The weather is turning colder.

This is my favorite season, without a doubt! It's cool enough to work on my bigger projects, like finishing my quilt tops and maybe starting a big afghan project. It's apple picking season, which means homemade apple sauce, and pumpkins are just around the corner for jack o'lanterns and pumpkin butter! A friend has baby #2 due in a couple weeks and another friend is having a Halloween wedding!

With all of the cold weather cooking I like to do, you guys are gonna have to stay on my butt about eating right. And I'll probably need some extra nagging to make sure that I stay active as it starts to be too cold to ride my bike. That's right! Free license to be a pain in my ass! What more could you ask for!?!?

It's been tricky to balance Carl's lowered carb eating with my hypoglycemia, but we're doing pretty good. I've been eating a lot of rice and couscous because they're quick to whip up on the side of an otherwise low carb meal. Carl's heartburn is greatly improved and he's lost about 10 lbs.

We're feeling pretty good about things right now, especially as we, just yesterday polished off the end of the first big ol' pot of winter chili! (It was chili verde and it was awesome!)

Wish us luck as we transition from wild, unpredictable PA summer weather into freezing, unpredictable PA winter. I'll enjoy the fall either way, I'm just not sure about the effect on my waistline.

Craziness.

I've not had much free time due to family commitments lately, between the nephew's doctor appointments and birthdays and so on, but we're still plugging along on the "Get Healthy" plan.

I've been doing really good at staying away from dairy and watching my portions. Carl has started eating low-carb. Which, by the way, it's a blast balancing a low-carb diet with a dairy-free hypoglycemic diet. I need carbs, he shouldn't have them. Cheese is an awesome option for him, but I can't have it. It's like grocery shopping for two separate households! I don't know how Lisa does it without losing her mind.

Right now, we're cooking a protein and a veggie, then I'm having a quick carb side, like veggie pasta or whole grain something while he has either a second portion of the veggie or a second veggie. It seems to be working pretty well now that it's starting to be a routine.

For snacks, we hide his cheese in a drawer in the fridge and we hide my crackers and pretzels in a cupboard that up until now wasn't really being used for anything. Again, so far so good.

I made homemade ketchup and some coarse ground mustard as well as making sure we're well stocked with salad dressings. I made a huge pot of meat sauce so I have something handy for my pasta and he's got something different to throw on his eggs for breakfast.

I have to saw that I'm really impressed how quickly he adapted to having a scramble egg wrap for breakfast from the peanut butter and honey that he's used to. He tells me his heartburn is almost gone and he's seems like he's starting to lose a bit of weight.

We're going to have a ton of bumps in the road I'm sure, but it seems as if we've finally found the right path! Wish us luck!

Check-In. And I thought I was inconsistent.

The biggest downside, to me anyway about dairy-free, believe it or not isn't the fact that it's somewhat more pricey than the regular dairy options. It's not even the fact that in order to get dairy-free you often have to go vegan, or gluten-free. Or sometimes even, gluten-free, fat free, sugarfree, flavor-free.

What never fails to piss me off is the completely random and inconsistent ways that grocery stores seem to stock the dairy-free options. Sure, put them in the organic or natural section, I expect that. Put them in the Vegan section, I can even deal with that. Even better, put them in the same cooler as the organic dairy, I can deal with that. But when they're randomly intermingled with the organic "regular" dairy, it makes me want to cry.

Why is it so difficult to put the dairy-free/vegan all on one or two shelves at the top or bottom of the door and fill the rest with organic dairy? Why do should I have to sort through organic cheeses and spreads to get to the one tub of Better Than Cream Cheese at the back? Why is organic ice cream stocked between rows of dairy-free and vegan desserts? I stock shelves as a large part of my job. It's not like it's hard to put the Daiya shreds up or down one shelf.

And while we're talking about it, why does it seem like the dairy-free stuff is always randomly in and out of stock? Do they order by hand? (Ok, at Sign of the Bear, they do. But they're also way more organized than grocery stores I'm talking about.)

For the longest time, I was convinced that nobody but Sign of the Bear carried Better Than Cream Cheese. Now it seems that (at least our local) Wegman's has an over abundance of it, crammed in the back of the bottom shelf in the last cooler in the natural/organic section. They carried Tofutti Cuties in Key Lime and All Vanilla forever. Tonight I go, all they have is the classic vanilla with chocolate wafers. No sign that they ever even carried the others.

My Giant doesn't have any Soy Yogurt and hardly any natural, organic, dairy-free or Vegan options, even though the next closest Giant to us has an entire organic/natural market in the back and several other Giants in our area have an organic aisle. Nevermind, my closest Giant is on the opposite side of a city park from WEGMANS!!

This is a huge change for me and I'm trying to be good. I really am. Why are the grocery stores making it so damn hard!?!?! You wouldn't randomly change your regular ice cream flavors. Sure they add new and get rid of poor sellers, but the dairy-free stuff seems like it changes from week to week sometimes.

The regular dairy cheeses are always neatly organized, excepting when there's an amazing sale, why is the dairy-free/Vegan/Organic always a huge mish-mash that looks like there was a total free-for-all battle in the cooler?

Come on, be nice to those of us who need/choose to eat a little differently.

Check-In. New Loves!

A few websites that I've found that have been wonderful for my personal "Get Healthy" movement.

Me You Health - Daily Challenge - you fill out a short questionaire, they give you your well being rating and then everyday you get a Be Healthy Challenge. They range from arm wrestle someone in your house to make a pledge to learn to use the right amount of sunscreen. It's a huge community of people all supporting each other! You can give out Smiles (similar to Facebook "Likes") and post congrats and support to friends and strangers! Tons of fun.

Bike Journal - If I belonged to a Bike Club, I'd get even more use out of this website, but they give you tools to track your bike rides. There's a journal, a great forum, and a huge community.

In other news, I'm proud to say that I've biked just over 25 miles in June so far! If I can keep up with this rate, I'll hit 100 miles this month! Not bad for a hippy chick who didn't even own a bike 6 weeks ago!

I'm settling further and further into the smaller pants size and I'm finding that some of my size 18's are actually way too big to wear outside the house. I'm starting to collect them together, so anybody interested in Hand-Me-Downs??

Except for my closing shifts, where I ride my bike less (Carl picks me up and brings the bike rack, so I'm not riding in the dark.) and get home later still wound up, I'm sleeping much better most nights and have even cut the dose on my OCD meds back down to where it was before our house fire last year.

Carl has given up on Diet Coke altogether and as a Congrats present I bought him a 64 oz water jug that he uses to carry fresh brewed tea or filtered water with him to work. And, he's taken to munching on seasoned nori strips which, as far as I'm concerned, he can eat till he floats, they have 1 Calorie and 1/10 of 1 carb each!

All in all, we're in doing pretty good with the get healthy stuff and when the veggies start to come in out in our little garden, I think we'll do even better!

Check-in. Healthier Choices.

I've lost nearly a pants size!

We're learning a lot about ourselves through this whole get healthy process. Here's the highlights!

• I feel like a little kid when I'm flying down a hill on my bike!
• If we have Edy's Fruit Bars or Whole Fruit Bars in the freezer, they're nearly always our first choice when we go for a snack.
• The fruit bars have also cut down on Carl's ice cream cravings, while making giving up dairy easier for me.
• Keeping chocolate in the house, but somewhere that's a pain to get to, has cut down on chocolate binges for both of us, and has almost completely eliminated my urges to buy a candy bar at the check-out.
• Pita chips have solved my issue with not being able to substitute crunchy for crispy.
• The 5 mile round trip to work on my bike seems to be what I need to be able to sleep well.
• I have a lot of fun battling traffic on my bike. Although I still walk it across the 22 interchange on my way to work.

All in all, I think that we're making a lot of change for the better and Carl is even starting to make plans for what he's going to do to make up for the fact that he can't really bike to work even if he wanted to.

Check-In. Trail Mix!

Can't even remember what I had for breakfast today, so it can't have been that interesting. It may have been clementines, actually.

Clementines and honey wheat pretzels for lunch (11-7:30 is a tough shift for me, mealwise. It's over two meals.) and a candy bar for a snack.

More egg-spinach-meat sauce in a tortilla for dinner.

Made a ton of trail mix tonight for lunches.

I had a pomegranate fruit bar for a snack so I wouldn't pig out while I was making the trail mix, also.

Sprouts are doing really well, in another couple days we can really harvest them.

Gonna try to get a little more work done in the garden tomorrow night. I should have asparagus this year, if the roots took and held up over the winter. It'll be nice to find out.

If anyone wants any mint, with or without roots, let me know, I've got tons. Spearmint and a chocolate mint hybrid.

Check-In. Been awhile.

I've walked to work three days this week so far, which is every day, actually, since I had off for Easter on Sunday.

I cheated a bit on my no-dairy to eat some of Gramma's Homemade Peanut Roll Eggs, but it was totally worth it!

We went back to the MLK stairs on Monday night and I shaved about 6 more seconds off my time, 2:54.54! Carl kicked my ass and made it in 2:10.38. BOO!

Eating hasn't been exactly great this week again, but I've been snacking mostly one Edy's Real Fruit Popsicles and Popcorn, rather than anything really crappy. Drinking lots of water, tea, juice.

Also, I got pretty awful sunburn yesterday, so I had to invest in aloe gel and sunblock today.

Check-In, Got a little naughty today.

I had Chocolate Cheerios for breakfast again.

Rotisserie chicken for lunch with Purely Decadent Peanut Butter ZigZag for dessert.

I had Taco Bell without cheese or sour cream for dinner, which was not the original plan. Apparently the Quakertown Primo's closed so we had to get something else, kinda last minute.

I had some more of my fake ice cream for a snack.

Spent the day, helping Lisa pack, but I did walk over to Sign of the Bear and found time to get new shoes to make my walk to work more comfortable. Famous Footwear actually carries sneakers in a 4E (men's Extra Wide), so I actually got the right size!!!!

Will probably have a bit of something when I get home.

See ya tomorrow!

Train, Train! Take me on out of this town.

Ok, it's really more like "Take me on out of this self-defeating, half-assed backwards mindset," but what can I say, I'm sort of a Blackfoot fan.

This past year sucked. Say it with me: "2010 sucked!" But, at the risk of turning into a walking cliche, there's been a silver lining in a lot of it.

Sure, my house almost burned down, but I didn't have to finish painting the 3rd floor and we got a kitchen/bathroom remodel.

Sure, I dislocated my knee and was out of work 3 weeks. but I got like a dozen afghans done for charity.

On the downside, is that all of the upheaval and, let's be honest, boredom, has lead to a lot of really, REALLY lousy eating habits.(And a serious Facebook addiction.) For so long, we were forced to eat based on convenience and now it's become our first instinct. We used to relish a chance to cook together, now we don't bother unless it's 3 days till the next check and there's $10 in the bank account.

I made fantastic Chipotle Corn Chowder for dinner the other night, but not because I had a brilliant recipe idea, it was because all I had left in the fridge was frozen corn, a stick of butter and a little milk.

At any rate, I ran into an old friend the other day, and she looked AWESOME! (Good for you, JuneBug!) Turns out, all she's doing different from my fat ass, is that she's actually doing all the things I keep meaning to do. Regular Yoga, eating the way she needs to, and so on. Basically, not being a useless lump after she punches out from work.

WAIT! That's all I need to do? Really? I swear on all that is holy and good, there really is something wrong with me. I can't even get my prescription filled on time. (Which I was gonna do tonight, I swear.)

And then I was sitting and thinking about it, I know I'm lactose intolerant, why do I continue to eat dairy? Why do I say, "well, I could have a little more milk before I have to worry about getting sick"? When I should be saying "I don't normally eat that, but for your birthday, I could have a smidge of Ice Cream."

I know that I can't eat onions. (Migraines) Yet over and over again, I find myself staring at Scallions or Chives saying "if I'm careful not to eat much of it, I'll be fine." When I should be saying "I should just skip this" or "I need to learn to cook this myself, you know, onion free, so I don't risk puking or missing work."

I genuinely love healthy goodies like dried fruit, nuts and seeds. So why don't I eat them?? I have a huge bag of almonds, could I tell you where it even is? Nevermind, when the last time I actually ate some of them.

I love Yoga. It centers me. It makes me feel awesome, spiritually and physically. If I did yoga yesterday, I can almost guarantee I'll do yoga today. Problem is, if life happens and I have to skip a day, it takes me like a week (or sometimes more) to get around to it again. Why??? What's wrong with me?

I could keep whining and say "I have OCD, I can't help it, I fixate on everything that sucks." Let's be honest, I'm on meds for that (which I still need to get refilled) and I know that I train myself to fixate on the good instead of the crap, I've done it in the past.

I'm not happy at work. Things are finally changing for the better, but it all feels like too little too late. So why don't I fixate on the things that do make me happy, you know, the not work stuff. How about yoga and almonds, cuddling with the cat or the fact that after almost 5 years, I'm still glad I married my husband. This isn't rocket science. It's easy stuff.

I need to just keep my eyes on the prize. No more onions, limit dairy to dry cheeses like parmesan and cheddar or things like sheep's milk feta which doesn't upset my stomach. Eat smaller, healthier snacks. Enjoy my food for the flavor, not the quantity. Pack a lunch, have breakfast at home.

Back to the basics! Need to get it right this time. Aside from the fact that I can't keep up with my favorite 4 yr old any more, I need to not look like a moose in the pictures at my sister's upcoming wedding.

Share with me! What have your "get healthy" victories been? Keep me motivated.

I'm not going to track my progress with weight loss. I'm going to track it in pants sizes. I'm also going to pay a visit to a giant staircase not far from our house (90 steps) and time myself climbing up and back down. Every week I'm going to go back and time myself again. I'm going to post the times here to keep myself honest.

Wish me luck.

Flavors.

Made more lipbalm the other night, Honey Almond with a touch of cinnamon. It turned out fantastic!

Then I tried to make Pina Colada. What a mess. The first try, the pineapple turned into a giant gooey blog, and the second try the pineapple powder integrated but I'm really not happy with how the flavor turned out. You can't taste the pineapple over all the coconut. I'm going to have to find a better/different way of flavoring this one.

I'm thinking of looking for a pineapple extract or a pineapple candy flavor and see how that goes.

Your Favorite Hippy is Back Online

So after all this time, we're finally getting settled back into the house. We've been living in it for almost 3 weeks, but it's only now starting to feel like ours again. All the damage from the fire has been repaired at this point but we haven't started to unpack yet because the bathroom remodel isn't done yet and repairing the living room floor and redoing the kitchen come after that, as well as the touch up painting in the whole house. When things are finished up, I'll post some pictures.

I haven't been totally lazy while I haven't been online, although admittedly, my dislocated kneecap is slowing me down quite a bit. But... I do have a few recipes to get posted, including two for awesome salads, both using variations on Good Seasons dressing mix packets.

I have my follow up with the orthopedic on Thursday, wish me luck.

This Hippy Has a Plan

So, things have got to change at this hippy's house. We're disorganized at best and it shows almost more than anywhere else in our eating habits. And we both ought to get it under control, because we need to get our weight maintained better for our health. I have arthritis in my spine and really bad knees and he has acid reflux and apnea. It's all aggravated by excess weight, which let me tell you, we have plenty of at this house.

So, we have a dear friend who also needs to make some major changes for health reasons, and she has a diabetic son. So, our family is going to support her family and vice versa. We have some similar hurdles, like a tendency to skip breakfast, and not eat as regularly as we should. We all need to get our portions under control, especially for snacks.

Our plan is not the same as hers, but they're similar enough that we can help each other a lot. As steps of the plan become habit, we're gonna add new things, until we're doing what we need to do.

So here's the plan:
No more high fructose corn syrup.

No "regular" pasta where it's avoidable. We're gonna use whole wheat and high protein whenever it's possible. (Try finding whole wheat Acini de Pepe in this area.)

Eat breakfast everyday.

Smaller snacks more often. (Not one huge snack late at night.)

Pack a lunch.

Plan out a whole week's meals at a time so we can shop more effectively.



Wish us luck.