Countdown!

First of all, I want to thank you, my readers.  It wows me and humbles me that anyone would want to read what I write, lol.  I don't have a fancy blog, amazon links haven't worked in weeks, photos are nearly non-existent, and I don't even know how to do a blog roll!!  Thanks for reading and thank you also to those who have ordered through the links or my astore at amazon (link at left).  I hope that some of my ramblings and adventures (including some misadventures!) in homeschooling and food/nutrition/health help someone else as you go through your homeschool or food journey.  Yes, pathetically, I actually use my own search box and use my own posts to remember what a recipe is or how I did such-and-such!  Just yesterday I used it to find the tempura chicken link.  Much to older dd's chagrine, who was helping, I threw in a lot of dried basil and oregano from our garden (you'll know why after you see the rest of my post).



St. Joseph



Countdown:



2 weeks from today we have to be out of our house. We'll be a bit nomadic for a while - no house in sight as of yet, not even a rental.  That makes things a bit more complicated than just moving.  On the other hand, I'm soooo incredibly thankful.  Our house was only on the market for 4 days.  I know things can still happen, but it's gone as smoothly as it could go so far.  I really wanted a family to get our house because it's such a great kid-house (except for closet-sized secondary bedrooms) and a young couple with a toddler is buying it.



I wish I knew our short-term (not to mention long-term!) living conditions to help me prep for the transition. Friday or Saturday I'll start boxing up the rest of our Montessori materials. I had managed to squish everything into 2 bookshelves and now I need to whittle it down even further. I got some bright orange duct tape to mark those ASAP boxes to keep handy to unpack or move around with us.

This is what is left on the shelves to pack yet keep handy (somehow!):

Math: Dot game; stamp game; flash cards; cassette tapes with math problems and times tables; snake game; multiples box with bead bars; short bead chain; long bead chain; multiplication bead bar layout; some polyhedral dice for making up math problems; geoboard w/ book; binomial and trinomial cubes; powers of ten cards; properties of numbers cards; memory charts; geometric stick material (which I never got back to in presentations!); math facts bingo; geometry box; power of two cube; hundreds board; and some fraction work.  Youngest dd is ready for long division so I need to make sure I have my manual and math storage banker box ready (since I'm not organized mentally to just pull those materials out right now).

Science: Chemistry box; Bohr model material; elements box (that is mostly empty so far!); zoology box; botany box; and the zoology box.

Other Culture: Land/water forms basket; world felt map; Europe Geopuzzle; globe ball; box of cards/rocks/beads for world felt map; some art cards; a bunch (really!) of geography books like an atlas, Trail Guide book (teacher book - so I don't loose it! - they can look through for now); Atlas in a Box game; and more reference books.  We have library books for Canada in a basket in the living room that they've been reading and pulling from for putting things in their geography notebooks (and culture notebook for youngest).



Language: Books by Ruth Heller (they start here and go on to the next page or so); cards that go with the R&D manual that we've already covered; farm objects; reading response cards (olders will use for Shiloh and Sounder; younger for By the Shores of Silver Lake); grammar symbols box; and sentence cut-ups.  We also have a few thesauruses and dictionaries handy.

On top of all of those materials we have several shelves with just books:  their notebooks and books and my teacher books.

What else? "Love your liver."



I just watched this video on liver health.  As a teenager I had the food-borne hepatitis (in another country) and more recently took Diflucan for 5 years straight (along with daily antibiotics) which is also rough on the liver (it has a liver caution and I checked my liver enzymes monthly).  At the tail end I had "drug-induced hepatitis" from the medications for Lyme.  You would think because of those two biggies I would be more vigilant, eh?

http://www.liverdoctor.com/index.php?page=videos&subpage=how-to-improve-your-liver

Here is her book.  I'm going to see if the library has it.

http://astore.amazon.com/ecleclivin-20/detail/0967398363

These are my notes that I took while watching the video:

~Liver Detox Superfoods:



- onions, garlic, leeks, scallions, turmeric, ginger, chili, bell peppers, globe artichokes [these have organic sulphur that the body uses to make glutathione AND to detox]

- broccoli, cauliflower, brussel's sprouts; cabbage, watercress, kale

- mustard greens, bok choy, and other Asian greens

- carrot, beet, celery, asparagus, all radishes

- bitter greens such as chicory, endive, rocket, radicchio, dandelion, kale

- seaweeds such as nori, kombu, wakame, arame, dulse, kelp

- fruits, especially rhubarb, citrus, blueberries, strawberries, apples

- super herbs such as basil, cilantro, parsley, oregano, mint, chives (thyme also mentioned along with the other herbs regarding lowering amount of viral load in body)



~If you don't eat the sulphur foods, then some MSM plus Vit C powder because organic sulphur is needed for: liver support; supports liver detox; cleans blood and skin; has natural antibiotic properties.

~Selenium:  supports the liver, supports adrenals, is essential in reducing the viral load in your body (also a companion supplement for iodine so I was going to begin anyway.  This affirms the importance of it!).  Make sure to get the 'organic' kind that the body can use (she uses the term organic, I think, as opposed to synthetic).  This looks like a good one and my conventional doctor sells this brand (she's so awesome):

http://astore.amazon.com/ecleclivin-20/detail/B0017I2CLY

~Milk thistle:  I haven't used in years, since on daily antibiotics.  Need to consider this and look into it more (daily or occasional use?)



~30% diet raw foods (note: I have thyroid issues and low iodine so I do NOT eat raw cabbage, kale or other goitrogenic foods - although fermented as in sauerkraut is awesome and I eat a small portion almost daily)

~Other notes:

- increase water

- coffee/tea okay in moderation

- chocolate okay in moderation

- herbal teas are good (green, dandelion, nettle, etc)

- raw veggie juices are recommended

- homemade lemonade (we like the fermented lemonade)



~Juicing:  in the section regarding gall stones she mentioned putting the following in the juicer:  apple, carrot, ginger, cilantro, dandelion, kale, and cabbage.  I'm assuming this would support the liver as well.  Again, I would not put in kale or cabbage but the rest sounds delicious.  She also mentions to have Apple Cider Vinegar with every meal to help break up stones gently (along with juicing the above).  When I've overindulged in fat (as in 1/2 stick of butter! Then I know I need some extra Butter Oil from Green Pastures and the craving stops!) I'll have some ACV to help my body handle the extra fat.  I remember when I was recovering from Hepatitis Paquita (who worked for us) would make this awful carrot/orange juice and would make me drink it - stand by the bed until every drop was gone.  By the end, after drinking several daily for weeks while bedridden, I loved this juice and looked forward to it.  I would beg her to make some even years after I was well.



~Somewhere else on the site she mentions how great soy is.  I strongly disagree.  Traditional soya is **fermented** soy; which is waaaaay different than all of the (genetically modified) unfermented, highly processed soy in our packaged/processed available foods ("health" food or otherwise).  I believe miso is fermented but you would need to check on that - I haven't had the need to go there yet.  I still, and always will, regret the YEARS that I gave youngest dd soy milk... long after necessary after the soy formula (I probably wouldn't have had another option for that - I'm not sure, but I DID have options after the baby formula, anyway...). 

All that to say, filter her recommendations but I found her liver info invaluable and motivational.

These notes for liver support through food are part of Kelly's Real Food Wednesday:
http://kellythekitchenkop.com/2011/06/real-food-wednesday-6811.html