Resources, a recipe, and a weekend trip!

Don’t you just love it when you receive a mailbox full of goodies?

I really love reading the Above Rubies magazine (if you don’t get it, subscribe for free, here) and wanted to send a small donation since their magazine is free and so helpful to me. I was sent this pack (for my $50) and I can’t wait to dive into it:

Three thick Bible study manuals: The Power of Motherhood, The Family Meal Table and Hospitality, and Gate-Keepers of the Home. Also, I received Nancy’s book, Be Fruitful and Multiply (oh boy…). :)

Now I have something to take with me on my long trip! (details below)

We also have started receiving this magazine, giving to us for Christmas by our very close friends:

I can’t wait to get my hands flipping through the pages! This was the perfect magazine for us!

While I’m sharing resources, I picked up this book the other day at the library and it has some awesome photography in it. This is my style of decorating:

Here are some delicious photographs:

And finally, my favorite:

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

Healthy Vegetable Soup (you can make good soup without meat and bouillon cubes!)

1 bag of frozen tomatoes (or 1 quart canned)

1 can of tomato paste (6 oz?)

A couple quarts of water (sorry, I didn’t measure)

1 bag of frozen mixed veggies (green beans, corn, carrots, peas)

2 stalks celery, chopped

1 handful fresh cilantro chopped

2 tbs olive oil

1 small bag of frozen okra (I put tons of okra up this past summer)

1 tbs Mrs. Dash seasoning blend (the one with the yellow top)

Onion powder (a tp or so)

Sea Salt to taste

Simmer for 45 minutes or so, until veggies are tender. Make sure you have enough sea salt to make it tasty!

The cilantro and the seasonings really make this soup yummy. This is my own recipe, thus the inexact proportions.

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

I will not be blogging until Tuesday because I am going for a visit with my parents to see my brother and his family! :) He lives in the neatest town in MO (near the Amish) and I have only visited with him once (sooo far away). I am taking my two girls and my dear husband will be keeping the boys. They are all geared up for some men stuff with daddy. :)

I trust that you have a wonderful weekend filled with God’s love and family togetherness.

May this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus.

God Bless!

Try these recipes!

Today is day 3 on the Daniel fast and while I haven’t consecrated to the spiritual part like I have intended to (honesty, here), I have been faithful in abstaining from the forbidden foods (eating like Daniel did). It hasn’t been too hard, but you know how things go on day three.

I’ve learned as long as I can snack on something when I’m feeling hungry or drink a big glass of water, I’m feeling pretty good about things.

Breakfast here consists of a smoothie, made from frozen strawberries, Unsweetened Almond milk, a bit of 100% Organic Apple Juice, bananas, flax seed, oatmeal, and a few peaches. It’s good and really satisfying. It’s no grits, eggs, bacon, and biscuits, but I’m denying myself here, right? :)

Lunch has been rice cakes with natural peanut butter, sliced bananas, and raisins on top. I usually eat 2 of these. Yesterday my mom was here and when she comes by she always gives me some money to go get us some lunch from town (gotta love moms). I went by our local grocery deli and I admit, the golden fried chicken livers were a temptation! I’m sure my arteries thank me for resisting. Anyway, Em and I got a vegetable plate. Poor Em was quite dismayed because he really wanted his brother’s leftover teriyaki chicken. He said he was quitting the fast today. :) I don’t think he’s getting his spiritual help. :)

For supper, Monday night, I fixed Veggie Sketti (my name for it). It is really simple. Boil some brown rice noodles (you can use 100% whole grain noodles for this diet). In another skillet, in a bit of olive oil—sauté tomatoes (I used some I had put up this summer), cut up zucchini (1), diced onions, and season to taste. I like using salt and Mrs. Dash’s seasonings (no sugar or MSG). After the pasta is drained, mix it in with the veggies. We cleaned up the bowl.

Even Ella enjoyed a bit (I did notice quite a few zucchini pieces left, tho)

Last night we had peas and potato salad w/veganaise, corn on the cob, and fish for the 2 littles. The Potato Salad was a hit!

4 Medium Potatoes (you might want to do more if your entire family of 6 eats potato salad), cut up and boiled in water until just soft (not mushy). Make sure the potatoes are salted.

In a bowl, mix 1/2 cup veganaise (this stuff is better than mayo to me), 1 tp curry powder, 1/3 cup chopped red onion, 1/3 cup chopped celery, 1 tp dill weed, and I even threw in a few cilantro sprigs (we love that stuff).

After the potatoes are drained, mix the Veganaise mixture in with the potatoes.

Very, very good.

*You can find Veganaise at your health food store or grocer, or on Amazon.

Just a few recipes I thought I would share with you. I know I am always looking for healthy alternatives or suggestions!

Hope you truly have a blessed day full of God’s love!

The icing on the cake…

I’m so happy to report we made it through our first week of homeschooling for this school year. It went very well! I hope to do a post very soon on our schedules and homeschooling setup. I always enjoy reading others’ posts on homeschooling, so just maybe mine would be interesting to my readers.

Speaking of readers, I hope my regular readers start trickling back in into my Blog Haven…:o) I hate taking such long breaks because my blog gets stagnant and sometimes my readers go away. :( I sure hope everyone will return! :) If you have returned, leave me a lil comment, pls! I never get to post a comment every single time on the blogs I read, but I do try to get around to a comment every now and again. I’d love to hear from you.

Now….I have a couple of recipes to share with you tonight. I know, boring, huh? :) Well, I’m so excited to tell you that I found a healthy Birthday Cake recipe in a Cooking With Whole Foods by Cynthia Lair cookbook that I have. I decided to try it for Ella’s birthday. Based on the ingredients (some I had to purchase, or rather my mom picked up for me, at the Health Food store), I really wondered if it would turn out. While the cake did NOT taste just like the Betty Crocker’s Yellow Cake mix version, it was very good and different, in a nice way. We had one piece left when we went to bed the night of Ella’s birthday. And..we only had 2 guests to her lil party. :)

Here is the ingredients in case you may be on the lookout for a healthy alternative to a birthday cake. You may be like me and just cringe to think of all that sugary icing and 25 cake mix ingredients going into your one year old’s body. Anyway, (as to not sound like a health food snob…) it is a great cake if you just want something different and don’t really care about the healthy issue.

Here ya are:

The buttons, etc., are just some raw sugar that I added a drop of food coloring too…

Loving it….

Tonight we had incredible Salmon Patties (or Croquettes as some call them) that I made up. I will be posting the recipe very soon as they were really, really delish.

It’s good night for me. Once again, I’ve skipped out on my early to bed promise to myself. Why can’t I be more loyal? Oh well, I’ll try again tomorrow!!

Tried and Proven Healthy Recipes

Pumpkin Spelt Bread

For years now, my husband and I have had a love/hate relationship with eating healthy. About 10 years ago, we truly learned about health and that it means, surprisingly, nothing about drinking Diet Coke and eating Low Fat Pringles. Really! Too bad.

Since then, we’ve tried to incorporate a pretty decent healthy eating lifestyle, but have had times of complacency with our healthy eating habits and (oh the horror) downright backsliding on our exercising. Now, mind you, I have never got to the place where I had brought in the liquid candy (soft drinks) or processed food (that excludes leftover Halloween candy, right?), but I seemed to have upped our butter/sugar (albeit raw sugar, but still….) intake and ousted the raw veggie/whole wheat intake.

My dear man of my dreams ordered us the book, Disease-Proof Your Child by Dr. Joel Fuhrman and upon reading the first 2 chapters, I wanted to shove everything currently in my cabinets into the trash can and also wanted to hide my head in shame at what I had been allowing my children to eat (hot dogs, anyone?). So, while I urge you to read this book (especially if your kids aren’t eating very healthy), I warn you that it may make you feel very, very guilty. :?/

I have two children of the four that would probably be considered obese (especially one) and I’m so sorry for that. It seems that when I try to watch their diet, there is always some eating out taking place—eating at church, eating at grandparents, etc.—other places where hot dogs are all the rage or chips are ever present among us. So, that being said, it is ultimately I and my husband who are responsible for their health. We have to get radical about what we are eating, even if it means eating differently in other places besides our home.

I have enjoyed eating this week. I have enjoyed making healthy meals for my family and feeling good about what I am serving them. We have enjoyed fruit smoothies for breakfast, srambled eggs (there is life w/o butter) with spinach, spelt biscuits, Summertime Tilapia (just say no to red meat), Chicken Salad made with Vegenaise (healthy ‘mayonnaise’!), carrot sticks (discovered that my 3 year old loves carrot sticks), spinach leaves (my kids have been asking for some ‘leaves’ to eat), and Pumpkin Spelt Bread with almond butter. All of the highlighted recipes were tried this week and were found to be delicious (and the ‘mayo’ is really, really tasty).

I look forward to updating you on our health progress and pray to not fall back in my quest for disease-proofing my children. Kids really don’t get sick by accident. Which you probably already knew that. I hope you will read the book!

Evan, enjoying the leftovers of the pumpkin spelt bread batter

It’s nighty-night here at our house. Church is tomorrow and lots of frantic details that entails. :) Hope you’re having a lovely Pre-Fall night.

God Bless!

PS One of my Blog Followers, Kirsteen, has a few wheat and dairy-free recipes on her blog. I look forward to trying some of these out. Check her out. :)