Well, almost anyway. You do have to do your part. But I found this site where you can just register and get all kinds of neat fitness tools to use. And it’s all completely free.

My Fitness Pal lets you use their free calorie counter , fitness guide , message boards, and even give you a free fitness and diet plan to use. You can use all this with any diet plan you’re currently using, whether it’s a low calorie, low fat, or low carbohydrate plan.

Technorati Tags: fitness, calorie counter, fitness guide, diet plan

We’ll be having spaghetti for supper with home made spaghetti sauce. Mostly home made, anyway. I did put a jar of Four Cheese Sauce in with the rest of the ingredients, so I guess I cheated a little.

Anyway, here’s how I made the sauce, and it’s smelling very tempting already!

Ingredients:

• 1 jar Four Cheese spaghetti sauce
• 1 large can diced tomatoes
• 1/2 large bell pepper, diced
• 1/2 large onion, diced
• 2 tablespoons finely diced garlic (the kind from a jar)
• 1 cup sliced mushrooms
• 3 tablespoons each of freshly snipped sweet basil, Italian parsley, and oregano
• 1 tablespoon freshly snipped oregano
• 2 teaspoons sugar (to cut the sharpness of the diced tomatoes)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Nothing complicated here. I put everything in my large electric skillet to simmer on low until the onion and bell pepper are thoroughly cooked. I’m stirring it occasionally since tomato based foods tend to stick and burn a bit if they’re not moved around.

You’ll notice there’s no meat in this, but you could add some if you want.

• 1 pound lean ground beef, browned
• 1 pound deveined, peeled shrimp
• 1 pound smoked sausage, cut into disks
• Meatballs, as many as you like
• 2 cups diced, cooked chicken breast

Let your imagination be your guide!

Here’s a picture of the sauce in the skillet. As you can see, I keep my favorite cooking gadgets right on the old stove I have!

I’ll upload a picture of the whole supper plated later after we get finished with it. I hope I snap the shot in time!

Technorati Tags: spaghetti, spaghetti sauce, Four Cheese Sauce, electric skillet

This coming Saturday will be our big family get-together. I’ve been called upon to provide the baked beans. This isn’t an unusual request. It’s what I provide every year, but for some reason my sister feels compelled to ask me again each time. That’s ok, though. She’s not a person who assumes anything, even when it comes to baked beans!

When I make them, I don’t actually “bake” them, though. I cook them on top of the stove, in an electric skillet, or in the crock pot. They still cook for a very long time, so the beans are infused with the wonderful richness of the ingredients added to them. What follows is my own personal recipe for making baked beans. This uses a #10 can of pork & beans as the base, so you can divide the recipe to suit your own needs. I make it for a crowd!

Ingredients:

• #10 can Showboat pork & beans (the ONLY brand I use)
• 1 pound bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 large bell pepper, diced
• 1 large onion, diced
• 2 cups packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
• Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Fry the bacon until crispy. Remove from skillet. Add bell pepper and onions to the bacon grease and sweat them. Do NOT drain the fat off.

In a large pot, large electric skillet, or the crock pot, mix together all the ingredients until the brown sugar is thoroughly mixed in. It takes a couple of minutes to make sure there aren’t any lumps left.

Cook slowly over low heat on the stove or in the electric skillet, or for 8 hours in the crock pot. Serve piping hot!

I don’t know how many servings this makes, although on the #10 can the number of servings is listed as twenty four 1/2 cup servings. I also can’t give you any nutritional information because 1.) I’m too lazy to figure it out and 2.) It’s a picnic with baked beans so who cares?!

Technorati Tags: baked beans, recipe, Showboat pork & beans, electric skillet, crock pot

I’ve written shopping lists on everything from the back of an old envelope to a scrap of notebook paper. However, what they all lack is organization and categorization. I used to use a free software program called Shopping List. So, I downloaded it again to this computer and started using it again. It’s great!Using this little program, you can work on your shopping list as you find you need things and save it each time. When you’re ready to actually go shopping, you just print it out.

So what’s so great about that? I’ll tell you. This list program lets you input the prices of items and keeps a running total for you. All that gets printed, too. Since it prints in categories, you can find things in the store much easier instead of remembering something and having to go back to the other side of the store to get it.

Shopping List is a very fast download. I got it here in just a couple of minutes, and I’m on a slow dial-up connection. What are it’s capabilities? Here’s what it says on the website:

• Saves and maintains lists of grocery items
• Point & click or drag and drop items to quickly form shopping lists
• Edit, add, and delete items and categories
• Print shopping lists sorted by category or item
• Save lists for re-use

Using this little program can help you maintain your grocery budget. When I used it before, I’d even cut it apart and let the kids take a category with them and pick up the items listed. You can make it pretty detailed so kids will know exactly what you want.

Although it will allow you to save and reuse a shopping list, if you want a good record of what you shopped for the last time, you can name the file to be saved. For instance, the file I used yesterday was started on May 23, so I named it 5_23_07.

Since you can input the prices of items, it’s fairly simple to edit them if you were off in your estimates. You can edit them to reflect what you actually paid for items. I use my receipt for this information and if I buy anything that wasn’t on the list (not really a good idea), I can add that to the program along with the price.

It’s a great tool!

Technorati Tags: shopping lists, free software, shopping, grocery

Since I do enjoy gardening, especially growing herbs, I thought I’d share something with you. You can sign up for a gardening newsletter from Home Depot that you can receive by email. It’s a very simple sign up. You just need to enter your first and last name, and your email address. That’s it! Then you will begin receiving the Garden Club Newsletter and will read about great gardening tips, savings offers, and gardening advice that’s appropriate for the growing season you’re in.

You can follow this widget to sign up now:

It’s easy and it’s free. So what are you waiting for? Learn what to plant, when to plant, how to plant. Learn about soil amendments and containers. Learn about feeding and pruning.

Technorati Tags: gardening, herbs, Home Depot, Garden Club Newsletter

I’m sure we all have our own version of comfort food. Mine happens to be old fashioned Southern cooking. It not only fills the tummy but it warms the heart as well.

Monday, I put blackeyed peas with smoked pork and onions in the crock pot. It cooked all night long. Then,  Tuesday morning I put the peas in the fridge, washed the crock pot sleeve, and put in green beans from the freezer.

Now, green beans aren’t normally that special. It’s all in the way you fix them.

I put about 4 cups of frozen green beans in the bottom of the crock pot. On top of that I put about 3/4 cup brown sugar, 4 slices of bacon, cut up into 1 inch pieces, a little salt and pepper, and about 1/2 cup of water. I stirred it a little to mix things together. Not a difficult recipe at all, is it?

I turned the crock pot on low and let it cook all day evening while we were at work. The green beans were done to a turn when we got home and the whole house smelled of home cooking.

I threw together a small pan of sweet cornbread and we fixed a half-gallon of sweet southern-style iced tea. It was a meal fit for a king, to us!

Not a dieter’s delight by any means, but hearty and wholesome nonetheless. It was a welcomed meal after dealing with fast food all evening.

There are still lots of peas left and a tad bit of cornbread, so we’ll eat those again tomorrow night but will have some kind of potato with them then. I will probably also open a can of mustard greens or turnip greens to have as a side.

Technorati Tags: comfort food, Southern, blackeyed peas, crock pot, green beans, recipe, cornbread, iced tea

In just a couple of weeks, Brandon and I will be attending an Advanced Shift Management course. I both look forward to this and dread it at the same time. We’ll have to drive to our state capitol three days in a row to attend these classes, and they’re very intense. In fact, attending them actually earns college credit hours.

I wish we could just participate in online education instead and not have to drive the 40 miles. Especially with gas prices what they are right now - over $3 a gallon!

It would be great to attend a place like Capella University online and just do the courses that way. We could study what we need to, when we need to, from the comfort of home. Capella is a well-established online university with a staff dedicated to the advancement of students. It’s their mission.

With almost 18,000 students worldwide, they have become a leader whose name is recognized in higher education circles. If this sounds interesting to you, just contact them at Capella.edu or call 1-888-CAPELLA (227-3552).

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This blog post was based on information provided by Blogitive. For more information, please visit Blogitive.com.

Technorati Tags: college, gas prices, Capella University, Blogitive.com

Well, last night I was already out of fresh, sliced, raw veggies and craving a snack. I ate a stupid ice cream sandwich. Bad me!

So now, I’m going back in the kitchen and fixing up more sliced veggies. I’ve got some fruit, too, so I’ll be fixing that for snacking on as well.

I learned a neat trick for making a fresh fruit salad and keeping it from getting soggy. You put a saucer upside down in the bottom of the bowl. This will lift the salad off the very bottom and yet allow any liquid to drain away and go under the saucer.

I read this over at America’s Test Kitchen recently and haven’t given it a try yet, so I’ll let you know how it works out. They are usually right on the money where food, tricks, tips, and gadgets are concerned, though.

Technorati Tags: ice cream sandwich, kitchen, sliced veggies, snacking, fresh fruit, salad, America’s Test Kitchen

You might be wondering why I’m so fond of the violets other than the fact that they are hardy and love to grow. The truth is, they only bloom once, and it’s very early in the spring. Then they are covered with beautiful small purple blooms.

“Ok”, you say. “So what?”

Well, violet blooms are edible. You can put them into a tossed salad to add color, flavor, and dimension to an otherwise mundane salad.

There are numerous other common garden blooms that are edible. For a short but very informative article about such things, just visit Edible Flowers, posted on the Purdue University website. I think you’ll be very surprised to find that many blooms you love to look at in your yard are also edible!

Technorati Tags: violets, edible, salad, Purdue University

I just found a really neat cooking site written by Chef Julian Fairchild. He covers all sorts of interesting cooking related things such as recipes, gadgets, and even gifts from the kitchen. Click on over to Gourmet A Go-Go and read some really great stuff! I know you’ll come away hungry, just as I did!

Gourmet A Go-Go is the name you’ll want to bookmark and remember.

Technorati Tags: cooking, Chef Julian Fairchild, recipes, gadgets, gifts, Gourmet A Go-Go