My knowledge of what constitutes good beef is not from being raised on a farm, but from educating myself about what to look for in a good cut of beef all the way from the farm to the dinner table.

Mom taught me to recognize a good looking roast or steak by checking for marbling and seeing if it was USDA Prime Choice, etc.. Those days might be long gone, and now we look much more closely at how cattle are raised, what they’re being fed and how the farmer is keeping them healthy.

Still, we all want quality meat, and that means organically raised by a reputable ranch where you feel comfortable buying their products like steaks because they have made their operation as transparent as possible for the consumer.  It is possible to Buy Steaks Online and feel confident that the group of US family farmers and ranchers who made them available to you are adhering to their own strict standards of raising healthy organic food fit for your table.

The Niman Ranch website has lists of their chefs and food service distributors, some of their retailers and a few of their featured farmers which makes me feel like they’re meeting me half way on this healthy eating thing.  I was happy to see they have a listing for Washington state distributors, with the notice that those places will be “added soon”.  I’ll check  back  to see if that category fills up.

Compensated post. All opinions are mine.

Click Here!

How many of your ancestors endured cold cabin floors and would have been oh-so-happy to have warm floors with radiant floor insulation?  I know many of mine would have!

Some of my Moline family lived in cold and snowy (part of the year) Sweden before coming to the United States.  And where did they settle?  They were first in Minnesota and then moved on to a somewhat warmer climate in western Washington.  I say ‘somewhat’ because the Nordgrens lived in Bellingham, one of the coldest places in the Puget Sound area.

As it so happens, we will be remodeling our family room pretty soon and one of the things we plan to do is add a radiant barrier to three of the walls.  While this is a sponsored post, I honestly do intend to look into foil insulation because it’s eco-friendly, and not harmful to install, and cost effective.

The room is located on the south and west sides of our house and even if we did those two walls we would come out ahead.  The other wall is shared with the unheated garage, and so that would work great in that application too.  EcoFoil has many installation manuals you can consult, as well as a McAfee secure site for worry-free ordering.

Click Here!

In 1939, breast cancer took the life of my great aunt, Elizabeth Yates Johnston at the young age of forty-nine. We’ve come a long way in treating breast cancer in the 70 years since her death, but there’s still more to do.

Cryo-Cell International will be partnering with the National Institutes of Health to explore the potential use of menstrual stem cells to treat breast cancer. Menstrual blood is rich in stem cells and a partnership between NIH and Cryo-Cell is now ongoing as they investigate the C’elle stem cells. This could be the next great frontier in diagnostic and regenerative medicine too.

Right now, Cryo-Cell is offering monetary contributions to the Susan B. Komen Foundation. If a purchase of the “Protect Baby, Protect Mom” C’Elle Breast Cancer Donation service is made, Cryo-Cell will donate $50; also, if a purchase is made of the “C’elle Menstrual Stem Cell” service Cyro-Cell Breast Cancer Donation they will donate $25.

I will be going on for my annual mammogram tomorrow.  It’s too bad that Aunt Lizzie didn’t have mammograms available to her seventy years ago, she might have lived to a ripe old age.   We have even more technology, and now cellular testing available to us. I encourage you all to learn more about Cryo-Cell and stem cell research.  We all need to be well informed about advances in medicine.

Click Here!

Hours and hours, typing or looking at files, and what do you get? I think of it as ‘genealogy back’. You know, that feeling, right? There is a way to alleviate much the pain though, and that’s by doing some very simple back exercises to strengthen those muscles. Back2Yourself has a free trial offer, and if you like their ideas you can also invest in videos for continued daily guidance in your own home.

Compensated

Click Here!

That’s a pretty melodramatic-sounding title to this post, but it’s the truth, at least in my mind. In 1993 I had what was suppose to be a out-patient minor surgery. What really happened was that it caused a major flare-up to my fibromyalgia. I didn’t know I had fibromyalgia, and I suspect I have had it all my life since the symptoms and signs were there even when I was a little girl. It was my good friend Sheryl who finally suggested that it might be fibromyalgia. The doctors had no clue, and one mistakenly gave me a broad spectrum antibiotic that just about killed me. I was shaky, my mind was in a major fog, and I was so depressed because I didn’t know what was happening to me, and I needed something to focus on to take my mind off how bad I was feeling.

We got our first computer in 1994, and at almost that same time I found Family Tree Maker to use for my genealogical research. At the time, we were still on dial-up for our ISP, and the amount of online genealogical records were sparse at best. I was not to be deterred though! I was adding people to my family tree (and my husband’s) at a frenetic pace. Almost every day I added new cousins as my letters and emails got results. It was like I was in a race to get as much information from as many of the older generations as I could before they weren’t around to talk to anymore.

I still have fibromyalgia, and some days I don’t do genealogical research at all. But, I have a Yates family book that I have shared with my family, as well as a plethora of great cousins who have helped me put the family puzzle pieces together. In my opinion, genealogy saved my life because if I hadn’t had it to focus on through those terrible days, months and years, I probably would have given up living altogether. Yes, I was that depressed.

A recent article at Genealogy Insider, Time to Talk About Your Family Health History, prompted me to write this article. It made me think of my dark first days of my fibro flare-up in 1993, and how I came through it using my obsession interest in genealogy.

Do you add health history to your family trees? I have added some when I knew for sure what caused the death. I think it’s an important key to add to the family file. It could mean the world to your descendants, couldn’t it?

You might also want to visit my other pages:

Wilkerson, Yates and Allied Families(Family Tree Maker Personal Page)

Wilkerson and Allied Families (Ancestry)

Yates and Allied Families (Ancestry)

Click Here!