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Southgate at Shrewsbury

Retirement community near Shrewsbury and Worcester, MA

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Is A Turkey Too Much? Try A Thanksgiving Cornish Hen

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Roasted Hen

Roasted Hen with stuffing and beans.

With Thanksgiving drawing near, many of us are preparing a scaled-down version of our annual feast. We can still enjoy the holiday with each other virtually, but the need for massive pans of food on the table to feed our families and friends may not be necessary in many cases.

While most dishes are very easy to scale down for a single household, there is one dish that can be difficult to orchestrate: the turkey. Turkeys do not come in single-family servings, but there are delightful birds ready to highlight your holiday table that are perfect for small groups.

Cornish hens make for beautiful miniature centerpieces for your Thanksgiving table and can be stuffed and cooked in a more manageable way due to their size. Not only do they take less time, but they come out every bit as delicious.

Preparing A Cornish Hen

Cornish Game Hen

A roasted cornish game hen fresh out of the oven and garnished with a sprig of rosemary.

Preparing a Cornish hen takes significantly less time and labor being that the average bird weighs between one and two pounds compared to a 15-pound turkey.

You can prepare your favorite stuffing the same way as you would for a turkey—just much less of it! Adjust your recipe according to the combined weight of your Cornish hen(s).

Heat your oven to 350º, place your hens on a greased roasting pan and cover them with foil. Bake them for 40 minutes.

Remove the foil, brush any herbed or plain melted butter over the hens, and bake for an additional 25-35 minutes. You will know when your hens are done when the juices run clear and the internal temperatures read 180º for the hens and 165º for the stuffing.

Delicious Roasted Cornish Game Hen with Stuffing served in a Shallow White Dish on a Wood Table

Delicious Roasted Cornish Game Hen with Stuffing

Even though your physical table may be a bit smaller than most years, your Thanksgiving meal can still be just as delicious as it always is. And even though your physical table may be smaller, don’t forget you can make your virtual table larger. If you need help getting started, check out our blog post about keeping in contact under quarantine.

From all of us at Southgate at Shrewsbury, we wish you a happy, safe, and delicious Thanksgiving!

How To Avoid Email Scams

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While the internet and the digital age have brought on a new wave of innovations and forms of communication, it has also opened the door for nefarious actors to commit fraud in new ways.

Being vigilant regarding email scams will ensure you are less likely to be the victim of a cybercrime and keep your personal data and conversations safe.

Check The Sender’s Email Address

The first line of defense is to ensure the sender’s email address is legitimate. Some scammers have gotten increasingly clever and have created email address that mimic those of corporate entities or even personal friends. For example:

From which sender would you NOT open an email?

marketing@southgateatshrewsbury.com
marketing@southgatatshrewsbury.com

yourgrandson@gmail.com
yourgrandson@gmial.com

Tricky, but in both cases, the first email address is the one you want to open. So how can you tell? Luckily, most email services have an easy, built-in method for you to fully preview email address. The following image is what happens when you simply hold your mouse cursor over the sender’s name in Gmail. You will see from the email address in the image that this email is a legitimate email from the Worcester Business Journal.

Check the Subject Line

Is anything misspelled? Are traditional grammar rules ignored? Are strange characters used? These are all signs to look out for when it comes to email scams. If you see anything in the subject line that stands out as odd, check the email address, just to be safe.

Preview Any Links

One final way to safeguard yourself from email scams is to check every link before you click on it. Just like with email naming conventions, scammers set up fraudulent websites to mimic legitimate ones while using links that closely resemble that of a legitimate company or entity. See the examples below:

https://www.greenchef.com
https://www.grenchef.com

Preview the links, closely. One is for the legitimate company Green Chef that came from an email. The other is a close copy that could lead to an identical-looking webpage.

Once again, the first choice is the correct link.

Like email addresses, most email services have a built in safeguard that allows you to preview links before clicking on it. Simply hold your mouse cursor over the link, and the web address will populate on the bottom left portion of the screen. The following visual is how this looks in Gmail.

If you take these three steps, you can safeguard yourself from email scams and safeguard your internet privacy. Arm yourself with the knowledge, and your internet world will remain secure for you to enjoy!

Maintaining Our Hearing As We Age

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Did you hear that? Maybe it was popcorn popping in the kitchen, or perhaps the pattering of your dog’s feet as he scampered across the floor. Was is the birds waking and chirping, outside your window?

Our environments are filled with unique sounds, and a simple sound can trigger an emotional response that takes you back through beautiful memories or to faraway places. Taking care of hearing as we age will help us ensure a higher quality of perception and life.

We have all heard that we need to wear earmuffs or ear plugs in loud places like concerts, and not to turn the volume up too loudly on our headphones. Those are good practices, but what else can we do to help preserve our hearing, as we get older? The following tips will help you do your best to maintain and even potentially strengthen your hearing.

Eat for Your Ears

Hearing contributes to the enjoyment of eating. That satisfying “crunch” sound created by something like a tortilla chip, or that “squirt” noise from an extra-juicy peach are examples of how sound enhances the eating experience—but that’s not what we mean by “eat for your ears!”

A recent 22-year study conducted by medical professionals associated with Brigham and Women’s Hospital found that simply following one of three healthy diets decreased likelihood of hearing loss by at least 30 percent; the Alternative Mediterranean Diet (AMED), Dietary Approaches to Hypertension (DASH), or the Alternative Healthy Eating Index-2010 (AHEI-2010).

On a more micro level, certain nutrients like folic acid have been linked to a decline in hearing loss associated with aging populations. Legumes, broccoli, asparagus and beets contain some of the highest contents of folic acid. This list of 15 foods from Healthline is a great place to start.

Zinc may not be a mineral you think of often, but it is very important for both a healthy immune system and the defense against hearing loss. This particular study found an improvement in tinnitus and sensorineural hearing loss in one-third of elderly adults. Those numbers are encouraging when you compare them to this study from Oregon State University that estimates as many as 40% of the elderly population may be zinc deficient. Adding more zinc to your diet is not a daunting task—try eating more dark chocolate, sweet potatoes, cashews, or a number of the other delicious foods on this list from WorldHealth.

Diets rich in vitamins A and C in conjunction with magnesium have been shown to halt the production of damaging free-radical molecules that attack the sensitive hairs in our inner hair we use to hear properly. Great sources of vitamin A include carrots, red peppers, beef liver, and even vanilla ice cream! Eat This, Not That put together a list of eight great food filled with Vitamin A.

For Vitamin C, we have all heard of citrus, but foods like bell peppers, guavas and strawberries have even more of this vital antioxidant! MyFoodData put together a list of the top ten foods highest in vitamin C. Here’s a hint: hit the produce aisle!

To increase your magnesium intake, look to pumpkin seeds, almonds, soymilk, and even shredded wheat cereal. Many of the foods you love may be higher on this list of foods with magnesium from the Cleveland Clinic.

Get Your Hearing Tested Regularly

As with all health matters, prevention is key. So be sure to talk to your doctor about your own personal hearing health and be sure to get regular checkups.

Protecting our ears is not something we tend to think about on a daily basis—even though we use them all the time! Even when we are sleeping, our ears are active. We use them beyond just our basic communication—we use them to perceive so much about the world around us and rely on them to activate certain mental and physical responses.

If you eat for your ears and follow the above best practices, you will greatly increase the likelihood your hearing remains strong as you age. Now sit back, close your eyes, and just listen …

FEAST ON YOUR FAMILY LEGACY—CREATING A RECIPE BOOK

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Food does not just feed our mouths and bellies; it feeds our souls. For many of us, food has been woven into our family legacies in the form of both culturally traditional and completely unique recipes. Depending on your heritage and the communication between generations, some of these recipes may be quite old!

Preserving and chronicling our family history has become much easier because of our rapidly increasing technological capabilities. This is especially true when it comes to putting together a family cookbook. You can still write the recipes on index cards and place them in a file box, but your smartphone and computer will allow you to much more easily and thoroughly put together this piece of family history for future generations to enjoy and add to in a more effective way.

While we are in the middle of a pandemic, we have more free time at home. Utilizing this time productively will allow us to enrich to continue to enrich our lives despite the challenges of the times. The following tools and methods will help you put together a beautiful family cookbook for everyone in your family to enjoy.

Writing Recipes by Hand & Adding Pictures

Many of us still enjoy writing recipes by hand on an index card or piece of paper. That does not mean you cannot use the technology of today to make them even better by adding beautiful, full-color photos.

Cameras have come a long way in our lifetime. You likely have a smartphone, and a very capable camera in the palm of your hand. When creating a cookbook for future generations, visual representations of the recipes will help ensure their accuracy endures.

When taking photos with your phone, be sure to take them while holding the phone horizontally. This will translate better when you print them out to couple with your index cards. After you have your photos, you can either email them to yourself through your phone or connect the phone to your computer using the USB charging cable. Once your phone is connected, you can open the files in your phone on your computer and move them to your computer.

When printing your photos to fasten to the back of your written recipe cards, you will be able to fit two per page and cut them appropriately. To easily print two photos at a time, hold the Ctrl button on your computer keyboard and click on two photos so they are both highlighted. Right-click on one of the photos, and select “Print” on the dropdown menu that pops up. On the right side, you will see options to print two per page for either 4” X 6” or 5” X 7” index cards. Select the one that you need, print, cut and paste!


Using Word to Create an Editable, Printable Document with Images

If you enjoy typing, you can easily create an ongoing, editable recipe book in Microsoft Word. Depending on the length of the recipe and directions, try to keep each recipe on its own page or on two pages by itself. Using a font size between 10 and 12 will help you keep things streamlined. Type your recipes, leaving about one-third of a page open at the bottom for an image.

After you have your photos (remember, if using your cell phone, hold the phone horizontally for a better image), move them or email them to yourself and place them in a separate folder on your desktop (right click on an empty space on your desktop, go down to “New”, select “Folder”).

Open your image folder while you have your document open. Click and drag each applicable photo (left click, hold and move the mouse) to the bottom of each applicable recipe.
***NOTE: you will likely need to delete some empty space between each photo and the following recipe.

Once saved, you can add to this document, anytime. You may also share it with family using a free cloud service like Google Drive so they can all see it and continue to add to it, over time. If you do not already have a Gmail, creating a Google account is free and easy. Visit either drive.google.com or gmail.com, and follow the prompts for a free and easy sign up.

Using Online Tools to Create a Cookbook

If you frequent the internet and would like to use a website to help walk through the design and creation of your cookbook, try Cookbook Create or Create My Cookbook. Both websites walk you through the process utilizing simple interfaces so you can start chronicling recipes for free. Once you chronicle and save a recipe to your profile, it is saved unless you delete it.

Once you are ready, you may order your recipe book in a variety of formats directly through either company. You can even access easy-to-use design implements to give your cookbook a visual theme.

You can also put together multiple projects if you prefer to present your recipe legacy in a series of thematic, professional-looking cookbooks.



However you choose to do it, putting together your family legacy through food is both intrinsically rewarding and a lasting impression you can leave on your family for generations to come. Due to COVID-19, we currently have more free time to spend at home—this does not have to be a negative thing! Utilize that time to put together a tasty piece of your family legacy that will last well beyond this pandemic.