*Distracted*...a 3-act day.

Distracted, Part I
So, I was in my kitchen (most of my stories start out this way lately...) and I was getting ready to make multi-"flour" blueberry pancakes.  Experiments are on-going.  I'm reading the recipe (and promptly ignoring it) and mixing buckwheat, rice flour, tapioca starch and sprouted einkorn wheat flour together, adding the kefir (because plain milk would be SO boring) and melting some butter on the stove at the same time.

My  kids are floundering at my feet and playing with jar lids, pulling my dish towels off the stove door and taking turns messing with each other.  I have to watch every step, every move...there are tiny fingers and toys and lids all around me. "Leave him alone"..."Go play with your babies"..."Hey, get outta there YOU"..."Give me one minute, I'll get you some cheese"..."No eat, don't eat things off the floor, babe..."

*sigh*

Mixing in the melted butter, I got the pancake goop blended thoroughly.  I set one of our large ceramic plates on the stove next to my frying pan to be a landing spot for the cooked pancakes. I'm at the sink scrubbing the cast iron pan because the pancakes are sticking badly to my frying pan and I want to switch it out, I hear, "CRACK...BANG!!".  I turn to see chunks of plate on the stove and shards of ceramic crashing down all around my kiddies.  They looked surprised, yet unhurt...not a bit hit them. (They both have really good guardian angels...) I plucked them out of the shards one at a time and banished them from the kitchen.  I'd left the burner on after I melted the butter, set the ceramic plate on it and when it heated up enough, it exploded.  That's the 3rd plate I've broken this year....and it's only March!

Distracted, Part II
Sunday is coming and I normally toss our ice cream maker bowl into the freezer for a few days so I can whip up a quart of ice cream, otherwise known as Sunday Brunch.  We careen around it with spoons, like vultures on a deer carcass.  This week, I've been enlisted to make 3 quarts of ice cream for a family birthday.

It's ALL vanilla, so it will be easy...done it a million times...don't even need to read the directions...I could do it with my eyes closed...but NOT while my eyes are focused on some silly YouTube video!  As I sat like a stunned grasshopper caught in YouTube's sticky web, I heard a loud hiss and ran into the kitchen to find an overflowing pan of foaming, scorched dairy products oozing all over my stove!  That's what I get.  Once again, the media is vile!

Distracted, Part III
So, I was in my kitchen...it's not just a schtick, it's true!  I'm simmering the new batch of cream, milk, sugar and salt while the kids play quietly with each other.  They're happy and playing very well together.  Sebastian comes in with a colored pencil in his hand....how cute, he's having art time!

He loves to draw just as much as he loves to gnaw the tips off of every crayon we own.  He also loves chalk, especially the violet chalk.... 

He's a 16-month old Picasso. 

You've heard of Picasso's Blue Period, right?

 This afternoon Sebastian went through his...

"Violet period..." 

The end.

Milk and Cookies...and Prismacolors

Not too much to say about raw milk and almond date ginger cookies...

...except, breakfast is served!

This has been one of the best sugar-free paleo cookie recipes I've found yet.  Sugar-free does NOT mean, sugar-less.  It contains sugars...not sugar.  Dates, still a sugar source, are real and unprocessed. I found the recipe over at fastpaleo.com, and I must say..I never stray from the recipe!  It's my way to adjust and alter, but this recipe is great AS IS.  I've always made it with coconut oil and not bacon grease...and I've never added the optional bacon pieces as I haven't had them on hand....YET.  But bacon...what's not to love?!

OMG Paleo Ginger Cookies

This past week, since I've gotten my hands and brain moving thanks to rag garlands, I've been designing this year's Paschal candle for church.  I've had the honor of doing this for the past 3 years.  I usually take visuals from the church and recreate them on the candle.  Sometimes it will be a stained glass window, or the details from the altar, or even simply a color match to the church.  This year, I took some designs that I did previously for the school logo which I also got the honor of redesigning last year, and used them for the candle.

Ironically, I've chosen the very colors that I want to use on our house!  We're getting our house painted this spring and I've been given the task (funny how an honor one place, can be a TASK in another!) of choosing colors.  Yellow-cream, muted blue-green...and rust.  These are my dad's Prismacolors...he's been gone for 10 years and I've only used them 3 times.  They were HIS box of colored pencils and I wasn't normally allowed to use them.  With good reason, I would have lost them, nubbed them off and they wouldn't be the perfectly amazing box of colors they are today!  Most of them remain un-sharpened.  He used them to color code his plans and blueprints for work...and well, I'm doing pretty much the same thing with them today.  They are quite special to me...and I covet them.  Once I let a friend borrow them...he removed them from my possession, and promptly returned them.  (It was a big deal for me, what a special friend!) He also color coded something for church...what a long, glorious and meaningful life for a mere box of Prismacolors.