Recent government guidelines suggest we eat at least five portions of fruit ad vegetables every day. If you’re anything like me, however, you are lucky to get five portions per week. It just seems like life is moving too quickly to squeeze in fruits and vegetables, with the result being that we consume less healthy foods that seem more convenient.
Well, it’s time to stop that. The benefits of eating more fruits and vegetables is clear: they make you look and feel better and cause to have more energy throughout the day. Here are a few tips to easily add fruits and vegetables into your daily routine:
Smoothies
Drinking a smoothie is one of the easiest and most enjoyable methods of consuming more fruit. As anyone who has ever been to Smoothie King can attest, they’re pretty darn tasty. If you don’t want to take the time or spend the money on store-made smoothies, here’s a few recipes that will have you whipping up delicious smoothies in your kitchen in no time:
By substituting raw carrots or celery for your mid-morning coffee break, you will avoid the drop in energy that high-sugar snacks cause. Here is a site that offers suggestions for healthy snacks.
Add Fruit to Your Breakfast
Try adding some blueberries or raspberries to your cereal in the mornings. Also, try drinking fruit juice with your breakfast. Make sure the juice is 100% fruit juice.
The New York Times breaks down a recent study of red meat’s effect on your health. In short, red meat is bad for your health and your longevity. Here’s their description of the results:
Now a new study of more than 500,000 Americans has provided the best evidence yet that our affinity for red meat has exacted a hefty price on our health and limited our longevity.
The study found that, other things being equal, the men and women who consumed the most red and processed meat were likely to die sooner, especially from one of our two leading killers, heart disease and cancer, than people who consumed much smaller amounts of these foods.
While nothing can replace a mouth-watering steak or a juicy burger, there are plenty of tasty alternatives. Here a few examples:
Young Money provides some good advice for the recent or upcoming group of college graduates looking to find their first jobs. Here is how they describe the current job market that awaits these twenty-somethings:
After college seniors enjoy their last spring break this month, they’ll return to campus for the final weeks of academia before they enter a recession-weary real world with an 8.1 percent unemployment rate. The first job search is always daunting but particularly so for the estimated 1.5 million-strong Class of 2009.
In August, employers surveyed by the National Association of Colleges and Employers said they planned to increase hiring of college graduates by 6 percent over last year. By October, the revised projection was a 1.3 percent increase in hiring. Then the hiring expectations were flat. Last month’s updated survey showed a staggering change of heart, with employers reporting they planned to hire nearly 22 percent fewer college graduates than they did from the Class of 2008.
Not exactly heart-warming. Fortunately, it’s not all rain clouds and sick puppies. Here’s a description of a few of the positive qualities new graduates offer potential employers:
In other words, don’t let a bad economy distract you from a good job search that needs to start now. The workplace may not need as many college graduates as it once did, but the need for the qualities they bring remains, career counselors say.
“There’s something great about a fresh college graduate,” said Gillian Steele, managing director of DePaul University’s career center. “They’re up to date with the latest stuff, they’re full of energy. They come moldable and they come with a more reasonable cost as well.”
And despite the headlines, there are jobs to be filled.
Here’s a few highlights of the tips that Young Money offers:
Use your college’s career services office.
Expand your search parameters, both geographically and industry wise.
Seize every opportunity to make a connection (i.e., network, network, network).
Use service organizations to develop your skills and broaden your network.
While at a cookout this past weekend, a friend of mine managed to get grease on her brand new shirt. Although I have no idea how much said shirt would have cost, the look on her husband’s face when they noticed the new “beauty mark” tells me it was most likely not free. And, as anyone who has ever gotten grease on anything knows, it’s nearly impossible to get rid of it. Luckily, we had a secret weapon again just such a stain: my wife. Without even thinking about it, she instructed our newly blemished friend to simply sprinkle some flour on the grease stain. To make a long story short: the stain completely disappeared, my wife achieved rock-star status among our friends, and my fears of becoming the proud new owner of a shirt with grease and flour on it never came to fruition.
So, here is what you should do if you’re ever confronted with a grease stain on your clothes:
Find any everyday product that will absorb the grease. The best products to use are baking soda, flour, or baby powder.
Sprinkle the powder directly on the stain and press onto the grease as hard as you can. A good method of doing this is to go from the underside of the clothing and pinch the powdered area between your fingers.
After you’ve pressed the powder into the stain, you should be able to just brush it off. If a considerable amount of powder remains stuck to the area, it means that all of the grease has not been absorbed and you need to repeat the above steps.
Prior to washing, sprinkle some powder on the area again and allow it to remain on their overnight. This extra step will ensure that you don’t lock in a stain by washing the clothing with a little bit of grease left on it.
The next day, brush the powder off and wash the clothing as you normally would.
I recently discovered TwitterJobSearch and am pretty impressed. TwitterJobSearch searches Twitter posts for information about who is currently hiring. The site currently boasts 42,524 new jobs located in the past seven days. That’s pretty impressive. I could see this being useful to help generate leads and to get a general idea of what the job landscape of a particular industry looks like.
I can actually feel you shaking your head at the prospect of using Twitter to find a job and I understand where you’re coming from. However, it’s important to take into consideration the current economic climate and to realize that innovation and thinking outside the box are what can make a big different in your job hunt.
Need a word processor but can afford Microsoft Word’s hefty pricetag? Need to do some work with your photos but unwilling to fork over the small fortune it takes to purchase Photoshop? AlternativeTo has you covered. This site provides alternatives to the most popular applications, both commercial and free.
The best part of AlternativeTo is the fact that you can vote on the suggested alternative and even make your own suggestions.
I recently discovered 
