My brother (he's 12 years older than me, a school principal) came out to visit. He brought his girlfriend Joanie. You remember when I blogged a few years back he lost his wife of 25 years to cancer so he's beginning a new chapter and we are happy he found such a super lady, we absolutely loved her. June 27th is my brother birthday, June 28th mine and my Mum's is July 5th so we got to celebrate together.
Earlier in the week I had an idea to make my brother a photo memory book. I had my Mum gather a bunch of old snapshots we knew he would never have or had long forgotten and I spent a few hours scanning them into the computer and then used Walmart.com photo department to build a book. It was printed in a few hours and I went to my local Walmart to pay and pick it up. It turned out awesome and he loved it. I highly recommend this for birthdays or other celebrations. It was a great conversation starter. Here's a couple that made the book of him and I back in the day. My New York pals will remember this... that's the original WPIX Yule Log on the TV.
After we came home from the beach, I whipped up a tray of weight loss surgery friendly tidbits: cold cuts, cheese, grilled zucchini (leftovers are destine to become Zucchini Roll-ups (aka Pasta-less Manicotti), a Caprese-ish salad (tomato, basil, oregano, fresh feta) olives, pickles, cucumbers (my crackers), nuts. We sat outside on my cleaned patio (what I spent last week doing) Here's some pics of the food and my clean patio (Joanie's camera has the people pictures. I'll post those when she forwards them to me.)
My birthday dessert was a Chocolate Covered Cherry Protein Ice Cream Sundae
Shelly's Chocolate Covered Cherry Protein Ice Cream Protein Ice Cream
1 cup Vanilla Soy Milk (or Regular Milk)
2 scoops Vanilla Protein Powder
1 Tablespoon Sugar Free Black Cherry Torani Syrup
1/2 cup fresh Cherries, pitted and chopped
Blend on super high. Cherries too. You want airy, doubled in bulk. Pour into ice cream maker. Follow your machine's instructions for freezing. You can eat it right away, it is soft serve-ish (see below) but I like to put it in the freezer to set for an hour (scoopable.)
After an hour it gets hard (lack of fat) so just nuke 25 seconds to soften again. I topped my birthday sundae with a little SF Fudge Sauce (Smuckers) and some toasted, sliced almonds. Here's some Protein Ice Cream making tips.
Hope everyone had a nice weekend.
