Wednesday, May 26

Ranch Dressing

Ever since I first tried Ranch dressing years ago, I've been hooked. For a while I was ashamed of myself, silly I know, but I was already aware that normal Ranch was not exactly a healthy or health building food. I've tried to avoid it, but yum.

My second choice has been Western. That cannot be much if any better since the first ingredient is high fructose corn syrup which I've been trying to eliminate from my diet.

I've been having a similar struggle with Mayo. I'm a big mayo fan. (This is relevant.)

Most people don't know it, but I'm a bit lazy. Unless I find the difficult way intriguing and I have that much time and energy, I'm doing it the easy way.

So I found this place I love called Penzey's Spices. (They have arrowroot powder among other things.) Not everything there is totally great [like the soup bases :( ] but most of it is wonderful. While there I got taco seasoning and :D buttermilk ranch dressing mix. Yeah! But still, it calls for mayo.

This past week, I finally got around to making my own mayo. I was intrigued when I heard about it and fascinated when I saw a video blog which I would link to but I lost it.  Eggs have also become readily available as it is nearly June. That was a big factor.  It was easy if you remember to you the mixer not the food processor. Our food processor makes it impossible to add things while running and that is way to time consuming! Note- I've not tried my mayo plain yet.

I have tried the Ranch. Since the dressing is liquidy, I need to add more mayo. That I can do. It is not the same thing as Hidden Valley, but it is Ranch. :D. Yeah!! I'll attach a picture when I load pictures next.

Vitamins

I am rather skeptical about vitamins, especially multivitamins. This is particulalty true about convention a multivitamins. I've always wondered if there was really any merit to them or if I was just buying expensive urine. After doing a little research i decided that with my synthetic vitamins that was likely what I was getting. Plus, the idea of adding vitamins to my body without the proper ballance of vitamins needed to metabolize them was not appealing.

In November I started taking New Life prenatals. They are small green round bale looking pills. I loved that they were easy to swallow. Not a strong point for me. However, I was supposed to take nine of them a day. I only took four. I don't really think that they were worth the price.

I have also been interested in trying New Chapter as they have had good reviews. However, since I have had good experience with Shaklee and have had recommendations from a few of my friends and relatives, I decided to try their vitamins. I also found out that they are also all non-synthetic before ordering.

I ordered them on Saturday. They arrived on Wednesday. Sweet. I was pleasantly surprised to see of that the multi (vita-lea with iron) is green. I was not so happy with the size of the pill. It is enormous. Well, maybe it is the same as the Walmart One a Day knockoffs. BUT, one enormous pill is only half of the serving. I'm supposed to take two.

We'll have to see. So far, I'm happier with Shaklee.

Tuesday, May 4

May Baby Belly

I'm thinking that this will be the second to last monthly belly picture- only June to go! I don't think that we are going to do any mid-month pictures.

Also, I'm happy to announce that I finally found a dresser. I'm very happy with it. It is just about perfect. I do need to replaced the draw pulls because the originals are missing a few parts.

That was pretty exciting. I've already done a load of baby clothes and need to put together my diapering basket, get my birth plan written, and figure out what needs to go in our bedroom for Baby before Baby comes. (An lift the co-sleeper.) Below you can see the dresser and a reminder of our nursery. In this picture you may notice that I have adjusted the curtain to its most open position. 
Also - I need to give a shout out to Justin and especially Luke who helped me retrieve the dresser and bring it inside. Thanks!

Sunday, May 2

Food Pyramid

As a teacher, especially one that teaches science to two classes of students at different grade levels and as a person who is passionate about real food, I really struggle with how to teach health and nutrition. Our curriculum uses the USDA approved guidelines which are wrong.

I seek to teach from and with a strong Christian perspective in all my classes. I have quite a few students whose families have slowly started food conversions but don't always have access to quality information. However, most of my students eat SAD.

(In case you are wondering how real food and christian perspective connect,  God create food for us to eat that is healthy for us. He create food for animals to eat that is healthy for them. When we stop trusting him and decide to re-engeneer things oursleves, taking away the God given healthy way of dooing things, how can anything but something inferior result? We sin against God saying that we are smarter than He is.  We sin against God saying that we can create better than He can. We sin against God by denying his creation the life God intended for them and denying them to express the characteristics he gave them.  If history and science teach us anything, it is that the more we try to control things apart from God, the worse things get. )

I have a lot of leeway, but no matter what I teach in health and nutrition, I'm just not sure. The more I learn the more I lean towards the truth, especially with my older students. I figure, if they do go home and talk about science/ health class, at least I have opened a door to the truth, at the worst, I get reprimanded for not teaching the curriculum.

Here is a great post about a REAL FOOD pyramid.

God's real food gives me a reason to be passionate about food.