Fascinating story of Holocaust survivor

From the NY Times:

ARTS / ART & DESIGN | August 30, 2006
History Claims Her Artwork, but She Wants It Back
By STEVE FRIESS
A dispute over Gypsy portraits painted under the Nazi gun.

Decrease in number of female clerks for Supreme Court

From the NY Times:

WASHINGTON | August 30, 2006
Supreme Court Memo: Women Suddenly Scarce Among Justices’ Clerks
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
The number of Supreme Court law clerkships held by women is in the single digits for the first time since 1994.

Women around the world

This has not been posted as a political or religious statement. It's just remarkable to me how women, even those who live under oppressive, authoritarian governments, seek to come together to influence society.

From the NY Times:

INTERNATIONAL / MIDDLE EAST | August 29, 2006
Islamic Revival Led by Women Tests Syria’s Secularism
By KATHERINE ZOEPF
The growth of Koranic schools for girls, rare in the Arab world, is one sign that Syria is becoming increasingly religious.

More from the Lean Plate Club ...

From today's DMN via The Washington Post. I'll just cut to the good part. In a nutshell, these are isometric exercises you can do at your desk or in the car.

Here's how you can turn tedious commutes, traffic jams or hours spent sitting in the office into opportunities for some isometric exercises and a few stretches. Except where noted, do these exercises three to five times every 15 to 30 minutes.

Start at the top. Do a posture check to counteract the driver's slump (which also occurs at your desk). In the car, sit up straight, trying to "grow an inch" taller by bringing your shoulders back. Lift your head so that your upper spine is erect and in more of a straight line. Retract your chin so that your ears are directly in line with your shoulders. Hold for 30 seconds while breathing in and out. Do a set of five to 10 reps.

Open your heart . Roll your shoulders up and then back while holding the steering wheel. (At your desk, you can let your arms and hands follow.) Gently pull your shoulder blades down and back toward your tailbone and your back pockets. "This movement helps reawaken those middle back muscles," Hagan says. It also helps loosen shoulder muscles, which tighten during stress.

Let your navel kiss your spine . Tighten your abdominal muscles to scoop up your belly and pull in your waistline so that your navel moves toward your spine. "This takes the stress off the lower, lumbar spine," Hagan says.

Grab a ticket. No, not a traffic ticket, and don't use your hands. Imagine that you have a winning lottery ticket. Grasp it and hold it tightly between your cheeks --"and I'm not talking about your face," Hagan says with a laugh -- while counting to 10. "You will get rich in posture even if you are not winning the lottery." Doing this exercise helps counter the numbness in the large gluteal muscles in your posterior that can result from prolonged sitting. She also advises men to remove wallets from their back pockets since sitting on them can add to the numbness and increase the risk of painful sciatica.

Grip the wheel . Clench as tightly as possible, then release. At the same time, try to relax your shoulders and sit up straight. Repeat about one second on, one second off about 10 times. "Most people don't realize how hard they are gripping the wheel," Hagan says. "This helps them relax and is also good for stress management."

Heel-toe presses. During long drives on cruise control, lift your heels and push up on the toes, raising your knees a little. Then lower your heels and raise your toes slightly toward the roof of the car. Do three reps on each leg every 30 minutes. For city driving, perform this exercise at stop lights.

Word of the Day

Here's something fun and educational. Add to your vocabulary each day with Dictionary.com's Word of the Day. You can go to the site or have it e-mailed to you.

www.dictionary.com

Online meal planning

From TDMN by way of The Washington Post and its Lean Plate Club:

Online meal planning makes diets more effective

By SALLY SQUIRES / Washington Post

To reach a healthier weight, you have to trim calories either by eating less, moving more or doing both.Trouble is that most people are pretty sloppy in calculating how many calories they eat.

So what does work? Planning and portion control, experts say.

But planning meals can be challenging. A strategy that can make it easier is to use a free online Web tool. In the evening, plan meals for the next day. Print the list and you've got a clear dietary game plan to follow.

To test the ease of using these free online tools, I plugged into each site a day's worth of meals and snacks that added up to 1,500 calories. Eating that number of calories would produce about a 1-pound loss per week for an adult who normally consumes 2,000 calories a day. (Find a copy of the menu at www.leanplateclub.com.) This one-day meal plan mostly met the required nutrient intake for a healthy adult, 50 or younger. It fell short only on calcium. (A single calcium supplement would fill the gap without adding calories.)

Here are the Web sites tested and how they stacked up for ease of planning meals:

FitDay (www.fitday.com ): Lots of pie charts show what you're eating and burning. A nifty feature customizes your food so you can tweak some of the standard calorie counts to better represent what you're eating. What I didn't like: Type in a simple food – oatmeal – and you have to wade through five pages of listings for oatmeal bread, oatmeal cookies and more just to find plain oatmeal.

Nutridiary ( www.nutridiary.com): Short on time? This site offers a guest feature that lets you use it immediately without registering first. It's a quick way to see how you like planning meals ahead of time. It also provides good first-time user information. Another feature: You can turn off all ads on the site.

NutritionData ( www.nutritiondata.com): Like technical information? NutritionData not only records food, but will guide you to better choices with its Caloric Ratio Pyramid, Nutrient Balance Indicator and Nutritional Target Map. Or plug in your own recipes and NutritionData will calculate the calories and nutrients for you. To use this feature, however, you'll need to spend some time recording each ingredient in your own personal online "pantry."

SparkPeople ( www.sparkpeople.com): This site asks for a lot of information before you get started, but that allows you to consider both your food and fitness goals. It sets daily limits on calories, fat, carbohydrates, protein and water based on your goals. It also allows you to add up to 75 other nutrients to track, such as fiber, cholesterol, sodium and more, making it a good option for those who have special dietary or health needs.

Article on women and the West

This is an interesting story from TDMN about a museum in Plano and the historian who runs it. She studies women's history, particularly in terms of the Old West pioneeer days.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/fea/life/stories/081306dnlivNSL_truewomen.4330681.html

If the link doesn't work, just go to DallasNews.com/SundayLife, and you should be able to locate the story.

Need a laugh today?

Misty sent this to me. I think we can all appreciate it, but especially those of us on the dating scene.

www.settleforbrian.com

Sherry's Pineapple Delight

Or Dineapple Pelite. Whichever you prefer.

Ingredients:

1 C. Scalded Milk

1 Lb Marshmallows

2 C. Cream, Whipped

2 Small Cans – Crshd. PINEAPPLE (drained)

1 C. Crushed Pecans

1 Box Crushed Vanilla Wafers

Directions:

1. Line the Bottom of an 9 x 13 pan with crushed VANILLA WAFERS.
2. In a separate bowl - dissolve Marshmallows in Scalded Milk. (Cool)
3. Fold in the Whipped Heavy Cream, the Crushed Pineapple, and Crushed nuts.
4. Pour Mixture on top of VANILLA WAFER crust.
5. Top with heavy sprinkling of additional VANILLA WAFER crumbs.
6. REFRIGERATE until cool and firm.

Liz's Spinach and Cheese Squares

2 eggs
6 tbs. flour
10 oz. chopped drained spinach
16 oz. small curd cottage cheese
6 oz. grated cheddar cheese
1/4 to 1/2 tsp. pepper
1/8 tsp. cayenne
pinch of cayenne

Mix eggs and flour together until smooth

Mix in all other ingredients.

Bake in a greased pan at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

Anita's Cream Cheese Corn

2 cans corn (your choice of kind)
1 8-oz. package cream cheese
1 jalapeno pepper, chopped (or to taste)
1 stick butter
1/4 C. milk

Melt butter, cream cheese, and milk over low heat. Mix in corn and jalapeno. Pour into greased casserole dish. Bake at 350 degrees until it bubbles (about 20-30 minutes).

Enjoy!

Aunt Millie's Pound Cake

Aunt Millie's Pound Cake Recipe

Hello Breakfast Ladies !

Here is my Aunt Millie's pound cake recipe.

2 sticks margarine
1/2 stick crisco ( yes, they now come in stick form )
3 cups sugar
5 eggs
3 cups flour
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. vanilla
2 tsp. Adam's Extract - butter flavoring
* I made it with the butter flavoring this time but, sometimes Aunt Millie subs witrh the Adam's lemon flavoring

* Mix in mixing bowl
* Pour into greased bunt pan ( this makes one regular sized or 2 small bunt pans )
* Bake at 350* for about an hour, test with tooth pick

Serve plain or with berries and whip cream!
Enjoy!
Amber

Speaking of breakfast ...

Today in The Dallas Morning News, the Taste section is devoted to breakfast. It's a back-to-school feature intended to help moms get their students' day off to a good start, but I think it has some good suggestions for all of us time-starved types. Personally, I started eating breakfast again over the last few months, and I confess, it makes a difference in how I feel.

Here's the link: www.dallasnews.com/taste

Blogs by Breakfast Clubbers

If you want reviews from someone you know on the latest movies, TV, books, restaurants, shops and more, look no further than The Blog of Liz, artfully written by our own Liz Gravitz.

Here's the link: www.lizgravitz.blogspot.com