It feels like a photo day

So let's catch up on May!

Charlotte discovered the tunnel. It was a little scary, but she made it!

And I'm sorry, but could she be any cuter? I just couldn't help myself.

My Momma, on mother's day <3

More Mother's Day fun, w/ Matt's Mom and Grandma "GG." Poor Charlotte was so "done" at this point, it was a long day!

Rowen playing with his little bud JJ

Charlotte enjoying homemade saurkraut on her hotdog. Mmm.... i have the weirdest kids :)

kombucha!

aww..... Charlotte lovin' on Daddy. (and a spatula.) Matt's face is one of utter enjoyment and disbelief- Charlotte is VERY stingy with her lovin's! (I'm pretty much the only one that gets them, ever.)

Would you believe we actually had a day nice enough to go to the Zoo? Rowen holding hands with his little buddy Adler.

Charlotte found the tupperware cupboard. She dumped out the bucket of lids. (organized, aren't I?)

Examined each one...

and then put them back. Sweet girl!

This morning we went to a (don't be shocked) McDonald's play place with our good friends the Carters. I know, I know, yuck, right? But the Mommas enjoyed a cup of coffee and the kids REALLY enjoyed climbing their hearts out. I do believe we'll be making a regular play date out of it!

You can make that? Buttermilk!

Oh, I know where she's going with this one, you say. I've known that little trick forever! Just add some lemon juice or vinegar to milk and let it curdle for a few minutes and..... oh, wait my dear friend. This is so much better. And just as easy. If you like to cook with buttermilk (or drink it, you crazy person. I know you're out there.) Or if you have some buttermilk that's going to expire and you're not ready to whip up 50 fluffy pancakes, you have got to try this. And then thank me later for the money your saving and for it's pure deliciousness.

Okay, are you ready? This is so great it just tickles me to share it. You need milk (not ultra-pasteurized, it wont work) some store-bought buttermilk (it's the last time you'll ever buy it, I swear.) and a jar w/ a lid.

Measure 2 Tbsp buttermilk into your jar...

add the milk with your left hand while taking a picture w/ your right... no no, don't do that. Unless you have lots of towels near by. Just pour in two cups of milk. Okay?

screw the lid on and shake it like ya mean it. (for a minute! Make sure you do a little dance while you're at it. Endorphins, I tell ya!)

Set it somewhere that you wont touch it for a day. The timing is not exact and depends on the temperature of your kitchen, but technically it's "24 hours." But really, who's counting? Just don't leave it there a week, okay?

And while you're here, feel very blessed that this is not what YOUR fridge looks like. And let your imagination run wild with just how bad the SIDE of the fridge is. heh. Oh yes, the organizational queen of old is dead. six. feet. under.

Finally, take it down and give it a good stir so you can admire it's beauty. Try and contain your urge to eat a spoonful. (okay c'mon, I dare ya! I've always thought buttermilk to be disgusting until I whipped up my own batch. Ooooh mama.)

refrigerate and make biscuits at will! Or whatever your favorite buttermilk recipe is.

If you think it's been in your fridge a touch too long and you haven't used it yet, scoop out another two tablespoons, add it to two cups of milk..... you get the picture :) And feel free to double or half the recipe, the ratios matter, not the quantity. Enjoy!

A few Photos of the kids

...'cause that's what everyone REALLY wants, right? Enough about enzymes and rancid oils already. ;)

a little easter egg huntin' w/ Pop-pop. i love this last one. They both have such cute looks on their faces!

The gals are finally outside... But this was a few days before. Trying to cram onto the edge of the brooder box to roost. I can't believe how big they are! Look at this photo of when we first got them:

seriously.

Rowen entertaining Sissy w/ donkey kicks all around her.

just before our bike ride. Rowen is SO cool. Charley is sucking on an apple slice. She knawed at it for about two hours- the duration of our sunny day adventure. Hehe. (more impressive than that, she kept her hat and sunglasses on the whole time. yeah!)

I told them to have goofy faces.

Okay i didn't. I just only snapped one picture and that's what I got. :)

Making the most out of our one sunny day: picnic dinner (broccoli raab w/ cheese, nitrite/nitrate free hotdogs, probiotic ketchup and raw milk. Oh yeah, we eat guuud when Daddy's gone.) It was Sissy's first hot dog. She would have eaten the whole thing if I hadn't given the last two bites to Rowen. Oink!

You can make that? Mayo!

Stop feeling guilty about spreading the white stuff on your sandwich- try this and know that you're doing something GOOD for your heath with every bite! It's ridiculously easy. I'm serious. It took me WAY longer to write/post this blog entry than to make the mayo. *snort*

I'm still perfecting my recipe, but that's the beauty of it. Change is a good thing!

Step one: gather your supplies, and make sure they're room temperature. You'll need:

1 egg + 1 yolk from pastured hens. (Yes folks, they're going to be raw. You want the good stuff.)
1 tsp raw sugar or other sweetener if you like (you can totally do without)
1 tsp raw, unpasteurized apple cider vinegar
3/4 C olive oil (cold press)
1/4 C coconut oil
1 tsp whey (liquid drained off yogurt or kefir)
sea salt & paprika

If it's less than 76 degrees in your kitchen, your coconut oil will be solid. I like to fix this little "problem" by putting the (full) measuring cup in a tray of hot water. Liquefies right quick!

whirl the eggs, sugar, vinegar, and whey in a food processor until it's nice and frothy. Slowly pour in the oils while it's running, like so:

I made my first batch with vegetable oil because I still had it. It was.... eh.... not the best. Second batch was half coconut oil, half olive oil. It was yummy, but a tad too coconuty. This batch at 1/4 coconut 3/4 olive is pretty tasty! Essentially, you could use whatever combination of oils you wanted to as long as you have one cup. If you're just getting into more "natural" cooking and going w/ coconut & olive is making your eyes bug out 'cause they're so expensive ( i know... i know...) you could start w/ half veg oil & half natural oils. That would cut the cost, and at least you're going better than store bought. Baby steps, people. I'm thinking my next batch might be 1/4 bacon grease... wouldn't THAT be tasty??? Baconaisse... ooh, the sky's the limit when you make it yourself!

Sorry. I'll stop day dreaming and get back to the process.

Next step: admire it's thick, lusciousness, and season appropriately.

Here's the part that is really going to eek you out. Forgive me.

Put it in a small jar, close the lid, and leave it on your counter for about 12 hours. Raw eggs and all. (then refrigerate and enjoy.) You see, that's why you put in the whey. All the happy organisms in the whey go to work on the mayo, fermenting it and INCREASING the nutritional value- and the shelf life! Normally homemade mayo will last about 3-5 days in your fridge. And who wants to clean the food processor every time you want a turkey sandwich? This lovely stuff will last several months, if you don't eat it first. :) It took me a while to get up the nerve to try fermented mayo because I thought it would taste... well.... fermented. (and the whole raw eggs fermenting on the counter for half a day thing...) But honest to goodness this is the yummiest spread. AND it's actually good for you! Healthy, natural oils (instead of rancid oil, which is what all the stuff in the store is made of. If you're not aware, vegetable oils (soybean, cottenseed, corn, etc.) are processed at such a high heat that they turn rancid. Like when you have the heat too high in your pan and the butter starts burning and smoking? yeah. yuck. Then to mask the unsightly odor and color, they bleach & deodorize it. But I digress....)

where was I? Oh yes... pastured eggs, and oh-so-many enzymes to aid digestion and overall well being. :) Eat up!

Cost analysis:

2 eggs @ $4/doz = $0.67

1t raw sugar @ 5#/$6.65 =$.02

1t raw apple cider vinegar @ 32oz/$2.75 =$.01

3/4C olive oil @$6/ltr = $1.06

1/4 C coconut oil @ 1gal/$39=$.61

whey = free

spices = too little to count

Total: $2.37 for about 12oz of delicious, healthy, organic, probiotic mayonnaise. Let me know if you try it, what you use, and how you like it!

Rowen Strider May 4th

notice his feet are up! Love the strider bike. what a gorgeous day!

Do you worry about feeding your kids meals that other people have provided?

This week I started reading "Real Food: What to Eat and Why" by Nina Planck. A couple things were so encouraging to me early in the book that I just had to share them :)

The first one especially- as I learn more about real food, and at the same time, the disasters of industrial food, I worry about my kid's diet. ("worry" is not the right word, we are SO in the Lord's hands!) I can feed them nourishing foods at home, but what about when we go to other people's houses for dinner? What about eating out? I am just as concerned about my heart as my kid's diet. I want to have (and to foster in them!) a heart of graciousness, thankfulness, and hospitality. To shun others because their food choices are not the same as ours is sin. Plain and simple. So this first excerpt gives me peace because these kids were having only SIX nourishing meals per WEEK, and saw vast improvements. Read on:

"...in one experiment, Price fed malnourished kids one meal daily, six days a week, while they ate as usual at home. The therapeutic meals included liver, fish chowder, or a meat stew made of broth and carrtots; a buttered whole wheat roll made with freshly ground flour; tomato juice with cod-liver oil; and two glasses of whole milk. The meat, dairy, and eggs came from animals raised on grass, which Price had found containted more vitamin A than animals raised on grain. It was the American version of the traditional diets: rich in protein, vitamins A, B, and D, omega-3 fats, and minerals. The children's health- and their performance in school- improved sharply. "A properly balanced diet," Price wrote, "is good for the entire body."" p28 "Real Food" Nina Planck

With a husband with borderline high cholesterol, this one also interested me greatly!

"The study of blood cholesterol and its various subcategories is getting more spphistiated by the hour, but the conventional wisdom holds that it's better for high-density lipoprotein (HDL) to be high and low-density liboprotein (LDL) to be low. Casually known a the "good" and "bad" cholesterol hypothesis, this idea emerged with it became clear that the number they call "total cholestrol" was a poor-very poor- predictor of heart disease. Today, most experts believe that low HDL and high LDL are "risk factors" for heart disease, which means the two conditions are statistically correlated.

"But I'm not so sure. There are two important caveats to the rule that high LDL, in particular, is dangerous. The first is a lesson from Statistics 101: correlation does not necessarily imply cause. In other words, high LDL does not necessarily cause heart disease. Instead, it could be a symptom (or marker, as experts say) of heart trouble. The second caveat is equally serious: many studies show that high LDL and heart disease are not linked. In 2005, the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons reported that as many as half of the people who have heart disease have normal or "desirable" LDL. Also in 2005, researchers found that older men and women with high LDL live longer. When the rule- high LDL is dangerous- doesn't apply in the elderly or in half of the heart disease cases, the honest scientist can only conclude one thing: the rule eeds a second look. Some cholesterol experts believe the rule needs more than just tweaking. "There is nothing bad about LDL." says Joel Kauffman, Professor of Chemisty Emeritus at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia. "There never was.""

it's quiet around here...

So I've gotta say, I'm loving the "homeschooling" with Rowen. I wish I were posting all the fun activities we were doing, especially the cute Easter stuff, but to be honest, I can't do both! :) (And I keep forgetting to take pictures.... heh heh) I'm not sure how the blogging mommas stay so on top of it. And the kiddos are the priority :) So I'll write that post about how easy mayo is eventually- but for now, I'm off to scoop up my yummy baby who's chatting away in her crib!

A few photos- for you photo junkies out there. You know who you are!

The water is super hot. Gloves on the feet so he can put his feet in the sink! ha. He'd really like gloves his size but I can't find 'em.

sissy's first plate. aw, big girl.

I'm not sure why, but I was super impressed by this little structure. The matching and the even...ness.... is that a word?

found this in his room the other day. His pillow is on the bottom, and all the animals are piled on top, head up, in quite the mountain. Topped with a blankie of course. Night night, animals!

a sweet girl & naughty chickens

resolutions.

Last year I did a new resolution every month. It was fun, motivating, and effective at changing little things. The accountability didn't hurt. I'm not sure why I didn't just keep it going this year, but I didn't. And I'm kinda missin' it. So why not start in April?

Really, my "new years resolution" this year was to journal more. Journal my quiet times and take notes at church, etc. I haven't been doing that hot. But we can call that "january" and keep working on it!

February I decided to read more. (I don't actually know if it was february exactly, but I've been trying to read more.) and for heavens sake, not JUST about food. I read a lot about food :) I've read:

Correcting Your Child in Love by Abner Sumrall

Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz

and am working on

Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing by Sheila Kippley

To make a goal more achievable, "they" say you should quantify it. So I'm going to say one book per month.

March brought the idea that I should be doing more with Rowen as far as directing his play to bring about a more structured learning. So I've been planning projects and trying to listen to his interests and questions more- it's been fun! My goal is to plan 3-4 activities a week (or more) and only a week at a time, so I can really mold them to him in that moment. Fun!

April is coming up, and my resolution is to read through the bible in a year. Starting in April, you ask? Didn't you do that last year, you ask? Yes, and yes! My first resolution last year, starting in January, was to read through the bible in a year. And I did! Hooray! But then the year was over, all my little boxes were checked, and my bible reading totally fizzled out. I just get stuck- what to study next? I dunno. Apparently, I'm a box checker. I knew that about myself, this is not shocking. So I downloaded a new "one year reading plan" (complete with boxes!) and I started yesterday (cheating a little, I know.) :)

Now, my resolutions are not and have not been a one-month deal. (okay, a couple of them were.) Anyhow, to recap the last 12 months:

May - stockpile the freezer. OAMC style. (okay, this one really was a one month resolution. I really liked it, and I haven't done it since! I can't believe that was a YEAR ago.)

June- have a healthy baby and try to stay sane. (shoot. another one monther.)

July - ban high fructose corn syrup from our house. (boy, what a can of worms this turned out to be! Not only corn syrup, but all things processed have been getting the boot around here!)

August- try one "deceptively delicious" type recipe a day. (This really was a one month goal, and then to see where it took me. I don't do anything anymore besides the "sweet milk" (sweet potato in his milk, which he loves) and we're still in a fierce vegetable battle with the toddler. Ya win some, ya loose some.)

September - journal pray as a daily part of my quiet times. (clearly, with my January resolution, this has been a flop. But I earnestly want to keep at it.)

October - so long, corn-fed beef. (check. We've even gone to one pastured chicken a month, divided up into four meals plus bone broth.)

November - tidy up! fill BOTH our yard debris bins, every week. & keep the kitchen table clear. (while the yard debris bins are a seasonal thing, i'm still keeping the kitchen table fairly clear!)

December - spend at least hour, one night a week, on the kids' scrapbooks. (fail. utter fail. and I'm still trying. and still failing. boo.)

What about you? What's one thing you'd like to work on this month? Name it! Quantify it! Let's encourage each other :)

You can make that? Ketchup!

You can make ketchup? Yeah! And it's SO easy! Maybe you're venturing into eating a healthier, preservative-/additive-/mystery ingredient-free diet. You're cooking dinner at home most of the time: great! But when you venture into the condiment isle at the grocery store- what do you do? You could shop at a fancy, organic grocery store and spend loads of money. (Well, some of you could.) We sure can't!  My solution: make it myself :) I've been making our salad dressing, sour cream, mayo, pickle relish, and now ketchup. Yay. But wont it go bad in like a week, you ask? I can't be making all our condiments every week! The magical, ancient solution: fermentation. When you ferment your yummy home concoctions, they'll last a month or more!

This was my first batch of real ketchup, and I was SO excited to make it!

 I got the recipe from The Nourished Kitchen - a very fun blog I highly encourage you to visit. Here is her recipe:

2 cups tomato paste, preferably homemade

1/4 cup raw honey, maple syrup or whole unrefined cane sugar (see sources)

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons fresh whey*, divided

2 tablespoons raw apple cider vinegar, plus extra for thinning the ketchup, if desired

1 teaspoon unrefined sea salt

1 teaspoon allspice

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

Seeing that homemade tomato paste is out of the question in March, I used S&W Organic. Yay for costco.

I used a combination of pure maple syrup and raw honey, 'cause I'm complicated like that.

added the vinegar, salt, spices and my 1/4 cup of whey that I had drained from kefir. Stir it all up! (If you don't know what whey is or want to know how to "make" it, leave a comment and I'll be sure to explain!)

Scoop it into a mason jar.

Top it off with the extra 2 Tbsp whey for good measure.

Put a towel on it, and set it in a warm place for three to five days & leave it alone so it can ferment. (Next to your lacto-fermenting beets of you have them. Then they can have a nice chat while they culture.)

And.... tadaa! you have ketchup! Nutritionally speaking, a vegetable with natural sweeteners, just teeming with healthy, beneficial bacteria (think yogurt!) The recipe said I could just stir in the white stuff that formed on the top from the extra whey, but it eeked me out a bit so I scooped it off. :)

yum! Homemade turkey nuggets, here we come.  This ketchup will last SEVERAL MONTHS in your fridge. Hooray!

Almost forgot!

cost analysis:

tomato paste: can't find the reciept. I think it was 6.99, but maybe it was 7.99 for the box of 12. I'm going to guess high. $8 / 12 = $0.67. I used three cans = $2.00

maple syrup: $12.55/32oz - 1/8C=$0.39

honey: $30.40/1gal - 1/8C=$0.24

whey: free, drained off kefir or plain yogurt

cider vinegar: $2.75/32oz 2T=$0.09

sea salt & spices: oh..... i don't know. Let's say $0.02

Total: $2.74 at the most! (you could make it much cheaper with cheaper ingredients! I could be wrong, but I don't think you could buy an organic ketchup with probiotics for $2.74 or less at the grocery store!)