My Carrots (and very proud of them!)

And they are the size of my hand -from tips of fingers to wrist (the purple ones).  Good sized carrots.  The last batch I pulled from the garden were shorter and thinner.  I had them in my lunch salad today.  Lettuce, three carrots, Feta cheese and Ranch dressing.  A much smaller than usual salad (due to not having much lettuce) and I skipped the tuna and mayo. And they are only purple on the outer edges.  The center of the carrots are orange.  The fat ones are just fat, short regular carrots.  The biggest round one has a smudge of purple from a neighboring carrot.  From now on, G will be in charge of planting seeds for carrots and beets and turnips.  They actually come up and grow when he does the planting.  Not for me.

I may have a picture of my beets one of these days.  Yes, I have beets for the first time in my gardening career.  I also have raspberries but most of them are moldy due to the weather.

Thank You to Susan McD for the referral to CJ Sansom.  I requested the first two books from the lending library.  My local doesn't have them.  I am intrigued.  Never even knew they existed.  A 16th Century detective (Henry VIII) and a hunchback?  Giddy.  I also requested the 6th and final Icelandic mystery.  Might as well finish up that series.

I seem to be in the mood for "finishing up" things.  Mended G's Japanese Farmer Pants after many many years.  Long enough to have mice eat holes in one pocket.  I am very disturbed to think I had a mouse in my workspace, eating a pocket, which held a crushed dog biscuit.  And I finally have the paint for the new Spooky House, even though I have NOT begun painting.  And yesterday I actually vacuumed all the floors and carpets.

Work was okay today.  I started the day (7:30) by watering everything.  Rolling up the hoses into neat circles and leaving notes to request that others do the same.  I also asked them to shut the water off when they finish. D brought her little yellow lab in to visit with me.  She is very small.  60 pounds.  Riley is trying to get to be 100. Then I had to play "hide & seek" with a store transfer order.  The descriptive is not very descriptive. And I had trouble finding stuff.  And then I learned how to transfer.  It wasn't easy.  All this F11, shift T, F11 again and then C and enter twice.  Oh, it was too much for me to hold onto, being a Mac person.

Finally, lunch time.  Then the trucks arrived.  I unloaded plants out back and then pumpkins out front until it was time to clock out, pick up Riley and go home. At some point in the day, I noticed I had dripped bacon fat from my BEC breakfast sandwich down the front of my work tee shirt.  Wonderful.  It's now 6:30 and G just got home.  I have no idea what we will be having for dinner.  Perhaps leftover pizza or more spaghetti and meatballs.  I made over 4.5 pounds of meatballs on Sunday.  I'm out of spaghetti squash which is what I had under my meatballs.  I guess I could have mine in a bowl, alone, with cheese.

I am SERIOUSLY considering counting calories again.  1200 a day which will be sort of tough with the Atkins "Fat" issues, I think, but well worth the try.  I need to get the scale moving.  Down.  Same food, only counting the calories.  Which will mean eating less of everything.  And, eventually, adding (being able to add and control) more carbs to the daily diet.  Like oatmeal for breakfast.

I did find a low carb sub for oatmeal.  TVP.  Textured Vegetable Protein.  I have some and might make it ONCE to see what it tastes like.  I can't imagine this.  Who ever thought to try this???  And Chayote instead of apples.  In case any of you wonder, Atkins asks us to sub sour cream for yogurt.  Can you imagine that?  Seems that cream has very few carbs but whole milk has more.  Lots more.

I had forgotten the many packages of sugar free mousse mix I bought last month.  Time to try them out with heavy whipping cream added to the powdered mix.  This was one of Dr Atkins favorite desserts.  My second choice (once the fridge is emptier) is sugar free jello.  I make four, one cup servings.  And there is still some rhubarb sauce in the freezer.  Three excellent dessert choices.  I won't even miss the apple pie.