Birthday Surprise, butter candles, cancer cure and more

  One day last week, my son here in TN asked me to have lunch after church on Sunday. So we headed to the restaurant after church. We were being taken to a table, and seated at a long one were a lot of folk, with their faces in menus. As we got close, they dropped the menus and there sat my son and daughter in law from North Carolina, and my daughter and grandson from Illinois.  What a big, lovely surprise. We had a great lunch, then headed home for dessert. My daughter in law here made a lovely, yummy cake with fresh strawberrys, and had ice cream and pretty spring napkins and plates ready. When we came in the door a big box said"open now," it was a new coffee maker from the TN kids, who knew mine had become defunct the week before. so we started coffee right away. Had a lovely visit,  got a beautiful orchid plant from N C kids, hope my cactus only mind will let me raise it, its so pretty.  The kids from Illinois brought a lot of great things too, including a raised toilet seat, another make life easier item. I so enjoyed seeing them,  the Illinois crew stayed over night so we had a great visit. Thanks to you all for making my birthday a memorable one!!!
  I spend some time each week making assurance calls to folk who are alone here in the area. This week one of the guys shared a great idea. If the power goes out and you do not have candles, cut a stick of butter into quarters, make a hole in each piece and stuff rolled tight toilet tissue into each hole, coating with the butter. when lit, they will burn for about four hours. What do ya know, niftly idea.
  I watch Dr Oz and The Doctors often, this week they had a wealth of information. A 2 year old girl had been battling leukemia, using chemo and radiation, but it did not work. So they took T cells from her body,and added genetically altered cells to them, and injected them back into her body. In 2 weeks, the cancer was gone and she has been healthy since. She is 6 years old now. This may be useable for other types of cancer in the near future, the T cells hunt out the cancer cells and destroy them. And no suffering from the effects of chemo and radiation.
  Our grocery stores are a mine field of products, stacked against us and our health. Did you know that almost all processed foods are heavily laced with fat, salt and sugar? Potato chips are dipped in a sugar solution to make them brown nicer, and hook us on the taste. A great deal of testing on real people goes into what's on the shelves. A taste panel tests until they say, oh yes, this is very good, like it.  Companys purposely lace their foods with unhealthy additives to get us hooked on them. This craving is fueling the obesity, diabetic, cholesterol epidemic we are facing. Once again, it comes down to you, read labels. There were several doctors on Dr Oz who said high cholesterol is not caused by fat, but sugar which changes to carbs after you eat it. Read labels, avoid transfats and hydrogenated fats, and anything high in sugar. Dr Oz's February 26 show will give you all this info, pull it up and watch on line.  I have been checking some of the things I use, and finding a lot of them are not good. Watch your yogurt, it should have one ingredient, organic skim milk. Add your own fruit and a little honey for a healthy version. When shopping, check the higher shelves and the lower ones, the best options are the ones you might not look for.
  It's getting to be spring cleaning time, if you are  doing kitchen cupboards, dump the old plastic containers. Look for  the BPA free ones but still never microwave in plastic. Use glass. The old melamine dishes let pieces of the melomine infiltrate your food,  Nordicware makes a safe version, and silicone is becoming more popular.
  Looks like winter has saved up for the first part of March, we are having snow flurries and maybe accumulating stuff tonight and into the next week or so. Be glad to see it end, and warm weather come back.  Hang in, we will have nicer days ahead. See you soon.