Eccentric WAHM Bloggers - Christa - Noel - Val

Family Style Broccoli Ham Rolls

Noel — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:00:00 +0000

My website Noel’s Kitchen Tips.com is a website about sharing wonderful family mealtimes and creating family memories that last a lifetime. Each and every week, I try and share menus with busy moms (and dads) that they can create for their family without breaking the food budget. Here’s a 30-minute meal you can create for your family. It’s a creamy mix of tender ham and broccoli, topped with sour cream.

Family Style Broccoli Ham Rolls

Ingredients:

1 package frozen chopped broccoli

1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup

1 package sliced cooked ham, diced

4 eggs

1/4 cup water

1 Tablespoon butter or margarine

1/2 cup sour cream

Directions:

In a saucepan, prepare broccoli according to package instructions; drain. To broccoli, add cream of mushroom soup and ham. Cook, stirring often, until ham is heated through. Keep warm. Meanwhile, in a small bowl with whisk, beat eggs and water until well mixed.

In a small skillet over medium heat, melt butter or margarine. Pour 2 to 3 tablespoons of egg mixture into skillet, tilting to make a thin pancake. When top of pancake is set and underside is delicately browned, slide spatula around sides to loosen; slide onto a plate. Repeat to make 7 more pancakes.

Fill each pancake with broccoli ham mixture; roll and arrange them in one layer on a warm platter. Top with sour cream.

Enjoying a delicious meal with your family doesn’t have to break the budget.

As always, my quick and easy recipes for Busy Moms can be found on my website Noel’s Kitchen Tips.

Would you like to join our Family Cooking Club? Share recipes and tips with others? Join the Family Meals Matter Cooking Club on Facebook.

What is Cardio?

Val — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:53:30 +0000

I’d like to hit some basics here for everyone before I jump into very many more posts. Cardio is one of the biggest things you can do for your health. For most of our human history, cardiovascular exercise wasn’t something that the majority needed to go out and pursue. Most worked very physical jobs and the household chores themselves were intense.

But now we live in an automated and sedentary society. The majority in our country have a long commute and a job that requires a good deal of sitting. This is not how our bodies were created to work. It is definitely not helping with our obesity and medical issues and yet it is something that you can completely change!

Cardio workouts are about much more than just weight loss. It’s about getting that blood pumping through your veins and cleaning them out. It’s about raising those HDL levels so your bad cholesterol (LDL) levels will lower naturally. It’s about increasing your lung capacity and your blood pressure. These are the main reasons you should be doing cardio workouts and then guess what? If you are watching your diet then weight loss will happen naturally.

For maximum health benefits you need to have your heart rate at 60% or above of your maximum heart rate. The beats per minute (bpm) will depend on your age, activity level and your resting heart rate. That will give you a true target heart rate. But for general purposes the Mayo Clinic has a calculator you can use that has decent numbers. Know that the longer you work out the better your resting heart rate should be. So you will have to adjust your target heart rate down the line.

If you truly want to maximize your health benefits then you will not count your warm up and cool down in your 20 minutes. Again, that 20 minutes needs to be at your target heart rate. Depending on what exercise you are doing, you can hit your target in 2 minutes or you can waste as much time as you want trying to reach it by walking slowly. Again, we’re talking about health benefits here and not just burning calories. There are many ways to burn calories

But do make sure that you do a little warm up if you are coming from a lot of sitting, just to loosen up your muscles so you don’t pull anything. Then always, always, ALWAYS, do a cool down. The purpose of a cool down is to get your heart rate back down a little more normal so your blood will not pool in your veins with an immediate stop. It’s very important, even if you just take a quick two minutes to walk and “cool it off” a little.

Look at your cardio workout and decide what your goal is. Are you going for health benefits or strictly working off some calories? Take your cardio to the next level and you may be surprised just how many calories you can burn in those 20 minutes. Burn a high amount of calories AND getting your best health benefits is priceless.

Before starting or drastically changing your workouts or diet, please consult with your physician.

Who Said, WAHM Said, What Do You Say?

Christa — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:30:00 +0000

Take a minute to think about all the conversations you have had on forums and social networking sites about business. How active are you?

I want you to also think about how often you take the time to comment on a question when you have the knowledge they are seeking. Do you shy away from joining the conversation even if you have some valid and useful input because you are new to a group? Are you afraid to join a conversation with those who you know have been in the game for a long time and include your input because of feeling intimidated? Or are you the go getter, joining in on many conversations, letting people know who you are and what you know?

If your not getting out there and joining in the conversations, you should be! Take a few of these tips and exercise them at least 5 times a week:

Make it a point to put visiting forums and/or social networks on your daily to do list.
commit to posting something WAHM orientated once a week at least.
Join discussions daily at least 2 or 3 a day

When you do participate, whether it be a little or a lot, what do you say? How do you say it? Keep these few things in mind when you do participate:

If offering up information, reference your sources
Upon defending a statement or joining a heated debate, speak directly and firmly but don’t be obnoxious and rude.
Never bogart a discussion, add to it. It’s just not cool to spin someones convo to your benefit, start another thread or separate discussion.

Whatever it is your saying, say it more often!

Are you members of these communities?

These are my favorite homes to network on, they full of life, discussions…won’t you come by and join? Who said…I said…Eccentric WAHM said!

photo credit: Jenah Crump Photography

Bad Girl Attitudes, Do They Exist Amongst WAHMs?

Christa — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 22:26:18 +0000

I would have to say yes, I have experienced it first hand, the first time back in 2003. Is it to the extent now to what I remember it then? Probably, but when I see it going on now I generally scoff at the ignorance and click away. (I want to clarify I said generally because I am human, every once in awhile I may find myself in ‘drama’)

Let me go ahead and share my first time experience with you: See back in 2003 I was a moderator in an exclusive group (so they wanted to think anyway). There were two main woman in this group and I was brought on like the third, the right hand. I was in the loop about most everything. I knew there plans, was asked for my opinion, I was the soul person in charge of any graphics made for the group, I knew what pissed them off, what made them happy, I knew almost everything. They were a couple of toughies, I knew this, but in the beginning they just came across as they just were not going to take any crap (nothing wrong with that)…not these “bad girl” I will totally rip you to shreds cause you didn’t agree with me types (which is what they were about).

I started noticing the “Bad Girl Attitude” emerging when people where creating groups similar to theirs. The ugliness was surfacing, they would all but threaten others about doing the same. The breaking point came when an upstanding WAHM member stepped forward and said something about a person they were ridiculing publicly, this upstanding WAHM they attacked (and the person I decided to back) was (still is) one amazing woman who they should not have lashed out publicly at. I, of course, spoke out publicly as well. The fact I spoke up for my friend and did not support their stand caused me a night long attack, and continued attacks. There was demands to kick me out of places they also moderated. It was a mess.

When I tried to join other similar groups I was ignored, banned ALL because my name was tied to their group as one of the top dogs. I could not believe how mean they were behind the scenes to others, the things I did not know. I had to prove myself, I had to prove I was nothing like them before I could even move on in those kind of groups.

Now, with my directness I often wonder if people think I have the “bad girl attitude”? I certainly don’t think I do, but have been known to ruffle feathers with my straight forward approach, so I think it is wise to really break this down on a level people can grasp.

Now this is souly my opinion but it’s a formed opinion based on experience so I shall share it.

Top 3, might have a “bad girl attitude” if:

Thinking one is better than everyone else (confidence is good, even a little pompous is OK BUT arrogance is just annoying)
Can not handle constructive criticism (doesn’t mean that all criticism is good either, also doesn’t mean everyone should blow smoke)
Need others to fight their battles (doesn’t mean someone can’t have someones else back, it just means others don’t have to take things into there own hands and be ignorant to about it)

How to avoid it? Click away. If you must say something, do it as straight forward as you can without sounding like a !@#$%.