Immune System Boosting Tea

I recently read an interesting quote.  "The flu is not a season!  It's an inability to adapt due to decreased sun exposure and water intake combined with increased sugar intake and stress!"  The best way to deal with "flu season" is to take build up your immune system.  How, you ask?  Get plenty of sleep, drink lots of water, eat healthy food, and exercise.  In my experience, it's really difficult to do all of these things in once day, or for an entire week.  Life gets in the way.  One thing I do religiously is drink tea.  I love to start my day with a cup of green tea, so lately I've been adding some extra ingreds to give my tea more immunity boosting power!

How do you get a job writing inspirational quotes on the tags of tea bags?  Talk about a dream job!

I start with one clove of crushed garlic which I put into the mug while I wait for my water to boil.  After I've added the hot water and the green tea, I add the juice of a quarter of a lemon, about a teaspoon of turmeric, and half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper.  

 It sort of tastes like an earthy soup.  Weird, I know.  But undeniably warm and comforting.  Seriously, you will become healthier just by reading the list of ingredients....  green tea, water, lemon juice, garlic, turmeric, cayenne pepper....  Mmmmm....

This is the first holiday season ever that I'm not traveling and I am hosting as well!  Staying in town is great, and there's not much work to be done so that gives me plenty of time to goof off.  I met some girlfriends this morning for brunch where I consumed too much sugar (in the form of champagne) so I will be drinking my flu-prevention tea tonight.  And tomorrow morning.  Stay healthy my friends!

I Survived Icemageddon

Happy Monday!  This may be the last time I say this, but I am thrilled this weekend is over.  And it was a long one.  It started Thursday with the weather reports telling us to expect the worst and for once, the meteorologists were right.  I made sure to get my errands out of the way (bank, gym, grocery store) so I could be home before the ice rain started.  No pretty fluffy snow flakes, just sleet and icy rain.  Thursday night was spent at home with the bf.  We were both looking forward to staying in and catching up on Netflix, and I had just bought a load of ingredients for some new recipes I've been dying to try.  Doesn't that sound delightful?  School closings for Friday had already been announced, so we looked forward to sleeping in a little and working from home together the next day.

We awoke around 7:30am on Friday morning to the sound of tree branches creaking and snapping.  Otherwise, the world was silent.  I got up to make tea and turn on the news for a weather update.  Roads around the city were completely iced over.  We weren't going anywhere.  I started to get a weary feeling in my stomach that this wasn't going to be good.  There were already reports of power outages.  By 8:30am, ours went out.  When this happens, you know a tree fell down and took some critical power lines with it.  It's not a simple fix- the outage has to be reported, and then you wait for the trucks to roll in and the heroes to get things up and running again. 

I know people in other parts of the country make fun of Texas for shutting down in winter weather, but this is what happens to us here!  This happened a few miles from our house.