CROCKPOT NIGHT!

I'm changing up our menu planning this year. We are going to eat out less and plan meals around some of our favorite (or at least when we bought them) appliances. 

This week, I thought I'd walk you through a semi-failed recipe from :

AMAZON

I've bookmarked several recipes I want to try. One was for Saucy Sweet Chicken Wings.

The recipe called for 12 chicken wings, 3 C. BBQ sauce, 1/4 c. maple syrup, 1/4 C ketchup and 1 T. sugar.

I left out the maple syrup. In place of the other ingredients I used my low-carb bbq sauce and ketchup. I used brown sugar in place of the white sugar.

Cook:

High - 6-8 hours

Low - 3-4 hours

I cooked mine on low and they were falling off the bone at the 3 hour mark. 

This is what they looked like when I fished them out:

I removed the swimming wings from the crock pot. For being in almost 3 cups of BBQ sauce/ ketchup blend, they were very bland-looking

This is the juice I poured out of the crock pot (please excuse the blurry photo)

All of the BBQ sauce went down the drain! Wasted!

I placed them on a cookie sheet, drizzled with NON low-carb bbq sauce and popped them into a 4508 oven for 10  minutes.

This was a much more appetizing batch of wings for the big game:

This recipe says 12 servings!  Ummm I don't know about you but I don't know of ANYWHERE they serve you only ONE wing! LOL  

In my defense, I did break this up into 4 servings but I had 16 wings. That gave me 4 servings of 4. A nice snack.

Not sure what's on tap for Next week. We'll see.  I will also be back soon with Air Fryer Friday, though that may join the ranks of  'appliances' and be feature don occasion.

Until then...

Enjoy the Journey!

~Kelly

WEIGN IN 2-10-20

162/ 173/ 135

No change from last week. I'm surprised considering we ate out on Friday. We found a great Italian place in Poplar Bluff. Think I can remember the name? LOL I'll get back to you on that. We each had an appetizer plus our meal and we both brought home half of our entrees. We had have of our entrees last night for supper, along with leftover garlic rolls. Bob said he'll have his for lunch today. I put mine in the freezer for a meal while he's gone. We spent right at $60 and will have eaten three meals each for that, plus the lovely evening out.  

This week will be crazy. We're going to celebrate Valentine's Day. Hopefully, that will be our only big meal out. Here's hoping. 

Oh, Bob won the weight challenge. As of weigh-in I was down two pounds but he was down four!

I know that eating out, regardless of where, always affects the scale reading so I'm striving for us to do that less, and strictly on a cash basis.

He's home three weeks. We'll do one 'nice' dinner, one Pizza Hut lunch buffet and one general meal such as Chinese buffet, KFC, something along those lines. We'll spend less and eat at home more. 

I've also bee on a new challenge with Moms and Money on YouTube.  For the month of January Jia challenged us to spend only $100 per person per month on our groceries. I've modified that a bit in that I do not include laundry/ paper products. I get all of my laundry supplies at Menards when they have the 11% rebate and my paper products at $ Genersal when I have a $5 off $25 coupon about every other Saturday. I use one per month. 

Jia has a lot of great tips and advice. She also offers budgeting and money management courses through Teachable. 

While I've always been good at managing our finances, learning little tips like realizing you don't need to spend as much at the grocery store as you think you do are nice surprises. We don't know everything. LOL

What is your biggest challenge when it comes to finances? Do you live paycheck to paycheck? Do you find yourself wondering where that paycheck went? Do you have a savings plan?  Please let me know in the comments. Let's give each other a lift.

Enjoy the Journey!

BURGER KING - The Impossible Whopper

I've tried the Impossible Whopper and didn't notice any different in taste. What did bother me was how they could get a 'medium rare' burger from a plant base. As the CNET reporter noted, she hadn't eaten real meat for some time and the more she ate of the Impossible Whopper, the taste/ texture was so similar that she couldn't finish the burger! I admit to having the same issue.

As you'll see from THIS LINK of the Nutritional info from the Burger King website, the Impossible Whopper is not even listed.

I was able to find the following information from CNET

Their article tells us:
The Impossible Whopper is a plant-based protein version of Burger King's famous Whopper sandwich, made with an Impossible Foods burger patty. It looks exactly the same and, according to CNET editor Brian Cooley, tastes just the same too. 

Here is the one line that disturbs me:
Despite the fact that this lab-grown burger ...

Lab grown?

But I kept reading and here's what I learned.

The 'burger' is a blend of soy and potato proteins a change they made from 1.0 which used wheat protein. 2.0 is now gluten free. The burger's fat source comes from coconut and sesame oil.

I couldn't share the video from CNET but if you follow THIS LINK and scroll down, you'll find a 4 minute video that walks you through the process.  However, they do have a video on YouTube.

Have you tried the Impossible Whopper? If so, let us know what you thought.  If not, treat yourself to lunch then come back and tell us your opinon.

Eat Happy! Enjoy the Journey!

~Kelly

FLY LADY - Laundry room/ Kitchen/ Christmas

Yes, you read that correctly. I said CHRISTMAS!

No.. I'm not behind LOL.. okay, maybe on one thing. The make-shift tree is still in the living room but for good reason. I'll get to that in a moment.

While most of the Christmas decor comes down around Epiphany my bathroom/ laundry room/ kitchen always stay up until Feb. 1. Why? Because I like the decor. Okay, so sometimes the laundry room/ kitchen comes down with everything else but the bathroom stays up. The decor is all about winter/ snowmen and that encompasses January. Well, if you look at the forecast for Wedneday (never mind we were 75* for Super Bowl Sunday!), winter is still here but come down they must. I need to get this house back in order.

I spent all day yesterday washing curtains, dusting decorations and packing everything away in the new Holiday Decorations storage unit we bought last fall. I wasn't ready to give up my Christmas pretties but time to move foreward.. in spite of our ground hog. Grrr.

The Christmas tree has stayed up way longer because we hadn't done anything more than put lights on and I had not had one single evening to sit and ENJOY my tree lights and a Hallmark moive. Every movie I recorded, save the one I watched Saturday night, is still on the DVR. But the tree must get put away and our living room back into shape.

I do like the idea of getting back into my clenaing routine. I've been so focused on trying to get the studio in shape that the rest of the house has been sorely neglected. As of this writing, Bob will be home tomorrow. Time I made the house look more like home.

While I won't be doing any deep detailing this month, I'm going to be thrilled to just do a basic clean.

What will you be focusing on this week? Share in the comments and let me know. I'd also love to hear if you have any challenges. Let's work together to make our homes at least presentable. ;-)

Happy Cleaing!

WEIGH IN 2-3-20

162/173/135

Good  morning!

Did the ground hog see his shadow where you live? Sadly, while Puxataney Phil predicted an early spring for the east coast, I'm pretty sure our ground hog saw his. We had a gorgeous day, reaching 75*. I could live on that weather 363 days of the year. I need snow for Christmas Eve/ Day. Some periodic rain for the garden would also be nice.

Next on the list was the big game in Miami between the SanFranciso 49s and the Kansas City Chiefs. 31-20 KC.  I've never been anything but a Bronco fan but I gotta say that young Mahomes is growing on me. He reminds me a lot of John Elway. He motivates his team and has one hell of an arm. The fact that they won their first Super Bowl in 50 years - on the 100th anniversary of the NFL is just cool. Coach Reid has worked hard for that win yesterday... his first SuperBowl of his long career. His team admire him.

Congratulations to Coach Reid and the entire Kansas City Chiefs franchise.

That half-time show was something else! While admire the talents of both Shakira and Jennifer Lopez, as well as the Latin theme of the show (was in Miami after all), I really don't think the performance was appropriate for a day that often encompasses young men and women viewrs. Way too suggestive in both costume and  movement. While I'm not a prude, I just kept thinking, if JLo were an everyday wife/ mother, would she want her children watching the show?

That said, I remember when I could shimmy like Shakira. A friend of mine owned a bar where I played pool. If he got backed up on drinks, he would shove me quarters for the jukebox so that I could play WipeOut and dance, distracting the customers for a bit while he got caught up.
I don't shimmy any more... I should. I'd love to get back to that point.

As you can see, the weight is up. I'm contributing the number to a few factors.
1) I had a horrible choking incident on Saturday resulting in me not taking my supplements, including my sugar blockers. I didn't take them yesterday either.
2) BBQ sauce that was not my low-carb/ low-sugar. I'll be sharing the recipe with you on Wednesday 2-12 (truly) I'm scheduling the post this morning. I had used my low carb/ low sugar but by the time all was said and done, there wasn't any sauce on the wings. You'll understand more when that post goes live.
3) Chocolate/ Caramel Brownie in a Cup.
By the end of the game I'd eaten a portion of almost every protein I'd prepared for the day. I craved chocolate... a chocolate caramel brownie. Well, none to be had in the house was probably a good thing. But there was Cake in A Cup. I had one with about a tablespoon of milk chocolate frosting and a glass of milk... at bedtime when I should have been eating more protein.

Some days you just have to give in to the cravings!

On the up side, I didn't have the Peach Belini made with Clear American Peach soda water I had planned on. The peach schnapps was not going to be a good idea.

If you're not a fan of sparkling waters, I encourge you to give these a try. Unlike most brands where you have an 'artificial' flavoring, Clear American waters taste like the real deal. You can taste actual JUICE in these waters. A couple other people have tried them on my recommendation and love them.

So on to another week. I'm back in sync with my inner 1950s housewife this week as well as back to a full work week - just in time for Bob to come home on Wednesday. Thus the reason I'm getting all the posts scheduled this morning.

How was your first month of 2020? Are you still on track? Today begins a new week and a new month. We've got this!

Enjoy the Journey!
~Kelly 

WEIGH IN 1-27-20

162/172/135

Quick post this morning

Another pound down!  Now if I can just drop 1 more before Bob and I weigh in on the 13th :-) I'd rather have 2 but you know.. I'll take the 1.

My sugar numbers are reflecting the weight loss. I know if the weight went down so would the glucose. 

But here's something odd. Carbs don't seem to be affecting my morning number. doesn't matter if I have cinnaon raisin toast or a bowl of coco wheats, my numbers will be lower in the morning. I am trying to make sure I eat late so that the carbs continue to burn through the night.

Today is all about my favorite Chinese buffet and I'm really craving a cheese burger.

Speaking of, I tried the no meat burgers from Burger King. They're pretty good but I'm going to research what they are acutally made of before I eat another one. I'll try to remember to post those results on Wednesday.

How are you doing on your path? comment below and let us 

Enjoy the Journey... together!

~Kelly

WEIGH IN 1-20-20

162/172/135

Happy New Year, everyone!

Time to start another year of resolutions.  I have to say I don't have any resolutions. I have GOALS.

1- Open my etsy shop (coming February 1)

2 - Be serious about my Sinking Funds.. I have 3 specific ones I'll be talking about later

3 - Keeping my glucose # in check. 

4 - Publish 3 books this year - ON TIME!

The reason I've not been around for the past three months is because I've been seriously working on #1. I've wanted to open an Etsy shop for over a year. I wavered back and forth between needing to make some of this craft stuff taking up real estate to start earning its keep and wondering whether or not I needed one more thing on my plate.  I decided the 1st avenue might be a good course to take. Get some stuff out of my crafting space and maybe make a little money. I'm not out to make a killing but if I can pick up a little extra cash towards #2 then that's a bonus.

The sinking funds is a big bullet point. I want Bob to retire in 4 years or less (Less is my goal) But there are some things we need before then. A new walk in tub - with jets is one. By then our bubble tub will be almost 20 years old. I want one that we can get in, sit in and be able to get out of in our dottering old age.  Another thing we need is a new sofa, with recliners. I have one spotted at FFO and the price isn't bad. I'm just hoping by the time we're ready to purchase, this whole micro fiber thing will be history and we can go back to real fabric. When we moved the original hide a bed into my office, we bought knew recliners for the living room. After almost 5 years, we are not happy with them. One thing that bothers us is that when you raise the foot rest.. at a certain point the back reclines as well. Bob wanted this recliner and he asks for very little. I let him have the win. I didn't want power recliners to begin with. Live and Learn.  Finally, there is the new truck I'm going to need. At the three-year mark I'll be looking for a 2019. I do know I do NOT want a car payment.. especially after he retires. The house will be paid off and my truck will be pushing past the 300,000 mile mark. Ugh! I've been blessed that it hasn't needed any serious work. Snowball is a good truck but at some point, she'll need a rest.

My glucose numbers went up over the winter. Mainly, I think, because I didn't focus on them all last summer and didn't focus on them the way I should have. Since I've gotten back on track, the number is slowly getting back to where is comfortable for me... my normal without drugs. I've had to give up a lot of things but I'd rather sacrifice some foods rather than my over-all health

Three books. Book 2 of my Ozarks series comes out in late May. Book 3 will release in late September. My other book will release mid-summer after I gain rights back. My contract for Somewhere Down the Line comes up in May. That has been a long 8-year lesson I won't repeat. 

One I didn't mention is my hope to work with an editor at Five Star for my Western Trilogy. The great western author, (late) Dusty Richards introduced me to Tiffany Schoefiled after he'd done a critique of the first chapter of book 1 in the series. I had the opportunity to sit with Tiffany last october and she's ready to see what I have. That book wouldn't release until 2021 but I have enough other things to keep me busy until then. 

Okay..

that's my 2020 forecast. What's yours? Let's have some conversation.

Enjoy the Journey!