Latest info, recipes, tools & gadgets to create a healthy diet
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Blanched versus Un-blanched
Mar 27th
Harvest Abundance
Last spring I had a bumper crop of snow peas. So many we couldn’t possibly eat them all. I decided to try freezing some of them to see how they did. I’d always read that you needed to blanch vegetables before freezing them.
Blanching is not a lengthy process, but I felt that if I could just clean them up from the garden, allow them to dry, and then freeze them without any processing it would help preserve even more nutrients.
Of course I’m not trying to freeze to keep something for eternity either. I had preserved them to use in More >
Gadget Repair Expert
Dec 30th
Thanks for the guest post by Jo Levy
My husband is definitely the technology guru of our house. He is great with gadgets and computers, and can really repair anything. It’s awesome to have someone like him around since we increasingly use technology to get though our everyday lives. We use a ton of electronic appliances in our kitchen, so whenever one of those starts acting up, it gets fixed immediately. Last time my phone was acting weird, it was my husband who fixed it. Then when our computer started going crazy, he came to the rescue again. Sometimes I just More >
Gift Ideas For Your Health Nut Friends
Dec 9th
The holidays are rapidly approaching. If you’ve got health nuts on your list for the holidays, buying gifts for them may be a mystery. I know when people hear our dietary restrictions (all voluntary) they secretly vow never to invite us over for a meal. However, with just a little bit of planning you can give a gift, even an edible gift, to a friend that is choosing to eat consciously.
You'll make a health-nut's eyes glow when they receive goji berries as a gift.
First off there are some ingredients that we love that are pretty expensive (of course all of More >
Food Popularity And Price
Nov 25th
Pomegranates, once a shunned food, now a fad.
Over the past few years I’ve found some of my favorite foods skyrocketing in price. The reason? They’ve been found to have high nutritional values, especially when it comes to antioxidants. Let’s see… pomegranates. You know those weird fruits that you used to have at Christmas that hardly anyone knew what to do with, so they would just sit around until they shriveled up. Well, I’ve eaten and enjoyed them since I was a kid. A few years back you could get a really, really nice pomegranate for 99 cents. Now, on sale More >
Enjoying Some Fall Baked Goods
Nov 12th
Guest post written by Erin Wooster
I am quite the cook. Or I guess that I would rather say the baker. See I’m not that into cooking, but I really love baking things. I just think it’s so much easier to mix something up and let it bake on its own instead of standing there and supervising it. To me, that’s just plain annoying and too much trouble.
Plus, it seems to be a general consensus that most of the things that you can bake are far yummier in comparison to things that you just plain old cook. I love to look More >
Rant: White Sugar
Nov 1st
Sugar from sugar cane is sometimes whitened with bone char, dead animal bones!
Recently I became aware that some white sugar (made from sugar cane) is run through a charcoal filter. However, it isn’t necessarily vegetarian. They take animal bones throw them in a fire and use the leftovers for what is called bone char. YUCK! I’ve decided not to eat anything with white sugar in it, because I don’t know if some poor animal had to die to make it white (beet sugar is naturally white).
Where did we ever get the idea that white sugar is better? This is certainly More >
What’s In A Name?
Sep 5th
Do you believe in love at first sight? Well I experienced it the first time I bit into a Pink Lady apple. I grew up in the time of Delicious, Delicious and more Delicious apples. I always thought they tasted so bland. Every once in awhile we’d get some Winesaps. Oh, were they delicious compared to the Delicious.
So, what’s in a name? When it comes to fruit, everything. Over the decades, as demand for fruits and vegetables have grown, farmers have chosen to grow varieties that have a long self life. It didn’t matter how they tasted. As time went More >
The New Food Plate
Aug 16th
The new food plate
I was trying to find information on the food groups that I grew up with as a kid, but I couldn’t seem to find anything truly definitive. I know that meat and dairy were the most important categories, but after that I’m not sure. I just know that fruits, veggies, and grains were not as important as they are today and that vegetarian options for protein were unheard of.
So, now we have the new plate. I’m not sure it is any better than the pyramid, although it does show you the proportions more readily. I mean how More >
Why Don’t Kids Eat Fruits & Vegetables?
Jun 17th
I was reading an article the other day entitled “Ten ways to get kids to eat their veggies.” My first thought was, “Why aren’t kids eating fruits and vegetables?” As kid I remember there were veggies that weren’t my favorite, but I loved green beans, carrots, salad, and would eat cauliflower and broccoli if they had cheese on them. Fruits were never a problem. I loved them all. As a matter of fact the only fruit I can think of that I’m not particularly fond of is papaya. Fruit is like candy, only good for you.
When I read that people can’t More >
Quality Over Economy
Jun 14th
I was recently gifted a beautiful pair of Gingher sewing scissors. Ever since I started living on my own I had used a pair of Fiscars, thinking that they were really fine scissors. However, when I put these new puppies to fabric they cut through it like butter and left a razor sharp, clean edge. I was shocked.
My mother had Gingher scissors and I had used them while I was growing up, but when I got on my own I didn’t have the money for Gingher, so I picked what I thought was the up and coming Gingher – Fiscar. More >