DIY Sunflower Butter

C is addicted to sunflower butter and at 6 dollars a pound we can't let him have it as often or give him as much as he would like. I stumbled across a diy make your own recipe and figured it had to be worth a try right?
I'm kicking myself we didn't try this sooner.  So easy less than 2 dollars and you control exsactly what goes in it. It didn't take any time at all either.

I roasted 3 cups of raw sunflower seeds in a pan. Apparently you want to roast them yourself so you don't lose the oils that are released in the roasting process and you get a nice nutty flavor.  Don't over roast them, watch them closely and stir constantly.
Transfer the seeds to the food processor (leave the vent open to let out the steam) and turn it on and let it go. Every once in a while stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the processor so it keeps chopping the seeds up. It takes a while but eventually you get something that is sort of butter like. I think it was around 20 minutes or so till we hit that stage. We added a pinch of sea salt and then add a little extra virgin olive oil to make it creamy start with a little let it run till you reach a consistency you like, same goes with sweeter (honey, maple syrup both work well) start with a little until its the right amount sweet.
Here is a guess for the add ins but its just a rough guide.

• 2-4 tablespoons light tasting oil (I prefer coconut oil or light olive oil)
• ¼ teaspoon honey (optional)
• ½ teaspoon salt (to taste, or omit entirely…depends on your taste buds)

That's it your done. So Easy.  store in a jar in the fridge.

lots of little changes... Big impact.

I've been thinking a lot about how to make our eating habits better. We eat better than most people but we are far far from where I would like us to be. I'm going to attempt to start making lots of little changes and hopefully by this time next year our eating habits and food budget will be looking much much better.

A lovely friend of mine stumbled across this cool website were a mom is attempting to actually feed her family of 4 real foods, organic, all that good stuff for 400 dollars a month. Lots of blogs have written about doing a "Food stamp challenge" but the majority missed the point and had lovely stuffed stocks of healthy food they "shopped for free" also rules about how they got a certain number of meals that didn't count each month, totally cheating and not really helpful. This mom made her rules much stricter and as close to real life working family who might be on food stamps like as she could. You can check it out here 

Anyway, I'm hoping to pick up a few tips on how to add more organic goodness into our diet and eat better without breaking the bank. I'm hoping to get a little better at going after manufacture coupons for natural stuff we actually use and figuring out how to combined them if possible with store sales to save a little

The 1st little change I want to is give up canned beans and make the switch to only using dried beans preferably local when we can get them and by 2015 100% organic.  We use a lot of beans mostly black, pinto, and garbanzo. We also do a lot of lentils and I want to work on making sure we are getting those as organic and local as we possibly can as well (shouldn't be to hard I wouldn't think we do live in the lentil capital of the world.) 

My hope is that, while we might not save money switching from convectional canned beans to organic bulk that they will at least come out the same cost wise, health wise the switch is a huge improvement, since it would basically cut out 60% of our canned foods usage (tomatoes and coconut milk are all that's left)

The second little change is switching from using oil in baking to only using cold-pressed coconut oil (occasionally I'm still not a big fan of it in baking) or using organic applesauce.  I'll still use real EVOO in cooking and things but my hope is to seriously minimize the amount of oil we consume.  

Food

Its a little hard to chase around a toddler and make healthy Brewer diet food for every meal. There are little ways to cheat and make it easier.

Today for breakfast we had Swiss Chard, Kale, caramelized onion, mushroom, roasted pumpkin seed, ginger pork sausage, roasted red bell pepper with acorn squash scrambled eggs. It took less time to make than our two morning lattes

I found that by cooking a bunch of leafy greens up with onions and mushrooms and storing it in a container in the fridge that its easy to throw a portion or throw into everything. I also love making big batches of things like caramelized onions they take all day in the slow cooker but a whole slow cooker worth frozen cubes easy to pull out of the fridge and slice off a portion and throw it into meals. Same with the red bell peppers we grilled 10 or so on the grill when they were in season and cheap froze then and its so easy to slice a portion. Not to sound like a broken record I roast a few different types of winter squash and stick them in the fridge or freeze them into cubes

Its great to go to the store on the weekend buy a lot of produce and prep it all for the week and if something is on sale and in season get a lot and freeze it.  Lots of days I'm tiered, busy the small folk in my house are crazy I can throw a frozen chicken breast brown rice a few cubes of frozen veggies or squash, add a few herbs form and its easy and healthy and grabbing a few frozen cubes or adding a few spoonfuls of leafy greens from the fridge after its done cooling is so easy.

It makes following this diet so much easier.

Gluten Free Corn Bread Bites

C is a little obsessed with bread, part of it is that its a rare treat to get anything bread like, since he is gluten free and the gluten free breads that you can buy are expensive and don't taste good, we don't do bread very often. Today we made corn bread in mini muffin tins which is the perfect size for little hands.  I didn't exactly follow a recipe, shocker.  I substituted gluten free flour for the whole wheat and used water instead of milk, the recipe called for butter but I used coconut oil and EVOO in its place. I added sunflower seeds, flax seed, flax meal and used molasses in place of sugar. They came out great yummy slightly nutty. Happy baby, happy mommy. I will post the actual recipe tomorrow and pictures of the little guy cooking tomorrow when we make another batch.

In other highlights today was the third stroller exercise class today, its hard and one of the babies actually pointed at us and laughed while we were doing a particularly hard set of exercises  Its a fun class however and I'm hoping that after a month of going three times a week, I will be a little closer to summer swimsuit weather.
  C and I also learned that apple cider vinegar makes amazing conditioner, you only smell like a fish and chips shop for a few minutes and then the smell goes away but it leaves your hair bouncy and tangle free. You should not let it get in your babies eyes it makes them scream and scream and will feel like a horrible mother. He got over it and is happily sleeping next to his puppy now.
All in all it a fulfilling day.

Toodler food

We are one of those households, the allergies list as long as your arm places where everything that comes in needs to be dissected to determine if its safe.  We are Gluten-free, Nut-free, Soy-free, Orange-free and have other food issues with eggs, most fruits, and red meat. We also don't do processed foods, preservatives, and are trying to cut all GMO stuff out too. I can't say I miss them but this can make eating a challenge.

sweet potato, kale salad, mashed potato, and cornbread

C has suddenly upped the amount he wants to eat he is always hungry and so I have found that my old nurse a lot, feed him a little of what ever I'm having method of meal times doesn't work any more. We have moved on to planned toddler meals. I want to make sure that he is getting a balanced diet because even with out all the junk its still possible to be lacking in good stuff.  This is the first week of planned munchkin meals, I will be attempting to make him breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner, and bedtime snack.  Ideas for breakfast are pancakes, oatmeal, muffins, smoothies, snacks will be bite sized and a mixture of veggies and protein, lunch will be what ever we are having usually rice based with veggies and dinner will be the same.
 My hope is that by making sure his meals are balanced and have variety it will spill over into the meals of the rest of the house, that my husbands lunches will become more rounded and our family meals will too.  I'm sure that it will take a while to get in a routine and get used to having a verity of good snacks on hand. So this week I am reading every book on toddler nutrition and breastfeeding a toddler that I can get my hands on and searching Pinterest for fun lunch and snack ideas.

Midwife

Yesterday we had our appointment with our Midwife. Baby is measuring well, and has a strong heartbeat of 150 bpm. Everything else was great. Happy, happy happy.  I only got in a little trouble for not having started taking alfalfa, which I was supposed to start last time, but I started taking it yesterday and if taking goat food pills is what is needed for a healthy baby then I will gladly take them.

We've been working on setting up the baby things and I have decided to have a Blessing way instead of a baby shower when we go back to Portland in July. (I'll post more on what a blessing way is and how we are planning on doing it tomorrow)

The sun is out. Rob is making an omelet with fresh free range local chicken eggs, which always taste better than the store bought kind, and we got them for free (perks of knowing actually knowing the chickens) which makes them taste even better.

I have all sorts of plans for sewing fruits today, watermelons, oranges, pears, and apples.
I just feel happy and like today is going to be a good day.

Good news

Yesterday I went in to the doctors office to get a blood draw and a check up. Good news, iron levels are back up and I'm no longer anemic. It's nice to have something go well. One less hurtle to face.
The only bad thing is the doctor was saying that we should wait 6 months till we try again.
 I don't know if we will wait that long, but we may wait a little longer than we had planned to just to make sure.

We have been going to the pool and I've gotten out the work out dvd's out. My new years resolution is to work hard get getting healthy for baby to be. I just feel like I owe it to both babies (our son and  baby to be) to take this seriously and work hard getting as healthy as I can. It wasn't like I was lacking when we got pregnant last time but there where moments that I slacked off.  When I didn't follow the Brewers diet, didn't go to the pool. I know that this time there will not be that sort of "oh lets just have pizza, and skip the gym" moments. Gone are the high fructose corn syrup, the ingredients that are hard to say, we've even given up the lotions and things that go on our skin that don't get a good score on skin deep a great website that rates products based on how safe the ingredients in them are.

Decaf

I ordered a coffee at our local coffee shop and said "oh make it decaf please," The barista eyes lit up and she whispered across the table "Can I ask, are you pregnant?"

To my knowledge I'm not pregnant. It is just the first time around, I gave up coffee months before we were ready to start trying to have a baby. I don't want to go back to fully caffeinated and then have to go cold turkey. Its hard enough to be an emotional wreck from pregnancy hormones with out adding withdraw to the combination. I love my husband and so I've started giving up the caffeine now.

I was talking to our friend J and Rob about how I wasn't that crazy hormonal mess when I was pregnant. J was kind enough to remind me of the time I threw my coffee cup at Rob's head.
I'd forgotten about that. So to make every ones life a little easier that is no more caffeine.
The coffee shop is just one more reminder of how different it is when everyone knows that you were pregnant. Its a reminder that everyone eyes are on my mid section watching to see if it grows in the direction of a baby.

grief food

Can you smother emotions with cookies?
Oreos are grief food.
When my dad died, suddenly and with out warning when I was thirteen, people filled our house with groceries. It was amazing the kindness and compassion the people in our neighborhood had. The only issue was that, it was highly processed and almost all of it contained milk. Both my mom and sister are allergic to milk. Which meant that the only person who could eat all the Oreos was me. Nothing like stuffing myself  with cream filled cookies to deal with grief. Filling the void with double stuffed chocolate cookies. Its been years but Oreos still hold the connotation of death and grief.
When my baby died I had to have Oreos. I told Rob that we needed Oreos. I gave myself a weekend and a lot of cookies, an attempt to fill a hole that had once held a baby. I reached a point when I didn't want any more Oreo cookies, the creamy filling was not as satisfying as I wanted it to be and the hole was still there. 
It was a significant moment when I looked down at my cookie and said I'm done.

You can only wallow in self pity for so long before it is unhealthy, tinting life with a dirty film of resentment.  I gave myself a week and a lot of Oreos to feel bad to lay in bed and soak in my pity. Then I brushed the cookie crumbs off the duvet and moved on. Not finished with grief but finished with the pity. 

A Pregnancy in Fruit

from a poppy seed to an avocado 
There is a popular website that has a pregnancy ticker in produce. Starting with a poppy seed.and getting bigger each week. For 16 weeks 6 days my life was defined in produce. Each week I watching the fruit ticker get bigger from apple seeds, raspberries, and ending on an avocado. 
Contextualizing in food is something I understand. I could hold a blueberry in the palm of my hand and say "this is how big my baby is." I never really got into the pictures of fetuses drawn like bad fishy aliens, but  I liked the fruit. If I was still pregnant our baby would be a an eggplant, 26 weeks. Instead, I just ended up somewhere between an Avocado and an Onion.

Oddly appropriate onions have always made me cry, and I've never been a huge avocado green fan. I wonder if there will be a day when I can look at an avocado with out thinking of holding his little body in my hand. A day with out thinking about the impossibly small fingers and toes, those little fingernails. I don't think I will ever be able to look at guacamole the same.