Ah, Agave...

Agave nectar (ah-gaw-vay) should be in your pantry. I never thought I'd be using anything from any kind of cactus besides aloe vera gel, but this stuff tops my list of "must have" ingredients. It is sweeter than sugar, and works anywhere you'd use honey or syrup or other sweeteners. It is recommended for diabetics or those at risk for diabetes because it's said to not cause the spike in blood sugar that regular sugars do. For more detailed information, go here. You can find it in any health food type stores, and Costco even carries it sometimes. It does cost more than honey, but in my view, food is part of your health insurance, so spend money on things that will positively impact your health and life.

Here's one recipe I'm making often these days that includes agave. It has eggs in it, but is dairy free if you use milkless chocolate chips. Cookies I don't mind my kids sneaking. And your house will smell heavenly while they're baking.

Chocolate Oatmeal Cookie Bites

1/2 c. unsweetened applesauce

1/2 c. sucanat (Now don't freak out, it's just the fancy name for evaporated cane juice crystals, find it cheapest in the bulk food section of your local health food store. It's brown and grainy looking.)

1 large egg

1 tsp. vanilla

1 TB agave (use honey if you must)

1 TB olive oil

1 c. whole wheat flour

1 & 1/2 c. rolled oats

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 TB cinnamon

3/4 c. dark or semi-sweet chocolate chips (my kids like the miniature chips in these)

Oven 350 degrees

Mix applesauce and sucanat until creamy

Add egg, vanilla, agave, and olive oil, mix well

Add all dry ingredients until just combined

Add chocolate chips

Bake about 10-12 minutes (taste test the first batch to see if they're dry or just right once they've cooled, and then adjust the baking time if necessary)

With fiber, protein, healthy fats, and no post-snack high then crash, these are more filling than regular cookies, which will keep everyone from eating their normal dozen or so. Don't expect the taste and mouth feel of regular chocolate chip cookies, call them something else if that helps, but these are sooo good, and there's not a guilty moment from shopping to last bite.

I Don't Get It: Diet Food Ads Featuring Already Skinny People

Special K cereal may well help you lose weight if you eat it twice a day then eat a sensible dinner. I'm not bored enough to try to find out. But these ladies they feature in their ads that can't do up the buttons on their shirts or are horrified when they look at the scale (um, try removing your giant 3XL robe before weighing yourself), I'm pretty sure are somewhere between regular skinny and bone scary skinny when they set foot in the real world. They look scrawny on tv. That's skinny. If you're going to show a "before" or someone who desperately needs your weight-reducing cereal or yogurt, show someone who actually has some excess fat to lose.

This is when I hate television. In their freak show world, tv and film folks are out of touch with real people, including those who are at and maintain a normal, healthy weight through normal, healthy means. And they're convincing the masses that what is on tv is real, and worse, right.

Back pre-kids when I was auditioning for tv and film stuff on a regular basis, I got a little bit sucked into the weight-obsessed vortex that is the entertainment industry. I, at the time, was hovering right around 100 lbs, which at 5 foot 1 is little but not skinny. My thighs still touched, and my Nordic ancestry still gave me some extra, uh, energy storage in the tummy area. But I'd go to auditions, about a size 4 or sometimes a 2, and be the biggest one there. I actually thought I was chubby. Now I find that both hilarious and a little bit sad. I was at a healthy weight for my height. I was not operating in the real world though, and I realize that, especially when I pay attention to what I'm seeing on tv now.

Don't tell me, lady with collar bones I could cut myself on, that you need any weight loss product. Give me a break, woman who's ribs I can count through her shirt, that the holidays caused you to pack on some extra weight. A little perspective and reality would go a long way with the people peddling diet foods. Skinny people don't need to lose weight. And I don't need to have my pants precariously perched on my jutting hip bones to be happy. I'm all for healthy weight loss, don't get me wrong. But can we shoot for health, wellness and peace of mind? I might actually watch the commercials selling that. Heck, I'd audition for 'em too.

Vegetari-raw-vegan-lacto-kindahealthyarians...?

Ah, forget it. We eat weird. Vegetarian, yes. Sometimes vegan (no dairy or animal products at all), nearly entirely raw foodists for about a year, no deep-fried stuff, no high-fructose corn syrup, no hydrogenated oil, carbonated drinks maybe a few times a year, no bleached flour... we've experimented with a lot of different kinds of eating, for health, and sometimes pure curiosity. I'm sure we're not through with trying different ways of eating and hopefully improving our health and well-being. That's not to say we are pillars of health and health food, we ate lots of unhealthy stuff over Christmas, especially, but we do try.

I get asked questions about the things I do all the time, because let's face it, we're a little off the beaten path in more ways than one over here. But far and away, the question I get asked most is "So what do you guys eat?". So my question is this, would anyone care to know? Recipes, individual ingredients that you might not know about or know how to use... not that I'm wanting to do a "food blog", but I could include posts about it since food is kind of a big part of every day life. Tell me what you think, friends. I'm hungry.

M-y-y-y-y-y Fridge! Busted.

I can't decide if I used to have better luck choosing great long lasting high quality things to buy, or if people just make junk nowadays. Here's a list of a few of the things that don't work/are broken/need repairing in my home right now:

Fridge- leaks water mostly out of the freezer side, I regularly defrost as suggested by the THREE repair guys that have charged me a fortune to tell me that little tidbit of info. Apparently there's nothing wrong with it that their crack investigative skills could find in the 3 minutes they each spent shining flashlights onto the suspect parts of my freezer. Now the flooring underneath the fridge is buckled, and probably starting a nice layer of mold. (If you aren't familiar with my love of mold, go back to the very beginning of my blog.)

Dishwasher- makes creepy, nearly vulgar sounds as it half-way cleans my dishes. Sometimes it withholds cleaning altogether. It just takes days off. It won't turn on until it's good and ready.

Dryer- the piping at the back will not stay attached to the dryer. Duct tape, fancy attachments and swearing at it have not worked (Mormon swear words, of which my non-Mormon readers can request samples). If there is a single smidgen of lint in the lint trap, it will not dry in less than 2 cycles. It's awesome.

Garage Door Opener- it is currently only functioning as a blood pressure raiser. It opens with all buttons, but does not close with the car buttons, and only with the wall one if you stand there and hold it down. I have smashed all records for backing out, turning off the car, locking the kids in, running into the garage, holding down the *#!O~# button, shutting the house door, sprinting to the front door, locking it behind me and diving for the car as I unlock it remotely. It has been this way since August.

Van- did you notice how I said car all through that last bit? I'm still in denial about the whole van thing. And this van, I hate with a white hot passion. It works ok, I just had to get that out there. I digress...

Vacuum- I shouldn't even waste the electricity. I spend half the time vacuuming over stuff and the other half picking up the crud it leaves behind, by hand. The bags get changed regularly, the filter is clean... I'd say it sucks, but it really, really doesn't.

My Mom had the same waffle iron for 40 years. She had this one mixer that worked for ages. I used to get birthday presents that wouldn't break the first time I played with them, something my kids experience less and less often. Is it just me? Am I just a really really unwise or unlucky consumer? I want things to work, and to last. Well, except for the companies that made all this junk.

Happy New Tuesday!

I've never been a big "New Year's" person. Sometimes I go to bed before midnight. Sometimes I don't make any resolutions. Next Tuesday is still just next Tuesday, and life doesn't change because I hang a new calendar on my wall. I guess I used to think maybe a new year brought something new with it besides a number change in the date, but really, it doesn't. The year matters in terms of births, and other historic events, but ups and downs happen, regardless of the year and what you set out to do or decided ought to occur.

For instance, at the start of 2008, I'm sure I had some things in mind that I wanted to accomplish. By mid-February, all of that had melted away, and all I wanted to do was make it through the day. By the end of March, I just wanted my kids to stay alive. By summer, I wanted somewhere to call home. Any notion I had had of doing something great with the year was entirely vapor by then. You don't know what you are going to be called on to do in any given year. 2008 was particularly rough for me, for our family. 2009 was hard and wonderful in totally different ways, just not as outwardly dramatic. I have hopes for this year, but mostly I just hope to be the person I know I can and should be through whatever is thrown my way. And it would be fine with me if what's thrown my way is solid gold bricks. You know, just for a change of pace.