Toot Toot Tootsie

These have been somewhat difficult days lately.  Spending long hours with my best friend Gail trying to help care for her 91-year-old Mom who is doing poorly.  We enjoy spending time together with our other best friend, Alice.  Many moments are difficult, but the time we spend together and with her Mom are precious.

Gail has always been a big baseball fan, the Philadelphia Phillies in particular and me…not so much.  Well, she’s turning me into a baseball fan, too!  We watch the games together and I’ve even started to watch them when I’m home.  I never thought it would happen.  I actually CARE that Chase Utley is back!

Since we’re all on Weight Watchers, we try to keep each other on track.  Long hours of sitting and waiting can lead to serious snacking issues.  We have 2 standbys that get us through the days.  One is Orville Redenbacher’s 94% fat-free popcorn.

The whole bag is only 3 Points on Weight Watchers and it really is a satisfying snack.  I have over the years mastered the art of slow popcorn eating (too bad I can’t master that with other foods!)  I can make that popcorn last through most of an episode of Law & Order!

Our other saving grace is strangely enough Tootsie Pops!! 

 We love them and go in search of them whenever our stash gets low.  We recently discovered that we can get them at Dollar Tree for…A Dollar!!  We had been buying them at Family Dollar but they were over $2.00.  We recently stocked up on them because we rely on them so much.

Do you think we’re covered for a while?!?!?  Gail had an old pretzel container and we decided that would be the best place for them. 🙂

We usually get the pack which they now consider their standard.  It has a lot of the original flavors, chocolate, cherry, grape and orange (no lime 😦  ) But it currently also has raspberry, green apple (not lime) and pomegranate.  It’s very funny watching us in the store.  There’s only a tiny window in the bag where you can see in.  We stand there poking at the bags to move the Pops around so we can take the bags that have the most of our favorites.

One of the good things about Tootsie is that they keep coming up with new flavor varieties, but the bad news is you can only get them for a short time.  We recently found this new one at Dollar Tree.

Wild Berry Flavors!!!  They are SO good!  Included are Wild Apple Berry, Wild Cherry Berry, Wild Mango Berry (my second favorite) and Wild Black Berry (my VERY favorite!!)  We all loved them!

We found them at one particular Dollar Tree.  I figured all of the stores carried the same thing at all of the stores…not so.  I went to the one that’s closer to us and there were none.  I even asked the manager…he said the stores don’t all get the same things…:-(

So when I had the chance to get back to the store were we originally found them…I bought 8 bags!!  I really keep itching to go back there and get some more, just to be safe.  But I think I’ll control myself right now. 😉

I did have a good dinner last night.  Ralph and I both had salads using up the last of the Artisan lettuce from last week and the last of the Big Salad from Sunday.

Dressed again with my balsamic vinaigrette with honey.  Very good.  

I love the convenience of having a big bowl of salad ready in the fridge.  I may do that today before I head to Gail’s house so that dinner will be easy again tonight.

Off to a busy day.  The Glee season finale is tonight!

Happy Tuesday!

I Didn’t Win Again, But…

I had the best time watching the countdown to the Oscars and then the telecast itself!  While the countdown was going on, I spent my time reading over my mantra book …

…in preparation for starting my meditation practice today.  More about that in a bit.

I very much enjoyed the show.  I’ve heard some comments online that the hosting was lacking, but I thought it was fun and I thought the show moved along well, certainly better than it has in some past years. They showed what they needed to do…BRING BACK BILLY CRYSTAL!!  I’ve heard him discuss how difficult it is and how much it takes out of him. The Academy needs to pay him whatever he wants to come back and host again!  I thought Anne Hathaway and James Franco were adorable but…there needs to be someone a bit more mature to give the show what it needs in a host.  Ok, I’ll get off my soapbox about that!  Nevertheless, I enjoyed it!

I was very proud of myself that I stuck to my plan regarding snacking.  We didn’t have dinner as I’d intended, Ralph brought home pre-made egg salad from a local convenience store and I used it to make wraps with my favorite Ole Tomato and Basil tortilla wrap.  I made 2 and although I didn’t really put a lot of the egg salad in them, they were quite filling, tasty and easy! 🙂 I had 3 clementines after and that kept me satisfied until well into the show.

I went with my plan to go with carrots and the Trader Joe’s red pepper/eggplant spread.  It’s very much like the Marco Polo ajvar which I can no longer find around here.  I just found it on Amazon while looking for the link, I guess that’s how I’ll have to buy it since I can only make occasional visits to Trader Joe’s. 

The spread with baby carrots counted for zero points.  I recalculated several times and even doubled and tripled the values when calculating and it still came to zero…my kind of snack! 🙂 The Tribe hummus was delicious!  I tried the horseradish flavor first and it was very tangy and yummy!  I ate it mostly with the carrots but I did have some of it with saltines.  Overall I think I’m happy with my performance as a snacker.  I should win an award!

Now back to my meditation practice.  Ele had mentioned on Saturday when we were discussing the practice that she had read online that some people sit on a little stool to do it.  I remembered that I had a little one that I had bought some years ago to use as a  foot stool.  I thought that it would be perfect…it’s padded and the top even flips open and I could store things in there.  So after I unearthed it, I realized that it would work very well. 

One of the great things about this mantra book is that it includes a CD that allows you to hear the mantra you chose in order to become familiar with how it should sound.  I listened to it during the countdown when I was reading the book.  It was such a help to have that.  You can read the words, but sometimes it’s hard to be sure if you’re pronouncing them properly.  I’m sure I wouldn’t be if it weren’t for the CD! 😉

I got up this morning and started.  The practice should be conducted for 40 days. As instructed, I had decided on what my intention would be for this 40 day period and got underway.  I think this will work.  The stool made it so much easier than it would be if I were sitting on the floor trying to keep the position.  I love my mala.  It took a few minutes for my fingers to get comfortable with what they were doing, but it started to feel like second nature.   I have a small bookshelf in my bedroom and I’m going to try to set it up as a little altar.  When I’ve gotten that set up, I’ll take photos of my stool and my altar to share.  It felt so peaceful and after a while I was actually able to block out most of the traffic noise. 

I think I’m going to like this…

Ommmmm……..Day One has begun…

The Most Exciting Day of the Year

Well, not exactly, but I get pretty excited on Oscar day.

First catchup from yesterday.  I tried something different with my oatmeal yesterday.  First of all I had always used the instant oats and last time I bought oatmeal, I bought old-fashioned oats.  Even doing them in the microwave, I can taste the difference.  I also added some special guest stars…

Trader Joe’s Country Pumpkin Spice Granola and pumpkin butter I had gotten at the Amish Market in Mullica Hill. 

The final product looked like this…

And it was delicious!!  I should have cleaned up the bowl a bit, but it looked so good I couldn’t wait to eat it!  I think I’m having the same thing for breakfast today! 😉

Now for the big deal!!  You should all recognize this guy!

I know it’s probably crazy, but I just LOVE to watch the Oscars, including the 3 hour lead in, or maybe it’s 4 hours…I don’t remember, I don’t care,  I just love it! 🙂

This can be a problem for me because, of course I need to snack during the fun.  I’ve been working on a plan to help myself stay in control.  I’m going to have a good dinner, probably leftover barbecue beans and dogs from earlier in the week.  That will be filling.

I did think it over and when I went shopping today, I found these…

Tribe Hummus…I’ve never tried it before, but I’ve also never met a hummus I didn’t like.  I did the calculation and it’s only 2 points per 2 tbsp serving.  In fact the snackers that you see in the photo are individual little tubs that are 2 points each.  That should be a help to keep me in control.  The best part of the transactioin…they were on sale 1/2 price!! 🙂  Am I happy?! 🙂

The rest of my plan looks like this…

Baby carrots and Trader Joe’s eggplant and red pepper spread which counts as zero!   Hopefully that will keep me controlled.

My other treat for myself is going to include this…

Instant espresso coffee!

Kristen told me how to make a latte with this and I’m going to give it a try tonight.  I’ll probably need a little help staying awake, since the Oscars almost always run over.  But that’s part of the fun!

So that’s my plan for the day.  I’m running very late.  Ele had told me yesterday about a sale at K-Mart on lightweight cotton sweaters which I love and I had to stop to see what I could find.  I bought 4 and can’t wait to try them on!  Need to get some breakfast for Ralph and for myself.  I’m trying to have a coffee date with Ele this afternoon, so I better get this show on the road.

May I have the envelope, please!