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Your Natural Healthy Family, Inspiration and Tortillas!
November 18, 2008

Your Natural Healthy Family
November 18, 2008
This issue:

  • What's new at NaturalHealthyFamily.com?

  • Quote of the week

  • Inspiration and Tortillas?

  • This week's healthy recipe: Barley Salad

  • Coming soon!

What's new at NaturalHealthyFamily.com?

The short answer? Not much...

Between working on the Bio-Kinetic Testing Home Learning Center and our new baby Lilly, we haven't gotten much done on the website. However, we will be posting some new Natural Childbirth pages this week. So keep your eyes open for that.

Quote of the Week

“Life’s most urgent question is: What are you doing for others?”

Martin Luther King Jr.

Inspiration and Tortillas!

We wanted to talk a minute today about inspiration (and tortillas). And we also wanted to dispel a particular belief that a lot of people seem to have, that is just not true.

Many people have the mistaken belief that it is possible to do nothing. Whether they call it "procrastination", or "inactivity", or something else. You might even have this belief yourself. Think about it. You're sitting on the couch, watching TV and eating potato chips. Someone calls you and asks what you are doing, and you say, "Oh, nothing".

But the fact is that you ARE doing something. You are sitting on the couch and watching TV!

That's an action.

AND, that action has a reaction. Marketing genius Mark Joyner calls this "The Inescapability of Action/Reaction".

You are always doing something. You are always in action. Even when you are sleeping. All kinds of things are happening inside your body when you sleep. There is never a time that you aren't engaged in some type of action. And this action always has a reaction.

If you are taking a brisk walk around the block with your spouse, this is an action.

The reaction is that your body is getting all of the benefits of exercise, you are spending quality time and connecting with your spouse, you are getting fresh air into your lungs, you are releasing stress from your work day, and so on.

If you are sitting on the couch watching TV, this is also an action.

The reaction is that your bum is getting wider, your muscles are becoming weaker, your arteries are slowly getting clogged with the cholesterol from your potato chips, you are disconnected from your family, and your mind is being programmed by commercials that are SCREAMING at you to buy more stuff! (Can you see where this is going?)

If you are always in action, and there is always a reaction, then what can you assume about life?

Life is never static.

You are always moving forward or backward, upward or downward. You are never standing still. So it's up to you. Which direction do you want your life to move in?

Now, we promised you tortillas, so you're going to get tortillas.

One of the ways to make sure that you are always moving in the "right" direction and taking a "right" action, is to focus on what Martin Luther King Jr. calls "doing for others".

We were recently forwarded an article about someone who has taken his education and work and used it to do something for others.

A food scientist and professor at BYU was faced with a problem.

Families in Mexico are subsisting on diets in which half of their daily caloric intake is provided by tortillas. The problem is that this diet is lacking in some of the essential vitamins and minerals that these families need, which is resulting in stunted growth and other health problems in their children.

Please take just a minute to follow this link and read the one page article about how this problem was solved.

http://byunews.byu.edu/archive08-NOV-tortillas.aspx

It was an inspiring story for us in particular, because this professor is also Josh's brother, Michael.

The question you have to ask yourself is, what can you do to make sure that you are always moving forward in life, and never moving backwards? What is a "problem" that you can devote yourself to solving that will keep you in action?

Let us know if this inspires you to use your own talents, education, and work to "do for others".

This week's recipe: Barley Salad

This recipe comes from the Daily Tip by Dr. Weil. It was forwarded to us by one of our readers. We tried it a couple of weeks ago, and it was delicious!

For more information by Dr. Weil, you can visit his website at http://www.drweil.com/

Barley Salad:

  • 3 cups vegetable stock or water

  • 1 cup pearl barley

  • Salt to taste

  • 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

  • 1 bunch scallions, sliced thin

  • 1 bunch radishes, sliced

  • 1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, and diced

  • 1 red bell pepper, seeded and sliced

  • 1/2 cup chopped fresh mint (or 1/4 cup dried mint)

Dressing:

  • 3 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

  • 3 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice

  • 3-4 cloves garlic, mashed

  • Salt to taste

1. Bring to boil the vegetable stock (or water). Add barley and salt. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer until barley is tender and liquid is absorbed, about 45 minutes. Drain well and place in a medium bowl.

2. Mix the dressing ingredients together and pour over barley.

3. Allow barley to cool, then add the parsley, scallions, radishes, cucumber, red pepper, and mint.

4. Mix well and chill for several hours before serving.

Coming Soon to NaturalHealthyFamily.com!

New Blog

We are creating a new blog feature on the website (actually, it will be attached to the website) so that we can more easily communicate with our readers. It should be up in the next 2-4 weeks.

Speaking of communicating with us, please remember that you can always reply to these newsletters if you have any questions or suggestions for us. Just hit your reply button and drop us a message. We love to hear from you, and we will get back to you as quick as we can.

Tele-seminars with author Tisha Mecham

We are planning on hosting a series of tele-seminars featuring Tisha Mecham next month. We will let you know as soon as those are scheduled.

We are constantly posting new content on the site, so keep checking back with us to see what's new.

As always, feel free to contact us if you have any questions, comments, or requests. Just reply to this message if you want to.

To YOUR health,

Beth Blasingame and family

www.NaturalHealthyFamily.com

Taking the guesswork
out of keeping your family healthy!

P.S. Please feel free to forward this newsletter on to anyone you think might enjoy the news and recipes. And if you come across a page on the website that you like, you can also use the buttons at the bottom of each page to share that page with your friends in your social networks.

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