"No Healthy Diet" website plug

Recently I wrote a post for a blog that a friend of mine started. The blog focuses on maintaining a gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free healthy diet. You can find recommendations, recipes and products, along with some tips for avoiding foods containing allergens. I hope you check it out! The blog gets updated several times a week. It's an excellent resource to be aware of, whether you can use the information yourself, or know someone who has an allergy to dairy, gluten and/or soy.

Can you spot the common allergens in this photo? :-)

 http://nohealthydiet.com/
And here's the link to the post that I wrote:
http://nohealthydiet.com/healthy-diet-plan/essentials-for-a-healthy-diet/

P.S. I am going to post photos of our family's garden as soon as I get our camera back! :-)

Waiting... but not for long!

Today was just too beautiful for words, so here are some photos!

(pardon the black spot in the upper right-hand corner of these photos... our poor little camera has suffered a lot of abuse! I suppose you could consider it a watermark... :-)

Here's the garden, waiting to be tilled and planted planted. Kale, Swiss chard, broccoli, bell peppers, onions, green beans, snap peas, carrots, potatoes, cabbage, zucchini and squash are some of the things we want to plant, in addition to the garlic, which took up residence last October. We already have peppers, onions and tomatoes started in little pots.

Here's the bonfire, waiting to be lit! Most of this brush came from the woods where Dad wants to put in another garden plot. The spot we have our current garden gets a bit wet, since it's in a lower elevation. We'll still use it this year, but we're hoping to have the other garden up and running next year.

Speaking of which, here is the site of garden 2.0.12! It doesn't look like much yet, but with a little (lot) of work, hopefully it will work out well for another garden spot.

Here's part of our lawn, waiting to be mowed! It's so refreshing looking out of the window and seeing GREEN instead of WHITE on the ground. Though I'm sure when summer comes I'll wish we had a little of that white stuff. :-)

Here's the recently-pruned lilac bush, waiting for flowers!

Here's the trusty weather station that never needs to wait for weather!

You can actually view the data from it here!

Here's one of the first few flowers in our flowerbeds, waiting for company.

They do say that two is company...

Speaking of which, Tucker kept me company on my photo expedition around the yard.

But he really doesn't like the sound the camera makes when you click the "shudder" button! :-)

So, there you have it! Spring at Green Gambrels.

The Search for the Perfect Gift

It's the time of year when many people are getting each other gifts. Sometimes it's hard to find someone something they need, might like, would use, etc. It's great when you hear someone say "This is perfect! Thanks so much!" in response to a gift that you or someone else gives them. Now, could you get that same gift for all of your friends and get the same response from them? After all, that would make gift giving at any time to any person very easy, wouldn't it! Well, I don't think it works that way! :-)

 What would the perfect gift be like? Well, it would have to be very specific to each person, yet appealing to everyone. The perfect gift shouldn't wear out or break. It shouldn't be something people get bored with after a while.

Such a gift would be very hard to find, would it not?

But it has been found.

You can find out more about it here at Good News Now.

You can also listen to, download and/or purchase more items like this at the Good News Granary.

A Great Piece by Bach!

Recently I started learning how to play the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 (or part of it, anyway!) on the violin. It's a piece by Johann Sebastian Bach, and I really like it. Not just because it's by Bach, but that is a good reason to like it. :-)

Before you watch the video, here's a quote from Bach that I appreciate.

The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.

I agree that all music should give glory to God, and a lot of it is certainly refreshing to listen to and enjoyable to play.
Here's a video of the bit of the Brandenburg Concerto that I'm starting to learn. This video is well worth watching, not only to hear the music, but also to see how every instrument, musician and part comes together to form this beautiful and lively piece. The musicians are also fun to watch; they look like they thoroughly enjoyed playing this piece together. :-) I hope you enjoy this video as much as I did!

Carrot Pancakes

For breakfast today I was contemplating making pancakes. However, I wanted a pancake slightly more nutritious than the ordinary flour/eggs/baking powder/milk ones that I normally make. So I went to Recipezaar.com to see what recipes I could find for vegetable pancakes.

I found one very basic recipe for carrot pancakes, which I ended up making for lunch instead of breakfast (I had a scrambled egg with chopped bell pepper instead). I tweaked the recipe a bit and it came out tasting rather delicious! Here it is.

            Carrot Pancakes
           Makes approximately 6 3”x3” pancakes 
            Ingredients

• 3 medium carrots, grated
• ½ medium onion, chopped
• 2 medium sized eggs, beaten
• 1 cup of flour
• Salt/seasonings to taste (I used trocomare)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder

1. Peel and grate carrots into a large bowl; also chop and add the onion.
2. Add the eggs, flour, seasonings and baking powder, then mix well.
3. Cook in oiled frying pan on medium heat until brown (2-3 minutes on each side).
4. Enjoy! :-)

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You can tweak this recipe as much as you want to, of course. You can adjust the size of the pancakes, how much onion or flour, ect. These pancakes are also good as a meal in themselves: with a glass of milk, of course. :-)

Chocolate Avocado Pudding

A couple months ago my Mom found a really yummy recipe for chocolate pudding. But this isn't any ordinary chocolate pudding. It's actually healthy! Mom found this recipe on a blog called Food as Medicine. You don't even have to necessarily like avocados to enjoy this pudding. Here it is! 

Chocolate Avocado Pudding :-)  
Ingredients

• 4 avocadoes
  1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder OR 1/2 cup carob powder
• 1/2 cup of sweetener (maple syrup or honey with/and/or stevia to taste)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Method

• Slice the avocadoes in half, remove the pit and scoop the flesh away from the skin.
• Add to blender or food processor along with the other ingredients.
• Process until smooth.

*Add water in 1 Tablespoon increments if needed to achieve a creamy consistency

We sliced bananas and put them at the bottom of our pudding bowls when we ate ours. It's quite yummy, and it's also good for you! Enjoy!

One of my favorite Pandora radio stations

I like to listen to instrumental music while I do my schoolwork. One of my music sources is Pandora radio. I wrote a blog post a while back about Pandora.
One of the things you do on Pandora after you've made a free account is create 'stations' with your favorite musicians (if they're in the database). Pandora then adds songs with similar qualities to your station. As you 'thumb up' or 'thumb down' various songs, you can streamline your station somewhat so that it mostly only plays songs that you like, or songs that are very similar to the ones you like already.

One of my favorite stations is called 'Greg Maroney Radio'. Greg Maroney is a pianist, so it's not surprising that most of the music you hear on the Greg Maroney station is piano music. I've customized the station to my liking so much that it's become 'my' station. In other words, Pandora has saved all of the songs that I've 'thumbed up', or in the language of Facebook, 'liked'. It mostly plays songs with similar qualities to those that I've 'liked'.

Pandora allows you to 'share' your station with other Pandora users. So if you want to listen to some nice (in my opinion!) piano music, then here's the link to 'my' station. 
http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh138141511343262553

Most of the piano music that you'll hear could be classified as 'new age' music. New age is a very broad term, but in this case it simply means contemporary piano music. 'New age' piano music generally has a very soothing, rolling, pretty sound. Some of the music that you'll hear is more folk style, with hymns or other tunes that you may recognize. However, most of them are original compositions by the individual artists.

The artists that I've added to the station other than Greg Maroney, are:

Anne Trenning

Bernward Koch

Brian Crain

Dana Cunningham (Holiday)

David Carnes

David Nevue

Emile Pandolfi

Fernando Ortega

Franz Liszt

George Winston

George Winston (Holiday)

Greg Maroney

Gunnar Madsen

Jennifer Haines

Jim Brickman

Jon Schmidt

Karen Marie Garrett

Kevin Kern

Lorie Line

Michele McLaughlin

Paul Cardall

Peter Kater

Philip Wesley

Tim Janis

Also, you get 40 free hours of listening time on Pandora. And there's more than just piano music on there, too! :-)

Concert, kitties and construction

Concert: I had the opportunity to play in another concert! This event was mainly organized by my violin teacher (Susan Ramsey). It went very well! I'm glad my Dad got most of it on video! :-)You can actually watch a short clip from the dress rehearsal here. The video takes a while to load. You can actually see me for about 1 1/2 seconds! :-) You can also read a little about the concert here
http://www.svweekly.com/joom1511/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1885:-foxcroft-academy-string-program-concert&catid=33:campus&Itemid=215
and here
http://dailyme.com/story/2010032000001922/bangor-daily-news-maine-joni-averill.html

Kitties: Today the kitties had a a big adventure. Well, maybe it was really a small one, but for them it was a big one. It actually started Saturday.
Ollie had the bright idea of climbing up one of the pine trees near the house. Perhaps he was chasing birds. But anyway, he climbed a little too high for his own comfort and got "stuck" about 20 to 24 feet high in the tree. We left him for a little while to see if he would come down by himself (he could have if he tried; there were lots of branched to latch onto). However, he kept on meowing and meowing and sounding quite pitiful, so we decided to attempt a rescue. Mind, this was about 30 minutes before I had to leave for the concert dress rehearsal. Dad got out our tallest ladder and I climbed up to retrieve our miserable cat. Well, he was up too high for me to reach, even from the top of the ladder, and I didn't feel comfortable climbing up the branches to grab him. So, down I went and up Dad went. Much maneuvering and a piece of cooked chicken afterwards, Dad and Ollie both made it to the ground.
I also made it to the dress rehearsal on time. :-)

                                             Eppie on the ground, perhaps contemplating how
                                                        much smarter she is than her brother :-)

Me in the tree  

 

  Ollie in our apartment in one of his favorite places and poses

                                                                    Eppie again
              
Some good friends of ours from CT have been here for the last couple of weeks helping us with construction on our house. Today a plumber came to help with, yes, you guessed it, plumbing. They needed to access some pipes from the outside of the house. They were up on the roof, so, out came our tallest ladder again. Both of the kitties were outside and they decided to explore the ladder. Mom found this out later when she found Eppie clinging to the screen one on of the skylights. She managed to get her inside through the skylight. Now Ollie had gone all the way to the tippy-top of the roof. Here's a photo of the spot where they climbed up (there wasn't any snow on the roof when they climbed up today, though!).

Sooo,I climbed up the ladder and rescued Ollie. I wonder if he'll ever learn his lesson? Or maybe he just has Spring fever. :-)

The Star of Bethlehem showing

Tomorrow our little group of believers is hosting a Star of Bethlehem showing tomorrow (Friday the 18th) at 7:00 PM at the Center Theater in Dover-Foxcroft. You can check out the theater's website Here.

You can read more information on what the Star of Bethlehem is about. As a short summary, the Star of the Bethlehem is a documentary by Mr. Rick Larson that delves into the mystery of the star; was it a real event? Was it really a star?
Mr. Larson uses high-tech astronomy software to travel back in time and discover that truly, the heavens declare the glory of God.
You can visit the movie website here: http://thestarofbethlehemmovie.com/
You can find out more information about the star here: http://www.bethlehemstar.net/

Please be praying!

Good Christian websites

Here are some links to some good Christian resources online. I'm sure there are many more, but these are just a few of the ones I've come across.

Sermons/Messages:
Voices for Christ - This website has hundreds (thousands, perhaps) of messages by many excellent speakers.
GoodNewsNows.info - This website has several different CD with good gospel presentations which you can order or listen to online.
BUCKIT Week messages - These are the messages from the 2008 and 2009 BUCKIT (Bible University Christian Knowledge Intensive Training) weeks. You can read more about what it is here.

Articles:
Uplook.org - This is the website for the Uplook magazine. You can read the latest edition and browse older editions as well.
Powered Youth - This is a sporadically updated website/online magazine with articles by and for young people.

Publishers:
Lamplighter Publishing - Lamplighter publishes books with excellent character-building stories. They have recently starting producing them in dramatized audio format.
Gospel Folio Press - GFP publishes many good Christian books, calendars and more.

Music/Hymns:
The Cyber Hymnal - This site has the tunes and lyrics for thousands of hymns.
Saints Serving - This website provides good resources for learning to sing 4-part harmony from Hymns of Truth and Praise (the red book) and Hymns of Worship and Remembrance (the blue book).
Bible Memory System - This website provides Scripture verses put to music.
PursuingLife.com - This website has many of the Psalms arranged a capella.