Whole 30 Week 4

Katydid's almond butter and jelly sandwich on Pecan-Raisin Bread from The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook

This post is a little late because Monday was a whirlwind after a busy weekend, but I'm here for what amounts to my last week on this Whole 30 challenge.  I say "this" one because I think I'm going to reset everything as of February 1st... perhaps allowing for a something honey-sweetened around Valentine's Day.  I guess that makes it less of a "challenge" and more of "a way of life", at least for now.  I think starting a medication in the middle of the challenge made it harder in some ways.  Prior to starting the medication, my taste buds had adjusted so that it was hard to eat an entire apple, because it was too sweet. An apple! But since I've been taking the medicine, I've broken down and eaten some of the honey-sweetened breads I've made for the kids.  The problem with those is that it doesn't matter if they're made of almond flour or regular flour, I tend to eat either to excess.  My brain thinks, Quick bread! Whoo-hoo!  One thing I was happy to discover is that the Pecan-Raisin bread pictured above (with jelly, but that wasn't what I ate) and the Scrumptious Sandwich Bread (linked below in the menu) are unsweetened.  No honey, no agave, etc.  I can eat those.  But the other stuff is not so good for me right now.


Monday:

• blueberry-banana kefir smoothie (kids)/leftover chicken soup (me)
• almond flour sesame crackers, cheese, deli roast beef, bananas (kids)/leftover chicken sausage, kimchi (me)
• meatloaf, roasted carrots and parsnips, green beans
• Snacks: fruit, sesame crackers, almond butter, hardboiled eggs, string cheese (kids)

Almond Flour sesame seed cracker dough rolled out on a cookie sheet and ready for the oven.

Tuesday:

• almond flour cranberry scones (kids)/eggs (me)
• leftovers
• Roast Lamb (based on Ina Garten's Herb Roasted Lamb, but I didn't use butter, and I cooked it at a lower temperature), roasted brussel sprouts, green beans, fruit
• Snacks: cheese, leftover scones (kids), sesame crackers, almond butter, fruit

Wednesday:

• banana kefir smoothie, hard-boiled eggs (kids)/eggs (me)
• Beef Polish Sausage Sliders, sauteed onions and green peppers, green beans, frozen blueberries
• Red Sauce (with meat) over spaghetti squash, oranges
• Snacks: leftover lamb, fruit, cheese (kids)

Almond flour Cardamom Raisin Bread

Thursday:

• almond flour Cardamom Raisin Bread (recipe below), plus eggs for me
• sugar-free hot dogs, fermented dill relish, pineapple, salad (me)
• Crockpot Ginger-Orange Chicken Thighs (a recipe born of desperation which turned out not so badly), stirfry veggies in coconut oil, mango
• Snacks: popcorn and Club crackers (Grandma's house, kids), cheese (kids), leftover raisin bread, leftover lamb

Cardamom Raisin Bread:

Inspired by Elana's recipe for Date Pecan Muffins.

6 c. blanched almond flour
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cardamom
2 tsp cinnamon
zest of 1 or 2 lemons
1/2 c. melted butter (you can substitute coconut oil for a slightly different taste)
4 tbsp honey
4 eggs
2 tbsp vanilla
a couple of handfuls of raisins (more if your family likes raisins)

Combine the dry ingredients (except for the raisins) in one bowl, wet in another.  Pour the wet into the dry and stir until thoroughly combined, then fold in the raisins.  Bake at 350 (if your oven runs hot, 325) for 35-45 minutes.   Yummy. 

Friday:

• blueberry-peach kefir smoothie, hardboiled eggs (kids)/um... you can probably guess what I had for breakfast by now
• Elana's Pecan Raisin Bread - sunbutter (or almond butter) sandwiches, oranges **I doubled the recipe for the bread, left out the arrowroot and used double the amount of almond flour per recipe.  So instead of 1/2 c. of almond flour for a double loaf, I used 1 c. almond flour and no arrowroot powder.  Clear as mud, right?
• "Tropical" salmon patties, snow peas, kiwi and pineapple, salad for me
• Snacks: The pecan raisin bread sandwiches were so filling, all the boys asked for until dinner time was a glass of milk! Before bed, they each had an orange and some cheese, and a couple of them ate spoonfuls of almond butter. Macadamias for Andy and me.

Saturday:

• Elana's Scrumptious Sandwich Bread with sunbutter (kids)/with butter for me and fried eggs (I made this bread the same way as the pecan raisin bread, without using arrowroot or flax.)
• Mexican restaurant -- the kids ate chips, quesadillas, etc./Andy and I had fajitas, minus the tortillas, rice, and beans, w/extra veggies
• Pan-seared tri-tip, sauteed onions, green beans, butternut squash fries, blueberries
• Snacks: cheese (kids), banana chips with almond butter

Sunday:

•  Chocolate-almond kefir smoothies (kids)/eggs and leftover steak (Andy and I)
• A train wreck as far as the kids' diet went.  Andy took the kids to Costco at lunchtime while I was in my class and they had drive-thru on the way (we didn't have enough time to pack lunch, and Andy didn't want to mess with that); for dinner, there was Grandma's pizza birthday party. Lots and lots of soda. The boys were bouncing off the wall by the time it was over.
•  The pizza place thankfully had a "build your own salad" entree.  I built mine with a lettuce mix, roasted red peppers, green peppers, onions, Roma tomatoes, avocado, bacon, and turkey.
• Andy and I both had Larabars.

This Week at Our House: Whiplash?

Katydid took this picture in our front yard, January 26.

So I'm giving in to peer pressure and starting up a weekly review post again.  Thank you for your kind words in the com box!  

Spring
 
It's been a strange week.  I'm pretty sure the calendar says "January", but we began this week with the tornado sirens sounding at 10:30 PM on Sunday night.  Although the Weather Channel had classified the severe threat for our area a "Particularly Dangerous Situation" and rated us an 8 on their infamous Torcon scale, we just ended up with some strong wind gusts and a lot of rain.  It was with some surprise the following day that we discovered Trussville, AL had been hit by a tornado.  My family lived in Trussville for two years when I was about 6 years old.  Oddly, most of what I remember about living there is hiding in our basement through tornado warnings.  I called my mom Monday night and found we were both squinting at the online photos, trying to decide if the subdivisions that were hit this time looked anything like the one where we used to live. 


After the storm system blew through, the weather cooled down a little... but not too much.  We had some more rain, but when that moved on, we had...

Blue skies.  And mud.

Lots and lots of mud.

And bugs! Centipedes and millipedes and earthworms. (Actually, a giant red centipede that bites and now lives in a plastic container in the garage after being banned from the kitchen table.) And a sulphur butterfly.  And honeybees.

And... flowers on the trees?  What?

Five years in New York put me on a different calendar.  Actually, I never adjusted to the long winters and cold springs (and summers) of upstate New York, but apparently they got into me just enough to make me expect that January and February would be cold months. Not "January is somewhat chilly and rainy and then we have spring!" months.  

So, still getting used to this.  The kids think it's funny.  Bees in January! 

With two mainly outside-in-the-yard days, plus archery, vision therapy, and a voice lesson for Katydid, it hasn't been the most organized of academic weeks.  We didn't get reading lessons in every day, but the twins' math focus continued.  

Math at our house
It is with some trepidation that I mention my 6 year old twins are doing Teaching Textbooks 3.  I know this is a sensitive area, because some people think that when you mention your kids are working ahead of grade (or age) level, you're bragging, and some people think you must be pushing them too hard, and some people will feel inadequate because their perfectly fine kids are not doing what your kids are doing.  Comparison is really the root of all evil here.  Anyway, the twins are the only kids I have who are really interested in math, and Dennis in particular will go through 2 lessons a day (and ask to do "the math disc" on weekends, too).  It does seem to me that Teaching Textbooks 3 is a little easier than I would expect for 3rd grade math, but maybe there's just lots of review in the beginning? We didn't start using it until October or November, and that sort of haphazardly for a while, so even George is only on lesson 35 or so.  
The twins and Chipmunk also ask to play on the Cool Math Games site every day, too.  These are more spatial and logic games than number games.  The boys like Ninja Painter, Build the Bridge, and Photon Zone.   Some of the games stretch the definition of "math" in my opinion and have been banned from official school time, as they are mainly used to produce cool explosion noises, but some of the other games require quite a bit of thought.

Sink and Float:

Otherwise known as "Chipmunk likes to play in the water." The other day George built a Lego submarine and wanted to test it in the sink.  This began a long string of the little boys building Lego creations and "testing" them in the sink.  I suggested stacking them with pennies to see how much weight they would carry.  Yes, there was a giant wet mess after this.


Books: 


Lots of books from the bug bin, scattered all over the yard.

I keep trying to pick up This Country of Ours with the boys again, where we were reading about explorers, but World War II has been an inexorable force lately.  We read D-Day: A Day That Changed America : They Fought to Free Europe from Hitler's Tyranny , which I have just discovered is part of a "A Day That Changed America" series of books that I will probably try to collect.  The D-Day book is set up as the story of four different, real soldiers who took part in the invasion of D-Day.  The boys were most impressed that the book was not historical fiction, and that all four of the men were still alive in 2003, the publication date of the book. 

I did manage to sneak in Sir Francis Drake: His Daring Deeds.  This is a picture book with an odd style of illustration that makes all the people look like they've been stuck in a vise and compressed head to toe. The big kids listened in to my reading and we all poked a little fun at the rhyme scheme, which was either very British ("again" and "Spain" appeared frequently) or a little forced, depending on your perspective.  Or maybe they just thought my Queen Elizabeth voice wasn't very good, who knows.

Computational Linguistics

I probably just gave you whiplash, going straight from a picture book to computational linguistics, but... welcome to life at my house.  I get whiplash on a daily basis.   
 
"Computational linguistics" has become something we all know a little about because Gareth has decided that it's fun.  J.R.R. Tolkien introduced him to linguistics.  Then he started studying Greek.  Then he added Japanese.  Then I started hearing that he wanted to be a linguist, and that he thought it would be good to go to a school with a good linguistics program.
 
Which was sort of how we ended up on MIT Admissions' Enrichment page , discovering the International Linguistics Olympiad.  To make a long story short, Gareth is going to participate in the Olympiad this coming week, so he spent this week working on practice problems.  (You can try some sample problems here. Tell me if you discover that you're molistic.)  And we spent Saturday in the city tromping around the college campus where the Olympiad will be held, trying to figure out where to park on "game day".  


Gareth spent his weekend hiking 16 miles with the Boy Scouts in Arkansas.  


I'm not sure if that's "molistic" or "cloovy".

Ordinary Days

 A journal of sorts.


When I don't write down our days -- the ordinary ones, the ones that pass loudly or quietly but without fanfare -- I find that they slide into the past without leaving much of a mark and I miss them.  In the past I haven't meant not to record them, but it's only too easy not to make the effort.  There's always something pressing to do, something more important than writing about little things that get swallowed up all too often by the hustle and bustle that accompanies homeschooling (and life in general) as children become teenagers.

Since we moved to Mississippi, which is a state that doesn't require a lot of paperwork to homeschool, I have found that my "writing down the days" has become a little lax.  My teens and I collaborate on keeping reading lists and videographies (ok, so I just like to say the word "videography") so that the basic records for high school are there, but the younger kids? I have dozens of pictures that never seem to make it anywhere.

Like this one of the little boys looking at atlases and dividing up territory between them.

 Beyond the fact that it's nice to be able to look back and remember the days when they're gone (which is the most important thing, really), I was also reminded of how important recordkeeping can be earlier this month when Gareth was up for a rank advancement with the Boy Scouts.  He had met some of the requirements when we were in New York, but his troop in New York was disorganized and nobody had ever initialed any of his accomplishments in his Scout book or, in some cases, had even filled out paperwork for completed merit badges.  (The way I think of his old troop is kind of like the Bad News Bears.)  His troop where we are now made up mostly of boys from our homeschool group and their dads, so it's not like he was applying for college or anything, but he still needed a few pieces of proof in his file since his goal is to eventually make Eagle.  

Enter the Rubbermaid tub.  At the end of every year I throw all the completed workbooks, binders, etc., including any records I've kept, in a big Rubbermaid tub which I mark with the year and the kids ages and approximate grades.  (The grades they're supposedly in, I mean, which actually mean approximately nothing to the kids themselves, by the way.)  Last year's Rubbermaid tub was actually a small file case.  But the last year we were in New York we had a tub, which we did move, and which I knew was still sitting in the garage and not up in the attic because its lid had been broken or gone MIA.  (Which is neither here nor there, but maybe there are advantages to procrastination?)  Anyway... I pulled out my record book...



(The Homeschooler's Journal is the one I like to use.)

... and I spent an afternoon looking through it for any Boy Scout notations I could find.  Then I pulled out my hard copy of all my "Week in Review" posts from my old blog, Three Plus Two, and searched through it.  I had to go back to the actual blog in a few cases because some little bits I hadn't included in my week in review, but I knew they were there.  I pulled out everything I could find, photocopied or printed it, and sent it with Gareth to his review. 

Then I thought about my current recordkeeping lack of a consistent system.

I decided to go back to The Home Schooler's Journal, which makes the most intuitive sense for me, because I can write all the kids across the top of the double-page spread (you can see a sample page here) in the "subject"sections and then just jot down a few notes for each one.  When we do something together as a family, I use the "Notes" section. Gareth and Katydid (ages 15 and 12) keep track of the books they're reading in their own spiral notebooks, and I have a spreadsheet set up to take care of their reading lists.  (More about high school recordkeeping later.  I'm still figuring that out, too.) 


What I'm still tossing around is this idea of weekly reviews... do I want to go back to weekly reviews on my blog? Sometimes they're tough to keep up with.  Do I want to start a blog for my own consumption as an online journal of our days, a depository for all those photos?


Or maybe I just want to start an "Ordinary Days" post on my blog.  A place where every week I can pick a day and write about it.  Like yesterday, when I was thinking how I hear sometimes that unschoolers must be lazy because they don't make their kids do anything, and here we were, with Katydid eating her lunch in front of her online Latin class so we could jump in the car immediately afterward for her and Gareth to attend an archery safety class.  From there Andy took them to work with him so that Gareth could meet his Greek tutor, and Katydid worked on the only thing I am really requiring in top down fashion this year for them: math.  We made a switch to The Art of Problem Solving texts, and she's working methodically but understanding what she's doing.  So maybe all that hands-on, Montessori-ish background paid off.  While the big kids were having a rather intense day, the younger boys made Star Wars pictures to cheer up a young friend who had to be rushed to the hospital over the weekend, and George (he who used to be Farmerboy) did his vision therapy, and on the way home from dropping off Gareth and Katydid, we went to Target, where they helped me find toilet paper and milk and spent the money they'd been saving on Bionicles.  Then we came home and they built Bionicles and took them outside and ran them around in the crisp air... and (sigh) we discovered that another chicken was missing and looked around for evidence of a murder (didn't find any, so maybe it was a hawk?)... and when the little ones were in bed, the big kids finished their viewing of Sherlock Holmes, and we talked about the stories vs. the movie, and how everything seems to be just a little steampunk these days...


So that was our ordinary day yesterday.  And I'm glad I wrote it down. 

Whole 30 Week 3 and a Menu

Notes from the Week:
I had a dentist and a doctor's appointment this week, which made things a little weird.  I haven't been to the dentist in a very long time (you don't really want to know how long), so I went with some trepidation, expecting lots of problems.  I know so many people who need root canals, etc.  But I was relieved to discover only a single cavity!  I can't claim that this diet has stopped my cavities, because it has been a really, really, really long time since I've gone to the dentist, although I imagine the diet has probably helped.  This only makes the third cavity I've had in my entire life, so I think I have to chalk it up to my grandfather's family, who all had really strong teeth.

The doctor's visit was interesting as well.  I finally lucked into a holistic doctor who was experienced in treating candida.  My neighbor, who has many autoimmune issues, raved about him and told me I should see him.  I've been having more trouble since Thanksgiving, when we visited my parents' house, which has whatever kind of mold triggers my asthma.  By the end of the week, my inhaler was not doing much and I was forced to use my inhaled steroids.  Inhaled steroids are not good for me, and I made it worse over the holidays by frequently eating pizza and indulging in chocolate.  So, while it wasn't exactly back to the drawing board, it has been (I hope) a temporary setback.  (I keep telling myself that one should not expect to fix the problems of a lifetime in a single year - or a month! -- but my self is somewhat impatient and tends to get discouraged easily at times. )


Anyway, the doctor prescribed me a course of Nystatin, which is a mild antifungal drug unfortunately sweetened with... some kind of sweetener.  Following the Whole 30 diet during this period is crucial, though, because yeast thrives on starch and sugars, and unfortunately, it is impossible to totally get rid of candida (in addition to many other strains of harmful bacteria in the gut); all you can do is to control it.  So I will probably be resetting myself after this course of medicine, meaning that I'll be doing a "Whole 60" or "Whole..." who knows.  This is not exactly primal, and I really enjoy eating primally a lot more because it's more relaxed.  But I'm afraid that my problems function more along the lines of food allergy.


Speaking of which, I finally got tested for food allergies, too.  Still awaiting the results.


The funniest thing about the visit, though? My blood pressure was so good, the doctor blinked a couple times and asked me, "Are you an athlete?  Do you run a lot?"


If you knew me, you would know that I am about as far from an athlete as you could possibly get. My blood pressure has never been bad, but it's even better now.  It's the food!

It wasn't the best week for the kids, diet-wise, because we got caught out sometimes.  However, my fifteen year old told me: "Sonic doesn't taste so good when you haven't had it in a while." So maybe they're learning.  Andy and I have stuck to our diet pretty well, though, aside from some more cheese for him...


Monday:

**A note about the oats: I use Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free Steelcut Oats and soak them overnight with a few tablespoons of yogurt or kefir***

• Oatmeal porridge (kids)/ 3 egg scramble with peppers (me)
• prosciutto and string cheese, leftover chicken sausages (I didn't eat the cheese), pears, carrot sticks
• Curbside take-out (a treat), steak, shrimp, and hamburgers. Kids ate bread and french fries, but Andy and I had steamed veggies.
• Snacks: almond butter and blueberries

Tuesday:

• Blueberry-pineapple kefir smoothie and hardboiled eggs(kids)/3 egg scramble with peppers (me)
• fried bologna, cheese, and apples (kids)/2 hardboiled eggs, cup of leftover pumpkin soup (me)
• winter vegetable and pork stew, sauerkraut, sliced kiwi (I ate a mixed green salad with grapefruit)
• Snacks: cheese, apples, pears (kids)/almond butter and apple (me), carrot sticks

Wednesday:

• cheesy eggs (kids)/fried eggs with peppers (me)
• sugar-free hot dogs (kids)/chicken from a Wendy's chicken go wrap and a garden side salad (me)
• Chicken and cauliflower with garlic-anchovy sauce, green beans, mango
• Snacks: hardboiled eggs, oranges, kefir, pistachios

Thursday:

•  almond flour orange scones (kids)/eggs for me (I'm boring)
• prosciutto, Dubliner cheese, carrot sticks, fruit (kids)/leftover chicken and cauliflower (me)
• leftover winter vegetable stew with pork, yellow squash fritters (summer squash frozen from the garden, almond flour, eggs, salt and pepper)
• Snacks: carrot sticks, bananas, kiwi, kefir, string cheese (kids)

Friday:

• oat cakes (leftover oats and eggs, fried in butter) - boys, banana kefir smoothie (K and Leo)/3 fried eggs (me)
• salmon patties (all of us), salad (me), peas and pineapple (kids)
• Shrimp Boil (minus the corn, potatoes, and sausage because it was Friday), green beans, pineapple
• Snacks:string cheese, bananas, and apples (kids), almond butter and blueberries (me)

Saturday:

• banana-pineapple kefir smoothie (kids)/fried eggs again (me)
• crockpot chicken soup, oranges
• pan-seared tri-tip steaks, sauteed onions, mushrooms, and peppers, green beans, apples (I didn't eat any apples)
• Snacks: string cheese, almond flour snickerdoodles (Katydid made them), bananas (kids), prosciutto (everyone),  almond butter and blueberries (me), pistachios

Sunday:

• almond flour cinnamon coffee cake (kids)/omelet with leftover mushrooms, onions and peppers and a little leftover steak (me)
• Sonic for the kids (ouch), salad with leftover steak and apple with almond butter for me (I had to go to a class after Mass, so I brought my lunch)
• Aidell's Gluten-Free Chicken Apple Sausages, carmelized onions, sauerkraut, apples
• Snacks: Grandma's house.  The kids had crackers, smoked sausage, cheese, fruit, and store-made chocolate chip cookies.  I stuck to carrot sticks and apples.  Probably too many apples.

Whole 30 Week 2 Progress, Nursing and Paleo, and a Few Links

Andy told the kids these stuffed squash were called "Dinosaur Eggs"

Whole 30 Week 2:
Andy has lost about 5 pounds so far, but I keep bouncing around.  We made an interesting discovery on Saturday when he ate a little cheese for lunch.  That night he had a bad nosebleed and Sunday morning what felt like the beginnings of a migraine.  By Sunday afternoon, he also had a stomachache.  So now we know that dairy might be one of his migraine triggers.  I don't think he is happy with this, as he does not like coconut milk (or coconut kefir) in his coffee at all.  I'm going to try to make homemade coconut milk from shredded coconut and see if that tastes better. 

I have been a little frustrated with my up-and-down progress so far.  One day I feel really good... the next, not so much.  I dropped my adrenal supplement because it was giving me a headache.  And then I did a little reading which made me think that I may not be getting the carbs I need for nursing.


Dear Mark: Nursing and the Primal Eating Plan
This Food Can Slow Your Brain (with commentary by Nell Stephenson )... an interesting discussion on determining the optimal diet
Breastfeeding and Paleo


So I went to FitDay and logged a few days of meals and snacks.  Lo and behold, the days I fell below 100 carbs (from fruits and veggies like butternut squash, carrots, and pumpkin) were also the days my mood suffered the most and the days I felt least motivated.  I also noticed that on those days my calorie intake was not really adequate, mainly because I was not eating decent snacks, and I was hungry.  When I bump my carbs up above 100 and eat a good lunch and a decent afternoon snack, I feel much better.  I also regained a pound I had lost (but I'm still down 3 pounds since January 1), but I think that's just an occupational hazard of nursing a toddler.  I do get to claim an exact 40 pounds lost in a year, though, since I started eating a paleo/primal diet last year on January 19!


Oh, and another interesting link from this weekend: Thomas E. Woods, author of How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization (among lots of other books about economics that my husband really likes), announced that he and his family were going primal and his wife started a blog of their journey.  They have 4 girls ages 8 and under, and they are in the very beginning stages of giving up grains.  She is a lot gutsier than I am, because she is doing this on vacation with her girls! I have such a hard time ignoring the siren song of the McDonald's drive-in when the boys are in the backseat claiming to faint from hunger.


Speaking of boys and fainting from hunger, I have some thoughts about feeding boys, in general and on a paleo diet, but I think they're going to have to wait until later.  This post is already long enough! Just remember when the list of snacks in the menu below seems to drag on and on...


Six boys live in this house!


Anyway, this is basically what we ate last week:
 

Monday:

• Breakfast: Homemade yogurt (kids), leftover lamb ribs, fermented sauerkraut, and beef broth (me)

• Lunch: sugar-free hot dogs, apples, fermented dill relish (me)

• Dinner: "Dinosaur Eggs", peas (kids), romaine and spinach salad (Andy and I), some kind of fruit
• Snacks: An enormous amount of fruit (kids),  apple (me), orange (me) 

Recipe for "Dinosaur Eggs":


Season ground pork with ginger, sage, and salt, about 1 tsp per pound, and 1/2 tsp pepper per pound.  Chop up an onion and as much garlic as you like.  Brown the onion and garlic with the pork.  Add 1 chopped green apple (or more, depending on how much pork you're cooking) and a little water or chicken broth and cook until the apple starts to get soft.  Scoop the pork mixture into winter squash halves or quarters (a variety with a good cavity) bake at 350 for about 45 minutes or until squash is done.  I covered the pan with foil until the last 15 minutes or so.  Tell your kids they're dinosaur eggs, and maybe they'll even eat the squash part. 

Tuesday:

• Breakfast: Almond flour pumpkin scones (kids), leftover "dinosaur eggs" (me)

• Lunch: Cheese, summer sausage, jicama, bananas (kids), leftover lamb ribs, snow peas (me)

• Dinner: Crockpot chicken soup, oranges

• Snacks: Leftover pumpkin scones (kids), fruit (kids)/ still snitching on the lamb ribs (me), macadamia nuts (me), pistachios (Andy), pecans and sunbutter (Leo and Chipmunk), apple with almond butter (me)

Wednesday:

• Breakfast: Homemade yogurt (kids), leftover chicken soup (me)

• Lunch: Ginger Drumsticks (chicken drumsticks coated in coconut oil, ginger, salt, pepper, baked in a 400 degree oven for 25-35 minutes), jicama for kids, romaine salad for me, oranges

• Dinner: Fish Sticks ("breaded" with egg and almond flour, seasoned with salt and pepper), homemade tartar sauce, green beans, canned pineapple (kids)

• Snacks: cheese and summer sausage (kids), US Wellness beef snack sticks (everyone), bananas (kids), apple (me), last of the chicken drumsticks (me), sunbutter on a spoon (Leo and Chipmunk), almond butter on a spoon (Andy), orange (me), raisins (Leo and Chipmunk), coconut I was trying to make flour from (me... and, yum! but alas, not flour)

Thursday:

• Breakfast: Almond Flour Cinnamon Apple Muffin Bread  for kids (I used butter instead of ghee and doubled everything to make quick bread in a pan.  I was also adapting Elana Amsterdam's original recipe from her almond flour cookbook.  This one's a real diet-breaker, though; it smells so good it's hard to resist!)/ 3 egg scramble with onions and peppers for me (and Leo)
• Lunch: sugar-free hot dogs (again) for kids, mango, leftover chicken soup for me
• Dinner: Pumpkin Soup with Turkey (Katydid said it should be called "Thanksgiving Soup"), cut-up kiwi (I didn't have any), salad for Andy and me (romaine, green leaf lettuce, scallions, avocado, grapefruit.)  Surprisingly, I really liked the grapefruit in the salad.  
• Snacks: oranges (kids), leftover Cinnamon Apple Bread (kids), pecans and raisins  (Leo), carrot sticks (me), macadamias (me), hardboiled eggs (everyone)

Friday:

• Breakfast: Peach Kefir Smoothies and hardboiled eggs (kids); leftover pumpkin soup with 2 poached eggs (me)
• Lunch: fried bologna, cheese, fruit (kids); tuna salad with homemade mayo on romaine (me)
• Dinner: hamburgers (no buns), carmelized onions and mushrooms (in ghee), kimchi (me), butternut squash fries
• Snacks: oranges, hardboiled egg (me), pecans and raisins (boys), hazelnuts (me)

Saturday:

• Breakfast: Pumpkin smoothie (kids, nobody liked this much); 3 egg scramble with peppers and onions (me)
• Lunch: raw milk cheese, carrot sticks, and fruit (kids), prosciutto and pears (me and Andy)
• A 2nd lunch for me, since I was at Costco around lunchtime: leftover hamburger, dill relish, and leftover pumpkin soup, blueberries
• Dinner: Pan-Seared Salmon, roasted brussel sprouts and cauliflower, kiwi and pineapple
• Snacks: blueberries, apple with almond butter (me), string cheese (kids) 

Sunday:

• Breakfast: homemade pork sausage, bananas (kids), 2 egg scramble with peppers (me) 
• Lunch: Aidell's Gluten-Free Chicken and Apple Sausage, carmelized onions and mushrooms, oranges (kids), spring mix salad with avocado and grapefruit (me)
• Dinner: Roast chicken (seasoned with coconut oil and ginger), green beans, apples 
• Snacks: almond butter and frozen blueberries (my new favorite afternoon snack), string cheese (kids)

A Fresh Start

A crowd for Teaching Textbooks

(The pictures are from yesterday, our first day back at work.)
 
I always seem unable to get going again the week of New Year's like everyone else.  I usually feel guilty about it, but this year we worked (or at least the teens worked) until December 23.  Then taking off 2 weeks for the Christmas season made perfect sense.  We've never been good at stopping for Advent anyway, although for the younger kids I do shift gears and we mostly read stacks and stacks of picture books. 


But now we're back at work.  The calendar is filling up with interesting things to the point that I am going to have to put the brakes on soon.  We have some fun ideas for high school science we're going to try out and an adventurous rabbit trail I'm heading down with Gareth (age 15) and George (age 8) and anybody else who wants to come along.

Playing Quick Chess

Our New Rabbit Trail
Over the holidays I got one of the Teaching Company's frequent catalogs and noticed that a course named Espionage and Covert Operations: A Global History was on sale.  For cheap.  (Much cheaper than it is now!) So of course I snapped it up.  I used to love to read thrillers, the Cold War variety, and I still have a soft spot for anything that relates.  I started playing the lectures at lunch this week.  Katydid is not interested, but Gareth and George sit and listen along with me.  The lecturer is a good storyteller, so my 8 year old (who is keenly interested in spies at the moment) has no problem following along.  Lecture 2 includes the mention of Rahab the harlot, except a synonym for harlot is used, and later on in the course it looks like there is the strange story of a French spy who dressed as both a woman and a man. (I may preview that lecture, as I've already read the notes.)  Otherwise, I don't see any difficulty with listening to this course with my children.  One interesting aspect to this course is that it relates Biblical stories of spying and spends quite a lot of time discussing the Jesuits and Catholics in Elizabethan England (including the unfortunate Gunpowder Plot).  After listening to his relation of the Biblical story of Rahab and Joshua and reading the lecture notes on the Jesuits and Elizabethan England, his treatment seems to be pretty even-handed.  In any case, it should give us something to talk about.  Now to run down a good history of the Jesuits.  Gareth is trying to decide between St. Ignatius Loyola and St. Francis Xavier as his Confirmation saint, so I think there is a serendipitous connection here...


And we're talking about what sort of history he wants to pursue for the next few months.  I have given up the idea of traditional "courses" with him for the most part, but he knows more history than I do anyway so I'm not worried.  Today we tossed around the idea of a semester of military history with the Espionage course as a part of it.


George (age 8) got spy glasses and commando gear for Christmas, and with a Barnes and Noble gift card he bought:

So it all dovetails rather neatly.

Sci-Fi Highschool?

He's not in high school.  He's just cute. (Also: I lied.  This picture is not from yesterday.)

 For literature this year, we decided that Gareth could pursue a "classic science fiction" course.  This is in keeping with me relaxing a bit more into unschooliness.  He's using the Other Worlds curriculum for writing science fiction, which also provides an in-depth history of the field.  So far this year he's read Heinlein's juvenile books, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, a bunch of books by Isaac Asimov... among others. We discuss the books, and he also writes about them (sometimes).  He's enjoying himself, and I find that we get to some real meaty themes sometimes.  About scientific ethics.  About theology.  About the place of humanity in the universe.  It's good.


So I was trying to catch up with my recordkeeping over Christmas, and I was trying to sort out books and Science Channel documentaries and NOVA episodes into "astronomy" or "conceptual physics", and I was trying to keep track of the topics he'd covered, and I got to thinking that it looked an awful lot like his science and literature were all related this year.  The next morning I pitched him an idea: how much physics could you learn by researching a science fiction novel, or vice versa, what kind of physics could you learn if you investigated the science behind science fiction?  Gareth is a great fan of Michio Kaku, so he was up to the challenge.  He made a list of all the physics (and astronomy) topics and questions he could think of relating to science fiction, and the plan is to choose a topic from the list, research it, and hopefully to do some kind of related hands-on project or experiment.  We'll see how it goes.  The first thing I have to do is order a rocket.

Coloring in the Dover Dinosaur coloring book

New Basics  
We decided to start fresh with our non-readers using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.  I've never used this program before, but my struggling 8 year old has been inching slowly through everything I have for the past few years and my husband and I agreed it was time for something new.  The vision therapy he's been doing since September has really seemed to help, and we're hopeful that this will be an approach that works for him.  I just started using it with my 6 year old twins, too.  Initially -- a long time ago -- I had passed on 100 Easy Lessons because I worried about the special alphabet it used.  In practice with these particular kids, though, it seems to work pretty well. So - hopeful.

This is how the day ended: toddler warpaint.

Whole 30 Week .5

Chicken and Cauliflower in Garlic-Anchovy Sauce

Well, I started out saying that this wouldn't be a food blog in spite of the name, and I think what I have done is blog mainly about food.  December and January seem to be food-focused months, though, don't they?  One's all about eating, and the other is... oh, I don't want to say it's "anti-eating", but that's the vibe that's out there.  

I am definitely not anti-eating, and fortunately I am not finding the Whole 30 protocol to be anti-eating either.  I think it would have been harder if I hadn't spent a year trying to get grains out of my diet and my kids' diet.  But after a bit (ahem) of whinging about not being able to have coffee with honey and cream every morning, I've found that hot tea with lemon is perfectly okay for me.  (And certainly better than the coffee with coconut milk that Andy is drinking.  Bleagh.  Sorry.) 

Since I started the Whole 30 last Tuesday after breakfast it hasn't been quite a whole week yet, but Erin and I were chatting and agreed that it would be helpful if we could post the menus of the last week, like Amy is doing with her newly gluten-free menu plans. (Erin just posted a very helpful update about her family's grain-free journey.  Especially good if you have a large family!)  Eva also asked me in the comments what supplements I was taking.  So I thought I would offer a status report.

First, about the supplements.  
Technically on the Whole 30 you're supposed to ditch them.  Well... most of them.  I think they say that a magnesium supplement is ok.  The rationale behind ditching the supplements is the same as it is in the GAPS Intro diet.  If something in the supplements is making you unwell, you will only discover this if you stop taking the supplements for a while.  Some supplements contain lots of questionable ingredients, many of which are derived from corn.  Maltodextrin is a common ingredient derived from corn.  Vegetable cellulose (what the plastic capsules are made from) is also derived from corn.  If you're allergic to or intolerant of corn (as I am), the supplements you're taking may be a source of your problems.

That said, I've already sourced many allergen-free supplements.  These supplements are powders which I can dump out of the vegetable cellulose capsules into a glass of orange juice (which is what I do, because I can't swallow giant pills anyway.)  But I'm not sure whether I should still be taking all of my supplements or not.  I have some autoimmune issues, probably low thyroid, I'm dealing with adrenal fatigue (although it's much better than it was), and I'm still nursing multiple times day and night.  On the other hand, I didn't take my regular probiotic today (which includes inulin from chicory root, but nothing else bad), ate some fermented sauerkraut and dill relish instead, and I feel better than I have in a while.  So who knows. Maybe that miniscule amount of chicory root was bothering me.


Here's what I'm still taking:

• Raw, fermented cod liver oil - 1 tsp daily because I'm nursing
• Dr. Ron's Best Multi - not sure whether I should stop taking this for the Whole 30 or keep on
• Dr. Ron's Cal-Mag
• magnesium oil topical spray
• Vitamin D (because it's been really cloudy lately)
• digestive enzymes when I remember  

I also recently started adding in thyroid and adrenals at a pretty low level.  (I empty the capsules into a cup of bone broth.  It tastes a lot better than it sounds.)  


(Obligatory disclaimer: I am not a doctor and in no way should you take anything in this post as medical advice.  I think you probably know that already.)

Now, how am I doing?
I'm doing well!  I did feel pretty rotten the first few days -- tired, discouraged, headachey, digestively not good -- but since then (and since I added the thyroid and adrenal) I've had a lot more energy, and I've dropped two pounds.  We started school again today, and I hadn't been looking forward to it.  But this morning I managed to get in a shower before the kids got up, I ran 3 non-reading kids through reading lessons, handwriting, and math, grappled with a cantankerous 4 year old, a wild toddler, an 8 year old who is going through bread withdrawal, and a teenager not fond of math, read aloud before quiet time, graded all the backed-up Latin quizzes, cleaned out 3 shelves in the school bookcase, and generally maintained my good humor... at least until I noticed that my kids had eaten a couple of bunches of bananas and nearly 4 pounds of apples (not to mention the oranges) in less than 24 hours. 

Keeping us all in produce is the hard part of being grain-free.

Andy has had somewhat the same experience.  He spent two or three days feeling very down, sniffly, etc. Then his energy picked up.  He's lost 3 pounds since Wednesday (although the emphasis of the program is not supposed to be on weight loss, it is a happy side effect), and more importantly, even with our whacky, rainy weather, he has not had a migraine.  Every week in December, he had from 1 to 3 or 4 migraines.  So we are cautiously optimistic.  

Here are the particulars of how I kept everybody fed last week, starting with about Tuesday.  (Since I began this post somewhat late in the week, I couldn't remember what day we'd eaten what in some cases, so I apologize for the jumbled listiness.)
   
What we ate:

Dinners:

• crockpot chicken soup, apples

• spaghetti sauce with meat on spaghetti squash, grapes

• butternut squash and (leftover) pork sausage egg bake, green salad with avocado and scallions, clementines

• Chicken and cauliflower with garlic/anchovy sauce (from Primal Blueprint: Quick and Easy Meals), snow peas, blueberries
•  Brisket/Chuck Roast with Carmelized Carrots (tweaked a little from Carmelized Tomato Eye of Round by Paleo Parents), salad, mixed frozen berries
• crockpot Mustard-Rosemary Lamb Ribs, carrot sticks, raw snow peas, jicama for everyone else (but not for me because apparently it isn't SCD legal), oranges (but I stuck to veggies).

Lunches (all of which had apples, pears, clementines, or blueberries for kids):

• taco soup (Brown ground beef and onion, add beef broth and tomato paste, 1/2 to 1 can of pumpkin, bag of frozen red and yellow peppers, cumin, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes to taste.  Top with any taco topping you want.)
• sugar-free, grassfed beef hotdogs with homemade ketchup
• leftovers (spaghetti sauce or hot dogs or cheese)
• leftovers (taco soup or egg bake or cheese) for the kids/ smoked salmon on arugula, baby kale and chard with oil and vinegar for me
• salmon patties (made with almond flour), pineapple, jicama for everyone else/salmon salad (made with homemade mayonnaise) on romaine with snowpeas and jicama for me  
• leftover beef brisket/smoked salmon salad for me

My breakfasts:

• 2 fried eggs in ghee with homemade pork sausage

• leftover chicken soup with 1 poached egg

• 2 poached eggs in beef broth (bone broth)

• 3 fried eggs in ghee w/ beef broth

Kids' breakfasts:

• almond flour cranberry scones

• homemade pork sausage, once with clementines, once with frozen blueberries

• porridge (made with gluten-free, steel-cut oats), served with milk, butter, and maple syrup

• oat cakes (leftover porridge and eggs made into cakes and fried in butter), served with butter and maple syrup
• yogurt
• kefir peach smoothie
• almond flour cinnamon coffee cake (made from the recipe in The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook, but without currants or walnuts, and with a simple honey and cinnamon topping) -- Sunday breakfast

My snacks:

• macadamia nuts

• blueberries (frozen from last summer)

• strawberries (at Grandma's house)

• pear

• chicken soup

• beef broth (seasoned with salt, pepper, and cloves, 1 capsule each Dr. Ron's Thyroid and Adrenal with Liver )

• leftover chicken in garlic/anchovy sauce

• apple

• US Wellness Beef Snack Stick Ends with spicy mustard

Disasters:
Kale chips.  Apparently making them with small, tender kale leaves from your garden is a lot different than making them with giant, tough kale from the grocery store. 


Victories:
Chicken in garlic-anchovy sauce (pictured at the top of this post.)  Do not turn up your nose at this just because it has the word "anchovy" in it.  My kids absolutely scarfed it up... and they even ate the cauliflower!  The original recipe called for artichoke hearts, but I didn't have any so I substituted a head of cauliflower, and I also used ghee instead of butter.  


Yum!

Winter Harvest

Kaleidoscope carrot mix, Thumbelina carrots, and an Ameracauna egg

There are many things I love about gardening in Zone 7.  Sure, the squash bugs and I have become mortal enemies, and dealing with summer heat is certainly requiring an adjustment in the varieties we grow and how we grow them (after gardening for 5 years in upstate New York).  But in Zone 7 you can have a true four season garden without the use of greenhouses or hoophouses, and I am loving that. 

A picture of one of our winter beds, taken in November. From left to right: Nero di Toscana kale, Bright Lights chard, and bok choy.

I'm really excited about the fact that our raised beds allow us to grow decent carrots.  In New York we grew tiny little misshapen carrots because of our rocks and weeds (and lack of timely thinning).  In our Mississippi clay carrots would not grow well either.  But the raised beds produce fine carrots.  More importantly, they are convenient enough that I can take a toddler into the garden and let him play while I do some thinning here and there.

And in Zone 7 -- carrots can stay in the ground all winter.  Come spring we'll be planting a lot more!

A giant mound of turnip greens.  And a sweet potato (not ours). And my camera, which was defunct at the time... so I took this picture with my phone. Actually, this is sort of a snapshot of daily life at our house.

We experimented with turnips this year.  We didn't plant many, and I didn't do much with the greens.  I like them all right cooked in bacon grease (or fatback or with some sort of pork product) and sprinkled with hot pepper vinegar, but the rest of my family is not too sure.

All those turnip greens and this was the extent of the turnips.

 I tried one of our turnips raw when it was small the way gardening books will tell you is good, but mine was hotter than fire.  At this size, I roasted them with butternut squash and apples, and some of my kids even ate them.

Smoked salmon on a bed of baby kale, baby chard, and arugula

 This salad was my lunch today.  We are having beautiful January weather -- today anyway -- with temperatures in the 60's.  I went outside at lunchtime and picked some greens for lunch.  Smoked salmon was a recent splurge.  I had never eaten it before, but I think now that it is one of my favorite foods!  

Pecans from our two mature pecan trees.

After lunch, Chipmunk and I picked some more kale so I can make kale chips, and we also gathered pecans.  We have two large mature pecan trees on our property.  They're smaller than commercial pecans, but also sweeter.  And we didn't even have to plant the trees!
 

The Whole 30

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Andy and I just started The Whole 30.  I'm the kind of person who has to ease into changes in my diet, so I've been eating about 95% grain-free since last January.  I dropped grains not to lose weight -- although I needed that -- but to deal with a lot of candida-related problems  (otherwise known as systemic yeast) which had reached a crisis point after the birth of my seventh child.  It's a long story which I want to tell some time, but for now I'll just say that giving up grains is the best thing I've ever done for my health.  I've lost about 40 pounds, but more importantly, I discovered that grains and sugar are what fuel -- no, strike that -- cause my depression and anxiety.  If I slip up a few times (or a week), I know that I'm going to have some bad days.

So I've been slipping up a bit and having more bad days than I care to anymore, and since Halloween, I've put back on a few pounds.  Upon further investigation, I found that I was still eating a lot of carbs in the form of sugars like honey and orange juice, and I was trying to add in more dairy again (having never completely removed it from my diet in the first place.)  In the fall I took the plunge and eliminated store-bought bread from my kids' diet and figured out to serve them mostly grain-free meals and snacks at home.  With that under my belt (and trust me, that was hard), I felt like I was ready to give up honey and cream for a while and tackle the rest of the mystery health problems. 

A brief digression:
You know, it kind of bothers me sometimes when I read blogs or talk to other moms, etc., that we all seem to be looking for something to fix.  It's like we're all worrywarts.  I don't want to be a worrywart, but when something's wrong, ignoring it because you don't want to deal with it is not a good policy.  Maybe we're all trying to fix "things" because lots of "things" really are broken.  I know it's a fallen world, but it has seemed to fall a little further in the past few decades, hasn't it?

Anyway, if you've been suffering from weight gain, blood pressure or blood sugar problems, asthma or allergies, foggy brain, depression or anxiety, and you're the kind of person who likes to dive in, go check out The Whole 30.  If you've gotten mostly off grains and sugar and you're ready to take the next step, you should check out The Whole 30, too.

On the Whole 30, you can:

1. Eat lots of meat, fish, eggs, and good fats like coconut oil and avocado.
2. Eat lots of vegetables.
3. Eat some fruit, but don't overdo it.
4. Eat nuts, but don't overdo them either.
5. Drink coffee or tea, as long as you don't add any sugars, honey, or cream (or fake creamers, made of soy or dried dairy.)
6. Eat sweet potatoes in moderation.

What you can't eat:

1. Grains and pseudograins.
2. Sugar of any kind (including honey and agave syrup).
3. Dairy, including butter... but ghee (clarified butter) is ok.
4. White potatoes.
5. Legumes (beans, peas, soy)

For 30 days.

If you're still eating standard American fare and reading that list made you want to run and hide, read the "easing into it" post I linked above and go check out Mark's Daily Apple.  Don't hyperventilate and keep an open mind.

I'm on my 2 and half-ish day of the Whole 30, and as predicted... I'm feeling kind of rotten.  I'm pretty sure it will clear up soon, though, because I'm familiar with the pattern.  You feel rotten for a while because all the evil little microbes in your body are starving and dying.  You're not feeding them their preferred foods of starches and sugars.  And your metabolism has to shift, too.  But after that, things should get better.

If you decide to go "Whole 30", too, let me know!  I have a feeling that this sort of challenge goes a lot better with support!

On New Year's Day

On New Year's Day, I watched the Pope's Mass for the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God on EWTN.  Eighteen month-old Leo has RSV.  On New Year's Eve, we were at urgent care and he was so furious at having to wear the nebulizer mask that he bit it and would not let go.  Fortunately, he was allowed to come home with an aero-chamber inhaler, which he finds mildly amusing instead of infuriating, and is feeling better today.  The twins also have a mild cold (RSV without the wheezing, I'm sure), so I'm at home with all the sick kids while Andy takes the well ones to the late Mass -- otherwise known as the Mass of last resort.

The Pope talked about the importance of a moral education vs. simple instruction in knowledge for the young.  Staying home to take care of sick kids is not without its blessings.
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On New Year's Day, I put a pork sirloin roast in the crockpot.  Tonight we'll eat it with sauerkraut, in honor of my German roots... and Hoppin' John, in honor of our Southern ones.  (And maybe some kale from the garden, if I can manage to run outside and grab some.)
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On New Year's Day, I ate more of the pistachio-fig balls I made last night...

... except I didn't cover them in chocolate, the way I did for Christmas.  Covered in dark chocolate, they were everyone's favorite Christmas "cookie". Or "candy".  Call them whatever you want!

Here's how to make them:

Use a ratio of 2:1, unsulfured, dried black mission figs (I got mine at Costco) to pistachios. To see if you like them, try 2 cups of figs and 1 c. of pistachios.  If your pistachios are unsalted, add a little sea salt.  I don't know how much, just taste.

Take the remaining stems off the figs and puree them in a food processor until they form a sort of paste.  (You really need a food processor for this, because the mixture will overheat a Vitamix. Trust me.)  Next add the pistachios, and grind them up until they're as fine as you want them.

Now roll the mixture with your hands into little balls, bite-size or a little bigger.  The mixture will be crumbly and a little dry, so you may have a little trouble getting it to form balls, but just keep smushing it together.  At this point you can a) eat one or two (or three) b)refrigerate them and eat them later (they will hold together better after refrigeration) or c)coat them in chocolate.

I melted a 60%cacao Ghiradelli baking bar in a rigged up double boiler (i.e., one pot sitting in another pot with simmering water) and rolled the balls in the chocolate using a spoon.  Set the chocolate-covered balls on a baking sheet or plate covered with parchment paper, and pop them in the refrigerator for a while to harden the chocolate.

Absolutely divine. 
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On New Year's Day, I read through the new Territorial Seed Catalog while I rocked the RSV baby and decided that it would be good to add an herb garden this year, and that we need passionflowers growing along our fence, and also that the thing that is missing from our front landscaping is jasmine.
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On New Year's Day, one of our feral rabbits had babies... but all 7 of them died because we didn't realize she was pregnant when we trapped her.

Sigh.

The feral rabbits are a long story. They are actually escapees from our neighbors' rabbitry.  (It's not really a rabbitry, but they have a bunch of rabbits.  I think they eat them, but I don't know.)  Anyway, these two rabbits were essentially living with our chickens, eating the chicken food, and had even been named by our children (Peanut and Midnight Ninja), but they were tunneling under the barn in so many directions that Andy was afraid the chicken coop was going to be next, and that a nice tunnel under the chicken coop would be like a giant neon sign saying EAT AT JOE'S for the resident fox population (which is high.)  So George, age 8 (who used to be Farmerboy on my old blog) rigged a trap in the barn near one of their holes.  Ten minutes later, he had a rabbit.  Five minutes after he got that rabbit out and set up the trap again, he had another rabbit.

Katydid took this picture.

Our neighbors told us if we caught them we could keep them.  So it was a good thing we had an old chicken crate... transporter... box... thing... laying around, because we were not prepared to take care of two incredibly tame feral rabbits (who assent to petting but not to being picked up.)

The black one is apparently the female. (And yes, her name was Midnight Ninja.  Now it is just "Midnight".  Ahem.)  Katydid had figured that out from her rabbit books.  But how do you tell if a rabbit is pregnant?  Anyway, we felt really bad, because a rabbit near kindling needs a nest box, kind of like a nesting hen, and we would have built one for her if we had known.  I don't know what we would have done with 7 half-feral hybrid bunnies, as I have discovered that I am not too keen on rabbit meat, and I doubt they could have been sold, but...

Sigh.
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Katydid mentioned today that this was another in a long line of her weird New Year's memories, which include an extended power outage one year and breaking her wrist another.  To that I would add my very first New Year's Day as a parent, which I also spent at urgent care with an infant with RSV.

Hmmm.

That infant did not spill an entire bottle of glue on the kitchen floor on New Year's Day, though.

I think this particular RSV baby is feeling better.
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On New Year's Day, I wish you and your families a happy, peaceful year, full of God's blessings.  And now I'm off to put together that Hoppin' John!