I decided to make pumpkin pie for our family Thanksgiving dinner. The challenge: no wheat, no dairy, no egg. I found a recipe in one of my books, the consistency was great, the crust was good, the flavor not so good. I received a few recommendations: more sugar, more pumpkin spice. Back to the drawing board.

Here’s the deal, this blog is supposed to be more than a “dear diary, today a boy looked at me” thing. Yet, I understand that my personal fitness is going to be boring to most people and I’m certainly not sharing my actual weight with anyone. One of my goals for 101 things in 1001 days is to run a 5k. I mentioned that I found a nice, gently used treadmill for sale and brought it home with me last week. In an effort to keep myself motivated, I am going to try to review something slightly healthy or health related as well as a quick update on my progress.

A website I have used in the past, but no longer use is eDiets. It is a subscription based service with a large menu and fitness system. Fill out a short questionnaire and you will receive a recommended menu profile to follow. I used this site years ago, before I knew I was allergic to dairy and before profiles. The profile suggested to me was not compatible with a dairy allergy. I remembered that I could tell it what foods I wanted excluded from the menu, but it still didn’t remove enough dairy. That meant I was constantly tweaking the menus. I tried the lactose intolerant menu, but it still used dairy products and said lactose-free this or lactose free that. The coolie menu application creates a shopping list so you can take it to the store and purchase only what you need. Cookies never appeared on my list, it’s a sad thing I tell you.

With eDiets fitness profile, you set your exercise level (beginning, intermediate, advanced), click the boxes for that equipment/tasks you want and it lines it all up for you. The site provides strength training exercises based on the equipment (or lack of) and you tell it what aerobics you like or can do including yoga, dancing, running, and swimming.

The drawbacks for the site were many for me. More than once I couldn’t log into the site to get my menu for the week, so my menu date would push back and I’d be shorted days. I started the program on a Sat. and when I stopped I was on Wed. The check-in process made me crazy. I don’t mind putting my weight into the thing once a week, but I also had to put my measurements in several times a month before I could get my menu. It would kick bogus measurements, so I had to either take them or waste time fiddling numbers. It only lets you have one computer generated menu at a time, the theory is that if you don’t lose enough weight, the menu will be tweaked to the lower caloric intake where possible. If you’re already at the lowest and you try to make it remove more calories it tells you to call and discuss your options with an eDiets representative. Because I had to check-in to receive my 7 day menu, I had a horrible time trying to plan grocery trips while trying to save gas. I would prefer to shop every other week, so I would create a menu, tweak it, print it and then scratch the menu and make a new one. The other option was to make the same menu two weeks in a row. Eventually, I just gave up and started copying the recipes into a file for breakfasts, lunches and dinners. I’d print the whole thing and make my own menus. The drawback? No computer generated shopping list for me. I also struggled with food for my husband. I would make a triple batch of each shared meal hoping that would be enough food for my sweet bean-pole who is unable to climb up to 130 and maintain it.

Other than that, the menus were great, I adored the fitness piece. There were new community boards, but since it’s all subscription based, people seem to come and go. I’m still using some of the recipes, the concept is good, the check in is just too cumbersome.

Stay tuned next week for a profile on a free site.

My stats:
Minutes: 95
Miles: 3.82
MPH: 2.4
Days: 3 (Su, W, Th)

We had a wonderful time with our small group last night and this morning. Last night we met to celebrate a birthday and game night. This morning we continued our study in James, heavenly wisdom and had a time of games after the study and prayer. Jason and I only stayed a little while, we had left Daisy inside due to temperatures.

I decided we’re having calzones for dinner, so the dough is currently rising, it’s just about ready to roll, stuff and bake. I have also become increasingly frustrated with themes for this WordPress blog. I am enjoying the blog, the writing and changing up the look every now and again. I have blogged before about the plugins not working with all the themes. At first, I was positive the plugins were faulty, so I set about to prove it. Unfortunately, it does not seem to be the plugin, it seems to be the theme. I printed out the code behind the current brown, diary theme and discovered that rather than sticking with standard naming conventions, WordPress theme authors are using terms as they see fit, which causes other plugins to display poorly. I am setting out to fix this current theme and documenting as I go so that I can fix others I find. By the time I’m done fixing all the themes I like, it will be time to design one of my own, but I’m just not motivated to tackle that yet. Never mind, after spending several hours pouring over the code, I do not wish to rewrite the entire theme just for a few pretty graphics. I found a theme that is semi-cool and tweaked it to fit what I want layout-wise. I think I will use this one, eventually, as a jumping-off point for other things as I find or create graphics I like.

Hopefully, the weather will cooperate tomorrow. I have accumulated scrapbook pages, stickers and stamps to finally get a wedding scrapbook finished/started. I am downloading pictures from Ruth and Julie so that I can include some of them in the book. As for the weather, I’d like to sit down with Mom Proefrock and select some with her, since she’d like to make a book, too. Mom found a website that prints pictures for $0.06 plus shipping. It seems to be a current sale that may change with time, maybe a special for February.

A quick review of the last week - fun with craft stores in GR with Mom and Julie, I have scrapbooking supplies for the above mentioned project. I spend Thursday in GR catching up with Patty and Angela and drove home in more snow, again on a Thursday. I also upgraded/downgraded another Vista machine to XP. Acers are a challenge, but I’m improving on driver scavenger hunts.

I’ll try to get a few more posts up the early part of the week. Thursday, Jason and I leave for NY for my Grandma’s memorial service.

Today Daisy and I were quite busy. We went and bought a bike, no, not for her. I got a really good deal on it, almost 60% off the original price. After showing it off to Jason’s Dad, we went home and baked bread. One smallish. loaf of spelt and another of applesauce. We’ll see how they go. If that wasn’t enough adventure, we then rearranged the living room, the couch is now at a 45° angle to the television. I’m not sure what I think about the living room yet. The couch extends onto the kitchen floor in order to give the recliners enough room to recline. The kitchen is going to seem a little small having to navigate around the couch. We also cleaned a set of cupboards so that there are no milk products at all, and the wheat without milk is separated into a different area. Anyone need any wheat/milk/yeast products? At seven, it’s time for my shower so I can go meet Jason and Nate for Mexican.

I made some progress on the flowerbeds this week, but I still have stones to move. I’m not really sure I want to redistribute the stones knowing that I’d like to redo all of the beds eventually.