I make a Mexican drink/food using squash/pumpkin. This is authentically Mexican, at least in the South Central part of the country and the Eastern Sierra Madre. But I also doctored some of it up to taste like pumpkin pie. That's not authentically Mexican. _________________________________ Recipe for Atole de Calabaza *Cut chunks of winter squash into your pot so that they fit. I left the shell on them and scooped the flesh off after cooking. *Add sufficient water to boil/steam the squash. *Add molasses and some cinnamon to the water and squash in the pot, so that the solution will be sweet to taste when finished. *Cover on low flame and cook till tender. *Remove shell from chunks and return the flesh to the pot. *Transfer squash and molasses solution to a blender, add a few "glugs" of milk to each blender full and blend to get rid of strings and chunks. How much you blend is up to you. IÂve had squash atole that had chunks, strings and entire seeds in it, and it was delicious. Our family prefers to blend it to a uniform smoothness. At this time you taste it and add additional sweetener if necessary. The amount I make takes several blender-fulls to finish, as I make about 2 quarts. *Enjoy! Something that is really good is to dip pieces of French bread or hard roll into the atole as you eat/drink it. ______________________________ Americanized Pumpkin Atole To a blender add: 1 egg a few glugs of molasses some sugar (brown or white) 2 cups of cooked squash ¼ teaspoon nutmeg 1/8 teaspoon ginger ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon optional  2 or 3 tablespoons of peanut butter Milk (fill the remaining space in the blender with milk, leaving just a little space at the top. Blend this all up and taste to see if it needs more sweetening. Pour the mix into a pot and heat until just boiling. Serve George

DD's latest favorite breakfast is me making her a PB grilled sandwich. Butter one side each of 2 slices of bread (we like honey wheat) Stick the 2 buttered sides together so you can spread PB on the exposed plain side of one slice. Put that slice on the griddle butter side down and sprinkle chocolate chips on the PB which is facing up. Add the other slice on top butter side up and grill like a grilled cheese. DD doesn't like bananas but I bet it would be great to add banana slices!!

Do you usually go to Kripalu alone? I have travelled by myself a fair amount but I would much rather do a spa thing with friends or as a couple. I think "summer camp" is an apt corollary, and that's why friends make all the difference. You may want to try it again with a group; then you could spend your time making fun of the biatchy crowd which is much more satisfying then mumbling to yourself. Plus I think things like bracelet making would be more fun with friends, too.

Ok. You asked. Well, in a way I am and I'm not. After 40 years, I finally made a resolution to try to eat smaller portions. I can out eat most men. It helped that I'd had a head cold that completely knocked out my appetite, so I'm also running with that. My (normal) diet consists of Breakfast, about 8 oz of skim milk + double espresso, along with either a Reese's Big Cup or a Starbuck's Brownie. For lunch, if I have it, it's a salad - lettuce, but with raisins, tomatoes, bacon, cucumbers, celery, pecans, a tiny bit of cheese, eggs, sometimes potato sticks with usually Caesar or Balsamic dressing. Dinner? Who knows. Maybe another, smaller salad, maybe a Longhorn restaurant steak. The thing is, I work in a BBQ restaurant, so my choices are limited by what I'm not sick of Occasionally I'll have ribs or some chopped pork. Maybe a kids' burger. All that has put 40 pounds on me, after losing 30 in chemo in 2020. All I'm trying to do is cut back. Salad has become lettuce, tomatoes, a very little cheese, eggs and bacon, same dressing. Dinner is another salad or a kids' chopped pork sandwich or 2, not 5 ribs. Sometimes some rib tips. Again, side order size of 4ounces, not a dinner size of 16. Maybe a glass of wine before bed. Maybe not. I eat the same things every single day. Every. Single. Day. See, I don't actually eat much but it's quite rich. So cutting down to kids' portions and not bored eating, I can have my regular breakfast. A side effect is at 64, I'm losing weight. 13 pounds since mid December and the head cold. I have to recognize the difference between actual hunger and "oooo that looks good," or "I'm bored, that looks good." (Eating disorders will screw with your head for your entire life.) So no, I can't say I'm dieting, but I am cutting back. I really just wanted to add the brownie and other things into my Mastercook so I could see, in my face and unavoidably, what I'm eating and the calories involved. I am not saying "no" to anything, if I want it. But I am asking myself if I'm hungry or it is an impulse. I've lost 1000s of pounds in my life by dieting and they all came back. I don't do bad things. I have never done drugs, barely drink, don't shoplift, and as far as I can remember, used to like sex, but I don't even do that. So if I have a brownie or Reese's Big cup for breakfast? Well, hun. I gotta die of something.