Month: July 2010

Overnight soaking; Black beans

Aynaria 2 Comments

black-beans.07.16.10.jpgIf someone were to ask me what my favorite bean was, I imagine I would say Black beans.

I love a variety of beans. I keep a large variety of dried black beans in our hosue. Some of which have been dried from our own garden. I’m very proud of that. Black beans are the ones I use most. I love the bold black color, and the way it contrasts with the colorful vegetables I add to my recipes.

Of course, it’s an added bonus that black beans are so good for you too. Why do you think I like them? 😉 Black beans are a great source of fiber, they are rich with antioxidants, and many other nutrients that I won’t mention here. But what about the gas? Depending on the dish I’ll add ginger, garlic, or fennel to combat this issue. They along with a few other whole foods are an effective way to prevent gassiness.

Earlier today, I mentioned I was craving lentils. I satisfied that craving by making a delightfully vegan savory lentil soup. Well, I’ve been craving black beans too. Earlier this evening, I set aside four cups of dried black beans to soak. Tomorrow I’ll cook them all in a large stock pot, set aside a cup, or two for some type of dish (I’m leaning towards grilled black bean burgers at the moment) and freeze the rest. I don’t use canned beans anymore, they simply don’t have the same flavor as dried beans. The frugal part of me, likes that they are cheaper to buy, and it’s fresher since the dried beans have recently been cooked.

The only drawback of cooking dried beans, is they take time to cook. That is, if you don’t have a pressure cooker. Crockpots come in handy in this instance since you can put your beans in the pot, leave the house to go about your day, and come back to cooked beans. I normally put prepare my dried beans in a stock pot. Eventually I’ll get around to purchasing one of those newfangled pressure cookers. I have an older pressure cooker. Updating to a smaller pressure cooker is ideal, since it will cut down on my dried bean cooking time.

When I know, I’m going to be busy; I prepare meals in advance. In doing so, I always have healthy options available so there’s really no reason for me to pick unhealthy foods. Since I’ve been following this type routine for years, unhealthy food really isn’t a temptation. However, in the early 90’s, I did have to force myself to get into this habit. If I didn’t, I would find myself reaching for the quick fix foods. You know what I’m talking about, processed foods that really aren’t that good for you.

Part of me, really doesn’t want to make grilled black bean burgers tomorrow. However, I told my seven-year old daughter that I was thinking of making them, and now she’s sold on the idea. Being the veggie burger lover that she is (especially the grilled variety) I won’t be surprised if I’m outside grilling, even if it is hot. Well, I’ll dress for the weather and wear a big hat.

Question: What’s your favorite bean? What’s one of your favorite ways to prepare it?

Technorati Tags:
Moondancer, Vegan, Vegetarian, black beans

Savory Lentil Soup; Soup that started out a salad

Aynaria 8 Comments

Lentil-soup.07.15.10.jpg


Savory Lentil Soup

Some say that lentils are to India as meatloaf is to America, it’s the ultimate comfort food. I’ve been Vegan since 1992, I haven’t eaten meatloaf since the late 80’s, however, I’ve made numerous dishes that included lentils.

For the past few days I’ve been craving lentils. I prepare Lentils in creamy Dhal. They make an appearance in sauces, and occasionally you’ll see them popping up in salads too. Regardless of how I prepare them, lentils usually have the starring role in dishes I prepare, and for good reason.

Despite their small size, lentils are a nutritional powerhouse. Serving up a variety of healthy and tasty, nutritional options that will keep you (and your loved ones) clamoring for more. Over 80 nutrients can be found in this tiny bean. Important minerals like iron, manganese, copper, phosphorus, folate, and molybdenum. It also boasts two types of B vitamins. Let’s not forget about fiber, just like most legumes you’ll find lentils far ahead of the pack serving up a healthy dose of soluble and insoluble fiber.

Yesterday, after my daughter’s piano practice was over, we stopped by the store and I purchased some dry lentils. I prefer purchasing my beans dry, unlike other dried beans it lentils don’t take as long to cook. So if you don’t have a pressure cooker, your beans won’t take hours to prepare.

A few days ago, I stumbled upon Pig in the Kitchen’s truly delightful virtual community. Although many posts caught my eye, I couldn’t help but to chuckle at her latest post. In that post, she wrote about her competitive nature (I can completely relate) and at the end of her post she shared a recipe for a truly delightful lentil salad. Although I had every intention of making some type of salad, my lentils had a mind of their own and I found myself making a savory lentil soup. Ahh, no worries, I haven’t made lentil soup in a long time.

Savory Lentil Soup

  • 2 cups of dried lentils
  • 8 cups of water
  • 1 yellow onion
  • 2 medium tomatoes
  • 1.5 cups of corn
  • 3 cloves of garlic, chopped fine
  • 2 tbsp of lemon juice (I used freshly squeezed lemon juice)
  • 1 tbsp curry
  • 1 bay leaf
  • organic sea salt
  • freshly ground black pepper

Directions

  1. In a large stock pot, add lentils, water, garlic, onions, and bay leaf. Bring to a boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for about an hour.
  2. Add the corn, tomatoes, lemon juice, and curry.
  3. let simmer for two – three minutes
  4. Add salt and pepper, season to taste
  5. Serve and enjoy

I tend to add my vegetables towards the end of the cooking time because I like the fresh taste of vegetables. They’re so flavorful. The good news is, there are so many different vegetables you can add to this dish. I had every intention of adding carrots, but checking my vegetable crisper I realized I didn’t have any. Although I love my dark leafy greens, I chose not to add them to this soup. It didn’t stop me from munching on them throughout the day.

Oh, I did add about six leaves of fresh lemon balm to this dish. We have it growing in our yard; it’s right next to the bee balm. I wanted to see how it turned out. I liked it, but think I should have added more leaves. There’s always next time, right? Cumin was purposely left out of the dish, simply because I wanted to see how I liked the soup with curry, it still tasted great and my daughter wanted more.

I had no intentions of making soup on an extremely hot day, but I really enjoyed the results, and we have leftovers!

By the way with the exception of the seasonings, lemon and garlic, everything else came from our garden. Now how’s that for fresh?

Technorati Tags:
Moondancer, Recipes, Vegan, Vegetarian, whole food

Feedburner: RSS Woes…

Aynaria 2 Comments

feedburner.07.25.10.pngIf you check out Celebrate Life via an RSS application, you might have noticed a change in the way you view my website.

Instead of getting the full post, you were only able to get the first few lines. In order to see the entire post you had to click on the more feature. The reason for going to summary was simple, for some reason Feedburner was returning an error message for my full posts.

I know quite a few bloggers that only post the summary. They do it for a variety of reasons. In fact, with a few of my websites, I opted for summaries too. However, I didn’t like it and after a few weeks, I went back to showing my full posts via RSS feed.

Showing just a summary of your post won’t automatically deter those who want to steal your content. Some of my original articles were stolen when I only had summaries enabled. With NetNewsWire for Mac, I can still view your entire post within my RSS feed. Yes, even if you choose summary. I can even comment from NetNewsWire too. I simply click on the more button, one extra annoying step but if I enjoy your website, I’ll do it.

Ok back to my RSS woes…
Just showing the summary wasn’t something I wanted to do, however, I noticed when I published my Bye bye Drought post this morning, my new post wasn’t showing up in NetNewsWire, My RSS feed reader. Now see, that is why it’s a great idea to subscribe to your own feed. In doing so you’ll most likely be able to see whether there are potential errors for those who view your blog via RSS.

Feedburner-Troubleshootize.2010-07-15 at 9.54.41 PM.png

Logging onto Feedburner, I clicked on the Troublehshootize Tab. The Troubleshootize Tab, opened up the above page. It was straightforward and walked me through a list of things I could do to get my service up and running again, unfortunately none of those worked. The last resort was clicking on the Resync Now button located towards the bottom of the screen, I held my breath hoping it would work, but unfortunately it didn’t. However, I did receive reasons why it wasn’t working.

WordPress There is an issue that must be addressed with your source feed

and…

Your feed filesize is larger than 512K. You need to reduce its size
in order for FeedBurner to process it. Tips for controlling feed file
size with Blogger can be found in Tech Tips on FeedBurner Forums, our
support site.

Uhm, yippee? The thing is, my file size for ten posts wasn’t that large. I know I export my WordPress files a few times weekly. Speaking of backups… How often do you back up your websites? All right back to the file size. Since I knew that wasn’t the issue, I couldn’t help wonder what on earth could be the problem? Checking the World Wide Web, I found a lot of people had experienced similar issues with new posts not being picked up by Feedburner.

WordPress-Admin-Panel-Reader-Settings.2010-07-15 at 10.12.31 PM.png

How did I get the error message to disappear?

  1. Log into WordPress admin panel
  2. Click on Settings
  3. Click on Reading
  4. In Reader Settings, select a lower amount of posts to be shown in your RSS feed

    5. By default, my RSS post view was set to 10. Initially I tried changing that to five posts to be shown in my RSS feed, since that didn’t work I chose a summary of my posts, saved my Reader settings, and my new post was viewable in my RSS feed.

Oh by the way, if you’re not following me via RSS feed, and would like to do you can susbscribe to the Celebrate Life! RSS feed. Not a fan of RSS feed readers, that’s cool you can subscribe to Celebrate Life! by Email, or virtually visit my website. Another thing, you can visit me on your mobile phone too. Now I’m not one to search the internet on my mobile phone. I use it to take/receive calls and occasinally text people. Sometimes I might take photos but that’s it! Oh, I do check out my websites just to make sure they are mobile compatible. Anyway, I recently installed WordPress Mobile Pack, a Word Press Plugin, to make my website mobile friendly.

My apologies for the short summary posts via RSS feed, I’m still playing around with various options so here’s hoping full feeds will be back soon.

Update: Good news, it looks like Feedburner is behaving itself, so full posts are enabled via your RSS feed reader.

Bye bye drought; the rain dancing worked

Aynaria 6 Comments

Say goodbye to a garden full of half wilted plants and say hello to the a garden coming back to life. The past few days, we’ve received a buttload of rain here in Maryland, and I along with many other gardeners/farmers are doing a happy dance. The past several weeks, rain has been scarce in our neck of the woods.

Last week we reached 100F a few days in a row. I can deal with the heat; I sit in a dry sauna several days weekly. The temperature gets up to about 180F. However toss in the humidity, and the biting flies and it’s not exactly fun being outside tending to the garden. Regarding the lack of rain, watering parts of the garden with our garden hose helped with some of our produce, but others (even some that hadn’t been watered) couldn’t handle the drought and intense heat and they withered up and died.

So yes, we’re excited about the rain. It’s great to see brown grass turn green again. Also, nice to see the scarlet red peppers, and the dark purple eggplants flourishing. Thanks to the downpour of rain over the past few days. Checking out the grapes, it looks as though we’ll be seeing them within a few weeks. Hot pink blossoms are all over our fig tree, and it’s one of the favorite spots of the butterflies and bees.

I’m still eliminating items I’ve had for years in the house. We don’t use them, so why in the world am I keeping them? At times, it’s hard for me to get rid of things and I need to realize that I simply need to let go! Over the past month, the Purple Heart has been called at least twice and we’ll be following up with them again soon. The recent cleaning frenzy I’m on reminds me of the nesting bug that hit when I was pregnant with my daughter. Thankfully people stayed out of my way.

I’m hoping I get a chance to take some pictures today, upload them onto my MacBook Pro, and perhaps share a few photos here at I’m Celebrating Life. My daughter has piano lessons today, and I really need to stop into the Apple store. I have a few projects that I need to finish for clients before my daughter and me head out to the swimming pool later today.

My workouts are still going well; I listen to my body, and know when to take it easy. If you don’t you can damage your body. I have slightly sore hamstrings today. I worked them out in a different way. I’ve found that sauna rounds is helpful, along with massages where I add a homemade sport rub to the affected spot can be extremely helpful.

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I would be starting a raw juice cleanse. I most likely will be starting that at the beginning of August. Perhaps I should write down what I consume during the week, and list the benefits of the various juices I use.

Question: What are your plans for today?

Technorati Tags:
Gardening, Moondancer

Natural skin care recipe: Soothing Sugar Scrub

Aynaria 21 Comments

raw-turbinado.07.13.10.jpgSugar scrubs are one of my favorite ways to exfoliate my skin. Unlike some of your other scrubs they melt away without leaving a residue, which for me is an added bonus, since there’s no clean up afterwards.

Benefits of scrubs

The main benefit of scrubs is their ability to exfoliate the skin. This is an extremely effective way to remove surface debris and dead cells from our skin. Which encourages new skin growth, and if we’re following a healthy diet it will encourage healthy skin growth. People often ask me where do I get my glow, besides my healthy lifestyle choices exfoliation is helpful in this area too since it does promote fresh and glowing skin. It also decreases the depth of wrinkles. With so many benefits, why wouldn’t you exfoliate your skin?

In the recipe below, I added essential oils. For those who are looking for animal friendly products, look no further than this soothing sugar scrub, it’s Vegan! You can make your scrubs without essential oils, and still have an amazing scrub that will leave you with soft skin, however I tend to add a few drops of essential oil since they do enhance my natural skin care products.

Soothing Sugar Scrub

  • 1 cup raw turbinado sugar (or brown sugar)
  • 1/2 cup Jojoba oil (you can also use sweet almond oil, peach oil, or coconut oil)
  • *3 drops of lavender, rose geranium, or ylang ylang essential oil (optional)

Directions

  1. Mix all ingredients in a bowl
  2. Massage gently onto skin
  3. Let the sugar scrub remain on skin for 3-5 minutes
  4. Rinse off
  5. Enjoy your softly scented skin

Be kind to your skin! If you exfoliate too hard or too often you can leave your skin raw or cause skin irritation.

Skin Patch Test

If you’re trying a new product on your skin I always do a patch test. I choose an area on my skin that isn’t noticeable. I then apply the product and wait 48 hours. If I don’t have a reaction I’ll use the product. I cannot think of the last time I’ve had a reaction to my natural skin care products, however just because a product is natural doesn’t mean you can’t have a negative reaction.

A quick look at the sugar scrub ingredients

If you’re like myself, not only do you want to know what’s going into the foods you eat. You want to know what’s going into the products you put onto your skin too. Creating your own natural skin care recipes is an effective way to control what’s going into your skin care products. I’ve compiled a short list of information about the ingredients I used in the sugar scrub. I hope you find it helpful.

Raw Turbinado Sugar

Raw turbinado sugar can be found in many of your sugar scrubs. I love it because of its a slightly larger grain than your regular sugar. It’s a great for exfoliator, and since it’s sugar it tends to melt away leaving no residue.

Most sugars contains glycolic acid. Gycolic acid can be found in many skin care products because of its ability to penetrate the skin. Studies have shown that it may reduce wrinkling, hyperpigmentation, acne scarring, along with other skin conditions.

Jojoba oil

Jojoba oil is a natural oil and is suitable for all skin types. Although you can use it alone, it’s usually used as a ‘base or carrier oil’ to which other ingredients, like essential oils are added. Jojoba oil has numerous benefits and it’s something I use often in my hair and skin regimen. Jojoba oil is easily absorbed because its chemical composition closely resembles that of our skins natural sebum.

Rose Geranium essential oil

I love the scent of rose geranium essential oil. It’s wonderful for sensitive, dry, or oily skin. It’s also used to treat acne, skin inflammations, and eczema.

Lavender essential oil

Lavender essential oil has a calming scent. It has been used to treat numerous skin disorders such as eczema, acne, psoriasis. Lavender essential oil effectively has been used to heal wounds, cuts burns, aids in treating migraines, headaches, etc.,

Ylang Ylang (pronounced ee-lung ee-lung) essential oil

Ylang Ylang essential oil is one of my favorite essential oils. I use it often in perfume blends. Ylang Ylang essential oil is great for oily and dry skin. It’s a natural conditioner and it’s been reported that it stimulates natural hair growth. There are numerous grades of this oil. I tend to purchase the Ylang Ylang superior.

If you have an active life, you know how easy it is to get so get wrapped up with your activities that you forget to take out time for yourself. I’m sure many of us have heard the cliché, Stop and smell the roses. Just do it. It’s something we all need to do now and again. One of the many ways I take a timeout from my busy life is pampering myself with a simple sugar scrub.

Technorati Tags:
Moondancer, Recipes, Vegan, Natural Skin Care

Homemade skin care products: Natural ingredients to pamper your skin

Aynaria 7 Comments

fruit.07.12.10.jpgIf you open up your kitchen cabinets or peek into your refrigerator, you might find some of the most common ingredients I use in some of my natural beauty recipes; Mangoes, pineapple, lime, lemon, banana, avocadoes, coconut oil, apple cider vinegar, etc.,

If you cannot find some of the items like your carrier oils (coconut oil, jojoba oil) or essential oils (rose geranium, lavender, Rosemary) check out your local health food store or pick them up at an online store. I incorporate aromatherapy into my natural beauty products. I first discovered aromatherapy in 1994, read numerous books on the subject. I took courses, received certifications, and happily included them in my natural beauty products.

I first became interested in natural skin care products when I was a teenager. The reason was simple, many of the over the counter products caused skin irritations with my sensitive skin, and so I headed to the local library, researching skin care products, and why some ingredients caused a reaction.

It was an eye-opening experience reading about the ingredients that make up some of the beauty products, and I searched for alternate ways to cleanse my skin. I guess you could say that’s where it all began, my love for natural things and eventually creating my own business focused on homemade natural beauty products.

Whether your looking for facial masks, cold creams, all natural toothpaste, facial scrubs, or sports rubs, many of the products you find in stores can be duplicated at home. You might enjoy them even more. The shelf life won’t be as long as your over the counter products, unless you add a preservative. However they’ll be fresh and can be replenished once it’s gone.

Here’s hoping you enjoy some of the recipes that I share here at I’m Celebrating Life, homemade skin care products are a simple but effective way to pamper your skin.

Technorati Tags:
Aromatherapy, Moondancer, natural skin care

WordPress Plugins: Five Community friendly WordPress Plug-ins

Aynaria 8 Comments

dogsblogchat.07.12.10.gif I’ve been using WordPress for about five or six years. I started out with Blogger, hated it moved onto Typepad after one day of using it.

I liked Typepad much better than Blogger so much that I used their paid service. I stayed with them for about six months. I left when I discovered that I had WordPress tucked away as a simple install in my hosting provider package. After reading up on WordPress I decided to give it a try, five years later I’m still using it. It’s definitely my favorite blogging platform.

There are thousands of WordPress themes you can choose from; your limitations are only hindered by your imagination. I like simple WordPress themes. Occasionally I’ll tweak them to my liking (although I haven’t really done too much with this one) and move one.

However even with the numerous themes available, that’s not where WordPress shines (at least not for myself.) I’ve always been a fan of the Word Press addons that focused on community. Whether large or small it’s nice when folks stop by and comment at your virtual home.

I’m Celebrating Life is my newest personal website. I really haven’t had a chance to virtually visit too much. However, when I do stop by I tend to leave a comment, especially if they’ve taken the time to comment on my website. For myself, it just seems the polite thing to do. I never have to think about what to say on their blogs since their posts make me want to leave some type of comment. 🙂 As my workload decreases, I’ll be able to visit more people. I do appreciate those who stop by my virtual home and comment, thanks.

Five Community friendly WordPress Plug-ins

  1. CommentLuv by Andy Bailey

    2. I remember when Andy created this plugin a few years ago. I instantly added it to one of my websites. The feedback was great, and I eventually added it to others. CommentLuv is a great way to reward those who have their own blogs, since it will link to one of their posts.

  2. Edit Comments XT by Michael Woehrer

    3. I know I’m not the only one that has made typos when responding to a post. Unfortunately, many bloggers don’t have this addon, or a platform that lets them do this. If you host WordPress on your own hosting server, you can have this enabled.

  3. Subscribe to Comments by Mark Jaquith

    4. I really enjoy this, at times I want to follow a conversation. Instead of having to continually go and check to see if the author has responded I’m alerted by email when the person has responded.

  4. Top Commentators Widget by Lorna Timbah

    5. This addon gives a permanent link to your top commentators; it’s a nice way to say thanks for those who stop by to comment. I imagine we all love seeing people commenting on our site, right? This is a nice way to reward your guests. I tend to comment a lot, it’s my way of letting one of my blog buddies know I’ve stopped by. Of course, I make sure I have something to say.

  5. Quick Cache by PriMo Themes.com/Websharks Inc.,

    6. My readers/commentators don’t see this WordPress Plugin since it works behind the scenes, however I enjoy it immensely since it improves the performance and speed of my websites. Which means faster loading time for my readers.

I hope you like the my short list of community friendly WordPress Plug-Ins. Eventually I’ll create a page featuring all the WordPress Plug-ins that I use.

Question: What are some of your favorite plug-ins? If you don’t have a blog or plug-ins what are some that you’ve see in other blogs, that you really enjoy?

Technorati Tags:
Moondancer, WordPress