A new twist on an old favorite...

While running through the particulars of "This little piggy went to market...", we had a slip of the tongue that shows that our daily life works it's way into everything.  Miso decided that the first little piggy didn't go to the market or to home....but rather...

"This little piggy went to Home Depot...."

Too bad I started laughing, she might have said the next little piggy went to Costco! And the next little piggy probably had liver and bacon!  (When in fact we did have "Woast Beeeeefff!!" this week.)

Lovely orchids...

My love celebrated his golden birthday this past week and I thought he deserved the most incredibly scrumptious flower known to man, in my humble opinion. And since I'm not able to pick a single color of anything (e.g. our house, inside and out), I chose two orchids with opposite yet complimentary colorings.

God willing, we'll keep them alive this time. Our last orchid bit the dust and I inherited a handful of wee dark green hair clips!

Draw Something...

Am I losing my mind?   I posted the same meat picture twice in a row...I must have REALLY liked it!  Or, I've been doing so much I can't even remember what I did yesterday...I think that's more true.

Well, I won't dwell on my apparent meat-headedness...I know for a fact I've never shown you these.  Some of my "Draw Something" jewels.  As you can see from the blue and white numbers at the top left corner, a friend and I have quite a streak going. 

In honor of this strange spring we're having, I give you..."Tornado".  This was a tricky one to draw with a finger...usually when I draw a tornado (which is my second most drawn object next to a tree) I add a little house flying around next to it...I decided that would be too much.

And one of my great loves, the "Desert".  The only thing missing is a little stick figure walking toward the sunset...she's wearing a long skirt and totes a bandana full of snacks tied onto a stick across her back...that would be me.

Do you know what kind of sister this is?  If you guessed Franciscan, you win!

 

Uh oh...I actually felt a little weird just drawing this one...I had no one in particular in mind, really!

 Pink can with white lines...can you say Aquanet?!  I can't help thinking of Ricky Lake in "Hairspray"! Love that two-toned red and orange art school issue hair-do!

Well that's all for now...I decided not to show you the "Madonna" drawing, yep...I drew the cone bra.  And I also opted to not show "sewer"...it was just wrong. 

They said WHAT about me?!

Random Tellulahness: Have you ever been standing there looking in the fridge for something and after rifling through every shelf in vain you realize the thing you seek has been in your hand the whole time?  I do.

Now for a story: Last Sunday, at a benefit auction, unbeknownst to me, several women were talking about my "physique" and one said that I was, "Too skinny..."  Seriously?!  That's the first time anyone's ever said THAT about me.  I'm trying to figure out whether the comment itself bothers me, or the fact that people were talking about me and don't have the glands to say things to my face?

Unfortunately, I know who this woman is (really wish I didn't)...and I would never wag my tongue at other women and say about her, "Gee...she sure is TOO FAT".  That would be rude, right?  Why is it OK to talk to others about "skinny folk"?  She could of at least told ME that directly so I could have had a chance to go on and on about how much BBB I eat...Butter, Beef liver and BACON.  Why am I so skinny if I eat all that fat? I wouldn't want to forget raw heavy cream, nuts, coconut oil and avocado either.  Oh, now I'm just bragging!

The only food that's ever made me put weight back on is grain/starch.  The ironic bit about someone saying I'm too skinny NOW is that I'd packed a few extra pounds on this last week...WHY?  Two reasons.  1.) I "discovered" Mary's gluten-free organic seed crackers and proceeded to not only eat the whole box, but made several dips along the way since I finally had something hard and flat to scoop it up with!  2.) Undercooked skin-on potatoes.  Some vegetables must be thoroughly cooked, potato is one of them.  I always make mashed potatoes with loads of butter, or bake the life out of them in the form of french fries. In the last few weeks I had two helpings of undercooked potatoes while I was out and about. Potatoes and non-sprouted seed crackers have given my digestion something to fight, and it's made me feel sick and tired.  Done with those!

I'm also giving coffee the cold shoulder too.  I'm going back to my theory that coffee is best left to professionals and in a "dessert" kind of way.  Not the daily dessert that the SAD (Standard American Diet) demands, but a true treating...a special thing in moderation...a "French Women Don't Get Fat" mentality for it was Mireille Guiliano's inspiration that started me down the road to health.  I didn't set out to be SKINNY.  

And now I've grown weary of talking about this whole topic, it just struck me because of all the gossip that's ever set sail in my honor, this by far takes the cake.  Har har...bad joke, I don't eat cake!

Maybe this is a bad transitional topic, but the farmer I buy from at the City Market said he's got someone working on a website for him, but the guy wanted pictures of cuts of beef.  Are you kidding?  I take pics of his cows cut up and grilled a couple times per week!  This was flank steak that we marinated and grilled.  I hope he'll allow me to bomb him with gratuitous meat pictures for him to use...and now I must go, for the site of beef makes me salivate.

M is for Meat...

Just a quick note to brag about my husband's grilling skills...and my farmer's meat raising skills...and my meat eating skills!  This morning, his "sageness" said, "Who knew you were such a meat hound?" This was after I declared that maybe my favorite food wasn't lobster tail drenched in butter...but steak.  Then I decided that the ultimate meal would be surf and turf, with a kale salad...and then maybe skip the salad...just give me the meat.  Yep, I'm a meat hound.

Flank steak marinated in wheat-free tamari, garlic and red pepper...grilled hot and fast...it was juicy, delicious...I had to make myself stop eating it so we would have some for lunch today!  What time is it?  Darn...only 8 am.  Steak and eggs?!

AR=ID/WD...

First of all, Happy 72nd birthday to my dad!  This post is a few days late since his birthday would have been April 13th.  Although the sun was shining, it's been cold and I doubt it would have been a good day to "hunt" morels.  Every time I see an aluminum beer tab on the ground I think back to the special call we made through them to summon the mushrooms!  Never seemed to work for me...maybe it would have if I'd focused harder instead of wandering off to pick wild sweet William! I never knew that's what they were REALLY called...thought they were self-named.  :)

I spent the day embedding metal dust into my hands and sanding off my fingerprints in dad's honor.  I've been making a box weave chainmaille bracelet for our annual auction at church...plus, I'm "in the mode" since I'm also doing chain mail with my favorite art group ladies this weekend.  And for the second time this year, I've finished a project over a week ahead of schedule!  My handmade charms are finished, 9 total...pictures will follow later as I don't want to put out any spoilers just yet.

Box chain is simple once you get into the groove.  I decided to make a man's bracelet because I feel they are very often left out of the personal adornment scenario!  Sure, a woman could wear this...I like heavy bracelets, but I'm hoping it ends up on a man's wrist. I call these bracelets "free range"...the copper lived in the wild (TV's, power lines, old electronics, etc) before they were bracelets...this wire was not new from a spool.  It's "composted"!  Recycled, upcycled, repurposed...WILD.

Using the odorific liver of sulfur, I darkened the copper and then polished the outside edges.  I love aged, antiqued, weathered things.  But now...I must admit, I'm addicted.  There's something about the repetitive action of making chainmaille that is taking over my mind.  I spend so much time thinking about the state of the modern food supply, that I hit a brick wall this past week and had to leave that mode of thinking and go back to my natural inclinations...construction.  Busy hands...making "things out of other things".   Which leads me to AR=ID/WD....or aspect ratio equals inside diameter divided by wire diameter.  In other words...mathematical purgatory. 

I'd say mathematical hell, but I know THIS will end!  Eventually, I will figure it out or give up and that's ok.  Dad, if you were only here to explain this!  Fractions, millimeters, AWG, SWG....decimals!  My high school algebra teacher called us "mental midgets" when we couldn't understand what he was talking about...and I've had mathematical baggage ever since.  This chart made my brain start smoking this morning...give me teaspoons, cups and even liters...I'm fine, but this is going to take some thinkin'.   I want to understand this...it helps you figure out what wire gauge and ring size to use in different chain weaving applications to get the perfect density of chain.  The above bracelet is slightly loose, smaller rings would have made a tighter weave.  I started making it with thicker rings and it did not bend at all!  Incorrect aspect ratio....*sigh*...this too shall pass...!

No-till gardens, setting rocks and Joel Salatin...

If happy was a flower, it would be growing out the top of my head right now.  I've got dirt embedded in my nails. I've had my shoes off all day long.  And not only did I lay a 2" by 10" no-till garden bed AND a carefully selected, painstakingly leveled, paved rock path through my old herb bed...but I did it in the same time it took my neighbor's son to pace the porch and talk on his cell phone.  While my two adventurous, curious monkeys were eating dirt, escaping down the driveway and trying to kiss the dog...I was happily digging up wild onions, rummaging through the compost heap and trying to tuck my hair behind my ear with muddy fingers...AND, trying to keep my kids from doing all those other things!  So, I was out there a while.  This whole time, the neighbor boy paced and talked on a cell phone...and Joel Salatin knows why.

I started reading "Folks, this ain't normal" last night and by page 6, Joel had validated my upbringing.  Things I used to grumble at as a kid have, in the past 10 years, become great parables.  Moving bricks from this side of the field...to that side of the field...is one of the "pointless" dad-invoked exercises that have shaped who I am.  One of these "exercises" that WAS fun at the time was when dad and I built a stone bridge to fill in a deep ditch in the path we used to drive down to the lake.  We collected rocks from all over the property (and probably other people's property too!) and slowly filled in the ditch, repositioning each rock for maximum flatness so it wouldn't pivot and pop a tire.  It was practically flat once we were done and sadly, I'm not sure I have any pictures of this work.  But it made my task of building this rock path through my herb garden a very simple and fun activity.

There was other childhood "drudgery" that I'm thankful for too...like that old Tecumseh lawnmower with the 50 foot knotted rope attached that I used to mow the back of our 2 acre lake by lowering it down the dam and then pulling it back up again...I'm proud to say I've gathered and stacked wood with my dad while learning about which woods burn hot and fast just like Joel describes in his book.  Reading "Folks, this ain't normal" also made me realize that I'm not the only one that is bothered by the time-wasting aspect of computer games.  I reveled in the shared sentiment of how video games (I know, us older folk say VIDEO....*computer* games then....) are not only an absolute waste of time, but are also to the detriment of the mind, body and soul.  When I see a male-child sitting on his rump, getting all bent out of shape about a computer game while he's quickly inputting "data" and valiantly obliterating every moving object on the screen I think..."Is this the best he can do with his time?"  Even more of a shame while his mother is washing his pants...and making his dinner, while the trash can overflows.  And while we need play as humans...what about playing WITH someone else?  Interacting IN reality?  Getting fresh air, Vitamin D...or, maybe helping your family with chores?

Oh, how I could go ON and ON about that...*sigh*...and we all get caught from time to time on the computer...hence why I don't blog every day.  Anyway, I wanted to sit down today and devour "Folks, this ain't normal" but decided instead to go outside and jump feet-first into my gardening.  It doesn't look like much now, but I started my first no-till "lasagne garden bed" right up against the garage wall.  It's a layer of wet cardboard to deter weeds, then grass, dry leaves and some top soil.  I have a lot of layering left to do, and since the water off the garage roof will drain water right onto the bed...I've decided to make it a flower bed.  I've got a pine tree to dig up, and a pesky lilac that you see sticking up by the corner of the garage.  Not only did it shoot out roots within 5 feet of itself in every direction, but when I kicked over the "dead" stump...it had termites inside.  Oh boy!

I've been "lamenting life in the city" lately...I know there's nothing I can *really* do about that right now except try to make what I've got look more like what I want.  Starting is always the hardest part...and today I stepped over that hurdle...

Fatbrain...this is for YOU!

That's right...I'm talking to you!  (You know who you are...) It's true...you can ditch that high fiber cereal and have bacon and eggs for breakfast...cook it in butter, put cheese and avocado on top too!  I felt your "pain and loss"...all those mornings and no eggs, no bacon...I grieved for you.

(Holy Thursday...we had slow-cooked lamb, bacon and kale apple salad)

Your brain, which I believe to be a very good one, needs eggs...it needs healthy fats.  Mary Enig's book, "Eat Fat, Lose Fat" was one of the first books on the subject that I read and it made a lot of sense.  (I have it if you'd like to borrow it)  And Mark Sisson's Primal Blueprint is a great "paleo compromise".  While he has wonderful food recommendations, he doesn't go to seed on the food thing...he talks about other equally important things like sleep, and stress and play! And of course there's the scientific reasons that we should eat certain foods and avoid others that are toxic to our bodies, no matter what the food pyramid tries to sell us.  The Perfect Health Diet explains that to a T.   And back, back...WAY back...is Dr. Price and his "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" where he studied primitive cultures to find out why they didn't have the diseases and death rates that modern men did.  Oh, that modern world!  ;)  The Weston A. Price Foundation says we can be "Happy, because we eat BUTTER".  It's so true.

There was a certain priest that we had around St. Vincent's for a while who used to talk about how evil things work into our lives slowly...that's how they sneak in without us noticing!  He had an analogy about someone sitting at a table, and if the table was just taken away, they would notice....but if the legs got shortened a little tiny bit each day, all of a sudden one day the table is GONE!  He equated that with how the devil operates.  And that's what the food industry has done...companies add a little more sugar into products every year...they tweak the "design" of wheat a little more here and there to produce more yield...they start using cheaper oils, the gradual change never registers until one day we read the label and go...wow, what junk!  One that I heard the other day was Kashi cereal (who claims on the box to be healthy!) who uses 3 different types of sweeteners so they are in smaller amounts and can be listed farther down on the ingredients list making you believe there's not a big pile 'o sugar...but rather, 3 types in smaller piles!   Things weren't always this way, the changes came slowly...and that's the best way to "send it back" to the food industry...slowly walk back to real food, back to farmers, back to health....one ingredient at a time.

In related news....we're only into the first week of Easter and Lent seems so far behind me.  I think I ate my weight in einkorn chocolate chip cookies and honey caramels, and even though not a peep, or jellybean, or Cadbury egg passed these lips...I'm ready to detox from sugar!  Thankfully, I do not consider myself to be a person with sugar addiction, I used to be!  But yesterday, I saw the wedding cake all cut into conveniently snackable pieces and I wasn't interested in it at all.  I've passed many a birthday cake this past year, and the only thing I missed was an unnecessary insulin spike.  

I've come to believe that other people think I'm suffering greatly...while I actually see THEM as suffering.  I'm not a puppet to sugar or flour or Kraft or any of those things, and what other people see as an ooh-aah indulgence, I see as a set-up for a miserable, unhealthy, prescription drug supported future!  Plus, Word on the street is that our bodies will only take our sugar bombing so many times before it gives up waiting for eggs and bacon!  It doesn't bother me anymore when people give me the, "WHAT, no cake?!" face when I say I don't want any...but they'll get quite a different response when they try to "push their wares" on my kids.  Addicts want everyone else around them to be addicted too...misery loves company.  And for some when you "don't eat a piece of their birthday cake" it's like you refuse to commune with them. 

I used to be the one who would go to a wedding reception, suffer through the long-winded toasts and be impatient to get out of there but would suffer through it all just to get the wedding cake!  Fortunately, this wedding yesterday was quite pleasant and I was happy to be there, cake or no cake!  This time, Gen and I put a dent in the cheese plate and spent the rest of the time outside sitting in the grass soaking up the vitamin D.

*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.