lemon-blueberry crisp with pine nut topping {food matters project}

I received some bad news last week. My bad {LDL} cholesterol has risen back to its original unwieldy height. My doctor suggested I start taking a statin {a drug that inhibits the production of an enzyme which helps generate cholesterol in the liver}. But when we sat down to discuss my options {and the potential side effects of the drug, which include Alzheimer's}, she decided that, due to my other statistics, I was not at that large of a risk for heart disease. It is just that darned LDL.

A number of thoughts ran through my mind:

My food blog is ruining my health.
I am so foolish to have thought I licked this with diet alone.
I need to do more to try and keep my LDL down.

I decided to do two things:

I am going to start running. A little at first so that I don't give it up, and hopefully get up to a couple of miles every other day. I measured the distance around my block and it is 1/3 mile. I think that is a good distance to begin with. I will run around the block every other day for two weeks and then increase a block every two weeks. Piece of cake!

I am going to reduce my sugar intake drastically. And I am going to begin with this recipe for the Food Matters Project.

The recipe calls for 1/2 cup sugar. Instead, I used 16 grams {which is equivalent to one tablespoon} of sugar in four sheets graham crackers. I also used 1/2 cup roasted, chopped pecans in place of 1 cup pine nuts. I think I could have left out the sugar entirely. Baked blueberries are pretty sweet all by themselves.

I am not sure what happened but my dish, which was tasty enough, did not have any lemon flavor and fell in on itself, losing all the crust to the berry mix. It didn't hurt the flavor any but made the dish less than beautiful. Did that happen with yours? 

Chosen by Laura J. You can check out what other Food Matters disciples did here.

{recipe}