Whole Grain bread - or not?

They fooled me – didn’t think it was possible – but they did! Who? The bread manufacturers and labelers did. I couldn’t believe it!!!! What am I talking about? Well, last week, right before we left on an eight night camping trip, I taught a cooking class. One of the topics I covered was how to select whole grain breads and how easy it is to be fooled – especially if you believe what it says on the front label of the bread. For the class, I bought 8 loaves of bread – 7 of which were really whole grain or whole wheat and one was not. Without reading the ingredient labels and by going only by the front label, I had them try to discern which loaf was NOT whole grain. A few of them got it right, but most of them didn’t. The one loaf which wasn’t whole grain was labeled 7 Grain bread – all of which were seeds or berries sprinkled on the top of a healthy looking loaf of white bread. Boy, was everyone surprised. The least healthy looking loaf of bread, and the softest one, was probably the best. It contained whole wheat flour and NO high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) – only brown sugar. I would much rather feed my family good old fashioned brown sugar than HFCS any day of the week. Brown sugar does not interfere with one of the body’s hormones called leptin. Leptin is the hormone which signals the brain that you’ve had enough to eat and are satiated. HFCS is one of the ingredients that block that hormone from reaching the brain – causing us to eat and eat and eat – without seeming to ever get full. Does that sound familiar? I certainly have struggled with that in the past, but switching to a whole food, plant-based diet with minimally processed foods has cured me – and it will you too. However, back to how I was fooled!!!! Getting ready for an 8 night camping trip in the same week I held a cooking class caused me to cut a few corners. Normally I bake a couple of loaves of bread a day or two before we leave- but not this last week. I decided that was one area that I could sacrifice home made – after all, I had just taught a room full of people how to select a loaf of healthy bread – certainly I could do the same. So, off I went to gather a few items at our local discount club – some apples, potatoes, grapes, maple syrup and bread. The store had two loaves of bread packaged into one bag, so the ingredient label was nearly impossible to read. So, I went on someone else’s recommendation, the labels on the front of the loaves and the healthy grains sprinkled all over the top of the lovely bread. I felt the bread and it felt a little stiffer than the soft whole wheat bread setting next to it. It looked healthier with all of those seeds on top. Someone had recommended it as a nice whole grain bread. The front label read like an honor roll of whole grain goodness – “low fat”, “heart healthy”, “American Heart Association recommended as part of a heart healthy diet”, “a diet high in whole grains can lower your risk of heart disease and certain cancers” and a plethora of other wonderful sounding, health enhancing goodness. WOW! Taking that short cut and not preparing homemade sounded great. What a better choice this stiff bread was than the Whole Wheat soft bread sitting beside it with no glowing endorsements on the front. WRONG!!!!!!! On the first day of our trip, as we sat at the table fixing our sandwiches, I read the ingredient label! OH MY! The number one ingredient was “enriched wheat flour”!!!! No Whole anything in the ingredient label. Boy did I feel rather schnookered that day. I had fallen for the oldest tricks in the book. Thank goodness noone but family was around to see it. Needless to say, the first trip we made to the grocers, I replaced that bread with a REAL whole grain bread. We are happy and so are the fish and turtles who are getting quite a nice handout of that “healthy bread”.

On the way to camping in Georgia

Camping is so much fun for our family. There is just something about being outdoors in the beautiful weather that we all love. This is the time of year when we begin enjoying the great outdoors. In the summer, it’s a little too hot and humid to want to be outside all day. The fall, winter and spring are great times to soak in the glory and splendor of the day and night. Normally we stay in Florida but this year we decided to venture into Georgia – partly to see if we could see any leaves change before the weather got too cold to camp. We left on Saturday and enjoyed our 6 hour drive into the interior of Georgia. We were playing games in the car and got to laughing so hard at the unintentional humor of our soon to be 7 year old son. We were playing Brainquest as a type of trivia challenge – with homeschooling everything becomes a teachable moment. The question was if boots is the plural of boot – what is the plural of foot. I guess I worded it a little differently in an attempt to explain plural. I posed the question as if you have one boot it’s b-o-o-t, if you have two boots, its spelled b-o-o-t-s. So, if you have one foot it is spelled f-o-o-t, so if you had two, what would it be? In an attempt to answer before his sister, our son yells out shoes, s-h-o-e-s! He might not have given the answer we all expected, but he was right on track! We thought that started our trip out well – we haven’t stopped chuckling and enjoying our time together since. It’s wonderful to spend the time enjoying being a family – even when things aren’t quite what we expect. Often, the unexpected is much better than what we expected.

Fresh Brussel Sprouts - YUMMY!

I broke my golden rule today and spent more than 30 minutes in the kitchen tonight making dinner. It wasn’t a complicated recipe but fresh Brussels sprouts that made me spend the extra time. I am a sucker for really fresh produce and today was no exception. I went to our old produce market to buy just a few things. My kids always laugh at that, they know I can NEVER buy just a few things at the produce store. Everything fresh and in season just naturally calls my name. Today, it was Brussels sprouts. It’s the right time of year for really fresh sprouts and the ones I saw were nice and green and small. No yellow spots or over-sized sprouts for me. Most people turn up their noses at Brussels sprouts – probably because they’ve only been served over-cooked and merely boiled sprouts. We love to take fresh Brussels sprouts, cut them in half, remove the inner v-shape and sauté them with lots of garlic. Yummy! Frozen ones just aren’t nearly as delicious – but it does take a while to prep the fresh sprouts – at least when you are prepping about 2 pounds. If there is one thing we don’t skimp on in our monthly budget, its fresh produce. There were only 4 of us at dinner, and there weren’t very many leftovers. When the vegetables become your main course, it’s amazing how much you can eat! Tonight we had baked eggplant slices, fresh and delicious corn-on-the-cob and Brussels sprouts and fresh raspberries for dessert. No processed foods on our plate – just a few tasty morsels of God’s grand garden.

It's Been A While!

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to sit down and write what is happening in our lives and hearts. I often think of all the things I want to share, and then get so involved in living, I hardly take a breath to pause and reflect. I am rethinking my family schedule and going to make sure there is more time for writing and sharing. There’s just something special about inviting others to join in and celebrate LIFE with us!

It was a great weekend this last Saturday and Sunday. The weather was a little gloomy, but we had a great time anyway. I held my first cooking class at Paradise Health and Nutrition on Minton Road. This was a new location for my cooking class, although I shop there frequently. The people who attended the class were wonderful and friendly and encouraging! We had a great time together learning how to cook Mushroom Stroganoff with Soy Curls, Vegetarian Chili and Tofu Cubes with Brown Gravy. (YUM,YUM,YUM!) Three dishes is less than an hour – we were cranking! I love talking about food almost as much as I love eating and preparing it – so I was in heaven – getting to combine two of my passions at once. The staff at Paradise was also incredibly accommodating and helpful. I love shopping there because I always leave feeling better than I did when I entered the store. There are VERY few stores you can say that about anymore.

Today, we are enjoying the sunshine – finally! The kids have been outside as much as I will let them chasing bugs, snacking on grapes and generally creating adventures of all kinds. We had a picnic for lunch, although it is still warm – much to my chagrin. Pretty soon we will be embarking on another camping trip – this time for 8 nights. We can all hardly wait to go north – to Georgia – and hopefully encounter some cooler weather. Last weekend we camped at Fort Clinch State Park. The park was absolutely gorgeous and the weather very pleasant. We were able to enjoy a half-mile long fishing pier, deserted pristine beaches, a Confederate army reenactment at the Fort and a relaxing family time together. I am so grateful to God that He has blessed us with health and vitality as we enjoy His creation and all of it’s majesty.

Three Sisters Stew

It just seems to get longer and longer between blogs. Life has been busy between cooking classes, school, editing cookbooks, writing articles, videotaping cooking lessons, field trips, experimenting with new recipes and life! But without all of these activities, we’d be busy anyway. I just had to sit today and write briefly about our latest meal we invented. Okay, perhaps we didn’t invent it, but we modified a recipe to fit our own taste buds. The weather here has started to cool off – okay, drop about 2 degrees from our normal summer afternoon high – and we are thinking about autumn. We started making camping reservations and that is always our signal that summer is ending. We decided to start about a month early this year by heading north. We made reservations at Fort Clinch State Park in Florida for October and at two Georgia State Parks for November. Somehow, we are hoping that we just might find some autumn leaves in November in Georgia. In the meantime, we are busy decorating our house with harvest decorations. The children did find one red leaf today in the front yard, which they are ready to press and save. In preparation for Thanksgiving – you have to plan things REALLY early when you write for newsletters – we decided to experiment with a Thanksgiving stew. (Most of you who know me thought I would never get back to my original point!) We based our recipe on the Three Sisters from the Native American culture – corn, winter squash and beans. These items were grown together early in North American history because they are symbiotic – nourishing each other and the soil and making good use of cleared fields. Anyway, the stew turned out marvelous! So basic and easy to make that I am sure it will be a staple in our house every autumn – if not year round! It’s too good to make only during one part of the year. Click here for the recipe.

Emails from Friends!

A good friend of mine sent me a funny email today and for the first time in a long time I took the time and answered it. In the past, I have gotten emails which ask a long list of questions about yourself to answer and pass on to friends. I’ve always loved everyone else’s responses, but never filled out one for me. Today was different. I don’t know why. Perhaps I was avoiding cleaning the bathrooms and making dinner. Any excuse to put off the inevitable seemed like a good idea. So I sat at the computer for about 15 minutes and totally indulged myself. Hopefully, it will brighten my friend’s lives too since I tried not to take myself too seriously. It’s been a rough couple of days trying to get it all done and keep everyone’s attitudes cheerful and joyful, including my own. Homeschooling requires me to sacrifice my self everyday, as do many other things in life. I love it, I wouldn’t change it, but I sure would create more hours in my day if I could. But of course, as soon as I created them, they would be filled up and I would be left desiring even more. I guess I’m that way about most things. There never seems to be enough. Although, perhaps that’s not really true. There are certainly some things I could do with less of – like sagging skin, hot flashes, summer heat and spelling questions from my children when I am trying to write. Oh well, off to the bathrooms and dinner – one can only put off the inevitable for so long!

The Science Experiment

As a science experiment for my kids, we starting experimenting with sprouts. As a homeschool family, we experiment with lots of things – although I don’t think we’ve ever experimented with something so tasty before. Okay, I’ll admit it – I have NEVER been a big fan of sprouts. Alfalfa sprouts have always tasted too “green” to me and mung bean sprouts normally go bad before I can use them in our favorite stir frys. So, when Andy begged at the health food store for seeds and a sprouting lid, my husband thought it might be fun and educational. It has been, but I think Andy hasn’t gotten to experiment much with it – my husband has taken it over. If it’s a bean or a seed, he’s going to sprout it. Perhaps this is a phase that will pass, but we sure have been enjoying them. We started with mung beans which sprouted nicely. We used them in our smoothies and salads. They tasted quite good, and according to my husband and about 1,000 websites, they are incredibly good for us too. Next, we tried sprouting wheat berries. I wasn’t sure what to do with them at first. I searched around the internet and everything I found sounded way too difficult to try. So, I did my usual thing and decided to add them to a recipe I was already comfortable with. I threw them in the VitaMix and then added them to my regular bread recipe. The sprouts came out of the VitaMix like a glob of gooey glutenous mess – a perfect addition to bread dough, I hoped. And I was right! What a wonderful feeling! The bread rose higher than it had ever risen before and had a delightfully delicious taste and texture. WOW! Emily said it was the best bread I had ever made! It was good and I have more wheat berries sprouting right now in the kitchen. Sometimes experiments turn out really good – and sometimes they don’t. The key is to be willing to keep trying.

Click here for the recipe.

Dumplings!

I’m trying a new recipe tonight. That’s not unusual for me, but I am experimenting with grains. I do a lot with vegetables, but have always stuck with wheat and rice. Every once in a while I feel bold and will put barley in my vegetable soup. Tonight I am making barley with broccoli and white beans. Sounds a little bland, but I’m hoping when it all cooks up we’ll have a new dish to add to our menus. I seem to go through phases where I cook the same 20 things over and over and over again. It’s hard to set aside some of our all time favorites to try something new. I do pretty good picking out recipes that end up tasting good, but I still have failures. It’s nice to have a sense of humor when sitting down at the table. I’ll never forget my first attempt at no-chicken and dumplings. (We use soy curls in place of the chicken and McKay’s seasoning for the “chicken” broth.) I should have paid more attention to the dumpling recipe. It looked a lot like my biscuit recipe, but with a lot more liquid. It was a REAL mess trying to form dumplings out of really wet dough. We ended up with little “matza ball” looking dumplings. The dumplings were….well, they just weren’t quite dumplings. My children were so gracious, telling me how great it was. Perhaps they were just trying to get an extra helping of dessert that night. We’re trying that dish again this Sunday night, and I plan to have an extra special dessert on hand just in case!

Rainy days!

It's raining again this afternoon! In Florida, we relish these afternoon storms which really help cool things off. Once the storms pass through, we are often left with a wonderful evening. It’s even possible to sit out back after dinner and enjoy the fresh air. Often it’s a time we go fishing or play tag or simply chat about our day. It’s nice not to be tied to a full schedule. Don’t get me wrong, our days are full – very full. But our days are not overly scheduled. We love to own our days rather than be slaves to them. In the past, we may have been tempted to say yes to every opportunity that came our way. There are always so many good opportunities for field trips, visits, team sports, classes and hobbies that we often struggle with which to choose. But good opportunities aren’t always the BEST opportunities for us. We have found that through prayer and self control, we are often doing more by doing less. God has called us to serve Him in a variety of ways and the most important way we serve Him is by training and disciplining our children. That’s pretty hard to do when we are too busy running them from one activity to another, where other people train them instead of us. So, we’ve learned to say no to many things in order to say yes to a few things – which are the most important things in our life. Perhaps it’s not pure coincidence that often our first words in life are NO! Perhaps we need to remember how to say that word again – and use it to our and our children’s eternal benefit.

Easy and healthy recipes - without expensive cookbooks!

Why do so many people make eating healthy so much work? I checked out a few new cookbooks from the library and sat down to peruse them. I was pretty disappointed by what I saw – a lot of work and a lot of special ingredients that not only do I not have in my house, I can’t even pronounce them. It didn’t take long to sort through the books and decide that there weren’t many items in them that I would be enjoying! Often times I do better taking simple, unhealthy recipes and modifying them for health. Soy milk, soy cheese and/or tofu work just as well as cholesterol laden animal products. Water sautéing works better than sautéing in oil – without having to be concerned about overheating the oil and making it rancid. Soy curls, TVP, seitain, mushrooms, tofu or Tempeh are fine substitutes for animal meats. Eating healthy doesn’t have to be hard. Take your old favorite recipes, make some minor modifications and you’re left with a wonderful new dish. But perhaps that doesn’t sell cookbooks as well as complicated and exotic recipes do.

If you need some help modifying a recipe, feel free to email me at nancy@veg4health.com.

Okay, perhaps I am a little weird and perhaps I am a little too attached to my cooking – but I am so excited because I made bread today and the loaf turned out BEAUTIFUL! The loaf didn’t have one blemish on it. It wasn’t too dark or overcooked and the top hadn’t even begun to split because I had let it rise in an oven that was too warm. My husband came home talking about a gorgeous sunset and I keep talking about my perfect loaf of bread! But oh – it is beautiful and perfect. It’s so nice when that happens. When all of my effort not only tastes good, but looks good too! If you have ever made bread from scratch, you know what I am talking about. There is no sense of accomplishment which can replace the feel of a perfectly done loaf!

Water Basketball - Beating the Heat!

It’s really hot in Florida right now! Unbearably hot in the middle of the day!. But I guess that is the price we pay for such mild winters. It’s normally not the heat in July that gets to me, but the heat in October. Although I have always lived in Florida, October seems to be a month when long sleeves and sweaters should start coming out of storage and the night air get crisp. October in Florida is never that way. It’s still 90 degrees and uncomfortably warm. However, I expect July to be hot. We just spend a lot of our late afternoons at Nana’s house, enjoying the pool and the shade. Today the four of us had a game of water basketball. Trying to arrange the rules so that the kids don’t get too rough with each other was a real challenge. We had a great time though swimming and tossing and dunking the ball. What a way to work up an appetite. It was a glorious day – enjoying the time we take on Sundays to slow down and truly enjoy our blessings!

Back from Vacation!

Well, it seems it has been a while since I’ve taken the time to sit down and write. We’ve been a little busy – preparing and enjoying a wonderful vacation in the absolutely beautiful mountains of West Virginia. We went for the first family reunion in over 40 years. We had never thought about vacationing in West Virginia, although we do love to vacation in the mountains. (With all of the flat land and ocean around us, the mountains always seem like the perfect place to get away from the ordinary!) The scenery and the wildlife was especially beautiful and we truly had loads of fun! Of course, in our family, salamanders seem to be especially high on the must-do list and we were overwhelmed by the great number and variety of salamanders we found on this trip. (I often wonder if when my 6 y/o son grows up a little more, just what will we do on vacation to fill our time!) My husband and I have always loved to go hiking and our children have been full of whines whenever we attempt hiking! On this trip though, there were absolutely no whines! We took a 3 mile hike with a naturalist DOWN the mountain and across the Bluestone River. When we were finished, we took an aerial tram back up. Along the way, we found over 52 salamanders, 1 box turtle, 5 millipedes, 2 snails and numerous bids and deer. When we reached the Bluestone River and had to walk across, boy were we surprised! I had assured the children that the water would only be ankle deep or so. Boy, was I wrong. It was mid-thigh on the adults, which meant over the waist on our two children. It was a blast, and after the initial shock of the cold we had great fun trying to walk through the swift moving river without losing our balance on the rocky bottom and ending up swimming our way across. By the end of the day, both children told us that they were beginning to really like walking in the woods! There couldn’t be better music to our ears and there was never another complaint all week long. Of course, when your favorite past time is salamander hunting, it can take hours to hike even 1 mile through the mountains! So much for speed hiking! I am sure as the children get older and their legs get longer and their interest change, we can gradually increase speed and distance. For now, I am just thrilled that hikes in the woods are no longer a burden but a source of joy to all of us!

Summertime Monopoly

It’s almost the end of the month and it’s hard to believe that summer is really here. It finally got warm enough that we had to shut up the house and turn on the air conditioner. I love the fresh air blowing through the windows and miss it during the summer. Don’t get me wrong, I am VERY grateful for air conditioning. When I grew up, we didn’t have air conditioning and our schools weren’t air conditioned either. It’s hard to believe that we didn’t completely melt into puddles during the summer months. But we survived and enjoyed our free time immensely. We used to sit in the breezeway to the house and play board games all during the long summer. I used to have the monopoly board memorized and knew the price of every house, rent and property in the game. I miss having all that free time. There is always something on my list to do these days. But, at least I’ve learned to use a list and make it my friend. I keep a daily, weekly and even monthly to do list. It’s where I park my brain so that I don’t have to keep it in drive. I schedule out my household chores, homeschooling tasks, menus and miscellaneous. It helps keep my mind uncluttered and gives me the ability to claim free time when I can. The bathrooms might be getting messy today, but tomorrow is my day to clean it. So, today, I can overlook the mess knowing that it will be clean tomorrow. It’s amazing the freedom it gives me to “goof off” when I can. I’m not an overly organized person, but having a schedule is freeing for me. Well, gotta run. It’s time to enjoy some of my free time and go have a game of tag with the kids. I love to do lists almost as much as margin!

Eat at Home!!!

I was completely surprised yesterday while I was surfing the net collecting information for an article I wanted to write. I was looking up nutritional information on some restaurant and fast food items and was stunned, literally stunned, by what I found. I know that eating out is typically a very unhealthy choice both for the waistline and the wallet. However, I guess I never really took the time to quantify that knowledge before. But with our family’s new commitment to following a spending plan each month and our continued commitment to healthy eating, my eyes were suddenly opened. Everyone knows that eating at home is much less expensive than eating out. It takes a little bit of time to prepare and clean up and a little bit of water and energy to complete both, but it doesn’t cost that much. But cost is another story for another day. What really surprised me was the fat content of items most people don’t think twice about while consuming. It is so easy to prepare a meal for the whole family with less fat than one serving of food to go. When a frozen mocha latte has over 40 grams of fat and ONE donut has over 15 (and who eats just one donut anyway?) it is no wonder that we have an obesity problem in America. It doesn’t matter what type of diet you are on, the only thing that counts for weight control is the number of calories consumed versus the number of calories used. Since each fat gram contains over 9 calories and carbohydrates and protein grams contain only 4 calories, no matter how you slice it, fat grams count too. I can’t even imagine fixing a dinner with so much fat. It reaffirms my philosophy of eating at home. Unless the only thing you eat at home are prepackaged meals and convenience foods, whatever you cook is probably much healthier than almost anything you can eat outside of your home. Want to lose weight? EAT AT HOME! Try it for a week. Just a week. See if being hyper-vigilant for only 7 days makes a difference. I bet if you just REFUSED to eat ANYTHING you hadn’t prepared yourself for 7 days, you would lose weight – and feel better! TRY IT! Let me know what happens! And if you don’t need to lose weight, does someone in your family? Seven days can make all of the difference in the world!

Living in the moment - What a blessing!

I’ve read a lot lately about decreasing your stress by living in the moment. Rather than physically doing one task while mentally doing 5 others, living in the moment means being truly present with the one task you are doing. I thought that was impossible and no one could live that way. I am always planning four or five things while doing what is at hand. Well, being sick has really opened my eyes to the importance of living in the moment. I am still recovering from pneumonia and trying to take it easier than normal. Yesterday seemed like a pretty relaxing day. I wasn’t stressed and I wasn’t overly tired by the end of the day. But then I reflected on what I did do yesterday and I was astounded. I had done 3 loads of wash (all folded and put away); homeschooled the children; prepared breakfast, lunch and homemade black bean soup for dinner; gone to the vet, the dollar store, the bank, the drug store, the post office, the library and the grocery store where I did my week’s worth of shopping; and returned home to unload and put all of the groceries away. I am not superwoman, but I was not overly fatigued. What was my secret yesterday? Besides relying totally on the Lord, I realized that I had also lived only in the moment. I knew I couldn’t do everything on my list, so I did what I could without beating myself up that I wasn’t doing more. I didn’t make phone calls while driving and I didn’t write blogs in my head while cooking and I didn’t plan cooking classes while homeschooling the children. I simply lived in the moment. I talked to the kids while driving and listened to them while we did our errands. I’m hooked – I hope! I never really knew how stressful and tiring it was to mentally be engaged somewhere else rather than in the present moment. And I never really knew how blessed I would feel to be recuperating and not at my fullest. I have really learned that God’s strength provides and he is always teaching me lessons – if I live in the moment enough to hear him!

It's tough being sick - but I'm glad I have margin!

It’s tough being sick. Over the last month, I have been battling what I thought was a little cold that just wouldn’t go away. A dear friend of mine has been battling the same thing, except for three weeks longer than me. My cough continued to get worse and instead of slowly getting better, I was getting worse. Finally, I decided I had to go see a doctor. What I thought was a cold was actually a case of bronchitis with asthma and pneumonia thrown in for good measure. No wonder the day before I went to the doctor my morning work out was spent coughing as much as working out! So, Mother’s Day found me in a walk-in clinic after church. For someone who never takes medications, I walked out with four prescriptions and a promise to get a chest X-ray if I wasn’t markedly improved in 4 days. Needless to say, I found myself 4 days later getting a chest X-ray, coughing myself silly and with 2 more prescriptions. So, I am convalescing and learning how to let my husband, mother-in-law and children help out. I am also learning how to say no to certain activities and obligations and how to pace myself throughout the day. What is really amazing is that I have never felt short of breath and never really felt bad. A little more tired at the end of the day, but I was still working out almost everyday. My normal 4 mile walks were shortened slightly and my time was off a little – which I thought was due to my taking time to cough. I am now slowing down for a while and waiting to work out until my cough settles down. But I sure am glad that I have worked out and eaten right. It’s no guarantee that I don’t get sick, but it sure does help when I do. I may be slower this week, but I am not stopped. I still am able to take care of the house and kids without total fatigue and exhaustion. Maybe I would be better off if I needed some bed rest. Hmmmm…perhaps I need to think about that!

Fiber Rich Brownies

I couldn’t believe what I saw tonight. I was going through a magazine about health and nutrition and I ran across an interesting ad which included a recipe for “Fiber –Rich Raspberry Brownies”. It was an advertisement for psyllium fiber which touted its ability to lower your cholesterol. Normally I don’t pay too much attention to ads but for some reason it caught my eye. As I examined it more closely, I couldn’t believe what I saw! Here was an advertisement for a product being promoted as heart healthy yet the recipe they included called for 6 large eggs and 3 cups of sugar! Oh, but it did have ½ cup of fiber powder! Color me silly, but I like to get my fiber the natural way – in the whole foods and grains I eat every day. As astounded as I was, it started to dawn on me that if the fiber product being advertised was paying for the advertisement, it must be profitable. People must actually believe this nonsense. Perhaps we’ve all just been lulled to sleep by the large pharmaceutical and supplement industry. Somehow we think true health comes out of a bottle, in a pill or somehow in our “magical” brownies which have 6 eggs, 3 cups of sugar, and ½ cup of fiber powder. We need to wake up and think. True health comes from a full spiritual life, fulfilling relationships, enjoyable recreation and proper care of our bodies through exercise and a diet based on whole foods. Don’t get me wrong. I love brownies too and think they can have a place in our diets. But mine won’t have 6 eggs and 3 cups of sugar. And they surely won’t have ½ cup of psyllium fiber!

Too Much Help in the Kitchen!

We have a large black Labrador Retriever named Sharlotte which we all adore. She was a wonderful gift from some friends just as my daughter was praying and begging for a dog. God always provides! But that’s another story. Sharlotte has a slight drinking problem as most labs do. When she drinks she also deposits a large amount of water directly on my kitchen floor. We always keep a small towel by her bowl to wipe the floor with after she gets a drink. When not in use, it normally “hides” under my kitchen counter. Really, it helps keep my kitchen floor pretty clean because several times a day I find I am using it. But that’s another story too.

Today, I was busy in the kitchen after dinner cleaning the dishes. Normally I feel a little like an Egyptian. I am getting quite good at building small pyramids of clean dishes and pots in my sink to drip dry. But today, I was concerned that my 9th wonder of the world may collapse, spilling all of my clean kitchen utensils onto the floor. So, as my 6 year old son was walking by, I told him to get the towel and start drying my dishes. I probably should have been more specific when I unknowingly made what I thought was a simple request. Andy was quickly obedient and started taking layers off of my pyramid and drying them. We had a nice visit while he helped and the time and chores seemed to fly by. It was only after I finished putting away all of the washed and dried utensils did I turn around and begin to sense that perhaps things were not as they had seemed. I quickly called Andy and asked him to tell me which towel he had used to dry ALL of the pots, pans, dishes, silverware and assorted other kitchen utensils I had used to prepare dinner. Much to my belated surprise, he told me had picked the towel up off the floor and used that one. ARGH! Next time I guess I need to be slightly more specific in my directions and perhaps I may be a little slower asking for help. Sometimes, there IS such a thing as too much help in the kitchen!

Choose health over convenience!

We had a good day today! We were supposed to spend the day doing ballet and early morning baking. However, ballet got cancelled so we spent the day together unwinding and enjoying each other’s company. After dinner we decided to go fishing in the St. John’s River from a local boat ramp. The kids both caught some good sized Bluegills and we enjoyed watching the alligators nearby. We made sure to keep the children away from the water’s edge and one of us always kept an eye on the water nearby. There would be no falling in today! Emily was completely grossed out by the wiggly worms we used for bait and could scarcely eat at home once she learned that the bait had been carefully stored in our refrigerator. Yet, what I really found interesting is that we had been fishing in almost the exact same spot my Grandpa used to take me when I was only 5 years old. Grandpa and I would head out to Camp Holly with our cane poles and worms and have a wonderful time fishing. Unfortunately, I did not get to repeat this adventure many times. Grandpa had diabetes and had died of complications from the disease by the time I was in Kindergarten. It’s nice to know that through exercise, keeping my weight down and eating a wide variety of plant based whole foods that I am significantly lowering my risk of developing diabetes. It’s also wonderful to be able to help others do the same thing. I love hearing from people about how they have overcome their health challenges and family history through adopting the same principles. I also love hearing people say that they never knew a healthy lifestyle would be so easy, fun and down right tasty! Healthy, vibrant living isn’t about giving up things; it’s about doing the right things. But I really love thinking about all those future children who will be able to build a lifetime of memories with their grandpa and grandma because they chose health over convenience.