No, I don’t live a keto lifestyle but I do use a lot of those recipes. Sometimes I will splurge and buy pre-made mixes. A few months back I came across the site for Keto Candy Girl. I’ve bought mixes from other sites but so far this is the very best. I made these chocolate chip cookies tonight. All I had to add was a stick of butter and one egg. You get 16 cookies per batch.

The directions are to bake them at 350 for 12-15 minutes. I baked these for 12 minutes and checked them. After another 2 minutes, this is how pretty they are.

They are so delicious. The cookies have soft, moist centers with a slightly crispy outside. Donnie ate three!

At 11 grams total carbs per 2 cookies, that’s not bad for me to have. If you count net carbs, they would only be 2 net carbs per 2 cookies.

Mixes are always more expensive but I justify the cost as being less than it would cost for me to develop the recipe or have too many failures.

At least that’s what I tell myself.

Some friends came over one time and had their young daughter with them. Her name is Hannah. She went exploring upstairs and came back down. With huge eyes she exclaimed “There’s a Big, Horrible, Hairy Monster” in the window up there. It was Oreo in one of his hiding spots. Molly Mae now has that nickname.

This is one of her favorite places to lounge. As a result, there is always an abundance of cat hair on the sofa.

Here’s a riddle for you: What do you get when you mix a long-haired, lazy cat with furniture?

Most of this came from brushing her but part of it came from the top of the sofa back.

While watching the Saints play the Dolphins, I packaged and labeled the pecans and then vacuum sealed them. I always put the shelled pecans into zip lock freezer bags first. The bags are labeled as to the variety of pecans, month/year, and whether it contains pieces or halves. I then seal the zipper almost completely leaving just a small opening on one end.

The filled bags are placed into Food Saver bags and vacuum sealed. The zipper on the baggie usually finishes sealing as the air is removed from the outer bag. I just use whatever size I have so sometimes there is only baggie of pecans, sometimes there are 2 baggies of pecans, and sometimes there are more. They will last several years in the freezer using this method.

To us, it’s worth a trip to Alabama just to get pecans but we were going anyway this year so it was nice to combine pecans with a family get-together.

The Etsy seller responded to my question about buying the chart from her. She can’t get that specific design. While I’m a little sad about it, I’ll just buy it direct.

Somehow I stumbled across a design today that I think I have to have. I admire vintage style samplers and all the work that goes into them but generally, I’m not interested in stitching one. I like regular designs more. I especially like holiday designs….and chickens.

It’s “Christmas Tree” by Barbara ana Designs. I’ve searched for the chart online and can not find it except on her site in Russia. I prefer to buy it here in the states if possible. I’ve purchased from Italy and the Ukraine via Etsy so I feel safe doing that. I did buy the Christmas sampler Denise and Judy are doing for the SAL from that site in Russia and it was fine with payment via PayPal. I just don’t have a lot of experience doing business with overseas commerce.

I’ve contacted an Etsy seller that sells her charts to see if she can get it for me. Fingers crossed.

I love it!

I didn’t have time yesterday to do a post and I was too tired last night. I hope everyone had a wonderful day yesterday.

We usually have our meal at lunch on Christmas Day but decided to have the meal at dinner time instead. It gave me more time to get things done but also made for a very long day.

I got the prime rib seasoned and into the oven, made spiced pecans and a chocolate dessert.

We’ve learned that Chris has a pretty bad intolerance to dairy so the dessert was both sugar free and dairy free. This is a Turtle Cheesecake Pie but I don’t love the “cheesecake” layer so I scoop it off or mix it in with the chocolate layer.

I didn’t have the sugar free cookies called for in the crust so I used Lolly’s Cookie Clusters German Chocolate Cake flavor and home made ghee. Ghee has no offending ingredients after cooking the butter. I also strain it before putting it in a jar.

I used Simply Delish chocolate pudding for the chocolate layer and it’s yummy.

It’s a real challenge to cook sugar free/low carb AND dairy-free at the same time but we try.

Here it is….Midnight on Christmas Eve and I have yet to take the first stitch.

I have 2 fabrics that are large enough but I can’t decide which fabric to use and I’ve been haunting Etsy tonight looking for something else. The floss is hand dyed silk from Treenway Silks.

Needless to say I haven’t done much to get ready for tomorrow. I may have to stay up a while longer to get the prime rib seasoned.

when all through the house…

We are getting ready for Christmas Day dinner. We don’t have traditional meals for Christmas. Instead, we have prime rib if we can find it on sale. We were able to buy 2….one at Winn Dixie for $5.99/pound and one at Albertson’s for the same price. The bones had already been carved out and tied back to the rib roasts. I cooked the ribs in the Instant Pot and made soup. The meat fell off the ribs and is delicious.

I added a couple bags of stew vegetables and some frozen hash browns along with Tony Chachere’s cajun seasoning and some Vigo beef flavor. Not bad.

A few weeks ago we took a trip to east Alabama for Donnie’s family Christmas. Alabama pecans are notoriously good so we stopped both going and coming to buy pecans. We used to buy cracked pecans at a place outside Foley, AL but Hurricane Sally put them out of business. We found another place by the same name outside Summerdale, AL. They didn’t have cracked pecans but we did buy big bags of both “Surprize” pecan halves and pieces.

https://www.underwoodpecanfarm.com

On the way home we stopped in Grand Bay, AL to a place called Harper Orchards. It’s an adorable old store and the lady was so nice. She did have cracked pecans (ready to shell) so we got some of those and also 5 bags of halves. These are McMillan pecans.

https://www.facebook.com/HarperOrchards/

It really does matter what variety pecans are. Surprize are my favorite but McMillans are also very good. Stuart and Elliott pecans are old-time favorites.

I’ve gotten all the cracked pecans shelled and sorted to halves, pieces, broken halves and in food saver bags.

I don’t talk a lot about my health. When something new comes up, it usually takes me a while to even talk about it. The only people who usually know something is going on right away are Donnie, Chris, Vanessa, and Faith. I might not even tell Vanessa and Faith if it weren’t that they are Chris’s main care-givers via TARC so they need to know anything that could affect him.

It’s just a very personal thing to me and I truly dislike the thought of others discussing my personal health. Our health information belongs only to each of us. This viewpoint gets me in trouble with some people but this is just the way I feel about it.

I’ve had diabetes type 2 for about 11 years and it’s been pretty well controlled except for the last 2 years. It became more difficult to control so we got on a rollercoaster of medication changes. For one reason or another I didn’t tolerate any of the new meds. I fought adding insulin so hard. I just did not want to take insulin. Insulin is a fat-storing hormone and I surely don’t need help in that department.

About 6 months ago there was no where else to go but to insulin. I started a long-acting insulin (Levemir) along with sliding scale (Lispro). I adjusted my dosage according to specific instructions for several weeks and that’s where I stayed until yesterday.

I have a wonderful diabetic nurse practitioner that I see with the Ochsner health system. She only works with diabetics and is fabulous! I saw her again yesterday for a follow-up with my glucose logs in hand. The result of the visit is an increase in Levemir. I will closely monitor the new dosage for a couple weeks and if we don’t get to the goal, I am to increase dosage again.

We’ll see how this goes but I think it looks pretty good. This evening my blood sugar was 113 before dinner which is so much better. I actually ate spaghetti sauce with some spaghetti. I will check my blood sugar before bedtime to see where I am.

Wish me luck.

Louisiana is different. Our weather is different every 5 minutes. Our culture is different. Our food is definitely different….and delicious! Our government is different. (We have parishes, not counties.). Our music is different.

If you’re lucky, you can have one of these in your apartment! Free of charge.

This guy was inside Chris’s apartment near the door last night and he was in attack mode. I know it’s hard to see but his pincers were raised and his tail was elevated. And he came after me. Needless to say, Chris did not want him to stay inside overnight.

Here’s an update to the kitchen progress. I taped off the butcher block and covered it with plastic to be ready for grouting.

I had to put my recent ingredients somewhere. The window sill seemed like a good choice. What do you think about the butcher block? We found this piece at our local Lowe’s at a great price. I’ve applied several coats of food safe butcher block sealer to protect it.

After Donnie gets the grout sealed and the paint around the windows done, the plastic will come up and I can start putting my small appliances on it. I’ve had them in different cabinets up to now but I wanted somewhere I could keep them ready to use. Donnie used cabinet units we had left over from the apartments build to make the station. He’s such a handy guy to have around.