I Hate to Exercise But Love to Cook

I love being married.  Lots of people say it is hard.  For me it hasn't been.  I think because I got married in my mid thirties, I am more appreciative of Lance and what he is in my life.  As with anything in life, there are always little annoying things you have to put up with.  The little annoying thing in my marriage that I have to put up with is growing.  It is that I have gained weight.  I hate to admit that I have gained 20 lbs since I got married.  So I am working on getting it off.

Recently, my friend Kelly introduced me to My Fitness Pal.  I have used Daily Burn in the past, but wasn't able to put my recipes in it.  And since we rarely eat out or eat premade food, it just didn't work for me.  My Fitness Pal allows me to put in the recipe and then enter the serving size I ate.  When you start your account, they ask you all kinds of questions and determine how many calories you need to eat per day.  They gave me 1200 calories.  Yikes!  Although burning calories gives you more to eat.  Whoo hoo.  And cooking burns calories!  Double whoo hoo.  I hate to exercise but love to cook.

While trying to balance out my calorie intake for the day, I went looking for a smoothie recipe.   I had purchased 32 lbs of strawberries and split with my mother.  I froze 8 lbs to make smoothies with.  So the smoothie recipe had to be strawberry and since I do not like bananas, it could not contain bananas.  I found a smoothie recipe that I added my touch to and now love.  I took 2 recipes and combined them.  I needed something that would tide me over until lunch.  So the ingredient I used from the second recipe was oatmeal. I put the oatmeal in the blender first and blended it so it was more like flour.  Then I added all the other ingredients.  It gives it a little odd texture but is filling.

Strawberry Pineapple Oatmeal Smoothie
1/4 cup oatmeal
1/2 cup frozen strawberries
3 oz milk
3 oz pineapple juice
1/4 cup vanilla yogurt
1 Tbsp sugar
3 ice cubes

Put oatmeal in blender and blend until fine.  Add the rest of the ingredients and chop ice (pulse) until completely chopped.  Then blend for 30 seconds - a minute.  Pour and drink.

BBQ Recipes

Because the other blog seemed long, I'm putting the recipes from our BBQ in this blog.  These were super easy!  And the fruit salad doesn't have to stay cold which is great for an outdoor party.

Pineapple Punch

1 -12 oz can Pineapple juice frozen concentrate

1/2 -12 oz can Limeade frozen concentrate

4 cups water

1 liter lemon lime soda

Optional: Strawberries hulled to float in punch

Mix all together.  (I quadrupled this recipe)

Fruit Salad

1 lb Strawberries, quartered

1 cup blueberries

1 - 20 oz can pineapple tidbits with juice

1 - 5.1oz box vanilla pudding mix

Mix pudding mix and pineapple with juice until pudding is well mixed in.  Fold in strawberries and blueberries. Chill and serve.

Of Course Bears Can Turn Doorknobs

Tonight at dinner we had rootbeer floats.  It took me back to my first year at church camp.  I must have been 8. We had church camp in Ketchum.  If you don't know where that is, it's up near Sun Valley.  Up in the mountains.  Up where it snows until late June. Lots of wildlife.

My first year at church camp was lots of fun.  I had so much fun that I hardly slept.  And of course, when I don't sleep enough I get sick.  So I would spend a couple days in the nurses cabin.  I would get better and then spend the last day of camp out with friends.  There were a couple other girls that had the same problem.  I made friends with those girls, and we knew we would spend a couple days in the nurses cabin together every year.  In the nurses cabin they weren't as careful about what they talked about.  So we knew all the ins and outs of what was going on around camp.  We learned very quickly that there were bears roaming around camp.  They found a bear one night digging through the dumpster and had to remember to put the lid down and lock it each night.  They had caught glimpses of momma bear and her cub, but they hadn't been around camp much.    The adults were concerned that there were bears, but didn't want to scare us kids.  But then again they couldn't have us walking around alone.  So they told us that bears had been seen and for us to be careful.  But us girls in the nurses cabin were privy to all the information.

Friday, we were able to go back to doing activities with the other girls.  Saturday was the day we were going home, so we were going to have a party.  We joined another cabin for our party.  We had rootbeer floats and other desserts.  I don't really remember the other desserts.  Everyone had gotten their float except me.  I was trying to avoid getting one because I am not fond of them.  They made me one, however, and I said I don't want one, but thank you.   So the counselor opened the back door to the cabin and poured it out.  Us girls were having a good time laughing and giggling as 8 & 9 year olds do.  One of the girls pulled the curtains back and looked out the back window.  She starts screaming, "there is a bear out there."  The counselor who was standing closest to the back door laughed and said, "yeah right."  Her cabin had been joking all week about seeing a bear.  But the girl was rather convincing so the counselor moved the curtains to see momma bear and her cub eating my rootbeer float.  We all started screaming believing the bear would open the door and come in and eat us.

When they finally got us calmed down, we went back to our cabin.  Our counselor decided she needed a shower.  We however did not want to be left alone because of course bears can turn doorknobs and come right into our cabin.  One of the guy counselors had come by to see if we were alright and warn us to stay indoors.  Our counselor convinced him to stay with us while she went to shower.  We feared that she would be eaten alive on her way to the showers.  It was about time for us to get ready for bed.  We made the guy who was staying with us stand in the corner so we could change.  Our counselor made it back safely.  Praise Jesus!

We all made it home safely with no more encounters with the bears.  They were able to trap the bears and move them away from our camp grounds.  So the older kids didn't have to experience the man eating bears.

I still don't care for rootbeer floats, but I do like a punch float.  Not quite the same, but just as good.

Raspberry Punch Float
1 lg can frozen lemonade concentrate
1 lg can frozen pineapple juice concentrate
1 liter 7-UP
42 oz. can pineapple punch
1/2 gallon raspberry sherbet
1 pt. raspberries

Thaw lemonade and pineapple juice concentrates; combine in large punch bowl. Add 7-UP and  stir in pineapple punch. Cube raspberry sherbet in large cubes; crush half the raspberries. Stir in raspberries.  Drop sherbet cubes into punch mixture just before serving. Makes 1 gallon punch.

I Was Going To Save Her

Camping was a big part of my growing up.  I have many memories of roughing it.  Living near the Snake River gave us great places near us to go camping.  When I was little we would camp in a tent.  In high school, we had a motorhome.

Camping in a tent was fun as a kid.  Unlike most families, we did not camp at state park that had flushing toilets and showers.   We would find a place that had an outhouse and was along the river.  I don't remember much about the cooking part of camping.  Mom always took care of that.  Us kids would spend our time fishing and exploring.  My nephew was usually with us.  He liked to see what animals he could catch or if he couldn't get an animal (which I don't think he ever did), he would catch bugs.  It rained occasionally while we were camping.  As tents go, as long as you didn't touch the tent it wouldn't leak.  My nephew took that as a challenge to see if he could touch every part of the tent.

I remember one time of camping very clearly.  We had set the tent up.  Mom, dad, my sister and nephew had gone down to the river to fish.  I was at the campsite doing something when a strong wind came up.  It started to blow the tent away.  I thought I will get in the tent so it doesn't blow away.  The wind got stronger and I started screaming.  No one came to my rescue.  I was frustrated because no one seemed to care I was going to be blown away with the tent.  Finally someone came up to the car to get some fishing tackle.  I yelled at whoever it is that I had saved the day because the tent almost blew away.  They didn't seem to care. But later we decided a storm was blowing in, and we should just pack up and go home.

Another time of camping, we had gone with some friends who had a motorhome.  We slept in the tent and they slept in the motorhome.  We set up camp close to the river.  My littlest sister must have been 3, making me 10, and my nephew 9.  The adults had some misadventures of their own with losing fishing poles in the river.  But us kids didn't really care too much.  We were having fun and that's what mattered.  My nephew and I were jumping off the dock and swimming.  We would get tired and sit on the end of the dock.  My sister like most kids do wanted to do what we were doing.  Mom wouldn't let her jump off the dock because she couldn't swim, but she let her sit on the end of the dock with us.  We were kicking our feet in the water, so my sister kicked her feet too.  As most little kids are, she was a bit top heavy and fell over head first into the water.  My nephew jumped into action.  He hopped up and started to jump in the water to save her.  My mom in the mean time calmly walked to the end of the dock, grabbed my sister's leg and pulled her out.  She was fine and my nephew kept saying, "I was going to save her, I was going to save her."  And I'm sure he could have.

Later when we got the motorhome we took a few camping trips in it.  Always a bunch of fun.  But my best memories of the motorhome was playing in it while it was parked in the driveway.  It was the place to go to get away from the world as a teenager.  When I had friends spend the night, we would sleep out there.   For a while we had a tv with cable out there.  It felt like my own space until my dad would come tell me he wanted to hang out there a while.  One summer while a friend was spending the night, we created a recipe for lemonade.  I know it wasn't so fabulous, but if you added enough sugar, it was good.  Since then I have gotten a real recipe for lemonade.  It is far better than the lemonade we made way back then.

Lemonade

7 cups water

1 cup fresh squeezed lemonade

1 cup sugar

Mix all ingredients well until sugar is dissolved.  Chill and serve.

Those Were Special Worms

My oldest nephew is 9 months younger than me.  He has been more like a brother to me than a nephew.  He spent a few summers with us.  He was far more adventurous than I was.   We always seem to get ourselves into some kind adventure.  I am going to try to not incriminate anyone in this blog, but some of the things we did weren't always what we were supposed to be doing.  We never did hurt anyone too badly or burn anything down!

For entertainment in the summer, we would get out my dad's golf clubs and whiffle golf balls.  We didn't want to break any windows! We hit the balls around quite often.  We also liked to hit birdies over the fence -our makeshift badminton net.  And we loved to dig holes to China in the back of the garden till mom got us a "sand box" to dig in.  It was more of an old tractor tire with dirt in it. But it worked for us.

We, of course, needed money.  Our plan was to sell worms to the fisherman.  Mom would water the lawn in the day so at night we could go out and catch the night crawlers.  We caught a lot, and made a lot of money.  We first put a sign in the yard.  We had some sales, but not what we had hoped for.  We went down and talked to the local tackle shop about selling our worms to them.   We got a lot more sales with them.  The tackle shop introduced us to a guy who would buy the worms by the pound.  We made a lot of money selling our worms that way.  We couldn't seem to get enough worms in our yard and the neighbor's yard.  So we started going down to the church and getting worms there.  For kids, we did very well selling our worms.

One night, I had a mishap with a worm that is still to this day burned into my mind.  We had gone over to the church to get worms.  I patiently waited for the worms to come up.  Had my flashlight, which of course had red cellophane over the light so the worms couldn't see the light.  I spotted a worm, reached down, grabbed it and it screamed at me.  I know you are thinking worms cannot scream.  But it did.  I then screamed, jumped back and ran.  My mom and nephew thought I was crazy.  But really it did scream.  No longer would I go worming at the church.  Those were special worms.  Worms with vocal cords.  I stuck to worming at home or at the neighbors.  Fortunately the summer was coming to an end, and it didn't put too big of a dent into the money we were making.

I don't really remember what we used our money for.  I'm sure candy.  I don't think what we were buying with the money was the important part.  It was the actual making of the money.  We loved to sit around in the day and discuss how we were going to do this differently that we could get more worms.  I think the red cellophane was something the guy at the tackle shop told us about, and it seemed to help.  Worming brought my nephew and I closer.  It was something we worked together for.

When I look back to the summers spent at home, I recall worming, baseball, wading pools, sunflower seeds and sweet iced tea.  Iced tea has been a part of my life as long as I can remember.  I'm even drinking it right now.  However, I should be drinking something warm.  It has rained, snowed, and sleeted for over 24 hours. I am a little bit chilled.  A few years ago I discovered a recipe for Spiced Cider.  It's a great comforting warm drink.  I hope you like it as much as I do.

Spiced Cider
1 gallon apple cider
2 cups orange juice
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp whole cloves
6 sticks cinnamon

Combine all ingredients in a large pot.  Stir until brown sugar is dissolved.  Bring to a boil and reduce heat.  Simmer for 15 minutes.  Strain cinnamon sticks and whole cloves out.  Serve in mugs.