Here's to a great 2012!

I'm not big on New Years Resolutions, mainly because most people (including me) don't keep them. It seems to me that except for the thought that goes into them they're generally a waste of time. I do, however, think improving ourselves is a good thing. Any time of the day, week, month, or year. In light of that, I stumbled upon an improvement recently.

18 days ago I quit smoking! I didn't plan for it, didn't really intend to do it but a few weeks ago I knew a quit was coming so I bought a box of nicotine patches. On December 16th I ran out of cigarettes and remembered I had the patches so I put one on. I haven't smoked a cigarette since and haven't used a patch since December 25th.

Interestingly enough, I've had not major cravings. I've had fleeting thoughts of cigarettes,  a hand full of minor desires for one, and Saturday night I wanted a cigarette for several hours but other than that, it's not been bad. The last time I quit, on January 2nd of 2007, I had a similar reaction but did chew the heck out of cigarette-length cut straws! I had a few of those ready this time but haven't used one.

I thought it would be good to have a visual reminder of how much money I'm not spending on cigarettes so every day I put into a pretty jar one penny for each dollar I haven't spent on cigarettes.

The picture above, taken yesterday, represents 144 dollars not spent on cigarettes. Several people have asked what I'll do with the money I don't spend killing myself and I've given that quite a bit of thought.  Half will be saved to take myself on a nice vacation and the remainder will go to a local charity I've chosen. I think those are both good things to do with the money.

Fauxtato soup success!

Ohh, long time no blog, friends! Life has been crazy but in a good way and I haven't had much time for blogging. However, I made something so delicious I just have to post about it here. Trust me, you'll be glad I did, especially if you're a low carb eater who misses that good ol' comfort food we know as "potato soup"!

For years I've heard of using cauliflower to make something akin to potato soup but none of the recipes I'd found appealed to me. Until last night, that is. I received email with a recipe for a simple but delicious sounding baked potato soup and as I read the recipe, I realized I had all the ingredients to turn it into fauxtato soup, including the cauliflower. I was very excited and started the dish last night before I headed to bed.

Here's a picture of the delicious but easy to make soup I ended up with.

Uh huh, makes your mouth water, doesn't it? Trust me, it's as beautiful to the taste buds as it is to the eyes!

And it's very easy to make. In a nutshell, I put one head of chopped fresh cauliflower, some chopped onion, about 3/4 of a package of onion soup mix combined with 2 cups water (since I didn't have broth on hand and wasn't making any for a few days), several whole cloves of garlic, and some spices in a slow cooker and left it all night. In the morning I mashed about a third of it with a block of cream cheese and put that back in the cooker. When the cheese was melted and incorporated well, I put some in the bowl and topped it with chopped green onion, crispy beef bacon, cheddar cheese, and a bit of fresh cilantro.

That's it! A little bit of chopping, a tad of mixing, throw it in the slow cooker and leave it all night, a little mashing up of stuff in the morning, and voila, delicious fauxtato soup!

This will definitely be on my menus as our weather cools. I hope it's on yours, too.