Friday, September 18, 2015

Beach Clean up In Ormond Saturday for International Coastal Clean up Day


Saturday is international Beach Clean up Day. We are hosting a beach clean up in Ormond Beach at the Neptune Beach approach from 5-6:30 pm. Hope you can join us. There is overflow parking at the church. If you can't come in the morning, Volusia county is also hosting morning clean up events that you can find on the Ocean Conservancy website. Bring gardening gloves and buckets if you have them. The above photo is from the last beach clean up that we hosted for Plastic Free July earlier this year. 

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Blueberry Bran Muffin Recipe



Here's a yummy breakfast bran muffin recipe for your weekend.  This recipe that I have modified from my uncle, Chuck Trusty. 

Oat Bran Blueberry Muffins

Ingredients:
3/4 c coconut milk
2 eggs
2 T coconut oil
1/3 c honey
2 1/2 c oat bran
2 t baking powder
1/2 t cinnamon
1/2 t salt
1 c blueberries

Directions, mix together wet ingredients, followed by dry ingredients. Then mix in blueberries. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Scoop batter into 12 muffin lined tins and bake approximately 15 minutes until they smell yummy (15 minutes was using frozen not fresh berries).  Allow muffins to cool completely before serving so that the cupcake wrappers don't stick to the muffin.

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Five Excerpts in Celebration of International Literacy Day 2015

Frederick Douglass, circa 1860s

In honor of International Literacy Day today, here are five passages from valuable books that I have read over the past summer. You can follow our "Books Worth Reading" board on our pinterest page.

"Plenty of people had watched and recorded the disaster of eliminating a predator from a system. They were watching it here in her own beloved mountains, where North America's richest biological home was losing its richness to one extinction after another, of plants and birds, fish, mammals, moths and stonefliers, and especially the river creatures whose names she collected like beads: sugar-spoon, forkshell, acornshell, leafshell." Barbara Kingslover, Prodigal Summer.

"Like countless others, he'd simply grown more cautious-- afraid to say the wrong thing, afraid to listen to forbidden radio stations that would tell you what was happening in the world. It was always possible that you might be picked up: at your place of work, in the streetcar, in a restaurant, in your own house. He had though it was enough not to participate in the Partei, to stay away from marches and speeches. Now he wondered how much damage he'd done with his silence. Maybe if he'd officially protested when the boys had stoned little Fienchen Blomberg outside the Weiler's grocer store seven years before... Or if he'd fought the treatment that the Abramowitzs and his other Jewish patients had suffered..." Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

"When northerners go to the south to reside, they prove very apt scholars. They soon imbibe the sentiments and dispositions of their neighbors, and generally go beyond their teachers. Of the two, they are proverbially the hardest masters" Linda Brant, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

"Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others." Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass


"There is only one perpetrator of evil on the planet: human unconsciousness." Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

Would you like to share a memorable passage from a book you've read? Feel free to leave a comment below.

 

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Flourless Carrot Cake Recipe: Made WIth Juiced Carrot Pulp


Do you like juicing carrots? Have you ever wondered if there was something you could do with the leftover carrot pulp to keep it zero waste? I have a good solution for you, a tasty flourless carrot cake. Our carrot shampoo bars are made with freshly juiced Organic carrots. I end up with a lot of carrot pulp from making our Carrot Shampoo bars and freeze the pulp for baking with later.

Flourless Carrot Cake by Aquarian Bath

2 cups cooked garbonzo beans
3 cups carrot pulp
5 eggs (try "flax egg" to make it vegan)
1 T molasses
3/4 c sugar
1/4 cup Organic Extra Virgin Olive oil
2/3 t pink salt
2 t Organic ginger powder
4 t Organic cinnamon powder
2 t baking soda
1 t Organic Stevia powder (green)

First mix the garbanzo beans in a food processor with olive oil until smooth.  Mix together with carrot pulp, eggs, sugar and molasses followed by the additional ingredients.  Bake in an oiled pan at 350 degrees F until the top becomes firm.  Test the inside of the cake with a tooth pick  or knife before pulling out of the oven. 

You can find Organic spice ingredients for this recipe at Mountain Rose Herbs


Carrot Shampoo bar with Lemon, Bay Rum and Cedarwood essential oils.