#445 oh fudge

Hope you all had a happy Saturday. Here's what I did today:

I started out at the gym with an hour of cycling (spinning) class followed by an hour of yoga/pilates. I came home, showered, then went to my WW meeting. No change this week, which I guess is ok since I've been snacking on leftover Halloween candy. I'm pretty sick of the Halloween candy. It doesn't even taste good anymore, but I eat it because it's there. It's just wrong. I'm taking it to work next week, but I think everyone is pretty sick of Halloween candy.

When I got home from the meeting, I ate, cleaned up the kitchen and proceeded with my fudge challenge. You know that the holidays are right around the corner, and one of my favorite holiday treats is fudge. I recently saw two fudge-like recipes that are very low Points, and they both sounded good and easy to make, so I decided to have a "fudge-off" and make both of them and then we could decide in a straight up taste test which one we liked better.

The first recipe is Hungry Girl's peanut butter fudge. You take a box of brownie mix, add two cups of pure pumpkin, mix them together and spread the thick, sticky batter into a prepared 8x8 or 9x9 pan. Then you swirl two tablespoons of reduced fat peanut butter through the batter and bake it for 35 minutes at 350 degrees. Let it cool, then cover with foil and refrigerate. The directions say that it should look undercooked when you pull it out of the oven.

Mine didn't look too undercooked. In fact, it's a brownie-ish consistency. I attribute that to two things. First, I didn't use exactly two cups of pumpkin. I only had about a cup and half. Second, my oven cooks hot. I probably should have pulled out the fudge at about 30 minutes. Maybe next time.

The second recipe is Weight Watchers Dark and Creamy Fudge from "Weight Watchers Magazine". It's super easy to make. You melt about 10 oz. of semi-sweet chocolate chips along with a 14 oz can of fat free sweetened condensed milk. Add in a splash of vanilla and a pinch of coarse sea salt. Heat and stir until the mixture is smooth; it takes about five minutes. Pour the mixture into an 8x8 pan lined with plastic wrap, allow it to cool, then cover with more plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for a couple of hours to allow it to set up. To serve, cut it into small pieces and sprinkle a little more sea salt on top. You gotta have the sea salt. It really adds to the flavor!

The boy-men in my house both liked the WW recipe the best. I like them both. They are quite different in flavor and texture. I would take either to a work event or to the extended family meal.

I took a picture of the fudges, but it was blurry and not worth sharing.

I watched the Utah Utes lose to the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame today. It was awful. I think there is some residual shaken confidence in Utah from the ass-whooping TCU delivered last week. Utah had NO offense today. They only scored three points, for God's sake! The Irish were happy to win on Senior Day. It was the first time they've beaten a ranked team in like three years or something.

On the good side of Utah sports, the Jazz finished up their four game road trip with another win! They beat Charlotte at the very end of the game on a basket from Deron Williams. He's great! I'm glad he plays for the Jazz. 4-0 on the road trip. Unbelievable!!

I didn't watch the Jazz game, though, because we had family night out. We all went to see the movie "Due Date". I really wanted to see it because Robert Downey Jr. is in it and I love him. Plus the previews looked funny. And there were some funny parts. It was similar to "The Hangover" because the situations they get into are so outrageous. And the hairy guy from "The Hangover" is in it too. MT said it was merely all right for him. I agree. It was all right. It might have been better if I'd seen it at Brewvies, drinking a beer and having some nachos.

After the movie, we went to dinner at Johnny Carino's. T ate a salad and a HUGE plate of spaghetti and meatballs. He actually still has a bunch of spaghetti left, but he devoured the meatballs. He was eating like the pre-teen boy he is.

So that's all I got for today!