Friday, March 18, 2011

Good -bye to Winter

Spring is coming. Our driveway is drowning in water from melted snow that has no place to go. The yard is full of stinking rotting leaves that didn't make it to the burn pile last fall. The dogs are tracking in mud and water that's sitting on top of the frozen ground, and their winter deposits are all visible and ugly. The melting snow has revealed brown vegetation, mud, litter, and other junk from winter.


The world is brown and grey instead of pure shimmering white. Gone is the fresh crisp air, replaced by the dank smell of uncovered rotting tree droppings. In the brown-and-gray world the trees look dead and pathetic, rather than majestic sleeping giants rising out of the snow.


Soon of course the leaves will fill the trees and the world will be green again, and the heat will start. The awful suffocating heat. And with it, those days or weeks of humidity that choke my breath as they assault my body. There is no getting away from them, no "cooling blankets", no cozyness. We just somehow get through it the best we can until the magnificent coloring trees and gentle coolness once again bring relief.


One of the few things that I like about summer: The early mornings when the sky is the brightest blue as a striking contrast to the vibrant greens of the trees, with bright yellow sunlight streaming through. And the occasional cooler, breezy day the brings blessed respite and a sense of "maybe this isn't so bad after all" that lasts until the next hot and humid day smacks me back down to size again. These are the gifts God gives me to remind me that He is still here, and the world is still His!

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Some GREAT Food Days!

Now that eating doesn't make me sick anymore, I've really been going crazy in the kitchen once again! I just love to cook (and shop/plan/devise/create!) and eat, and it has been such a downer the last few years that no matter what I ate, I would get sick. Now I don't get so much as a belly twinge, let alone all the rest, so I can indulge in my unbridled food passion once again!

As a result I've had some really fun food days lately! I just posted the recipe for what I did with the leftover cauliflower, that was great! One day I grilled some burgers on the electric griddle, and topped them with shitake mushrooms and a slice of provolone, tenting some foil over top to melt the cheese (without holding in enough heat to damage my griddle of course). Those were amazing!

My green beans are always a hit. I buy the whole skinny string beans that GFS sells (about $2 for a 2.5# bag!). I dGFSon't even thaw them, just heat butter and olive oil in a frying pan, add the beans with some sea salt and onion and garlic powders (heavy on the onion!) and "stir fry" them. I've also added mushrooms to these, or real onions, cut into thin slivers. (You have to start the onions first, they take longer than the beans.)

Today was a great day, starting off with some lovely cold 31-40 shrimp dipped in our simple seafood sauce of low-carb ketchup with a spoonful of horseradish mixed in. Later I had some eggs whipped up and fried with spinach and swiss cheese, served with toast (from the bread recipe I keep raving about!), heavily buttered, and a little SF jelly. A snack today was a slice of my low carb chocolate cake with buttery cream cheese frosting, and my evening snack was oven-baked cheese crisps dipped in full-fat sour cream.

My post-op weight loss stopped a few weeks ago, but I've been losing steadily at about a pound a week, with 1-2 cheat meals each week. If I want to give up the cheat meals and really concentrate on higher fat levels in my diet I could drop weight like crazy - I always do - but it's not worth it to me; unless you have done it, you can't believe how hard it is to eat 75% of your daily caloric intake as fat. Too much work at the moment.

I've been so active and busy these last couple of months! After spending so much time at my computer the last few years, too sick to do much else, I'm now living my life again. I try to stay caught up with my emails and blogs and RSS feeds and social networking but most days that's a lost cause. So much to do now that I can! So I hope you'll understand if I'm not blogging every day...I'm out living instead :).