Banana Bread (it's vegan & wheat free - if anyone can tell)

Preheat oven to 375 F.

In a small bowl mash 3 ripe bananas to a mush, add 1 Tablespoon lemon juice, 1/2 C oil (I used olive), 1/2 C sweetener (I used honey) and 3/4 C chopped dates. Stir it together.

In a Large bowl Stir together the dry ingredients: 1 1/2 C flour (I used whole spelt flour), 1/2 C oat flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 t baking powder & 1/2 teaspoon baking soda. Optional addition: 1/2 C chocolate chips.


Gently mix wet ingredients into dry ingredients until they are just combined. Scoop into a oiled loaf pan & bake 40-50 minutes. Test for to see it it's done with a skewer or knife tip.

Yield: 1 loaf

Request for nurse comment

When you are a contract nurse you have two bosses; the one from your agency and the one from the place you work.

Contract nurses even from the same company talk behind one another's backs so there isn't any loyalty there. It is hard to make friends as a contract nurse - it's kind of like being in the service.

As a contract nurse it doesn't feel like there is much to depend on other than your skills and a paycheck.

Other observations:

Isn't it ironic that mental health and physical body ailments are treated by separate practitioners when we are all in the same body?

Is there a root cause as to why the humanity seems to be draining out of healthcare?

Capitalism seems to encourage greed and encourages society to make it acceptable.

I can't help but wonder if healthcare were socialized would it still have the same flaws it has now?

It's a Beautiful Day

Got up and went to the gym today. Met with my trainer and went through the preliminaries to see where my body is at. You find out your target heartrate you subtract your age from 220-34= 186. So the goal is to reach 65% to 85% of this target heartrate when you work out in order to make improvements. For someone my age it would be 121-158 beats per minute. When I did my workout I got up to 155 .

She said something about having your heartrate go down so many beats within so many minutes of stopping exercise indicating that you are getting a good stroke volume in your heart. I did this almost to a T. It would still be good to know exactly why this is signficant.

I'm glad to be taking charge of this part of my life. Hopefully it will help to calm me down and handle stresses easier. There is so much going on with my life - husband, mother, work, housemate, money, vehicle - that it is very much needed for balance.