After Thanksgiving I hit my highest weight ever.  If you follow this blog you know that I don't obsess about calorie counting or my weight, just eating whole real food, until.....I hit close to my highest weight or over or I don't fit into my clothes any more.   Then I get pretty serious about it.  To me this is a big sign that something is off in your life and it's better to nip it in the bud.  It's easier to lose 5 lbs than 30lbs!  I've lost about 2 lbs since then, so I've still got some way to go.  One way I plan to try to lose more is to stock my fridge with super low calorie foods.   I also plan to re read my post I wrote about my weight loss when it seemed to effortlessly melt off of me.  Thank goodness I wrote that post!  Its kind of like my notes.  I actually use my own blog all the time.  Not only does it allow me to share all I learn and do with you, but it helps me remember what I've done, what our garden has done, recipes that are killer but I don't make often enough to memorize, DIY projects I've done, etc. 

If you follow this blog you know that I love to grow kale in my garden.  Next to perennial veggies and fruit kale is the easiest plants we grow.  It's one of the first and last veggies in our garden every year.  I like that I can also harvest it whenever I want to.  It's also so nutritious it's a super food.  The only problem is we planted 6 kale plants this year and we only eat a little bit.  I like to sneak it into chocolate banana almond butter smoothies, and as a wrap for sandwiches.  I also occasionally add some to soup or stews.  But that doesn't amount to much.  So I'm determined to find some recipes with kale that I like.

I'm currently addicted to these muffins.  I seriously can't stop eating them.  I can eat them for Breakfast lunch and dinner right?  Think cheesy sausage omelet cooked to perfection crossed with a muffin.  Next time I make it I plan to use my large muffin pan so I don't feel like such a pig eating 4 or 5 muffins at a time!  These are great for brunch or an easy hearty breakfast to go.  They'd even be great for a picnic! 

I think I might have a new food love.  Butternut squash fries.  Oh my good golly miss molly these are addictingly good. They actually taste to me a bit more like potatoes but with a twist. I liked these actually better than sweet potato fries.  I'm not sure if squash is actually better for fries or if this batch just happen to turn out better.  Either way it's a great way to get your kids friends or spouse to eat their veggies and to use up extra produce.  We didn't grow any squash this year after our horrible infestation of our squash crops last year, but we did snag a super deal at our local farmers market for a huge bucket of squash the last day of the market this year.

Every year I host Thanksgiving at our house.  I am already starting starting on preparing what I can freeze until Thanksgiving.  I've learned it's best to do as much ahead that you can, that way if it doesn't turn out no big deal, you can try again or just buy it pre-made.  Yesterday I started with Sweet Potato Biscuits.  I made Martha Stewart's last year and served them with a honey cinnamon compound butter spread.  And they turned out fabulous, the only problem was I made them too big (considering all the food everyone eats on Thanksgiving), so this year I made them smaller.  I doubled the recipe (why not make more since you can freeze them for later), and I altered the original recipe to have healthier fat, less carbs, no sugar., and I added cinnamon to help stabilize blood sugar.  They still turned out great.  I greatly reduced the grains in this recipe so it's lower gluten but not gluten free, if you have a guest for thanksgiving that is sensitive to gluten you could try using all coconut flour instead.  The only reason I didn't is I don't like to take a recipe to far from the original recipe the first time around. Also do not reduce the amount of fat in this recipe.  I have tried this ( I reduced to 9 tablespoons of fat) and it was a bit dry.  So I instead replaced half the fat with coconut oil, which is a very healthy fat that is baking stable.

These freeze great so don't be afraid to make to many!  I make these a week ahead for Thanksgiving and enjoy some fresh the day I bake it and freeze the rest.  I take it out the night before Thanksgiving to defrost and warm it up in the oven (for about 5 -10 min on warm) just before I serve everything.  They come out perfect like I just baked them!

Do you like pumpkin pie?  If so I must warn you this recipe could cause an addiction.  You could find yourself wanting to make this again as soon as you run out (like me, I've seriously made this recipe about 8 times in the last month).  The great part is it's honest to god healthy, so no guilt! 

About 4 months ago I changed my diet to a low carb diet.  I am doing this for health reasons (see my post about how I lost 15lbs in 3 months by increasing my insulin and leptin sensitivity), but I do believe it is a good ideal for most (but maybe not necessary for all) people.  I still have been making bread for my husband's lunches even though I haven't had any in months.  I took last month off and bought some, since it was so hot!  It seems weird to bake when we had a heat index of 110 degrees!  I might have found a way around that...can you say crock pot bread? That will be my next experiment,  look for a post to come on that.  I'm so hoping that will work.

For the last few months I have been trying to have low sugar and carbs (only complex carbs), because of a yeast imbalance that I have (sugar feeds yeast, and refined carbs break down to sugar).  And I've also been trying to gluten free as much as possible.  Given all my new restrictions their are certain foods I haven't had in a long time.  One of them is pancakes.   I came across a recipe on Blogiliates (I actually follow Casey Ho's pilates lessons online and was surprised to find she has amazing recipes too.  I had no idea) for pancakes made with protein powder as flour, hummm... interesting I  thought.  Could they really be good?  They looked normal.  It seemed to simple, I was skeptical.  I tried her recipe slightly altered.  I did not use psyllium husk, even though I had it on hand because I have found psyllium husk to get a gummy and weird texture when exposed to liquid for to long.  So I used flax meal in place of psyllium husk.  I was also worried about the fact that there was no leaveners used in the recipe (to produce the air bubbles).   I added some baking powder and just a little baking soda.  It turned out a little cardboard like and broke when I tried to flip it.  I could tell the recipe had promise but needed some work.  Enter my quest for the perfect low carb high protein gluten free pancake. 

I stopped getting frozen pizza when I realized how easy and better homemade pizza is! The trick is you just make more while your at it and then freeze the rest.  Then it's like having a few homemade frozen pizzas in the freezer.  You have all the convenience of processed foods but it's homemade by you!