I almost forgot about the low-cal sweets! There are ways to diet and still have some treats. One of my favorites is a chocolate ice-cream peanut butter dish. I get the Smart Ones giant ice cream bars (chocolate) and nuke one in the microwave for ten seconds. Then I scrape it off the stick and mix it with two tablespoons of peanut butter. I top it off with fat-free Cool Whip. This is delicious!
Other great desserts are the Smart Ones chocolate fudge cakes found in the freezer section of the grocery store. These are great comfort food if you heat them in the microwave on a cold winter day. Other Smart Ones desserts are good as well. Smart Ones is the brand name of Weight Watcher’s goods. Weight Watchers also makes a very good cookies-and-cream ice cream bar.
Fat-free chocolate pudding and fruit flavored yogurts are good treats for dieters. I love to mix vanilla yogurt, chopped apple, and any granola-type cereal for either breakfast or dessert. The Great Grains cereals are especially good for that.
Oatmeal is a good treat if made with Splenda, and you can add powdered cocoa to make it chocolatey. A chocolate fudge Pop-tart is also a good afternoon treat. (Can you guess I like chocolate?) The little Dove Promises are delicious bites of dark chocolate and only count as two Weight Watchers points.
You can make great smoothies with low-fat yogurt, fruit, Splenda, and ice. Edys and Breyers both make double-churned light ice creams that are as good as the regular.
I enjoy a recipe I got off the Weight Watchers web site. Take two small flour tortillas. Place one in a small nonstick skillet. Sprinkle miniature chocolate chips over the tortilla and sprinkle that with a small amount of sugar and cinnamon. Top with the remaining tortilla and cook until the chocolate has melted and the tortillas are lightly browned, turning once. Remove from the heat and sprinkle the outside with powdered sugar. Yummy!
An easy and low-cal cobbler can be made by mixing a can of no-sugar-added fruit such as peaches, including the syrup, with a pack of instant oatmeal, the low calorie kind. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes and top with light ice cream.
Baked apples make a good dessert, especially with Cool Whip or ice cream on top.
By satisfying my sweet tooth with these ideas, I am able to stick to my diet better. I do need to step up the exercise a little to compensate for them, however.
Bon appetit!
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Fire in the Mountains
We have always spent the Fourth of July at home, unlike most Americans who take to the road that week. But this year, we decided to join them. We went to my parents’ home in the mountains of North Carolina for the week. Daddy has a beautiful piece of land on the side of a mountain with two houses on it. From the deck of either house, you can see an awesome, panoramic view of the mountains.
There was only one house when my parents sold the farm, retired, and moved up there about seven years ago. Daddy built the other house just last year, at the age of 72! He and a neighbor did almost all the work themselves. It is just up the hill from the first house. It’s smaller, but has the advantage of being completely handicapped accessible, which is necessary for my mother. She has an increasingly difficult time getting around due to a bad back, bad knees, and bad feet. We all fear that it won’t be long until she is confined to a wheelchair.
The new house has a guest room where Doug and I have stayed before, but this time we wanted to stay in the old house. (“Old” is about ten years.) There is a reason why we wanted to do that. Doug will be eligible to retire in two years, and my parents would like nothing better than for us to move up there. Since we love our current home so much and have friends here, a good church, and a son and daughter-in-law nearby, we have mixed feelings about the idea of leaving it all behind and making a major life change at our age. Also, while Doug will be eligible to retire, he can continue working and add two percent to his retirement income for each additional year he works. He had planned to work at least five additional years which would have paid off our house.
On the other hand, my parents are starting to need us. The place where they live is beautiful. There are lots of good places to eat nearby and good neighbors around them. Mama and Daddy attend a church that they really love, and we would probably enjoy it as well. Because we would be living in a resort area, I feel sure that our friends would come visit us. The house up there is big enough to accommodate several guests at once. I know Sean would come, because he loves it up there and loves to go trout fishing. Doug could supplement his retirement check by finding work up there, and if we sold our current home, we could pay off our debt and invest the equity we have in it. Daddy would let us live in the house up there for just the cost of utilities and insurance, so we wouldn’t have a house payment. The mountain home would eventually become ours.
We have two years to decide, and a lot can happen in two years. We will just have to decide when it gets closer to the time.
Now, back to our trip. We wanted to stay in the old house to get a “taste” of what it would be like to live up there. One immediate perk was the temperature, which was about ten degrees cooler than it was down here last week. We enjoyed the time there, especially the time when Sean and Misty came up. We had bought some groceries and I cooked breakfast and a few other meals. Two meals we ate with my mom. Other times, we went out to eat. We also put together a 1000 piece puzzle and spent lots of time reading and just resting. One day I took Misty to the lake. She lay on a float reading her book while I sat under a big shade tree and read mine. It was a very pleasant day.
We wanted to see fireworks on the Fourth, and there was a beautiful display right on the lake. However, Sean and Misty had to go home that day, so Misty found out about another display on the 3rd in a little town called McCaysville, which was about an hour away. I rode with them over to this town in the Blue Ridge area, which was more hilly than mountainous. We got there early enough to explore antique shops, art shops, and general stores. The small town was overflowing with people who had turned out for the big fireworks show. The Blue Ridge Mountain train brought a whole load of people. We ate at a good and very crowded Mexican restaurant, and while we sat at our table by the window, a huge storm blew in. It poured rain for quite some time. There was lots of wind, thunder, and lightening, and we wondered if the fireworks would be cancelled. (There was plenty of nature’s fireworks, however.) Needless to say, we took our time eating, and the rain had finally tapered off to just a drizzle by the time we left. We found a place on the sidewalk to watch the fireworks being fired from on top of Tater Hill. While waiting for the show to begin, we enjoyed people watching. McCaysville certainly has its share of rednecks! They were cruising around town in their pick-up trucks with Confederate flags flying, and we occasionally heard the sound of Dixie playing from their truck horns. Young mountain boys rode by in their old beat-up cars with the windows rolled down so you could hear the loud beat of rap music coming from their radios. The rap music seemed out of place, somehow, and Sean said they were confused!
We really didn’t know if the fireworks show would be worth the trip over there or not, but it definitely was! It lasted about 25 minutes and was quite beautiful. Afterwards, we walked hurriedly back to our car. Local people were firing off smaller explosives all over town, people were rushing all around us, and the train whistle was blowing. It reminded me of the song – “The night they burned old Dixie down.”
The next night we went to see the fireworks on the lake. We sat on the dam, and out on the lake were hundreds of boats with their lights on. It was a beautiful sight. A local band played, and there was food to eat as well. Little children ran about with their light toys, creating streaks of color. Middle-age children were playing with sparklers, and teenagers were setting off Roman candles and other explosives all around the shoreline. An earlier rain had cooled the air enough that I was actually wishing I had a sweater on the Fourth of July! The fireworks were lovely, but the most awesome part was the sound. It echoed off the mountains surrounding the lake and sounded like the volley of opposing armies. I imagined that it must have sounded like it did on Civil War battlefields.
This was the best Fourth ever.
There was only one house when my parents sold the farm, retired, and moved up there about seven years ago. Daddy built the other house just last year, at the age of 72! He and a neighbor did almost all the work themselves. It is just up the hill from the first house. It’s smaller, but has the advantage of being completely handicapped accessible, which is necessary for my mother. She has an increasingly difficult time getting around due to a bad back, bad knees, and bad feet. We all fear that it won’t be long until she is confined to a wheelchair.
The new house has a guest room where Doug and I have stayed before, but this time we wanted to stay in the old house. (“Old” is about ten years.) There is a reason why we wanted to do that. Doug will be eligible to retire in two years, and my parents would like nothing better than for us to move up there. Since we love our current home so much and have friends here, a good church, and a son and daughter-in-law nearby, we have mixed feelings about the idea of leaving it all behind and making a major life change at our age. Also, while Doug will be eligible to retire, he can continue working and add two percent to his retirement income for each additional year he works. He had planned to work at least five additional years which would have paid off our house.
On the other hand, my parents are starting to need us. The place where they live is beautiful. There are lots of good places to eat nearby and good neighbors around them. Mama and Daddy attend a church that they really love, and we would probably enjoy it as well. Because we would be living in a resort area, I feel sure that our friends would come visit us. The house up there is big enough to accommodate several guests at once. I know Sean would come, because he loves it up there and loves to go trout fishing. Doug could supplement his retirement check by finding work up there, and if we sold our current home, we could pay off our debt and invest the equity we have in it. Daddy would let us live in the house up there for just the cost of utilities and insurance, so we wouldn’t have a house payment. The mountain home would eventually become ours.
We have two years to decide, and a lot can happen in two years. We will just have to decide when it gets closer to the time.
Now, back to our trip. We wanted to stay in the old house to get a “taste” of what it would be like to live up there. One immediate perk was the temperature, which was about ten degrees cooler than it was down here last week. We enjoyed the time there, especially the time when Sean and Misty came up. We had bought some groceries and I cooked breakfast and a few other meals. Two meals we ate with my mom. Other times, we went out to eat. We also put together a 1000 piece puzzle and spent lots of time reading and just resting. One day I took Misty to the lake. She lay on a float reading her book while I sat under a big shade tree and read mine. It was a very pleasant day.
We wanted to see fireworks on the Fourth, and there was a beautiful display right on the lake. However, Sean and Misty had to go home that day, so Misty found out about another display on the 3rd in a little town called McCaysville, which was about an hour away. I rode with them over to this town in the Blue Ridge area, which was more hilly than mountainous. We got there early enough to explore antique shops, art shops, and general stores. The small town was overflowing with people who had turned out for the big fireworks show. The Blue Ridge Mountain train brought a whole load of people. We ate at a good and very crowded Mexican restaurant, and while we sat at our table by the window, a huge storm blew in. It poured rain for quite some time. There was lots of wind, thunder, and lightening, and we wondered if the fireworks would be cancelled. (There was plenty of nature’s fireworks, however.) Needless to say, we took our time eating, and the rain had finally tapered off to just a drizzle by the time we left. We found a place on the sidewalk to watch the fireworks being fired from on top of Tater Hill. While waiting for the show to begin, we enjoyed people watching. McCaysville certainly has its share of rednecks! They were cruising around town in their pick-up trucks with Confederate flags flying, and we occasionally heard the sound of Dixie playing from their truck horns. Young mountain boys rode by in their old beat-up cars with the windows rolled down so you could hear the loud beat of rap music coming from their radios. The rap music seemed out of place, somehow, and Sean said they were confused!
We really didn’t know if the fireworks show would be worth the trip over there or not, but it definitely was! It lasted about 25 minutes and was quite beautiful. Afterwards, we walked hurriedly back to our car. Local people were firing off smaller explosives all over town, people were rushing all around us, and the train whistle was blowing. It reminded me of the song – “The night they burned old Dixie down.”
The next night we went to see the fireworks on the lake. We sat on the dam, and out on the lake were hundreds of boats with their lights on. It was a beautiful sight. A local band played, and there was food to eat as well. Little children ran about with their light toys, creating streaks of color. Middle-age children were playing with sparklers, and teenagers were setting off Roman candles and other explosives all around the shoreline. An earlier rain had cooled the air enough that I was actually wishing I had a sweater on the Fourth of July! The fireworks were lovely, but the most awesome part was the sound. It echoed off the mountains surrounding the lake and sounded like the volley of opposing armies. I imagined that it must have sounded like it did on Civil War battlefields.
This was the best Fourth ever.
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