Foodie Friday--Pesto Bechamel Pasta

When the weather starts cooling down, I tend to cook more in the kitchen. And most of the items I cook could be termed 'comfort food', which usually translates into creamy, carb-loaded concoctions.
The other day, I looked in the fridge and saw store-bought pesto and some leftover chicken (seasoned with fajita seasoning and grilled few days ago).

Now, pesto can be an overpowering thing since basil is the number one ingredient, along with olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper and some brands add parmesan cheese and/or pine nuts or almonds. The brand I picked up this time was in the refrigerated section and was far less garlic-y than the brand in the hard goods aisle. I personally don't like the pesto that's this strong, so I will find ways to dilute the intensity.

So my idea was to make a chicken, pesto, pasta thing. And then I remembered my Chicken Lasagna recipe. I had to make a few changes, because the sauce was just a hair too thin for the pound of noodles that I cooked--I added about three large spoonfuls of grated parmesan cheese, which was about 3/4 cup.

Here's the recipe:

Pesto Béchamel Pasta

4 Tbls. butter
1/2 cup flour
3 cups milk
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 cup basil pesto
leftover chicken--sliced
salt
pepper

Place pot of water with salt for the pasta on stove, on high, as you begin to make the béchamel sauce. Cook pasta al dente according to pasta directions.

In a large saucepan over medium heat, melt butter. Add flour and stir, cooking for about 2 minutes. Slowly add milk, whisking constantly to prevent lumps. Simmer about 2-4 minutes. Add pesto, salt and pepper. Adjust seasoning. Add chicken.

If the sauce is finished before pasta, place a lid on it to keep warm.

Drain pasta. Add to sauce mixture. Fold pasta into mixture. If sauce is too thin, add grated parmesan cheese until desired thickness.

Serve with side of green salad.

Tips & Tricks:

• taste your pesto before you add it. Some brands are loaded with garlic or salt, and you don't want to over season your meal
• the roux will seem chunky after the flour is added, just keep stirring so it doesn't burn. Turn down heat just a little to help keep it from burning
• I use skim milk, but if you want a richer sauce use whole milk. If you don't have whole milk (I don't), add a little cream in place of some of the milk. Instead of 3 cups of milk, use 2 cups of skim milk and one cup of cream
• season intelligently. If you don't like nutmeg, don't add nutmeg. If your pesto is salty, then don't add salt until after you mix in the pesto to see if you need to add any salt.  
• I use a whisk instead of a spoon to stir, since whisks break up lumps.
• I didn't have fettuccine noodles, so I used some trumpets. The shapes are fun, but they took a little longer to cook than thinner noodles.
• The sauce was too thin for these noodles, so I added a couple large spoonfuls of grated parmesan cheese to help thicken it slightly.

And this is another recipe that my family demolished in less than 24 hours.

Enjoy!

Weighty Wednesday-- The Biggest Loser

I periodically tune into The Biggest Loser, but I don't routinely watch the entire season.

I'm excited for the people who have made the decision to drop weight. More power to them, but television also tends to skip over some of the very important factors that play into this show.

True, we see controversy. Heck, that's why so many of these 'reality' shows do so well when you put differing personalities into the same room and lock the door (Survivor, Big Brother). But what the audience sees on Biggest Loser are the intense workouts these contestants do.

This show is just not realistic for the average person trying to lose weight. For one, who really has eight to ten hours in their day to work out. That is how those people get those huge drops in the number on the scales. Think about it, it's a full-time job to work out on that show. The only people I know who work out that much have some sort of funding in the form of sponsorships, or are independently wealthy, or they own a gym, or happen to be a trainer to the stars . . . or manage to get a gig on The Biggest Loser.

I know the show has doctors monitoring the contestants. Some of them have to be monitored closely due to their health issues and the consequences of that much exercise on their systems--heart, lungs, and pancreas (considering most of them are teetering on the edge of diabetes).

But the part I wish they would share with the viewing audience is conveniently left off camera.

The nutritional aspect of the challenge of losing that much weight without destroying their muscles and their kidneys in the process.

The quantity of food these people are consuming changes when they start losing large amounts of weight. I want to see the nutrition classes where the chef teaches the contestant how to lean up a meal without losing the flavor. Or how much is too much. Or how many meals should these people eat. Three big meals is unrealistic, since they would be barfing up their food as soon as they started exercising.

Who cooks those meals? How do they learn to do it themselves?

It's all fine and dandy to tout "It's a life style change.", but what happens when they get back home and their a McDonalds calling their name? Or they start hitting the drive-thru at Starbucks? Or they simply don't have time to exercise due to trying to earn a living?

What really happens off camera after they go home?

What happened to the contestants from the first two or three seasons? Where are they now? Have they managed to maintain their weight loss, or did they succumb to the realities of their life.

What do you all think? Am I just spitting into the wind? Or do you think they need to start showing some of the food parts of this show?

Later, Peeps!

Weighty Wednesday--Fit Bit Scales

Through an odd string of incidences my BIL had a second set of Fitbit Scales, so he gave it to us since he knew we were a Fitbit family.

It is a VERY nice gift!

There are two features that make this scale better than the digital scale we had been using.

1) the round area showing the digital numbers backlights when you get on the scale. I LOVE this feature! I prefer to weigh first thing in the morning and it tends to be dark when I get up, so I would have to use a flashlight to see the number.

2) this scale knows who you are. When the scale is set up your information from your Fitbit is linked to the scale, which means every time you step on the scale and it records your information, it sends that information to your Fitbit stats page.

If you set a weight goal (I did), it will tell you how many pounds to go, and it also gives you a calculated BMI (NOT a number I was happy to look at!). All this information is at the touch of the computer when you look up your sleep patterns, number of steps, number of miles and how many of those steps were truly active.

All-in-all this scale is a very nice and handy tool to have in the bathroom. But the key to any weight-loss tool is to actually use it.

I think I will since I tend to be a very visual person. The graph is exactly what I need to keep me focused!

Later, Peeps!

How to Drive This Analytical Writer Crazy

I'll start by mentioning that I wasn't born with a pen in hand, writing as soon as I took a breath of air. So many authors claim to start out this way--tongue in cheek, I hope--but none the less, many writers have been writing in some form or another since they learned to write.

It seems as if they were born with a creative bent to their minds.

Creativity comes hard for me--and I'm sure many authors will react by saying that it isn't easy for them either, but they manage to overcome their obstacles.

Well, my writing passion has been hidden for years as my mind has more of an analytical edge to it versus a creative edge. I have always been fond of the sciences, which tend to be black, white, and even various shades of grey. I have a Bachelor's of SCIENCE degree in Medical Technology, in fact I was about three hours shy of getting a minor in CHEMISTRY.

See? There is nothing in that last paragraph that suggests ARTS or CREATIVITY. I love math and science. I love logical and linear thinking. I love everything that makes sense . . .

Writing and the arts is SUBJECTIVE, which means I might love something, but you might not like the same thing that I love. For example: I love reading Rick Riodan and J.K.Rowlings, I can't get my daughter to even crack open one of their books. She loved the Hunger Games and Divergent series, I don't care enough to even learn the author's names, much less read the books.

Subjective. See?

So how does a person with an analytical thought process get into the writing biz?

Beats the heck out of me, but for some odd reason I want to write and share my stories.

Here's the problem:

Analytical people want to find the elusive answer to the perfect story. There is no perfect story. We tend to forget that everyone has an opinion as we strive to perfect our product.

While writing is a creative endeavor, the basis of the writing process is an analytical one. You need to know the mechanics of grammar, sentence structure, character arcs, story arcs, chapter cliffhangers, what makes a reader keep on reading, blah, blah, blah.

But even various publishing houses have different 'styles'. Some houses will ALWAYS use the serial comma, while other publishing houses don't. I've also seen a distressing trend of not placing a comma in a statement that addresses an individual. For example: "Put a damn comma in there (comma) Margaret!" I don't know if it's writers being lazy or simply an oversight, but I really have an issue with this. Then again, I love commas. Commas are the little 'breathers' in a sentence as they give the reader a teeny-tiny break in a sentence.

Anyway, back to driving me crazy.

A few months ago, I mentioned that I finaled in RWA's Daphne contest. Actually, one nice aspect of this contest is that when you final, you do NOT get to see the first round judges scores or comments until after the winners are announced. So it wasn't until months later when I found out that I was placed fourth out of five finalists.

Okay. I'm good. And then I got my scores from the first round of judging. . . .

I have to admit that this is the part that usually tears me up as I wonder why certain aspects of the story didn't appeal to the judges.

Out of a possible 123 points, I got a 116, 119, 120 --excellent scores, good comments, and I totally understand why I was marked off in the relationship category since the hero wasn't even introduced--and then I had an 86. WTF?!

Well, okay, they just didn't get into the story which was reflected by the comments. I understand. Trust me, six months ago, I would have tried to find some way to 'fix' this and justify her comments. I would have tried to make everyone happy.

But in a creativity-type endeavor like writing, it just isn't going to happen. The judge might love reading paranormal stories, but she didn't love reading my story . . . but three other judges did like the story.

And then I went on vacation and didn't think about anything else other than having fun at Walt Disney World and Universal Florida. When I got home I had an email from the contest coordinator who had the final judge's comments.

Deep breath. I opened the email.

And their conflicting comments would have caused me to yank my hair out if I hadn't finally decided that the only real person I have to please is myself.

Agent's comments:

This is a fun story and the writing is solid. My concern is that the world-building is too complex and slows the story. The market has shifted away from stories with lots of world building.
Which echoed the concerns the low scoring judge wrote.

Editor's comments:

Great writing. However, it's a little confusing at times. Author could spend a little more time world-building, to make the story easier to follow. Nice voice!

They both seemed to like  my writing--Yahoo!  But . . . Less world-building? More world-building?

What's an analytical writer to do with this conflicting advice?? This is the stuff that totally drives me bonkers!

It's taken me fourteen years to get to this point, but I finally feel confident enough with my writing that I will simply do what works for MY STORY. And no, I won't add more world-building or remove world-building.

I'm doing what needs to be done to tell my story.

And that is how this analytical writer has decided to keep her sanity.

Later, Peeps!

Coloring Outside the Lines

As I've grown older, I've realized that I have a need to color outside the lines. This is totally against my normal tendency to follow the rules by doing stuff in an orderly and logical manner.

But I don't have a choice any longer--I have to color outside the lines on my eyebrows and lips.

Yes, my friends, I have started wearing make-up again. It's been about ten years, or longer, since I actively wore make-up. Oh, I would wear it on the occasions when it was called for, but for the most part I would go au natural.

Trust me, I don't have a problem with not wearing make-up, but I feel that I need to be a good example for my daughter in regards to the fact that make-up is to enhance your inner beauty, not cover up the ugliness lurking beneath the surface.

Well, but then reality hit me in the face . . . literally.

So, the other day, my daughter was complaining that she had a round face (she doesn't, it's oval) and no cheek bones (well, she is a young teenager). She looked at my face and stated that she was jealous because I have cheekbones.

I didn't have the heart to tell her that the reason I now have cheekbones is because my cheek skin has now sagged into my jowls.

One of the harsh reality signs of aging.

When I was younger, all I needed to do was throw on a bit of colored lip gloss and some mascara and I was good to go. Not so any longer.

Time has taken it's toll on my face in the form of disappearing lips and non-existent eyebrows, and I have found the need to 'color' outside the lines.

So what to do?

I do have an eyebrow pencil that I love. It's a Clinique super fine liner in light brown. I use it to color the bottom of the eyebrow hairs that I have left while it fills in the 'empty' spots, and then I smudge it inward to give it a more natural look.

And for all you girls out there who want to pluck your eyebrows--DON'T!! Eventually, the hairs will stop growing and you will be stuck with bald patches.

Just saying.

Oh, I'm not saying don't get rid of the odd hairs that are in weird spots or are wonky, crazy hairs, but don't go nuts and thin them out. I was never one to over pluck my eyebrows, but nature has managed to take care in the long run.

Lips are another problem. Somewhere between my early 40's and my early 50's, my lips just . . . disappeared!

Along with the newly discovered cheekbones caused by hanging jowls, my lips have thinned into nothingness. I don't think it's because I purse them in disapproval all the time, but hey, you never know. I also have lines that start on my lips and shoot their way onto my face, like I'm a smoker, but I'm not. I finally decided that it's due to sipping coffee and drinking from straws.

Don't believe me? Then watch your lips as you do either one of these tasks and see if you are gaining lines.

RE: the lip issue. In the past, I used to use a lip pencil to outline my mouth. As I had pale lips I didn't stop there, but would color my entire lip with the darker color, and then us a lipstick or gloss over the lips.

Sorry, but the color didn't transfer. I'm assuming it's because of the way the file was set up so the consumer could look at the various 'shades'.


Now, they have various products that are "long last" type things. I've purchased a few. Most of them I don't like because they are sticky and simply feel gross--a couple of Revlon products. The one that I like the most (and have purchased at least five different shades) is Cover Girl Lip Stain. It's light weight and once dry (I will also 'seal' it with a loose powder) it holds pretty well. It will start to fade in the center first, but for the most part it works well.


The coloring outside the lines part has to do with the border of my lip to my face. Instead of coloring inside the lip line area, I now color just outside the lip area to actually give myself some lips!

Yes, it's one of those harsh reality life lessons one keeps learning as we grow older.

So I don't know about you, but I'm feeling a little bit of rebel in all this, and I think I'll keep coloring outside the lines in other areas of my life as well!

Later, Peeps!

Foodie Friday -- Old Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream

This is my "Go To" ice cream recipe. It actually came with the ice cream freezer, though I have made a few changes to the recipe that is documented under the Tips & Tricks.

This is how to make the custard, which is the base of the ice cream. It is NOT an instruction on how to MAKE ice cream, mainly due to the fact that ice cream freezers are all different.
That's your problem, not mine. :-)

Old Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream

 

5 Quarts  

 
3 cups sugar

½ cup flour

½ tsp. salt

6 ¼ cups milk

5 eggs, beaten 

5 cups whipping cream

2 ½ Tbls. vanilla extract

Combine sugar, flour and salt in saucepan. Gradually stir in milk. Cook over medium heat approximately 15 minutes or until thickened, stirring constantly. Gradually stir about 1 cup of hot mixture into beaten eggs. Add egg mixture back into remaining hot mixture, stirring constantly. Cook 1 minute: remove from heat. Refrigerate 2 hours. Combine whipping cream and vanilla in large bowl; add chilled mixture, stirring with wire whisk to combine Freeze as directed according to your ice cream freezer.

 Tips & Tricks:

·         I use vanilla paste instead of vanilla extract. Vanilla paste has a stronger vanilla flavor without the alcohol of an extract, plus the paste has vanilla bean seeds throughout.

·         BEFORE refrigerating the mixture, strain the custard into a plastic container and seal with a lid.

·         The custard can be made the day before and refrigerate overnight. Be sure the container is sealed tightly as the custard will absorb other flavors in the refrigerator.

·         The step that says combine the whipping cream and vanilla in a large bowl is redundant in the sense that you can simply mix it in the container that comes in the ice cream freezer.

·         My ice cream freezer holds 5 quarts. Be sure to adjust the recipe according to the size of your ice cream freezer.

 

Preparing for an Amusement Park Marathon

Find an old telephone booth, or sauna, pack it full of people and wait for the tempers to erupt.

You think I'm joking, I'm not.

Not all amusement parks are this bad, nor are many rides, but there are a few lines you'll be waiting in that you will have to kiss your personal space good-bye, and I think Americans tend to have larger personal space issues than other nationalities.

And if you are on the vertically challenged side of the scale, say 'hello' to everyone's armpit.

There were two rides that were the worse: WDW The Haunted Mansion, and UF Escape from Gringotts.

Think of cowboys prodding a large herd of cattle into a single crush for one cow.

Both of these rides have elevators taking a group{(s) Gringotts has two elevators}down to a queuing area. So if the ride isn't moving quickly enough the area backs up, resulting in a free-for-all as everyone pushes and shoves their way into position. It's ugly and humanity doesn't shine in determination to be "first" in line. The problem is slightly alleviated by limiting the number of people on the elevators, but the persons halting the queue on the front end really have no idea how bad it has become on the other side. Then the amusement-park-powers-that-be might consider some sort of chain queue to break up the horde of humanity prior to the funneling process, which would get rid of the whole funnel experience. During off season, this isn't a problem, but in peak season when the crowd levels are high, it's hideous.

 The next issue is getting around the parks, AKA walking.

These parks are BIG. And you probably won't be simply going in one direction one time, but instead will be traversing these parks for one ride or another or to take advantage of a FastPass+ or a meal at a particular location.

But you think to yourself, "I'm a walker. I walk 4-5 miles a day. No biggie."

Yes, it is a biggie. It's a big issue because when you are walking on your own terms, treadmill or trail, you can stride out and get your heart rate up, and all-in-all enjoy life.

Not so in an amusement park.

You have to take into consideration the 20,000 other bodies who walk at a different pace, who meander all over the place, who stop for no reason right in front of you, or those people who want to go against the flow of traffic or cut across to the attraction on the other side, which disrupts your forward momentum.

It's those people who are at odds with your focused walking. In the immortal paraphrased words of a character in James Herriot's novel, All Creatures Great and Small, "I don't like the big city much, Mr. Herriot. A man can't walk there.  'e has to take big steps and little 'uns."

Still even though you won't be striding out, you will be putting in miles and thousands of steps. On my biggest day, I managed to get almost 22,000 steps, which calculated out to be about 15 miles.

Yeah, when we do amusement parks, we DO amusement parks with a mission!

So even if you have the best shoes in the world, and walk like nobody's business, your poor feet will be screaming at you after a marathon day.

What to do?

Other than buy a shoe with a big enough toe box or wear flip-flops (I couldn't do that. No foot support, and I wouldn't have lasted very long), you could invest in some Band-Aids or be proactive about the situation.

By proactive I mean, taping your toes. Runners do this all the time. If you've walked a lot in your shoes, you'll notice where 'hot spots' tend to pop up. The key is to tape them with cloth tape to prevent rubbing, which is what causes the blisters.

Sorry about the ugly feet, but I am an old broad and my feet tend to show my age. This picture was taken after a long day at the park. I had taped my toes because they tend to rub against one another, and I have 'bunionettes' (the joint sticks out under the baby toe) on both feet. Walking tends to shove your foot forward and my poor bunionettes were getting smushed. I taped them and it helped decrease the pressure.

 

 

So what other health measures do I try to take while on vacation?

 

I have a small zippered bag that has anything and everything you might need: Excedrin (headaches), Aleve (muscle aches), Mucinex and Sudafed (decongestant), Pepto Bismol tablets (tummy upset), Imodium (intestinal upset), Claritin and Alavert (Allergy Meds),  variety of cold medicine, Neosporin and Band-Aids, Cortaid (topical steroid for itching), a small sewing kit and my asthma inhaler. I think that's it.

 

For the most part, I never have to use these items with the exception of the pain relievers, and I don't stock the entire jar. I have one or two doses to get me by if there is a problem and I can then go to the store to buy more if I need it.

 

What if you weren't proactive and managed to get a blister or five? Do you drain them or leave them?

 

Most doctors will recommend NOT draining them, but if you have any more days at the park--DRAIN THEM.

 

Take a needle from the sewing kit and poke a small hole in the blister. Clear fluid will seep out. Once it is finished (use a tissue to catch the fluid) place a little Neosporin on the blister and cover it with a bandage. DO NOT REMOVE THE SKIN OVER THE BLISTER. It's there to protect the raw flesh underneath. If you don't drain the fluid, you might have difficulty walking and might actually tear the skin from the blister, which would make things worse in the long run.

 

Drink lots and lots of water.  This goes without saying, but I'm saying it since we didn't drink near enough fluids a couple of days. The problem is two-fold. 1) When you are sweating and the sweat isn't evaporating, you don't feel the need to drink any extra fluids. And trust me, if you go to Florida in the summer, you will be sweating! 2) When you are waiting in a two hour line for a ride, you don't want to get out of line to use the toilet because you probably won't be allowed back in line!

 

Even if you don't need to use the toilet before a long ride wait, do it anyway! You can thank me later!

 

When we go to the parks we don't carry anything in with us, no purses, no bags, no cameras, no nuthin'. What we need is in our pockets. The number one reason for not carrying a bunch of stuff is that many of the Universal rides require you to put your items in a locker prior to riding. This means you might be in line for 15 minutes before you even get to the locker area, and then you lose your place. . ..and it's a pain in the butt to have to remember to get your stuff.

 

So I keep a few key items in my pockets: tissues (ladies, this is for you. Always remember to pack tissues.) Even if there isn't any toilet paper in the stall I enter to use the bathroom, I always have a tissue with me. I make a small 1/2 sized snack bags (jewelry baggies or coke bags whatever you want to call them) to carry Aleve and Altoids (curiously strong peppermints), a flosser for my teeth, and chapstick or lipstick. Hubs usually has his phone and wallet, so we're good.

 

Oh, I almost forgot. Wear a good pair of sunglasses. The reflective surfaces are harsh on the eyes. I wear Ironman Wrap-around shades--I'm wearing them in the pictures in the previous posts. I started wearing these shades when I had a horse. The arena at my barn was sand, which is very reflective, just like cement and water, which Florida has a whole lot of.

 

That's it for now.

 

Later, Peeps!