Erica Desai – To Bake or To Cook?

Erica Desai enjoys baking and cooking. While both of these hobbies happen in the kitchen and yield something delicious, they are fundamentally different. Baking is a science, it requires you to follow a recipe exactly. Cooking is an art, you can get creative and change a recipe however you wish. Some people are excellent bakers, but struggle with cooking. Others love to cook, but their cakes always turn out dense and dry.

Baking a cake, or cookies, requires a specific amount of flour, baking soda, baking powder, oil, and eggs. If you miss an ingredient, or if you add the wrong amount, there is a good chance that your cake will not rise and your cookies will be as hard as rocks. If you have years and years of baking experience, then you can change a recipe to suit your taste. However, you can never change the amount of these five ingredients if you want your baked good to turn out properly. If you love having a set of specific instructions to follow, this is a great hobby for you to try out.

Cooking has no such requirements. When you are whipping up a main dish or an appetizer, you can get as creative as you want. In fact, most great cooks explore the edges of creativity on a regular basis. If you find a great recipe for a hearty stew, try adding a few new spices to it. Or if you want to make a fantastic sauce, play around with the ingredients to make it a little creamier. Cooking is for people who do not like follow a set of instructions and are always willing to try something different.

Erica Desai loves to cook and to bake. She loves the feeling of accomplishment she gets every time she watches someone enjoy something she made.

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Erica Desai – Shopping in Virginia

Erica Desai is young and single and lives on the east coast. This area of the United States is filled with great shopping centers and antique malls. No matter what your style is or what you are shopping for, you will always find something fantastic.

On the east coast, the states are all small and close together. It is incredibly easy to get from one place to another, which means there are endless opportunities for shopping. The east coast is also the home of the thirteen colonies, where the British first settled. Therefore, all of the antique malls in this area are filled with gorgeous colonial and Queen Anne style furniture. When you browse through the numerous antique malls, you will always find something historic and amazing.

If you are more interested in clothing, shoes, and jewelry, you can drive up to Washington, DC. It is a two hour drive from Richmond, and for a good chunk of that time, you will be driving along a beautiful and lush river. DC is a bustling city filled with museums, shopping, and restaurants. You can start your day by strolling through a few museums on the Smithsonian mall in the morning, or if you want a nice invigorating walk, you can head over to the national zoo. Then you can go find all of your favorite stores in the Fashion Center at Pentagon City. When you get hungry, grab lunch at one of the dozens of highly rated restaurants in the area.

Erica Desai loves shopping for great new outfits and takes advantage of the proximity of the great shopping centers on the east coast.

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Erica Desai – Relieving Stress with Art

Erica Desai works in the health care field in Richmond, Virginia. Her career involves heart care at one of the nation’s leading hospitals. Her day to day life is filled with stress. After a long day at the hospital, she likes to come home to work on her art. Painting and drawing are great ways to unwind and relieve the tensions of the day.

Erica Desai

Art is an expression of emotion. When you sit down to sketch something new, you are focusing on technique and using your feelings to dictate an image. This focus will drain away the stresses from work, school, and life in general. Sketching takes time, and practice, but once you have created something beautiful, you will have an amazing sense of accomplishment.

Painting is a fantastic way to relieve tension and stress. You can either paint methodically and carefully, or you can let your emotions run wild and create something active and abstract. If you have a defined image that you want to create, you can sit down with a sketch and painstakingly fill it in. You will have to focus on the shading and the color choices as well as the perspective of the painting. The focus and care you use will make you forget about anything that was troubling you.

If you are raging with emotion, grab a brush and a palette and just start slapping paint onto a canvas. You will create something wild and enticing, while working out any stress or anger that built up throughout the day.

Art has always been a way to express feelings. Some people enjoy looking at calming paintings in order to unwind. Other people enjoy creating as an emotional outlet. Erica Desai loves to paint and draw, it is a great way for her to relax.

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Erica Desai – How to Cook Heart Healthy Meals

Erica Desai loves spending time in her kitchen preparing delicious meals for her friends and family. She also works in the heart center of a top hospital, and knows how food can affect heart health as well as overall health. It is important to moderate foods that are unhealthy, such as saturated fats and sugars. It is okay to consume these foods every now and then, but the bulk of your meals should be heart healthy.

Saturated fats are fat molecules that are filled with hydrogen molecules, meaning they do not have any double bonds between carbon molecules. This affects the way your body breaks them down and causes a negative impact. This type of fat is mainly found in animal products, such as meat and dairy products. When you eat these foods, the saturated fats raise the level of bad cholesterol in your blood. If you have high cholesterol, then it is likely that your arteries are developing plaque, which can lead to a heart attack.

Sugars also have a negative impact on your heart. Sugar breaks down into glucose and fructose. Fructose is processed through the liver, and your liver will first store these molecules as glycogen for later use. However, once your liver has reached its capacity for glycogen, it will then turn the fructose into fat. This will cause fatty organs and obesity. Obesity is the number one cause for heart disease.

Erica Desai

A way to maintain long term heart health is to cook healthy meals. When you are working out your weekly meal plan, make sure to stick to lean meats. Lean meats do not have the same levels of saturated fats that beef, lamb, and pork have. You should also keep your butter and cheese use to a minimum.

A little bit of each is okay, but don’t smother every meal with cheddar. Rather than sauté your meats and vegetables in butter, choose a plant based oil. Olive oil is a great alternative because it is not a saturated fat and gives your food a great flavor.

If you are worried about your cholesterol, there are a few foods that you can add to your diet that can actually help lower your cholesterol. Consuming soluble fiber is one of the best weapons against cholesterol. Beans, especially pinto and garbanzo, are a great source of soluble fiber. Make some pinto beans as a side dish, or add some garbanzo beans to your soup for a heart healthy meal. Another choice is apples.

Either eat one as a snack, or bake some sliced apples sprinkled with a little bit of cinnamon as a healthy dessert. Nuts and seeds are a great source for heart-healthy polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. Throw a handful of nuts into a salad or a stir fry to keep your heart pumping strong.

Erica Desai loves cooking meals that are both delicious and heart healthy.

The Culture of India

India’s history and culture is intricate, and spans back to the beginning of human civilization. It started off with a mysterious culture along the Indus River and in farming communities in the southern lands of India. The history of India is marked by the constant integration of migrating people with the diverse cultures from surrounding areas. Evidence suggests that the use of copper, iron, and other metals was prevalent in the Indian sub-continent at an early period, which reveals progressive this part of the world was at the time. This region of India was a highly-developed civilization by the end of the fourth millennium BC.

The History of India begins with the birth of the Indus Valley Civilization, also known as Harappan Civilization. It was located in the western part of South Asia, and flourished around 2,500 BC. After the demise of the Harappan civilizations, many Empires formed and fell. Influences from many areas of the world were felt within its culture. Then in September 1920, Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress led the Non-Cooperation Movement, marking a new awakening in the Indian Independence Movement. Gandhi quickly realized after a series of events such as Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, that there was no prospect of getting fair treatment for his people by the British, so he withdrew the nation’s co-operation from the British Government. This act launched the Non-Cooperation Movement and thereby marring the administrative set up of the country. This movement was a great success as it gave great encouragement to millions of Indians.

Erica Desai is a professional health care worker who tries to give back to her community. She tries to get involved in various causes that help to improve people’s lives. Besides helping to bring awareness to cardiovascular disease, she volunteers at Vraj Camp in Pennsylvania. The camp is part of a committee whose goal is to broaden the knowledge of Indian heritage within the youth. She is proud of her culture and wants to make sure that the next generation carries on its legacy.

Skateboard Safety

Albert Cyprys has been skateboarding for years, and he enjoys the opportunity to ride throughout the five boroughs of New York City. New York has several excellent hot spots for skateboarders and those seeking unique parks and recreational areas. Skateboarding requires extreme coordination and experience but can be enjoyed by anyone. Wearing protective gear can save lives, make no mistake about it. In a city environment, riders see many unique dangers and sometimes, they don’t see them coming. Wearing a helmet, elbow pads, and kneepads can be very helpful in extreme situations, but even just wearing a helmet can help save your life in a serious accident.

If you plan to do any advanced skateboarding jumps or aerial tricks, it is important to have a good grasp of skateboarding basics. The adage of “practice makes perfect” truly applies to skateboarding. Skateboarding is a sport that requires strong instincts, unique strength, balance and agility and often fearlessness.

Skateboarding can be an easy and cost-effective way to get around town is also a fairly simple and fast method for commuting around car traffic. In a city, cars are often at a dead stop so finding quicker paths can be truly beneficial if you’re in a hurry. However, if you have deliveries or packages, you may want to consider a bike or a really big backpack. You may also want to consider the level of exercise required to ride a skateboard, it’s a great way to stay in shape while saving time, money and stress. Yup, riding a skateboard is great stress relief.

Duke University

Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina. The school was originally founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day town of Trinity in 1838, then moved to Durham in 1892. Tobacco and electric power industrialist James Buchanan Duke changed the name to Duke University, in order to honor his deceased father, Washington Duke, in 1924.

The university’s campus encompasses over 8,600 acres, located on three campuses in Durham as well as a marine lab in Beaufort. Duke’s main campus incorporates Gothic architecture with the 210-foot Duke Chapel in the center of the campus’ highest point of elevation. Duke is one of the wealthiest private university in America with $11.4 billion in cash and investments in 2014. Duke spent $993 million in research expenditures in the 2013, ranking eighth in the nation. The University is ranked among the top universities in the country. In 2014, Thomson Reuters named 32 Duke professors to its list of Highly Cited Researchers, making it fourth globally in terms of primary affiliations. Duke’s basketball team has won five NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Championships, the most recent in 2015

Erica Desai received both her degree in public health, and went to graduate school for her Master’s at the University of North Carolina. After graduating in 2014, she began working at Duke University Medical Center. She also stays busy outside of the workplace, enjoying a variety of hobbies such as singing and dancing, painting and cooking, running and playing volleyball and spending time with her family and friends. She also likes to travel whenever possible and stay active in her Indian culture.

Writing A Graduation Speech

There is lots of advice out there on how to give a big speech in front of an audience. What are the things that one must consider when writing a speech? The audience for one. So, how can you come up with a great speech that is guaranteed to get applause?

Keep it simple. Sometimes there is a temptation in a speech to cram everything you have to say into a short time. Instead of trying to fit too many points into a speech, try to make your remarks fit the time allotted. If you’ve got five minutes to speak, you shouldn’t have more than three main points.

Start planning in advance whether you have five days notice before your speech or an hour. If you’re trying to narrow down a speech, your planning might consist of coming up with three main points that are targeted at getting everyone’s attention. Another important part of preparing is to rehearse in front of other people at least a few times.

In all of history, I don’t think anyone has ever said, “I wish that speech had been longer.” So try not to run way over the time allotted or ramble. If you’ve run out of time and forgot to touch on a major point, try to sum it up briefly.

When Erica Desai graduated, she had to give a speech at graduation that would sum up their journey into adulthood. “Let us be the best that we can be so that we may fill our lives and the lives of those closest to us with happiness and with pride. We’ve already taken the first step by making it to this ceremony today—now, it’s time to take the next steps in the journey that is our lives and begin to build our futures.”

Erica Desai – Vraj Youth Committee

The Vraj Youth Committee’s main goal is to preserve and nurture the intellectual, spiritual and cultural development of Hindu youth by encouraging service to the community and broadening knowledge of Indian heritage. The group was first established in 2002, and then formally re-established in August of 2005. The first executive board was introduced, which lay way for the future of the Vraj Youth. The committee was able to get past its beginning obstacles and proved itself as a permanent and vital part of the Vraj family.

Vraj is dedicated to promote and protect the Indian culture and heritage within the local youth. They strive to bring awareness to causes and concerns within the community. They devote their time and volunteer efforts at Vraj events; by introducing the first newsletter written by and for Vraj Youth; and by managing and executing various gatherings and programs to unite and encourage Hindu youth in America. As the organization grows, they are constantly looking for ways to be more active and find interested youth to help them accomplish their goals.

Erica Desai is a professional who works in the health care sector. She always had a desire to help others and gets great satisfaction out of making a difference in someone’s life. She is also very active within her community and volunteers for organizations that educate the young adults in the area. She often volunteers at Vraj Camp in Pennsylvania, which helps to broaden the knowledge of Indian heritage to the youth.

VRAJ Youth Retreat-Summer 2015

The VRAJ is once again offering a summer youth camp for separate camp weeks. Please pay attention to details on Camp groups, as there are two separate age specific camps offered on different dates.

Children Age 13 – 16 Years of Age may attend Camp One (Saturday July 18 – Saturday July 25, 2015) Or Camp Two (Saturday July 25 – Saturday August 1, 2015)

Children Age 9 – 12 Years of Age may attend Camp Three (Saturday August 1 – Saturday August 8, 2015). They may also attend Camp Four (Saturday August 8 – Saturday August 15, 2015) or Camp Five (Saturday August 15 – Saturday August 22, 2015)

Photos for 2013 and 2014 camps are posted online at the following link to give campers and parents an idea of the fun they can expect for the 2015 camp year!

http://www.vrajyouth.org/index.php/photos/

All information regarding registration for Youth and Volunteers can be found in the link below:

http://www.vrajyouth.org/index.php/campers-2/

*Reminder* All clothing should be packed for at least seven days. Some extra clothing items should be included. Please refer to the “suggested list of items to bring” for a comprehensive list of what children should pack.

Huge thank you to all volunteers for making the VRAJ Youth Retreat possible every year!

Former Youth volunteer, Erica Desai, remembers her time as a summer retreat volunteer fondly. Some of her responsibilities included: Supervising the daily activities for campers and aiding the adult volunteers in maintaining order with daily operations. She also attended semi-annual youth retreats to discuss informative topics with peers.

The experience for Volunteers often has as much of an impact on them as the children, and each volunteer is greatly appreciated!