Tag Archives: Real Food

Ah – Rain!

Quora

It started raining last night and is still raining today.

I got my early spring garden planted, so I’m really happy about the rain, even if we drown going to Lunch Bunch today. :0)

Two days ago I got some leaf lettuce, spinach, broccoli, and cauliflower plants in my raised bed, square foot garden. Yesterday I planted to bunches of red onion sets. I don’t have the irrigation timer installed yet, so I was really glad to see we were expecting rain last night. The garden is started! I’ll probably plant some radish seeds, plus more lettuce (my husband likes me to try head lettuce) if we can find it, but basically, the early spring garden is in. (This photo shows three of the six planter boxes. I took it before I planted the onion sets.)

I’m looking forward to seeing my friends for Lunch Bunch today. It’s a big moment of ‘normal’ in a chaotic, scary world, and I treasure it, and my friends. We’ll probably stop at Real Food on the way home to see if we can find some goodies to bring home.

Since working outside isn’t in the cards today, I’ll concentrate on cleaning some of the inside. Most of what I vacuum up is dog hair. You would think Amber would be completely bald by now.

I hope that you can stay safe, warm and dry today.

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Filed under Friendship, Gardening, Mother Nature, Seasons, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds

Minus Sugar and Carbs

Just kidding. :0)

My husband has Type II Diabetes, so we cut out as much sugar as possible several years ago. That, along with medication, is keeping his blood sugar at a good level. He really had to work to do it. He LOVES sweets. He even calls ME “Sugar.” I’m really proud of him that he is building good habits. He does splurge, but we monitor blood sugar twice a week and pay attention to it.

We had two places start up in Greenwood this year – REAL FOOD and STU’S CLEAN COOKIN.’ Both provide individual serving frozen meals that are HEALTHY and DELICIOUS.

Today I’m cooking a chuck roast in the slow cooker, but most of our days are built around having one of their frozen meals, or the ones I make from the leftovers we have. We have a sandwich or tuna salad for lunch, and we try not to eat much in-between. It seems to be working for us, albeit slowly.

In these days when we need to be particularly careful about our health (we are in the high risk group for COVID) it just makes sense to also eat as healthy as possible and try to lose the lard.

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Weight Loss Tip 2

Born to Workout

I am feeling more in control of what my husband and I are eating now. We are both happy with the food we are getting from REAL FOOD in Greenwood. It’s delicious. We are basing our eating for the day around the meal we eat from there, having a really light lunch and very careful snacks, if any.

We are lucky to have ANOTHER good frozen food place that just opened recently in Greenwood.  It’s called, STU’S CLEAN COOKIN’.  We looked at their menu online yesterday morning, ordered, and were able to pick up our order after 10:00 a.m. yesterday morning! We had paid online and they had our order ready for us. You can’t ask for faster service than that!  We put that in the freezer to stock up. I like the fact that they list the nutrition of each meal on their website. I look forward to seeing if we like their “cookin.”

We get enough to eat 5 dinners per week and then I cook on the weekend, making one of the keto recipes we like. So far, we are losing weight and really enjoying LIKING our food!

My husband is only a couple of pounds away from his goal weight, but he likes the food so much, he is being VERY cooperative about doing this for the foreseeable future while I continue my efforts to get the lard off. (I have around 30 lbs to my goal, I think.)

With good food for the big meal of the day SO easy, I can concentrate on doing the other things I would like to do, rather than being tempted to feed my face in the kitchen.

Right now, the big project is trying to get my onions harvested without being stung/bitten by more fire ants who have taken up residence in my raised bed, square foot planters, and getting the planters cleaned out, things repaired, the boxes filled with Mel’s Mix, and then covered with tarps for the winter.

Have a wonderful Sunday!

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Filed under DIET!, Great Companies Who Deserve Your Business, Healthy Eating

Thoughts on a Thursday 9-17-2020

Thankful Thirteen via lovethispic.com

 

I am having a wonderful Thursday, and I hope that you are, too.

Getty Images

My day started off with a wonderful massage from Lynn Moody.  If you are in the Greenwood area, give her a call at 479-629-7601 and see if you can book one. You’ll be SO glad you did! Besides my NORMAL miracle massage, I mentioned that my neck was stiff and sore. She did some magic with a towel and expert lifting and twisting and made it stop hurting!  :0)

Yesterday our new food group, REAL FOOD – also in Greenwood – (479) 414-6337 – posted the choices for the week coming up. My husband and I ordered with enthusiasm, and will pick up our goodies next Monday.  Since we don’t have any nutrition information, my husband and I are watching the scales and building our eating day around the Real Food meal as our main meal, with a snacky-type lunch. We are fasting from dinner until lunch the following day, except for drinking water and coffee the next morning, with very careful – if any – snacking. Fingers are crossed that things works well for us. Their food is delicious!

 

Amazon Handmade

I have added some hand-painted totes to Amazon Handmade today.  For some unknown reason, one of the images is not showing. I’m still fighting with that, but hopefully will solve the problem soon. It’s SO exciting to be adding my stuff to their website!

 

Rags n’ Roses Collective

I am going to go up and play in my art room some this afternoon. I’m still working on the bunch of bookmarks I started about a week ago. I’m adding some ribbons, strings, and/or doo-dads to each of them. I will post some pics when I have several finished, but I’m having a lot of fun. I am planning to take them to the booth I share with my friend, Carla, at Rags & Roses Collective479-597-3107 – in Greenwood.

 

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Filed under Great Companies Who Deserve Your Business, playing in my art room, taking care of yourself

Relief

“Caught Red-Pawed” – Audrius P. – Bored Panda

 

Our last BistroMD meal last night was Salmon. It was mostly edible, but my husband and I both used lots of tartar sauce. (Usually I don’t use anything except maybe a squeeze of lemon on salmon, so I was really disappointed). Neither of us could identify the side veggie, but we each took one bite and that was it. I just looked it up online and it was eggplant with 5 spices. (Maybe it would have been better if they had used 6.) We are in celebratory mode now because we are moving on. (We still have some snacks from both South Beach and BistroMD, but time will tell if we are hungry enough to eat them.)

Today I will cook some pork chops. We will have a side salad and a celebration of small portions of black eyed peas with onion.  We will eat half of this tonight and the other half tomorrow. Monday we pick up our order from Real Food. I’m eager to try that.

As with so many things, their competitor has already sprung up in Greenwood. It’s called, Stu’s Clean Cookin’. I was impressed with the ad in the paper. They list calories, fat, carbs, and protein for each meal listed. They identified some as “low carb,” “contains dairy,” and “contains gluten.” I like that.

So – just as we needed them, we have TWO nice companies preparing frozen meals we can try! I will be doing a lot of label reading. I plan to at least have several meal options available in the freezer while trying to get back into the swing of meal planning for keto eating.

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Filed under DIET!, Healthy Eating, quality of life, taking care of yourself

Hooraaaaaay!

“Caught Red-Pawed” – Audrius P. – Bored Panda

 

Tonight we eat the last meal from BistroMD. This program was not a good match for us, and we are happy to be able to move on. Sad to say, I didn’t lose any weight over the past week – just held my own. (I didn’t get any taller, either.

If I grew about 5 inches, I would be in MUCH better shape. I have a massage next week and will encourage my wonderful therapist to redouble her efforts to pull on my head, legs, and arms enough that my problem might eventually go away. :0)  (One can dream….)

We are looking forward to a week off. We have ordered some hand-prepared frozen meals from Real Food in Greenwood. We will pick up our order Monday. Some of our Lunch Bunch friends say their food is delicious!   In the future, we will do a combination of keto meals and meals from Real Food – if we like it – concentrating on portion control, good choices, and exercise. Fingers crossed.

 

 

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Filed under DIET!, exercise, Healthy Eating, quality of life, taking care of yourself

Happy Tuesday!

Reader’s Digest

We have several errands this morning, and more this afternoon, so I might not get ANYTHING else done today.

In about an hour, we’ll leave 4 leaf bags of trash at the bottom of our driveway for pickup. (I made my goal of finding 2 extra bags of things that SHOULD have been thrown away a long time ago. I’m hoping to continue this each week.) We will also get our mail.

We have been experiencing serial failures of our fluorescent light fixtures this year. We have changed out the ballast transformers on many of them. Now we are replacing the switches that control them.  We will pick up those at Yeagers. We will stop at our co-op to see if they have lettuce plants. (I’m hoping to pull out the spent tomato plants in the long brick planter by the house and put in lettuce plants.) Then we will stop and check the new Real Food store on the way home, hoping to find some frozen meals to buy and try.) Later, we’ll go back for my husband’s hair cut and a quick trip to the clinic for a shot for him.

I got lazy yesterday and didn’t do anything outside. This afternoon I’m planning to mix up EIGHT bug killer and will hose down my raised bed, square foot garden planters before I even THINK about trying to harvest the rest of our onions. I am finally healed up from the attack of the fire ants that I discovered living among my onions, so I’m ready to wage war. If I’m successful on getting the lettuce plants, I’ll take some pics for you.

I finally got an email from Amazon Handmade, confirming that I have been accepted to list my work there, and giving me some directions on how to get to a place I can register. When I have a calm space of time, I’ll try to follow them. Fingers crossed!

I hope you had an enjoyable Labor Day and that you make today a great day, too.

 

 

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Filed under Gardening, Housekeeping - Maintenance, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds, Thoughts on a ________

Decision

“Caught Red-Pawed” – Audrius P. – Bored Panda

We have cancelled our BistroMD meal plan. We have to accept one more week’s delivery, but then that’s it.

We tried dinner the first night and then lunch and dinner yesterday – plus my husband had two snacks. He said – after tasting the dinner last night – “Three strikes and they’re out.” We will try to eat our way through the rest of this week’s fares plus next week’s, but this plan is not for us. A sample of our conversation: “What is this veggie?” “I think it’s apple.” “I think it’s squash.” Whatever it is, it’s pretty awful.”

Our new plan (after we try to finish the food we have, AND yet to be delivered), is for me to go back to cooking keto. We will also check out a new place called REAL FOOD that opened up recently in Greenwood. At Lunch Bunch the daughter of one of my friends mentioned the place, saying that their frozen dinners, made fresh each week, were really good, and were good for you. That may give us a nice change from all the cooking from time to time.  I will also make a point of cooking so that we have leftovers, so I won’t be spending all my time in the kitchen and cleaning up.

I’m disappointed, but the dinner was so unappetizing last night that I threw mine out, opting for some deli meat, a hard-boiled egg, and a string cheese stick.

There are a few more options we may try, but I’m STARTING to learn that being lazy and trying to avoid cooking might not be the best option long term. We used the South Beach as a kind of ‘reboot’ on our keto efforts. When my husband saw how much time I was in the kitchen, prepping, cooking, and then cleaning up when we had finished the two months of South Beach, he suggested that we try another plan and I – lazy person that I am – caved.

I will concentrate on cooking enough of each keto recipe we love so that we have leftovers for another dinner and maybe a lunch. I will also research how well each one freezes in individual portions.

 

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