Advetures in Eating

These last few weeks I have taken a detour from my strict dieting. It was not intentional to take a 3 +/- week break, but making a single bad choice is a slippery slope. Every day I would wake up and say, "I'm back on my diet today." And at some point, I would fumble in my decision making, and then say to myself, "Well, I guess the diet starts tomorrow." It's a (familiar) viscous cycle. The diet is always starting "tomorrow", and it never does. I'm only up a 1/2 of a pound for the week, but in the last few weeks, I have gained back 6 pounds from my lowest weight on this journey. That's lame...I'm lame.

Specifically in this week, I have ventured to Peter Piper Pizza, and Bob's Big Boy with the family...



I had two "Sugar Shack" orders. The first order was for 36 cupcakes...18 chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream icing, and 18 strawberry cupcakes with strawberry buttercream icing. Each of the recipes made 36 cupcakes...I could have halved the recipes, but I wanted to do some test runs with cupcake liners, and do some experimenting with freezing the cupcakes...so I made the full batch of both batters.



After all of the testing was done...there was sampling to be had. I consumed too many "experimental" cupcakes. :0( The strawberry cupcakes were the lightest, and best tasting cupcakes I have ever made! There were TONS of fresh strawberries throughout the cake AND the icing...I even added a whole cup of my sister's homemade strawberry jam to the batter...SOOOO good!

After the cupcakes were completed on Thursday, I had my niece's 1st Birthday cookies to do on Friday.





But more about that in a minute. :0)

After my run on Saturday, I made the BEST "comfort food" meal! A few weeks ago we had been given a huge package of Foster Farms chicken breasts with the skin on and the bone in. Rick and I are VERY picky about our chicken, and we are not a fan of skin on, and bone in meat. :0( I had immediately shoved this chicken in the freezer until I knew what I was going to do with it. But when it hadn't magically disappeared, and I had finally grown tired of it taking up so much room in the freezer, I decided to do something with it! I went on to Foodnetwork.com and typed in "skin bone chicken breast"...there were a TON of results, but the very first recipe caught my eye...Chicken Stew with Biscuits. It was fairly involved, a bit time consuming, but weeeeeell worth the wait and effort!



The stew was creamy and flavorful, and the biscuits were moist and buttery...soooo good!

Now back to Samantha's 1st Birthday Party...

It was oodles, ahem, Poodles of fun!!!

My sister Jenni and her husband Desmon have a wonderful tradition of having their children get dedicated to the Lord on the morning of their childrens' 1st birthday party...that way we can witness the dedication, and then go straight to the party...all in one day/event.



The dedication was beautiful. Samantha was stunning in her gown, and she clapped the whole way through worship. :0) Even though I was visiting my sister's church, Maranatha Chapel, and have only been there a handful of times, it felt like home...the Palm Sunday sermon was wonderful, and it was so neat to have the rare opportunity to sit next to (most of) my entire family, and have my old (as in time, NOT age, lol) youth pastors sitting right behind me (shout out to Myke & Pam!)!

After the dedication, we headed to my sister's house for the Poodle party where we were treated to some DELICIOUS "puppy chow"!

They served muffins, fruit, eggs, bacon, sausage, scalloped potatoes, and my favorite, Blueberry French Toast Casserole...







For dessert my sister had made some simple cupcakes, a mini candy buffet, and my poodle cookies...







"Sambone" devoured her first cupcake! :0)



I had a wonderful day celebrating (and eating) with incredible family, and the best of friends.

But it's now Monday, and my diet starts today...right??? ;0)