More for Me Than for You

This post is more for me so that I never have to search this again.  If you want the recipe for the best chocolate frosting I’ve ever tasted here it is!  This is the best website for recipes especially baking.  It has a servings calculator so you can easily make a half batch or quarter batch which really comes in handy when you want chocolate frosting to eat off a spoon at 10:00 at night and don’t want to have 12 servings of it.  Not saying that I’ve ever done that or anything.

Photo credit: Larkspur

Make it tonight!

I really like Lasagna, but I NEVER make it because it intimidates me and I assume it takes a lot of time to make it.  I made this after church on Sunday for lunch and it was easy and more importantly DELICIOUS!!

Here is what you need:

1 lb lean ground beef (I used turkey)

2 green peppers, chopped (I used only one)

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 jar [26 oz] spaghetti sauce (mine was 24 and it was fine)

1 2/3 cup water

1/4 cup Zesty Italian dressing

12 oven ready lasagna noodles broken into quarters

1 cup shredded mozzarella

How to:

Brown meat and drain.

Stir in peppers, garlic, sauce, water and dressing: bring to a boil.  Add noodles; stir, cover.

Cook on medium-low heat 10 to 15 minutes or until noodles are tender, stirring occasionally.  Remove from heat, sprinkle with cheese and wait about 5 minutes for the cheese to melt.

This recipe is from the Kraft Food and Family magazine which I’m currently seriously digging!

Cheater Cheater

Snicker doodle eater.  I don’t know how to make snicker doodles, meaning I don’t have a recipe for them and I don’t really care to look one up, but I like snicker doodles this time of year so I came up with a totally cheaters way to make them.  They are chewier than the real thing which makes me like them more than the real thing.  You will not believe how easy this is, I feel like I shouldn’t tell you my secret, but I have to share:

Start with a bag mix, sometimes you can score these for like a $1, I find them at Big Lots. Make it as directed using the drop cookies recipe.

make a cinnamon sugar mixture, I didn't measure, just made it as dark as I like it

Make balls and roll in your cinnamon sugar mixture, then bake as directed on package.

And then you eat them! I had someone ask if I put crack in them because they couldn't stop eating them. Don't say I didn't warn you!

More Like Her

I’m becoming more like her everyday.  My Grandmother, Katherine Burks Russell.  She passed away February 28, 2005.  Since then I’m reminded of her often through the jewelry I inherited, she was one trendy jewelry wearer.  I’m reminded by my nail beds, how random is that?  I literally look at my fingernails and realize that I have the same hands.  Age spots, yep they started showing up last year, I remember she had quite a few and they have definitely popped out in a patch on my face.  Unfortunately this week I found out that I inherited her high cholesterol too.  It sent me in to a bit of a tailspin because I’m very dramatic.  I believe I told Andrew that I was probably dying…can you imagine me saying that?  Then I googled some stuff and I am trying to figure out what I’m going to eat and trying to commit to working out everyday.  It turns out that it’s just another thing that I’m going to have to fight against to not be chemically medicated.  I need to drop it 33 points…blek, that’s a lot, I think Cheerios is supposed to drop it a whole 3 points. If only I had inherited her tiny figure too…

Beaver Anal Glands

Are you intrigued?  Be prepared to being completely grossed out.  I mean Beaver Anal Glands alone is a gross thought, but did you know this is an ingredient in FOOD?  Yep, I feel a little bad for telling you this, especially if you like raspberry candy.  My Sister-In-Law passed this website on to me that outlines the 10 most disgusting things found in foods that we eat.  I bet you didn’t know you were eating anal glands, bugs, sand, sheep secretions, and the list of nasty stuff goes on.  If you want to read the article and be completely turned off to processed foods and some fast food CLICK HERE.  If you are someone who strongly believes that ignorance is bliss, do not click there!

The Dirty and Not So Dirty Dozen

As some of you know Andrew and I are trying to be more chemically free.  Pesticide and Hormone free foods are extremely easy to come by in Austin and are only slightly more expensive.  To be honest it’s hard to find non-natural poultry in our meat departments.  It started with me giving up of diet coke which has gone extremely well and now it’s seeping into other parts of our life.  I bought Almond Milk this week and surprisingly I really like it, we might be making the switch to this instead of cows milk considering dairy has never been super friendly to us anyway. My grocery budget will not allow for me to buy all organic so when I’ve talked to my organic friends and asked them where to begin they have directed me to the dirty dozen list.  I have found this helpful and I’ve had a few people ask me to share what the list contains.  Here is where I found this particular list.

12 Most Contaminated

• Peaches
• Apples
• Sweet Bell Peppers
• Celery
• Nectarines
• Strawberries
• Cherries
• Pears
• Grapes (Imported)
• Spinach
• Lettuce
• Potatoes

12 Least Contaminated

• Onions
• Avocado
• Sweet Corn (Frozen)
• Pineapples
• Mango
• Asparagus
• Sweet Peas (Frozen)
• Kiwi Fruit
• Bananas
• Cabbage
• Broccoli
• Papaya

We will probably never go totally organic, but I think the less chemicals we put in our body the better.  You know I’m never going to completely give up Bluebell Ice Cream!

Lucky Her

That’s always been my mentality.  I look at girls and think, lucky her, she’s naturally thin.  Oh how I wish I was petite.  Man to have her hair.  And the list goes on and on.  Then it struck me this week.  For the first time ever I realized it’s totally my choice what size I am.  I am the only person who can control what I eat, when I exercise, etc.  I always assumed that you were either meant to be thin, or meant to not be.  I know I’m not really that big, so I don’t want you to think I have a totally warped self image, but I did get a little out of control with my eating and I have finally started to reign it in again.  I also looked into some people’s diets that I deem thin and honestly if I ate what they ate and worked out as much as them I’d be their size too!  The other thing I realized is most likely people look at me and think lucky her.  It’s a vicious cycle for women (and men too) that we look at other people and think their lives are so much better than ours.  For me it’s people’s size, their wardrobe, their home decor, and their hair and make-up.  Yeah I’m that superficial sometimes.  For men I think it’s more other people’s jobs, their cars, and maybe their house. I’m working on changing it from Lucky Her to Lucky ME!

Eating a Dry Sandwich

I NEVER eat ANYTHING dry.  I am a condiment lover!!! However when we started this lose it thing I realized that about one hundred calories could be cut out of my diet each day if I forwent the condiments.  The other night we went out to dinner and I ordered a club sandwich, no bacon.  I bit into it before putting any sort of mayo or mustard on it and it was ACTUALLY good!  The tomato was so juicy that I didn’t even need any mayo, but for the first time in my life I actually tried something before adding extra calories to it, what a novel idea!  Here are some of the tricks I have found in the past few weeks that have helped us cut some of the calories out, I thought this might be helpful to our other friends who are losing it with us!

Bread: I found an OROWHEAT (AKA BROWNBERRY) bread that is 90 calories per slice.  It’s the 100% whole wheat version and it’s honestly not bad at all.  I’ve cut down to only eating a one slice sandwhich which also cut down on the turkey and the miracle whip (yes I am still going to use it sometimes) this switch to half a sandwhich saves me 175 calories at lunch!

Chocolate:  I went up and down the candy aisle Monday night looking for something I could fill our candy jar with and I stumbled upon aerated chocolate.  Hershey’s kisses now have an aerated version (meaning they pump air into it) that are only 18 calories per kiss!  Haha ok I just looked up regular kisses and they only have 22, but hey I’ll save any calories I can and you can’t really tell the difference.

Special K bars: Chocolate Pretzel snack bars are only 90 calories and they are tasty!  I also bought a chocolate drizzle which I am sure is good too, just haven’t opened the box yet.

Fruit:  You can eat A LOT of strawberries for 100 calories, I usually only eat about 50 calories worth and I cut them up and put one packet of splenda on them…this is the only time I use splenda so I count that as not too bad!  They are just too tart otherwise.  Cantaloupe here is so fresh and juicy these days and you get quite a bit for the calories.  I also am loving Pineapple and they are cheap down here so I get one every week!

Yogurt:  Yoplait Light is 100 calories and I’ve tried every flavor they have.  The only one I thought was gross was the peach, it had bizarre chunks in it!  My favorites are the Strawberry and Key Lime Pie.

Weight Watchers Cheese sticks: 50 calories and very tasty, also they are so convenient!

So there you have a short list of the things that are keeping us alive as we navigate the waters of eating half of what we typically eat.  I’m still just around 6 pounds down, but I’m hoping this week I’ll lose a couple more.

How is it possible?

That we don’t all way over 500 pounds??  Andrew, Amanda, Me, Mom and “Aunt Jill” started Lose It this past week and let me tell you it is INCREDIBLY eye opening.  Thank you to Stephanie for your suggestion in the comments section!  We started last Monday and have come to the realization that on any given day we were typically eating an extra 1000 to 2000 calories!  WHAT??? How is that even possible???  Take yesterday for example, I wanted a PB&J for lunch so I measured it all out and for 1/2 of a sandwich with 1 piece of bread, 1 tablespoon of PB and 1 tablespoon of Jelly it was 265 calories.  I used to eat an entire sandwich sometimes after work for a snack, before dinner!  When I texted this revelation to Amanda she responded back letting me know that she used to eat 2 in one sitting!!!  Don’t get me started on the pizza, we are still eating a lot of pizza, but our portion size has reduced drastically.  We used to just split the Digiorno in half (1170 calories per person) now we eat one slice for 390 calories.  I also looked up our standard meals at Chili’s when we get the combo thing with the appetizer, meal and dessert and we were both consuming over 2000 calories in one sitting!  I have been very hungry most of the day and go to bed with a growling tummy every night, but before I go to bed I mentally think “body, eat your own fat.”  It’s working I’ve lost nearly 3 pounds in the matter of about 10 days so that’s a healthy weight loss so far.  If you want to get serious about weight loss and want a very eye opening experience go to the website and sign up.  If you want to friend me my user name is Lauracampbell2008, it’s easier to lose weight when you have a team of encouragers, so get your friends in on it!

Tipping the Scales

I’ve gone back and forth on whether or not to post this, but then I realized if I post it then it’s out there and I will force myself to actually do something about it and change.  Andrew “fixed” the scale while I was gone.  He tells me he didn’t do anything to it, but when I left it said it needed a new battery and when I came home it was working just fine.  So the moment of truth arrived Tuesday morning when I stepped on the dreaded scale after not weighing myself for at least 4 months.  The number shocked me, like jaw on the floor kind of shock.  I knew that I wasn’t at the lightest weight I’ve ever been at, but seriously I did not know my body could produce such a number!  I’ve always had a weight ceiling that I never broke through so even when I would get “really out of control”  I always had the assurance that I wouldn’t go above a certain number because my body just plateaued at a certain weight.  I won’t share what the weight is on here because that just isn’t very lady-like and we all know I epitomize femininity, but if you know what my ceiling is add three pounds to that and that’s where I am.  So now I am 23 pounds away from my goal weight instead of just 15 which is where I thought I was until that dreadful Tuesday morning.  Please don’t hear me complaining, this is not a oh woe is me moment, rather it’s a kick in the butt because the only person who can control my weight is me and it appears I need to exercise a lot of restraint.