Amy Currioman

Do you ever feel hungry but don’t want to eat anything? That happens to me all the time! My stomach is growling and my hands start to tremble, and I even get a hunger headache! But I don’t want to eat anything – nothing appeals to me! This is a dangerous time because now is the time that I would probably grab some empty-calorie type of snack just to head off the hunger pains! I’d love to be able to grab an apple – we were given a ton of them recently, but for some crazy reason ten minutes after I’ve eaten an apple I feel hungrier than I did before I ate it! Sounds crazy, right?

I’ve been playing around with my new to me (picked up at thrift store for $3) bread machine and I’m really enjoying it. When I first picked it up I was afraid that it didn’t work; after all the first one I had bought there didn’t work, but I took another chance on this one and it works just fine. Although when I go through the owners manual and read through the trouble-shooting guidelines I see some of the problems marked with an asterick so it looks like the original user was doing something wrong. I say that because I am not having any of those issues with the machine.

Well today I decided that I wanted to do something a little different than white bread, french bread, sour dough bread, portugese sweet bread. I’ve had good luck with all of those but today I decided to shake it up a little and make some applesauce oatmeal bread. I am looking forward to giving it a try!

I’m the kind of person who loves to make lists.  I try to make a list of things that need to be done for the day, both for inside the house and for errands that need to be run.  It really gives me a sense of accomplishment when I cross off the item on the list!  And I try very hard to make my grocery list in the order in which the items are found in the store so I’m not zig-zagging around the store! When I make the list for running errands I try to make the list in a logical “full circle” list so that I’m not wasting time or gas by back-tracking.

I often use the clean backs of envelopes that I received in the mail to write down my lists.  I love how it reduces the amount of trash filling up the landfills!  And whenever possible, I use both sides of printer paper.  One good way to use the second side of printer paper is using it for shopping lists that I’m printing off from the computer.  Now you may ask why I would be printing a list from the computer!  And for good reason!  I found a website that I’m going to try out where it helps me to create and organize my shopping list. The website is called list2shop.com and I think that it has the potential to help me save time and money. And it’s free!

I’ve been hearing some rumors about how you can lose weight on a cookie diet!  I’ve never heard of that one before!  If I could lose weight on a cookie diet, and if the cookies tasted good and filled me up so that I wasn’t hungry right off, I think I’d be very interested in checking that diet out!  I have a sweet tooth like you wouldn’t believe!  I was reading that the “Smart for life” diet program that involves cookies helps weight loss by speeding up your metabolism.

I have to wonder what is in the diet that speeds up your metabolism, and I wonder if there are any health risks involved in that.  According to their website, the cookies are made with all natural products and are free of toxins and preservatives.  I’ve always been suspicious of diet foods – there either isn’t enough there, or they have too much fiber in them and I end up suffering with stomach distress.  But I was reading that this is not a diet program where you have to commit for a long period of time to the program, you can just buy pre-packaged “kits” so you only buy what you like.  I sure wish that they gave out free samples, though!

Well today I decided to buy some cornmeal to try and make english muffin bread in the bread machine. I went to the new Harris Teeter store and bought way more groceries than I intended to buy! It’s hard to resist all of the BOGO specials and the double coupon offers!

Anyway, now I’m home and am cooking the bread in the machine. I’m anxious to give it a try! I remember about 30 years ago a friend gave me some english muffin bread that she had made from scratch. It was really good!