Wishing you a

Splendid Valentine’s Day

Grab Bag Cookie Cutter:

Here is a really fantastic way to accomplish TWO things:

1. Control the portion size of home baked cookies

2. Have cookie dough (rich with whole grains and low in sugars, no doubt :-)) ready to go at any time, so you can bake 2 or 20 cookies and enjoy fresh-baked yumminess in minutes.

Pulled this off the Fooducate blog:

An Awesome Portion Control Trick For Fresh-Baked Homemade Cookies

So, you like to bake – but you have a problem. Yes, I know that problem well.

You bake a couple dozen cookies and then they stare at you from wherever you have put them. Haunting you…… Just one more, you say, as you eat two more.

I have this rule about baked goods that I only eat ones that I have baked (or that someone I know has baked). These keeps me from eating stale, terrible, supermarket cookies when I see them.

This rule has helped me drop some unnecessary pounds and now I savor my baked goods. BUT, if I have them around I can’t stop eating them.

So, with the help of a reader’s comment, I came up with this handy method of having my cookies without overindulging. Check this out:

I put my finished oatmeal raisin cookie dough into an ice cube tray! And, then I froze them and dumped them out into a freezer bag. Now if I want a fresh baked cookie, I heat up my oven, get out a baking sheet, and bake a reasonable number for my family.

This would be even better if I had a toaster oven because I wouldn’t have to heat my whole oven for such a small load.

I put on my apron when my children get off the school bus and pretend I have been baking all afternoon. Take that – Martha Stewart!! 

Grab Bag De-Stress Checklist:

Grab Bag Wow Moment:

Art flowing in human form….

Grab Bag Breakthrough?

The cancer drug Bexarotene, approved for over 10 years in the U.S., has just been shown to make dramatic improvements…..

… in mice with Alzheimer’s.

From ScienceDaily.com:

Neuroscientists at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have made a dramatic breakthrough in their efforts to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers’ findings, published in the journal Science, show that use of a drug in mice appears to quickly reverse the pathological, cognitive and memory deficits caused by the onset of Alzheimer’s. The results point to the significant potential that the medication, bexarotene, has to help the roughly 5.4 million Americans suffering from the progressive brain disease.

Bexarotene has been approved for the treatment of cancer by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for more than a decade. These experiments explored whether the medication might also be used to help patients with Alzheimer’s disease, and the results were more than promising.

Grab Bag Product of the Week:

This credit card case sells for $19.95 at Victorian Trading Co. I can think of a few people who might have INVENTED  this.

Grab Bag Scorekeeper:

I love to play lots of games with friends and family. This free app, for iPone or iPad, will be GREAT to keep all my WINNING scores :-).

Grab Bag Brain Flex:

Flex your gray matter a bit. Three categories of qualifiers are presented in each stage, and you must assess if the shapes, letters and numbers that appear are consistent with the rules. THEN, the rules switch locations, and you have to remember the new placement and associated rules. 

Just try it… you’ll see after the first 2 rounds what’s required. It’s a good one..

BRAIN FLEX

Grab Bag Funny Stuff:

What an awesome Valentine’s gift this would make… if only it were available: