The Jell-o Project: The Game On! Gelled Salad Mold

I must give credit to my brother Jason for inspiring this latest Jell-o mold and my return to The Jell-o Project. Last week as part of the Game On! Diet I'm playing with my friends, siblings and their friends, Jason jokingly asked if flavorless, colorless, sugarless Jell-o might be OK to eat on the diet.

I replied that it would be, as long as you counted it as a protein and only had a palm sized serving. (I also might have mentioned something to him about ground up horse hooves, but we don't need to go into that here.) His mention of Jell-o got me thinking about what a Game On! worthy Jell-o salad might look like.

I can not vouch for the tastiness of the salad (pictured above), but I can guarantee it will not lose you any points in the diet by eating it, as long as you do so as one of your 5, approved meals.

Jason's Mold

1 pkg. plain gelatin

3/4 cup hot spinach water

1/4 cup water (room temp)

2 tsp diced celery

1 TB diced turkey bacon

Sprinkle gelatin over 1/4 cup of water and let it dissolve for 3-5 minutes. Add 3/4 cup of hot spinach water (left over from cooking spinach) and stir. Refrigerate for about an hour to thicken the gelatin. Add bits of celery and turkey bacon (kangaroo meat will work as well) to the thickened gelatin and spoon into a 1/2 cup mold and return to the fridge. Unmold on a lettuce leaf and serve to your Game On! opponents.

The possibilities for gelled Game On! salads are limited only by your imagination!

Game On!: No Snacking Means No Snacking

One of my favorite things about late summer is the wild blackberries that seem to grow everywhere. For weeks and weeks the picking is plentiful and free. I'll be the first to admit that blackberry picking can be a dangerous pursuit. The thorny canes almost seem to reach out and grab you get close enough to pick. And of course the best berries are always require the most physical sacrifice on the part of the picker to acquire.

But it's worth it.

The route I take on my daily power walk takes me right by a productive patch of blackberry bushes. Ten months out of the year, they are useless and not even very pretty. But when those blackberries ripen, they offer something for every one of the senses. On warm mornings I can literally smell the berries as I speed walk by. It's intoxicating!

This summer I decided I would literally stop and taste the blackberries. So mid walk, I would scan the bushes for the plumpest, most delicious looking berries, stop, grab a few and continue on with my walk. It was just a berry or two, but the romantic in me felt strongly about experiencing to the fullest the natural world around me. I needed to enjoy the blackberries before they were gone.

All was well with this plan.

Until the Game On! Diet.

This morning on my walk I passed the heavily laden bushes and noticed a berry I could NOT pass up. One berry. I grabbed it and tossed it in my mouth and continued on my way.

"I should really have the kids pick me some berries for a blackberry crisp," I thought to myself. Quickly, I realized that blackberry crisp did not have any part of my 5 daily approved meals. This made me realize that by eating that one, little blackberry, I'd snacked--a major no-no in The Game.

A 10 point deduction in The Game.

I was devastated. How could I do this to my team? And it was 7am! I had the whole day ahead of me and had just started it off with snacking.

I then remembered the 100 calorie rule. I can have 100 calories of anything I want during the day, as long as it is consumed all at the same time. I could count my one blackberry as part of the 100 calories and still potentially have a perfect day. I was saved.

Out of curiosity, I googled how many calories one blackberry had when I got home.

One blackberry has one calorie.

...

It's OK. I'd rather give up my 99 calories than take a 10 point deduction and let the Super Ninja Bootie Busters down.

That's our team name.

Pretty awesome, no?

I'm Done

My 2010 Canning Season has officially come to a close. Finally.

About a month ago I picked up a box of pears and set them out on the counter to let them ripen. I thought it would only take a week or so, but I was wrong. A few pears were ripe around week 2, so I made pear cranberry jam (7 half pints) and carrot cake jam (5 half pints, 2 pints). A few days later there were enough ripe pears to make ginger pear sauce (4 pints).

The next week I canned pears in syrup (14 quarts ) and finally, today I did another batch of ginger pear sauce (4 pints.)

I will be quite glad to scrub out my canner and put it away for 9 months.

I will be thrilled to get my counter space back that has been, for a month, taken up by actual pears, or pears in jars.

I will not be glad to finally clean the drip pans on my stove top, but it must be done. For some reason, my giant canning pot does bad things to my stove top. Easy Off oven cleaner will be required, but I'm not under the illusion that anything will come "off easy."

I was so excited for canning season back in June when I got my fresh strawberries. There is something about making and storing my own food that brings out the giddy obsessive compulsive in me. I could look at all my jars of preserves lined up on the shelves in my garage for 10 minutes and not get bored. Through out the winter and spring, I'll spend time re-organizing them as we use them, moving things up that need to be used first and taking inventory of jams to prepare for the coming season.

See? Just a little OCD.

Now, however, I'm ready to be done. I've worked hard this canning season and have used almost all my canning jars. This, by the way, is my OCD dream: to have every single canning jar that I own filled with some kind of preserve at the beginning of Fall. I have yet to see this dream fulfilled because we keep using up preserved food and returning clean, empty jars to the garage.

Here are all the preserves in my food storage from the 2010 harvest. (I should note that I did not grow any of these foods myself, which is unfortunate. Last year I canned all my own tomatoes that I grew myself, but I still have so many tomato preserves on the shelf, I will easily get through next summer with what I have. I did, however, pick all the fruits I canned myself, with the exception of the strawberries and the pears, which came from Salem and Medford.)

June - strawberry jam, strawberry lemonade concentrate, strawberry sauce (for ice cream and waffles, and no, it's not failed jam, it was an actual recipe for strawberry sauce.)

July - cherries in syrup, cherry chutney, black forest macaroon compote, apricots in syrup, apricot jam, apricot butter

August - peaches in syrup, peach almond conserve, apple sauce, red hot cinnamon apple slices in syrup

September - pears in syrup, carrot cake jam, pear cranberry jam, ginger pear sauce

No wonder I'm a little burnt out on canning.

If you would like any of the recipes for the things I've mentioned, I will tell you right now, I'm not going to type them all out for you. You may borrow my incredibly awesome canning cookbook (but not during canning season), check it out from your local library, or buy your own. Although I think my strawberry lemonade concentrate recipe is here.

Here's What's Going On

Last spring I participated in the Game On! Diet, which is much more than changing ones eating habits. It's about overall health and well-being. On top of that, it's also a competition. You play against friends, or strangers, or anyone who's butt you'd like to kick. In a totally healthy way, of course.

After completing the 4 week game, I thought it would be great to play with my family. We are spread out from coast to coast and I hardly ever get to see them. I thought this would be a fun way to connect and encourage each other to be healthy. OK, I'll say it: I wanted to lose a few pounds after a summer of copious snacking. (But I only snacked like crazy because I knew I'd be working it all off come September!)

Part of the game requires you to choose one bad habit to get rid of and one good habit to adopt.

My bad habit is spending too much time on Facebook. So I am giving it up for 4 weeks. It's going to be hard because my little fingers sometimes have a mind of their own as they fly across the keyboard. I made it yesterday without checking Facebook once, but I had to catch myself several times when I just reverted to my habit.

My good habit is going to be writing 2 hours a day. Writing has been a goal of mine for a long time and now that all the kids are otherwise occupied for about 7 hours a day, I think it's time to stop making excuses and get to work. Ideally, I will be writing things that could eventually be sold for money, but this blog should expect to see a little more action too.

So, gentle blog followers and readers, I hope you enjoy the increased postings here at OMM. Feel free to leave comments telling me how awesome I am, because, you know, that would totally help me out with this competition. Did I mention there is cash prize at stake? Cash!

My sister in Virginia has a team of 4 players.

My sister in California has 2 teams of 4 players each.

My sister in law in Ohio has 2 teams with 5 and 4 players each.

And I have 2 teams of 3 players each.

Game on!

Snips, Snails, Puppy Dog Tails, and Really Dirty Socks

Back in July of this year, Ethan participated in a Pioneer Trek with other 12-18 year old youth from our church. The experience is meant to give kids a greater appreciation for the sacrifices our pioneer ancestors made crossing the plains to get to the Salt Lake Valley, but also to give them a sense of accomplishment. There were all kinds of challenges the kids overcame to complete their approximately 20 mile trek. Along with the physical challenge, many kids were stretched emotionally and spiritually.

The only emotion Ethan found being stretched was his strong desire to never, ever do a Pioneer Trek again. Although he ultimately had a good time (and I know this because he was very excited to attend a family reunion with his trek family last month), the journey was physically very difficult for him. Emotionally and spiritually he has a bit of maturing to do, so any big life lessons in those areas pretty much went over his head.

Still, I thought this was a fabulous picture. There was an official Trek photographer who took over 7000 pictures over the 4 day experience and then put together a wonderful slide show for a youth fireside last Sunday. This was one of the pictures in the slide show, and it got a big laugh from the 200+ kids and their parents in attendance.

It is interesting to note, that Ethan's supply bucket where he kept all his stuff during Trek, has not been unpacked since July due to a misunderstanding about when and where to pick it up. We actually just retrieved the 5 gallon bucket after the fireside on Sunday. It's currently in the back of the car. The thought that these socks are somewhere in that bucket makes me want to dump the whole thing without even opening it.

At the very least, I think Ethan should be the one to open and unpack the bucket. But these socks will NOT see the inside of my nice washing machine.

Garbage day is tomorrow.

I Lost 21 Pounds in One Day!

For years I've been saving old blue jeans with the idea that I would one day use them to make darling quilts for my boys. Whenever Robert or any of the boys wore out a pair of jeans, they got stacked on the shelf in a closet. Wednesday I looked at the shelf and asked myself an important question: Am I really going to take the time to cut up each of these pairs of jeans into useable squares that can then be used to make a quilt?

The answer was a resounding NO!

The decision to part ways with the stacks of jeans (a 21 pound stack of jeans, no less) was quite freeing. I no longer had a dreaded project hanging over my head and I was about to get a whole closet shelf back. It felt great.

However, I didn't want to throw the jeans in the garbage. It seemed like such a waste to relegate the stack to a landfill. And I couldn't give them to Goodwill. As if someone would actually pay money for jeans with holes in the knees! I decided to offer my stack to my Facebook friends, but shockingly, there were no takers. (Well, I did have one friend from Wyoming express interest).

Finally I posted them for free on Craigslist and I found a taker.

I was surprised that I didn't have more interest in my 21 pound pile of jeans. After all, there are a plethora of crafts one could make from old jeans. The word du jour is "repurposing." Or, if you prefer, "upclycling."

A quick google search turned up online instructions for using old jeans to make not just quilts, but wallets, purses, a kindle case cover, a notebook cover, a lunch sack, baby bibs, an apron, Christmas stockings, a vest (or at least that is what she's calling it), and this amazing, but very heavy looking dress.

I was impressed, however, with all the footwear you could make repurposing old jeans.

These slippers seemed pretty comfy, but for the life of me I could not find directions to make them. (Not that I'd have any old jeans for the project anyway...)

Not sure what to say about these slippers.

A creative use of pockets for sure!

For the baby in your life, these cute little booties.

For sale on Etsy, these cute mary janes.

I could get excited about these, maybe. But again, I'm all out of old jeans. 21 pounds lighter!!!

Thank You

Thank you to those who called or e-mailed to make sure I was doing OK. Apparently my not blogging for a few days is unusual enough that some of you worried I had spiraled down into a abysmal state.

I have not.

In fact, with the start of school I've been relishing my kid-free time. I've also been repeatedly walking by the bathrooms and marveling over the fact they are still sparkly clean and fresh smelling. (The happiness this brings could keep me going for months.)

I spent the last few weeks of summer vacay reading up a storm. Now that school has started, I'm cleaning up the house from the mess that was created while I read and blissfully ignored dumped out legos, unflushed toilets, and unfortunately, piles of wet towels.

Don't worry though. The blog updates will start shortly. Maybe even today.