F* You, Sugar. F* You!

Genius that I am decided the week of Valentine’s Day to start eating clean and cut sugar out of my diet. I know! Valentine’s Day! But so far it’s been going okay. I found a program that I like and have been able to stick to it.

Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve tried to live a healthier lifestyle, and for the most part I do okay. But I am a stress eater. I do recognize what I’m doing when I reach for that third handful of gummy bears and stop myself before I grab a fourth.  But the fact that I reach for them at all was starting to become more frequent. So it was time to take a more active stand on my diet.

I know there are many of you out there, hundreds, thousands, who are doing or contemplating watching what they eat. For those who are struggling, keep on trucking. You can do it. I know you can! For personal reasons, I will not say what specific plan I use, but basically it’s clean eating. Organic, nothing processed, lean proteins, fruits and vegetables. You know, the way people ate before food came pre-packaged in a box.

My goal isn’t to lose weight, although we all know that is a nice bonus, but to be healthy. Avoid cancer-causing agents, remove those free radicals. If I’m going to keep telling people I’m 24, I’m going to have to do everything I can to maintain the illusion.

As we approach that time of year when Cadbury Eggs and Starburst Jelly Beans are within arm’s reach, know that I am there with you feeling your pain. I am there with you when you say no to the ginger whiskey on Wednesday because you are saving your free day for the weekend. I am there with you in spirit as I know you are with me.

Crunch on with your crudité, my friends. Crunch on and stay strong!

Until next time-

Anna- The Super Diva

Website- http://annaalexander.net/

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Love at First Bite

No, this isn't a vampire post. And it isn't a werewolf post (though I would expect one here soon if I were you). It's actually a cooking post. Sometimes, in interviews, I'm asked what it is I like to do when not writing. It's a pretty good sized list. I enjoy a lot of things. But one of my favorites is cooking. It's something I have in common with my husband. We both enjoy being in the kitchen. Sometimes so much so that we actually fight about who is going to cook that night and what we're going to make.

I'm not a gourmet chef. I don't wander too far out of my comfort zone. If I can't pronounce and have never tried a dish, chances are I'm not going to attempt it. But I do really enjoy cooking. Especially this time of year. So after we'd eaten the stuffing, green bean casserole, brownies, and pumpkin pie, I started craving something with a little tartness to it. More than anything else, I wanted cherry crumble! Which was kind of crazy because I hadn't had it since I was a child. And I quickly realized that, as much as I loved eating cherry crumble, I'd never actually made it. Not even with my mom when I was a kid. Which was a shame given how easy it is to make. So this was my first attempt. And it was pretty darn good if I do say so myself. Even our guest who dislikes cherry pie filling liked it. She had two servings.

Cherry Crumble

Ingredients:

6 tablespoons butter

1 1/8 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup granola (I used a vanilla/almond granola but I can’t wait to try it with coconut/chocolate)

6 tablespoons packed brown sugar

a pinch of salt

1 (21 ounce) can cherry pie filling

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).

2. Melt butter or margarine in a large saucepan (I melted mine in the microwave in a microwave-safe bowl).

3. In a large bowl, combine the granola, flour, brown sugar, and salt. Pour melted butter over the mix and stir in until a dry, crumbly dough forms. Press about 2/3 of the dough into the bottom of 9 inch square pan, making a firm even layer.

4. Spread cherry pie filling in the crust, and sprinkle with remaining crumb mixture.

5. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, until top is lightly browned. Serve warm or at room temperature. Refrigerate any left overs.

Happy holiday! 

The Sweet Life

So I had planned to do a blog entitled Decadent Desserts this week. In preparation for it, my youngest son and I baked a chocolate chip cookie, Oreo, brownie bar. Have you seen these on the Internet? You can find the recipe here: Recipe 

If you haven’t seen it and you don’t feel like clicking over to the recipe it’s essentially one dessert bar that has a layer of chocolate chip cookies, one layer of Oreo double stuffed cookies topped off with a layer of brownies.

Since my oldest is at camp this week, I’ve been teaching my youngest kiddo how to cook. This project looked challenging (since we made the cookie dough from scratch and there are several different steps he’d have to keep track of) and the pay off seemed large. Hello! It’s like the ultimate dessert. Put mousse in that puppy and it’s got all of my favorite things. And he agreed. He’s always liked to cook so it wasn’t exactly twisting his arm.

So we did it! We got it all assembled and cooked and put it out for the cooling time. But then I had a doctor’s apt. I needed to go to. Like, my doctor is to the point of only giving me my medicine one month at a time until I went to see her kind of need to go. Which was okay because the dessert takes two hours to cool. Yep, you read that right, two whole hours!

I put the dessert up where our doggies couldn’t get it and we headed into town with visions of sweet yumminess in our heads. Two hours later (my doctor was behind and I hit rush hour traffic on the way home) we returned to find the brownies on the floor, one quarter of it dessert bar gone, and my oldest dog with two deep lacerations on his paw.

Poor dears had to be taken to the emergency vet, have their stomachs emptied, and oldest dog had to have his paw stitched up. No brownies for us. We didn’t even get to taste them. My youngest kiddo was devastated.

But a funny thing happened while we were getting ready to go to the vet. My youngest saw how miserable the dogs were and how stressed out I was (I had no idea how much chocolate the dogs had eaten and I didn’t know if the oldest dog had broken his paw so I was pretty worried about them) and my youngest tried to comfort me. As we made our way to the vet he told me that he was certain the doggies hadn’t been eating the brownies for very long or they would’ve gotten more of it. You see, the vet couldn’t get the chocolate out of their stomachs if it’d already digested past that. And, since we’d been gone for like three or four hours there was no telling how long the doggies had been eating that brownie. But my kiddo was certain the vet would be able to help them. And, he told me, we could always make another set of ultimate brownies. Turns out he was absolutely right on all accounts.

So maybe life isn’t always decadent. Sometimes it’s a bit stressful. But if you surround yourself with the right people—people who care about you and want you to be happy, it’s always a sweet.

I’m happy to report that the doggies are doing fine. Oldest dog gets his stitches out Friday and he’s started successfully hobbling around the house. We just need to get his appetite back up. Apparently the brownies ruined him for his kibble! And youngest and I made a truly inspired batch of pretzels. (You can find the recipe here though I did use parmesan cheese on some and cinnamon/sugar on some instead of salt) Can’t wait to see what today holds for our little cooking camp.