At a standstill now, but maybe not for long.

Elmwood Ave on Christmas eve.
The past few days have been very difficult for me. My weigh-in wasn't great--I gained about a half a pound. To counteract this, I have been going to the gym and doing cardio and strength training. However, the candy in the house has been calling my name. Yesterday, I ate far too much of it. Needless to say, I enjoyed every bite. The night before, we went out to dinner for my Mother's birthday. Afterwords, we had champagne. I had too much, and woke up not feeling too great. I also was due at the gym at 8am for personal training. I did get there on time, and even did 10 minutes of cardio warmup. But.....now I feel that I am going to fall back into my old habits. There were restaurant leftovers and some cake from my Mother's birthday in the frig. I ate all of it. Today, I wrote most of it down, but I left out the candy and cake. These are my old habits. I don't want to slide back into my old ways. I have come too far to go back. I have lost more weight so far than I have in all my diets going back 20 years. This is not counting the pounds that I lost and regained over and over again. Weightwatcher group leaders say that when this happens, and it does, just start over. So today, I have a good breakfast and did my cardio. On the positive side, I am posting the promised neighborhood luminarias from Christmas eve.

Merry Christmas--just a little bit late

Christmas was a nice 2 day celebration. We had a nice dinner on Christmas Eve and open our our gifts. Then on Christmas day we had some guests and another wonderful dinner. My husband and chef made short ribs on Christmas eve and on Christmas day, he made tenderloins--or filet mignon. My brother and son made some scalloped potatoes with 4 cheeses. Delicious.
We have a neighborhood celebration, we all contribute to purchase the ingredients for luminarias, which burn all night. I will post the picture in the next few days.
I am the owner of my own digital camera which I don't know how to use yet. It sure looks easy to use. My husband took the picture of the luminarias.

I also have another no bake cookie which is so easy and tasty.

Rolo Cookies

1 bag Synders Butter Snap Pretzels
4 packages Rolo candy--or more if you want more than 32 cookies.
pecan halves ( 1 small bag)

1. preheat oven to 300 degrees
2. prepare the baking pan with a sheet of parchment paper.
3. lay out pretzels on the baking pan
4. on top of each pretzel, place one rolo candy.
5. top each piece of candy with a pecan half.
6. bake in the oven for 6-8 minutes. check to make sure that the candy does't melt and get sloppy.
7. take cookies out of the oven, and lightly press down on the pecans, so the candy makes a little "pillow"
8. cool and serve.

A Bit From Alma

Merry Christmas to everybody!
I got into a little bit of trouble the other day. Pauline had the ingredients for the Christmas bark on the counter. They don't realize that I am very unhappy when they go out to eat and don't include me, especially since it was Alan's birthday. Everyone knows that I am Alan's dog. So, as soon as they left the house, I started to cruise the counters. I hit the jackpot. I dragged the bag into the living room and ripped open a bag of brown sugar. Not to my liking, so I continued to investigate the contents of the bag. Then I realized that there were about 4 bags of chocolate chips. Delicious! I ate one bag. Then I decided to look around for more. Upstairs I found some more chocolate in the guest bedroom. Since I was pretty full, I decided to hide that in one of my stash areas, so I could enjoy it later. I have several stash areas, conveniently located under the cushions in the living room armchairs and sofa. Pretty good spots. Then, they came home. Unfortunatly, they weren't very happy with me. Pauline dragged out the vacumn cleaner, which I hate, and proceeded to clean up the sugar. All the candy disappeared, but they missed the candy in my secret hiding place. A sucessful evening.

No Snow Here

It's raining! Thank goodness! It this was snow, we would be shoveling like crazy. No white Christmas for Chicago this year.
I've decided to work out like crazy for the next three weeks, so my new bathing suit won't be tight. Bathing suit shopping is the worst possible experience for women of my age. Wearing the bathing suit isn't much better. That's why they make coverups.
I'm thinking of ordering another suit over the internet. This one will have a high neck and a high back, so I won't be exposing too much skin to sunburn. Next little job is to take my pants in to be altered, so I can wear them in Mexico. I just bought them last spring, and I really don't want to buy any new ones, so off the Elite Cleaners for them. Then I can get to work on next semester's syllabus. Fun.

Oh Boy, We're going on a trip

Today, I booked a trip to Mexico. My husband and I have been talking about taking a trip to someplace warm, so on a whim I called a travel agent yesterday, gave her our rather restricted dates, and around noon today, we had a trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. I am also the owner of a new turquoise bathing suit, which I purchased in honor of the trip. We are leaving in three weeks. I haven't even looked at the hotel picture yet. More later.

Recipe News

Finally, I made the Christmas bark recipe, and it was as good as expected. It's an easy recipe to make and it's pretty tasty. There are a couple of pitfalls, first of all, there is no pan size specified in the recipe. I used a jelly roll pan the first time I made the bark, and it was too large. So, I used a smaller pan with sides--9x12 1/2 inches. You could go a little bit larger, but not much. It worked much better than the jelly roll pan. You may want to increase the toffee mixture by 1/2. So instead of 1 cup of butter, use 1 1/2 cups. Increase the sugar from 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup. So give the recipe a try. You won't be disappointed. The recipe is on the blog entry before this one.
So, I went to my Weight Watchers meeting today, and to my surprise, I lost almost 2 pounds. It wasn't my best week in eating or exercise. I'm getting a little nervous. Sometimes I believe that I will wake up fat again. I guess I will just have to go one day at a time. So, now I'm going to ride the exercise bike.

I Survived the First Semester

Today was the last class of the semester at Oakton. I shared class recommendations and grades with my students. Although I had to fail several students, they took this fairly well. Most of them were happy with the recommendations, and only one student has to repeat the class. Most of them are moving on to the next class, even though they didn't pass the exit exam. So, on to writing the syllabus for next semester, which requires studying the new textbook.



This picture of Alma was taken at Thanksgiving

I have a recipe for an easy holiday cookie-candy. Although I have not made this treat, I have been assured that it is delicious.

Christmas Bark
preheat oven to 350.

1 sleeve saltine crackers
1 cup butter
1/2 cup light brown sugar
12 oz semisweet chocolate pieces
1 cup chopped pecans
(1 cup crushed candy canes)

1. place crackers in one layer on parchment lines baking sheet--use one with sides --(jelly roll pan)
2. Melt butter and sugar in a medium saucepan. Cook for 3 minutes, stirring constantly
3. Pour butter-sugar mixture over the crackers, spreading evenly.
4. Bake 15 minutes.
5. Remove pan from oven and sprinkle with chocolate pieces. When the chocolate melts, spread evenly.
6. Sprinkle pecans evenly on top of chocolate.
7. Refrigerate 1 hour.
8. Remove from refrigerate and break into pieces. Makes about 40 pieces.
Crushed candy canes may be sprinkled on top instead of pecans, or in addition to the pecans.

A big step forward and a step backward.

The pine cone wreath on my front door

I seem to be on a roll. Today I made my 25 pound goal at Weight Watchers. Consequently I ate a lot of cookies and related stuff at a holiday party. Oh well. My program starts again with dinner. I ate only the homemade cookies and skipped the store made ones.
There were some interesting cookies, one of which didn't need much preparation. They were based on a square pretzel, about 1 inch square, with a rollo candy on top of it. Then there was a pecan on top of the rollo. It was baked for a few minutes, so the rollo melted into the pretzel. I estimate, maybe a minute or two in a regular oven. They were very tasty, crunchy, chewy and chocolately. And best of all, no big cleanup!
Speaking of no mess cookies, I was given a recipe for Christmas bark made with a base of saltine crackers. I will include it in the blog sometime soon. I haven't made them yet, but I have been told that they are excellent.
I did make a nice pine cone wreath at the party, which is now gracing my front door. I was looking at wreaths at Target, and I'm glad that I decided not to purchase anything.The one I made is much prettier and full of interesting things like lotus pods, dried flowers, cinnamon sticks and various other natural items. It also smells like cinammon because the pine cones must have been soaked in cinnamon oil or something. Thank goodness it's hanging outside, otherwise the house would smell like Michaels.

A word from Alma

I know that you rarely hear from me, so I decided to write a short entry to let you know how my life is going. I am thinking very hard about my holiday letter, since I am waiting until the last minute to write it. People really enjoy reading my letter, so occasionaly I think about compiling them and making a short book about my life. I hope that people will enjoy reading about the doings of a north shore dog who lives a comfortable life. It will be a little like a Sienfield plot--mainly about nothing. They did quite well with nothing.
About my life, the cold weather is finally here, my favorite time of year. I have a spring in my step and don't have to pant to cool off like I do in the summer. I am the opposite of humans, they like warm, I like cold. Maybe its about my permanent fur coat.Well, that about all I can write now, I'm saving the good stuff for my letter.
Take care
Alma

We had our first big snow storm yesterday. The weather people were talking about it for about 3 days before it arrived. Well what we got was bad, but not as bad as a few miles to the west. It had started sleeting when I left Oakton about 9pm on Thursday, and at midnight there was a little snow on the ground. When we got up on Friday morning, there were about 4-5 inches on the ground. Our neighborhood looked quite pretty, like everything, houses, trees, streets are frosted with powdered sugar. You can barely see the street, so the area looks like an 19th century street scene. My husband took the picture before the snow stopped, and before people came out of their houses.
Most of the schools in the area were closed, including Oakton, but my old school district stayed open. I was planning to stop by a school on Friday, but I decided not to go because of the weather. It--the storm-- was all over by noon. When I went to Oakton on Thursday, my husband wanted me to take the awd car. I didn't need it then, but on Friday, when I went to the grocery store, it was much more stable than my sedan. I decided to make a few dishes to freeze on Friday. Now we have dinners for the days when my husband comes home late.
Today was a beautiful sunny day, but cold. Snow on the ground does this. I took my mother shopping and to lunch. We had a nice day. and she actually bought a few gifts. I did too. When I finish this blog, I'm going on line to order a few more.