Monthly Archives: October 2012

Tasty Bean Salad

I am at home again today, sick – could have strep throat….and feeling pretty miserable. I wanted to share what I am doing to try to improve my health, since I have been sick off and on since February and now on my 6th course of antibiotics.

So as my health has been pretty awful this year, I have decided to try “Eat to Live” plan by Dr. Fuhrman.  The idea is to concentrate on eating 90% nutrient-dense foods – like veggies, fruits, seeds and nuts, beans and whole grains. For the remaining 10%, you can have healthy oils, meat and dairy. My goal is to build my body’s own immune system and provide the right food and nutrients to my body, it’s not about weight for me.

I have been pleasantly surprised, it has not been that difficult to follow the plan including a breakfast, lunch and dinner. I am one and half weeks.

Here’s one of the recipes I use for lunch.

Ingredients

1 can cannelloni beans (washed)
1 can black beans (washed)
1 can corn (washed)
1 small onion
1 small red pepper
1 small green pepper
1 garlic clove
1/2 tsp cumin
1 Tbsp fresh basil
1 Tbsp fresh parsley
1 Tbsp fresh chives
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp whole grain mustard
2 Tbsp white wine vinegar

Wash the beans and corn and place in a large bowl. Add diced peppers, diced onion and crushed garlic to the bowl. In a salad dressing container mix the remaining ingredients – shake to mix. Pour over the beans mixture, and stir to cover.

Serve as a side salad or I used a 1/2 whole wheat pita and made a sandwich. This salad stores well in the fridge. also think about adding fresh dices tomatoes or diced celery to add more flavors/tastes.

Here’s my lunch – the final product 🙂

Backyard Garden Design 3: Weekend Progress

As mentioned in the previous post, this weekend’s goal was to start and hopefully get the backyard garden done based on the design shown here.

Thank you to our weekend worker bee helpers – Dieter, Justin, Rob, Brian, and Chris…we wouldn’t be as far along as this without your help. Here is the progress so far.

  1. Draw, measure and line up the design
  2. Dig the lines out to put the sand.
  3. Move the sand and level out to put the wood blanks
  4. End of Day 1 – corners built
  5. Building up the walls (End of Day 2 of the weekend)
      
  6. All brackets hammered in to hold the wall, french drains in (weed fabric, pipes and gravel).
  7. Dirt being leveled out to full in the level/first tier.
      

Not too far away now, next steps:

  • Need more dirt to fill in the levels – probably another truck load
  • Need to find the concrete slab steps
  • Need to order and lay sod

Quick Update: Weekend Projects

We arrived back from vacation with an action packed weekend planned.

Firstly, I am ecstatic about my first sale on Etsy. I finished making a custom order for chair bags (for 11 in. wide kids chairs).
  

The first picture is the actual color swatch which shows the true color, the second picture is the finished bag but the photo was taken in the evening light.

The other big project this weekend is the backyard – we are having a “working bee”, where friends come over and help us out with manual labor in exchange for food and drinks. The two walled levels are being put into the backyard as designed in the previous post. This weekend we should have the following update done to that post (cross fingers 🙂 ):

Additional steps over the next few weekends:

  • Order and get the wood (DONE)
  • Order and get the sand, gravel and dirt (DONE – except for the gravel)
  • Lay out the step walls  (DONE)
  • Put in french drains behind each step  (DONE)
  • Fill in with soil  (DONE)
  • Order and install concrete step tops
  • Order and get sod
  • Add the additional vegetable garden  (DONE)
  • Place the boarders for the vegetable garden path
  • Fill with stones

I will post photo’s on Monday on the progress of our back yard :-).

My projects, over the weekend is to try to make progress on the:

  1. Four Season’s Quilt
  2. Place mats
  3. New Monster Designs