I wonder what I'll have to count tonight

Last night I was determined to get to sleep without drugs.  I have a lifetime history of insomnia, and in recent years I had given up fighting it.  I was much more interested in getting to sleep than I was in being chemical free.  For some reason, last night I took a stand.  "Tonight I will fall asleep on my own" I said to myself.

I counted sheep.  I counted goats.  I counted horses.  I visualized myself mountain climbing.  Finally around two AM I drifted off.  And I felt great in the morning.  I was totally energized.  I took care of some chores and felt like I had had a huge shot of caffeine (which I had not, which is a whole other story).  And I was in a *great* mood.

About six PM it all caught up with me.  Five hours of sleep plus Monday plus walking in the cold plus dieting = I am very tired.  And today was our monthly "run around and clean up the house" day.  I am POOPED.  I am so close to having a pepsi and a snickers.  Fortunately we're out.  Instead I had some popcorn and some water with lemon slices in it.  Whew!  Diet saved.

Oh I forgot!  I wanted to show you the banana "ice cream" I made.  Tara forwarded me an article about this a little while ago, and I finally was home and had nasty spotty bananas to make it with.  Last night I sliced up two bananas, stuck them on a flexible sheet, and put them in the freezer.  They weren't crunchy last night so I had to wait until this morning to do anything with them.  Here is the two bananas worth of slices after a night in the freezer.

 

Them's some cold bananas

I had bought JD a little Cuisinart hand unit food processor for Christmas.  The bowl fit about half of the slices so I did it in two batches.  All I did was pulse the blender a few times to get it going, then let it run for a minute or two.  The first time I didn't let it go quite long enough so I went back and redid it.  The second time it came out perfect on the first try!  And it's pretty good.  I love "Chunky Monkey" ice cream so I figured I would like this, and I do.  I also put a wee dab of Hershey's syrup on some, and it was fantastic.  [1]

The first batch I did was pretty much mashed but the extra thirty seconds of blending made all the difference.  The color and texture totally changed.  On the left below you can see the banana after about two minutes.  On the right you see batch one before I blended it some more - it's at about one minute thirty seconds of blending.

Ice-cream-ish

You can see that the finished product has a consistency like soft ice cream.  I ate a little with breakfast, feeling incredibly decadent.  I put the rest in the freezer.  JD and I had some more after dinner.  It's now more like hard ice cream. On the whole I think I prefer it soft, but they're both good.

I could definitely see making Faux Chunky Monkey by mixing in some walnuts and adding a swirl of chocolate.  This would be an awesome summer treat.  For that matter it's an awesome winter treat.

[1] A very wee dab.