The Non-candy store

I don’t want my kids to miss out on the fun of getting a big bag of candy on October 31st. But I don’t want all of that candy to become part of their bodies and brains either.

^{Beatrix discovered the wonders of candy last year.}

^{And knows what she’s after this year.}

^{But how do you get those darn tootsie rolls open?!}

Maybe you just eat the paper…. hey Mom!

I guess pretzels are good too.

Acadia and Lily are not happy with only eating the pretzels. So we’ve come up with a happy solution all around…

The non-candy store.

In this store the goods are good for you and the candy is the cash!

Here’s last year’s store:

^{Strawberries, pistachios, spritzer, toys, games and art supplies}

And here’s this year’s store:

^{Organic fruit sour gummy worms and bears, peanut and almond butter squeeze packs, sparkling cider, art and school supplies, socks, hair things, cups, and the coolest thing: window climbing ninjas.}

They still had some candy left after buying all the stuff I had, (my prices weren’t high enough!) so they portioned out the rest for the next few days. But this is all the stuff I kept OUT of their tummies and off their teeth:

I know there’s other creative methods of cutting back on candy. What are your ideas?

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Losing it....the weight I mean.

We started eating real whole foods last fall. But I hadn't been losing any weight. Dan asked me if it would be motivating for me to have a goal/reward/carrot. I said well, yeah! So we came up with the goal of losing 10 pounds and he would get me the Wii balance board and Wii Fit Plus. I accepted the challenge. It took me about two months and I am still losing. I LOVE playing on Wii fit, but that's not really how I'm losing weight. I promised my facebook friends I would share my secret so here's what I'm doing.

• Eating whole foods as much as possible, avoiding processed foods, corn syrup and artificial sweeteners.
  
• Replacing vegetable oils or shortenings with traditional fats and oils.


• Drinking raw whole milk and eating full fat dairy, butter, cheese, etc.


• Limiting breads and giving up processed cereal.


• And my number one secret for making this all work.....COCONUT OIL!
  

Here's why I think the extra virgin coconut oil is the catalyst for my weight loss. It contains medium chain fatty acids that increase metabolism, keep me feeling satisfied longer, and reduce my sugar cravings. I cook my eggs in it for breakfast. I put it on my oatmeal, in my coffee or tea, or make a warm vanilla milk drink with it. I sometimes cook or bake with it when it fits the recipe. I use a couple of tablespoons a day, and when I hit a plateau with my weight, I make sure to work on incorporating it into my diet more. Find out more about coconut oil, good fats, and weight loss here.

So that's my secret. It's working well, I'm not hungry, I try to limit portions, but I still eat dessert sometimes! I'm trying to excercise too. I have lost 15 pounds so far and am hoping to lose more. I feel like the food I am eating is nourishing me, and my body is letting go of what I don't need now, that it's happier :)

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How to get a really strong iced coffee for $1.05 (and rip off DD)

Yeah. I'm pretty pleased. I just got this really robust iced coffee for really cheap.

It's because I married a Java Genius. When I'm at home my JG just makes me an iced coffee with espresso, ice and half 'n half. But he figured out a way to get this same Beautiful Beverage when we're on the road, without paying a lot of money for it.

And although I'm not willing to share my JG, I will share this fantastic secret with all of my Dear Readers. Here's whatcha do.

Go to Dunkin Donuts and ask for: a double espresso, on ice, with cream (and sugar, if that's how you take it). But hold on, it's not quite that simple. Now comes the hard part. You must wait while the teller is momentarily befuddled. "Can you repeat that?" he says. And you do. "That will be a dollar five," he says. And yes, that's $1.05 for a BB at DD without even having your own JG!

So, DR, are you curious why it costs so much less than a regular iced coffee? It's because you're not paying for water. A double espresso (also known as a turbo shot at DD) is only $1.05, and they don't charge extra for cream or ice. If you make the mistake of ordering an iced coffee with a turbo shot you're going to pay somewhere around $3 which is just too much to shell out very often.

And if you don't drink coffee and you still want a novel way to cool off you can try Lily's method:

Let me know if you try either of these hot tips, I'd love to know what the tellers tell YOU!

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b&m&b: Real Food on the Run

One of the big challenges for our family in eating real food right now is what to eat when we are in town and haven't packed a lunch. Cadi has been going through fast food withdrawal, but we are making progress.

When we are downtown on a weekday we like to go to Bagel Central, a local bagel shop that makes fresh homemade food. I get the girls a bagel with melted cheddar, and I like the potato pancake served with applesauce and sour cream. Especially in the winter it's nice to be able to have something warm and tasty to nourish us during our busy day of errands and appointments. Plus, it's one of my favorite spaces; exposed brick, long tables, and now they even have WiFi!
Tonight, we were out shopping and had planned to head over to Bagel Central but they close early on Friday night for the Sabbath. Out next stop was Target so we decided to throw in the dishtowel on getting good food and get something from the snack bar. I will NOT tell you what Dan and the kids ate other than to say it was "foodless food" as Holly has christened it. I was

going to eat the same thing for lack of better choices, when I discovered that Starbucks has oatmeal! I mixed in the dried fruit, nuts, and brown sugar, and enjoyed my sweet but nourishing supper. In fact, I kinda kept going on and on about it to Dan, who was not nearly as thrilled as I was. Our dinner entertainment was this little girl sitting in her stroller making funny faces and laughing to our uproarious response.
The girls were also highly amused by Dan's warning to them that they might not be able to get pretzels at Target because the machine might be broken or something. When we got up to the counter, lo and behold, the woman told us the pretzel machine was broken! (Miller family smirks and giggles.) She said that the pretzels in the case were just for display. I'm thinkin' those ones probably have as much nutrient content as the ones they make anyway.

I still need to work on more ideas for eating on the run, but at least now I have two. Tomorrow I'll be making granola bars, which would also be a good thing to pack for snacks in the car, but I have a feeling they won't last long around here!

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Bread and Milk and Blackberries for Supper

I haven't blogged in forever. I have thought about blogging at least every other day. Tonight the kids are in bed and Dan is watching a movie I don't care to watch, and it seems like a good time to just start.

You might remember bread, milk and blackberries from the story of Peter Rabbit. This is what the little bunnies had for a simple supper when Peter was sent to bed with chamomile tea. I am introducing Bread, Milk, and Blackberries for Supper as a new "foodie" feature of my blog. I have blogged about food before, and posted a recipe here and there. But recently food has become more of an interest for me.... specifically "real" food, like bread, and milk and blackberries. Let me tell you where I'm coming from.

For Mother's Day Dan got me some ducklings. When the starter feed ran out I went back to the farmer's supply store to get more and it was out of stock. I asked if my ducklings were old enough to switch to corn, and was told that they were. So I brought home a bag of cracked corn. I hadn't started giving them kitchen scraps yet, so all they had was corn and water. Being a very new farmer-person I thought that was good enough. Soon though, the ducklings started having seizures. It was so disturbing to watch that I didn't want to go out and see them. I went online to see what could be wrong with them and discovered that they had symptoms of vitamin deficiency. Especially the vitamin E found the green stuff they should have been eating. So that night I fixed them a big pan of spinach and scraps with vitamin E capsules drizzled on top. They loved it, and the seizures resolved right away once their poor little bird brains were sufficiently nourished. I started feeding them kitchen scraps with lots of green stuff and mixed rabbit pellets in with the corn, which they thrived on.

A few months later I came across a book called "Real food for mother and baby" by Nina Planck. It was eye-opening. Many books and articles and films later, I realized that I had been starving my own brain pretty much the same way I accidentally starved those little ducklings. I hadn't been eating real food. I had been eating whatever was at the store, which seems like food but is often so far removed from the actual thing, it is now something else entirely. And when you trace it all they way back to what most of this "food" is made from, you come back to......corn. The same thing my little ducks tried to live on but couldn't. I want to give my kids nourishing food. This family's brains can definitely use all the help we can get.

So stay tuned for more "Bread, Milk, and Blackberries for Supper". You can count on the bread being homemade, the milk being raw, and the blackberries being local. I will be serving up some recipes, ideas, and chronicling my new quest for real food, in between turns on the tire swing. Pin It

Flaky Pastry and Parenting

UPDATE 1/29/10: I have changed this "traditional" recipe now to use traditional, real fats: half butter and half coconut oil. My mom and I both did this for Thanksgiving and the pie crusts came out even better than usual. Yum!

I made pastry dough today using a family recipe. It came from my mother's family, I don't know how far back. It may not be ancient, but it makes really good pie. I was amused at how easy it was for me to make compared to other recipes, it seemed like my hands just knew what they were doing, and my fingers knew when the texture was just right. I have been making this pastry since I was little; watching my mother at first and playing with the dough, then trying my own pies and hearing my dad say (with a twinkle in his eye) "It's good... just needs a little more practice!" So now, it's natural to me. I don't get lost in the recipe, I don't forget the ingredients, there is nothing to figure out. The pies come out great, and Dad still says "Just a little more practice!"
While I was mixing my dough today, I was wishing that parenting was more like making pastry. In fact, I used to think that it was. You follow the recipe, you make a good kid. You raise your children the way you were taught (in my case, coming from a loving home) and things will work out fine. Don't have an old family recipe for raising children? Never fear, just choose one from Dr. Dobson, Michael Pearl, or even Super Nanny! Read the books, follow the steps, and the result will be one nice shining kid.
Anyone who is a parent knows it doesn't work like that. I don't even have a great analogy for parenting, I don't think it fits one. My experience with parenting isn't even the same with each child, and yours would be quite different from mine. The closest thing I can think of at the moment is mining and cutting diamonds. It's hard work, messy, takes forever, and then each diamond has to be cut to bring out the radience of the individual stone. The best part of that analogy is that only a diamond can cut a diamond. So both diamonds are being shaped in the process. We are not creating children like we create a pie, we are being used to shape them. And we too, are being changed.
I need my experience with parenting to conform me into the image of Christ. I form my pastry into pie, and pray that I will be as pliable in his hands. But not quite so flaky. Pin It