Watermelon Rind Pickles
When melons are in season, the rinds usually end up in the compost pile, which is a shame because the rind is the healthiest part of the melon. So before you toss it out, try this old-fashioned Southern treat: Watermelon rind pickles.
Watermelon rind is a great source of Vitamin C, Vitamin B6, Vitamin A, magnesium, and potassium. You can get even more vitamins and minerals in your watermelon by simply selecting the yellow flesh variety. The more yellow, the more nutritious it is.
Watermelon has higher concentrations of lycopene—an antioxidant that protects against cancer and cardiovascular disease—than any other fresh fruit or vegetable, and it also boosts the immune system.
For pregnant women, the benefits of watermelon rind go beyond just vitamins and minerals. The rind has also been proven to reduce heart burn or acid reflux, reduce swelling, and its natural sugars can even alleviate morning sickness and dehydration. In the third trimester, consuming watermelon rind can also reduce muscle cramps, as the amino acids citrulline and arginine contained in the fruit will help relax your blood vessels. So if you are pregnant, make sure you eat some watermelon rind from time to time.
Continue reading Watermelon Rind Pickles at Small Footprint Family.
The Time is NOW: 6 Things We Must Do About Climate Change
Barring the invention of some incredible new technology, the window for avoiding a deadly change to our climate appears to have closed. That’s the startling conclusion of a recent study in Nature, which found that the greenhouse gas reduction goals of the landmark Paris Climate Agreement are woefully inadequate for keeping our climate within safe and stable limits.
The Paris Agreement (a historic piece of climate change policy adopted by 195 countries) pledged to limit human-caused global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. (We are currently 1 degree Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels now.) We’re supposed to accomplish this goal by aggressively cutting back on fossil fuels and switching entirely to renewable sources of energy.
But according to new evidence, even before the Paris Agreement can take effect, we are already locked into 1.5 degrees of temperature increase simply from the carbon and methane pollution we have already released.
And that’s bad… really bad. That half degree is literally a world of difference. And not a world we really want to live in.
And if things weren’t already headed in the wrong direction, the study finds that the meager targets in the Paris Agreement would actually push us up to a 3 degree increase by the end of the century.
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