August, 2011 - Bettina Network's Blog

Archive for August, 2011

A Healthy Very Quick Breakfast

Sunday, August 14th, 2011

copyright Bettina Network, inc. 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.

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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

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.

Anti-Perspirant Follower

Saturday, 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.

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Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

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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

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.

An Editorial from an Upset Editor

Thursday, 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.

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Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

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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

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.

Robert’s Blueberry Muffins

Thursday, August 4th, 2011

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.”

________________________________________________________________

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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