Iñ

Isaiah 55:10-11 () 10 For as the rain and the snow come down from heavenand do not return there but water the earth,making it bring forth and sprout,giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 11 so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;it shall not return to me empty,but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. #Bible http://mydailybible.org/dv/esv/2013-04-29.htm

Dinner on the fire!

Tonight's dinner is cooking on the fire! I love that it doesn't heat my house up and I get to be outside.  What's more, usually when we cook on the fire, Chris does it, and all I have to do is prep. :-)

What's for dinner tonight? Chicken legs, baked potatoes and baked sweet potatoes and a salad.

Other exciting news: we got some plants for our garden today!

Garden Tour 4.24.13

Here's the latest video from our garden.  Taken Wed, April 24th

Sorry I took it sideways. :-P

French study suggests younger women should stop wearing bras

Well, Ladies, what do you think of this study?!?

Love to hear your comments.

Bra Study

I like the benefits listed in this study.  Less stretch marks?  Yes, please.  A "perk up."  I could take that. Nursing four children has certainly taken a bit of toll on things. :-)

But there are definite cons-- the social, in public problems.  It's pretty obvious when someone isn't wearing a bra!  And, what if it's chilly?  So, there are major drawbacks too.

What do you (yes, I want to hear from YOU!) think?

A turn in our food journey...

We're going gluten free. 

 At least for awhile. The reason? 

 This girl. She has a rash all over her back that is itchy and never goes away. Several times a week she complains of a belly ache after meals. Sometimes she is so lethargic she just lays on the couch for an hour. 

 I've had this sinking feeling about it for awhile now. After some research, (it wasn't much, I think I only went to one website) it was pretty clear we at least have to try the GF thing. Itchy rash, belly ache and lethargy top the list for gluten allergy. 

 Luckily, she isn't afraid of veggies. She's eating her third helping of salad as I type this post!

Summer salad with ranch beans

Awhile ago, I think I mentioned how my awesome husband got me a menu planner for Christmas. :-) 

As it worked out today, I made ranch beans from my menu planner for lunch in my crock pot.  It was super easy-- I cooked the beans in my crock pot overnight, and then added the rest of the ingredients and turned on low while we were at church.  It made the whole house smell great, so much so that when we got home, Ellie declared, "It smells like dinner!" 

I also bought the ingredients for salad at the store last week. I go through phases of this, but I am hoping to make it a habit-- to have salad with our meals twice or more a week.  I like chunky salads.  With lots of tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, etc.  I don't like to have to search out the extras in a sea of lettuce.  :-)  Also, I dislike making salads because of the time it takes to chop everything up. I know this sounds crazy coming from a girl who sprouts, dehydrates and then grinds wheat berries into flour. but really, I find it a drag.  :-P I have been trying to make an abundance of salad and then eat it over the course of a few days.  This gets tricky, though, because if I leave it too long in the fridge and it goes bad, then I get this kind of avoidance where I tend to leave it in the fridge for entirely too long-- until it is totally gross-- before I just deal with the fact that I didn't eat all the salad I made. I should just get over it all ready! 

Anyway, back to lunch. When we have salad, I have been getting out these adorable balsamics and olive oils I got from my SIL for Christmas.  We have such fun flavors as 'ripe peach white balsamic' and 'blood orange infused olive oil.'  This is fun for me to try different pairings, and also caused an unexpected bonus-- children who want seconds and thirds of salad, so that they can try different flavors! Ben seriously had three helpings of salad at lunch. I chose to put my beans on my salad and I used the maple syrup flavored balsamic also.  It gave them a nice baked bean flavor. 

Growing lettuce from the cut off stem and other randomness

I saw on Facebook that someone was growing lettuce from the bottom stem that they had cut off when they were making salad. Of course I had to try it. And it worked! This picture is about four days worth of growth. No need to spend top dollar for 'microgreens'... just grow them from the stem of your used lettuce for free!

A rare cup of morning coffee. Not much sleeping happened in the Good children's room last night, which also means it did not happen in the parents' room either...

Four eggs for scrambling at breakfast. Two are Wegman's organic and two are from a local farm. Can you guess which are farm eggs? They are so much more beautiful. This is why I only buy store eggs in a pinch.

Sugar Free Blueberry Smoothie

I made a smoothie for dessert tonight.  It was so hot, and we needed/ wanted something refreshing after dinner.  I need to go to Millers so badly that I have NO sweetener in the house (This is not the first time this has happened!).  Alright, almost no sweetener.

I kid you not, I have 1 cup of maple syrup, 1/4 cup or less of rapadura, and maybe 2 cups of honey.  Needless to say, I am doing my best to stretch that until I can go shopping, which looks like at this point, this weekend or next week.  Not very soon, in any case.  :-)

That being said, I made a smoothie.

Blueberry smoothie
1 1/2 cups plain yogurt
1 1/2 cups blueberries (i used frozen ones from last summer)
2 TBS ground flax (just for added benefit)
1 TBS vanilla

Put in blender.  Blend til smooth.  It was delicious.

To prove my children loved it, here is a video of Baby John having his. :-)

Garden 2013 Update 3

I actually managed to make a video today of our garden.

Enjoy!

Garden 2013 Update 2

Well, it was longer than I wanted until I got to this post (of course).  I don't have any pictures (sadly) -- not that there's much to look at right now.  :-)

Maybe tomorrow I will have Ben, Sam and Ellie take you on a tour of the garden.  That is always fun and amusing.

But here's the quick update.

• Despite bad technique planting garlic last fall, almost all of it has come up and is about 3" tall. 
• The strawberries are starting to get new growth on them. 
•  Chris bought a grapevine, which I planted today
• Chris got three blueberry bushes that I planted this past weekend out front
• Ben got a kiwi plant that we haven't planted yet. (who knew you could plant kiwi around here?!)
• I planted peas yesterday (both snap and regular) 
• Chris planted radishes which are coming up (little baby sprouts!)
• We planted a bag of 75 snowball onions, some of which are sprouting a bit
• Chris expanded the garden to the size it will be this year, dug a little trench around it, put the fence around it, and put some landscaping fabric over half of it. 

That's all I can think of right now.  Hopefully tomorrow you can see it with me.  It looks rather barren right now, but the promise of spring and summer is there in the little green sprouts peeking out here and there!  

Good night!