Recipe: Kashi Salad

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Kashi Salad

Recipe adapted from Dale’s Natural Foods in Flint, Michigan, where they serve this in their deli. The original called for Kashi as the grains. I’ve added toasted sesame seeds and changed the oils.

Make the small size of this recipe for normal family meals. The whole recipe would be good for a party.

SMALL LARGE
1 cup 2 cups cooked whole grains, Gluten Free any mix of Quinoa, Short Grain Brown Rice, Buckwheat, Millet, GF whole oats, (or any other grains such as those contained in Kashi 7 Whole Grain Pilaf which contains: whole oats (groats), brown rice, rye, hard red wheat, triticale, buckwheat, barley and sesame seeds)
x Tbsp. x Tbsp. sesame seeds, raw or toasted
1 2-3 bell peppers (red, green yellow)
1 cup 2 cups frozen peas, thawed (or cooked and cooled English peas, which you can get fresh at Costco or Meijer)
3 6-9 scallions, chopped
1 3 ribs celery, chopped

Dressing: (Makes extra dressing. You may reduce amounts.)

½ cup 1 + 1/2 cups soy sauce, naturally fermented
2 Tbsp. 1/4 to 1/3 cup olive oil
2 ½ Tbsp. 1/2 cup (8 Tbsp.) Raw red wine vinegar
1 Tbsp. 3 Tbsp. dijon mustard (Grey Poupon type)

Mix salad ingredients. Pour on dressing a little at a time and use as much as tastes good to you. Reserve the remainder of the dressing for other salads later.

I recommend putting “not enough” dressing on the salad when you are making it ahead of time, and then adding more, to taste, just before serving. (This is because the dressing will soak in over time, which means it would be drier and saltier and then too salty if you add more dressing before serving. If your salad is tasting salty enough but you need to perk it up, just add some olive oil and another splash of red wine vinegar.)

Waldorf Day in the Life

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Just wanted to record some random day-in-the-life stuff that relates to our Waldorf education experience.

Reading. We have embraced the approach that we, Daddy and I, love reading and we will read aloud to our kids even after they learn to read. There’s no rush. We are excited for them to learn to read, but we don’t push. Without much screens/media, they are excited to have someone read aloud. We have the help of their teachers in developing their listening aptitude and physical capabilities (like Brain Gym) before they are given the tasks of learning to read. They learn the elements of story and the expansion of imagination that will serve them later in forming pictures/imagination and in “comprehension.” Now our 7yo and 5 yo are learning to read together at the same time, and they are doing it quite by their own drives. I was expecting this soon with the first grader, but with our Kindergartner it comes as a little surprise. She has been given very little instruction, and certainly no rote learning, on how to do it. They are both sounding out words, and we are not focused on whether they are sight words or big words or little words. They’re just words and we read them for fun, together. (I do believe in the charter public school they would have attended had we stayed in Michigan, the first graders get spelling tests! Talk about a stress I’m so glad we don’t have.) They’re not early readers, but they’re not late either. In Waldorf terms, they are almost early. They do love the possibility of reading and that they “are becoming Readers!”, and that’s the main thing. Another win for Waldorf.

A specific. You know, Waldorf classes don’t usually use textbooks. The kids make their own “lesson books.” Our first grader is bringing home his first “Reader” which is a book he made in class to bring home and practice reading at home. This is a good example of the way in which children begin copying texts from the chalkboard. It seems to me similar in the basic way, to Montessori, as they say children learn writing before reading. And, in Waldorf, they learn listening first—and actually, don’t babies listen very well?

Erik’s Reboot

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Here’s a quick update for those of you wondering about how Erik is doing on his weight loss program, which is working for him! He’s slimming down!

Reboot Juicing Breakfast: Blended Spinach with juice, Amazing Grass and some supplemental capsules

Breakfast: Amazing Grass, supplemental capsules, and Blended Spinach with juice.

Erik and I concur: When beginning a fast, days 2 and 3 are the hardest. Day 4 the cravings are dying down and it gets much easier after that.

The juice fast routines are basically:

  • A.M. blended spinach-juice, cod liver oil, Vit D, Amazing Grass (probiotic, antioxidant), Maca, Milk Thistle Seed. And, he enjoys his coffee.
  • Lunch: soup, trying for the lower calorie or vegetarian types. Or cauliflower with a dip like hummous. Sometimes a chai (see below) or Dandy Blend instant beverage.
  • Dinner: blended spinach-juice again if at home. Salad if at a restaurant?
  • Evening: homemade chai sweetened with stevia and erythritol, unsweetened almond milk OR a cocoa (see below)
  • Shot of magnesium with coconut water
  • Basically, relearning to eat small portions at all times. Over the past couple of years, I have really seen Erik eat far smaller portions. These first two “fasts” have really helped him get to know his own body better.
  • Ideally, I try to get a zinc supplement into him on an empty stomach and/or towards evening.

In order to get "over the hump" of the difficult first three days of a juice fast, I recommend drinking as much as you want of all of the "approved" drinks (like all those mentioned on Erik's Reboot program) and up to three servings of green food powder such as Amazing Grass.

Erik will be morphing his “diet” into an Intermittent Fasting model using the low-calorie “juice fast” routines I am detailing here along with some days when he eats a regular Primal Blueprint diet. This will allow for low-calorie fat burning days on his juice fast, but not for long enough for his metabolism to go into starvation/fat-storage mode. Primal Blueprint guidelines call for a moderate protein, higher fat, high vegetables and low carbs.

I have also been developing a supplements chart for our family-of-four, to help us stay on track with supplements. Mainly, we have moved to taking our fat soluble vitamins in the morning, giving us the calories from fat to use through the day. Another tip I’ve just started using is to mix our evening magnesium with some coconut water for a balance with potassium. A tasty way to do this is with Coco Cocoa!

Laundry

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Simplify! Simplify! Simplify!

Conscious Laundry 101: What can we do to reduce work, save time, energy, and money? Here are some more laundry tips for Simplicity Living, “4-Hour” style.

Recent changes in my house:

  • Rule: Each person has only 2 towels with a unique color. Noone may use any towel that is not his own. (This should cut down on the kids taking a new clean towel whenever they feel like it.)
  • Instead of hit-or-miss and inconvenience of trying to get my 5 and 7 year olds to put clothes in the hamper twice per day, I decided I would give them the rule: All dirty clothes off bedroom floor into hamper at night before bed. I still have to tell them to do it, but now I have crossed it off the A.M. list of things to do.
My usual laundry process:
  • I enjoy having our washer/dryer in our main bathroom. (We rent, so this may change this year.) This has allowed me to process laundry in the morning and evening or whenever I am doing other work nearby. This also allows me to re-use water from the tub after the kids take a bath (we don’t use a lot of soap)–I haul bucketfuls to the washer a few feet away, only for the wash cycle (not the rinse cycle). This only takes a couple of extra minutes, saving me money and water consumption. I like the value it helps me demonstrate to my young ones about (water) conservation.

#1: Think of "batch processing": sort many loads of clean laundry all at the same time. #2: Break complex tasks into small steps--this helps you see what can be batched and helps young children learn the small steps instead of being overwhelmed by a multi-step task.

  • Batch Processing. I wash as much through the week as possible, saving the folding and putting away until the weekend. This might be too messy for some people. I have a basket in each child’s room, so during the week, some clean clothes accumulate in their baskets, unfolded. I have a few baskets of clean laundry hanging around in my bedroom (all of these rooms currently on the same floor). I try to get the whole family involved in sorting and putting away laundry on Saturday or Sunday morning. The kids have learned if they are looking for a clean item that’s not in their rooms, check the extra baskets and the dryer. I am thankful when my husband puts away his own laundry, demonstrating to the kids that we all help. Sometimes I do sort a basket or put away towels during the week, but that’s usually because a batch of towels is piling up. Exceptions exist, but it’s the mindset to “Batch it!” that works here. And, you cannot use this as your excuse to procrastinate!
  • I have a 3-bin sorting cart and I made 3 color charts to help the kids see which clothes to put in which bins. This allows the concept to sink into their little heads over time: break the large task into simpler steps. Since the rules on which items can be washed together are fuzzy and different for different households, this allows them to learn over time—they sometimes ask questions about sorting.

Batching sometimes requires duplicitous clothing, such as extra t-shirts of the same color, kids pajamas, or socks and underwear. Anytime we have to scramble to wash a particular item, I ask whether I need to acquire an extra of that item.

These are my loads:

  1. One basket of cleaning rags and kitchen towels per week, washed in hot.
  2. In the sorter: reds/pinks/orange/brown
  3. In the sorter: darks, jeans, including dark towels
  4. In the sorter: lights and whites
  5. In the winter I set aside some items that get special attention, such as woolens that can be washed but not dried. With a load full of “special” items, they aren’t lost in a “regular” load.
  6. A hamper in the master bedroom usually contains my husband’s stuff. It’s nearby to the laundry area. I save up white t-shirts in the bottom of this one to be washed in hot, probably a load every 2 weeks.
  • Every time I begin a new load, I am questioning which load is highest priority right now. Sometimes it is the stuff waiting on the top of the washer (code for “wash me now”), or I do an assessment of what’s in the hampers.
Do you have any tips that make laundry easier or simpler? Do tell!

Recipe: Coco Cocoa

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This quick recipe blends antioxidant-rich dark cocoa, which is also high in magnesium, with coconut water, which is high in potassium. A tasty way to get these two balancing minerals together in a low-calorie, sugar-free way.

Cocoa powder—Navitas Naturals Cacao Powder–> (or other cocoa powder)

Sweeteners: KAL stevia extract–> and/or Erythritol–> (or raw honey)

Coconut water–>

Optional: Vanilla extract, Blue Diamond Unsweetened Almond Milk Beverage, coconut milk

Directions:

In a large mug, mix 1 Tbsp. cocoa powder with 1 tiny scoop of KAL pure stevia extract and/or 1 tsp. Erythritol (or raw honey). Heat coconut water to just hot enough for enjoyment, then pour into the mug and stir.
Maybe add some vanilla extract and/or some almond milk. Maybe some whole coconut milk if you want some fat.

When it’s time for ear piercing

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My 5 year old daughter is now looking forward to getting her ears pierced. I’ve let her know that I have to see her being responsible with her things before that can happen. I think it will be a year or two, at least. Here’s why we’ll be visiting a tattoo parlor.

The backstory:

When I was almost 5, I got my ears pierced for the first time. The doctor used a needle to pierce through the lobe, which we had held ice on for a while to numb it. He cut a potato and held it behind to give something stable to push against. That might not have been too painful, but as I recall the problem was that then he had to push an earring through. When the needle went through and then came out, there was nothing holding the “hole” open, so I can’t believe this really helped. It probably hindered, by just creating an initial injury through which the earring then had to pass.

I have further experience with ear piercing. I also got a double piercing at the mall. That is, a second hole above the first one. That mall experience included gun malfunction so that the sales clerk running it had to make 2-3 attempts on one ear (and I don’t remember how the second ear went).

I do not remember how my other piercing experience went. That one was to re-do one set of my ear piercings. I think it was the original, lower holes that I probably had let heal together. I believe it was because at age 5, I dropped the earring down a vent in the floor—an innocent falter that my parents deemed irresponsible, probably just based on not being able or wanting to pay for another set of earrings.

I also have another piercing experience which was at a tattoo parlor. That was for a navel ring, which I no longer have (I am allergic to metals, and cannot even wear earrings in my one remaining set of ear holes, lest I get inflammed in the lobe and get a headache). That experience in the tattoo parlor was the best one out of all of them. As I recall, nearly painless.

The bottom line:

So, based on my experiences and some of the finer points in this article about why tattoo parlors are a better choice for ear piercing, even for a young girl, when my daughter is ready for ear piercing, we’ll be finding a nice piercing parlor.

How to get Instant Movies

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Just found another resource for watching movies on a computer. It’s YouTube’s version of Netflix / Hulu / Amazon Instant. I see a lot of the videos are $2.99 or $3.99. There is also a Free category.

Now, I must say that I haven’t dived into Amazon Prime Instant Videos, but I should, because my hubby has an Amazon Prime account. And, wow, do we love it. For all our consumption needs :-) Our Prime account gives us shopping options with free shipping, and we are often able to get the items we want shipped for free. Saves all the hunting around and burning petrol to shop local stores. Still, it’s UPS delivered but, we don’t have printers that make things like in Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. (Here it is on Kindle).

So, while you’re on YouTube.com/movies, you might want to check out some free movies, among which I noticed is The Beautiful Truth. Enjoy. I’m going to check out Life in a Day.

We’ve had a Netflix account for several years. Before that we had a Tivo—which taught us the value of never watching TV with commercials/ads. Now we continue with a Netflix account for Instant-only. Because we have a Blockbuster 2 blocks away, my hubby has signed up for their cheapest option which gives us one DVD at a time, which comes in the mail, and then which we can trade for one DVD in the store. Once we turn in the store copy, we then wait for another one to come in the mail from the online account. It gives him a chance to take a little jog outside, and we have a movie for the weekend. He and I enjoy a movie about once or twice a week. Sometimes we watch other “streaming media” since we do have a computer hooked up to our TV.

I will say, that we went for a full year without a television, and it was actually quite nice. I didn’t miss it at all. I resisted getting another TV, but the hubby was missing him some sports. But, it’s fun to play with media, and we like to relax together and have something to spur a conversation now and then. I do love myself a good movie or documentary. With watching content via the computer, on demand, I forget that some people actually watch a lot of advertising, still. I rarely see ads and I will never miss them! It’s the only way to fly.

Recipe: Super Nut Butter (on celery)

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I’m rediscovering nut butter on celery as a super fast snack! This blend works in several superfoods that my family would not normally eat as stand-alones.

In a clean jar with lid, stir up a batch using these ingredients:

  • In order to mix coconut oil in smoothly, bring all nut butters to room temp. Melt coconut oil. (Next time, I’ll try mixing the oil with the pumpkin seed flour first.)
  • Peanut butter for flavor, if necessary (avoid due to mycotoxins)
  • Almond butter or any other nut butter (freshness really affects flavor!)
  • Ground walnuts for crunch and an EFA brain boost
  • Tahini for a mineral boost (sesame seed butter. Brands vary in taste due to freshness and roasted or not. My friend prefers EastWind. I like it freshly ground at my co-op.)
  • Ground pumpkin seeds for zinc boost (highly recommended for older boys and men or those with low stomach acid)
  • KAL stevia extract powder for sweetness
  • Extra sea salt if needed (I use Redmond RealSalt)
  • Children might enjoy better with raw honey mixed in. (I’ll try this with my son who doesn’t like the stickiness of nut butters)
Spread on celery or whatever!
I haven’t worked out the proportions yet, for the coconut oil and ground pumpkin seeds to a consistency I like. Honestly, I’ll probably just stir it up without measuring and adjust later–I can always add more of any ingredient.

No Mercury in Our Mouths, please!

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This week, after over a year of living in a new state, I finally took myself and my children to the dentist for cleanings and checkups. To find our new dentist, I first asked my friend and “partner in crime” (more like: partner in natural living)–she had moved here from Michigan a couple of years ahead of me, and what an incredible resource she is! I already knew that I want to get my own mercury amalgam “fillings” removed at some point. The sooner the better, but it’s a pricey procedure. I knew that I wanted to work with a dental office that fully embraces bio-compatible dentistry (and would still be in my dental insurance network, for highest levels of cost coverage). So, I spent a couple of hours looking at the lists. Even after pouring over the short lists of bio-compatible dentists (checking maps and my insurance network), I ended up choosing the same dentist as my friend. Apparently, we are lucky to live in a metropolitan area with even a few enlightened dentists. (Let’s hope that some young people from “Weston Price families” and Waldorf families will grow up to study truly holistic dentistry!) Let’s get started, shall we? Here are the lists I looked at: Continue reading →

Rachel’s Typical Breakfast

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I continue my quest for truly simple nutrition, so that I’m spending minimal time in the kitchen and still getting the best nutrition I can.

The following is copied out of my FitDay.com account for what I ate this morning. This is very typical for what I eat almost every morning. Sometimes I eat more by adding on a piece of meat or almond flour muffin. Sometimes I leave out the egg yolk. Inspired by revisiting the book Eat Fat, Lose Fat, I plugged this into FitDay so that I could look at adding a tablespoon of coconut oil (same fat as 3.5 Tbsp of canned whole-fat coconut milk) prior to each of three meals. At a total of 461 calories, and with a daily target of 1400-1800 calories (for weight loss, based on my personal calculation using Primal Blueprint Weightloss formula as my guide), I still have enough calories budgeted for the rest of the day if I stick to Primal eating and do not cheat by eating sugar.

 Food Name Cals Fat (g) Carbs (g) Prot (g)
461 35.7 16.4 8
Canned Coc Milk 1.75 oz = 3.5 Tbsp. (same fat as 1 Tbsp. Coc… 114 11.8 2.7 1.1
Eve Primrose Oil, 1 tsp* 50 0 0 0
Fish oil, cod liver 123 13.6 0 0
Almond Milk Unsweetened 1 cup 40 3.5 2 1
Dandy Blend 1 Tbsp. 15 0 3 0
Zukay Kvass 1/2 cup Beet Ginger 13 0 2.7 0.3
Morning Blended LEMON SPINACH 29 0 5 2.4
Brazil nuts: 1 nut 22 2.3 0.4 0.5
Egg, yolk only, raw 55 4.5 0.6 2.7
 TOTALS: 461 35.7 16.4 8

My 5-year old daughter takes her egg nog with chocolate milk. She also gets a squirt of Trader Joe's chocolate syrup into her mouth with her brazil nut. I do not give the kids a multi-vitamin. (They do not drink the spinach, either.)

*I’m not even sure I will continue with the Evening Primrose Oil after I finish this bottle, so I’ll free up some calories for more interesting food.

I came to the conclusion quite a while ago that I needed to blend up some spinach in the morning and I wanted it to be easy, fast and taste good enough to slug it down. I add 2 Tbsp. lemon juice (Organic in a bottle, from Costco), one tiny scoop of KAL stevia extract powder, and about 1/2 cup water.

Instead of spinach for my husband, I give him Amazing Grass (a green food powder).

I blend raw egg yolks (as free-range as I can get) with unsweetened almond milk, vanilla extract and stevia extract. Top with a shake of ground nutmeg for a Morning Eggnog.

This morning regimen is NOT easier than if you just ate some scrambled eggs. However, it’s what I’ve come up with after several years of living with allergies, working toward Primal, and having picky eaters. This is just what I do.