March 12th, 2010

Win Disney’s The Princess and the Frog on DVD

It’s com­ing to DVD and here’s your chance to win a copy! Three lucky win­ners will receive a copy of the Princess and the Frog DVD.

The sin­gle disc DVD comes with these excit­ing bonus features:

• Deleted Scenes
• Audio Com­men­tary by John Musker and Ron Clements (co-writers and direc­tors) and Peter Del
• Vecho (producer)
• “Never Knew I Needed”- Music video by Ne-Yo
• Games and Activ­i­ties
  • What Do You See: Princess Por­traits — A bayou-style quiz tests view­ers’ knowl­edge of all of Disney’s beau­ti­ful princesses. Ray’s fire­fly fam­ily cre­ates twin­kling por­traits of each princess and if the player cor­rectly iden­ti­fies her, they can enjoy a tongue-cheek mini re-telling of that character’s story.

How to enter:

(1) Leave a com­ment here answer­ing the fol­low­ing question:

Who is your favorite Dis­ney Char­ac­ter and Why?

March 8th, 2010

Fresh Juice Recipe: Super Greens Juice

Another juice recipe for you. If you tried the Beet, Car­rot, Apple Gin­ger Juice, I would love to know what you thought.

Today I tried a Super Greens Juice. If you are con­fused about what “Greens” are, here’s a tip: veg­gies and fruit that are green in color. Think kale, cel­ery, spinach, col­lard greens, beet greens, broc­coli, cucum­bers, alfalfa sprouts, wheat­grass sprouts, onion sprouts and so many more. Greens Juice is great for cleans­ing your body and jump star­ing any weight loss pro­gram. Own­ing Pink does a great job of explain­ing the amaz­ing­ness of Green Juice so go there and read about it.

This Super Greens Juice recipe comes from Goop again but I encour­age you all to try dif­fer­ent vari­a­tions. I have adjusted the recipe to make three 12 oz glasses.

• 2 cups of Kale (use everything)
• 1 whole Lemon
• 2 inches of Ginger
• 8 stalks of Celery
• 3 whole Pears

Run every­thing through the juicer. Remem­ber that leafy veg­gies are a pain so to make sure that they juice com­pletely, I wrapped the kale around the cel­ery sticks. Made life A LOT eas­ier. Also, make sure you stir your juice very well.

March 6th, 2010

Fresh Juice Recipe: Beet, Carrot, Apple and Ginger

In an effort to cleanse my body of tox­ins (also called “yuck­ies” by my 3.5 year old daugh­ter), I have been embarked on a detox jour­ney using a menu plan writ­ten by Gwyneth Pal­trow with her doc­tor, Dr. Ale­jan­dro Junger author of the book “Clean”. I know a lot of peo­ple hate Gwyneth Pal­trow, but I absolute love her site Goop as it has good tips for health.

At any rate, my hus­band and I bought a juicer two years ago and we were using it almost every day. Then for some rea­son, we just stopped. Detox­ing has given me the oppor­tu­nity to bring it out again and include fresh juice into my diet. Here is a tip: if you have a juicer, keep it out on the counter or you will never use it. I know that it’s big, but you know the say­ing, “out of sight, out of mind,” right? It’s true. So keep it out and then you can incor­po­rate that into your daily menus.

On to the Beet, Car­rot, Apple Gin­ger Juice. It’s a beau­ti­ful color, isn’t it? Before I decided to make this juice I looked up the ben­e­fits of beets in your diet. Beets have been shown to low blood pres­sure (not for peo­ple with hyper­ten­sion) and are a pow­er­ful blood and sys­tem cleanser.   It is also believed that beets can increase sta­mina and pro­vide numer­ous heart-healthy ben­e­fits.  It is being called a super juice and while I know that there is no one cure for all that ails, I am will­ing to add more healthy things into my diet.

The recipe fol­lows but I want to share my thoughts on this juice. It actu­ally tastes good despite the fact that I really don’t like beets. I did notice that my stom­ach began cramp­ing while drink­ing my ver­sion which leads me to believe that I used too much beet juice in pro­por­tion to the other ingre­di­ents. Beets are a nat­ural lax­a­tive and work rather quickly. Stick as close to the recipe as pos­si­ble. The recipe below comes directly from the Goop site.

SERVES: 1
TIME: 5 minutes

• 1 large or 2 medium beets, cut into wedges (My Note: I’m not sure this includes the greens. I did not as I used them for another recipe. Also, I’m not sure if beets are sup­posed to be peeled or not. I juiced every­thing but the greens.)
• 1/2 lemon, zest and pith removed
• 2 large carrots
• 1 large apple, cut into wedges
• 1″ piece of ginger

Juice every­thing into a glass, give it a stir and enjoy.