Effortless Eating - Page 63 of 185 - Elizabeth Yarnell – Solving Inflammation & MS

Be a Smart Label Reader at the Grocery Store

May 1, 2013

Naturally Savvy published a new e-book: Label Lessons, Your Guide to a Healthy Shopping Cart. Filled with a ton of interesting information, it teaches you how to properly read product labels, and is their gift to you.

I really like the way this e-book is laid out with the familiar product on one page, like General Mills Honey Nut Cheerios, and the cleaner, more natural alternative on the facing page, in this case Barbara’s Classic Honest O’s Honey Nut. For each product featured, the undesirable ingredients are called out. In Honey Nut Cheerios, for example, there are Genetically Modified ingredients, 4 of the first 5 ingredients are sugars, and there are no actual nuts included (only “natural almond flavor,” which may or may not originate from actual almonds).

Naturally Savvy calls out the “Scary Seven” ingredients to avoid as you read labels in the grocery store and choose your food:

High Fructose Corn Syrup
Trans fats
Artificial Flavors
MSG
Artificial Colors
Artificial Sweeteners
Preservatives

Read the e-book and share it to help raise $10,000 for charity. You can download coupons for all the healthy products in the e-book, and you can win a $1,000 shopping spree at the natural products store of your choice!

8 Herbs for a Kitchen Garden

April 29, 2013

Not much compares to the culinary joy of picking fresh herbs to add to your kitchen creations. Wherever I land, there are a few staple herbs I like to grow in garden plots or pots every summer. Here’s my list of staple herbs to grow for culinary creativity.

1. Parsley. Parsley is great to grow in a garden patch because it’s a hardy perennial that doesn’t need much sun or attention to keep coming back every year.

2. Sage. In Colorado and other semi-arid climes, sage will blossom into a bush that sustains fragrant leaves through the winter.

Lemon Rosemary Salmon Glorious One-Pot Meal. Click the picture for a recipe and video demonstration.

3. Rosemary. Every summer I kill another potted rosemary plant, probably by over-watering, but while it lasts we make good use of the needles in savory Glorious One-Pot Meals and olive-oil rubbed oven roasted potatoes.

4. Basil. I grow basil in pots around my flagstone patio and harvest leaves for everything from marinara sauce to Italian-style tuna with olive oil, basil and capers.

5. Mint. For some reason, as much as I want mint to spread and go wild in my yard, it simply refuses to cooperate, so I grow mint in pots, too. I love a cold glass of Sun-Tea poured over mint leaves, and often use mint in rice pilaf-type dishes.

6. Oregano and/or Marjoram. I usually pick one or the other and while oregano is the more familiar, I find marjoram to be the more versatile herb.

7. Chives. The chives I planted seven summers ago still reappear year after year for me to snip to give a little zing to any dish, hot or cold.

8. Cilantro. Okay, I don’t actually grow cilantro because I can’t stand it, but it’s easy to grow and a lot of people would probably like to have it in their kitchen garden.

3 Ways to Improve Your Mood Naturally

April 25, 2013

Depression affects a huge number of people in our country and prescriptions of anti-depressants are so common that I’ll bet you can name at least two people off the top of your head who take something to feel happier. That’s to say nothing of all the people you know who haven’t told you that they are taking a drug for anxiety, depression, or unhappiness.

Heck, antidepressants are so common that you’ll find traces of them in most municipal water supplies.

But there are more natural ways to lighten your outlook on life and help you find a happier disposition. Here are a few to try:

1. Dance! I love starting off my day with a Jazzercise class and it never fails to put a smile on my face even when I’ve woken up on the wrong side of the bed. I have a friend who simply cranks the disco music at her house and dances in her own living room to put the spring into her step as she enters her sixth decade. Check out some of the great free dance class offerings on YouTube for a fun time. Here’s a reggae dancehall workout with Keaira LaShea that will put a smile on your face.

It’s hard to nurture hurts or grudges as you become engulfed in music and movement. Not only does dancing offer cardiovascular benefits, it works your muscles and your brain as well, which can keep those synapses flowing as we age.

2. Laugh! I’ve become addicted to the new 24/7 comedy channel on the radio: 103.1 Comedy. They play a continuous stream of stand-up comedians ranging from classic Bill Cosby on raising kids and Eddie Murphy’s hysterical “I’ve got some ice cream,” to current comics like Kevin Nealon, Dana Carvey, and Jeanine Garrafalo. I’ve laughed so hard in the car on my way to pick up my kid’s carpool that I’ve arrived with smeared mascara from the tears. I don’t mind when I’m stuck in traffic because I’m so entertained by what I’m hearing.

Laughter releases endorphins like exercise does, and endorphins give you a natural high while putting a smile on your face. They have mobile apps, and are online, too. Give it a listen and see for yourself if you don’t arrive at your destination a little happier from having laughed all the way over.

3. Go on an Anti-Inflammatory Diet! What? This doesn’t sound exciting or mood-lifting? Here the fact: depression and inflammatory conditions like MS, heart disease, diabetes, etc., go hand-in-hand. When there is inflammation in the body, it’s not limited to wherever you notice the symptoms (joints, bowels, skin, etc.). Many inflammatory actions are systemic, meaning they extend throughout our body’s systems, and include the brain. When the brain swells, brain function is disrupted and higher thoughts processes like reason and logic are affected. The stronger, more primal and emotional brain functions – fight and flight, lust, anger, hunger, etc. – can supercede rational thought in an inflamed brain.

Many of my clients report a lifting of “brain fog”, a return of a sense of humor, and a sunnier outlook as the inflammation in their brain recedes on a customized anti-inflammatory diet. It’s much easier to be happy when you feel better and your brain is not inflamed!

Recycle Your Underwear!

April 24, 2013

We compost, recycle papers and plastics, and limit our water usage, but one way to help the earth that never occurred to me was to recycle old underwear.

Rodale.com offers five surprising ways to recycle underwear, including cutting it up and adding it to your compost bin (only if the underwear is 100% cotton, of course!).

These tips come at a good time in our house as I just noticed a few pairs of my husband’s underwear that should be retired from active duty. Have you noticed that men will wear underwear until it literally falls to pieces?!

The New Urbanism: Hawks in the Alleyways

April 23, 2013

My great Earth Day experience yesterday was watching a hawk wing through the heavy spring snowstorm into a nesting box mounted on the third story of a town home wall across the alley from my kitchen window.

hawk nesting box — The hawk's nesting box mounted on the 3rd story of a town home wall.

Lately, in the last three weeks or so, we’ve been coming upon piles of pigeon feathers in various locations in our front and back yards. While our 16-year old cat has caught quite a few baby birds in her day, and even snagged one last summer (you go, girl!), she’s not as spry as she once was and, besides, she hasn’t spent a lot of time outside lately with all the snow. She was only 9 pounds at her peak fighting weight, and many pigeons and squirrels outweigh her to begin with, and her hunting was usually limited to baby rodents and baby birds.

urban hawk — A hawk pauses in our backyard tree with its prey.

So, we had assumed it was a coyote that was leaving the crime scenes as our neighborhood is built around a natural habitat corridor that weaves throughout the development and through several wildlife sanctuaries. We are several blocks in from the greenway, however, and don’t usually see those animals running down our street.

Then, last Friday, we saw a hawk clutching a hapless pigeon in his talons in the tree in our backyard and wondered where he lived. I saw another winging by down the alley shortly afterward, so I believed there was a nesting pair. Part of the mystery of the dead pigeons was solved, but where were they coming from?

Now I know. And when the snow stops falling, maybe I’ll be able to snap a picture of the birds entering this nesting box, like I spied yesterday through my window.

I applaud our neighbors for cleverly mounting a nesting box: painted the same color as their trim and so camouflaged that I have looked out the window above my kitchen sink for eight years and never noticed it. We’ve speculated on how (and when!) they hung it: Did they use a cherry picker? Did they repel down from the roof? Was it placed by the original builders? How did the hawks find it?

My husband snapped a picture on his iPhone as the hawk paused in our tree with his prey. Can you spot the big bird in our tree?

As urban homesteaders at heart, we are thrilled by the arrival of the hawks and look forward to getting the pigeon population under control.

Be a Smart Label Reader at the Grocery Store

8 Herbs for a Kitchen Garden

3 Ways to Improve Your Mood Naturally

Recycle Your Underwear!

The New Urbanism: Hawks in the Alleyways

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