A new baby

yeah, I made it!!!! My first batch of Kefir....I received my Kefir grains in the mail (from germany) last week, nursed them back to health on good ol raw milk, and then last night I stuck the poured off milk in the oven with the light on (keeps things the perfect temp) and woke up to beautiful kefir. It is not much in terms of quantity but I will slowly build that up, my grains are already double in size and quanitity than when I first got them a week ago. i love food that is ALIVE!!!!!!
Anyway, so liliana is in the 'suspect' stage of life..meaning she is suspect of everything (or most everything). So I whip up my kefir with a banana, some raw honey, and a piece of frozen peach (YUMMY!!!). I tell her that mommy has cracked code on how to make her favorite drink (the one she ask for numerous times a day), she is suspect of this 'so-called kefir' that mom made. She tried some, and it was not awful like she must have predicted but still being suspect she decided to 'save' it for later today. But I tried it and I have to say it taste loads better than the store bought stuff. I mean, it is one thing knowing something is good for you and choking it down, it is another thing enjoying the foods that are good for you. I was so hoping I would like this stuff as I have not been able ot drink store bought kefir plain (i usually have to add, all sorts of things to it and whip it up in a smoothie (and that is after buying it already flavored with fruit!).
It was interesting the mind over body thing. For so long now, both my mind and body agreed that I did not like the 'sour' taste of cultered milk products such as kefir and yougurt. So when taking a sip of this I braced myself and lo and behold it was not sour at all, yet my body was still flinching like, any minute now I was not going to like it...It is a process to have both our minds and our bodies 'get' over a previous food dislike. anyway. I just wanted to share the good news, we have a new baby in the house, her name is Kefir :)

another rainy day

Well it has been a wet day here in Southern Maine. First, I got all wet as I tried to jump my cars battery. You see, I have never officially had a dead battery on my hands, or I should say, only in my hands. Normally someone of the male species was around to take charge of such situations, thereby allowing me to stand back and watch...well, ignorance is not always bliss...so I called a friend (her husband is a medical resident, so she is also on her own alot, and I should add, she also had never jumped a car) so...needless to say we screwed up a few times before we figured it out (and YES>>>we had to call a man....she paged her husband at the hospital to set us straight (normally, my ego would not allow such interference in things but well, it was raining(no, I was not worried about my hair, it is 7pm and I have yet to brush it) and cold and I could not handle the thought of staying stuck in my house with my kids all alone for another day). Then around 3 or so when I am usually dragging I, in my mental state, told liliana that she could get a bucket of soapy water and mop my kitchen floor (hmmmmmmm...).
Soooooo, needless to say, anyone who knows her probably could predict what I found when I rounded the corner. Her, all naked and soaped up and trying her darndest to squeeze her big girl body into that tiny lego bucket. I really wanted a pic, but didnt want to show her naked body (that is her sacred self) but i did happen to snap a photo that is more discreet.
Mattie has learned how to climb...yeah, need I say more...and not only that she has learned the concept of pushing items up to things inorder to have something to stand on. Today I found her behind the blinds, yelling out the window, the ones that reside ABOVE the play table. Good thing she was not naked then, displaying herself out the window (yea, she also likes to be nude, (everytime I change her I feel like we are having a wrestling match)
I told jacob tonight that I cant imagine being a single mom all of the time. I am wasted at the end of each day. I know alot of that is due to the age of my children (and lets not forget the fact that I was woken up last night several times...there was the usual for milk, that I can understand, but the massive crying out for socks!!!! comon!!!----then, she 'lost' her socks 45 mins later and started crying out again, believe me, I tried to ignore her, for some reason she is so stubborn..hmm, wonder where she gets that from)
anyway, what day is it??? How old am I??? When is my husband coming home???
I admire all of you moms out there who know what day it is, are happy to have lived that day,and are looking forward to the next (and not just looking forward to rest)....
THanks for being my example.

Fall doings

Alright. So most days I 'think' about updating our blog, but then some wonderful book calls to me and I easily walk away from the computer. Right now I am reading, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle", by Barbara Kingslover...and I always look forward to the spare moments here and there to read it.
Jacob told me that the other day at work some of the women residents he works with asked him if he had read a book called, "Twilight". Now he knew of the book, but answered, "no, he doesnt have time". So they rephrased their question and asked if I had read it. He explained to them the following: "My wife likes to read Sociology books and Nurition books". They say, " Oh, we mean for fun", his response, "Yeah, that is what she reads for fun, you see, my wife stays home with our children, so she just loves delving her mind into something that she loves whenever she gets a spare minute". They just got quiet...
I don't blame them...yes, it is true. I do read books like that for fun (have I told any of you that I am currently taking a Kefir course?-----hmm, some of you may be wondering what in the heck that is...)
But I do also like a good Narnia book or Potter book every now and again.
Mostly though there are more books I would like to read and more things that I would like to do then I have time for.
I am too busy cleaning up after an almost 1 year old (2 more weeks till birthday!!) after she plays in her pile of poop and pee on the floor (she was barebummed after a previous diaper change and I was letting her air dry, silly me) and trying to protect my money from being stashed away in the 'wrong' persons piggy bank (my almost 4yr old truly believes that if she finds any money it is hers, and let me tell you, she hoards money--takes after her daddy (who, by the way, just loves this quality in her))...
So we have been enjoying fall down here in Southern Maine. Zarah has been here almost 2 weeks now helping me run the household in Jacobs absence. We have gone apple picking (2 bushles worth), hayrides, LL Beans, lots of raking leaves (and playing in them), many Farmers market visits (we bought 25# potatoes and carrots to store for a 3-month food storage supply (we place a layer of dry leaves on the bottom of a tub (the same kind of tub we put clothing into), then a layer of dry potatoes or apples or carrots, then a layer of leaves and so on till full). We have them in our garage where they will stay cool and dry and last us the next 3 months and still be fresh.
We have been trying to get a well-rounded 3-month food supply. We knew we were lacking in the vegetable/fruit arena so have been trying to rectify that.
Jacob is due home from PA this upcoming weekend. We can't wait for his return, although it will be bittersweet, as he will only be here 24hrs, then he leaves for Bangor, where he will be for a month. We are hoping to go up that way sometime inorder to check out that location for living, etc...
We feel really good about either location and also know that when it comes time to decide we will know which one we should move to.
Well, this is it for now...We miss all of our friends but mostly we miss DADDY>>>>>>>>>>>>love your girls:)

Butter

We've been meaning to post this for awhile, but with starting a new rotation down by Pittsburgh, it got pushed onto the back burner.

In the "Nourishing Traditions" book by Sally Fallon, she gives a recipe for making butter - it's incredibly easy.  We siphoned off the cream from our milk.  That's the nice thing about whole, raw milk - the cream rises to the top and you can skim part of it off to make ice cream, whip cream, or, in this case, butter.  We left the cream out for about 8 hours to sour it a little, added a teaspoon of salt, put it in our food processor, and turned it on.  About 20 minutes later, we were done.  We drained the butter milk, transferred the butter into a metal bowl and patted the butter with a wooden spoon to squeeze out the rest of the butter milk.  

Here are some of the pictures the we took of the butter making process.  As you can see, Liliana was my helper throughout the whole process.  The only downside is that you can't leave the butter out, otherwise it will continue to sour and leaving it in the refrigerator made the butter hard.  The increasing sour taste didn't bother me, but Heather didn't really like it.  

For those of you who are squeemish about leaving raw milk or cream out on the counter, you don't have to sour the cream at all.  We haven't tried that yet.  Maybe when life gets a little less hectic!  

For those of you who are wondering why we left the cream out to sour, souring the milk gives time for the natural bacteria in the milk (the lactobacillus species, which is the bacteria in yogurt and kefir) to start to break down some of the milk sugars and proteins.  This makes the butter easier to digest.

Baptism

Liliana loves going to people's baptisms.  About a year ago, one of her older friends turned eight and Liliana got to watch her get baptized.  Ever since then, whenever someone in Primary gets baptized, Liliana wants to go.  So, naturally, when they announced that there was going to be a baptism this Friday, she got excited.  After playing the organ, I sat down with them to listen to the speakers and she looked up at me, grabbed my head, and whispered excitedly in my ear: "There's going to be a baptism on Friday!"  When I asked her if she wanted to go, she furiously nodded her head up and down.  

The whole experience made me remember an incident that happened in the summer.  She and a friend, Mary, where playing in the kiddie pool at our house while Heather and Mary's mother where visiting inside.  The sliding door was open and so they could hear what was going on outside.  Some time goes by and Heather suddenly hears Mary's voice saying, "I baptize you in the name of the Holy City Jerusalem", followed by a big splash!

Question...

Alright, so I have a question to pose...
I have been debating on if I should pose this on the blog but decided in the end to go for it...
So some of you kinda know (and some REALLY know) that Jacob and I try to eat different then the mainstream (what, we are different???)
it really started when liliana was 6mts old and I was in the midst of having to decide how to nourish her, I bought, "Super Baby Food" by Ruth Yaron. This book was my first eye opener that I did not have to eat what food companies had to offer me. As well, it taught us that we can determine how we are by what we eat...That was 3 years ago now.
We hate going to grocery stores and hardly go anymore as there is hardly anything there one could call, "food".
No, I am not joking. Most everything there is edible (except for detergents and all that, wouldn't recommend eating that, and for the most part I wouldn't even recommend using those to wash your clothes, but that is a different subject)
We shop at a health food store where we are able to buy items in bulk (cheaper for us anyway) and it is "REAL FOOD".
Real food is defined as something your great-great grandmother would have recognized and I have to say there is not much in my supermarket that she would recognize, even yogurt has been defamed and turned into a sugar dessert (under the awful guise of health food-although there are some that are 'better' than others)
Jacob has not even graduated and he is already tired of seeing so many people that have all these chronic issues and it is just diet.
It is even harder in the church to see ill health, where we have the Word of Wisdom. There really are 'conspiring men' out there who make loads of money off our palate.

So my question is this (and the answer really does mean alot to me)
How do we (Jacob and I) share what we have learned about health and food with friends/family without coming across like we are better than another (for we do not feel this way at all)? How do we say we don't want to eat certain food (or don't want our child to eat certain food (at least that often, or as often as others eat it) because we don't see it as food, it is more of a chemical concoction?

You know back in the day (1800's) you had to label food items as 'imitation' if you were trying to get people to buy an item because it looked like the 'real' item, for instance margarine/butter. But the food industry did not like putting the imitation label on as it deterred many from purchasing the item. They took it to court and that my folks was the beginning of the end. And so my generation has grown up on fake food and am just now discovering the 'real' food item it was intending to imitate. We prefer the real. My body was made to process 'real' food, real fats, real food...Our bodies were never made to process/handle food that was created in a lab.
Food is a sensitive topic. It is also a topic we love talking about, because we LOVE to eat good food. I mean, just tonight we grated fresh (raw milk) Parmesan cheese. The scent filled up the room and I said to Jacob that once you have the real stuff there really is no turning back. Many would counter to me that they cannot afford the real so they buy the fake (although no one has ever used those exact words (referring to their food as fake or real). We have been blessed with being able to buy in bulk (thanks to a local health food store) which saves us alot. We also have a local farm to get raw milk (which we are starting to learn how to turn into butter and kefir so that we can cut that out of our supermarket purchase as well, thereby saving us money.) We also make everything from scratch (fake convenience foods eat up alot of ones budget, so by not buying any of that we are able to spend that money on things like real Parmesan cheese or whatever.
I was asked to teach an Enrichment class on Whole Grains the other night. I loved every minute of it. Answering every ones questions. Seeing the variety that Heavenly Father has provided for us. It is very empowering taking control of our food/health back from those who profit off of us being submissive and ignorant. It was ignorance that kept me from eating better until now. I just ate the way i was taught. I was in ignorance. In so many ways I still am but I just love learning and then changing some more.

wisdom passed down and up again

Well tonight we had a most interesting FHE (family home evening). It all came to my mind last minute (usually does).
We started with our 4 songs (our girls love the music part), then I told liliana that daddy and I had a few problems we needed her help with. She said, "sure, she could help us" (oh, wise child you...)...
So I asked her to sit on the couch and daddy and I would show her our problems...I decided last minute that jacob/and I would improve some typical scenes in our house that WE get tired of dealing with (in terms of sibling fights). Thanks to jacobs theater career in highschool, he was ready and willing (did you guys know that he was a theater nerd????)
Anyway, I quickly tell jacob the scene, he doesnt need to much info, as he knows how to impersonate liliana or mattie.
Scene 1:
mom is playing quietly with a toy and having fun
jacob comes over and starts trying to take the toy
mom starts yelling and pushing jacob
jacob starts crying (no, he did not shed real tears, but got the whining right)
We both look to liliana and say, "what can we do, we have a problem?"
Liliana comes over and says,
"(in a soft, almost condescending voice (im sure I dont sound like that normally...)), "well, you can take turns"
Jacob: but I want to play with it now, she has already had a turn...
Liliana: "I know, I know", But maybe you can just be patient."
Jacob: But I want to take a turn first, then I will let mommy have a turn
Liliana: I know it is hard to wait but just be patient and then it will be your turn...

So, we acted out several scenes, like one of my favorites (to act out, not to deal with on a day to day basis) was when I was sitting on the floor playing with rocks and jacob (pretending to be mattie) came over and grabbed one and put it in his mouth. I frantically (acting like liliana) started grabbing for it and trying to dig my fingers into his mouth, knocking him over in the meantime, now he is crying and i am yelling.
Thank goodness, liliana was there to help with all of our problems. Jacob and I were having such a rough time of it. But she just knew all the solutions to everything. Infact every word of every solution sounded awfully familiar...I wonder if she had heard those words before????

anyway, she had a blast. and without an obvious lecture we got a few messages across...
This pic if from last night..she begged to be put in a sling (I carry mattie around all the time in a different one and upon seeing this huge sling she knew it must fit her, jacob threw her in and she grinned the whole time)