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I’m trying to drink more water. It would be a New Year’s Resolution, but it is way past the New Year and moving towards mid summer. After the forced pumping of the MRI experience, I started thinking about how much I ask of my body and how rarely I offer it what it really needs. For example, even though I know that our bodies are comprised of mostly water, I never set out to make sure that I get enough. I know that headaches, bad skin, chapped lips, constipation, on and on and on, are all caused by dehydration, but still I don’t make the time to get enough water. It has been suggested that weight problems can be linked to insufficient water too. As a nursing mother, I need even more water than a normal person, and yet I still don’t give myself enough water. On the other hand, I have no problem getting my coffee every morning.
So I am trying to drink AT LEAST one of these bottles of water a day. I fill up the bottle in the morning and carry it around until I finish it.
Here’s to water! Cheers!

5 Comments | In: food | | #

Okay, prepare yourself for awesomeness!

Ready?

Okay!

I bought a jar of “innoculated” mushroom dowels this weekend.  Yes!  I did that!  I actually paid $10 for a moldy jar full of dowels coated with mushroom stuff.  Before you make any Jack and the Beanstalk jokes, check this out:

Here are my moldy dowels.

I drilled holes in this rotten stump in the front yard and hammered the dowels in.

In the fall, this will be covered with mushrooms that we can cut and eat!

And to think that I got a quote to have this stump removed!  The mushrooms I am growing are called “Chicken of the Woods” and they are suppose to be meaty and wonderful.  I gave the other 25 dowels to my dad to put in out in Sheridan where the stumps are plentiful.  I have wanted to grow mushrooms for so long, and now I have my own precious stump of possibility.  Is this not awesome?

5 Comments | In: Awesome!, food, Projects That I Do With My Clever Little Fingers, urban farming | | #

It feels goofy that I would even have any opinions about house keeping.  I never thought it would be me.  It occurred to me that it is true that when you do something OVER AND OVER again, no matter how small, how meaningless it might seem, you develop a certain pride in how you do the work, (and maybe even a self-importance that keeps you from admitting that what you do is not that great).  You develop very clear ideas about how things should be.  This is actually why people become obnoxious out in the world, why the fussy lady at the library wants you to only use black push-pins to hang your garage sale notice, why the neighborhood association says the garbage can goes on the left side of the driveway, why the clerk at the grocery store sighs when you pull out your recycled plastic bags.  They are drowning in meaninglessness about their work, scraping out a sense of being in knowing that there is ONE SMALL THING that they do more efficiently and better than others.  And they nitpick over stupid details.  Sigh.  This is why I am so irritated when someone puts short cups on the side of the dish washer where only the tall cups fit!  Or why I wish that the person moving the laundry over would always hang up the cloth napkins (because they get wrinkly in the drier).  And has anyone noticed that only BLUE towels go upstairs?  The green and white ones go in the DOWNSTAIRS bathroom.  What would happen if you could put any towel of any color just anywhere?  Anarchy.  What is wrong with these towels-in-the-wrong-bathroom people?  They obviously don’t understand the importance of properly loading the dishwasher or non-wrinkled napkins either.  How could I live with such slobs?

Anyway, this is not suppose to be about MY household.  This year I read most of the “Little House on the Prairie” series out loud with Francis.  We stopped at the final book as Laura was grown up and had become boring like the rest of us.  Francis didn’t care about Laura’s Happy Golden Years.  As I read, I noticed that there was a lot to learn from the Ingalls family on the plains.  They did a lot of things very, very effectively.  Here are some tips I learned from Laura and the gang:

1)  Pick a day for each house keeping activity.  The Ingalls family did the washing on Monday, sweeping on Tuesday, baking on Wednesday, walked to town (if there was one) on Thursday, mending on Friday and kept the weekends for leisure.  I never thought I would prescribe to this sort of order, but it sure does make sense.  One thing I really hate is watching how laundry can just go and go and go.  It is truly alpha and omega, never-ending, never really done.  It makes me crazy.  I have watched laundry in someone’s house get washed, go in a pile to be folded, fall on the floor, and be thrown back in the laundry.  And that is the problem with kids too.  If you give them a pile of laundry to put away, chances are, they will figure out a way to throw it back in the laundry mixed in with the dirty stuff on their floors.  So this is what I do.  I wash on Monday and fold on Tuesday.  By the end of Tuesday night, the laundry must be folded and put away.  I fold, put it in baskets for the various bedrooms and carry the baskets up to the rooms to put away, or I supervise the stuff being put away.  Then I don’t do laundry again until the following Monday.  This way I don’t have to feel like laundry is taking over my life.  

2)  I only grocery shop on Thursdays in the morning.  Thursday morning at 9:30am is a great time to go shopping.  Only the bread delivery people are in the stores.  You can get in and out really fast.

3)  Don’t hitch up the wagon multiple times a day.  Walk to town as much as you can.  I try not to drive more than once a day.  I aim for keeping the car parked most days.  If I can do most errands walking, I will simplify my day into the things that I really need to do and I will get the exercise that I need.  I have lost more baby weight walking across town for errands than I ever lost running miles and miles.

4)  Eat lots of beans.  Beans are a great food!  You can buy them dry in the bulk food section super cheap.  They keep fresh forever.  You can make them really quickly if you pre-soak them, then put the ones you aren’t immediately cooking in the freezer in a bag.  Then they are available when you need to cook something fast.

5)  Use every part of your meat.  Soaking bones to make broth is not ridiculous.  It actually works really well and it is a great technique to combine with all those beans you need to cook.  You just cook the beans in the broth.

6)  Simple food is okay.  Not every meal has to be a knock-out.  Laura as a child was pretty stoked to get fresh carrots or an orange at Christmas.  It is okay to have a potato and some brussel sprouts for dinner.  It is also reasonable to eat foods that are in season.  This means that you don’t have to eat salads all winter while lettuce is not growing near you.  You are going to live.  It is a very western idea that we need all this variation in our diet every single day.  Most of the world eats the same damn thing all the time.

7)  Eat pure, real foods without worrying about fat.  If you are just eating pure, real foods, you probably won’t need to worry about how much fat is in that bit  of butter or avocado or olive oil because your overall eating is so much healthier.  Butter is about the best invention ever.  I have no need for fake butter or egg whites or non-fat milk.  God gave us these awesome foods.  Let’s eat them without looking like ingrates.

 If you go on a trip somewhere, bring back a present.  It doesn’t have to be a big present, but you should bring something.  Once Pa brought peppermint sticks for the girls and some fancy white sugar for Ma!  These are simple things but so excellent for the ones left behind to know that they were thought of.  (Please don’t bring me white sugar, Brad).  

9)  Accept invitations.  If someone bothers to ask you to something, make every effort to accept.  People are not required to include you and if you are constantly making excuses for not sharing your company with others, they might just tire of asking you.  Why are you so great that everyone should work with your schedule?  You’ll be great and lonely, sucker!  Your special, busy, important life will change and then you will wonder why you don’t have any friends.  The prairie is large.  There might be a hard winter next year.  People need to stick together.  Make some effort.

10)  Don’t look down on the neighbor boy.  (Wink wink Brad!)  You might think you are too good for him one day, but the next day he might be a strapping young thing with two beautifully matched horses.  If you really want to go for a ride in his buggy,  give him a little respect.

15 Comments | In: Current musings, family, food, General bitchin' | | #

In honor of, well, me, here I am at 6.  What do I remember about being 6?  Well, I think life was pretty good.  I was in kindergarten and I loved my teacher.  That year, our school burned down and we went on a strange “double shift” program where half the kids in the school went to class super early and half went super late.  I think we were the super early kids.  My mom’s journal (from when she was 36!) seems to say that we were often very tired.

We had chickens who moved into “the shed” which had been our temporary home while we were building the house.  That shed was about 15 by 10ft and slept our whole family of 5 for about 6-8 months.  That was one of the most fun summers of my life!  Our real house wasn’t done of course, but if you know my family now, you know that this is nothing new.

When I was 6, I had a dog named Thorn.  Most of our dogs were named after characters from “Lord of the Rings” series, although I didn’t actually read those until the third grade, at which time I did not understand them.  Our most beloved dog was Bilbo.  Frodo was a short time for this world, as I remember.

When I was 6, my eyes were finally checked and my parents discovered that I needed glasses.  The mystery of the crossed eyes was solved!  I have a lazy eye that just gives out when it is tired.  To this day, I put on glasses whenever I want the world to sharpen up or give me a break.  Luckily, I am far-sighted, so with the natural process of aging making most people more near-sighted, I am steadily moving towards having BETTER eyesight.

When I was six, I loved a boy named Ryan Burr, sang to chickens, thought my doll Tina was really alive, and got in trouble regularly for the art projects I would make out of my parents’ materials.  Usually I chose something expensive like a chunk of exotic wood or a piece from the CENTER of a kimono.

Now I am 36 and the world is pretty good to me.  This morning my husband dragged himself out of bed at 6am to make me cinnamon rolls.  They are truly the best in the world.  Then he let me sleep in until 8:40, which is truly amazing.  I have a 2 month old, a 2 and 1/2 year old, and a 5 year old (almost 6!).  They are fantastic, creative, sweet kids, and I am only lucky to have them.  Gratitude abounds.

Now I am off to the market to get some lamb and stuff for Greek food.  I love anything that has “feta” as a primary ingredient.  It is going to be delicious.

Happy Birthday to me.  I hope my birthday is good to you.

7 Comments | In: Current musings, family, food | | #

Late breaking news!  I am getting another chicken.  She’s a golden laced Wyandotte (not a silver like I wanted, but hey, it is Mid-December and there isn’t a lot of choice out there).  This is just a stock photo, but I will post some of the actual girl when I get them.

Anne’s boyfriend pointed out that chickens are “a real deal” in terms of price, and even looked like he was ready to spring for a whole flock before he carefully considered if he even wanted chickens in the first place.  A deal?  I’m not sure, but I am willing to shell out $20 for this beauty.  She is on the spendy side, but she is 8 months old and laying, so she will fit in a lot better with our current flock.  And currently we just have one chicken laying as it is so dang dark out.  I had to buy eggs the other day and was shocked at how expensive they are and how TASTELESS.  Nothing compares to what our hens (usually) give us.  I can’t wait to be “in the eggs” again.

I am also taking name suggestions, so leave me a post please!

5 Comments | In: Chickens Are Super Fabulous, food | | #

Francis has “Mis Noticias” (“My News”) at her Spanish immersion school, so almost every day she comes up with some piece of news that is charmingly 5 year old.  I think yesterday her news was a picture of her in her flower girl dress for Clementine’s upcoming wedding.

My news for today is sort of silly and has to do with a lunch box.  My friend Nancy from Eugene makes these lunchboxes:

Lunchsense Lunchbox

They are very cleverly and durably designed.  Even though I sort of balked at spending the initial dough on one for Francis, after she went through TWO other lunch boxes, the dollar amount for this one that would actually last seemed a lot more reasonable.  You can completely unsnap the thing and send it through the wash, which means that there is no stinky spoiled milk smell that can collect in there.  I bought one for Brad last year, as a nice black lunchbox looks a lot more professional than the ratty bag that he was carrying.  A year later, with daily use, it looks just as good as when I bought it.  (In case you are interested:  http://www.lunchsense.com/).

Anyway, Francis has a packed lunch every day of school.  About two or three weeks ago, she just stopped eating her lunch, or rather, stopped eating any reasonable amount of her lunch.  She started to subsist on 3 grapes and a drink of water, or one bite of sandwich and two crackers.  I was really confused.  I remember hearing about those weirdo people who thought they could live by extracting nourishment from the air, Breathairians, and worrying about Francis’ future as one of them, a SHORT future.  I don’t want to be a crazy mother pushing food, and I in general, try to avoid that sort of power struggle as it just seems weird to push something as natural as eating.  I had heard from a pediatrician that no kid would actually starve his or herself, so in general, I’ve tried to let her own body dictate her needs, but this struck me as more of a mystery than anything.

At her parent-teacher conference, I asked her teacher about snack times at school as I suspected that Francis was either filling up on crackers at snack or holding out for something “better” from her peers.  That wasn’t really the case, but he suggested that I try to “pack things she liked”.  Huh.  Like cupcakes?  Ice cream?  Anyway, I sort of dismissed that suggestion in my mind as nutrition is so important to me that it seems way beyond the kids LIKING it.  Who cares what they like?!  I’m talking about things that are GOOD FOR YOU (so, yes, I am controlling in other ways…).  Anyway, after her lunch came back two days ago with one bite out of a sandwich, and she informed me that she threw away her hard boiled egg as it was “too cracked”, I told her that I was sick of doing all the work of packing a lunch for nothing and that she would pack her own lunch from now on.  SO there!

Yesterday she forgot to pack her lunch, which I think was a good lesson for her to see how time-consuming it is, (I did send her something at the last minute).  This morning, however, Francis packed her own lunch!  I was worried that each lunch from now on would be lemon curd or jam on bread, but this is what was in it:

one small container of green peas

one container of carrots

a thermos of water

She was so pleased with herself, and I laughed at the HUGE irony of what I might pack versus what she might pack.  Who was the bigger vegetable pusher?  I did insist on her adding a chunk of bread to her meager fare.  She turned down the offer of some cheese too, but whatever… she’ll live.

In other news, I have a lot of music happening this week and month!  I played yesterday at the kids’ Atrium class, where I was horrified by Zephyr’s behavior.  The music went well, but I almost wish that I had remained blissfully ignorant of how he acts there.  I will be doing music for the St Nicholas celebration this weekend at church.  It should be sort of fun.  Some awesome old guy is dressing up as St Nick and leading the kids in a lantern procession around the church.  It’ll be fun for the hipsters on Alberta Street to gawk at the crazy Catholics.

My gospel choir director last night taught our choir a song for me to lead, a prospect that fills me with joy and DREAD!  I don’t understand my deep yearning to sing and perform and my huge fear to, well, basically do the same.  I am so afraid and so thrilled and from moment to moment, don’t know which one is more powerful.  I am going to be solo-ing (or in gospel speak, “leading”) on a groovy version of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”, and I can hear the possibilities for diva-esque stylings.  Just the thought of it sends chills of terror down my spine.  We perform December 28th, so I have a couple weeks to get over it and learn to believe in myself.  Think, “I am awesome!  I am awesome!”.  Gospel style singing has no real room for any lack of self-esteem, I suppose because you are testifying for Jesus.  If you sound good and go all out, you aren’t seen as showing off, but rather, making a joyful noise and really communicating the words for a higher purpose.  It isn’t the space for a shrinking violet, and I know that I won’t perform well if I can’t get over my fear and insecurity.  I sort of have to grab the mic, take a breath, and try to blow them away.  There is just no other option.  God help me!

4 Comments | In: food, My super freakin' cute kids, Philosophical musings | | #

Man, I hated squash as a kid!  I don’t think my mom reads this very regularly, and I certainly don’t want to hurt her feelings as she is a woman with immense and numerous talents… but cooking squash was not one of them.  Squash as a kid, was prepared one of two terrible ways— one was to cut it in half and bake with brown sugar.  Yuck.  The other was to bake, then scrape out the innards and eat them as a mushy mess.  Not much better, but you could pretend to be toothless.

While in Eugene, Brad and I decided to venture into the world of Community Supported Agriculture, or CSAs.  We bought a summer “share” two years in a row and really loved the weekly box of vegetables.  Come winter, we thought, “Hey, we can do a CSA now too and we’ll get all different stuff!”.  It was different alright.  There were different kolrabi, gobo roots, beets, and squash every week!  Then things got really exciting and we got some parsnips.

Squash is really a great plant though.  Our Native people cultivated it as one of the three useful plants for staying alive through the winter.  Along with beans and corn, squash could be dried, ground or just stored up for when there wasn’t much else to eat.  Squash is very nutrient rich.  It has tons of vitamin A, C, and potassium, and the folate found in that miracle vegetable has been found to reduce birth defects and assist in keeping that all important prostate in good order.  

My whole family, (including both kids and an African who seems to shun vegetables unless they are in ketchup form) loves squash.  We found out early on that there was no need to buy baby food when our kids started eating solids.  We could make squash and feed everyone!  Squash freezes into ice cube trays for thawing out later!

Brad and I learned quickly what you need to do to make squash totally delicious.  Unfortunately, it involves a lot of SAUSAGE, which may negate the health benefits.  Here is what you do to rock the squash:

Best squash to use are butternut, delicata, or even those pretty little pumpkin ones.  This also works in the summer with zucchini, but I don’t like it as much as the zucchini is more likely to get a bit slimy inside.

Cut squash in half.  Scrape out seeds.

Place halves in a baking dish with 1/2″ water in the bottom.  Bake at 375 for about 30 minutes or until the squash is softened.

Meanwhile, raid your fridge for random things to stuff that beauty with.  Start by saute-ing chopped onions and garlic in olive oil.  Throw in a bit of soy sauce, maybe some celery, chunks of mushrooms, bits of kale or any other greens that you might find down there.  Huck in some amazing sausage… like the breakfast kind or the stuff you can buy from the real, live meat counter.  When all of this is an amazing, bubbling mess, add torn up bread chunks or crumbled crackers.  Stir it all up and throw in a bit of shredded cheese (just enough to help all this stick together).  I’ve also added raisins and nuts at various times.

Pour off the water that you cooked the squash halves in, and flip them over so that they look like little boats.  Pack each half of squash with the stuffing mixture, pressing down to fill the fruit and then mounding firmly the additional stuffing.  Cook it all another 15-20 minutes or until it smells awesome.  It might not look pretty, but it will be delicious… and your prostate, if you have one, will be healthy.  And you know what that means!  Sexy squash!

2 Comments | In: food | | #