Middle eastern type tomato chicken stuff... or something like that

This was something that I made the other day trying to use up the chicken and couscous that I had, and it turned out really well for such a simple recipe.
Chicken in a tomato and turmeric sauce with vegetables and couscous.

Prep time: 3-5 min Cook time 8-15 min Serves 2

Ingredients:

1 chicken breast, cut into bite sized pieces.

1 14 oz can of diced tomatoes

2 tbsp curry seasoning or 1 tbsp each of coriander and turmeric (you can fiddle around with the spices)

2 tsp to 1 tbsp of garlic powder

1 pound of fresh or frozen veggies, cooked (I used broccoli) 

1 cup of couscous 

1 1/2 cups of chicken or vegetable broth (water will work if need be)

salt and pepper if you used tomatoes and broth without salt

Directions:

Bring the broth to a boil. Add in the couscous, cover and turn to low cooking for 5 minutes. Turn off the heat, fluff the couscous, cover and let sit for another 10 minutes.

Cook the chicken breast in a bit of oil in a pan. Add in the tomatoes (with the juice) and the seasoning. Let that heat up. You can cover it and let it cook on low for a bit to let the spices integrate more if you would like. Put down the couscous first, then the veggies, and then the chicken and tomatoes layered on your plate. Now you have dinner for two. 

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Easy creamy tomato pasta

This is really delicious and so easy to make. It can easily be made vegetarian by omitting the chicken.

Takes about 20 minutes to cook, 10 if you make the sauce while the pasta is cooking, and serves 4.

Ingredients: 

1 pound of pasta cooked, drained and buttered or oiled so that it doesn't stick.

2 tbsp of butter

1 red onion, minced

1/2 pound of chicken thighs or breasts cut into small pieces, about 1/4-1/2 inches

2-4 cloves of garlic, minced
4 large tomatoes chopped (Don't get rid of the juice! This goes in too) or a can of diced tomatoes (you might want to chop them up a bit more)
1/2 cup of cream cheese
1 Tbsp of oregano
1 Tbsp of basil
1/2 cup of olives, chopped
1/2 cup of chopped artichoke hearts
Parmesan or asiago cheese to taste
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Melt the butter in your pan (I left the pasta in the colander and did this in my pot to save of dishes but you can just as easily do this in a saute pan or skillet with high sides.) Cook the onions in the butter with some salt to help them sweat for a couple of minutes or until they soften up and start to become translucent. Scootch the onions to the sides of the pan and add in the chicken. You can season the chicken if you want. Since they are small pieces they should take 2 to 3 minutes to cook. Add in the herbs and tomatoes and let them cook a bit, don't forget to add in the juice that was released when you cut them up. Add in the cream cheese and let it melt into the sauce. Add in everything else but the pasta and let it mix up then combine it with the pasta. Whala you are finished.

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Easy Diy Perfume

I love to use essential oils and hydrosols for perfume instead of that toxic nastiness that you get on your fingers when turning the page in a magazine for a perfume add. Instead of messing up your endocrine system, giving you headaches, and causing cancer in your body, you can actually help your body out with perfume made from essential oils and hydrosols. 

You can make perfume 3 ways, one as a roll on with a carrier oil, 2 as a solid perfume (find my tutorial for that HERE) and 3 as a spray using hydrosols for the carrier instead of alcohol. 

I like to keep things simple with rose hydrosol and chamomile oil in a spray bottle, but you can get as complex as you would like. Bellow I have oils in groups to give you ideas.

For a roll on take a bottle with a roll top and drop in your essential oils first. you will want the oils to go probably about 1/8th to 1/3 of the way up. Experiment with just a little first so that you can test out combinations without wasting any oils. Then fill the bottle up the rest of the way with a carrier oil such as almond.

For a spray perfume choose your mixture of oils and add them to a spray bottle with a hydrosol of your choosing. Hydrosols are the water left over from making essential oils, so they still have the smell and small particles of the essential oils suspended in the liquid. You will want to play around with the ratio of oil to hydrosol because every oil has a different strength to it. 

You can even use floral waters, like orange blossom and rose water that you can get at the grocery store with extracts like vanilla and almond. 
 
Blend ideas for women:
 *Neroli, chamomile, and bergamont are refreshing and relaxing.
*Jasmine, ylang ylang, vanila, cardamom, orange create a romantic scent
*Lavender and vanilla is simple and sweet.

Oil ideas for men: Sandalwood (calms and soothes but also increases testosterone and balances hormones) Frankincense, spruce, fir, cedarwood, vetiver, sage, vanilla, hints of cardamom are nice, basically anything manly. You can go woodsy, or more spicy. 

My favorite is sandalwood with frankincense and cedar with a bit of orange and vanilla. 

You can put oils in a roll on and use them for various problems that you might be having to rub directly on where you need the oils. 

Sore muscles/back pain: Peppermint and clove work marvelously together. You can also add other warming oils like wintergreen, cypress, basil, marjoram, and elemi can be added as well as calming oils like lavender and chamomile.

Endocrine system rosemary, cinnamon, Black pepper, dill, geranium, and frankincense.
  
Fatigue:  Ginger, Peppermint, White Fir, melissa

Help you think: Rosemary, basil, sage/Clary sage, peppermint.
  
Hot Flashes: Peppermint, Geranium, citrus oils, and Clary Sage.  
  
Low Blood Sugar: Cinnamon, clove, thyme,

 Mood: Bergamot, Clary sage, fennel, geranium, lavender, lemon, peppermint, rosemary, sandalwood, blue spruce, ylang ylang, melissa

 PMS: bergamot, Clary sage, fennel, geranium, grapefruit, lavender, Roman chamomile, melissa,

Have fun being creative and smelling fabulous!

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My snack food favorites

It is so difficult to find good alternatives to junk foods but I think that I have come across some pretty good ones that I am going to share with you today.

Find them HERE

I really like Inka Plantain chips. They taste like potato chips, and they have 3 ingredients, Plantains, sea salt, and palm olein. They also have roasted corn, broad beans, and potato chips all made with palm olein instead of canola, sunflower, or safflower oil. Palm olein is much healthier for you, read more about why this is HERE. Palm olein is liquid palm oil. It has been more processed, but so far I haven't found anything showing it to be harmful.

As far as corn chips go I look for one that is organic,  made with sprouted ingredients, and doesn't have canola oil. Late July's corn chips are delicious but their are lots of brands that are like this. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any made with a good oil, but since I don't eat them often I choose ones that I will actually get nutrition from and don't have toxic canola oil. Even Tostitos has blue corn chips that aren't made with canola oil. They aren't sprouted but they are better than gmo's.

Back to Nature, Late July, and Annie's brands have fairly decent ingredients. You just need to pick and choose what you want to omit and all three brands can be found at most grocery stores. They have chips, crackers, cookies, and bunches of other stuff.

I really like Pamela's shortbread cookies. They are gluten free, buttery, and delicious.

Heavenly organics have these chocolate patties that are just three ingredients  Chocolate, honey, and peppermint oil. They also have pomegranate and almond ones. You can find those HERE

I love Justin's nut butters. They have such a delicious alternative to nutella, and they also have yummy nut butter cups and candy bars. They do have sugar, but it is less than other brands and it is organic. 

I love, love, Love SunDrops. They are such a good alternative to MnM's. They don't have all those nasty artificial colors.

I'm not that into snack food, I mostly get the plantain chips, the chocolate patties, and dried fruit, but every once in a while it is nice to have alternatives that although they aren't healthy, they aren't terrible for you. My list isn't that extensive, but as long as you read labels then you should be able to find some favorites too. 

Things to watch out for, Artificial colors and flavors (which come from beaver butts (serious), and petroleum. the ones from petroleum can cause hyperactivity and cancer.) Hydrogenated oils, canola oil, cotton seed oil, soybean oil, to much sunflower and safflower oil, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, agave nectar (some healthy-er alternatives have this sweetener that has more fructose than corn syrup) gmo's, Sodium Benzoate, Potassium benzoate, sucralose, artificial sweeteners,  BHA, BHT, propyl gallate, sodium chloride and salt (but not sea salt), soy, potassium sorbate, soy lecithin (mostly if it isn't organic). 

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Kefir, yogurt, and prebiotics

We have all heard of yogurt, but maybe not kefir, and quite likely you have not heard of prebiotics (not to be confused with probiotics). They all have to do with intestinal health, and consequently the health of your entire body, but they all have different functions.

Prebiotics are the food for your intestinal flora, or the beneficial bacteria in your colon. Prebiotics consist of fiber that our bodies can not digest, but the flora can. Not all fiber is food for the probiotics, the fiber that isn't basically just cleans out the colon. Where fiber that isn't a prebiotic is still beneficial, if you aren't getting a wide enough range of fruits and veggies you may be hindering the health of your intestinal flora. 

You can take prebiotic supplements, but foods like asparagus, Jerusalem artichoke, leeks, onions, cabbages (including broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts) radish, rutabaga, leafy greens, bananas, kiwis, etc.

Yogurt contains probiotics, but not very many and different kinds of probiotics than kefir. The probiotics in kefir do NOT colonize the colon, but rather provide food for the beneficial bacteria already in your intestines. If fiber is the broom that sweeps out your colon, then yogurt is like a mop that cleans and makes everything happy. Yogurt is so easy to make, my cousin has a marvelously easy recipe that you can find HERE.

Kefir is awesome. Let me tell ya, where yogurt fails, kefir succeeds at colonizing the intestinal tract with over 30 types of beneficial bacteria. It also has way more of the bacteria in the actual amount of product. Where 500 ml of yogurt contains close to 1.5 trillion organisms, kefir has 5 trillion in 500 ml. Not only that but it also has beneficial yeast that take out the bad yeast and parasites. The kinds of  yeast and the probiotics in kefir create more nutrition as well. Kefir has many amino acids, calcium, magnesium, loads of B vitamins, phosphorus (the second most  abundant mineral in the body which is critical in helping our bodies utilize what we put in it).

Kefer is so good at what it does, that when E.coli is put into kefer the beneficial bacteria obliterate it within 24 hours. Kefer also creates a protective lining on the intestines that keeps parasites from going through, and creates an environment where harmful bacteria can't thrive but beneficial bacteria can. Kefer is also a natural antibiotic because it protects the body from harmful bacteria. Various medical reports have shown that Kefir has been helpful in the treatment of psoriasis, eczema, allergies, migraines, gout, rheumatic arthritic conditions, candidiasis and colitis. The World Health Organization has

reported that Kefir has been effective in treating tuberculosis and typhoid fever. 

Some of the known health benefits of live Kefir made from live Kefir grains (from http://www.orhaolam.com/uploads/KefirInShort.pdf):
1. Strongest natural remedy against any allergy
2. Strongest natural antibiotic without side effects
3. Treats liver disease
4. Treats gallbladder, dissolves gall bladder stones
5. Clears the body of salts, heavy metals, radionuclides, and alcoholic products
6. Cleans the body of chemical antibiotics
7. Treats kidney stones
8. Good bacteria in kefir are able to fight off pathogenic microorganisms
9. Lowers level of LDL cholesterol
10. Cleans the gastrointestinal tract
11. Treats Irritable Bowel Syndrome
12. Treats gastritis
13. Treats pancreatitis
14. Treats ulcers
15. Prevents and treats colon cancer
16. Improves digestion
17. Improves the body functions
18. Improves the human immune system
19. Cures Candida
20. Cures hypertension
21. Stops growth of cancer cells
22. Speeds up healing process
23. Treats psoriasis
24. Treats eczema
25. Treats inflammatory diseases
26. Reduces size of tumors
27. Treats heart disease
28. Reverses calcination of blood vessels
29. Clears the blood vessels
30. Boosts the bodies energy
31. Natural “feel good” food
32. Treats lung infections
33. Normalizes metabolism thereby can be used for weight loss
34. Cures acne
35. Has anti-oxidants and anti-aging properties
36. Nourishes hair
37. Treats the gum disease parodontosis
38. Lessens side effects of medicines
39. Replenishes body of good bacteria after antibiotic
40. Balances the microflora of the body’s digestive system
41. Regulates blood pressure
42. Lowers blood sugar
43. Lowers blood lipid levels or cholesterol and fatty acids
44. Treats diarrhea
45. Treats constipation
46. Promotes bowel movement
47. Anti-stress properties
48. Treats sleeping disorders
49. Treats depression50. Treats attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
51. Improves the brains neuro functions like reflexes, memory retention, attention, the five senses
52. Reduces flatulence
53. Lactic acid fermentation enhances the digestibility of milk-based foods. People who cannot otherwise digest milk, can enjoy the vital calcium rich Kefir.
54. Treats yeast infection
55. Eliminates vaginal odors
56. Cures wrinkles
57. Treats arthritis
58. Treats colitis
59. Treats gout
60. Cures migraines
61. Treats rheumatism
62. Treats other stomach disorders
63. Detoxifies the body
64. Improves protein quality of milk, and enhances absorption and digestion
65. Good bacteria manufacture B vitamins such as B3, B6 and folic acid.
66. Aids in treating tuberculosis
67. Treats stomach cramps
68. Treats chronic intestine infections
69. Treats liver infections
70. Treats asthma
71. Treats bronchitis
72. Treats sclerosis
73. Treats anemia
74. Treats hepatitis
75. Healing effects on catarrh, digestive nodes, astral nodes, bilious complaints
76. Treats leaky gut syndrome
77. Prevents metastasis

You can make kefir from patruized or raw milk, although the raw milk will be better for you, and if you have any feer of "bad stuff" in your milk the kefer grains will kill it. You can also make it from nut milks, coconut water, juice, and sugar water, however kefir from dairy milk has the most benefits.
How to make Kefir
How to make almond milk kefir

http://www.kefir.net/kefir-vs-yogurt/
http://simplyhealthyfam.blogspot.com/2011/03/kefir-vs-yogurt-put-this-on-your.html

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Easy cream cheese dip/frosting/filling

This recipe is amazing. I have been looking for the perfect fruit dip for ages and finally figured one out. Before I go any farther I should probably tell you that unlike most of my recipes this is not helthy. I don't have any substitutes for the sugar in the condensed milk but all the fat in the milk and cheese will give you more time to use up that sugar before it turns to fat. Haha! However I do suggest you use a sweetened condensed milk with just milk and sugar, no carageen or other additives.  

You can use this as a dip, a frosting or a filling. If you want a carmel-ie flavor you can substitute dulce de leche. You can also use just milk and powdered sugar but that would be more frosting-ie. But it is easier to substitute the sugar that way. And depending in your taste you can use less sweetened condensed milk. Oooo! Also if you fold in some whipped cream; let me tell you. That, is delicious. Its more fluffy that way.

Ingreedients:

8oz (1 package) cream cheese, softened
1 small can of sweetened condensed milk (or dulce de leche)

1tsp vanilla

1tsp of lemon juice (don't use if you use dulce de leche)

*optional you can fold in a cup of whipped cream or a couple tbsp of blended up fruit. (Pineapple and strawberries work nice but not with dulce de leche) 

Directions:

Beat with an electric mixer until combined.

Use as a frosting, filling, or dip for fruit, gram crackers, or pretzels.

I post recipes, diy's, healthy living tips, and urban farm type stuff usually twice a week so if you want more check out my posts which have been organized for the most part in the categories above or you can subscribe via email or google and I think I have another option on the sidebar.  Also you can follow me on Twitter (sneak peeks to new posts) and on pintrest. Have a fantastically marvelous day!

 

Chicken curry

This is a very easy recipe for chicken curry and it is so tasty. It works best to use a cast iron pot (dutch oven) or a deep saute pan but this can also be done with a frying pan and eather a crock pot or a baking dish.

Ingredients:

4 chicken legs
Palm oil
1 onion, chopped
1 clove minced garlic
Chicken or vegetable broth (enough to cover chicken legs)
1 can of tomato sauce
1 tbsp curry powder
1 tsp turmeric
3-5 cloves
1 bay leaf
Whatever veggies you like. I used carrots, frozen mixed veggies and okra. The okra helps to thicken the sauce.
Some maple syrup, molasses, or honey is optional to sweeten things up a bit.
Corn starch mixed in cold water is also optional to help thicken it.

Directions:

Pan fry the chicken legs and saute the onion and garlic in the palm oil. Salt the onion a bit to help it release the water and soften faster.
Add in everything else. You may need to add in a bit more broth to cook the veggies.  Just keep in mind that if you use frozen veggies they will release water as they defrost. If the chicken is already cooked through then the dish is ready to eat when the veggies are cooked, but the flavor improves greatly with at least 2 hours of cooking.
Cover it and cook on low. Make sure to stir it every once in a while and make sure it has eniough liquid. 
If you want to cook this all day in a crock pot throw everything in and turn it on high untill everything starts to get heated up. Leave it on low all day. Just make sure you give it enough time to cook the chicken.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, but my computer has been out of commission. I usually post recipes, beauty DIY's and health tips twice a week so if you want more then subscribe over on the side bar. :)