Subversive Plots

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My “mid-life crisis” seems to be pushing me in some new directions. Limited thinking is peeling off like old chipping paint on the outside of a turn-of-the-century Victorian house. So, while this is NOT the perfect year for me to start a garden, I’m doing it anyway. We rent a house, and very likely we will not be here next summer. All we have is the Now… and my limited knowledge about gardening (this will be my second attempt, first one at the last house was a total flop)… Fueled by A) tidbits of gardening wisdom I get from my friends and acquaintances, B) desire to get more sunshine on my skin (my Vitamin D status is still un-healthfully low, and C) this TED video on subversive plots / backyard gardening. Roger Doiron makes the case for backyard gardening. I love the bit about how all the work should not be on the women, but men should help out, too. (Inspiring thought for me in my traditional female-homemaker role, though here we are so caught in the nuclear family net that most of this work will be falling to me.) Roger founded Kitchen Gardeners International: “We are a nonprofit community of 24,000 people from 100 countries who are growing our own food and helping others to do the same.”

A backyard garden fits in the weave of the lifestyle choices I’ve already come to appreciate: teaching my children where their food comes from, appreciating the Earth, slowing down, eating more whole and Primal foods, getting more sunshine and barefoot connection to the ground, lower-cost organic food, and family time together. So, I’m adopting a “Just Do It” attitude, knowing once it gets rolling we’ll not be able to ignore it too much: it will get us Out There.

KGI has exactly what I need as a beginner: a garden planner tool with reminders of when to sow, etc. It’s FREE for the first 30 days. I’ll be digging into this over the next few weeks.

” …it takes a very long time to learn the ins and outs of gardening.  One must be very kind to oneself and unflustered by incomprehensible failures. .” -rvisser on KGI.org

Cookie & Muffin Scoops

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I have 2 cookie scoops listed in my Amazon store. Please check them out the cookie scoops under Kitchen Gadgets. (If you shop from that link, you will be supporting my blogging effort.Thank you so much!)

I use the larger cookie scoop, which OXO calls an ice cream scoop, for the 1/4 cup measure for a “jumbo” almond flour cookie or a regular sized muffin. I use the smaller cookie scoop which is 2 Tbsp. (that’s half of 1/4 cup) for mini-muffins or for a regular-sized cookie.

Both have a trigger to swipe the scoop clean. This saves me a lot of time getting cookies or muffins into the oven!

 


Banana Muffins

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I used to enjoy this Baby Bear’s Whole Wheat Banana Bread recipe to make muffins or small loaves. It’s a great recipe and uses whole wheat flour. Nourishing Traditions cooks would probably adapt it to soaking the flour.

These days, I use my adapted version of Elana Amsterdam’s recipe from The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook. Always at the ready for when the bananas go brown!

Banana Muffins

3 cups blanched almond flour

1 and ½ tsp baking soda

¼ tsp sea salt (if you use coconut oil. Do not add salt if you substitute salted butter)

2 Tbsp. oil (I use melted coconut oil. You could use melted butter.)

3 large eggs

4 to 5 very ripe bananas

1 tsp. cinnamon (my addition)

4 tiny scoops KAL brand stevia extract powder (this is almost like adding 4 tsp sugar) Optional

Up to 1 cup chocolate chips Optional
  1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line 12 muffin cups with paper liners.
  2. I use a blender for this recipe. Food processor would work too. I puree ripe bananas until the blender measure shows 1 and 1/2 cups. Reserve a banana until later if you like chunks of banana in the muffins. If you do not want chunks of banana, puree enough banana to measure 2 cups.
  3. Add the salt, oil, eggs, cinnamon and stevia and mix in the blender with pureed bananas.
  4. Measure in the almond flour and then the baking soda on top of that. Blend in. Quickly thereafter, add the remaining chunk of banana and pulse briefly, leaving chunks of banana.
  5. Scoop 1/4 cup into each muffin cup. I use a cookie scoop which is ¼ cup measure.
  6. Bake 35 to 40 minutes (I set the timer at 30 minutes and check) until set and slightly browned. Let muffins cool in the pan for 30 minutes, as this will allow them to set up. Of course, I always eat some warm.
   About the paper muffin liners:I recommend If You Care Brand in a plain brown box. A) These work really well to release from all baked goods, just like parchment paper (I always use parchment paper to line my cookie sheets.) B) they are eco-friendly. I have purchased at Meijer and at co-op and natural food stores.

About the scoop: OXO brand calls it a “trigger ice cream scoop.” This makes muffin-making so easy! See the cookie scoops.

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.