Archive for November, 2017

Pumpkin Gelato and The Gelato Moment

Saturday, November 4th, 2017

Discover your own “gelato moment” with this easy to make Pumpkin Gelato.

I had this fantastic Pumpkin Gelato at Nostrana last week while visiting my daughter for her birthday.  So today, I tried to replicate it with great results (it is fantastic and I can imagine it would be a huge hit at Thanksgiving too).

Here is the recipe I adapted from several I found online combined with an ingredient I think was in the Nostrana gelato:

Ingredients:

1 15 oz can of organic pumpkin puree

half the pumpkin can with heavy whipping cream

half the pumpkin can with whole milk

2 tbs organic sour cream

1/3 cup organic sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1/4 tsp fresh ground nutmeg

Pinch of salt

Directions:

Put all ingredients in a bowl and mix with a whisk until well mixed together.  Place in a cuisinart ice cream maker and mix for 30 minutes.  For the gelato,  remove from the ice cream maker and put it into a bowl. Freeze for 24 hours.   If you’re okay with ice cream, just keep going with the ice cream maker until the ice cream is firm.  Gelato though has less air in it – so for a real gelato experience, remove before it’s completely frozen.

Besides the incredibleness of this dessert, I was inspired for other reasons to attempt making gelato like we had last week in Portland.  I have not been a gelato or ice cream connesiur.  My daughter still wonders why she is not in possession of my Cuisinart ice cream maker (this is the one that has a built in compressor).  I had a foodie friend though who is a huge fan of gelato so I am thankful I collected my borrowed Ice Cream maker when I moved from Portland.  One of the many things I love about my foodie friends is how in the moment they are when enjoying something that is so absolutely spectacular.   This one foodie friend opened my mind up to how this could be so with gelato.  So now, whenever something is so absolutely perfect in the moment – I call it “the gelato moment.”

I hope by enjoying this pumpkin gelato, you can discover your own gelato moment – and with it, the absolute perfection of your entire life.

Two Blogs, Two Purposes

Friday, November 3rd, 2017

My last post on this blog, last December – it was time to make some changes in how I was blogging to better support Cheetah Learning.   We are meeting our goals with better Search Engine Optimization through blogging efforts with the Cheetah Learning blog. In the Cheetah world (as in the rest of the world), a lot changes in nearly a year, and I realized, I want and need a blog separate from the main Cheetah Learning blog.   I need a forum to share whatever new and crazy idea I’m testing out – my latest recipe, insight, challenge I’ve set for myself, etc.  I also have a new marketing team at Cheetah Learning who are inspiring me in new ways with the Cheetah Learning blog so I have more brain space now too to share other parts of me.

The 15 Week Neurofeedback Experience – resurrecting my personal blog to track this.

I’ve been toying around with the idea of doing some type of self – improvement challenge.  I started a new round of neurofeedback training to continue to work on optimizing my brain performance.   My father passed away at the end of June and my brain was not performing as well as I wanted it to – just like it did after my mother passed away.  Losing one’s parents is a signifcant life stressor – so I guess I’m just “normal.”  I found my way to a neurofeedback clinic that specializes in a form of neurofeedback called Quantitative EEG I had been wanting to test out.  We set up a 15 week program to get my brain waves and connections operating in an optimal state.   I’ve already done three sessions and I’m liking the impact on my self-discipline and get up and go.  So I figure it might be a great time to blog about the changes I’m experiencing as I go through this 15 weeks of QEEG neurofeedback.

I am doing three to four hour long sessions  a week of QEEG training.  We are starting out with one channel programming to reduce the amplitude of my alpha waves.  For me, with loss and grief,  with the right temporal lobe damage sustained when I was thrown out of the car at four years old, my brain behaves in some odd ways.  Most people’s Alpha waves decrease when doing tasks (this is when the Beta waves naturally increase).  But for me, while I’m not all that conscious I’m upset,  and think I’m coping fine, I will start having a hard time staying awake while reading or working on the computer.  This is a sign my Alpha waves are taking over when they are supposed to be quieting down.   So the first task is to help me stay awake while I’m working.  I’d say it’s working – still at it on this blog, no sleepiness.

The next phase is to get all parts of my brain firing in the right patterns.  While the first brain improvement activity in 2013 got more blood to the damaged parts of my right side of my brain, the QEEG report showed the connections are not balanced on the right side.   So once we quiet down the Alpha waves, we are starting on improving the connection balance throughout my brain.  It will be fun to see what happens with that – stay tuned.