English Corpus

Your kids have played together. Both husbands coordinated and erected that wooden fence between your properties and installed a gate between the two yards. This neighbor has been your dearest friend. You have shared raising your children, she gave that great flowering bush out front, and you even shared your family recipes with her. Now they are moving. It is like a part of your family is moving across the country.

You have both said you will stay in touch with each other. You’ll write and she’ll write. There will be the occasional phone calls back and forth. You want to give her a gift that will have some special meaning of your life together or will continue the closeness you have. Your neighbor also has her hands busy with packing. You want to give her something that will help. So, what do you do you give to your dearest neighbor?

I have a few suggestions. Maybe some of these will be just right.

-If you are better at talking than writing, then stay in touch with phone calls. Purchase a long distance calling card to keep in touch. Find a card with a picture of the plant she gave you, or two houses side by side, or other symbol of your friendship.

-Your neighbor will need to notify everyone of her address change. Pick up a Mail address change packet at the post office and fill out her old and new addresses for her.

-Get a new address book and have all the neighbors add their info it.

-Go through your old photos and put together a picture book of all the times you’ve shared together.

-As a remembrance of your long lasting friendship, get a plant or small tree for your neighbor to plant in her new yard.

-Find or write a poem of your friendship, type or do calligraphy on to stationery and frame it to be hung in her new home.

-Find a door mat with their last name inscribed on it.

-If your neighbor has a dog, get a new dog tag with his name and new address and phone number.

-Get a pretty box of stationery, stamp each envelope and write your address on each.

-If it’s going to be a long trip in the car to their new town, put together a picnic basket with all the goodies that the family likes.

-When they arrive, your neighbors are going to have their hands full with unpacking. Put together a basket of canned meats, cheese, and crackers that will help on a tired night.

-Get gift coupons from national pizza parlors, fast take out places. This will help for the trip and those nights of unpacking.

Adriana Copaceanu provides people with creative gift ideas that don’t blow the bank. Gift Baskets for Baby, Birthdays, or Christmas, are just some gift ideas you’ll find at her site. Want regular reminders on gift-giving? Sign up for her free monthly newsletter
Gift News You Can Use

Comments Off

Lunch is an important meal for low carbers. But who has the time to cook?

Instead of cooking lunch, one good solution is to cook more food the night before when you are cooking dinner. If you are having ribs or chicken for dinner, make a little extra so you can have it for lunch the next day. It doesn’t take any extra time and with convenience of a microwave your lunch will be ready in no time. In fact, ribs and chicken can also be just as tasty cold.

Another good idea is to do most of the cooking on days when you have more time. You can take one day and prepare some foods that will provide good lunches for you all week.

Chicken

Buy a whole chicken, clean it and boil. You can use it to make chicken salad to stuff into a bell pepper or tomato. You can also slice the chicken to make deli style lunch meat. Wrap it up in a piece of romaine lettuce with some mayonnaise. Yummy.

If you want to get a little more fancy you can wrap some ham around some Swiss cheese, then wrap the chicken slices around the ham and heat it in a microwave. It’s a great low carb cordon bleu. You’ll feel like you’re dining with royalty.

You can also buy packages of chicken legs and wings and fry them up with no breading. The skin gets crunchy and tasty. These make great grab and go snacks and lunches.

Ham

Boil a ham and slice it. This will be good for making ham and cheese roll-ups. You can also dice up some of the ham for omelette’s in the morning or ham salad that you can heap on pork rinds.

Beef

By a large roast beef and cook it in the oven. Slice it up deli style. Wrap this meat around cheese for a quick and easy lunch.

For a real treat top these roast beef slices with some previously sautéed peppers, onions and mushrooms then top it with Swiss cheese. Heat that in a microwave until the cheese melts. Your tummy will be so happy when you dine on these tasty low carb Philly cheese steaks.

You can get a corned beef and boil it. You can have corned beef and cabbage one night for dinner and slice up the rest deli style for great lunches the rest of the week. Top the slices with Swiss cheese, sauerkraut and some low carb Thousand Island dressing and you have a great low carb Reuben sandwich. (Diet ketchup mixed into some mayonnaise with some low carb dill relish makes a good low carb Thousand Island dressing).

Fish and Seafood

Get cans or convenient pouches of tuna. Add a little mayonnaise to the tuna with some low carb dill relish and stuff that in a half of a bell pepper or a half of a tomato. Split the top of the tomato into quarters so it falls open and easily holds the tuna. Try it with salmon, too.

Add some mayonnaise and a little chopped celery to canned shrimp or crab (check the carb counts - for some reason the leading brands seem to think we want sugar in our seafood). Take the seed out of a half of an avocado and stuff the shrimp or crab salad into the remaining whole. Delicious!

Even Faster Alternatives

Use processed foods minimally. They have chemicals that you don’t need. Don’t let the deli counter fool you. Most of those are processed, too and many contain sugars that add to the carb count. It’s best to boil or roast your own meats and fowl.

But if you are in a real big hurry, an occasional visit to the deli won’t hurt. You can purchase deli meats and wrap them around cheese slices for a very satisfying lunch without having to cook.

Even less desirable are the cans of meats and packages of lunch meats and cold cuts. These are handy when you know you are not going to be where you can get to any other low carb food. You can keep a couple cans of Vienna sausages in your car or at your desk for those situations.

Summary

The ideas presented here can be done in a few hours total and provide great lunches and even quick dinners all week long. On the day when you do the main cooking, you will also want to chop any veggies you might need for the week and clean some lettuce so it’s ready to go. Take your lunch to work in one of those lunch bags that keep things cold. It’s even easier if you are at home. Just reach in the fridge and start munching - low carb style.

That reminds me, it’s almost lunch time!

Michael Russell

Your Independent guide to Cooking

Comments Off

If you have defaults on your credit record, it is possible to
have some of them removed. Defaults are non-payments recorded on
your credit files. When a person is in default, they are
subjected to lawsuits, liens, judgments, and other complicated
situations. If you are a student struggling to pay student
loans, a renter struggling to meet monthly bills, or a homeowner
battling to stay out of debt you might want to know what is
available to you.

If you have a college loan, which means you have a loan from
the government you can ask for a default, which gives, you time
to repay the loan. Other types of defaults include insurance
policies, bills, car loans, personal loans, and other types of
credit lines. Sometimes we are subject to debts that may not be
ours.

There are thousands of collection agencies and credit reporting
services throughout the US. Sometimes there are errors sent to
the credit bureaus that put the default on your credit file.
Once the default goes on your credit file it remains there until
the bill is paid in full. Now, if you did not make the purchase
the first thing you want to do is file a dispute. The problem
however, defaults remain on your credit file for a period of
time before they are removed.

The upside is fighting for your rights and disputing the
allegations made against you are telling creditors that some
boo-booed. If either you have credit cards and purchased an item
or service on the card and the service or item was defeated, you
must first dispute the problem with the providers. After you
have disputed the issues with the providers, you will next
contact your credit card lender and inform them of the defaults
on your credit report. DO NOT pay on items or services that done
you wrong, since this means the creditors will view you in a
different light.

If you have, insurance policies are delinquent on your bills,
you might loose your coverage, however in some cases you might
be in more trouble than you realize. Read all terms & agreements
as well as any other fine prints before obligating your self to
a contract. If there is a default against you on your policy
contact your provider immediately and try to work out a plan.

By making contact, you could save your insurance as well as
additional debts added to your accounts. Anyone that lends you a
line of creditor subjects you to defaults if you cannot make
payments. If you have defaults on your credit files make sure
that you work to pay the debts down to avoid complications.

Identity Theft

Now here comes the bad deal when it comes to dealing with
defaults on your credit file. If you are subjected to identity
theft, the ultimate resource is to continue fighting for your
rights. People are robbed, beaten, murdered, and violated and so
on every single day.

The difference between these situations and identity theft is
these people are survivors and identity theft victims are
victims for the remainder of their lives. I can say this with
confidence, since it has been seven long years since I was
robbed of my identity and today I am still fighting for my
rights. Today I cannot get an apartment in my name, nor can I
get credit.

The reason…My credit file has Freud Alert written all over it.
Once a Freud Alert is posted on your credit, file it leaves
creditors open as to who committed the crime. If I had known
about the FREEZE option when I sent letters notifying my
creditors that my identity was stolen, I would have had a much
better chance in life. Instead, no one told me. Now I am passing
the word on to others, since I never want anyone to suffer as I
have as a result of identity theft.

When your identity is stolen, defaults hit your credit files
continuously and remain there until the time allowed. If you are
a victim of identity theft, make sure that you ask the credit
bureaus to put a FREEZE on your accounts. This tells the
creditors that you are a victim.

Comments Off