So, I thought it was amazingly cool that I won these items:
I love her stuff so much that I am going to order some things from her to give away here, on the blog, in July, to celebrate my one-year vegan anniversary. More on that in June. (June, now there's a happy thought....flowers, fresh produce from the market, butterflies....ahhh.....but I digress).
Earlier in the year I won the new edition of Dr. Joel Fuhrman's book, Eat-to-Live from Wendy's Healthy Girl's Kitchen blog. Meet Wendy here: http://healthygirlskitchen.blogspot.com/ She rocks. That made someone else a winner too, since I have a copy of the original and it will now get passed forward to another person.
I also won a prize at my niece's shower earlier this month. It was so funny because there was a game and my other niece had set her timer on her phone and whoever's gift was being opened when the timer went off won the prize. When the first timer setting went off, I thought to myself, I'm going to win the next prize, and I did! I love when that happens. Not so much the prize, although it was lovely....here it is:
but the idea of manifesting something....of somehow injecting your will and intention into the physical realm, sitting back and then watching it appear, poof, abracadabra, bibbity-bobbity-boo! (Interestingly, a definition of abracadabra is "I create as I speak").
Winning these little treasures recently and the fun I had trying to 'will' them got me to thinking about intention and focus and how powerful these tools really are. How often do we put our intent into the things that are 'wrong' with our lives at any given moment, or how much extra weight we are carrying, or this person's expression that we didn't like, and so on, ad nauseum.
In horse training, we know that if our horse comes upon a scary object and we react by (somewhat naturally) putting our attention or focus on that scary object, we now embue it with even more life and power and we are now both focused on it solely. Instead, if we continue our focus on down the path or over to whatever destination we were originally traveling, we at least don't add more to the anxiety and power of the object, and we continue to be the leader we need to be to divert the frightened horse back to the task at hand.
Wow, that's some powerful stuff when applied to our own lives. How often do we get upset with another or get off of our own path and are now re-focused, not through our own intent, on another person's reaction, drama, or view of where else we should be, or whatever. In the practicality of day-to-day living, we may have to pause, acknowledge the distraction or deal with it to some extent, but the sooner we get back to our own path, the more we are our own good leader.
We do tend to get, or manifest, that which we focus upon. So, when the focus is on BUILDING health or achieving goals or making the very best food choices, we can more easily bring them into reach than when we are distracted by another path.
Leadership, intention, focus....all translate to modern day magic when practiced regularly.
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A friend of mine sent me a really good recipe. I love it when I have someone else out there keeping an eye out for something I might be interested in....love it even more having a friend to bounce plant-based ideas off of. We all need a little support from time-to-time and isn't it funny how far a little will go sometimes. (Thank you, R!).
Well, this recipe is just right in there with my 'winning' cycle. It is making me happy in these dismal rainy days that we are STILL having here in Ohio. (I haven't worked out how to manifest sunny days yet....still working on that one!)
Yummy Corn Bisque
(My friend got the original recipe from a library book and she changed it and I changed her changes, so it is probably ok to post on here, but I am still hoping to find where it originally came from to give proper credit. We think it might be one of Isa's recipes, but I haven't found it matching anything yet, and since I regularly promote Isa's work, I won't feel too neglectful).
Roasted peppers (yellow or red/canned or roast yourself) I used about 3
1 bag frozen corn
1 large sweet onion
garlic cloves to suit your taste (I used 4)
3-4 C vegetable broth
2 sweet potatoes, cubed (or white potatoes)
1/2 head of cauliflower, coarsely chopped
1.5 t salt
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (I'm a weenie, but adjust as you like it)
1 14 oz can coconut milk
1 T maple syrup
juice of 1 lime
grated nutmeg
Saute onion and garlic in stock pot with small amount of water, approx. 3 -5 mins. Add corn, potatoes and cauli. Cook a few minutes and add pepper flakes, broth and salt. Cover and simmer 20 mins on low heat. Add coconut milk, puree all but a few cups of soup (I didn't puree all because I wanted some texture/chunks in the soup, but adjust to your tastes). Heat. Grate nutmeg into soup and add syrup, lime, stir and serve.
Sue, winning so very much, & not just 'stuff', in Ohio
P.S. DVR Dr. Oz, tomorrow, Wed. Apr 27. Caldwell Esselstyn, T. Colin Campbell and Neal Barnard will be on discussing the upcoming film "Forks Over Knives. Now that's a winner!
