dedication Archives - Health Pulse

What’s For Dinner?

Posted on February 13, 2014February 13, 2014 by Shelli Thompson

images-3 In our fast paced world with all of the conveniences at our fingertips it’s hard to imagine having enough time to actually cook a nutritious meal that doesn’t have some ingredient that is processed. Many recipe’s today include opening a can of this or a box of that. I may be a cooking snob but when I see these things I usually discard the recipe unless I can make the ingredient fresh.

The media helps us in this thinking that we need nothing but convenience when it comes to our meals. I love the Olympics so I dusted off the TV and turned it on and really enjoyed the stories of the athletes and their competitions. What I didn’t enjoy is the bombardment of the media and their convenience foods. The Mom talking about how “toasted” she is at the end of the day so she stops by KFC and gets her family a meal.

I was thinking now she isn’t only toasted she’s fried too!!

With a little bit of planning it is not difficult to cook healthy meals with nutritious single ingredient simple foods. The best place to start is on the weekend, this is a great time to plan the weeks meals and strategize about how to make it more simple and convenient. Planning ahead will guarantee you will have all ingredients at hand and any prepping can be done ahead of time.

Todays meal is Cajun Chicken Gumbo so I planned ahead.
This take about 7 hours to cook in a slow cooker so the best part about it is that you put everything together and leave it. When you get home, dinner is cooked.

Last night because we had a planned out meal it was simple to chop up the onions, peppers, celery and garlic and seal it up in the fridge. Then this morning I took 15 minutes to make my roux and cook my sausage at the same time and drain. A small amount of Italian sausage is the only processed item in this recipe, Gumbo just isn’t the same without it. When it is pre-cooked and drained it is much healthier than cooking it in the gumbo like most recipe’s call for.

Another thing that I do for convenience is that I can organic chicken breast meat in jars. It is amazing for quick meals where chicken is called for. I only use it if time is an issue or there is no chicken on hand, it is an amazing time saver. I will go through the steps for you so you can learn how to can your own chicken in an upcoming blog but for now lets stick to the gumbo.

Shelli’s Cajun Chicken Sausage Gumbo:

1/3 cup Flour
1/3 cup Canola oil/ cooking oil
3 cup Water
12 OZ Cooked Italian Sausage
1 1/2 cup Cooked Shredded Chicken
1 cup Onion chopped
3/4 cup Sweet Green Pepper chopped
1/2 cup Celery chopped
6 cloves Garlic minced
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Black pepper
1/2 tsp crushed red peppers
3 cups cooked rice

Prep time 30 minutes
Cook time 7 hours

To make roux: combine oil and flour in pan, cook on medium heat for about 15 minutes stirring constantly until it is a rich dark reddish brown color like the photo, set aside and let it cool (hint: take if off the heat before it is to the finish point and it will finish as the pan cools, make sure and stir it occasionally)
Cook and drain the sausage and cook and shred the chicken (or open a jar of home canned chicken)
Chop all vegetables.
Add 3 cups of water to a pan, add the roux, it will look like the photo

Add the sausage, chicken and vegetables and let it simmer all day.
When you get home it will be done. Serve over rice. it’s delicious!

Because dinner was so easy tonight, you can plan for tomorrows meal and prepare anything that needs to be chopped ahead of time.

A great hint if you don’t have a timer on your crock pot is to buy one for the wall and plug the crock pot into that, set the time for 7 hours and head off to work.

There is no substitute for fresh locally grown food that is cooked freshly delicious.

Bon Appetite!

Practitioners Year Part 1

Posted on May 16, 2012May 16, 2012 by Shelli Thompson

WHEW!

Naturally everyone can relate to feeling a bit behind right? I have to say that’s a feeling that I am not used to at all. I am a list maker a scheduler, you know the sort of person, everyone does. Sometimes they make you sick with their organization……I admit it, I am one of these types.

I am that way in everything I do. School is no exception, the exception to that seems to be this year. Did I plan? Yes actually I did. So how did it happen? How did I manage to get behind in the very first Month of school……Honestly!!

It’s all about learning something new and for me it is more than just a few things. Number one is the new and very Awesome E-learning system we have in place this year, that I really didn’t explore as much as I thought I did.

Please refrain from laughing here……I logged onto the sight and found my class. In addition to classes on Tuesday and Thursday night that are live, we have a number of videos to watch. I could see the number of videos and it APPEARED to be 10 videos. Appear is the optimum word here because there were 4 sections of videos so I didn’t have 10 videos to watch, I had 40. YIKES!

Lesson number one: Fully Investigate anything new on the learning sight….Very Important.

I hope you are still not laughing because after this next statement you are going to think, “wow, how anal can someone be?” Honestly I had to work hard, and watch hours of video in a sitting to feel semi-caught up. Here’s the deal, I have never worked from a position of being behind, due to my list-making and scheduling, I am absolutely positive I do NOT like it.

Lesson number two: I do NOT like being behind, I know because I just seen me do it.

Okay all humor aside, seriously I have found out what my mental strength is all about. I could have cracked and quite frankly I may have done that last year when I found out the immensity of my mistake. Instead I pulled my boots up by the boot straps and did what I needed to do to get the job done.

I have a new schedule now. One that keeps the whip snapping and gets me closer to being where I want to be. Is it on the calendar? YOU BET! Do I have a list of the things that I need to do to get it done? Right in front of My face at all times.

Am I kicking my own ASS over the mistake I made…..HELL NO! Moving on.

So we continue on the journey of wellness in a world full of illness, with a group of individuals that are just as passionate about healing the world as I am.

I am truly blessed!

Now Thats A Stretch!

Posted on August 24, 2010 by Shelli Thompson

Downward Dog is a Great Stretch

That your doctor will tell you before you get stiff and can’t touch your toes that you need to keep your flexibility as you age in order to lead a healthy life is a real stretch. If your doctor told you before it was almost too late it would be really helpful.

I taught fitness classes for 25 years of varying nature. I taught from age 2 1/2 all the way to 90 years old and one thing I always did was talk about the importance of flexibility.

Many people would ask my advist after their doctor told them that they need to work on flexibility with different stretches. Many of those students could only reach about mid shin when they reached for the floor.

I saw tremendous improvement in many students after attending Yoga and classes specifically designed for stretching and addressing stiffness that comes with age.

Why is this so important?

You see, we only have 4 types of tissues in our bodies. These tissues are made up of cells with the intelligence to know what they are needed for.

Within each type of tissue there are different uses for instance Epithelium is our skin and it has different functions such as protecting us from the outside world, it absorbs in the stomach and intestinal lining, it filters in the kidneys and it secretes from glands.

So let’s look at Muscle tissue and the different functions it performs.

Muscles are responsible for body movement, muscles move blood, food, and waste through the body’s organs and it is also responsible for mechanical digestion.

If you notice Muscles are responsible for moving blood and blood runs through veins. The walls of your veins have the same type of tissue that your muscles are made up of.

What we all need to understand is that when you have a tissue type in the body that is affected in a negative way all of the tissue that is similar in nature will have a similar problem. If muscles get stiff all of the tissue that has the same make up will be affected.

So if we have the same tissue responsible for our muscles and our veins, what do you suppose will happen to your veins when your muscles get stiff and inflexible?

I think you got that right, your veins become stiff and hard, allowing for the sticky, gunky build up known as plaque and also allows cholesterol to block the veins due to their lack of flexibility. The real danger though is the build up of plaque. This Plaque can break free from the walls of your veins and arteries and actually cause blockage. Depending on where the blockage is it can lead to a heart attack or a stroke.

Do we want to wait until we are all stiff and “stoved” up before we start to work on our flexibility? Certainly not and the reason for that is it can be a long road back to having some semblance of flexibility if you have lost it at an older age.

Chances are you won’t get it back completely but there is definitely a chance of that happening with perseverance and determination and the really important ingredient would be dedication.

Don’t let you muscles get stiff, make sure and stretch morning and evening and you will never be sorry you took the 10 minutes to get it done, it is an investment in your future.

Make sure and join Health Pulse Magazine and they explore stretching and lengthening all of the muscles in the body in their special series, “That’s a Stretch” coming soon.

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