This is the day!

I really like that children's song based on Psalm 118:24.  This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.  That's what I'm going to do doing today.

I got up early (for a Saturday) to let in the guy who's installing the last of our energy efficient windows.  The rest of the job was finished in early December, but they ordered one window the wrong size, so it's going in right now.  We're expecting unseasonably warm weather today, but let me tell you, at 7:30  this morning it was too cold to stay toasty-warm in the house with a large window-sized hole in the wall.  Thank goodness for the snugly wool socks my Laura gave me for Christmas!

Guess what DH and I are going to do today!  Here's a hint:   You got it.  We're going to take advantage of the great weather (near 60 is the predicted high) and go for a bike ride.  And I'm going to ride my "Pearlie."  DH gave me a road bike for Xmas last year, but with the winter weather and then my surgery in March,  I've only ridden it three times.  I mostly rode my hybrid bike this year because the road bike has the rider lean over the handle bars more and I was leery of stressing my neck where I had the surgery.  Now, though, I'm ready to ride Pearlie again.

I'm feeling good on the WW front.  I bought three 24 oz BPA-free water bottles at Costco yesterday.  I'm drinking 60+ oz of water a day and tracking my eating on the WW site.  Morning weight augers a happy face at my Wednesday WI.

Laura made applesauce during our Christmas vacation.  Amazingly easy, fast, delicious, AND fills the house with a wonderful aroma.  Here's the recipe:

Core and slice 10 Fuji Apples (Laura uses a mixture of several varieties) (one of those apple corer thingamajigs works well.  No need to peel the apple.
Fill a large pan with 1 inch of water. Bring water to a boil. Put apples in pan, cover and simmer for 20 minutes.
Blend apples until desired consistency.  (I use my new immersion blender!--Cuisinart Smart Stick SB 77)
Add cinnamon (optional).
Serve warm or cold.
Oh, and ZERO WW points!

I'm making pork tenderloin tonight and Laura's applesauce is definitely on the menu.

See you soon, I'm going to get moving and continue rejoicing and being glad in this day!
(Tish is my nickname.  I love knowing that Tish, Tisha, and Ticia (as I spell it) mean "glad." I think my parents did well in naming me.)

Mango Mania

I am loving mangos this summer. Did you know that they have been called the "fruit of the gods"?  Most of the mangos in the world are grown and eaten in India.  They also pack a powerful punch in the area of nutrition.    They have the largest amount of vitamin A of any fruit.  They are also good sources for vitamins C, B1, B2, and B6 and Potassium.  [my reference is The Fruit and Vegetable Stand:  The Complete Guide to the Selection, Preparation and Nutrition of Fresh Produce, by Barry Ballister--a book I go to quite a bit.  Don't forget I'm a librarian!]  Mangos are increasingly available in supermarkets here.  I never had one until about five years ago.  Now, I buy one or two every week.  I like the ones that get a nice reddish bloom with a bit of yellow and green.   Choose a mango that feels heavy for its size, that give slightly to a gentle pressure, and that has a tropical fruit scent. Don't store it below 45 degrees for more than a day or two.


The biggest issue about mangos is how to get at the fruit.  The mangos have a large flat oval seed that parallels the shape of the fruit.  If you don't know what you're doing, you're likely to get mangled fruit with too much left on the seed and rather ragged pieces.   I recently read someone's blog (Diane's?) where she asked about the best kitchen gadgets.  A few people commented that it was their mango seed gadget.  I bought one last week and used it for the first time tonight. I'm in love. It did a great job and I got so much more usable fruit for my salsa. The Oxo splitter to the left was the one I bought. There may be other brands that are similar, but I like how sturdy Oxo kitchen gadgets are and I'm getting quite a collection of them. I was curious about what would happen if the seed was bigger than the metal cutter part. My seed tonight was slightly bigger. It just cut down over it and there was a tiny bit of seed still attached to the fruit. I cut the fruit in long wedges and had no problem trimming off the little part of the seed that was still attached. This gadget is really a time saver and does something that is almost impossible to do as well by hand.

I used my mango in a mango, avocado, and tomato salsa.  I don't really use a recipe, just add 1 chopped mango, 1 diced avocado, some chopped cherry tomatoes, a bit of diced red onion, a generous bunch of chopped cilantro and lots of fresh lime juice.  I served this alongside my night-before-WI baked cod fish, whole wheat rotini pasta, and some leftover carrots and peas.  Very eye-appealing, very quick, and quite tasty.  


Tuesday is always a gym night and I had a good workout.  DH and I go together and each has a set routine.  It usually takes us about 50 minutes.  I do my routine while listening to a book on my ipod.  It really makes the time go faster.  Before I had the ipod, I often ended up counting the ceiling tiles!  Hearing a good book is much better. Right now I'm in the middle of Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear.


Tomorrow is my WI.  As usual, I can't predict what will happen.  I have done well on my eating and on exercising this week and don't expect to gain, but the scale today was nearly the same as last week. We'll see what tomorrow brings.  


Tell me about your favorite kitchen gadget!  I love finding out about new, useful tools.

It's a Good Thing Popcorn is a Whole Grain

Yes, I made a big bowl of popcorn and ate the whole thing.   I used to eat the 94% ff microwave popcorn, but I was leery of all the chemicals in the ingredient list, not to mention all the sodium.  And the smell, if it happened to burn, made you know there was bad stuff in there.  I read a rave review of the PowerPop Microwave popcorn maker and decided to give it a try.  Awesome.  You just add the popcorn and stick it in the microwave for a couple of minutes.  Voila.  You can use it with or without oil (I use 1 tsp of canola oil) and anything else is optional.  The popcorn doesn't have that too dry, styrofoam taste I associate with hot-air poppers.  I add a sprinkle of popcorn salt and, if I want a "kettlecorn" taste, a couple of packets of splenda.  When I first lost weight, two years ago, I had an entire bowl of this popcorn every single day.  I used to make it and take a gallon size baggie of it to school to ward off the snack machine munchies. Now it's an occasional treat and I try to share the batch with DH, but sometimes . . . .   Anyway, popcorn was calling my name today and I stepped right up to answer the call.  [this is an entirely unsolicited and uncompensated review]

One of the reasons I was vulnerable to the siren call of popcorn was that I got back from a Costco run to find a long line of water droplets dripping steadily from the ceiling in our office.  It took me a few phone calls to locate someone who would come investigate today and a few hours of waiting for the person to show up.  I called the company that had installed our new AC (in the attic) because we figured that it was probably a leak in the condensation line.  It turned out to be a plumbing leak from one of the fixtures in the upstairs bathroom, but, fortunately, the AC company also does plumbing.  They finally left around 8:30 tonight.  We now have two biggish holes in the ceiling, and they pulled out lots of soppy insulation.  I need to call my friend the painter tomorrow to see if he can come repair the drywall ceiling and re-paint in that room.  Did I mention that we're having ~30 people at a choir party at our house next weekend?  I don't need this.  Oh well, the popcorn helped, somehow.

Little E could have used her yellow umbrella with pink and green polka dots to good advantage had she been here today!



We took a nice hour-long bike ride tonight after dinner (leaving the plumber working--he assured us he'd be there for a good long time).  We rode by our new house again.  We checked out the very nice community pool and biked by the house several times to get an idea of what we might want to do in the garden and yard before we rent it out.  Our realtor let us know that they (the sellers) had found their dream house and were negotiating on it today, so maybe we'll close a lot sooner than we thought.

On the biking, when we don't have plumber-guys working in our house, I want to start going out a little earlier and biking a little farther to work up to feeling confident about the 35 mile route we'll do over Labor Day.  The weather today was so nice--not the muggy hot we've had recently, but very nice not-muggy high 70s.  Yay! We're going to take the bikes to the 'bike spa' just before we go to make sure they're all tuned up and ready to go.

Thanks for your comments re blogger posting issues.  They helped.  After yesterday's comment about slow traffic on weekends, I had a nice amount of traffic today, so I'll keep posting on Saturdays for now.  I'm also thinking that posting regularly at night before I go to bed is a good thing as my posts will appear at a more uniform time and also, the 5 hour delay doesn't matter so much.

I'm hoping for another nice weather day tomorrow so I can run comfortably in the afternoon.  Grilled lamb loin chops, sauteed spinach with sultanas and toasted pine nuts, and whole wheat orzo with roasted cherry tomatoes on the menu for dinner tomorrow.

Do you eat a special dinner on Sunday nights or is it the cook's day off?