First Day Out...and Reese's Did Me In

I blame it all on end-of-book stress.

Uh-huh. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. I have a book due immediately (as in like yesterday :-) and got stressed last night and ended up dipping into my Christmas candy stash (my kids bought me Reeses's mini candies and out of love for my kids, mind you, I ate them). And the mini chocolate balls from Hilliard's that another friend gave me. [Note: that's so not a recent photo; it's one of my promotional photos from a few years ago :-)]

The sugar made me hungrier later and I ended up having a bagel (a Weight Watchers bagel at least) with low-fat cream cheese. That's kinda good, right? Didn't make it to the gym, but blame that on the evil laptop which had hidden my file with all the changes I put in the other day so I spent an hour finding the file that held the first 66 pages of changes to the book, which was far easier and less time consuming than searching the trash for the pages I'd already entered.


Found it, which was good, and put 'em all in. I'm no adding the last few pages of changes, then off to write the last scene and a half either today or tomorrow, depending on how things go and whether I get interrupted thirty times today :-). It's the kids' first day back at school, so we'll see how well that goes. I am positive someone forgot something, like maybe their head.

Thanks to Sock Girl for explaining a Meme. I think that's a great idea, actually. And I should probably do those, especially over at my MySpace page. I'm going to do a separate blog entry for today for "what I'm reading" in a little bit -- when I feel like procrastinating ;-).

[SockGirl asked: "So what is Common Grounds about?" It's a mother-daughter road trip book, with a potbellied pig along for the ride, too. They have their issues...a lot of them...and they're stuck in a little car from Massachusetts to California. Along the way, the car gets stolen, they meet a disgruntled bride broken down on the turnpike, a relatively psychotic--but quite nice--RVing couple, and they find out some very surprising things about each other and themselves. But most of all, they find common grounds, not just in the stops they make or in the people they meet, but in each other. It's kind of the story of me and my mom, and kind of not :-)]

Okay, on to the topic of recipes. DH and I are doing Weight Watchers this time out. We'd had great success with a similar program when we lived in Massachusetts, so we thought we'd try that this time. If you've ever done it and know a great site for WW recipes, let me know. I joined the WW yahoogroup, the one that has the points recipes, but so far no recipes, just discussion. I know I can search the archives, but it's much easier for me just to go to a site, print off what I like and go to the market :-). Today, we are having steak (okay, it's not exactly a WW friendly meat but it was in the freezer and I have had chicken three times already in the last week, and I'm about ready to cluck) and what looks like a really good potato salad recipe.

This was last night's dinner. Quite good actually. I adapted it from what I found on another website, so I'm not exactly sure that the points are right. Here's the link to the original recipe, and if you're good at math, feel free to do the points math (the original was 5 points a serving):

Creamy Chicken Fettucini

4 Chicken Breasts, boneless
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 10-3/4 ounce can condensed low-fat cream of chicken soup - undiluted
1 10-3/4 ounce can condensed low-fat cream of celery soup - undiluted
1 small can mushrooms, sliced, drained
1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated
1/2 cup reduced fat cheddar cheese, grated
16 ounces whole wheat fettucini (I couldn't find spinach kind at the store), cooked and drained.

Sprinkle both sides of chicken breasts with seasoning. Spray non-stick pan with a little Pam, then brown on both sides. Remove, turn heat to medium and add soups, mushrooms and cheeses, stir until cheese is melted. Turn heat to low, put chicken breasts back in and cover. Cook until chicken is cooked through, about 20 minutes.

Even my kids liked this, though they picked out the mushrooms and gave them to me ;-) We didn't eat all the fettucini and we also had tons of extra sauce left over, too, so I'd probably double the amount of chicken to make two dinners out of this.

I served it with a salad and some steamed broccoli. That kinda cancels out the cheating later, doesn't it? ;-)

Shirley