HappyGreenYogi

It’s Friday, let’s all do a fun dance!

2009-10-23T10:27:00.000-07:00

While making my meal and shopping list on Monday morning, I came up with an idea to try with my homemade pizza. I make homemade pizza fairly often since it is both fun to make and my family likes it a lot. There are just times I like to change it up, and this is one of those times. I made my crust, which has already gone through changes over the years of being made over and over. In the last year or so of making my pizza crust, I started using whole wheat flour along with adding 2 tablespoons of flax seed. The best thing about using the bread machine is that other things can get done while it is mixing and rising. The topping on the pizza were cheddar and mozzarella. Then, I added partially cooked cut red potatoes, along with cut up fresh basil and spinach. For the final topping, I added freshly ground pepper and salsa seasoning. My whole idea in making the pizza this way is to try new and interesting ways to add more fresh vegetables to our daily diet.

Yesterday, I published 2 articles under my title of Madison Healthy Food Examiner. One was filled with a few of my own recipes for Apples, along with the great health benefits from them. The other is a cookbook review, and once you read the article you will want to run out to purchase this cookbook. I have made a number of the recipes and found them to be easy and great tasting. I know you all will read, “Brownies with butternut squash, I don’t think so”. I was so surprised to eat one and there was no taste of the butternut squash. So, check out those articles and please feel free to give me feedback I always enjoy it.

All we have been hearing so much in the news lately about H1N1, and if you have been affected by it in any way I am sorry to hear it. I want to share a product that I have been keeping very close at hand since all this started. This product is called Get Clean Germ Off disinfecting wipes from Shaklee. These wipes are shown to kill 99.9% of Salmonella, along with E. coli. Another thing is the Get Clean Germ Off wipes are conveniently packages in a container that can be carried with you. I have one under my kitchen sink for the counters; one is downstairs by the exercise equipment. Everyone is to wipe down the equipment when they are done with it to keep the bacteria down. I have started carrying one in my car in the seat next to me. I am just trying to be wise during this flu season, and that is why I wanted to share with product with you. If you go to my Shaklee website, and you will find more information on all the bacteria’s that these wipes and Basic G kills. If you would like to me to send you information just feel free to email me. I would be happy to get information for you.

The rest of my time lately when I am not studying that is, has been spent Fall cleaning through our house. We are going to send the stuff to auction in the next month, and get it out of our house once and for all. It is amazing to me how much stuff we collect without realizing what we are doing, and I truly want to work on stopping it. All the stuff isn’t going to make me any happier. The relationships with my family and friends are what bring true happiness.

I look forward to reading your comments, and I hope you enjoy your autumn weekend!

Autumn is here!

2009-10-07T10:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a big writing day for me in my home office. To be honest, I don’t feel like I accomplished as much as I had hoped. For the last couple of weeks, I have been working on reading a great deal for my Holistic Fitness Coaching classes. This last week, I was notified that I am a certified Pilate’s instructor now. This along with many other activities has begun to make me feel a little behind in my writing schedule. One of the articles that I have been working on writing is about how to keep your breasts healthy. Being this is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we all should be thinking about what we can do in our everyday lives. Here is the link to that article on Examiner.com.

With the cool temperatures outside, I have begun to have a taste for a few of my comfort foods. A few nights ago, I made my Goulash Stew, and it was so good. My Goulash stew recipe comes from a cookbook that I purchased over in Germany a number of years ago. Over the years I have taken the recipe and changed it to be just a little healthier by cutting the fat levels in it. I have also added a little more spice to it with a seasoning called Cajun seasoning from Penzey’s. I have started working on a number of my older recipes to reduce the fat and unnecessary sugar in them. I need to be careful because I don’t want to lose the great taste of the recipe that we all felt in love with over the years. I have started adding flax seed meal to breads, waffles, and anything else I can think of hiding it in. Next week, I plan to start taking a few of my recipes and take out the fat (or at least some) and add butternut squash in its place without changing the favorite of the recipe.

Are you planning on entertaining this weekend your friends or family members? Tomorrow, I will share with you a few easy ideas to help you enjoy your time with them more.

Have a great day! Take time today to be grateful for all your blessing!

It’s the Weekend

2009-09-12T07:50:00.000-07:00

Weekends can be filled with fun activities, a lot of yard work or house cleaning or simply no activities at all. Yard work or house cleaning is really not fun, and most people feel having no activities on the schedule as boring as well. I feel a little different about no activities because that means I will most likely get to have time to read a book on my list for once. I want to throw the question out to all of my readers, and ask you. “What are your weekend plans?” I am always curious, how people spend their weekends.

Thursday afternoon, I was writing in my home office, and for some reason started to think about making bruschetta. Now, it could be that I have so many tomatoes and needed to figure out new ways to use them. I got online to find a recipe, which I was able to do rather quickly. Since I was in the writing zone, but still wanted to make time for my 30 minute run, I used my bread machine to make the fresh bread instead of driving to the local store! My bruschetta turned out so good that I had to take a photo to share with all of you. So, here it is and I hope it encourages everyone to think outside the box when thinking about dinner time tonight.

Otherwise, our weekend is very busy with activities. I will have to fit in my house cleaning sometime this weekend though, I am just wondering when! I published a few new articles and at least one of the articles I have shared is one of my old favorites. So, feel free to check it out at Madison Healthy Food Examiner, and always feel free to give your thoughts and feeling.

I will close for now and look forward to hearing from you all, my readers in the weeks to come. Have a wonderful weekend doing whatever you will be doing!

Wow! Here it is already September 10th

2009-09-10T08:16:00.000-07:00

Where did the summer go? I don’t know about the rest of you, but I feel like this summer just completely flew by me. With that being said, I am excited about getting back into regular daily blogging. I have made myself a schedule for all of my writing jobs, along with a fun blogging schedule with daily features. I have been working on my Pilates class, which includes learning the whole body’s biomechanics. I don’t have that much more to go with reading the manual and then comes the test.

This summer has been filled with many changes around our house. My daughter graduated in May, but continued to live up in Minneapolis until the last few days of August. She has now moved home, but as of earlier today was offered a job up in Minneapolis. I don’t know if she will take it or not, she needs to look at it from all the different sides. My son is back into the swing of college, and is looking toward the future with excitement to follow in his Dad’s footsteps. I have been writing this summer, working on building up my readership to this blog along with my writing sites. I have been assigned another Examiner title called Madison Healthy Food Examiner, and all of you who know me will know how fitting that is. I am continuing to write the Milwaukee Alternative Medicine Examiner as well. I have linked them here so please feel free to check out what new information I wrote on them. I am working on writing a few more guest blog entries for MomsWhoBlog.com, and will share the link when they get published so you all will be able to read them.

Here are a couple of pictures from my backyard flowers, and I hope you enjoy them. My husband and I just returned on Monday afternoon from our anniversary weekend in downtown Chicago. We had a wonderful time shopping and eating at a few of their great restaurants. We also went to the Chicago Art Institute, and decided to become members with hopes of visiting there more often. I really enjoyed the CAI; it really sparked my creative side. On our way home, we stopped at the Chicago Botanical Gardens, which was in full bloom.

I hope that you all continue to check back here daily for tips, creative ideas, along with some recipes that I will be sharing here with all of you as I begin to work on my future cookbook. Fall is my favorite time of year, and that is when you will find me getting back into the kitchen to experiment with new recipes. I will be putting links to my articles and websites that are of interest. I look forward to hearing all your comments, and ideas.

Have a wonderful Thursday!

Back Home Again!

2009-07-22T06:29:00.000-07:00

We are back home again after a wonderful trip out East. My husband and I just returned yesterday from out East, where I met the rest of his family for the first time. They all made me feel a part of the family from the first warm wonderful hug to the time we left to drive home.

We stayed in a beautiful hotel that was filled with antiques and felt very much like a bed and breakfast. Here are a few photos I took of the hotel and around Strasburg, Virginia.

While we were gone on our trip, my container garden continued growing. It was so exciting to come home and find little green tomatoes, and green pepper growing on my plants. I have already been able to enjoy using some of my fresh home grown basil in my Mediterranean bread salad recipe.

Yesterday morning, I found it hard to get focused and organized so it took some time. But, I finally did and started working. I plan to have some interesting articles for everyone to read in the next couple of days. So, keep checking back to read my blog entries which will share the links to my new articles. I have also picked up another title with Examiner.com called Madison Healthy Food Examiner. I will be adding a link to that home page as soon as it is all set up, and I have published my first food article.

Have a great day! Remember to always live in the moment and enjoy each day to it’s fullest.

Where did the 4th of July just go?

2009-07-07T19:32:00.000-07:00

Well, I hope everyone had a fun filled 4^th of July! Our weekend was filled with a movie on Friday night, which we have not been to in for so long. Then, my husband played golf days in a row, and finished off the weekend with yard work. I have been writing for examiner, and hope you click here on Examiner to read them. I wrote about all the great benefits that licorice root offers our bodies. I would like to share that my son, Kurt has been using the licorice root extract for his canker sore and it worked within a few days. I would never say that it will work that fast for everyone, but one knows. I also wrote an article last week to share with all of you how to turn your home into a spa and pamper your feet to look great for summer.

I am currently working on an article about staying young, along with researching about other herbs and their health benefits. I look forward to be able to share that with all of you in future blog entries. Today for lunch I was so unsure what to eat, so I made a new recipe up. It is very simple, taste and healthy and I want to share it with all of you. There is one problem with it; I don’t have a name for this. So, if any of you have a name that comes to mind as you are reading this please let me know. The great thing about this recipe is that you can make it for as many people as you need too.

Cherry tomatoes or you could cut larger ones if needed.

Green beans wash and cut both ends off.

Fresh Cilantro, cut into small pieces after washing well.

Fresh basil, cut into small pieces after washing well.

Black pepper to taste

Cajun seasoning to taste

Italian dressing to your taste

This recipe is easy, fresh, and tasty packed with many vitamins. I really look forward to hearing each one of your comments along with your ideas of what to name it.

New Picture of Deck Garden!

2009-06-25T19:32:00.000-07:00

Finally, I am able to sit out on the deck to enjoy my little container garden. There is only one good thing about this hot humid weather we have been having here in the Madison area and that would be it has helped my container garden to grow amazingly. It is very exciting to watch, so I wanted to share some photos with all of you.

I have been writing a great deal this week, and you can check out the articles on Examiner.com.

I would really like to hear any comments or suggestions about my container garden. Have a wonderful evening with your loved ones, and I look forward to meeting you all back here tomorrow!

How hot can it get around here!

2009-06-23T19:47:00.000-07:00

Do you think it is hot enough around here? I don’t remember summers being this warm when I was kid, and if it was warm I would just go lay on the lawn to watch the cloud pass by. As you can imagine our house did not have AC, it was the 70’s what more do I have to say that would explain it.

I finally solved my computer problems. Okay, it meant purchasing a new computer unfortunately, and recreating pretty much everything. I am back and fully up and running to blog often. I wanted to share that I just had a blog entry published as a guest blogger on Momwhoblog.com, and hope you enjoy the profile on another woman who blogs just like I do. Shannon lives in New Jersey, so we talked by phone for the interview, but it was so fun to get to know this amazingly busy mom.

I have started a little garden on my deck, which is thriving in this warm weather. Anyone who knows me is most likely wondering, why I am doing a container garden being that I live on five acres. The answer is Jazzy (my husband and my baby puppy) who would dig and eat the garden within minutes of being unattended outside. Okay, the other part is with just not having the time to weed a whole garden since, working to get my freelance writing career going this spring and summer. I will be posting photos of my deck garden in the next couple of days for all of you to see. I would like to give the credit for my garden this summer to my dear email colleague, Dena Bolton the Nashville Gardening Examiner and has her own blog called Dena’s Garden. If you have the time please take a read. You will for sure learn so much from her, she is amazing with garden information.

I have been going more ‘Cook Yourself Thin’ recipe along with starting to make changes to my own recipes as well. I have really started walking daily with my husband or at least 6 days out of the week along with my yoga routine. In the following weeks, I will be blogging more about the changes I am experiencing in myself.

Well, I will close for tonight and write more tomorrow! Have a wonderful night with your loved ones.

New Things to Share!

2009-06-03T20:13:00.000-07:00

This summer is moving along quickly with mowing the lawn and weeding the flower beds around the yard. Here are my beautiful Irises that are planted right outside of the court yard by the front door. Our dogs, Jazz and Heidi had to get into the pictures I was taking around our yard today. They both can be such ‘Hams’, thanks to my two children who have been taking many pictures of them over the years. Below are the three pictures taken earlier this evening, as I am so excited to share a little bit of my world with all of you.

I want to share about the zucchini pasta, which was so good the first time; I of course had to try it again. I couldn’t help myself but to make it a couple more times since then. I serve it with my spaghetti sauce; it takes the place of spaghetti noodles. I read about it in ‘Cook Yourself Thin’ cookbook, and was so curious I couldn’t help myself, but to try it. I made it for a dinner party and explained to our guest that they didn’t have to try it because mainly I wanted my husband to try it. It was a success as everyone liked it. Then, I made it this evening with left over spaghetti sauce from the other night’s dinner party.

Let me explain how I make it. I wash the zucchini skins with basic H and my potato scrubber. I use my vegetable peeler to take some of the skin off, and leave some on. I used my cheese slicer to make the zucchini pasta slices thin enough. I tried using my mandolin slicer the other night, but that only left me with a sliced finger. I warmed a skillet with a small amount of olive oil in the bottom, and I put the slices into it. The zucchini slices should be warm and coated with olive oil. Then, I seasoned them with salt and pepper to my taste. On Saturday evening, I added chopped up fresh basil which added a wonderful flavor to the zucchini pasta. I look forward to hear that a few of you have tried zucchini pasta, and liked it or not. I still look forward to hearing from my readers about their experiences. I will be trying another new recipe tomorrow if all goes as planned in my day. So, please keep checking back to read about my new cooking journey. I really enjoy it because of learning so much about food, cooking, and health. In fact, my desk has about 6 of Dr. Kenneth Cooper’s books piled on it that I am going through, learning as much as I can about taking control of our health.

Before I can try that new recipe though, I have other assignment I need to work on. I hope to have a number of new articles published in the next day or two. I hope there will be something of interest for each of my faithful readers. Between researching for my articles on Examiner.com, my class work for becoming a Holistic Fitness Practitioner, and all the other reading my brain is swimming with good information that I want to share with all of you in the near future.

Keep checking back daily as I will be increasing my blog entries now that I have a good working schedule for my freelance writing.

Go ahead and comment you know you really want to. I would really enjoy hearing from you.

Graduation, Good Food, & Beautiful Weather

2009-05-21T08:28:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was a fun, exciting, memorable, and all together overwhelming. My daughter’s graduation went well, and you could not have asked for a more beautiful day from the weather man. But, I feel like it has taken me the last few days to get caught up with everything around here. Here are a few pictures we took after dinner on Saturday night while walking through UM campus.

Yesterday was another beautiful day; the temperature was 85 the last time I looked in the afternoon. Hopefully today will be much of the same. While writing yesterday I was not paying attention to the time at all. Finally, I realized it was 1:30 pm and that I should eat a little lunch even though I was not hungry. I went to the refrigerator to find mainly vegetables staring back at me. Here is what I came up with for lunch. The great thing about this recipe is it could be made for 1 person or more. I hope you give it a try; it was really light, fresh and tasty on a warm day. I don’t have a name for this dish yet, so if anyone has a good name I would be open to hear them. Down the road it may find its way into my cookbook.

Tomatoes (cut into small pieces)

English cucumber (Cut up in to small pieces)

Fresh Basil (chopped

Salt and pepper (to your taste)

Balsamic vinegar (to taste)

Extra Virgin Olive Oil (small amount, maybe a tbsp. per serving)

Penney’s Cajun seasoning (to taste)

Parmesan Cheese (On top of finished salad)

This evening for dinner I tried another recipe from ‘Cook Yourself Thin’ recipe book called ‘Mediterranean chicken’ with only a few modifications. My family enjoyed it; I thought it was really good as well.

Keep checking back for more pictures from graduation, good fresh recipes and other fun things.

Have a Great Day!

My Family Liked Them!

2009-05-14T20:25:00.000-07:00

My family liked the cookies from the other evening. That could be a miracle in my opinion, but I could also be wrong. I think I have figured out my recipe needs a little tweeting though before I can share it with you. They are good, but are a little too moist the next day. I am working on a number of articles this week for publishing at Examiner.com. So, I will have them published in the next couple of days.

Today has been very challenging since I woke up with no voice. I have been drinking a number of cups of green tea and loading my body with vitamins to get my voice back by tomorrow. I have not been able to even answer my own telephone, no one will hear me.

Please share any comments, recipes or anything else you would like to share. I look forward to reading what you want to share, and will comment in return.

Have a nice relaxing rest of your evening!

A New Journey Has begun!

2009-05-12T19:58:00.000-07:00

Today is a nice sunny day, but still lacking in warmth until later this afternoon. Last night, I played golf and it was actually warm out on the golf course.

Here, is a picture I took just a few days ago, I wanted to share them with all of my blog readers. These tulips are the same ones in my last blog entry. Enjoy!

I have become fascinated with a new show on Lifetime, that I happen to run across. This show is called ‘Cook Yourself Thin’, and these three ladies have written a cookbook by the same name. I ran across this book on Sunday at Target, and of course could not resist purchasing it for my ever growing cookbook collection. This growing collection has not ended with just cookbooks, but recipes from magazines as well as people who are willing to part with their family recipes. Anyway this has started me on a journey to experiment with some of my recipes to make them healthier. Yes, some of you may think that my family is tortured having to eat all these healthy meals. Yet, others may say they are blessed to have food cooked for them. Whichever, they will be eating what I cook for dinner or they will be finding another place to eat their meals. Tonight, my target was my famous chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. I have been making these since my children were just babies or at least that is what it feels like. They go way back, but my idea tonight was trying to give them a healthier twist. Here is a picture of the new cookies, and tomorrow I will share what my family really thinks of them. If they were a winner or not, and then I will share the recipe with all my readers at that time.

If any of you have recipes and would like to share them with all of us, please feel free to make a comment and share them.

Have a wonderful evening! I look forward to meeting you all back here tomorrow with another entry about my new journey.