1200% improvement

I haven’t been baking – or even cooking – much lately. Partly because it’s been sunny and hot every day. Hot, in Hilo, means mid 80s. Go ahead and laugh, I’m willing to concede it’s hotter where you are. But it’s humid here, and we don’t have air conditioning -- other than the trade winds, which lately haven’t been cooling anything off much. Steamy is not the kind of weather I associate with pleasant hours spent in a warm kitchen.

Also partly because our freezer has been well-stocked with both Chocolate Zucchini and Banana Cake, so we’ve been enjoying that on Cake Night.

And partly because in the wake of a stomach bug I didn’t eat more than a few mouthfuls of fruit and yogurt for three days. Probably started with something I ate, but my husband’s been fine, and he happily consumed all the likely culprits, too, with no ill effects, so go figure. Our produce is all local and either organic or at least unsprayed (or possibly some of the farmer’s market vendors are just telling us what we want to hear), and not suspects in the tomato-jalapeno-cilantro-phobia that’s sweeping the mainland. Oh well. Briefly unpleasant, but an effective way to drop a few pounds. Be nice if I can keep them off.

With a little help from the tummy uglies, I’m very close to my goal of getting back under 150 before I turn 50. And before that, my July 1 weigh-in was a success: down six pounds in six months, yay! That’s speed-of-light progress for me. And, if I’ve done the math right, a 1200% improvement in weight-loss rate over my measly 1 pound for all of 2007. So, nice progress, on that front.

Since I haven’t whipped up any scrumptious delights lately, I’m going to share the Sesame Noodles (see next post) that I whipped up at the end of June and just now got around to typing up. They were yummy. We ate them warm but cold they’ll make a good steamy-day dinner. Now that I’m eating again, I think I’ll go whip some more up…