The Juicy Woman

My Stuffing Blunder

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.

Taking Charge: Create a Bug List

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.

Gotta Have Food: The Juicy Woman's Fruit Crumble Recipe and More...

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 (you could have also used acai), 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!

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

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:

The Power of Negative Anchors: Who's Pushing Your Panic Button?

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.