Yummy Superfoods, Part 2

Whoops, the whole "check back tomorrow" thing didn't exactly pan out like it was supposed to, but oh well. You can read Part 1 here, or just scroll down. Next up on the list is one of my favorite foods: salmon! Anyone else like it? Of course, salmon is filled with protein, but it is also filled with omega-3 fatty acids, which help heart health. Wild salmon is usually better than farmed salmon since farmed salmon can sometimes contain additives and contaminants. Here's a recipe for Teriyaki Salmon with Gingery Chard. I'm drooling, it's a combo of my two favorites, teriyaki and salmon, ah...

Oats are next! Seriously, what beats oatmeal with brown sugar and milk on a cold morning? I love oatmeal, I used to eat it almost everyday, my parents would buy this big thing of oats and it'd be gone by the next week! (FYI: I've scaled back to only eating it once or twice a week, and I put sunflower seed butter (very good for you!) and jelly on top instead of brown sugar. (My mom's a big stickler for the whole "eat protein at breakfast" thing.) Oats can help lower total cholesterol and help lower LDL cholesterol. (The bad cholesterol) Oats also contain plant chemicals that contain antioxidants. (Free radicals, beware!) But be careful, eating too much oat bran can be bad for you. I heard that it slows the absorption of some other type of vitamin, I forget which one. Anyway, here's a recipe for Fruit and Oat Granola Bars.

Next up is dark chocolate. (Yes, dark, not milk or white!) Dark chocolate is packed full of antioxidants and can help lower blood pressure. Still, you shouldn't eat too much, of course, because of calories and fat. (It's still high in that!) And remember, the darker, the better, since processing strips the chocolate of much of it's health benefits. Here's a list of organic and fair trade dark chocolates! My mom buys 72% dark chocolate from Trader Joe's, it's fair trade too, I think.

Blueberries are up next! Olivia loves blueberries, I like them, but not as much. Blueberries contain lots of antioxidants, and can help slow some degenerative diseases associated with old age. They're also known to help improve urinary tract health. (Cranberries are too, I think) Olivia puts blueberries in our pancakes, they're good! Here's a recipe for Blueberry Crumb Bars, don't they sound delicious?

Yummy Superfoods, Part 1

On the news today, I saw an article for "Super foods that you'll love to eat!" According to my mom, a superfood is a food that is packed full of vitamins and nutrients, so full, in fact, that it can take the place of other foods. Let's see here...Number one on the list was spinach! Yup, Popeye's favorite food! Apparently, it can help prevent some cancers, as well as cataracts and other things. I like spinach, so I wouldn't have any problem eating it, but here's a recipe if you want to try spinach in a different way. (The recipe is Spinach and Jack Cheese Bread Pudding)

Next up was the walnut. Walnuts are high in protein, fiber, and Vitamin E, as well as being high in antioxidants. (Those are the things that help keep free radicals from attacking your cells, I think, ack! We learned about this in school, but I forget :) Walnuts aren't my favorite thing to snack on, but I think my parents like them. Here's a recipe that uses walnuts. (It's Sweet Potato Casserole, interesting...)

Following is honey, an old favorite of parents and kids alike, known for it's sweetness and golden color. Honey contains antioxidants. (I was right! Antioxidants help protect us from the effects of free radicals. Free radicals can be found in cigarette smoke and radiation, and can contribute to disease, yikes!) Fun fact! The darker color the honey is, the more antioxidants it has. Also, here's something else that I learned from, what else, a manga (a Japanese comic book that reads from right to left, they're getting quite popular over here). Granulated sugar requires Vitamin B to process, so if you eat too much white sugar, you could end up with a Vitamin B deficiency, which could amplify the tired feeling you get after you eat sweets. (Must...sleep...zzz...) Honey is a better choice because the sugars in honey are naturally occurring glucose sugars, which don't need Vitamin B to process, and are easier to absorb, to boot! I think it's better for diabetic people, too. Got all that?! Also, honey helps increase the number of good bacteria in the gut. Basically, honey is a sweetener with practically no side effects, on the contrary, it has many good benefits! Here's a recipe for Honey Cake, yum! (Also, honeyed lemon slices are a popular snack over in Japan, they sound good)

Come back tomorrow to learn about the next superfoods in line, salmon, oats, and, chocolate?!

(Note: thanks to thedailygreen.com for the great recipes, maybe I'll try one out!)

Lost in Blue

(Took the title from one of my video games, seemed fitting)
Summer's coming up, and today was the day that workers began to clean out our neighborhood pool. They drain out all of the old, brown water into the lake, (I wonder if the fish appreciate that...I wouldn't!) then they hose it out, clean out the pool, (usually, it has gunk and gross stuff on the sides) and fill it up with new water. (The water that they add in is freezing!) Last year, they repainted it, so it looked all nice and new. Another perk from that: No skinning your toes on the bottom of the pool anymore! (We used to scrape our toes a lot, it hurt!) The pool is really nice, the only problem is that it's only five feet deep. No jumping/diving! It gets really crowded sometimes too. We go a lot during the summer, although we didn't go as much last year.

Actually, Olivia and I prefer to go to the Y to swim. (FYI: The Y=The YMCA) The Y near our house is really nice, and the pools go up to nine feet deep! Olivia and I can touch the bottom, but sometimes our ears pop. We also love the hot tub. Ah, so nice and relaxing...Water looks like a blue jewel when light shines on it just the right way, doesn't it? Like an aquamarine, or something. Yup, us Ginn kids sure love to swim!

Movie bloglist

Movies we've seen lately:
Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark,
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Yep, we're going back and watching a classic, the Indiana Jones trilogy. We've only watched the first two, but I'm going to get the third from the library today. Yeah! My dad thought that Olivia would like them, since they're in the same genre as the movie National Treasure, (If you know Olivia, you'll know that she loves National Treasure, she's memorized most of it, and can quote it, as well as having watched it around a million times! I mean, I like it too, but I don't watch it over and over! Although, there are movies that I like a lot.) but I'm surprised at how much I like them too. We just watched the second one yesterday, and we liked it a lot. (Note: Olivia and I are the ones watching them, Claire would probably get scared.)

We're studying the Aztecs right now for history, and in the movie, there was this one scene where a freakish priest pulls the heart right out of someone, it looked very Aztec-inspired. (Not for the faint-hearted!) The first two Indiana Jones movies are rated PG, but I read that so many kids went to go see Temple of Doom and got the living daylights scared of them, so the moviemakers had to come up with the PG-13 rating just for The Last Crusade.

The fourth Indiana Jones movie, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, is coming out on May 22nd, May is turning out to be a good month for movies. (Both Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull are coming out that month) I wonder how Indiana Jones will do in the theater, I heard that it'll have to rely a lot on fan nostalgia for it's success. (There'll have to be a lot of fan nostalgia, it's going to have to make at least $400 million for Paramount to make any profit!) But I'm sure that it has a huge fanbase, right?