Chasing Hank

Meet Hank, a two-year old, 35-pound Formosan Mountain Dog:

I spent most of my weekend volunteering with a dog rescue group, Saving Great Animals, trying to track down Hank in my neighborhood.

This poor dog has the saddest story, but I'm praying for a happy ending. He's from Taiwan and has only been in the United States for five days. He is one of forty dogs rescued from Taiwan. Hank's breed, the Formosan Mountain dog, and the fact that he's solid black, put him at high risk to become dog meat in Taiwan. In 2004 the Taiwanese government made selling dog meat illegal, but of course, people still do it. The Formosan is a favorite, and an all black dog is considered a delicacy.

Hank was a beloved family pet in Taiwan until a recent tragedy. His family's house burned down, and all of his family died in the fire. Somehow Hank got out of the house, and was sent to the Saving Great Animals sister shelter in Taipei. They wanted to get him out of Taiwan since he's solid black. The risk of someone eating him was too high. I don't know about you, but this just horrifies me.

Hank was picked up at the airport five days ago by his new foster mom. He'd just flown in on a flight from Taiwan. She said he has the sweetest personality and played with her dog (a rescue from Mexico that I fell in love with). Hank even let her two-year old pet him.

Two days after Hank's arrival, he was adopted by friends of his foster mom. This is where we should have a happy ending. Unfortunately, more tragedy struck. Within ten minutes of having Hank in their house, the new owners accidentally let him in the garage with the garage door open. Hank has been on the run for three days, in the coldest weather on record in Seattle (in the teens at night).

Last night there was a sighting about a mile from my house, so we searched from 9pm until 2:30am. We finally gave up and went home. This morning there was another sighting a half block from my house. I ran over to where Hank was spotted, and met the guy that had seen him. There's a huge reward for this dog so the guy was really trying to help us find him. No luck.

About two hours later a lady called and said he was in her yard. It was a fenced yard about a half mile from my house. There were eight of us, including a woman from Pet Partnerhip, a searh and rescue for lost pets group. She had a snare pole and was using her own dog as a "magnet" dog, to be used to lure Hank over to her so she can collar him. Unfortunately Hank freaked out. We ran after him, but we couldn't catch him. I was in tears. I couldn't believe we were so close to catching him, and he got away from us.

The rescue folks finally decided to set live animal traps for him, with food inside. One is a block from my house and the other one about 1/2 mile. They have to be checked every two to five hours. I hope we catch him.

The new owners that let Hank escape aren't going to be able to adopt him. They're not fit to be dog parents. I know they must feel awful, but they haven't helped us at all to try and find Hank, and their mistake was pretty big.

Send a little prayer out for Hank. :)

Back to my regularly scheduled program, weight loss
I attended my Weight Watchers meeting Saturday, and I weighed in at 182.6. Not fantastic. Heck, not good at all, but what I failed to mention is about ten days ago I saw 187.0 on my home scales. That was the first thing in the morning, naked. At Weight Watchers I had clothes on (I'm pretty sure you already knew that). I'm going in the right direction, but I still have a really long way to go.

Saturday night after walking around in the freezing cold until the wee hours of the morning, I came home starving to death. I had purchased a box of two-Point Lemon Mousse Pie bars at my meeting (never again). I ate the entire box when I got home. I think there were ten, at 70 calories each.

I was furious with myself afterwards. I'd spent an hour at the gym earlier in the day, 30 minutes StairMaster and 30 minutes crossramp. One hour of high intensity cardio. Then I'd traipsed through the woods for five hours looking for Hank. I burned a lot of calories but not enough to compensate for a 700- calorie binge.

What can I say? Not much. I started over today, again. So far, so good but it's only 9pm. I have to go check Hank's traps before I can go to bed. I'm totally exhausted from this weekend. It ws physically and emotionally challenging.

Lime and Watermelon Granita

(makes 6-8 servings)

Ingredients:

• ½ cup fresh limes juiced
  
  


• ½ cup water
  
  


• ¼ cup sugar
  
  


• 4 cups cubed seedless watermelon
  
  

Preparation:

• Bring water and sugar to a boil in a small saucepan, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and let cool.
  
  


• Using a blender, purée the watermelon.
  
  


• Stir in the watermelon, sugar-water and lime juice in a medium bowl.
  
  


• Pour watermelon mixture into a 11 x 7-inch baking dish, cover and freeze at least 3 hours.
  
  


• Remove from freezer, let stand at room temperature for 10 minutes.
  
  


• Scrape the entire mixture with a fork until crystals are fluffy. Serve in chilled glasses or bowls.
  
  

Make 6 Servings:

Weight loss recipes Amount Per Serving(1/6 of recipe (147 g)): 73 Calories, 1 g Protein, 19 g carbohydrates, 1 g Dietary Fiber, 0 g fat, 0 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 6 mg sodium

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It is well documented that the incidence of human obesity has been increasing steadily with each generation since about the time of the industrial revolution. As societies became more specialized, with constant advances in the fields of science, technology and agriculture, we became increasingly fatter. In addition, we now have alarming rates of child obesity essentially in all Western cultures

Honey Popcorn Balls

(makes 6 popcorn balls)

Ingredients:

• ½ cup honey
  
  


• ¼ cup sugar
  
  


• 1 tbsp butter or margarine
  
  


• ½ tsp cinnamon
  
  


• 5 cups hot-air popped popcorn
  
  

Preparation:

• Place air-popped popcorn in a large-sized bowl and set aside.
  
  


• Combine honey, cinnamon, sugar and 1 tbsp butter in a 2-quart microwave-safe bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and microwave at 275 degrees F about 5-7 minutes.
  
  


• Pour honey mixture over popcorn and stir to coat, then set aside to cool.
  
  


• With buttered hands, shape into balls.
  
  

Make 6 Servings:

Weight loss recipes Amount Per Serving(1/6 of recipe (48 g)): 176 Calories, 1 g Protein, 36 g carbohydrates, 1 g Dietary Fiber, 4 g fat, 2 g saturated fat, 10 mg cholesterol, 44 mg sodium

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Cottage Cheese Crab Salad

This salad is quick and delicious. There are two ingredients my husband refuses to eat: cottage cheese and sour cream. Funny thing, he ate two servings of this salad saying it was 5-Star top-notch delicious! HA!! I'll never tell.

I used plum tomatoes, the only fresh fruit I could find this time of year. The seeds and membrane were bitter so I seeded them and sprinkled a pinch of sugar on the

You never see a tubby smackhead

I was watching this show yesterday and this guy was talking about diet pills which just cracked me up!

I think the highlight of the one liners last night was "Forget diet pills. Just take Heroin! You never see a tubby smackhead!"  Oh man if it that was socially acceptable hobby I would give it a go for sure! Another great ones was "How can a man who spends his days pumping cream into buns be homophobic?" ahh man it was so funny.

I had never seen it before, but its really good. Its a stand up comedian just doing jokes about the current week of news and topical subjects. I posted one of his little funnies I found on You tube just below. If you get a chance check it out - Russell Howard's Good News.

Anyway, onto band news... well things have moved a little bit in the right direction. I am currently 117.4kgs and holding. So that's nearly 5kg since October. I have made a few conscious mistakes just because I wanted succor in the form of chocolate and crackers and crisps but still managed to lose. Wine has also be partaken of, and obviously that wont help the weightloss either, but I have enjoyed myself.

I think that if I hadn't been going to the gym, I wouldn't have lost weight though. I think that 350 -400 calories I burn there 3 times a week has got to help me out really. It is my fourth week now. TB and I started on Friday 28th January so we have gone 3 times a week for a month without skipping or missing a session. The one week I couldn't do our regular day, we went the next one to make up for it.

We go Monday, Wednesday and Friday for about 1 hour to 1 hour 30mins each time. I definitely feel fitter and am still as up for it as I have ever been. We are going a bit later today but we usually go about 10 as that fits with work and stuff. I will take a video of the gym session today and show you around our health club!

Last night I made a scrummy band friendly dinner.

I have no idea what to call it, and most of the names I can come up with sound rank and yuk but here it is:

This is vegetarian and serves 6 healthy appetites!

1 bag of Kale (or strong Greens/Cabbage)
2 cooking apples
1 onion
10 spring onions (green onions)
4 sticks celery
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons sunflower seeds
salt and pepper
2 teaspoons mustard
1 tablespoon of sugar
1 package of ready rolled Pastry

Fry the onion and celery together in a little olive oil/butter or even water until soft

After frying and softening the onion and celery add the cooking apples to the mix and stir continually as they stick easy and burn easier!

  After the apples start to moosh a little add the rest of the stuff - kale, spring onion, garlic, mustard, seeds, salt, pepper and sugar and mix that baby until it looks a little like this:

Then get your pastry and divide it into two. Roll both pieces out separately into an oblong shape - it should already be big enough in width, so just roll it so its a bit longer - about the length of your baking tray. As it will be thin, put it on greaseproof paper and then dump half the mixture onto one side of the pastry like this:

 

fold the pastry over to cover it and stick all the edges together and you should end up with a kind of strudel shaped thing. Do the same with the other one and then put them in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes on about 175 deg C (fairly hot - like what you would bake stuff at) and you should end up with 2 of these beauties:

these cut up into 4 reasonable portions or 3 generous portions depending on how many you have to feed/ how hungry they are!! But it looks like this on the plate:

I served this with boiled carrots and mashed potato and it was scrumptious! Calories - in the mixture there was about 300 for the whole lot (as I used olive oil to fry with) and the pastry when divided into six portions was just under 300 cals so a lovely scrummy pie suitable for bandits was 350 cals! 

Right, I am off to the gym, see ya'll later x