Healthy Habits

Tip #2

We like to substitute plain organic yogurt for sour cream. I wanted to get more yogurt in our diets and one way to do it was to buy the big 32 oz. containers (we like the Stonyfield Farm brand) and use it whenever we would have used sour cream. Since Clara was old enough to sit up and eat I have given her yogurt in a bowl, sometimes sweetening it a little bit, or adding sprinkles (it looks like a dessert then!), or stirring in her favorite cereal for some added crunch and texture. I like to stir in slivered almonds, frozen blueberries, and a sprinkling of brown sugar to a bowl of plain yogurt. The vanilla flavored yogurt is also awesome, but it doesn't substitute well for sour cream because it is sweet!

Here's my favorite pancake recipe:

YOGURT PANCAKES

2 eggs beaten
1 cup plain yogurt
1 cup milk or soymilk
1 1/2 cups self rising flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. flax seed meal (optional)

To the beaten eggs, stir in the yogurt. Slowly add the milk. Add the rest of the ingredients. It is ok for batter to be slightly lumpy.

I cook these in my cast iron skillet. Butter the skillet and measure about 2 tbsp batter for each pancake. I can get 4 in my large skillet. Turn over when the edges are lightly browned and the pancake is puffed up a little. (These pancakes are moister than regular pancakes.)

Serve pancakes with pure maple syrup!

Healthy Habits

Tip #1

Get soymilk into your diet! Its easy to do. We like Kikkoman Pearl Organic Soymilk, which is sold in aseptic cartons that keep fresh without refrigeration until opened. I keep them in my pantry and substitute soymilk for milk in recipes and no one ever knows it. We also like the chocolate soymilk-- its great when you have that urge for chocolate! And the Creamy Vanilla flavor is great for adding to oatmeal, pancake batter and anything else you might add vanilla or milk to.
Soymilk is as high in calcium, Vitamins A and D as whole milk, is low in saturated fat, is cholesterol free and high in protein. (Soy protein may help reduce the risk of heart disease.) And it's just convenient to have on hand for those times when you run out of milk unexpectedly!

Merry Christmas!

Ten days ago we moved into base housing. I have unpacked every box and almost have all the pictures up on the new walls. It has been an exhausting week but we are happy in our new home. That will be our last move until Danny retires from the Marine Corps, which is only a little more than a year away!






Well, I have suitcases to get packed for lots of little people around here. And tonight we're going to load up on hot chocolate and drive around town to see Christmas lights. It's a wonderful time of year to be together with those you love. Hope you're enjoying it!

The Girls

Well, Linnea is growing and changing more every day. She is not the same little newborn we brought home. She smiles and coos, has filled out and is as pretty as ever. When she was around 2 weeks old she developed a "strawberry" over her left eye. We'll see if our pediatrician recommends doing anything with it at her next checkup. It is starting to be puffy enough that her eyelid droops a little over her eye when she is awake. I have read that if a strawberry interferes with vision, they might recommend treatment. She is now 7 weeks old.

Clara will be 3 next month on the 4th.


We're all doing quite well, though I do not find much time for keeping up with my blog these days!

She's Here!

We are happy to announce the birth of our daughter....

Linnea Valerie
(pronounced "Lin-nay-uh")
Born on her due date, Sept. 14 at 7:38 AM at Birth and Women's Center in Dallas

Here she is right after birth, bright eyed, beautiful, and alert!



Our midwife weighs her and finds that she is 7 lbs. 6 oz, and 20 inches long - just right!



Big sister is very excited to finally hold her own little baby!




Proud Mama and Papa




Her wonderful big brothers being helpful after the bath



Welcome to our family, little one! We love you!

Picture Day

Two weeks before the due date...and my midwife says I'm "all baby!"


Our three beautiful children, after we visited the Kimbell Art Museum and saw the Impressionist exhibit


Soon we'll be a family of six!

No Baby Yet...

Baby is due on Sept. 14 and there is no sign of her making an entrance anytime soon. The countdown to a birth - day is a nerve wracking thing. We're excited though and are praying that God will bless this special day with joy, no complications, and a healthy little girl!

We recently watched The Business of Being Born. Have you seen it? (It is available from Netflix.) I thought it was informative and very well done.

Time for bed. Hope to get some sleep, but wouldn't mind waking up to some contractions!!!

Wow - Am I really updating my blog?!

I don't know if anyone drops by my blog anymore since I haven't updated it in a LONG time. If you're wondering why I haven't written, you'll just have to keep wondering, because I don't really have an answer! But just to prove that we're still counted among the living, I'll update it now with these brief words and a few pictures.




My pregnancy is going well and we are all looking forward to the arrival of our second little girl in the middle of September. I can't wait to hold a newborn baby again! And I'm sure Clara will get her fair share of holding and kissing her little sister!




That's all for now!

A Dizzy Day

This morning I stayed home while my family went to church. I felt normal when I woke up except that I was very hungry. Instead of eating though, I took a shower and got ready for church. I went downstairs, feeling weak and in a hurry to get some food to my stomach. But the food tasted funny and I could hardly eat. I stood up to make coffee so we could drink it on the way to church, but I started feeling dizzy and lightheaded. I hurried to the sofa and laid there awhile, puzzled about what was wrong. I still don't know what happened, other than I must have waited too long to eat!

While I was resting on the sofa and my family was at church, I picked up the book I've been reading, "Diary of a Midwife," by Juliana van Olphen-Fehr. It is an excellent book, and I could not put it down. Juliana tells many stories of the labors and births of her clients, and she shares candidly her experiences with hospital births. I know I could not be a midwife, though I find their work extremely interesting and valuable to the lives of childbearing women. I wish there were more of them and that the medical community would accept them for the professionals that they are.

I am feeling better now, though my stomach feels all tight and stretchy today. Maybe the baby is having a growth spurt! I took a nap when Clara slept and I haven't felt dizzy anymore. Just hungry and thirsty all the time. It is truly amazing how much food a pregnant woman can put away!

It's a Beautiful Place

Birth and Women's Center in Dallas, Texas is at the top of my list of most beautiful places to have a baby. You should look at some of their pictures! It is an old home with wood floors that squeak when you walk across them, antique furniture, lovely black and white pictures of pregnant women and babies, and an old staircase. Embraced by a midwife who views each pregnancy as normal until proven otherwise, a woman can enter motherhood with peace and the knowledge that thousands of others have walked that path before her. Here, there were no sterile lobbies with padded blue chairs and coffee tables with magazines, and 30 expectant women waiting their alloted 3 minutes with the doctor. There was no glass window with a busy secretary hollering your name behind it. Pregnancy and birth are beautiful, and so should be the place where she hears the heartbeat of her little one, and where she works to bring that little one from her womb and into her arms.

In the pictures of the Exam room, you can see the patterns on the wall. Before I went there, I didn't realize what those patterns were, but it turns out those are actual footprints of babies that have been born at the center! It is amazing to see all those little prints walking on the walls. Their names and birth weight are listed next to their footprints. Siblings who were not born at the center are encouraged to put their thumbprints next to the baby's footprints, so that sometimes there is a nice little row representing a whole family that used the birth center. It is one of those special touches that you just won't find at any hospital.

I am thrilled that we are going there for my prenatal appointments and for the birth of our baby!

A Chemical Feast

Ethel Renwick, in her book "Let's Try Real Food," tells us that the food industry's use of additives is not in the interest of the nation's nutritional needs, but for increased sales and profits to themselves. Synthetic chemicals are much cheaper substitutes for flavors and colors than real fruits and vegetables, and that the profit of synthetic foods made from chemicals is enormous.

Additives lengthen shelf life, they make processed food taste and look better, they prevent spoiling and even mask deterioration. Companies producing food would rather add vitamins to low-grade food than help malnourished people get better jobs so they can buy more nutritious food. Additives allow a manufacturer to put LESS of the natural ingredient into their product. Dr. Carlton Fredericks explains that the vast majority of food additives have no counterpart in nature, therefore are not automatically compatible with the body. The U.S. permits any number of additives in our foods which are banned in Europe.

What surprises me the most is the source from which these additives are made. Of the 2,764 classifications of food additives, 1,876 are derived from coal-tar. The same dyes that are used for clothing are also used in food. Dr. Feingold gave examples of what is involved in making imitation flavors. Artificial pineapple flavor takes 17 compounds, and imitation coffee flavor takes from 200-300! These additives are not real food at all! Why not eat pure food... REAL FOOD?

It certainly has become a habit, one we don't even think about when we roam the grocery store aisles, to pick up a box of artificially flavored pudding, or a box of sugary cereal, which might contain between 30%-50% sugar. These cereals should be labeled "imitation cereal" and should be sold in the candy aisle!!! I was shocked to learn that peanut butter (the hydrogenated version), which we generally think of as wholesome and nutritious, is actually 22% Crisco! Chemists went to work on peanut butter, adding emulsifiers to keep the oil mixed throughout, then they added sugar to make it sweet to please the crowd of sugar-cravers they had created, and finally the hydrogenated oil to make it spread easily. A lady by the name of Mrs. Desmond describes it as "peanut flavored cold cream!" She suggests that if the industry wanted to make a product with less than 90% peanuts, it should be called Peanut-flavored cream" or something like that. She actually won her case, so that now peanut butter has to contain at least 90% peanuts. As part of our avoidance of products containing hydrogenated oils, we made the switch to 100% natural peanut butter (yep, the kind you have to stir first and store in the fridge.)

This book was written in 1973, and at that time it was estimated we were eating 10 pounds of additives other than sugar, salt, corn syrup, and dextrose. I wonder what that figure actually is today?

An Easter Photo

Clara loved the little marshmallow bunnies I made for our table's centerpiece! She held this one for a long time and played with it, then she finally started to nibble his ears, and before long... he was all gone!

Make your own Salad Dressings

Since we got back to the U.S. I have been reading a lot of books about food and nutrition, such as:

Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You to Know About by Kevin Trudeau
More Natural Cures Revealed by Kevin Trudeau
Let's Try Real Food by Ethel H. Renwick
Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld (a cookbook)
Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
The Non Toxic Home by Debra Lynn Dadd
Prescription for Nutritional Healing

The common theme that runs through these books is that it is better to make it yourself than buy it pre-made from the store. Any convenience food from the grocery store is likely to be filled with additives, food dyes, chemicals, hydrogenated oils or fats, extra sugar and salt and generally have very little nutritional value. We pay the food industry to remove good nutrients, then we pay them to return a fraction of the vitamins and minerals they removed, and then we pay them for the chemicals they put in to fool us in one way or another. There are some products I stopped buying completely after I realized just how imitation they were (like Cool Whip and non-dairy creamer for coffee.) I began to read the list of ingredients and if it contained artificial colors, hyrdrogenated oils, or high fructose corn syrup, I put it back on the shelf. These three ingredients are a tell-tale sign that the product is mostly junk. The nutrition that might have been there before processing was stripped away, then they added their numerous chemical concoctions to make it smell good, look good, and taste good and then they targeted children with their advertising to convince Mom it was worth buying. It is no wonder America is unhealthy. We feed our bodies a constant diet of junk food (either from fast food restaurants or the junk in the grocery store) and we hardly think twice about it.

One of the easiest things to make in your kitchen is your own salad dressing. I started doing this after realizing how many complex chemicals and artificial ingredients were in store bought salad dressing. You can find salad dressings now that are more natural and made without additives, but I am really enjoying the flavors and ease of making my own dressing. Here are a few of our family's favorites....


Balsamic Vinaigrette

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 tsp. brown sugar (may not be necessary depending on the quality of the vinegar)
1 tbsp. chopped garlic
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
3/4 cup olive oil

Place all ingredients in a screw top jar and shake to combine. Taste and adjust the seasonings. (I actually cut this recipe in half for our family of 5.)


Honey Mustard Dressing

In small bowl, whisk all ingredients together:
1 cup plain yogurt
3 tbsp. olive oil
1 tbsp. Dijon mustard
honey to taste
salt and pepper to taste


Greek Salad Dressing

Place 3 tbsp. olive oil, 1 1/2 tsp. lemon juice, 1 clove minced garlic, 1/4 tsp. sea salt, 1/2 tsp. dried oregano, 1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper in a small jar with screw-top lid and shake to combine.


Easy Dressing

Whisk 2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil with the juice of 1 lemon. Pour over salad greens and toss till coated. Sprinkle with a pinch of sea salt.

More about homemade cleaners

Go ahead and skip the ammonia that was listed as an ingredient in the homemade cleaners. It is a very volatile chemical with fumes that irritate eyes and lungs and is especially harmful to anyone with respiratory problems. All of the vinegar cleaner recipes work fine without the added ammonia.

Commercial cleaning products are among the most hazardous products you will find in your home. They contain chemicals that are toxic, corrosive, flammable, radioactive or act as irritants. The Consumer Product Safety Commission focuses only on the immediate effects a product can have, but ignore the possibility that they can have devastating effects over time. And that's how we are exposed to cleaning products... over time, daily, for years... and we forget they may be dangerous to us!

Non toxic cleaning can be done with very few ingredients, which are simple and inexpensive. For example, Clara decided to try out her artistic side with crayons on my tan colored footstool that goes with the glider rocker. Very pretty! I poured a bit of vinegar in a bowl, added some lemon juice to it, then scrubbed the crayon marks with a dish cloth. The crayon marks came out and the footstool was restored to its previous non-artsy look!

Surprise!

We're having another baby!

I guess there is something about September, since this baby is due then, and 3 of our family members (the boys and I) already celebrate birthdays in that month. Kinda crazy, but that's ok.

I have not been troubled with morning sickness with this pregnancy. How nice it is to wake up in the morning and not have to eat crackers before I can get out of bed!

Clara will love having her own little baby to hold. She loves her dolls and stuffed animals and cares for them with such affection and tenderness, carrying them with her as she goes about her business, even changing their diapers! I love to see the nurturing side of little girls, so different from the "conquering hero" side of my boys!