Letting Go

I realize I'm a control freak who has a really really hard time letting go of certain areas. And I yell and bluster, sigh and complain and make life miserable for others around me (my family), when I don't get my way. God have mercy on me, a sinner.

I woke up at 4:15 this morning with migraine symptoms. I put on an eye mask and went back to weird-dream sleep. When I got up I took an excedrine migraine, and pushed through my day. until. I. could. not. continue.

I went to liturgy, ate brunch, baked a cake, made homemade ice cream, went to the store for a new ice cream freezer...blah blah blah. busy day.

I should have paid attention to what my body was telling me and gotten some rest. I did lay down for a wee bit, too little, too late.

So after vespers (yes, I even ignored my body to that extent and went to evening vespers, shame on me!) I finally asked for help and the rest of everyone made supper. Not quite the way I would have made...

and what really frosts me about myeslf, is that I STILL couldn't keep my critical comments to myself.

I really really need to make other people on my family cook more often.

Food Blogs

Sometimes I wish I had a food blog. Lately this blog has almost been a food blog, but not quite. I don't know if I'll ever get there, but part of me really wishes I could be one of that chic club of organic locovores who are amazing, who cook, who write well about it, and who are food renegades.

I'm talking about www.foodrenegade.com, www.cheeseslave.com and www.organicthrifty.com, among others.

But I'm too new at this. And I'm fat.

And being fat, I feel like I'm totally and utterly disqualified to talk in a reasonable way about healthy food and actually get an audience to listen to what I say, even if I'm saying the exact same things as all these appropriately-weighted writers who are saying the same things.

Who wants to read a food blog about being healthy that's written by a fat person? Nobody, that's who. Because obviously whatever I'm doing has not been being done long enough to make a difference...or at least not a difference that counts in the way of our sick society's one-and-only measure of health: Body weight.

This makes me infinitely sad. I hate being fat. I hate Eating disorder/disordered eating, thinking about it, obsessive thoughts about it, all of it. Hate, hate, hate this aspect of me. Working on it, getting help for it, but you know: Some things I can do and some things are out of my control. I can (and do) exercise. I can watch what and how much I eat (which I also do), but I can't MAKE my body get thinner. And so far, all the controlled portions, healthy oils and whatnot are doing such slow good that no one can tell. Not even me. At least not on the scale. Well, maybe three pounds.

But my skin and hair...they sure look great.

Nourishing Traditions style Ice Cream Cake

Nourishing Traditions type of cooking...takes time and energy, let me tell you! And advance planning. But it also gives me such a sense of health and well-being that it's worth it. (Skin and hair look better too. The other day several people said they thought I was in my 20's, egads!)

The project: An ice cream cake.

Yesterday: got out my Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook and looked up the devil's food cake recipe. What changes do I need to make to it?

1. use whole grain soaked flour. Ok, so last night, I measured out the flour, but made it whole wheat instead of white flour, and then got some whey (off the yogurt, I probably had half a cup or more, and added enough water to it to make it the amount of water that the recipe called for. Mix those together with the flour, cover, let sit on the counter over night.

2. Today I added the other ingredients, using palm sugar (low glycemic) in place of regular sugar, pastured eggs and coconut oil instead of canola or vegetable oil. I mixed them very well so that all would be blended. Handy Kitchen Aid!

Baked the cake in two round pans.

OK, on to the ice cream:

Had just bought real cream and milk from my handy dandy farmer S., so decided to double the "3 cups of cream" ice cream recipe to six. It was more like four cups of cream and two cups of milk. That works, too. Real vanilla (all I had, about 4.5 tsp.), a cup of agave nectar (I know, honey is more NT correct, but my metabolism really needs something lower glycemic, so we compromise), six pastured egg yolks (thank you again, farmer S.!)

All into the ice cream maker, plug it in, only to learn that the motor had decided to die sometime between last time we used it and now. Perhaps moving across state damaged it somehow. Perhaps the ice cream maker is crap made in China.

So, I had to put all in the fridge and run out and buy another ice cream maker. Grrrr. Whatever happened to the kid-powered crank ones? I bet I could order one through Lehman's Catalog.
An hour and fifteen later, I'm finally home, only to learn that I just can't grab the metal container form my old machine and stick it into the new one, or throw the new motor on top of my old bucket because the whole stankin ' thing's been redesigned by the Chinese crapmakers. Oh well. And besides, I unwittingly bought a bigger size. I am now capable of quadrupling the recipe should I so desire, in the future and making loads of icecream all at one time. Maybe we'll have a party someday, and do just that.

Soon enough the ice cream is churning. Not long after that, it was done, and now it is ripening in the freezer.

I cut one of the layers of cake in two and will make the ice cream cake like a giant oreo cookie.

Now I'm hunting for a way to make NT style frosting. Butter and cocoa would be nice, since I have lots of that on hand. How do I sweeten it? I don't want to use powdered sugar, that's for sure. I'll figure something out and post pictures when it's all done.

Enough of this. My kitchen is trashed and I ought to go clean it up. Sigh.

Musical Muse

Today I figured out how to do a bunch of chords on the keyboard. Did I mention that Eric has been praying for a piano or a keyboard for a while now, and God provided one for us at affordable Thrift store prices...a REALLY good one, too. Along with a stand. So it has a spot against the wall in our dining room.

I've been enjoying resurrecting some very very rusty and non-existent piano memories from the one year of lessons I had as a teenager.

And so now I can slowly eke out the chords for pretty much all the songs I've written, since they are all things like A, am, D, dm, E, em, G, C, F, F#m...that sort of thing. So it's not too hard to listen to the notes on guitar and figure out the chords on the keyboard. And then I can sort of accompany myself. Lots of practice needed, but it was so fun that two hours flew by while I was doing that, and my arms sort of got crampy.

Well, I promise that I'm not very good at it, but it was fun.

Father's Day a Week Late

Last week, 75% of our kids were at camp, so we decided to do Father's Day at our house today instead. The kids did a cute skit based on the Code Monkey song, and a can of Mountain Dew (anyone who knows Wes...), and here's the dinner I made:




Fried fish, local collard greens with garlic, local blueberries, homemade ketchup, and two pies: brownie pie (sweetened with low glycemic palm sugar) and apple custard pie (sweetened with stevia/erythritol blend) and a bottle of homemade Kombucha. I ended up adding the apple custard pie when I had too much pie crust dough, it only took seven minutes to put together.

Wes was kissing the back of my neck while I was cooking that dinner, so I think he felt loved and I know he liked the food.

Thanks for being such a wonderful Father to our children, Wes!

Kids, Mount Washmore, and Trimmed Fingernails

The kids are back from camp! I'm so happy, that I have little butterflies in my stomach. Don't get me wrong, after telling them get on that big charter bus (which was admittedly hard), and especially after I got phone calls that they'd arrived safe and sound at Antiochian Village, I proceeded to just let them have a good time, and to not worry about them at all beyond praying for their fun, health and safety.

God answered all my prayers, and now I'm being regaled with how one sibling shut another sibling into the stinky charter bus bathroom out of revenge for some familial meanness. Kids.

And of course, I have three large suitcases (a week's worth of clothes each) full of dirty stinky camp laundry to contend with. My youngest came home looking like she'd been wearing her outfit for at least a week, which, she informed me, was close to the truth, since laundry day for her cabin was on the first Friday of camp. But how that meant she didn't have clothes somehow escapes me. Perhaps some hyperbole was involved in the tale.

Suffice it to say, the kids had a good time. The camp staff even found a way to take care of Eric's weird food issues. He was eating breakfast each day, and then living off fruit and snacks from the gimme shop (choice of drink and junk food at snack time) for week one, and then someone picked up on his weird eating, and he started being fed a PBJ sandwich for lunch and a cheese sandwich at supper. Better than just fruit. I'm very grateful. Food issues. Sigh.

So, Mount Washmore grows in the bedroom, and later on today I'll have to sort and fold it all. I might recruit some help.

Oh, and I've been growing my nails out lately, and really enjoying having longer nails, but a couple of them started to break and split, so I trimmed them all back down-for now. The nice thing about fingernails, is that they grow. But while they are short, I think I should play my much neglected guitar or something.

I'm really enjoying my slow Saturday morning, but MUST get up, shower and get myself off to the farmer's market. As soon as I finish my morning coffee. ;-)

Playing with Beads

I particularly like how all three bracelets look together. I've had fun.

New Opportunities

Pray for me. It seems that after a time of settling in, I have some opportunities developing in my life for service, that coordinate with stuff that naturally is going on around here.

One thing that's developing is that a bunch of us homeschooling moms have gotten together and formed a new group called Alphabet Soup Homeschoolers. We are each of us teaching our special needs kids at home and have been in need of support and encouragement. We chose the name Alphabet Soup because we wanted to include anyone who has special challenges, regardless of diagnosis. LD, ADD, ADHD, AS, Autism, Downs, etc.

It's really great to sit at the park and socialize with other moms who get it because they are in the same trenches. The opportunity to really serve is revolving around the fact that some of us think it would be a good idea to actually form a co-op social skills class for our kids. I really want to be involved in this effort, and am excited about the possibilities. Everything is embryonic right now, but I do appreciate prayers. We need a meeting room and we need to choose a curriculum or social skills book to work through. I'm not thoroughly familiar with all that is out there, but have begun to research.

As I move forward next school year with getting as much of a diganosis for Eric and Maia as I can, I hope that doing something like this will be a way that something good and grace filled can come out of something painful and sad.

The other opportunity that's been presented to me is not something very big or hard at all, and it's also not something for this blog. But a prayer that God would give me wisdom on making a decision would nonetheless be appreciated.

I've been meeting so many new people and making new friends lately, and getting closer than casual to at least one person, and I feel really really blessed by that.

This week Bethany and I (the kids are still at camp) have been taking walks at the St. Matthew's Mall, since it's been really really hot outside. I've also enjoyed the long hours of quiet that having the kids at camp has caused, and have done more reading than usual. I like to read, and right now I have my nose in at least three books, along with various blogs and keeping up with the news over the internet.

Good things, all of it.

~blessings on your day~

How I make Waffles

Marfa asks. I answer. I don't measure much of anything.

The night before my waffle making stint I soak about four cups of whole wheat flour in some water and about half a cup of whey. I don't measure anything. It should be thick-ish so that when I add the other ingredients, the next day, it's not too thinnish.

Next morning, add three or four eggs, a heaping tablespoon of baking powder and some coconut oil, blend it well.

It will be thinnish, but not too thin. A thinnish batter makes a lighter, crispier waffle.

Bake in waffle maker. Three and a half minutes in my case. You don't want them too dark as they will get toasted later. Let waffles cool, then freeze them.

It works better to freeze them on a flat tray and then put them in bags, otherwise they stick together. Ask me how I know. I broke a nail trying to pry them apart this morning. Sigh.

I usually toast them twice to get them thawed then hot.

Very good with maple syrup (or something sugar free in my case...I actually found a sugar free maple flavor syrup that's just maltitol and NOT splenda or aspartame the other day, at Whole Foods. Thrilled.)

Pre-soaking the grains, using whey and of course coconut oil and pastured eggs is all in line with Nourishing Traditions type of cooking/eating.