Deep in the Throes

How are you tracking your calories? I've been using the MyFood-a-Pedia site when I don't have label information. It's pretty awesome! Not only does it tell you the calories, but it also tells you how much of each of the different food groups you're getting. I just discovered a cool site that will give you nutritional information for any recipe you enter. All you do is enter the recipe items and what serving size you want to know (for me I wanted to know how much each meatball was in my Sweet & Sour Meatball recipe) and the Recipe Calculator spits the information right out at you. Suh-weet! For my food journal I've been using the MyPyramid Worksheet. All you do is click on your recommended calorie range in the right hand column and it will load a pdf file.

Since I joined late I've only been tracking my food for two days, but I've found that while I've been able to stay under my 2000 calorie limit, I'm not eating enough fruits and vegetables. Living in a town of 500 with a tiny little store really limits the produce selection on hand. And the cost is atrocious! I went to the store yesterday and paid $11.00 for a bag of grapes, a 1lb bag of mini carrots and 4 apples. Fortunately I'm visiting Salt Lake this weekend and plan to hit Costco and stock up on some good fruits and veggies.

Now, about those weaknesses. I'm a sugar freak through and through. I love baked goods, especially sugar cookies and brownies and cake and fudge and bread. Part of my problem is that baking is not just about the food, it's about making something my family will enjoy. I enjoy the process and I enjoy seeing the pleasure on my family's faces when they taste the yummy goodness. And I like the yummy goodness, too. My 3-year-old Amelia has been begging me to make sugar cookies for weeks. It's a fun activity to do with the kids because not only do they get to cut out the shapes, we go all out and decorate them with frosting tips, the whole 9 yards. See?

I know, I'm just a mean woman posting a picture like that.

So I made the cookie dough on Tuesday (thinking I'd be smart and only make half a batch so there wouldn't be too many cookies to eat) and after snitching probably two cookies worth of dough (almost 300 calories) I shoved the dough in the back of the fridge and put Amelia off over and over about baking them. Now it's Thursday night and we're no longer at home, so I dodged that bullet. Also, I told my husband to dispose of the rest of the brownies while we were gone. The crazy man doesn't like brownies so they'll be going straight in the trash. Ugh, I can't stand the thought of throwing away such lusciousness!

Has anyone found a workable solution for baking treats for your family but not pigging out on them yourself? Please share the secret of the universe with the rest of us!

I discovered an absolutely DELISH treat at my Mom's house tonight. This:

Plus this:

Equals sheer decadence for a girl deep in the throes of sugar withdrawl. Even with a really greedy serving of whipped cream, it's only 20 or 30 calories! Maybe I could live solely on this stuff. I'd better see if they carry it at Costco!

I just looked up the definition of throes and it says, "violent pangs of suffering". Word.