Raising Raw Kids

Kids Jumping On The Bed

I like my kids the way I like my food:  raw and untainted. It’s fine for any adult to be motivated to make healthy lifestyle choices, but if you’re a parent – and a parent of three – you’re making these choices for other people too. . .and you have to be prepared for resistance [...]

Raw Food Tools

Cuisinart Food Processor

There are certain tools that will make the transition to raw foods easier.  You may not want to drop a wad right off the top, but if you are at all serious about eating well/better, don’t “cheap out” on the essentials – it will only cost you time, money and sanity.  It can be tough [...]

Homebirth #3 – Can-Can

First Baby Sleep

Our third was due two days after Halloween 2008. It was customary to drive out to my sister’s place so the boys could shell-out with their cousins, but we were nervous about being more than an hour from home. So we made a plan: Grandma would pick up the kids and take …

Homebirth #2 – Red

Baby's First Cuddle

When Windy was about 18 months old, we decided we wanted another just like him.  So, one dreary December day, I borrowed Daddy’s toothbrush and we started re-arranging furniture. In the new year, when all was confirmed and the grandparents were informed (I love breaking the “rules”), I started hunting for a new midwife.  I [...]

Homebirth #1 – Windy

First Breast Feeding

It was Friday, April 25th, 2003: DaddyH and I had rented a couple of movies for the weekend, from the local Vietnamese video store.  We were watching Session 9, not the best movie for a new mom to see (check it out, if you must know why).  I remember sitting on the edge of my [...]

She’s a Girl!

I Love my Dolley... problem with that?

My daughter is two today! And she is officially a girl. She has spent the last year and a half playing with her older brothers’ toys – Transformers, trains, cars, light sabers, swords, guns and, most recently, Lego.  She’s always had fun with them.  She’s never known anything else. She has also always worn her [...]

I’m on Perma-Cleanse!

Cleansing time!

I did my first fast when I decided to have my first baby.  DaddyH and I had been slowly making the shift to healthier, holistic (do people still use that word?) living.  We stopped eating sugar and wheat, started filtering all of our water – not just drinking – and tossed every chemical we had [...]

Vegetarian Goulash and Galushka

Goulash and Galushka

When we decided to cut out meat, I knew that the old family goulash recipe would need a minor facelift.  (Blasphemy!)  I decided to substitute chick peas for the stewing beef, which, incidentally, shortened the prep and cooking time by half an hour, saved me from dirtying a skillet, and turned the dish into an [...]

Frost Warning

Frost

Frost Warning tonight. Busy day after a busy Thanksgiving weekend.  Wanted to can some apple butter and apple sauce, but instead I spent naptime madly harvesting all remaining veggies from the garden: 3 green cabbages 1/2 dozen japanese eggplants of varying sizes 2-3 dozen peppers, green and purple, of varying sizes 3 over-sized zucchini 1 [...]

Canning: A Matter of Life and Death

Life!

Home-canned food has saved us from starvation on more than one occasion. On a snowy winter’s day, when the fridge was looking bare and I couldn’t go get groceries ’cause the driveway needed plowing, but the tractor was out of diesel, and the only local pizza delivery place decided they “wouldn’t risk it”, I’ve bounced [...]

Home-made Apple Butter

Dazzling Apple Butter

Pure unsweetened apple butter was my kids’ first condiment.  When they had their first rice cakes, and it was too soon to try peanut butter, I gave them apple butter.   When I made Apple Barley Pancakes, they were never served with maple syrup; they were served with apple butter.  Their first “cookies” were sweetened [...]

Rabbits and Raccoons Reaping my Roughage

Rabbit

So our old raccoon is back and, clearly, is no longer deterred by my little green box.  He knocked down half my corn stalks last night.  There were little nibbles where the ear would have developed.  I decided to pull all remaining plants, leaving nothing for the little b—–d to get his fingers on.  I’ve [...]

Mid-season Report

Mid-season garden

June was a blur.  But the garden grows without me, now, so there’s little to do there except wait for the harvest. The peas are just finishing, the beans are just starting, the greens are continuing, and the tomatoes are full size and ready to change colour.  I have never had such a lush vegetable [...]

All You Can Eat Buffet

Microgreens

Miscellaneous updates for the past week: Fertilized the tomatoes. Replanted (third time) yellow beans; eleven of the original twelve plants had been chewed off by a furry foe. Lost one pepper plant to some critter that left the plant mostly intact, but nibbled on the stem just enough to make it flop over in despair. Planted [...]

Range Update

Broken Range

The oven works!  However, we only lasted week before I started shopping for a portable electric burner.  The first one I bought turned out to be a dud; I returned it to the store the following day. It was another week or so before I found a very funky, but sturdy, double burner, and I snatched it up for [...]

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