Snow in Tampa?

 

Wesley Chapel, Florida (high 65, low 41)

 

For the past 8-10 days, the buzz on the local Tv channels, has been about the chance of snow in the Tampa area this coming week-end. 

Our favorite local meteorologist, Denis Phillips (Mr. Suspenders) had had some fun on Facebook, teasing us about this possibility.  It’s hard to believe, but there are actually people in Florida who have never seen snow.

Several of the computer models have been showing the possibility of snow Saturday night or early Sunday morning. 

 

The last time I saw snow in Tampa was 1977.  There was enough snow to accumulate on the ground and of course it caused a  lot of accidents that day. 

 

The following picture is from the 1977 snow.  Notice the hair style?

 

I guess we’ll see how the snow prediction plays out this week-end.   We will definitely have some cold temps for the next week and may not even get into the 70’s all week!   I know that doesn’t sound cold to you northerners, but for us it’s cold.  Florida cold always seems colder for some reason.  :)

 

We haven’t been doing anything exciting around here.  Our days are busy, and we don’t seem to find enough time to get everything done, but unfortunately we haven’t had the time to do any kayaking. 

We have been going to the gym most every day.  I’ve had some problems with my right shoulder and have been unable to do most of the upper body exercises.  I suspect have a bone spur that is causing rotator cuff pain.  I’ve been through 3 rotator cuff surgeries with Al, so I know the symptoms.

Al’s been pushing me to see a doctor and get a cortisone shot, but I’m trying to avoid that if I can.  For the time being, I’m self-treating.

I’m taking ibuprofen, and eating lots of fruits and veggies for the anti-inflammatory properties.  I’ve  also started taking curcumin/turmeric for the anti-inflammatory benefits, as well  as using Joint Flex Cream .  The pain seemed to improve when I started using Joint Flex, but it could have been all the other things I was doing.  Joint Flex is great stuff though, if any of you have any aches or pains.  You can get it at Walmart for about $13 I think.

Al is outside playing “cornhole” with a neighbor.  I think I’ll skip that until my shoulder is better.

 

We’ve been on our Vegan diet about 7 months now. 

I remember the first day we decided to give it a try.  We told ourselves, we would see if we could do it for just one day.  That was easy, so we went another day, and another.  It’s now become a permanent change I think.

I remember when we first met David and Sherry and found out they were vegan.  Al told me (many times) “I will never go vegan.  Don’t you ever  ask me to.”   We still laugh over that!

I never did ask him to.  I also had no intention of becoming vegan either….until I read the book “The China Study” and watched the video “Forks over Knives.”

We consider ourselves 99% vegan.  When we want something non-vegan, we have it, but we don’t do it all that often.  We like knowing we can eat whatever we want.  We try to get a lot of variety or fruits and veggies into our daily diet.  The Blendec blender makes it easy by making a smoothie every day.

We  found a new restaurant we can get a quick and inexpensive vegan meal.  It’s called Tijuana Flats.  We normally have a wheat quesadilla with black  or refried beans.  We don’t have cheese or sour cream on it and it’s delicious, especially with all their choices of hot sauce.  It’s nice to have a place we can go besides Subway.

When we first started eating vegan, the pounds dropped very quickly.  The longer we were vegan, the more variety of foods we found to eat and probably the more calories we consumed.  We both gained a few pounds back and then hit a plateau.

We’ve been watching the fat content a little more and substituting cooking with olive oil, to cooking with a veggie broth or Olive oil spray. 

Whether it’s because we’re going to the gym most every day, or the cooking, or both, but we’ve both lost a little more weight.  I hope the trend continues.

Al is down 18 pounds and I’m down 17.  We still have more to lose, but it’s been very easy and we still eat all we want, so we haven’t felt like we were “on a diet.”

Many people think all Vegans eat is tofu and vegetables.  I can tell you, that is far from all we eat.

We still have our favorite foods like taco’s, pizza, spaghetti, and lasagna.

We’ve learned to love new foods like, Red beans and Rice, veggie/potato scrambles (compliments of Sherry) and many bean dishes and soups.

The dish below has potatoes, onions, garlic, spinach and “sausage”.  It was yummy.

Here is the “sausage”  Another Light Life product.

We discovered Light Life products and they have given us back our “ground beef.”  I don't believe anyone could tell the difference between this and ground beef when mixed in spaghetti, or lasagna.  The taste and texture is the same. The grocery stores (except Walmart) carry these products too, so we can  get them anywhere.

We’re hoping our health has improved with all the exercise and diet changes.  I guess we’ll know when Al gets his blood work done in the next month or so. As a test, he quit taking his Lipitor (with the doctors approval) a few months ago.  The blood work will tell if he will be able to stay off of it or not.

 

I’ll report back with pictures if we get any snow!

Change of Plans

Wesley Chapel, Florida

Nothing much happening around here, but we did see this guy who found a great way to spend an afternoon.  I’ll bet it was a bit cooler up there.

This is called a Powered Para-motor.   If you look carefully you can see the person has something similar to  a fan with a motor strapped to his back.

The motor is not very powerful and is quiet.   The motor is used to push them once they are airborne.

When you are taking off, you have to run to get the parachute filled with air.  Once the parachute is filled with air, the pilot starts to ascend.  The motor doesn’t help with the take-off, but once airborne, the motor pushes you around in the sky.  You have handles for steering.

Their motto is “low and slow”.   They like to go slow and low so that they can enjoy the sites.  If the motor dies they won’t come crashing down.  The main thing that causes them to crash are wind gusts, but for the most part they are pretty safe.

Al and I nearly bought two of these para-motors a few years ago.  They were about $7000 back then.   We would have needed two and it just wasn’t in the budget at that point.  We’ve always thought we’d love to do it.   Maybe someday we will.

We’ve been hanging out around here trying to stay out of the heat.  Sherry and David came over the other night and we had a nice visit with them.  Baxter really liked Sherry.

Here is a cute picture of Bax sleeping on the dash in his bed.  Do you think he may have outgrown it a little bit?

I woke him up when I got the camera out and he was yawning here.

He’s a big old boy.

 

We’re still doing well with our new vegan diet.  I’ve lost 7 pounds now.   I’m not sure where Al is. …8 or 9 I think.  I have never lost weight this painlessly before.  We eat as often as we like, and as much as we want.  We try to get in plenty of fruits and vegetables.

The easiest way for us is with smoothies.

This one just had fruit in it, but usually we throw in a big batch of spinach to make it a bit healthier.  It changes the pretty pink color to green, but the taste isn’t much different.  They are surprisingly good.

Sherry told us about Tofu Crumbles the other night.  Al found these at a local Publix grocery store for $3.69. 

I had seem them before but was a little leery of them, until Sherry and David gave us their seal of approval.

Here is what they look like.  They seemed to grow once I took them out of the box.

I mixed up some dry taco seasoning, heated it up in the microwave and we had instant tacos.  No messy cooking of the ground beef.   I substituted the cheese with hummus, spinach for the lettuce (because it’s healthier) and we had wonderful healthy tacos.  We only ate 4 tacos so we probably have enough left for 6-7 more. 

 

The new driveshaft disconnect part arrived yesterday.  We’re taking the truck back Saturday to get that put in, and then the new truck will be ready to tow.

So, with that in mind, we’re going to tow it!  Yeah…we have plans to get out of dodge.  Mom has been doing better (knock on wood), so we are hoping we can get away for a while.

I think we’re going to head over to Vero Beach (east coast of Florida).   We can stay for $3 a night on our Thousand Trails membership and it’s close enough that we can get there quickly.  We’re ready for some beach time.  We may even stop in at Kissimmee Prairie on the way back.

Almost a “toad”

Wesley Chapel, Florida

Our new truck is still not ready to be towed behind the motor home.  It appears the drive-shaft disconnect part  did not fit, so we will have to wait for another one to be sent.

It’s no big deal, except for the fact that we had to drive 40 miles over to Clearwater to pick the truck up.  We didn’t want to leave it there for who knows how long.    They did get the Air Force One braking system, and the tow bracket installed, as well as all the wiring done.  The only thing left to do is the driveshaft disconnect.

 

We are almost at the end of week number three of our new vegan lifestyle.    We have not missed meat or dairy products, and we are having no cravings because we can pretty much eat/graze all day long. 

We’ve been discovering more and more delicious foods that not only can we eat, but that we like to eat.  Who knew there was so much great food out there that didn’t have meat or dairy?  You get stuck in a rut of eating the same things over and over and there is so much variety out there if you just take the time to look.

 

Here are a few of our favorite new finds.

We bit the bullet and bought a super high power  Blendtec blender .   It was not cheap,  at $360,  but we felt it would help us to eat more healthy fruits and vegetables.   They had a demo day at Sam’s club so we drove over to look at it in person.  We could have gotten it on Amazon for $369, but I wanted  to actually see it before we paid that much money.

There are basically two top blenders that have the power needed to do what we need it to do.  The Blendtec and the Vitamix.

There are numerous You Tube videos comparing the VitaMix blender to the Blendtec blender.

Which is better?   

Both have have big motors (although the motor in the  Blendtec is larger) , both are extremely powerful and both have a 7 year warranty.  Both are expensive.

The following is a video comparing the two blenders.  They both did a great job.

The reason we decided against the VitaMix,  was it’s size.   It’s over 20 inches tall, and wouldn’t fit under my kitchen cabinet.  I plan on keeping it on the counter top so that I’ll use it often.  The base is a lot larger and heavier too. Even though the Blentec is smaller and lighter weight, it gets the job done as well as the VitaMix.   For us, smaller is always better since we live  in a RV.    We also like that it has preprogrammed buttons for most uses.  If you want to make ice cream, you hit the ice cream button, soup, the soup button, or smoothie’s the smoothie button.  There are quite a few different buttons for whatever you want to make, plus a pulse button, where you can raise or lower the speed of the blades. 

We made a great soup in the Blendtec.  It’s so powerful that the friction actually heats things up if you blend it long enough (90 whole seconds).  So I made a quick and easy soup with:  tomatoes, onion, cilantro, taco seasoning mix, avocado, garlic, and jalapeno.  You hit the “soup” button, it does it’s thing automatically,  and when it stops,  you throw in a handful of corn chips, hit pulse and it chops the corn chips up into the hot soup.  Yummy!   The soup is thick, spicy and delicious.  When you’re done, you put a little water and a drop of dish soap into the blender, hit pulse a few times and it washes itself!

I also tried a blended drink last night for happy hour.   I’m happy to report that it makes a great frozen mixed drink too!

I’ve gotten quite a few comments from people who are either already on a vegetarian/vegan diet, or who have thought about it.  Some of you said you were interested in changing your diet, but didn’t know how, or what to eat.

Here are a few of our favorite new food discoveries.  It’s really not too hard, if you just take a little time to discover all the wonderful plant based food that is out there.

 

Hummus is our new best friend.

Yummy.  It’s made with garbanzo/chick peas.  Doesn’t sound good, does it?

Trust me, it’s thick, creamy and delicious.  There are many flavors.  We like the spicy varieties.   We spread it on tortilla shells, for wraps, or bread or pita’s for sandwiches.  It’s also good as a dip for chips or veggies.  You don’t have to be vegan to enjoy it.  It does have olive oil in it and many vegans try to stay away from oils.  We don’t.  We figure we’re doing very well the way we are right now.  Oils, salt and liquor are not taboo for us!

We like pizza but sometimes don’t want to take the time to make a home made pizza crust.  I don’t like the looks of any that I’ve seen in the stores.  We can no longer get the frozen pizzas at the grocery store, which were a staple in our old life.

We discovered these  brown rice tortilla shells in store demo.   We found them in the freezer section.  They are delicious as a pizza crust.  We throw one in the Nu-Wave for 5 minutes to crisp it up, then toss on the pizza ingredients and cook another 5 minutes of so.  So GOOD!

 

 

One of the ingredients we put on our pizza is this “cheese”.

It is delicious and comes out gooey and creamy on your pizza.    We had been using an almond milk “cheese” until we tried this at the demo.  This is much better, although it looks ugly in the package.

Another thing we love are lentils.

I made tacos with them.  I just added some dry taco seasoning to some cooked lentils.  I put them on taco shells with lettuce/spinach and some hummus.  VERY good!

And finally….my cute kitten picture of the day.

I guess Mr. Baxter is now a year old, so maybe he’s not a kitten anymore!

Eating Out-Vegan Style

Wesley Chapel, Florida

During our morning walk yesterday, we saw two hot air balloons heading our way.  Unfortunately they landed (or crashed) before they got to us.  I was hoping they would fly right overhead.

 

Although Al and I are discovering many new foods and ways to prepare them, eating out is a bit more of a challenge. 

We have always eaten out a lot….mostly because I hate to cook and food tastes so much better when someone cooks it.  

In the two weeks since we began our Vegan Experiment, we’ve only eaten out twice.  That’s some sort of a record for us.   At first we never left the house without bringing some snacks with us.  We were so afraid we’d get hungry and get tempted at a fast food restaurant.   Now, we’ve relaxed more and realize that the foods we are eating keep us satisfied and that we can actually pick up snacks at a convenience store if we had to.

One of our favorite restaurants is Sweet Tomatoes.  It’s like  a big salad bar on steroids. 

They have veggies, salads, home made soups and pastas, and all sorts of breads.  We wanted to take Mom out for lunch, and our choices were limited. 

At Sweet Tomatoes, we knew we could fill up on raw vegetables and salads, but we weren’t sure we would be satisfied or feel that we got our moneys worth.  We decided to give it a try.

I had to pass by some of my usual favorite things, but fortunately there were plenty of other healthy and tasty choices, many of which I had never even tried before.

Al passed up his favorite, which is their cheesy pizza bread.  He certainly could have handled a few pieces of the pizza, but he chose not to.  Good boy!

We both grabbed a baked potato, but then couldn't find anything to put on top of it.  I got the idea to spread a little of the delicious vegetarian soup on top of the potato and wow…was that delicious.  I think it was even better than with sour cream, butter,  and bacon bits!

We all three stayed vegan (even Mom)  and we all left feeling very satisfied and slightly stuffed. 

Our vegan experiment at Sweet Tomatoes worked out just fine.  We will definitely go back.  Now….can we still go to our other favorite, Outback?  

Mom is interested in our new way of eating and is giving it a try.  She has so many health problems, so maybe this will help her.  

 

After we ate, we took Mom to a local Nutrition S’mart  (health food store)  and got her some groceries.   It’s a little more difficult for her because she needs easy things that she can fix when she doesn’t feel well…..which is most of the time.   I really think a better diet would do wonders for her.  She is like we were two weeks ago….what the heck do you eat anyway?? 

It started pouring rain while we were inside, but fortunately it was a fast moving downpour, and quit shortly.  At that point we decided to forego any other shopping and get home before the bottom fell out again.  

The weather has been normal for Florida in the summer.  Hot, humid and rainy.  There is no drought going on here.   In fact we are closely watching two tropical storms. Ernesto is expected to become a hurricane and stay to the south of us, Florence is right behind, with a couple more trying to develop.   September is the big month for hurricane development and it starts to heat up in August.    Hurricane seasons ends November 30th…4 more months.

We really need to get out and do something fun.  It’s been way too long.  We’re close to some beautiful rivers for kayaking and there are some nice beaches nearby.  

The driveshaft disconnect part is in, so next week, we’re taking the new truck to Clearwater to have it installed, the tow bracket put on and the braking system transferred over.  Once that’s done we’ll be able to tow the new truck behind the motor home.   Not that really matters at this point.