When I first started eating pumpkin as a vegetable, I seasoned it like pumpkin pie, just without any sweetening. I'd add ghee, cinnamon, ginger, and occasionally a little all spice or cloves. It was delicious. I ate it happily just like that for 4 1/2 years.

Then DD started eating pumpkin with me. She liked the pumpkin pie version, but one day she suggested adding nuts. Another day she said how about a little dried fruit. We now have a variety of pumpkin recipes that are all delicious.

We always start with a can of 100% pure pumpkin. We always add ghee, 1 tsp ginger juice and 1 tsp cinnamon. Then the fun begins. Here are three of our favorite combinations:

chopped pecans and dried cranberry
chopped walnuts and dried pineapple
chopped walnuts and dried cherries

Warm together until the flavors have a chance to blend.

While I may think of pumpkin as a vegetable, grocers disagree. Canned pumpkin seems to always be placed on the isle near the cake mixes. It would be easy to miss if you were looking for a tasty beneficial vegetable.

My legs are sore! DD and I are always looking for creativity and variety in our exercise. We have found a new leg exercise. There is a hill near our home that is too steep for either of us to ride up on our bicycles. We have to get off and push. Today we rode to the bottom of the hill. That in itself is good exercise. There are several challenging hills between our house and the big one.

We walked up the hill backwards. I could feel burning in my leg muscles. Obviously I was using muscles that I missed in my regular exercise routines. We walked down the hill backwards. More muscles burned. Then we walked up the hill backwards on tiptoes - twice. We rode our bikes home and enjoyed a big glass of water!

If this does not sound like a strenuous workout to you, find a hill and try it. If you don't find yourself walking a little more slowly and carefully the next day, you are in much better shape than DD and me!

The last yearbook picture has been placed. Yesterday I happily delivered the last page designs to Fed Ex. It is the most creative yearbook I’ve ever worked on. That’s saying a lot - I’ve worked with yearbooks off and on since 1972. However, I’m very glad its finished and the pressure of the deadline is behind me.

I’ve written so many blogs in my head, and I’ve put none of them on computer. Some of them were pretty good – and most of them are completely forgotten. However I’ll do an abbreviated version of two BTD items that caught my attention while I was immersed in the yearbook.

I cannot figure out why pears are Super Beneficial for Hunters. I have always thought of pears as a “nothing fruit.” They’re sweet, but they don’t have much flavor. They have a texture like sand. It’s difficult to buy them because they are either too green or too ripe. To add to the confusion, they are black dot avoids for Gatherers. None-the-less, in my database that combines everything I know about the BTD and the GTD, I have them rated Super Beneficial for me, and I’ve tried to eat more of them.

Then one day when I was buying dried fruit for DD’s power bars, I saw dried pears. I picked them up. “Disgusting,” I thought, and put them down. I picked them up and put them back several times before they ended up in my cart. Surprise, surprise they are delicious. The flavor is concentrated in dried pears. They are chewy and much less sandy. Now my problem is not eating too many of them.

My Honorable Husband (Type A) had a set back and drank four sodas in one week. He paid for it with an upset stomach that lasted most of the next week. I was not a sympathetic wife. I laughed at him. I also e-mailed him this tid bit from the GenoType Daily, “Ever wonder why you shouldn't eat Teacher Toxins like cornstarch, sugar, and soda? It's because starches and simple sugars encourage microbial growth in your intestines, which can lessen the efficiency of your immune system.”

He loves sodas, and he doesn’t think it’s fair that club soda and seltzer water are beneficial to a Type O like me. Now that the weather is hot and dry, I’ve been indulging in more carbonated beverages. Knudsen spritzers (carbonated water and pure fruit juice) are delicious, but expensive. I like making my own soda beverages using fruit juice and plain club soda.

Because DD takes a shake made with fruit juice and egg white protein powder to work every day, we’ve been buying Dole 100% frozen juices. There are several flavors including raspberry and cranberry, which are beneficial for her.

I took some of her raspberry juice (which is neutral for me) and mixed it and a teaspoon of ginger juice in a glass of ice cold club soda. Raspberry ginger ale! It was fabulous.

We have a friend who says, “Money can’t buy happiness, but it can sure make you comfortable.” The statement always gets a laugh because it’s true. Almost everyone wishes they had more money, but they can see that the rich are some of the unhappiest people in the world.

It’s equally true that food can’t make you happy. In spite of all the magazine articles about comfort food; eating with the wrong motivation just compounds problems, it never makes them go away.

My Darling Daughter and I had a conversation on this topic this morning. It started when she said, “Food makes you happy, Mom, but I’ve never really liked to eat.” At first I wanted to flatly deny both parts of the statement, but I couldn’t.

I do enjoy eating. I like the flavors and textures of food. I don’t care for gourmet cooking with fancy sauces and decorations. Simple food simply prepared is my style. However, I do get pleasure from cooking and eating.

DD on the other hand, says she has never really liked to eat. I remember that when she was a little tyke, she rarely finished her breakfast or lunch in one sitting. She would eat a few bites, then leave the table and go play. An hour later I’d see her back at the table, eating a little bit more.

This has made it hard for her to gain weight this year. She doesn’t like feeling full. She doesn’t want to have to eat snacks in between meals. She especially doesn’t like eating before she goes to bed.

I reminded her that while she didn’t eat a lot when she was little, in her middle school and early high school years she would come home from school, watch TV and snack. That was different, she explained. TV and munching seemed to go together. It wasn’t so much that she liked eating, but she liked keeping her hands and mouth busy while she watched. And she certainly didn’t like the weight that she put on during those years.

She told me how unhappy she was when her jeans wouldn’t fit. “So you worked hard and lost weight – too much weight,” I said. “Did that make you happy?” No she admitted that it hadn’t. “Now you’re almost at your goal of a healthy weight, does that make you happy.” Again the answer was no.

Food doesn’t make you happy. Happiness and joy come from inside. (The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Galatians 5:22) Happiness is more about your faith than about how much you eat or how much is in your bank account.

I hope that DD will come to learn that while the right kind and right amount of food can bring health, a happy heart is much more than weight or dress size or the image in the mirror.

I think I'm beginning to see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. School is out. My class really worked hard the last two weeks, and most of the yearbook pages are done. The editor has to wrap up the division pages that tie the book together, and I have plenty of proofing to do. But it's a manageable amount of work. It all has to be in the mail a week from Friday.

Graduation was last Saturday. I'm going to brag a bit on my darling daughter. She was the valedictorian of the senior class. She gave a lovely and positive speech. She stayed far away from the cake at the reception, even though pictures of the seniors were on top of the cake in colored icing. How do they do that? What kinds of chemicals and artificial colors must it take? It's fascinating to look at, but I wasn't tempted to eat it.

I've eaten well during this stressful time, but I haven't had nearly enough sleep. I have a fever blister!! The first in more than 20 years. I know it's the lack of rest. I have rarely been to bed before midnight in the past 3 weeks. More nights than I care to admit, my light was still burning at 2am. It's not quite 10:00 as I type this blog. I have one more e-mail to write, then I intend to crawl into bed and read for a few minutes before I close my eyes.