Bacon Egg & Cheese Biscuits

Heaven. Pure heaven.

Today is my birthday. I don't really care much about my birthday in general. I never really want to go out and do anything, and I certainly don't want some horrible mexican hat dumped on my head while a bunch of uncomfortable looking waiters sing happy birthday to me in Spanish while all my friends laugh. So to avoid any temptation for my friends to do that sort of thing, I generally stay at home and take it easy.

There are two serious advantages to having my birthday though. One: I get presents and everybody likes presents. :) and Two: I get to eat whatever I want. Usually an indulgent dinner and a *whole* piece of cake -- whatever cake I feel like making for myself (usually Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting)

I never really consider myself to be on a "diet." However, I used to weigh quite a lot more than I do now -- at my heaviest I remember one day that the scale read 180 -- which is far too heavy for me at 5'3 and a supposedly active lifestyle. Lots of things happened to help me lose weight, and it took me roughly 4 years to go from my heaviest down to my average now which hangs out around 130. These days though I am very careful to maintain my weight. I weigh myself every single day of the week and when I creep up to 130.5 I cut back on what I've been eating until it drops back down. My goal is to keep my weight below 130 and I usually keep it right at 129 which is a weight I can live with.



The only "trick" I have for maintaining my weight is portion control. I generally eat what I want, but I will say, for the most part I "want" to eat lower calorie stuff and I try to avoid heavy meals with lots of fried food. When I do eat a burger and fries or pizza or something else like that, I eat maybe 5 or 6 fries and half of the burger -- keeping the portion under control and hopefully the calories down to a reasonable level.

With all the baking I do I sample a small piece for the sake of the blog to get an accurate read on flavor and texture and fun things like that. (some recipes take more "sampling" than others... no denying that.) But even with all the baking and all the great food that Chris makes for us, I've kept my weight down for almost two years now. Some days are harder than others, and there are definitely days I get frustrated with the whole thing, but it's worth it because I feel a lot better about myself at this weight, and I still enjoy all the food I have always loved, I just enjoy much smaller portions of it.

But, with all of that going on in my day to day life, I always indulge on my birthday in something I wouldn't normally eat because of the calorie count. I considered several things for my birthday dinner this year (last year was a fantastic veal scallopine fried in butter with prosciutto and sage -- a recipe that Chris whipped out on one of our first dates in fact... I think he was trying to impress me) but for this year I finally settled on bacon egg & cheese biscuits. Man, what a great meal.

I made the biscuits (my favorite Red Sage recipe that you can find here), while Chris fried the bacon and cooked the eggs and we topped the whole thing with extra sharp cheddar cheese. There are no words really for the wonderfulness of this meal... *sigh* :) Comfort food at it's finest.