A cool cooking from food storage find!

When we went to the preparedness fair for our stake, one of the classes was on pressure cooking from a lady named Anitra.  Not only did she open my eyes to an appliance I'd never seen called an electric pressure cooker that can give perfect beans cooked from dry in only 24 minutes, she also talked about ways of putting together and organizing your pantry to get the most out of it.  Her ideas are very similar to mine in a lot of ways, however I would like to implement my own twist on them by doing them in a different way that I feel would keep the food good longer and make more sense along with being healthier for my family and our needs.  She has tons of cooking and pantry how to videos, check them out if you want.  I liked this video for a fun thing to do when I entertain guests.  :)  www.simplylivingsmart.com

A Mothers Natural Care For Both Viral & Bacterial Infections

Here is an excerpt from my book on natural healthcare.  These tips have helped the things that used to last for weeks only last a couple days.  Its awesome!  I did notice that there were two things I didn't remember to put in this excerpt, so I'll have to go edit my book.  I'll write those here though.

A supplement of Fermented Cod Liver Oil gives many fat soluble vitamins that are ineffective if taken without the right type of healthy fats and also gives a lot of probiotics at the same time.  Thats super nice cause probiotics help our bodies fight off illness and function properly, but it is so hard to get them into our kids that can't swallow capsules.  That makes this oil perfect for kids.  I just get the kind that has that measuring squirter thing from "Real Foods Market" in Orem (soon to have one in Sugarhouse).

Lots of Food Derived Vitamin C & Immune Boost Supplements mixed into juice.  The best is obviously fresh juice from carrots, celery, beets, greens, and apples, but I also use the store bought apple juice with these supplements too.

The last thing I didn't cover is a homemade veggie or bone broth made into a soup works almost like a superfood to help boost your immune system.  There are also a bunch of other superfoods to choose from too.  Hope you enjoy the excerpt below.  Happy Healing!  :)      

The Healing & Weight Loss Diet Meal Plan is Coming Soon...

It is taking so much longer than I expected to get my meal plan put together.  Its a "beast" to say the least.  I am typing up all the ingredients and amounts used weekly so that I can have a good 2 weeks shopping list and am hoping to do it just perfect so that we don't spend more than $300 a month like I want to budget a month for our family of 5.  A lot of what I have written thus far I wrote in a very simple text program and because it isn't all pretty yet it makes it kinda hard to follow for me and my mild dyslexia symptoms.  I guess that means I'm gonna need to take it into photoshop soon.  :)  I love photoshop!  This diet is a 7 phase diet and Kirk really wants to know when it will be over, so even though you can take as long as you want on each phase, I am going to put a 1 month time frame to them so that my hubby can feel better about it.  He's excited because he knows that we'll get healthier and I think he's pretty excited about all the weight loss we've had and are going to continue to have by following it diligently.  When I get the first 2 phases looking a bit prettier in photoshop so you can enjoy looking at them more, I'll post them on here so you can use them.  :)  Lots of requests, so here's as good a place as any.  I just ask that once you see results or have input for me, to come back to me with that input and those stories.  Thanks for the motivation to get it out to you by requesting this!  I'll try to get done with it really soon.

Kids want to say "Hi" to Family

Today we made some videos while Kirk was at work.  The kids really wanted to talk to Papa Jack, Grandma Jean, Uncle Matt, Nama & Pop-Pop.  Hope you guys get to see these and enjoy watching how cute the kids are as much as I enjoyed filming them. :)  P.S. Daisy is almost 9 months old now... isn't it crazy?

Re-Organizing Kitchen To Healing Disease (through diet)

Today I spent a lot of time cleaning and re-organizing certain parts of our kitchen (like where to put this appliance or that one, where to put jars for fermenting, and sprout my seeds, etc.).  I made a lot of progress today, enough that I think we're pretty close to being able to implement my new system.  I need for finalize our dietary plans along with the meal plan and recipes that go with it - this includes a schedule for rotating through sprouts and fermented vegetables, nuts, and grains along with homemade bone and vegetable broth.  This diet is highest in fresh vegetables, but these other things that help the body and the gut heal are vital and take space for the proper equipment (like the jars and sprouter, etc.).

I worked on my meal plan a bit today and am excited about it because my mom said she really wants to do it.  Its so nice to have someone notice how knowledgeable I actually have become about health and want my input on what to do to help their body.  I'm probably more excited than she is about it and she is excited.  I can almost guarantee that in 6 months time not only will she be re-energized and happier, she will be at least very close to a target healthy weight/waistline and her body will have healed from many common issues found in the gut that cause other ailments seemingly unrelated.  She won't get sick so often anymore and if she does, it will be for very short periods and won't hit as hard or as often as it does now.  I have already seen many positive effects for myself, but after a month I pulled out those chocolate chips to vacuum seal and haven't had the bold will power needed within to refrain from eating them.  My big problem is that as of right now every time I eat a significant portion of anything containing sugar I end up with very large amounts of blood in my stool.  Needless to say, I probly need my diet more than anyone and would greatly benefit by developing a stronger backbone to say no to sweets.  I know, with no doubts at all, that I can fully heal from whatever is ailing my body by following my dietary guidelines I've come to through great research (and weeding through conflicting statistics and information).  Not only can I heal from what my most recent symptoms are, but I believe that I can also fully cure my suspected Auto-immune disease: Lupus.  What an amazing feat... I have read of a few ways that others with Lupus have not just gone into remission, but fully cured themselves completely and I fully believe that my program can also do that.

Mason Jar Self Reliance Projects Craziness

As part of a project that Kirk and I are working on to be more self sufficient we are trying to put together as many mason jars as we can for as little cost as possible.  I just got 96 mason jars for $48!  Granted they are all used, but that doesn't really matter to me on this one.  60 of them are pint sized and 30 are quarts.  I'm so excited!

I'm going to use the pints for fermenting vegetables and fresh veggie juices in small quantities, so that we don't have to eat tons at a time (even though the probiotics from tons at a time would probably be really healthy).  I also want them to put our homemade soups into (with a bone broth base) for Kirk to take to work with him.  I heard that they are also great for storing spices properly too.  Of course once the ingredients are in them I am ultimately planning on vacuum sealing everything for either pantry or freezer storage.

The quarts could be for a number of different dried goods.  One example is chocolate chips, which can last longer than 3 years when vacuum sealed in a mason jar.  I have also heard that it can triple the life of grains like rice to vacuum seal those in mason jars too (one lady I talked to said her rice lasted 7 years instead of 1 - now thats what I call extended shelf life).  I want to get as many of my dried goods vacuum sealed as is feasible in mason jars so that it all can last longer in the pantry.  I hate throwing away food that would have been good if we had eaten it sooner or stored it in a better way.  Outside of dry pantry style goods, I am kinda excited to use quart jars for "salad in a jar" and "soup in a jar" and even what I am going to term "bakery in a jar".  The first two are kind of self explanatory, just making a soup or salad compilation in a mason jar.  To make it fun though, you can layer parts of the salad to make a fun pattern for "eye-candy" before shaking it all up and eating it.  The "bakery in a jar" refers to all the different types of baked goods that can be baked in mason jars.  To do this properly, it is my understanding that they must be placed on a deep cookie tray that has a layer of water in it.  Its awesome.  You can make mason jar bread, pies, cookies, brownies, etc.  I'm excited to experiment and start making more of my own recipes for these like I did when I wanted more multi-grain recipes and couldn't find what I liked or wanted.

I think it would be cool to only have wide mouth straight edged jars, however that would cost a lot more.  So I will try to slowly accrue larger straight edged jars (that I need to do the bakery stuff) and just go with the great deals on these other jars for all the other awesome things I am gonna start doing with them.

Because of purchasing our foodsaver type vacuum sealer called the seal-a-meal secondhand it did not come with the tube that sucks air out of attachments.  We could not find any place that carried the tube attachment so decided we would take it into our own hands and figure out making one with parts from home depot.  We read online that some people did this, but no one said how.  We decided to make a video to post on you tube for those in our same situation with this same project.  It was a clear tube 1/4" big, the length doesn't really matter (although if its super long it can take a longer time to seal things) and the nozzle thing (called a double sided barb) we found was 3/16".  Here's the video if you are interested.

Reading for Empowering Strategies

I've been reading the book by Kim Kiyosaki called It's Rising Time! and love it!  One of the things that really hit me was her idea of using creativity in everything you do, if you want to be succesful, along with noting what the problem is you want to solve and then solving that problem becomes the good business opportunity.  She told some stories, one was about the mother who created the first sippy cup lid for her toddler.  It was simply a solve the problem scenario, but that lid has changed the way parents raise their children.  It is rare to find a home with little ones in America that do not also have sippy cups.  This was all because of one mother, with one problem, and one good solution.  This idea has inspired me to make a list of those things that are frustrating to me so that I can not just deal with them, but rather, find my own solutions.  For example i'm frustrated that it is so hard to have a nice relaxed walk with my husband now that we have 3 kids.  We have a bunch of things like strollers or wagons that fit 2 kids and are fun for walks but 3 just isn't working unless we carry one or make one walk.  If our oldest walks or rides her bike than, instead of rekindling like I want from the walk together, we end up focusing on her or the stroller to keep the kids in line, un-injured, and happy.  I want a 3-4 kid stroller or wagon but am not in a place to purchase one for $400 or more as that is far too overpriced in my mind.  We also need something that we can tote them in while riding bikes to the market once winter is over, which could be the same thing if I designed it right.  The words from this book I'm reading made me feel that I should just design a stroller thing instead of just being frustrated every time we want to walk as a family.  That idea is so EMPOWERING, its great!