• Makes 1 dozen

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups shredded coconut (about 5 ounces)

• Vanilla Cupcakes (see Recipe Below)

• Chocolate Buttercream (See Recipe Below)

• Yellow and light-blue food coloring

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spread coconut on a rimmed baking sheet; bake until light brown, 8 to 10 minutes, rotating pan once. Set aside to cool.

2. Lightly frost cupcakes with 1 cup chocolate buttercream; set aside. Tint 2 tablespoons reserved buttercream pale yellow; place in a pastry bag fitted with a #349 Ateco leaf tip; set aside. Tint remaining buttercream light blue; place in a pastry bag fitted with a #11 Ateco plain round tip, and pipe three bluebird heads, 3/4 inch in diameter, onto each cupcake. Using leaf tip, pipe yellow beaks. With a toothpick, add melted-chocolate eyes. Form each nest with 2 tablespoons toasted coconut.

 Vanilla Cupcakes

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

• 1 teaspoon baking powder

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

• 1 cup sugar

• 3 large eggs

• 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

• 3/4 cup milk

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a cupcake pan with paper liners; set aside.

2. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time; scrape down bowl, and beat in vanilla.

3. Add flour mixture and milk alternatively, beginning and ending with flour mixture.

4. Divide batter evenly among liners, about three-quarters full each. Bake until golden and tops spring back to touch, about 20 minutes, rotating pan once if needed. Transfer pans to wire rack; cool completely.

Chocolate Buttercream

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup sugar

• 3 large egg whites

• 1 cup (2 sticks) plus 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature

• 3 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted and cooled

Directions

1. Combine sugar and egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Place over a pot of simmering water; whisk until hot and sugar is completely dissolved, about 3 minutes. Transfer bowl to mixer stand, and beat on high speed until cooled, 7 to 10 minutes.

2. Replace whisk with paddle attachment, and set mixer on medium-high speed; add butter, 1 to 2 tablespoons at a time, until incorporated. Beat in chocolate. If not using immediately, refrigerate buttercream in an airtight container for up to a week. Bring to room temperature, and rebeat or stir vigorously before using.

INGREDIENTS

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Melt the butter in a deep 10-inch sauté pan over medium heat. When the butter has melted completely and foams up, add the onions. They will fill the pan to the top, at this point. Stir as you add the onions to coat them in the butter. Sprinkle lightly with salt and black pepper. Cook the onions for about 40 minutes over low or medium heat, stirring occasionally.

2. When the onions have developed an evenly light beige color throughout, add the garlic, thyme leaves, and whole rosemary sprig, and cook for a few minutes more, stirring frequently. Turn the heat up to high and cook for a further 5 minutes, stirring frequently. You want dark, slightly burnt spots to appear on the onions, and for them to develop a rich mahogany color. When the onions get quite dark, add 1 cup of the beef or chicken broth. Add it slowly, stirring and scraping the pan vigorously to scrape up any burnt or stuck-on bits. When the liquid has been added, bring it back up to a simmer and simmer lightly for 5 minutes, or until it is somewhat reduced.

3. Take the onions off the heat and pour them into a 3-quart oven-safe dish with a lid. (If you don’t have a Dutch oven or another oven-safe dish with a lid, you can use a 9×13-inch baking dish. Just cover it tightly with a double layer of foil.)

4. Heat the oven to 325°F.

5. While the onions are cooking, brown the chicken. Heat another 10-inch or cast iron skillet over medium-high heat. Pat the chicken thighs dry and season lightly with kosher salt and black pepper. When the skillet is hot, add the thighs and brown for about 3 minutes on each side, 6 minutes total. When they’ve developed a golden-brown crust, remove from the pan and set on top of the caramelized onions in the baking dish.

6. Add the remaining 1 cup broth to the pan. Stir vigorously, scraping up any browned bits on the bottom of the pan. Whisk in the balsamic vinegar and Dijon mustard. Simmer for about 5 minutes or until reduced by half. Pour this sauce over the chicken and onions, and put the lid on the baking dish. The chicken and onions will look quite saucy; there will be plenty of liquid in the baking dish.

7.(At this point you can refrigerate the dish for up to 48 hours. Let it sit at room temperature for at least 15 minutes before baking, or else add about 5 minutes to the bake time.)

8. Bake at 325°F for 30 minutes. Remove the chicken from the oven and turn the heat up to broil. Take the lid off the baking dish, and sprinkle the cheese evenly over the top of the chicken. When the broiler has heated up, return the dish to the oven and broil for 3 to 4 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and golden on top.

It’s that time of year again!  Time to reflect on what you accomplished in 2011 and what you hope to accomplish in 2012.  If you are like me, you have the best intentions in January on setting new goals for 2012 only to find yourself in June wondering where half the year went.  In order to make sure I set my own goals this year and to help you set yours, I thought I would share some of my secrets with you.

First, why should we set goals?  The primary reason is to have a clear path on achieving at least one of your dreams.  Without a path (or smaller goals), we can become lost or unfocused on what to accomplish and when. 

Next, how do we go about it?  I like to use the SMART goal acronym which stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Resonate (or realistic) and Timely.  By taking a goal and making it SMART, you are ensuring that a) you have a specific goal that you want to accomplish; b) you will know what you will have achieved when you reach it; c) it’s a goal you can actually achieve; d) you really WANT to accomplish the goal; and e) you have a due date. 

My last secret:  choose a buddy who can hold you accountable in reaching your goal.  When you know that you have to report to someone on your progress, our human nature is to not let that person down.   Try it!  It works!

If you would like to explore goal setting with a professional life coach, I am offering a one-session price of $90.  In this one session, we will create a set of goals for 2012 which will get your life humming! 

I hope to hear from you!

Tammie K. Ross, CPCC

Wellness Coach

Eating disorders have psychological and emotional roots and working with a wellness coach can drastically improve your personal and professional life.

A professional wellness coach will set specific exercise goals to help you move from your current health state and then work closely with you to ensure you achieve those goals. These coaches go beyond personal training to address the whole person – body, mind and soul – for optimum health.

Wellness coaches can help you overcome anxiety and reverse the effects of emotional eating. They help clients overcome binge eating and get off the yo-yo rollercoaster effect of fad diets. Overcoming an eating disorder is nearly impossible to do alone.  A trained wellness coach uncovers the fears and anxieties that cause emotional eating and helps to create new ways of responding to deeply-rooted issues.

Binge eating is driven by anxiety.  In order to overcome binge eating, wellness coaches focus on the prevalent issue – anxiety. Anxiety not only wastes your time and energy, it also weakens you physically and mentally. You can overcome anxiety by making small changes to your regular lifestyle with the help of a wellness coach.

Wellness coaches are not certified dietitians; however they are knowledgable about nutrition and health issues. They support their clients by working closely with them to ensure their customized program is being followed…so they can ultimately experience the joy of living life to the fullest – with less anxiety and sustainable weight loss.

If you are interested in a free 15-minute consultation, please contact Tammie Ross at lifecoach@tammieross.com.  All you have to lose is the weight!

By Tammie Ross, CPCC, Wellness Coach

Imagine this…you’ve just been told that your company is downsizing and your job will be one of the casualties. Immediately the fears kick in. How will I support myself? How will I ever find another job? Who is going to pay for groceries? In the next six seconds, you find yourself standing in front of the vending machine grabbing a bag of chips to soothe your emotions. Sound familiar?

This is emotional eating; you, reaching for food in response to your feelings instead of hunger. Did you know that experts estimate that 75% of overeating is caused by emotions? What has happened to us? We know what foods are better choices and yet we still reach for junk food to fill the void that we think can’t be filled by anything else. It’s an epidemic and it’s making us very sick.

Emotional weight loss is a different type of process of gaining control over your health. Through self discovery, you look at your triggers, your patterns, and how you can achieve the “high” you are searching for in other non-food ways. Once you stop using food to shove down your emotions or fill your love tank, you will immediately start to become healthier.
Is it really that easy? No. This type of work is not for the weak of heart. For most, it is much easier to use food to calm ourselves than to stare into the depths of what we are to understand the reasons why we reach for food. It can be shocking; it can hurt but there is no other way. You have to go through it, not around it.

If you are literally sick and tired of being overweight and recovering from your food hangovers, think about whether emotional weight loss might be the key to becoming a healthier you. All you have to lose is the weight!

By: Tammie Ross, CPCC, ACC, Wellness Coach
lifecoach@tammieross.com
www.tammieross.com
If you’re interested in attaining emotional weight loss, contact me to learn about my coaching program(s) and how you can obtain the results you’re looking for!

“Helping women love themselves from the inside out!”

I have come to understand that holding more light and powering ourselves up with our divine essence seems to be the key in helping us overcome the beliefs that can hold us back from being who is that we truly are!  Our true, authentic, and powerfully potent selves filled with divine love and light from our Creator (God, Life Force Energy, The Universe, Higher Power, Divine Consciousness)… this is who we really are! This is our birthright!  We are not separate from Source.  Source is who we are. We have been somewhat hypnotized into believing otherwise, through beliefs that we make through significant emotional traumas we may experience at any point along our lifetime. We may also buy into negative beliefs from the insidious traps of some of our spiritual traditions which are riddled with dogma, taboos, and interference patterns that hold us back!!!

Many of us are waking up from this sleepy state. We are being called to consciousness through an enormous universal force which is asking humanity to rise up and change its course! Through this waking, many of us are letting go of old patterns, beliefs, and behaviours, which can feel very uncomfortable indeed.

Some of us, have been moving through these changes with all kinds of turbulence, chaos, and feelings of overwhelm. At times this may feel very exhausting. We may experience periods of depression, memory loss, anger, confusion, and a general feeling of fogginess, sometimes even hopelessness. This can lead to all kinds of dis-ease and ill health.

I have come to understand through the courses, trainings, continuing education, and my own personal journey of healing, that one of the biggest challenges we face, is ridding our energy bodies of high impact emotional trauma experienced at some point in our lifetime. These traumas get held, as an energetic imprint, in other words, they get housed in the actual cells of our tissues and energy body (or Aura,) which interferes with our ability to hold our light, and become the powerful and sacred beings we were born to be!

Experiencing Movement, Mindfulness and Therapy such as Nia, Reiki, Integrated Energy, E.F.T. and Sacred Sound, can support and augment one’s ability to reduce the disturbance level of these emotional imprints and energetic structures that become held in ones cells and energy body. Through continued use of these sacred practices, we dislodge the negative cellular memories, which allow us to hold more light. Of course this takes practice, and a commitment to self. We may need to see a practitioner every week or twice per month for an extended period of time, depending on how much trauma we have experienced. When we begin to see how much these negative imprints and traumas are infecting our point of view and holding us back from Source, we become inspired to commit to seeing ourselves through a lens of forgiveness and freedom. We actually realize these experiences have been our greatest teachings and gifts! We see ourselves as sacred. We start to know and understand that yes, it is our birthright to experience ourselves as divine Source energy. Potent, powerful, and pure unconditional…… Love.

May you step forth and become the light that you are!  Say “yes!” to your birthright and commit to getting yourself un-stuck. Commit to power-ing up, and light-ening up!

Try energy work such as a Reiki or I.E.T treatment, take a Reiki Training and come on out to a Nia class! Your body, mind, spirit and soul will thank you for it!

“Through Movement We Find Health” Nia’s Motto

“Through Service We Find Wealth” Susan’s Motto

By Susan Meehan

The purpose of cleansing is to stimulate the organs of detoxification to work better and move stagnation out of the body. Nutrition and movement are the two easiest ways to start a cleansing program.

Nutrition

Increase bitter greens

These greens stimulate and support the livers ability to detoxify the body. Liver stagnation is a common problem in our society due to increased toxin exposure and increased stress from a fast-paced lifestyle. Bitter greens include spinach, kale, bok choy, swiss chard, and collard greens. Aim to have at least one serving each day (2 servings would be better!)

Increase raw vegetables

Raw vegetables aid you digestion and help your bowels to function better. As the weather warms, raw vegetables are much more appetizing and help to lighten the body.

Decrease heavy and starchy foods

These foods weigh down the digestive system. With increased sun and heat from spring and summer we want to lighten the digestive system and therefore our bodies.

Drink lots of water

Have water as the main drink during your day. It’s an important component to your kidney function. By increasing water, you’ll also decrease other drinks that contain excess sugar, caffeine, or harmful ingredients such as aspartame.

Lemon water

Juice ½  a lemon and mix it with warm water for a drink first thing in the morning. The liver does a lot of detoxification work overnight while you sleep and this drink helps to stimulate the liver to enhance that work. Drinking lemon water throughout the day will also help to alkalinize your body. Having your body be more alkaline is the best way to decrease inflammation throughout your body.

Movement

Move your body!

During a cleanse, it’s important to keep your body moving but you’ll most likely decrease the intensity of your regular exercise. Walking, yoga, tai-chi, and pilates are all excellent activities to keep your lymph moving through your body. Lymph relies on movement of the body to circulate properly.

Breathe

Taking long, deep breaths is all that you need to do to keep your lungs functioning well. Smoking or working around harmful chemicals can decrease your lungs capacity to detoxify your body. Aim to decrease or eliminate these habits for better health.

Sweat

Stimulating your body to sweat through hot baths, steam rooms or infrared saunas will help to release toxins through your skin. Hydrotherapy is an excellent way to rid the body of excess toxins that have been building up over time.

A more thorough detox plan is best done under the care of a naturopathic doctor. A qualified professional can guide your through an intensive plan using herbs and supplements to help stimulate weight loss, release toxic build-up in the body, move stagnation and leave you feeling lighter and more energetic for spring!

Lindsay Martens, ND

Having irregular bowel movements can be a sign of numerous health issues. Getting to the point where one is having regular bowel movements is one of the best forms of feedback one can get in determining that their diet and digestive tract are operating properly and efficiently. The body excretes what it consumes and a lot can be learned from irregularities in bowel movements. Additionally, in Chinese Medicine we often ask many questions about the stool as it is a clue to the health of the inside of the body.  Luckily, having regular bowel movements is not too difficult, as it is the natural way the body is meant to work. Outlined below are a few simple tips for helping restore the natural rhythm of your digestive system.

Fiber Power! One of the best things to do for maintaining proper stool properties is to have a diet with plenty of fiber. Fiber can be found in many foods including whole grain breads, lentils, chickpeas, and whole cereals. Additionally, many food products are fortified with fiber. Another popular choice for people are supplements like psyllium and flax. These bulking agents contain lots of fiber and are great at absorbing toxins and such in order to be eliminated. Flax seed also contains essential Omega-3 fatty acids. This makes flax seed itself a double action supplement that is great for daily use!

Balanced Eating! Maintaining a well balanced diet and eating regularly is vital to having regular bowel movements. If eating is sporadic and inconsistent, the body will be digesting foods at different times. For example, if you happen to eat a big meal late at night some days but not others, the food that is eaten late at night will be moving through the digestive tract at a different time than on days when you eat at regular intervals throughout the day.

Regulate! Try going to the bathroom at a regular time each day. Even if the urge is not there, sitting down and trying to have a movement at a predetermined time every day will help to train your body that that is the time at which it should be having a bowel

Remember that bowel movements are the major way that your body gets rid of waste out of your body. Not only can a daily bowel movement encourage the removal of toxins from your body, but also prevent the stool from actually adding toxins into the body.

Get rid of that old waste and start fresh.

… Okay, now you can giggle!

If you’re committed to getting in shape and improving your overall health and fitness, the efficiency of circuit training offers a complete solution! Training circuit style improves overall body strength, including the resiliency of tendons and ligaments, and the integrity of your joints. A well designed circuit training program will build strength, increase stamina and flexibility, tone muscles, improve body awareness, burn fat, and improve your aerobic and muscular endurance all at the same time!

Circuit training is by far my absolute favorite method of fitness training! Plus, circuits can be successfully customized for all levels and goals, including losing weight, conditioning for better athletic performance, and injury rehabilitation. The fast pace and constantly changing workouts provide variety of stimulus to the body and keep you from getting bored.

Traditionally, the circuit format uses 5-10 dynamically different exercises, where you complete one exercise right after the other before starting the whole cycle over again. Each exercise is performed for a specific number of repetitions or for a prescribed time period (usually 1 minute) before moving on to the next exercise.

The exercises within each circuit are separated by a brief rest interval (10-30 seconds), with each circuit followed by a timed rest period of 1 minute. The total number of circuits performed per training session will vary depending upon your fitness objectives and training level.
Basic Circuit Training Guidelines

• Warm up at the beginning of all training sessions. Low intensity exercises for 10 minutes followed with 10 minutes stretching of all major muscle groups is a good guideline.

• Perform circuit workouts 2-3x per week, leaving at least 48 hours between each session for your body to recuperate

• Arrange your exercises so that they alternate between muscle groups (i.e., triceps dips followed by squats), and work each major muscle group during a circuit session.

• Remember to cool down for at least 10 minutes at the end of your workout. This gives your body a chance to heal and allows the lactic acid to metabolize after your exercise session.

Whether you are new to working-out, recovering from an injury or an athlete seeking to strengthen specific muscles, circuits can be designed to emphasize strength, endurance, speed, weight loss, agility, flexibility, balance, or any other aspect of your fitness health that is important to you.

Try adding circuit training to your current workout routine, or in place of 1-2 days of plain old cardio. The Wortley Wellness Centre offers a Body Sculpting class with Heykel Kader on Monday and Thursday evenings that incorporates circuit style training!

You’ll love what you see in the mirror!

To get you thinking about your dash, take some quiet time to reflect on your life. Think about where you’ve come from, the various paths along your journey, and consider your satisfaction levels today in the eight areas mentioned below.

This exercise is just for you.  No one else needs to see your answers. Be completely honest and give yourself a satisfaction score between one and ten with ten being extremely satisfied.

1) Health

2) Family & Friends

3) Career

4) Money

5) Fun & Recreation

6) Significant Other/Romance

7) Physical Environment

8) Personal Growth/Spirituality

Once you’ve completed all eight areas, reflect on your answers. You may want to leave this for a day or two and re-visit this new-found insight with a fresh mind.

If you find that you are less than completely satisfied with one or more areas in your life, it’s time for some soul searching and introspection. Where would you like to be and how would it feel to live your best life? The answers to how you can best bring that change into your life lay within you.

If you need help to gently open the doors to expand your possibilities, consider talking with a life coach. We can tap into your own inner wisdom for lasting change.

Author

Tammie K Ross, CPCC