Short Side of Life

This past weekend I tried something that I have never done before.  Travis’ mom and her new family brought their four wheeler and mule to use at the Off Roading Vehicle area in the South Randolph area of Tuttle Creek.  Saturday afternoon Travis and I joined his famiy out at the camp ground for dinner and mudding, if we were interested.   I am not ashamed to admit that I was born and raised a city girl and have an aversion to mud, so I did not jump at the idea.  The ORV area was nice enough, it consisted of mud, dirt, and water in ditches and wooded areas.  At first my plan was just to watch everyone else get dirty, but after a little bit of persuasion I joined in on the fun.  The first ditch we came to went straight down into 2 feet of muddy water and the only way across was through it.  So straight down into the mud pit we went with my feet up in the air the entire way in order to avoid getting them covered in mud, which is how I spent the next 30 minutes.  I managed to get away amazingly clean, which I can’t say about everyone else.  The trip was definitely amusing, but not something I would repeat any time soon.  I think I will stick to swimming in water and not in mud.

I enjoy snacking…a lot.  I have tried to reign in my snacking habits after joining Weight Watchers, but it was no use.  However, I have found several low point or zero point snacks that I do not feel guilty munching on in the middle of the day or as a late night snack.  My newest find that I am very excited to try is Brothers All Natural Fruit Crisps.  Travis and I ordered several different types of the crisps including the Pineapple crisps which have a 1 point value and the Fuji Apple crisps which have 0 points and 2 servings of fruit in one little bag.  Unfortunately it is going to take 7-10 business days for the delivery, so we will have to wait to sample this amazing find.  One of my favorite low point snacks are the Hostess 100 calorie muffins and 100 calorie cakes.  I enjoy the banana muffin and coffee cake, and chocolate cake snacks (great from the fridge) which are each just 1 point.  If you enjoy popcorn I highly recommend Pop Secret 100 calorie Kettle Corn.  The entire bag is worth 2 points, but since a bag of popcorn never completely pops I only count it as a 1 point snack.

Besides having a bad snacking habit I also have a killer sweet tooth.  My favorite sweet find so far is the Dairy Queen Fudge Bar.  At just 50 calories and 5 grams of fiber it has an amazing point value of 0.  Another sweet item I have tried and enjoyed is Bryers 100 calorie 2 point fudge swirl ice cream which comes in a portion controlled cup.  Weight Watchers also has a line of ice cream and frozen desserts, but I do not think they are that great for the amount of money you spend on them.  Weight Watchers does however have great chocolate and carrot snack cakes which are delicious and only 1 point.  

A few of the low point snack items I have found are from HungryGirl.com which is a fantastic website with great recipes and ideas for people who are watching their weight.  One thing I have noticed about her recipes is that they contain a large amount of ingredients that I wouldn’t normally have on hand and might not use again, but they look delicious and I have several of them on my list to try and her cookbook is on my Amazon wish list.

While all of these snack and treats are delicious my most favorite snack food that is good any time of the day is and will always be pineapple. 

Recently I have started to try my hand at cooking and baking, specifically diet friendly foods.  My interest in this first came about when my former office manager told me about how you can subsitute a can of diet soda for the eggs and oil in a cake and it should taste the same.  Since Travis is willing to try anything at least once we decided that a taste test was in order.  While the cake did have similar flavors the texture and moistness did not hold up.  I did find that when used in a recipe such as Better Than Sex Cake the differences of the diet cake were not noticeable.  Another low calorie cake recipe that I tried recently called for a can of pumpkin puree instead of oil and eggs.  I have heard of using applesauce to replace oil before, but I have only recently read about using pumpkin.  The recipe was a huge success, the cake was moist and rich and delicious and I had several people at work ask for the recipe.

Many of the diet recipes I have looked through claim that they taste similar to the original recipe.  While this may be true for some things I have found that it is not true for all recipes.  One recipe I found this to be true for was cream cheese brownies.  The recipe that I used for low point brownies was a recipe I found on Weight Watchers’ website.  I had high hopes for it since it included cream cheese, which can make anything delicious.  Turns out the addition of cream cheese was the only part of the brownie that was good. 

More recipes and pictures to follow.