Eat Well Wednesday: Salsa!

Eat Well Wednesday Uncategorized

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           Tomato season is upon us!

 

Did you know that tomatoes contain 2 grams of fiber each, loads of Vitamin C helping you stay healthy, and beta-carotene to help make your skin glow?

 

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I will take any chance I can to get some of those benefits into my body and if that means eating salsa, well that is fine with me.  

Salsa is by far our all time favorite dip!  We consume large quantities of salsa in our house, for the perfect topping to our eggs, to a great dip for our chips. We LOVE salsa!!  After sharing with you our Coconut Granola Clusters as an easy and yummy way to save money on your grocery bill, I was inspired to share with you our family favorite, HOMEMADE SALSA.

 

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This recipe makes about 8 cups of salsa and for about $4.00.  That is a steal, considering that a 2 cup jar of salsa at the store will cost anywhere form $3-$4!!  Talk about cost savings.

Not only is this recipe budget friendly, it is very, very tasty and so fresh.  You can whip up a batch in about 1 minute and immediately serve it to your friends and family or store it it jars in the fridge for the perfect dip to your chip or topping for your morning eggs.

 

Gather up these ingredients:

  • (2) 28 oz Cans of Whole Tomatoes
  • (1) Bunch of Cilantro
  • (1) Bunch of Green Onions
  • (2) Tablespoons of Jalapeno’s (Jar)
  • (3) Tablespoons of Cumin
  • (2) Tablespoons of Sugar
  • (1) Tablespoon of Salt
  • (1) Teaspoon of Cayenne Pepper
  • Juice of  (1) Lemon
  • Juice of (1) Lime

 

 Here is what you do:

  • Cut off root ends of green onions and chop onion into 3 inch pieces.
  • Add green onion, cilantro, jalapeno’s and tomatoes into blender and process until well blended.
  • Add the seasonings and juice the lemon and lime. Blend for a few more seconds.

 

And that’s it!  Time to break out the chips and enjoy your fantastic dip. 

I know that your friends and family are going to love this salsa.

 

So, what is your favorite dip?  Salsa or queso? Leave a comment below and let me know.

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Jill Wentworth is leading us Wednesday by Wednesday into making better food choices and being more healthful. Tune in every Wednesday to get some great recipes and advice from someone who really knows health. In an effort to fuel her passion to serve as well has enhance the lives of others through their nutritional choices, she started Eat Well SA(San Antonio). Her vision is to educate you on how to incorporate a healthy array of foods into your life. Eat Well is not a diet, nor does it embrace any one specific dietary agenda. She also offers customized programs that are educational and teach you the tools you need to maintain healthy, well balanced eating for your busy lives.

 

Dinner / Dance 19: Meet Roxi Wright

Interviews

Hi Framers,

This next performance, Dinner / Dance 19 is taking a turn from our usual abstraction.  Because the event is a multi-course dinner, and we are navigating subject matter from planting to eating, I realized a huge part of dining is the drama and dialogue we have on a daily basis while eating a meal.  We’ve been working with some funny, and hopefully identifiable characters in rehearsal.  And now it’s time to begin introducing you to them.

 

Allow us to introduce:

Roxi Wright

(aka Danielle Gonzaba)

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Roxi Wright is a summer intern with Search Optimizer.  She is the youngest daughter of 4; her parents are successful business people.  She is currently in college studying business.  While she’d rather do nothing over her summer break except be with her friends in Austin, she’s working to make friends with all the employees because she feels pressure to be hired by Search Optimizer when she graduates. So she’s putting on her game face. What drives her?  Love and acceptance, and as the youngest of four, she’s used to being the center of attention without having to work for it.  Also: she’s in a sorority.

Come meet the characters on Thursday, May 1 at 7:30pm at Tony’s Mexican Restaurant. 2222 Ella Blvd, Houston, TX 77008.

Tickets to Dinner / Dance 19 are limited!  Get them here.

Tuesday Tunes: The 1930’s!

Tuesday Tunes

Tuesday Tunes

 

           The 1930’s!

 

 

 

 

The 1930’s was a time of celebration and hardship. Talking pictures were all the rage at the local theaters and radio became a household item where everyone could tune in to hear Orson Wells tell the American public of a pending alien invasion from War of the Worlds. The Depression sent many families into poverty and many businesses were closing up shop, but that didn’t stop America’s optimism and ingenious designers from opening the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge for the whole world to see. The 1930’s had its ups and downs throughout the decade but that didn’t stop people from dancing! Dances like the Foxtrot, Tap and the Waltz were becoming popular once again on the dance floor while others like the Jitterbug and Swing were just getting started!

 

 

A Dutch instructional film from 1930, demonstrating the ballroom Foxtrot of the time.

 

Keep Punchin Jitterbug Contest

 

Fred and Ginger – Waltz in Swing Time (Waltz, Tap and Swing all in one)

Dinner / Dance 19. Meet Gretchen!

Interviews

Hi Framers,

This next performance, Dinner / Dance 19 is taking a turn from our usual abstraction.  Because the event is a multi-course dinner, and we are navigating subject matter from planting to eating, I realized a huge part of dining is the drama and dialogue we have on a daily basis while eating a meal.  We’ve been working with some funny, and hopefully identifiable characters in rehearsal.  And now it’s time to begin introducing you to them.

 

Allow us to introduce:

Gretchen Charise Kittridge

(aka Ashley Horn)

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Gretchen started at Search Optimizer out of college.  She accepted lower pay than she wanted because she was promised that she would move up quickly in the company, she was one of the first employees of the start-up.  But has only had one promotion in 11 years.  Comes early, stays late.  Gretchen is only child of overachievers–  Mother is a school superintendent and Father is an pediatric heart surgeon.  She graduated with honors in 3 years with a degree in Marketing.  Always planned on going back to law school, but can’t seem to find time.  She’s not particularly liked at work, she’s a little bitter and hated by one of her colleagues.  All she wants is fairness and the success she deserves.  That’s not too much to ask, right?

Where would you find her when she’s not at work?  Reading a book with a glass of wine.  Maybe adopting another cat.

MFA Monday: Matthew Cumbie

MFA Mondays

MFA right

 

 

Happy Monday dear Framers!  I am excited to post this because I have so enjoyed reading Matthew Cumbie’s articles.  But it’s the third of his arc, so that’s a bummer.  But in the meantime, enjoy…

 

“Small Dances About Big Ideas,” and the importance of story telling*

 

So far, when writing these blog entries I’ve chosen to tackle topics that I’ve felt strongly about. I haven’t talked directly to my experiences in graduate school, or before or after, very much at all; a conscious choice of mine, most certainly. But in doing this I realize that I haven’t given much insight into who I am or what I do, merely glimpses; I haven’t shared my story, and frankly, I believe that everyone’s story matters. It’s this belief that shapes much of what I do today and has led me to where I am now. It’s also this belief that, for me, contextualizes the larger artistic questions that we as a community find ourselves asking and the research we do to explore those questions; in plain, within these personal stories lie universalities and shared experiences that ground what we know and how we come to know that.

My current story picks up in Washington, DC, where I am a Resident Artist and the Education Coordinator for Dance Exchange, an organization rich in history and rooted in the belief that everyone’s story matters and that everyone can and is encouraged to dance. The path taken to this fortuitous place has been one of much meandering, difficulty, and perseverance (and a bit of good fortune). Truly, until my time in graduate school I had a very small understanding of what the organization did and does still; then it was the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and I distinctly remember at one point encouraging a peer of mine to audition but not really envisioning myself involved in such a process. After finishing my MFA, however, I decided to get to know the organization better and enrolled in their Summer Institute, a condensed amount of time in which participants work closely with the company learning about their collaborative process and tools and history while collectively making and sharing. I fell in love and almost immediately knew I had found a home, one in which I was enlivened and engaged in a way that I had been searching for.

While in graduate school, as I’m sure many can attest to, one must really be focused on the work that is happening. This is particularly important if the work you’re doing is challenging and valuable, as I think most work at the graduate level should be. For me, graduate school became everything. I felt challenged on all fronts and grew three dimensionally in a way that I had never before experienced and with such rapidity that at times it felt almost impossible to keep up. It was probably one of the most difficult and exciting points in my life. I cried a lot. I laughed a lot. And I learned more about myself and my craft than I could probably ever explain on paper. I lost a relationship, and at that point particularly, poured myself without abandon into my work. My dog Lucas served as my anchor at home and my friends and peers within my program kept me afloat. I don’t regret any of it, but as I exited that environment and found myself back in a world outside of academia I realized how disproportionate my life had become.

It was at this point that I began to want and need and work towards finding a way to compromise the distance I felt between my artistic self and my everyday self. I began to question the processes that I was engaged in, wondering why I was doing this work and of what value did it have for others besides myself. What good was I doing for anyone else but me? What did I value in both my art making and my life making that I could harness in a process and feel satisfied with? How could I participate in a rigorously full artistic process and a rigorously full life simultaneously? These questions felt important in lessening that gap. When I started my work with Dance Exchange at that Summer Institute, and subsequently on some residencies that I was invited to help facilitate, answers to some of these questions manifested themselves either in the work that was made or in the relationships that formed, and I have a feeling it has to do with the alignment of my values and the organizations’ values and in the way that this process and work asks me to bring my whole self regularly.

As I mentioned before, at Dance Exchange we believe that everyone’s story matters and that everyone can and is encouraged to dance. Because of this philosophy, and our constant questioning of who gets to dance, we are committed to making space for all to participate in the making of art; from trained professionals to unexpected movers and makers, criss crossing all disciplines and engaging any who are interested in questioning and creative research. It’s in this place of exchange of ideas and information that I feel my many selves, Matthew the artist/human, fully engaged and aware. It’s in this place, where 90 year old women and men move with teenagers and twenty something year olds as a way to know and relate, that I find resonance in what I do and how I do it. It’s in this place that I have found a bridge between my many selves and feel more able to work on lessening that gap between the artistic and everyday.

To take a more macroscopic view, I want to leave you with this. In my personal experience, and in talking with many, many peers, I have found that leading full artistic lives and full everyday lives to be sometimes difficult (one could also change the word ‘artistic’ to ‘any other career’). But both are important. An integral step in doing that is finding a process or group or company or school or ensemble that continually asks you to bring your whole self, your many beautiful selves, to the work. It’s in this exchange between your own ideas and interests and this exchange between you and others that richness can be found and that much can be learned. Sometimes this work is hard; that’s when the work can be the most rewarding and relevant.  One of my former graduate professors once spoke of her ‘pedagogy of discomfort,’ a term that I have come to love. Although probably different in meaning, I have found that when situations or experiences seem to be uncomfortably hard or trying, it’s through the perseverance and working through those that has proved to be the most illuminating.

There’s something in here related to my previous posts about value and pausing, and in the combination of these 3 writings that I think speaks to carving out sustainable lifestyles as people that are committed to processes that might sometimes be difficult, especially in regards to an increasingly connected, fast-paced, and ever changing world. I hope that, wherever you’re at on this journey, you have found some nugget of something worthwhile in this and that applies to your story and story telling. It’s these stories that we carry and share that make our work worthwhile, that allow us to better our art and our lives, that allow us to gather as a community and work towards our individual and shared goals. It’s these individual small dances that we make which contribute to our collective big ideas.

 

* “Small Dances About Big Ideas” is a work by Liz Lerman and the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange which premiered in 2005. It is not at all related to the topics discussed above other than the connection of Dance Exchange. 

 

Photo by Jori Ketten. Dance Exchange artists Matthew Cumbie, Sarah Levitt, and Shula Strassfeld (in order) in Cassie Meador's How To Lose a MountainMatthew Cumbie is a professional dance artist based in Washington, DC, and is currently a Resident Artist and the Education Coordinator for the Dance Exchange. As a company member with the Dance Exchange, he works with communities across the United States and abroad in collaborative art-making and creative research as a means to further develop our understanding of our selves and community in relation to the environment around us. He has also been a company member with Keith Thompson/danceTactics performance group, and has performed with Mark Dendy, the Von Howard Project, Sarah Gamblin, Jordan Fuchs, jhon stronks, Paloma McGregor, and Jill Sigman/thinkdance. His own work has been shown in New York, Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, and at Harvard University. He has taught at Dance New Amsterdam, Texas Woman’s University, and Queensborough Community College. He holds an M.F.A. in dance from Texas Woman’s University.

Dinner / Dance 19 Characters

Uncategorized

Hi Framers,

This next performance, Dinner / Dance 19 is taking a turn from our usual abstraction.  Because the event is a multi-course dinner, and we are navigating subject matter from planting to eating, I realized a huge part of dining is the drama and dialogue we have on a daily basis while eating a meal.  We’ve been working with some funny, and hopefully identifiable characters in rehearsal.  And now it’s time to begin introducing you to them.

 

Allow us to introduce:

Gwenevieve Hues

(aka Jacquelyne Jay Boe)

Gwen is a recent divorcee and mother of two young children.  Only on the job at Search Optimizer one month (but out of the job market for seven years), she is just now beginning to settle in and become comfortable with her colleagues.  Determined to make a living without her ex, she is invigorated with this new chance to reinvent herself.  But is she looking for more?

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Free Events Thursday

Free Events Thursday

BESO Latin Saturdays at Synn Ultra Lounge

April 05, 2014 – July 12, 2014 (Every Saturday) from 10:00pm – 2:00am

3302 Mercer St., Houston, TX 77027

Join us this Saturday Night at Synn Ultra lounge for BESO. Houston’s upscale latin party. With its welcoming ambiance, Moving Music, & Plenty of Eye candy BESO Saturdays at Synn Ultra Lounge display elegance, class, and style amongst all the rest.

Price: FREE!!!

 

3rd Annual Houston Improv Festival

April 24, 2014 – April 27, 2014 (Recurring daily): Thursday – 8pm; Friday & Saturday – 8pm & 10pm

Midtown Art Center

3414 LaBranch, Houston, TX 77004

The 3rd Annual Houston Improv Festival descends upon Houston April 24-27 at Midtown Art Center. HIF 2014 welcomes fifteen improvised acts from around the country.

Price: $15

 

Save the date! San Jacinto Day Festival 2014 

Saturday, April 26th

Booming cannons, cracking musket fire, thundering hooves and desperate battle cries resound across the San Jacinto Battleground as hundreds of history reenactors recreate the events leading up to Texas winning its independence at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto.

Price: FREE!!!

 

30th Annual Wine & Roses Festival

April 26, 2014 at  2-8pm

Messina Hof Winery and Resort

4545 Old Reliance Rd., Bryan, TX 77808

We invite Houston to our 30th Annual Wine & Roses Festival at Messina Hof?, Saturday April 26th in Bryan, TX! Wine tasting, grape stomp, art classes, live music and so much more!

Price: FREE!!!

 

4th Annual Gumbo Cook-Off and Fun Day

April 26, 2014 from 10 am – 6 pm

Clear Lake, Landolt Pavilion

5100 E Nasa Pkwy, Seabrook, TX 77586

4th Annual Gumbo Cook-off & Family fun day featuring Gumbo Cook-off Competition, People Choice Award, Gumbo Tasting, Celebrity Judges, Vendors, Booths, Silent Auction, Dunking Tank – See whose getting dunked! Come hungry for Gumbo, Crawfish Plates, Sausage-on-a-Stick and more. Live Entertainment featuring The Station Break Band. Proceeds benefit Rotarians of Seabrook Charities.

Price:  $10 and includes Gumbo Tasting (It includes food, people)!

 

Artist Talk: Trenton Doyle Hancock

April 27, 2014 at 2:00 pm

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston

5216 Montrose Boulevard, Houston, TX 77006

Join artist Trenton Doyle Hancock and Senior Curator Valerie Cassel Oliver for an artist talk in conjunction with Trenton Doyle Hancock’s exhibition “Skin and Bones, 20 Years of Drawing.”

Price: FREE!!!

 

2013-2014 ROCO Chamber Series: French Salon

April 27, 2014 at 4:00 PM

Gremillion & Co. Fine Art Annex

2504 Nottingham Street, Houston, TX 77005

Finishing out the Chamber Series is a French Salon concert that includes music by Poulenc and more feature Alecia Lawyer on Oboe and Kristin Wolfe Jensen on Bassoon.

Price: $25

 

 

Eat Well Wednesday: Fridge Dump

Eat Well Wednesday Uncategorized

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A healthy body is built by healthy, whole, unprocessed foods.  If you want to eat well you need to have good, nutritious foods readily available.

Since your pantry and fridge are the base for your healthy meals, that is where we will start.

Here is a picture of our fridge, prepped and ready to go for the week and stuffed with vibrant colors and fresh, whole foods.

We eat most of our meals at home, in fact, we rarely eat out.  So yes, we really do eat ALL of this food. By the end of the week, this fridge will be almost empty.

 

Remove these foods from your fridge

  • Conventional milk/dairy/butter
  • Processed Cheese
  • Artificial flavored and sweetened yogurt (Yoplait)
  • Juice
  • Soda
  • Packaged deli meats
  • Conventional eggs
  • Frozen dinners

 

Fill Your Fridge

  • Vegetables (the more color the better!)
  • Fruits
  • Organic, hormone free, vegetarian fed chicken
  • Organic, Omega 3 enhanced eggs
  • Organic, grass fed beef
  • Almond milk/Hemp milk
  • Organic milk
  • Organic cheese
  • Greek yogurt (Plain 0% or 2%)
  • Low sodium deli meats
  • Frozen veggies
  • Frozen fruits

 

Look for these brands of foods at the store, they are usually well balanced and provide healthier options.

  • Chobani
  • Nature’s Gate
  • Kashi
  • Earth Balance
  • Almond Breeze/Blue Diamond
  • Applegate

 

How can you change the foods in your fridge to support a more healthy and balanced lifestyle?

 

Leave a comment below and let us know.  Be Well.

 

0-1Jill Tarpey is leading us Wednesday by Wednesday into making better food choices and being more healthful. Tune in every Wednesday to get some great recipes and advice from someone who really knows health. In an effort to fuel her passion to serve as well has enhance the lives of others through their nutritional choices, she started Eat Well SA(San Antonio). Her vision is to educate you on how to incorporate a healthy array of foods into your life. Eat Well is not a diet, nor does it embrace any one specific dietary agenda. She also offers customized programs that are educational and teach you the tools you need to maintain healthy, well balanced eating for your busy lives.

Tuesday Tunes: The Roaring Twenties!

Tuesday Tunes

Tuesday Tunes

 

 For the next few of weeks, Tuesday Tunes will be spotlighting famous dance crazes throughout the decades!

 

         This Tuesday Tunes celebrates the…

 

 

 

 

The spirit of the 1920’s was marked with a disdain for modesty and the breaking of traditions which brought the sensations of jazz music and the ideology and fashion of the flappers. The Roaring Twenties, also know as the Golden Twenties, was a time of raised skirts, bobbed hair  and exciting parties filled with fun cocktails and wild dances. Dances like the Charleston, Black Bottom, the Shimmy (which was actually banned in certain areas)and many others took the world by storm and dancing to a whole new level. 

 

 

The Charleston, the Shimmy and the Lindy Hop

 

Black Bottom 1926, and The Black Bottom Dance

 

1920’s – Quickstep Vs Charleston