Author: mylowcountryliving

Happy Cinco de Mayo – margarita recipe

Today is Cinco de Mayo.  The 5th of May. It’s a holiday celebrated by the Hispanic community and those of us who like to partake in Mexican food and margaritas.  Although margaritas don’t fit into my current eating plan, I will still make some margaritas for my family who is coming by today.  My friends Rich and Karla from Fort Collins, Colorado, showed me this margarita recipe, which I consider to be the greatest margarita in the world!

Learn how to make the world’s greatest margarita.

 Ingredients:   2 ounces tequila (I prefer Patron Silver)

2 ounces Cointreau

1 ounce margarita mix

1 ounce lime juice

1 small pour Grand Marnier

Mix the tequila, Cointreau, margarita mix, and lime juice in a cocktail mixer over several ice cubes. Pour out into a salt rimmed glass and pour in the Grand Marnier until you see the color start to darken in the margarita. Enjoy!

My health journey begins

There is a famous quote that says, “A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Step.” These are my first steps.

I originally wanted to call this entry my weight loss journey, but as I began to think about it, my journey is more than about weight loss… it’s about my health.  I used to be very healthy and active when I was young.  In high school, I played football and ran track.  After high school, I was involved in intramural sports in college.  As I got older, got married, and had kids, I became less active, and like a lot of people, I kept eating like I was far more active than I actually was. In high school, I played inside linebacker on our football team, and I had a playing weight of 182 pounds.  By the time I was in my late twenties I was about 235 pounds, by my mid 30’s it was 280 pounds and my mid 40’s it was about 330 pounds.  Looking back, I was putting on about 50 pounds per decade, or about 5 pounds per year.  When it’s only 5 pounds per year, it creeps upon you, and you don’t realize how big you are getting. 

About four years ago, I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and I figured no big deal.  I will just take a pill once a day, and it will be ok.  It wasn’t ok.  One pill a day became two pills a day, and eventually three pills.  By January 2020, I was neglecting my diabetes and sometimes taking my medicine and sometimes not.  I was never watching what I ate.  Daily blood sugar testing, that was never happening.  I went for about five months without a test.  Probably because I knew I was going to have high numbers and didn’t want to deal with it.  Then in January 2020, I switched physicians and went in for a physical so that my new doctor would prescribe me the other medications I needed.  I was on different medications for high blood pressure and high cholesterol.  I was a mess.  They say that for many people, they don’t make a change until they are faced with a crisis.  This was the day that was a shocker for me.  I was in a crisis.  My blood sugar that day was over 450, and my A1C was over 14.  My doctor said I needed to make immediate changes that day, or I was in danger of becoming insulin-dependent, possible blindness, neuropathy, and possible future amputations caused by diabetic complications.  Why didn’t I do something before this visit?  I was trying to convince myself that my diabetes wasn’t that bad even though I wasn’t checking it.  After all, I had lost just over 30 pounds in the last six months and wasn’t doing much at all to lose it.  I should have known better.  The extremely high blood sugar level was causing rapid weight loss.  It was my body’s way of screaming for help.

Thud.  That was the sound of a brick just hitting me.  I immediately changed my diet that day.  Gone were all the sugar and complex carbs.  I was focused on a low glycemic index diet from now on.

Along with the changes to diet, I had to get more active.  At my size, running was out of the question, so I had to start a walking regime.  I had heard over the years that you should get in 10,000 steps a day, so that was my goal.  I started off slow at first just going on 1 – 1 1/2 mile walks in the morning, then adding a walk in the evening so that I could get my 10,000 steps in.   There is a famous quote that says, “A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Step.”  These are my first steps.  Follow along with me on my health journey by following along in my blog to see what happens next. 

Homemade Almond Milk

I love almond milk, I use it in my cereal, in smoothies and basically every recipe that calls for milk.  All my life, I have had an intolerance to dairy, and I avoid cow’s milk whenever possible.  However, for some reason, I can’t stop eating cheese and ice cream (I just need to have tiny servings).  There are a lot of tasty varieties of almond milk at the grocery store, but I worry about added sugars and what preservatives they put in the almond milk to extend its shelf life. So over the years, I learned how to make my own almond milk.  To my surprise, when I learned how to make almond milk, I found that it is one of the easiest things that you can make at home in your own kitchen.

Here is the recipe that I use to make my almond milk.

Ingredients:

1 cup almonds

1 date

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

4 cups of filtered water

  1.  Place your almonds in a bowl or jar and fill the jar with water so that it covers the almonds and has about an additional inch of water above the almonds.  I like to use a mason jar for this.
  2. Let the almonds soak at least 12 hours in the water.  I soak mine overnight and make this fresh in the morning.
  3. Drain the water from the almonds and place the almonds in a high-speed blender, add the 4 cups of filtered water, the date, and vanilla.  Blend on high speed for about 2 minutes until the liquid becomes a creamy white color.
  4. Using a nut milk bag strain the almond mixture through the nut milk bag into a large bowl or mixing cup, gently squeezing out all the liquid.  You can now transfer into a storage container, mason jar, or milk jug.  I put mine in an old glass milk jug.  Don’t discard the leftover almond meal.  The almond meal can be dried out and used as a topping on yogurt, used in homemade granola, or ground to make almond flour.

Hello

Hello to all you blog readers out there, welcome to My Lowcountry Living!  My name is Tommy Ray, that’s my first name.  Yes, it is a double first name, just like Billy Ray Cyrus.  I am from Colorado, but live in Charleston now.  Despite being from Colorado my double first name fits in just fine in South Carolina.  I started mylowcountryliving.net to share my life living in the lowcountry of South Carolina.  I love to cook and garden and through this blog I intend to share my favorite recipes with you and try new recipes together.  I will share my experiences gardening and growing my own fruits and vegetables.  I have been a type 2 diabetic for about 4 years and I am on a journey to lose weight, lower my A1C and live a healthy lifestyle.  That journey to a healthy lifestyle will have its ups and downs and I will share that with my readers and together we can grow from it.