Meet Spook

We adopted another cat today. Spook is 4-5 years old, fluffy and has a stubby tail. He's been neutered and declawed, so he definately stays indoors. I've been told that it's easier to shove him in a toilet than it is to shove him outside, anyway.

He was adopted from the animal shelter 3 or 4 months ago by the sister of a friend of ours. I got a call yesterday from our friend. Her sister has found out that she has asthma and can't keep a fluffy cat.

She brought him over today and he's now hiding behind the loveseat. He's come out to explore a few times already, so I imagine he'll settle in without too much trouble. I think he's going to be a Daddy's boy - he won't let me get very close yet, but he walked right up to Jack and let him scratch his ears. Harry and Oreo are back in the bedroom, sulking I think. Harry has come out to check out the new brother from a distance.

Three Down, One to Go...

I finished and delivered Baby Afghan #3 a couple of weeks ago. I'm just now getting around to downloading the pictures, though. For some reason, Blogger wouldn't take the picture of the entire afghan. It turned out kind of big. I guess the kid will use it for quite some time.

I had a hard time finding a pattern that spoke to me on this one. The baby's nursery is being done in planes, trains, and automobiles, all in bright colors. I found a worsted weight acrylic rainbow varigated yarn. It's kind of rough feeling, so I didn't want to make the whole thing out of it. I made a white center out of the Caron Simply Soft, then added and edging of bubbles 5" wide all the way around it. The outcome was a bright, cheerful blanket.

Once again, I waited until last minute to wrap the rascal. I used more tissue paper to wrap in, and took what little bit of yarn I had left and chained it all together with a huge hook to make the ribbon. I think I'm starting to like this wrapping method, though. It's definately not something you just grab off the shelf at Dollar Store!

The parents of the baby this is for are both just thrilled with it. Or so they said. I had fun with the colors. One more afghan to finish - it's almost done. It looks like I'll get this one completed well before the baby shower, but I'll probably wrap in tissue paper and yarn again.

Bleah...

I went to the doctor yesterday to feed the vampires. I've been taking Actos for 8 weeks and Lipitor for 4. She'll compare the numbers from yesterday's bloodwork with the numbers from 2 months ago for signs of improvement. Using the sugar meter at home, I've watched my morning glucose numbers slide down the scale slow and steady, so she isn't making any changes in the meds just yet. The numbers are not where they need to be yet, but they're a lot closer than they were 2 months ago. Yayyy!!!!

The timing of the doctor visit couldn't have come any better, either. I'm dealing with my fall sinus infection, and this one hit fast. I was fine Sunday. By Tuesday night, I couldn't stand to lay down to sleep. I've spent the last 3 nights in the recliner. The doctor took one look at my throat and said "Man, that looks like raw hamburger...." Oh, gee, thanks for the encouragement there.... I left her office with Rx's for antibiotics, Clarinex, and a nasal inhaler. Yummy. I really, really, really dislike sinus infections. :o(

On the plus side, when I can stay awake, I'm getting some stuff done around the house. Wednesday, I finished up the spaghetti sauce project - canned another 11 quarts of sauce and a quart and a pint of tomato juice. It was either get up off my behind and do something with the tomatoes, or throw 2 five-gallon buckets of rotten tomatoes into the woods.

I can't stand to throw that much of anything away. I would work a little bit, rest a little bit, work a little bit, rest a little bit... until I had all of the tomatoes peeled and pulped. Penny had helped me with one of the buckets one evening while they were here and all of the tomatoes from that evening's work were in storage bags in the fridge, so I just had the last bucket to process. Once they were in the stockpot, I didn't have anything to do but stir it every now and then for 4 hours. Nap time! :o)

Once the sauce was done, filling the jars and loading the canner was easy. There is something very satisfying about hearing the "Plink!" of a jar that you've just processed sealing. We heard quite a few of them after we went to bed Wednesday night.

Yesterday I spent quite a bit of time on the latest baby afghan. This is the last baby afghan for a while. We're running out of new mothers at church. I found the pattern at Caron's Simply Soft website (the picture is from there, too. I'm not that far along on mine). I really love this yarn! It's another plaid, but it's done differently than the last one I did.

The NINKs are coming!

Just got word via email that some folks that we know from SabMag are on their way here from South Carolina. We're not sure how long they'll stay, but we're looking forward to their visit. Jack has the next few days off, so he may get to go riding with them as they explore this area.

Jim and Penny Devlin have sold just about everything they own, quit their jobs, and are traveling the countryside at will on their bikes. They call themselves NINKs - No Income, No Kids. Their original plan was to travel for a year, then settle down somewhere and get back to a regular life. Like all good plans, it is subject to modification. Now their plan is to settle somewhere temporarily for the winter months and work so they can travel summers, at least for a few years.

The Devlin's keep a blog to follow their travels. It's at http://devlinstravels.blogspot.com/.

When all was said and done the other day, I ended up with 5 quarts of spaghetti sauce and enough to make a side dish of baked spaghetti for our dinner that night. Mmmmm.... I have two more 5 gallon buckets to process. One is ripe now - 3 guesses what I'm doing this afternoon! The other should be ripe in a few more days, so I'll be working on more towards the end of the week. If you would have told me 20 years ago that I'd be so domestic and loving it, I probably would have laughed in your face. Funny how time changes things. :o)

It's a This-N-That kind of day

Nothing major, lots of little things.

Dad News

Dad is doing well. He brought his new leg home this week and is practicing around the house. They're going back to the Tick Farm this weekend to meet up with the contractor and oversee the work he'll be doing. Yay progress!

Dad has built plastic models of airplanes for as long as I can remember. Since he's been backing off of the pain meds and his thoughts have gotten less foggy, he decided to spend some of this abundant time he has building a new one. He's always built planes for most part, unless somebody contracts him to build something different. Anyway, the model club he belongs to had issued a challenge for this month's contest - build something you wouldn't normally build. And, to top it off, it is also British aircraft month. So, my dad created a non-conventional British aircraft:


He flies through the air, he's not something my Dad would normally build, and he's got World War II British markings. If you look closely, he's got a plane with German markings in his mouth :o)


Other things

My kitchen looked like an opening scene from Law & Order this morning. You know, the scene where somebody finds a body... I decided to try my hand at canning spaghetti sauce. I located lots of tomatos and started processing them. They need to be skinned and all of the seeds and water removed before cooking down into the sauce. They make an incredible bloody-looking mess! I was working on them last night at the sink and my husband asked whether or not I was trying to stuff a body down the drain. I ended up with 22 pounds of tomatoes, after the the skins, seeds, and water were taken out. They came in a 5 gallon bucket from one of the roadside vendors that populate east TN this time of year, home grown and pesticide free. They're in the pot now, simmering away, just about ready to begin canning. The house smells like an Italian restaurant. Mmmmmmm....

A local paper for one of the neighboring towns does something neat - on the front page every day, they feature a postive story. Yes, something beside crime, sickness, tragedy, and death. It is very refreshing to see that. The story on yesterday's front page was about a woman who took her first motorcycle ride - on the way to her 100th birthday party. I guess you're never too old to start doing something adventuresome.

Proof of Abuse of the Iraqi people by our troops

This email has been circulating around for awhile now. Whether you think we belong over there or not, the fact is that we're there, and not all of what is happening is bad. You just never see CNN or FoxNews reporting on this stuff.

And, whether you think we belong over there or not, our service members are over there doing their jobs. They're following their orders. They're working, sleeping, playing, relaxing, getting hurt, dying. They're feeling good, exhaustion, fear, bravery, joy, sadness, just the same as we do, except they're doing it on the other side of the globe from their homes and families.

Regardless of if you think we belong in the Middle East or not, or what you think or know our reasons for being over there are, these service members deserve our respect and our support. They don't make the policy that sent them over there, they do what they swore to do when they signed up for whatever branch of the military they're in - serve their country, right or wrong.

OK, I'm off the soap box now. On to the good stuff!

The email:

Proof of abuse by our Troops:

Armed American Troops Force Iraqis to Seesaw Until They Talk!

Iraqi Child Bites GI In Self Defense After Obvious Torture!

GI Falls Asleep On Duty While Using Iraqi Child As Body Armor!

GI Overheard to say "Talk or I'll tickle you till you pee!"

More Evidence Of Failed US Intelligence Policy:

Soldier Attempts to Eat Iraqi Child !

Clear Evidence of Forced Labor by Troops!

Iraqis Grateful That American Forces Did Not Open Fire During Soccer Game!

Soldier Caught At "Tickle-Torture" To Extract Intelligence!

GI Forces Iraqi Child To Hang By Fingertips!

No comment here. There's nothing funny about this one.

May the good Lord bless every one of our troops wherever they are!

I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND TO THE REPUBLIC, FOR WHICH IT STANDS, ONE NATION UNDER GOD, INDIVISIBLE, WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL!

I should listen to my body...

I'm figuring out that when I misbehave too much dietarily, I pay for it later. I started avoiding junk food awhile back. You know the type, chips, snack cakes, greasy stuff.

Today I had a pretty healthy sandwich for lunch (you should try portabello mushrooms, onions, & peppers sauteed in some olive oil with a dash of balsamic vinegar on toasted whole wheat... mmmmm!!!!!) and some Fritos. OK, I admit, more than some Fritos. A small mountain of Fritos. Not too long after that, I didn't feel so good.

This isn't the first time it's happened, either. Eventually, I'll learn and just avoid stuff I shouldn't eat. I'm kind of glad my body is with me on the dietary efforts. Remembering how miserable I was this afternoon may help me to keep from falling off the culinary wagon again for awhile. :o)

I've done pretty well at avoiding caffeine. I used to drink anywhere from 4 to 8 Diet Mt. Dews a day. I'm down to none to 2, drinking more water, herbal teas, and these wonderful things from the convenience stores called Fuze, the Slenderize versions. They're low-carb and taste great!

Update on the blood-sugar numbers - they're coming down, a little bit at a time. :o)

Dad News
Dad goes to pick up his prosthetic leg Tuesday. The steps last Friday were a fitting. Tomorrow, it's for real and he brings it home. Mom & Dad went to the Tick Farm over the weekend with their camper. Mom's getting pretty good at pulling the camper with their truck. I think she may be qualified to drive a semi now. I talked to my sister and found out that Dad drove home. He told her that it felt really good, too. Yayyyy Dad!

Words fail me right now...

...but the pictures Mom took today say it all! I'm still teary-eyed with happiness. :oD



Here's the update Dad sent out today:




Hello everyone,

The past week has been a down and up one, to be certain. There has been a lot of thinking and a lot of emotion in the last few days. Wondering how this condition came about and what it's impact on our lives will be, that sort of stuff. The final outcome is that, based on our current health,we will are going to meet all of our goals of retirement and it's rewards, although we will need to make some adjustments along the way. Just in the manner in which we do some things, not what we actually do.

To say that the week ended on an up note would be an understatement. I was fitted with my new leg today and took some steps with it. Tentative and awkward to be sure, but had to try. I guess I had it on for about an hour and walked quite a bit of that time. The leg supplier's rep that we have been working with was very happy with my ability to take to the leg so quick. That being said, I still have a very long way to go before I can be turned loose on the world, but I start therapy and training next Tuesday.

Slipping the shell up onto the liner for the first time. I was very apprehensive and excited at the same time. Basically you sit down, bend the leg down, slip it on as far as you can and then stand up.


Locking the shell and liner together by shoving straight down with my leg. I was not sure what would happen. Did I have the liner on straight? How much pain will I feel in my stump? What will I have for lunch? Well, the liner was straight, for if it were not, the locking mechanism will not latch. It did. I have a fair amount of phantom pain and was concerned about what affect stepping into that leg would do to it or for it. There was no additional pain, in fact, I think I forgot about the pain I was having. It almost felt like a cocoon or something. We celebrated a bit by going to Appleby's. I had the Bruschetta sandwich with garlic fries. Very good.


The first step. You have to think about every motion you make, or at least for now. It will come more natural as time goes by.


Steppin' oout!


That is about it for tonight. It has been quite a day. I'll be checking in later.


Mark E. Young, Jr.
MSgt, USAF (RET)
Member IPMS/USA
Dayton Area Plastic Modelers Society

KC-135A - built when Man thought He Could Burn Water

September 11th - Have we forgotten so soon?

Remember when 9/11 first happened? Remember how many people reached out to each other in shock, disbelief, terror? Needing the comfort of human contact, another shaken voice to listen to them, the touch of a hand on their shoulder letting them know they aren't alone? Remember how it didn't matter if you knew the other person or not - you considered them a friend that day because they were dealing with the same horrible events that you were.

Remember how flooded the churches were as people who hadn't prayed in a long time all knelt and prayed together, strangers and brothers at the same time, needing the comforting touch of the Father? How many people accepted Christ as their Savior that day and in the days following, I wonder.

And the sea of red, white, and blue that blanketed our nation for months as we showed Islam that America will not fall? And the unity that our nation's government showed as we struck back at the source of our terror?

Where is all of that today? Here it is, just 6 years later, and people are back to bickering, protecting their own and nobody else's. The churches have emptied, save for the ones who went before 9/11 to begin with. The flags, well, there are still some out, but not nearly as many. We don't even want to go into the subject of our government right now. Let's just say that just about everyone in the upper levels of government should be booted out with the next election and start fresh. The current members can't get along long enough to get a shoe tied, let alone keep the nation pointed in a decent direction.

Where is that unity that we had as a country in the days and weeks after 9/11? Where is the awesome presence of God that is felt when an entire nation leans on Him for support and guidance? He's still there - you just don't feel Him because He's been relegated to the back burner again, somewhere behind Little League Football and visits to the WalMart down the street. How sad that it took something as tragic as the events of 9/11 to bring Him back to the forefront for the first time in wayyyy too long, and even sadder that as people got used to what happened, they let Him slip into the background again.

Is there anything that we can do to bring that unity back? And then use it to bring God back to the front, where He needs to be in our lives? I don't know. I can't help but think that if everyone would just be kinder to each other - smile at the lady in a bad mood with the screaming child in the grocery store - hold the door for man with his arms full - help the bum on the street with a hand-up instead of a hand-out - pray for our neighbors and one's who've done us wrong - pray for our Nation and it's leaders and don't give up, even though it doesn't look like it's helping any - we can do these things easily. It's called "Random Acts of Kindness", and they don't need a reason. In fact, Christians are encouraged to RAKs by the love of Jesus living in them. It's just a question of whether or not we listen to the urge to help others.

I, for one, am going to try to make it my priority to repay every irritation with a kindness instead of a rebuttal. To smile at the lady with the screaming child, to hold the door for someone and say "Have a nice day", to help the woman I see walking down the road headed to the next town, to sincerely pray for our nation and it's leaders, pray for our neighbors and or community, our youth... I don't know how much one person can do to improve the world around her, but I'm going to do what I can. You never know, RAKs may become the next "in" thing.

The spirit that swept our country after 9/11 was awesome and wonderful. It didn't just disappear overnight. It faded out. If we want it to come back without another tragedy, we'll have to work it into our lives, fade it back in.

A challenge to my friends who are believers, too: First of all, pray for our country and the survivors and victims of 9/11. That should be a given. Then, help a stranger today. Hold a door, encourage somebody who looks depressed, tell the clerk at the counter she looks pretty today, smile and say hello to the frump sitting on the bench outside the store, pick up something somebody has dropped, anything to brighten somebody's day some. Then pray for God to guide and protect them, touch them with His Spirit if they've not accepted Jesus. You don't need to know their name, God knows who they are. One person at a time, we can make a difference.

Wee Bonnie Plaid in Pink & Purple

Some more pictures from my phone...

This is a baby afghan that I finished last month for a girl at church. She says that she'll have to work hard to keep her husband from stealing it from their daughter when she's born. It seems that he really likes how soft it feels. :o)

Here it is in progress. The first set of stripes are just a double crochet chain/double crochet chain.... to get the the width. Then I wove 6 strands of yarn through the other direction to get the plaid pattern to come out. I used the biggest crochet hook I had and just wove through 2 or 3 squares at a time. Sounds simple, and it is if you pay close attention to keeping the shape right. It will break your back though, because the best place to do it is spread out on the floor. Luckily, I don't make very many of these.

And here's the almost finished product. Weaving the yarn through really softens up both the look and the feel of the afghan. I used Caron Simply Soft worsted weight acrylic yarn. Unbelievably soft stuff!

All that was left to do here was tie off the tassles and trim them. I wasn't able to get a picture of it after doing that - I sort of waited until the last minute to do the final touches and had to hurry to get to the baby shower on time. Oops....

Of fishtanks and goofy cats...

I've had a fishtank for a little over a year now. Nothing really exotic, just some little Neon tetras. We started out with 10 of them, a bottom-feeder, and one of those black goldfish with the big bubbly eyes. We're down to five neons and the bottom-feeder.

The goldfish only had one eye. The other one was deflated, probably in a fight with another goldfish. Jack named him Winky. We let Winky go in the pond last summer after we found out that goldfish poop is toxic to other fish. Might explain why we went through 3 bottom-feeders rather quickly - they consumed lots of the stuff. I couldn't stand the thought of flushing a perfectly healthy fish down the toilet, so we decided that the pond behind our house would give him a fair chance to grow into a big, happy goldfish. Anyway... back to the fishtank.

Like I said, I've had this tank for a little over a year now. The neons are quite happy, and the bottom-feeder stays hid. We named him Fugly to begin with, but decided that wasn't an appropriate name to be calling out in front of little ears... "Mamaw, what does 'Fugly' mean?" Um, yeah... so we've changed his name to Fergus. He doesn't care one way or another as best I can tell.

Harry, my big grey fluffy cat without a brain, has just discovered the fishtank. It's in the same place it's always been, he's just finally noticed it. Silly cat. He likes to sit right next to it and watch the fish. He'll sit at one end of the tank and peek through the glass. The fish, on the other hand, will all run to the other end of the tank and huddle under a rock and just wait him out. Fergus has started going *to* the cat, though, like he's challenging him or something. I think in a fair fight, Fergus would win. Harry's a bit of a wuss. Jack caught him peeking through one day. He snuck up on his hands & knees to the other side of the tank and popped his head up. Scared the cat witless.

Harry hasn't tried to go fishing yet, but I imagine that will be coming soon enough. I've told him that if he ever starts putting his paws in the water, I'm buying some piranah to go in there. He just looks at me and blinks uncomprehendingly. There really is no intelligent thought going on in there. It's a good thing he's got a very friendly, affectionate personality and he's gorgeous. If he had to rely on his smarts for his survival, he'd never make it.

The Long-Awaited Hike Photos

I found the chip-reader for my phone and was able to download a bunch of pictures from it. It's hard to tell what photos I'll come up with over the next few days...

Here's pictures from the hike to the Falls Branch waterfall that Jack and I went on a couple of weeks ago:

Jack went first and sort of blazed the trail, so to speak. He carried a stick with him to knock the spiderwebs out of the way. I never had to deal with a spiderweb in the face, and he refused to let me carry the backpack even part of the way. He's such a gentleman!

You can't see the tops of the trees in this picture, but you can tell by how shady it is that the trees formed a beautiful canopy overhead. It was nice and cool on this part of the trail. The only place that we got hot was when we were coming back and climbing up a steep part and really working at it.

This is called a laurel hell. Really. The laurel grows so thick through here that if we were to take this way, we'd have to either hack and chop at the laurel, or crawl under it. Fortunately, the trail itself was very well defined.

Laurel Branch Creek

Climbing up to the falls. We could tell that if this were not a super-dry summer, we wouldn't have been on these rocks. They would have had water moving over them.

And here we have the waterfa... um... trickle that we set out to see. It's been a really dry summer here. Have I already mentioned that? We could see the wear-marks on the rocks where the water usually fell over them. There's no way we could have gotten very close if the stream had been at full volume. Still, it was very pretty, and peaceful, and calm.

This is the pool at the bottom of the falls. The water here was perfectly clear and clean. We know of at least on fish and one crawdad who lived in this pool. Both were very shy and didn't hold still for their picture to be taken. We sat next to the pool and took a break before heading back.

There were all kind of stands of these flowers around the pool, growing in places where there was usually a creek running through. They were just polluted with bumble bees, flying from flower to flower. You can't tell much detail from this shot (it is a camera in a cell phone, after all, and not the greatest for up close work), but it was just so cool to sit there and watch these guys work. They're always moving and working, but not in any big hurry. It seemed like sort of a lazy day for them.

No more pictures today. I'll have some more of something else later, though. There were a lot of pictures on that chip.

Google rankings

The campground's website has made it to the first page of Google when you search for "motorcycle campground". Really. It has. We're right on the bottom, right on the bubble where we can get booted to page #2 pretty easy, but for now, we're right up there with all of the big names. It is soooo cool.

Okay. Back to our regularly scheduled lives.... just had to share that.

Low-Carb Praline Pumpkin Pie

We're having a fellowship at church tomorrow evening. In light of my recent attempts to eat more sensibly, I thought I'd make a dessert that I can eat. I'm also making a pasta salad using the Dreamfield's rotini noodles, and I've already put half a pig through the smoker, so I know for sure that there will be at least 3 things there that I can eat, enjoy, and not feel too terribly guilty about. There's usually an abundance of veggie trays, too, so I'll be good to go providing I can stay out of the potatoes. Darn those potatoes, anyway. Why do they have to taste so good? Rhetorical question, folks. They taste so good because I'm not supposed to eat very much of them. Simple, really.

This is the recipe for the dessert - a pumpkin pie in a pecan praline crust. Not a scrap of flour to be found in the rascal. I found the recipe I based it on at http://www.cdkitchen.com/. Of course, I can't leave any recipe alone, I've got to tweak it. That's just what I do. Sometimes I even remember to write the tweaks down, but usually not. The pie is in the oven right now, and my house smells so wonderful, it's hard to think of this as a low-carb thing. I would guess that if you're not really watching your carbs, you could use regular sugar. This is not a low-fat recipe, but hey, if you cut out everything that's bad for you all of the time, you end up with sawdust, and who wants that?

Here's the recipe as post at cdkitchen. My changes are in blue.

Low-Carb Praline Pumpkin Pie
Serves 12
Prep: About 10 minutes
Bake: About 1-1/2 hours total

Ingredients:
***Praline Crust***
2 tablespoons hot melted butter
1/2 cup finely chopped pecans
1/2 cup sugar substitute (recommended: Splenda) - I used Splenda Granulated
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
I doubled the crust recipe and quadrupled the cinnamon (1/2 tsp total). When I make this again, I'll also use one more Tbsp of butter as the crust turned out a little on the dry side, which made patting it into shape a challenge.

***Pie Filling***
1 can (15-ounce size) no sugar added pumpkin filling
I couldn't find no sugar added pumpkin filling, so I just used 100% pumpkin
3/4 cup sugar substitute (recommended: Splenda) - I used Splenda Granulated
1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice, plus 1 dash
1 1/4 cup heavy cream - I used heavy whipping cream
4 eggs
The filling wasn't quite sweet enough, probably because I used plain pumpkin, so I added 1/4 cup Splenda brown sugar. Mmmmm.... tasty!

***Low Carb Whipped Cream***
1 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup sugar substitute (recommended: Splenda)
1 teaspoon no sugar added vanilla extract -yeah, watch your vanilla for corn syrup or sugar! I didn't know it was in there until I read labels at the grocery tonight. Scary how much stuff has corn syrup in it.

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Make the crust: Mix all crust ingredients together in a small bowl. While mixture is still warm from the butter, press it evenly into the bottom of a deep-dish pie pan. Bake for about 5 minutes, or until browned. Remove piecrust from oven. I took the extra crust and patted it up the sides of the pie pan, too.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Make the filling: Place all filling ingredients in a medium bowl and mix well with a wire whisk. Pour filling into prebaked piecrust. I took pecan pieces and spread them around the edge of the pie. This served two purposes: A, it alerts people to the fact that there are nuts in the pie, which is important if somebody has an allergy, and B, it just looks pretty. Bake for 15 minutes and then reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees F.

Continue to bake for an additional 50 to 55 minutes. To test for doneness, stick a toothpick in the center; if it comes out clean, the pie is done.

Cool and then chill before serving. To serve, top each slice with a dollop of low carb whipped cream.

Low Carb Fresh Whipped Cream: With an electric mixer on high, whip the heavy cream just until frothy. Then add in the sugar substitute and vanilla extract and continue to whip on high until peaks form. Be careful not to over-whip, or cream will break. Transfer to a pastry bag or just spoon onto pie.

Nutrition Information Nutritional Analysis per Serving Calories 241 Total Fat 24 grams Saturated Fat 12 grams Carbohydrates 7 grams Net Carbohydrates 6 grams Fiber 1 gram These numbers will change since I modified the crust recipe.

**********************

I just pulled it out of the oven. It looks and smells divine. It puffed up quite a bit during baking, but it's falling back down as it cools. I just took the picture that is at the top of the post. I submitted it to the website, too, since they don't have a picture of the pie. I don't know if I'll mess with the low-carb whipped cream or not. Probably will since I have all of the stuff to make it, and nothing else to do with it.

Another find at the grocery tonight was unsweetened coconut. I know, what's so exciting about that? Just try to find some when you've got a really cool coconut recipe to try out. It barely exists here locally, and I'm usually in a hurry to try the recipe and don't want to take the time to order some in. Of course, now that I've found some, can I remember the recipes? Um, no. Must be early-onset senility or something similar. :o)

************************************

Edit added Monday, September 3, 2007 -

Oh.... My..... Gosh......

This is simply the best pumpkin pie I've ever made, with or without sugar. It's moist and flavorful. I made the mistake of putting a little flag on it at the church social that identified it as sugar-free. Hardly anybody touched it. Silly people. They just don't know what they're missing... but, on the plus side, that leaves plenty for me and Jack... :o) I know, I'm selfish. What can I say?

This pie doesn't need whipped cream, or anything else on it for that matter. It tastes wonderful just the way it sits. I've had some pies that you had to have the whipped cream on them in order to choke them down, but not this one. Very tasty just the way it is.