Assorted Notes On My Christmas Break
Hey, gang, I'm back from my Christmas break. Here is an assortment of thoughts and data:
* I did not gain weight! Or rather, I probably did, but did a pretty strict meat-and-eggs day yesterday, and weighed in this morning at just exactly the same weight as the day I left.
* This is not to say I did not Indulge at all. I drank considerably more wine than I usually do; we were celebrating, after all. I had one small serving of stuffing at Christmas dinner, and some flour-thickened gravy. And the last night we were there, when we went out to dinner, I ordered Chicken Marsala. I specifically asked if the chicken was breaded, and the waitress assured me it wasn't. It was, however, floured. :-/ I ate it anyway. Not the best Chicken Marsala I've ever had, but it was good. I preferred the chopped salad I had the first night we went out; it was just exactly what I wanted at that moment.
* I've now had the opportunity to compare Valor Sugar Free 70% Dark Chocolate , Guylian's sugar-free dark chocolate, and Trader Joe's sugar-free dark chocolate, side by side. The Valor wins, hands down. Best texture, richest flavor. The Guylian's is silky, but frail-flavored, as if it were diluted. The Trader Joe's is flavorful, but too sweet for my tastes, and a little grainy. The Valor is richly flavored, smooth as can be, and not too sweet. Wonderful.
* That Nice Boy I Married and I took a dozen-and-a-half eggs from our chickens along, and between the 23rd and the 27th we ate all of them. Would have shared, but no one asked. So we ate 'em ourselves, and they were yummy.
* My niece and I ran out to the local Hispanic grocery to grab some grated cheese for taco night. Hispanic groceries are a fantastic source of pork cracklings, known in Spanish as chicharrones. I tried a brand called La Visita, and while they weren't quite a match for my beloved Golden Flake, they were better than anything I can get here in Bloomington. I'm going to have to find out where the nearest Hispanic grocery is. I find it particularly charming that the bag for La Visita cracklings bears the slogan "Sooooon de puerco!" which translates as "They aaaaare of pork!"
* Note: taco night is a great way to serve folks with differing nutritional parameters. I had the chicken and beef on a bed of lettuce, with onion, salsa, and sour cream. My sister, who does the Weight Watchers Core Plan, had chicken, beef, lettuce, onion, and salsa, no sour cream. The rest of the family had, you know, tacos.
* I also discovered Blue Diamond Soy and Wasabi Almonds. If you're a wasabi fan, you have to try these. If you haven't tried wasabi, ask yourself how you feel about hot peppers, hot mustard, and/or horseradish. If you like 'em all, you'll probably like wasabi.
* That Nice Boy I Married got Dove Sugar Free Chocolate Peanut Butter Creme Candies and a sugar free Godiva Dark bar in his stocking. Along with the candy, he also got Planter's Sea Salt and Pepper Cashews, which he scarfed with dispatch. I'll have to buy those again. I also got him Emerald Cocoa Roast Almonds. They were on a twofer sale, so I got a second canister to pass around to the family. It took maybe 36 hours for them to vanish. Other treats included some flavored coffee, an expensive imported salami, three kinds of really good cheese, and a bottle of sugar-free French Vanilla syrup, which I'd link to, but you can't order 'em in the wintertime, because of the risk of them freezing in transit. I trust I've demonstrated that "Christmas treats" is not necessarily synonymous with "sugar"?
* Got hungry on the five hour drive home yesterday, so we stopped at McD's, where I had an Angus Bacon Cheeseburger and a side salad. Took the bun off the burger, plopped it on the salad, added some Newman's Own Caesar Dressing, and called it supper. Not gourmet, but low carb, filling, cheap, fast, reasonably tasty, and not too full of garbage.
So now I'm home and back to the slow cooker recipes. I very much hope that those of you who celebrate Christmas had a good one.
