"Oh, Cinderella!"

Today I made rice pudding, did the dishes, and swept the floor. Oh my, it seems my work is never done!

Oatmeal Carrot Chocolate Chip Cookies

I was ready to bake again. I had lots of oats that I knew would not be used up before winter was over (I try to use up all of my hot cereals like oatmeal and cream of wheat by spring since I generally only eat those hot cereals in the winter).

So, I decided to make oatmeal cookies and I found a recipe in my cookbook for oatmeal carrot cookies. I had chocolate chips in stock, so I decided to add those, too! I started to shred the carrots, but it was taking up too much time, so I opted for my electric chopper/grinder. Chopping created pieces that were too big, so I ground the carrots instead.

So how did they turn out? Better than I thought! The combination of carrots and chocolate was delicious. Who would've thought - chocolate covered carrots??




When I finished baking, I was ready for a snack with a glass of red wine to enjoy while "catching up" on a pile of papers to read! (But, I didn't eat all those cookies at once!)

Making Pizza

I love pizza and it's such an easy meal to make! We were running out of ingredients in the fridge, freezer and pantry, so I took inventory of what I had available to cook for dinner...flour, pizza sauce, cheese...and yeast in the freezer. I bought yeast before we moved to North Carolina and kept it in the freezer. Now was a better time than ever to cook with it! I found a recipe online for pizza dough and began the preparations around 3:00 to allow time for the dough to rise. It was easy to make: yeast dissolved in warm water, add the flour and a little bit of sugar; stir it together and keep it in the bowl covered in Saran Wrap at a temperature of about 75 degrees. Well, there's no way I'm turning the heat up in our house to 75 degrees, so I turned on the oven to about 200 and set the bowl on the range. The dough rose in an hour.




Then, I punched the dough, set it back on the range top for another 10 minutes and it was ready to prepare for the pizza sauce and cheese.




I pressed it into a pizza pie shape (I had a momma's helper)



spread the sauce and added the cheese - and voila, it was ready for the oven. At this step I realized it would have been more practical to press the pizza dough directly on the stone instead of pressing it on the cutting board and then trying to transfer it to the cooking stone. Now I know! Also, I spread oil, which was left-over from a jar of marinated artichokes, on the top of the stone for flavor on the pizza crust.



Thirty minutes later it was ready to eat. It turned out great, because everybody enjoyed it!

Changed the Name of the Blog

I changed the name of the blog from "Secret Habits of a Thin Person" to "A Journal of Food Habits" because that's what this is turning out to be: more of a journal than a "secret" on nutrition, dieting or health. After writing several blogs for this site I'm discovering that I don't really eat very healthy anyway. I think I manage my weight more on terms of small portions and keeping an active lifestyle. I've started to exercise again, too, so that helps! I hope you enjoy my blog!