Good News Moment

Usually I post a writing but this time I'm going to do something a little different. I'm going to post a life update.

I applied to the University of Iowa, and I'm proud to announce that I will be a Hawkeye! I got a few things to do before I can start but I will be a Japanese major.

Dairy-Free Coffee Creamer Recipe

Do you ever wake up and feel very tired? Are you not a morning person and need a caffeine boost? Are you a vegan or even lactose intolerant? Or maybe you don't have creamer in your pantry and didn't realize it until after you made your coffee. For whatever reason that you don't drink milk, it's hard to find a healthier alternative to dairy-free coffee creamer. In one of my previous articles, I wrote about the history of coffee and some of the health benefits that it provides. This article will provide you a recipe for coffee creamer that uses full-fat coconut milk, maple syrup, and vanilla extract.

To make the creamer, you will need:

• 1 can of Full-Fat Coconut Milk
• 4 Tbsp of Maple Syrup (or whatever natural sweetener you use, I prefer a syrup of some sort though)
• 1 Tbsp of Vanilla Extract

The instructions for preparing the creamer are as follows:

1. Pour the coconut milk into a bigger mason jar. Add the syrup and the vanilla extract
2. Mix all ingredients well
3. Pour into your cup of coffee and enjoy

That's it! Only three steps to make a healthier alternative to dairy creamer. To store the creamer, make sure to place a lid on your mason jar and place in the fridge. When you need to use the creamer again, make sure to shake it because the ingredients will separate.

A Few Things I Learned at College

Hey guys! In December, I finished my last classes for college. Since then, I have been filling my time paying off my balance, learning Japanese, watching YouTube videos, trying to find work, and watching Korean Dramas. A few days ago, I payed off the last dollars that were needed to be paid in order to receive my transcripts and to actually receive my diploma, so I will be walking the commencement ceremony in May for an AS in Information Technology. I would like to share with you guys my new-found knowledge that I received while going to college. NOTE: My experiences aren't like most everyone's experiences, with me being Autistic and have gone to a Tribal College.

1) Diversity.
Because the college I went to was a tribal college, I got to meet cool new people who come from a very different background than me. Most everyone that went to the same college as me was Native American (there were even diversity among the different tribal backgrounds others had) and there were more backgrounds that others had. The least amount of students were Caucasion, like me. Because of the diversity that the college had, I learned a lot about different cultures. For example, I learned about different Lakota/Dakota foods, different slang that was used (the most common one I heard was chun), and words from the Lakota/Dakota language. In the end, a few best friends I gained was from a very different background than me.

2) Confidence and How to Make Friends
If you knew me in elementary, middle school/junior high, high school/senior high, and beauty school, you would know that I wasn't very confident and had a very tough time making friends. I was considered weird by most people that I knew. Being part of Upward Bound helped a little bit with gaining confidence and I made some friends there, but a lot of my new confidence that I gained was from when I went to college. During my time at college, I formed an Anime Club with one of my best friends I made while there, met a lot of people through Anime Club, joined other school clubs, hung out a lot in the student lounge with my friends, and hanging out with my roommates I had the one term I lived in the dorms. I even talk to a lot of the friends that I made still, and try to visit the college to keep up to date with them. The me in high school would hopefully be admired by the me in college.

3) Everyone Evolves
This one has been pretty interesting for me. The me before college was Mormon, shy, depressed, conservative in views about social things. The me post-college left the Mormon church, became confident, started managing my depression. Everyone evolves, especially during when they go to college if they do. Going into college, I wanted to be an art therapist (a therapy style that involves art as a means of coping). Graduating college, I wanted to run my own PC Repair company. Today, I want to teach English in Japan, so I'll be going through more college. When you go through college, you go through a lot of moments that forever change who you are as a person. Hopefully the changes in your personality become good changes and make you a better person than you were before.

4) Different Skills
When I went to college, I learned a lot of new skills that I did not learn in classes. I learned proper time management, how to manage a busy work load, how to be better organized, and a few other skills. It took me three years to complete community college, which isn't too bad (in fact it usually takes a few years to complete community college if you change your major). Through those three years, I learned a lot of  these skills with a gradually bigger work load.

In conclusion, there are a lot of things you learn when going through college. You hopefully learn new things that help out who you are as a person and enjoy the moments you have and look back happily on those moments.

Where Are You? (A poem)

What happened to my friend?
The one so sensible and smart.
Why did greed get to you
and blind your view?
Where did you go?
When will you come back?

My soul aches for the friend
I once knew...
I fear the old you died
and someone bad took your spot.
When the old you comes back
Please let me know.
I want to save what we had.
I want to save who we are in this world.

Don't forget the love I had for you
and the love I still have for you
You're more than just my friend,
You're my sister, the anchor that kept me down.

Slow-Cooker Vegetable Soup Recipe

Yesterday, I finally received my slow cooker in the mail. I was very excited about the delivery, but throughout the whole delivery process, I wasn't sure as to what I would make. Finally, I decided to settle on making Vegetable Soup. I didn't take any photos this time, so in the future, I will be sure to take photos of the food I make.

Vegetable Soup

Serves: 4

3 Quart Slow Cooker was used

Ingredients

• 14.5 OZ can of diced tomatoes (un-drained)
• 2 potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 2 onions, diced
• 3 celery ribs, sliced
• 2 carrots, sliced
• Basil
• Oregano
• Pepper
• Salt
• 1.5 cups water

1. Mix all ingredients together in the slow cooker
2. Heat on high for 6 hours

This recipe was simple to make and was delicious. When I put in the can of tomatoes, it had some jalapenos, so I didn't realize how spicy it would have made the soup. My recommendation if you like spice, is to have a can of diced tomatoes with jalapenos instead of a can of just diced tomatoes. 

Coffee: History, Information, and [Some] of the Health Benefits it Creates

When I was a young girl, my family lived with my grandma and grandpa (on my mom's side). One of the things that I remember about living with my grandparents was that every morning when I was getting ready for school, I would smell the aroma of the freshly-brewed batch of coffee that my grandparents would drink every morning. At that time, I didn't drink coffee, and I didn't start drinking coffee until February 2013 when I was going to beauty school. Currently, I like to have my coffee with creamer (chocolate flavored being my favorite flavor) and 3 packets of sugar.

This is what a coffee plant looks like. A coffee bean has one seed but a coffee cherry has two seeds in each berry.

Some information about coffee is that one coffee plant can produce between 1 1/2 and 2 pounds of coffee a year and would take 1.6 billion trees to supply the USA alone on a year's worth of coffee. The sacks that coffee is sent and exported in is made with hemp plant and to fill a 150 pound sack with coffee beans, it would take over 600,000 coffee beans. A shot of espresso uses 45 coffee beans. The word coffee comes from a latin word coffea, which is a member of the rubiacecae family, having over 500 genera and over 6000 varieties of this plant. Coffee plants take about 3 to 4 years to mature and can bear fruit for about 20-30 years. Coffee is actually a fruit which is mostly grown 1000 miles from the equator on both Northern and Southern hemispheres. Just as rich coffee is with information about the plant variety, coffee also has a rich history with amazing health benefits.

There are a few theories that deal with the origin of coffee. One of the origins is that there was a goat shepherd in Ethiopia named Kaldi. Kaldi noticed his goats would eat a specific berry that would make them energetic. Kaldi then brought this berry to an abbot at a local monastery, who then brewed a beverage with the berry. The abbot noticed that the beverage would help him with his late hours of study. Since the abbot noticed this, he talked to other monks and eventually word spread about this wonderful beverage.

The first place that coffee was cultivated and traded was on the Arabian Peninsula. By the 16th century the cultivation and trade of coffee spread to Persia, Egypt, Syria, and Turkey. There was also a growth in the amount of coffee houses, otherwise known as Qahveh Khaneh or Schools for the Wise. Citizens would go to the coffee houses to socialize, listen to music and watch performers, playing chess, as well as keeping up with the news.

During the 17th century, coffee was introduced to Europeans. The first reactions towards this beverage wasn't as positive as it was in the Middle East. People met coffee with a skepticism and dubbed the drink as the bitter invention of Satan. In 1615 Venice, people were so concerned with the beverage that the Pope had to intervene. Pope Clement VIII tasted the beverage and was so satisfied with it that he approved the beverage. Although coffee was looked at with disdain, people would open coffee houses. In England, coffee houses were also called Penny Universities and by the mid-1600s, there were more than 300 Penny Universities in London alone, with other coffee houses in England, Austria, Germany, France, and Holland. The most common thing to drink in the morning at 17th Century Europe was wine or beer, but eventually, coffee would replace the two for morning drinks. Those who would drink wine or beer and then switched to coffee noticed that they were more alert and that the quality of their work also improved. Coffee was brought over to New Amsterdam (now known as New York) during the mid-1600s. Until 1773, when the Tea Tax occured, tea was the most common thing to drink in the morning. When the Tea Tax happened, however, colonists would revolt by drinking coffee instead.

Until the late 17th century, the only people who grew coffee plants were people in the Middle East. The first people to successfully grow a coffee plant were the Dutch when they planted a coffee tree in Batavia which was located on an island named Java (now named Indonesia). After their success with growing a plant in Batavia, the Dutch then started growing plants on the islands of Sumatra and Celebes.

During the early 18th Century, King Louis XIV of France was presented with a coffee plant by the Mayor of Amsterdam. Naval Officer Gabriel de Clieu was able to obtain a seedling from King Louis XIV's coffee plant in 1723, in which he brought with him to Martinique in 1723. His voyage was successful, but also difficult. During his voyage he was met with tough weather, an almost sabotage, and a few pirate attacks. Once he was able to plant the seed, it became a very successful plant. Within 50 years the coffee plant de Clieu planted would parent over 18 million coffee trees and would be the parent tree of different coffee plants in the Caribbean, South America, and Central America.

Francisco de Mello Palheta of Brazil

Francisco de Mello Palheta of Brazil was sent by the Emporer to French Guiana to try to obtain a seed. He wasn't very successful at convincing the French to share a seedling with him. However, when de Mello Palheta left, the Governor's wife gave him a bouquet of flowers. When de Mello Palheta looked at the flower bouquet, he noticed that he was given enough seeds to create a billion-dollar industry. Thanks to all of the missionaries, traders, colonists, and travelers planting coffee plants worldwide, coffee became one of the main exported crops. Currently, the coffee plant is 2nd in exports and beverages bought.

Throughout the past, a lot of people believed that coffee was a drink that was bad for you and would cause sicknesses. Contrary to that belief, drinking coffee moderately (3-6 cups) actually provides the best health. This doesn't mean mixing milk and sugar into your coffee with all of the fancy toppings but this is when a person drinks coffee without the add-ins and drinks it plain. A regular brewed coffee has less than/equal to 5 calories and no fat or carbs. To reduce your chances for cardiovascular problems, it's important to drink 3-5 cups of coffee a day. Having 2-6 cups of coffee can reduce the risk of stroke and having 4 cups a day can reduce the risk of heart failure. If a person were to increase their coffee intake to two servings per day can lower the risk of liver cancer by about 40%. However, for those who have liver cancer, it can reduce the risk of cirrhosis and for those who already have cirrhosis it lowers the risk of death and/or the development of liver cancer. Finally, by drinking coffee every day you can lower your risk of getting Type 2 Diabetes, with the lowest risks being 6 or 7 cups a day drank daily.


Citation:

Carroll, A. (2015, May 11). More Consensus on Coffee’s Benefits Than You Might Think. Retrieved October 21, 2015.

FUN FACTS: AMAZING COFFEE INFORMATION... (n.d.). Retrieved October 21, 2015.

History of Coffee. (n.d.). Retrieved October 21, 2015.

Reflections on K-Pop Summer 2015

One of my favorite past times is listening to K-pop and even watching some of the music videos (which I don't really do for American pop music). Some years are better than other years, but I have to really applaud this summer for the Korean pop music industry for a few reasons:

• Big Bang came out with a new series called the MADE series.
• A lot of other comebacks with other groups as well as some debuts
• More high energy songs were released than there were slow songs
• The comeback of Wonder Girls (which is very major for JYP Entertainment)

The MADE series was an amazing work of art by Big Bang. I originally became a fan of Big Bang with their song "Fantastic Baby" (which is about dancing, partying, and having a good time in general) a while after its release, so to be able to hear the MADE series and watch each video as they came out was amazing. The MADE series took about 4 months to release, but it marked the comeback for Big Bang after a 3 year hiatus. The songs on the MADE series are as follows:

• "Loser", "Bae Bae" (Released: May 01, 2015) [M]
• "Bang Bang Bang" (Released: June 01, 2015), "We Like 2 Party" (June 05, 2015) [A]
•  "If You", "Sober" (Released: July 01, 2015) [D]
• "Zutter" {G.D. and T.O.P.}, "Let's Not Fall In Love"  (Released August 05, 2015) [E]

My favorites with the MADE series are "Loser", "Bang Bang Bang", "Sober", and "Let's Not Fall In Love". Personally, I think the "If You" is devastatingly beautiful because of what the lyrics in the song mean.

"Loser" by Big Bang off of the M album

"Bang Bang Bang" by Big Bang off of the A album

"Sober" by Big Bang off of the D album

"Let's Not Fall In Love" by Big Bang off of the E album

"If You" by Big Bang off of the 

Summer 2015 was a pretty big season for a lot of bands. Typically comebacks are at other times of the year and that not every single group does a comeback at the same time. However, that wasn't the case this year from what I noticed. My favorite songs this season with all of the comebacks and debuts are "Shake It" by Sistar, "Just Right" by GOT7, "Trespass" by Monsta X, as well as many others. Currently, I'm learning the dance to "Shake It", which has been relatively easy for me to learn.

"Shake It" by Sistar

"Just Right" by Got7

"Trespass" by Monsta X

The reason why the Wonder Girls comeback was so popular was because they also had a 3 year hiatus. There was a lot of publicity towards their newest album "Reboot" with five teaser videos and a sneak peek at the album songs. Before the hiatus, Wonder Girls had five band members and when they were announced to have a comeback they also announced there was going to be four band members. For the first four teaser videos, they would have just one girl play a certain instrument and each instrument would have a different girl playing it. The fifth teaser video was a little snippet of their newest music video "I Feel You" which came out August third.

Wonder Girls teaser 1 was Sunmi on bass

Wonder Girls teaser 2 was Yubin on drums

Wonder Girls teaser 3 was Hye Rim on guitar

Wonder Girls teaser 4 was Ye Eun on piano

"I Feel You" by Wonder Girls on their newest album Reboot

Like every year, I love to see what my favorite Korean bands come out with for songs and music videos. 2015 has proven to be a very good year for the Korean Pop industry, especially this summer.