80 Calorie Cookies, Whaa!?

I am a lover of cookies.  And I am a lover of chocolate.  The latter is one of my favorite foods, don't cha know??  Well I have a problem though...cause I'm keeping track of my calories right now, check out myfitnesspal.com :) and I can't afford chocolate. Or cookies for that matter...sad life, I know it.  But I had a craving today.  Well I always do, but especially today. :P   I just HAD to have something.  Sidenote:  I recently discovered my favorite cookie has 148 calories...in ONE stinking cookie!!!! :( :(  You can imagine my heart pains...148 per cookie just doesn't work for me.  That's as many calories in a whole serving of oatmeal, a whole serving of Special K WITH milk, that's like a 2-3 cups of delightful strawberries, and to burn 148 calories, I have to run on the elliptical for 15 minutes.  ALL FOR ONE COOKIE.  Okay that's my sidenote.  So anyway, back to my craving.  Since I had to have SOMETHING to satisfy my need for a chocolate cookie, I searched for a low calorie recipe online.  Totally found one.  80  calories. (http://lowcaloriecooking.about.com/od/desserts/r/chocmintcookies.htm) Not bad compared to my 148!!  And oh boy they looked pretty darn good, and it seemed like a pretty normal recipe!  Nothing weird was called for and the recipe only made 2 dozen. :)  So I printed it off and went to work in the kitchen.  After combing everything and in looking at the dough, it was a tiny little lump.  Like there was no way I could make 2 dozen out of it.  Literally they'd have to be cookies the size of my thumb.  So I learned a lesson today.. a sad lesson.  And it's this... anything is low calorie in you limit the portion.  It stinkin made 15 normal size cookies, not 24!!  Holy baby cookies if you get 24 out of that recipe!  I was mad.  Haha so I figured on myfitnesspal that each cookie is actually 105 if you make them normal size, still not as bad as 148, but I was ticked nonetheless, cause nobody eats baby size cookies!

Allie and I decided to take lots of pictures today!!  We went to the gully and to the Wetlands, hoping to get some good shots with the rivers and lakes and greenery.  We first stopped at the gully and it was SO HOT!!  My goodness.  Anyway we walked down and took some pictures by the river in a spot where it parts into several mini-rivers and there's thick trees and wow it kinda looks like the Sacred Grove!  It was beautiful.  We were walking around trying to find other good places down there and we found this one place, but there was a weird man across the river...he was washing out a black hat type thing..had a big backpack...kinda looked homeless.  Anywho, it was sketchy.  So we turned around and went somewhere else.  But it was gorgeous down there!  We got some good pictures for sure. :)  The Wetlands gave us some good backgrounds too!  It was beautiful with the lakes and the cute ducks and benches and things.  Anyway, we had fun.

After hangin' with Allie, I had to make dinner!  I have been wanting Shepherds Pie (some call it hamburger pie..) for sooo long.  I've never made anything with beef cause I'm kind of scared to cook with it because I always feel like I don't know how to cook it or I'll just mess it up, I don't know, weird fear, but I wanted to do this anyway. :)  So first, I could NOT find my mom's recipe for the life of me.  She has like 20 cookbooks, and holy cow, I just had no clue where to start looking for it.  Lucky guess though, I found it in the first book I looked in!!  WOO blessing, I know. :)  Oh gees it is such a good recipe.  This one I found online, but it's almost exactly like the one I made, but scratch adding the water to the beef, it's fine with just the onion juice :) http://lyndasrecipebox.blogspot.com/2009/05/hamburger-pie.html .  So super easy and low in calories as well!  :)  I made my very own mashed potatoes, which I've never done...mashed potatoes are OWNED by my dad, nobody else ever makes them since he is King over those. :)  And he's never shared his secret...so I was left to do whatever I thought I should do to make them smooth and lookin' okay.  Haha but I did it, they were pretty good too!  So I made my taters, set them aside, and I took out the ground beef and realized I didn't have an onion!!!  I had to go to the store for one flippin onion.  So I did.  Mmm the meat turned out good.  All it is is the ground beef, and chopped onion and then a can of condensed tomato soup.  YUM.  So first in the casserole dish goes the beef, then a couple cups green beans, and then mashed potatoes and a sprinkling of cheddar cheese and parmesan.  Cooked for 25 minutes. :)  Wow, I am a good cook you guys, cause it turned out amazing. ;) Just kidding I'm really not a good cook, so I'm very very grateful it turned out okay. :)

After dinner, the lovely Emily Budge and I went to the gym to exercise.  Needed to burn off those 100 calorie chocolate cookies I was having a cow over cause the recipe said they were 80...well again, 80 IF YOU EAT ONE THE SIZE OF YOUR THUMB!!   So yes, the gym.  Ran on the elliptical for 40 minutes, burned 500 calories :) :) and then Em and I wanted to conquer the ab machines.  And we did.  Holy cow mine are going to KILL tomorrow.  Also, I have issues...when we were doing left lifts, I kept getting charlie horses in my quads!  Weird right!?  My stomach should be burning like a fire cause I'm working it so hard, but no, instead my legs were, so I had to stop a lot and stretch them.  More bananas? I guess...  but I'm so excited to go to the gym again with her tomorrow, cause we're going to try out all the "Hoist" machines...they're so trippy.  Kinda hard to figure out, so we're excited to go together cause honestly you always feel less dumb with someone next to you laughing about it with you than when you're by yourself and you can't figure a machine out. :)  So that's what we're gonna do. :)

After I got home, Taylor and I watched an episode of 24. :)  SO INTENSE, I love it.  I miss watching Lost though...but we decided to stop because the seasons keep getting progressively worse if you know what I mean. :/  I wish there were more seasons of Prison Break!!  That show is seriously the BEST EVERR.  Oh gees, but we're back to 24 because we haven't finished all the seasons yet.  And it's good, just every season is basically the same...ya know?  Oh well, it's been like a year since we watched a season.  So I like it. :)  If you know of any good shows, we love the action, love the suspense, hate the dirty, any suggestions, please comment! :)

And that was my day.  It was a good one!!  Can't believe tomorrow's Thursday, this week is flying!!!