Dress up an old or ugly dining room table by stencilling a runner down the middle. Sand table smooth, then run two stripes of blue painter’s tape down the tables as a guideline for stencil placement. Paint stencil pattern with a stencil brush, using a dabbing motion and an almost – dry brush. Remove stencil and let paint dry for 15 minutes, then reposition stencil to continue the pattern and repeat the process. Let dry overnight. Coat the tabletop with two coats of clear acrylic polyurethane to seal.
Turn a Table into a Showstopper
June 30, 2008 By
More fiber, less cancer
June 30, 2008 By
All of us could benefit from more fiber than the partly average of 15 grams a day. But pre-menopausal women may have special reason to boost intake, says a British study that tracked over 35,000 women for seven years. Those who ate 30 or more grams a day cut their breast cancer risk in half, compared with the women who ate less than 20 grams.
Testing the Five-Second Rule
June 30, 2008 By
You know the joke: If you pick up dropped food within five seconds, you can still eat it. Turns out, it’s not a joke – and you may have more time than you think. In an experiment at Connecticut College, a group of microbiology students left both wet food (apple slices) and dry (hard candies) on the floor of a cafeteria for intervals ranging from five seconds to five minutes. When they tested their samples for bacteria growth, they found it took 30 seconds for germs to appear on the apples and up to 5 minutes for the candies to become germy. Of course, you have to use good sense too. If the floor is dirty or pets walk in it, even a nanosecond could be risky.
Calzones
June 30, 2008 By
Calzone is a folded pizza, made from pizza dough and stuffed with cheese, ham or vegetables. The dough is traditionally folded over, sealed on one edge and baked or deep-fried – however, we can add a little bit of a healthy twist to the original Italian recipe by removing the deep-fry part from the equation and replacing the ham with boneless, skinless chicken breast. This recipe will yield six smaller calzones, which are the ideal size to be packed away and enjoyed at work, along with a fresh vegetable salad. If you’re vegetarian, simply replace the chicken with 1 pound of sliced mushrooms and 1/3 cup chopped onions, sautéd together in a teaspoon of olive oil.
What you need (for 6 servings)
1 frozen whole-wheat bread dough loaf (16 ounces, thawed, not risen)
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts
10 ounces (1 standard package) frozen chopped spinach (thawed, drained)
8 ounces part-skim ricotta cheese
4 teaspoons Parmesan cheese
2 egg whites, divided
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1 teaspoon minced garlic
How you do it
First of all, preheat the oven to 350 F. In a nonstick pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat and sauté the chicken breasts whole, turning them when needed so that they turn a light golden brown. This shouldn’t take longer than 10 – 15 minutes at most. Set aside and when cooled cut the chicken breasts into small cubes.
In a small bowl, blend together the spinach, Parmesan cheese, ricotta cheese, parsley, garlic and one of the egg whites. In a separate bowl, lightly whisk the remaining egg white. Then, cut the dough into six pieces and on a floured surface, press each piece into an oval, about 8 inches long and 6 inches wide.
Take each dough oval, brush the edges with the beaten egg white then add the filling in the center: 1/6 of the chicken cubes and 1/6 of the spinach mixture on top. Fold the dough over the filling, pressing the edges firmly together. Crimp with a fork, and place the calzones on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray or olive oil. Bake until brown and slightly crispy.
Don’t Let Worries Rule Your Life!
June 30, 2008 By
We cannot deny the fact that we live in extremely stressful lives and with constantly increasing problems connected to everything from money to the price of gas, to our jobs and relationships, romantic or otherwise, it’s no wonder most of us worry a lot. If you consider the matter a bit, you may find that the whole issue of “worrying” is a lot more complex than you may have initially assumed.
Base on the research only 10% of the things we worry about are really relevant. Money, disease, personal relationships, all of these make us lose sleep – however, the vast majority of the things that cause us concern either never happen or have already happened – and here I’m talking about break-ups, losing money, a friend, making a mistake at work and so on. Studies also show that those of us who spend a lot of time worrying are less productive in the workplace, get easily distracted from their tasks or even worse – fail to complete them properly. Worrying burns-off mental energy and messes with our moods often leading to depression.
The fact is, we should never allow our worries to take up too much of our time and energy, since they will only end up weakening us, physically and mentally. Chronic worrying was medically proven to wear out our hearts and push us to eat too much, engage in little exercise, drink and smoke too much. As someone once said, worrying is like a rocking chair – it gives us something to do but doesn’t really get us anywhere.
