The Wild Leeks of Spring-time
Filed under: Food & Cooking Tips, Living Green, Potatoes & Veggies
Some call them Ramps, others Ramsons. Folks from the far South and the West of
our country don’t know them at all because they’re a wild spring vegetable
of northern hardwood forests from South Carolina to Ontario.
Ramps are a delightful relative of the onion family (also closely related to the lily family). Their flavor is strong and earthy. They have tones of garlic, shallot and onion, yet have an elusively unique gingery spiciness.
Pioneers made certain to hunt their ramps for the nutrients they offered, being one of the very first green edibles of spring after a long winter of subsistence on stored vegetables. They say that the city of Chicago got its name from the native Potawatami “Checagou” which means “onions” or “skunk”, most likely due to the aroma from the proliferation of ramps that could be collected in the hardwood forests on the shores of Lake Michigan.
April Foods Day….
By Deborah Yaffee, CH, CN 
April is International Humor Month and I’d be a fool if I didn’t share some April Foods tips with you to bring in the month with a smirk on April 1st. Don’t be shy… go ahead and throw a huge dinner party. Serve the courses in reverse…starting with dessert, then the entrée, then the salad, and finally the appetizer. Sure, let them eat dessert with the butter knife and give them a spoon to attack the salad with. Don’t forget to put salt in the sugar bowl…oh, right, this is a nutrition article: remember to put the Celtic sea salt in the Succanat bowl. And how about some hearty tomato soup in the coffee cups?
How to Achieve Good Life and Fitness
Crizza Reyes
How will you know if you have a good life and a fit body? When you visit your doctor, do you ever bother to ask him that question? Good life and fitness are somehow synonymous, but not all people will agree to that. If you’re fit, then you’re bound to have a good life in terms of being healthy and not being prone to illnesses. If you have a good life, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re already fit, because chances are, you’re one of the many people living an unhealthy lifestyle.
So how will you find out if you have a good life and fitness altogether?
The Battle with Insomnia
Many of us experience the occasional night of sleeplessness without any consequences. It is when the occasional night here and there becomes a pattern of several nights in a row that you are faced with a sleeping problem. 
Repeated loss of sleep affects all areas of your life: The physical, the mental, and the emotional. Sleep deprivation can affect your overall daily performance and may even have an effect on your personality. If your insomnia continues for a long period of time it can cause problems in your relationships, compromise your productivity, and perhaps lead to other health problems.
It can become a relentless cycle of worry and anxiety as night after night you toss and turn, wondering when sleep will come, wondering what is wrong with you. Insomnia and sleeplessness generally fall into three categories:
- “Initial” insomnia: where you have difficulty in falling asleep, generally taking 30 minutes or longer to fall into a sleep state.
- “Middle” insomnia: where after falling asleep you have problems maintaining a sleep state, often remaining awake until the early morning hours.
- “Late” or “Terminal” insomnia: where you awake early in the morning after less than 6 hours of sleep.
Insomnia can be the symptom of some medical conditions that may require your doctor’s advice and medical care. In those cases the cause will be treated, not the insomnia.
If, however, your sleeplessness is due to a pattern of not sleeping, or because your body and mind find it difficult to settle into a state of relaxation necessary for sleep, this book offers you alternative choices for achieving healthy sleep without the use of prescription drugs.
- This book will teach you how to:
- Set the mood for a comfortable sleep atmosphere
- Prepare your body for relaxation
- Use colors to stimulate calmness and relaxation
- Understand the importance of exercise
- Use music and other relaxation techniques
- Relieve your mind of anxiety and worry
- Discover the importance of reducing stimulants
- Use herbal teas and warm drinks to promote relaxation
- Use herbs and vitamins to promote natural sleep
After reading this book you will have the information you need to turn your sleepless nights into restful ones, waking in the morning refreshed and alert rather than tired and anxious. All of the techniques and sleep-inducing aids in this book can be applied naturally and easily in your life. Get ready to embark on the journey of falling asleep naturally!
The entire book can be downloaded in PDF format by clicking on the link below.
A Guide on How to Improve Your Memory
Improve Memory
Many scientific experts will tell you that we just do not have the ability to recall facts, images or events perfectly as if we had a photographic memory. Unfortunately, although people may say that they do have a photographic memory; this simply isn’t true, as it does not exist.But do not worry as through this book we will show you the steps that you can take to help improve your memory. In fact, with a little time and a lot of practice, many people are able to gain the ability to memorize what seems to be an impossible amount of data and information.
Even if you just want to remember where you actually left your keys from the night before, then this book should help you.
You know that in order to gain muscular strength you need to exercise, well the same goes for actually increasing your ability to remember things. Your brain needs exercise, as well as being nurtured. So your diet needs to be good, and you need to look at taking up much healthier habits.
Unfortunately, because our brains are so complex, they need a lot of effort in order to get them in the best shape possible. There are a number of things that you can look at doing which will help you improve the capacity of the retrieval mechanism in your brain. But first, let us take a look at how it is we remember things.
To put it in simple terms, our memory is the activity carried out in our brain to recall information that we have gained through experiences in our lives. However, it is a complex process which involves various parts of the brain, and serves us all in very different ways. It can either be short term or long term.
With short term memory, you will find that your brain is able to store certain pieces of information for only a few seconds or minutes. Unfortunately, the problem with this memory is that it is very fragile, and if it were to retain all the information it receives, your brain would soon be telling you that it has no more space. Plus, each person’s short term memory is only meant to hold around 7 items at any one time, and this is why, although you may be able to remember a new telephone number for a few minutes, you will often find that when you are going to buy something online with your credit card, you need it beside you, because it actually has more than 7 items on it.
Long term memory is all to do with the information that you are making an effort to retain, both consciously and unconsciously. This is because the information may be particularly personal and meaningful to you, or it is because it is something that you need in order to complete a task or to take some exams. However, there is some information that you retain in your long term memory which will need you to make a conscious effort in order to recall it, such as a personal memory which relates to a specific experience or time in your life, known as episodic memory, or it may be some factual data that you need to recall, and this is known as semantic memory.
The other type of long term memory that we all have is known as procedural memory, and this is where your memory will recall skills or routines that you use so that you do not have to consciously need to recall them.
There are certain parts of the brain which are especially important in relation to not only the formation, but also the retention of memories, and these are as shown below.
Hippocampus - This is found deep in the human brain, and plays the largest role in the brain processing information as memory.
Amygdala - This is an almond shaped piece of the brain which is found close to the hippocampus and processes a person’s emotions. This particular area helps to imprint memories into the brain which involve emotions.
Cerebral Cortex - This is the outer layer of the human brain, and is where most long term memory is stored in various different sectors. It will all depend on where particular memories are stored, as to what process the information involves. So language will be stored in one sector, sensory input into another, problem solving into yet another sector and so on.
As well as the above, the memory also involves communication occurring between the brains various network of neurons and cells (millions of which are activated by chemicals in the brain known as neurotransmitters).
Buying Salmon - Health and Value Secrets!
Filed under: Food & Cooking Tips, Healthy Lifestyle
by Chef MartyYaffee, Certified Culinary Educator
Martin Yaffee
It’s a dilemma! Even when cash is loose and flowing, the cost of wild salmon has always made salmon seem like an extravagance, but with a tight economy, it seems to look even more beyond our fiscal reach. Is it worth it? And if not, what are the alternatives?
Salmon is truly “the king” of “the good fats” fare. It’s one of those foods that has no equal in providing us with those omega-3 fatty acids that our bodies absolutely can’t do without in our continuous production of new cells. Our body literally makes billions of new cells every day and for them to be created healthy, we need an adequate supply of omega-3 fatty acids which our cell membranes are actually made of. These particular healthy fats come from oily fish like salmon, sardines and tuna.
What’s Green, Sometimes Irish and Helps You Lose Weight?
By Deborah Yaffee, CH, CN
If you guessed tea, you’d be right!
Researcher Dr. Carrie Ruxton, of King’s College in London, has shown that tea just might be even healthier for your body than plain water is. Tea contains many antioxidants that may help to protect against heart disease, stroke, cancer, and other compounds that help protect the brain and prevent bacterial infections. Dr. Ruxton found that it takes about 4 cups per day to get the full health benefits of tea.
As You Think… So You Are - A Positive Mind Goes a Long Way
This one point should be drilled into your head so it becomes as natural to think of as your name. To make the point very clear, think of a pessimist and an optimist. Do you think they have different realities based on how they think? Of course they do. They have different body language, use of their vocabulary, experiences and outcomes. And it’s all based on they way they think about things.
And I am going to now share with you why this is… but before I share this… get ready. Seriously, get ready to tattoo this into your thoughts. Focus your attention on what may seem simple but is the most powerful thing I may ever ever share with you. Okay… are you ready? Here it is…
TFAR - You are probably thinking, “Huh”? TFAR is the simple formula for all things that happen in life. Let me explain… Thoughts Feelings Actions Results
Thoughts lead to Feelings which lead to your Actions which lead to your Results in life. Therefore, every result or outcome is basically linked to the thought that preceeded it. But it’s more than just knowing it…
Weight Loss is Easy When the Struggle is Removed
It’s true but difficult to accept because there is always struggle associated to weight loss. If there wasn’t, everyone would be losing weight and be able to keep it off. The big secret to weight loss is to NOT use your conscious, forcing mind… will power. Come on, let’s face it, if will power worked we’d all be what we want to be… but we’re not.
The only effective way to change behaviors and bad habits, and more importantly maintain positive behaviors, is by accessing the subconscious mind where all behaviors are stored. This is done with the safe, natural and highly effective process we call hypnosis. Athletes may know it as guided imagery or visualization. Irt’s nothing new but is the most misunderstood and overlooked source of powerful change we all have available to us… but there is a problem.
Like anything, it’s not so easy when doing something new. And because Weight Loss Without Diets want to be sure we make it as easy as possible for you to achieve your weight loss goal with what we offer our members, we have added the top rated weight loss hypnosis CDs by Harvard Medical School hypnosis instructor, Jean Fain, in an article she had published in Shape Magazine. (Thanks Jean) The hypnosis audio downloads available to you as a member will assist you to think and feel differently about food and your eating habits.
You deserve to feel and look better by losing excess weight that causes problems. Follow the simple instructions for using the hypnosis weight loss audio downloads and all the other helpful and valuable resources here at Weight Loss Without Diets and you will soon see why diets and will power can’t compare.
The Danger of Fad Diets
It amazes me as to how far someone will go to lose weight. If you’re old enough you may recall the Fen/Phen craze during the 80s and how many deaths it caused. The core issue regarding fad diets or any unreasonable approach to losing weight is impatience. Impatience is partly because of the difficulty of forcing yourself with willpower to stick to any healthy eating plan, which if followed would surely lead to increased health and weight loss. But will power and force does not help change behaviors. The only way to effectively change a bad habit or negative behavior is by addressing the subconscious mind, where all behaviors are stored.
This is why I am proud to be associated with Weight Loss Without Diets. My contribution of hypnosis audio downloads to motivate behaviors that assist in physical weight loss is what assists all members to be able to comfortably create a lifestyle of healthier choices and eating behaviors. This is what separates this membership site for weight loss from all others available. It will help you to know that people in 35 countries have benefited from the same hypnosis weight loss audios made available to you as a member of Weight Loss Without Diets.
There is no secret to releasing fat and losing weight. We must choose healthy food, eat when hungry and stop when that feeling is gone, and be more physically active. By using all the resources available to you as a member of Weight Loss Without Diets you can create the lifestyle changes necessary to be successful with your weight loss goal and become healthy and happy. Fad diets come and go and only cause harm and disappointment.
Do everyone you know who is overweight and wants to lose weight a big favor, tell them there is a way to effectively lose weight without spending a lot of money and to avoid any fad diet they may be considering. If more people did this in the 80s it may have saved some lives.