½ stick Crisco® All-Vegetable
Shortening Sticks OR ½ cup Crisco® All-Vegetable Shortening
1 ¼ cups firmly packed brown sugar
3 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 ¾ cups All Purpose Flour
¾ teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons flax seed meal
Directions
HEAT oven to 375 degrees F. Combine peanut butter, shortening, brown sugar, milk and vanilla in large bowl. Beat at medium speed of electric mixer until well blended. Add egg. Beat just until blended.
COMBINE flours, baking soda, salt and flax seed meal. Add to creamed mixture at low speed. Mix just until blended. Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls 2-inches apart onto greased baking sheet. Flatten slightly in a crisscross pattern with tines of fork.
BAKE one baking sheet at a time 7 to 8 minutes, or until set and just beginning to brown. Cool 2 minutes on baking sheet. Remove cookies to cooling racks to cool completely.
Courtesy of Crisco® via Food Network.com, edited by Amanda D.
So I love cookies... I would say that I am "the" Cookie Monster of my family, but I think that title belongs to my little brother, Ja-Mez. The only thing that I do not like is that when I make my mini bites of heaven, they contain little to no nutritional value. So I started to think, "how could I make my portable treats delicious and somewhat nutritional?" Flax seed baby! I know, I know... it sounds gross and alone it probably is, but when mixed with some awesome ingredients you can trick even the finickiest of children to eat Omega 3s. Flax seed can be found in three different forms seed, meal, and oil. I usually use flax seed meal because I don't like to feel the seeds, and the oil may change the chemistry of a recipe. But whichever way you use it is fine, just use it. Need an idea? Try this one.
I
love cheese! I love lots of
cheese on just about everything. In an attempt to eat more seasonal
food I thought it would be cool to add cheese and squash. This was
one of the best things ever. The sweetness of the baked squash, with
the saltiness of the cheese. The savory herbs and touch of heat. My
only regret was that I did not find out about this before
Thanksgiving. This may cost you some extra cardio, but it is so worth
it. Did I mention that I LOVE cheese!
Ingredients
3 minced garlic cloves 2 minced sage leaves 3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese 4 Tb breadcrumbs 4 Tb olive oil Salt crushed red pepper flakes 1 acorn squash
Directions
Preheat oven at 450 degrees F. Mix
first seven ingredients together in a bowl. Line baking sheet with
parchment paper. Thinly slice the acorn squash and place on baking
sheet. Pat cheese mixture onto acorn wedges. Squash should be in a
single layer on the sheet. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes in oven.
*If you want each wedge to be fully "cheesed out" use 1/2 acorn squash per cheese mixture. Note that making it "cheesed out" is what makes it a "Food Hiccup".
Like every other person that is displeased with their image, I decided to loose weight for the New Year. I workout out at least 8 times a week... Monday through Friday. I eat low carb everything. Plenty of Omegas (I'm addicted to flax seed) and tons of water. My main focus is not the type of food but the portions. I find that I eat a lot of "good" food; I just eat too much of it. As focused as I may appear I do slip up from time to time, and when I slip up I do it right. I mean smoothies, pasta, and cheese on top of cheese, on top of cheese. Not all at on time but, that doesn't sound like a bad idea either. ;)
Well I just thought I'd share some of those beautiful... hiccups with you. I'm not suggesting that you bend or cheat yourself from attaining any goals. But if you should choose to reward yourself with a little food indulgence. I just may have a suggestion or two that is geared towards you.
Have
you ever done a task that was so symbolic to what you are currently
experiencing in your life? I have; actually I JUST finished. I am
currently in the armed forces and I want to be certified in a signal
related job. This job entails gaffing up a pole. Gaffing is when you
use climbers, which look like the leg braces that Forrest Gump had on
his legs as a child, to get up a pole. Attached to these climbers are
gaffs: small, sharpened metal shanks. The simplest way to explain it
is, you stick your foot in the wooden pole with one gaff and climb up
the pole. Sounds easy enough. But like most things that look and sound
easy, it wasn't. I needed to climb to a certain distance without any
support other than my gaffs and my arms. Then place the safety strap
around me while still keeping hold of the pole. Once my aid was in
place I needed to continue up the pole until I reached the top. When I
reached the top I need to install & uninstall hardware to the pole,
without dropping anything. If I dropped any equipment I had to go back
down and get it, then start over. If while installing and uninstalling
the hardware I did not make all the facing movements taught by the
instructor, I still had to complete them before coming down. If I lost
my footing at anytime and then fell, I had to gather my bearings and
start all over again. All of this needed to be done with a day and half
worth of training. I know I may be loosing some of you, so here is an
example of what I needed to do.
Nice
video right? Did you notice how graceful and strategic that man was? That, is not how I looked. I think I fell at least four times. It was
not pretty. I had splinters, I was getting hot and fatigued and my
frustrations levels were increasing with every failed attempt. Everyone
else was getting up there with little to no problems. Here I was with a
dust cloud all around me because I had fallen from the halfway point.
The icing on the cake was that I was in a class of ALL males and I was on
the verge of having a visit from my red headed friend. AWESOME! So now I
am extra emotional about...well... Everything. ;)
I
got home from my physically and mentally irritating work day ready to
quit. This was too hard, my body hurt, and I already felt like a
failure. I just wanted to withdraw myself from the course before I
injured myself or made a bigger fool of myself. My husband listened as I
went on and on about how horrible it was (never actually saying that I
wanted to quit). I was having so many problems getting to the halfway
point; how could I be sure that I wasn't going to fall once I reached
the top? My instructor that was at the base of the pole was a man that I
used to work with daily. He is one of those people who believes that
what you believe is wrong, unless it is conjured up by a conspiracy
theorist, --that includes, but is not limited to, religion. So there
I was ¾ of the way up the pole scared because my gaff had gotten stuck
and I did not want to jerk it out and my instructor tells me to “have
faith”. Well I didn't and did not appreciate hearing those words coming
out of his mouth. His annoying voice was stuck in my head all day going into the night saying, “have faith”.
I
laid down in my bed recapping the day as I always do, trying to
visualize my mistakes or recognize anything previously overlooked. This
gaffing was so symbolic of my life. Every goal I set, I do with
intentions of getting to the top. But my tools in life always seem so...
dark ages. Instead of getting it handed to me like my friends, I had to
WORK. Then when having to work it always looked like everyone else was
getting through their struggles with ease, almost as if it were not a
struggle at all. At times I would get a bot of momentum then... I would
loose my footing and fall. From the bottom all I could see were the
people that I started the “race” with; they had already reached the top,
their goals and their dreams. The more I fell in life, the more I
wanted to give up. I would convince myself that my goal was not
important to me. I did this so I could feel like less of a failure on
the inside. I see now that that was my true low. Unable to truly self
soothe myself to the point of walking away from my obstacles I would try
again.
Me, Gaffing - 7 Jan 2011
Today
I finished gaffing. I got to the top of the pole, completed my tasks
while up there and came down. I slipped on the way down, but I didn't
fall. My key to success in gaffing was to stayed focused on my pole. I
stopped looking at it as a competition amongst others, but as an
accomplishment for myself. When I reached to top of the pole... I
didn't notice. My mind was so centralized on getting my foot in a
stable position that I did not know that I had made enough stable steps
to reach my destination. I have a couple more objectives to achieve.
But with gaffing I am officially done. LOL
P.S. I swear I lost 2lbs doing that crap. At least I feel like I did
Have you ever seen a commercial and then suddenly feel the urge to have a burger, buy a doohickey, or stretch your last dollar on a piece of “Oh I never needed that before”? Well it's okay, so have I. Just the other day I just had to have chicken just because a talking chicken wing said that she was juicy and delicious all by herself. Yum, Right? Well that's neither here nor there. I have a confession. A confession that may make some people upset, but it is my truth and I want to share it. Now in the spirit of “everyone is entitled to their own opinion”, I speak out.
I am a strong willed person, but every now then the power of media manipulation seeps into my psyche and makes me believe that their ideas are my own. For example, I have always appreciated female MCs, vulgarity and all. I was empowered by UNITY by the Queen. I jumped as RUFFNECK played on MTV. And I secretly played HOW MANY LICKS in my walkman, so my mother wouldn't know that Brooklyn had stolen my heart; sorry Mommy. All these lyricists brought their talent, their skill, and their since of self to the table and I obliged. As time went on more and more female rappers were introducing themselves to the world and more and more I became bored, until now. Now I have found myself extremely... interested by a particular plastic doll loving female.
At first I could not stand the degrading messages, the imaginary vocabulary and the references to our youth being plastic, as though they are empty headed pawns being played an over-sexed record. Weeks of silent protesting turned into months of outward debates. I could not understand how so many could scream for change and then succumb to regression. My heart ached with every woman and little girl that know identified herself as a Mattel product. Then it happened. The media and their shifty yet clever techniques grabbed hold of my conscience and squeezed it until it screamed “Uncle”. I was now following the cotton candy headed diva on twitter. How could this have happened? I had such strong convictions and now I just wanted to see which talk show host was going to smack her ass next.
People take lightly the influences that their radios, their televisions and their internet truly have. They push aside the ethics that they live their lives by, and submit to the voices in the boxes that say ,"It's all okay". So today as you demand the respect that you deserve; as you prove your intelligence over and over; as you sign the checks that pay someone's mortgage, ask yourself, am I being taken seriously? Is this the “Queen” that my mother hoped to raise? Or am I going to be dismissed as another mouthpiece with big ass?
Unfortunately I could not think of any
well known New Year's songs. :) So I'll just yell HAPPY NEW YEAR!
This is your New Year; your
time for change. I hope 2011 brings you all the joy, love, success,
and strength that your life can bear. Stay in the positive and don't
let anyone deter you from what your heart desires (assuming that you
desire legal things). So if this year gets too tough and you feel as
though you need a beautiful distraction, find me. I'll be here for
YOU. Happy 2011!
