• Priscilla Nason Shartle

hearthealthyboomer

~ Living healthy after age seventy.

hearthealthyboomer

Tag Archives: baking

Good Food, Good Drink, Good God, Let’s Eat!

07 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by prisnasonshartle in Bountiful Raised Garden

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baking, Braggs Organic Apple Cider, calories, eating healthy, family, friends, garden, Huffington Taste, organic, raised garden, vegetables, vegetarian

vegetablesGone for five days and it rained for four of those days.  Lucky days for our garden (and for our son Brian who offered to water both our garden and his brother Daniel’s garden.)  We came home to brand new vegetables and an abundance of others that had already been producing.  Always grateful, we love sharing and my new neighbor mentioned she was a vegetarian (for 55 years now) and she got a large brown bag of assorted vegetables right after I cleaned them. Included in yesterday’s pickings were cucumbers, squash, zucchini, lettuce, beets, purple hull crowder peas, bell peppers, okra, and three varieties of heirloom cherry tomatoes.

Yesterday for lunch I made a green salad with three varieties of lettuce, the cherry tomatoes, avocado, pine nuts, pumpkin seeds, boiled egg, chopped broccoli, cucumbers, and quinoa.  It was delicious.  We had a half a grilled cheese sandwich to top it off.  For dinner, I made cheese grits from organic polenta and because we do eat meat from time to time, I sautéed some chicken and then added a cold salad I made early in the day which had cucumber, tomato, and onion soaked in my homemade dressing of Bragg Organic Apple Cider Vinegar, olive oil, and honey.  For lunch today, I stir-fried slices of zucchini and veggie burger (which we split), deviled an egg for each of us, sliced some cold cumbers and tossed on a few cherry tomatoes and topped it all off with a couple of spoons of my homemade bread and butter pickles that I made last week.

Tonight I am making a zucchini risotto with sun-dried tomatoes and lots of other herbs and greens from our garden.  I’ll grill a slice of pork loin topped with garlic, grated lemon, red pepper flakes and some Louisiana seasoning.  And we will finish off our dinner with a flourless chocolate cFlourless-Chocolate-Chip-Banana-Muffinship almond butter muffin.  I found this recipe at the Huffington Taste website. Every once in a while it’s nice to not know the calorie count on something.  But eating healthy the majority of the time allows for a few hiccups and I do love chocolate chip anything!

But most of all, I enjoy taking advantage of the bounty from our raised gardens in our little back yard.  When I think about all the years we didn’t have one, I say a prayer of gratitude for what we have now.  Growing our own vegetables helps with our budget and it helps us know that what we are eating is organic and good for us.  And we get to enjoy new foods, create new recipes, and share our bounty with friends and family.

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Temptation

17 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by prisnasonshartle in Tempting Foods

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baking, chocolate pound cake, healthy eating, LSU, mother-in-law, ZTA

Today I baked a cake.  Not just any cake but my sister-in-law’s very own “Deluxe Chocolate Pound Cake.”  Delicious beyond measure, it is hard to pass up, but I will.  Not because I don’t like it, but because it will make me sick.  Not literally but emotionally.  I am addicted to foods I should not eat and there are probably over a thousand calories in one slice of this cake.  And because my diet is based on eating healthy foods, (without butter, eggs, and sugar), I’m pretty sure I could not stop at one piece.

I baked this cake for several reasons.  One is that I love to cook and baking is just as fun as making a big pot of bean soup filled with garlic, onions, flax seeds, and kale.  The other is that it brings back such great memories. When I was a young mother I got this recipe at a ZETA alumni party.  Our alumni chapter at LSU made cookbooks and sold them to each other at the “Kandy Kitchen” fundraiser.  My sister-in-law, Wesley Anne submitted the recipe and so I baked it as a treat one Sunday when her mother, my mother-in-law came over for dinner.

We sat at my kitchen table, drinking coffee, listening to my oldest son, Brian who was three play outside in our backyard.  We had a fenced in yard with a swing set and patio for him to play on.  He could hear us talking as we could see and hear him playing.  The smell of the chocolate cake was just like it was today, wonderful.  Finally, after the required one hour and twenty-minute bake time, I pulled the cake out of the oven.  It was a mess.chocolate pound cake

I looked at my mother-in-law and could not tell if my face was red from embarrassment or from the heat of the oven.  We just looked at it – a crumbled, uncooked glob of chocolate.  I carried it the table and together we tried to figure out what went wrong.  With the recipe card, she started calling out the ingredients to confirm I had indeed not left anything out.  But when she got to five eggs, I hesitated, checked my refrigerator and sure enough, the eggs were still in the carton and NOT in the cake.  However, it was not a loss.  For you see, how can you go wrong with rum, butter, coconut extract with chocolate, butter and sugar?  We sat and ate our cake with a spoon and enjoyed every minute of it.

Temptation – to desire or crave something; I have the power to say no to eating this cake, but that won’t stop me from baking it or sharing it with those who can handle its delicious treats.

 

Mind Matters

11 Tuesday Oct 2011

Posted by prisnasonshartle in Keeping Your Mind Alert

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A.Word.A.Day, baking, computers, mind, newspaper, Reader's Digest, staying healthy, television

Before the days of computers, our parents and grandparents used books, magazines, newspapers, dictionaries, encyclopedias, the library, teachers, and their own parents and grandparents to learn.  Learning is a life-long task where we discover things created by man and revealed by God.   And it is the best way to keep our minds healthy the older we get.

My mother’s father read the daily newspaper religiously.  The day was not right if the paper was late. This is because it was his joy to share what he read with his wife, my grandmother who did not have the time to read the paper.  (Or maybe she chose not to do so that they could share that special time together.  I will never know, because I never asked.)   My father’s father was an avid baker, reading cookbooks and recipes he collected for years.  He then turned around and gifted members of the family with a homemade cake or pie or bread.  Both grandfathers stayed “young at heart” by discovering a way to keep their minds alert while doing something they found enjoyable.  Both of these men lived and died without a television as children and computer their whole life and until the last six months of their lives, they lived normal healthy lives well into their eighties.

My mother died, on the other hand too early.  She lived a short sixty-three years, as did her mother and her grandmother.  My mother lived a very addictive unhealthy life for the most part.  But she was funny, kind, a good friend, mother, grandmother and wife.  Everyone loved her.  I never saw my mother exercise in her life – not walking, hiking, swimming, running, dancing, aerobics, nothing.  And yet her heart and mind were strong and healthy.  This is because she read books and magazines and always looked for ways to stimulate her mind.  Her favorite magazine was the Reader’s Digest and especially Word Power, a regular column that lists words related to a theme with a multiple choice of answers for each word.  Answers were provided but my mother never cheated.  She worked diligently studying the words until she got them all right.  My mother also grew up without a TV or computer but I feel certain that had she lived into her eighties as her father, she would have welcomed a computer in her home.

Three generations later, I too, grew up without a computer, but there has always been a television set in my home as a child and today.  And I have used a computer for over thirty years.  But it was not until I started writing that I came to realize what a benefit to my health the computer is; for it is through the Internet that I search and research for the articles, stories, blogs that I write.  Here I find recipes, spiritual guidance, articles on health and fitness, and mental strategies to stay alert.  For example I signed up today to get A.Word.A.Day by Anu Garg  through a daily email.  It was free and like my grandfathers and my mother I can use the daily words to expand my world by forcing myself to learn something new each day keeping me well and whole and healthy.

P.S. Today’s word is picaresque.  “One of my favorite pastimes is watching the picaresque movie Robin Hood with Errol Flynn and Olivia DeHaviland.” ~ My sentence.

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