Okra & Cupcakes

Hey y'all.  I don't have much time today.  Midterm grades are due and I'm behind this week already and Monday isn't over.  I gained a pound when I weighed on Saturday which came as no surprise since I ate too much the weekend before.  I had a rude awakening today when I went to Belk and found myself looking for bigger jeans and flowy clothes to cover myself up.  I remember when I was proud to go shopping.  There are changes that can be made of course but it sure is frustrating to exercise as much as I do and do as well as I do during the week to have weight just piling on.  I have to get motivation for the weekends somehow.  Back on again today of course.

As most southern women tend to do, I love fried okra.  Often times, people think that the only way to have okra is if it's battered and fried but that's actually not true.  I like to have it baked as well. Even Cassandra who is not the biggest vegetable lover will eat it done up and seasoned in the oven.  All I did was take a bag of frozen okra, place it on a cookie sheet sprayed with Pam, added some salt and Flavor God's Everything Spicy season and let it go until it was crispy. I broiled it some at the end for added crunch.  It was delicious and the whole bag was 120 calories.  The spice really kicked it up a notch as well.

I neglected to give my mom a birthday shout out last week.  Her birthday was on Thursday.  Happy Birthday Mom! I made a few lower cal recipes, my Dad smoked a turkey and then for dessert we had diet cupcakes.  They were actually delicious.  I've featured the chocolate ones before.  All you do is take a box of cake mix, mix it with one canned diet coke and bake like normal.  I also added some sugar free frosting.  For the strawberry cupcakes, I mixed strawberry cake mix and diet cream soda for a strawberry-cream effect. Both were delicious and well under 200 calories.  They were big too!

Alabama had an amazing win on Saturday and I celebrated way too hard.  I hope they can make just as big of a statement on Saturday when they play Arkansas.

I hope y'all have a great week.

Until next time!