On The Run

A unique photo capture of my granddaughter, Kelila Israela, taken last fall on the east coast. On January 30th, she turned three. I love how her endless endurance was apprehended here to prove her forever rambunctious character. Oh! how I wish I could seize a fraction of that vitality, that energy, that zest for life, and utilize that valuable commodity on a lethargic day.

Disclosure: The Excalibur Dehydrator link under "Other Sites" is an affiliated link. If you make a purchase using this link ~ you will receive free shipping, along with other specials. I also earn a small percentage to help support my blog. Thank you, your support is appreciated!!

Benefits of Chia Seeds

Chia seeds are another type of healthy seed to add in your diet for more health benefits.

For each tablespoon of chia seeds, you'll get 3 grams of protein, along with 5 grams of dietary fiber.

Plus, you'll get 6% of your daily iron requirements, 10% of your daily magnesium requirements, and 8% of your daily calcium requirements.

Chia seeds also contain 2.5 grams of omega-3, along with boron and antioxidants.

When wet, chia seeds swell ten to fifteen times their original size, forming a gel that helps keep you full for hours. Try chia seeds sprinkled in smoothies.

I keep a small bag of chia seeds in the cupboard for use and freeze any larger quantities in the freezer.


Disclosure: The Excalibur Dehydrator link under "Other Sites" is an affiliated link. If you make a purchase using this link ~ you will receive free shipping, along with other specials. I also earn a small percentage to help support my blog. Thank you, your support is appreciated!!

Digital Hoarding

Ever watch the show "Hoarders"? I've never watched it myself, but I have heard of some pretty crazy stories about the people on the show and the things they hoard. But seriously, isn't everyone a hoarder of one type or another? Admit it. I'll bet if you really think about it, you're a hoarder of something.

I recently came to the conclusion that I hoard digital photos. I always figured since they're digital and easily stored on the computer that it was no big deal, until I started going on photo shoots with my daughter.

Now my computer runs sluggishly because of the hundreds of accumulated digital photos. I purchased a new camera before my vacation last fall and saved all the photos in raw format. Once I got home and uploaded them onto my computer I realized that I couldn't view them easily. So I began the long, tedious work of converting them into .JPG format.

It wasn't until over halfway through converting these files that I realized some of them were not very high quality. So, once again I began the tedious work of converting them into .TIFF format. I finished about a month ago. Whew! However, my computer was dragging from all the extra bytes I fed it.

Next I decided to burn all of my photos onto CDs and/or DVDs in order to preserve them. Then I copied them onto my external hard drive for a backup copy just in case my CDs/DVDs suffered a scratch or went bad on me in some way, shape or form, and I would lose my precious photos.

After copying the photos, I wondered, "Did I really need every single one of those photos?" I mean, seriously, how many pictures did I need of the apple tree?!? At this moment, I realized that I had to confess, "Hello, my name is Linda, and I am a hoarder; a hoarder of digital photos."

I tried to rationalize some of these photos, even the blurry ones, like the one of my grandson, Zeek, below. I mean, how cute is that? Of course I'm going to save it!!

Now maybe keeping this photo is a bad idea, and since I cannot resist, this contributes to my hoarding problem. In an upcoming post, I'll cover solutions to how I'll overcome this particular hoarding problem.


Disclosure: The Excalibur Dehydrator link under "Other Sites" is an affiliated link. If you make a purchase using this link ~ you will receive free shipping, along with other specials. I also earn a small percentage to help support my blog. Thank you, your support is appreciated!!

Benefits of Hemp Seed

Hemp seeds are another healthy seed to incorporate into your diet for their many health benefits.

For every three tablespoons of hemp seeds, you'll get 10 grams of protein, along with 1 gram of dietary fiber.

Plus, you'll get 15% of your daily iron requirements, 50% each of your daily phosphorus and magnesium requirements, and 25% of your daily zinc requirements.

Hemp seeds also contain:

• 3.0 grams of omega-3 alpha-linolenic acid (ALA)
• 0.3 grams of super omega-3 stearidonic acid (SDA)
• 7.5 grams of omega-6 linolenic acid (LA)
• 0.6 grams of omega-6 gamma-linolenic acid (GLA), an especially beneficial type which can help support healthy metabolism and fat-burning functions

If you'd like to start including hemp seeds in your diet, try sprinkling them on smoothies or salads.

I keep a small bag of hemp seeds in the cupboard for use and freeze any larger quantities in the freezer.


Disclosure: The Excalibur Dehydrator link under "Other Sites" is an affiliated link. If you make a purchase using this link ~ you will receive free shipping, along with other specials. I also earn a small percentage to help support my blog. Thank you, your support is appreciated!!

Benefits of Flaxseed

Flaxseeds are so healthy for you that if you're not already consuming them, you'll want to start. First of all, for every two tablespoons of flaxseeds, you'll get 4 grams of protein, along with 1.5 grams of soluble fiber and 4.5 grams of insoluble fiber for a whopping total of 6 grams of fiber!

Plus, you'll get 6% of your daily iron requirements and 8% of your daily calcium requirements.

Flaxseeds also contain omega-3 fatty acids along with vitamin B6, magnesium, folate, zinc and manganese.

If you'd like to start including flaxseeds in your diet but not sure where to start, try adding them to smoothies or try these Energy Bites.

I store my flaxseed in the freezer to keep them from becoming rancid. Once I open a bag, I pour the remaining seeds into a Tupperware bowl and keep them refrigerated.

Disclosure: The Excalibur Dehydrator link under "Other Sites" is an affiliated link. If you make a purchase using this link ~ you will receive free shipping, along with other specials. I also earn a small percentage to help support my blog. Thank you, your support is appreciated!!

Frozen Bananas

Ever wonder what to do with overripe bananas besides making banana bread? Don't get me wrong, banana bread tastes wonderful. But what do you do when you're heading out of town and at the last minute find some bananas that need tending to before you leave?

If you don't know me by now, there's one thing I hate. It's letting good food go to waste. Food is getting expensive so I like to get my money's worth.

We were headed out of town for the weekend and had a few ripe bananas so I peeled them, put them in a resealable freezer bag and placed them in the freezer.

I wasn't sure what I was going to use them for until I wanted to make my breakfast smoothie and was out of bananas. I pulled one out of the bag and used it in my smoothie.

The smoothie results were great, but because it took a little work getting my old blender to chop the frozen banana up, I decided to try freezing future bananas into smaller pieces.

The next time I needed to use up some ripe bananas, I peeled them and sliced them into 1/2" chunks. Then I layered the bananas in a cake pan, covered them and froze them overnight. In the morning, I broke the pieces apart and put them in a resealable freezer bag and placed them back into the freezer until I need them.

I prefer the fresh bananas, but when I'm out and I want a smoothie, these smaller chunks of frozen bananas will come in handy and also be a lot easier on my blender.

Disclosure: The Excalibur Dehydrator link under "Other Sites" is an affiliated link. If you make a purchase using this link ~ you will receive free shipping, along with other specials. I also earn a small percentage to help support my blog. Thank you, your support is appreciated!!

Healthier Pizza Crust

Anyone who knows me knows my favorite food is pizza. Actually that’s quite funny since when I was in grade school I thought I hated pizza. Really, I just never tried it. Once I did, there was no turning back. I have been eating pizza ever since. Ask any one of my family members what my favorite food is and they’ll all agree, without any hesitation - it’s pizza!

Frozen pizza, restaurant pizza, homemade pizza, thin-crust pizza, hand-tossed pizza, pan pizza, dessert pizza, breakfast pizza, fruit pizza, all-meat pizza, veggie pizza, one-topping, two-topping, supreme ... Well, you get the idea ... any pizza will do ... even pizza flavoring!

As much as I love pizza, pizza isn't necessarily good for you. In fact, it can be quite unhealthy depending on the pizza and what's all in it. And definitely fattening!

My daughter, Keisha, is home on spring break and was after me to make a homemade pizza. I decided to give in but only on the condition she helped make it. She would be in charge of the meat topping and I would handle the crust.

Since both Keisha and I prefer sausage over plain hamburger on a pizza, I pulled out a recipe containing spices used in making sausage. She did her best to add different amounts of the spices she chose for the meat and the results were better than expected. She also added spinach for the first topping layer.

Keisha does not like it when I alter recipes trying to make them healthier so I warned her ahead of time that I was going to substitute a couple items in order to make them less detrimental to our health.

For starters, I replaced the butter in the crust with coconut oil (my favorite!) which is way better for you. And, for a sugar substitute, I recently purchased a bag of Stevia for the first time. Stevia has zero calories. Zero! Zilch! Nada! None! According to the bag, you can replace the sugar, cup for cup, with Stevia. Since it only called for a tablespoon, I couldn't see the harm in it, even though the Stevia is so light compared to granulated sugar. No wonder sugar weighs us down!

We were all very pleased with the results. In fact, Keisha commented that the pizza was amazing!

Update: We enjoyed this pizza so much we made another one with bacon and more spinach.

For Pizza Dough recipe, go here: Landi Raemi's Pizza Dough!

Disclosure: The Excalibur Dehydrator link under "Other Sites" is an affiliated link. If you make a purchase using this link ~ you will receive free shipping, along with other specials. I also earn a small percentage to help support my blog. Thank you, your support is appreciated!!