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French Onion Soup
This soup is a classic, and very much appreciated by many especially on cold days. The steaming pot with delicious bread soaked in onion broth and melted cheese hit the spot. Try this French Onion Soup, we promise you won’t regret it (if you like onions that is!) Ingredients 2 tablespoons butter 1 teaspoon olive oil 3/4 pound peeled, halved, and sliced yellow onionthick slices french bread as required to form a single layer in each soup bowl pinch sugar 1 teaspoon flour 3 cups beef stock 1/2 cup dry white vermouth (optional) salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste 1/4 pound grated gruyère (or other strong cheese of…
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The Truth about Cats and Dogs
I don’t understand men. When I say I don’t understand, I do not mean that I can’t identify with their behaviour, I do not mean that I do not comprehend their logic, I also do not mean that I disagree with their principles. What I am trying to say is that when they talk, I don’t actually understand a word they’re saying. Why is this? We are both human beings after all, and we both communicate through vowels and consonants, so why don’t I understand a word they say? This question has lead me to think, and think hard I did. I thought about all the possible reasons for this…
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Are You Anaemic?
Are you tired and weak? Does the lining of your lower eyelids look pale? If so, you could be anaemic. But what does that mean? It means that either your red blood cells or the amount of haemoglobin (oxygen-carrying protein) in your red blood cells is low. There are several types of anaemia: • Iron-deficiency anaemia is the most common one. The primary cause is blood lost during menstruation. But eating too few iron-rich foods or not absorbing enough iron can make the problem worse. The recommended daily allowance for iron ranges from 6 milligrams for infants, to 30 milligrams for pregnant women. Yet one medical source found that females between 12…
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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
This review is tied to the review of the book with the same name, since the movie is the director’s visual representation of a book considered by many a masterpiece. If you have not read the book, read it! And read all the series and read it to your children too. This series of books has all the ingredients to make Harry Potter the Tom Sawyer of the 21st century. If you know that Tom Sawyer is a literary icon, you know what I am talking about. If you don’t know it, now you do. (Actually it would do you and your children a lot of good if when buying…
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Tropical Chic
Decorating your house? Tired of Louis XV and Louis XVI furniture? Tropical chic is one of the most popular looks. It includes comfort, warmth, and a touch of the exotic, using jungle themes, restful colours, and natural textural elements. It’s a style that has fresh appeal with touches of traditional. This is not the multi-coloured jungle look you might choose for a child’s room. Instead, it might be defined as “lush minimalism” since it mixes lots of texture and intricate pattern with simple details and a few large accessories. Common motifs include stylized palm trees, large leafed banana plants, animal prints, rattan and leather. This look is most often used…
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Hay Fever
The thought of spring time can cause panic in those who suffer from hay fever because it means the nose and eyes are in for a battle. What Is Hay Fever? Hay fever is the name most people use to refer to the symptoms caused by allergic rhinitis, the most common allergy. It is a mediated allergy that has nothing to do with hay or a fever. The inflammation of the mucus membranes that line the inside of the nose, is known as rhinitis. It is characterized by an immune-system reaction to airborne allergens. Allergic rhinitis is classified into two categories – seasonal and perennial. Seasonal allergic rhinitis is usually…
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Why Women Don’t Always Leave Abusive Relationships
Sometimes it feels like men have been given some natural license to treat women like subordinates or inferiors, and women have been fighting for decades to change this perception. This is why seeing women being abused by their partners is especially difficult to accept. Battered Wife Syndrome is the name given to the psychological and behavioural symptoms derived from this type of abusive relationship. It is my bias that it is no one’s right to hit anyone, children included because it demeans the individual. A woman who suffers this kind of abuse believes that the violence is her fault and actually has an inability to place the blame elsewhere, mainly…
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Childfree by Choice
There’s a certain stigma associated with being female and being childfree. Because being childfree-by-choice is rather frowned upon in our child-centric society, most women who don’t want children, rarely say so openly. They try to avoid the disapproving stares and cries of, “How can you not want children?!” and go into hiding. In fact a woman who doesn’t want children is often labelled a selfish woman. It’s more difficult for a woman to admit that she does not want children as men are often exempt from such pressure. Women on the other hand must answer to other women, to mothers, to aunts, to neighbours and even to friends. When my…
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The Bald and the Beautiful
It creeps up on you ever so quietly. The actual process began many years earlier but realization hits you as if it were something that just fell out of the sky. You’re standing in front of the bathroom mirror humming away, having just finished shaving, innocently practicing your Gillette facial poses as you check for that little patch you inevitably missed… and then it happens! Staring you in the mirror is a thin strip of skin crawling subtly across your forehead. Skin, let me add, where there should be hair. You look closer and the first image of the true shape of your head – hidden for years by your…
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Help your child to succeed at school
Most people today understand the value of education and parents try very hard to pass this sense on to their children and are surprised when they fail. Parents are desperate for their children to succeed and they convey this to them. It is too familiar a scene when parents lock their children in their room to finish their homework or tell them they’re better off studying than watching a movie. Children get the message early on that they are studying to please their parents and this may cause certain problems. The first of these is that children don’t actually take an interest in what they are studying and will only…
