I came up with a new recipe this week. David and I have been using this program on the iPhone called "Tap and Track" to monitor our exercise and food intake. One thing this has helped us with is to realize that neither of us are particularly good at getting in protein. So, I made this high-protein, lower carb casserole. It is similar to my Not Chicken Pie recipe, hence the name:
Even Less Like Chicken Pie (makes 10 servings, freezes well)
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Ingredients:
8 oz shredded low-fat cheese. I used the Sargento Reduced Fat Mexican blend
2 packages Aidell's Organic Chicken and Apple sausage, sliced
5 oz bag of baby spinach, chopped
1 Vidalia Onion, diced
1.5 lbs chopped fresh broccoli
1/2 cup 100% Egg Whites
2 Tbsp Vegetable Oil
Garlic
Paprika
Chop the broccoli, removing the leaves and other stuff you don't want. Steam the broccoli till tender and set aside. In a large frying pan or wok, stir fry the chopped onion and garlic (to taste) in the vegetable oil until translucent. Add in the chopped baby spinach and cook until kinda slimy looking. Turn off the heat and remove from burner. Add in the chopped broccoli, sausage, cheese and egg whites. Mix well, then put into a large casserole dish that you have sprayed with Pam. Smooth the top and sprinkle with paprika. Bake in 350 degree oven for 40-45 minutes.
Face it, there is just something about sitting down and devouring a pint of ice cream. We've all done it. You go to the store, you think you are being "good" by just buying a "little" container of ice cream, you get it home, suck it down, say to yourself, "Hey, it's only 300 calories". Then you see the "per serving" and realize that a "serving" is 1/4 cup and you just ate 8 servings.
Or worse, you buy "diet" ice cream, and feel good about saving the calories until you see the ingredient panel, and realize that you just consumed a pint of something that contains absolutely no ingredients that you can pronounce, but you know for sure that they didn't come from no cow. Well maybe a mutant soylent green type of cow but not the kind that goes MOOOoooo.
So, you have the following choices:
Eat 1/4 cup of real ice cream and feel deprived and beat yourself up and go back for more.
Eat a bunch of nasty tasting chemical laden ice "creme" like dairy-ish product (hey, the chemicals might cause you to grow another head out of your arm pit, but at least you won't be fat!)
Say screw it and allow yourself a treat of a pint of really good ice cream every now and then, with real sugar and fat in it. This is by far the best option. There is absolutely nothing wrong with treats now and then.
But today, I discovered there is actually one other option for an ice cream fix. My trainer told me about this new stuff called "Arctic Zero". I tried the Vanilla Maple flavor today - the nutritional information is amazing:
Serving Size: A pint (the carton says 1/2 cup, but we all know we aren't going to stop there, so I did the math here to eat the whole thing)
Calories: 150
Total Fat: 0
Sodium: 320 mg
Total Carbs: 24 g
Dietary Fiber: 8g
Sugars: 15 g
Protein: 14 g
What gets me is the ingredient list: Filtered water, whey protein concentrate, organic cane sugar, chicory root, guar gum, anthem gum, natural flavors, sea salt, organic monk fruit. No Aspartame or even Splenda here!
The consistency is more like ice milk, and it tastes better if you let it melt a bit (although I think all ice cream tastes better melted) but the flavor of the Vanilla Maple is amazing. David tried the Chocolate Peanut butter, and thought it was ok. I didn't love the chocolate peanut butter flavor, but I'm not a huge peanut butter fan either.
The only problem is that it isn't that easy to find. I got mine at the Publix in Vero. The Sebastian Publix doesn't carry it yet (although I really really really really really really really hope they start!)
Let me know if you try it and what you think. Personally, I love it so much I would marry it it. But that's just me.
Oh my. Today was very hot, and very buggy. But, I was joined by both the divine miss H and HFC David, so it was a wonderful walk as always. It amazes me how many times we can walk the same stretch of road, and yet see completely different things of every walk. If you didn't GOYB today, here are some of the very cool things you missed (click to embiggen):
This was something we hadn't seen before. A slug! We felt really bad for it, the sidewalk was very hot, so Heather picked it up and put it in the cooler grass.
We were not sure what these bones were from. David was guessing maybe a giant land crab?
This was a spider. The whitish stuff was sticks in her web, the spider is the brown and grey thing, but I'm not sure what kind, it was kind of bunched up.
This was a formerly pretty but currently very dead moth being eaten by life. Circle of life became a recurring theme on todays walk.
It was a beautiful, albeit hot day. On the shore there were a ton of little birds...
...including a Ruddy Turnstone coming into his winter plumage...
... and some Spotted Sandpipers.
This is most likely the same Reddish Egret we saw last week. Here is taking off.
This was really sad. It happened really quickly so she wasn't sure what happened, but Heather saw this guy do a loop-de-loop on the telephone wires, then crash into the water. It looked like he might have hit the wire, broke his wing and crash landed in the water. There really wasn't anything we could do for him, he was floundering quite badly but still moving when we left him. We didn't see him on the way back.
This is a Black Vulture. Not sure if the fact that he was hanging out is related to the fact that we didn't see the hurt pelican on the way back. But again, it is the circle of life, something dies and something else feeds on it and survives.
BTW, a free DeeMotivation t-shirt if someone (other than David or Heather) can tell me what color this bird's legs are and why!
We saw lots of spiders today. There are at least 4 in this picture.
Here is a close up of a golden orbweaver (one of the same type that is in the photo above.) Pictures don't do them justice, they are beautiful critters.
Something that cracks me up -- all of the houses on A1A have PRIVATE docks, and there are signs on all of them telling you that. I love seeing the peeps being such little scofflaws!
On our way back, we were just shy of 6 miles, so rather than cut across the grass to our car, I made everyone walk along the road a little further. I was rewarded for my efforts when this little guy came running out to say hi to me!
Overall it was a great walk. Be sure to join us for upcoming walks. We are doing Riverview Park in Vero Tuesday night, and A1A again next Sunday night. Remember you will never experience real life sitting on your couch!
We made a last minute change to our SOS walk this week. This turned out to be somewhat of a mistake. I only got about a mile in as there were storms all around us. Still, got a few pictures, and got to spend time with HFC David. If you didn't GOYB, here's what you missed:
HFC David with scope and binoculars (this was at Vierra in the morning on the way to Joe Overstreet.)
Joe Overstreet has some awesome burrowing owls. This isn't one of them. But in my defense, I wasn't wearing my glasses.
This was cool, it was a whole family of sandhill cranes, a mom, a dad and a baby.
Unfortunately, we didn't get a ton of pictures as it was dark and raining quite a bit, and too threatening to go far from the truck with the camera even when it wasn't actually raining.
Oh well. It was still way better than sitting on the couch doing nothing. Remember, doing SOMETHING is always better than doing NOTHING! Come on out and join us on a future walk!
Since I started this blog, one of the questions I get asked the most is, "What motivates you?" There are a few answers to that. People are a big motivator (I'm looking at you David, Heather, Alison, Hiawassee Mom, Joy, Amy, all the way back Wayne on Mount Monadnock who started this whole thing) and I would not have come as far as I have in the last few years without them. But the one thing that has always been with me, literally every waking minute of my day is music. It is what gets me up in the morning, gets me through my work outs, and gets me though the times that I alone.
Back in 1995 after my divorce, I was pretty down. I listened to a lot of music and read a lot of philosophy. One thing that stayed with me was from the Tao, there is a part about learning to be like water and go around the rocks instead of just crashing into them. I needed a reminder of this point, which is the explanation for my first tattoo on my left wrist.
At the time I got that tattoo, I knew I wanted a second one on my right wrist. My initial thought was the chinese character for "Silence" as at the time I was convinced I talk way too much. A few years removed from the divorce, I realized that that was pretty negative, I am chatty, that's just the way I am, most people think it's actually one of my better points and I came to appreciate it. But I still wanted a tattoo, but was back to being undecided what I wanted.
I started this blog in 2009. I was a big turning point for me, it was about self acceptance. On New Year's Eve 2009, I was wondering if the blog was a bad idea, had doubts if anyone would ever want to go out and do stuff, didn't really know if I could make any kind of difference or impact. I was feeling kind of bored and lonely and started goofing off on YouTube. I happened to stumble across one of my favorite videos of all time, The Smashing Pumpkin's Tonight, Tonight:
A line from the song jumped out at me:
"Believe that life can change, that you're not stuck in vain"
A few things dawned on me at that moment:
Not hating myself doesn't mean I have to go through the rest of my life not changing or fixing the things that are broken.
I found my new tattoo.
In the video, that is Tom Kenney, a.k.a. Spongebob Squarepants, jumping out of the dirigible.
When I made my new year goals that day, I put "Get new tattoo" on the list. I didn't do it. I put it on my list again in 2010. Didn't do it again.
A few weeks ago, during an SOS walk, I was whining to Heather about being down, and she basically kicked my butt and told me stop whining and GOYB (man, I HATE it when people throw my own words back at me:-). So, I came home from the walk, and took a day off of work to regroup myself. On that day, I went back and revisited my new years goals - I bought new sneakers, I signed up for banjo lessons, and I researched tattoo artists in the area. Since that day I have:
Started banjo lessons
Increased my walking to between 3-5 miles a day
Got this:
In case you couldn't watch the video, this is the dirigible that they ride to the moon. And in case you are not familiar with my warped sense of humor, the yellow in the window at the bottom is Spongebob Squarepants.
Life feels new and good again.
Join us for the SOS walk tomorrow evening. But beware, you will have to look at my tattoo over and over and over. :-)
It was a very interesting walk tonight. We saw a tree with some tape around it. Weren't sure why until we heard this deafening noise. Here's what we saw and HEARD!
Trust me when I say, our walks are not usually this scary!
So, the last time we did and SOS, I got severely dehydrated and felt awful for days after. So, this week, I took all kinds of precautions. My trainer told me about this electrolyte stuff you can get that doesn't have all the calories of gatorade or even G2, so I tried a packet of that. It tasted like vaguely cherry flavored spit, but it really seemed to help (I drank 6 oz of that on my way to the water). I also got myself a fancy 70 oz Camel Back. That was awesome. Absolutely worth the $50, it was so nice not to have to carry multiple water bottles, and it also had pockets for my cellphone and keys, and the best part is that it is insulated, which meant that my water was still cold when I finished it at the end of the walk!
Speaking of the walk, if you didn't GOYB today, you missed some wicked cool stuff! Here's what we saw today:
I haven't seen one of these in a while! It was a very pretty golden orb weaver. He was way up on the power line.
Heather decided that she needed her picture taken in a banana jungle. I concur it was quite picturesque.
A banana bloom with lots of bananas.
I'm not sure what this was. I thought at first maybe a Forester's tern as it had black eyes, but he just wasn't pointy enough. Perhaps a laughing gull in between plumages?
A smiling bunny!
Some kind of really really really large moth.
I should know, but admit I have no idea what the heck these 2 birds were.
This was a first for us. Apparently one of the crabs got itself a fancy set of wheels! Or maybe it was just a toy car that a kid left on the rock. I prefer to picture a crab cruising around in it.
This was another oddity today. It was a chunk of bobcat fur. There was no other evidence that the cat had been hit by a car or predated, so maybe something almost, but not quite got him.
I was trying to get a good picture of this willet when something bizarre swam by...
This was by far one of the oddest things we've ever seen. It's a Snook swimming on top of the water. He didn't just come up once for air, he was swimming like this all the way up the river! Really weird.
Neither Heather nor I know what the heck this is, but the white stuff was on an Australian Pine. I am thinking that maybe the pine tree had a sinus issue and it's tree snot. But that was just my guess.
Now I ask you, while you were sitting on your couch today, did you see a Snook* swimming on top of the water, or did you see pine tree snot? I think not! GOYB and join us Tuesday for our next walk on the river!
* And for those of you who actually watch it, no, Snooki on the Jersey Shore does NOT count!
