Monday, February 26, 2024

Three Beautiful Things 02-25-2024: Burning Calories, Delicious Family Dinner, Great Conversations

1. Often what I hope to do at the Fitness Center is burn more calories than I ate for breakfast. If I push and pull, huff and puff,  pedal and often stride for an hour or so, I can usually achieve this goal. Today I arrived at the gym early enough to exercise for a full hour before it closed at noon and I accomplished my goal. 

2. I'm guided by an app on my cell phone that stipulates how many calories I should consume in a day to meet my next weight loss goal. I enter, as best I can, what I eat and how much, keeping track of calories. The app also tracks the calories I burn when I exercise. 

Today, knowing family dinner would include a cocktail, some wine, an entree, some bread, and a dessert, I did my best to keep my calorie intake down during the day -- and it worked. 

Christy hosted family dinner tonight. 

It was awesome. 

Carol and Paul brought naan bread and hummus to start and Debbie fixed her current favorite cocktail, a blend of gin, Cointreau, fresh orange juice, and fresh lemon juice. 

Christy prepared a superb spinach feta lasagna. No store in the Silver Valley had lasagna noodles in stock, so she used radiatori pasta, to great success as far I was concerned. I think I enjoyed these bite sized radiator looking pasta bits better than I like the thicker lasagna noodle. That said, I would never turn down lasagna made with the bigger strips of pasta! 

Debbie made a unique and tasty celery salad and Molly brought a loaf of garlic bread that Christy heated in the oven. 

I drank a small pour of very satisfying red wine with my meal and then totally enjoyed a bar of Christy's chocolate oatmeal pan cookies with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream. 

3. We talked about a lot of things tonight as we ate and after we were finished -- books, book groups, the soon to occur opening of Nocturn, human aggression, how people resolve conflicts (adults and children), theological questions, and more. 

My mind was a buzzing hive of mental activity when I returned home! 

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