Good Morning all.

I worked yesterday, and the days I work I do nothing else. Had the kids the day before, so haven't been here for a few days. It's hot here too! high 90's, but it's supposed to cool down starting today. I'm still waiting. It's only 11 and already it's HOT. Cleaned the carpet in the family room this morning, did a ton of laundry....and I have to work tomorrow. Off the weekend though and it's supposed to be cool.

Welcome Bootsie and stitches. Look forward to getting to know you.

Put me down for another one who doesn't like clintro. Love mexican, but like Bobbi said, it tastes like soap! YUCK. I think you either love it or hate it, nothing in between.

Who said something about addictive personalities? I am one. It runs in the famly, like most things do, I think. My addiction is food. I guess it's better than alcohol or drugs, but it's a problem. And I agree with Z, it's a hard one to controle. Drugs or alcohol you can totally avoid. You have to eat.

I love to read too. I always have a book, or 2, going. Plus a book on disc in the car. I'm reading Sarah's Key right now, by Tatiana de Rosnay. I wasn't sure I could read it, it's about the jews in France during the Holicost. I may have been taught in school that the french cooperated with the gathering of the Jews but I didn't remember it. On the lighter side, I have the new Janet Evanovitch book ready to dive into also. I figure I'll need something a little lighter after i'm finished with this one. I'm a big fan of Pat Conroy too Donna.

Bootsie, I'm thinking about the hot sauce and peaches. Can't quite visualize it. But I do like strawberries sprinkled with balsamac venigar or sprinkled with black pepper, so I might just give it a try.

Everyone, have a good day.

Freda

Hah! It IS SOUTH of Broad, PT. My memory was faulty. Maybe he'll write "North of Broad" someday, and everyone will recognize me as a psychic! I'll get to appear on talk shows! I'll be famous! Oh, jeeze. I hope not. That all sounds so strenuous and stressful. Maybe it's best we forget that I ever mentioned north of anything? (Thanks.)
I'm at work. Ugh. Much to do, little time to do it. Sad but true. Over and out. Personals later.
:grouphug:
Z

Good Afternoon Girls!
I have a birthday party to attend in half hour so I thought I'd give you a thumbs-up on a recipe I put together yesterday. I'm getting kind of sick of my daily veggie soup and decided to make a cream soup out of cauliflower. Put 4 cups of water and 4 chicken bouillion cubes in a saucepan, add one package frozen cauliflower, 1 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp onion powder, 1/8 tsp nutmeg, salt & pepper to taste, cook until mushy. Put in blender or food processor with a few fresh basil leaves and blend until smooth and creamy. 8 oz bowl is about 40 calories. I left the salt out yesterday because I thought the salty bouillion cubes would make it salty enough but you need some. This makes 3.5 servings (8 oz) I'm thinking some browned up turkey sausage crumbled in it would be good if you want to use this recipe for a main meal.
Have a fun day everyone!
P.S. Whose's from California?

evening all....I misnamed Pat Conways book sorry...right book wrong direction. It's a bit wordy in the beginning but later it all makes a weird sense.Just finished a book about my DD's Bf Ds. It's his face and eye on the cover. It was a struggle to read and am still upset. Guess the GI's coming back now have the same problems the Nam vets had when I was working at the VA. Janet Evanovich's Sizzling 16 here I come need... something happy and silly.

Just made the best salad for supper. Had chick peas, feta cheese and lime basil dressing. Just about everything laying loose in the refrig got dumped in. little carrot, cuke, tomato...Lately lime just seems so bright tasting.

Bootsie....Your polecat/skunk story sounded like a conmerial we have down here where lady is calling in her cat and a raccoon walks in the house. My DM had a skunk fur coat and it was lovely until it got damp. Phew!

Quiet day here. Sunny! Such a treat. Spent the day catching up on book work. Balanced the estate check book. $12.50 missing and I was crazy. Finally realized that the bank charged that for the checks. I had made up the distribution amounts and then had to redo them when the bank statement showed up this afternoon. That 12.50 changed everyone by a $1.50. Have
.06 cause you can't divide 10 into it. hmmmmm Guess am not only addictive but anal retentive, too. sighhhhhhhhhhhh

Tomorrow is my weekly trip to vegie stand. Local tomatoes have been really good. Not sure if the Santa Claus melons are in yet. They are wonderful. Cross between honeydew, lope and kiwi. And tickles me to ask if you ate your Santa Claus.....i know me bad!

Bobbie....That caulflower recipe sounds wonderful, will wait until cooler weather to try it. Trying keep me from getting bored with vegie pot. I really want a slice of cheesecake....no a whole cheesecake not just one slice....bury my face in it size!

Lynn...you are the busiest retiree yet.

Forgot to load the dryer...oppps sheets are damp.....hugs karen3

Good evening ladies!

It's almost 90 here today too hot to cook, too crazy a day at the office too lazy to prepare a salad. So breakfast for dinner, a bowl of Fiber one cereal with a cup of blueberries.

Bobbi, I love homemade soups the and your recipe sounds great. I’ve found that having a variety of quick healthy meals available is so critical to controlling my food consumption. I try to keep 3 or four different soups in the freezer; does it freeze well?

Donna, thank you for the lovely complement. Generally I stay on the other side of the camera where the view is better ;)

Talk about addictive behavior. I started Outlander last night, had difficulty putting it down and got up at 5 this morning to get an hour in before getting ready for work…can’t wait to continue the saga.

Karen, I haven’t had cheesecake in a couple of years, it’s one of those can’t just eat one slice foods….I really miss cheesecake :( It’s been a while but I have mixed white chocolate sugar free/fat free instant pudding with fat free vanilla yogurt…it’s not cheesecake but it’s pretty good.

I haven’t read anything by Conway or Smith thank you for the recommended authors ladies...Jo

Okay, Bobbi – I think you’ve hooked me with that soup recipe! It sounds simply divine! One question…how large a package of frozen cauliflower? I typically buy it in fairly good-sized bags, but I know you can get it in smaller boxes, as well. I also like the idea of crumbled turkey sausage. I mean, here I am, mouth watering, and it isn’t even over anything sweet! What a novel occurrence for ME! I remembered my Fiber One today, incidentally…and am presently looking at my bowl of Greek pineapple yogurt, added blueberries, strawberries and Fiber One (which I usually LOVE eating) and I swear I woul KILL for a (big) piece of cheesecake instead!
Karen3, I’m VERY jealous over your vegetable stand fresh tomatoes…it’ll be another few weeks, maybe a good month before we can get good locally grown ones around here, and everybody knows how much I love fresh-picked tomatoes. I mean, I’ll even STEAL ‘em if I have to! :devil: But yeah, ONE piece of cheesecake wouldn’t do it for me, either. Tsk.
Jo, the Fiber One cereal and fresh blueberries for supper idea would actually work for me, too. Now, DH is a different story. Luckily, my daughter-in-law-to-be loves experimenting with various healthy cooking ideas, and at least two or three days a week I come home to a nicely prepared and served supper that I can actually eat without worrying about it. Last night she made some exquisitely seasoned ground turkey burgers with chopped onions and peppers that would (and did) melt in our mouths. I’m going to really miss that girl when she and DS move into their own house.
PT, you said: “I'm still feeling bloaty and blechy and blah.” Well, as I may have said more than once, they don’t call us PTs for nothing. Bloaty, blechy and blah is exactly how I’m feeling today. I have GOT to stop these bouncing around, back and forth when it comes to eating. I’ve been rather uncommitted for a couple or three weeks, now, and enough is enough! Monday I start fresh (for the seven thousand, eight hundred and 43rd time!) and start getting myself under some kind of permanent control. MUST do it! Kansas City, eh? Hmmmm. We need to look into this…
Freda – and Bootsie – the hot sauce and peaches made me think of when I used to visit my son in L.A. and he would always buy me fresh fruit from street vendors, and they would sprinkle it with red pepper flakes. I had never heard of such a thing, but one taste, and I could’ve eaten nothing but that all the time I was out there. Amazingly delicious. So I’m guessing that the peaches and hot sauce would be pretty yummy as well…I’ll have to try them, too. I know I like dark chocolate with chili peppers…I forget who makes it…comes in bars. Lindt, maybe? But the combination of sweet-ish and hot is really, really good! (And it would be good FOR me if I could restrict myself to a few squares…
How’s the temperature down there, Lynn? We had a couple of downright unbearable days, but it’s cooling off a little bit…reaching more bearable levels, at any rate, and they’re predicting rain and storming all day Saturday. (We need it, but I wish it would rain during the week and leave me with sunny weekends!)
Hi Rosey, hi Isabella and all…
Have a great weekend!
:grouphug:
Z

Good Morning Girls!
Zoe...I used a 16oz bag of frozen cauliflower, the nutmeg in this makes it taste almost like a white sauce. I love sausage gravy over biscuits, with less broth in this recipe, we could make it into a gravy using the cauliflower.
We're having a hard time with MIL at the nursing home, they are trying to kick her out. She is soooooooooo nasty, but she's been that way her whole life. She has Alzheimers and I can reason with her when I visit but as soon as I leave, she turns into a dragon. They have her on a waiting list to another nursing home that has a private room without the extra expense. She told me the other day she was moving in with us, HA! DH is an only child and he can't stand her, never goes to visit her. Our golden years do not involve a MIL that's a demanding tyrant.
Our tomatoes are still green but I picked our 1st zucchini a couple of days ago. When I have too many to use, I shred them up and freeze in zip bags for this winter's soups. A really low calorie filler and the neat thing about zucchini is it taste like whatever spice, herb you put on it.
Jess...I know I have an addictive personality, it's always been ALL OR NOTHING with me. I'm going to eat 3 pieces of cheese cake or none at all. See....I can't stop thinking about cheesecake.
Karen3...stop talking about cheesecake! I love cheesecake and could bury my face in it just like you. Maybe we can turn blended cauliflower into cheesecake? If we could pull it off, market it........we'd be rich!
Stitches...I would guess it'd freeze, I just put the recipe together a couple of days ago and haven't tried freezing it.

Quote:

I love homemade soups the and your recipe sounds great. I’ve found that having a variety of quick healthy meals available is so critical to controlling my food consumption. I try to keep 3 or four different soups in the freezer; does it freeze well?

Hi Bootsie, Lynn, Rosey, Karen 31 (where are you?)Freda.....I don't mean to exclude anyone but I've decided to make up a cheese cake
recipe using cauliflower:rofl:
Have a good one.

Good Morning! It is kind of a gray day here today. Night before last we got 3.6 inches of rain overnight! Yep, my pool was overflowing! Then last night we got .4 more! I went out this morning and backwashed some of the water out so that the filter system would work right this morning and have the filter running now. I will have to add more "STUFF" to it later. Just kind of waiting to see if we are going to get more rain or not.

Zoe, even though the pool takes some work it is so worth it! And they even have covers that you can put over them and use them year 'round! I've actually thought about doing that later down the road. Also you can have a salt water system put in that doesn't use all the chemicals to maintain it. We are also considering doing that sometime later. If you have ever had even a quick thought about putting in a pool my vote would be do it!! I LOVE IT!! For a couple hours work on it a day, you sure get lots of hours of enjoyment! By the way! I LOVE YOUR NEW PICTURE!!!

Welcome Jo! Nice to see you here. You are going to find that these ladies are great! So many great ideas and recipes!

I have Angel here today! Right now she is laying on the chair behnd me sleeping....probably not for long! My brother flew to CA. this morning and will be getting married about 3:30 CA. time this afternoon. He will be back home on Tuesday and I am sure Ginger and Sissy will be so happy to see her go home again!! She is too puppy for them!

Bobbi, I am going to print our that soup recipe and give it a try-- later when it is cooler. But it does sound great!

I have friends coming to visit from Colorado next week. I worked with her at Wendy's many moons ago! Her name is Karen and her hubby is Jim!!! Could get a bit confusing!!! But I imagine we can talk forever and leave the hubbys wondering WHAT???

Donna, did you get a lot of that hail in Denver? I have a friend in Woodland Park and her car was pretty much destroyed and their house needs lots of repair work now too. Hope you are safe and sound.

Rosey, you have done so well and your picture is beautiful! I need to get some of your will power from you.

Well, I need to get some clothes out of the dryer and put more in... never ends....

Hello to everyone that I have missed and I'll get back later.

Morning everyone..well its been an eventful few days here..my family came back from the cabin and took dh to emergency room..a friend surprized them at the cabin,they were in the back addition with the generator on and didnt here him come in..my dd looked up and and shreaked as she was starteled..my dh turned on the 8 ft ladder he was standing on to see what was amiss and fell off unto the floor..all banged up and sprained his ankel now hes on crutches ouch just call us mr and mrs gimp again..then i dont know if i should be angry or cry but i found out my oldest dd and family where here over the 4th and never called or came by,they always stay with us..shes still avoiding us..id like to spank her but shes to old..i keep trying to get this resolved but she wont budge..makes me sad..lifes to short for this and its a lesson she has not learned yet..what a brat..and shes 40:?: esp sad for my grkids..the garage sale is going well at least it not raining..my dogs are going beserk with every car and they bark till they squeak i finally put them in the back bedrm..boy one of my favorite foods is cheesecake..my dd bakes them from scratch..she made a carmel apple one for me but her absolute best and my fav is her carrott cake one..i ate the whole thing yummmy ..ok now i need a bib just thinking about it..as far as my dieting resolve thanks for the kind words..what keeps me going is the thought of being housebound when i get older..if im smaller my dh can move me down the wch ramp easier..purely survival instincts..besides the monthly weigh in the drs office is a great motivator..if i had had this resolve earlier in my life i might not be where i am today..however life experiences builds character right..should have would have could have sigh..now i make the most of what ive got and thankful for every day..Bobbie i ahve all the stuff to make your soup..yay lunch is solved..thanks..hoping you all ahve a great day..(((hugs))) rosey :wave:

Hi everyone! I've been too busy to spend much time here but today I dropped off our son at the airport (he came for another business trip just 2 nights) and now I'm feeling lazy. I'm a little behind on my housework so need to get to it but here I am on the 'puter! :D

It is in the 90s here now so we now have summer I guess. Doesn't seem like we had much spring, but time moves on. I've been busy in the yard trying to keep up with the watering and weeding and mowed once. dh says lawn doesn't grow as much in the summer so I'm only doing that once a week. It's all so new to me but I do enjoy it and sometimes don't want to come indoors until I get too warm, then the ac feels really good!

dh continues to do well..doctor now says he can bear a little bit more weight, but pt said (the next day) he was putting a little too much weight on it so the trick is finding the right amount to not risk injury and yet increase strength. PT also increased his exercise a bit as he was getting a little stiff. He is walking more by himself when I am around to kinda watch over him but yet I don't have to hover any more. He likes being independent and I am trying to respect that. At night and outside though I still am right beside him. He goes back to the doctor for x-rays in 4 weeks.

It was good to see our son again even 2 nights. Sometimes brief visits are the sweetest even, don't you think? :D This is our youngest son..he
is 34. I can tell he has matured even recently.

I was glad to have him here to help me Wed. I was in bump-to-bumper traffic and my car overheated. It was comforting to have him there..I know basically nothing about cars, he doesn't know a whole lot but a little more than me. We called my dh who advised us and finally made it home ok. My dh had to be alone for 3 hours ..the longest I have left him...but he was ok.

Where's the best place to find baby clothes online? Meant to shop and send my son home with a gift for his baby coming in Oct but with Joe's accident didn't get it done so think I'll just order online. Tried Pennys..good deals but little choice of colors.

I agree with you about addictions. I think I have a very addictive personality. Thank God never smoked, did not develop much taste for alcohol and never used other drugs! Used to have a bad nail biting habit but that is almost overcome now.will occasionally if they get too long..have t keep them nicely manicured at all times. Kinda OCD. But food is my main addiction. Some foods I just cannot have around me in large amounts. Ice cream is one. Yesterday I bought 3 small cups of ice cream and gave one to my son telling him this is the only size we buy anymore. We used to always have the 1/2 gallon size and often more and he was used to that.

Rosey - sounds like your dh had an accident similar to my dh's. Glad yours didn't fracture anything at least. Hope he recovers speedily. I understand about "grownup" kids that never seem to really grow up! Out of 4 we have had our share of that..still do some. Sorry they hurt you like thatl It can frustrating, irritating and even heartbreaking!

Jess/PT/Z - I can relate with dieting over and over again..each time determned to do it once and for all! But I figure I will never quit trying and even (God forbid!) I don't ever get to my goal weight I will be healthier for the effort. Each time I diet I learn more about nutrition and anymore the changes I make are lifestyle changes not just temporary.

Bobbi - I love good soups too..I snagged your recipe for future use. Thanks!

The books you guys are reading sound really good..I'm making note of them in Springpad so I won't forget them. Right now I have a large number of books I haven't yet read.

Well, better check on dh and get busy on housework. Have a good day everyone!

Maryea..i buy on e-bay..just type in new in the babyclothes..surprizing what u can find.new but great prices try gymboree they have such cute things..rosey :wave:

Thanks Rosey, I forgot about ebay. I ended up buying some cute things at the childen's place. Figure she can return them if something wrong as probably has a store nearby. I couldn't get blankets there though but think I may wait and see what she gets in her shower.

I think my DD figured out why I have been feeling so crummy - dehydration. I explained my symptoms - nausea, lethargy...

She gave me 4 glasses of water & I felt much better.

Live and learn - again, and again, and again.