Category: Healthy Living

Thus far, I must say that I’m pleased with my cleansing process...

I haven’t changed the way I eat, but I have introduced herbs, enemas and various other items that are specifically focused on bowel care. You know something? I always found it a bit strange that bowel health wasn’t talked about openly. The primary function of the colon is to reabsorb nutrients, along with water, into our bodies. Ever wonder what happens if our digestive system isn’t working correctly? If we aren’t experiencing proper elimination, an impacted bowl can lead to a variety of issues such as constipation, hemorrhoids, ulcerative colitis and colon cancer.

I can’t help but think that a lot of the bowel issues that many experience could be avoided if more would just be open about it. Proper bowel care is a topic discussed in our household armed with the information I’m hoping, as my daughter gets older, she will continue to make choices that will improve her bowel health.

Hopefully later this week, I’ll have a chance to write about using enemas/colonics to improve your overall health…

Bowel health isn’t an embarrassing topic for me. I learned about it’s importance from my own mother and my grandmother (father’s mom.)

As I’ve mentioned numerous times on this site, I’m not a fan of canned beans. In my opinion, they don’t taste as good as cooking them myself. My first preference, is cooking freshly shelled beans from our garden, but if that’s not an option, I’ll always choose dried beans. Since I don’t always have time for the preparation that can sometimes go into cooking dried beans, I usually cook my beans in large batches.

Personally, the cooking time, is the only part that I’m not always thrilled about when cooking my dried beans. A pressure cooker would speed things up significantly, since it drastically reduces the cooking time of a variety of foods, but I don’t want to be lugging out my heavy 23 qt. stainless steel pressure cooker every time I want to cook my dried beans or some other dish!  That pressure cooker’s only job is to can the produce I gather from the garden.

You know what? I’ve been saying, I was going to purchase a small sized pressure cooker for years, but I never got around to purchasing one until now…

 

 

A few moments ago, I (finally) ordered a much smaller sized pressure cooker which makes it more suitable for preparing a typical meal. I decided on the Presto 8 quart stainless steel pressure cooker.

 

What I do like about this pressure cooker is that it’s not too small (such as a 4 qt.) since I prefer cooking a large amount of dried beans at a time, but still much smaller than my regular 23 qt. pressure cooker. Based on the reviews, The Presto 8 qt. pressure cooker is a “no-frills” pressure cooker; but it still gets the job done.

I’m looking forward to using it, and reducing the cooking time for some of the foods I prepare by 60 – 70%.

Tomorrow,  my daughter and  will be stopping by the store so I can purchase a variety of bulk dried beans. It seems I’m running out of most of my favorite beans; black beans, black eyed peas, garbanzo beans, pinto beans, etc.,

 

 

Satisfied with my purchase?

Is the purchase worth it? I would think so, since it’ll drastically reduce the cook time needed for grains, legumes, beans and many other types of foods that take a long time to process. Which means saving me money since I won’t be using the stove for longer periods of time. For example, garbanzo beans normally take me over an hour to cook. In a pressure cooker, it takes about fifteen minutes.

 

 

A few minutes ago, I stumbled upon this vintage ad for Presto Pressure Cookers.

 

Inspired by suituapui’s post about ramen noodles…

I decided to do something with the instant noodles I had…

Instant noodles were something I used often during my college days. I rarely ate them plain but usually added something to them. After all, who wants to eat plain noodles? I most certainly do not!

I decided to use one of my daughter’s instant noodle packs and prepare her a quick heat & serve meal that she could eat when she wanted something savory.

I don’t use the enclosed seasoning packet. It was immediately tossed into the trash.

 

 

 

In a stainless steel skillet I chopped up yellow onion and added the seasoned egg mixture to the skillet. I cooked everything until the onions were almost clear. Right beside the skillet, was a small pot filled with boiling water, and of course the ramen noodles!

 

 

Once the noodles were finished cooking…

I rinsed them off thoroughly with water. I do this too all my purchased noodles.

 

And now is where the fun began; combining everything!

The noodles were tossed into a serving dish with the ingredients from the skillet. And here’s where I added something extra…

I remembered that ( a few days before) I’d prepared some honey roasted garlic chicken thighs for my daughter. I took one of the thighs and shredded the meat, tossed into the skillet with extra virgin olive oil, garlic, curry and some other seasonings. I then tossed that into the ramen noodle dish. I set aside a portion to keep it vegan (for me.) I served a portion to my daughter, while setting aside the rest to be eaten, by her, at a later date.

The results, my daughter seemed to really like this dish. I know I liked my portion. She was thrilled that there were leftovers for when I don’t feel like preparing a meal.

And there you go… a quick meal, that was made more delicious (and healthier) by adding my own additions.

Many thanks to suituapui for the inspiration…

When I cook, I rarely follow a recipe. I mean… why should I? I find I have way too much fun being creative and doing my own thing!

This past Sunday, I decided to make a dish specifically with my daughter in mind.

She’s not vegan, although for the first six years of her life, she was. And yes, I prepare non-vegan food in our house. As she became older she was interested in trying other things. I let her. She still mainly eats vegetarian/vegan but she likes to mix it up with other things too…

Preparing non-veggie meals shows her that even if she isn’t veggie she can make healthy choices.  You just need to make smart food choices. That rule applies to vegetarians/vegan too! Don’t get me started about the number of unhealthy veggies I’ve met.

 

I started with boneless chicken breasts, and cut it into small pieces.  This was set aside in the refrigerator to marinate with a variety of herbs/spices. Hours later I brought it out so I could prepare the meal.

But what to prepare? Hmm…

Initially, I was only going add vegetables directly to the chicken dish, but I realized that I hadn’t made noodles  in a while (my daughter loves noodles) and so I decided to prepare penne.

 

I was going to simple add lightly buttered garlic penne w/herbs to the chicken dish, but I thought it would be much tastier (and richer) if I made a white sauce to compliment the chicken. So… I grabbed some flour, milk, herbal tea, tomatoes, herbs and spices. I combined everything together and let it cook until it had thickened into a rich and thick sauce. My did it smell good!

 

I served the meal; the chicken was set atop the penne pasta (sorry I forgot to take a picture of that.) The results? My daughter loved it so much that she got a second helping immediately after consuming the first.

Food for dad

Since my mother was working, I made enough to share with my father. Although a man of few words (when it comes to giving compliments about food) he said it was really good!

Just because I don’t eat meat, doesn’t mean I don’t know how to prepare it. I do… 🙂 Although I didn’t eat the chicken, I did have some of the noodles and I must say it was delicious. The next time I prepare penne this way, I believe I’ll add mushrooms, grated carrots, and thinly sliced broccoli.

I was planning on posting pictures of the red bean burgers I’d made. But, I believe I’ll save those for another post. 😉

A few days ago, I cooked about four cups of dried kidney beans.  Some of it was made into the red kidney beans with brown rice dish, and the rest was packed away into my Pyrex glass storage containers and put into our deep freezer for a later time.

 

 

This morning I decided to cook some of the kidney beans, but I realized there weren’t too much left, What to do?

 

No worries, to the leftover kidney beans, I added pole beans, zucchini and garlic… fresh from the garden! We haven’t pulled up our onions from the garden (yet) so I used store bought onions. I added some seasonings like curry, cumin, and cayenne.

What happened to all those kidney beans?

So why didn’t I have many kidneys left? Last evening, my ten-year old daughter had prepared her very own meal with some of the kidney beans. She ate her meal and offered me some, which I politely refused since I wasn’t hungry. I will try some today. Bottom line, she was proud of her dish that she made it without my help. It smelled delicious. I’m looking forward to trying it later today.

What do you eat when your “cleansing”?

Occasionally, I’ll have people ask me what foods I eat when I’m on a cleanse. I really don’t deviate unless I’m juicing everything. I simply eat what I always eat, which is whole foods with minimal processed foods. I guess you could say,  the “extra cleansing” aspect is the herbs that I use in addition to my healthy eating lifestyle.

Being a vegetarian/vegan doesn’t automatically mean you’re healthy…

You don’t have to be vegetarian or vegan to eat healthy. Truth be told, I’ve encountered a lot of vegetarians/vegans who made extremely unhealthy choices. The key is making healthy food choices, regardless of your eating preferences.

This past Monday, I received the nori sheets that I’d ordered.

It was a surprise for my daughter. She loves nori! My daughter immediately started snacking on a plain sheet of nori.

 

And I made stuffed nori rolls.

 

I used the leftover stir fried black bean and veggies as the filling. It turned out very nice. I think next time, I’ll add sliced sweet peppers and grated carrots.

Taking herbs, clay, enemas, vinegar and many other natural remedies have seem to always been part of my life.

My mother used many within our household. It’s a bit interesting, since now she rarely uses any of them.  Whereas I, on the other hand, have picked up where she left off. Because of me,  my father has become interested in natural alternatives again. He’s familiar with them much before he married my mom.  His mom (my grandmother) used them religiously in their household.

My grandmother was a short Black/Irish/Indian lady, even tinier than me. I’m guessing she was perhaps 4’10” since I could look down on her from my lofty height of 5″.

Over the years, I’ve chatted with  one of my favorite blog buddies (Jennifer) about this topic and others via email and occasionally blog postings. Today, I told her I’d start  writing about my cleansing experiences and in some cases my skepticism about certain treatments here at Celebrate Life.

Since a few topics/results might be repulsive to some (I find it fascinating) I’ll be sure to hide that part of the posts behind a more tag.

For the past several years, I’ve taken numerous courses in alternative therapy. Natural healing, like aromatherapy has always fascinated me. Anything I’m interested in I’ll research thoroughly.