Friday, June 26, 2015

Avocado Pasta

AVOCADO PASTA
Prep Time10 minutes
Cook Time10 minutes
Total Time20 minutes
Yield4 servings
The easiest, most unbelievably creamy avocado pasta that everyone will love. And it'll be on your dinner table in just 20 min!
INGREDIENTS
  • 12 ounces spaghetti (I will substitute zucchini and use as pasta)
  • 2 ripe avocados, halved, seeded and peeled
  • 1/2 cup fresh basil leaves
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
  • 1/3 cup olive oil
  • 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
  • 1/2 cup canned corn kernels, drained and rinsed (use fresh non GMO if possible)
INSTRUCTIONS
  • In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook pasta according to package instructions; drain well. *Skip this step if spriralizing your zucchini
  • To make the avocado sauce, combine avocados, basil, garlic and lemon juice in the bowl of a food processor; season with salt and pepper, to taste. With the motor running, add olive oil in a slow stream until emulsified; set aside.
  • In a large bowl, combine pasta, avocado sauce, cherry tomatoes and corn.
  • Serve immediately.

Recipe from Damn Delicious

Avocado Pasta

AVOCADO PASTA
Prep Time10 minutes
Cook Time10 minutes
Total Time20 minutes
Yield4 servings
The easiest, most unbelievably creamy avocado pasta that everyone will love. And it'll be on your dinner table in just 20 min!
INGREDIENTS
  • 12 ounces spaghetti (I will substitute zucchini and use as pasta)
  • 2 ripe avocados, halved, seeded and peeled
  • 1/2 cup fresh basil leaves
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
  • 1/3 cup olive oil
  • 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
  • 1/2 cup canned corn kernels, drained and rinsed (use fresh non GMO if possible)
INSTRUCTIONS
  • In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook pasta according to package instructions; drain well. *Skip this step if spriralizing your zucchini
  • To make the avocado sauce, combine avocados, basil, garlic and lemon juice in the bowl of a food processor; season with salt and pepper, to taste. With the motor running, add olive oil in a slow stream until emulsified; set aside.
  • In a large bowl, combine pasta, avocado sauce, cherry tomatoes and corn.
  • Serve immediately.

Recipe from Damn Delicious

Sunday, June 21, 2015

meal replacement smoothies

7 Meal Replacement Smoothies

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In order to remain happy, healthy, and strong, your body should be getting a certain amount of protein and fiber every day.* This is true for everyone, but it is especially important for those who want to lose weight quickly. Unfortunately, many dieters think that the quickest way to a swimsuit-worthy body is through starvation. The problem with this mentality is that it puts the body into a survival mode, where it begins to burn through muscle rather than stored fat in order to free up important nutrients.
Instead, the best way to lose weight is to monitor food intake, and to make sure that you’re taking in the right kind of foods, like kale or spinach. This is where the meal-replacement smoothie comes in. Meal replacement smoothies give the body a heaping helping of the nutrition it needs, without the added fat and sugars that tend to collect as unwanted flab around the midsection (and elsewhere). Check out our infographic for seven tasty and healthy meal replacement smoothies that you can start trying today!
*Blendtec’s in-house registered dietitian recommends that meal replacements contain at least 10 grams of protein and 5 grams of fiber. Getting adequate protein and fiber will increase satiety and help maintain stable blood glucose levels reducing the urge to eat again immediately after consumption.
Meal Replacement Smoothies
meal replacement smoothies

7 Meal Replacement Smoothies

facebooktwittergoogle_pluspinterest
In order to remain happy, healthy, and strong, your body should be getting a certain amount of protein and fiber every day.* This is true for everyone, but it is especially important for those who want to lose weight quickly. Unfortunately, many dieters think that the quickest way to a swimsuit-worthy body is through starvation. The problem with this mentality is that it puts the body into a survival mode, where it begins to burn through muscle rather than stored fat in order to free up important nutrients.
Instead, the best way to lose weight is to monitor food intake, and to make sure that you’re taking in the right kind of foods, like kale or spinach. This is where the meal-replacement smoothie comes in. Meal replacement smoothies give the body a heaping helping of the nutrition it needs, without the added fat and sugars that tend to collect as unwanted flab around the midsection (and elsewhere). Check out our infographic for seven tasty and healthy meal replacement smoothies that you can start trying today!
*Blendtec’s in-house registered dietitian recommends that meal replacements contain at least 10 grams of protein and 5 grams of fiber. Getting adequate protein and fiber will increase satiety and help maintain stable blood glucose levels reducing the urge to eat again immediately after consumption.
Meal Replacement Smoothies

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Yummy Berry Chia Fresca Smoothie -- Found on Popsugar




INGREDIENTS

2 cups water
2 teaspoons chia seeds
1/2 cup strawberries
1/2 cup raspberries
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon raw honey or agave (or use date paste/syrup)

DIRECTIONS

  1. Mix the chia and water together in a bowl and set in the fridge to plump for 15 minutes. Remove, mix again, and combine all ingredients in a blender. Puree until well combined and adjust the sweetness if needed.

Find this recipe and more at PopSugar

Yummy Berry Chia Fresca Smoothie -- Found on Popsugar




INGREDIENTS

2 cups water
2 teaspoons chia seeds
1/2 cup strawberries
1/2 cup raspberries
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon raw honey or agave (or use date paste/syrup)

DIRECTIONS

  1. Mix the chia and water together in a bowl and set in the fridge to plump for 15 minutes. Remove, mix again, and combine all ingredients in a blender. Puree until well combined and adjust the sweetness if needed.

Find this recipe and more at PopSugar

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Lemon, Rosemary and Vanilla For Natural Room Scents

I found this wonderful recipe for a wonderfully natural room scent.   This wonderful idea comes from Kari Anne - Thistlewood Farms  I am sure you will love it as much as I do.  Throw all those nasty chemical based air fresheners away and focus on what Mother Nature has to offer us.  And now presented with love...





To create my personalized scent, I started with two fresh lemons and then added 2 stalks of rosemary and a teaspoon of vanilla in 2 quarts of water in a pan on the stove.  I brought the ingredients to a boil and then turned the heat down to let them simmer.
As the water evaporated, I added more water to keep the fruit and herbs covered at all time.
And as the mixture simmered, the house was full of the smell of spring.
The subtle smell of freshly squeezed lemons combined with the heady scent of vanilla and an occasional whiff of rosemary.
It was light and refreshing and full of the joy of the everyday.

Lemon, Rosemary and Vanilla For Natural Room Scents

I found this wonderful recipe for a wonderfully natural room scent.   This wonderful idea comes from Kari Anne - Thistlewood Farms  I am sure you will love it as much as I do.  Throw all those nasty chemical based air fresheners away and focus on what Mother Nature has to offer us.  And now presented with love...





To create my personalized scent, I started with two fresh lemons and then added 2 stalks of rosemary and a teaspoon of vanilla in 2 quarts of water in a pan on the stove.  I brought the ingredients to a boil and then turned the heat down to let them simmer.
As the water evaporated, I added more water to keep the fruit and herbs covered at all time.
And as the mixture simmered, the house was full of the smell of spring.
The subtle smell of freshly squeezed lemons combined with the heady scent of vanilla and an occasional whiff of rosemary.
It was light and refreshing and full of the joy of the everyday.

Monday, June 1, 2015

A Vegan Diet May Help With Diabetes Pain

For those who experience a painful side effect of type 2 diabetes, here’s some hope. 

A low-fat vegan diet may help people with type 2 diabetes reduce physical pain related to the condition, suggests a small new study.
“This new study gives a ray of hope for a condition where there are no other good treatments,” said Dr. Neal Barnard, the study’s lead author and president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a non-profit organization that promotes a vegan diet, preventive medicine, and alternatives to animal research.
Most people with type 2 diabetes will develop peripheral diabetic neuropathy, the researchers write in Nutrition andDiabetes. People with the condition may feel pain, burning and numbness in their body’s extremities.
“For an individual patient, it can be miserable and also depressing because there are no good treatments and it just gets worse and worse,” said Barnard, who is also affiliated with the George Washington University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C.
“By setting aside animal products and oily foods, you can become healthier, and your pain can diminish and perhaps even go away,” he told Reuters Health in an email.
Type 2 is the most common form of diabetes and is often linked to obesity. In type 2 diabetes, the body’s cells are resistant to the hormone insulin, or the body doesn’t make enough of it. Insulin gives blood sugar access to the body’s cells to be used as fuel.
The disease is thought to interfere with the ability of nerves to signal the brain about pain, light touch and temperature. Anti-seizure medications and antidepressants help relievenerve pain in some patients but may have unpleasant side effects.
For the new study, the researchers recruited 35 adults with type 2 diabetes and painful diabetic 
The vegan diet focused on vegetables, fruits, grains and legumes. Overall, most participants on the vegan dietappeared to avoid animal products and about half stuck tolow-fat dietsthroughout the study.
After 20 weeks, those on the vegan diet lost an average of about 15 pounds, compared to about one pound among those in the comparison group.
Several other measures of health, including blood pressure, improved among the participants on the vegan diet, compared to the control group.
Those on the vegan diet also reported a much greater drop inpain, compared to the control group, the researchers report. A test of the nerves in the foot also suggested that the vegan diet may have slowed or halted nerve function decline, compared to the control group.
There was also a suggestion that the overall quality of life of those on the vegan diet improved, compared to the control group. The difference may have been due to chance, however.
Barnard and his team acknowledged larger trials would still be needed to show a vegan diet helped relieve pain related to type 2 diabetes.
Dr. Stuart Weiss, an endocrinologist at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York, said the study was “kind of cool,” though the number of participants was small and the length of the study was short.
“We always talk about diabetes and diabetes control being about diet and exercise, but we end up prescribing a lot of medications and don’t really focus that much on diet and exercise because that’s not easy,” said Weiss, who was not involved in the study.
Weiss told Reuters Health that he typically advised patients to eat less processed and refined foods and not overeat.
“It might be that eating less of that in a plant-based diet might be helpful (in reducinginflammation), but again it was just 20 weeks and it takes years and years for neuropathy to develop,” Weiss said. “We need to see long-term and nobody’s going to pay for that.”
While Weiss said it was exciting that researchers were looking for an alternative to medication, he cautioned that not everyone would go for a vegan diet.

A Vegan Diet May Help With Diabetes Pain

For those who experience a painful side effect of type 2 diabetes, here’s some hope. 

A low-fat vegan diet may help people with type 2 diabetes reduce physical pain related to the condition, suggests a small new study.
“This new study gives a ray of hope for a condition where there are no other good treatments,” said Dr. Neal Barnard, the study’s lead author and president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a non-profit organization that promotes a vegan diet, preventive medicine, and alternatives to animal research.
Most people with type 2 diabetes will develop peripheral diabetic neuropathy, the researchers write in Nutrition andDiabetes. People with the condition may feel pain, burning and numbness in their body’s extremities.
“For an individual patient, it can be miserable and also depressing because there are no good treatments and it just gets worse and worse,” said Barnard, who is also affiliated with the George Washington University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C.
“By setting aside animal products and oily foods, you can become healthier, and your pain can diminish and perhaps even go away,” he told Reuters Health in an email.
Type 2 is the most common form of diabetes and is often linked to obesity. In type 2 diabetes, the body’s cells are resistant to the hormone insulin, or the body doesn’t make enough of it. Insulin gives blood sugar access to the body’s cells to be used as fuel.
The disease is thought to interfere with the ability of nerves to signal the brain about pain, light touch and temperature. Anti-seizure medications and antidepressants help relievenerve pain in some patients but may have unpleasant side effects.
For the new study, the researchers recruited 35 adults with type 2 diabetes and painful diabetic 
The vegan diet focused on vegetables, fruits, grains and legumes. Overall, most participants on the vegan dietappeared to avoid animal products and about half stuck tolow-fat dietsthroughout the study.
After 20 weeks, those on the vegan diet lost an average of about 15 pounds, compared to about one pound among those in the comparison group.
Several other measures of health, including blood pressure, improved among the participants on the vegan diet, compared to the control group.
Those on the vegan diet also reported a much greater drop inpain, compared to the control group, the researchers report. A test of the nerves in the foot also suggested that the vegan diet may have slowed or halted nerve function decline, compared to the control group.
There was also a suggestion that the overall quality of life of those on the vegan diet improved, compared to the control group. The difference may have been due to chance, however.
Barnard and his team acknowledged larger trials would still be needed to show a vegan diet helped relieve pain related to type 2 diabetes.
Dr. Stuart Weiss, an endocrinologist at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York, said the study was “kind of cool,” though the number of participants was small and the length of the study was short.
“We always talk about diabetes and diabetes control being about diet and exercise, but we end up prescribing a lot of medications and don’t really focus that much on diet and exercise because that’s not easy,” said Weiss, who was not involved in the study.
Weiss told Reuters Health that he typically advised patients to eat less processed and refined foods and not overeat.
“It might be that eating less of that in a plant-based diet might be helpful (in reducinginflammation), but again it was just 20 weeks and it takes years and years for neuropathy to develop,” Weiss said. “We need to see long-term and nobody’s going to pay for that.”
While Weiss said it was exciting that researchers were looking for an alternative to medication, he cautioned that not everyone would go for a vegan diet.