A Gallon of Water a Day: My New Challenge

Drink a Gallon of Water a Day for Better Health

On Friday, I was reading a magazine at the doctor's office. It was some random beauty magazine that I was just thumbing through. There was this picture of an actress or model, some name I didn't recognize, and it said she was 40 years old. The photo of her looked like she was in her late 20's. She really did look great. Now, I know that the photo was probably airbrushed and all her cellulite was magically removed with the click of a mouse. It wasn't so much her photo that caught my attention. It was the little caption by the picture asking her what her anti-aging secret was. She said that in her 30's she had starting drinking a gallon of water a day and that had changed everything for her. She noticed immediate changes in her hair, skin, nails, weight, etc. and that she had been drinking a gallon of water every day since then. This is nothing really new of course, we all have heard about the health benefits of drinking more water, and the majority of us don't drink near as much as we should. I know I fall into this category myself. But the thought struck me at that moment at really how simple it could be, drink a gallon of water a day, to change your health for the positive in a significant way. So I decided I would give it a try and see how it would benefit me. Now obviously this commitment has to be long term and I plan for it to be just that. So far I haven't noticed any change except the obvious, but at eight months pregnant what is a few more trips to the bathroom. I have been at it for 3 days. The first day I failed, I could only get down a half of a gallon. I didn't start early enough, that is the key. The second day I almost made it, only fell a few cups short. Today is my third day. It is almost 4 pm and I am almost done with my gallon. My method for doing this was to rinse out an empty milk jug and fill it up each night, so it has all night in the fridge to get nice and cold. I highly recommend using some kind of container so you can really see your progress. You have to drink a lot of water in the morning I think to be successful, especially if you don't want to be up all night, which is already a problem for me anyways. If you think about it, drinking that much water really makes it so you eat less and you are not drinking other things that are high in calories, like soda or juice. That will definitely help you to shed unwanted pounds and be healthier overall.  At eight months pregnant I know I won't see any obvious change in my weight at least right now, but I am hoping that once this little sweetheart arrives, my new habit of drinking a gallon of water a day will help those pounds melt off. In addition even if you are already at a healthy weight drinking more water has so many other health benefits, so everyone should do it.  I will keep you updated on my progress and if you decide to give this a try, let me know how it works for you. One thing I do know is it can't hurt.

A New Adventure. . .

Once again, you may have noticed we haven't been posting much lately.  Life has hit us with another major change recently and so things have been very busy around here. Jacob started a new job in Arkansas about a month ago now. We are very excited about our New Adventure. The kids and I are still in Texas, working on selling our home. So there hasn't been much time for blogging, but I am working on a few posts that will be coming your way soon. So check back . . . We hear that Arkansas is great for gardening, a lot more rain than we get here, that in and of itself is exciting for us. Ya'll know how we love to garden . We can't wait to get our hands into some Arkansas soil.

Homemade Laundry Detergent: Update

I have been making Homemade Laundry Detergent for quite some time now. It saves a ton of money. It is easy to make and I am happy with the cleaning results. I posted the recipe for it here: http://ourprovidentlife.blogspot.com/2012/01/homemade-laundry-detergent.html . Since that post I have made one change to my detergent that I really like and so I wanted to update everyone in case you wanted to try it out.

Fels-Naptha great for Homemade Detergents

Here is my original recipe:
1 Bar Grated Soap (Ivory or Zote)
1 Cup Borax
1 Cup Washing Soda


Instead of Ivory which is what I was using I decided to try out Fels-Naptha. Well I love it. I think it is far superior to Ivory (sorry Ivory, better for the shower I think). The Fels-Naptha grates up nicely (looks like cheddar cheese) and has a great scent to it.

Grating up my Fels-Naptha for Homemade Laundry Detergent

The great thing about the Fels-Naptha is you only have to use 1/3 bar to equal 1 bar of Ivory. So I always make a triple batch of detergent.  Here is the new recipe:

1 Bar Grated Fels-Naptha Soap
3 Cups Borax
3 Cups Washing Soda
Mix Thoroughly. Use 1 TB. per load.

I have not tried Zote out yet but I will give it a shot in the future and let you know where I think it ranks. As for now, I am loving the Fels-Naptha and the cost is pretty much the same. If you are interested in a break down of how much homemade detergents and cleaners can save you check out this post: http://ourprovidentlife.blogspot.com/2012/04/making-cents-of-cleaning.html.

You can find Fels-Naptha, Borax, and Washing Soda in the laundry isle at your grocery store.

One Pot Wonder Pasta

So I know I promised more posts and my intentions were sincere and honest, but life has a way of changing things unexpectedly for most of us and that is what it did to our family. We got news a few weeks ago that we are moving to Arkansas. In fact, Jacob has already started a new job there, leaving Shaun-ta' behind to wrap up things in Texas and sell our home. (This is nothing new for me.) One thing I am truly grateful for this time is that I have a new home and so there will be no long nights of peeling wallpaper, endless painting, texturing walls and ceilings, etc. Yes, I am definitely grateful for that. But I have been super busy and I am 7 months pregnant, so by the end of the day I am beat, and I honestly have no desire to cook dinner by this point. But I still want to eat something delicious. It is such a dilemma. I ran across this recipe today, just by chance, or maybe by fate, because I really wasn't looking for a recipe. It was already 5:30 and I hadn't gotten anything out for dinner yet and I was thinking, "Oh, no cold cereal again." But then I came across this recipe for One Pot Pasta over at Apron Strings and dinner was saved. Dinner was done 20 minutes later and I mean done and it was delicious and healthy. I made a few changes from the recipe on Apron Strings but only to accommodate what I had in the pantry and garden.

Here is the original recipe:

ONE POT WONDER TOMATO BASIL PASTA
Serves 4 to 6 as an entree

12 ounces linguine pasta
1 can (15 ounces) diced tomatoes with liquid ( I used zesty red pepper flavor)
1 large sweet onion, cut in julienne strips
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 teaspoons dried oregano leaves
2 large sprigs basil, chopped
4 1/2 cups vegetable broth (regular broth and NOT low sodium)
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Parmesan cheese for garnish

Place pasta, tomatoes, onion, garlic, basil, in a large stock pot. Pour in vegetable broth. Sprinkle on top the pepper flakes and oregano. Drizzle top with oil.
Cover pot and bring to a boil. Reduce to a low simmer and keep covered and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring every 2 minutes or so. Cook until almost all liquid has evaporated – I left about an inch of liquid in the bottom of the pot – but you can reduce as desired .
Season to taste with salt and pepper , stirring pasta several times to distribute the liquid in the bottom of the pot. Serve garnished with Parmesan cheese.

One Pot Wonder Pasta

My changes:

I used 13 oz. of Whole Wheat Angel Hair Pasta
I used about 15 oz. of fresh tomatoes from the garden. Yum!
I chopped up my onion and garlic. - The kids don't do big chunks.
I skipped the red pepper flakes, cause the kids don't do heat.
I only used 4 cups of Home Canned Chicken broth, because I used angel hair pasta I knew it would require a bit less liquid and cooking time.
I also added some fresh portabella mushrooms that I had on hand - a very yummy addition!

It turned out delicious and it was so fast and easy!

20 Minute Meal - One Pot Pasta

DIY: Frozen Spinach

Large bunch of Spinach harvested from our Garden.

As the days started to get warmer here in East Texas I knew that the days of being able to satisfy my spinach cravings were numbered. It made me a bit sad, because my spinach has been doing so well and we have all been loving it. As it started to bolt I decided to preserve a bunch of it by freezing.

Freezing is actually a really great way to preserve vegetables from your garden. Freezing allows you to preserve most of the nutrients and also helps to maintain the color and flavor.

Three bowl set up for freezing homegrown spinach.

For most vegetables blanching and cooling is a necessary step to properly preserve them. Blanching stops the enzyme action that helps vegetables to grow and mature. 

I used a three bowl set up to blanch and cool my spinach very quickly. It only took me about 20 minutes to do the whole batch.

Blanching Homegrown Spinach.

Cooling Spinach after blanching.

Draining water off of blanched and cooled spinach.

Of course the first step is to thoroughly wash the spinach, cut off thick stems and take out any bad leaves. Then you can start the blanching process.

The first bowl is for blanching. I have a large stock pot with a colander that fits inside, perfect for blanching. But you could also scoop it out with a slotted spoon.  Bring the water in your stock pot to a boil. Then add your spinach. I did several small batches because you want your spinach completely covered with water. Cover the pot and blanch for 3 minutes.
 

Remove your spinach promptly after 3 minutes and put it in a bowl full of ice water. I placed a colander inside a larger bowl of ice water for quick and easy transfer. Allow the spinach to cool for the same amount of time. If you are doing several batches be sure to change your water or add more ice to keep the water cold.





After cooling I transferred my spinach into another colander placed over a bowl to allow it to drain. After it drained for a bit I used my hands to squeeze out the remainder of the water.

Blanched, cooled, and drained spinach all ready for freezing.

After my spinach was blanched, cooled, and drained I placed it into Ziploc bags. Here they are all ready for the freezer. I got three quart sized bags of spinach from my garden that day. I was very excited. It was much easier than I thought and didn't take much time at all.





Remember that each type of vegetable has a different blanching time to prepare it for freezing. If you want to freeze other types of vegetables there are various places you can find time charts. Here is one from the Colorado State University Extension. Freezing is another way we can preserve some of that great garden harvest. Happy Freezing!

Also remember this great water conservation tip and use all that great spinach water to water you household plants and pots.

Goin' Green

Kale - Nutritional Powerhouse

Unfortunately for us, our green season has pretty much come to a close. By "Green" I mean our garden greens. We have been loving them. For many of you though you still have some green days ahead. If you haven't been planting greens in your garden you should give them a try. We have found them amazing easy to grow and extremely delicious. Most importantly they are packed with nutrition. Let me tell you about a few that we grow.

Kale in a planter.

Giant Winter Spinach

Kale is a nutritional powerhouse. It is said to be one of the healthiest vegetables on the planet. In addition it grows easily and it is very pretty. I even planted kale in my decorative flower pots.  Kale is of course extremely low in calories but is loaded with fiber, and is highly concentrated with the antioxidant vitamins A, C, and K. We love kale both raw and cooked and we have been eating a lot of it.




Spinach had long been know for being an iron rich vegetable. It also is a good source of fiber, folate, and vitamins A, C, and K. I have actually been craving spinach for most of the spring.

Bright Lights Swiss Chard

Leaf Lettuce

We have struggled to grow Swiss Chard in the past. But it grew beautifully this year. I am so glad, because it is delicious! I love it! We have really been enjoying it. It is also full of vitamins A, C, and K and is rich in dietary fiber and protein.The stems on this Bright Lights Swiss Chard remind me a lot of rhubarb, not only appearance but taste as well.



Although, not as high in nutrients as many of the other greens, lettuce is still a tasty choice. The greener and more colorful the lettuce the more nutrient rich it is. Iceberg lettuce has the lowest nutritional value of all lettuces. We grow a bit of leaf lettuce in our garden but to be honest most things we would use lettuce for (hamburgers, sandwiches, and salads) we choose to use spinach or one of the other greens instead. Most often we will mix it with other greens for a tasty salad.

Giant harvest of beet greens.

Another really great green that we often have an abundance of is beet greens. I have to admit these are not my personal favorite, but they have grown on me. I didn't care for them at all in the past, but now I will occasionally eat them sauteed and we like to throw them into our "Green" Smoothies. This is the beet green from last years harvest of beets. We planted a lot and canned and pickled beets. This year we only planted a few for greens.
The wonderful thing about greens is you can continually harvest them. I usually cut the outer leaves first and leave the younger inside leaves to grow and mature. The more you harvest them the more they will grow.

Swiss Chard being Sauteed with garlic and onion.

We use greens in a variety of ways, but our favorite way is to throw them in a smoothie. At least this is the way the kids enjoy them most because, they can't really taste them. :)  Jacob and I love them sauteed with garlic and onion. We like to add sauteed greens to things like scrambled eggs and pasta dishes. I will also add pureed greens to my pasta sauces. Of course, we also enjoy them raw in salads. It is most beneficial to grow greens yourself and harvest them as you use them, because once you have harvested them the nutrients begin to deteriorate. It has been show that frozen spinach (I am sure this is true for other greens too) actually contain more nutrients than the store bought fresh spinach, because by freezing the spinach you lock in the nutrients. Check back in a few days for a post on how to freeze your own spinach or other greens.

Variety of greens from the garden harvested for a smoothie (kale, chard, spinach, and flat leaf parsley).

Family Home Evening

Jacob and I do a lot of posts about the temporal aspects of Provident Living, especially having to do with home production and storage and physical health.  These are important aspects of Provident Living and areas where we are currently learning and doing a lot. Sometimes I forget about sharing some of the other ways we strive to live our lives more providently on a daily basis. Some of the things that we do really seem so commonplace to us because we do them all the time and we have been doing them for a long time that I forget they really are important parts of living a provident life too. One of these important areas of provident living is taking care of our spiritual and emotional needs. Every week (in addition to our Sunday church services) our family participates in something we call Family Home Evening. We take one night a week together as a family to spend special time with one another to focus on spiritual things. During this time we sing songs, have a lesson that is spiritual in nature, and do family activities. These nights allow Jacob and I to give our children and ourselves more in depth spiritual instruction and they give us that spiritual uplift that helps us to get through the upcoming week. Because our children are still very young, we keep our lessons short and sometimes make our activities a bit longer. We also sing spiritual and uplifting songs, which is something we all enjoy very much and we try to learn new songs as well. We encourage our children to ask questions and participate a lot in the lessons we have planned. In fact, each week we assign different family members to plan various aspects for the next weeks Family Home Evening.  This helps each one of us to develop different skills and allows to share our talents with each other. We love Family Home Evening. I especially love the feeling of peace and unity that it brings into our home as we talk about the Savior Jesus Christ and His Gospel and our great love for Him.

We have decided recently to to begin preparing our Family Home Evening Lessons from the most recent General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. We prepare and plan our lessons and activities from the talks that were given at this conference. We also include appropriate hymns and scriptures that go along with the topics as well as an activity that usually involves treats ( our kids favorite part).

Yesterday, I prepared the lesson from a talk entitled, "For Peace at Home", given by Elder Richard G. Scott of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Elder Scott, spoke about the things that we can do to bring more peace into our homes. Some of the principles he mentioned were family and personal prayer, scripture study, and weekly Family Home Evenings. He also talked about the importance of making Jesus Christ the center of our home, and promised that when we do this there will be peace and serenity. He also suggested that as we work to achieve this goal in our homes we reach out to others in friendship, love, and service, so that might feel that peace in their lives as well.

After our lesson, and some songs, together as a family we made a family treat with the intention of sharing some of our treats with a family in our neighborhood that is moving away.

We made "Scripture Cookies" which reinforced the importance of reading the scriptures in our home and also gave us a way to serve those around us. It was a fun activity. The kids loved listening to each scripture for the clues they needed to make their cookies.

Family Home Evening is just one way that we use in our home to strengthen ourselves and our children spiritually and emotionally. We know that as we hold weekly Family Home Evenings our lives our enriched and blessed and we experience more of the peace and serenity that is promised us as we strive to center our home around the Savior Jesus Christ.

Below is the recipe for Scripture Cookies. We hope you enjoy them at your next or first Family Home Evening.

Beat Together:                                                            Key:
3/4 Cup (Psalms 55:21)                                            1. Butter
1/3 Cup (2 Nephi 26:25)                                           2. Milk
1&1/2 Cup (Jeremiah 6:20)                                      3. Sugar
2 (Isaiah 10:14)                                                          4. Eggs

Add:
2 Cups (1 Kings 4:22)                                                5. Flour
1 tsp. (Solomon's Song 4:14)                                    6. Cinnamon
1 tsp. (Doctrine & Covenants 101:39)                     7. Salt
1/2 tsp. (1 Corinthians 4:6)                                        8. Baking Soda
3 Cups (Doctrine & Covenants 89:17)                      9. Oatmeal
1 Cup (Samuel 30:12)                                                10. Raisins

Drop by spoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. While baking read (History of Joseph Smith 1:37 and Doctrine and Covenants 133:11) to remind you to watch them carefully so they don't burn.

For access to the 2013 edition of the scriptures for the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints click here.