Tag: problems

A Better Bran Muffin

Wheat bran has a lot of fiber. And that is why I have always eaten Kelloggs All Bran and would make bran muffins. Recently I have noticed that although I can eat food with gluten, I do a lot better if I avoid wheat. So, I have been experimenting with spelt and oat bran. And I'm finding my body is a lot is a lot happier. In a nutshell, I don't bloat after eating spelt bread or oat bran cereal. Here's some fascinating details on the problems of wheat. There are apparently many!

So, earlier this week, I thought I'd see if I could make a decent oat bran muffin which has both oat bran and spelt flour.

They came out great! They actually have a consistency of a scone (especially during the couple hours after baking). They even taste like scones!

These are not overly sweet. You could add some stevia (I really like the Truvia brand packets) if you'd like to address that. Alternatively, you could slice them in half, toast them and spread some nice raspberry or blueberry jam on them.

I will warn you some of the ingredients, about 4 in all, are a little different- oat bran, whole grain spelt flour, Celtic Salt, and Black Mission Figs. But, all of them, you can get at a Whole Foods market. And, once you have these ingredients in the house, it will be much easier to make these the next time.

1 1/2 cups whole grain spelt flour

1 1/2 cups oat bran

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 to 1/2 tsp Celtic Salt

3 tablespoons real maple syrup

12 to 14 (dryed) Black Mission Figs cut up into small pieces

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 egg

1 cup unsweetened applesauce

Preheat oven to 400 degress.

Mix all dry ingredients together in one bowl until well blended. Mix all wet ingredients together in another bowl until well blended. Pour wet mixture into dry mixture. Stir as little as possible, just enough to have wet mixture absorbed by dry mixture.

Spray 12 muffin tin cups with non-stick cooking spray. Put slightly rounded 1/4 cup of batter into each muffin tin cup.

Bake for 15 minutes.

Enjoy!

December 21, 2012

All Bran, Celtic Salt, fiber, flour, gluten, kelloggs, less, muffin, muffins, oat bran, problems, spelt, wheat, whole
Here are my six suggestions for how we might be able to fix our country and its politics:

Note: These thoughts are rough around the edges and need to be challenged and refined. I believe, however, it's this kind of creative thinking that can allow us to solve our incredibly serious problems.

First: Toss all Political Action Committees (PACs). Elected officials must fairly represent the wishes of all individuals not the wishes of only the very wealthy and corporations.

Second: Have term limits (only one) so we can avoid the problems that come into play with reelection campaigns. And limit all campaigns to a specific, very nominal yet appropriate budget which only the government supplies.

Third: Require federal fiscal budget to be balanced (via a constitutional amendment) every year. Want to understand our fiscal budget deficit better? Read this.

Fourth: Replace our overly complicated tax code with a simple flat tax. I think Ross Perot proposed 17%. And Forbes is doing the same now. It's fair for everyone.

Fifth: Because our annual spending is 3.83 trillion, there is no simple and easy solution for paying down this black hole of a national debt we have created for ourselves. Even if we were to throw a full 25% of our annual spending or upwards of 1 trillion dollars at this, annually it would take over 15 years to pay it off. And, I know that we are not in a position to do that, not even close. So, here is some really out of the box thinking, that needs more consideration and certainly constructive feedback from you!

Legalize marijuana. According to NOML (which has a site by the same name), Marijuana is the third most popular recreational drug in this country (alcohol and tobacco are ahead of it). Approx. 100 million Americans have used it at one time or another. Approx 25 million Americans have smoked marijuana in the past year. And approx. 14 million people use it regularly.

NOML also says marijuana is a lot less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. About 50,000 people die each year from alcohol poisoning. And over 400,000 deaths each year are attributed to tobacco smoking. Contrast this with marijuana which is considered to be nontoxic and cannot cause death by overdose.

Business Week's web site has an article: Legalize Marijuana for Tax Revenue. It starts with "The entire U.S. should follow California's lead—introducing referendums to make marijuana legal, thereby putting the current criminal drug producers and sellers out of business and enabling government to collect tax on pot sold via legitimate channels."

Want to know more about our national debt? Read this.

Sixth: Have a viable plan to go back to the gold standard (or something similar). Printing and spending money that is only backed by gold (vs. nothing) will let us reestablish and maintain the integrity of the dollar.

We do not want to loose our international dollar standard. A number of sources believe that this is at risk now, because of our seemingly "out of control and irresponsible" printing of US dollars. It appears that if we loose this standard, we loose control we've been enjoying since the early 1970s. Here's more info on the international dollar standard. Loosing this could all by itself drastically and negatively affect our quality of life going forward.

July 27, 2012

budget deficit, democracy, democratic, fix, gold standard, got guts, government, national, national debt, party, political, politics, problems, republican, solve

Tag: problems

A Better Bran Muffin