Oh, the books I could write...

My child has been sick for exactly one week and one hour.
Last Sunday he came down with a fever which we nursed until 2:30 Tuesday morning when it became a congested chest cold. Stuffy nose, cranky head, coughing... it's all here. Every morning he wakes up on the bright side, I've got his room so humidified it's like a cool sauna, but by 11 he's fallen apart once again.
I don't blame him - I HATE being sick. HATE. With violence. And so does my son. Thankfully, I make a better nurse than a sick person *and* I'm the adult, so we're getting along fair to middlin'. He's been smeared with eucalyptus infused oils, humidified, syringed, aspirated, wiped, hydrated, cuddled, coddled and fed copious amounts of oranges and pineapple while watching Pride and Prejudice. I hold him a great deal, but the Inside Baby doesn't care for that so much and makes his objections known by repeatedly beating my bladder until I move. Oh yeah.

Being of a literary bent, I've taken a few moments in-between nose wipings and tantrum soothings to imagine some of the books I could write using all the rich content I've been 'soaking in' the past few days.

"Everything is Covered in Snot; A Memoir"
by Mrs. Ann 'Nightingale'

"My Child Just Spewed Baby Tylenol All Over The Breakfast Table; and other adventures"
by Mrs. Ann 'Wet Rag'

"Somebody Smells Like Eucalyptus! A Guess-Who Book"
by Mrs. Ann 'Slather'

"Where's That Syringe?! An Eye-Spy Book"
by Mrs. Ann 'Hold-Him-Down'

"I Just Ate Half A Jar Of Gummy Vitamins; A Survival Guide"
by Mrs. Ann 'Confessional'

"Please Let Him Nap; A Book Of Common Prayers"
by Mrs. Ann 'Baby Tylenol'

"Don't Wipe Your Nose On THAT! A Book Of Every Day Objects"
by Mrs. Ann 'Grab-it-First'

"The Beast Below; Dealing With Early Sibling Rivalry"
by Mrs. Ann 'Gottapee'

So there you have it, from the trenches, 

Ann 

Darcy Day

My son loves Pride and Prejudice almost as much as he loves Baby Einstein - in fact, I think it safe to say that they are tied in his affections. 

When we have a cranky day, an icky day, a sick day, a 'just can't get out of our own way' day, I pop on some P&P and things immediately begin to smooth out. Little Bear sways and hums along with the ever-inviting introductory theme and always enjoys the ball scenes, twirling and clapping with the Bennet Girls and their beaus. When Mrs. Bennet gets her bonnet strings in a whirl, Bear throws up his hands and issues a loud wail of his own and every time Lydia elopes with the infamous Wickham, he grieves with the family as if they were his own, faking tears and throwing himself into the chair cushion with great zeal. 

He plays with his farm puzzles and blocks during most of the episodes, loving the dances and drama the best and stopping in the middle of whatever he is doing at the time to join in, but when each one ends he says, "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, mama! More?" 

There is *always* more Pride and Prejudice. It's such gentle entertainment, we go about our day with the lilting British chatter in the background and feel we are very much among friends and neighbors. 

"The Revolution Will Be Home-Baked" Soaked Bread - - Pilgrims with iPhones - - and other musings

Bread is simple, right? Wheat and water - the staff of life... you go to the store, buy a loaf, take it home and devour it with an infinite variety of toppings and applications. Bread is awesome.

The beautiful simplicity of bread must not be confused with the apparent ease with which it is commercially mass produced. Let's face it, folks, we have absolutely taken the loveliness of bread and sacrificed it upon the heathen altar of industrialization.

**Industrialization - good for things like indoor plumbing and penicillin, bad for things like food.**

Our ancestors would have taken our daily bread and stared at it in wonder and dismay.
What are you supposed to do with it? Build things? Wear it? Throw it at your enemies?

People are always musing on the idea of Pilgrims with iPhones and how funny that would be - I think Pilgrims would be much more interested in the plethora of non-food-foods we consume without a thought, just because someone put it on a shelf and told us it was to eat.

"Forget that little magic box, my dear, what on earth is that which you putteth in thy mouth???"

**Pilgrims - probably didn't talk like that.**

Bread is simple - but we have abused its simplicity and turned it into an unrecognizable nonfood our founding fathers would have refused to feed their livestock.  I think it's safe to say that if they had eaten what we eat, we wouldn't be here today to eat what we're eating. How long can a civilization survive on nonfood? I guess we're going to find out.

**Steps down off soapbox and returns it the laundry room.**

There was a wisdom that these ancestors of ours possessed that we are lacking. A knowing. A rightness that worked with what God had naturally given them.

Before frankenfood and Wonderbread, there was sourdough. There was flat bread. There were community mills and genetically pure grain. It seemed like necessity and a lack of technology forced this wisdom on them - and maybe it did - but it worked. It had to work, because if it didn't there wasn't any Walmart up the street selling fake bread for $.99 a loaf. It worked and in many instances it worked better than what we have now.

It's simple because you can take the seed of a grass, some water and tiny, funky little creatures that live in the air we breathe and end up with BREAD. Bread, which sustained life for thousands of years. And people question the existence of God... when there's bread??

I love it. I love the science and the process and the endless possibilities it adds to my daily life. I want to honor the Old Ways while not being afraid to use some of the new ones too (thank you, refrigerator, oven and KitchenAid mixer!)

I've found that The Old Ways can be summed up with 3 S's:
Soaked
Sprouted and
Soured

The Ancients would either sprout their grain and then dry it before grinding it to flour and using it for bread, use a sourdough starter to leaven their bread or supposedly (this is a new one for me) soak their flour in an acidic medium before baking. I'm not pretending to be an expert in this, I read mostly before I go to bed which means I am deliriously tired and bleary-eyed. I absorb enough to make it work and make a mental note to go back and get sciency with it later.

Why all this trouble? Phytic Acid. It's something in wheat that makes it hard to digest. Yuppers.
And then there is the fact that commercially produced yeast wasn't available as leavening, and refrigerators weren't available to keep things from spoiling - neither was the cocktail of chemical preservatives, softeners and conditioners.
Food had to be tough (in a good, 'I can handle this' sort of way). And as it is with a lot of things in this life, sometimes a little *good* toughness does us a whole lot of good.

Preparing bread The Old Way pretty effectively solved these problems. It was easier to digest, lasted longer and was satisfying to eat.

**I am a Pilgrim, and I approve of this bread.**

I'm working my way up to a no-yeast sourdough bread (and variations) for us for every day and the next step was trying a soaked bread where the flour was mixed with water and an acidic medium (I used whey) and then left to culture for 15 hours before preparing.  HERE is the recipe and method I used. I did NOT use the ascorbic acid, simply because I don't have any - - - and it turned out just fine.

This recipe uses yeast (and she explains all about that in her article) but it seemed to be as easy to digest as the bread I've been making - and it took One day instead of Six. It was also nice to have a not sour wheat bread instead of a white sourdough for a change. This is definitely an excellent sandwich loaf I will make again!!  Let me know what you think...

The soaking 

The rising 

The cooling (after baking)

The consuming

Reading Through The Bible 2015

This is going to become a habit with me, isn't it?
I thought the whole 'Writing Bug' had gone and died, but alas, it has not.

So, my one and only resolution for this upcoming new year is this: I want to read through the Bible chronologically.
I have read the entire Bible, mostly as part of a dare I accepted as a 10 year old, years before I actually became born again. Yes, I was unsaved, but among the churched and that's the sort of thing we dared each other to do - read Leviticus. It bewilders me and I wish I now had a tenth of the time I wasted fulfilling dares in order to *really* read Leviticus as a believer.
But that's what this resolution is all about.
All my life I've made lists of self-improving or world-improving resolutions at the beginning of the year and I feel in some small way as though I've gotten over that.
There really is only One thing that is going to improve anything - either in myself or the world around me - and that's God's word. Improve in that and everything else will fall into line - I am convinced.
I don't want to do a 365 devotional because I don't want to be spoon fed anything. I don't want to make assumptions and gloss over things. I don't want to be interrupted. Having said that, I do plan on getting some good study tools and dusting off the ones I used in high school when Bible Study was an actual course - heavens how I loved that. My seeking soul just longed for understanding. I wore out my mini-concordance and fell head-over-heels in love with Strong's - and not the handy little Strong's App I now have on my phone, no sir, I mean the tie-yourself-to-it-in-a-twister volume that took up half my desk and had print so tiny it strained my eyes. Good times.
I have a couple of sturdy old Bible history books I plan on rereading and I'm going to be all about charts and maps.
I am so excited.

My favorite Sunday School Teacher - ever - was Mrs. McKay. She was a slightly older, southern-styled, honest to goodness Lady like they just don't make them any more. She was traditional, she was domestic, she was sweet and kind and she was the most exhaustive Bible scholar I've ever known. In my circle, that wasn't always encouraged. We were supposed to know the good wife scriptures and scriptures to support whether or not we covered our heads and wore long dresses, but we honestly weren't too into things like prophecy or Old Testament Chronology. Mrs. McKay was, and how! I thank God at least monthly for the 3 years I learned from her, not only about how to be a godly wife and mother and how to defend a conviction with scripture, but about the glories and infinite mysteries of the Word of God for its own sake.

Mrs. M read the Bible like it was honeyed poetry, the words dripped off her lips in a way that made me ache - it was so beautiful. She loved the Word of God with a blazing passion, she was infatuated with it and she radiated that enthusiasm to everyone around her. She loved the God behind the words-  that was the key. Anything *He* said was the most important, gorgeous, worthy thing in the universe. Anything He recorded - she memorized. Anything He repeated - she studied until she understood why. Anything He mentioned - she paid attention to and loved. Think of a love-struck woman hanging on to, agreeing with and immediately adopting everything her fiancé says - it was like that.

In our tiny church, Mrs. M taught the young adult group - six of us sitting in a line in front of her desk, our knees and farm boots stuck out at odd angles due to the tininess of the chairs we had. For an hour we listened and read and sometimes talked. While every other youth Sunday school I'd ever attended focused on things like dressing appropriately, giving up dating, obeying your parents, seeking the Lord's will for your life after high school and the like, Mrs. McKay scooped us up and dove without reservation into the book of Isaiah for a full year. We didn't come up for breath Once.

Have you ever read Isaiah?
And we didn't just *read* it, we studied it. We got intimately acquainted with it. We memorized its ins and outs, its kings and sins and all the stuff we couldn't hardly understand. We read what great saints from times past had gleaned from the Lord concerning its content. I fell in love over and over and over again. I went home and preached to my mom (the other and original Great Bible Lover in my life) hollering and crying and trying to make her understand what was going on. It was exhausting, challenging, mind-blowing and the best Bible Study experience I'd ever had.  I learned more about how the Lord desired that I live my life from that study than from all the youth-centered studies I've ever read or seen. She didn't ladle anything out - she didn't bend or coddle or sweeten or cajole or make it 'relevant to our lives'. She was having the time of her life and if we wanted to go along, that was great, but we had to keep up. God's word is ALWAYS relevant. To everyone - so listen up.
And I say, "Amen."

I really want to study the Bible like that again. Maybe I can - maybe the time for me has passed? I hate to think that's true - I have child(ren) to raise and teach and I am as in desperate need of learning as they are.
Lord, if I show up - if I press on and pay attention and listen - will you teach me like that again this year?

Desiring daily bread from heaven itself,

Because I cannot live on earthly bread alone - 

My soul is famished. 

Me Today; them lying hormones

This is how I feel Today:

And somehow, writing about it is going to cure me.  I need to laugh at myself - bear with me. I know of no other remedy so perfect for a funky mood. 

Little Bear is fed, changed and taking his afternoon siesta, The Mr. is sleeping after a long night at work and I am sitting here in my kitchen sipping cold coffee, wondering what to do with myself.  

I personally identify with this screaming, cleaning war dwarf. I'm convinced this is what my brothers picture when remembering me as a teenager. I am the oldest girl - I have three younger brothers - we lived on a farm with as many as three indoor dogs and up to five indoor cats. Mopping was intense. I stand by any actions I took while completing the task. 

This is how I feel - machete raised, hair aflame, spit-flying. 

I am embarrassed to admit this publicly, but I really am only now learning that how I *feel* isn't necessarily how I *am*. Seems like something you learn in day school, not during one's second pregnancy. My last pregnancy (and, honestly, this one too) was a bit of a nightmare internally because my feelings and moods and thoughts were so intense, so out of control and overwhelming it almost drove me crazy. I thought I *was* crazy.

 I live at an intensity most people can only experience while under the influence of untoward substances. I have this idea nestled inside that if my Whole Being isn't 100% - none of me is. I know this is a horrid fault to confess in front of people I have only just met - - - but it's true. If I *feel* like a raging dwarf, I must be a raging dwarf, no matter how I act or KNOW otherwise. And this brings on guilt and despair and dismay and discouragement and confusion... and every bad thing. 

Sometimes I do stupid or sinful things while channeling my war dwarf, but most of the time I just go on as I must and let the war rage on inside and unseen by anyone but me. 

Here's the truth - This is actually me today: 

I sat in the rocking chair holding my sobbing Little Bear who was in a good bit of distress for most of the morning. It was just one of those days. He was heartbroken when Dad went upstairs to go to bed. He was heartbroken when he couldn't get the book to shut. He was heartbroken when his cup was empty. He was heartbroken when my shoes wouldn't fit his tiny feet. He was heartbroken when Jane Eyre had to flee Mr. Rochester - - and he's never read that book. I tried to tell him it ends well, but he would not be consoled. He's pretty intense too... Hmmm. 

So I put my plans for the day aside and we hunkered down. I dried his little tears, we watched three episodes of A&E's Pride and Prejudice (which is second only to Baby Einstein in his affections), we talked, we cuddled, we played with his ball and his farm animal puzzle. Then I made lunch and we ate. And here I am.  

There was no screaming, no sobbing on my end, no machetes, no war. 

My adrenal glands were ready to charge into the fray, my mind was racing and tumultuous with battle plans, my entire being felt panicked and on the edge of desperation. But it was just hormones. 

Useful hormones, necessary hormones, but they lie, lie, LIE. 

And now I must go. Baby #2 is jumping on my bladder - and that's a feeling that needs to be believed and acted upon rather urgently. 

Breakfast at Bethany

I am not a breakfast person by nature, but I have become one out of Necessity and Duty.  I must say that it is one of the better things Duty has lead me to.

Breakfast is my second-language and I was a clumsy and unwilling student, yet as the days pass I become a little more fluent, a little more easy and quite a bit more skilled at preparing the feast which breaks our fast. 

At Bethany house we have three standard breakfasts; 

Oatmeal, 

Fried Eggs with Toast and 

Dirty Potatoes. 

My Mr. and son LOVE oatmeal and often eat it no matter what else we are having, but I find it unsatisfactory for a breakfast food.  Alex loves his oatmeal in a liquid state very much like the gruel fed to the orphans in Oliver Twist. Little Bear eats his much thicker (so that he can keep it on his little spoon) and decorated with stewed prunes, butter and vanilla-flavored fish oil. Yum.  If the guys are content eating oatmeal, I will make myself a smoothie with yogurt, cottage cheese, frozen fruit and veggies and some fish oil. Yum. (yes, I must add 'Yum' after every mention of fish oil.) 

I far prefer having sunny-side-up eggs on buttered toast, but my favorite breakfast is Dirty Potatoes. I got the name and recipe from a gruff old coot we used to live a mile up the road from in Ohio who claimed he ate it while stationed in the Philippines after WWII. Our family had been eating variations on the idea for years, but my brothers and I couldn't resist the romance our neighbor wove into the story and Dirty Potatoes became one of our favorite meals. 

This morning we had Dirty Potatoes with Buttered Bananas  - - the perfect way to start a day, I think! 

Dirty Potatoes, ala Roger Galbraith. Chopped up bacon is cooked until the fat is rendered and then diced potatoes are tossed in and the whole thing is salted and covered. When the potatoes are tender, eggs are broken right into the pan and scrambled. I'm usually not in the mood to cry first thing in the morning (sometimes I am...) but chopped onions make a nice addition - add them with the potatoes. 

My guys like to eat it with ketchup - brothers, son, husband, the whole caboodle. Little Bear carefully dips each and every bite into his red pool of ketchup before eating it with a finesse only toddlers can truly pull off. 

Buttered Bananas are very simple to make but they taste fancy and balance well with the heartiness of the Dirty Potatoes. I slice 2 or 3 bananas into a small sauce pot and add a few Tablespoons of butter, a teaspoon or so of cinnamon and a dusting of cocoa powder. I then cook them over low heat until the butter is bubbly and the bananas appear to have melted on the outside but are still intact. 

Oh my, oh my - these are some good eats to be sure. 

I love having a breakfast plan and I love having a breakfast rotation. These three meals are excessively inexpensive (the dirty potatoes only cost about $2.50 for the whole pan and feeds three hearty eaters) and simple to prepare while providing us with good nutrition and some sturdiness with which to begin our day. The Mr. comes home to the smell of cinnamon and bacon (what man wouldn't swoon if greeted with *that* succulence, I ask you), the Little Bear eats until he can eat no more (and then sits in a very pleasant 'after breakfast coma' before his bath), and I actually enjoy breakfast and a cup of hot coffee... 

How is the breakfast hour managed at your home? 

Peace, 

Ann 

I Made This; a Maternity Clothes Success Story

My mom is the seamstress. I am the 'cryer with frustration in front of the sewing machine'.

But I made this. Mostly because I hate all the maternity clothes - - - and yes, I mean that to sound as emotional and unreasonable as it does. Because I am pregnant. And emotional. And sometimes a wee bit unreasonable.
I have a real bone to pick with the designers of maternity clothes these days. I swear they use LESS fabric than even regular clothing. Skinny jeans with spandex tubes instead of waistbands and tissue paper-like jersey tops that really aren't any bigger, just longer and then scrunched up the sides.
Why, people, why? I already feel like a sausage.
As a woman who desires to dress modestly, it makes me want to pull my hair out and wear a poncho made from bedsheets just to "Show Them".
As a woman who already struggles with personal style and feeling 'unpretty', it discourages me when I try to do my best to NOT look like I'm wear an old sheet, if only for my husband's sake.
As a woman who isn't, can't and therefore never will be a size 2, it makes me want to cry (and in all honesty - - because we're being honest here - - Kill).
As a women who doesn't have a million dollars to spend on custom maternity clothes, it makes me stop crying, stop complaining and get to work.
And by getting to work I mean getting on Pinterest and looking at what everyone else has done to solve this problem - - - because a lot of women have at least one of the preceding issues.

Thank you, talented, pregnant seamstress ladies, for saving my silly little, emotional, pregnant sausage self.

After some reading and considering, I picked the tutorial that Modest Maven  wrote (and cleverly illustrated with clear and concise photos) on her site. It was simple enough for even I, the Sobbing Seamstress, to follow and resulted in the most comfortable pair of maternity *anything* I have worn thus far in my pregnancy adventures. Oh yes. I may never NOT wear them. Ever.

I don't often wear jeans, but when I do it's because it's 10 degrees outside and 48 degrees inside and I'm trying to not freeze to death while building a fire, making breakfast, corraling my Little Bear and needing to look half-way decent for the Mr. when he comes home in the morning. He loves the long skirts I wear 99% of the time, but he gets a real kick out of my baggy mom jeans - because he's that awesome.

I used an old, second-hand pair of LLBean jeans that I bought at Goodwill for half price during one of their big sales. Jeans = $2.50
When I was in Vermont to visit my mom over Thanksgiving, I got some thickly knit jersey material at JoAnn's for the waistband. Waistband = $1.50
I had some elastic already, but the price tag was still on it. Elastic = $1.99
Best Maternity Jeans In The History Of Pregnancy = Priceless (actually $5.99)

That's it, ladies and gents - took me about 2 hours to complete the task and I've been wearing my maternity pants ever since. Quite literally.
Excellent tutorial, Modest Maven, you are awesome. And so are my jeans.

YAY!!! They're not skinny jeans!! This is probably my favorite shirt, mostly because I stole it from my husband the week we got married and never gave it back. I wear it almost constantly in the wintertime. It makes me look like a real Mainer and not the 'Midwesterner from Away' that I really am. As long as I don't open my mouth and betray myself with my obvious accent, they think I am one of them. Shhhh. 

Here's the waistband - - and baby belly. Ah yes. 

17 weeks and counting...

Sing a Song of Sourdough: Part One

Ok - get ready for pictures and links and every wild and wonderful thing concerning my recent obsession with Sourdough. I'll try not to run-on, stop me if I do.
Let me begin with this - the original recipe for a super easy 'compromise sourdough'. It's what I've been experimenting with because I'm too big a chicken to dive in and just go yeast-less all at once.
Baby steps, Baby steps.
So you can start this little pictorial journey by reading Gwen's recipe and technique for fridge-fermented, low carb bread HERE>> or you can scroll on and come back to it later... totally up to you.

This here is my first try using Gwen's recipe. I forgot my baby step mantra and dumped in my homemade, sprouted grain flour, which can be tricky - especially since sprouting the grain dissolves a lot of the gluten - which is what gives bread its nice bread-like texture. I let it sit in the fridge for 5 days total. Since the four was very dark and fragrant, the bread turned out dark and fragrant and had a very pronounced toasted grain flavor. I also didn't add nearly enough salt, so it also tasted flat. It goes in the Brick Bread Category. There was no buoyancy, no crumb, just dense-dense-dense. It was pretty good toasted with butter and apple butter... 

Meet Take Two, which came out looking and tasting like Bread. I used half home-ground whole wheat and half King Arthur all-purpose white flour and it was an overwhelming success. This dough waited for 6 days before I baked it up and it made two gorgeous loaves. It had an interesting texture, very much like a baguette, but it was finely grained which made it good for toast and sandwiches. We really enjoyed this batch and I found that after eating it I didn't have the usual severe bloating that normally follows my consumption of any sort of bread. Yay!!

I made this loaf yesterday morning. It had the same flour mix and the same 6 day waiting period the last batch did. I decided to try a trick I'd read where you put your loaf in a cold oven and then turn it on, letting the bread rise and bake all in one easy step. Well. My loaf rose and tried to leave and then made this creepy franken-baby-loaf on top that adhered itself to the pan and had to be pried off with a butter knife. Lesson learned. I shall let my bread rise *before* baking. 

Notice the raw honey sitting behind it? A favorite snack at our house is buttered toast with honey - it's so delicious and the raw honey contains enzymes that help to break down the bread even more. The honey has to be really raw though - and this stuff is! I found it at the discount food store for a remarkable price (nearly 95% off the retail amount) and it's really raw - so raw it has little bee pieces and comb bits on top. Ewww - but authentic.

The other half of the dough I used for flatbread for dinner last night. It was excellent- I couldn't have been more thrilled. I baked it on my stoneware pan and we were all amazed at how it didn't make us 'feel fat' afterward, even though it was bread and cheese...  

(If anyone is curious, I topped the dough with organic olive oil, crushed garlic, Italian herbs, salt, parmesan cheese and slices of mozzarella. Baked in a 500 degree oven **the stone was pre-heated** for 7 or 8 minutes and served in strips with seasoned tomato sauce for dipping.) 

And here is a picture of my stoneware baking sheet. Because it's really neat and deserves a little spotlight. I was given this as a wedding gift from some very dear friends!! 

Alrighty then - this has been the first hundred yards in my trek towards traditional bread making. During the next leg of the trail we will encounter such wonders as wild-caught yeasts, home-ground wheat flours, grain mills, sourdough mothers and stoneware bowls...
Until then, eat healthy, live hearty,
Mrs.

UnPaleo-fy Me

I've recently become obsessed with sourdough bread.

It started as most things start, as a problem needing to be solved. 

We have pretty clean diets, but with pregnancy #2 sapping most of my energy, I had returned to buying our bread at the grocery store. The convenience pleased me but every time I opened the bag to get a slice I felt a sting of conviction. It doesn't help that the Paleo diet and its various stepchildren are ALL the rage - everywhere one looks we are encouraged to forsake wheat and use a plethora of odd, flour-like substitutes to make 'sugar-free-grain-free-egg-free-dairy-free, paleo-friendly' everything. 

I do understand their point. 

I appreciate their science and their concern. 

But I have a bit of a problem with rejecting so many things that have kept civilization going for, well, as long as civilization has gone on. How can milk and honey be bad when God promised His people a land flowing with it?
And why would Jesus call Himself the Bread of Life if bread is synonymous with poison? 

Firstly, I understand that these pictures are, indeed, pictures. Secondly, I believe the milk God uses so promisingly in His word was not the glorified glue-water we buy today in plastic gallon jugs, nor was the bread Christ ate commercially created using Frankenstein grain and synthetic chemicals. 

So maybe my problem isn't with the Paleo people. They're dealing with the problem (which is the increasing toxicity of our food and its detrimental effects on our health) one way - by avoiding the tainted foods all together. 

I - being the stubborn mortal that I am- need another option because I will never be paleo-fied.
I want an alternate route. 

I think I found it. 

It's a pretty fine blend of a hundred different people's wisdom - standing on the shoulders of giants as it were - mixed with my own ideas and conclusions and pet theories such as my Ma Ingalls test.  Ma Ingalls didn't have coconut oil, papaya enzymes or stevia... So how on earth did she stay in good health? That's what I want to learn - how to be traditionally healthy without depending on the internet, fancy foreign foods or highly processed health serums. 

Beside considering Ma Ingalls and Mother Wilder, I've read a lot of Weston A. Price's studies as well as many other people's thoughts and findings based on WAP's writings. 

This is going to be my online journal of sorts, chronicling my journey towards a more traditional, unfancy type diet and in turn, lifestyle - because what is food but fuel for life itself? 

Some topics I want to explore are:

Traditionally Fermented Breads (we're going yeast-free, folks!!) 

Sourdough and Biblical leavening 

Traditional North American (local) Fats

Cultured and Fermented Fruits and Veggies 

Raw and Cultured Dairy 

Traditional and Local Sweeteners 

Natural, Traditional Housekeeping 

So there you have it! 

Stay tuned for my many wild and wonderful sourdough bread experiments... 

Peace,

Mrs.  

My first loaf of sourdough, which could have been used as a brick... or doorstop... or weapon. It gets better- don't worry.