Oh, the weather outside is frightful …

It's snowing. And cold. And it's snowing. AND DID I MENTION IT'S SNOWING?!?!?

I put a sideways-oriented video on my Facebook page, because I'm stupid about cell phone camcorders. (And then I fixed it so it shows up properly! Woo hoo!) Not sure if you have to be a FB friend to see the video or not. If you're not my FB friend, feel free to click the little button in the sidebar and I'll add you right away.

I'm feeling a little emotionally manic this morning, I guess falling snow will do that to you me. I'd love to be feeling physically manic, as well, but I was up for a couple hours in the dark, early hours, right after 1 a.m., and my energy level is running on empty.

But since I got a call last night saying don't bother to come in to work today, I think I'll somehow manage to get through the day. I might even mop my floors, which desperately need attention. The garden center is having a snow day! Yay!

They were open yesterday, but my schedule has changed and I no longer work on Sundays. I did, however, celebrate Earth Day by picking up roadside litter with the owner and two other employees. We started at 9 a.m., got done around 11:30 and collected 15 bags of trash over a two-mile stretch of road. You can read about our adventures in litter-bagging here. (Honestly? What a nasty, nasty job. I couldn't wait to get home and take a shower. How hard is it to just hold on to your trash until you can deposit it in a proper receptacle, anyway? Especially beverage bottles used as spittoons. gross, Gross, GROSS!)

Moving on.

Apropos of absolutely nothing Earth Day-related, I want to share what I had for breakfast this morning. Overnight oats have been around for a while. I first read about them at Kath Eats Real Food. (Here's her recipe. And her photos are much better than mine!) I don't know if Kath invented them or not; I see lots of links to variations on Pinterest, as well.

These are not your warm, creamy, steel-cut-in-the-crockpot overnight oats. These are cold and creamy, and you'd absolutely NEVER know you were eating oats. I've been meaning to try them for months, but I never think about throwing everything together after dinner so they can meld together in the fridge.

Last night, however, I did. Here's the basic recipe:

Overnight Oats
1/3 cup yogurt (plain, flavored, Greek, it doesn't really matter)
1/3 cup milk
1/3 cup old-fashioned rolled oats

My last batch of yogurt was kind of thin, so I didn't add any additional milk. The flavor variations come, of course, from the add-ins, which range from sugar-free applesauce and cinnamon to fruit-flavored jams to fresh cut-up fruit to peanut butter and cocoa. I did the applesauce-and-cinnamon version and loved it. I added some chia seeds and a teensy bit of sugar, from my sugar-cinnamon mix stored in a shaker-top spice bottle.

Mix the ingredients in a Mason jar or other lidded container, pop it in the refrigerator and let it sit overnight. It's actually still good a couple days later, in case you get an unexpected invitation to breakfast.

Seriously. You won't believe you're eating oats.

Have you tried them before? Did you like them and are they now part of your regular breakfast rotation? And how did you celebrate Earth Day? Inquiring minds and all that …

Friday Quote Day

I've learned only that you never say never.

~ Marina von Neumann Whitman

I'll tell you right here and right now that Marina von Neumann Whitman was not the first person to never say never.

Case in point: I'm tempted to say I can never lose weight again. My metabolism is so screwed up, my age is working against me, I'm post-menopausal, blah, blah, blah. But … I lost a pound in August.

So there. Never say never.

The Fat2Fit guys would be so proud of me. Slow and steady wins the race and all that.

A pound doesn't sound like much, and it isn't really. My weight can vary by a pound or more from morning to night. Not that I weigh myself morning and night. (I used to. I'm so over that.) During the month of August I weighed myself twice: the 1st and the 20th. I'm not sure why the 20th happened, but I recorded my weight in the FatSecret app on my phone, so there you go.

(Aside: One of the diet tips on FatSecret is: STAY AWAY FROM CAKE. Heh.)

I weighed myself yesterday and am going to try not to weigh myself again until October 1.

I bet you'd love to know how I lost all that weight in just one month, right? Well I think the secret was switching to soy milk. (All kidding aside, I'm a new soy milk convert, the light vanilla is delicious!) Pretty soon I'm going out on a limb and try almond milk, as well.

Don't get me wrong. I'm still using fresh cow's milk for mozzarella, cottage cheese and yogurt. But the occasional glass of vanilla soy milk has totally revved up that lagging metabolism and blasted away four ounces per week.

One serious thing I've been consciously doing is eating a yogurt/oat/fruit concoction for breakfast nearly every day. I was a little worried at one point that I was setting my day up for a fall, because the fruit is either homemade-with-sugar strawberry jam or peach preserves. However, after my spectacular weigh-in yesterday I can throw that worry out the window.

Some people call the concoction overnight oats, but I usually forget to mix it up and let it mellow overnight. So basically I'm eating half a cup of plain yogurt with a quarter cup of old-fashioned uncooked oats and a tablespoon of preserves, all mixed up and eaten quickly, so as not to dwell on the fact that I'm eating minimally processed oats. (Sometimes I add chia or sunflower seeds and sometimes I sprinkle the whole mess with cinnamon. But basically I'm eating glop.)

Really, it's not so bad. The oats meld into the yogurt, and fruit preserves can mask a lot of gloppiness with some juicy, delicious gloppiness of its own.

Are you doing something fun for Labor Day? I'm visiting family in North Carolina and planning to hit the farmer's market on the way home. Last time I did that I bought peaches; this time I'm looking for okra and apples. My okra harvest, as I reported earlier, was not a total crop failure, but was too skimpy to make pickles. I love okra pickles and they are worth the trouble to make. My neighbor's apple tree produces fruit only every other year, so no free pommes this year, but with only one eight-ounce jar of apple jelly left to get me through the winter, I think I need to snag a bushel.

I also might get some raw peanuts with the idea of planting some, just to see what happens. I'm thinking our soil/climate is a little too wet for peanuts, but I'm willing to throw some in the ground and see what happens.

I appreciate all of you who take the time to share your thoughts with me in the comments, and all of you who lurk, too. It's time for you lurkers to come out of the virtual woodwork. Don't be shy! I know you talk to real people, you can talk to me, too.

Here's to college football, cooler temperatures, maybe even a little rain to end the summer season. Have a great weekend.