Paleolithic Diet

My newest venture is the Paleolithic Diet.

It is basically eating meat fruits and vegetables and that is it. No grains and no sugar.  It is pretty tough to do living in this society.  Everything has four or high fructose corn syrup in it.  It is frustrating to go shopping.  You just have to make peace with making things from scratch.   The one thing I am struggling with is bread.  I have been buying sprouted bread to make the transition.  It is working pretty well.  My kids don't mind it either.  One thing I have noticed for sure is that I feel GREAT!  I feel light and no more food crashing.  You know,  the late afternoon wall that tells you you need sugar.  No more for me.  I do miss the full feeling that you get from comfort foods but I always feel bad when I eat them.  

Oh The Rain

Here comes the rain again,

Falling on my head like a memory,

Falling on my head like a new emotion,

"Eurythmics"

Anyone remember this song?    I think I finally understand it now.  Oh the rain is here. Living in the Pacific Northwest is so very beautiful, that is if you are willing to live through the eight months of rainy grey skies.  I haven't decided if it is worth it yet.  

I do take great comfort in the many different varieties of coffee here.  

My other newest love is knitting.  I enrolled my two children in a knitting class at the local yarn shop.  They fell in love with it and I have learned through them.  I love sitting by the fireplace, drinking a rich frothy cup of coffee and knitting.  

A few nights ago, we were sitting around the fireplace reading our latest family novel "Fable Haven" and I had a dejavu moment.  I can remember before having children envisioning what it would be like when I did have children,  what it would be like.  I remember thinking how nice it would be to sit around the fire and knit with my daughters.  And there we were doing just that. 

So Sweet.

Reaping the Harvest

This summer I had planted 8 tomato plants in my garden; 4 roma and 4 beefsteak.  Well, it is time to harvest and I can't believe how much one plant can produce.  These were raised from seed so they were very inexpensive.  I think one plant has produced over 10 lbs  of tomatoes.  At $2.99 a lb (store price here) that is a huge savings.  I have decided, after eating many tomato sandwiches, that I would can some.  Surprise, surprise.  Anyway, I made one batch of pizza sauce so far that turned out so delicious.  Tonight I am making more because it takes a ton of tomatoes to make a little bit of sauce. Be warned though, if you try to cook tomatoes down for sauce as I am doing, it scorches very easily. I am hoping if I add more tomatoes that you won't be able to taste it much. I just can't bear to throw it away.  

Community Living

What ever happened to living Community style? You know, when you see and know your neighbors well, and everyone in the neighborhood has a skill that they share.  The town I grew up in was like that.  My mom was the local barber/hairstylist,  day care and chicken supplier( yes, chicken that are grown for food).  They neighbor across the street had a small tractor that he used to till up every one's garden that had one and in the winter he would plow the snow out of your driveway.  Another neighbor knew how to fix cars so he would work on your car and just charge you for the parts it took to fix it.  Everyone knowing full well that they would get services in exchange for their efforts. But that was never said or assumed.  Living there, that is just what you do because you want to and you appreciate what others do for you.  We also saw each other on a regular basis. We didn't have mailboxes on our house. We had a post office that we had to walk or drive to every day.  Everyone would hang out at the Barley Pop now and then just to shoot the breeze and play some pool.  The local kids would also go there to buy candy with their allowance.  Everyone in the town would keep their eyes on the kids and if they were in some one's apple trees that they weren't supposed to then their mom would get a call. No big deal. We all felt responsible for each other.  The kids in town would also hang out with the older folks and keep them company, play cards and listen to stories from their childhood.  It was such an easy, safe life.  .  .   .   THAT .  .  .   Is what I yearn for for my own children.  

Rose Hips

While picking yet more blackberries from behind our house I was noticing this beautiful bush. It was loaded with these bright orange and red things that look like miniature apples.  Looking further I realized that it was a wild rose bush and that the little miniature apple looking things were rose hips.  If you have never seen them, they are so pretty. So, of course being on fire with learning about canning and using the things around you locally I looked them up online and found out that they are really good for you and can help with many different health issues.  Having heart problems that run in my family, I am very interested in doing more preventative things now.  Rose hips are loaded with vitamin C, even more than oranges.   Well, that is all I needed to know so I read more about how to harvest them and now my counter top is full of drying rose hips.  It is a bit tricky taking the seeds out and stuff but I figure 'what the heck' . They are free right!  

Back to Basics Life Quest continuation

After having our second child we have figured out a few things. First priority was to keep me home to raise our children.  Second was to find a job skill for my husband that could support all of us. This was not an easy task but being where we are now, seven years later, I am thankful for my husband's tenacity. He is self employed now and works from home which makes our family life so much more special.  We also chose to home school our children first because we had moved so many times. It isn't easy balancing everyone being  at home but the rewards are so great.  Now it is a necessity that they are all home and  home school. We can pick up and go on a family vacation pretty much any time of the year.  Another thing that we have learned from living off of one income is that getting a babysitter is a challenge on a tight budget.  A friend of ours gave us the idea of babysitting trades.  You ask other couples with similar age children ( ones that will have a positive influence on each other ) and ask them if they would like to trade out nights for babysitting. One night you go out and the next week is their turn.  So far this has worked out well for us.  It is free and usually so well received because as I'm sure most of you know how hard it is to get out regularly ( I mean just you and your spouse ).

And as you all probably also know is that if you don't nurture yourselves as people then you aren't usually as effective as a parent. =(        .   .   .   more to come  .   .   . 

Today's canning project

Today, I decided I was going to try to make pickles. I am fortunate enough to have a friend that grew lemon cucumbers this year and has a huge excess of them. We ate many of them but just couldn't keep up so what better to do than make pickles with them. Having never made pickles before, I was a bit apprehensive.  But knowing myself well enough that when I have an idea to do something the universe opens it's vast source of knowledge to me and 'voila' , it's done. So, on to pickling.  I found a recipe in a canning book from the library, rolled up my sleeves and started chopping. Surprisingly enough, it was very simple and only took me about an hour to cut and can 4 quarts of beautiful lemon cucumber pickles. The jars are so pretty. If you have ever seen lemon cucumbers, they are the prettiest shade of yellow.  If you can picture a jar full of cucumber slices that look like fresh lemons it takes your breath away. We have not eaten any yet. I won't let anyone open them  because they are so pretty to look at.  =)

Back to Basics Life Quest

Our family's quest to get back to the basics of living stem partly from my experiences of being raised in a small community and also from our desire to live with more awareness towards the needs of our family. We want to live in a community that has a sense of how to take care of one another. Moving all around this country we have learned many things about how this societal structure works and how it doesn't work. We as Americans have learned well how to take care of ourselves. Ourselves, ourselves, ourselves.  Need I say more.  Our first experience of this realization was after the birth of our first child. With both of our parents living on opposite sides of the country we realized the amount of responsibility to raise our child laid on our shoulders alone. Having been the first of our friends to get married and have children we also learned that single people usually don't want to hang out or help out people with small children (be it fear or lack of knowledge of what to do). We found ourselves more alone than ever. OK , I thought, I can do this. I can be a stay-home mom, housewife, and house keeper AND be successful at it. Well, needless to say, months later I found myself very depressed and wanting a part time job just to be able to get out and socialize. Talking only to a baby for months is just not the same as adult conversation. The pressure of doing all of this alone was not as fun of a challenge as I first thought. Then we became pregnant with our second child. I was happy at the thought of not being my first child's constant playmate but I think the reaction from my husband was more like panic. For him the realization was thinking of how he was going to support us all .    .    .   More to come .  .  .

Canning Local Goods

My latest resourceful endeavor is finding local food and processing it. We happen to live in the Pacific Northwest where blackberries are wonderfully abundant and most importantly, FREE!  Everyday, on our family walk, we plan our route to include a stop at a local blackberry bramble.  We usually come home with about a gallon each day.  On returning home I rinse and freeze the berries on a cookie sheet to keep them from freezing into mushed clumps. Then I put them in ziplock bags and store them in the freezer until I have enough to make jam. The rest I keep frozen till the middle of winter when your body yearns for a comforting homemade blackberry cobbler. (You really don't appreciate cobbler in the summer, even though that's when the berries are ripe and abundant) So far I have canned a few quarts and about a dozen pints of jam. Yum . Yum.  On these walks my eyes and mind wander through people's yards where apple, plum, and pear trees are heavy with fruit that is starting to drop to the ground. I try to work up the courage to knock on their doors to see if they are planning on collecting them and then finally give in after listening to my children nag me to. They usually are very happy to have someone pick the fruit so that it doesn't go to waste. So now I also have six jars of plum sauce that would be great to dip  pot stickers or egg rolls into.  Next, that huge apple tree down the street. Maybe I could make apple butter and can apples for making apple pie for Thanksgiving.

Back to Basics Living

After hearing several of our friends comments about our lifestyle and how it inspires them I have decided to share some of this information. I think I take for granted the way we live because it has come out of necessity but when I talk to people I realize how many things we have learned to do as a family that just aren't commonplace. I come from a town of less than 100 people which is a wonderment to most, but I believe that it has given me some life experiences that most people don't experience in today's world. I will be sharing what I learned from growing up in this kind of atmosphere and what I have learned since then after traveling and living around most of this country.