Julia: "Mom, what do you get for your birthday?"
Me: "Hugs and kisses from girls that I love."
Julia (giggling with excitment) : "I'm a girl."
Showing posts with label Mothering Win. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mothering Win. Show all posts
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Just Eat It
I have reasons to make a change:
**I feel nauseous after I eat.
**My mom had cancer when she was 37 and I am turning 34 next month.
**I'm struggling with low energy & dramatic mood swings.
**My kids need to eat more vegetables.
**I'd like to lose weight.
I have history: I grew up eating healthy.
**Whole Wheat: My dad made me eat cracked wheat mush nearly every day for breakfast whether I wanted to or not (on Saturdays mom made whole wheat pancakes.) Any kind of baked goods, my mom made with 100% whole wheat flour that she ground in her electric wheat mill. Bread, rolls, pasta, cookies- all 100% whole wheat.
**No Sugar: Mom only used honey for sweetening things like cookies. When she made pancakes, she would make a little syrup on the stove boiling honey & water together.
**Lots of vegetables: Most of what we ate either came from the garden or it was a kind of dried legume. When we had meat, it was a small part of the meal--a little hamburger in gravy to go over mashed potatoes. The only time I ever saw a chunk of meat on the table was Thanksgiving Day and Christmas day. Those days we had roast turkey, although one year, I remember going to Grandma Bennion's house and she had made some kind of a baked brisket. It was so good. On the menu for dinner at the Hansen house depended on the season.
Early spring: Asparagus soup or Broccoli soup; lettuce
Late spring: boiled potatoes with cream sauce & peas; steamed green beans; milk; cantaloupe
Summer: tomato & cucumber salad; mashed potatoes; corn on the cob; milk; or garlic & parmesan cheese coleslaw; watermelon
Fall: split pea soup; bread & butter; milk;
Winter: home-canned tomatoes poured over rice & homemade cheese; milk
The eating healthy train is derailed:
Then I left home to go to college. I ate the cafeteria and reveled in the glorious bounty of meat and gravy, white flour pasta, cookies, pudding, and cake.
I gained 10 pounds.
Then I went to basic training for the army. I ate in the Dining Facility. Everything they gave me, I ate. I was so worried about having enough fuel to work with. I didn't eat syrup on my pancakes though--I couldn't stomach that much sugar in the morning. I would pour the strawberry yogurt we got on my pancakes in place of syrup. Saved me time anyway.
I gained 10 more pounds. But to be fair, a lot of it was probably muscle since I went from not being able to do a single pushup to being able to pump out 42 in 2 minutes.
Back on track for a little while:
When I got back to college, I suddenly couldn't stomach the cafeteria food anymore. Eating made me feel nauseous. I still had to eat at the cafeteria (since I was living in the dorms) but I switched to omelets for breakfast and bagels & salad for lunch and dinner. I just could not bring myself to eat all those meaty, gravy, fatty foods. I lost 15 pounds, but I've felt guilty about it for a long time--that I "starved" myself skinny.
Then about 3 weeks ago, I realized: I didn't starve myself at all. I just went back to eating like I did at home as a girl, or as close to it as I could at the cafeteria. I chose to eat what didn't make me feel sick: vegetables. The salads I ate were not just a bit of wimpy lettuce--the glorious thing about a cafeteria salad bar is all the chopped vegetables you want, and you don't have to be the one who chopped them. My salads were a plateful of lettuce and broccoli and cauliflower and cucumbers and mushrooms and green peppers with chopped boiled egg and sunflower seeds and cherry tomatoes and baby carrots drenched in ranch dressing and cheddar cheese. There is nothing starving about that!
Marriage (in other words, keeping the Man happy):
About 2 weeks after our marriage, the Man of the House asked me, "When are we going to have meat for dinner?"
I was confused. "What are you talking about? I made chicken soup this week, pizza, hamburger gravy and mashed potatoes. All those things have meat."
He said, "No I mean a chunk of meat."
I did not know how to cook a chunk of meat. But I had The Joy of Cooking and 2 Relief Society cookbooks full of cream of mushroom soup casserole recipes. I learned how to cook pot roast, country fried steak, pork chops, and 5 kinds of chicken. After 2 weeks of eating a chunk of meat every day, I decided our budget couldn't handle that much meat. Surely people didn't eat like this all the time?
But a fundamental shift had occurred in my thinking. I no longer thought, "What am I cooking for dinner?" I thought "What meat am I cooking for dinner?" If there wasn't meat in it, the Man of the House insisted that it wasn't a "hearty" meal.
I did manage over time to shift some of his opinions. I made homemade cinnamon & raisin swirled bread and gradually, week by week, increase the amount of whole wheat flour in it until he liked to eat whole wheat bread. He insisted that there wasn't a difference between margerine and butter. I only used butter. A month later at his mom's house, he put margerine on his bread, took a bite and made an icky face. "What's this?" he asked me. "Oh, that's margerine," I said, probably a little too smugly.
I reduced the amount of meat I cooked as much as I could, using only 1/4lb of hamburger per quart of spaghetti sauce and making things like stir fry that had lots of veggies. But my thinking was still, "What meat am I cooking for dinner?"
I've blamed the weight I've put on in the last 13 years on 6 pregnancies, but I think it had a lot to do with all the meat and all the desserts my husband wanted me to cook and my inability to not eat just one serving of said dessert.
Everybody is ready for a change:
The Man of the House has gradually come to his own realization about eating healthy. He knows that the less processed a food is, the better for us it is. He likes to eat spinach, kale, and bok choy. And now, he is wanting to feel healthier too.
The Change: 4 changes for 3 weeks:
**Green Drinks. The plan is for the adults to drink 1 quart of green drink and for the kids to drink 1 cup to a pint of green drink every day. Here is my recipe for now:
2 1/2 cups water
6 cups kale or spinach or beet greens (I'm working up the courage to try comfrey)
1/2 tsp truvia
1/8 of a lemon (peel & all)
2-3 cups frozen fruit
1-2 small apples (sometimes)
Blended in my wimpy Walmart special blender.
I won't go into all the reasons why this is good for you. Suffice to say, we are getting more raw veggies than we were before by a long shot. Kale & spinach are both packed with all kinds of nutrients.
I bought The Green Smoothie Diet by Robyn Openshaw . Much of what she said about how you should eat reminded me of what I grew up eating. It was good to have facts to show the Man of the House and the more I read about the nutrients in raw food, the more I realized how much I had been worrying about cancer. Now I know what to do about it.
**Less Cow milk. Being the daughter of a dairy man, I grew up on the gospel of milk. But after I read the research, I decided milk might not be the best thing for me. I stopped drinking milk ( I was drinking a gallon a week- more than twice what the rest of the family put together drinks) and realized that nauseous feeling I had all the time was caused by the cow milk. I'm considering getting a goat, to see if raw goat milk would sit better, but until then, no milk is better than processed milk.
**I have shifted my planning mindset back to "What vegetables and fruit are we having for dinner." We aren't going vegetarian or anything, but my focus is on the vegetables.
**I'm cooking with olive oil and coconut oil and a little butter. No more soybean based vegetable oil.
I also plan on eating **Less Sugar, but I didn't manage that one yet. I've realized that I'm addicted to sugar.
Results:
After 3 weeks of green smoothies (although I didn't make them every day- more like 3 times a week), only drinking 1-2 cups of milk per week, and using coconut oil instead of soybased oil:
I feel so much better! I don't feel nauseous all the time and my mood swings have dramatically evened out. (I think the Man of the House is massively relieved.) Also, by the way,
I LOST 4 POUNDS. That might sound like a little thing, but I haven't been able to lose more than 1/2 pound in a week for the last 12 years, and I had to carefully count my calories and exercise until I was red in the face and sweating buckets to do it.
I lost this 4 pounds (more than 1 pound a week) without suffering; without exercising, without spending hours planning meals and counting calories, without feeling hungry, and I ate more sugar than I should have. Like I'm talking about a whole bag of mellow cream pumpkins and 2 bags of Lindt chocolate truffles. (sorry for not sharing, Dear Husband.) Then there was Julia's birthday cake and after school cookies and etc. etc. etc. Just think what might happen if I did not eat sugar and exercised a couple times a week!
Now I'm 38 pounds away from what I weighed when I was married and suddenly it doesn't seem like a hard thing, but a possible thing that those pounds could go away.
**I feel nauseous after I eat.
**My mom had cancer when she was 37 and I am turning 34 next month.
**I'm struggling with low energy & dramatic mood swings.
**My kids need to eat more vegetables.
**I'd like to lose weight.
I have history: I grew up eating healthy.
**Whole Wheat: My dad made me eat cracked wheat mush nearly every day for breakfast whether I wanted to or not (on Saturdays mom made whole wheat pancakes.) Any kind of baked goods, my mom made with 100% whole wheat flour that she ground in her electric wheat mill. Bread, rolls, pasta, cookies- all 100% whole wheat.
**No Sugar: Mom only used honey for sweetening things like cookies. When she made pancakes, she would make a little syrup on the stove boiling honey & water together.
**Lots of vegetables: Most of what we ate either came from the garden or it was a kind of dried legume. When we had meat, it was a small part of the meal--a little hamburger in gravy to go over mashed potatoes. The only time I ever saw a chunk of meat on the table was Thanksgiving Day and Christmas day. Those days we had roast turkey, although one year, I remember going to Grandma Bennion's house and she had made some kind of a baked brisket. It was so good. On the menu for dinner at the Hansen house depended on the season.
Early spring: Asparagus soup or Broccoli soup; lettuce
Late spring: boiled potatoes with cream sauce & peas; steamed green beans; milk; cantaloupe
Summer: tomato & cucumber salad; mashed potatoes; corn on the cob; milk; or garlic & parmesan cheese coleslaw; watermelon
Fall: split pea soup; bread & butter; milk;
Winter: home-canned tomatoes poured over rice & homemade cheese; milk
The eating healthy train is derailed:
Then I left home to go to college. I ate the cafeteria and reveled in the glorious bounty of meat and gravy, white flour pasta, cookies, pudding, and cake.
I gained 10 pounds.
Then I went to basic training for the army. I ate in the Dining Facility. Everything they gave me, I ate. I was so worried about having enough fuel to work with. I didn't eat syrup on my pancakes though--I couldn't stomach that much sugar in the morning. I would pour the strawberry yogurt we got on my pancakes in place of syrup. Saved me time anyway.
I gained 10 more pounds. But to be fair, a lot of it was probably muscle since I went from not being able to do a single pushup to being able to pump out 42 in 2 minutes.
Back on track for a little while:
When I got back to college, I suddenly couldn't stomach the cafeteria food anymore. Eating made me feel nauseous. I still had to eat at the cafeteria (since I was living in the dorms) but I switched to omelets for breakfast and bagels & salad for lunch and dinner. I just could not bring myself to eat all those meaty, gravy, fatty foods. I lost 15 pounds, but I've felt guilty about it for a long time--that I "starved" myself skinny.
Then about 3 weeks ago, I realized: I didn't starve myself at all. I just went back to eating like I did at home as a girl, or as close to it as I could at the cafeteria. I chose to eat what didn't make me feel sick: vegetables. The salads I ate were not just a bit of wimpy lettuce--the glorious thing about a cafeteria salad bar is all the chopped vegetables you want, and you don't have to be the one who chopped them. My salads were a plateful of lettuce and broccoli and cauliflower and cucumbers and mushrooms and green peppers with chopped boiled egg and sunflower seeds and cherry tomatoes and baby carrots drenched in ranch dressing and cheddar cheese. There is nothing starving about that!
Marriage (in other words, keeping the Man happy):
About 2 weeks after our marriage, the Man of the House asked me, "When are we going to have meat for dinner?"
I was confused. "What are you talking about? I made chicken soup this week, pizza, hamburger gravy and mashed potatoes. All those things have meat."
He said, "No I mean a chunk of meat."
I did not know how to cook a chunk of meat. But I had The Joy of Cooking and 2 Relief Society cookbooks full of cream of mushroom soup casserole recipes. I learned how to cook pot roast, country fried steak, pork chops, and 5 kinds of chicken. After 2 weeks of eating a chunk of meat every day, I decided our budget couldn't handle that much meat. Surely people didn't eat like this all the time?
But a fundamental shift had occurred in my thinking. I no longer thought, "What am I cooking for dinner?" I thought "What meat am I cooking for dinner?" If there wasn't meat in it, the Man of the House insisted that it wasn't a "hearty" meal.
I did manage over time to shift some of his opinions. I made homemade cinnamon & raisin swirled bread and gradually, week by week, increase the amount of whole wheat flour in it until he liked to eat whole wheat bread. He insisted that there wasn't a difference between margerine and butter. I only used butter. A month later at his mom's house, he put margerine on his bread, took a bite and made an icky face. "What's this?" he asked me. "Oh, that's margerine," I said, probably a little too smugly.
I reduced the amount of meat I cooked as much as I could, using only 1/4lb of hamburger per quart of spaghetti sauce and making things like stir fry that had lots of veggies. But my thinking was still, "What meat am I cooking for dinner?"
I've blamed the weight I've put on in the last 13 years on 6 pregnancies, but I think it had a lot to do with all the meat and all the desserts my husband wanted me to cook and my inability to not eat just one serving of said dessert.
Everybody is ready for a change:
The Man of the House has gradually come to his own realization about eating healthy. He knows that the less processed a food is, the better for us it is. He likes to eat spinach, kale, and bok choy. And now, he is wanting to feel healthier too.
The Change: 4 changes for 3 weeks:
**Green Drinks. The plan is for the adults to drink 1 quart of green drink and for the kids to drink 1 cup to a pint of green drink every day. Here is my recipe for now:
2 1/2 cups water
6 cups kale or spinach or beet greens (I'm working up the courage to try comfrey)
1/2 tsp truvia
1/8 of a lemon (peel & all)
2-3 cups frozen fruit
1-2 small apples (sometimes)
Blended in my wimpy Walmart special blender.
I won't go into all the reasons why this is good for you. Suffice to say, we are getting more raw veggies than we were before by a long shot. Kale & spinach are both packed with all kinds of nutrients.
I bought The Green Smoothie Diet by Robyn Openshaw . Much of what she said about how you should eat reminded me of what I grew up eating. It was good to have facts to show the Man of the House and the more I read about the nutrients in raw food, the more I realized how much I had been worrying about cancer. Now I know what to do about it.
**Less Cow milk. Being the daughter of a dairy man, I grew up on the gospel of milk. But after I read the research, I decided milk might not be the best thing for me. I stopped drinking milk ( I was drinking a gallon a week- more than twice what the rest of the family put together drinks) and realized that nauseous feeling I had all the time was caused by the cow milk. I'm considering getting a goat, to see if raw goat milk would sit better, but until then, no milk is better than processed milk.
**I have shifted my planning mindset back to "What vegetables and fruit are we having for dinner." We aren't going vegetarian or anything, but my focus is on the vegetables.
**I'm cooking with olive oil and coconut oil and a little butter. No more soybean based vegetable oil.
I also plan on eating **Less Sugar, but I didn't manage that one yet. I've realized that I'm addicted to sugar.
Results:
After 3 weeks of green smoothies (although I didn't make them every day- more like 3 times a week), only drinking 1-2 cups of milk per week, and using coconut oil instead of soybased oil:
I feel so much better! I don't feel nauseous all the time and my mood swings have dramatically evened out. (I think the Man of the House is massively relieved.) Also, by the way,
I LOST 4 POUNDS. That might sound like a little thing, but I haven't been able to lose more than 1/2 pound in a week for the last 12 years, and I had to carefully count my calories and exercise until I was red in the face and sweating buckets to do it.
I lost this 4 pounds (more than 1 pound a week) without suffering; without exercising, without spending hours planning meals and counting calories, without feeling hungry, and I ate more sugar than I should have. Like I'm talking about a whole bag of mellow cream pumpkins and 2 bags of Lindt chocolate truffles. (sorry for not sharing, Dear Husband.) Then there was Julia's birthday cake and after school cookies and etc. etc. etc. Just think what might happen if I did not eat sugar and exercised a couple times a week!
Now I'm 38 pounds away from what I weighed when I was married and suddenly it doesn't seem like a hard thing, but a possible thing that those pounds could go away.
Hurray for Green Drinks!!
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Birthday #4 for Julia Gulia
Julia is 4!
(and I'm so glad because 3 is such a whiny age!)
Julia's favorite song is "The Smile Song" ...If you chance to meet a frown, do not let it stay...
She also often asks me to sing "The Sunday Bean song"
which my brothers probably think is "Beans, beans, the magical fruit," but it isn't, it's "Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam."
And the "Naughty Flower song" which is "In my pretty garden the flowers are nodding" but we have to sing extra verses:
"In my pretty garden the flowers are silly" and "In my pretty garden the flowers are sleeping."
Julia likes to play baby horses, so she and I and Isla spend some time every day crawling around on the floor whinnie-ing and "eating" grass.
She is potty trained FINALLY. I tried lots of things, but the one that motivated her was that if she went on the potty, she could watch Dora the Explorer. We watch a lot of Dora, but I don't have to change diapers. It is worth it.
Julia's favorite things to eat are toast, cheese, bananas, and raman noodles.
She likes to pretend to be Flynn Rider and carries around her "Flynn Rider purse."
Last year for her birthday, she requested Chocolate Rapunzel Cake.
I don't think I've ever had a kid with such a long memory. This year she requested Vanilla Flynn Rider Cake. And she wanted it to be round instead of square.
So I had the genius idea that if I couldn't find a little Flynn Rider doll, that I could print out a little picture of the guy and tape him to a toothpick and stick him in the middle of the cake and voila! Flynn Rider Cake.
but then the Man of the House and I got into an intense, but civil, debate over this TV news anchor which maybe I will blog about later, or maybe not, because I'm kind of bored with the whole thing now.
Anyway, I got distracted by the debate and almost forgot to make the frosting until the last minute, hence I did forget to make the little Flynn Rider guy.
Julia didn't care. She had round vanilla Flynn Rider Cake.
Sadly, my new camera no esta aqui. Here, however, is my delicious recipe.
***Honey Vanilla Cake***
2/3 cup coconut oil
1 cup white sugar
1/4 cup honey
2 eggs
1 Tbsp vanilla
3 cups cake flour
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
1 1/4 cup evaporated milk (not sweetened condensed milk)
1. Preheat the oven to 325*F. In an electric mixer, cream the coconut oil with the sugar and honey. It will whip up fluffy just like butter does.
2. Add the eggs and vanilla, continue to beat on medium speed until the eggs are well incorporated.
3. Combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Add them to the sugar mixture alternately with the milk until everything is blended in.
4. Pour the batter into 2 round cake pans and bake for 25-30 minutes.
Top with your favorite Vanilla buttercream frosting. I can't tell you my recipe. I just whipped a stick of butter and added a little milk and powdered sugar until I thought it tasted right.
But I think the cake itself has such a lovely subtle flavor and frosting kind of covers it up (haha) so really just leave the frosting off if your family will let you get away with it.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Getting Ahead of the Housework
For almost 13 years, I have been on a quest to improve my house cleaning skills enough that I'm not ashamed when people come over. Also I like to have the house clean because I am happier when things are neat and uncluttered. I feel so peaceful when things are neat and so out of control and cranky when things are messy.
Myths/Lies I told myself:
- If I can just get more organized, the house will be clean.
- If I weren't so lazy, the house would be clean.
- If I would get up at 5 a.m. every morning, the house would be clean.
I've read many books on the subject. These are some of them:
Organizing from the Inside Out- Julie Morgenstern
Time Management from the Inside Out- Julie Morgenstern
The Art of Homemaking- Daryl Hoole
Make Your House do the Housework- Don Aslett
Is there Life After Housework?- Don Aslett
No time to Clean- Don Aslett
How to have a 48 hour day- Don Aslett
Sink Reflections- Marla Cilley
The Ultimate Career- Daryl Hoole
It's all too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff - Peter Walsh
The Sisterhood of Wonderful Wacky Women- Suzy Toronto
I've been to many time management classes. I've made schedules, weekly plan sheets, lists, color coded spread sheets, chore charts, chore binders.
Only one thing has worked. Achieving this one thing has brought not just success, but lasting success.
Want to know the secret?
Here it is:
Reduce the amount of Cleaning.
That's right, the only way to keep up on the sisyphean task of keeping a house clean is to make it so there is less cleaning that has to be done. I still have more reducing to achieve. But I've had some success. Here is my short list for how I have managed it (and how you can too!):
- Get rid of stuff. De-Junk, De-clutter, De-treasure. Re-shuffling piles of stuff around isn't cleaning. I gave away half of the family's clothing and saved myself hours of laundry time every week. None of the kids has had to go naked yet. (Though one of them goes nekkid by choice quite often. And I think we can all agree that there is a difference between naked--as in "Naked came I into the world"--and nekkid--as in "plum stark nekkid.")
- Get traffic mats. Good mats at every door will stop so much dirt from entering your house. Dirt that you don't have to clean up if it isn't there.
- Put things away right the first time. If it is in your hand, put it away right- it will take less time than if you drop it any old place and then have to go back later to put it away. Unless a child is in mortal peril, you have time to put things where they go.
- Clean as you go. Example: Fold clothes as you pull them out of the dryer. It hardly takes more time than pulling them out and mashing them into a laundry basket.
- Set a timer. When you are cleaning, set a timer for 15 minutes and race it. See what you can get done. We've all performed cleaning miracles in the 2 minutes from when we saw an unexpected car pull into our driveway and when the doorbell rang. Have a miracle every day and then have more time for what you really want do do. (Like read a good book!)
- Wait for your toddlers to grow up.
If you need more help with #1, especially if you are really emotionally attached to all your stuff, I recommend It's all too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff - Peter Walsh.
For more ideas like #2, I recommend one of Don Aslett's books; Make Your House do the Housework is my favorite.
For more help with #3 & #4 the best one is Sink Reflections- Marla Cilley
To remind yourself that being a mom is so much more than keeping a house clean, read one of Daryl Hoole's books.
If you are still waiting on #6, sit down with your toddler and read him a book. You'll both feel better.
D&C 42:41 And let all things be done in cleanliness before me.
Friday, June 15, 2012
Cupcake Wars
One of the girls' favorite things to do is watch Cupcake Wars with their Grannie on Sunday evening. The problem with watching a show about cupcakes on a Sunday evening is we all get really hungry for cupcakes. They've been begging me for awhile to have our own cupcake wars.
So on Memorial Day we did.
I went easy on myself and bought 2 cake mixes rather than making the batter from scratch. I listed the "pantry" choices on the fridge and the girls each planned their cupcake. For the filling, I made a cream cheese & sugar base and let them stir in their flavor of choice. For the frosting, I made vanilla buttercream and again, let them add the extra flavor of their choice. They were thrilled.
Cupcake: butter or chocolate
Filling: cream cheese, chocolate (cocoa), peanut butter, strawberry jam
Frosting: vanilla, chocolate, caramel, lemon
Decorations: twizzlers, silver dragees, colored sugar sprinkles, gummy bears, star shaped marshmallows
Our theme (chosen by Grannie) was Girl Scout Camping.
Cherry Pie made a butter cupcake with chocolate filling and vanilla buttercream, topped with a twizzler camp fire.
Pumpkin Pie made a butter cupcake, no filling, with vanilla buttercream, topped with a smiling girl scout face made with twizzlers and silver dragees
Tamale Pie made a butter cupcake with peanut butter filling and vanilla buttercream, topped with twizzlers and marshmallow stars.
No one chose gummy bears, much to my amazement.
We made Uncle Eddie & his friend Kaitlyn be the judges. Everybody won and everybody was happy.
I made 2 dozen chocolate cupcakes with chocolate filling and salted caramel buttercream frosting. (Salted caramel seems to be the fad in desserts right now; it shows up a lot in cupcake wars. I've been dying to try it.)
I got the delicious recipe I used here at CHOW.com. (That's right, sisters, I didn't just pin it on Pintrest it, I actually made it.)
Many people who commented on Chow complained about the ratio of butter to powdered sugar. I personally prefer buttercream that has more butter than sugar, so I knew I would like this one! I did end up adding a little more sugar, but it was because I heated up the house with all that baking, and the butter was too soft.
Go make some cupcakes. You know you want to.
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