Every year at Thanksgiving I take it upon myself to prepare stuffing the way my Nana used to, simple bread stuffing with celery and onions sautéed with thyme and fresh butter.

In my former Weight Watchers days, when I was calculating points, I knew that ½ cup was equivalent to 4 points, so I set aside a cup and half and allotted myself those 12 points for my precious stuffing.

Since I’m no longer the dieting diva I once was, I no longer fear food, so I always eat exactly what I want, when I want. Now unfortunately stuffing is not such a big deal anymore because I can make it anytime throughout the year.

As it so happened, I forgot that my stuffing was in the oven and it had dried out. It looked  more like stuffing hard tack than Nana’s rich and buttery delicious stuffing in a beautiful casserole dish.

Don’t ask me why but someone put it on the table anyway. My son said to me, Mom, you love stuffing so much. Why don’t you try it? I told him, “Bleech, that looks terrible. It’s so dried out. He said, Yes, but it’s still so good. Try it.

I took a micro dot of it and put it on my fork and realized that it was still tasty but the texture was awful, definitely not what I was used to. If company was not around, I would have taken my napkin and discreetly spit it out. Rather I swallowed those few hard, crusty bits of bread, and put my fork down quickly. Then without a second thought to my stuffing loss, I continued to enjoy my wonderful carrot flecked mashed potatoes with my home made turkey gravy. I just won’t eat something if I don’t love it. Will you? Share your thoughts with me and let me know what you would have done.

All too often we fall into patterns of tolerating things in our life that displease, bug and annoy us. Whether they are a leaky faucet, a disorganized closet, a broken bathroom tile, a dirty kitchen or a jacket in need of mending, the effect on your psyche is the same. If you consent to live with these irritations, knowing full well that you do so at the risk of your comfort and peace of mind, then they have control over you. You are at their mercy.

When you find yourself trying to ignore the upset that you feel, living with these little buggers, sends a message to your brain that you are not worthy of having more. Ignoring these frustrations, can feed into a negative self image.

That’s when you may become complacent and cajole yourself into believing that you are being too picky or difficult to focus on such small things. You don’t want to rock the boat and be a pain to make something an issue if its’ not. “Let’s let sleeping dogs lie”, you may say. But if it’s bugging you, it’s not contributing to your happiness, it’s making you miserable.

You owe it to yourself to handle the little irritations that annoy you, because if you don’t they will eat at you until you do. Before you know it, you’re eating more than you want to or picking at the frosting of a donut that you realized you don’t even like.

Look around at your life and reassess it. Notice what irritates you and causes you frustration. Go throughout every room of your home and office and make a list of what bugs you.

Is it an overflowing closet that you avoid opening or perhaps a crooked picture that doesn’t hang straight on your wall? Start to take note of the things in your life that you have been saying, “Oh, it’s okay, I can live with it.”

Make a list of 100 of those things and each day commit to doing one small thing to eradicate those bullying buggers.

I love food. Don’t you? When I first began learning how to listen to my body, I wanted all the things that I had denied myself on a diet. Those were the junk foods, the chips, burgers, fries, candy and all the manufactured goods that I would never let myself have on hand during the week. I only kept them around during a binge and then disposed of them by mouth really quickly. Today I rarely eat convenience foods anymore.

Since I’ve gotten all those mediocre tasting foods out of my system, by stripping the pent up emotion from them using my Mindful and Gentle Eating Technique, I’ve learned to acquire a very discriminating palate. Now those wrapped confections and mass produced ‘goodies’ are either too salty, too sweet, too fatty, too big, too small, too, too, too. You get the idea. I just don’t like them anymore and I’ve gone back to my roots of cooking and baking most of my meals. I like it the way I like it and that’s all there is to it. My family is also pretty happy with the change.

Since I love food so much, and assume that you do too, I’ll be adding a food segment to my newsletter and blog. Today you’ll get a bit of sweetness with my recipe for fruit crumble, next time I’ll share my version of one of my favorite soups, my mother in law, Luz’ Spanish chicken soup. I just made it for the first time on Tuesday and boy is it good!

The following recipe is a variation of what is called an Impossibly Easy French Apple Pie from Betty Crocker’s Bisquick Cookbook. I’ve been working on getting it just right to suit my taste for my Fruit Crumble recipe. In my opinion, it beats the heck out of the Hostess Fruit pies that I used to scarf down. Try it for yourself.

Andrea’s Quick ‘N Easy Fruit Crumble

Make streusel topping (see recipe for streusel topping below ingredients)

Ingredients:

• 1 can of Comstock All fruit pie filling or 1 bag of fresh frozen fruit
• ½ cup Bisquick
• butter, margarine or cooking spray

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees or for high Altitude (3500 to 6500 feet): Heat oven to 375 degrees.
   
2. Grease with cooking spray and butter a glass baking dish measuring 8x8
3. Spread fruit of choice in baking dish.
4. In separate bowl, make streusel topping. (see below for recipe)
5. Combine above ingredients and mix until crumbly, mashing them either with a fork or a  pastry  blender. Work until dough resembles consistency of green peas. You may need to add more butter or margarine to get the desired effect.
6. Sprinkle crumb like mixture over top of fruit in baking dish, covering entire surface of dish.
7. Bake 40-45 minutes or until knife inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 5-20 minutes depending upon preference.

Streusel Topping

Ingredients:

½ cup Original Bisquick
¼ cup chopped nuts
¼ cup packed dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons firm margarine or butter

Mix bisquick, nuts and brown sugar. Cut in margarine, using fork or pastry blender, until mixture is crumbly.

Notes from Andrea: I prefer using 2 tablespoons of sugar as opposed to the ¼ cup directed. I also adjust the nut according to the fruit. I have tried Comstock cherry filling with pecans and apple filling with walnuts. I prefer the apple or a package of fresh frozen peaches with pecans. I’ve also used frozen blueberries, strawberries, and canned pears with both walnuts or pecans. I have also used a frozen pie crust and lined the bottom with it, cutting it to fit the exact bottom surface or including the sides. That way you get a bottom crust and the streusel topping. Best of both worlds or overkill. You decide!

I enjoy eating a bit of the crumble heated to 350 degrees n the oven for 10 minutes with a scoop of Edy’s Grand French Vanilla ice cream. Yum! Enjoy!

Self Esteem. Everyone benefits by increasing their confidence and developing a stronger self esteem. It's the core structure to anything that you attempt in life. It determines how willing you are to risk going for what you want. It's the difference between success and failure.

Last year I created a self esteem program for Elementary school aged kids called, "It's Great to Be Me," I developed it after years of working with various groups of parents, boys and girls and understanding the need to instill confidence in our children.

In the program, I included much of what I learned from studying with Jack Canfield, the leading expert in self esteem development programs.

One of my favorite things that I often discuss is the power of words. As a kid, you've probably heard, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never harm me."There's actually quite a lot of truth to that little rhyme.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, nobody can make you feel badly without your consent." The reason for that is because only you control your thoughts, feelings and the pictures in your head. Basically you run your own brain by having the ability to do those three things.

Although we tend to think that other people can hurt us with their words, the truth is, it's not what people say that hurts; It's what you tell yourself after they've stopped talking.

Here is a powerful statement that I learned from Jack that I share in my seminars:

No Matter What You Say Or Do to Me, I'm Still A Worthwhile Person

It's a simple but very powerful statement. In my seminars, I pass out paper to the students with only this statement printed on it. Then I tell them to repeat it after every statement I make.  I explain that we're going to test it out by shouting out nasty things and then we'll follow by everyone reading what is written on the paper.

I start them off by saying something like, ""You're stupid, and then I lead them to read the empowering statement, and then I say something else on the order of a put down that one of them may have said about another like, "Duh, don't you know how to do that? and then I led them to say the feel-good statement. Once they get the idea of how it works, I want them to put their signature on it so that they really get it in their bones. I encourage them to come up with nasty things that have been said about them. Then in response to those, everyone repeats, "No matter what you say or do to me, I'm still a worthwhile person."

The transformation I have seen with the kids was amazing. After they did this exercise, they ended up beaming and glowing.

This is how it works. These words are like an antidote to the hurtful junk that you hear each day. Imagine being in a situation where you are subjected to being intimidated by someone who is criticizing you and being nasty, then just let their words roll over you as you repeat the "No matter" mantra to yourself over and over again.

Just like I did with the kids, test it out on yourself. Just let your self talk rip and listen to what goes on inside. After that, repeat the statement, then repeat it and keep on going. It will create a real calming, buzzy kind of feeling.

That day I found myself repeating the statement to myself over and over from the time I walked out of the school all the way to my destination, about 15 minutes. Over that course of time, as I drove, I teared up, I laughed, I smiled and I ended up feeling really amazing. Today I use it often whenever I have a negative thought that has some cling to it.

I've found it to be incredibly empowering and so have the kids. Let me know how it works for you

Recently one of my Juicy Women emailed me and asked me why lately she automatically gets angry for no apparent reason when she sees her husband.

Here is what I told her.

"In a relationship where two people are living together, it is common to experience stress and tension. Sometimes the stress comes from within the marriage but sometimes it comes from other things, work, kids, financial strain, family pressures, etc. The stress chemicals that flood your body when it senses tension, create an association in the brain that will trigger bad feelings. These negative feelings remain in the body until they are dissociated and released.

Now that you know that stress affects you, here's the clincher. Your brain is always working to create new associations. Here's the rule of thumb... anytime you are in an intense emotional state, you are susceptible to creating anchors. Anything that happens around you can get connected in your mind with the way that you feel at that moment. It gets wired into your brain that way. Therefore each and every time that you repeat or trigger the anchor, you will get the same response.

For example, you might be able to think of a certain song that you love and instantly it will make you feel good. The song would be a trigger or considered a stimulus. It will affect your heart rate,
breathing, your pulse, maybe even send a message to the receptors in your skin to create goosebumps, etc. In essence, every part of you will be affected by those yummy feelings as they wash over you.

You could be feeling down and if that song would play on the radio, it would change your state of mind from gloomy to great. This is an example of a positive anchor. Now you don't necessarily have to rely on a song to create an anchor, as I mentioned, your brain does this automatically. Sometimes it works on your behalf and other times it doesn't.

Now let's look at the other form of anchoring which is considered a negative anchor. Let's take the specific example of what may be happening in the case of your husband.

Let's say one day you're having a fat day, you know those days when you just feel as fat as a house and nothing and nobody can make you think or feel differently.

So you're already feeling awful. Your body is defenseless, you're depressed and feeling very vulnerable.

Let's say your husband walks in the room and he's feeling a bit prickly and says something just a bit insensitive about your weight. That is the stimulus that triggers your brain to connect those
feelings of helplessness, and vulnerability to your husband. He may have been well intentioned, yet his delivery may have stunk, however your brain is looking for patterns to prove that he is the bad guy because your brain tells you that you've been hurt.

In your mind, he is perceived as a threat to you. Although he may not be anything of the sort, your brain connected up those extreme feelings of vulnerability with his presence and his specific words.

Therefore until you eliminate this pattern of feeling hurt and vulnerable around him, you won't ever feel the confidence to set him straight in a loving way and let him know from a position of power
that you are not okay with his commenting on your body.

That's why it's so important to use EFT to collapse those negative anchors that just make you feel bad for seemingly no reason at all.