Sourdough beignets

It's interesting to look back and see how everything has been pointing me to the Roman Catholic Church. I took Latin in high school and college. I really love the language. I have always wanted to visit Italy. I really enjoy traveling to New Orleans.

One of my family's traditions is making beignets for supper. Most of the time we use refrigerated biscuits. Tonight, I tried a recipe for sourdough beignets. The directions included salt and eggs that weren't in the ingredient list. I added 1 1/2 tsp salt and two eggs. It made for a chewy donut rather than the lighter beignets of Cafe du Monde. It was a crowd pleaser and made twice as much as we could eat. I cut them and began cooking and ended up having to cut some of the later batches in half again because they kept rising.

Don't ask me why this is right side up in my camera roll but then uploads upside down. But it's lots of deliciousness either way you look at it!

Variety is the spice of life!

So, I have learned that I need familiar things like crochet, cooking, bubble baths and such boost serotonin. Exciting, new things and being active boost dopamine which I am lacking. So I need a routine that incorporates lots of variety.

Since August, I have been planning our school days very effectively. I use a notebook and add each subject with page numbers and review questions. We are getting so much work done. The boys did their copy work in cursive today which was way better than I thought they would be at this early in the school year. We'll be through the science book in three weeks and have time to do one or two more science books.

How about I apply that to my daily schedule? My subjects can by God, husband, children, community, cleaning, organizing, decorating and crafting. I can vary the activities often so I am addressing all areas of focus without it getting old. I can plan ahead a focus to help plan ahead so i am not a slave to my impulsiveness and then add what I else I am able to accomplish once I get on a roll.

I think this will help me focus on today instead of what didn't get done yesterday or what will still need to be done tomorrow. I really love the days when I am in the zone and getting lots done. Maybe this idea will help those days become more frequent.

Daily Choices

I have never thought of myself as a very good person.

I am.....

Careless

Impulsive

Irresponsible

I have tried so hard to change who I am. I've tried Flylady and Emily Barnes to help me keep my house clean. I've tried every routine and schedule you can imagine to keep myself consistent. I do well at first and then I get bored or distracted and fail.

I often feel like a child. Why can't a grown woman get it together? I had even considered medication. Since coffee puts me to sleep, I do react to stimulants in the way that ADHD people do. At my worst, I would have mood swings that were similar to bipolar. I talked to my husband about it and decided that I might need medicine in the future but I wasn't ready to be called crazy just yet.

I decided to pick out a dieting book at the library to give me some motivation. I picked Diet Rehab by Dr Mike Dow. It explained how our brains work. The kind of ADHD symptoms that I was having could well be explained with low dopamine that could be boosted by certain foods and activities.

The mood swings were caused by my efforts to "fix" myself. I'd find a new program or a new motivation and be on top of the world for a while. New things are dopamine boosters. Then I would get into the nitty gritty of trying to be consistent with my new program and my dopamine would drop and some days it was a struggle to get out of bed.

It gets worse with age. My biggest addictions are caffeine and peanut butter. Fat and stimulants that boost dopamine. Because I'm getting older and weight comes on more easily, I can't have a Coke and a Reese's as often as I'd like or I'd be 300 lbs.

I'm using these ideas for myself and my son who has been diagnosed with ADHD but has reacted terribly to medication. The best part is that I don't have to add a lot of foreign foods and eliminate our favorites. For the first week which ends today, I add one dopamine boosting activity and one dopamine boosting food per day. I eliminate nothing for the first two weeks.

So I added exercise, dancing, cleaning to upbeat music and new recipes. On the first day, I noticed my son was a little more anxious. That could be low serotonin so I started adding things like cooking, crafts and more laughs and hugs to boost serotonin.

Basically, sugar spikes and crashes our serotonin levels and fats are the pitfall foods of dopamine. So add more complex carbohydrates and protein.

We ate more beans, grits, flax seed and eggs. I have seen some more ways of adding protein like smoothies and high protein pasta.

Starting tomorrow, I'll be adding two activities and two foods each day. I really like that this about daily choices. Our actions, diet and attitudes affect our brain chemistry every day. Every day we have a chance to make better choices that will help us be more focused and less impulsive.