Makia’s is an outdoor/sporting supply company and have a lot of things on their website.  Any sport or activity and there [...]]]> The nice people at Makai’s Sporting Goods contacted me and wondered if I would like to review a couple products.  I said, sure – and a nice little package made its way to me.

Makia’s is an outdoor/sporting supply company and have a lot of things on their website.  Any sport or activity and there is something there.  I was surprised to see how much stuff the website has on it.  They even have outdoor gear for your pet!  It can be a little hard to find stuff, though.  I think they need some more specific categories in the front without having to click through so many sub menus.

Makai’s sent me 2 items.  The first is this nice little aluminum canteen, which is perfect for walking or hiking.

Does anyone know if you can freeze water in a canteen?

The other item was travel wipes.

I really liked these.  This is a resealable package and you can take it camping, hiking, biking, or whatever.  I used mine after a bike ride.

The towel is a nice size and very sturdy.

The pack gives directions on how to actually clean yourself to prevent any kind of cross contamination going from top to bottom and limb to limm.  However, I was just getting off sweaty bike grime and not using it as a substitute bath.  Look at all the grime that came off from my ride just from my arms, legs, and face!

Ewww!  Riding with sunscreen on and every speck of dust sticks to you.

The cleanser in these wipes needs no water and left my skin soft.  Also nice was that it only had a very light scent to it, not over powering.  I like these. Good for a quick clean up or refresher.

So if you have some time, check them out.

* note: These products were provided to me for free. The opinions are mine.

This part of Glens Falls is going through a rebirth.  It had some questionable buildings (aka flophouse) which are now closed and there will be [...]]]> Wednesday – you know what that means!  We headed out on the bike path today.  The temps were in the mid 50s, which is a perfect morning ride temperature.

This part of Glens Falls is going through a rebirth.  It had some questionable buildings (aka flophouse) which are now closed and there will be some demolition.  This coffee shop opened in one of the restored buildings.  The Empire Theater building.

My cuppa joe:

And my wheat bagel:

Delicious!

The sun broke out today, so we had a sunny ride home.  3 cheers for vitamin D!  It was quite a nice day for a ride.  12 miles round trip.  Gotta burn off some of that cream cheese.

Lunch time came pretty fast as work was busy all morning.  I made up a salad and crushed some tortilla chips on top for a little crunch.

Interesting, but I think I like nuts better.

I received a fun box today from Amy’s Kitchen.  They have 4 new Light and Lean Organic  meals, and offered me a sample of each of them to try.  I used to be the Lean Cuisine Queen back in the day and I haven’t had a frozen entree in years.  I didn’t like the processed taste after a while, but these sounded interesting.  Being organic, I figured they were a few steps up from LC, right?

The best part?  They were packed in dry ice!  That meant John and I could geek out for a while.

Outside?  Pretty boring.

Inside – instant fog machine!

Dry ice is so fun to play with.  I brought the bowl over to Pixie thinking she might find the bubbles interesting, but she was was all “get that out of my face”.

After keeping my face in the smoke for a while, I began wondering if it was possible to  suffocate from dry ice vapor, so I figured it was time to make dinner.

John and I each had an entree.  Mine:

Official description: Rotini pasta tossed in a light tomato sauce and tender shallots, organic asparagus spears and broccoli florets. Just 210 calories, 5 grams fat, and 470 mg sodium. (haha – you know with broccoli florets I was all over this one)

John’s entree:

A mixture of organic black beans, tofu, brown rice, vegetables and cheese tucked into a tortilla covered with tomatillo and ranchero sauces. Organic brown rice with carrots and sweet corn complete the meal. Contains 240 calories, 4.5 grams fat and 480 mg sodium. Gluten free.

We chose to cook these in the microwave.  I didn’t want to wait 45 minutes to cook in the oven.  Does anyone ever cook frozen meals in the oven?

Mine cooked for 3 minutes, stirred and another 1-1/2 minutes.  Voila

Actually pretty close to the picture, just not with cheese on top.  It mixed in when I had to stir the entree.

Served avec poire:

The taste?  I actually liked it quite well.  I find that often times frozen meals with veggies always taste heavily of bell peppers.  Maybe it is just me, but that was my experience.  Not the case here. The pasta was not gummy or mushy and the veggies were surprisingly fresh tasting.  Not often that asparagus appears in a frozen meal. I definitely could have used more cheese, though.  What I really liked was that the pasta was not over sauced.  Too many time frozen dinner have gobs of sauce and 3 pieces of pasta.  Overall I was quite impressed with the quality.

John’s meal:

There was sauce pictured on the box of his meal, but it must have soaked into the tortilla, which made it a little chewy.  He really liked the flavor of the enchilada.  The enchilada filling had a nice spice to it. The rice was good, but a little on the bland side (I agreed with that).  He said that cooking in the oven would probably be the best method for his dish. His meal was gluten free, too.

These meals retail for $4.89 per meal, which is on the high side, but then again, they are organic and of definitely better quality than a Weight Watchers or Lean Cuisine.  And pretty low in sodium for a frozen meal at around 470 per meal.  We have 2 more to try as well, so you will see those sometime

Evening snack for me tonight is some of this:

Question: Have you ever tried Amy’s Kitchen products?

Disclosure:  I received these items from Amy’s Kitchen to sample, but the opinions expressed are my own.

I was not exactly sure what to expect with this book, but I have to say that it wasn’t really what I expected.  Does that make sense?  First off, I was put off by the title, hence the reason I waited so long to [...]]]> I finally finished Women Food and God by Geneen Roth.

I was not exactly sure what to expect with this book, but I have to say that it wasn’t really what I expected.  Does that make sense?  First off, I was put off by the title, hence the reason I waited so long to read it.  I was concerned that it might be a religious approach, which I was not interested in.  However, Ms. Roth uses the word god as more of an abstract concept, but the continuous use of the term got in the way  at first.  I think people looking for some sort of spiritual guide would be pretty disappointed in this book.

The majority of this book just seemed to be case studies from her seminars and flashbacks to her life, which led it to seem somewhat disjointed to me.

Here were the positives and negatives I found with the book:

Positives:

- Recognizing the inner voice.  This is, to me, the best advice in the book.  To stop letting that inside voice speak to you negatively.  This was key for me in my journey and I think is really step 1 for any serious life changes.

- One of the best sentences in the book?  On page 199 – “Since the relationship with food is only a microcosm for your relationship to the rest of your life… any attempts to change the food part without also engaging in the beliefs it represents will end in disappointment 100 percent of the time.”

Makes such a great point that food often times is not the issue.  So many times people think, if I can eat right, the rest of my world will fall into place.  It gives food too much power.

- The 7 eating guidelines  (although this is also a negative as outlined below), which could be very helpful if you have never heard of them before.

My favorite guideline?  #7 – Eat with enjoyment.

Negatives:

- No practical advice.  Really, she just says “once you do X, then you will see clearly about Y.”  However, she gives no real steps about how to achieve this.  Even with the meditation (which she calls ‘inquiry’, it is just “notice the tingle in your arm and reflect on that.”  Well – I don’t feel any body tingles when I meditate.  The book “Savor” is one that explains this concept much better.

- Profanity.  Okay, I have to admit that I curse like a sailor, but I certainly don’t put it in my blog.  I don’t have a problem with profanity, but I don’t know as the f bombs really had a real place in this book.  It seemed gratuitous.

- The eating guidelines at the end in an appendix.  She kept referencing the rules, but never actually stated them in the book.  You had to go to the very end of the book for the bulleted list – in fact, the very last page of the book.  And then there was no explanation on how to actually achieve the rules.  Eat when you are hungry? Fine.  But how does one recognize stomach hunger versus head hunger?  Eat what your body wants? Okay, but isn’t there a difference between what it wants and what it needs?

Finally, there is something about her delivery that really bothers me and I can’t quite put my finger on it.   She is never surprised by anything her seminar people say, like she can predict their thoughts.  She talks about how these really emotionally disturbed women are practically emotionally healed after a week at her seminar.  Some of the things these women say about themselves is really heartbreaking and really need something more in depth than a week-long seminar.  Is this egomania?  Someone help me out here.

I really did want to like this book more since so many people seem to.  I think this book is probably more of a background book to further study in the field than anything else.  I really don’t see why Opera thought it was so life changing when there really isn’t anything groundbreaking or new in it.  Or maybe it is just me.  Personally – I got way more out of Savor or The Beck Diet than I did WFG.  A lot more.

Question:  Those of you who have read WFG, what good and bad points did you take from the book?

Attune Munch is granola with a twist – they have [...]]]> I love getting fun things in the mail.  I received a surprise box from Attune Foods last week and opened it up to find granola!  I love Attune bars and you all know I love cereal.  John and I could barely wait to try these.

Attune Munch is granola with a twist – they have added probitoics to the granola (just like their chocolate bars).  The probiotics are in the form of yogurt chips or as prebiotics in the chocolate granola.  A 1 ounce portion of granola has 1 billion probiotic CFUs (colony-forming unit).  Not sure I need a billion, but that’s okay LOL!

There were 3 kinds in the box:

Each of the photos below is a measured serving size of 1 oz, which has 120 calories, 4.5 g of fat, 3 grams of fiber, and 2 gram of protein.

Chocolate: Oat clusters rolled in Dutch cocoa powder mingle with rich chocolate chips for a satisfying healthy treat.

My notes – you know those no bake oatmeal chocolate cookies?  This tastes exactly like those.  Big trouble for me!  This was John’s favorite.

Apple Cinnamon – Apple and cinnamon infuse into whole grain oat and brown rice crisp clusters mixed with yogurt chips.

My notes – I think this was my favorite.  Light crispy texture. It was very apple-y tasting and I adored the yogurt chips.  They really are what make this different than regular granola.

Maple Nut-Whole grain oat and brown rice clusters rolled in maple syrup, this granola is flecked with pecans and yogurt chips.

My notes:  Maple!  Nice maple flavor to this.  Not much in the way of pecans, though, just little teeny pieces.  Again, the yogurt chips are what made it.

Overall a very,  very tasty granola.   Definitely one of my favorite types so far in my granola findings!  Fairly small serving size for calories, as it pretty typical for granolas.  Like other premium granolas, it is a little pricey at $5.99 a bag.

You can find Munch in the yogurt aisle at A&P, Waldbaum’s, King’s, and King Kutter at least.  I have asked my local Hannaford to bring this in as well.

This is open for US residents only (sorry).

To enter, just comment below with your favorite way to use granola.  I will draw a comment number via random.org and announce the winner on Thursday September 30th!

For additional entries, just link this on your facebook page or on your blog.  Leave a separate comment below if you do this.

Happy Munching!

Please note that Attune Foods sent me these products. I was not paid for this review and all opinions are my own.

I have to say that it shipped really fast, so kudos to them! Pretty sleek.  This is also a convection oven, which is pretty cool.  We were doing the standard bread toasting in it at first, but I wanted to see [...]]]> I received my Black and Decker Toaster Oven from CNS stores last week.

I have to say that it shipped really fast, so kudos to them! Pretty sleek.  This is also a convection oven, which is pretty cool.  We were doing the standard bread toasting in it at first, but I wanted to see how the convection works.  A couple really nice features on this toaster oven are the long timer option (60 minutes) plus an “always on” option.  Good for baking things that need a longer time.

Not impressed with the baking tray, as it seems flimsy:

Seeing as we are awash in blueberries and I wanted to test the convection properties of this oven, I decided to play around with a buttermilk blueberry corn muffin!

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1 large egg
• 2 tablespoons of sugar
• 2 tablespoons of unsweetened applesauce
• 1/3 cup cornmeal
• 2/3 cup of whole wheat flour
• 2 tsp of baking powder
• 1/4 tsp of salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 cup of fresh blueberries

Spray a 6-cup muffin tin with nonstick spray (or use cupcake liners).  Preheat oven to 350 F.

In a medium size bowl, mix together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt and set aside.

In a small bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, egg, applesauce, and sugar.

Add the wet ingredients all at once to the dry ingredients:

Mix until just barely combined and then fold in the blueberries.  It is really important not to over mix this.

Divide up into the 6 muffin cups:

They will be pretty full.  Pop into the oven – or into the toaster oven:

I could hear the convection fan cycle on and off while this baked.  Guess that means it works

Bake these for 20 to 25 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.

Voila!

One nice thing about the convection as that the tops didn’t burn like can happen in a regular toaster oven.

Muffin stats:

Calories: 115 per muffin (awesome!!)

Fat: 1.5 g

Carbs: 22.5 g

Fiber:  2.5 g

Protein: 4 g

Best served warm.  These are a nice dense muffin.  With the low calorie count, these make a great snack (or have 2 for breakfast )

** Disclaimer:  I was provided a gift certificate to review a product from CSN stores.  All opinions are my own, however.

I was sent some Slice of Life adult gummy vitamins to try!  I received a bottle of Vitamin D3 and Omega 3.6.9s.

These gummies are gluten free and made with natural colors and flavors:  Ingredients are: glucose syrup, natural cane juice, gelatin, citric acid, [...]]]> So you all saw my sneak tease picture yesterday:

I was sent some Slice of Life adult gummy vitamins to try!  I received a bottle of Vitamin D3 and Omega 3.6.9s.

These gummies are gluten free and made with natural colors and flavors:  Ingredients are: glucose syrup, natural cane juice, gelatin, citric acid, lactic acid, tumeric and annato seed (colorant), natural flavor, fractionated coconut oil and caranuba wax (to prevent sticking).

Pros: If you like the swedish fish candies, you will really like these vitamins.  The nice thing is that the Omegas are plant based and not fish based!  I cannot stomach the fish oil capsules, and the flax oil pills I take are pretty large, so it is kind of fun to chew my Omegas   A serving of 2 Slice of Life gummies gives you 90 mg of Omega 6, 60 mg of Omega 9, and 80 mg of Omega 3.  This one tastes kind of like cranberry.

The Vitamin D3 gummy has a citrus flavor to it and each serving gives you 1000 IU of D3!

Cons: These vitamins are not vegetarian.  They do use pork as the base for the gelatin.  There are the children’s gummy vitamins that are available as vegetarian with a pectin base.

————————————————————-

The parent company of Slice of Life, Hero Nutritionals, is going to give one lucky reader of my blog 3 bottles of vitamin supplements!

Contest is open to all readers at this time.

Here is how you can enter to win:

1. Visit the Slice of Life website and use the “Help Me Choose” button (bottom of page) to see which combo of vitamins fits you, and leave a comment here of what that is.

For additional entries, you can do the following:

2.  Follow the Finding Radiance blog (however you choose to do so) and let me know in a comment that you are.

3.  Post a link on your blog and let me know in a separate comment!

So that is 3 chances to win.  The winner will be chosen on Friday May 21, 2010 at noon by random number generator!

Good luck

This box was amazingly generous!

I am a [...]]]> I am going to do a review on these products.  I actually won a drawing for a basket of items from the Ginger People, so these were not provided to me for review, but I enjoyed them so much I figure I would talk about them.

This box was amazingly generous!

I am a big ginger fan.  I love the sweet hot flavor of it.  I also love ginger Altoids, but I don’t think too many people like them because they are so hard to find!  Gingerbread and gingersnaps at the holidays? Oh yes, I am all over that (with a glass of eggnog…

Anyway, the box had ginger chews, crystalized ginger (in different forms), ginger juice, Gin-gin candies, and gingersnaps (!!!).  Yum!

The first thing I dug into were the ginger chews in the peanut flavor.

This was my very favorite thing in the whole box!  They remind me of Squirrel Nut Zippers, only with a ginger taste to them.

With little bits of peanuts in there, too.  I have been noshing on these all this week if I am feeling snacky.  They also sent a coffee flavor, which was good.  I wasn’t as wild about the apple spice chew.

We tried the juice next.  I have to say it seemed a little medicinal to me?  Part of that is that we just don’t drink juice, and I don’t drink sweetened anything, so it was pretty strong.  John actually used this juice as the liquid for some pancakes, which gave a subtle ginger flavor to them.  I think we will use the juice for cooking, or possibly add to seltzer.

The little cookies?

Good thing this was a small box, let’s just say that.

The other favorite thing I had where the crystalized ginger baking bits.

The logo guy is cute, too You know how sometimes crystalized ginger can be tough or chewy?  These little bits seriously melted in my mouth! They are made with baby ginger, and maybe that makes a difference?  Whatever, I really liked them.  That’s what I added to my gingerbread oats from yesterday.

I don’t know if this brand is offered in all stores, but check them out if you find them!

Interesting note as I was perusing the Ginger People site:

Ginger contains anti-inflammatory compounds called gingerols. They are believed to be responsible for the relief reported by many arthritis and chronic pain sufferers who regularly consume ginger. “It [ginger] works like Ibuprofen, but without the side effects.”

Source: Neal Barnard, M.D. author of Foods That Fight Pain

Maybe that has helped with my sciatica this week?

Question:  Ginger fan or no?

I was given the opportunity to review the Gym in a Bag, which the company was kind enough to send me.   You all know I love strength training and believe everyone should [...]]]> While I sit here in the happy land of Vicodin, I thought I would post my thoughts on the Gym in a Bag.

I was given the opportunity to review the Gym in a Bag, which the company was kind enough to send me.   You all know I love strength training and believe everyone should be doing it in some form, so I was very interested to see this product up close and personal.  First off, I was surprised at how small the bag was.  There certainly is no reason one couldn’t take this for travel.  Inside the bag were resistance bands, ankle straps, hand grips, a door hanger,and a bar that comes apart in 3 sections to fit in said bag.  Plus a DVD and flip book to show the moves and workouts.

I popped in the DVD to see it in action:

This was using the handgrips.  Here I am with the bar itself doing bicep curls (obviously not taken in my current state of being):

I cut off my head…. oooops.  I have to say, the more I played with this, the more I liked it.  Especially the bar.  I know the biggest difference of this set versus regular resistance bands is the wrist cuffs rather than using handgrips, but I thought the bar was pretty darn cool. It  almost is like having a barbell or a cable machine.  There are 4 different resistance bands to use.

The coolest thing (which is also a drawback in my house) is the door brace so that you can do pull down exercises like this one.

That is so cool for a home gym.  I would need to buy an attachment for our bowflex to do these.  Unfortunately for me, our downstairs has no door to hook this to, so that was a problem to watch the DVD and do the exercises.  The only rooms that have doors like that are upstairs where there is no DVD player.  But, you don’t necessarily need to use the DVD, you just need to be able to workout where you have a door the attachment will slip onto.  (I am also going to admit that I had no idea who Kim Lyons is.  I have never watched TBL.  Am I the only one in America who does not watch this show?)

Check out all these exercises you can do with this:

My mother also thought this was a good product, and I am working on trying to get her to do some poses for me to put on the blog to show that it doesn’t matter what your age is to use it

The cost of Gym in a Bag is $89.00, which really isn’t bad considering how many exercises you can do with this versus a lot of home machines (like the bowflex or home gym).   Or a membership to a gym. Not to mention it takes up no space.  I love economy, don’t you?

Normally when things have been processed to make [...]]]> A few weeks ago I had posted about my love of steel cut oats (or any type of oats….) and the overnight soaking method for them.  Country Choice Organic read my post and kindly sent me some of their quick cooking steel cut oats to try!

Normally when things have been processed to make them quick cooking, the nutritionals suffer.  However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the stats are almost exactly the same:

The only difference is 1 less gram of protein, but all the fiber is there – yay!

You can either do these in the microwave or the stovetop.  John decided to make a bowl in the microwave and that took 6 minutes of cooking.  I did mine stovetop, like I do with all my oats (I am too afraid of boil over).  It took 5-6 minutes to cook.  I did find that I needed to use 1 cup of water instead of the recommended 3/4 cup, as it was starting to get dry in the pot.  I just added more water towards the end.

Mixed in some pumpkin pie spice, fresh pumpkin, brown sugar and topped with cranberry sauce and toasted pecans.

The result?  Thumbs up!  The oats were creamy and slightly chewy, like good steel cut oats.  Big plus is that they are organic, too.  You should be able to find these in your regular grocery store, possibly in the natural foods aisle as well.  They retail for $3.79.  That comes out to about 18 cents a serving.  I think the 5 pecans on top cost more than that LOL!  Yet another reason to love oats!!  Wouldn’t that be a boring tagline?  “Oats – the affordable breakfast.”

In perusing Country Choice’s website, I see they also have organic cookies, hot cereals and breakfast bars.

Have you tried or seen this brand in your store? Is organic important to you or a bonus?