Terre Pruitt's Blog

In the realm of health, wellness, fitness, and the like, or whatever inspires me.

  • I teach yoga, Nia, and stretch online!

    ALL CLASSES ARE ON ZOOM AT 10:00 AM PDT

    Tuesday Gentle Yoga 

    Wednesday Nia

    Thursday Stretch

    Please see my website for details!

    I am also available for private Nia / yoga / Personal Training all virtual, of course!

  • Unknown's avatar

  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

  • My Bloggey Past

  • ******

    Chose a month above to visit archives, or click below to visit a page.

Archive for July, 2010

Next Entries »

Help With Drinking Water

Posted by terrepruitt on July 8, 2010

San Jose weather up until about June had been all over the place!  One day it would be cold, one day it would be windy, the next day it would be raining, then the next day there would be sun, then the next day it would cold, rainy, and windy.  Then—bam! HOT!  It was all over the place.  Honestly, I have a difficult time drinking water when the weather is cold.  When I am cold because the weather is cold drinking water makes me MORE cold.  So I had thought of coming up with things that help me when I have to work at getting “enough” water.

One thing I do is, I heat it up.  When the weather is chilly I just put it in the microwave for about 30 to 45 seconds.  I like it warmer than room temperature but not so hot that I feel as if I need to actually be drinking tea, coffee, or hot chocolate.

When the weather is warmer, but I am wanting something more than just plain water I put a cucumber in it.  I had seen this and wanted to try it, then a friend brought it over earlier this year and reminded me.  (Thanks, Friend!)  I am not a fan of lemons, but some people do that.  I like to put a few slices of cucumber in it.

Other things I do, I change what I am drinking the water from.  Sounds weird, I can imagine, but it works for me.  I pour it in a mug instead of drinking it out of my usual bottle.  Sometimes I drink out of different glass, just to have a different sensation.

I find that when the weather is hot I don’t even have to think, I just drink, but when the weather is cool or comfortable, I need a little more reminder.  I drink it when I am practicing a Nia routine or teaching a Nia class, but honestly, lately, just during the day I need to step up my water drinking, I have slacked off a bit and I am feeling it.

Do you drink water?  Do you add things to it?  Drink it plain?  Have a special glass you drink from?  Tell me, I love to hear different ideas.

Posted in Water | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 20 Comments »

The Last Donation

Posted by terrepruitt on July 6, 2010

Throughout my day I come across a lot of things I would like to post about, but not all of them are in keeping with or even CLOSE to in keeping with health and wellness. I know I stretch sometimes, but I always write about something I have learned or something that interests me.

I just happened upon that tonight. This might not be suitable for everyone and it certainly won’t interest everyone.

I have long wanted to donate my body to science. When I am done with it I have always hoped it could help people. I watched a special tonight that really amazed and interested me and really helped confirmed that donation is a great thing. I was of the belief that it would go as a whole to a medical school, but now-a-days with so much surgery being done laparoscopically the need to practice on real tissue has greatly increased.  So an entire body is not always needed. 

I understand that this might be against some people’s religion or beliefs which is understandable. But if not, it might be something to consider.  Even though I cannot dwell on the actual details, I love to focus on what a donation can mean: saving a life or improving the quality of one.  To me that is a tremendous gift. 

There is a company here in the United States* that will take a body at no cost to the family. For a lot of people not having the cost of a funeral or anything could be a very big relief. Plus the body can be used for great things.

Body parts can be used in medical studies, in transplantations, in medical products. We could keep on giving.

All of the information on this show** was amazingly fascinating to me, but I have a feeling that not many here would care for the details. I will say that due to all of the medical advances there is an increase in demand by as much as 50% per year. With this huge increase in demand for tissue the black market is getting larger. Since only 1% of Americans donate, it is still very profitable for thieves to steal and sell.  It is awful to think that some people are profiting from stealing someone’s body.  And on top of that, if they are doing it so dishonestly they COULD be doing it with potentially diseased tissue.  This TV program hinted that if more people were to donate through legitimate sources it might help make it less profitable for the shady ones and there for less worth the risk. 

Did you know:

—Bone graphs from one person could go on to help 80 people. (That is EIGHTY people that could live a better life because ONE person decided to be generous with something they are no longer using.)

—In Britain it was illegal to practice medicine on a cadaver until 2006.

—Organs need to be retrieved while the heart is still beating, but tissue can be retrieve up to 24 hours after death.

—They can use an achilles tendon to replace a ruptured knee ligament.

—Tissue transplant includes bones, tendons, and skin.

—Donated human tissue can be used in Medical Science, Education, bio products.

*Anatomy Gifts Registry (AGR) – Tissue Broker

**The show I watched was first aired in 2008, I just watched it July, 6, 2010.  All the information in this post is from the show.

Posted in Misc | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments »

No Virginia, There Aren’t Really Nectarines

Posted by terrepruitt on July 3, 2010

Is San Jose a good place to grow nectarines?  I love nectarines.  I just decided I want a nectarine tree.  My hubby knows I love nectarines so he came home with a container of them.  YES!  For three days I would walk into the kitchen and touch every one to see if they were ripe yet.  Let me rephrase that: for three days EVERY TIME I walked into the kitchen I would touch every one to see if one was ripe.  I stood there at one point wanting to eat one, but knowing that if it wasn’t ready it would ruin the joy of it.  So I waited.

Now, they are ripe.  Yesterday I ate two because if you don’t eat them fast they will go bad.  These ones are the eat-it-over-the-sink-because-it-is-really-juicy type of fruit.  Confession:  I stopped at this point in my writing because thinking about them made me want one.  LOVE THEM.  So good.

I was going to post about the nutrition value of nectarines, but I learned something new as I researched how to grow nectarines.  I thought I would share.

I had always thought of peaches and nectarines as being similar but not the same fruit, but the information I am seeing is that a nectarine IS a peach, but with smooth, non-fuzzy skin.  But I don’t think they taste the same.  Do you?  But alas, according to what I am reading, there aren’t really nectarine trees, they are only peach trees that produce a mutated variety of peach.  Dang, I learn a lot writing a blog.  Did YOU know that, Dear Reader?  Did you know that a nectarine is a peach? That explains why people always have peach trees and not nectarine trees.  But that actually makes me laugh because if it is a peach tree with a mutation, it is a nectarine tree.  Odd.  It must be the way “they” classify things.  Everything I look up for nectarine comes up peach.

A nectarine is in the group of peaches, but it is two peach trees with the recessive “fuzzy” gene that produce a nectarine tree.

I am sure there are plenty of you who knew that a nectarine was a peach.  Quite honestly,  I don’t need to know, but I am kind of surprised by it.  I thought a peach was a peach and a nectarine was a nectarine, and it is, but it isn’t.  And no, I am not going to compare this to anything and get all philosophical on you because, well, I am just stuck on the nectarine being a peach.  I just find it fascinating.  I love when I am looking for something and I discover something entirely new to me.

Did you know that nectarines were peaches?  Do you like nectarines?  Do you like peaches?

Posted in Food, Fruit | Tagged: , , , , , , | 14 Comments »

Mango and Chicken Kabob

Posted by terrepruitt on July 1, 2010

I had a lunch date after teaching my Nia class on Wednesday.  I had mentioned, in a previous post that I wanted to cook more with fruit since we had a large amount of plums.  So, I was happy to try the mango and chicken kabob.  Obviously, I can’t take credit for cooking and/or preparing this.  I did not cook this kabob.  Worse, I took the picture with my iPhone so it is — well, the quality of an iPhone picture (it was actually so blurry I had to “sharpen” it with Photoshop).  As the waiter was setting the plate down, I thought, “Oh, I need to take a picture.”  But I forgot when the waiter brought another plate of kabobs that we did not order.  I think he just didn’t want her to feel left out.  I remember after I ate one!

Anyway . . . .GREAT way to cook with fruit.  I don’t think I would have thought to put mango on a skewer with chicken, but it actually works perfect because it cooks great.  I have determined a long time ago that it is too difficult to cook meat and veggies on the same skewer because in order to get the meat cooked properly the veggies get too done.  Or vice-versa, depending on the meat and the veggies.  So it is best–for us–to do them separate.  Plus separate allows for different seasonings and it keeps the meat separate from the vegetables in case there are persons who are not eating meat.

The mangos were cooked with the skin on and for the most part that made the skin very edible.  I didn’t even notice the skin until I got to a particularly tough one that was green.

So, yay!  A way to cook with fruit AND another way to use mangos.  I normally only use them in the cucumber mango salad.  I would have thought to make a salsa, but not to put them on a skewer especially WITH the chicken.  You might have noticed that this kabob has onions, red peppers, and tomatoes too.  I even ate the tomatoes (big deal for loath-tomatoes-girl), even though they were cooked.

Do you cook with mangos?  Do you make kabobs?  Kabobs are a nice way to serve food for a cook out, huh?  Have you managed to perfect cooking vegetables AND meat on the same skewer?

Posted in Food, Fruit | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Next Entries »