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Photo: KJGarbutt / Flickr

If you’re an entrepreneur or self-employed, you’ve probably had your fair share of having to deal with an unpredictable cash flow. This may include facing a low income over holiday periods, especially if you’re a freelancer. Managing cash flow begins with setting your minimum financial goals. What do you need every month to cover your expenses? Do you have a six-month emergency fund that you can draw on during the lean times? Do you have a savings plan? (more…)

Photo: Happy Sleepy / Flickr

A typical Western diet is high in fats, refined food and additives. This mass processed food often passes for real food, leaving one overweight and sluggish. A detox can help rid the body of the residues of toxins. It can also help give you a taste of pure and natural food. It’s best to adopt a healthy, balanced diet in the long term, though, as a quick detox won’t necessarily remove all the toxins that are stored in one’s body. (more…)

Photo: FotoosVanRobin / Flickr

This artichoke soup recipe uses Jerusalem artichokes, which will keep in the fridge for a good four days if they’re bought fresh. Other ingredients include onions, vinegar, butter, celery, sugar, marjoram, hot water, milk and seasoning. The soup has a refreshing and delicate flavour and can be served hot or cold. Serve with a sprinkling of finely chopped parsley or some thinly sliced fried mushrooms. To enhance the flavour, use chicken or vegetable stock instead of the water. Use cream to add richness to the dish. (more…)

Photo: Governor Patrick / Flickr

University courses are getting ever stranger. It’s possible to study subjects like Zombies and David Beckham these days. But then, it would seem that university courses are losing favour on the whole. Statistics show that applications for university courses are down 9 per cent for 2012 compared to 2011. Besides, The Independent reports that over 28,000 of the 2008/09 student intake dropped out of university in the UK. But is dropping out such a bad thing? Three successful ‘drop-outs’ prove not. (more…)

Photo: dyogi / Flickr

Kitchen Gardeners International is a network of likeminded ‘green-fingered’ folk who wish to re-localise the global food supply. The founding director, Roger Doiron, was instrumental in the replanting of a kitchen garden at the White House. His challenge is for kitchen gardeners to unite to ‘feed more people healthier food while preserving and enhancing the health of the planet.’ He writes in The Kitchen Gardener’s solution: ‘Harness the power of people who grow their own nutritious, delicious, and sustainable food to help others do the same.’ (more…)

Photo: ppacificvancouver / Flickr

If you’re a salmon lover and feel like treating yourself for a change, consider preparing this salmon Wellington dish. You’ll need 500 grams of salmon fillet, some baby spinach leaves, white wine vinegar, onion, butter, lemon juice, sea salt and butter puff pastry. You’ll have to open a bottle of wine of course, not only because the recipe calls for it, but because it’s perfectly fine to drink alone when you’re cooking. That said, if you feel like some company, simply double the recipe. (more…)

Photo: Tojosan / Flickr

How does it feel to meditate? According to The School of Meditation, ‘meditation leads the attention beyond the gross to a subtler level of mind, where there is less activity and fewer compelling images. Beyond that, it leads to a level subtler still, where there is no experience, no thought, no imagery.’ This state can be compared to deep sleep, when one has no experience of images in the mind. At this level, awareness ‘is a condition of being at one with pure consciousness.’ (more…)

Photo: Robert Couse-Baker / Flickr

Are you a compulsive thinker, constantly stuck in your head? Are your concepts and judgments getting in the way of your relationship with yourself and others? ‘The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly,’ says Eckhart Tolle. ‘Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly – you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you.’ Believing that you’re your mind is a delusion: don’t let the instrument take over. (more…)

Photo: Mersey Viking / Flickr

Do the lights in your house flicker? Does the toilet flush when nobody is there or have you had an encounter with doors shutting themselves? If so, this is ‘no seasonal attraction for those who delight in fright: It’s your own home,’ writes Roy Berendsohn for Popular Mechanics. ‘Even if you don’t believe in ghosts, the noises you hear in the dead of night still give you the heebie-jeebies.’ No fear, here are a few nifty fixes to explain away some creepy happenings. (more…)

Photo: Stock.Xchng

All soil is composed of a mixture of silt, sand and clay. Soil will hold air, nutrients and water differently depending on how much of each of these three elements it contains. A well-drained soil will contain sand which makes the soil loose. Loose soil holds air and water well while also making it easy for roots to spread and grow. The best soils are loams which contain an equal mixture of sand, clay and silt. Read on to find out more. (more…)