Low Fat Vanilla Bean Frozen Yogurt

Low Fat Vanilla Bean Frozen Yogurt

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I don't own an ice cream maker. I know, that sounds so un-American but oh well.
I put this in my freezer in my CoringWare (FRENCH WHITE) and it did GREAT!
http://www.corningware.com/

HOMEMADE IS EASY Blogger ~

If you like the tangy taste of yogurt you'll love this low-fat homemade frozen treat made with a combination of Greek yogurt and plain yogurt and real vanilla bean. 

It's National Ice Cream Month and to celebrate I've been playing with my new ice cream maker. This frozen yogurt is so easy to make. This is best served soft and topped with fresh fruit. Serve it right out of the ice cream maker or let it thaw a few minutes before serving.

Homemade Low Fat Vanilla Bean Frozen Yogurt
Adapted from Food Network 
Gina's Weight Watcher Recipes
Servings: 8 • Size: 1/2 cup • Old Points: 3 pts • Points+: 4 pts
Calories: 144 • Fat: 1.5 g • Carb: 24.2 g • Fiber: 0 g • Protein: 9.2 g • Sugar: 24.1 g
Sodium: 56.1 mg 

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups plain whole-milk yogurt (I used Dannon All-Natural)
• 2 1/2 cups plain fat free Greek yogurt, I used Chobani
• 1 vanilla bean
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3 tbsp honey
• fresh fruit to top (extra points) use kiwi, blueberries, strawberries

Directions:

Combine sugar and the seeds from the vanilla bean in the blender and blend until fine.

Whisk both yogurts, sugar and honey in a bowl until combined.  

Pour into an ice cream maker.

Freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.
http://www.skinnytaste.com/2011/07/low-fat-vanilla-bean-frozen-yogurt.html

Ladybugs

How to Start a Ladybug Garden

Who doesn't love ladybugs?
These easily recognizable, friendly little insects are yellow, orange, or scarlet and have small black spots on their wings.
The benefits of having ladybugs in your garden include being able to cut back on pesticides and ridding your flower beds of aphids and other insect pests.
Also known as lady beetles or ladybirds, the ladybug can be your best friend as a gardener and attracting them into your yard or garden will add to the beauty and joy of making your garden unique.
But if you want to attract ladybugs to your garden, you’ll have to do a few things first to start your own successful ladybug garden.
Read on to learn how to get ladybugs to love your garden.

You can purchase ladybugs online or at a local nursery and release them to start a ladybug garden.

How to Identify Ladybugs
The ladybird has an oval body and the color can vary from yellow to orange or bright red. The black spots on the wing covers also vary in number and size and a few species, such as the twice stabbed lady beetle are even solid black.
Ladybug larvae are not so easy to recognize, but have six legs and are usually blue-black with orange spots. Learn to spot the larvae so you do not accidentally spray them with insecticide or crush them thinking they might be aphid or other insect larvae.
Lady beetles like to feed primarily on soft-body and scale insects like aphids; a ladybug can eat as many as five-thousand aphids during its lifespan. A female may lay fifty to three-hundred eggs at a time, which take three to five days to hatch. Larvae take about two to three weeks before pupating into adult ladybugs.

Typically we think of ladybugs as being orange or red, but yellow or black species can also be found in some gardens, depending your climate and location.

How to Attract Ladybugs to Your Garden
Besides eating aphids, lady beetles are depend on pollen as a food source and seek certain types of flowering plants, including dill, cilantro, yarrow, wild carrot, angelica, cosmos, geraniums and dandelions.
So, to create your ladybug garden, you will want to research these plants further and be sure to plant them in your garden if you don’t have them already!
Other methods you can use to attract ladybugs include cutting back or ceasing the use of insecticides in your garden. By leaving aphids, you not only provide the ladybug population with the food source upon which it thrives, but you also avoid killing any of the larvae. Remember that the ladybugs will provide a natural check against the aphids, keeping them under control.
What you will need to start your ladybug garden:

• Garden Hose
• Nozzles and attachments
• Ladybugs
• Flowering Plants (see above for some favorite species)

Instructions for starting your ladybug garden:

• You can buy ladybugs at your local nursery or online. This will help to get your ladybug population established. Research has proven that ladybugs reared indoors can not survive when released outdoors, so be sure you buy wild ladybugs collected from the outdoors only.
• Keep your ladybugs moist with a few drops of water and place them in your refrigerator vegetable crisper until you release them. This will also slow them down a bit since they will be cooler.
• In the afternoon or early evening, water your garden well in preparation; this gives them much needed hydration and helps them stick better to the plants. Its best to release your ladybugs after the sun sets to help prevent birds from eating them before they are able to settle into your garden.
• After resting overnight and re-hydrating a bit, your ladybugs will be ready to start eating those aphids. If you have any plants that are infested with the aphids, place a bit of netting over the plants and let some of your ladybugs loose under it, where they will happily gobble up those pests!

While ladybugs eat mainly aphids and scale insects, they also depend on pollen as a food source.

Ladybug Facts

• The black spots on their wings fade as they age
• Ladybug wings move very quickly, like a hummingbird’s, as much as 85 times per second in flight
• A ladybug can live for up to three years
• The male ladybug is smaller than the female
• Long ago, doctors used mashed-up ladybugs to cure toothaches
• The Swiss call ladybugs “Good God’s Little Fairy”
• The Ladybug is the state insect in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Delaware, Tennessee and Ohio.

http://www.howdididoit.com/home-garden/how-to-start-a-ladybug-garden/

4th of July

A taste of independence

Larry West is a freelance writer in the Pacific Northwest and a frequent contributor to MSN.

The first public recognition of American independence was in Philadelphia on July 8, 1776, just a few days after Congress declared the nation’s independence from Great Britain. The Liberty Bell sounded from the tower of Independence Hall, summoning people to the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence by Colonel John Nixon. Even though Congress had adopted the Declaration on July 4, it was not publicly announced until July 8, after the document came back from the printer.

First celebration

The first annual commemoration of American independence occurred on July 4, 1777, in Philadelphia while Americans were still at war with the British, fighting to hold onto the liberty they had declared for themselves a year earlier.

More firsts on the Fourth

The first public Fourth of July event at the White House occurred in 1804, when Thomas Jefferson was president.
The first Independence Day celebration west of the Mississippi also occurred during Jefferson’s presidency; it took place at Independence Creek and was celebrated by Lewis and Clark in 1805 while they were exploring the territory Jefferson had acquired from France with the Louisiana Purchase.
In 1778, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin went to Paris in an effort to gain French support for the United States in its war of independence against Great Britain. On July 4, they hosted the first American Independence Day celebration in Europe, with a dinner for “the American Gentlemen and ladies, in and about Paris,” according to an excerpt from the “Diary and Autobiography of John Adams.”

It’s a sign

The 56 patriots who signed the Declaration of Independence did not place their names on the document on July 4, 1776, nor did they all sign at the same time. The official signing event was on August 2, 1776, when 50 of the men signed it. The others signed at various times over the next few months.

Patriotism or treason?

The names of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were not made public right away in an effort to protect the signers in case things went badly for the new nation. If the cause of independence had failed, their signatures on the Declaration would have marked them as traitors to Great Britain. According to British law at the time, that act of treason would have cost them their lives.

Nation building

On July 4, 1848, President James Madison, accompanied by First Lady Dolly Madison and a number of other VIPs, oversaw the laying of the cornerstone of the Washington Monument. Three years later, on July 4, 1851, President Millard Fillmore took part in laying the cornerstone of the new Capitol Building.

Red, white and green?

Red, white and blue have not always been the colors traditionally associated with Independence Day celebrations. In 1778, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where the army was camped, General George Washington directed his soldiers to place “green boughs” in their hats to celebrate the day.
 He also issued the troops a double allowance of rum and ordered an artillery salute.

Grand old flag

On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress adopted the design for an American flag.

 “Resolved: that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; 

that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”

More stars were added to the flag as new states joined the union. Arizona became the 

48th star in 1912, and the 48-star flag would continue to wave for 47 years, 

until Alaska and Hawaii became states in 1959. 

The new flag, with 50 stars, was flown for the first time on July 4 of that year.

Independent states

In 1781, Massachusetts became the first state to make July 4 an official state holiday.
This occurred several months before the decisive American victory at Yorktown, Massachusetts,
where British General Lord Cornwallis surrendered his army, which effectively brought a triumphant conclusion to the American Revolution.

Independence Day

Americans began celebrating the Fourth of July as the anniversary of their national independence right away, but the term “Independence Day” was not used to describe the holiday until 1791.

Larry West is a freelance writer in the Pacific Northwest and a frequent contributor to MSN.

American Bald Eagle vs Turkey and Benjamin Franklin - American History

Talking turkey

Larry West is a freelance writer in the Pacific Northwest and a frequent contributor to MSN.

After much debate among the Founding Fathers, the bald eagle was chosen as the new American symbol and appeared as the centerpiece of the national seal. Benjamin Franklin never really embraced the choice. Writing to his daughter Sally from France in January 1784, Franklin said:
“For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead Tree near the River, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the Support of his Mate and young Ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from him.
“With all this Injustice, he is never in good Case but like those among Men who live by Sharping & Robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank Coward . . .”
Franklin told his daughter that he thought the wild turkey would make a much better symbol of the American character:  “For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America . . . He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.”

4th Of July History

Reporter:Larry West is a freelance writer in the Pacific Northwest and a frequent contributor to MSN.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who had been leaders in the American Revolution and U.S. presidents as well as personal friends and political adversaries throughout much of their long lives, died on the same day, July 4, 1826. Their deaths came exactly 50 years after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, which Jefferson had drafted and both men signed.

As Adams was near death on the evening of July 4, 1826, his last words were reported to be, “Thomas Jefferson still survives.” Sadly, Adams was mistaken. Jefferson had died approximately five hours earlier.

The death of James Monroe

Like Adams and Jefferson before him, James Monroe died on Independence Day. Monroe died on July 4, 1831, just five years after Adams and Jefferson, the third U.S. president to die on the nation’s birthday.

Monroe was the fifth president of the United States and was the last U.S. president who was considered one of the nation’s Founding Fathers, because of his service as an officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolution.

Population explosion

In July 1776, there were approximately 2.5 million people living in the newly independent United States of America, roughly the same number of people who currently live in Brooklyn, New York.

Remembering the 4th of July With HONOR

Larry West is a freelance writer in the Pacific Northwest and a frequent contributor to MSN.

Making it official

The Fourth of July was not a federal holiday until 1941. Although July 4 had long been celebrated as the Independence Day holiday by tradition, and even by congressional decree, it was not officially a federal holiday until Congress agreed to give federal employees the day off with pay—and that didn’t happen until 1941.

It’s a sign

The 56 patriots who signed the Declaration of Independence did not place their names on the document on July 4, 1776, nor did they all sign at the same time. The official signing event was on August 2, 1776, when 50 of the men signed it. The others signed at various times over the next few months.

Patriotism or treason?

The names of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were not made public right away in an effort to protect the signers in case things went badly for the new nation. If the cause of independence had failed, their signatures on the Declaration would have marked them as traitors to Great Britain. According to British law at the time, that act of treason would have cost them their lives.

Nation building

On July 4, 1848, President James Madison, accompanied by First Lady Dolly Madison and a number of other VIPs, oversaw the laying of the cornerstone of the Washington Monument. Three years later, on July 4, 1851, President Millard Fillmore took part in laying the cornerstone of the new Capitol Building.

Red, white and green?

Red, white and blue have not always been the colors traditionally associated with Independence Day celebrations. In 1778, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where the army was camped, General George Washington directed his soldiers to place “green boughs” in their hats to celebrate the day. He also issued the troops a double allowance of rum and ordered an artillery salute.

Grand old flag

On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress adopted the design for an American flag. “Resolved: that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”
More stars were added to the flag as new states joined the union. Arizona became the 48th star in 1912, and the 48-star flag would continue to wave for 47 years, until Alaska and Hawaii became states in 1959. The new flag, with 50 stars, was flown for the first time on July 4 of that year.

Independent states

In 1781, Massachusetts became the first state to make July 4 an official state holiday. This occurred several months before the decisive American victory at Yorktown, Massachusetts, where British General Lord Cornwallis surrendered his army, which effectively brought a triumphant conclusion to the American Revolution.

Independence Day

Americans began celebrating the Fourth of July as the anniversary of their national independence right away, but the term “Independence Day” was not used to describe the holiday until 1791.

Larry West is a freelance writer in the Pacific Northwest and a frequent contributor to MSN.

Tracy Aviary And A Child That Loves Birds

High functioning Autism......in a quiet, peaceful place they bond!

Trying to get one on each side.......it didn't work, more arrived!

"Oh they heavy".

Our son with Autism started out with his "ear 'boves" on, but then his Daddy got to "hold"

them......the birds were very calming! IT was a GREAT day @ Tracy Aviary 22 June 2013!

Our staff member.....sorry no name tag!  HE was wonderful w/ our son! 22 June 2013

~photos Jenny~ this photo is NOT under  copyright,  IF USED BY TRACY AVIARY EXCLUSIVELY! 

Gary Williams