Pumpkin-Ginger Soup

Pumpkin-Ginger Soup

Ingredients (use vegan versions):
1 small cooking pumpkin
1/2 cup raw cashew pieces
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger (or to taste)
salt to taste

Directions:
Soak cashews in water to cover for several hours. This step is optional, but helps them blend better. Cut pumpkin in half, remove seeds, and bake cut side down at 350 degrees F until very tender (45 minutes to one hour). Scrape pumpkin from the peel and puree in a blender, with any juices, in batches. Put pureed pumpkin into your soup pot. Blend cashews in blender until smooth and add to the pumpkin puree. Rinse the blender with a little water and add to the pot. Add a little more water if its too thick. Add ginger and salt to taste and heat gently for a few minutes to blend the flavors. For an even easier variation, use frozen, cooked squash.
recipe credit http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=10540.0;wap2

This recipe looks simple, inexpensive and tasty to try this weekend. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Snack Time & Wrapper Purses

What do you bring for kids for a snack when you are trying to switch to vegetarian? I’d just like for us to eat healthier and rid the toxins from our bodies. We tried the Honest Kids juice at Costco - it has a much “cleaner” juice taste than those other juice bags. http://www.honesttea.com/products/kids/ Plus you can recycle the juice bags which will be made into purses. I think it’ll look like those gum wrappers I used to fold in elementary school. Here’s a blog showing how to make a purse with candy wrappers and chip bags. http://www.candywrapperpurse.blogspot.com/ Even where I like to get my coffee from makes purses & clutches from coffee bag wrappers http://www.greenmountaincoffee.com/prdNonCoffee.aspx?Name=Candy-Wrapper-Purse.

Halloween

Download a Detroit Tigers Pumpkin Stencil.
Type in your zip code to find some Halloween events near you.
Staff of the White House share some of their stories of weird noises at the White House. Also has word search, quiz, coloring page, and more.
Halloween Origami.
This looks like a fun activity! Using Excel, students answer questions to create a silly, spooky, fill-in-the-blanks story. It says you can Microsoft Excel or another spreadsheet program, but I haven’t tried it yet. I use Quattro Pro.
Newsword has Halloween worksheets you can download in pdf. The worksheet sets have about 15 pages each! Look under the headings Fall Themes and October.
Halloween on a Shoestring has some ideas we’ve used to make the festivities more enjoyable.

I don’t know the subject title

Current mood: sad, contemplative, shocked, melancholy, mad

My cousin (ok, technically my cousin’s ex-husband & father of her kids, so really my cousin), a friend (friend & co-worker for about 10 years - view him on my myspace friends Tru450), and another friend (known him about 17 years) are gone. All to suicide. My cousin in 2006, my friends in June & October 2007.

Another

Saturday, October 13, 2007… Another friend committed suicide. I am in shock & stunned. Pretty much at a loss for words.

Mandalas

Get Centered

Increase concentration, find balance & relaxation with Mandalas
Download the Mariposa Peace Mandala
107 Mandalas to download and color
Mandalas for little kids
Animal Mandalas
Mandala Lesson
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Keurig

I Love My Coffee!

Happy 50th Anniversary, Sputnik!

Sputnik and The Dawn of the Space Age
(Queue the theme from 2001 A Space Odyssey)
History changed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world’s first artificial satellite was about the size of a basketball, weighed only 183 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. That launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments. While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the space age and the U.S.-U.S.S.R space race. Read more from NASA…