And the winner is....

The winner of the free e-book is...number 11. The following screenshot was from random.org. Congratulations 6-kids. I will be contacting you.

True Random Number Generator
Result:11

Fit-N-Better blog

I am part of a new blog called "Fit-N-Better." Currently there are five of us blogging on our travails of becoming healthier. I thought I'd put my first post below with a LINK to it HERE. Then on Fridays I am going to do Fit Mommy Friday meme if she is doing a new challenge and I'll blog that here.

So here is my today's post from Fit-N-Better.

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Hi folks! First a starting point. I did get on the scale today. Wasn't as bad as the estimate but clearly want to loose about 20-30 lbs.

First on food for me is mindful eating. I have a 10 year old and I just 'take a bite' of everything I feed him. So I am getting into the habit of at least STOPPING before I do this. Today I took bites of his pear, cashews and some potato chips. On the plus side, I did stop myself before sampling his french toast and also after I ate some chips I stopped...and then I MINDFULLY ate some more. LOL! (It was an uber stressful moment and I said to heck with it.) My next goal will be to stop saying 'to heck with it.' So I plan to publicly declare my success and trials in this area.

On exercise.... I did some Wii today..Gold's gym dance program where I burned a whole 23 calories. My lovely son said, "That's great mom! That took care of the cookie you ate." (He was being serious bless his sweet little heart.) He has told he me doesn't want me to loose weight because I am 'cuddly.' I am also doing PT 3X a week for my neck and that includes upper body weight stuff.

I'll tell you all more about myself another day. Nice to 'meet' you!

REAL food e-book give away

It's give-away time. I know you are all looking at how to better your health in the new year. I have found a great resource called Nourish MD. Their facebook page is wonderful and they continually link fabulous resources to all things healthy! Nourish MD takes you through a step by step change to clean up your "dietary" life. You can find that info on the sidebar of their main page at any time. They also blog on many topics.

Now on to the COOKBOOKS. Ya'll know I 'heart' cookbooks. E-Cookbooks are no exception. You can find all of them here. At this moment they are each $9.95 but they continually have "package" deals. They do include eggs, dairy and wheat but most of the recipes are very adaptable to gfcf. I have many favorites that I make from them. If you subscribe to their Facebook page you will keep up to date on the sales.

I have written a review of them before and you can find that here. They are chock full of ideas and recipes to eat REAL food. I am pretty good about eating real. The other night I tossed some taquitos from Trader Joes in the oven. We are gluten, casein and soy free... and this product was pretty 'clean' but I paid for it. I felt terrible the next day and I just knew that was what it was. The folks at Nourish MD give all sorts of great tips about prepping food and making step by step changes to change your life! Angelle also has a ton of resources that you can read about including a 20 minute coaching call for $10. That is a STEAL.

So, how can you win a REAL food e-book that is written by Nourish MD?? It is simple. Leave a comment for EACH item that you do below. Then on January 4, 2011 I will pick a winner and can send you the e-book via email. I will pick the winner via random.org and will count down to THAT comment- thus the need to leave comments for each thing you do.

1) Follow this blog and leave a comment that you are doing so. (If you already follow, feel free to leave a comment.) You can do this by Google friend connect or some other RSS feed indicated. These are on my sidebar.

2) Post this contest on facebook. You may do this once per day but leave a comment for each day please.

3) Re-blog this contest.

4) Send this to 5 friends.

I will draw a winner on Tuesday January 4, 2011

mmmmmmmm.... BEST NO BAKES!!!!!!

My friend 'Tam" gave me this recipe and we made them yesterday.

Melt 1 stick margarine with 2 cups sugar and 1/2 cup milk substitute on the stove until boiling and boil for about 1 minutes. (I cut the sugar to 1.5 cups and will do closer to 1 cup next time.)

Put 3 cups oatmeal, 4 TBS peanut butter, 1 cup chocolate chips and 1 TBS vanilla in a large bowl. (I used crunch almond butter and put a dash of salt in with this mixture.)

Pour the hot mixture onto the oats mixture. I had waited approximately 5-10 minutes after I took it off the burner because we were doing this as an RDI exercise and I wanted to pour it into a plastic container I had.

The hot liquid melts the chocolate as you mix it up. Then drop spoonfuls onto waxed paper. (I used a silpat.) Put in the fridge and 30-60 minutes later- enjoy.

I used Trader Joe Semisweet chocolate chips which are milk free.

REAL Thanksgiving Dinner

Putting together my Thanksgiving menu!

Turkey- fresh from John Henrys meat. They are delivering it on Tuesday. I might brine it with the recipe given here.

Mashed potatoes

Gravy

'Regular' stuffing. Shannon in charge here.

Thinking of trying this slow cooker GF cornbread stuffing recipe.

Tripple Cranberry Sauce- I read this in Bon Appetit in 1992.

Green Beans or Haricot Verts- pre-steamed and then sauteed at the last minute with sliced almonds.

Sweet Potato casserole made by mom.

Roasted sweet potatoes potentially with this balsamic glaze.

Bobby Flay's Brussels sprouts with pomegranate.

Homemade rolls made by Shannon.

Pies made by Shannon.

Potentially will have the kids make a no bake chocolate cookies.

Toying around with a GF dessert option.

Roasted Veggies Three Ways

Just a quick post with a few ideas because I wanted to send this off to a friend. I will update later with specific ingredients. You who know me know i am NOT a recipe girl. I'm more a good enough gal... so consider this a canvas for your creative abilities.

My friend J gave me a great tip on how to expand the use of roasted veggies. First, you roast a ton of veggies at around 400-425F for as many minutes as it takes to get them done. Maybe half an hour. I use cauliflower, eggplant, peppers, zucchini, carrots, sweet potato. The list is endless. Then divide it into three batches.

Batch one: Add tomato sauce and italian spices. Freeze. Thaw, heat and put on pasta, or bread sticks or make pizza.

Batch two: Add curry sauce (or spices) and maybe some coconut milk. Freeze. Thaw, heat and serve on rice, or polenta or eat with a spoon.

Batch three: Whirl in the blender or food processor and make a dip. You might add Greek yogurt if you want. I can't recall what else she adds to this batch because I have yet to make it but you get the idea. You could add chick peas and make a veggie hummus. This one you probably don't want to freeze especially if you use a milk product.

Play around with it!!

Favorite Allergy Free REAL food blogs

I admit..I judge a blog very quickly. I was recently looking through a list of REAL food allergy (mostly gluten) free blogs. Here are the ones I found to be my favorites. There are other great ones..and some that are much more well known. But these struck me right off the bat. They are simple looking blogs, not a lot of ads, easy to read and most have beautiful pictures! I 'heart' pictures.

Sure Foods Living

The Whole Life Kitchen

Allergy Free Lunchbox with Brain Power

Glugle Guten Free (Currently has a ton of Halloween ideas.)

The W.H.O.L.E. Gang

My Tartelette

Elana's Pantry