I eat this for lunch at least twice a week.  It’s quick and easy to make and you can use whatever veggies you have on hand.

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup of quinoa cooked to package instructions
• 1/4 cup of chopped veggies (raw)
• 1/4 cup of beans (can substitute white fish or chicken)
• 1 tablespoon gluten-free tamari
• 1 tablespoon crumbled goat cheese (substitute another soft cheese or shredded raw cheese)
• 1/2 tablespoon nutritional yeast (optional)
• cayenne pepper
• sea salt
• black pepper
• garlic powder

Directions:

Cook quinoa to package instructions.  While quinoa is cooking wash and chop veggies and pull out your spices.  When your quinoa is ready transfer to a serving plate.  Top with veggies, beans, and goat cheese.   Sprinkle with nutritional yeast and tamari and add seasonings to taste.  Mix it all together.  The hot quinoa will lightly warm the veggies, but you will still get all the nutritional value of eating them raw.

This is a great way to up your daily vegetable intake and it works with a large variety of vegetables.  Bell peppers, kale, tomatoes, squash, and broccoli are some of my favorites.  This is light, but I always feel full and energized when I eat it.

What veggies would you put in a quinoa bowl?

I spend a lot of time thinking about what I put in my body (and I’m guessing many of you do to), but what about the things we put ON our bodies?  The skin is the largest organ and every day it’s polluted by products loaded with harmful chemicals.  These chemicals are sometimes hidden behind creative marketing labels that promise anti-aging benefits, thick, silky hair and more, but the reality is they are doing a lot more harm than good.

Today, I thought we would take a look at some of the common ingredients found in our shampoos.  The list below includes some of the biggest offenders in hair care.  When choosing a shampoo, check the label and avoid products with these ingredients.

• Sodium Lauryl/Laureth Sulfate – The synthetic ingredient that gives your shampoo it’s thick, foamy lather.  It’s also used in many industrial cleaning products and detergents.  It’s known to be a possible carcinogen and because of it’s acidic nature it may contribute to thinning hair.
• DEA – May also be listed as diethanolamine.  This is a chemical wetting agent that is actually harmless on it’s own, but when mixed with other chemicals and ingredients commonly found in personal care products it can create harmful, carcinogenic compounds called NDEA.  NDEA is absorbed through the skin and can be damaging to the stomach, esophagus, liver and bladder.
• Parabens – These are synthetic preservatives used in just about every traditional beauty product.  They can be found in toothpaste, moisturizers, face wash and yes, your shampoo.  I don’t like to focus on the scary details, but these hormone disruptors were found in 19 out of 20 tumors in women with breast cancer and in the urine of nearly all adults the Center for Disease Control tested in a study.  Any ingredient with the suffix – parabens is one to be avoided.
• Petroleum – Ingredients ending with the suffix -PEG, -xynol, ceteareth, or oleth are cancer causing petroleum based ingredients.
• Fragrances – In most cases, fragrances added to shampoos and beauty products are synthetic and have been found to cause a number of health problems from cancer to skin and other allergic reactions.  I love a shampoo that leaves a clean fresh scent, but most of the time we go fragrance free unless it’s a natural product scented with essential oils.

The good news is more and more companies, both small and large, are offering natural, safe shampoos and beauty products that will give you healthy, clean hair without all the harmful side effects.

Be sure to check back later this week for a review of one of our favorite natural shampoos.  If you’re unsure about your own, search for it in the Cosmetic Database to check it’s safety rating.

Do you use a natural shampoo or one that’s made without the ingredients listed above?  If so, please share your favorite brand in the comments.

Today, we spent nearly four hours touring local, organic farms in our area.  It was exciting and inspiring to meet the farmers and their families, visit a variety of crops, learn the details behind the organic techniques that protect our food and their farms and collect some great tips for caring for our own backyard gardens.

At Rocky Glade Farm, they gave every family on the tour the opportunity to harvest five garlic bulbs.  I think this was the best part for our boys (other than the hayride) and for me.  Garden fork in hand, we turned up the dirt loosening it’s grip on the aromatic bulbs of garlic. We took turns pulling them up and trimming the roots and stalks.  As all the families eagerly participated in this mini-harvest I couldn’t help but notice how the air smelled like my grandma’s basement kitchen on a Sunday afternoon.  It was pretty cool.

I just finished cleaning and prepping the garlic for storage.  If you’ve never stored garlic fresh from the garden, here’s a quick how to.

Steps to Store Garlic Fresh From the Garden:

1. Dampen a cloth and wipe away any dirt on the bulbs.
2. Dry each bulb.
3. Place them a cooling rack or another surface that allows for full air circulation.
4. Put them in a dry place and let them sit at room temperature for about two weeks.
5. Trim the remaining tops from the bulbs (the part that looks similar to the stalk on a green onion).
6. Store the bulbs in an open brown paper bag, a small box or a mesh bag in cool, dry place for 3-6 months and use as needed.

One of my favorite uses for fresh garlic is this garlicky kale recipe second only to my grandma’s secret sauce recipe.  What’s your favorite way to use fresh garlic?

This is a topic I actually debated with my pediatirican a few years back.  He wanted to know how many servings of milk my boys drank a day and when I told him zero he was extremely concerned.  At that point, I was basing my decsion on books I’d read, guidance from our chiropractor and the fact that both of our boys’ allergies seemed to improve when their dairy consumption was limited.

I’m not saying I knew more than our pediatrician.  I actually really respect him and think he’s a great doctor.  I’m just saying that I think we sometimes limit our dietary guidance to one strict way of doing things (or to misguided or outdated information) when we are all unique individuals with unique dietary needs who can benefit from different dietary theories.  I’ve recently learned through my health coaching studies that our need for calcium is generally overstated and misunderstood.  You can read more about that here.

In general, our daily calcium needs probably fall somewhere between 500 mg and 1200 mg a day (depending on our age).  A glass of milk provides about 400 mg a day and the average person eating a somewhat healthy diet gets about 300 mg a day, not counting dairy sources or fortified foods.  But what if you don’t eat dairy?  How do you bridge the gap from the 300 mg you’re probably getting to the 500/700 mg you might need?

If your lactose intolerant or simply choose not to eat dairy, here are some examples of non-dairy foods that are healthy source of calcium.  These are muchbetter than calcium fortefied breads or cereals and definitely healtheir than consuming 3 or 4 glasses of milk for the sole purpose of increasing your daily calcium intake.  Not to mention the added nutrition you get from the extra nuts, veggies and legumes in your diet.

• 1/2 cup of almonds – 350 mg
• 1 cup shrimp – 300 mg
• 1/2 cup of cooked spinach – 146 mg
• 1/2 cup of walnuts – 140 mg
• 1/2 cup of cooked turnip greens – 124 mg
• 1/2 cup of canned white beans – 96 mg
• 1/2 cup of cooked kale – 96 mg
• 1 cup of garbanzo beans (can be used to make hummus) – 95 mg
• 1 cup cooked quinoa – 80 mg
• 1 cup of black beans – 80 mg

Sea vegetables like nori and kombu are also excellent sources of calcium and delicious mixed into salads.

Are you dairy free?  Do you take a calcium supplement or do you rely on alternate, non-dairy sources of calcium?

The great dairy debate is a tough topic to address because people are very passionate about their particular side.  It’s complicated by the fact that nutrition science happens to be one of the only areas of science where people can prove both sides of the debate.  So we’ve been left to choose sides based on individual preference and experience and we’re able to support our stance with scientific evidence leaving us with no clear picture or guidance on the healthiest choice.

Recently, concrete studies have come out on the issue that help give a less debatable answer to the questions – how much dairy do we really need? – which directly relates to the question, how much calcium do we really need? I’ll try to keep it simple by bulleting out some of the most significant findings from research recently presented by Walter Willett, MD, DrPH, Chairman of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.  I’ve had the privilege of studying this research as part of my health coaching curriculum at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition™.

Facts About Dairy:

• Most of the world is lactose intolerant.
• Touted as a solution to our calcium needs. (see below about calcium studies)
• Contains hormones designed to trigger rapid growth. (useful for babies)
• Cows are often milked when pregnant when higher levels of hormones are present.
• Hormones and high amounts of milk intake seem to contribute to higher risks of some types of cancers including prostate, ovarian and endometrial cancer.
• Dairy consumption is not essential to a healthy diet.  People all over the world live dairy free because they do not have access to it and have healthy bones and no increased risk of fracture.
• No evidence in recent studies that milk consumption prevents osteoporosis or fractures.

Facts About Calcium:

• Calcium needs have been overstated.  Exact amount is up for debate and may vary by individual but it ranges between 500 mg a day to 1200 mg a day for someone over 50 years of age.
• UK studies claim daily calcium needs are 700 mg a day.
• World Health Organization claims daily calcium needs are 500 mg a day.
• The average healthy diet provides about 300 mg of calcium a day.
• A glass of milk provides 400 mg of calcium a day.
• We can get a descent amount of daily calcium from a healthy diet and one glass of milk. (People are being told they need at least 3 servings of dairy a day.)
• Recent reports indicate that high calcium supplements in our diets (1200 – 1500 mg a day) have been linked to higher risk of heart attack and kidney stones and possibly a higher risk of hip fracture.
• Calcium fortified foods are everywhere.  It’s in bottled water, orange juice, bagels, bread and cereal in addition to our dairy intake and calcium supplements.  It’s very easy to significantly overload on calcium.

Here’s where I come out on all of this.  Consuming dairy is not essential or necessary for a healthy diet.  For some of us, the risks may outweigh the benefits.  For those of us who can tolerate dairy, consuming it in small quantities is acceptable and maybe even somewhat beneficial.  The higher quality the dairy the better.  If you do choose to make dairy a part of your diet, organic is always better.  I personally enjoy some dairy, mainly in the form of raw, organic cheese.  My kids are big fans of yogurt.  So while we haven’t eliminated dairy from our diets completely, we only consume it in small amounts - mainly because we enjoy the food and not because we believe it to be an essential component to a healthy diet.

Where do you stand on the great dairy debate?  Do the facts from Dr. Willett’s research change your opinions or leave you with any questions about the role dairy should play in your diet?

Last week, I shared my favorite recipe for roasting chickens.  One of the best things about that recipe, besides all the great uses for the meat, is the chicken stock I get to make afterward.  It’s incredibly easy and great to have on hand for adding flavor to grains and vegetables like quinoa and green beans and of course, for making soups like my Garlic White Bean Kale Soup.  If you’re planning to roast a chicken be sure to save the bones and left over seasonings for this tasty stock.

Ingredients:

• Leftover chicken bones and seasonings from roasted chicken recipe.  You can use a boiled chicken, but roast chicken adds so much more flavor.
• Diced veggies.  Use whatever you have on hand, but tradition calls for celery, carrots, onions and garlic.
• Water

Directions:

Place the chicken bones and any seasonings left from your roast chicken into a large crock pot.  Add your diced veggies.  Cover with water leaving at least a 1/2 inch of space at the top for the lid.  If you don’t leave that space your stock will likely boil over.  Trust me!  Cook on low ovenight.  In the morning, use a collander or slotted spoon to remove the chicken bones and veggies.  Allow the stock to cool and package in individual servings in freezer safe containers.  Freeze, label and use within six months.

It’s that easy.  Do you make homemade chicken stock?  What’s your favorite way to use it?

I’ve been using The Fresh 20 meal plans for the last two weeks and loving them.  This week, roasted chicken was on the menu. I have a few recipes I like to use, but The Fresh 20 had some new twists I hadn’t tried.  I decided to blend their recipe with my own and made three chickens instead of two.  The recipe is included below, but first I have to say, the best thing about roasted chickens is that there are a million ways to use the leftovers.   Here are just a few.

1. Pull the meat off the bone and store it in the fridge for quick snacks during the week.
2. Use the refrigerated meat to make sandwiches or pack with a yogurt dipping sauce for school/work lunches.
3. Make homemade chicken salad.
4. Freeze some of the meat for quick dinners.
5. Make chicken fried rice.
6. Make homemade chicken stock with the left over bones.
7. Roast some veggies, add some chicken stock and your leftover chicken and you’ve got an easy soup.
8. Toss the chicken in with pasta, veggies and drizzle with olive oil, sea salt and black pepper for an easy dinner.
9. Set up a pita stuffing bar using leftover chicken, veggies, cheeses, lettuces, etc.  This is an easy summer dinner idea when it’s too hot to cook!

And now for the recipe…

Roast Chicken Ingredients:

• 1-3 whole, pasture raised chickens
• 1 tablespoon olive oil or expeller pressed coconut oil (per chicken)
• 1 teaspoon sea salt (per chicken)
• 1 teaspoon black pepper (per chicken)
• 1 tablespoon rosemary (per chicken)
• 1 clove of garlic, pressed (per chicken)
• 2 cloves of garlic, whole but peeled (per chicken)
• 1/2 lemon (per chicken)

*For a variation on this recipe, try stuffing each chicken with a sliced green apple and 2 tablespoons of real butter.

Directions for Roasting a Chicken:

If you’ve ever wonderd how to roast a chicken, this is probably the easiest way I’ve found.  I think it’s even easier than using the crockpot because you can cook several chickens at one time.  Preheat the oven to 500 degrees.  Remove any neck or liver pieces from the chicken cavity then rinse and pat the chickens dry.  Place them in a large roasting pan or on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil.

Next, mix the oil, salt, pepper and rosemary together and rub down the outside of each chicken.  Stuff the cavity with the garlic and lemon.

Roast the chicken in the 500 degree oven for 15 minutes.  Reduce the heat to 450 degrees and roast for another 15 minutes.  Reduce the heat again to 425 degrees.  Baste the chicken with pan drippings and continue roasting for 30-40 minutes.  If you are roasting more than one chicken, it may take a little longer for them to cook all the way.  The chickens are done when the internal juice runs clear and the temperature is at least 160 degrees between the thigh and the cavity.

Remove the chickens from the oven and allow them to sit for 10-15 minutes.  I use my hands to pull all the meat off the bones and I store it in BPA freezer baggies or in glass containers if I’m putting it in the fridge.

If you’re planning to make chicken stock, transfer the bones and any remaining seasonings like the lemon or garlic into your crockpot and get started.  If you don’t have time to make the stock, you can freeze the chicken carcass and make your stock another day.

What’s your favorite use for roasted chicken?

Have you guys seen all the pins on Pinterest with ideas for fun summer activities?  I think washing the car made it onto almost every list.  So what did we do on Friday to take advantage of the beautiful weather?  We washed the car.  The good news is I have some great tips on making your at home car wash a little more eco-friendly.  The really good news is that our car washing experience was a comedy of errors so while you’re picking up green car washing tips I think you’ll also pick up a few laughs.

Step 1 of the green car wash is to completely empty out your car.  If you find things you forgot you had, consider putting them in the donate pile.  Make a separate pile for recyclables like empty water bottles and a third pile for trash.

Next pull out all the carpets, shake them off and sprinkle them with baking soda.  We let it sit while we worked on the rest of the car so the baking soda could do it’s thing and absorb any unwanted odors.

 With the car completely emptied out, it’s time to vacuum. I hooked the shop vac up to an extension car and got to work.  As I was vacuuming I kept noticing a really rotten smell.  It was garbage day in our neighborhood so at first I thought it was all the trash cans out on our street.  Then I wondered if it was something that had spilled in the car.  But the odor was traveling with me as moved.  That’s when I realized it seemed to be coming from the shop vac.  The smell was getting bad so when I finished vacuuming out the car I asked my husband to come check it out. I’m so glad I didn’t look myself!  Apparently, our shop vac is the best mouse trap in the world.  According to my husband, it captured an entire family of mice that got in, but couldn’t get back out.  I won’t go into any more detail (and I’ll spare you a photo) but I’ve never been so grossed out in my life!

Once we recovered from the mouse situation we were ready to start cleaning and DISINFECTING the interior of the car.  We went with our stand by, a spray bottle with a 50/50 mix of white vinegar and water.  Our seats are leather and this seemed to work really well.  We did a little spot test first to be sure.  If you’re seats are cloth, sprinkling them with baking soda and vacuuming is another good option.  For the dusty dashboard I used a dry microfiber cloth.  It was a great tool for getting in the vents and around all the details of the dash and it was a good job for our 4 year old.

Our next target was the interior carpeting.  It had multiple stains including a recent smoothie spill that hadn’t been cleaned very well.  We mixed up a batch of one part kosher salt, one part water to make a paste to help scrub out the stains.

Here’s a before pic of one of the stains.  We scrubbed it with an old hairbrush after letting the salt paste sit for awhile.

Here’s the after photo.  The stain isn’t completely gone, but it’s much better!

The final step was washing the outside of the car.  We chose pure castille soap to give our van a green clean.  Here are a few other tips for making the washing part a little more eco-friendly.  If your husband and your neighbors can stand it, park the car in the grass (just for the car wash).  The water will filter into the grass, which reduces waste and actually helps filter the water.  Another tip is to prepare two buckets.  One for soapy water and one for rinse water.

Here’s my little guy manning the rinse bucket.  He was in charge of the clean sponges we used to rinse the car and followed after his big brother and I who were using the soapy water and a sponge to give the outside of the van a good wash.  Using the two bucket system saves water because you aren’t running the hose the entire time.  You really only need it to fill the buckets and give the car a quick rinse to start so you aren’t rubbing around chunks of rock or dirt when you wash, which could scratch it.  You can empty and refill the buckets as needed.  One suggestion, supervise the kids if you let them man the soap bucket.  My oldest son poured the soap all by himself and I learned that you really only need a capful.  He used about a cup full and we had a really hard time rinsing all the soap off.  The hot sun was drying the soap onto the car faster than we could rinse it.  It was quite a scene as I worked to chase down the soap streaks with a clean sponge and eventually the hose (I know that defeats the original idea of the two bucket system) before the sun could bake them onto the car.

The final step is vacuuming the rugs that you sprinkled with baking soda at the start of your car wash.  I don’t have a photo because I had to go to the local car wash and pay $3 to use their vacuum.  I wasn’t getting near the shop vac once I knew what had been in it!

So, that’s it.  Our green car wash was a bit stressful with the mice infested shop vac and the soap that wouldn’t rinse.  It didn’t leave as much time for water fights as we had hoped.  But the car is clean and we still have the whole summer ahead of us to test the fun factor on all of the Pinterest activity lists.

Is a car wash on your summer bucket list?  What activity are you most looking forward to over summer break?

]]> http://broccolicupcake.com/blog/2012/05/green-your-car-wash/feed/ 0 http://broccolicupcake.com/blog/2012/05/green-your-car-wash/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/broccolicupcake/NtSt/~3/VZDbzKw_trM/ http://broccolicupcake.com/blog/2012/05/how-to-kill-weeds-naturally/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 13:58:18 +0000 broccolicupcake http://broccolicupcake.com/blog/?p=2711

I have to start with a confession.  We used to be those people who got our yards sprayed.  What they sprayed it with, I honestly don’t know and I didn’t want to find out.  It was something my husband insisted on after 2 years of trying to grow grass in Tennessee and finally investing in sod.  He didn’t want the weeds to take over and our money to be wasted.  I know the man on the spray truck used to tell me it was safe for our dogs and our kids as long as we waited for it to dry, but that never really made me feel better.

Over the last few years, we went from getting our lawn sprayed, to only getting it fertilized with a natural fertilizer, to not doing anything at all (except on our own.)  We finally realized that the lush, perfectly manicured suburban lawn wasn’t worth the risk.  And in one short season, the Tennessee heat turned our back yard into a full blown weed field.  When the grass is cut you honestly can’t tell, it just looks green, and it’s soft enough for the kids to run around barefoot.  So no big deal, until this spring.  We have a new weed.  It’s wide, it grows tall, it spreads like crazy and it’s covered in incredibly sharp prickers.  Everyone one of us has ended up soaking a foot or hand in an Epsom salt bath trying to work one or three out from under our skin.  In the interest of a fun, barefoot summer, I had to find a way to rid our back yard of this weed.  But the question was how?  I still didn’t want to introduce chemicals into the yard.  I did a little research and decided to try two natural weed killers, boiling water and one of my favorite household tools, white vinegar.

Below are the results of my experiment.

Vinegar as a Natural Weed Killer:

Slightly discolored edges 24 hours after vinegar treatment.

Almost totally brown 24 hours after boiling water treatment.

This seemed to be the most effective natural method for the giant weeds covered in prickers.  The minute the boiling water hit them they started to shrink and wilt and within 5-10 minutes they started turning black around the edges.  It was easy to keep track of which weeds I’d already treated because there was a noticeable difference in them. By the next morning, all of the weeds treated with boiling water were completely shriveled up and brown. Within in 3-5 days they were totally brown and crispy and there were no more prickers to worry about.  Within 10 days they had completely disappeared.  None of them needed a second treatment.  The only negative is that the boiling water killed the grass around the weed and left small brown spots around the yard.  But after a week or two those started to fill back in.  Boiling water also worked well on smaller weeds in the flower beds and cracks in the sidewalk. I could usually pull the weeds treated with boiling water after letting them sit for about 10-15 minutes. Just be sure not to treat anything to close to a plant you love.

My conclusion – boiling water works faster and gives better overall results as a natural weed killer.  I used a tea kettle to boil the water and carry it to the backyard so the biggest negative is that it was time consuming.  The vinegar worked, but not as consistently or as quickly and it took a lot of vinegar to get the job done.

How do you kill weeds naturally?

Ingredients:

• 4 organic chicken breasts
• 3 tablespoons of expeller pressed coconut oil (if it’s not expeller pressed you will taste the coconut)
• 1 onion thinly sliced
• 2 bell peppers (red, orange or yellow) thinly sliced
• 3 tablespoons of raw honey
• 3/4 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1 1/2 cups of chicken broth
• sea salt and black pepper

Directions for crockpot vinegar chicken:

Put all of the ingredients into a large crockpot starting with the veggies and ending with the chicken broth.  Cook on high for 4 hours then on low for approximately 2 hours until you can shred the chicken easily with a spoon.

The finished product will look something like this.  Serve with whatever sides you like.  We went with quinoa and green beans, but a side salad would be great and easy.

Cross your fingers and hope your family enjoys it.  At least that’s what I do at dinner time   Luckily, this meal was a hit!

Do you have a favorite crockpot recipe?