Supernatural Botanicals

Health up your salad.  Instead of reaching for the croutons, which can contain a high butter and fat content, reach for whole wheat crackers.  Just crumble over a fantastic salad and get the benefits of whole wheat and fiber, along with great taste with half the calories.

Chuck Bass from Gossip Girl, giving us his best Gordon Gekko impersonation.  I adore this look!  This over-the-top style is amazing…and so hot!  It screams sexy.  Love it!  I especially love the fact that the style continues on to another generation. 

Today was a delicious day.  I spent all morning at the Farmers Market, all afternoon playing in my garden, and all evening cooking.  It’s good for the soul…try it.  Here’s a look at the day….

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wV_qYfjtxc

Scenes from my day today at two farmers markets in Cincinnati; Hyde Park Farmer’s market and Findlay Market.

You are going to have to come up with new ingredient combinations if you want to make a smoothie interesting.  We’ve all been making smoothies for years, so it takes something special to really make one stand out. 

Try this on for size…a Blueberry Cheesecake Smoothie.  Fantastic with pastries or coffee cake in the morning, or as a dessert after dinner. 

Recipe:

1/2 cup milk (low fat)

3 oz.  PHILADELPHIA Light Cream Cheese, cubed

1 cup blueberries

2 Tbsp.  plus 1-1/2 tsp. sugar or honey 

1/2 cup ice cubes

BLEND  First 4 ingredients in blender until smooth.

ADD  Ice; blend until thickened. Serve immediately

The great thing about childhood is that your dreams are huge.  Endless.  I grew up thinking I would would move to NYC immediately after high school and tour with the Rockettes while starting my fashion design career.  To a dance hopeful, Michael Jackson was pure inspiration.  We would rehearse for hours and hours trying to perfect his moves, never quite nailing his smooth-operator dance style…or his moon walk. 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7MmEMrCRfc

Bell jars make backyard gardening so easy.  Positioned on top of sunken pots of lettuces, they create a greenhouse-like effect for accelerated growth of plants, and also do double-duty by protecting young growing plants from frost.  They also look beautiful in your garden, making your backyard garden aesthetically more appealing to the eye.

I buy vintage garden bell jars any time I find them.  Although they are glass, they are made of very thick, very hard to break glass.  They are also very heavy, so you won’t have a problem with rabbits or squirrels knocking them over.  They give your garden instant “wow” factor.  It turns a backyard garden into an English garden look-a-like in seconds.  Perfect for lettuces.  Talk about a garden salad!  Super-fresh and delicious.

Dear Applebee’s,

Your Grilled Shrimp and Spinach Salad sounds very tempting.  The grilled and spinach parts of the salad “appear” to be very healthy choices.  But upon further investigation, it is discovered that this salad has 1160 calories!  That’s almost an entire days’ calories in one meal.  It’s completely unacceptable!  In fact, your Grilled (there’s that healthy term to fool us again) Steak Caesar Salad without the toast is 1190 calories with 75.4 grams of fat!   That’s several days worth of fat consumption in one meal, and almost an entire days’ calories in one salad.  Gross! 

It doesn’t need to be this way, Applebee’s.  Food can taste great without leading to coronary disease.  It really isn’t necessary for a salad to produce thunder-thighs and cellulite.  So stop it, please.  Life is hard enough without your mega-calorie salads with their low-fat sounding names trying to fool us.  My suggestion is to hire a nutritionist, create new recipes, and stop trying to make us fat. 

Thanks in advance for your cooperation….as I’m not a fan of thunder-thighs. 

After a long battle with cancer, the iconic Farrah Fawcett passed away today in Los Angeles at the young age of 62.  Ryan O’Neal was at her side.  From a Charlie’s angel to God’s angel.  R.I.P.  Sadness.