Monday August 15th

Hello,
My effort to post more often than Wednesdays didn't go over so well this week, but I'm sneaking in a little post here to prove to myself that I can do it.   I started using Dawn's Fitness Pal food log and after a bit of effort, even managed to get it on to my Blog page.  I think I have it set to public so that anyone that feels like it can check my foods.  I really like the way it works!  It's easy (which is important to me) and doesn't take much time to log in your foods! (also important)  Once you have a bunch of stuff you usually eat logged in, the food tracker remembers it and you just have to check off your normal foods to add to your daily totals.  This is probably how all the food log things work that most of you use, but it was news to me!  Anyway in doing this I realized that my lazy breakfast meals of Cheerios with almond milk and truvia a week ago were big trouble.   One little cup of Cheerios would not fill me up, so I'm sure my bowl (which I didn't measure at the time) was more like 2 1/2 cups.  Those, added with my coffee with Benefiber and my chia seeds, was actually throwing me up to three servings of carbs in the morning!  Three servings for Cheerios??  Forget it!  I started back on eggs and a carb balance whole wheat mission tortilla in the morning, with some coconut bread thrown in too.  Much more satisfying and lower carbs, higher fiber to boot!  Anyway I used to log my foods by writing things in a little journal, but I like this food tracker better.

We had ribs with BBQ sauce one night last week and it reminded me that I wanted to give you my BBQ sauce recipe.  I got it from a book called "The Low-Carb Barbecue Book" by Dana Carpender.  She has a lot of recipes but she does use Splenda and molassess so I had to change those up to keep this Belly Cure friendly.  It starts off with homemade sugar free ketchup which I didn't have so I kind of combined the two recipes:  Here it goes:

Kansas City BBQ Sauce:

2 1/2 cups plain tomato sauce
2/3 cup of cider vinegar
1/4 tsp of powdered stevia (you could add Truvia packets to your tastes)
2 TBS minced onion
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. ground allspice
1/8 tsp. ground cloves
1/8 tsp. pepper
Combine all this in a food processor first as it is the "ketchup"  Next take:

4 TB butter
2 cloves minced garlic
1/2 chopped onion (sweat the garlic and onion in butter a bit before adding remaining ingredients)
2 Tbs lemon juice
Your already made above ketchup
4 TBS Worcestershire sauce
2 TBS chili powder
2 tsp cayenne pepper (or more or less depending on how hot you like it)
1/4 tsp salt
The book calls for 2 TBS blackstrap molasses but I left that out and added a bit more stevia if I thought it wasn't sweet enough.
Let everything simmer for a a while on the stove and then its done. 

Thats it.  I do like to cook (when I'm in the mood of course) so I don't mind making up a double batch of this and sticking it in the fridge or freezer, but it may seem like too much trouble to someone that doesn't like to cook.

I'm off to the grocery store to get supplies.  I feel like I am at the grocery store every other day!  Keeping this family of six full is a never ending task!   Sort of like the never ending task of laundry -which reminds me the dryer guy had to order a part so my dryer won't be fixed until this Wed. or Friday! 

Have a great day everyone!

Doing a practice picture here of an eggplant growing in my garden