Sep

3

Gua Sha

While visiting my mom today I met Susan, an acupuncturist, RN, and a jewelry maker. We got to talking about my horrible back pain that I’ve had for the past five days and before I knew it, she was performing an ancient Chinese massage technique on my back called Gua Sha.

(from wikipedia)
Gua Sha involves repeated pressured strokes over lubricated skin with a smooth edge. (We used a ceramic Chinese soup spoon and olive oil)

The smooth edge is placed against the pre-oiled skin surface, pressed down firmly, and then moved down the muscles — hence the term “tribo-effleurage” (i.e., friction-stroking) — or along the pathway of the acupuncture meridians, along the surface of the skin, with each stroke being about 4-6 inches long.

This causes extravasation of blood from the peripheral capillaries (petechiae) and may result in sub-cutaneous blemishing (ecchymosis), which usually takes 2-4 days to fade. Sha rash does not represent capillary rupture as in bruising, as is evidenced by the immediate fading of petechiae to echymosis, and the rapid resolution of sha as compared to bruising. The color of sha varies according to the severity of the patient’s blood stasis — which may correlate with the nature, severity and type of their disorder –appearing from a dark blue-black to a light pink, but is most often a shade of red. Although the marks on the skin look painful, they are not. Patients typically feel immediate sense of relief and change.

It looks worse than it feels. The scraping hurt at times, but afterward there was no pain except for the tight muscle that wasn’t completely work out. It still hurts now but there seems to have been a small improvement.

Not too pretty though, eh?

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Sep

2

Halfway there!

I really didn’t mean to go a whole week without updating, and I REALLY can’t believe I’m halfway through this pregnancy already.

I want to write soon about art ideas, baby stuff, and recipes, but today I can’ only think about eating and sleeping. The most I was able to do today was take this weeks belly photo and put clean sheets on the bed. So that’s all you get (the picture, that is, the sheets are all mine)

P.S. We find out the gender on September 13th!

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Aug

26

Channa Masala

Now for one of my all time favorite recipes – Channa Masala!

I could eat bowl after bowl of this delicious Indian dish. I usually make some fresh chapatis to eat with it, but next time I’m going to try my hand at homemade garlic naan. My mouth is watering thinking about it…

Hope you enjoy the recipe!

Step #1
Prepare the ingredients in separate bowls. It may sound a little tedious, but having everything chopped, measured, and ready to add to the pot is helpful beyond words.

Ingredients:

2-3 TBS vegetable oil
1.5 tsp cumin seeds
1.5 tsp onion seeds
2 16oz cans chickpeas (garbanzo beans), rinsed
1 14.5oz can diced tomatoes
1 large onion, chopped
3-5 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped into bite-sized chunks
3 garlic cloves, minced garlic
1″ piece of ginger, minced or grated
1/2-1 jalapeno, minced
2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp garam masala*
1.5 tsp turmeric
4 C water
handful of fresh cilantro, chopped

*if you don’t have garam masala, this homemade spice mixture will give you 2 tsp for this recipe:
3/4 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp coriander
1/4 tsp cardamom
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp cloves
1/8 tsp nutmeg

Step #2
Heat the oil over medium heat and add the onion seeds and cumin seeds. Saute for around 20 seconds then add the chopped onions and cook until they are lightly browned.

Step #3
Add the ginger, garlic and jalapeno and stir fry for a minute or two.

Step #4
Now add the can of diced tomatoes and stir fry for another 5 minutes, then add the spices and stir thoroughly.

Step #5
Add the diced potatoes and stir well to coat in spices

Step #6
Add 3 cups of water and put the lid on. Once it comes to a boil, turn down the heat a bit and let simmer for around 20 minutes to soften the potato.

Step #7
Check to see that the potato chunks are soft then add the chickpeas. Stir it all up and add another cup of water to the pot. Bring to a boil again and then turn the heat down to simmer for 15 minutes with the lid partially on.

Step #8
Stir in some freshly chopped cilantro then turn off the heat, put the lid on tight, and let it it stand for around 15 minutes while you make some rice or warm up some bread. It’s then ready to serve!

P.S. This weeks belly photo! :)

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Aug

25

Five things

1. After being bombarded with spam comments again, I’ve installed a new captcha program on my commenting system. If anyone wants to leave a comment to test it out and make sure it’s working properly I’d very much appreciate it. If there are any problems please contact me at meg.kat.art@gmail.com

2. I love love love Liv Tyler’s look in this photo for Gucci.

This is the style I am aiming for.

I don’t know if I want to go so far as to cut my bangs that short so I’ve started pinning my bangs back in a similar way. I haven’t owned lipstick in years but I found a brand of organic and low-toxicity lipstick called Zosimos Botanicals that I want to try out. My favorite color so far that is most similar to the one in the Liv Tyler photo is the Garnet mini stick.

I’m also going to work on the fun eyeliner application :)

FYI: Cosmeticsdatabase.com is a great website to find out how toxic or safe your health and beauty products are.

3. I love when customers send me photos of how they’ve displayed work they’ve purchased from me.

Allison and Brian in Maryland actually designed their new bathroom specifically for my Rock Star Scientist posters and sent me a few pictures. How cool is that?!

And Rob in Nevada sent me a photo of his framed mini posters:

4. We had another baby appointment at TBP yesterday and everything is looking good with me and Baby K so far. My blood pressure is still 110/80, I’ve only gained about 1lb, and I’m measuring right around 19-20 weeks. We also got our prescription to get an ultrasound and find out the gender!

Since we only get one ultrasound (unless another is medically necessary or we want to pay for one ourselves), we’re going to wait at least another week or two so that chances are high we see the little girl or boy parts clearly :)

5. New belly photo tomorrow!

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Aug

22

Date Night

The sudden and intense desire to go to Ikea struck me yesterday, so of course Matthew took me for a little date night.

One of the best things there: a cafe full of cheap food! (and cool light fixtures)

(buy one salad and get one free!)

I love their take-home containers for leftovers. I have a thing for little brown paper boxes.

After eating we took a quick tour through the top level and I happened to fall in love with this kitchen

I also really really want to get a couple of these bookcases soon. I had been looking at the Billy Bookcases for a long time, but I actually like that these aren’t as tall and they have a cute little drawer on the bottom