Recipes galore!

Here's a great link for healthy recipes: Recipe Rumble. This link was passed on to me by Karenee and I've only taken a cursory glance through it yet. If you find recipes you think sound great in there, why not let us know?

Slacking off

When I look back on the past few weeks, I find that the whole health and nutrition thing goes very hand in hand.

My weight is wobbling all over a four-pound range. On the plus side, it spent a few days lingering at a new all-time low before wobbling back up. There have been a few issues, I think.

The bear didn't help! I do now have a very good quality (though elderly) treadmill upstairs and took it for a good run yesterday. It clanks and clunks a lot, so I'll have to get hubby to have a look at it when he's home on the weekend. It's noisy on walking mode but gets rather frenzied at a jog. So we'll see how that works out. I'd like to get back to daily exercise. Once I start skipping days its easy to skip a couple more.

I wound up with a minor flare-up of the arthritis earlier this week. I did manage a couple of Curves workouts during that time frame but I'll be the first to admit they weren't real fat-blasting programs. Even not feeling 100%, it seemed wise to keep moving as best I could rather than reclining at leisure. Things seem back under control on that front now, for which I'm glad.

And when I'm not feeling well, I eat. Hovering just above my goal weight is frustrating. On the one hand, I think I can drop those last few pounds any time. Such as *later*. On the other hand, I'm hunting for comfort food, because how much harm can a little slippage do at this stage? Sigh.

All these things work together. When I'm exercising regularly, I feel stronger mentally. I feel I can tackle absolutely anything. (Well, except for bears.) I can say no to just about any tempting food. But if one area slides, it's a slippery slope.

This evening I baked me some healthy comfort food to tuck in the freezer for when I need it most. It's not stuff I should eat with abandon, but it certainly will do less damage than some of the things I've reached for lately when I wasn't prepared. So now I should get off-line and freeze the pumpkin snack bars and the carrot bran muffins so I don't go on a feeding frenzy at midnight!

Tomatoes and zucchini and pumpkins--oh my!

The garden has officially frozen over. I must say it's a relief.

But then, I'm kind of surprised it took this long. Usually we have killing frost by mid-September, and here it is, well into October. I did have the tomato plants covered Sunday night when it froze, but when the frost is heavy enough, it goes through the tarps anyway. Most interesting, the leaves were wilted looking and black but the tomatoes themselves didn't look affected. Monday afternoon I picked off anything that looked orangey to red and covered them again, as well as the pumpkins which I'd forgotten to cover Sunday. The ones tucked under lots of leaves had survived the first frost, but the ones on the outskirts were frost-bitten. The zucchini are simply toast, but I've eaten enough of them to do me for a few months anyway.

This afternoon my sis-in-law came down and picked off the remaining tomatoes and pulled the plants. She didn't have room in her car for a pumpkin as well, but she wants one. I've quadruple covered the three surviving pumpkins in hopes of finding them homes tomorrow. Hubby's sisses' all say they want one but keep not coming to pick them up.

We butchered one of the biggest on Saturday, though. Hubby rolled it over to the compost pile, hacked it up with an axe, and *gutted* it there. The chunks filled our wheelbarrow. Mom-in-law looked interested so we gave her a bunch of it, maybe a quarter. I spent the rest of the day prepping pumpkin for the freezer. Folks had told me the fastest way to do it was to bake the pieces and remove the peel afterwards. Way too slow. It took about 90 minutes to do one pan-full, and the wheelbarrow (which we drove right into the kitchen) had too much in it for that rate to be effective.

I kept a couple pots on the stovetop going as well as two large broiler pans in the oven. I peeled and cubed the pieces and put enough water to steam. The broiler pans I covered with foil. With all these pans going simultaneously it was all I could do to keep ahead prepping--and pureeing at the other end. (By then hubby was out in the field, plowing a pasture under.)

Adding water to pumpkin that way makes it kind of soggy, so the next step was to fill a couple of pillow cases with puree and tie them up from the beam in the kitchen ceiling with empty pots underneath to catch the drips. Not very beautiful, but it works.

45 2-cup packages of pumpkin now live in my freezer. There will be pumpkin recipes coming to the forum, trust me...

Really, I haven't forgotten about the forum, I've just been kinda...busy.

The Bear Wins

The winning score officially goes to the bear. His masterful stroke was leaving a pile of scat on our road, a hefty stone's throw from our house. I no longer have a running date outside on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 6:45 and am scrambling for a new plan. I'd thought all would be good until the snow started to fly and the road got slushy or icy; that could take a couple months yet. I hear rumors that someone in the family has a treadmill that's not in use so we're looking into bringing it to our house.

I'm not so concerned about Saturdays and Sundays because I can go later in the day when there are more vehicles on the road. (Imagine considering contending with traffic to be a bonus...) On Saturday afternoon I took my bike out for a nice long ride (while the salsa simmered!). It was a very pleasant day, sunny and warm with a light breeze. Sunday was when I saw the bear droppings. Monday I went to Curves. Tuesday (today) I slept in an hour because I was NOT getting up to run. Maybe after work. I'll have to see how the day goes.

Behold the Tomato

I've finally come up for air from the vast mountain of ripening tomatoes that has been gracing my house for a few weeks. I'll miss having garden fresh tomatoes for sandwiches, salads, and stir-fries, but at the moment, I'm just relieved. There still are some in the garden--we haven't had a hard frost yet--but the rush is over. I've processed enough to see us through the year. Perhaps two.

Roma tomatoes, also known as Italian or plum tomatoes, are much firmer than *regular* tomatoes. There is almost no juice to them. I've dehydrated enough of them to fill an ice-cream bucket. I've made a big batch of salsa and canned 10 pints. I made pasta sauce, also canning it in pint jars (the right size for two people). For both the salsa and the pasta sauce, I filled two 5-quart slow cookers with all the ingredients, then let them sit uncovered on low for 16-20 hours until the right thickness, then canned them. Works good for batches the right size for us.

Also with the romas I canned over 30 pints of roasted tomato sauce. We just love this stuff; the flavor is so rich. It can be used as a base for soup, as a pasta or pizza sauce; last night I used it in a spinach lasagna. Mmm.

The regular tomatoes just got chunked and canned for future reference. I still had some on hand leftover from other years so only canned about 20 quarts and 25 pints. I was thinking of making tomato vegetable soup to can but I ran out of energy, and with the canned tomatoes I can make the soup any time in just a few minutes. With hubby working out of town, having ready-to-eat homemade soup makes a nice lunch for him at work.

Of course, there still ARE some tomatoes in the garden and if it stays warm this week, I might get tempted to make a big batch of soup yet. Or not. I'll have to think on it.