There's Always a Reason to Eat

There's always a reason to celebrate eat. You're thinking at 8-10 p.m, as you're biting into the chocolate bar "ah, I/we shouldn't be eating at this time"... and you or your spouse lists one of these reasons below,

• It's Friday night, end of a long week!
• It's our anniversary
• Diet starts tomorrow
• It's Saturday, start of the weekend
• It's our cat's christening.... or another make up celebration
• It's Sunday, back to work tomorrow
• Ah, one bar won't kill us
• It's been a rough day, I/we totally deserve this

I wonder why we're always making up excuses to glutton? And you know, I am not just talking about a chocolate bar. I'm talking about that Starbucks run, left overs, late night munchies, popcorn, etc. It can be healthy stuff too, like nuts and seeds /butter on home made crackers, fruit, and cheese, etc. 

This week we spent 3 days away from home. We ate out everyday. It's quite hard to eat out healthily, unless you have access to a fridge. I tried choosing better restaurants but it dawned on me, even the best and healthiest restaurants, basically serve things like, -sugar, salt, fat and wheat, and all in the bad form. It wasn't til our last day that we found a Mexican fast food joint, which served clean food. Gluten free, freshly milled wheat, organic meats/fish, and produce. Yummy! Next time, we'll know. Those "pearls" are so few and far between, but they're becoming more popular and with a little extra investigation, they're available! Forget, ABC's, IHOP's, Denny's, WhiteSpot and any other common restaurant with "home cooking" -it's all frozen!

So during our trip, while feeling mentally and physically totally robbed nutrition wise, I started menu planning, again. I decided that we would be eating more fish from now on. I love the 'meatless Monday' idea, and I'm still keen on not spending too much time cooking, so instead just throw stuff together, and voila! Dinner is serrrrrved. Also, the only thing that I thought worked out with my crockpot, is Chilli, so I won't be using that too much either. My oven is pretty high tech, so will be utilizing the options on it more. Baked fish, here we come!

Here is what I've been brainstorming to do:

• Monday- vegetarian
• Tuesday-Beef
• Wednesday- Seafood
• Thursday- Vegetarian
• Friday-  Salmon
• Saturday- Chicken
• Sunday- Seafood 

I'm pretty excited about Chinese and Mexican influenced recipes, I like it how everything is fast and simple, and the greens are usually added at the very end of the recipes. 

I went to Costco today and bought, salmon and quinoa. I love quinoa! My kids are getting there, I'm not taking no for an answer. The salmon I get will be enough for two family servings. Some of you already know that we don't eat a lot of meat/fish when we do have them, meaning, we don't have a chicken breast each. I chop up 1-2 chicken breasts into a curry sauce/stir fry/meal and that feed us, a family of 5. That is enough protein for now. Here is a trick, if you thaw a chicken breast just a little before cutting it, it's easier to slice up a lot of thin slices.

What do our kids normally have for breakfast?

• cereal
• omelets
• oats, hemp hearts and yoghurt
• porridge
• toast with cheese and cold cuts
• breakfast burritos
• Chinese pancakes (spring onion) 

+ a smoothie

 Baked Salmon. The kids devoured it, didn't manage to take an after oven pic :)

 Fried Tofu Sticks

(junk food)

 Marinade: 

• shaoshang wine
• dark soy
• light soy
• garlic
• ginger
• chili flakes (optional)

 Gone in seconds, glad I managed to take a picture.

When we lived in Finland, we never had bread or butter in our home. These days, we have both. Even to this day, I feel uncomfortable about it, but I've just let it go. I am not a big fan of yeast, I don't think eating "yeasty" foods daily is a good thing to the body. It's like up keeping an inflammation in the body, to me. However, I make my kids sandwiches for dinner 1-2 a week. I would like to cut back, but we are not allergic to gluten, or sensitive to gluten. The only thing I would like to cut back on is the yeast, therefor the bread, and swap it to whole wheat, stone milled, rich grain and seed tortillas. I don't want to take away the bread, because bread is yummy and nothing beats a fresh baked bread with butter on top, -and my kids know it!

Moving on...

There you have it, a little sneak peak to some of our family foods and also an honest, not so direct, confession on being a snacker and finding excuses for it. I'm still motivated and moving towards healthy eating while at the same time dodging all the food and diet trends... a.k.a paleo etc. Nothing lasts, nothing. Like I've said before, and I will say it again -the Bible has a lot of answers to what we should be eating and how. Really! Start from Genesis 1:29 and 2:9 and go from there... 

(These verses, totally prove that seedless cucumber from Walmart is from the devil! he he!)

Please share with me, what you feed your kids! Leave a comment!

DIY Create-a-Meal Fridge Magnets -Homeschool

Here they are! DIY Create-a-Meal Fridge Magnets, by Cathy Rose! The coolest thing ever! :) What a great way to be creative, meal plan, and teach your kids how to create healthy wholesome meals. This is how I made them.

You'll need

• scissors
• card stock
• small magnets (elmer's)
• sharpie, colours
• creativity and inspiration (you ALL got some!)
• laminating sheets and a laminator (borrow one!)
• double sided tape
• a fridge :)

1. I  made a list of the foods we eat. I kept it as healthy as I could, this way we automatically plan good nutritious meals for the whole family. I just started drawing, nothing fancy, just plain lines and even gave my veg faces!

No rush with the drawings. You can't think of the meals all at once, take your time, even days.

2. Name them and colour them in. And again, let your kids do the colouring, no stress.

3. Cut out the pictures and laminate.

4. Cut out the pictures. Stick the pictures and magnets together by using double sided tape.

Teach your kids how to create healthy meals, using a correct food pyramid. 

 

(I.P stands for "ILTAPALA" which means evening snack/bite in Finnish)

VOILA!

Need help in creating healthy meals? Check out my recipes here!

Need help finding an healthy food pyramid? Click here!

Don't forget to ENTER to WIN A FREE BOOK!

Food Pyramid part 1

A few weeks ago I taught my son the Food Pyramid, straight out of a 1st grade health and nutrition book. Mid way, I stopped the lesson and gave our support teacher a call. I told her "I cannot teach this rubbish and I have a dilemma, what am I to do?"

How can I teach my son something I know is NOT true and not because I am a new ager, but because I believe in God and His word to be true. In the Bible it clearly teaches us what our first two major groups should be... and they are :

Genesis 1:29 Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.

PLANTS that have SEED in it and FRUITS with seed in it.

Now this is the same God who breathed the planets, said and it was done. Pretty knowledgable, right? I mean, he probably knew what He was doing when he made every plant to benefit us differently, right?

I CANNOT teach my children that consuming dairy products above fruits and good fats is the right way to go. I could count that as child abuse, really. These innocent children who look to me for food and never second guess the nutritional value of my cooking, they might question the paletable side of it, but never the nutritional value of it- I then give them "so called food" that fights against their bodies' ability to heal itself, improve itself, and  manifests illness and other chronic unpleasent symptoms.

No, as a parent I should be teaching them about what makes your bones strong, what makes your muscles strong, what makes your hair shiny, what keeps your joints healthy, what fights colds, and prevents infections, which is anti-imflammatory and anti-viral, which food builds bones, heals your body, what do enzymes do, etc, etc. How to treat and co-treat (sometimes along side medicine) EVERY ill health from WITHIN and  what not to eat and WHY. Knowledge is power. The more you read, the more you dig.. the more you know.

Let me give you an example : Most pyramids have a tiny little section for oils. Our family's pyramid has a good size sliver for "good" oils.  Our preferred oils are different from what most school book pyramids teach. Good oils include, avocados, olives, salmon, fish oil, coconut oil, olive oil, almond oil, avocado oil, hemp oil, nuts and seeds... etc.

Let me give you another example from the dairy group:

We do enjoy cheese and ice cream, but it's not the second or third consumed group in our diets.

Dairy, the way it's made today, is not good for you. (Some people will argue that dairy-in any shape or form- full stop-is not good for you). Milk won't penetrate the gut wall. Calcium won't absorb at all, or very very little. Hence, you are calcium deficient. It also gives you other unpleasant side effects. You get more calcium from sesame seeds and broccoli than you do from milk.

Deuteronomy 14:21  "You must not cook a young goat in its mother's milk."

I believe that there is nutritional truth in that verse. When I was a young girl my father was a teacher at a Jewish school for a season. One day he came home with a revelation and told us we shouldn't drink milk and eat meat at the same time. I don't remember knowing why and I don't know how long it lasted...

Now this seemed to be the law for the people in the Old Testament (and others may think it means something else) but nutritionally this makes sense! The calcium of the RAW milk will not absorb if taken in with meat. The toxicity of the meat prevents it. I truly believe that osteoporosis and other bone ill-health could be reduced and even prevented, if not stopped or reveresed by changing a "few" things in our daily diets.

In this case, changing the store bought milk to an -as close to it's original form- raw milk, almond mylk, coconut mylk and/or hemp seed mylk. That trio is amazingly beneficial for your body.

SOY milk (tofu and other soy based products) is BAD for you, it's poison, it should have never been taken in in such large quantities as we see in our western world today. Soy prevents vitamins, minerals and nutrients absorbing into your body and is a hormone DISRUPTER etc. Not good.

It's all dandy if someone doesn't know, but we need to do the research for ourselves, and read ALL sides of a story, right! You cannot even take what I am saying as the final truth, you need to take what I have said here and take it, compare it and weigh it against well supported and honest research. You need to do what you feel is right for your family. We make decisions out of love, right? God sees your heart, where you are, He blesses the right direction and meets you where you are. We cannot know it all in a day. But start your journey, start from Genesis 1:29.


As a homeschooler, I should teach my children 2 pyramids. What the "world says" and what WE believe.

There are areas, which I have not covered yet, such as meats, other cheese and milk products, wine, cooked food, raw and live food etc, etc. I will. This is why this post is "part 1"- check in for more posts.. You'll be surprised.

Letting Go

A week ago, I started drinking DECAF. For a good week now (and on going), I have had long naps in the middle of the day, have gone to sleep early and haven't wanted to get out of bed the next morning. I still feel this way, perhaps not as severely, but I do feel very tired. I get it. I had tricked my body for months, believing that all was dandy, go go go! I wonder how much harm have I really done to it? I can barely cope with the tiredness. I truly owe my body rest and I plan to give it. If I require 8-10 hrs of sleep per night, then so be it! I have to fit that in and that's just how it needs to be. We were made to live, to work and to REST. Most inportantly, REST in Him.

I cannot be a good wife, mother and homeschooler if I am always dragging along the floors, doing and giving my minimum. 

If we need to eat or drink substances that give us false energy and rob us from our minerals, vitamins and... LIFE, we really should not be doing it. I truly believe that there are foods and natural drinks that give a natural pick-me-up effect with NO side effects.

I personally like the taste of coffee, I just don't need the caffeine to go with it. I am looking into giving up decaf too and swapping it to a coffee-red reishi brew. The red reishi eliminates 97% of the toxins and caffeine in the coffee and it becomes beneficial. This is awesome! More on that later!

Also, we all know how bad sodas are for us, but why do we "gladly" pour this "toxic drink" down our throats and think we can get away with it? We are so DUMB! We won't get away with it, our bodies don't know what to do with it!!!!! No wonder our hormones and bodies are out of whack! And out of whack isn't even the worst case... so sad. You oughta swap the ring pull or bottle cap to a spray nossle and sanitize the dirtiest corner in your house because it kills EVERYTHING.

Please include attribution to TermLifeInsurance.org with this graphic.