Anti-Inflammatory Recipes Archives - Page 13 of 15

Breakfast Quinoa Recipes, Homemade Granolas, and Oatmeal Ideas

Let’s see… does this describe you? You wake up and you want to eat something, but you crave something different than what you had for breakfast yesterday. (That’s a sign you could be a natural Vata). Why not try quinoa recipes for a morning cereal bowl that healthy eaters are raving about?

Btw, it’s OK to feel like you’re in a food rut, seeking food variety and abandoning old ways. That’s actually a healthy natural selection way for your body to get different nutrients and as nutrition information evolves.

Cereal used to be the most popular way to start your day, with a nutrition label full of vitamins and minerals. But then the healthy truth came out and went south when you learned that the source was fortified, (nutrients were added), or enriched (nutrients removed and added back). You see preservatives like BHT on the list of ingredients when they could (and you can) do without.

Our childhood favorites that end in “O” (maybe for “oh-no!) have been called out for having Roundup weedkiller ingredients. Even if it’s small traces, you don’t want your food near pesticides that aren’t natural foods you pick off the land, ya know what I mean? So what’s a girl to do? Like most, we grow up and tweak our diets to match a healthier lifestyle?

Other-once childhood favorites like a tart popped from the toaster are no longer appealing to a healthy adult. The nutrition label can make your eyes pop out of your head with high sugar, low fiber, etc… (you might as well go for a bakery creme-filled donut or chocolate croissant).

For our daily breakfasts, we love our fast favorite cereals and breakfast sweets, but we can love our health more.

Well… when you put it that way…

That’s not a pick-me-up way (and not my usual Enneagram 7 enthusiasm). It actually sounds a bit like wah-wah-wah, but wait… there’s a new wah in Keen-wah (quinoa)… a much better alternative to get excited about. Now, that’s what I’m talking about! And, my favorite easy, quinoa recipes are below.

Another favorite is old-fashioned or slow-cooked oatmeal (whole grain rolled oats) that’s a particularly great morning warm meal for natural Vatas who love to multitask while getting food in the morning body. It’s a good morning bowl because it doesn’t get soggy (it’s already mushy!). And it’s fast to make so it’s no bother if your brain hasn’t caught up with your stomach needs before you’ve had any caffeine. You just need a little hot water.

For slow-rising Kapha energy, warm oatmeal could also be the simple meal that works. While healthy Pittas love to eat and go! and love foods that cool their bodies down. A meal with milk or a dairy alternative is perfect like cereal or a morning healthy goodness smoothie.

Because I mentioned how finding healthy store-bought cereals that you like can be tricky, making your own homemade granola cereal (crunchy) or oatmeal (soft and warm) from whole-grained rolled oats is an easy alternative. It’s tasty and takes very little time.

And you can pre-make healthy granola cereal as an extra time-saver. The only sweet ingredient is a small amount of high quality or local honey (to act as the glue) and optionally add in your favorite dried fruit and nuts, such as almonds and raisins as the healthier choices.

If you want a crunchier granola cereal, then use less honey, and bake in higher oven temperatures for a shorter amount of time, making sure to watch your batch so they don’t burn.

Quick funny story… or at least it was entertaining to me. Long before I worked in hotel catering, I worked in the kitchen of an upscale Italian restaurant where I did food prep. One salad task I had was to prepare and bake pine nuts. I remember they were extremely temperature and time-baking-sensitive. If you didn’t stand there and watch the oven, the pine nuts would go from unbaked to burnt in the blink-of-an-eye. That happened more than once, but I got smart and learned to stay mindful on my task.

[OK…anyway, where was I? 😊]…

Granola is a little more forgiving, but every oven is a little different and depending on where in your oven you set your sheet pan. I take my Silpat off so that I can get crunchier granola (but that’s just preference). In baking, slight altitude and temperature changes outside, affect indoor baking conditions.

Another alternative and my favorite and maybe yours too (or could be yours), is the breakfast quinoa bowl. I promised some quinoa recipes (they’re further below).

When I was growing up, we didn’t know quinoa existed. Before then as far as I can remember, cous cous was the exotic and chic healthy norm alternative to pasta or rice before superfood quinoa came along.

Quinoa is actually mistaken as a grain, and even set in the grain aisle in the grocery store. It’s acually the fruit part of a dried herb (but it looks and cooks like a grain so it’s treated like one).

You know that saying, if it looks and acts like a duck, then it’s a duck.

Anyway, now we’re all fully quinoa aware.

We add healthy grains to our lunch and dinner salads like dry dressing. For breakfast ideas, have you tried or thought about adding breakfast quinoa recipes as the new cereal or oatmeal?

I did and that really spruced up my healthy morning breakfast options. You may also love (or grow to like) the quinoa-forward trend for starting your day right. ♥
Continue reading “Breakfast Quinoa Recipes, Homemade Granolas, and Oatmeal Ideas”

Summer Mediterranean Recipes + Faves from Foodie Restaurants

Off and on with my 20-year hospitality career, I worked behind-the-scenes in catering planning and event execution for Spanish, Italian, and Lebanese restaurants and fine hotels in the Washington, DC area — a top foodie hub. During that time, I picked up many great summer Mediterranean recipes and experimented with my own.

Some of my fondest memories were the large corporate and bridal events where I could get creative with the festive food and elaborate decorations.

From those experiences, I learned to create balanced menus for preferred and customized tastes around the specific seasons and events.

I’ve taste-tested delicious foods, recipes, and dishes from the chefs I worked with who came from around the world.

Some of my favorite summer Mediterranean recipes(great for warm seasons!) that I’ve added my take and twists to, are below:

Continue reading “Summer Mediterranean Recipes + Faves from Foodie Restaurants”

Mental Health Awareness Month For Your Wellness

Trees in May bloom can be a mental health awareness month reminder.

Mental Health Awareness Month is in May. But every day is an opportunity for wellness and mental health awareness for everyday people.

Mental health disorders and anxiety run rampant for people in our lives. In keeping wellness up, we can only do our part and be supportive of others and ensuring our own mental health is in order.

Mental Health Awareness Month is one of the several recognized events throughout the year to keep a reminder going.

And we can all check in on how we’re doing these days.

And others have strayed away from natural growth and becoming better and healthier, into less productive habits that lead to their self-inflicted destructive behavior patterns.

In some cases, this has led to a growing anxiety medication epidemic crisis in America. Too many people are taking them willingly like popping candy without questioning their doctor’s recommendation, and for longer than prescribed.

In college when I didn’t know any better, I took OTC sleeping pills for a semester. When I got off of them, I felt like I was drowning.

That was the wake up call that was needed to get me up and out of looking for a med crutch, when there is a choice to self-medicate and seek inner peace.

We’re all here to evolve and get better, but that’s up to each of us.

And some of the best remedies any of us can apply in Mental Health Awareness Month is wellness practices.

This can be in yoga, meditation, nature walks, and all of the above. Wellness and self-care is the best mind-body answer.

You’re the only one who can choose and do your better life. So for Mental Health Awareness Month (with emphasis on awareness), these are some ideas that you can implement for your healthy wellness lifestyle changes:

Healthy Wellness Lifestyle Changes You Can Make (For Mental Health Awareness Month)

And in your practice, you can get to the root of discovering the healthy you!

Through mind-body connection, maintaining both mental and physical health plays a big role.

When you’re aware that the mind-body directly communicate with each other, you can make positive changes to your life.

Let’s look at mental health (mind) and physical health (body) that we can influence in our wellness.

For physical health changes:

Many recurring or chronic flare-ups don’t have to be a regular or seasonal occurrence when you know the source.

With many interruptive symptoms, you can avoid them with better lifestyle choices and making healthy changes like having less stress in your life or purging past memory baggage.

And removing post-trauma that can stay invisible to you today, and be a part of your everyday.

And general symptoms such as eczema, acne, acid reflux, other GI tract, IBS issues, or sinus infections are preventable.

If you make a simple lifestyle adjustment, you can live more enjoyably, and prevent bothersome symptoms that can otherwise leave you worried, stressed, or moody.

Let me show you how simple these lifestyle changes can be.

Eczema – too much sugar can trigger eczema and food allergies, so finding alternatives. When you don’t eat sugar over time, your cravings can disappear as your tastes change. So slowly removing refined sugar and eating plant-based including fruits is a solution.

Acid reflux – a diet such with highly acidic foods and beverages, and wrong combinations of food eaten together can exacerbate. Using ACV with “the mother” as a food as medicine ingredient in your daily or weekly plan could benefit you. And changing up your meals as most of us eat the same categories of food. Adding more alkaline foods can do you good. For example, if we eat cheese, we tend to eat more than we need. Or we lean into tomato sauces when we could alternate with a butternut squash or other healthy alternative.

Sinus infections – we can’t do anything about the air we breathe in around us, but we can use a neti pot to clean out our nasal passages regularly to prevent sinus infections.

The preventative neti pot me saved me, a person who had experienced back to back sinus infections from a work environment that had mold behind the modern-built walls.

And like a magic potion (there’s no magic!), the prevention prescription for these annoying symptoms can be natural. If we can prevent ailments and nip-them-in-the-bud before they grow, then we don’t have to take medicine that hurts our microbiome.

Some of these “grandmother” and “old world” ways that are Ayurvedic ways, come from generations before us where modern medicine didn’t exist and the people then were able to live longer than they would have because they found natural solutions, like these:

A low sugar and balanced diet, apple cider vinegar, and sinus cleansing (neti pot). Those are pretty easy healthy fixes compared to the physical symptoms.

These changes are all healthy and easy to implement with a desire to change small habits.

We can pick up habits easily and unaware we don’t notice what we’re consuming, doing, or not doing. Being sensitive to our body’s “calling out” through imbalanced body symptoms can wake up our awareness.

For happiness-sadness mood swings:

Taking supplements such as the correct amount of daily Vitamin D3 can change your daily happiness.

Had I known this back when I was a teenager and young adult, my SAD (seasonal affective disorder) mood that came up every February (when naturally Vitamin D sunlight was far less) could have been better or non-existent if I took the right amount of Vit D. Proper vitamin and mineral nutrients are essential where some are daily critical.

And getting enough tryptophan from foods helps with your serotonin “happy hormones” where 90% is produced in your gut.

In our wellness age, we’re learning that a healthy gut is a happy life.

And finally taking the right amount of magnesium that most people don’t usually get enough of absorbed into their system or in their diet, can be helpful to relax a stressed, anxious, or worried mind-body.

For mental health disorders:

Feeling anxious, severe Impostor Syndrome, or prolonged depression can often be naturally altered. For those who are born healthy, we learn behaviors that if kept unaware to us, can turn into mental health disorders that affect daily life.

Getting your heart rate up in exercise, taking a shower, or getting outside to take a walk and appreciating those moments where you can see nature can help you stop wanting what you can’t have right now.

Our brains can be our worst enemies or best friends. You choose. Exercise ignites happy chemicals in your brain.

Your ego may influence you to overindulge or overinflate (e.g. overinflated ego). Be aware. And walk away from those thoughts with a nature walk or doing yoga.

Challenge your thoughts. They don’t always help so tell the ones that are not helpful, to take a hike! And you take your healthy hike outdoors. 😊

Walking away is better as there’s nothing more dangerous than an ego that’s unleashing thoughts affecting your counterproductive behavior. Catch your ego in the act in observation. And do the opposite. Find the loving and productive thoughts.

And one thought change at a time, changes your mind’s perspectives where you develop your happy, loving, and healthy mind for life.

If you have a situation or trial, find a positive to be gained. There is one if you look hard enough. On the other side of the rainbow, you will gain patience, resilience, self-control, and other traits that you couldn’t have learned otherwise or through other people’s lessons.

If you feel stuck in your current situation, you can try to come up with one step you could take today to change or start exploring a new direction?

In the beginning, a baby step is all it takes. Getting to the shower or your yoga mat even when you don’t feel like it. Do it anyway. And afterwards, you’ll feel much better.

And then you will have trained your mind to “just do it anyway” because it works! And the brain loves when it works, because that’s a sign of accomplishment and success.

Peace and wellness be with you.

A healthy wild cod with Vitamin D with a “3 Sisters” plant-based accompaniment is a good source of Vitamin A, K, protein, and fiber. Drizzle with a little extra virgin olive oil and the fat-soluble vitamins will absorb better.

Butternut Squash Three Sisters Fish Tacos

Pairing a 3 Sisters dish with fish tacos is a healthy dish.

Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Ingredients

Butternut squash
Black beans, canned
Corn, canned
Fish
Basil
Olive oil

Instructions

Cook your butternut squash until soft, then cut in half.
Cook until you can scoop out the squash.
Add the corn and beans drained from cans.
Cook fish and make salsa verde (basil and olive oil) or pesto (basil, olive oil, pine nuts).

Fear and Phobia Is Not Permanent

fear and phobia

When I was younger I wore contact lenses. For the first few weeks, I had a subconscious fear and phobia, and I struggled to get the soft contact on my eyeball.

When I would try, my eye would blink and my eyelashes would keep the contact out of my eye.

No-contact was what I should have called the daily event that seemed like taking half an hour every day.

Years later, I realized that the reason I couldn’t get the contacts in my eyes was that I had a subconscious fear of the contact (lens) making contact with my eye.

So the blinking was not controlled by me but a body reaction to what my mind was telling my eye (mind-body connection in full swing).

From this puzzling event, I recalled that years before as a child, my eyes would sting when I tried to open them in the pool water.

Some kids could open their eyes completely underwater (I noticed with my underwater goggled protected eyes wide open).

A-ha!… with that, I made the connection to my fear… the goggles acted as eye protection and a contact lens was an intruder like the chlorinated pool water, at least in my subconscious mind (that does most of the thinking).

Knowing that insight, allowed problem-solving consciousness to emerge.

With daily practice, I consistently calmed my mind disabling my protective shell in my brain and re-writing the new story narrative to my fear and phobia that had the bold headline: “contacts are safe.”

Then that mind message was reinforced daily as I went to a 20/20 daily vision world from a framed eyeglass world.

Those subconscious positive reinforcing thoughts cut down the time to insert a contact within seconds.

Wouldn’t that be great if we could reprogram our negative thinking minds in nanoseconds?

Making visible, hidden fears through your actions

Inserting contact lenses can be a frustrating experience for many in the beginning (like it was for me).

Similarly, for so many other starting out defeats, a hidden fear or phobia can be preventing the outcome from happening.

There’s a deeper root cause for your fears.

When you can find the reasons and ways to reprogram your subconscious mind, then you can get over your fear and phobia.

Insecurity is one of those subconscious fears that can show up regularly with a knee-jerk reaction from a fear-based thought.

Another is jealousy or criticism especially if you’ve been wounded or have reason to doubt.

And these get worse if you’re Vata imbalanced. If you’re naturally Vata dominant, anxiety is your natural way that can trigger fear.

Any non-loving thought is fear-based because it comes from the brain’s ego, and if left unattended, can spin wildly out of control.

We can rewrite those subconscious fear thoughts and shadow work can be the way.

Also, others can notice from the words, actions, and reactions that happen, but the person with the ego is often blind…

It’s natural and invisible to the person unless they witness and catch the self-defeating and manipulating thoughts.

So that’s why we all have to be careful and stay aware of our own egos.

At any weak moment, a humble spirit can turn into a prideful act.

The simple act of someone cutting you off on the road can change your calm state to a riled-up one. And that can show up in a myriad of undesirable outward expressions that are unhelpful to everyone involved.

Getting off your chest is healthy and productive after you have a chance to cool down in self-control and you have calmly thought about potential solutions.

Then when you are tested, or you’re cut off the road, you get to decide which road to take.

Choosing the higher road means letting go and that can seem weak to the ego-mind, but self-control is empowered strength.

If you’re conflicted or when you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything yet. Review so you can learn and have discernment next time.

Remember that tidbit of wisdom next time when you hesitate.

Because you can be certain you will be reminded again until the lesson is learned. Life is patient with us.

How To Change Your Deep Rooted Fear and Phobia

Fear and phobia is rooted in the small places we can operate from in limitation and sometimes ugliness.

We all can act saintly-kind if we choose, and the act allows good sides to birth. Love serves all.

With practice over time, ideally, we can even learn to let undesired “meant to protect you” entering thoughts just pass through without putting energy into them.

We don’t have to accept our thoughts as current truth such as an isolated traumatic experience.

We can just reject those non-helpful thoughts that don’t apply to our current situation and send them back to where they came from.

And we can connect the dots to our self-awareness for the next time. We can recognize our self-destructive patterns and question them.

Because when you realize and accept every thought isn’t yours, that’s when you can learn how to optimize and transform your life if you decide.

Maybe you do realize, but you haven’t accepted yet. Because to accept means you give up a part of your control.

Say Goodbye to Your Past Fear and Phobia!

Before my younger contact lens years, I had fear and phobia about the dark, lightning, thunder, and the deep waters just to name a few things.

They came from news stories I heard, scary movies I watched, and almost physically drowning in my backyard lake at 9 years old.

But first I had to get calm and lose the worry.

I conquered the drowning fear eventually by learning how to swim.

When you lose your deep fear, any surface panicking fear and phobia, you can learn to float as you become light and buoyant. And if you can float either on your back or your front, you can learn to swim and save yourself.

That summer I was able to enroll in swim lessons but didn’t successfully learn how to float.

Then one day I was in the shallow end of a neighborhood pool, and I was calm and tried to float. Something clicked and I learned how to float on my belly and my back in the pool water.

It wasn’t pretty as I just laid there like a piece of driftwood letting my feet slowly float from the bottom of the pool.

But that day gave me confidence as I repeated floating again and again until I unintentionally could convince and remind myself (and my mind) that I knew how to float.

Fast forward to my young adulthood… most of my childhood phobias had disappeared or I had learned to swim out of them.

I still had fear and worry about so many real-life situations.

One was I had learned to grow scared of sharing.

I didn’t grow in share vulnerability times so that re-enforced my being a private person.

Writing blog posts like this and sharing on the internet was not something I would have ever done back then.

But instead of letting the fear get to me and grow in me, I slowly one-small step at a time turned those moves into action and transformation.

Since I faced my fear, I got over the hump to the other side and then I could replace my old fears.

But I learned to lean on faith to gradually change my Vata ways and worried thinking.

When I had the realization opportunity to cross the bridge into knowing there’s a divine source inside you decades later, there was an exchange into believing in more than my ability only.

There was new weightlessness like the thick clouds had lifted. I wasn’t the sole source for my success and I stopped believing in luck as coincidence without meaning.

I became a Believer that applied deeper insight to life, which did the heavy lifting to transform fear. In faith you know there’s another better life coming.

…What if this life were just a test?

And if you’re still wondering what this life is about, testing the waters in your quiet, thoughtful life is a good way to discover. What if there was more, and you were missing out?

This is an individual question, but when you seek, you will find.

“You become what you think about all day long.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

How Faith Can Play a Solution Role

To take one step further, gaining faith can transform your beliefs and mental health, and especially if you have an anxiety disorder or a traumatic stress disorder.

When you believe that all things are possible in a larger context, then you can believe that fear is beyond you and your power.

Fear can feel like an uncontrollable problem. If you can problem-solve with from within then you have a powerful way.

Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking was a classic book published in the 1950s.

He was a motivational thinker so ahead of his time because he was already suggesting meditation and mind-body correlation in his works.

There’s a 10-step practical process in the book’s chapter “Power to Solve Personal Problems.”

It includes: believe for every problem there is an answer, pray about your problems, trust in your insight and intuition, and do creative spiritual thinking for amazing power answers.

If Mr. Peale were still alive today, he would be a great forward-thinking influencer with much to say.

Heart and Soul Centering To Live Your Best Life Now!

Heart and soul is a part of our bodies that we can’t see, but we can feel daily. Pizza is heart and soul food (recipe below for making a heart shaped pizza 🧡).

This sky painting over the water is heart and soul spirit in one. A daily heart and soul-centering check-in can change your life! You could be an old soul or have an old soul like some of us who remember young life before the internet.

…I remember when I first started out working and ambitiously I thought I wanted to climb the corporate ladder. It didn’t take many years before I shifted my priority to wanting better work-life balance.

And with those intentions, I career pivoted that gave me that outcome. But had I not picked my head up to see what my heart and soul was telling me (and now I know my spirit was helping me), I would’ve missed the message about finding time to work on me. Personal growth was something I had to go outside of work to find in volunteering and discovering myself.

It’s never too early to start checking in. Maybe now is a good time to set this priority in your life as you had to rethink parts of your life in 2020, along with everyone else (so you’re in good company!).

There were many external changes made affecting your life, that you had no control over, and may help you later on in ways you may not see how yet at this moment.

So for now, you can just keep going, growing, and focusing on creating the best that your life offers in abundant possibilities that you put intention to until the next step. There’s always a next step when the timing is right.

It’s better to think this optimistic way and joyfully pivot into your forming newer overall life, including work, relationships, passion, and purpose, so you can enjoy the process with greater ease (and not create unnecessary dis-ease or woes-me feelings).

That doesn’t mean you don’t have varying feelings with so many gray areas and small decisions you need to make, but that you’re finding your happier way now in the process (and possibly then seeing through a different lens than the one you may have been previously looking from).

I provide a lasting impactful way to do a heart and soul check-in, further below. ⬇️

Encouragement: Our Society, You, and Your Gained Ideas

In America, convenience is at our fingertips, and many of us started last year to positively lean into our interests, curiosities, and skills development.

You may have learned how to grocery shop differently, cook meals, bake your own bread, and learn new digital skills as a way to communicate with the rest of our virtual world and the local community.

You picked up other life skills that everyone needs so you could stay relevant.

You may have even discovered or rediscovered a few passions and hobbies, and read more books than you sought out originally to do. Those were some of the common gains for many of us.

All was not lost in our home life, and more has been gained (and is being gained) in our overall lives if we choose to focus on the higher lens way of living.

It’s helpful for you to reflect and personally remind yourself of the progress over perfection you’ve made, so you can stay feeling uplifted in your spirit. It’s too easy to get sourly influenced in our culture.

You can be less on guard, open up to your authentic self and reap the benefits in a new era where we’re all finding our way in many ways.

Over the past year especially, you may have changed some lifestyle habits or behaviors that you like, that work better, and that you decide to keep forever.

And you may have gained clarity about what you want in the next chapter of your life. Even though you wouldn’t have done this if you weren’t challenged to do so. But you can use your situation to your good advantage!

You may even have found the better way, and experienced that good changes in your life can show up as a combination of thinking, doing, and feeling what is right for you. You get internal clues and they can help you find your second or next act.

If you took or take your connect-the-dot lessons one step further, you can reflect on how you felt about what you first thought about specific ideas. You can then take another brave leap of action so you can try and replicate best practices and discover even more new ways, as our world is evolving. This creates innovation and gives you a better way of doing things.

For example, you’re inspired to try a new recipe and that seemed to work out and made you happy, so the next time you tweak the recipe and create something new and different that you enjoy. This works the same with a new workout, new route, or a new passion project you’re developing. Variety and innovation keep you making progress!

And that’s how personal growth attitudes and creative progress are fed and can seep into every fiber of your life if you’re open to new ways and ideas.

New ideas can take time to form in the process and as you start dabbling with curiosity, you can become less intimidated to make mistakes. That’s how you grow and learn.

In this forming introspective way of life, you can also dig deeper into yourself to find what gives you more meaning and joy than what you previously found made you happy, as you become more of who you are and will become.

You can also reach higher levels of contentment and then feel fewer emotional ups and downs.

Many positive changes can be happening all at once in this complex life, with yourself and your life.

You may have even re-thought your life’s retirement plans and this year’s optimistic and realistic plans. And you’ve probably learned to be more grounded in reality and to get back to simple basics, focusing on what actually is happening to you and around you.

As a global society, we’re still not able to freely travel and create safe, live events. From these changes, new ways have been born and are birthing, such as the newer apps where you’re entering live global event conversations safely and without travel hassles.

You could use the saved travel time and energy to work on your life, to double down on a new purposeful trajectory, or seek a new mission in your life.

Just one idea can change your life and if you have an extra few minutes, that could be the difference-maker in your life.

So where would you spend those extra minutes? Here’s what I do and what I suggest.

Prioritize a Daily Heart and Soul Check-in

Especially as we’re all distracted, prioritizing a heart and soul check-in can be the best way to (re)focus on your life.

Below you can be reminded or learn to take a specific step for long-term impact and to find your daily heart and soul-filled joy, peace, and balance. Continue reading “Heart and Soul Centering To Live Your Best Life Now!”