Asha Anujeeva

I just bought a bread machine that says that it bakes 1, 1 1/2, and 2 pound loaves of bread. Well, I was really happy about that because my old bread machine that just died wouldn’t go as high as 2 pounds, it would do 1 and 1 1/2 pound loaves.

So today I decided to bake a 2 pound loaf of french bread. It overflowed out of the pan and hit the top of the bread machine. When I lifted the lid up, part of the loaf of bread stuck on the lid. It was really hard to get the bread out of the bread pan because the top of the bread had spilled over the handle of the pan. I had to rip off pieces of the top just to get it out of the pan.

I think I’d best stick to 1 1/2 pound loaves of bread from now on!

My sister has been encouraging me to drink a hot tea every day. Both black teas and green teas have health benefits, mostly an anti-oxidant that helps prevent cancer. She wants me to drink at least one cup, if not two cups, every day.

The green tea has an amino acid in it that produces a boost in your body’s immune system. This has been proven in a recent Harvard sponsored study on interferon contained in the body. In their study, subjects who drank 5 cups of tea every day had 10 times as much interferon in their body than the non-tea drinkers. That is a huge difference and definitely something I should take to heart.

One of the things that I’ve been trying to do lately is to eat a little bit healthier when I get the chance. I’ve been relying too heavily on fast food recently and my body is objecting. I’ve noticed, though, that eating healthy tends to be more expensive.

So that means that I have to look a little bit harder at ways to save money. Looking for the fresh fruit that is marked down because the “use by” date is getting really close is one way that I do that. I’ve never liked buying under-ripe fruit and then having to wait a few days for it to ripen enough to eat it.

So now I look for the fresh fruit mix bowls that are marked down and try to eat them for a snack. I enjoy them because they are sweet, and I have a sweet tooth. The only problem is that I have to eat them about an hour before I plan to eat a “real” meal because eating fruit makes me hungry again really fast! But they are good for a “Gee I’m not really hungry but want to eat something sweet” to satisfy my sweet tooth!

My father was recently diagnosed with hypertension.  Everyone in the family was very surprised because there is not any family history of hypertension that we are aware of.  We’ve been doing some research on high blood pressure causes and learned that there are other factors involved that may cause it.

One of the factors is stress, another is sodium.  Well, Dad has always liked a lot of salt on his food, so we’re going to replace the salt with salt substitute right off.  That’s going to be tough because there is so much sodium in just about everything one buys nowadays!  Especially canned goods!  So we’re buying a big freezer and going to be serving him things from the freezer instead of canned goods.

As for stress, well that’s a tough one.  He’s always meditated and exercised, so we’re not sure what else to do there.  Fortunately we’re all here to support him and are willing to work it through with him.

My kitchen is so small and I get so frustrated trying to cook, that I have decided to make changes. I am looking at the enclume pot racks that I can buy online and give my wonderful pots a place to hang and be accessible to me while I am cooking.

An enclume pot rack makes my favorite pots within arm’s reach instead of having to get down on my knees and reach into a deep dark cabinet cluttered with all the different pots and lids that are jumbled on the shelf. I really dislike kitchen cabinets – they are not made to be user friendly at all.

After looking at all the enclume potracks on their web site, this is the one that I want to order. See how it has a nice shelf for me to have all my cookbooks handy? This is the perfect design for my needs! Finally, someone has made user friendly ways to store the essential and most frequently used things in my kitchen.