copyright Bettina Network, inc. 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.”
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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
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1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.
Is Deodorant/Anti-Perspirant Necessary?
May 23rd, 2011copyright Bettina Network, inc. 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.
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.
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