food 5 Comments

Attempt at Light Coconut Pie, Take 1

After picking up a recipe for Key Lime Pie at my Weight Watchers meeting last week, I decided to think of variations to the basic recipe to make it a coconut pie for my upcoming luau. After a little searching online, though, I found a recipe for Light Coconut Pie that promised to be just what I was looking for.

I assembled the no-bake pie this afternoon, ramping up the “light” part even more than the recipe said: lowfat graham cracker crust, Splenda instead of sugar, and Cool Whip Free (which just tastes like Cool Whip to me). After the pie was assembled and cooling/setting in the fridge, I did the math to see how many points one piece of pie would be.

Damn you, sweetened coconut flakes. Damn you to hell.

We were even at Claudia’s Natural Food Market this weekend, and saw unsweetened organic coconut, and didn’t buy it, thinking that it was a little over-the-top… and not realizing that Meijer only sold sweetened coconut. Turns out that the sweetened coconut flakes added the most calories to the pie overall.

One piece of “light” coconut pie? EIGHT points. That’s one-eighth of a normal-sized pie. Not exactly “light” in my book, but certainly lighter than a normal dessert, I suppose.

Guess I’ll have to do a little more experimenting, and try the unsweetened coconut next time. I’m sure I’ll have a passably light coconut pie by luau time.

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links for 2008-05-24

memories

Adolescent Karma

If someone would have told my sixth-grade self that everyone’s awkward at age eleven, I would have thought they were just trying to make me feel better.

I was the new girl. Not only that, but I was chunky — almost 5’7″ and 160 lbs, just barely starting my growth spurt — with no sense of style and what seemed like a bumper crop of acne. I also got placed in the advanced class with the smart kids, as I had in the two previous elementaries I’d attended. Add to that my love for music class and choir (which were more of a stigma than being in the supplemental advanced art class in the afternoons), and I was one seriously dorky kid.

I felt like I only had one friend in the whole school (although I later learned that I was mistaken, at least from others’ point of view), and even she didn’t consider herself my “best friend.” I felt taunted and persecuted and awkward in so many ways. I heard people talking about me when they didn’t think I was listening, calling me fat and lazy and stuck-up.

That’s why the unannounced Scoliosis Screening ultimately gave me such sweet and silent satisfaction.

For those who don’t know or don’t remember from middle school or junior high, scoliosis is a condition wherein the spine develops an unusual curve, described to us sixth-graders as an S-curve (although it can be more complex). As it often develops or becomes more pronounced during adolescence, we were the perfect age group to screen.

Screening involves standing in front of a qualified medical professional and bending forward in a deep bow, so the nurse or therapist can clearly see the spine.

The shirtless spine.

They took the girls to the girls’ restroom — I forget what they did with the boys — and had us each stand in an open bathroom stall, so only the nurse could see, for privacy’s sake. Then we removed our shirts, leaving our undergarments on, and bent over as instructed.

However.

The skinny girls? They had no boobs at age eleven. Unlike me, who did. For them, wearing a bra was more of a grown-up novelty than a necessity. For me, it was starting to become necessary.

One of my very few sweet moments of karmic bliss that year was listening to the snobby popular girls twitter amongst themselves in the girls’ bathroom about how they couldn’t believe this was happening to them, how they didn’t wear a bra today! And they had to take their shirts off for the creepy nurse ladies!

It didn’t make me any more popular or more accepted, but I sure was glad I’d worn a bra that day.

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links for 2008-05-23

reviews 1 Comment

Wii Fit: A Clarification

After discussing our respective Wii Fit experiences with an old college buddy (specifically, an RCC employee, for those RCC alumni playing at home), I decided that the Wii Balance Board can’t be that flawed. So, I installed the Balance Sensor Extenders that I had assumed would be unnecessary for as short of carpet as we have.

Voila! My weight registered today as… well, as my correct weight, shall we say, and my BMI was the 29-and-change I had expected it to be. Unfortunately, it means that my Mii got way fatter, since Wii Fit extrapolates from your BMI and adjusts the corpulence of your Mii accordingly.

So, I take back my assertion that the Balance Board is not a good scale, and instead replace that assertion with the completely valid concept of RTFM.

I tried a couple of new exercises in Wii Fit today, while I was waiting for my dinner to get done: one new yoga pose (sun salutation — again, simplified in a big way), one strength (torso twist), and a few balance games (soccer ball headers, ski slalom, and ski jump). Apparently, I just skipped the balance games last night entirely, in favor of the aerobics. The balance games are by far the most fun for me at this point, as far as actual gameplay is concerned, and I did myself and my readership a disservice by deeming the game meh-worthy before playing said balance games.

I will, therefore, give Wii Fit a tentative rating of a B. I may change my mind after I play it a while longer.