15 Cheatsheets For Smoothies, Juices, Sauces & Snacks

What is happening on my Facebook page? A proliferation of charts! Of what, you may ask? Cheatsheets on how to grow vegetables, make smoothies, sauces, green drinks and more!

They are nifty charts you can put in a Google image search to see if you can link them back to their original sources. They seem to be passed around on social media. For our blog purposes, they are just a collection of practical information, all neatly on a single post that we do not claim ownership of and are free for all to read. Enlarge the ones of interest to you ...

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1. Romaine Lettuce  Similar to celery. Keep the base of your romaine lettuce in a bowl with 1/2 inch of warm water. Let it sit in direct sunlight, and in a week or two, your lettuce stem will produce fresh, new lettuce leaves for all your great salads. Transplant your lettuce to soil to continue growing. They should be fully grown in 3 to 4 weeks. This process works for Bok Choy as well. 2. Garlic Sprouts Are those tentacles?! Nope, those long green things growing out of your garlic are green shoots. You can put them in a little water, under a lot of sunlight, and grow a bunch of garlic sprouts. They are milder in taste than garlic cloves and are great in salads, pasta, and as a garnish. 3. Carrots Plant the end of the carrot, and when it begins to sprout, take those seeds and plant them. Pretty soon, they will begin to sprout delicious greens from the top that are a nice addition to meals. Using a deeper container and more water, use toothpicks to keep carrots halfway in the water and wait for them to root. Once they root, you can plant them in your garden for a continuous supply! 4. Turnip Like carrots, cut off turnip tops and leave them in a shallow container with water until they begin growing roots. This can take a couple of weeks. Once they’ve sprouted, plant them outside the same way you would your carrots! 5. Sweet potato Unlike most vegetables, sweet potatoes aren’t started by seed but by slips (or shoots). Clean and cut a sweet potato in half, then place it half in/half out of a jar full of water using toothpicks. Over a few days, your sweet potato will begin to sprout slips at which point you remove them and place them in water to grow roots. You should have rooted slips with the week. Next, plant them in loose, well-drained soil and water every day in the first week, and then every other day (or as needed) the following weeks.

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1. Asian Honey Marinade  Ingredients:  1/4 cup soy sauce  1/4 cup honey   2 tablespoons rice vinegar  2 cloves garlic, minced  1 teaspoon grated ginger  1 tablespoon sesame oil Instructions: Combine all ingredients in a bowl. Marinate chicken for 1-4        hours for a sweet, savory, and umami flavor. 2. Jalapeno Garlic Marinade  Ingredients:  1/4 cup olive oil  2 jalapenos, seeded and finely chopped  4 cloves garlic, minced  Juice of 1 lime 1 tablespoon honey Salt and pepper, to taste Instructions:  Mix ingredients well. Marinate chicken for 2-4 hours for a spicy and garlicky kick. 3. Italian Marinade  Ingredients:  1/4 cup olive oil  1/4 cup red wine vinegar   1 tablespoon Italian seasoning   2 cloves garlic, minced   1 teaspoon dried oregano   Salt and pepper, to taste   Instructions:   Combine and marinate chicken for 30 minutes to 2 hours. Expect a classic, zesty Italian flavor. 4. Fajita Marinade   Ingredients:   1/4 cup olive oil   Juice of 2 limes   1 tablespoon chili powder   1 teaspoon cumin   1/2 teaspoon paprika   1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)   2 cloves garlic, minced   Instructions:   Whisk ingredients together. Marinate chicken for 1-3 hours to get the vibrant, tangy, and spiced fajita flavor. 5. Honey Mustard Marinade   Ingredients:   1/4 cup Dijon mustard   1/4 cup honey   2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar   1/4 cup olive oil   Salt and pepper, to taste   Instructions:   Mix all ingredients. Marinate chicken for 1-2 hours. The result is sweet, tangy, and creamy. 6. Nashville Hot Marinade   Ingredients:   1/2 cup buttermilk   1/4 cup hot sauce   1 tablespoon paprika   1 tablespoon brown sugar   1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (adjust to taste)   1 teaspoon garlic powder   Instructions:   Combine ingredients, and marinate chicken for at least 1 hour. Expect spicy, smoky, and slightly sweet notes. 7. Teriyaki Marinade   Ingredients:   1/3 cup soy sauce   1/4 cup brown sugar   2 tablespoons mirin (optional)   1 teaspoon grated ginger   2 cloves garlic, minced   1/4 cup water   Instructions:   Mix until sugar dissolves. Marinate chicken for 1-4 hours for a traditional, sweet-savory glaze. 8. Cilantro Lime Marinade   Ingredients:   1/4 cup olive oil   Juice of 2 limes   1/4 cup fresh cilantro, finely chopped   2 cloves garlic, minced   1 teaspoon cumin   Salt and pepper, to taste   Instructions:   Blend all ingredients. Marinate chicken for 30 minutes to 2 hours for a bright, zesty, and herbaceous flavor.

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The next 4 charts are healthy snack choices. Ideally a snack should be 100 - 200 calories. Protein snacks, including a handful of nuts, stop hunger in-between meals. At work I always got hungry at 4 PM, so began eating turkey sticks or almonds because pretzels, a carb, made me hungrier!  Protein is the better choice.

Fruit makes an excellent snack as well because fiber fills you up and takes time to digest. I consider fruit "free" food since it's packed with vitamins and doesn't add up to many calories. If I have a day I'm always hungry, I eat an apple, move onto a orange and if still hungry, follow up with a banana, or a pear, a handful of blueberries until my appetite stops bothering me!


Hope you learn a tip or two from these cheatsheets.

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The Parallel Makeup Bag

Without a doubt, at $78 for the small size, the Parallel Cosmetic Bag is expensive! Still we can admire how revolutionary it is. A traveler can organize her makeup essentials upright and visible instead of packing it in one big clump of brushes, powder, blush, and lipsticks. No riffling through the bag to find an item.

We are asked to pay for the attractive, sophisticated design that turns chaos into the clever organization of all our beauty tools, the patent-pending folding technology, its intuitive compartments and compactness, and the ease it gives us of grabbing our makeup on the road.

Nevertheless, we know it's only a matter of time before other retailers create a knock-off of the Parallel Travel bag and we could choose to wait and see if they're close enough for less moola.

A Savvy Shopper has choices. Take the concept: (1) Pay the piper if it fills an immediate need; (2) wait for a sale; (3) search for a close-enough clone; or (4)  try making one yourself if you can sew.

Scoring a steal or deal for the original Parallel Cosmetic Bag would be fabulous, but finding a budget-friendly compromise is super satisfying too.

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Othofeet Shoes

Support shoes to treat common foot problems such as plantar fasciitis, diabetes, high arches, heel pain, bunions or flat feet can be eye-poppingly expensive. But! Orthofeet are about the same price as regular reasonably-priced shoes.

According to the retailer, biomedical engineers are employed to design its shoes to ease the symptoms that cause the above named conditions.

The site's wide range of stylish sneakers, sandals, boots, clogs, mules, Mary Janes, dress shoes or specialty shoes for athletics, hiking, or handsfree slip-on-and-off shoes for men and women look just like regular shoes. I'll go farther and call them cute!

Othofeet shoes have built-in orthotic insoles to provide arch support and proper foot alignment. They have ergonomic cushioned soles to absorb shock. You can select features like wide toe boxes or seam-free, padded interiors. Also each pair of shoes come with an arch booster, 1/8” removable insole and another 1/16” removable insole, which other companies make customers pay extra to order. Remove them to wear thicker socks, and insert them as a spacer to wear sockless. Such great value for fantastic support!

Free shipping and returns plus promotions of $15% - 25% off to make already fabulous price points even more affordable!

The website is super simple to navigate making it easy to zero in on inventory that addresses your individual foot condition! Best of all, you'll never go broke to alleviate it! 

Know that my blogs aren't sponsored, I'm simply thrilled to find a brand that is about 1/3 of the price of other orthotic designed shoes! Plus they go on sale!!!

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I Love My New Bowl Cozy

Despite her busy life, my friend and schoolmate, Teresa, sews Bowl Cozies in her spare time. Recently a group of us classmates had a fun Saturday lunch chatting and catching up in her beautiful home. When we were leaving to return to our homes, she gave us one of her Bowl Cozies. Perhaps I'm the last person on earth who didn't know of their existence, but instantly I fall in love with them! They are so darn cute and useful. In addition to preventing burns while carrying a hot bowl of soup, the cozy keeps the soup warm for a longer period of time. When not in use, bowl cozies look super adorable sitting on your kitchen counter. Your house, co-op, or apartment becomes a home!

In life there are always new things for me to discover, but the knowledge that my friend, Teresa, is a women with many talents and a warm heart, is not one of them! The old saying, "If you want something done, ask a busy person," applies to her.

Our school must have done many things right. My schoolmates are a cool bunch of women. You feel proud to know them!😍😎

🥕🥕🥕My Impromptu Crock-Pot Soup🧅🧅🧅

Ingredients: 

frozen butternut squash, 10 oz 

frozen mixed vegetables, 12 oz

1 large onion, diced

1 cup celery, diced

1 can pinto beans (Use any bean.)

7 cups water

2 large chicken-tomato bouillon cubes (Use any bouillon flavor or stock. If you use bouillon cubes, no need to add salt.)

1 teaspoon dried garlic
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1 bay leaf
1/4 cup of organic cider vinegar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
a sprinkle Worcestershire sauce
3/4 cups of brown rice

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

This is a forgiving soup, use vegetables and the starch of your choice. Feel free to make the soup with whatever you happen to have, fresh, frozen or leftover. Spice as you like it, and the soup cooks as well on a stovetop.

Directions:

1) Toss everything but the brown rice into a Crockpot and let cook on high for 4 - 5 hours.

2) Add the brown rice and cook for another 2- 3 hours. Although I didn't time it, avoid over cooked rice by tossing it in later. I also thought about diced raw potatoes, but went with the rice. Less work! :)

3) After the green beans, celery and rice are tender, dip some of the liquid out into a cup, let it cool, and mix it with 3 tablespoons of all-purpose flour to add back into the Crockpot and cook for a final hour.

After thickening, it is ready to eat. You can top the soup with diced smoked ham if you wish. Brown rice with beans are a complete protein if you decide to eat lighter by skipping the meat.

 Bon appètit!

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Frankly Retinol 0.1%

I'm a big fan of Korean skincare which is very advanced. The brand, Frankly, offers high quality retinol anti-aging creams. The top image (o.1%) is the beginner potency. When using retinol, always start with a weaker strength and work your way up to a higher strength. Virgin skin won't be able to tolerate higher strengths, and you'll stop using it. The skin's tolerance builds up to the higher potency with regular use. Frankly has a 2-strength set, Retinol 0.1 paired with a 0.3 stronger strength. Week one of retinol use, you might use it once a week. Week 2 you might use it twice a week, and week 3 to 3 times a week, etc. You skin benefits by the consistency of retinol use over how strong the retinol is.

Frankly's retinol creams contain ceramides and ginseng extract to hydrate and nourish the skin while the retinol is working to smooth our fine lines and wrinkles. It's the perfect balance between effectiveness and gentleness. Retinol can be drying while it speeds up skin cell turnover. Ceramides and ginseng moisturize the skin.

For many people I recommend only buying one strength at a time since everybody's skin reacts differently and you don't know when your skin will tolerate a higher strength. So you may need to buy retinol 0.01 repeatedly before you can bump up the potency. Retin-A (prescription strength) and Retinol (non-prescription strength) tends not to have an eternal shelf life.

The price point ($15.90) is very reasonable for a high quality retinol. K-beauty tends to be a bargain which will surely change with tariffs slapped on all foreign goods to be passed on to customers. Let's all hope tariffs are short-lived! According to economists, tariffs on most everything will rise prices with little benefit to future production or the economy.

Originally Amazon aimed to show customers how much tariffs would add to the cost of products, but after a call to Jeff Bezos from the White House to object, this was scraped. In purchasing goods or services, I'm always on the side of transparency. What consumers don't know usually hurts their wallets. You decide whether or not you'll pay for tariffs on consumer goods. On essentials you won't have much of a choice. On extras you will!

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Marie R. Turner (1900 - 1984) Superintendent of Schools

Marie Turner in her office

Today, I want to highlight a woman whose remarkable life I became aware of in college. She is the ideal of a dedicated educator and public servant. 

The Courier-Journal - Sept 27, 1959

Marie R. Turner started her career as a school teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in Breathitt County, Kentucky. She became superintendent of schools in 1931, a position she held for the next 38 years. By trying to improve the schools in an area of the country nestled in Appalachia, Marie, as well as her husband, Judge Erwin Turner, became active in local politics. Marie served 3 terms as chair of the Democratic Party. She worked with Kentucky governors, U.S. senators, and U.S. Presidents to upgrade schools and bring jobs, infrastructure, and training opportunities to rural Eastern Kentucky. Her accomplishments were extraordinary and numerous, especially considering Marie's era when women couldn't get loans or credit cards in their own names, much less hold a job with far-reaching authority. 

Marie Turner (back on the right) with Kentucky Governor Albert "Happy" Chandler (left) and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (center)

Marie Turner took advantage of available federal programs (under The New Deal, The New Frontier, and The Great Society), smartly and efficiently,using federal funds to better the lives of the people whose children she wanted to attend public schools. As she explained, if you want poor children to have an education instead of dropping out of school, you address poverty and isolation. Give them a handup through education, work training, job development, and perhaps help them to get on their feet with hot school lunches and affordable healthcare. A handup is not a handout; the people of Eastern Kentucky were a proud lot, used to hard farm work, and Marie thought the school curriculum needed to meet them where they were with prospects and aspirantes of value to them. Her schools and the rural families benefited from the library system sponsored by the WPA (Work Projects Administration) where books were delivered by a team of women librarians who rode horses and mules to the hollows and mountains where families lived. "If the children couldn't get to the books, the books would get to the children." The Superintendent also visited every school in her district once a year, getting there by whatever means were necessary. Early on, some of the paths were so rugged, it took a day to reach some of the schools.

Marie R. attending a pie and box supper to raise money for school repairs

Sometimes the women of the horse pack libraries were the only members in their families earning a paycheck. Out of Marie's own frustration of being denied a credit card, she founded Citizens Bank, where a woman could get a loan or credit card. 

Marie Turner and Lady Bird Johnson

From the 1930s through 1960s, Marie Turner worked with the Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations, opening a much-needed high school in Jackson, Kentucky (1938) and encouraging Senator Robert F. Kennedy to visit Eastern Kentucky (1968). When Senator Edward M. Kennedy ran for President in 1980, she sat in a wheelchair alongside him at the podium on stage in Louisville's Freehall endorsing his candidacy in Kentucky. Secret service agents flanked the stage, screening the crowd.

Notably, people with shorter careers, looser ties to Eastern Kentucky, and far, far fewer accomplishments serving the public than Superintendent Marie R. Turner have created Wikipedia pages and published memoirs about their "roots," but not her.

Over a lifetime, she worked as an educator who entered politics to make a difference in the lives of her people. Marie R's words matched her deeds. A reminder of what public service means and an inspiration to aim high for the benefit of others ... the everyday people you serve.

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Fruit Cobbler Without The Fat

Photo: Flavor Walk

Fruit cobblers are scrumptious and scream summer is near! But, usually, these tasty cobblers are made with a stick of butter. Nowadays, I try to eat healthy about 90% of the time, so I make a cobbler recipe that only requires buttering the baking pan. You can use any fruit, such as a peeled and diced apple, or peach, or my favorite, blueberries. A combination of blueberries, seedless raspberries, and blackberries will also do. My recipe yields one or two servings, so you don't have to wait for visitors to make it. Without the usual butter in a cobbler, it's not too decadent to devour all of it by yourself. You are still eating dessert (i.e., sugar), though, so you may not want to bake the cobbler every day. But gee whiz, sometimes we just crave a little treat:😋

Fruit Cobbler Without the Fat

Ingredients: 

Fruit Filling --

1/2 cup of berries (or 1 peach or 1 apple)

1 tablespoon dark brown sugar

1 tablespoon all-purpose unbleached flour

a sprinkle of cinnamon and nutmeg

a squirt of lemon

Cobbler Streusel Topping --

2 tablespoons unbleached flour

1 tablespoon of finely crushed walnuts.

2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

2 - 3 tablespoons of buttermilk (or milk if it's all you have)

If you like cinnamon, you can sprinkle some in the topping.

Optional: 1 tablespoon of Quaker oats if you feel like tossing it in.

Directions:

1) In a mixing bowl, use a fork to combine all the ingredients for the fruit filling.

2) In a 2nd mixing bowl, whisk together the streusel topping ingredients.

3) Butter a baking pan or dish (an 8-inch, 9-inch, or 10-inch square baking pan, a pie pan, or a loaf pan all work). Pour in the fruit filling.

3) Spread the streusel topping evenly over the fruit filling.

4) Bake in a preheated 350°F oven for 20 - 25 minutes. Watch for the cobbler to bubble and the topping starting to turn brown. After removing it from the oven, let it cool for about 10 minutes before eating.

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