Cranberry juice is one powerful antioxidant drink that’s good to keep in your food-as-medicine kitchen cabinet. It’s a festive, easy drink to serve up to your dry and under age guests that wins health points for all.
Cranberries have stood the test of time over centuries like many healthy, plant-based foods. That helped people survive.
The fruits were originally named crane-berry because it was a popular food for cranes, as in birds. Machines 🏗️ aren’t drinking or eating yet.
…Also, wouldn’t it be fun to name fruits because many are still being discovered in our New World? 💭 I remember when elderberries came on the scene as good for cold immunity… I feel like an elder berry. 😊
These days, we share these same foraged foods with other small wildlife creatures like squirrels, deers, and other birds. 🐿️🦌
And humans turn this cranberry fruit (that’s not a berry) into a drink for good reason.
For one, cranberry juice is known to be good for preventing urinary tract infections, even though it hasn’t been made fact.
But preventing infections mean less antibiotics in your body that always helps gut health. The rise of antibiotic resistance and contaminated meat is costing over $2 billion annual in the U.S., so it’s worth believing cranberry as preventative medicine.
Pure 100% juice version is the one to source and buy. 💯 without added sugars like the common cranberry cocktail version you find in convenience stores. Buy it when you’re inconveniently in the big grocery stores with a cart and the juice will last long after opened.
It’s one healthy holiday tradition that you can stand by…
And on-travel, ordering a cran-apple juice on the airplane can be a good next-to-water hydrating drink with vitamins and minerals.
At home, besides as a glass of cranberry juice, you can make a cranberry tea… either iced for warmer months or warmed tea for colder or transitional months.
And the way to keep this a low-sugar, healthy beverage is to change the taste. 100% cranberry juice is tart, so adding other natural flavors will enhance the tartness and make it exciting. ♥️
For warm tea, use dried fruits, flowers, and spices to naturally spice-up the tea, like these pairings:
-Hibiscus & rose hips
-Elderflower
-Raspberry
-Apple
-Orange Peels
-Ginger
-Cinnamon
Use a strainer for the dried bits, and if they’re finely ground, you can use a paper coffee filter that you can cut down to the right size for your strainer.
I actually like when a few tea leaves seep through as it keeps the tea homemade and rustic feeling. Turn on the moody jams and you have an enjoyable break. 🎶
But that’s a nice choice you get to make in the moment…
And at the end, zhughing with some ruby red fruits like cranberries and pomegranates sinking to the bottom make it a bottomless tea party!
In my drinks, you can even find some shredded coconut streamers or rosemary spikes, and a ‘pick of cranberries for tasty interest.
Those details come naturally from my event and party planner days where it’s all about the special zhugh. This one is good for the heart.🫀
For an iced tea version, use fresh fruits, flowers, lemon… and omit the spices.
You can also use your cranberry juice tea to make other wild fresh drinks or mocktails…
You can add cranberry seltzer water to make a big fizzy punch that’s a pink champagne color and bring up happy spirits! 🎉
Mindfulness brings in happiness because in the present head space, you have the chance to let it go and bring in light.
As a visual, walking down this art deco outlined carpet can be the amount of time needed for loving mindfulness.
You have the now space to make the better choice.
You can count 1-Mississippi as a mind gap or mind the gap that is popular from the London tube words.
It’s as simple and complicated as that.
In the mindfulness space, you get to choose your positive or negative thoughts and responses despite your initial thoughts.
Thoughts are betternegotiated if you want your best outcomes.
Plus, practicing being mindful is an opportunity to grow.
And as an easy test, you’re in the now if you understand these words.
Whether you’re here or not 😁, good mindfulness lessons (especially for love relationships) can be learned from an entertaining reality relationship show like Love Is Blind. 📺 👩❤️👨
Have you seen the worldly Netflix series? 🌎
The premise of the show is that you can fall in love on a blind date (potential partner unseen) behind the pod walls.
The goal: to find your person and get married at the end.
But the healthy spiritual growth way to look at it is that you come out a better person no matter what happens. Because not all relationships are meant to turn into marriage as a sign of success.
…You can come out with new friends of both sexes, learn more about yourself, and grow up in the process. 🎉
The latest season was in the DC metro backdrop where I spent most of my years… and is always in the news especially these days.
…And not for mindfulness reasons.
In the LIB love reality show microcosm, you see the raw moments that aren’t edited.
Where blindspots are made transparent…
And it’s easier to learn from others watching on the sidelines.
When tested in our own relationship situations… that’s where the rubber meets the road. 🏎️ 🛣️
But more knowledge leads to better self-awareness, and these are some gleaning points that can help you…
In Love Is Blind DC, the couples embark on the engagement journey that ranges from loving couple selfie-video filming to fiery heated disagreements. 🔥
...Ugh, that’s how the show can be renamed “Ego Is Blind.”
And in those difficult moments, we see what’s going on behind-the-scenes…
A beautiful budding relationship unravels and goes reality life awry.
Not the couples’ faults… learning about ego devise is something that takes time to learn (if caught on and learned).
Egos (not eagles 🦅) invisibly soar and hover over us and are more magnified in relationships. 🔎
💡 And that’s the main issue in every relationship issue.
…Did you catch that?
The masks are unveiled, gloves come off, and differences are an ego mind playground to create more divide.
Since the LIB participants are 20 and early 30-something young adults, they don’t have the same experiences they’ll have in 10 or more added years as mature adults. That’s just a fact of life.
You trade in youth for wisdom if you’re on the growth track. 📈
And in the episodes we can see that theydon’t know what they don’t know that lessons-learned experiences could provide. We’re all in that boat for one area or another.
In relationships, couple happiness comes from letting go of the petty stuff. And that’s where mindfulness can be the handy solution.
Being tired or moody any day can derail from that mission, so staying alert and wise to know yourself enough can help your conversations and situations you get roped in.
They help in my situations.
A simple “can we talk about this another time?” is sometimes all that’s needed.
…And if the other person can calm their momentary crushed ego and say, “sounds good” and stick to that, then there’s no issue.
And that way, you make the issue smaller to ego as you stay objective and get further away from emotions.
Let your pot simmer down inside you first.
Because situations will arise. Everyone is different. Another fact of life. So embrace the differences, even if it’s your close partner.
…Just remember they grew up different than you even if they grew up down the street. They are them and only YOU are you. 🪞
You’re the only one you can change and are fully accountable for.
Show up mature as you can be. And if both are mature, then saying yes! at the altar has a better chance (despite what it seems like or is said weeks before that… which btw, the ego mind will chomp at).
Every moment has potential for ideas to collide even with the person you think you know best or as well as yourself.
One day, what seemed perfect is no longer.
Expect that to happen.
When that happens…
Talk it out.
Have fun again.
Tyler and Ashley do this well taking sky diving and sharing moments. 🪂
Garrett and Taylor do this well laughing, playful, and enjoying each other’s company.
Those loving honeymoon period ways get them through their tough times.
Those are the couples that make it through LIB married at the Reunion.
That’s the relationship experience they signed up (and hoped for)… a life partnership that’s enhanced with two.
When they ran into a disagreeing situation, they let upset emotions out which is communication. They also moved on in their own mindfulness moments.
Maybe smartly asking themselves in the break: “why was I really so upset?”
…Usually it’s from an experience or idea from the past that was traumatic and is now pulled into the gray matter.
The secret is knowing that most of it is curable in self-discovery that improves relationships, and not about changing someone else.
And in tough relationship times, we can learn 3 lessons:
Lesson #1: Wisdom teaches us to move peacefully in the moment.
The most mismatched couple in LIBDC was Nick and Hannah. They had a parent-child relationship that was obvious wouldn’t end well.
Usually there’s a honeymoon period but for this couple, it was obvious from the start who would wear the pants.
Words deeply matter. Saying aloud things like: I’m not the same person I was who had fun before…” is nothing short of putting a dog’s tail between its legs. But that’s common ego power trying to dominate in language.
Nick could have addressed that comment, walked away, and let Hannah think about her words. But since he kept taking it to the end of their relationship, it just got worse.
And so it turned into passive-aggressive behavior.
A lesson in mindfulness: at the late group mini-reunion, she could’ve sat down with Nick and her best friend in the pod at the table rather than let her jealous emotions creep up later and address privately.
Wisdom say you never get a second chance with the moment.
Mindfulness thinking: you may never have another chance with this person again so embrace the moment (as in “in the moment”).
That situation could have been avoided if she acted on her deeper feelings at the moment in a peaceful way.
That’s how mindfulness practice could have helped.
Practicing mindfulness on a yoga mat or away from social situations (alone) when things are good, can allow breathe-in space to be brought into awareness in impromptu situations. 🧘🏻♀️🧘
Lesson #2: Be the giving person. Two giving people are better than one.
Never go into a relationship seeking gain for your life, and expect it to end well. The other person wants to be loved and that’s the agenda.
The couple that became a hot mess was Tim and Alex. Their perceptions of each other were completely off. Another ego power trick.
They had miscommunication and unrealistic expectations.
There are no mind readers as Alex pointed out and especially with unspoken expectations.
There’s not one right way with two people involved, but there’s usually a point in the right direction.
In the moment, a person can directly tell the other partner their needs. Both will feel better about it no matter what it is.
…It’s how it is said that’s most important.
When you say “I feel…” it’s totally different than ego judgment words like “you always…” Those 2-words are the difference between love and ego. 🥰❤️🔥
Practicing using more loving words helps direct the mind to those ways. Let the other person be themselves and not come up with a list of “all I want you to do is…” Leave that legacy to their mother that can get away with that agenda impact.
Lesson #3: Respect should never be a word tossed around in love relationship communication.
When the other mentioned they felt disrespected, that was a bad sign. The “respect” word doesn’t belong in relationships.
Respect is a word you use in an office place that’s an arm’s distance business-to-business arrangement.
Respect is usually earned from deed or time. Co-workers know when they are respected because work boundary lines aren’t crossed. It’s nothing personal.
In love relationships, it’s all personal.
In a loving relationship, you don’t want to earn love or your place to the other. That’s inferiority vs superiority (ego power).
Your loving partner wants a soft place to fall, not a daily enemy they face. Those common feelings happen when out-of-alignment or out of happy mindfulness.
Besides, respect means different things to each person mostly based on upbringing. As a couple, if you grew up on opposites sides of the grass, then respect definitions are wildly different based on their grass past life experiences that can’t be defined in one 7-letter word.
But bringing in more self-awareness, mindfulness, self-discovery helps to turns things around and bring more peace to lives and relationships.
Remember changing your words said can change your relationship.
Do unto others as they would like to be treated, keep growing, and doing your best. Good luck! 💘
Malt loaf bread is comfy country bread that I could eat regularly as in weekly. It’s hearty, comfort food like a raisin bread. And this similar molasses cake (yes, you heard right!) recipe needs no proofing.
Learn more below 👇
Recipe below 🧡
Molasses is one of the star ingredients in this loaf or cake (depending on how you want to look at it) and one of my favorite sweet ingredients. ⭐️
Watching the slow as molasses dark glossy liquid glide down the jar to the opening is joyful.
And when it does and makes contact with its destination, it comes with multi-dimensional tastes.
…I like to call it dark caramel and one that Grandma’s from the south grew up with. (That’s also the common household molasses brand most of us know).
It’s got the old-fashioned flavors mixed in…
Along with regular molasses comes a bit of sweet, bitter, and black licorice tastes that gives gingerbread cookies its distinct flavor.
The acidity in the ingredient also helps to activate the cake rise if you use a common household ingredient like baking soda (that’s usually stored in the fridge for other purposes).
Also, unlike white table sugar as a sweetener, amazingly molasses has anti-inflammatory effects. If you’re a food science nerd like me then you get excited about these nuances in daily sustenance that affect the body! 🎉 …and whether the ingredient will be used.
Not as common is blackstrap molasses that comes out after the third boiling, so most of the sugar has dissolved like Houdini. It has a lower glycemic index and polyphenols compared to regular molasses. PLUS it has minerals and Vitamin B-6.
With the dark flavor, the dark color matches.
It’s perfect for the cooler months and warming inside if you think of a warm fireplace playing jazzy tunes. 🎶
…And just in time for holiday baking season.
Malt loaf was a challenge on the The Great British Bake Off where I heard of the cakey bread.
And I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love a cakey bread because that means no proofing, but is Prue-fitting, as in Judge Prue Leith who sent the loaf popularity waves across the pond… and into my sound waves vicinity.
…And what makes this loaf so out-of-the-ordinary great is the plumped up raisins from the Earl Grey tea.
It’s a strong brisk black tea that is what you expect for an afternoon high tea. 🫖
I had first heard of the intriguing “raisin plumping” idea in a food class where I collaborated with dieticians.
I loved the idea then… and loved it even more when I added them to this recipe.
You can see how bold and dramatic the raisins become. Who knew raisins could grow and not more wrinkly old? 😁
And to top off this breakfast dessert, you can add a glaze if you wanna shine! ✨
But I like the rustic and plain… like the simple raisin bread. But with bananas, this one is even BETTER.
Not needing butter.
And however you bake your cake or bread, you can make this in one bowl or even in the same baking pan it will end up in! That’s what happened here…
I mean, it doesn’t get much easier than this for fall foods, breads, and baked goods. That makes it so easy to FALL for! 🍂
A moist malt loaf that has molasses as a star ingredient.
Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy LIfe Secrets
Ingredients
1tbspEarly Grey tea, brewed
1tbspraisins (plumped up from tea)
1/3cupcurrants, chopped dates, or additional raisins
1cupmashed bananas
1tbspcoconut oil (in addition to coating the pan)
1/3cupmolasses
2eggs, room temperature
1/4cupalmond milk or milk of choice or more
1/2tspbaking soda
1/2tspground cinnamon
1/2tspsalt
1cupflour of choice
walnuts, chopped (optional)
Instructions
Coat your baking vessel with coconut oil that helps to give a nice thin outer crust and help prevent sticking to the pan. If you prefer less crust, then you can use a light dusting of flour to coat your pan or use a non-stick baking spray.
Brew hot tea and add raisins to the tea. While you're waiting for the tea to steep and raisins to plump up, make the loaf.
Mix the wet and dry ingredients together. Easy tip: you can do this in one bowl and even the same baking pan/vessel that you will use to bake the loaf! This is/should be a very liquid-y batter (like pancake) depending on the flour(s) you use tthat will come out moist. Bake on 350°F for 65-80 minutes until outside is the brown color preferred.
Circadian rhythm is our internal body clock that’s a part of nature and Ayurveda (the study of life). It affects how birds migrate and the happiness of our house plants. 🪴 These things affect us.
And circadian rhythm indirectly affects our mind-body and how tired or happy we are. 😊
Circadian rhythm quietly affects our sleep, feelings of energy or zapped energy and our cognitive ability or disability.
It’s an underrated important factor in our happy daily lives.
In this article, you can learn all about circadian rhythm from changes in our daily environment and easy tweaks you can make, so you can impact your happiness.
Circadian rhythms are deep and affect our spiritual lives deep within us.
It has a ripple effect from the outside…
So we want to make healthy tweaks to our lifestyles to keep the circadian rhythm balance humming along nicely.
One powerful way we can control our circadian rhythm is with the light and dark influences in our lives.
That’s as natural as the first verse and creation chapter of the Bible..
In modern terms, if you work night shifts and sleep in the day, your circadian rhythm changes.
Work shift shifts create mood swings. Try saying that 10 times fast.
We need natural visible blue light in the day that’s naturally strong from sun light.
…And yes daylight is the same blue light we’re warned about that comes from computers, but 100,000 times stronger. 🌞
💡And that’s the first easiest impact we can make.
My first understanding about circadian rhythm was not from light vs dark lessons, but in an Ayurveda class discussion about sounds.
From the experience we each received a unique, natural primordial sound that was happening at our time of our birth. It starts with “Om.”
As a miracle, those sounds are as natural and spiritual as birth.
These are part of the first earth sounds we heard in our echo chamber sound booth coming out of the womb. We could probably feel the sound energy happening then because we’re spiritual beings tied to an energy bigger than ourselves.
So I learned that circadian rhythm was part of light and sounds… and as part of our sight and hearing, it closely affect our minds.
Our minds are wired to our affected wakefulness, alertness, memory, mood, and slow (or quick) cognitive function that end up impacting our daily happiness and mindfulness with relationships.
And if our happy mood is down for a season, then we can feel dark or void inside.
As a visual, all you have to do is shut your usual window blinds for a week and that throws your circadian rhythm off.
And sliding down that slippery slope, you’d feel off. It doesn’t matter if you’re a sensitive person or not… all that matters is you’re human.
…Like when we change our clocks for daylight savings and we’re off of our rhythm for a day or two.
And this rhythm is tied to our sleep and how tired we feel.
When you sleep closer to 9 hours and still feel tired, you can rationalize the tiredness with working more hours, clock time changes, stress, season changes, or even getting too much sleep.
But more sleep isn’t the answer.
When you’re cranky and it feels like you woke up on the wrong side of the bed and maybe carry around the bad moods, they creep into lower quality or less productive work. It takes more energy to get the same bare minimum things done.
And that can lead to our loving sides affected and our relationships taking a back seat.
This can become crippling if you shut out love and let in the negative and fearful spiritual tendencies that become the surrounding air breathed.
This can happen as easily as when you’re too preoccupied busy to notice your surroundings, or you let your ego take over your thoughts and play thought tapes over and over again.
It’s subtle to you as you pay less attention.
E.g.o. (edging God out) clouds over and those behaviors hurt productivity and happiness.
Letting in more light wind (spirit) is going to sway you in the right direction out. Instead of south, you head north in the opposite direction.
You can naturally find your way out when you know from experiences which way is up (as your natural wisdom helps you).
Knowing can come from tapping into your quiet space and spiritual self that often comes from gut instincts (not logic).
Sometimes answers pop right in… and sometimes you have to mull on the peaceful thoughts longer.
Because light and dark is a spiritual battle not based on reason…
Some of the battles can be avoided.
How? Patching a simple early fix like more blue light in the waking hours already mentioned, so you have more energy ⚡️ in the day that circadian rhythm regulates… and this helps you get to bed at normal times.
Blue light is a good answer, but it often gets a bad rap because of warnings to shut off digital devices late at night… which is good to do.
But in the same light, it’s not emphasized enough how much natural blue light you need in the day.
Tip: Be just be sure to wear UV-protected sunglasses and sunscreen in sunlight.
Because UV and blue light aren’t the same for your health, but often gets confused in today’s world. UV is harmful.
With enough blue light, then you can get the normal sleeping patterns that can reset the lower spectrum or first few hours of deep sleep (Delta sleep) when the body mostly resets and repairs.
That’s why you hear of people who only need 4-5 hours of sleep… and it’s enough.
Often they have a strong purpose (or busy season) and what they will do in life, like getting up for the New York Marathon race, voting, or taking in a new travel adventure.
Then sleeping at the bare minimum for the daily body repair is enough because excitement carries over or their Pitta drive drives them.
But if the minimum sleep isn’t achieved, then no amount of coffee, 80’s music, or a jolting pine eucalyptus candle is going to revive.
Sleep is irreplaceable.
In summary, these are a few healthy reminders:
-Get back to your light-dark/day-night schedule and normal sleep times.
What unnaturally took you off your circadian rhythm can be restored with natural healthy moves, such as:
-Listen to nature sounds like birds chirping by the river, or the pitter patter of rain. Those were part of nature when you were born and can revive you. Today, you can use technology to get those effects and drown out manmade construction and technology sounds.
-Add sleep-inducing foods with melatonin and B6 to help your sleep like eggs, bananas, nuts, yogurt, and avocado.
Those sound like breakfast food 💭 and if you’re having a hard time sleeping, like warm milk, these types of foods are helpful.
-Create a 3-day rule for yourself in self-discipline. If you don’t get better in 3 days or after the weekend has ended, then commit to fixing it in other ways like changing your routine that isn’t working for you now and in your quiet spiritual space.
-Breathe in words of inspiration like that from the Bible to get back to nature and your loving roots.
The Book of Psalms is one love letter full of natural wisdom and blessings of peace, love, and hope.
The timeless words are in weddings and funerals because those are the biggest pouring out-of-love events.
And those loving feelings and words can help turn your off-balance circadian rhythm feelings into happy good.
Turn on the light and naturally get a ‘lil happy today. You’ll be glad you did! 😎
Pan co’Santi is All Saints Day bread and National Cinnamon Day bread celebrated on November 1 and anytime year-round that you want.
Anything happy goes these days!
And this joy-filled bread has raisins, walnuts, dates, cranberries… and bananas too!
It’s very much like a banana bread. 🍌
Bananas make this a sweet breakfast bread that goes with your breakfast drink, hot cocoa, or coffee.
…But this banana bread is better… it’s heavenly and has landed on the plate like a meteor in the shape of the sun.
Like a shooting star under the sun to be more precise. It’s earthly food that was sliced in half to enjoy. 🌠☀️
It was sent from above with love. 💌🌤️
And you can have the same experience from your oven.
…Like bread that fell from the sky like a gift during Biblical Ezekiel’s era.
Bread afterall is life.
And LIFE is a gift.
Where we can appreciate the present as in now (and 🎁).
And for the blessing of our daily bread, like this cinnamon bread. 🍞
Bread used to be a food category on its own as one of the four basic food groups when I was growing up. And food is one of the 4 basic needs of survival, so that makes bread a need for us (and this one needs no knead 😊).
These days, since our lives are more complex and we have more healthy food options, we get to choose. Bread is one option in the broader acceptable grain category for healthy living.
And this saintly glowing bread of life is shaped here as sun, earth, moon and stars combined. 🌻🌕⭐️
You can make your celestial and grounded shapes with your baking molds. These could be bread, cake, and donuts.
Because of how moist and sweet it comes out piping hot from the oven is why I call it cake bread.
…Part of that comes from the nature of bananas.
Banana bread and I go way back before when I first knew what I wanted to do as a grown up that turned out to be a hotel catering planning professional career.
That’s when life was bananas working crazy long hours.
But a bananas life helps you handle chaos later on in life so you adapt better.
And banana fruits that are the star ingredient in this bread are a metaphor for adapting through the changes, as one fruit we can count on (or at least hasn’t changed much over the years).
The new bananas used for this recipe are soft bananas that got mushed up in a freezer bag and were left in the freezer.
Those are the best kind to use for this recipe, where they turn a dramatic scary black like a black car oil spoof.
You can bring out the frozen bananas on the same day as baking day… and let them warm up to room temps.
That’s one way this recipe is super simple.
Another way is there’s no need for yeast, proofing, or proofing time.
And a third way is you won’t need a mixer as you can do this all by hand with little effort.
…So maybe I got your attention now. 😊
And to lean in on easy recipes, I like to mix using a regular metal kitchen spoon instead of a whisk because the batter can get sticky and you end up losing a big part of the batter that way… and that could be the reason for a low-rise bread (as there’s less batter).
Mixing is also why this is more like a cake recipe, but turns out like a bread in the magical oven.
The baking secret is to use use enough flour so that the cake bread can stand almost firm on its own. That will better ensure a bread with homemade bread holes.
We don’t want too dense of a bread, but we want a moist bread that will rise and not look flat in the end.
And if you’re like me, you probably like to see the ingredients first to see if you have them and want to use or eat them. 😋So here’s the Pan co’Santi bread easy ingredient list:
mashed bananas
coconut oil
maple syrup
eggs
almond milk
flour
baking soda
salt
ground cinnamon
optional: walnuts, dates, raisins, craisins
And that’s it!… go Pan co’Santi bananas and welcome in the new season weather and time changes!
