Bettina Network's Blog - Table Talk at a Bettina Network Home

High Blood Pressure!

September 12th, 2011

“Hi everybody!

I am a new host family in the Bettina Network and this is my first blog. I didn’t think anything would happen to make me want to write a blog. I am a quiet, unassuming person and generally go about the business serving rather than joining in the conversation.

That has all changed now!

We had a guest who caused quite a lively conversation at breakfast and when everyone was served I couldn’t resist joining them.

She had high blood pressure and her medicine was out. She was away from home and didn’t know how to get a refill. So the table did every thing they could to help. She was quite reticent about calling her doctor or her local pharmacist. She didn’t want to bother them. That is what made me join the table. Someone as quiet and unassuming as I am, so I got a chance to see myself through someone else. I am going to love this bed & breakfast business.

We tried to do what we could to help. I was worried she would get sick in my home and then what – but that didn’t happen.

Everyone around the table had some remedy they put forth to help her bridge the gap until she returned home. What a conversation.

The best suggestion came from a neighbor who came over to join us for breakfast. He said he used Milk Thistle Seed about twice a year for about 30 days each time. He took two Milk Thistle Seed capsules after dinner in the evenings and it made him “pee like a fire hose”. Well, that broke the ice and when I stopped turning red, it was quite a time.

The next best suggestion was organic parsley. So I put parsley on everything at breakfast – the scrambled eggs; I mashed parsley against a cup to bruise the leaves and filled the cup with water so she could have parsley tea. She got the idea and went into the kitchen several times over the next few days and made parsley tea on her own.

Someone else suggested that old stand-by that I’ve always heard about – garlic. Except in the Bettina Network it would have to be organic garlic – I learn fast.

I didn’t know what to do about that. One can’t put garlic in scrambled eggs – or freshly baked bread – or muffins – or cinnamon buns – so I made the cheese spread that has been going around the Bettina Network as a great snack to give people when they arrive. I believe it came from a golf club in Georgia with changes made by several of us. I made it with three whole garlic bulbs. The cheese in the spread, no doubt, counteracted any affect the garlic would have had, but it was enjoyed by all.”

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Posted in Bettina's Cookbook, Breakfast Table Talk, Health | Comments Off on High Blood Pressure!

How Do You Keep Your Linens?

September 8th, 2011

A guest at a bed & breakfast in the Bettina Network wrote:

“I just left one of your homes and it was a fantastic experience. I have become a Bettina Loyalist – hey, I coined something new and hope you use it, it can be payback to you for what I just learned during my visit.

I have beautiful linens from my grandmother which I used only once and when I used it, it became hopelessly stained, by a friend who couldn’t eat without dropping food on the tablecloth. Because of that and because I want to keep the linens she left me to pass on to my children I needede to know how to use them without causing damage and how to take care of them.

I’ve read everyplace and every tip. The eye opener was my trip to a Bettina home ,just recently. They had beautiful linens on the table with linen napkins which were exquisitely embroidered by somebody’s grandmother. I was amazed that she was using such linens for us!!!! Someone at the table spilled coffee all over the side of these hand embroidered, very old pieces. I about had a fit. I couldn’t believe that guest was so careless with something he will probably never again experience in his lifetime unless he stays at another Bettina home.

I hung around the kitchen all morning after breakfast because I wanted to know how they were going to handle those stains – and I was too embarrassed to ask.

No one was upset about the coffee spill except me. If these were your usual hotel-type linens which are sent out to a cleaners and bleached, starched and ironed to within an inch of their lives – substantially shortening their life-span I would have thought nothing of it. But these were very elegant hand made linens.

At first, I just hung out in the kitchen, too embarrassed to say I didn’t know how to take care of my grandmother’s linens so I didn’t use them. When she took the linens up the back stairs it was just to much for me to hold back. I went after her to see what she was going to do with the linens. When she saw me following her I had to tell her why and we both laughed – thank goodness!

She put almost a cup of non-chlorine fabric bleach in a plastic pail full of water – the kind of pain you use to scrub floors. She, apparently, only uses this plastic pail for her linens. Then she put the linens in the pail of water – which was luke warm to my hands and let them sit. She does this after every breakfast – so when she does the wash for the day – a couple hours later – the linens get dumped in the washing machine on ‘hand wash’ cycle and cold water and washed. Simple. But then what?

Well, if I didn’t have time or want to do the wash that soon or didn’t have those regular habits and times for doing the wash, then her advice was to just wash the linens whenever I did have time – the next day is not a problem, but she cautioned me not to wait much longer than that. She did say she had a friend who uses her home for bed and breakfast guests who sometimes lets her tablecloths stay in the water and bleach for a couple days because she isn’t that organized to be able to do it just a couple hours after breakfast.

She puts her linens on a hanger in her laundry room to dry because she doesn’t like to use the dryer when it isn’t necessary. That’s unusual!

Once dry, she irons her linens and rolls them on a roller which she gets from rug stores. They have the large rollers which carpets come on and these stores throw them out periodically so she keeps a supply in her basement for new additions to her linen wardrobe. Before she rolls the linens she has old sheets she puts on the roller and then rolls the linens over the sheets. Her linen storage closet is impressive!

It all sounds complicated and time consuming, but I went home and tried it with the stained tablecloth I was grieving over from my grandmother. It was quite dry from the dinner of several weeks ago and very clearly stained – and I thought forever. I should have been listening and watching when I was little to see how my grandmother kept these linens so beautifully – but I wasn’t.

I soaked it, per my host family’s instructions, left it overnight – put it in the washing machine with a couple other things the next day and then into the dryer. (I felt really guilty using the dryer after my stay at that Bettina home, but bad habits are hard to break – especially when convenience is an issue).

When the linens dried and were ironed, I rolled the tablecloth on one roller and the napkins on another – she doesn’t roll her napkins on rollers, this was strictly my own contribution. They came out beautifully. The stains are gone. I used another one of my grandmother’s beautiful handmade linens last night because we had a dinner party with special friends. Eveyrone ooohhed and aaaahed over the table cloth and worried that they would stain it. I was very nonchalant and advised that they should relax and enjoy their meal. If they spilled on the cloth – no problem – I could take care of it easily.

It was a really enjoyable evening. I was relaxed and not hyper about what my dinner guests might do to my grandmother’s table cloth and my husband was amazed because he knew how hyper I had been in the past about using these linens.

After dinner, when we cleared the table, I took the tablecloth and napkins downstairs to the washing area, put them in the plastic pain with the all fabric bleach I bought for the occasion, – after looking long and hard for just the right one – went upstairs and enjoyed the rest of the meal.

Thanks folks! One never knows where the next little bit of enlightenment to help us live an easier and elegant life will come from. This time from your Network and I really appreciate the discovery.

This might sound trivial to all of you who are still using those plastic placemats, but when you decide that way of eating is no longer satisfactory, come back to this lesson and move up in the world:)

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Posted in Housekeeping, Making Connections | Comments Off on How Do You Keep Your Linens?

Post Office Failing?

September 6th, 2011

comment received from a Bettina Network bed & breakfast guest about the blog “Why the Post Office is Failing?

“Thank you for that blog. Really, one truly never knows what will appear on your blog.

I was delighted to see this topic because it has to do with one of my pet peeves – the technology people, the computer programmers and others in that same area use their technology knowledge and assume it is everything. So what is happening here is the tech area telling the rest of us how we now have to do business. Technology is a staff function. It supports the rest. It has become the only function in charge with everything else taking a secondary seat and sometimes supporting, but most times just pushed out of the way as though generations of experience don’t matter, only the increasing tech takeover of everything in this society.

I’ve seen many places where this is true. This post office box thing is indicative of how the tech area will change the rest of society and not always for the better. In fact, most times it is for the worst.

You don’t have to be a business to have run into this problem. My personal address is a post office box number because I travel a lot. I don’t want mail accumulating outside my door when I am gone and I don’t want to put a stop on my mail at the post office so my brilliant alternative was to have a P. O. Box. I can pick up my mail when I am in town and no problems. However, I am having the same problem – I can’t get a lot of things on line because of my Post Office Box. My co-worker also travels and has a post office box with xxxxxxxxxxx (Editor’s wipe out). She has no problems because her post office box has a street address and suite number. I didn’t follow her example because it costs more and I couldn’t justify the extra expense. If this becomes more common, as it seems to be on that path, the Post Office will suffer declines in income from this part of their service.

Keep up the good work. Root out all of the problems – then its up to the rest of us to fix them. Hopefully, we will not be too lethargic to address this problem and others. All it takes is many, many people protesting to change this.”

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Posted in Guest comments | Comments Off on Post Office Failing?

Why the Post Office is Failing!

September 5th, 2011

What a discussion and why I love bed & breakfast.

We talked at this breakfast about something I didn’t realize —-

Many businesses have a corporate address as a post office box. Technology groups – ie Google, etc. will not accept an account if the address is a post office box, even though that is the address your company has used forever. So the post office has problems because private companies which offer post office boxes are much more in demand by corporations because they offer a street address and suite number. The street address is the physical address of the box provider and the suite number is what would be the old traditional P. O. Box Number.

That is acceptable to groups on the web as a bona fide address whereas the United States P. O. Box number is not.

The private groups charge more than the post office, but if you need a street address you pay the premium.

Apparently, according to this discussion which went around the table, that is one thing taking away income from the United States Post Offices.

Isn’t it amazing the little tid bits that surface at a bed & breakfast.

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Posted in Breakfast Table Talk | Comments Off on Why the Post Office is Failing!

The Trek from Home to School 2011

September 1st, 2011

“It is that time of year when the exodus starts – from home to school; from what is known culturally, socially, economically, food-wise and more to something new. It is the Exodus from, not the biblical-type Exodus to. For some of us that biblical Exodus will never happen. For the lucky few, that biblical-type Exodus back will be a life-fulfilling time. Having resided in those hallowed halls, the biblical-type Exodus brings a handful back home.

For others, – the unsuspecting, the innocent, the thoughtless, – friends are left behind; relatives are left behind; old institutions which formed a comfort level for most of us are left behind and even our identities are shed and strip-searched. Everything is ripe for forming new attachments, new loyalties, new cultural mores, food habits, clothes styles, friends, and we attach ourselves to new institutions. Most poignantly we adopt new identities without even being aware of that process happening. We feel the pain of the change, but because this is all such an integral part of the society in which we live and because this has all been pictured to us in ways which remove our defenses and understandings, we simply feel the discomfort, the frustration, the confusion that comes from putting in place our new identities. At one time in history these many would have been called the strivers. They are the ones who will succeed beyond their own and anyone else’s expectations because they have that something which brought them out of their own to this new territory without incident, question or immediate guilt.

And yes, what arrives for all in this process is the guilt. A new kind of guilt which will neither surface nor grow for at least a decade. A slowly developing guilt from actions that, to those of us in this process – in our late teens to mid-twenties – has nothing to do with guilt, but is simply life moving ahead.

In this re-ordering process, the new identity is what will be most troublesome over the next several decades. If we are not upper-middle class Northern European we will re-order our family relationships drastically. To move ahead in this ’new’ society we must cut off and keep family at arms length. They will expose our background, our class, the economic base from which we’ve come and more. The exceptions who are used to disprove the rule, are allowed to move ahead and keep family and there are not many of them. They can discretely keep some family around. The others have to move away from family. Find fault with them, keep them at arms length because whatever is wrong is their fault so they will not walk into this beautiful – though painful – place with us.”

Ed. Note: This is a small excerpt from a letter we received from a former guest. He had been part of a conversation around the breakfast table in one of the bed & breakfast homes in the Bettina Network, inc. when parents were bringing their children to college and he was doing the same thing. The conversation from a couple older parents, who are now grandparents was about how they missed their children who were “busy”, had very little time to ‘come home’ and from whom they heard very seldom.

Over the years he has stayed in other homes in the Bettina Network, inc., was a part of conversations with parents who had effectively been ignored by their children for decades and he was beginning to experience the same thing.

We have not put the entire letter in this blog because it is very painful to read and revealed a lot of information personal to the guest. We don’t know your experience, but over the years this certainly parallels many conversations we’ve had with parents as their children left home for school and the years that followed cut them almost totally out of their children and grandchildren’s lives.

The end of his letter follows:

“What is most painful about having packed up my children several years ago – one at a time – and brought them to college – and then to watch them grow away from all of us is the thought that this is what I did to my parents. Without even a thought; not realizing the pain it must have caused them. I became part of the prior generation – leaving home – establishing a very successful career – and looking back today on my childhood and family, which I miss terribly, but can’t replace or even belatedly go back to visit because they are all dead. I did everything I was raised to do – finished college, established a business and now am living comfortably several steps above where my family lived financially and class-wise. But in the end, when I look back, what I wanted and expected was to finish college, go home and move ahead with my life in the context of family – my family. To have grown and maintained my original identity was my goal, although not put in those terms as a young person. That was taken away from me without either my knowledge or consent. How did that happen? Is this how a multi-national economy is formed, grown, expanded? Was I fodder for that process and are my children the new fodder needed for this to continue? I don’t think I even like the new identity I put in its place.”

We hope it is not your experience, but we add it to Bettina’s Blog because the guest sent it for the blog and because we think it is illuminating to life today. Your comments are welcome.

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Posted in An editorial just because, Breakfast Table Talk, Guest comments, Making Connections | No Comments »

A Healthy Very Quick Breakfast

August 14th, 2011

I want to share with you something we have started doing in the morning for breakfast when we have a guest who doesn’t have time for a sit-down meal, wants something healthy to keep him/her going during the day and is concerned about keeping healthy and ‘regular’ during their time away from home.

I will call this – the Bettina Smoothie:

For three glass of smoothie we put the following into a blender – if you follow the order we give, you will find the blender works without your having to go in and stir the ingredients while blending.

one glass goats milk kefir (raw and organic, if possible – if not, as close as you can come)
notice we don’t use cow’s milk here and we use kefir instead of ordinary milk. That is our probiotic and guests really appreciate the difference.

2 organic bananas – if you are making only one or two glasses, then use one organic banana instead of 2.
The other ingredients don’t change for one or two glasses. Actually, we don’t know how to make one glass because someone always shows up for the second glass and its easier to have it ready than to make another. they seem to sense the blender going and will have a Bettina Smoothie and then sit down to a full course breakfast.

one package organic frozen fruit – ie blueberries – blackberries – strawberries – pineapple. Use whatever frozen organic fruit you have or the guest particularly likes. We have a couple guests who have to be at meetings by 7am. They have come often enough to expect the smoothie and put in their request for the fruit they feel like eating the night before.

A little organic maple syrup, or organic turbinado sugar. Use sparingly because you only want a tiny taste.

Pour into elegant, crystal stem glasses and serve with linen or brocade napkins, for that “Bettina” touch.

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Posted in Bettina's Cookbook, Health | No Comments »

Anti-Perspirant Follower

August 13th, 2011

A blog from a guest at a Bettina home

I have been reading your blogs on giving up deodorant and anti-perspirants. That is quite brave of you because we all know people in our society now judge you as immoral if you have any odor at all. In fact, we are beginning to judge people as immoral even if they have a perfume odor where once we considered using perfume a good thing. Now using perfume is a low class/trashy thing to do. Times do change and sometimes really quickly.

I have been trying to give up deodorant and especially anti-perspirants because I believe they contribute to our epidemic of Alzheimer’s. The aluminum Chloride? – not sure which aluminum compound is in it, but that aluminum closing your pores so you can’t perspire cannot be a good thing. I imagine aluminum stuffed into my pores under my arms and it gives me the chills. I have not been successful at giving up deodorants, however, until I read your blog.

Several ideas came to me since reading and re-reading your experiments. The first – after a few weeks – I realized this is a great, unintentional weight-loss program.

I keep a food diary and write down everything I eat. It took about two weeks to begin to get it as a regular thing without missing foods or forgetting to write down what I had eaten. The diary has made giving up deodorants without smelling loud quite easy.

I noticed as I kept this food diary that when I eat heavily processed, pesticides, antibioticized foods – in other words foods that have been doctored and are not organically grown – my bad smells went up. Really horrible smells came out of me when I ate beef – non-organic. I smelled almost immediately after I got out of the shower and the smell was not pleasant.

The more of the “wrong” foods I ate also turned my body into a foul smelling center. So gradually I started the food diary so I could ascertain which foods were the culprits and gradually I have become extremely aware of my body and the reactions I have to what I eat. It has been an amazing revelation – and I am a very busy person so being busy is not an excuse to remove yourself from your own responsibility to take care of yourself.

When I go out to a restaurant with friends or an evening on the town or wherever I am going to eat foods that cause foul smells to emanate from my body I use deodorant. If its going to be a long night, I even use anti-perspirants because I need to be careful to not be ostracized by those who can’t stand to smell the human body when it is doing its job of getting rid of toxins through the pores.

It has felt like a long journey, but I like where I have reached. I have lost 15 pounds in the process. Apparently, the foods that make you stinky also make you fat.

This is an awful note to send you, but you have opened the door to such a discussion and I want to air my experiences. Maybe they will help someone going through what I’ve been through or maybe they will just peak someone else’s curiosity. I look forward to reading responses and suggestions from someone who has been through this and can help me go the next step in understanding more about my physical self and how society has intruded on the health of my physical self in a very negative way and what I can do to either mitigate or reverse those problems.

Ed. Note: This was from someone who has been a guest in a Bettina home. We are sharing it in the hopes you find it useful. If you are a Bettina Host Family or have been a guest in one of the Bettina Homes, please feel free to send us your thoughts, ideas, suggestions, discoveries and we will add them to the summaries of discussions we get from conversations over breakfast in Bettina homes.

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Posted in Guest comments, Health, Making Connections, Reader Feedback | No Comments »

An Editorial from an Upset Editor

August 4th, 2011

GOOGLE is a very irresponsible company. Do you know they don’t have any customer service for anybody – unless you know someone who works there who will risk their job by taking your problem to someplace it needs to be addressed and most of us don’t have that.

Our blog was a mess for weeks and we spent hours-days-weeks trying to get it out of the ether back to where it could be accessed.

So now the only Bettina’s Blog you can access via Google search is a part of the blog which dates back from 2010. How or why they separated our blog into this really one part and ignored the rest is something I can’t address or solve and can’t find anyone in Google. I think everyone who works there must be a computer – no real live human beings are in evidence anyplace unless you want to spend money and get into Google AdWords, etc. All of a sudden, live people are on the telephone. what is that about?

I used to hear how humane and forward looking the two founders were. Well either this was a myth or the company is so out of their control that it has become one of the worst invaders of our privacy and the worst ignorers of dealing with their problems I have ever come across – and I’ve seen and experienced some really awful corporations.

We are beginning to understand why Google has come to the attention of so many anti-trust bodies. They are totally trying to put every kind of agency out of business by presenting to the public a way around using an agency. By the time John and Jan Q. Public realize this is a come-on and a really bad way of doing business, their money is gone, they are out of business and Goggle has marginalized those who looked towards them and away from agencies that were looking out for their best interest.

I could go on for pages about the problems we’ve had with Google.

suffice it to say, we were afraid to put blogs out there for several months because of the way Google opened us up to damage by those looking to wreck havoc. Now we’ve decided to just go on, ignore the possible problems and hope there is a fix for them someplace – Google isn’t interested in fixed anything. You can post your problems on a public board and hope someone responds and helps you out of a mess. That doesn’t happen very often.

If your problem is of a very delicate nature that could hurt you if it gets out before a fix gets put in place you are flat out of luck.

How have we ever allowed a company which is violating everything we hold dear and close in this country to not only survive but to thrive?

If this keeps up there will be a new company in Bettina’s Hall of Shame and Bettina’s Box of Shame.

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Posted in An editorial just because | No Comments »

Robert’s Blueberry Muffins

August 4th, 2011

We have had several requests for Robert’s Blueberry Muffins – which are admittedly exceptional.

He has not been in the frame of mind to give out his recipe. He experimented with lots of different combinations and finally came to the conclusion that it is not the recipe, but the ingredients which make the difference and then went about using just an ordinary muffin recipe. Everytime he makes them we get rave reviews on the “Guest Questionnaire” which we send out to guests who have visited one of the Bettina homes.

He is giving up this recipe with the proviso that when you use it you have to give him credit and give the muffins the title of “Robert’s Blueberry Muffins”.

A creation of the Rev. Dr. Robert Bennett – or so he claims:

   “ROBERT’S BLUEBERRY MUFFINS”

All of the ingredients for these muffins must be organic and not simply ‘organic’, but the best organic ingredients you can find. Be especially careful of ingredients called organic from those large, large stores which are now hopping on the organic bandwagon and selling organic products about which I am a bit suspicious.

1/2 cup organic turbinado sugar (sugar that has been processed only once.)

1/3 cup organic butter or organic, virgin, expeller processed coconut oil (this is a new ‘shortening’ I have started to use because my wife gave me heck for turning my nose up at it and using butter exclusively. I find it makes lighter muffins and gives them a little different taste that no one can quite pick out. This is one of the secrets of these muffins.)

1 egg – organic from chickens that run around in the fresh air and sunshine and are only given organic feed

1/2 cup milk. Preferably raw organic milk. If you can’t find this, then milk which is unhomogenized, and/or unpasteurized. If not, then use organic milk as unprocessed as you can find it.

1 1/2 cups organic flour. Make sure the organic flour is also stone ground.

2 teaspoons organic baking powder.

1/2 teaspoon himalayan salt. A very pure kind of salt and the only kind I am allowed to use at home. I would love to tell you why, but I don’t know.

1/4 teaspoon soda. This was a secret because we had abolished using soda. I used to keep this specially wrapped and hidden away, but the secret is now out.

1 cup organically grown blueberries. Put the blueberries in a small bowl with flour and mix them around with a large spoon until they are coated with flour. This helps to keep the blueberries from all sinking to the bottom of the batter. It took quite a long time for me to figure this one out.

Grated rind of one lemon and a little extra turbinado sugar to mix together and sprinkle on top of each muffin before you bake them.

Mix dry ingredients together with a wire whisk until the flour looks lighter and has incorporated lots of air. .

In a separate bowl, beat egg with a wire whisk until it has lightened and incorporated lots of air then add the rest of the ‘wet’ ingredients. The idea is to incorporate as much air as possible into these wet and dry ingredients because the batter is mixed very little once you put these two together.

Add dry ingredients alternately with wet ingredients. Lightly mix – don’t try to get out all the lumps and especially don’t overmix. Fold in floured blueberries. Pour into a greased muffin tin and sprinkle grated lemon rind and sugar on top of each muffin. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.

If you want more than this yields, double or triple the recipe.”

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Posted in Bettina's Cookbook | No Comments »

Bettina Network’s Policies

July 29th, 2011

Having been in business over 20 years in bed & breakfast, we have learned much about this industry.

Our policies are in place because of the experiences we have had over the years and they have served us well.

We are not the fastest on the block, but we are concerned, considerate, safe and constantly changing to help create a better world – to be super concerned about preserving what we have as a world community and making sure our homes are all working towards being more efficient, more considerate of others, more considerate of the environment and knowledgeable about the health and happiness of our guests.

Every home in the Bettina Network is one we know well and whose family/owners we know well because someone from the Bettina Network spends the night in each home before we accept that home into the Bettina Network and before we take reservations for guests to stay in that home. From the office, we are in constant communication with our host families, making sure we get even better acquainted with them to know their strong and weak points and to be able to help them move to ever higher levels in this corporation.

We also are concerned about who the guests are who stay in a Bettina home. We want to make sure both the guest and the Bettina Host Families are well cared for and cared about. We are a community of people with a common interest in bed & breakfast as a way to travel – we all work together to make this a great experience for everyone. We have huge historic mansions, regular suburban houses, apartments, etc. to give you as large a choice as possible, but all thoroughly checked out.

We do everything we can do to minimize any possible problems. We are not an unknown and unknowing entity, in place to make reservations for whoever comes or to take into the Bettina Network whichever property presents itself for inclusion in the Bettina Network. Yes, we are a business and yes, we are in business to make a profit, but yes also we are concerned about how we make that profit. We do not want it to be at the expense of others or to anyone’s detriment. Our community grows larger each day and grows in depth, wisdom and knowledge – but especially in inclusiveness, caring, eco-consciousness and more.

That may be a slower, more expensive way to work, but it has been our choice and it has served us and our guests very well over the years.

You can arrive at a Bettina Home and know the guests who will be sharing that home with you are wonderful, interesting and concerned/considerate people. If there is no host family present, you can be assured the Bettina Home is still well looked after and in great shape when you arrive.

You can arrive at a Bettina Home and know it has been checked and constantly re-checked so that you arrive to no surprises and it is the place described to you over the telephone or through the mail or through email. We are very accurate in our descriptions and quality control is at the top of our agenda as we think through who would be great to stay in our homes and – unfortunately, we do have to make the call that some would not be great guests. And yes, we also have to make the call that not everyone who calls us would make a great Bettina Host family and so we sometimes have to decline a family that wants to join the Bettina Network.

Bettina guests help us keep Bettina Homes at the top of the industry because they also are asked to keep us apprised of what their stay was like and we share with Bettina Host Families both the positive and negative feed back we get. If, and that is very seldom, we get negative feed back it is responded to immediately and changes are made promptly. Guests have sent us letters telling us how fantastic are the homes in which they stayed. That is the result of our constant vigilence over the Bettina Network.

That is what we work for – that is what keeps us going – and that will continue to be our method of operating. We hope you approve and support us as we move forward in this business.

We must apologize for the problems we have had with our technology – our Bettina’s Blog was lost for some reason – floating around in the ether until we could figure out how to bring it back. Our listing on Google has been lost for reasons we don’t understand. And we have experienced other upheavals which are totally unnecessary in this business world. It is about competition and being raised up or lowered down because of your business policies and practices and how they affect this world. It is not about one business trying to move out another because they don’t want competition and want the industry to themselves. We are tenacious, persistent and very fair and good at what we do and we will continue to hold that space and that place at the top of this industry.

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Posted in An editorial just because, Bettina Network Info, Making Connections | No Comments »

Remembering Betty Ford at Breakfast!

July 13th, 2011

It was a very interesting breakfast. I am sending this to you for Bettina’s Blog because we don’t normally talk about such things, but this was quite thought provoking.

A couple people at breakfast were old enough to remember Betty Ford when she was at her height and the work she did. Particularly her stances around women’s rights – or the equality of women. A lot was said about her, but the part of the conversation I wanted to share with your readers was the observation of the sexism at the funeral and how far we have to go as a country when our top leaders are setting the tone and sending out the wrong messages.

The “presidential” contingent, there to bear witness to Betty Ford and her life were all women, except for former President Bush – the young Bush – the one we try to make fun of. There was Hillary – but no Bill; there was Michelle – but no Barack. That was quite a message. If it were a president who died, the men would be there in force and so would their wives, but because it was the wife of a former president, the disrespect was glaring. We guessed the others were too busy to pay their respects to a former presidents’ wife who they all knew and whose work they all knew and whose contributions to society they all knew. That was so sad. We all felt sorry for them that they would not ‘demean’ themselves by attending the funeral of a former first lady.

Ed Note: Thanks for sending this. We watched the funeral on C-Span, but it didn’t hit us that the former and current Presidents were absent. It looked ‘normal’ to us and therein lies the problem, which is so hard to solve and push aside for a better way of life for all. The wrong example is certainly being set at the top.

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Posted in Breakfast Table Talk | No Comments »

Bettina’s Blog is Back

July 11th, 2011

What a trial by fire. It is quite challenging if you were not raised with the concepts current in the computer programming world. You have to learn them through trial and error and it is excruciating.

Bettina’s Blog was flying around in the ‘ether’ or whatever the universe is called that contains lost internet sites and other miscellany of the internet world. Trying to snag the blog and make it respond to your commands – like having Bettina’s Blog just a click away for you when you want to read the Blog, is not easy.

We changed servers and we must have looked pretty bad over the past few weeks. Nothing worked! Now that we are back in force, everything looks different and not as elegant as we thought it was before we went to IH “internet hell”.

Funny how your eyes readjust. Stop looking daily at your design and other work and the pink cloud, which is the stuff in which you wrap your own ideas, stops making things look better, pretttier, more elegant than they are.

So on to better things and greater blogs.

We have a few email requests to catch up to. We haven’t ignored your emails, we have just taken a little frustrating, demoralizing, humiliating detour. We are back now and changes should come quickly as we use our major new learning in the IT area. For those of you who are still in the pre-IT age, that means Internet Technology (I think!)

Your exhausted editor!

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Posted in An editorial just because | No Comments »

Testing New Post

June 30th, 2011

Testing to see what happens with a new post.

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Coconut Oil and Alzheimers

June 16th, 2011

We had a great discussion around the breakfast table on Coconut Oil. I pass it along to you. You can put it in Bettina’s Blog, if you like. Maybe other houses in the Bettina Network of bed & breakfast homes would like to start the discussion around their breakfast tables to see what surfaces.

The conversation came from my having seen a segment of the Dr. Oz show which had Dr. Mercola on as a special guest. Thanks to you, I now subscribe to Dr. Mercola’s newsletter at mercola.com so he was no stranger when I saw him on Dr. Oz. The topic of Coconut Oil came up and to my surprise, they were very positive about it.

I am from the generation which was told Coconut Oil is bad and you shouldn’t use it ever. It was put in the category of trans fats and could wreck everything from your heart to you liver to your total health and decrease your life expectancy. I listened to that, in spite of the fact that my great-grandmother used nothing but Coconut Oil. I am, you see, from the generation of people who trashed what they were told growing up in favor of what they hear from their peers and the spin on everything the marketing people spread around the globe. It has taken a couple decades, but I am a reformed family negater and am doing my best to recover the information and wisdom which had been passed on to me by various family members. The longer I live, the more I am shown their wisdom and information was real and long lasting. It stood the test of many generations and is still very viable.

I am a part of the women who have just been liberated, who are roughly akin to first generation immigrants who discard their culture, their language, their family’s wisdom in favor of what they find in their new country. Maybe I have just started to pass that ‘newbie’ space and am moving on to recovering who I am and who the women were in my family. I owe them a lot, which i did not repay nor acknowledge. Trying to say thank you as I recover what I’ve almost lost and grieving over my actual losses of the wisdom and stories the woman in my family tried to pass on to me is overwhelming for me right now. The damage sexism has done to women continues to add-up. I do my best to hold it up for the next generation to see and understand.

I first came upon Coconut Oil in a new light at my daughters house. They had this huge container of Coconut Oil, which they used for everything. I was appalled and was sure they were destroying their health and worse, the health of my grandchildren.

When a guest started talking about the Dr. Oz show and Coconut Oil – I had seen the same show and was doing research into Coconut Oil because of the conflict between my daughters using Coconut Oil; the information I was raised with; and the prevailing information about Coconut Oil out in the ether.

Dr. Mercola talked about Coconut Oil being something which possibly could reverse Alzheimer’s. Which to me meant it could probably also reverse my forgetting nouns and proper names. The conversation around breakfast was fairly heated because one gentleman decided only people who were uneducated could really seriously consider using Coconut Oil after everything ‘science’ has discovered about ‘these foods’. As he talked I immediately defended Coconut Oil because he set off an old feeling which arises when people talk about ‘these people’. Is this a minority food? Is this food threatening to some industry which doesn’t want or like the competition?

I checked out Bettina’s Blog and found we have an article on the blog about massaging after a shower with Coconut Oil. Wow! Ahead of the curve?

As the conversation progressed, we heard – if the guests were correct – there is no ‘good science’ around Coconut Oil being a very negative food which raises your cholesterol. The tests which the marketing people push, were done with partially hydrogenated Coconut Oil – so the Oil iself didn’t stand a chance. The test results were pre-determined to make it look bad.

When one uses Organic, Expeller Pressed and whatever other words were thrown out during breakfast, it turns out Coconut Oil is a good food. All the words meant that Coconut Oil should be bought and used unadulterated without being processed and without being full of additives or hydrogenated. So off I went to buy my Coconut Oil and try the massages, adding Coconut Oil to everything I cook – although I can’t quite get into taking four tablespoons of the Oil daily for the Alzheimers cure – it sounded pretty gross and I am hoping that with no Alzheimers nor dementia in the family I will avoid that one.

I should read Bettina’s Blog a little more diligently so I don’t pass over breakfast conversations like the one you put out on Coconut Oil and Massage. I am going to massage my scalp with Coconut Oil and let it sit for a time before washing my hair. Maybe it will reverse the beginnings of hair loss I am experiencing. It can’t do any harm and I am way ahead of the game if my hair starts to grow in thick and shiny and beautiful. Isn’t that what was used in the Hawaiian Islands for generations – before the U. S. introduced them to all this other stuff – and they were healthy and beautiful people with thick, shiny hair?

Ed Note: Thank you for this article. I would like to add a brief conversation we had over breakfast about using Coconut Oil in a Latté by putting it in the milk before the milk has air whipped into it. The taste is supposed to be excellent, but I must put in the caveat that we have not tried this. The person who told us about this use for Coconut Oil used skim milk. We are not fans of skim milk because we think it is an unhealthy way to go so when we try it, we will try it with whole milk – raw if possible, as untampered with as we can find if we can’t find raw milk.

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Tags: coconut oil, DR. MERCOLA, Reversing Alzheimers
Posted in Breakfast Table Talk, Health and Beauty | No Comments »

Estate Sales and the Environment!

June 9th, 2011

It is no secret that the Bettina Network is expanding into estate sales/auctions/etc. It is one of the things that just about every Bettina Host Family enjoys and uses to maximize the profit from their bed & breakfast, to help the environment and to enjoy a day out going from one sale to the other “kibbitzing”.

As we gave some thought and discussion to this phenomena we realized that we have not been to a department store, hardware store, shopping mall, etc for quite a long time. The only place we shop, other than estate sales, is the grocery store and we generally only buy food at the grocery stores because things like aluminum foil, bags, paper products, etc. even clothes, shoes and some toiletries can always be found in a house sale for very little money.

The last sale we went to was full of hand crocheted pot holders, dish towels, place mats, and an exquisite hand embroidered table cloth. Over $700 in the stores, but $50 at the house sale. Someone’s grandmother probably spent a couple years making the table cloth and it was hardly used – kept for special occasions – except special occasions for us turns out to be breakfasts and we really use those table cloths and other table accoutrements.

We had been given a pot holder as a gift not long ago along with an oven mitt by friends of ours who were very excited about the new materials on the market. I put a hand crocheted pot holder and this new, red, greasy looking but not greasy feeling pot holder side by side and started to research the two on the computer. What I discovered was the new red pot holder was made from petroleum products and the hand crocheted pot holder was grown and spun from cotton. What a difference!!! Why go to the trouble of trying to drive less to save gas and do all the other things we are being encouraged to do to limit the amount of oil we use when new products are constantly coming on the market which are made form petroleum. Products for which we have perfectly acceptable materials out of which they have been made for generations.

Even products that our parents and grandparents used without thinking for cuts, burns, etc. are made of petroleum – ie Vaseline ‘Petroleum’ Jelly. What is wrong with using aloe very gel or juice or the entire plant? It is one that can be put on a cut or burn or bruise with good results and you can drink a glass of it with or without water to double the affect.

I am sure you and I could go down the list and find many products to eliminate so we don’t overwhelm our bodies and environment with oil products and used the real things instead. What a new, clean way to live.

We needed paint this week – and found the exact color we needed at a house sale; I have several very elegent designer dresses from a house sale; a much needed comfortable chair for one of our bedrooms at a yard sale and many, many pillows.

How do you deal with cleaning the things you buy? We throw the pillows in the washing machine on ‘sanitize’ and then into the drier and they all come out beautiful. We cleaned the chair with an upholstery and rug cleaner and on top of that put the pillows on the chair into the drier on ‘sanitize’ and we were off to put the money we saved under our mattresses:)

Now which bed & breakfast are we talking about? And are you going to strip the beds and look under every mattress from now on when you stay at a Bettina Home to see if you can find which one is being used as a bank?

Send us your ideas as to how to live a life without all of the oil, petroleum, and other horrible products which create health problems for us in the future – and – how to find and use those natural products which are still on the market, although for most you will have to go to house and estate sales, especially if you want to find real cottong (which was grown in a field full of sunshine) or real silk which was spun by the butterflies, etc.

______________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Posted in An editorial just because, Health, Making Connections, Shopping | No Comments »

Is Deodorant/Anti-Perspirant Necessary?

May 23rd, 2011

We have had quite a time of it with this topic. It all started when we received a request from a guest to please follow up on how to live an organic life without smelling when you give up, especially anti-perspirants.

Several of us took up the challenge. We will never be the same and we will never have the same friends again. People looked at us funny! They moved away from us when we were in meetings during our trial time! We had great and as you can guess, hilarious discussions about this. One bottom line result for all of us – we now know who our true friends are. The others dropped away because they wouldn’t come close to us until this was over – and from them, they said “we love you, but don’t come near me until you have regained your senses and started wearing deodorant or anti-perspirant again – nothing personal, they just couldn’t stand how we began to smell!!!”

Here is what we found – and you have to remember this ‘scientific’ experiement was done by just a hand full of people – women and men:

1) Much to our chagrin, the men didn’t smell as ‘ripe’ as the women throughout this experiement. We don’t know why, that is just what we found. Maybe they cheated and didn’t go to tennis and other heavy activity occasions so they wouldn’t smell and alienate their friends and co-workers.

2) Our bottom line discovery is that it is possible to go without deodorant and anti-perspirants, but it does not happen overnight. You have to work up to it or go around smelling until you have your bodily reactions under control.

Diet has a lot to do with how we smell. And I mean – smell bad.

Lots of fast foods, grease, beef or other animal proteins raise your smell level to almost intolerable by someone sitting or standing next to you if you went two days without a bath or shower. You can do that if you use deodorant. In fact, we found that is probably why people use the stuff because they can go a week without bathing or showering, use anti-perspirants and get by tolerably well.

We tried the suggestion of one persons friend – to use Tom’s deodorant, but we found while it didn’t have the bad stuff in it, it also didn’t work. It worked well for only one person. It left the rest of us smelling bad within an hour or so.

Without using deodorants or anti-perspirants it is imperative that you bathe daily – or shower daily.

The adjustments you have to make to your diet to go without deodorants and anti-perspirants are also good for your weight. I didn’t weigh myself during this time and only stepped on a scale this morning and found I had lost a very appreciable amount of weight. Probably, thinking about something else and concentrating as hard as we had to with this experiment, kept my mind off food and my hands out of the chocolate.

We realized the answer to this question had to be that deodorant and anti-perspirant were not necessary because our ancestors didn’t have the drug companies churning out these products, nor did they have all the tv ads making you feel like a really dirty swamp if you didn’t use them – so – something kept our ancestors from smelling and kept them close to one another without a negative reaction to their mutual body odors.

We found many helps:

1) If you must eat animal protein, use beef, chicken, etc. as though it is a condiment rather than the entire meal. A little bit goes a long way and your body stays ‘fresh’ smelling longer. We don’t know why, we just know that was our experience. We also conjectured if this was the reason anti-perspirants came along and why as humans we are needing stronger and stronger products to keep us from smelling loud and wrong as our diets go further off kilter.

2) Bathe or shower daily – preferably in the morning – so you can get the perspiration or dead skin cells or whatever accumulates overnight, off your skin giving you the best chance at not smelling all day. Of course, there are the overachievers in every group and a couple of us bathed before bed and in the morning while another person bathed in the late afternoon before going out for the evening, at night when she returned and again in the morning. You will recognize her – she is the one whose skin has turned colors from the chlorine in the water.

3)There are ‘helpers’ we found, which we believe, increases your health level and reduces the likelihood of your smelling bad as you participate in life. The biggy is organic, virgin, cold pressed or expeller pressed coconut oil. To give yourself a massage with coconut oil – or if you don’t have the time for an all-over massage to rub coconut oil under your arm pits after bathing, helped a lot. If you also used a couple drops of essential oil after you massaged the coconut oil under your arms you are almost guaranteed not to smell bad, but to smell like whichever essential oil you chose. I liked rose oil. Someone else used lavender oil, and there is the renegade who used rosemary oil. Her smell was a little different, but you got used to knowing when you smelled rosemary oil it was your friend and not stewed chicken on the stove. One used cinnamon oil and one used nutmeg oil, but all of the results were the same; bad body odor was banished.

A second good result came from the person who used organic aloe vera gel either as a massage all over, or when she didn’t have time for a massage, only under her arms. She also used essential oils – only a drop or two under each arm – over her basic massage medium.

We all found that it takes time – from a couple weeks to a month to get good results living without deodorant and/or anti-perspirant. Probably, we guessed, because you have to detox your body of the things which cause you to get that ‘ripe’ odor.

So our conclusion is that you can live very comfortably without either deodorant or anti-perspirant. It takes thought and care and paying attention to your diet and your body and bathing daily, but it is worth it to get ride of those toxins. You know that whatever you put on your skin is in your blood stream in seconds. So if you can’t eat it, don’t use it in your body. AND – there is not a deodorant nor anti-perspirant on the market that I would eat or drink.

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Posted in Breakfast Table Talk, Guest comments, Health, Making Connections | No Comments »

The Royal Wedding at Breakfast

April 20th, 2011

Wouldn’t you know the Royal Wedding would not escape a Bettina breakfast table. It was a great and very funny discussion. Basically, how to cure the world’s ills using the 30 to 60 million dollars it is estimated will be the cost of this wedding. Homelessness, poverty, hunger, etc. could all be cured well within that amount of money.

Skeptics will question that possibility, but we were sure it could happen. It boggled the mind of everyone at the table that a wedding could cost that amount of money in 2011 – or rather that any one, any country, any institution would spend that kind of money on a wedding, especially in a time when the world is awash in so much tragedy; so many people living in the streets because of earthquakes, tsunamis, fires, and more – not even beginning to call up those who live in the streets all the time.

It makes the “good works” done by the royals look like so much cover for lives led on a level that is beyond human decency. As one person said – who are they that they take the right to themselves to use that much of the world’s very limited resources on such a senseless extravaganza. When these extravaganza’s were in vogue and the thing to do because that was the way of the world, it was done to scare people and so impress them with the power of the throne that they would not dare revolt they would be afraid to even consider another way of life. What then, does it mean today?

What does it mean when Charles raises money for his charities when he doesn’t even put his own tooth paste on his own tooth brush to brush his own teeth? That almost ended breakfast because none of us could eat we were laughing so hard at the description of how this grown man lives.

What does it mean when our media goes rushing to England to cover this extravaganza, searching all around to make it more than it is, spending lots of money and media space while totally not covering those in England who don’t have enough to eat or a decent place to sleep, while gilded horses and carriages are riding about and people are yelling and screaming with joy over the fact that they are being ‘royally’ screwed.

We went from high hysteria with laughter to serious discussions about how long this kind of obscenity can last. Why do so many people follow the high and mighty when their own lives are in trouble because of the resources taken from them to pay for such unnecessary frivolity and show of power and money.

What makes it even more not understandable is the fact that this all takes place in a Christian Church! WOW, did that ever get comment! Exactly what is happening in that Church that all of this is what it is about and what it takes as its “ministry”? They probably even have a mission to the poor – which probably makes up about one-half of one percent of the total amount spent on other things.

The discussion was mostly about what ‘they’ have and what ‘others’ don’t have. It was about the demeaning of the human being – both royal and servant to the royals who do the ‘care taking’ of the royals by running their baths, brushing their teeth, etc..

(You can leave this next part out, but it just totally disrupted breakfast and it took a good five minutes before we could calm down from the laughter this generated).

We wondered who was the servant to the royals who wiped their —— . And we wondered if the American media might get a ‘live’ interview with that person so the rest of us could see whose job it was to do this! We also wondered if this was done with paper or with washable rags. We hoped it was with washable rags so there would at least be some redeeming environmentally friendly result.

I think you get the picture. How we got such raucous laughter out of all of this I don’t know, but it was a pretty funny breakfast and one I have not been able to get out of my mind. None of this was upfront for me. I even watched some of the media coverage leading up to the big day. After that breakfast I have been totally sensitized in a way I hadn’t been before. Long Live the Bettina Network!

Ed Note: We put your blog in as you wrote it without eliminating anything. It was astounding to us. As a result of this breakfast and what was discussed – much of it we hadn’t thought of before either, we are putting the Royal Wedding in Bettina’s Hall of Shame.

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Posted in Bettina's Hall of Shame, Breakfast Table Talk, Making Connections | No Comments »

Beautiful and Elegant Skin!!

April 9th, 2011

well, we have once again stumbled upon one of the fountains of elegance! Can’t say youth because that is a fallacy! Everything that looks good is called “young”. That is a bad habit we should break – soon! Try this and when you look in the mirror you will see reflected back, a more beautiful you.

The youth of today are already out of control with an abominable arrogance. How did they get it? All the marketing of “youth” would make the strongest young person arrogant. We use ‘young’ and ‘restore your youth’ to market and advertise products almost as much as we use ‘sex’. The most common tag line in advertising is to try this and that – it will make you look and feel ‘young’. That makes the strongest young person arrogant. And we wonder what’s wrong with our ‘youth’ today!!!

This beauty secret is something we’ve known about for generations. Many of us had a tough brush with this growing up. COD LIVER OIL!

What does that have to do with beauty and elegance? Try it on your skin and see what happens!

Another breakfast discovery at one of the Bettina Network bed & breakfast homes!

Take a capsule of cod liver oil – one with oil on the inside, not a solid capsule – clip off the end and squeeze out the oil into your cupped hand. Very gently rub this oil all over your face as you would any face cream. Let it stay on your face at least 20 minutes, preferably longer, and voila! a change for the better that can be seen. Only make sure you aren’t going out soon after because folks will begin to move a little away from you when you enter a room and sit down. You will smell like cod liver oil.

We tried it for several weeks and people we met were commenting on how great we look! We put it on at night before going to bed so by morning when we splash cold water on our face to get a little blood flow going in the cheeks, the smell of cod liver oil is gone.

Sorry, the royal wedding is having an affect on my language – the royal ‘we’ will probably be around in everything I write until all this hoopla has died down! My children try to say that royal ‘we’ has been around a lot longer, but I just ignore them.

This beauty treatment did bring back some controversial memories, which I suspect many of us share. I remember my grandmother giving me cod liver oil on half an orange and telling me it was just an orange and good for me so eat it. She claimed it would keep me beautiful. One look at that very oily orange and you knew you were being conned. One taste of that orange and you just about gagged on everything you had recently eaten. What she should have told me was to take that half-orange soaked in cod liver oil, rub it on my face, let it stay for a goodly amount of time, and I would always be beautiful!

What struck us as we tried this cod liver oil on the face was the fact that unlike other oils which tended to bother our eyes if we weren’t careful and put oil too close to our eyes, cod liver oil didn’t do that. We could put cod liver oil under our eyes and on our eyelids and there was no stinging, burning or other negative side affects. We don’t know why, we are just reporting on the results of our experiments. You might find that to be true or you might find some other affect.

What also struck us was the fact that the cod liver oil was absorbed into our skin fairly quickly. There was no oily residue even when we put on lots of cod liver oil.

We decided this would be one of our beauty regimens. Dry milk, vitamins A and E one day, coconut oil a second day, aloe vera gel a third day, royal jelly a fourth day and cod liver oil capsules on the skin on the fifth day. If that doesn’t create an amazingly beautiful person – on the outside – we don’t know what will. Try it, you’ll like who you see reflected in the mirror in about three to four weeks. Remembering that natural remedies don’t work immediately, although if 1) your skin is dry and has been neglected for some time, or 2) you have been spending lots of money and time on cosmetics which at worst dry out your skin and at best do nothing for you, you are likely to see some immediate results – both in the money left in your pocket book for you to spend and when you look at your face.

We haven’t tried it, but I suspect this would make a great all-over massage treatment. In which case you really want to stay away from other people until you have given yourself a great cod-liver oil massage; let it stay for an hour or so; and have rinsed yourself off in the shower with luke warm moving to cold water. This might even be good for your health!

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Posted in Breakfast Table Talk, Health and Beauty, Making Connections, Preserving Family History and Stories | No Comments »

Industrialization of Information

April 7th, 2011

What follows is a summary – as best we could – of a very interesting breakfast conversation in one of the bed & breakfast homes in the Bettina Network, inc. It is a woefully inadequate summary, but it is one we think you will understand from the bits and pieces we picked up.

“Our ancestors lived through and saw their lives dramatically changed by the Industrialization of Agriculture. Some good, but a whole lot not so good, has come out of that still-ongoing movement.

We moved from a pastoral, family oriented, farm society in which we knew where our food came from; we knew how it was grown; we didn’t eat food very far from its source; and we created much of what we needed. From that era we have moved to a society where we eat food which has been processed so much that we don’t know what it was originally; have to read the labels to find out what’s in the food being sold; and when we do we discover food is the last ingredient on the label, most of the other ingredients are words we can neither read nor pronounce. The dilution, pasteurization, manipulation of real food has happened while we were all looking in another direction.

Huge machinery has been designed and built to produce things like potato chips, bread, cookies, jam, rice, pasta and to make vegetables into things we could never imagine and wouldn’t eat if we hand’t been introduced to some really grotesque abominations from childhood. Healthy real foods have been processed and industrialized into out of control and life denying addictions. Animals are being raised and slaughtered in ways that make science fictions’ most abominable and ruthless monsters cry at the thought of what we do to the animals with which we share this earth.

Today, the big industry is the food industry with processing taking place on nearly every food item available and those which are not now in the processing industry are being pushed there by the ever increasing and more ridiculous requirements of the FDA – i.e. the edict that raw almonds have to be pasteurized before they can be sold because of the fear of mold negatively affecting those who buy and eat raw almonds. Almonds, which have been sold and eaten raw for thousands of years with no bad effects on those who have eaten them.

We are a society with increasing kinds of illnesses happening from this processing, genetic expansion, experimental development from the corporate farm.

The same type of thing is happening in the information arena. We are digitizing, organizing, exploding the information available to the average person. We are organizing people into social networks and feeding them all kinds of information which is becoming a necessity instead of a some-time thing. Where is that going? How will that affect everyday people? What will it do to how we live and what is considered necessary for modern survival?

It is bizarre with some of the equipment, which has become indispensable. If you are of an age, you went about your life without a cell phone and felt very secure in where you were going, how you were going to get there and some smattering of what to do in case of an emergency.

Today, many children hyperventilate at the thought of their parents going around without a cell phone. They feel and articulate that they have no emergency outlet if something horrible befalls them. These are parents who didn’t know anything about cell phones and let’s not even mention grandparents.

If you moved from one city to another, you found your way around and found your way to the local library, city hall and other places to become acquainted with your new surroundings. Today, many feel stripped naked if they move and don’t have access to their computer and Google, Yahoo or some other search engine. They absolutely can’t function without it.

The first thing many of us do when meeting someone new is to “Google” them to see what is on line about them; click on their address to see what kind of house they live in, etc. We don’t feel comfortable with another human being until we have “Googled” them.

We moved on from there in a very lively debate, but I think you get the gist of the breakfast conversation. – Huge amounts of money is being made taking what was in the public sphere and putting it in the technology sphere making money on this information in the process. Much more will gradually be put into some form of this informational industrialization with many more making obscene amounts of money manipulating what was free.

In the process we become more and more tied to machines and the developing technology as we get sicker by the minute from what this technology and its developing delivery utensils are doing to our bodies. They irradiate, and do all kinds of other things to us, our genes, our bodies, our environment, our lifestyle AND the food we snack on while engaging in and enjoying this newfound power. The Industrialization of Information ties into and promotes the Industrialization of our food industry. One promotes the other. And where will it all end? In the industrialization of yet another part of this society? Or in leaving this world to robots which will be the only things which will be able to survive the atmosphere and environment we are creating.

Maybe we need a group to look into and study this, presenting their findings globally in a webinar which will compete with another study groups’ webinar encouraging us to go back to the primitive life before all of this happened and outlining how to do this.

We won’t be able to run off to Vermont as one could do to escape much of the Industrialization of Food because Vermont is well into the Industrialization of Information. Those who are going back to the ‘old ways’, the ‘non-consumer’ ways by running off to Vermont usually do so taking with them their technology toys. So we will have to find another safe haven to which we can escape when we have made millions from this new Industrialization and find it too difficult to sustain ourselves as humans through old age in the world we created.

Ed. Note: Hmmmm, isn’t that the Christian definition of sin? Probably the definition of sin in many of the world’s religions

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Posted in Breakfast Table Talk, Guest comments, Making Connections | No Comments »

A Political Breakfast Conversation

March 17th, 2011

Neither politics nor religion are off-limits at the Bettina breakfast tables. I have tried to report on several, but some I didn’t understand as one or another host family tried to give me a synopsis of breakfast table conversations they thought were particularly interesting.

This one was very relevant and timely and amazing as it hooked so much together. I understand this breakfast lasted until after 1pm and the host family made lunch to keep everybody well fed. They must have been exhausted and exhilarated at the same time. Wonder what happened to all of their plans for the day! A stay at a Bettina Network bed & breakfast can lead to some interesting and unexpected places.

This came about because the subject, at breakfast, changed to closing down the government. A couple was concerned as to what affect it would have on their jobs and if anyone else had the same concerns.

Because a couple people were older, they remembered when Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House with designs on becoming President and the national political scene looked very much the way it looks today. He led the threats to close down the government if his/their conditions weren’t met by a certain date. Today, so many years later, the same threats have emerged and ‘voila’ Newt is once again thinking of running for President. The conversation outlined the parallels between then and now and amazement went around the table that so many people are following Newt down that same tired, worn-out road once again.

The result of that was the presidency was lost to the Republicans and the Democrats stepped up to the plate. A few Republicans were elected in the interim time, but the big prize was lost. People were kind of disgusted. We suspect those feelings will or already have returned.

________________________________________________________________

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

[give_form id=”3763″]

______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Posted in Guest comments, Making Connections | No Comments »

High Blood Pressure!

How Do You Keep Your Linens?

Post Office Failing?

Why the Post Office is Failing!

The Trek from Home to School 2011

A Healthy Very Quick Breakfast

Anti-Perspirant Follower

An Editorial from an Upset Editor

Robert’s Blueberry Muffins

Bettina Network’s Policies

Remembering Betty Ford at Breakfast!

Bettina’s Blog is Back

Testing New Post

Coconut Oil and Alzheimers

Estate Sales and the Environment!

Is Deodorant/Anti-Perspirant Necessary?

The Royal Wedding at Breakfast

Beautiful and Elegant Skin!!

Industrialization of Information

A Political Breakfast Conversation

Blog Search

We are the Bettina Network

Categories

Archives

Bettina’s Lifestyle Community