Sweet Tooth Tuesdays: Pumpkin Cookies

Just last week, my friends and I decided we'd have a cookie night every Tuesday night.  Which sounds awesome, right?  Except Friday, my husband and I went paleo.  No more chocolate.  No more caramel.  No more brownies.  And no. more. chocolate.  How do you make cookies without chocolate?  I think I've only made two kinds in my whole life without chocolate: snickerdoodles (not paleo) and Christmas sugar cookies (also not paleo).  So, scrambling to find a recipe that is a cookie, but also paleo, I found this by way of Pinterest: Paleo Pumpkin Cookies and created Sweet Tooth Tuesdays!  So now every Tuesday, you can check back and find another paleo dessert recipe I tried that week.

You all are about to become tasty goodness...

The ingredient list for the Paleo Pumpkin Cookies says you can use either pumpkin, butternut squash, or sweet potatoes.  Since I still have cans upon cans of pumpkin that I never used during autumn, I decided to use those.

We mixed the dry and wet ingredients separately, as instructed.

Let's be honest, one person did more mixing than the other...

After baking them for an eternity of 20 minutes, they came out looking like this:

Just a darker, tastier version of the batter.

And boom!  Cookie Night was served.  They tasted really good, especially to someone who hadn't had a lot of sugar over the last few days.  (These cookies take 2-4 tablespoons of maple syrup, and I, of course, opted for the 4 tablespoons.)  Even our dear, skeptical friend Max enjoyed them!

Proof that Max is enjoying them, even if a bag is in his face!

This recipe was certainly encouraging, and I can't wait to try what else I've picked out for my other Sweet Tooth Tuesdays!

Thin Mints

Yesterday began my venture into the three months of eating only Paleo.  And my dear, sweet husband has agreed to play along at least for a month.  (He claims he only agreed to two weeks, but I heard him say a month, so a month it is!)  I've seen a lot of discrepancies between different Paleo diets, so here are the guidelines we are following:

• No grains of any kind (that includes corn [a cereal grain] and rice)
• No beans or legumes (including peanuts and soy)
• No dairy (waaaaaaaaah!!!)
• No processed sugar
• No chemicals added to "food"

So I can eat:

• Meat
• Fruit
• Vegetables
• Seeds and Nuts (which includes Quinoa)
• Maple Syrup and Honey

And my husband and I have agreed on a compromising:

• Wine
• Tea

We've got a meal plan for the first week (which I'll post later in case you're interested.  But as a farewell to our favorite foods, here's a picture of our Thin Mint milkshakes:

So minty and so chocolatey...

Goodbye, my minty, chocolatey loves!

10. Florida

(Note: I shall be referring to my husband as H to protect his privacy just a teensy bit.)

Despite myself, I still somehow manage to get things accomplished on my bucket list.  Like crossing off three states from my bucket list!

8.           Delaware

9.           Georgia

10.         Florida

11.         Hawaii

12.         Idaho

13.         Illinois

14.         Indiana

15.         Iowa

16.         Kansas

17.         Kentucky

18.         Louisiana

19.         Maine

Since I haven’t mentioned it before, my rule for crossing off states is either I must live in them or specifically visit them.  No layovers or hours of driving through.  (I’m looking at you, Georgia!)  Kentucky was easy to cross off because I live here.  And the Indiana trip is a story for another day.  So: Florida.

I chose to make 2. Visit Every State part of my bucket list, because I really wanted (and still want) to see the change in flora and fauna.  I love how living in a large country provides massively diverse landscapes.  But I wasn’t going to Florida to view landscapes; I was going to visit family.

The idea of going on this trip caused me a bit of anxiety.  You see, we were going to visit H’s grandmother and her husband.  H’s grandmother is a wonderful person, and so is, I imagine, her husband.  But he has Alzheimer’s.  I’m not ashamed to say that the prospect of spending a week with them made me uneasy simply because of that fact.  The truth is my own grandmother had Alzheimer’s or dementia or a series of small strokes (the doctors never were too clear), and I knew how heart-breaking and cruel a disease it could be.  And since she had died in December, I wasn’t looking forward to dealing with it again so soon.

When we got there, my fears weren’t assuaged.  H’s step-grandfather acted basically how I expected.  He didn’t know the house we were in was the house he lived in.  He didn’t recognize H’s family, even though he’d been a part of it for nearly 25 years.  And worst of all, most of the time he didn’t even know that H’s grandmother was his wife.  (A few times he said I looked like his daughter, but he doesn’t even have any daughters.)  It made me sad, and my heart broke for H’s grandmother.  How could she live like this day in and day out?

H’s grandmother is quite the cheerful personality, and whether or not she actually feels cheerful, she radiates it just the same.  I was baffled as to how she could deal.  But then one day, I started looking at all of her photo albums.  (She’s basically scrapbooked since 1982.)  I really love looking at pictures.  It’s more fun if I know the people in them, but I don’t have to.  And the older the better!  As I was looking through them, I started seeing lots of pictures of her and her husband, and I thought, “Oh no, this is just going to make me even more upset, seeing them before his Alzheimer’s.”  And for a while it did upset me.  But as I kept looking at the pictures, something changed.  For some reason, seeing that she and her husband had had this whole life together before the Alzheimer’s really comforted me. 

I don’t know if I’ll ever completely know why seeing the photographs reassured me.  But I think the fact that they had this entire life and love together before Alzheimer’s, and that not even the Alzheimer’s could change that past had something to do with it.  I’ve had this idea in my head that who you are is determined by how you are when you die.  If you’re successful when you die, then you die a success.  If you were successful, but then towards the end of your life you had a failed comeback or something, then you die a failure.  If you die with Alzheimer’s, then you die tragically.  I’m not sure I think that anymore.  Yes, H’s step-grandfather’s disease is ugly, twisted, and just plain mean.  But that doesn’t change how many people loved him, were loved by him, and still love him.  Even if he can’t remember.

H and his step-grandfather waving to neighbors.

Excuses, Excuses

Ah ha!  I see you've noticed I haven’t written in two months.  Well, it’s true, you've got me.  This task, like so many others, scares me.  So I abandoned it.  An entire month in 2013 has gone by, and I haven’t even remotely started working on my bucket list.  Most of my list for the year isn't something that requires a lot of hard work.  Eating fruits?  I love to eat!  Get a deep tissue massage?  Why, I should be jumping at the chance!  But instead I've completely shut down.  Why?

The first part of my bucket list I started working on in 2013 was taking a walk every single day (unless the weather would kill me).  It was so easy to do at first.  My husband and I were in Florida from Jan. 2 until the 8, so the weather was no hindrance.  And then we came home and got puppies.

I’d like to think the puppies were the reason I stopped walking, and I’m sure if we hadn't gotten them I would have lasted a few more days before coming up with a different excuse.

Why do I do this to myself?  In all honesty, I don’t really know.  If I was desperate to find the root of the problem, I could always go to therapy and find out, but I’m not all that interested in the why.  I just want to stop doing it.  I thought making a list would help me break things down into smaller bits and seem less intimidating, and at first it did.  But then, I don’t know why, it seemed big and scary again.  So I shut down.  That’s just how I react to big intimidating things: big papers, recitals (ahem…), planning weddings.  The list goes on and on.

So I suppose that now my first goal needs to be to start with 36. Learn how to deal with anxieties better.  Unfortunately that’s the most intimidating because it takes away my number one excuse to not accomplish anything.  I know some people are inspired by knowing that their success is entirely up to them.  But I’m not.  I know I’m an incredibly unreliable person when it comes to taking on tasks.  And now if I remove my anxieties and still fail, it will only prove that I was right and I am an unreliable, lazy person.  And then how will I accomplish my bucket list?

But here is a picture of my cutest excuses to cheer everyone up!

Penny is on the left and Gizmo is on the right.  (Such good girls!)