Healthy Habits

We are trying to develop more healthy habits around here! Easier said, than done, but I made a goal this year to do one or two healthy habits each week–just little things sometimes, like boiling a dozen eggs each week or having one of the boys cut up/clean veggies within a day or two of shopping, etc. Sometimes they are bigger, like buying a salad spinner. Anyway, I thought if I focused on one or two each week, and if I wrote it somewhere (on Reish Ramblings!), I would be more inclined to follow through.

So here they are so far….and hopefully, this will force me to add to this list each week!

January

HH 1: Ten mins of exercise every day regardless….I can/often do participate in more exercises—ballroom dancing for two to four hours a week, T-Tapp moves more than the ten minutes, but the ten mins a day is do-able and makes things more consistent for me.

HH 2: Take my vitamins and alfalfa every morning before I do any work or emails, etc. I am always going to “come back” later to take them, after this next little thing or after I finish this real quick, etc. No vitamins/no work should help me ‘coz I love to work!

HH 3: Veggie Straws. Now, unlike the lady in line behind me when I bought these (who said, “I buy those too–gotta get veggies into the kids any way I can!”), I know these are not health foods–nor are they vegetables! However, they are lower in carbohydrates, give you more for the calories (38 of them!), have a little fiber, and are better than chips for my guys.

HH 4: Huge bag of almonds. I have been steering away from nuts more in the past eight months of my weight loss because I was on a low calorie/low carb/low fat diet. Formerly, I had been on a low to moderate carbohydrate diet and gained weight–from eating the insides of fattening sandwiches and nuts, probably! Anyway, I am trying to build up a snack repetoire for my guys that is less “bad” than other snacks–not a very noble goal, I know. But it’s a starting point. So…..along with our veggie straws, our snack cupboard now has nuts again!

HH 5: Salad spinner. I have always secretly thought that we could have salads like restaurants if I just invested in a salad spinner. It’s probably not true. But maybe it will help the boys clean and rinse veggies a little better.

“Old Fashioned Sugar Cream” Squares

I recently went to a shower where I was encouraged to try a dessert that I would normally not try. (It looked like it had lemon…not a lemon fan. Plus, it didn’t have chocolate. I was planning to use my saved “sugar” allottment for the week on chocolate only!)

Anyway, I took a bite and it was heavenly. It tasted so much like my old fashioned sugar cream pie recipe that I was sure it must have taken its baker an hour of stirring on medium low heat before pouring it into some kind of crust that must have taken another hour to make.

I was wrong! And when the cook told me how simple the recipe was (she could tell it as we stood munching on them–without even looking up a long list of ingredients or steps), I knew I had to have that recipe. My guys and I (two or three sons, husband, and I often bake/cook together for special events/potlucks, etc.) could whip this up in ten to fifteen minutes (minus baking time).

So here we are on a Saturday morning making a dessert to take to our ballroom dance tonight and a potluck tomorrow night–and in ten minutes, these lucious babies will be in the oven!

“Old Fashioned Sugar Cream” Squares

2 rolls regular crescent roll dough
2 bars regular cream cheese
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
sugar and cinnamon mixture

1. Spray 9 x 13 glass baking dish with PAM.
2. Roll out one tube of dough and press into pan.
3. Mix cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla together.
4. Spread over bottom dough in pan.
5. Roll out other tube of dough and place over cream cheese mixture.
6. Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar mixture.
7. Bake at 325 for 25 mins regular oven (20 mins convection).
8. Chill. Better cold…

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