Summer Cooking

Pancreatic Shock for Breakfast

• 2 cans Texas-style biscuits
• 1 stick butter, melted
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar
• 1/4 cup maple sugar
• 1 cup pecan halves
• 2 tsp cinnamon

Icing:  2 cups powdered sugar, 1 tsp. vanilla extract, 2 T. cream

Preheat oven to 380 F.  Grease a loaf pan.  Sprinkle in a bit of the sugars, a few nuts and put on a layer of biscuits.  Brush the biscuit layer with butter and sprinkle with cinnamon.  Add more sugars, and repeat, until all the biscuits are used up, ending with cinnamon.

Bake at 380 for about 45 minutes, until the biscuits in the middle are done (you will have to lift a couple of the top ones to check).  Mix the icing ingredients and spread on the top, allowing the loaf to cool as the icing melts down.

Zuccini Pancakes

• 5 small zuccini squash, shredded
• 1 small sweet onion, minced
• 1 cup cooked fresh sweet corn, cut from the cob
• 1 cup fresh basil leaves, chopped (measured before chopping)
• 1 t salt
• 1/2 t pepper
• 2 t minced garlic
• 2 c self-rising cornmeal mix
• 4 eggs, lightly beaten
• Bacon grease

  Mix all the ingredients, except the bacon grease, which is used on the hot griddle to crisp the pancakes.  Cook by large spoonfuls on a 380 degree griddle about 10-15 minutes on each side.

Diet….Schmiet

Welcome to Type II Diabetes, Right?

The first thing you hear after you pick your large butt off the floor when you get that diagnosis is “girl, you gotta lose weight.”

As IF I haven’t been trying to do precisely that my entire life.  I have lost and gained back the rough equivalent of an Olympics gymnastics squad over the last 30 years.  I’ve done Weight Watchers (have a nice, brass life member card for that one), Sugar Busters, South Beach, the Cookie Diet, medically-supervised Atkins, and a bunch of others.

Enter the 21st century and the computer, the internet and the smartphone.  I finally understand what it all comes down to.  Modern science is catching up to it as well.  Are you ready?  Take notes and feel free to share.

Angela’s Big Weight Loss Miracle Secret

1. Eat fewer calories than you burn.
2. Get some kind of physical activity in a few times a week, and the more fun it is for you, the more likely you are to do it.  If you call it fun, it ain’t exercise.  For me, gardening, loading or unloading and setting up or taking down the camper burn as many calories as running or working out at the gym.  So does building a cabinet, or pushing a lawn mower, or hauling a bunch of laundry baskets up and down the basement stairs.    Want to know how many calories you burn in your favorite activity?
   http://www.healthstatus.com/calculate/cbc
   
3. If you are, like me, into the menopausal years and can’t handle the carbs, then eat fewer of them, shift to high fiber, whole grains (go South Beach/Sugar Busters) and eat more lean protein instead.
4. Weigh, measure and record everything you eat.  Sigh.  Yes, in that Weight Watchers had it right.  It’s easier now, though.  We have this wonderful, miracle, modern technological miracle called MyFitnessPal! It is a free member website and has companion apps for every breed or brand of smartphone or tablet on the market.  I use it every single day on my Android phone.  The database of foods is over 10,000 and growing exponentially every day as members use their smartphone cameras to scan the barcodes of new products, or create new recipies.  If you create a recipe, MFP adds up the nutrition of all the ingredients from the database and calculates the nutrition information for you.  There are great support boards, and you can sign up buddies to encourage you along the way. 

Blueberry Tendabake Pancakes

1 cup Tenda-Bake 7 Grain Pancake and Waffle Mix

1 cup fresh blueberries

1 cup water

Mix together and cook on a hot (350 deg. F) until browned.  Don’t turn the first side until it’s bubbly, and take it off about 3 minutes later.  Top with a good-tasting omega-3 margarine (I like Fleischmann’s olive oil spread) and sugar-free syrup (try Hungry Jack).    I dollop of Ready Whip won’t kill you.

Who says dieting has to be boring, or unenjoyable?

84 Square Feet

George Carlin put it best:

“Ever notice how someone else’s stuff is shit and your shit is stuff?”

We live in a 3-story house (counting the finished basement) with a detached garage.  For the past 10 years, I’ve been waging a steady war of attrition against the shit stuff Chad and I accumulated over our separate lifetimes.

It’s very easy to categorize folk for one reason or another.  When it comes to stuff, there are the kind of folk who keep it forever and the kind who toss it.  He’s a keeper, aka Packrat.  I’m a tosser, aka HONEYWHERE’DMYSTUFFGO?

I admit to having a weakness for the collector bug, and have had to divest myself of several collections of things over the years.  What the heck was I thinking about when I collected a box full of silly slammers?  Or that full set of Teddy Grahams Bears?  I’ve had to stop myself several times from paying RIDICULOUS money on ebay for the last two Washington Nationals racing presidents bobbleheads, because I don’t have the full set.

I have bins and bins of yarn I’ll never knit, and a box of cross stitch patterns I’ll never sew, but all of that is only part of the contents of ONE CLOSET.  The rest of that closet and most of another room….are occupied by

CHAD’S SHIT.

Model Airplane Kits.  Model Spaceship Kits.  Model Spaceplane Kits.  Spaceshuttle Kits.  Model Cars.  Model Trains.  Boxes and boxes of magazines and new car brochures that occupy about 60 linear feet of shelf space.

That’s only in my office/craft room, and doesn’t count the bin after bin of spare computer cables, guitars, guitar cables, computer parts, old cassette mix tapes, VHS tapes and the rest of the Packrat Pile that (at least) is packed away off the floor (for the most part).

THE DEADLINE LOOMS

We have 3 years….until I retire and we move into:

84 square feet of luxury!  I’m only sort of kidding.  We’re actually looking at an A-frame chalet that will be about 1200 square feet and very short on storage space.

The fact is that we are very happy for long stretches in this 84 sq. ft. camper.  All that STUFF in the house is not really necessary.

 

 

 

Be a Pinhead–You’ll Love It!

Pinhead Oat Scones

2 cups Tenda-Bake 7 Grain Pancake Mix
1 cup pinhead or steel cut oats
1 cup boiling water
1/4 cup oat bran
4 tsp Just Whites dry egg whites
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp mace
1/4 tsp ginger
1 T. extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup white flour

 

Soak the pinhead oats in 1 cup of boiling water for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, mix the dry ingredients. After the oats have soaked, stir in the oats and olive oil. Turn into quarters with a knife.

Bake 350 F for 30 minutes, until lightly browned on top. Cool 5 minutes before serving.

Makes 6 scones.  Per Scone:  284 Calories, 47 g carbohydrates, 7 g fat, 10 g protein, 7 g fiber, 337 mg sodium.

Got the Fiber Smoothie Blues

Blueberry Yogurt Fiber Smoothie

1 cup fresh blueberries
1 cup 1 % milk
1 cup Greek nonfat plain yogurt
8 packets Splenda
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups crushed ice

Blend all ingredients for about 5 to 7 minutes on medium speed until it is WELL BLENDED. Stop the blender.

Add 2 cups crushed ice. Blend on high speed for 2 minutes. You’re just trying to cool the smoothie down, not make a frappe.

Serves 2:  174 calories per serving.  27 g carbohydrate, 2 g fat, 17 g protein, 2 g fiber, 113 mg sodium.

Got the fiber blues?