Banner Day!

Yesterday was a banner day, energy and productivity-wise!!! Yay!! I woke up feeling tired, but nonetheless refreshed, after a not-so-great night of sleep. I told a friend, "I'm going to stay in my room and probably in bed alllll day and rest." About a half hour later I was up, had taken a shower, and was running errands with my dad. Friday and Saturday were sort of exciting for me, because I stocked up on gluten food that I can eat! I got some almond and cashew butter (cashew butter is amazing; it tastes like a candy bar!), some quinoa pasta, a soup to try, turkey burgers, goat cheese, and maybe one or two other things I'm not remembering at the moment. Tons of veggies, too, since those are easy to make and healthy.

Anyway, back to yesterday. In the afternoon (after my lunch of apples with my new nut butters and a few other miscellaneous items) I prepared and sent some medical forms out and helped my dad with some financial stuff. This year since I have some spare time I told my dad I would make an Excel spreadsheet for him so that it simplifies his tax processes at the end of the year, which makes filling out my FAFSA a whooooole lot simpler!

Then, *drumroll* I helped my mom make dinner. We were shuffling pots and pans around so many of the burners it wasn't funny!! The menu was barbecued chicken, salt potatoes, and fresh sauteed green beans. The hitch was we didn't have any barbecue sauce that wasn't loaded with high fructose corn syrup. Soooo... I made ketchup using a recipe from Skinny Taste, and then used my homemade ketchup to make barbecue sauce. (I used this recipe, but I had to modify it insanely. I didn't have the ingredients to make the sauce from Skinny Taste, although I know it would have been better if I had.) The salt potatoes turned out fantastic! I'd never heard of salt potatoes but apparently they are a trade-mark food of Upstate New York. You use about 12 ounces of salt for 4.25 pounds of potatoes and boil the potatoes in saltwater until tender. If you carefully lift the potatoes out of the saltwater, the salt will dry on the potatoes and coat them. Most amazing potatoes ever!! Deliciously salty on the outside, and slightly bland but oh-so-creamy on the inside. Erie County Farms sells bags of them if you are interested. Oh, and the salt comes in the bag, so you don't need to measure out your own salt *cough* like I did before opening our bag...... =) And then after dinner, I made cookies for my dad. Apparently it's the best batch of cookies I've ever made... but I can't eat any because I am gluten, sugar, and dairy free for another 25 days :(

After all the activity of the day yesterday, I've been more tired today than I have been in a few weeks, but I'm sure with rest I will rebound. :)

Finally, I have a shameless plug to make. I'm a member of a site called Scholarship Points. I haven't used this site too much to be honest, but I recently started paying attention to it and recognized that the system is a lot easier to use than a number of other ones. How it works is each time you log in and complete activities, you earn points. If I refer people and they visit or join the website, I earn points. If you join, I'll be overjoyed, because I'll earn 225 points, hehe. But today all I am asking you readers to do is to click the link at the end of this post, and for every click I will earn 25 points. That shouldn't be too hard to do. So, all you've gotta do is make a few minuscule movements with your fingertips. Click the following link so I can earn points, please! I'm spending them on entering a $10,000 scholarship award drawing =) http://bit.ly/SYyRXg