How to Compost

One of the first things I started when I moved to my new homestead was a compost heap. I was juicing and there was a ton of plant waste. I also have chickens and their poop is perfect for compost. It is full of Nitrogen. I also have almost 2 acres of land to mow, so much grass clippings, perfect for compost.
I also want to start a vegetable garden and all the books say to start a compost pile to make nutrient rick fertilizer for the plants. Everything was pointing to... COMPOST.

I'm lazy though... and I'm cheap. Back on the mainline our neighbor got one of those tumble barrels, and every morning I would see him go out and dump his scraps in there and work the barrel. It was all so clean and perfect, and he paid $300 for it. What a sucker. I was not going to pay for something that tumbled my garbage. Sorry. Not happening.

We had a blue barrel, and I started dumping our scraps in there, and then once a month I dumped chicken poo in there, and then we dumped some leaves in, and once a week the hubster gets the pleasure of taking a shovel and mixing it around. We let the rain water the compost. It rained so much that we had to puncture some holes at the bottom of the barrel to let some of it out.

It made excellent compost tea, it leaked all over our vegetable garden. Liquid gold....

Anyway, our barrel soon was overflowing, and so we needed something bigger. We had some big green ring feeders for livestock. (they came with the house) The hubster got the fun job of dumping the barrel of compost into the green ring. And then we ran... my god what a smell, and it was winter. Everything was frozen... but not our compost... it was hot... doing it's job of breaking down.

Anyway, composting is easy.

I cut the tops off our milk jugs and fill them with all my food scraps. I have a full gallon of scraps a day. We eat a ton of plants.

I give my chickens the carrot peels and dump the rest into my green ring.

I compost everything including my coffee grounds and egg shells.

Things I don't compost are: meat, black walnut tree leaves, weeds that have seeded, coal or charcoal ash, dairy products or eggs, diseased or insect ridden plants, cooking fats, fish bones, dog feces, pig feces, soiled cat litter, horse manure, and anything treated with pesticides.

What I do compost and
What you need:

Brown Organic Matter: dry, woody material like tree bark and branches, dead flowers, cornstalks, shredded paper,

Green Organic Matter: wet stuff, vegetable waste, coffee grounds, grass clippings, weeds, eggshells, overripe fruit,

Water

The brown and Green Matter should be equal.

Also add some earthworms. They are little machines that will do all the work for you.

To attract earthworms to your garden spread some fruit peels and vegetable peels on your garden bed before planting. They will gladly come to the surface to help you.

Also, if you want your compost to work fast, it is best to shred everything into very small pieces before dumping it. They suggest you blend up your food scraps or cut everything into very small pieces.

 I'm too lazy to do this. I think I dumped a whole pineapple in there the other day. I'm just curious to see what happens to it. If it doesn't break down I can take it out.

Check back with us. My compost is still brewing, and I will update you on our progress. It takes time for the matter to break down. I currently have no worms because they are deep in the earth sleeping the winter away.

This is my compost bucket. I cut the top off of a milk jug and fill it everyday with my plant based trash, if it gets too gross I can just recycle it and cut me up a new bucket.

Walking out to "the vegetable" garden. This was taken in February, the garden isn't ready for me yet. 

This is my compost heap. I just dump stuff in there and wait for it to work.


Happy Composting! 

Mill Creek Apiary

A family portrait. Me, Hubster, Jbone, and Watts with Chickens and Ron.

I was not fond of honey, or rather I had never tasted honey that appealed to me. James was about three months old and I was still having problems with my addiction to white sugar from my pregnancy. All I could think about was birthday cake and pie, it was on my mind....mmmm cake. I think it's still on my mind actually. just say no... 

The hubster and I had just done a long hike with the kids and I was starving as usual. We came across a Christmas sale at our local firehouse,  and this booth offered a taste test of different honey's. A white bearded man and lovely woman sat behind the booth and immediately started to chit chat with us (the hubster) about their grand children and how cute our kids were.  Meanwhile, I'm eating all the honey. Just grazing... and then I realized how different they tasted. Butter bean... tasted like happiness! Pine Barrens tasted like pine trees, Wild Flower tasted like strong scented perfume... not the bad kind... you know the good kind... I don't know if it was the fresh air that had cleansed my pallet but I was hooked on the Butter bean. They had little sample sticks, so we bought some butter bean honey and some sticks and ate them on our trek home. Little did I know that I would soon become obsessed with Mill Creek Apiary honey.

Remember, I said I was addicted to white sugar. I thought about it constantly, and would get edgy and irritable if I didn't have a dose of it by early morning. Now that I had my honey it was easy to control these urges. Anytime I had a craving or melt down I would take a baby spoon and fill it with honey, suck on it, and count to ten. I went through a bottle of honey in about two weeks. It took a day to replace the white sugar with honey. I drank a large cup of coffee with a heap of white sugar- no longer. Now it was a baby spoon of honey (with almond milk). It tasted richer and had no terrible aftertaste, and I was using it like Methadone. At night I would make my "lemon elixir"- hot water, squeeze of half a fresh lemon and a teaspoon of honey, this helped get rid of my cravings for pie, cookies, and ice cream. It was a miracle.

A week later I was addicted to honey but feeling much better. I was down to two baby spoons of honey a day and no white sugar. I went to the Mill Creek Apiary website so that I could find more. My bee guy Stephen would be across the street from our house in a few short days. I have never been so excited. I could now eat the rest of my honey! Reading this makes me sound like "Winnie the Pooh" I was a human Pooh. That sounds weird, I know a few people that would like to take the "h" off the end of that line. Anyway.....

In a few short days we were standing in front of the bee booth once again. Only this time I took more of an interest in this guy's work. He came over like last time, was very friendly and of course loved our kids. Both the hubster and I bombarded our bee guy with all sorts of questions about bee keeping, bees, honey.... It turns out that not only does he make great honey, but he's interesting, intelligent and is very passionate about what he does. It was refreshing to say the least.

This time I left with some Butter bean and Pine Barren Honey, and some Bee Pollen. Apparently, the taste of the honey is reflected by the plants the bees go to; or rather the hive boxes are placed near the plants that you want your honey to taste like. So my Butter bean honey comes from butter beans and  pine barrens honey comes from.....? Pine trees!! Yup. I could play this guessing game all day AND I'm good at guessing the answers right for once. (If you want to have a boring time with me, play me in a game of Trivia Pursuit. I sit there like a couch cushion with the look of serious thought on my face, and yet, I know not one answer). I digress. My mom will beat you at Trivia Pursuit though, I would put money on it... just saying. still digressing....

The wild flower honey helps reduce spring allergies because it is made from the bee's that go to the wild flowers which I suppose most people are allergic to. The bee pollen is a whole different story. I grabbed this directly from The Mill Creek Apiary website. I think it does a good job explaining Bee Pollen. It's a little complicated..

** Pollen is collected from flower stamens, formed into granules and used as a food source. Pollen is one of the few vegetable sources of vitamin B12. It also contains a wide spectrum of vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, hormones, proteins, amino acids (23), enzymes, coenzymes and fatty acids. It is known to contain high concentrations of the nucleic acid RNA and DNA. You can exist on Honeybee Pollen, water and roughage. It is used to treat many illnesses, relieve airborne pollen allergies and enhance athletic performance.
**CAUTION - Pollen is what people are allergic to. Anyone with any unhealthy condition or suspected sensitivity is recommended to see a doctor prior to using pollen

I don't have allergies, but the hubster does, I have been feeding him a spoonful of the bee pollen in our green juice. He has not had any bad reactions to it,  it will be interesting to see if he is allergy free this spring! Oh my... just the thought warms my heart... no more... "whats wrong with you" "I told you I have allergies leave me alone" and then he tries to blame poor Ron (the cat) on his sniffles and clogged throat.... (Ron is a very clean outdoor cat. He grooms himself for several hours. The hubster is just jealous of my love for the creature, maybe even jealous of his look... he is a handsome devil). Anyway, Allergies suck, even for us that don't have them.

It felt good to support a small business and speak to the man that makes the product. In this case his name is Stephen Alexeichik and he is from Medford Lakes, NJ. His website is http://millcreekapiary.com/. He is an open book of knowledge. I asked him if I could do an interview with him and he agreed.

Why did you get into beekeeping?
 I got into beekeeping because of the Boy Scouts of America, they have a beekeeping merit badge.

Is beekeeping your hobby or full time job?
 Beekeeping is my full time job.

 How did your wife and neighbors react when you began to think about taking up this new hobby? 
My wife has always allowed me to do my own thing. We only start hives here, our working hives are at other locations, so although the neighbors know they don't mind.

Once you made the commitment, how did you go about acquiring the equipment to start that first hive? What kind of initial investment is required? 
We joined the NJ Beekeepers Association and purchased hives through other beekeepers. We went online and purchased woodenware. Our initial investment was about $300

Once you had the hive, where did you decide to put it and why? 
We chose The Mill Creek Organic Farm to place our hives because we wanted better nectar sources, more sunlight and less of a chance for harsh pesticides.

When the hive was ready, where did you get your first colony? 
We purchased established Nucleus hives from a NJBA member that sold bees for a living.

Once they settle in to their hive , what do they need from you the bee keeper?
Almost nothing, the chosen site had a good water source close by, we checked to see if the queen was laying eggs and moved frames around occasionally and checked to make sure the hives weren't disturbed by anything.

What are the do's and don'ts of buying bees? 
It's a personal choice, DON'T buy bees that aren't local (you can purchase 3 lbs. of bees and a queen from GA) because the bees do not acclimate as well; DO buy NUCLEUS hives, they are already established; Know the source and you won't get burned.

Do you need any kind of license to raise bees? 
No, as a hobbiest there is no license required, however, some townships may have regulations.

How do you determine what kind of bees are right for your area? 
The generic honeybee is the Apis Melifera Ligustica or three banded Italian, other subspecies have certain qualities that some beekeepers look for.

How and at what time of year do you introduce bees to a hive? 
You slide the frames of bees into the wooden boxes. In this area, we start our hives in mid to late April.


How do you avoid getting stung? Be very calm and move slowly. Wear lighter colors. Smoking the bees can quiet them.


Next time you see a bee enthusiast stop and talk to him or her. They are interesting people that are doing great things for this environment. 

I grabbed this from the Mill Creek Apiary facebook page. It's a picture of the bee box's at the Mill Creek Apiary Organic Farm. 

Mill Creek Apiary Honey

Mill Creek Apiary Bee Pollen

Ron. with facial hair.

Healthy Sweet Potato Soup

The Watts feeding James my homemade health soup

Just made some excellent sweet potato soup. I was looking at recipes online and they all called for cream, butter, oil, brown sugar, I didn't want to use any of this.

For sweetness I used Almond Milk and cinnamon.

Sweet Potato Recipe:

3 celery stalks
2 peeled and diced carrots
2 sweet potato peeled and cubed
1 regular potato
half green pepper
half tomato
half cup almond milk
dash of cinnamon
two cups water
2 chicken broth cubes
a dash of pepper


cook onion, celery, carrots, pepper, tomato till onion is translucent and a pleasant aroma is brewing
add half cup of almond milk or soy milk



wait till it bubbles add cinnamon and (nutmeg if you care for it).
add potato and sweet potato and coat
add in water with chicken broth

boil it, and then set to simmer.

then stick in it in your blender and blend till smooth
this takes about a half hour to make and once again I don't mean to brag but my two year old and 6 month old loved it.

Add salt and a nice toasted baguette for the ultimate indulgence.

Whoa, this is a lot of soup.

I like this, I'm going to eat it all.

All gone, "I want more" he say's. What a pig.

Enjoy!

Planting Seeds

We planted our seeds this weekend. Let's hope they grow. The hubster wet the soil in a bucket before we put them into our planting tray and then I took the seeds and dumped a few into each hole and covered it over. There is no way it could be this easy. I doubt they will grow. Let's wait and see.
The tray is sitting on my window sill on a heating pad covered by a plastic top to act like a green house.

I planted. Broccoli, Radish, Cabbage, Lettuce, Peppers and Onion. These are my "March" seeds.
I don't really want any of these in my garden but the first year is always a "tester" to see what grows and what doesn't. I also planted things that were supposed to go directly in the ground... like Onion, Lettuce and Cabbage. They are not supposed to be transplanted, but as usually I don't follow directions well, and most likely set myself up for failure. I also have peas... which I do want in my garden. These are supposed to be planted directly in the ground... but we are still having a frost, and I want to wait till mid march. I also havent put up any trellis yet. Oh man... I'm nervous about this. I'm not going to lie, I will be "ticked off" if this fails.


UPDATES:!
Feb, 27, 2013: Have a few shoots already! 4 radish, 1 cabbage, and 2 broccoli have started shoots. It's working! It's working!!! whoop whoop.  We are only 4 days in... I think I might have planted too soon.  Who knew my thumb was so green?!

Seeds were planted on Feb, 24, 2013. 

I got this for my birthday from the hubster... let's see if it works. Who knows... if I get a big yield maybe next year will be a real green house. 

Healthy Pasta Sauce Recipe

Just made some excellent and (good for you) pasta sauce using my blender. It took about 5 minutes to do. My picky eater two year old just ate all of  it and said "mmmm mmmm finger lick'in good". (This is how I know that it's good).

Healthy Green Sauce

-1 sweet potato 
I peeled it, cut it into cubes, stuck it in a cereal bowl of water and put it in the microwave for 2 minutes. then I dumped the potato and the water into the blender.

-1 clove of garlic

-Half  a green pepper

-Half a onion

- 0-10 flakes crushed red pepper
(a dash) depending on how much spice you want. 10 being mild.

- 5-6 leaves basil

-2 large handfuls spinach

-1 whole tomato

-half teaspoon salt

-half teaspoon pepper

- 1 teaspoon olive oil

Blend until smooth.
do a taste test. If it needs more salt add it. If its too sweet add some garlic powder, if its not spicy enough add some CRP, if you don't like spice. Don't put CRP in it.


Cook your pasta, drain (not well), dump your sauce on the pasta and cook till it bubbles.

Add some parmesan cheese to it for an added boost!

*** The sauce will look green like pesto*****

Enjoy.

I would normally clean him up before taking the picture but I wanted you to see how happy he was.

Happy for Monday.

My life on a sunday.

I actually looked forward to a Monday for the first time ever.

What a nightmare of a weekend. Nothing went right. The kids were badly behaved. The hubster was in a bad mood all weekend, which put me in a bad mood, which rubbed off on the kids. We got nothing done. We spent all of Saturday cleaning the house, I was looking forward to hanging out with my old college buddies that had been planned for a month.

My friend picked me up and we drove an hour into the city to meet up with the rest of the group.  Everyone that said they were coming, didn't show up. The people that did show up were on their cell phones the whole time. Nothing worse then having a phone shoved in your face showing you some website or a picture. Just put the stupid things away and be in the moment. It's terribly rude, and boring.  Needless to say, I think I'm done going to reunions.

All of Sunday was a complete downer due to me working off of 4 hours of sleep. I stumbled through the morning barking and flipping out every other minute. If it was annoying or loud I was going to let you know about it. I tried to take a nap and woke up to an angry family. I came downstairs and James stank of stink bug and Watt's had tricked the hubster into taking him to the potty, where he quickly broke loose and peed instead.... on the floor. Hubster is furious that he can't find diapers, Watts is running around naked, and I'm busy smelling Jbone's mouth to figure out if he actually ate the stink bug or was accosted by one. The hubster is insisting that James was attacked by the stink bug. I'm not buying it. I swear he burped up stink bug. Neither here nor there at this point....

I get everything in order and everyone settled down and in the car to go grocery shopping. I thought it would be nice to get some mussels that were on sale. $3.00. Get home and open the trunk of the car and almost threw up from the smell. The mussels stunk. It smelled like the bay at low tide. Argh.... of course.... my romantic dinner would have to stink to high hell. The hubster is annoyed with me because I kept talking about the smell.... we push dinner off till after I put the tots to bed.

Get the boys to bed and try to clean the mussels. It took an hour to determine what was dead, what wasn't... watching several videos on "You Tube" to see how to cook, clean, and check mussels...  by the time I got them clean and in the pot the whole house reeked of dead sea life. If you ever want to play a prank on somebody you hate with a passion, take 5 rotten mussels and hide them in a house or a car... hell it could even be outside.

Anyway,  Get them in the pot... add some white wine, garlic, this that, it's looking good... add some toasted bread...

Try to make it romantic and finally sit down with a glass of wine some candle light... and watch as the hubster takes his first bite. His face winces as he digs something out of his mouth... "I think I just bit into a pearl". "Thats not possible... mussels dont make pearls" "Well here... hold this pearl that was in my mouth" sure enough a tiny pearl....

I take a bite... my mouth was full of sand, grit, shit and the taste of rotten bay. That was enough to make me snap. "I can't eat this..." I get up from our dinner and start throwing dishes around... I look over and the hubster is sitting there all by himself looking pathetic as I throw a shit fit. Poor man, he was wearing the same face as a dog about to be euthanized.... now I'm just angry that I exist.

We both ditch the bay, drink the wine, and eat some home made hummus. The wine calms me down, and put's me right off to sleep.

I have never been so happy to see Monday.

Killer Fish on the homestead!

"I'm not dead! Help me! Help me! 9.1.1" "It was fun while it lasted bother Link" "Poor Guy" "Doesn't know he's next"

I was talking to my dad last night listening to him tell me how fabulous I am... and I caught a glimpse of my fish... swimming around... double the size... "what in hell is in Killers mouth?" Killer is the largest fish in the tank and when I first got him he went around nipping all of the tails off of my other fish. Especially Finny. Finny was the runt of the litter. He sat in the corner at the bottom of the tank barely able to swim because Killer ate his fins.

 Anyway, I thought Finny was sure to die so I went and got more fish. Some neon tetra's and a Tiger barb and another smaller Killer... who knows maybe Killer was lonely?. Killer was still angry but settled down a little and Finny grew his fins back along with the rest of the fish. I think the problem is that at the pet store they didn't have labels on the tanks saying whether these were community fish or aggressive fish. I think Killer is part Piranha. He is so angry. AND hungry. I should just name him "mini me".

Any-who.... I had wet hands when I went to feed them the other day and wasn't paying attention. I overfed the fish... like little idiots they went around and ate all of it... the neon tetras (the weakest links) were so fat that I thought they were going bust open. So I didn't feed them the next day.

Remember what I told you in my earlier blogs about a schedule? My fish are on a schedule....

This is what happens when you don't feed my fish.

Left to right: Tiger , Killer and Little Killer.  Thats Killer in the middle. He's part Piranha I think. 

I forgot to feed the fish today so they ate the weakest link.

the weakest link. A half munched neon tetra.



So I took these pictures last night... They ate the rest of Link and then ate his brother.  There is so much death happening on the homestead that I think I should just open a slaughter house called "Nature"

******************************************************************

My dad couldn't help himself after hearing me scream "NO KILLER NO!!" at the fish tank and hung up on him... He wrote this poem and emailed it to me fist thing this morning.

In My Aquarium

By: Bev

My red white and blue Beta,
Through despondency
Or fits of pique

Or perhaps near-sightedness,

Kills

His fellow fish.

Since Tuesday,

He's eaten three,

Which morally

Invites

Eviction, this exhibition of

Unkindness.

Yet though pretty,

Each victim cost

A mere fifty cents.

And while guilty,

My Beta was a two dollar

Bargain.

Therefore,

I'll keep him,

Since fifty thrice

Is fifty less

Than my Beta's

Bargain Price.

Science of Junk Food

Just got done reading this article from the New York Times.

The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

Grant Cornett for The New York Times

Blog by: Liz edited by Bev

THE EXTRAORDINARY SCIENCE OF JUNK FOOD

By MICHAEL MOSS
Published: NYTimes, February 20, 2013
www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

This above article describes how American food producers use science to make fast food and snack food so addictive that a lot of us would rather die than give it up. Unlike someone who’s cooking meth, what the food producers do is legal. Result? While so many on our crowded planet are starving,  tons of junk-food -addicted Americans are snacking themselves to death.

I’m an angry and worried wife and mother who’s saying enough already.

When I was growing up, there was always chocolate in our house.  My friends would come over and see the bowl brimming with candies.

 "Can I have some?"

"Sure, it's old take it. I don't like candy"

On my way home from riding on weekends we would go to McDonalds where I would get a double cheeseburger, small fries and a Sprite. Yet when I rode in my friend’s car and asked for McDonalds, her parents would wrinkle their noses and say "no".  This made me want it even more! I would sing the McDonalds song, and wouldn't give up till finally we were in the drive-thru to get that precious order of  small fries.

I can eat whatever I want and not become obese.  So I don’t truly feel the food-addiction thing – the trials and tribulations of size extra large.   Blame it on my mom. She fed me, she raised me... and she eats killer foods. If left to her own devices she would happily douse every meal in ketchup, mayonnaise and white sugar. Spread that load of heart attack on some cheap white bread, slap on a side of tuna...and you have a happy old British Lady.

Some of the meals I now make for her are very healthy but taste bad, even to me. She looks at it and says "but war food-rationing is over!" and starts to pick out the vegetables and fake tofu-meat. Can you blame her?  Mom loves her béarnaise sauce with a little red meat, washed down with a glass of wine.

At our house, Mom fed us English style  It was steak and potatoes almost every night. Sorry, my mom will object to that. So let’s admit it. She did serve other things...like shepherd’s pie, Yorkshire pudding, roast beef, meat loaf, beef Wellington, London broil, bubble and squeak, toad in the hole, bangers and mash, bacon roly-poly, and sometimes for a special treat, a slithery mass of haggis. It took hours to make, and she cooked it well...but  it was truly a labor of nutritional catastrophe.

Since you asked, here’s a haggis recipe: enjoy!

Ingredients

• 1 sheep stomach
• 1 sheep liver
• 1 sheep heart
• 1 sheep tongue
• 1/2 pound suet, minced
• 3 medium onions, minced
• 1/2 pound dry oats, toasted
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon dried ground herbs

What can I say?  I quickly became a picky eater.

By the time I was in high school I was eating a bowl of oatmeal, a Snickers bar downed with two cans of Coke, followed by a Celeste pizza and that was it for THE DAY.    I ate small portions of sugary greasy things that would get me high enough to make it to the next "cheap and fast meal". No more of that super heavy English cooking. No more taking time to cook any food for that matter. Grab a bag of chips and run.

Then I met my husband. Whether it was meat, fish or veggies, he’d put spices on everything, add a little cheese,  some bread crumbs and sauté it... till it was perfect. I started to understand why people crave this stuff.  He taught me how to cook a meal, as in:  a meat, a veggie, and a starch heaped onto a plate. That's how we ate for four years.

Now,  it wasn't that he was eating bad things.  It’s just that his portions were HUGE.  He needed to lighten up. He agreed, and the pounds started to come off.

I was going in the opposite direction. By this time in my mid 20's I ate Adderall mixed with booze, and smoked, and drank a ton of coffee. This was a problem.  But I felt it brought me pleasure. In reality, I was an in-denial wreck with terrible mood swings, depression and often an upset stomach.

It took me only 27 years of bad nutrition to figure out that fiber-rich, regular and moderate eating can be a girl’s best friend!   Hubster’s, too.

So I backed off from my food phobia, and he dialed down his food fascination. As a result, I added a few much-needed pounds to my boney frame, while he dropped a cool 50.  How many years will that add to his life?

We do indulge our greasy food cravings. Just once a week, as in: Yay, it’s Saturday, let’s have a cheese-steak!  Allowing that one  treat  permits us to be disciplined for the rest of the week,  when we faithfully follow the “Forks Over Knives” whole-food, plant-based diet.

www.forksoverknives.com/

But for most of America?  Read those bathroom scales, people!  And weep.  

Back to my mom...

Both during and for some time after World War II in England, people, including my mom, were given Ration Books, that contained cards like this one.

Ration card for groceries.  My mum still has hers.  I’ll post it later.

A card might allow you to buy 2 oz or 3 oz of candy, for example. Also rationed were butter, meat, flour, tea – all the basic necessities. People grew fresh veggies in back gardens. There was no fast food, or pre-baked dinners. No food additives. Those coupons, while they lasted, kept a nation on the dietary straight and narrow.

How far we have strayed in our good old stuff-your-face USA! The article that I mentioned at the top of this blog?  It  shows that despite all the government’s talk about curbing obesity, the fast-food, snack-food industry is pouring billions into advertising and into ever higher crunchiness and calorie levels along with chemically manipulated tastes that will hook people on food products that you wouldn’t feed your dog,  because it would be cruel. So why are we cruel to ourselves and our children?

Next time you go to the supermarket, read the ingredients! And understand what they mean. Here’s a great little book to take with you on your next shopping trip…twelve bucks on Amazon.

Feeding the kids (and mom) is hard. They won't eat salads or whole grains; you have to trick them into it. My son loves chicken nuggets. It would be fast and easy to do a drive through and get him some, or to thaw some out of a frozen bag. Instead I buy free range organic chicken and dunk it in some breadcrumbs with a dash of garlic and a dash of parmesan cheese, and he loves it. I even let him dip it in some honey from my neighborhood apiarist.

I want my kids to love food and not crave McDonalds. I want them to look at food and see a rainbow of healthy choices. I want them to eat a Dorito chip and have it blow their mind because it feels wrong in their mouths... I want them to know that this taste is unnatural and modified to get them addicted to it. I want them to say nay to colorful packages of candy.

 This will never happen of course. I can however, feed them in moderation and feed them well with home cooked healthy options. I'm a stay at home mom in that regard, so my kids are lucky to have my time and energy. If you have any bright ideas to help working moms make better choices, let me know!

Bon appetit.

We certainly did not need this during the war. Just saying. 

Me in high school drinking my coke, I went through sometimes 6 a day. I was depressed.

Me in art school, smoking and drinking, still depressed.

Me in grad school. On Adderall, happy and starving to death.