Finally Remembering a Word That's Been on the Tip of Your Tongue

It's like throwing a pail of cold water on all our smoking inner head parts.  Gears unjam, lines start rolling, and you settle back in the restaurant booth with a satisfied smile on your face and just blurt it out.........

"Parcheesi, that's what it was called."

Awesome!

This is the jist of  "The Book of Awesome" and well worth the time to parouse.  A pick up book, a bathroom book; no need for a lot of time.  Open it up to any page and enjoy.  It took Neil Pasricha a year to gather all the awesomeness resting between two book boards, but it's there for you for a moment or longer as you choose. 

Now that's what I consider awesome.

The Ongoing Saga or I Want a Blizzard..........

It's Almond Breeze time again.  To be truthful, I'd about given up on creating a 3-5 point yummy over the moon "Blizzard" until quite by accident there it was!  A Banana Mango, eat with a spoon concoction that equalled any real Blizzard.  Well..... that is if you wanted a fruity blizzard and not something full of bits of Scor bar and pecan clusters..............  This was amazingly thick and creamy and now one of my favorite all time  "I want something rich and creamy and tastes like it's full of calories (points) but isn't"  instant satisfiers. 

So here it is;  just look at how thick it is!  And it's even GOOD for you................

The Recipe:

1/2 a medium frozen banana  (peel  & break in half before freezing or you're in trouble)

1/2 cup frozen cubed mango  (I buy them on sale by the case and freeze my own)

1 cup well chilled Almond Breeze

1 scoop vanilla whey protein powder (I like Sisu brand)

1 Tbsp. natural bran (optional)

Wizz in your blender until thick and creamy. 

Yeild:   1 Serving

Points:  5

Note:  If it's not thick enough, add more frozen mango or banana until it is the consistancy you like.

                           

"Almost Ice Cream" Chocolate Protein Shake

I've been experimenting with my blender again.  I said earlier that I thought If I used choclate protein powder I could create a 2.5 healthy mock Blizzard.  It didn't work!  I had overlooked the "freeze" factor and all I got was a thinish protein drink.  Remember, the in the blueberry "Blizzard" protein shake I had added 3/4 frozen blueberries.......the freeze factor.  There wasn't any frozen berries going into the chocolate "Blizzard" shake so all I could think of was some ice.  Bad idea!  All that accomplished was to water down what would have whipped into a nice thick protein drink.

This thought has been brewing in the back of my mind for a couple of days and today I pulled out the blender, chocolate protein powder and...........the freeze factor.  (Yesterday I poured about a cup of Almond milk into ice cube trays and froze it!)  Ah ha!  I think I've got it!

Of course your blender won't work if all you put in it are chunks of  frozen Almond Breeze, so I started with 1/2 cup cold Almond Breeze and topped it up with the "freeze factor" until the liquid reached around a cup.  Actually it was all stacked up so I really don't know what the heck that measurement was.  Oh well, this is just an experiment after all.  On top of that I added one scoop of chocolate protein powder and a couple of teaspoons of natural bran.........can't forget the fiber........remember he helps with the thickening and acts as a scrubbing brush in  our intestines.  Enough said about fiber.

WHIZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz went the blender and I discovered I had too much "freeze factor" in the carafe and everything just got hung up above the blades so I added a drizzle more almond milk to get things going again.  Away it went again and what I'd intended to be a mock chocolate "Blizzard" ended up looking more like ice cream!!!  OMG, this is fantastic, I thought but it really wasn't all that great after all.  It was too icy to be ice cream and not creamy enough to be a "Blizzard".  What I got I think, is a chocolate slushy.  Oh well, back to the drawing board...............

Almond Breeze and an Adventure in Architectural Coiffing

I just read the comments on my new and amazing protein shake and am happy that some of you are going to give it a try.  I had another one this morning because they are really decadent, creamy and filling for so little points.  (3.5)

Medicmom, (defib64) to answer your querey;  Almond Breeze is almond milk and you find it in the same place that you find the tetra packs of soy milk (bad stuff that soy milk).  Here is a visual for you for next time you go shopping.

Now that that is out of the way I have to tell you I must have burned up a gazillion AP's today.....without walking or pumping iron.  I've been de-dusting our house.  Don't get this confused with ordinary dusting because it is not.  I have been removing gargantuan amounts of sanding dust from every nook and cranny in my house..........just the downstairs mind you....I still have the upstairs to tackle.  Yay, burning more calories again!

 I've not mentioned this before, but we are updating our home that we built 12 years ago.  I call it architectural coiffing because it's kind of a fancy upgrade to an already beautiful home.  We decided to remove all the carpeting from the living and dining rooms, hall and my library/office, and stairs and remove the granite floor from the foyer and replace it all hardwood .  Very 2010!  From there we decided "while we're at it" (the famous last words) we should do some special wall and woodwork treatments.  In came the design team to help us decide which way to go.  The woodwork, which there is a lot of, has been striaded and glazed.....this is a process of  6 to 7 layers.

The new wood stairs treads are spectacular so we needed to upgrade the stancions on the railings from wood to iron.  Our living room is two stories high so we added beams that ended up getting antiqued.  Our dining room which has a ceiling height of 9 feet got the royal treatment; coffered ceilings and beams that are being antiqued with silver, bronze and washes of burnished browns and crackled smokey sea pine colour.  This is also a multi layer job.  Similar ceiling in the powder room but this time we are using a bronze verdigre with silver undertones. 

We just couldn't leave it there could we?  No.  The walls had to be treated to a multi layer process as well.  Enter the plasterer who specializes in Venetian plaster.  So here we are today, 7 months from when we started and the plasterer broke his knuckle this morning before he started our job and is in a cast!  Falling back to my British roots; I have to shout......... Bloody Hell!  Anyhow, he said all is under control and he has a couple of people starting in the morning to do the initial 3 layers.  By the time they are done, he should be healed enough to do the final "what you will see" coats himself. 

When will that be finished you might wonder....4 - 6 weeks.  When he's done, the covers come off of the hardwood floor that were scraped and sanded during the past 3 weeks so that they can be stained and given 3 finish coats of some new and wonderful type of finish that I've never heard of before.  If everything goes as planned we should be ready to roll out the area rugs and return the furniture to there places in say 2 months.  That adds up to 9 months.  9 months for a reno!!!!  OMG what were we thinking?

I really don't believe it will be finished then and today I overheard the Christmas word spoken this morning, at which time I decided to bury myself in my art studio and have some fun for a change.  I'm done with it all, it has about driven me to distraction, my DH and I have had "words" on several occassions so I'm going to my "happy place" and having a glass of wine.  When it's done, it's done and I'm not going to let it get the better of me or worse still cause a rift between my DH and myself.   O H M!!!!!  Zoning out now.

Moral to the story:  Drink yummy protein shakes and DO NOT renovate your house!

Amazing Blueberry Almond Breeze Protein Shake "Blizzard"......all for 3.5 Points!

Having a protein shake for breakfast isn't a new thing for me; I generally have two of them every week.  Each summer I freeze lots of blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries and mango chunks for these yummy "shakes".   I use either  1 cup of skim milk or Almond Breeze, 3/4 cup of frozen fruit and a scoop of Sisu French vanilla whey protein and whip it up in the blender.   Sometimes I throw in 1/2 a banana as well especially if I'm making a strawberry "shake".  Strawberry and banana is such a classic combination.

Well..........today I had a brain storm and decided to add a tablespoon of natural wheat bran to the mix for extra fiber and here's what I got...........

.......it was the best one yet and it kept me full until well after lunch time today so I'm going to be adding natural bran to all of them from now on.  The bran expanded and made my normally thick protein shake super thick; almost like a DQ Blizzard.  No kidding you could have eaten it with a spoon.  Of course, if you don't like the spots (blueberry and bran spots) you could blend it longer until they were gone but I kind of liked the way it looked and it felt more like a Blizzard somehow. 

Did you know that skim milk will whip like cream whereas 2% or milk with any cream in it won't?  That's why I like to use skim milk in my protein shakes.....they get thick.  The Almond Breeze gets thick as well and imparts the most amazing rich creamy flavor you can imagine.  I buy the unsweeted plain Almond Breeze and one cup has only 40 calories or 1 point.  So if you have a hankering for a Blizzard, try it out with any frozen fruit or berries of your choice (if they aren't frozen, it doesn't get very thick) 

That said, I'm thinking I'm on to something here and I'm going to experiment with chocolate protein powder, almond milk,  a drizzle of chocolate syrup , natural bran and a few Smarties or pieces of Skor bar sometime soon.........I'll let you know how it worked out.

My Salad

D e l i s h !  Leftover green beans, asparagus and chicken breast turned this bed of butter lettuce and tomatoes into a tasty 5 point lunch.  It could have been less if I'd used a fat free bottled dressing but I really don't like them.  I make my own olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing from scratch.  Since I eyeball it, I think there was either 1 or 2 teaspoons of olive oil; if in doubt I always go for the higher number, so my dressing added 2 points.  The only other points in the salad was the 3 ounces of lean chicken breast.

That's all the ingredients I use to make my dressing.  I use a very fine VSOP balsamic vinegar and olive oil from the Napa Valley at about a 3 to 1 ratio; 1 being the pure virgin olive oil and 3 the balsamic vinegar.  A generous grinding of pepper, about 1 tablespoon of Lighthouse freeze dried Salad herb blend and a couple of grinds of Antarctic Pure salt and kelp.  In my experience with balsamic vinegar, the higher the quality, the sweeter it is and the more you can use.  If you can't get the really good stuff, I'd add a pinch or two of some sort of artifical sweetener to take the "bite" off the inexpensive vinegar.

So there you have it, my "d e l i s h"  lunch for today.  Once I finish my cup of tea, I'm off to take my dog for a good walk to help take care of the tiny piece of birthday cake I had last night.  All in all this was a great OP weekend for me even with the wine tasting event we went to last night.  The only numbers that were unplanned for was the ones on the bills we put down for all the wine we bought.