Foody Friday: lemongrass green tea with cinnamon sticks and ginger!

In an effort to not consume multiple cans of Coke Zero daily, I have a few different strategies I use depending on my mood. As mentioned before, I'm making it a point to start the day off with fiber and water. Some days, like yesterday, I just couldn't bring myself to do that, so I fixed myself some tea instead... but not just any tea, but lemongrass green tea with cinnamon sticks and ginger.


You need
- a large mug
- one or two sticks of cinnamon
- a nubbin of fresh ginger, coarsely grated (or sliced, or crushed)
- a bag of Good Earth's Lemongrass Green Tea*

... pour just-boiled water over the contents of the mug and let it steep for about 3-5 minutes. Squeeze the bag and set it aside. Stir and enjoy!


Be warned, ginger bits will end up in your mouth - I just chew & swallow 'em; if you don't want to do that, I suppose you could fish 'em out, or just kinda strain the drink with your lips/teeth, LoL!

I don't add sugar, because the second half of the drink is always very sweet due to the cinnamon.

You can even make a second cup reusing the same ingredients, just steep the bag a little longer: 5-8 minutes, for example.

*NOTE: Of course you don't have to use Good Earth's Lemongrass Green Tea specifically! I highlight it because I really like how the lemongrass brings a slight citrus-y twang to a tea that I don't usually like the taste of, but have tried to drink because of the health benefits. ... then I went the frugal route and got a huge box of plain green tea of a brand that will remain unnamed. Big mistake. If I let it steep for more than 2 minutes the tea turned bitter; and even when it wasn't bitter, well, I just didn't quite like it. I slowly managed to make my way through those 100 bags, but vowed never again. I've since gone back to Good Earth's Lemongrass Green Tea, and there's no looking back! :)

If you're interested in trying out Good Earth's Lemongrass Green Tea, please follow the link to read more about it (and purchase, if you see fit) via amazon.com. This is an affiliate link and I will get a commission if you make a purchase using this link. You can probably just as easily find this product on the shelves of your grocery store, in the tea aisle :)

btw, another thing I like about this particular product? The quotes on the tags. :D

... over at a malaysian abroad, I talk about another tea I've been making recently - chai! Click on over to read about it, k? See you there!

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Thursday Thoughts

Life After Work's sister sites have been out of commission for a while now; I had all these plans for a Food in February theme over at a malaysian abroad, but despite quite a few ideas for a variety of different posts, I just never did sit down and churn the posts out... just never got around to it.

*sigh*

I'm struggling here.

I do have inspiration for a series of posts for Life After Work, thanks to snglguy's own series that's just starting (see parts one and two), about the different places he's called home - he says three for him, I say omg I count at least ten! I'll tell you more about them once I get a hold of some pix, so that might take a few months since it involves heading back to Malaysia first...

Something I'm looking forward to wrt my trip is that I'll be helping spread the reach of kapgar's Norman (well, actually one of an army of Norm clones) to Malaysia, Switzerland and perhaps even Italy. So lots of coolness there.

Still dreading the cost of tickets, which have probably gone up in the past month or so of my procrastination. Go me!

:p

Firefox 3.6: Now with personas! (personae?)

Hey the new Firefox 3.6 was released recently, just found out about it now :p

It now comes with personas! I suppose you might call 'em wallpaper for your browser. After trying a meditation theme followed by Niagara Falls, I've decided on a cluster of bamboo. For the moment.

It's all a little busy now, ainnit?

ugh. VERY busy!

Perhaps it'll be better with something that's not battling for darkness supremacy at the bottom of my screen?

I guess this'll be another round of time wastage as I play around more with these personae(?); I anticipate that I'll decide to just go back to the plain default original theme.

How about you?

disclosure: some required legalese

You might have noticed that I've added some ads to Life After Work recently.

... I certainly hadn't planned on going this route, but because of changes in how today.com is making its payments (it's now totally based on revshare, I don't earn anything just from visits to my today.com sites anymore, bummer!) I needed to get myself my own Google AdSense and Amazon.com Associates accounts; once I had them, I figured I might as well leverage them for myself on this blog ...

... Then there is the US Federal Trade Commission's requirement that "bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service" that I've not properly complied with yet...

As a result, here is some required legalese I need to disclose:

This blog is a personal blog written and edited by yours truly who goes by the internet moniker of lynne naranek, and usually signs off as *lynne*. For questions about this blog, please contact me via the contact form.

All advertising is in the form of advertisements generated by a third party ad network or affiliate program (to date: Google AdSense and Amazon.com Associates).

In order to serve ads when you visit this website, these third-party advertising companies may collect and use information such as your IP address -- but not your name, address, email address, or telephone number -- about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here (Google) or here (Amazon).

In order to serve ads when you visit this website, these third party advertising companies usually use cookies; specifically, Google uses the DART cookie to enable it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit this site and/or other sites on the Internet. You may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy.

Compensation is in the form of commission paid only if/when somebody purchases goods or services via a link on this blog or its RSS feed. Said commission is paid by the seller, not you the buyer. Any compensation received will never influence the content, topics or posts made in this blog.

This policy is valid from 18 February 2010

The above was produced with reference to hospitalera's Policies and Sitemap page, and with help from DisclosurePolicy.org.

Thank YOU for your time and attention.

Now back to blogging!

Image credits: ?!?!?? and DONE! by svilen001

Self-Love Day: let's start off slow, shall we?

Ah, Valentine's Day... a day when florists probably make enough $$ to cover the rest of the year; when jewelers also make a killing because "diamonds are a girl's best friend"; when restaurants and chocolatiers rub their hands in glee at the highly marked-up purchases made by people totally in the thrall of Hallmark, consumerism and lack of independent thought.

Ummm can you tell I don't "subscribe" to V-Day? LoL!

Instead, let's explore Self-Love Day, shall we? Snackiepoo's brainchild moves into its fourth year (but I admit this is the first time I'm seeing it; again thanks to Karl!)



Here’s how the whole thing works:

• Grab yourself a banner (you can find another one here if you're male / don't like this one).
• Post that banner and then tell us all something that you really like love about yourself (hence the “self-love”, duh!).
• Ask or beg your readers to post one thing that they too love about you!!! If your blog friends are nice, you shouldn’t have to beg…much. (If you don't have many readers, well, ooops! That would be me!!)
• Enjoy!

So yeah, if you're interested in spreading the love, go ahead and participate (whether it's dropping a comment here, or doing your own self-love post, or both), and drop Hilly a line or a trackback so that she know you participated too, k?

Me? One thing I *love* about me?

"Love"??!

Ugh.

I shy away from that term.

But I'll push myself a little out of my funk...

... so I'll play it safe (hence this post's title!).

*ahem!*

I love how I'm kicking Kosh's butt in racquetball, with only minimal use of my 2-bounce handicap. Not that I'm reveling in mopping the court up with him or anything, teehehee! It's more an appreciation that whatever my current weight/fitness level, I do have some level of eye-hand coordination and chasing-down-blue-balls ability that transfers over from tennis. I do wonder how this will impact my tennis - if ever I find folk to play with here in Springfield once the weather warms up again...

Okay ... so the ball is now in your court (haahahaa see how I made a pun / segue?) - care to drop me a loving comment? :)


... and finally: GONG XI FA CHAI!! It's also Chinese New Year!!

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a month of resolutions

I've never been one for New Year Resolutions. However, I have been needing and wanting to establish some new/good/overdue habits. Nudged by Karl who's doing a Year of Resolutions, here are things that I am striving to do on a daily basis, during the month of February:

• write
• meditate
• fiber
• exercise

Write:
This doesn't mean churning out blog posts daily, although that might be a natural side-effect. My focus here is on the two novels knocking around in my head, one half-written, the other perhaps only 10% done, both inter-related enough that I need to map them both out properly, both to prevent inconsistencies as well as to see more nodes for connections between the two. I am 0/3 so far for this, ugh.

Meditate:
I have yet to establish regular daily meditations, even though I know I would benefit greatly from this. Shooting for doing this first thing in the morning, before I wake up the computer, because once the 'puter is on and I start checking email and twitter feeds, my attention is shot and inertia is high. I think I'm at 1/3 for this, ugh.

Fiber:
Again something to shoot for in the mornings: a glass of fiber, followed by a water chaser. This gets my digestive system on track and ensures I get at least 800 mL water in me. So far I'm 3/3 for this, yay!

Exercise:
Daily! To chase away the funk, to meet new people, to just plain move, to lose weight, to feel good, and so many more reasons. There are a variety of "free" (read: already paid for in the monthly membership fee) exercise classes at the YMCA, in addition to racquetball facilities and the normal stuff like running track, weights, machines, etc. In addition, Nia classes have started! I'd be 3/3 except that today found me in a funk of sorts. Nvm, I'll allow myself a break since I'm still sore from the racquetball or weights (or both) I did on Monday.

They say that doing something for 21 days makes it a habit, so I'm working on getting the above incorporated into my routine establishing a morning routine that incorporates the above. I'll report back at the end of the month and we'll see how successful this month of resolutions has been.

In the meantime, a malaysian abroad is kicking off a Food in February theme, do drop by and check it out, k? I'd love to know how you did on the quiz :)

Image credit: MS Office clip art