Addendum

I just wanted to clarify that I use the goldenseal, but I don't use it on the kids. I don't use anything that is not recommended by the website I mentioned in the previous post.

Goldenseal

Well, since the family has its first cold I thought I'd share some info on my favorite herbs. Last year, when I started working with preschoolers, I battled sinus infections during May. Blech. I visited my local herb store, Garden of Eden, and told the "practitioner" that I could feel a sinus infection...like someone had punched me in the cheek. She told me to use my neti-pot with herbal tea - thyme, oregano, echinacea are some good ones...anti-bacterial and anti-viral. Then, she sold me some goldenseal powder. I mixed 1/16 of a tsp with very little water and stuck it up my nose with a q-tip. No joke. :) I started at lunch time - neti-pot and goldenseal - , again after school, and by dinner time the pain was gone. I was also taking an herbal tincture she had for allergies. This goldenseal works wonders.
This time round with the cold, I did the goldenseal, but would stop when I started to feel better. However, it is important to keep doing it until you actually are better because it will come back. Kind of like taking your entire bottle of antibiotics even though you feel better. You just gotta wipe out those suckers!
Some good preventative herbs are astragalus root and echinacea. I alternate these with my kids. We just started yesterday with astragalus, and will alternate every month with echinacea.
A great website is: http://www.umm.edu/altmed/ I check this site before giving any herbs to my kids.
Will has entered into the germ pool of Kindergarten. This year will be a good test for our new healthy eating habits and preventative herbs. Here's to our health!

Meal Planning

Just a blurb about meal planning...it is a must if you want to be healthy! If I get home and don't know what I am going to eat, my family is doomed, and my budget is shot because we end up eating out too much! So, Thursday is my shopping day and I just planned out my menu. In case you were wondering: :)

TH-Stir Fry - using left over steak from Sunday's BBQ. My dear hubby cuts up the extra steak and it goes right into the freezer to be used later in the week. LOVE THAT!

FRI - Duane is home, and he actually likes to plan dinner. Fabulous.

SAT/SUN - free days for me. Sunday is always a big BBQ, and leftovers are used during the week. I just recently decided to grill extra chicken no matter what because nothing beats grilled chicken in things like quesidillas later in the week.

MON - Broccoli/Quinoa Chicken What is quinoa you ask? Check out www.danispies.com. Look for her Quinoa 101 video...it's short and sweet. Her site is fantastic.

TU- Fajitas - using that leftover grilled chicken. Also using tortillas that you cook on the stove. So delicious and no preservatives. But, they are made with white flour so use sparingly. :) Look for them by the cream cheese at Walmart. Also good with this...leftover veggies that were grilled in a foil packet on Sunday night. MMMM. Try a warm tortilla with some honey and maybe some cinnamon. Yum.

WED - Greek Pizza - This uses shredded chicken that was cooked in the crockpot. So easy to shred and freeze for future use. Throw some in Monday, on low and shred while dinner's in the oven. Someday I'll share my homemade sauce recipe. Think of this pizza as a greek salad...olives, feta, mozzarella, chicken...topped with a little greek dressing-also a great recipe to follow. Discover Rustic Crust at Bashas, it's wonderful.

Well, gotta run. Time for dinner...

Essential Oil and Green Smoothies hmmm.

Aaahhh. I'm allowing myself 15 minutes with my feet up before starting round two of my day, or it my be round three since it's dinnertime. :) Will is in the bath breathing in our wonderful essential oil mix...eucalyptus, tea tree, clove and peppermint. Just mix a few drops of each with some lotion or glycerin (available at Walmart in the Pharmacy dept) and add it to the water. It feels so good when you have a cold, which he does. 1.5 weeks into school, and he has a cold already! Stink. This year will be a test to see how healthy we are as Will enters the massive germ pool of public school for the first time. Bleck. He's got a major runny nose, but it's not keeping him down at all. So far, so good.
I went shopping today and got spinach for our smoothies. We use two big boxes of organic spinach every two weeks or so. I bring them home and pop them right into the pan with some ice cubes to cook while I am unloading everything. The box says it's been washed 3x and is ready to enjoy, so I trust the box and enjoy the time saved. Apparently, spinach is better for you if it is cooked,so I cook it as a favor to our digestive tracts. It is cooling on the stove right now, and after dinner I will put it in little snack bags and freeze them for future use. It's really not that difficult to be healthy!

OUR GREEN SMOOTHIE "RECIPE"
This makes us 2 good sized smoothies and 1 little one.

about 1 cup of water or water kefir (more about this later) in your blender
one frozen banana (just take your mushy bananas peel, break them apart and freeze them)
a handful or two of frozen strawberries or any other berry  we also like cherry and pineapple
a snack bag at least half full of frozen, cooked spinach
a big squeeze of bottled lemon juice (we like ours tart)  OR two teaspoons of lemon flavored cod-liver oil...seriously, it only tastes like lemon, the kids will never know.

Blend it all up. Add more liquid if you need to, or if you don't like it thick. The spinach makes the smoothie bright green, and we think that is fun. You actually can't taste the spinach at all...really. We tried red peppers once and you could taste it, but not spinach. Spinach is a super food, so it's worth a try! Imagine, you can get one of your 5 veggies in a yummy smoothie! If you want yours sweet, add more fruit and definitely axe the lemon juice. Point is, it is easy to make a smoothie; adjust it to how you like it. It usually takes me a total of 7 minutes clean-up included.

Tip: Cost-co carries big bags of frozen fruit.  Some organic.  :)

Gotta run..sorry for any typos...I'm 6 minutes late for round 3!

Favorite Healthy Lunch

Hey Christine...this one's for you. :)

My favorite healthy lunch...now that I am working, I make it everyday. I love it because it is so healthy it's disgusting, but actually yummy. Everyday I try to eat the following:
Lot's of fiber - 25+ grams
5 veggie servings (including one "leafy greens")
3 fruit servings.
Everything else seems to fall into place if I focus on these top three.

So, here's the ingredients for the super-healthy :) lunch. Super-duper healthy if you go all organic.

Flat Out Bread - find this at Walmart, Cost Co or any store. It comes with flax meal which adds lots of healthy fiber. You can also get it flavored with herbs.

A nice healthy salad - I like to buy mine organic, in a box. We did grow lettuce this spring, and it was awesome. We're going to attempt a mini greenhouse this winter with straw bales and old windows, so we can have lettuce all winter long. More on that later...Fix up a nice salad with some cucumbers, tomatoes...and you can just keep it in the box. It should last several days.

Pepper Jack Cheese - I like a little kick. Shred a bunch and keep it in a zip lock all week ready to go.

The initial prep takes some time, but is worth it. The night before - always make your lunch at night, or you will hate yourself in the morning!! - just whip out your flatbread and coat 2/3 of it with your cheese of choice. Cover the cheese with a bunch of salad and roll it up. Stick it in a quart size zip lock with the bottom bunched together in a corner. That's it! Add a snack bag sized of baby carrots and another of grapes, and you're good to go. (You've already packed these goodies and have them stored in the little drawer of your fridge. This way you just grab them and throw them in your lunch box. Have your kids help and make enough for all of you because school lunches STINK! Unless they are homemade in the cafeteria of course...not likely. Good quality time, and it gets done really fast.) :)

Bring a banana for a mid-morning snack and something for the afternoon or the ride home or else you'll never make a healthy dinner because you are too hungry! Try some raw nuts, shredded whole wheat cereal, some of the yummy treats posted here, etc.

I forgot to mention...keep the wrap inside the bag when you are eating. Just grab the end of the bag and peel it open around your hand. This way nothing falls out on your lap!

Purpose Found

"...no man is complete wihout his wife. You were created to make him complete, not to seek personal fulfillment parallel to him." Created to be His Helpmeet

God has really been hammering this lesson home during the past year and a half. It was about that long ago that I dropped out of all my "ministry" and other commitments and started focusing on how I complete my husband. During that time I did struggle with, "but what is MY purpose?" Finally, I got it. If I am a wife, that is my purpose. My husband and family are my ministry. By being involved with them in all that they do, I am constantly in the "mission field". I don't need extra things to do with a church. I complete my husband, that is my purpose. I am his gift from God. God created Eve to complete Adam, and we are no different. Since I have embraced this and all it entails - mainly losing myself and my selfishness - I do see a difference. Duane and I are more involved with things together, and I love it. We are a team. Not pursuing two lives parallel to each other, but we are on the same team...and I complete him...beautiful.

So, any wives reading this, I encourage you to think about how you complete your man. You are God's great gift to him, does it show?

Genesis 2:18.... Proverbs 18:22

Welcome

I am surprised to say that I have successfully exported and then imported the posts from my former blog, and it was easy and uneventful! How rare that is. Musing helpmeet, I love the title. I came up with it after searching an online thesaurus. I am definitely a muser...I love to think and mull things over. I love to brainstorm. The only bummer is that I am not so good at carrying these things out. Maybe this blog can be a fun way for me to do something with my musings. Here's to great future ideas! As for now, it's time to finish up my Aug. 1 cup of hot chocolate - thank you monsoons - and get going on the day. It's Sunday, lots of helpmeeting to do. :)