New Month, New Me

Happy December 1st everybody!  I'm so happy November is over!  It was really not a good month for me.  I mentioned most of the things that went wrong during the month in my last post but, here's a quick recap.

• Sick for the first 2 weeks of the month
• Stressed-induced ulcer
• Depression
• My body refused fish of any kind.  The only animal protein I could tolerate was eggs, yogurt and cheese
• I only made it to the gym a handful of times
• The family's diet was seriously horrible due to everything that was going wrong with me

I'm happy  to say that I'm physically and mentally better, and I have reduced my stress by half.  My body is now allowing me occasional fish, I'm changing the family's diet back to normal as of today, and I'm headed back to the gym on Tuesday {I would be going back tomorrow but, Christmas doesn't shop for itself}

I don't know if this is happening everywhere in the world but, where I live, many of the fat free foods are being taken out of the local supermarkets.  My local Publix no longer carries light soy milk.  I could understand if they only carried the Greenwise Market {Publix's brand} brand light soy milk and no longer carry Silk or any other company's light soy milk but, they have taken every brand off the shelves.   I also have difficulty finding fat free coffee creamer {I buy it when I want to treat myself and don't want to pay coffee shop prices.}  I think it's interesting that while everything you read is talking about how unhealthy Americans are and how much we need to reduce our fat and calorie intakes, Publix is taking the healthier options OFF the shelves.  Does this make sense to you??!!??

So, in short, I now shop at Wal-Mart for my light soy milk and I make my own coffee creamer.  After Publix upset me by not carrying any flavor other than French Vanilla in the fat free creamers I started searching the internet for how to make my own.  Every website had the same basic recipe.  This would probably be a great gift for the coffee aficionado in your life.  

Ingredients
1 14 oz can fat free sweetened condensed milk
2 cups skim milk

Directions

1. Whisk together

You can add flavorings to it.  Here are a few links that have a bunch of flavoring ideas.  

Mrs. Happy Homemaker: 20 Different Flavors
Deliciously Organic: Homemade Coffee Creamer
She Knows: Fall Flavored Coffee Creamer 

Another great thing about this recipe?  The calorie count!  1 tablespoon {without any flavoring added} has 21.3 calories and 4.6 grams of sugar.  It makes 3.75 cups/ 60 tablespoons.  

For my first rial I made a pumpkin chocolate creamer since I am currently obsessed with Dunkin Donut's Pumpkin Mocha iced coffee.  Add .25 - .5 cup pumpkin puree and 1-2 T sugar free chocolate syrup to the base recipe.  You can also use cocoa powder but make sure to heat a bit of milk and mix the cocoa powder into the heated milk before mixing everything together.