It is still green here, however the yard is looking very sparse.  That’s because the leaves are off the mulberry in the back yard and also off several of the big oak trees. I have a couple of types of oaks and one type seems to lose all its leaves and the other doesn’t.  This winter I am seeing the houses behind me through my yard, and usually I only see my trees and the tall palmettos.  I have been cutting thru the palmettos some each year, mostly just cleaning out the deadfall, but now I can see thru them a little bit, too, in places.  I like cutting paths thru my palmettos, different paths to walk down.  The woods to the east of me have been looking very sparse and ragged since the hurricanes, so I watered everything real deeply yesterday.  I had a bunch of cut bamboo that had crashed down from where I had it stacked, so I moved it to a new location to act as a sort of screen from the road until the greenery starts growing back from the watering.   Continue reading →

I’ve been in a subdued mood the last couple of weeks.  No heavy thoughts, just working through some inner conflicts.  You know, the standard routine of personality integration *smile*   I am inspired by concrete goals, and have learned how to trick myself into breaking out of my workaholic routine by using goals as the bait.  If someone says to me, “you’re working too hard, want to take a break and do something?” that doesn’t give me much to look forward to to whet my appetite, except to stop working, which I may want to keep doing.  But if a friend calls and says “It’s a beautiful day and I’m going to take a ride in the sun and take my camera to the beach and have an adventure.  I can pick you up in an hour, and we can eat sushi on the way back home and you’ll be back at work before dark.”  Now that sounds tempting!  It tells me what to expect, it tells me when I can be back to work, I have to eat anyway, I’m always up for a nature trek with cameras.  I feel special and honored when someone picks me up and drives.  I like a pal with a plan.  I like a take charge kind of pal; someone who is always in optimistic, confident motion forward with some goal in mind.    Continue reading →

INGREDIENTS
1/2 pound medium shrimp – peeled and deveined (save shells and heads for stock)
12 mushrooms, halved
1 (4.5 ounce) can straw mushrooms, drained
4 cups water or chicken broth
2 stalks of lemon grass (will remove before eating)
4 kaffir lime leaves (will remove before eating)
4 slices galangal (will remove before eating)
1-4 chilies as hot as you like them (I use 2)
1 tablespoon tamarind paste
1- 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce
1- 1/2 limes, juiced
1 teaspoon white sugar
1 teaspoon chili garlic sauce
1 tablespoon nam prik pao or tom yum soup paste
1 giant bunch of fresh basil or cilantro for last minute adding.   Continue reading →

Andrea’s Low Fat Seafood Chowder:
Marinate 1 lb of bay scallops in the juice of 2 lemons while you begin.

6 cloves fresh garlic chopped and sauteed in 2 tblsp olive oil
Dice and add:
I giant whole leek
1 fat stalk of fennel
I parsnip
2 whole carrots
corn scraped from one raw ear
4 stalks celery
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp thyme
1 bay leaf
handful of fresh basil torn up, maybe 20 leaves
7 strands saffron
salt and pepper

Stir until the vegetables soften and reduce, then add:
1 giant can chopped tomatoes
1 small can double strength Campbell’s beef broth + 1 can water
handful of bay scallops for flavor
Simmer 45 minutes, then add the rest of the scallops.

It’s ready when they are done, 5-8 minutes, but I add them and cook another 30 minutes so they kinda melt into the stock.

I’ve also poached fish filets on top of the broth, for more protein and a heartier meal.

If you liked this, visit my food blog –> Goddess Grub, Healthy and Luscious Low Fat Meals for the Goddess on the Go 

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I’m not someone who spends a lot of time in the kitchen. Maybe because I worked from home for so long that I got in the habit of eating most of my meals out. I have a handful of favorite dishes I cook for myself and for friends and one of my favorite things to cook is soup.  Sometimes I’m just looking in the fridge at the leftovers. Sometimes I do this in a structured manner, like deciding on split pea soup and buying just those ingredients, but most often I find myself in the store looking at a juicy stalk of fennel next to a fat leek and the ideas start to flow. If I have no direction in mind, I can just let the fresh vegetables of the day direct me. 

Continue reading →

Hello and welcome to the April 2007 edition of Horizons Magazine. I feel like I live in a Disney movie. I walk outside each morning to put out birdseed for the cardinals, jays, woodpeckers, etc. and I watch squirrels chase each other across the long oak branches. I water a few plants, twist some vines in a new direction, munch a fresh basil leaf and rub fresh rosemary in my hair. I watch the baby lizards scampering about, and rake the leaves into a pile for the cats to jump into. Lately I’ve been raking leaves like crazy! The cold snaps back and forth the past two months have tricked the trees into thinking it’s autumn, so they’ve all been shedding their leaves. Even my bamboo took a rest from its breakneck speed growth and literally covered the ground beneath it in inches of feather-downy leaves. I love that the cooler weather this late in the season lets us know we will once again have a mild storm season.  Continue reading →

Hello and welcome to the November 2006 edition of Horizons Magazine. Wow! It’s been a whirlwind month of first, my week long stay at The Monroe Institute in Virginia where I took their 6 day Gateway Voyage, then two weekends in Orlando back to back, doing Pranic Healing Level II with Master Stephen Co, and then attending the Hayhouse I Can Do It! Conference where I took the pre-conference workshop with Abraham-Hicks. As you can imagine, my mind has been blown wide open and I can barely keep myself from bouncing off the clouds. Life is good! All things are possible! We are only using a small fraction of our potential. We have inner resources that are amazing. And we all have it, it is in all of us.   Continue reading →

I got great news last night.  I’m incredibly healthy!  In February of this year, I changed my eating habits to dramatically reduce fats and processed foods.  Sixty days ago, I got tested with the Pharmanex® BioPhotonic Scanner.  The scanner is the only non-invasive device that claims to measure carotenoid levels in human tissue at the skin surface using optical signals. Carotenoids are members of the antioxidant family. Continue reading →

Last month on The Larry King Show, he had a panel including author Marianne Williamson, an evangelical pastor, a Catholic priest, an atheist, a Jewish Rabbi and a Muslim on “What Happens When We Die?” During the talk, the evangelical pastor and the atheist both stated there was no evidence to the claim of the other. We hear that a lot in debates and sales. Statements are made as if it’s The Truth rather than just the belief and current understanding of the speaker. Or, in the case of sales presentations and news reporting, it may not be the speaker’s personal belief, but it is what they are paid to tell you is the truth in order to get you to buy their product or story. The pastor was adamant that the Bible is the ultimate, final and unchanging Word of God and that it contains all the proof anyone needs. The atheist stated “There’s never been secular evidence that Jesus Christ ever existed.” The atheist chose to not accept the Bible as evidence. The pastor chose not to accept her statement that there was no secular evidence.   Continue reading →

“All people are blessed.  It is God Himself who takes birth in a physical form.  If we turn our gaze towards God, divine energy will possess body, mind and senses.  Purity of Heart makes the mind receptive to divine vibrations.  Wise people choose an ocean of consciousness to swim rather than to wade a pond of narrow thinking.  Consciousness picks up vibrations from the cosmos. When the mind is open, it receives more light from the cosmic existence.  If we think that the world has limited resources, it becomes very limited.  If we prepare our mind to think that the world offers unlimited resources, one learns and prepares to reach high.”  Ma Yoga Shakti

From Page 92 of Awareness – the Center of Being: A Complete Guide to Self-Awareness with Proof for the Existence of God by Karl W. Benzing