Weekend Round-Up

 Weekend Round-up

Eat Healthy Snack Smart

Stock up on healthy ingredients so the right stuff is always available. Good snacks should come in around 200 calories each and contain:
Protein
Since it is digested slowly, a protein-rich snack gives you a steady stream of energy. Aim for a minimum of 3-5 grams of protein per serving.
Fiber
Fiber helps slow the release of energy you get from carbohydrates. A healthy snack should have at least 3 grams per serving. Apples have healthy doses of fiber and good carbs.
Good Carbs
Choose recipes that include whole grains, whole oats or whole wheat flour. Fruits and vegetables also count as healthy carbs.

Some Suggested Healthy Snack Solutions Include:
Nuts
Pistachios are high in fiber, protein, and antioxidants. 30 pistachios =100 calories. Most other nuts you only get half this amount for the same calories.
Snack Mixes
Check for these products at Target or Walmart and in some organic sections of the grocery store.

All natural made with whole grain, high in fiber, and only 120 calories per bag.


Saffron Road products come in 6 flavors and are big on crunch, fiber, and protein.

Nourish products choose among flavors, combos of granola bites. popcorn and nut mixes.

Scrambled Egg Burrito with Avocado

Scrambled Egg Burrito with Avocado

Cook's notes: The recipe makes 2 burritos.

Ingredients:

• 6 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon of butter 
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 jalapeno pepper, deseeded and diced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup diced mushrooms 
• ¼ red onion, diced
• Cherry tomatoes, diced 
• 1/2 cup shredded cheese
• 4 flour or whole wheat tortillas
• ¼ cup salsa
• 2 avocados, sliced

Directions:

• Drizzle olive oil into a skillet over medium heat, add peppers, mushrooms, garlic, and onion, and saute about 2-3 minutes until just tender. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in the same fry pan.
• Whisk eggs and pour into skillet with vegetables, adding in cheese. On medium-low heat scramble eggs just until set.
• Divide scrambled eggs across the flour tortillas. Top with salsa and avocado slices.
• Wrap and serve warm.

Smoothies

Check out this link to some of the best smoothie recipes ever from BHG
http://www.bhg.com/recipes/breakfast/smoothies/smoothie-recipes/

Cherry Almond Smoothie

The recipe serves 3-4 each serving 98 calories with 3 g. fiber, 5.5 grams of protein
Ingredients:

• 2 cups unsweetened frozen dark cherries
• 1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk
• One 6 oz. Greek plain yogurt
• 1/2 cup fresh or frozen blueberries
• 1 small banana frozen, peeled, cubed
• 1 tablespoon chia seeds

Directions:
Combine in a blender and blend until smooth.

Cozy up this weekend with some good reads

Kit, an ER doctor in California, sees her sister Josie on the TV news from Auckland, New Zealand, where a club has caught fire. So? Her sister has been dead for fifteen years! (Great set-up to hook the reader.) Kit, emotionally torn from the sense of grief, loss, and anger, decides she must go to New Zealand and find/confront her sister. After arriving in New Zealand, Kit begins to live out her past (through flashbacks): days on the beach with her sister, surfing, a lost teenage boy unofficially adopted by the family, a father and mother with such a turbulent marriage that they ignore their children, and a “trauma that has haunted Kit and Josie their entire lives.” You also get to experience the same backstory from Josie as she lives a new life as Mari, fifteen years after she was supposedly killed in a terrorist bombing in Europe. 

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I was excited to see this book out after enjoying "The Book Woman." The story is interesting and informative shedding light on society and the injustice for women or anyone who was considered different in the 1950s. I had never heard of methemoglobinemia and the Blue People of Kentucky until I read the first book. 

Honey Lovett is the daughter of the famed blue-skinned Troublesome Creek Packhorse Librarian. Her adoptive parents have just been arrested and hauled off to jail for violating miscegenation laws leaving sixteen-year-old honey on her own. The state won’t view her as an adult until she turns eighteen and a virulent state social worker is determined to see an also blue skin-tinged Honey sent to a reform school.
Luckily Honey’s parents have lawyers and have made provisions for this by selecting a guardian to look after her. Unfortunately despite that, Honey soon finds herself alone and scrambling for gainful employment as well as ducking from the social worker and an enraged coal mining, wife-beating husband. The question remains can she continue in her mother’s tradition of bringing books to people starved for them while trying to earn her freedom?

I enjoyed this fun coffee sign 

HAPPY WEEKEND