This week’s menu included meatloaf and you may think Oatmeal? Meatloaf? Yep, replace the breadcrumbs with oatmeal and you increase the nutritional value of your meatloaf… something this mom is ALWAYS trying to do.

So, here’s the recipe…

1. Preheat over to 350 degrees
2. Mix in a large bowl (the best is really just with your hands):
   1. 2 lbs of good quality ground beef *
   2. 1 1/2 cups chopped onion
   3. 1 cup old fashioned oatmeal
   4. 1 cup ketchup
   5. 1 cup chopped cilantro (you can use parsley)
   6. 3 large eggs, slightly beaten
   7. 2 tsp non-salt garlic herb blend (like Mrs. Dash)
   8. 1 tsp salt
3. Form mixture into a loaf, about the size of a loaf pan, on a cookie sheet
4. Glaze the loaf with ketchup
5. Cover the loaf cross-ways with 8-10 slices of bacon. Tuck the ends of the bacon underneath.
6. Cook for 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes , until internal temperature reads 160 degrees.

Enjoy! … and go create your day over at Quaker Oats so they can donate some more!

*Costco is one of the few places that check their ground beef at the store for E-Coli.

I Am Water Foundation is the gift Elena Davis is giving to the world. The idea is simple… as simple as sip of water… and yet this simple thing is sometimes difficult to come by. And I not talking about a sip of water in war torn, drought ridden country is some far away place… I am talking about a sip of water here in our own backyard. Here is Houston, TX – one of the largest, business bustling cities around – here where we too have had our fair share of hard economical times – here where there are a lot people just trying to make it one day to the next – praying for a break, a job, a small inspiration, a very small spark of hope that tomorrow may be better.

Reading Courtney Pemberton’s blog post yesterday and diving into the I Am Water site I was truly moved… here are so many pieces of my life all combined in one place.

1. The Miracle of Water: I was introduced to this research by the movie “What The Bleep Do We Know.” The scientist in me latched onto the imagery of a water molecules intertwined with the power of a word. I had to know more. Masaru Emoto’s work is amazing, it’s life changing. It makes total sense that with our bodies being composed of 80% water, or more,  water is pretty dang important. Emoto’s work begins in pharmaceutical research… with the startling discovery that water would retain the healing properties of the medicine it was mixed with – even after the mixture was so dilute the compound could no longer be detected. In more simple terms – water mixed with medicine – would still heal the body – even after there was no “detectable” medicine left in it. Emoto hypothesized that water could be written on – and from there his research took him to discover water molecules exposed to Thank You, Hope, Love and… You Make Me Sick.

The Miracle of Water

2. Blessed Water: For about a year after I read “The Miracle of Water” I would take a sharpie and write blessing words on my water bottle. The words would rub off – I would write more. If drinking 8 glasses of water is good for the body – drinking 8 glassed of blessings is good for the body and the soul. It was fun, it made me smile, people asked questions, I was able to share – I may just go back to doing this again.

3. Lord of The Streets: My dear, dear friend Reverend Martha Frances is the past Vicar and Executive Director of Lord of The Streets, an Episcopal outreach working to minister to the spiritual, emotional, physical and social needs of individuals living in Houston who are homeless, in crisis or in transition. I donated a lot of graphics work to LOTS at the time – it was one of the first website I ever did in Dreamweaver – using it as a learning opportunity. Reverend Martha still drives around with bottles of water in her car to hand out. I am really looking forward to telling her about I Am Water and their donation of 180,000 bottle of water to Houston.

Which leads me back to I Am Water… here is an organization with a simple mission. Give water and hope to homeless women, children, and men. Nourishing  their bodies and their souls. And that is why they are my fav site o’ the week.

Feeling inspired… wondering what you can do? Vote for I Am Water to win $250,000 in grant money from Pepsi’s Refresh Everything Grant Campaign.

You’ll be in good company with…

• Hilary Duff
• Clyde Drexler
• Marlee Matlin
• Laura Wilkinson
• George Foreman
• Buzz Aldrin

So, check out the site and VOTE! … yeah you! Go do it now! Cause…

“A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.” ~ Mahatma Ghandi

I adore The Feild Lab by John Wells:

The Southwest Texas Alternative Energy and Sustainable Living Field Laboratory

I would love, love, love to grab a six-pack o’ beer (price of admission) and take a trip out to West Texas for a visit. I think that AK & The Z-Man would be beside themselves with the innovative gadgetry that Wells has been able to conjure up. The blog is:

• 1 part art
• 3 parts environmental statement
• 1 part quirky
• 1 part cute
• 6 parts education
• 4 parts true Texas grit and
• 10 parts of just WOW!

TWLOHA is my favorite site of the week not only because the cause is a pretty phenomenal one…

To Write Love on Her Arms is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide.  TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.

It also has some of the most passionate and visceral writing I have come across. Their story is woven with pain, beauty, inspiration, despair and speaks to the true human condition and seeking of enlightenment, love, salvation, redemption…

She has known such great pain; haunted dreams as a child, the near-constant presence of evil ever since. She has felt the touch of awful naked men, battled depression and addiction, and attempted suicide. Her arms remember razor blades, fifty scars that speak of self-inflicted wounds. Six hours after I meet her, she is feeling trapped, two groups of “friends” offering opposite ideas. Everyone is asleep. The sun is rising. She drinks long from a bottle of liquor, takes a razor blade from the table and locks herself in the bathroom. She cuts herself, using the blade to write “FUCK UP” large across her left forearm…

She is full of contrast, more alive and closer to death than anyone I’ve known, like a Johnny Cash song or some theatre star. She owns attitude and humor beyond her 19 years, and when she tells me her story, she is humble and quiet and kind, shaped by the pain of a hundred lifetimes. I sit privileged but breaking as she shares. Her life has been so dark yet there is some soft hope in her words, and on consecutive evenings, I watch the prettiest girls in the room tell her that she’s beautiful. I think it’s God reminding her.

…and if you are looking to be inspired, touched, moved in anyway go read the whole thing and then find a friend to write love on your arm and take a pic and share it… and help the love movement grow.

Thanx Brandius for my Love Art!