DAY FOUR

Just a little food talk…I’ve been getting some questions about some of the food I’ve been eating. I do A LOT of stir-frying…why? Taste good and its fast to cook. One of the meals I love to cook is chicken and veggies stir-fry, it’s so simple and best of all one frying pan full can make many meals to eat on all day long. Truth is I cheat as much as possible; the chicken comes per-cooked


And I buy the veggie mix frozen…
it takes about 7 minutes from start to finish cooking and cleaning. I just throw the chicken into a hot frying pan covered with Pam, I give the chicken about a one minute head start in the pan then I throw in the frozen veggies, after about another minute I LIGHTLY cover the mix with Toney’s seasoning and sometimes a little soy sauce.

That’s it…just a few more minutes and its done; pour it on a plate, quick hand wash of the pan in the sink and it time to eat…Mmm Mmmm Good!

One word of warning…a lot of the stir-fry veggies (like photo above) come with a seasoning pack in the bag…beware…most of the ones I’ve looked at, while very tasty are very high in sugar, THROW THOSE SUCKERS AWAY…it little mistake like eating these packets that can ruin your diet for the day…READ the labels people.

Woke up this morning with a body weight of 286 LB...Oh yea and sore from head to toe.
Big Al

NOTE: I’m going to start adding this note to each of my blog post until the 56 DAY FITNESS COUNTDOWN is over…I’m doing this incase some new readers come on and wonder what the heck is going on…if your lost look to the top left hand corner of the blog page and click on “THE START” under the 56 DAY FITNESS COUNTDOWN (LINKS)…it will explain what’s going or just use it to look at a post you might have missed…oh yea my weight loss will be posted daily just above that…hope this helps.

Poolside garden project

Well its spring time and my son (Myles) and I decided it was time to build a small garden. Around three years ago I bought one of those plastic landscape ponds, ever since then it has been sitting around on my deck waiting to be installed. The pond itself is a 300 gallon; it came to me in a dream to fill it with dirt instead of water.

My boy and I got started early Saturday morning a week ago; Myles started by tighten up the air chuck on the nail gun. I have to admit the nail gun was almost as big as my boy. Ha-ha.

Next step was to nail down the boards where the pond was to be placed; Myles got the hang of it very quick and made short work of it.

Next step we needed to drill some one inch drain holes; again Myles was up to the job, he first drilled holes in the bottom then went to work on the sides. He did an amazing job.

The next step you ask; well Myles abandon his dad and went to the front yard to play some baseball. Ha-ha. He had done a good job…I think the heavy nail gun took it out of him.

Now it was my turn to work; I first built the frame then added braces due to the odd shape of the pool.

Then a test fitting of the pool

Then I placed the pool back into place and did a test fit of the 8 foot 2” x 12” treated board. I had to use 2 x 12’s to cover the odd shape of the pool; once I laid a board on top I would lay on my back in the pool and trace the shape of the pool on the bottom side of the board.

Then it was time to get out the jig saw; here is a little back ground story of the jig saw I was working on another project a few years ago (the deck) and I burn up my other jig saw and I only had one board left to cut and to make matter worse it was late in the day and a Sunday. So at the time of day I just went to Wal-Mart to get a cheap jig saw to finish the job until I had time to go to Lowes and get a better one. When I got to the store there was a Black and Decker jig saw for 20 dollars, so I picked it up and was walking out to pay…then I saw it a no name jig saw for…get this its price…six dollars. I laughed to myself and picked it up, figuring it would last at least long enough to finish the one cut I had left…well to make a long story short; I’m still using the same cheap jig saw three years later…go figure. Ha-ha.

Next step was to finish up the crazy cuts and nail them to the top.

Then I stared on the sides, I used six foot dog eared boards (fence boards) cut into 16” boards

Then came the trim boards around the top

It ended up looking like a hot tub once done.

Now it was time for the dirt, my Pop sprung for the dirt, we ended up getting it from Wal-Mart too. It cost $ 1.20 a bag; we ended up getting 60 bags somewhere around 70 dollars. So if you ever ask your self what 2400 pounds of dirt looks like in bags…well here it is…

Next was painful I had to carry 60 bags of dirt from the driveway to the pool and cut open and dump each bag. It’s amazing how everyone has something else to do when lifting is done…ha-ha.

Once I got it mostly full I went back to Wal-Mart and the nursery and picked up the plants and some high dollar dirt to finish off the pond.

Next I planted the plants

Here is the finished garden…after the garden is over I plan on planting dwarf fruit trees in the pond next.

I also planted some more veggies in some pots that will go into another planter on my deck…more on that later.