Juggling writing my novels, blogging, and daily life is a huge challenge. This week I (sort of) chunked the task of researching the business end of blogging. That voyage into Google-ville unearthed a meandering myriad of fascinating stuff worth sharing with you…
This Aboriginal woman of Australia’s NPY region may be listening to Smiling Mind’s free meditation app in English or Pitjantjatjara or Ngaanyatjarra!
Blogging: In most any timezone, folks check their social media on weekdays, around lunchtime. According to these statistics gathered by Sprout Social, most of us bloggers are wisest to post mid-week, mid-morning. Forget about posting on weekends.
Social media: Trendwatchers at Pew Research Center report that everyone everywhere is increasing their social media engagement. Among all ages, Facebook is used most and most frequently, with Youtube gaining behind them.
Mind: “The greatest gift you can give to people is your full attention,” according to the Australian guy on Smiling Mind. Meditation, mindfulness, stress relief, call it what you will — everyone tells us we need it. Smiling Mind coaches us to do just that, in English and even in Aboriginal languages! — no credit card required to upload it and use its free version indefinitely!
Body: Mindfulness can help us stay fit — MyFitnessPal tracks and calculates our eating, nutrition, and activity. No credit card required to use its gratis edition forever.
1st YouTube: Ever wonder about it? Ta-da! Here it is, originally uploaded on April 23, 2005…
Anti-Viral Dog: Crisis brings out the worst — and the best! — in us, like how whoever kindly made this video wanted us to smile…
What are your best blogging hacks and fave truly free apps?
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(Hi friends, this is da-AL — Khashayar’s post follows the next photo.)
Cool, cold, freezing! Yes! All those sound absolutely refreshing now that summer’s kicked in here in Los Angeles. What does hot weather make you feel like doing?
For me, the heat makes me want to dip my toes in a whispering mossy stream. It makes me want to nap. And it makes me want to sip iced coffee by the shore. Alas, real life beckons.
Enter ice cream! Better yet, frozen yogurt, because more people can tolerate it. Moreover, yogurt’s healthy probiotics withstand freezing. Here’ my sweeter-than-frozen-yogurt husband’s version of sheer indulgence (photos and captions are by me)…
1. Use cheesecloth to line a strainer that’s the size of the type used to drain pasta, and pour yogurt into it. Insert strainer over a bowl to collect the water from yogurt. Place in the fridge for 12 hours.
Step 1: Save the resulting fabulous liquid, a.k.a. whey, to later enhance everything from drinks and smoothies to soups and bread making.
2. Cook the berries on low heat to reduce the juice out of the fruit for about thirty minutes.
Step 2: Frozen berries are picked at the height of their season.
3. In a large bowl, use a hand blender to mix the banana, honey, and butter. Add in the thick yogurt and fruit and mix.
Step 3A: Ingredients other than yogurt and berries.Step 3b: A blend of all but berries and yogurt.Step 3c: Super dynamite yogurt meets blended tasty fruit and stuff.Step 3d: Everything stirred together, except the berries. Sorry, I forgot to get a photo of the last step of combining berries into everything.
4. Leave in freezer for 24 hours and serve.
Step 4: Use the yogurt container to freeze the total mix in. In my humble opinion, it tastes amazing even at room temperature!!!
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How do you make staying healthy easy? Focusing on what’s good to eat (rather than what isn’t) helps me. So does collecting wholesome recipes that are simple and delicious.
My husband welcomes challenges, nutritious cooking included. Here’s a favorite dish he’s come with that family and guests love…
Hungry for something wonderful?
Veggie Black-Eyed Peas Appetizer
Ingredients
1 medium onion
2 tablespoons coconut oil
1 zucchini
1 head garlic
2 teaspoons turmeric
1 1/2 cups black-eyed peas
1 cup dried maitake mushrooms
1/2 cup walnuts
1/4 cup cheddar cheese
4 cups water
1/2 cup white rice
salt and pepper to taste
olives
crackers
Olives brighten up Vegetarian Black-Eyed Peas Appetizer
Instructions
Coarsely chop onion.
In a medium sized pot, sauté in coconut oil until golden.
Coarsely dice zucchini.
Add zucchini to onions and sauté another five minutes on medium heat.
Mince garlic.
Add garlic to the pot with turmeric and sauté two minutes.
Add black-eyed peas, mushrooms, walnuts, rice, cheese, and water. Bring to boil.
Lower heat to medium and simmer for half an hour.
Once fully cooked, coarsely grind with an immersion blender (which is a little easier to control) or mixer. Tip: if mixture overcooks and becomes too dry to blend, add water 1/4 cup at a time until it can be emulsified without becoming watery.
Let cool.
Spoon into large bowl.
Garnish with Olives.
Serve with crackers.
Vegetarian Black-Eyed Peas Appetizer is tasty on wholewheat crackers.
Serves 8-10 people.
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As a novelist, tea is one of my best friends. If I want a boost, to warm my fingers, something tasty and healthy yet free of calories (given how writing involves little physical energy), or during the moments I want to commune with others (making a story can be like cooking, the ingredients being actually living).
Tea is infinitely varied — hot or cold, fruity or robust, earthy or sweet, and on and on — there’s a tea for everyone. Blogger Rhiannon Brunner lives in Vienna, Austria. She’s written a pile of books about subjects that interest her in German, which she’s planning to soon translate into English.
What’s your favorite tea? Here she describes hers…
Author and blogger Rhiannon Brunner.
Tea offers extremely valuable properties. Many minor physical pains can be easily relieved with the right one.
If you take a look at my tea box, you will find some herbs that serve healing purposes. The classics (rosehip, chamomile, and fennel) are of course included. However, I would like to present here two varieties that I have long considered to be absolutely essential:
Damiana is a healthy and good tea.
Damiana
Damiana tea tastes like dried hay.
Its positive effects include stress relief (it makes one slightly euphoric), relief of menstrual pain, and it has anti-inflammatory properties.
Many people find it helps relieve stomach problems, acts as an aphrodisiac, aids sleep, and strengthens the heart and general circulation.
Bitter gourd is another great tea.
Bitter Gourd
If you don’t like the bitter taste, sweeten it with honey, because it tastes really bitter!
Above all, diabetics and health-conscious people enjoy its positive effects. If you want to lose weight, you are well advised to use it, since the usual diet does not need to be changed at all.
I have experienced this on my own body — although I did not even intend to. It includes saponins, which helps the body to break down dangerous abdominal fat (visceral fat). Bitter gourd helps to get rid of the type of fat that not even the most restrictive diets can get to. To check the results, I asked a couple of friends to drink the tea as well. Their results were like mine.
Bitter gourd is rich in iron, calcium, phosphorus, copper, potassium and the vitamins A, B1, B2, and C. Therefore, it is optimally suited for a health-conscious lifestyle.
Caution is advised only for pregnant women and people with low blood pressure.
My personal favorite way to take bitter gourd is this one, Trà Khổ Qua. It is a combination that also contains Reishi mushrooms, which makes the bitter gourd less bitter, as well as additionally healthy.
I highly recommend anyone to engage in tea and be open to a variety of impressions.
Good tea is like a beloved friend.And so — let me say — it is tea time.
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Tired of taking food too seriously? Let blogger Elan Mudrow help…
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Fiction = Facts + Imagination + Heart + Soul (i.e., dark chocolate or whatever your fave food)
Our newest fellow blogger (and what a cartoonist!) friend, DJ Sakata, understands this, so how can we not like her?…
I assume this is DJ Sakata’s self-portrait
Aloha to you lovers of tails and tales. I am DJ Sakata/Empress DJ/Honolulubelle, and a new friend of da-AL. We met on Goodreads and were instant fangirls. She asked me to sprinkle a few words on her blog of my love of reading. As a child and well into my teens I used to hide under the covers and read with a flashlight as my strict and priggish mother would chide and punish me if I was caught as according to her, “Reading fiction is a waste of time.” Hmm, then I am now a total wastrel who squanders the majority of her free minutes indulging in such foolishness. I have an eclectic reading palate, but my favorite will always be women’s fiction.
Is frenemy Puka taking these for herself?
Since I’ve retired – which BTW is oh, so, sweet – I read all day in my cozy little nest with all the windows open, I live in Hawaii so I can do that year-round – don’t hate me, I’ve earned it. I do occasionally put my Kindle down when my husband whines for food and/or attention. I thumb my nose at my mother’s ridiculously misguided notion as I’ve noticed my vocabulary and spelling have markedly improved with the increased perusal. I am an incredibly lazy blogger, but I do have one called Books and Bindings, which is just a small personal blog where I can toss up my silly little reviews that no one ever reads, but I don’t really care about that. If you find you are all caught up on Ms. da-AL’s posts and have a few minutes or an interest in seeing what nonsense I’ve recently read which my Bible banging mother would most certainly not approve, then come and see, or not. I’m happily whiling away in my little nook while lovingly tapping my Kindle and sipping Moscato 😉
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Most of the week, fellow blogger Roijoyeux blogs on heroic people bullied for being gay or bisexual. Sundays he reserves to torture us with photos and recipes from his latest mouthwatering healthy/delicious yummy. Another awesomeness about his site is that if you don’t read French, he’s installed a google translate widget…
Pour mon cher ami Tauche et son mari, je réalise presque chaque semaine des gâteaux à la fois sains et gourmands et j’ai décidé de vous faire profiter, joyeux visiteurs, de mes plus belles réussites…
Cette semaine, j’ai eu envie de tester la recette de muffins aux pépites de chocolat inscrite au dos des paquets de pépites de chocolat “Vahiné”, en l’adaptant pour mes amis; Tauche souhaitait un gâteau à la banane, il me restait un sachet de noisettes en poudre, voici donc les :
Ingrédients : (pour 9 muffins de diamètre 6 cm)
125 g de farine de riz + 50 g de farine de sarrasin + 75 g de poudre de noisettes (au lieu de 250 g de farine)
1/2 c à c bicarbonate (au lieu de 1 sachet de levure chimique)
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Simple solutions are elegant and often the most efficient when it comes to so many things! Here’s Amna’s secret to good health…
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Yesterday saw a whole bunch of us interested folks going to explore the arboretum at Ardnagashel in Glengarriff, West Cork, but apart from admiring the wonderful trees we also received lots of information on the seaweeds and lichens along this stretch of coast. Ardnagashel was established by the Hutchins family and it was as part of the Heritage Week of Ireland that these activities took place, in memory of Ellen Hutchins (1785-1815)who was a remarkable Irish Botanist. The talks on the lichens and seaweeds were given by Howard Fox, who is the State Botanist (National Botanic Gardens) and by Maria Cullen. This ‘life’ introduction to the seaweeds and the lichens of the coast of Bantry Bay was so very interesting. a true first introduction in this field for me. Later in the afternoon Madeline Hutchins (Ellen’s great great grand niece) took us through the forested area of this garden and…
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As the dish went in the oven, I admit the ingredients could have looked more appetising. But this is the truth of the process; sticky toffee pudding before its glory on the plate, and the gunky sweetness which sticks to the back of your teeth. This photo is the real life part of the fantasy which will be the portion covered with cream, dribbling down across textured contours of sponge and jagged rocks of dates. Real life is the seven selfies you take before the one which is finally chosen for public scrutiny. That one becomes the fantasy. The image of what we ideally want ourselves to be.
In fact I had to bring it out again, because I forgot the components of the sticky bit. Dark muscovado sugar, unsalted butter and some boiling water … all sprinkled, dabbed and poured over the top before cooking commences. (That looks even…
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This Aboriginal woman of Australia’s NPY region may be listening to Smiling Mind’s free meditation app in English or Pitjantjatjara or Ngaanyatjarra!
Ingrédients : (pour 9 muffins de diamètre 6 cm)
