More Christmas in AZ (original title, No?)

Christmas in AZ

Spinach Breakfast Casserole

I made this for breakfast this morning and since it was delicious I thought I would share. I got to use my cute little Christmas ramekins too :)

Saute a leek and a few crushed cloves of garlic in a few generous tablespoons of butter. The real stuff, not oil. I sliced some really yummy thick sliced turkey lunchmeat from Costco and threw it in too. It would be good with crumbled bacon, or Italian sausage too. Add about 4c of spinach, I shredded it, and cook it until it's wilted. About 5 min. Put everything into 5 greased 1c ramekins and crack an egg on the top of each one. Place them all in a 325 degree oven for about 15 min. Then remove and sprinkle with a little parmesan. So good!

I was supposed to leave the egg off of Ty's, but I forgot. So he had a banana and a smoothie :)



I also made yogurt in the dehydrator last night and it came out great. I made it the night before but it was still much like milk when I took it out, although the flavor was good. I think I just didn't leave it in quite long enough. But this morning the yogurt was thick and creamy, very much like store-bought. Yay!

Puppy...

This is Mara. We are having a grand time taking care of her while Hailey is gone.

This is the pencil sharpener. The cord is in 4 pieces.

I didn't take a picture of the speaker wire. Or the snow boot. Or the pee.

Monday can't come quick enough :)

In Which I Whine. And Demand.

I need a web master. My blog is a mess. Video spilling over into the sidebar, sidebar stuff climbing into the middle. I never did figure out how to add my Delicious links. Ugh. But alas, no money to hire a web master, no time to become one. So, a messy blog it is. At least for now. If anyone has webmaster advice for dummies, I am all ears. And thumbs.

And while you're looking at the mess, sign up for Swagbucks. It's the giant square spilling over from the sidebar. I love it so, and if I had a bigger readership I'd love it even more. You earn "bucks" just for doing searches you would normally do, and you can redeem those bucks for prizes. My favorite are the Amazon gift cards. It really works, I've been collecting gift cards :) So, sign up already!

ObamaCare-A Done Deal??

Who the heck is Scott Brown? That's the question Kathleen Parker answers in her Washington Post article. What he is, is a true threat to the blue state status quo and ObamaCare. He actually seems to have a fighting chance of winning Ted Kennedy's vacated seat in Mass. If he wins, he should be seated before congress votes on a unified bill, and the Dems won't have the votes to push it through. What an amazing irony that would be! Imagine Ted Kennedy's old seat costing the Dems Obamacare!! Perhaps that would finally get through to Obama and congress that the people Do Not Want this bill. Or....not.

"Paul Kirk, currently serving as interim Senator in Massachusetts, has declared that Brown, if he should be elected, will be delayed from any voting in Washington for as long as possible. Masssachusett’s Soros-funded Secretary of State, the corrupt William Galvin, has promised to do everything he can to stall the certification of Republican Brown “so that Democrats can pass the healthcare bill”.

If there was any question that congress has no interest in the will of the people (there was no question, right??), this seals it. They plan to get their way through any means necessary. Like good little Alinsky followers, they believe the ends justify the means. The only question to ask is, will it work. That alone is the basis for action. The....Audacity.

This One's For You, Chance

Toxins, Toxins, Everywhere!

Cancer From the Kitchen. We all know by now that non-stick is bad, right?? But how about your food containers. Are you still using plastic? I have transitioned to mostly glass for anything hot. I store items like cookies or cold things in plastic, but anything warm goes in glass. Click through and read the article, it's worth it.

Here's To a Healthier New Year

I thought I would pass on what I read in one of Dr. Mercola's email alerts today, mostly for the benefit of my family who won't click through to a link. You know who you are :) Also because I want to keep it where I know where it is. It assumes you realize that doughnuts, chips, and fries are on the "No" list :) They are talking about real foods that we may not consider to be health risks. It is taken from an article on Yahoo Shine and it's worth clicking through to read the whole thing. It's titled:

Avoid These 7 Foods and You're Off To a Healthier New Year

1. Canned Tomatoes. Whoda thunk!! Item number one prompted this post. I would not have dreamed that a top food to avoid would be canned tomatoes. Apparently "the resin linings of tin cans contain bisphenol-A, a synthetic estrogen that has been linked to ailments ranging from reproductive problems to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Acidity -- a prominent characteristic of tomatoes -- causes BPA to leach into your food."
2. Corn-Fed Beef. No surprise here. We have been eating grass-fed beef for a while now but our proclivity for eating in restaurants is like shooting ourselves in the foot. The article says, "A recent comprehensive study found that compared with corn-fed beef, grass-fed beef is higher in beta-carotene, vitamin E, omega-3s, conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), calcium, magnesium, and potassium."
3. Microwave Popcorn. Yep, knew this one too. It's the stuff that lines the bag the gets ya. It's linked to infertility, as well as liver, testicular and pancreatic cancer. It vaporizes with the heat and leaks into your popcorn.
4. Non-Organic Potatoes. "Root vegetables absorb herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides that wind up in soil. In the case of potatoes they're treated with fungicides during the growing season, then sprayed with herbicides to kill off the fibrous vines before harvesting. After they're dug up, the potatoes are treated yet again to prevent them from sprouting." I was struck by this comment in the article, "I've talked with potatoe growers who say point-blank that they would never eat the potatoes they sell. They have separate plots where they grow potatoes for themselves without all the chemicals.
5. Farmed Salmon. "Farmed salmon is lower in vitamin D and higher in contaminants, including carcinogens, PCBs, brominated flame retardants, and pesticides such as dioxin and DDT."
6. Milk Produced With Artificial Hormones. "rBGH or rBST increases udder infections and even pus in the milk. It also leads to higher levels of a hormone called insulin-like growth factor in milk. In people, high levels of IGF-1 may contribute to breast, prostate, and colon cancers." I would go further and say that only organic raw milk should be consumed. Cheese is another issue, you need to search out cheeses that use clean milk. I think Tillamook is still good.
7. Conventional Apples. "If fall fruits held a "most doused in pesticides contest," apples would win."

Mercola then adds his additional input. I knew canned foods were the least healthy choice when compared to fresh or frozen, but I didn't realize that one can of some items contains more than the current US guidelines for "safe" levels of BPA. Look for glass jars! He includes the following facts:

Non-organic meats have up to five times more pesticides than non-organic vegetables.

Non-organic butter can have up to 20 times as many pesticides as non-organic vegetables.

So when prioritizing your purchases, look for organic meats, eggs and dairy products before anything else.

And he adds that we should never consume unfermented soy. Soybean oil...Bad. Strongly linked to thyroid issues and various cancers.

We should make our own choices about what we eat and feed our families. I just think we should have the facts about what is being done to our food. I don't know why it has to be so hard to get through the grocery store!

Randomness

My internet connector thingy mabob died. Again. At our last house we couldn't get dsl and opted for one of those wireless cards that lets you connect anywhere. Sort of. Unless it's cloudy, or raining, or Tuesday, or a full moon. You get the picture... It's been really frustrating. And my laptop is pretty new and I always wondered if it was really that slow or if it was just the connection. Because it would take me 30 minutes to load a 3 minute U Tube video, if I could download it at all.

But yesterday the little connector card died and I am without access until I figure something else out. But I needed to balance the bank account and pay a few bills so I headed to Starbucks. I'm not really supposed to be blogging. The baby is at home. But I just had to share...IT'S NOT MY LAPTOP!! Web pages are flying open, there is no waiting. I bet I would watch a whole concert on U Tube. Anyway, I'm pretty excited. Just wanted to share :)

Oh, also found about $500 of charges from someone who is not me. Looks like my information has bee stolen, so I'm off to the bank :(

Food, Sort Of

So we watched Food, Inc. the other night. Not news exactly, but disturbing none the less. I can't believe how difficult it has become to get truly nutritious food. Actually, given what Obama and company are doing to our country I can believe just about anything, but I'll spare you my conspiracy theory diatribe. (Is it still a conspiracy theory if it's true??)

Anywaaay. We are two steps forward, one step back in the healthy eating department. But we are on a forward trajectory right now and trying to get back into the swing of things :) I really want to avoid high fructose corn syrup as much as possible. This requires pretty diligent lable reading and just skipping a lot of things because it is in EVERYTHING! Pickles - check, ketchup - check, bread - check... But it's important, so we're working on it.

If you want to read a little about why it's so awful for you, and especially for your kids, you can start here.

One line in Food, Inc. really stuck out to me. There was a poor, hispanic family being interviewed. They worked long hours, on the go a lot, usually resorting to fast food in the car. The husband had deveolped diabetes and the wife said, "Before he got diabetes we never thought about whether something was healthy. We thought all food was healthy." Now they struggle to decide whether to spend their money on presciptions or vegetables. So sad.

Ojai

Hailey and I took an overnight trip to Ojai for some good food, good conversation, and good memories. We had a great time and had the opportunity to talk of the weightier things that require the kind of time and environment that has been hard to come by lately :)

I also made her smile for the camera:)







This is the old Ojai jail. When it was built the railroad tracks ran between it and the park, it was built on "the other side of the tracks." It was used into the 1970's! We read that a few men actually spent upwards of a year here.