Old Fashioned Blueberry Pie Recipe
Steaming blueberry pie.
Ingredients
1 baked 9 inch pie shell
4 c fresh or frozen blueberries
1 c sugar
3 tbs cornstarch
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 c water
1 tbs butter or margarine
Directions to Old Fashioned Blueberry Pie
Line pie shell with 2 cups of blueberries.
In a saucepan, cook remaining blueberries, sugar, cornstarch, salt and water over medium heat until mixture is thick.
Remove blueberry mixture from heat, add butter and allow to cool. Pour blueberries over blueberries in the pie shell. Chill until ready to serve.
Delicious served with whipped topping.
Save Money on Gifts with Homemade Chocolate
Traditional chocolate making requires getting the cacao beans, roasting them and extracting the chocolate yourself, which takes many hours but easy homemade chocolate recipes allow you to use special chocolate chips and wafers especially made for candy making. These chips and wafers
just melt down in a double boiler or even in a microwave, giving you a nice smooth chocolate base to start with. Once your chocolate is melted, then you can get creative by deciding what flavorings and special touches to add to the chocolate to make it uniquely yours.
Easy homemade chocolate making using these chips, wafers and bricks of chocolate allows you to make great chocolate treats in your own kitchen and you don’t have to do a lot of research or find special ingredients or invest in a lot of pricey equipment just make chocolate at home.
Where Do You Find Chocolate Making Ingredients?
Go to a hobby or craft store, like Michaels, Joanne’s or Hobby Lobby. You’ll find a great candy making section that will offer a chocolate base for homemade chocolate making and also molds so you can melt and pour your own creations. Look for great coupons at these stores to save even more money.
Using melt and pour chocolate is also a great way to try out different chocolate flavors because you can find some very exotic chocolate bases, full of special spices that might cost a fortune if you wanted to buy them individually to add to your chocolate recipe.
Sugar free and low fat chocolate bases are also available which eliminate the need for you to buy expensive ingredients or measure ingredients to make sugar free or low fat chocolate.
If you want to have the fun of making homemade chocolate, save some money and make your own unique gifts that all your friends will love, then making homemade chocolate using some great melt and pour chocolate bases will be perfect for you.
If you don’t have a craft or hobby store nearby, check online Look in your local craft store to see if they carry candy making supplies or look online to find a candy supply store that carries a wide selection of different chocolates that you can use to make homemade chocolate.
Making Fine Chocolates: Flavour-infused Chocolates, Truffles and Confections
Boomer Living - Create Your Own Indoor Herb Garden
Nothing beats the fragrance and taste of fresh herbs and creating an indoor herb garden for use year-round is as easy as growing herbs in the outdoor garden.
Grow your own Cilantro
Light for Indoor Herb Gardens
While different herbs have somewhat different requirements for light, most herb plants need a sunny location to thrive. For the sunniest location, choose west or south-facing window. Sometimes supplementing with a fluorescent lamp, or “grow light,” is necessary in the winter too, when hours of sunlight is less.
Soil for Indoor Herb Gardens
Try this general planting mix for indoor herbs.
- Two parts sterilized potting soil and one part coarse sand or perlite.
- Add about one teaspoon lime per 5-inch pot to sweeten the soil, or a cup per bushel of soil if you want to make a large amount.
- Place an inch or so of gravel or Styrofoam pellets at the bottom of the pot to help with proper drainage, which is essential for growing herbs.
Caring for Your Indoor Herb Garden
- Herbs hate wet feet! Water your indoor herbs only when soil is dry to the touch. If plants are growing in hanging baskets or clay pots, they might require a little more water.
- Provide needed humidity by placing the plants on a tray of moistened pebbles or mist water on them.
- For plants with different water needs, try using separate planters or divided planters.
What to Plant in Your Indoor Herb Garden
An indoor herb garden can be made up of annuals or perennials.
- Annual herbs including basil, cilantro and parsley can be grown indoors through their entire lifecycle. Annuals can be grown from seed or you can purchase small plants at a nursery or garden store.
- Perennials, such as thyme, oregano and rosemary, do much better if they are indoors only in the winter months and then moved outdoors during summer months. In mild climates, you can still pick these herbs in winter, although the oils aren’t as pungent. To move perennials in summer, you can simply plunge the pot into soil up to its rim or keep the pot in a protected spot on the porch or patio, rather than transplanting into the ground. Perennials are usually best purchased as a small plant and transplanted to your pot as growing them from seed is more difficult.
If you move your herb plants outdoors during the summer months, be sure to bring them into the house before the first frost to avoid damage. Mint, chives and tarragon, however, benefit from a light frost which induces a rest period in the plant and helps make new growth firm and fresh.
Perennial herb plants can thrive indefinitely in your indoor herb garden with periodic light feeding, yearly repotting, seasonal moves outdoors and an occasional pruning. For annuals, renew plants yearly.
By following these basics for creating an indoor herb garden, you can ensure a supply of fresh, fragrant plants all year long for use in your recipes or in potpourri.
Boomer Blog - Save Money with Spam Books and Recipes
Spam recipe books will get you started toward creating some tasty budget recipes.
I went to the grocery store the other day to check out the Spam offerings and was surprised to see barbequed spam and other flavors. It’s still only about $2.50 a can, making it a great ingredient for budget recipes.
Here’s a Spam recipe to get you started for Hearty Spam Soup.
Ingredients for this Easy Spam Soup
2 cups dried pinto beans, wash and soak overnight. For a quicker and easier version, use 4 12 oz cans of pinto beans
3 cloves crushed garlic
1/4 c firmly packed brown sugar
12oz can of SPAM, cubed ½ inch cubes
2 tbsp chili powder
1 quart water
2 (13-oz) cans tomato juice or diced tomatoes if you prefer it chunkier
1 (14-oz) cans chicken stock
1 medium onion, chopped
1 tsp thyme
3 bay leaves
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp cumin
Directions for Thick and Hearty Spam Bean Soup
Combine all ingredients in large saucepan and blend thoroughly.
Bring soup to a boil and cook for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 3 to 4 hours or until soup is thickened.
Remove bay leaves and serve.
Hearty Spam Soup Recipe makes 6 servings Spam can last on your shelf for several years and requires no refrigeration. What more could you ask for a great budget recipe ingredient?
Try this delicious country style Spam casserole.
Ingredients
1 can Spam
2 12 oz cans of potato soup
1 chopped onion
4 cooked potatoes, mashed
2tbs butter
1/8 cup milk
8 oz frozen veggies of your choice
¼ cup grated parmesan cheese
Directions for Country Style Spam Casserole
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Steam potatoes. When they are tender, add butter and milk and beat with blender until smooth. Set aside.
Cut Spam into cubes and saute in skillet with onion until both are browned.
In a mixing bowl, combine vegetables, Spam and onions and the two cans of potato soup.
Spoon Spam and veggies into a 3-quart casserole dish. Spread potatoes over Spam mixture.
Sprinkle Spam Casserole with Parmesan cheese.
Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until hot and bubbly.
This Spam casserole recipe makes 6 servings.
I’m planning to order a couple of these Spam recipe books so look for book reviews in future food blog postings.
Boomer Blog - Healthy Eating Tips
1. Healthy eating doesn’t mean you have to give up butter. Here’s on great tip: Buy one of those little butter spray bottles and just spritz your vegetables before serving. You still get the buttery flavor without all the fat and calories.
2. Speaking of spritz bottles, those salad dressing spritz bottles only have about 10 calories per spray, as opposed to say, Kraft’s Balsalmic Vinegrette dressing which comes in at a whopping 90 calories per 2 tablespoons, of which 65 calories are fat. Even if you switch to a lite version of this salad dressing, you’ll find it has 45 calories per 2 tablespoons, of which 36 are from fat.
Here is a healthy recipe for homemade Balsalmic Vinegrette that beats the bottled dressing in taste and calories.
Balsamic Dressing Recipe
Recipe Ingredients
1/4 c balsamic vinegar
1/4 c minced green onion
2 tbsp German-Style Mustard
1-1/2 tbsp Olive Oil
1 tbsp water
1 tsp Tarragon
Recipe Directions
Simply whisk ingredients together blended, then chill in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.
Yield 3/4 cup dressing.
Nutrition per serving - 2 tbsp each
Calories 40
Carbohydrates 4 g
Sodium 1 mg
Fat 3 g
3. Choose lean cuts of meat for healthier eating. Although lean cuts of meat are good for you, they can sometimes be tough. Marinade lean cuts of meat with lemon juice, orange juice or 7-Up to tenderize. Just put meat into tenderizer for about 30 minutes before cooking.
4. For healthy eating, one easy tip is to choose whole wheat products instead of refined white flour. Use whole wheat noodles for spaghetti or whole wheat bread for sandwiches. Even kids don’t usually notice the difference. Brown always trumphs white if you wan to eat healthy. You can even find packaged rice dishes in brown rice versions now.
5. Try serving veggies with healthy dips. Kids love dips and even adults appreciate the change of pace from steamed vegetables. Make your dips with low fat plain yogurt instead of sour cream or use fat free sour cream. The dips are still tasty but contain less fat and calories.
6. Serve fruit for dessert for a healthy finish to each meal. Skip the sugary desserts for healthier eating. The daily recommended allowance of fruits and veggies is NINE servings. Having fruit for dessert is one way to meet that fruit requirement.
7. Try fruity herbal tea for a healthier drink. Skip the soda and sugar filled drinks and switch to herbal tea or green tea with fruity flavors added. Herbal tea can be delicious and contains no calories. Try fruity rooibos iced tea. Even kids will love it. Green tea also is low in caffeine and contains lots of healthy antioxidants. If you need sweetener, try stevia, a natural plant sweetener which contains nothing artificial and zero calories.
8. If vegeatbles sometimes seem too much trouble for healthy munching because you have to peel and cut them up, purchase the already peeled varieties, like peeled baby carrots. These have the same great nutrition. Organic baby carrots are even very easy to find these days. Another veggie healthy eating tip: If you make a salad or veggies for dinner, cut up some extra and stick into a zip loc sandwich bag for snacking the next day.
9. Speaking of snacks, nuts are an extremely nutritious snack. Nuts contain protein and heart healthy fats and studies show, eating nuts actually helps you lose weight. Add nuts to your salads or put some into a zip loc baggie and take them with you to work or for a pick-me-up while shopping. My 2 year old granddaughter would rather have sunflower seeds than just about any snack.
10. Keep dried fruit bits around for snacking or for adding to salads or muffins. Dried fruits also count toward your daily fruit requirement. Cranberries make a welcome addition to any salad.
11. Switch from white potatoes to sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes contain more nutrients and they are also lower on the glycemic index than white potatoes, meaning they don’t cause spikes in your blood sugar. You can roast sweet potatoes and serve just like white potatoes or steam, peel and mash, serving with a little cinnamon and a spritz of butter.
12. Try using more herbs and spices in healthy recipes and leave out the salt. There is lots of excess sodium in the foods we eat and it’s healthier to cut salt where you can. Cooking with herbs and spices makes foods tastier and they don’t add calories. Add most herbs about the last 5 minues of cooking to enhance taste.
13. Get creative! There are hundreds of healthy recipe sites on the internet, including healthy recipes. Whatever you’d like to cook, look for a healthy version of it or make your own healthy substitutions for high calorie, high fat ingredients. Healthy cooking can be fun.
Better yet, if you want the kids to eat healthy, have them help you shop for the ingredients and prepare the meal. They’ll be much more interested in eating foods they helped prepare. Remember, kids and grandkids are learning healthy eating habits from you while they are young so hopefully they will carry this way of eating over into adulthood.
These are just a few healthy eating tips for you and your family. Healthy eating doesn’t have to be difficult and once you get in the habit of thinking and being healthy, it becomes second nature.
Anti-Aging Foods for Longevity
Can eating certain anti-aging foods help baby boomers live a long, and healthy, life? Research shows that some foods help your body replenish healthy cells and help your body fight off the damage caused by aging and toxins in the air, food and water. You may be eating many of these anti-aging foods right now so it will be easy to add more to your daily diet for all the nutrition you need to be healthy and avoid age-related diseases well into your senior years.
A recent study in Greece of 23,000 adults found that lots of fruits and veggies, nuts and legumes had the greatest affect at increasing longevity.
Green Vegetables
Your mother always said to “eat your vegetables” for good reason. Five servings a day of veggies would help protect us from age related diseases like heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure and other illnesses that decrease the quality of life as we age. Add a salad to your dinner every day, buy a package of pre cut veggies for snacking and make a smoothie with breakfast, adding spinach or avocado. Be creative with your veggie recipes when cooking. Veggies are low calorie and filling too so they’re perfect if you’re watching your weight as you increase in age.
Avocados
Avocados contain heart healthy omega 3’s and actually help you lose belly fat and improve cholesterol. Add one to your salad every day.
Walnuts
Walnuts contain heart and brain healthy omega-3 fatty acids, plus fiber and other nutrients. Add them to your salad every day or eat a few as a healthy snack.
Water
Your body needs water to function in a healthy way and keep toxins and other wastes flushed from your system, which greatly increases longevity. Water has no calories and if you get a filter on your sink and a non-toxic, reusable bottle for refilling, water is inexpensive.
Berries
Berries are number one on every superfood list for good reason. A power house of antioxidants and other chemicals that your body can use to make repairs and
Blueberries are #1 on every superfood list
prevent some of the damage caused by aging. Berries offer low calorie nutrition too.
Green tea is the staple drink of Asian countries for good reason. High in antioxidants and other nutrients, green tea boost immunity, gives you energy and protects your body from age related disease like heart disease, Alzheimers and more. A UCLA study found that Just cups of green tea daily cuts your risk of having a stroke by 21%.
If you don’t care for the taste of regular green tea, mix it with black tea or find fruity flavors.
Taste the Purest Tea on the Planet – Organic and Fair Trade Certified Shop Numi Organic Tea
Red Wine
In moderation, red wine is good for you. Containing resveratrol, it helps protect your body from age-related illnesses. At the end of your day have a glass of red wine with your meal and enjoy it’s anti-aging properties.
Legumes like Beans, Peas and Lentils
Legumes give you a health source of lean protein, plus fiber and antioxidants. Some researchers believe that animal protein may cause many of age-related diseases so if you switch to a vegetarian source of protein, you’ll be helping your heart and arteries stay younger, longer. If you can’t give up meat entirely, try eating legumes a few times per week instead. When you do eat meat, op for organically raised meat which contains no growth hormones or other additives.
Dark Chocolate, which contains at least 72% cacao, contains antioxidants and healthy chemicals that your body needs to keep you young. However, as with alcohol, it’s easy to overdo the chocolate. One small square daily is all you need.
What else can you do to increase longevity and be healthy as you live longer? Exercise as much as you have time for, even if it’s just a brisk 10 minute walk per day. Eat less red meat and drink alcohol only in moderation. Keep your weight down and if you smoke, quit today.
More on Anti-Aging Foods - What to eat and what not to eat.
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Nostalgia - Spam is Popular Again in Rough Economy
Something about Spam just makes me nostalgic. I have to admit I haven’t eaten Spam in years, but when I was a kid, growing up in the 50’s, we ate Spam all the time. Suddenly, Spam is popular again as people look for budget conscious ways to create a meal.
Here’s the scoop on Spam:
Workers at the Hormel Goods Spam factory have never been busier! Spam is a traditional money saving food and consumers are looking for ways to save money on food. Spam contains protein and can be used in various creative Spam recipes.
On a recent day, the Hormel plant in Austin, Minnesota turned out 149,950 cans of Spam! Workers say they’ve seen hard times but never anything like this demand for Spam. Spam was invented during the depression years and is made of ham, pork, sugar, salt, water and potato starch.
Since Spam is in a vacuum sealed can, it can last on the shelf without refrigeration for several years - good to know if you’re creating a “safe room” for a possible terrorist attack.
A 12 oz can costs about $2.40, which is a pretty cheap source of protein. Spam has also kept up with the times, creating many new flavors of Spam these days, like barbecued Spam, spicy Spam and Spam Lite.
I recently read too that sale of Beer is thriving in hard times. I guess if you have your Spam and a can of beer, the economy won’t seem so bad!
I also see the increase in Spam sales as a sign that even in a bad economy, someone thrives! Spam was invented during bad economic times and it’s still around today. I think one way to thrive in any economy is to fill a current need that people have.
Cost of Holiday Dinner Goes Up This Year
On a related budget food topic, I also read that our annual turkey dinner, serving 8 to 10 people, will cost 5/6% more this year because of higher energy and transportation costs. It costs an average of $44.61 for the typical 12 items purchased for the holiday dinner.
Still, I think there are going to be bargains out there. I paid 39 cents a pound for my turkey this year, available at Krogers with a $20 purchase. I remember when you had to purchase $50 or $75 worth of groceries to qualify for the budget priced turkey.
I always buy extra to put into the freezer as a way of budgeting for the coming months’ menus. 39 cents a pound for meat is a real savings!
Stay tuned for some great Spam recipes!
Hillary Says We Have a Right to Protest This (or any) Administration!
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Seems a very apt statement in view of recent town hall meetings on health care reform.Hillary says we have a right to protest Obama’s administration!
Elderly See Obama Health Care Reform as Assault on Medicare
Overall public support has also fallen, with 42% supporting the health care reform and 53% opposing it. The group most strongly supporting the plan are voters under 30 who support the health care plan by a 67% approval rating.
Do you think Socialized medicine is working great in countries who have it? If so, do a YouTube Search for Daniel Hannan health care reform. Daniel Hannan, MEP with the British parliament, has been making the rounds in America, warning us that we do not want to go down the same road as his country with health care.
Read more about Obama’s Health Care Reform at Dick Morris.com
If you have a chance, attend one of the Town Hall meetings, and see for yourself whether or not the protest is “orchestrated.” Ask your representative how this health care reform is going to “save money?” Ask who is going to pay for this -where is the money coming from if not from our tax dollars?
Here is a list of upcoming town hall meetings by state. Maybe you should go and see what all the fuss is about.
President Obama faced a fairly tame crowd at his own town hall meeting - but there they couldn’t do anything about the protesters who lined the street outside.
As long as they have a good product and the government plan has to sustain itself through premiums and other non-tax revenue, private insurers should be able to compete with the government plan, Obama said.
“They do it all the time,” he said. “UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. … It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.” Isn’t the Post Office the only one of the 3 that is government run? Not a very good example in my opinion!
Take a look at these videos from recent town hall meetings and form your own opinion about them. One is from an AARP town hall meeting! The AARP doesn’t seem comfortable listening to the views of it’s own members. If you’re a baby boomer and a member of AARP, make your opinions known to them today.
With 40% of the savings in medical spending coming from Medicare, the senior citizens of America are coming to see the Obama proposals as an assault on their health care system.
Who is the Angry Mob Opposing Obama’s Health Care Plan?
Visit one gathering of the Angry Mob and find out just who is attending?
As a baby boomer who started out to build a work at home resource blog for boomers, I have somehow stepped into some political issues relevant to our generation. I never intended to write a political blog but some issues, like health care reform, are vitally important to those in their boomer years.
It’s also bugged me over the years, that much misinformation is out there in the mainstream media and any in the US don’t bother to read websites or watch television news that offers both sides of an issue. They watch Charlie Gibson on ABC news and think that is the real scoop and that’s all there is. Their vision of what is happening in the world gets to be very one sided.
Lots of people don’t like Fox News but it’s mostly, I believe, people who never watch it. On Fox News, a conservative and a liberal are labeled as such. On most all issues, in almost every interview I’ve seen, both sides are represented and the viewer knows who is who.
In the mainstream media, interviews are presented and statements are made but you never know if the person speaking has an agenda behind their words. Who do they represent? What do they base their statements on? Nobody questions these things. Statements are presented as facts and not too many hard questions are asked.
On Fox, everybody gets grilled and every person is identified and asked what their agenda is up front so viewers know if someone has an axe to grind or not. I hear dozens of small newsy items on Fox news that never see the light of day in mainstream news media because the items don’t fit into their concept of what viewers should know about.
Another good place to subscribe to if you want to know about what’s really going on in the media is The Media Research Center, which tracks liberal news bias with film clips and more, taken from mainstream news broadcasts. You can sign up for their daily alerts too for free.
I believe that baby boomers need to cultivate a source of news that shows both sides so we can decide for ourselves just what we truly believe.