good health, and to putting YOURSELF first. Here is a list of the top ten

things you can do to manage your type two diabetes.

1.  Weight Control. If you are overweight, work with your medical team

to create a diet of portion controlled meals, and lose weight slowly

over time, by eating properly. Even losing ten pounds can help to

decrease your heart disease risks by lowering blood pressure, insulin

resistance, and body fat.

2.  Exercise. Start slowly if necessary. Regular exercise improves your

body’s use of insulin, helps you to lose weight, improves blood

circulation and reduces stress. Within a short time your body and mind

will crave the regular exercise as part of your daily routine. Walk,

swim, take an aerobics or aqua-size class, or ride a bike. These are all

excellent types of exercise.

3.  Check your blood sugar regularly. This is critically important in

managing diabetes. If you don’t know your blood sugar, there is no

way to monitor your diet. The Mayo Clinic supplies an excellent article

called “Blood Sugar Testing- Where, when and how”.

4.  Eat at about the same time every day. Your blood sugar will stay more stable if you eat about the same amount of food with the same balance of nutrients at about the same times each day.

5.  Take the medications prescribed by your doctor. It is essential to blood glucose management that your medications are taken daily as instructed by your doctor.

6. Drink plenty of water. Water dilutes the blood and therefore has some degree of influence on lowering your blood sugars.

7.  Control Portion Sizes. Most restaurants offer portion sizes which are double or triple the serving size recommended by the USDA and doctors. For instance, one serving of chicken is 3 ounces, or about the size of a deck of cards. Recording your food intake in a diary is a great way of controlling what you eat.

8.  Take care of your teeth. Diabetes may leave you prone to gum infections. Follow a routine of dental hygiene that includes brushing your teeth at least twice a day, and flossing at least once. Keep your regular dental exam appointments.

9.  Quit Smoking. This has become easier over the years as medications are available to ease the process. It will not be easy, but will be one of the most important things you’ve ever done for your health.

10.  Stay positive. Diabetes is a serious disease, but it can be controlled. If you’re willing to do your part, you can enjoy an active, healthy life with type 2 diabetes. Talk to friends and family and keep a strong support group around you.

Did you know the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) funded researchers showed that Organic mushrooms play an important role to keep the body’s defense mechanisms healthy?

In a recent document published in July 2010 from Sciencedaily.com, leading correspondent Rosalie Marion Bliss reported how the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists have conducted an animal-model and cell-culture research showing that white button fresh mushrooms elevated the activity of essential cells in the body’s immune system.

Agaricus bisporus (known variously as the common mushroom, button mushroom or white mushroom) is an edible basidiomycete mushroom indigenous to grasslands in European countries and The United States. Agaricus bisporus is cultivated in more than seventy countries and is probably the most commonly and widely eaten mushrooms globally.

In the United States, white button mushrooms represent 90 % of the entire mushrooms eaten.

The study (Reference: http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/jul10/immunity0710.htm) was conducted at the Jean Mayer Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) at Tufts School by center director Dr. Simin Meydani.

The outcome proposes that white button mushrooms may boost immune function by increasing the production of antiviral and other proteins that are released by cells while seeking to defend and repair tissue.

The study’s cell-culture phase demonstrated that white button mushrooms enhanced the maturation of immune system cells called “dendritic cells,” from bone marrow.

Dendritic cells can produce T cells which are necessary white blood cells that can recognise and eventually deactivate or eliminate antigens on invading bacterias.

When immune system cells are exposed to disease-causing pathoenic agents, like bacteria, our body begins to increase the number and function of immune system cells, according to Dr. Meydani.

Regarding white button mushrooms, one simple option to use them in your regular diet could be to start thinking on some sample recipes: The Masala mushroom is an excellent example.

Garam masala is a basic blend of ground spices popular in Indian and other South Asian cuisines. It is used by itself or with other seasonings.

Ingredients for 2 Serves:
- Mushrooms(chopped) 2 cups
- Onions 2
- Chilli powder 1 tea table spoon
- Garam masala 1/2 tea spoon
- Salt
- Olive oil 1/2 tea table spoon
- Coriander leaves

Directions: (Preparation time : fifteen minutes)
Heat oil and fry onion till it turns slightly brownish. Then add mushrooms, cover and cook for around 10 mins.
Add all the masala and cook for a couple of minutes. Garnish with coriander leaves and serve hot.

The author – Celia Barnes writes for the nutritionist certification blog, her personal hobby web site dedicated to healthy eating tips to help future health professionals and dietitians to learn healthy eating options for their patients.

In 2005, according to findings by McKinsey & Co. a food industry consulting company, the Home Meal Delivery Segment was projected at $170 billion in annual sales, contributing to 80% of the overall growth in the food industry. Insert MagicKitchen.com, a Los Altos, CA based e-commerce company. Led by seasoned corporate veterans Greg Miller and Michelle Tayler, MagicKitchen.com entered the meal delivery arena with the ambition and game plan that will lead them to industry leader status. “MagicKitchen.com has quickly emerged as a customer favorite because of unique product offerings which are much easier to have table-ready than the competition, the superior quality of their meals and their superior, intimate customer service,” said industry analyst and consultant Ryan Montague, President of Gourmet Business Solutions, an industry consulting company.“In the home meal delivery segment of the Home Meal Replacement category, they are definitely being innovative.”

Since 2005 when the company was created, MagicKitchen.com company revenues have soared, and projections reveal exponential growth figures leading to a larger share of the meal delivery market-segment. Attributed to exceptionally tasty, nutritionally sound, quick and easy-to-prepare meals like those you would have normally worked hours to prepare at home, as well as creative marketing programs and a team of highly-dedicated chefs and industry experts, MagicKitchen.com is emerging as a meal delivery industry leader and trendsetter.

MagicKitchen.com really is Magic
MagicKitchen.com really does have magic:
-A senior citizen calls on MagicKitchen.com to send much needed prepared meals to family member in dire need during the Christmas Holiday
-A customer re-orders $100 of MagicKitchen.com’s Ricotta Cheesecake because it is “the best he’d ever had”
-Eggplant Parmigiana is hailed as “best ever” by a MagicKitchen.com customer, and “best on the West Coast” by another.
-After trying a MagicKitchen.com product sampler, a customer calls for 12 orders of MagicKitchen.com’s signature Panna Cotta to be delivered overnight for a large dinner party, even though alternate desserts could have been ordered locally.

Stories like these combined with the growing number of working couples, busy families with children, and senior citizens with restricted time and ability to prepare quality, nutritious, meals have propelled MagicKitchen.com to astounding sales and continued growth.

To accommodate these groups of busy families, senior citizens, and gift-givers MagicKitchen.com developed prepackaged, pre-cooked, frozen meals that can be thawed ahead of time and then reheated when needed. This allows for quick meal preparation and a full balanced meal on the table minutes from when the family walks in the door. For example, a senior citizen can place the chosen entrée and side dishes on a plate and microwave it for five minutes or less, creating a nutritious meal without the hassle and mess of meal preparation and clean-up. To start, all it takes is the click of a button on the MagicKitchen.com website, or a quick call on their toll-free number to place an order.

The Magic Difference
Unlike most of the other companies in the booming meal delivery industry, MagicKitchen.com stays ahead of the competition by focusing mainly on quality pre-cooked meals instead of raw products being shipped to the customer. With pre-cooked products, this allows the customer to eliminate the time and hassle normally required to prepare a quality, nutritious, gourmet, home-cooked meal.
MagicKitchen.com is focused on top-quality, tasty meals starting with top shelf ingredients and skilled chefs. Although nutritious, MagicKitchen.com’s offerings are not to be compared with totally bland and boring health or diet food products, often referred to as ”hospital food” (i.e. no fat and/or salt).

Senior Citizens, busy families, and gift givers take note: MagicKitchen.com has the solution you may be looking for. Leave the mess behind and give your family or loved ones the meals they deserve with MagicKitchen.com’s Chef-Prepared, Gourmet Meals delivered right to your home or business destination.

About MagicKitchen.com
MagicKitchen.com is a rapidly-growing player in the burgeoning home meal delivery market. Meals are prepared by chefs using quality ingredients, flash frozen, packaged, and delivered to the customer’s doorstep. The company actively participates in community fundraising. MagicKitchen.com is headquartered in Los Altos, CA, with kitchen facilities in South San Francisco, Redwood City and San Jose. MagicKitchen.com can be contacted by calling 877-51-MAGIC (877-516- 2442), or visiting www.magickitchen.com.

This wonderful video Jeff Novick -who used to be a food service manager at Kraft Foods-blows the lid off food labeling. This is an excerpt from Novick’s 80-minute talk at the VegSource 2007 Healthy Lifestyle Expo, and part of a 12-part series of top health expert presentations. In this online excerpt, Novick  exposes one of the dirty secrets major food corporations use to deceive consumers. It’s no accident labels are so confusing!

Seniors  typically don’t eat as well as they used to. They lose interest in cooking, and if they live by themselves, cooking for one seems like too much of a chore.  If you are caring for a parent that lives far away, MagicKitchen.com chefs have created delicious prepared Senior Meals designed for today’s healthy senior lifestyle. MagicKitchen.com offers fresh, delicious prepared meals cooked by our chefs, with the unbeatable convenience of home meal delivery. Save time without sacrificing taste.

If your grandparent resides in a senior’s facility, they will welcome a change of dietary pace, and most of MagicKitchen.com’s meals can be heated in a microwave.  They would only need room in a freezer to store the meals. What could be easier than sending your grandparent our Senior’s Bundle:

• Vegetable Stew, Cornbread Blueberry Toaster Cakes
• Steak Soup, Potato & Cheese Pierogies
• Vegetable Lasagna
• Beef Bordelaise, Magic Mashed Potatoes, Brussels Sprouts with Bacon
• Deep Dish Chicken Pot Pie

Desserts

• Apple Pie
• Carrot Cake

Looking for something to keep the kids busy while you’re visiting with grandma? How about the Doodlebook photo frame? This 4 x 6 photo frame is also an 80-page sketching pad. Budding artists and doodlers can draw all over the frame and then tear off the top sheet to create a new artwork.

Here’s an idea for a super-personalized gift- plak your poem (http://plakyourpoem.com/).  Write your own poem or select one of theirs, put it on one of their beautiful backgrounds, then let them mount it and laminate it.

How about a fun fishing photo frame for grandpa?  They say, “We will personalize our exclusive Hooked On You© Personalized Frame design with any name or title you choose along with each of his fishing buddies’ first names.”

Whatever you decide on, don’t forget to celebrate Grandparents Day! Without them, you wouldn’t be here, and you certainly wouldn’t be the person you are!

He grew up in Naples, Italy surrounded by the bounties of the garden and the sea. For the last 20 years, however, he has been an Executive Chef running a commercial kitchen in the greater San Francisco area. In this interview, he talks about his culinary inspirations, and his passion for creating foods that fit the needs of the MagicKitchen.com customer.

What started your love for cooking?
I have been around food all my life. As a young man I was in love with my father’s home cooking. After school, I was right there in the kitchen with him trying to help, but the most he let me do was peel potatoes or slice carrots or onions. My reward at the end, though, was to taste the finished meal. I still believe that home cooking is the best.

Why do you enjoy working with MagicKitchen.com?
I love being part of a great company startup, seeing it grow and feeling proud of being part of it. I believe in using the best ingredients and putting them together and creating great dishes under no pressure is a great accomplishment.

People are becoming more familiar with how restaurant chefs lives their daily lives, but probably don’t know as much about a commercial chef. What are some of the differences?
There’s a big difference between a restaurant chef and a commercial chef. Restaurant chefs cook and serve the food right away while it is still hot. My job is to create and prepare dishes that have to be reheated in the microwave or the oven and while still preserving the freshness and the flavor. My MagicKitchen.com dishes require a lot of preparation and tasting in order to come up with the right texture and freshness. It takes a lot of patience!

What ingredients do you love to work with?
The ingredients that I like to work with are mainly vegetables and seafood; obviously, because it reminds me of home.

What are some of the dishes you’ve created that are the most popular, or that you’re the most proud of?
I feel proud of my eggplant parmigiano, because it’s a recipe from home and we do it a little differently than most cooks. Also it is one of MagicKitchen.com’s top selling products. Typically when you cut basil, it turns black pretty quickly. So instead we create a basil pesto that we stir into the tomato sauce. You get a great basil flavor, and a good color. Also, we don’t bread the eggplant – just use egg and flour, fry it lightly in canola oil, and drain it well so it’s not oily at all. It’s time consuming and more costly this way, but we really want to create a flavor that lets the customer knows that a lot of time and care went into preparing the dish – even though it takes only a few minutes to heat it up!

Any memorable mistakes in the kitchen? Or a dish that didn’t quite work out?
Yes! I’ve made many mistakes in my cooking; sometimes to the point where I feel like giving it up all together. But my love for cooking always returns and there are always new challenges to come up with the best products.
In this business, you have to think about not only how you’re going to cook the ingredients, but how they’ll reheat as well. Water is the enemy of freezing and reheating food! For example, with vegetables that contain a lot of water like mushrooms and zucchini, we bake them with a little olive oil and garlic to get out the water. We also use a lot of crunchier vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower and carrots because they don’t have as much water. The same goes with sauces – we test our sauces many times so that they’ll reheat at the right consistency.

So what is a high level ? It is generally accepted that a total cholesterol level of over 200mg may cause problems in your cardio vascular system.

Low-density lipoprotein, or LDL, is known as bad cholesterol.

High-density lipoprotein, or HDL, is known as good cholesterol.

If excessive LDL cholesterol circulates in the blood, it will slowly build up in the inner walls of the arteries that feed the heart and brain. This, together with other substances can form plaque, a thick, hard deposit that narrows the arteries and makes them less flexible. Plaque narrows the coronary arteries and reduces blood flow to your heart muscle. It also makes it more likely that blood clots will form in your arteries. Blood clots can partially or completely block blood flow.

HDL cholesterol, or “good” cholesterol, appears to scour the walls of blood vessels, cleaning out excess cholesterol. It then carries that excess cholesterol — which otherwise might have been used to make the “plaques” that cause coronary artery disease — back to the liver for processing.

So: Lower LDL + Higher HDL= GOOD HEALTH!!

There are five food types that will help you lower your bad cholesterol, as explained by the Mayo Clinic:

1. Oatmeal, oat bran and high-fiber foods

Oatmeal contains soluble fiber, which reduces your low-density lipoprotein (LDL), the “bad” cholesterol. Soluble fiber is also found in such foods as kidney beans, apples, pears, barley and prunes.

2. Fish and omega-3 fatty acids

Eating fatty fish can be heart-healthy because of its high levels of omega-3 fatty acids, which can reduce your blood pressure and risk of developing blood clots. In people who have already had heart attacks, fish oil — or omega-3 fatty acids — reduces the risk of sudden death.

Doctors recommend eating at least two servings of fish a week. The highest levels of omega-3 fatty acids are in:

• Mackerel
• Lake trout
• Herring
• Sardines
• Albacore tuna
• Salmon
• Halibut

You should bake or grill the fish to avoid adding unhealthy fats.

3. Walnuts, almonds and other nuts

Walnuts, almonds and other nuts can reduce blood cholesterol. Rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids, walnuts also help keep blood vessels healthy. Make sure the nuts you eat aren’t salted or coated with sugar.

4. Olive oil

Olive oil contains a potent mix of antioxidants that can lower your “bad” (LDL) cholesterol but leave your “good” (HDL) cholesterol untouched.

5. Foods with added plant sterols or stanols

Foods are now available that have been fortified with sterols or stanols — substances found in plants that help block the absorption of cholesterol.

Plant sterols and stanols are substances that occur naturally in small amounts in many grains, vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, and seeds. Since they have powerful cholesterol-lowering properties, manufacturers have started adding them to foods. You can now get stanols or sterols in margarine spreads, orange juice, cereals, and even granola bars. But check the labels carefully. While plant sterols are healthy, extra calories are not. Excess calories simply lead to excess pounds.

MagicKitchen.com indicates Low-Cholesterol foods with this icon:

Then upload the video to youtube or google video, send us the <embed…> code, and we’ll put it up on the blog and the website!

(On youtube, just copy the code from the “Embed” box—you can find it in the “About This Video” box when you’re watching the video. On google video, to the right in the rating box, click on “Email – Blog -Post to MySpace”. Then click on “Embed HTML” and the code will appear.)

On July 31, we’ll pick a winner, and the winner gets a $100 gift certificate. Lights, camera, action!

Reading materials and puzzles are often perfect get-well gift ideas. A stack of magazines can be ideal as long as they match the person’s interests. Give a box of herbal teas.  Make them smile with thoughtful and funny gifts, such as a box of chocolate band-aids or a bottle of candy coated “pills” (mints or candies).

For a woman, perhaps a visit to bedhead pjs is in order: http://www.bedheadpjs.com/

Give them something to look forward to after they’re feeling better–a gift certificate for a round of golf, a few games of bowling, tickets to the movies, a concert or a theme park–whatever it is they enjoy doing when they’re feeling well.

For those recovering from a surgery or other medical issue that does not affect their appetite or diet, create a movie package. Fill an unpopped popcorn tub or popcorn bowl with drinks, snacks, microwave popcorn, seasoning salts, and a DVD (or a gift certificate to a movie rental store–with a note that says you’ll pick it up for them).

When searching for get well gift ideas, always remember that it’s the thought that counts. No matter which get well gift you decide to give the recipient, chances are that they will be very appreciative of the gesture of your thoughtfulness and generosity.