Praises

"No Sign of Cancer"

My mom recently finished chemo for stomach cancer. She was such an inspiration and a real trooper through it all. Of course, even while undergoing cancer treatment she STILL ran circles around me! Her last test results came back: No sign of cancer! Yeah (happy dance!). The culprit: a bacteria called helicobacter pylori.

This is so insignificant compared to the above praise, but we now have a working washing machine! In the words of oldest dd, "I can't wait to do laundry." :)

What's cookin'?

Cabbage is cut and salted waiting to be 'smooshed' for sauerkraut. I hope I didn't ruin it by leaving it in the fridge for 2 days waiting! Okay, it would only take 10 minutes or less - why can we not get to it??

Middle dd wanted some home-made cream cheese so I should set that up right now after logging off. It's the easiest thing and I think it was the first thing I tried when I started on this food journey of going back to traditional foods and away from packaged foods with additives/trans fats. I'm still in the middle somewhere of that journey with a loooong way to go.

To make cream cheese simply strain yogurt in a cheese cloth overnight over a bowl or container of some sort. I gave the recipe for homemade yogurt the other day. You can use that or even store-bought yogurt (that's how I made it at first). When it's done straining you will have a liquid in the bowl/jar. Don't throw it away! That's whey - How cool is that? Save it for soaking oats or for lacto-fermenting. For the cloth to strain it I used clean dishrags for almost a year. I had certain ones that I only used for straining this or almond milk. Make sure you use one with NO colored design (don't ask how I know! Checkered cream cheese, anyone? Ugh). Finally I got some unbleached muslin, cut it to size, and keep several handy in the kitchen constantly. I STILL need to hem them.

Sprouts has canteloupe, avocadoes, and organic apples on sale this week. I got some of each. I couldn't believe it when I saw almond meal for $5.99 a pound! Gosh, to think I use to throw it away when we'd make almond milk. Now I save it, dry it out, and use for recipes. I guess I'll save that for another day's post...

School:

We rearranged the schoolroom a little bit today. I needed to make room for the guinea pigs. Who's bright idea was it, anyway, to get GPigs over hamsters?? Oh yeah, mine. They really are cute though, and it breaks my heart not to give in every time they 'bark' at me begging for goodies (even if their bowl is full and they have plenty of T. hay). They go nuts if I'm cutting up tomato for a meal. The only thing is that the cage has to be cleaned every 3 days. When we finally have their permanent cage set up we hope to train them to go in a 'litter box' (yes, you read correctly!). They started to when we tried before but the cage just wasn't set up right and it would slide around.

Right now they (the dc, not the gpigs!) are preparing for the following for 4-H: Educational Presentation; Consumer Decision Making, and Share the Fun. We're also preparing a lesson to lead the little ones for Food and Nutrition. The vague plan that I have in my head for that is to make a big labeled grid on a shower curtain for them to sort actual food items on the mat.