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.

December 29th, 2009

Exercise Any Way You Can

Intro­duc­ing Bucket the Wonderdog

Happy Hol­i­days every­one! If your Christ­mas (if you cel­e­brate it) was half as good as mine then you should be very happy! This year we decided to add a dog to the mix– a beau­ti­fully well-tempered dog named Bucket (my daugh­ter named him). Isn’t he adorable?! While we made this deci­sion so that my daugh­ter would have a play­mate, we did so also because of the exer­cis­ing benefits.

We live in as apart­ment and since mak­ing the deci­sion to work from home I have become some­what of a shut in. I home­school my daugh­ter and then work as a writer, web designer, Blog­ging Con­sul­tant, and am co-founder Moms of Hue and the We of Hue Net­work the rest of the time. I have very lit­tle rea­son to leave the house out­side of doctor’s appoint­ments and the occa­sional fam­ily out­ing. This has proven to be dis­as­trous to my health as I have gained weight which is in direct oppo­si­tion to what I need to do. So, the deci­sion to get the dog came from a need to force myself to brave NY win­ters and get my butt and my daughter’s butt outside.

And it has.

We live on the sec­ond floor but have to climb about 35 steps to actu­ally get there– 20 to get to the front door of the build­ing and then another 15 to get to my door. I have been climb­ing those steps twice daily at the least since bring­ing Bucket home. In addi­tion, my daugh­ter and I, along with buddy walk roughly .25 miles when we take him out for his after­noon walk. In addi­tion, in the morn­ing we have begun walk­ing an addi­tional .5 mile and plan to work our way up to 3 miles. As you can see, I have already begun to get more exer­cise since Christ­mas Eve than I have prob­a­bly done all year. All this walk­ing com­bined with my daily EA Active exer­cise (once I get the doctor’s approval to con­tinue) will help me reach my over­all goal.

It is so impor­tant to get up an move. I feel bet­ter than I have in a long time because I am forc­ing myself to exer­cise. Those trips up and down the stairs count. The brisk walks of the dog around the neigh­bor­hood count. It all counts and I plan to con­tinue get­ting exer­cise in any way that I can.

What do you do tho get more exer­cise in?

November 6th, 2009

Product Review: Exergen TemporalScanner

One of the hard­est things about hav­ing a sick tod­dler is hav­ing to take her tem­per­a­ture. Hav­ing to make her more uncom­fort­able in order to gauge just how sick she is, often seems sadistic.

That is why I was so excited about the oppor­tu­nity to try the Exer­gen Tem­po­ralScan­ner infrared ther­mome­ter. It reads tem­per­a­ture in just two sec­onds just by run­ning it across the fore­head. The Tem­po­ralScan­ner mea­sures arte­r­ial tem­per­a­ture (the core body tem­per­a­ture) which is the same as blood flow­ing from the heart. It is rel­a­tively close to the tem­per­a­ture taken rec­tally. The core body tem­per­a­ture is the oper­at­ing tem­per­a­ture of your bod­ies organs as  opposed to sur­face temperature.

What I loved about the ther­mome­ter is that it takes tem­per­a­ture in two sec­onds– no more wait­ing and hop­ing that your child will stay still. I have to admit that I tried this prod­uct while my daugh­ter was per­fectly healthy so tak­ing her tem­per­a­ture was eas­ier than ever before. Nonethe­less, I didn’t have to worry about changes to the tem­per­a­ture due to drink­ing, positioning,talking, or mov­ing. An impor­tant thing to note is that if your patient is sweat­ing, the tem­per­a­ture should not be taken across the fore­head but rather the on the neck behind the ear lobe.

And here is another plus. The Tem­po­ralScan­ner is man­u­fac­tured in the United States  and does not require the use of probe cov­ers like the ear ther­mome­ters. There are no hard to find bat­ter­ies to replace (uses a sim­ple 9 volt) and no scary mer­cury of bulb thermometers.

You can find the Exer­gen Tem­po­ralScan­ner at Wal-Mart, Wal­green, Costco, Babies R Us, Toys R Us and Sam’s Club. It costs less than $50 and makes a great addi­tion to you med­i­cine cabinet.