Bellies, bellies everywhere!

I love this site.  

I was directed there via a blog written by the folks over at sparkpeople.com, which is a free fitness and nutrition tracker that has helped me stay on track the last four months.

My belly, which after gaining close to 30 lbs and being pregnant twice, is a constant source of annoyance.  Constant.  It's the one thing that despite losing over 10 lbs still hasn't really budged. It's gone down in circumference, yes, but the flabby mess it consists of probably won't go away without surgery.  Because of this I'm always fascinated by how differently we women are all shaped.  Even in my own genetic line.  

I wish I could say that I wear my belly mess proudly because it helped nurture two babies and blah, blah, blah, but honestly, I'm a little too vain, and a whole lot more cynical to be so sentimental about flab.  I want it gone despite the reassurance that other women have bellies like mine.  I would very much like to wear pants that don't resemble "mom jeans" so that the belly stays where it should.  That would be great.  

I've been trying to remember what it was like to be thin.  Before I started packing on the pounds with age and bad habits.  I have to go all the way back to high school.  Junior year to be exact.  I was in a size 3.  I know I took my fit and healthy body for granted, as we all do when we are young, and I really wish I hadn't.  I wish to heck that I had kept up with my PT while I was in the AF.  Back then the fitness test consisted of a ride on a stationary bike with a heart rate monitor strapped to your chest.  They would measure your heart rate and your vO2 rate via a breathing tube.  As a pack a day smoker, I should technically have FAILED those "fitness tests" but lo, I did not.  I would pass them, consistently.  They left it up to you to go to the gym and workout.  Going to the gym wasn't on my priority list back then.  There really wasn't much of an incentive.  I was much more concerned with where we were going to go get a beer after work.  Now, they make you run and do those pushups and sit-ups as a group to measure your fitness. 

All the bad habits, and the lack of respect I gave my body has caught up to me.  Here I am, 20 lbs over where I should be, and miles to go it seems.  I still fight the numbers on the scale as my measure of success.  Why I still weigh myself makes no sense since I've lost many inches, and my clothes fit better than they used to.  "I want my muscles back and if I stay at 160 lbs, then so be it" is the mantra I repeat in my head.  I keep my tape measure handy and if it's even a half inch down, I'm elated.

So, I keep running, and I keep doing my crunches, and I keep lifting weights, and I keep watching what I eat so that eventually when I do lose the weight I can head on down to a plastic surgeon and say be gone with the belly mess.  Until then, I think I'll keep looking at other women's bellies and try to keep thing's in perspective.   :-)

Crustless Garden Quiche, or if serving to children....Eggy Pie.

So as of late, I've been experimenting with lots of different recipes.  Some were really good, others.....not so much. But the point is, I'm expanding my repertoire because I'm freakin bored of salad and chicken breasts on the grill every night for dinner.  

I found the base for this recipe on All Recipes.com which is kind of a funny site if you read the comments left for each recipe.  People can be downright cruel about food man.  Cutthroat really.  But my favorite commenters are the ones who rate a recipe at five stars and then go on to tell the original cook all the thing's they changed in the recipe before they've tried the original.  But I digress, this quiche recipe rocks as a base to which good stuff is added and I became "one of those"  people.  I'd been making a version with a crust but since we are *ahem* counting calories in this house, I decided to go crustless.  Now, I'll never go back.

• 
  
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 (10 ounce) package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained (or fresh, sauteed into a wilt and squeezed dry; I used two LARGE bunches of fresh)
• 1 red pepper, diced*
• 1 carrot, finely grated*
• 1 tomato, seeded and diced*
• 5 eggs, beaten
• 3 cups shredded Muenster cheese (I used cheddar, you can use whatever you want)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese, grated (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and spray a 9 inch pie pan with whatever cooking spray you have on hand.
   
2. Heat the oil in a large skillet over med high heat and add onions, spinach, and finely grated carrot .  Saute until onions are soft about 3-4 mins.  Take off heat and allow mixture to cool.
   
3. In a large bowl, combine the eggs, cheese, salt, pepper, and basil and mix until incorporated.  Add a scoop of cooled spinach mix to the bowl and mix to temper the eggs.  Add in the rest of the veggies and combine well.  Pour into prepared pie pan.  Top with the parmesan cheese if you would like.
   
4. Bake for about 30 minutes or until the eggs are set.  Cool for 10 minutes or if you're like me, five seconds because you are so hungry you could eat your own hand.
   

• This quiche is great warm or cold and is about 210 calories per slice give or take what you add or subtract.  
• * denotes ingredients added to the original recipe.

BTW: Eggy pie is a great name isn't it?  The Princess and the Kracken eat this Eggy pie up like it's filled with sugar!  All because it's called pie.  True story!

To help a child.

Please go to this site and take a look!  Kelly is an online friend of mine through a mommy message board I read, and her little girl needs some help!  Cadence, who is dealing with Cerebral Palsy, has a chance to go to Duke University for some truly ground breaking treatment that could change her life.  Kelly, and her husband Corey, are trying to raise money to foot the $12,000 bill.  If you can donate, please do so, if you can't please keep this little girl in your thoughts and prayers!

Thank you!

Why I don't go "down the shore"

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