Improve your decluttering muscles with a tour of Seattle Chocolates

What do you love?  What do you love so deeply that it makes your spirit dance and eyes sparkle?  How do you decide what you truly love and what is only life clutter?

By building exploration and discovery muscles- that's how.

Yesterday, my girlfriend and I went on a sensory tour of the Seattle Chocolate Factory.

 At the end of the tour a 6 piece chocolate taste test was waiting for us to enjoy.  Our task was simple: taste each chocolate.  What do you love?  Each piece eaten with full awareness and curiosity.  Do I love this?  What do I love about it?  What do I taste?  How does it compare to the other 5 samples?  If I could only pick one, which one would I choose?  
The idea of choosing got me thinking...

Learning to discover what you truly love is an art.  Keeping everything just incase or because you feel obligated is like buying bad chocolate and then filling your pantry with it.

February is known as the month of Love and Chocolate.  I challenge you, not to look at your life full of clutter, but to elevate your senses into a place of playful discovery.  What do you truly love?  If you could only keep one book, magazine, bolt of fabric, craft, appointment, sweater, chocolate bar ..... which one would it be?

  Put order into your sorting process.  Which do I love the most?  By rating your chocolates in order of favorite to least favorite, you build the ability to identify what you truly love.  Keep the top 20%, let go of the rest.

   A sensory tour helps you ignite your discovery muscles. These newly strengthened muscles can be applied to your home clutter, your life clutter, time clutter etc.  Imagine all this because of a little, delicious chocolate tour.... priceless!

  FYI:  When you eat your chocolate savor each bite.  Life and chocolate are best when consumed slowly with full attention.  Let go of what you don't love so you have more time and energy for what you truly do love.

Clutter clearing is TLC for your spirit... keep it fun!

Go to Seattle Chocolate's home site

Meet Chis he was our guide into the world of Chocolate
 It was fun, delicious and worth repeating- Thanks Chris!!

Health and Culinary Discovery: Whole Frozen Lemons

Have you heard of freezing whole lemons?  It's new to me.  My curiosity got fired up when I read an article about the multiple benefits of whole frozen lemons.  You freeze the whole thing?  Yes, organic lemons, washed, peel and all.

 I love upping my family's nutrition and health with a simple process. Having grated lemon and zest at my disposal with zero waste- priceless!

Here is my whole lemon freezing and grating recipe: 

4 organic lemons, wash and put in freezer.
Wait overnight or until fully frozen.
Grate lemons
I used my processor to grate my frozen lemons.  It was a noisy process but quick and effective.  I ended up with 1 ice cube tray of frozen lemon grate and 2 quart bags of the grated lemon. That's it!  Easy! Simple! Quick!
The whole process took maybe 15 minutes of my time and smelled amazing!!

Discoveries:

I love having ready to use lemon zest in my freezer.
My morning hot water and lemon tastes better- not as sour
I was catching a cold but then it just went away... coincidence? 
No more wasting any part of the lemon! 

3 ways to use the frozen whole lemon grate.

Adding to hot water - for an nutritional enhanced morning lemon water detox
       I'm not normally a fan of lemon water but this has a softer creamier flavor.
Substitute the whole lemon for recopies calling for lemon zest.  I made a delish macadamia cookie
Add to Salad dressings

I'm a true believer in grating whole frozen lemons.  There are big claims on the health benefits frozen lemons.  Such as the ability to fight cancer cells, improve immunity and help in weight loss. I'm not a scientist but I know from personal experience that food has been my best medicine and I believe food does heal.

I recommend you trying it yourself and see what you can do with an abundance of grated lemon.  Experiment, play, research, share and enjoy!!

On this first day of the new year, I choose to spend my time doing what I want to repeat for the new year.  Creating, experimenting, discovering simple solutions, sharing and of course eating delicious foods!

May your New Year be blessed, healthy, happy and prosperous!,
            Denise

Simple hand scrub for dry skin

Tis the season of dry skin.  Last night my hands were dry and feeling winter rough - catchy.  Catchy - you know when your skin sticks to nylon -silk type material.  Microfibers are the worst. augh!!

There is a simple, inexpensive solution at your fingertips!  Shop your pantry!  I love recipes with limited ingredients and few steps.  This is so easy- in less than 5 minutes you will have soft smooth and happy hands again.

Ingredients:
                     Oil
I used my kitchen's organic olive oil but feel free to use Organic: sunflower oil, sesame oil, avocado oil, walnut oil and safflower oils.  Anything you cook with will work.  You are using organic oils to cook with right??
                    Salt &/or sugar
  A fine salt but sugar or a combo of both would have been heavenly as well.  My favorite salts for a scrub are fine salts.  Leave the course salts for cooking.

Directions:  Last night I simply poured a little salt in my hand followed by a little olive oil.  Then rubbed my hands together for 2-5 minutes.  Get everywhere!  Rinse and dry!  Walla the worlds easiest, least expense and most productive hand scrub ever!

I decided to post this recipe this morning when I woke up and noticed how insanely soft and smooth my hands.

Enjoy!  Wishing you the gift of simplicity for the holidays,
                    Denise