Creole Flavored Black Bean Burger

photo by alt10trader's

I am always searching for some easy yet delicious vegetarian recipes. This weekend I tried a delicious Black Bean Burger and the chef shared a recipe that I would love you to try. Serve this burger with a green salad and a side of sweet mashed or roasted potatoes (you will be delighted by the rainbow of colors on your plate). Enjoy!

Yields 6 to 8 burgers

2-15 oz cans of black beans drained

1/2 onin diced

1/2 red pepper diced

1/4 tsp Braggs amino acid; Tamari or Soy Sauce

1 tbsp of cilantro chopped

1/4 cup of bread crumbs

Dash of hot sauce

2 tsp of Creole or cajun seasonings

3 cloves of garlic minced

Salt and Pepper to taste

Mash beans together in a large bowl, add all other ingredients and mix weel, from into patties and saute over medium heat for about 3 minutes per side or until warm or spray gril with cooking spray and gril until warm through turning often.

1 patty - Calories 285; total fat 1g, saturated fat 0 g, cholesterol 12 mg, sodium 214 mg, carbohydrates 32 g, dietary fiber 6g, protein 7 g

De-Cluttering

Photo by Thrift Store Addict

When I was thinking about my new year’s resolutions this year, I did some reading on-line, and came across a lot of people who had identified de-cluttering as a goal. Simplicity, orderliness, and less stuff are getting more and more attention these days and are being heralded as important for success and happiness. When I started thinking about how this whole idea is related to my balance of life roles, it became clear that de-cluttering is probably a healthy goal for me, as well.

For the sake of full disclosure, I should note that I come by de-cluttering pretty naturally. My mom is the type of person who lives by the mantra, “If you haven’t used it in 6 months, you don’t need it.” I can remember my dad turning the house upside down in search of some item that he hadn’t used in several years, but discovered that he needed just then. Nine times out of ten, mom had tossed it. So whether it is a nature or nurture influence, growing up in a clutter-free home probably makes that feel more comfortable to me now.

Piles of stuff and general clutter at home or in my office make my skin crawl. I find that I cannot be productive if my surroundings aren’t at least somewhat organized. If I can’t find stuff, I won’t get anything accomplished. Now, that certainly does not mean that I am always de-cluttered. Take a look at my home office desk right now and you’ll see a pile of papers that desperately needs sorting. The same goes for the pile of clean laundry sitting in my bedroom. Life happens and clutter grows. But taking a few extra minutes here and there to keep most of it at bay is sometimes the difference between productivity and lost energy for me; between balance and imbalance.

There are a few things that I have learned through personal experience or from organizational experts over the years that have helped me to de-clutter things in my life. These tips may be helpful to you, too:

1. Every thing has a place. If you own something that doesn’t have a place that it belongs, then perhaps you don’t need it. If you have a place for it, keep it there. After you finish using it, immediately put it back. If you put it down with plans to put it away later, it likely won’t happen.

2. Sort through mail and other paperwork as soon as they come in your house. Designate a time and place to do this where you can immediately recycle the junk mail, file the bills to be paid, and put away any other important paperwork. Keep folders or boxes for things like children’s schoolwork that you want to keep, and a to-do file for things like bills that need to be addressed soon, but not necessarily right now.

3. Finish a task before starting another one. This is where a lot of my clutter builds up. I start some laundry, and in the midst of putting it away, get distracted and start working on an art project with my child. The laundry is still out, and now so are the art supplies. Take a couple of minutes to finish what you’re doing to keep clutter from even starting.

4. De-clutter your email. I am a minimalist when it comes to email, both professionally and personally. When I am going through my inbox, every message gets action when I read it. I either address it immediately (respond to the sender or complete a task), put it in a short-term to-do file (for later that day or week), put it in a long-term to-do file (to be addressed in a week or longer), or delete it. If I don’t have time to address it in one of these ways right then, I don’t open it.

5. Do a sweep once a day. Pick a time each day that you have 3-5 minutes to sweep through your house (or office). Take that time to put away those things that aren’t in their place, sort through paperwork, or complete a task. This is not the time to do major organizing, but rather to do a clean sweep so things look less cluttered and more inviting.

Being able to balance my various roles requires some pretty detailed organization most days. Having a lot of clutter around me costs precious time that I just don’t have. I’d much rather spend any extra time I have in quality interaction with my family or friends, not in de-cluttering.

What are your thoughts about clutter? What tips to you have to keep it at bay and maintain balance?

Fantasies

photo by rankun76

We are very excited to welcome Dana, a working mother, wife, and an industrial-organizational psychologist, back to our blog. Dana agreed to participate in the blog on monthly basis. All of us will get a chance to learn from sincere and very practical insights Dana shares based on her path of finding a balance in her life.

The past year and a half I have taken a crash-course in balance. Through trial and error (mostly error), I have unearthed some implicit beliefs that were preventing me from finding a happy balance in my life. Two such “fantasies” reared their ugly heads at me most recently.
Since finishing grad school nearly seven years ago, I have worked as an independent contractor for a management consulting company. I have always had the benefit of being a telecommuter (a fancy word meaning “one who works in pajamas”), except for when I traveled for business. In addition to having a flexible job location, the autonomy afforded by being self-employed also gave me some flexibility in terms of when I did my work. When I became pregnant, I became even more grateful for my work situation.

After my son was born, I continued to work from home (minus the travel) and reduced my hours to part time. Having never had a child before, I thought since I was “only” working part-time with such a flexible arrangement, it would be a breeze to fit in 20 hours a week while also being a full-time mother. It would be more economical, certainly – and as a first time mom and with no family nearby, I couldn’t imagine handing him over to a stranger. And, of course, there was supermom syndrome: I thought I should be able to do it all.

So, for the first sixteen months of my son’s life, I juggled work and motherhood without the help of family or even a sitter. I worked when he napped (poorly), I worked when he went to sleep (intermittently) for the night, and I worked on the weekends when my husband could take over (which, I should add, he wasn’t able to do for the first year, because on nights and weekends he was working on completing his dissertation). A more experienced parent sees the punch line already: very quickly I became burnt out. I was chronically sleep-deprived, my marriage was being woefully neglected, and I was overwhelmed with everything I felt I had to do (and do well).

This brings me to the first fantasy that prevents many of us from achieving balance: that we can do it all. That we should be able to do it all. That we shouldn’t need help. Overcoming this fallacy is incredibly difficult, but breaking free of it is liberating. Asking for help allows you to accept that you are human. Although the imperative to “do it all” came from only one place – within me – I also resented feeling like I had to do it all, and turned that resentment on other people. When I was able to let go of the need to be omnipotent, I was also able to let go of a lot of resentment.

So, finally accepting that I needed help, I hired a sitter to come to my house several mornings a week, thereby giving myself 15 hours of protected work time, which would theoretically allow me to avoid working nights and weekends. I was absolutely giddy with the thought of it – I felt like all of the things that threatened to overwhelm me were about to just melt away. I thought this would somehow “make it all better.” Not surprisingly, it didn’t – it just changed things. To be sure, in some ways things changed for the better – for example, my husband and son and I get to spend more time together on the weekends and I regularly get seven hours of sleep. But other challenges cropped up: whereas before I took care of errands, chores, and cleaning and the like with my son in tow, now I needed to find the time to get them done when I wasn’t working…like on nights and weekends.

Which brings me to the second fantasy preventing us from finding balance: that time is something we can make more of. Avoiding for the moment the philosophical argument about the nature of time and whether it is a mental construction or a “real thing,” the important thing to realize about time is that you cannot make more of it. It is impossible. We can only use the time we DO have in the best way possible. What the best way is depends on us – on our passions, strengths, or priorities. As I thought about this, I realized there are three ways to go about making the most of your time:

• Doing less – what do you not like doing? What do you do that doesn’t help you achieve anything important to you? Spending time cleaning her house soothes my sister – but for me, it is just an irritating fact of life. This is definitely an activity that doesn’t further any of my big-picture life goals! So I started looking into hiring a cleaning service. Delegation is a way of doing less – especially if you have already overcome the first fallacy and are ready to ask for help.


• Doing more – what do you like doing but don’t dedicate enough time to? What activities will help you achieve your big-picture goals if you devoted more time to them? I decided to use the time I would otherwise spend cleaning on things that satisfy my soul and make me happier and healthier, like reading and cooking really good meals, and I’m going to accept my husband’s offers of help and go for long runs on the weekends. These activities give me greater enthusiasm and energy, which helps me be positive and productive overall.


• Being strategic – what do you have to do that you could do more efficiently or effectively? I plan a weekly menu and go grocery shopping every Sunday, which not only saves time and money, it also helps ensure we eat well. I even try to be strategic in setting up for the morning and doing laundry – little ways of being organized minimize frustration and chaos.

The past two months have taught me that I can’t do it all – and that it is silly to even try. I am striving to be more willing to accept help, so that I can focus on what is important and meaningful to me, and to be more thoughtful about where I put my energy.

What are some underlying beliefs you hold that prevent you from feeling balanced? Are you able to readily accept help when necessary? Are there things that you could do less, more often, or more strategically?

Delicious Raspberry Thumbprints: Healtier Version

photo by lepiaf.geo

What can be better than a batch of delicious cookies on a cold snow day? I would say the only thing that can make cookies better if they are a little healthier. Often, I take the recipe and modify it to make it healthier yet still extremely pleasing. Here you go:

Dough:

1,5 cups of whole-wheat flour

1/2 cup of organic butter or earth balance vegetable margarine, softened

1/4 cup of turbinado sugar

1/2 egg yolk

2 tablespoons of orange juice

Preparation:

1. Into large bowl, measure flour, butter, sugar, orange juice and egg yolk. With mixer at medium speed, beat ingreadients until well mixed, occasionally scraping bowl with rubber spatula. Cover and refrigerate about 1 hour.

2. Preheat oven to 375 F.

3. Shape rounded teaspoonful of dough into balls. Place 1 inch apart on cookie sheets.

4. Press thumb into centers of cookies, making deep indentations.

5. Bake 10 minutes.

6. Remove from oven and with 1/2 cup organic or lower sugar raspberry (apricot or strawberry) preserves fill indentations.

7. Bake 5 minutes more; immediately remove and cool cookies on racks.

Makes approximately 50 cookies.

Enjoy with a cup of hot tea!