My mom and I spent the weekend chatting nutrition and drinking green barley juice. It was a good weekend. The weekend began at dd’s. We chatted a bit of nutrition too. But it really all began for me almost a week before.

It happened early last week. The counter and sink were covered with that green, staining fine powder. Mr. 3yo dumped the last 10 or more servings of my BarleyLife. No chance to salvage. Counter was damp, as well as sink, making a couple of really big globs of green barley paste. It is a good thing the countertop is already green, and sink is stainless steel. But it was hard not to cry as it washed down the drain. I could have had a sink full of juice. I hate good food to go to waste (like the 10+ pounds of brown rice that had to be thrown away last month because it had bugs.)

I haven’t been drinking BarleyLife all that often lately. We’ve been doing really good making fresh juice daily, so I’ve only made the BarleyLife occasionally. Evidently I’ve been making it enough though that Mr. 3yo decided that day he could make his own. I knew we were heading out of town this weekend, and didn’t plan to take the juicer since I figured I had enough BarleyLife left to cover it. –Until Mr. 3yo. Oh well, we could take the juicer.

I ordered more BarleyLife, expecting it to be here when we got back. It actually arrived before we left. I went ahead and got Just Carrots and RediBeets too, (powdered carrot and beet juices,) even though I don’t use them as much. Then I hid them all from Mr. 3yo and told him mommy would make it when he wants some.

I placed a Wholefood Farmacy order too. The convenience would have been nice for the trip. But that order arrived late Friday afternoon - after we left early Friday afternoon. So instead, the children loaded the cooler with dried apples, apricots, and dates, raw almonds, cashews, pecans, and filberts, grapes and bananas. I packed a couple gallons distilled water. I figured there wasn’t any chance of a blizzard, but if there was, we’d be ready to be stranded!

Here’s this car packed with all the nutrition we need for a great weekend - and what do we do? Head to Chuck E Cheese’s. Where does dh get these ideas - or was it the kids? The pop was no temptation (not even at my daughter’s later when she offered Cherry 7-Up, my only real pop temptation). But I succumbed to pizza after my salad. Oh well, we had a great time visiting with dd and family.

The next day we went to my mom’s and she was happy to chat nutrition. She’s been taking liquid chlorophyll for a few months at the recommendation of my sister. (Her Dr. had put her on iron for low blood levels and she immediately quit it after my sister talked to her.) She just had her blood recheck, and her levels were back up and pronounced OK. Praise to God for His natural foods ways.

She also told me she wasn’t drinking her BarleyMax. She was excited to have it, and the Hallelujah Acres resources, but just couldn’t get into drinking the BarleyMax. I had her try the BarleyLife. She liked it better. She also tried the beet juice powder in her BarleyMax and said that would do the trick for her. She could drink it that way and would order some beet juice powder. I had also suggested stevia powder, but she hadn’t bought any of that yet, and I didn’t have any with me.

It was an encouragement to me to be in a situation where I could encourage my mom. Mom doesn’t make all healthy choices (but — neither do I - the pizza - oh, and the cherry cheesecake dd made for other dd’s 16th birthday while we were there, and the …) But mom is open and interested to learn. I was encouraged that she has my sister looking for a good used juicer for her.

I’m also glad she grabbed the onion. Mom always has plenty of onions. I was glad I’d stopped for some raw honey and some lemons at the store. I’m also glad (and hope she is too) that she learned my adaptation to grandma’s recipe.

Mostly I’m glad for a chance to sit down and chat with my mom - and with my grown dd. Chatting nutrition was just a bonus for my soul. And doing it over a glass of BarleyLife a bonus for my body.

I just heard the latest. “They” are now saying, “Don’t give your children cough syrup.” Hmm, haven’t I been saying such things for years? But I’m sure my reasonings are not the same as theirs, nor my solutions.

Oct. 11, ‘07 - “the voluntary withdrawal of oral infant cough and cold medications from store shelves.” Oct. 18-19, ‘07 - An advisory committee “voted to recommend to FDA that cough and cold active ingredients should no longer be available for use in children under six-years-old.”

Anyhow, the news didn’t affect me in the least. I haven’t bought or given my children OTC cough syrup for decades. But I thought if any of you did, you might want to know my grandma’s recipe. She wasn’t a big herbalist or anything, so there’s nothing unusual in this recipe. It’s easy enough for anyone to get the ingredients and anyone to make.

My mom was raised on it herself, and used it for her 7 children. She found it especially helpful for my older sister who has bad asthma that the doctors didn’t diagnose right away back then. And I’ve used for our 10 children when we’ve needed it.

It’s onion syrup, and it does a great job of cutting through the phlem and soothing the cough. This weekend, after a night at Chuck E Cheese’s while we are on the road, a couple of my children started coughing at grandma’s house. She pulled out the onion and started chopping. Here’s how.

Slice one large onion into a stainless steel sauce pan. Cover with raw honey - a cup or more. Put the lid on the pan and heat on a very low burner. Stir occasionally. How long? Hmm, good qustion. Until it’s done? The honey will turn to the thin liquid. The onions will get limp and transparent - and the fragrance will fill the house. I figure the aroma begins the healing benefits before you even consume the syrup. Anyhow, a couple hours maybe? Maybe less, maybe more. Let it cool enough to take. Take a couple tablespoons full. You can keep it in a sealed container - glass jar with lid or Tupperware. If you won’t use it all up right away, you can store it in the refrigerator as is, or you can strain the onions out an keep in the cupboard for a while. Especially if you refrigerate, reheat gently, until a warm thin syrup, before taking each time. You may be able to heat it enough just by putting the container in hot water. If you don’t refrigerate and don’t have time to rewarm it each time, just use as is.

At home I generally will add fresh lemon juice too, either to the batch after it is cooled or just to the individual dose. When we aren’t able to cook the onion syrup, or if we’re dealing with a sore throat and not cough, we just mix raw honey and fresh lemon juice. If even that can’t be done, if we’re somewhere else, I just take a spoonful of honey and add a drop or two of therapeutic-grade Lemon essential oil.

I hope you find these beneficial real foods helpful when your family needs a health boost.

This week I’ve been teaching dd15 how to make sewing patterns. So far she has made her slopers. It’s kept her practical application of math up with all the division, addition, subtraction and measuring.

It is really quite simple to make your own patterns. I’m not sure why more sew-ers don’t do it. Once you have your basic sloper, all you have to do is make any variation you can think of. Perhaps it more has to do with envisioning the finished project. Perhaps it’s just plain easier to follow old habits. I’m sure that is what it has been a lot of the time for me.

I have 2 different pattern making book sets. One is from the European School of Design. Our oldest dd and I took a class, when she was a teen, from someone who came to our town. That was many years ago, pre-internet days, and I haven’t found these books online. They promoted the Lutterloh system, but that isn’t the books I got.

The other is from Sew with Sarah. I got them a few years ago to learn more, (since I’d done very little with the first ones,) when I wanted to design some maternity and nursing clothes. I’ve got the Quick and Easy Pattern Making . She has several websites, but that is the best link I’ve found for ordering this online in either download format or in print. There are links to her other books there too. I plan to get the one for making children’s patterns.

I’m looking forward to getting dd into this as she is SO creative. I think once she gets started she will love it.

Just because fruits and veggies are so Good for You - Naturally!

I’ll replace the embedded video with a link in a few days, since the videos always mess up my blog formatting, and I don’t know how to fix it.

What you won’t find on our webpages is a lot of recommendations for "nutritional products". We believe nutrient rich real whole FOOD is your best "health product." However, there are a couple of real whole foods besides those you find in your typical grocery store that we think are worth mentioning.

They aren’t necessary to a Good for You-Naturally! eating plan at all though. We really aren’t trying to sell you anything you don’t want. We only mention them because we truly think they are great foods and many of you are looking for some convenience - at least some of the time. That’s all they are, convenience when you want it, that doesn’t violate the Good for You-Naturally! principles.

Both of these foods are raw G.O.D. foods (God’s Original Diet - raw fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds), packaged for convenience. Throw them in your bag and go. No prep. Easy to take. Easy to eat. Great tasting.

Today I’ll tell you about our NEW one. And I’ll recap our other one another day.

Wholefood Farmacy

Super convenient - great tasting - affordable - living wholefoods - delivered to your door from the Wholefood Farmacy! What more could you ask for?!!

We don’t recommend health "convenience foods", most are just overpriced a-little-better-than-junk-food. They aren’t really Good for You-Naturally! But these are organic, raw G.O.D. foods, just conveniently packaged for when you’re on the go. - Check it out here!

Browse around the site. I primarily went seeking them out for their Phi mixes. I’m familiar with the developer of them and have been enjoying them (by a different name) for many years. Be sure to visit the site sometime when you have time to watch the video. Even just the first half of it, which is not on Wholefood Farmacy.

OK, that may be soda for you non-midwesterners - or is it "soft drink". Well, if you don’t know it yet, soft drinks aren’t soft on your body.

"Drinking just one soft drink a day — whether diet or regular — may boost your risk of getting heart disease, a new study shows. That is because a soda habit increases the risk of developing a condition called metabolic syndrome, according to the new research, and that in turn boosts the chance of getting both heart disease and diabetes. "Even one soda per day increases your risk of developing metabolic syndrome by about 50 percent," says Ramachandran Vasan, MD, professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and the senior author of the study, published in the July 31 issue of the American Heart Association’s journal Circulation." source

I believe that the way God designed the foods He gave to man to nourish his body is perfect. I don’t believe man can improve in any way on it.

I don’t believe that "nutritional products" are what man needs to be healthy. I don’t like gimmicks that try to promote processed/ adulterated foods or non-foods as healthy.  I don’t think good nutrition is based on strange or special, secret foods. And I also don’t believe that eating what’s Good for You needs to be expensive. Good for You - Naturally! is a far cry from buying your potato chips and microwave dinners at the health food store.

Good for You - Naturally! is whole foods nutrition based on G.O.D., God’s Original Diet (as opposed to S.A.D., Standard American Diet.) Good for You - Naturally! is an eating lifestyle based on raw fruits, raw vegetables, raw nuts and raw seeds - and plenty of pure water. We, like most people, add to this (as God Himself did), but this is the foundation for eating Good for You - Naturally!

~~~~ So why am about to recommend a food "product"? Because most people don’t believe anything can be convenient or easy without coming in a bag or a can - or is that plastic tub now? And many people are willing to pay for convenience. Well, many people don’t realize that they are paying for convenience, they just don’t know their is another way - that really isn’t inconvenient either. And there is a food that doesn’t violate any of the Good for You - Naturally! principles, yet is totally convenient.

It most likely will not be for all of you - all the time. But it most certainly will be for some of you - all the time, for some of you - some of the time — perhaps for some of you -  none of the time.

Stay tuned for our announcement.

- for God that is.

2 years ago our family went to family camp and I met Stacey McDonald. It was a real treat, since we enjoyed her book Raising Maidens of Virtue, and we have long been subscribers of Homeschooling Today magazine, even long before McDonald’s had it. (It is now ran by others, including Jim Bob Howard, that we know from R.C. Sproul, Jr.’s ministry.) Anyhow, I really enjoyed Stacey’s talks at camp.

Many years ago I was also introduced to Jennie Chancey, through her writings and the ladiesagainstfeminism website.

The two have teamed up to write Passionate Housewives Desperate for God: Fresh Vision for the Hopeful Homemaker. I just got the press release this week, but the book is scheduled to be released Nov. 1.

I’m looking forward to reading it. Hope you are too. Here’s a link to get  a free trial issue of Homeschooling Today too.

Passionate Housewives Desperate for God: Fresh Vision for the Hopeful Homemaker By Jennie Chancey & Stacy McDonald / Vision Forum

Raising Maidens of Virtue: A Study of Feminine Loveliness for Mothers and Daughters By Stacy McDonald / The Vision Forum, Inc Do you want your daughter to cherish her purity and honor God by the chaste and lovely way she presents herself? Through stories, conversational teachings, illustrations, and memory-making projects, Raising Maidens of Virtue covers topics such as guarding the tongue, idleness, sibling relationships, honoring parents, contentment, modesty, purity, cleanliness, and feminine beauty.

I’ve added a new Resources and Recommendations page in our from me ~ Beyond Babies section. It’s called Family Fun and includes Books, Audio Books, Games and Videos our family enjoys.

Check it out here.

Also all pages under the from me section have been updated - but not all have new info added :-/ I only have so many hours in a day, just like you.

Here’s a partial list of some of my favorite parenting type books over the years.  The top four I’ve read recent enough that I’d still give them a top recommendation. The other’s have all been among my top recommendations in the past, but its been varying lengths of time since I’ve read them. I think I’d still give them a high recommendation, but don’t know for sure if they’d still be in my all-time TOP PICKS. You can read my book review of Romancing Your Child’s Heart here.

• Bound for Glory by RC Sproul, Jr.
• Teach Them Diligently by Lou Priolo
• Withhold Not Correction by Bruce Ray
• Child Training Tips by Reb Bradley
• Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Ted Tripp
• Romancing Your Child’s Heart by Monte Swan
• Hints on Child Training by Trumbull
• What the Bible Says About Child Training by Richard Fugate

Enter the name of the book (or author) in this box and see if it is currently available through Me and My House minsitries:

Search: Title Author/Artist ISBN CBD Stock # Keywords Publisher