New recipe I'm working on...

Grain-free pop-overs.  The first go round was great on crust, but the inside was not perfect, so I have more baking to do, but here's a teaser.  (ignore the awful backsplash, we just moved to a new place and it's kind of a fixer upper!)








**** EDITED TO ADD*****

Well, since it's taking FOREVER for me to tinker more, and it seems like every time I think I'll have time it's 100 degrees in my house so I don't want the oven on, I figured I'd post the recipe so far.  I'll adjust it more when I get time, and post again.  So anyway, here it is!

Grain-free Popovers:
3 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 c mozzarella cheese
2 c tapioca flour
3T olive oil (I'm thinking this should be one or two tablespoons, but I haven't had a chance to try it yet)
1/2 t salt

Put mozzarella in a food processor and process until it's fairly finely chopped.  Add eggs, milk, olive oil and salt.  Process again.  Add tapioca flour in small portions and mix until thoroughly blended.  I then baked them at 425 for 10 min and then dropped the temperature to 350 for 40 minutes, but I was thinking it might be better to drop it to 325 for a bit longer... but the lower amount of oil might take care of this problem on it's own.  So there it is!  Please let me know how that went, if you try it!

DIY Montessori Globe

Last week was my kids' last week of school at their tiny montessori school.  We can't afford next year's tuition for my kids, so I am officially starting homeschooling now.  I'd like to keep within the montessori style mostly because I LOVE the montessori math curriculum.  It's just so brilliant!  Also because my kids are just sort of used to that style now.  I'm not married to the rest of the curriculum, though I do like it.


Anyway, I was scouting out Michaels' looking for ideas for things and came across this globe:

It's just a small (maybe 5 inch diameter or so?),  presumably paper-on-cardboard globe that has just light brown for the land parts, though it has some darker and lighter areas to show the mountains and such, as well as the names of the various countries and borders drawn in black.  The kids saw it immediately and were all excited to have their own globe at home, and my immediate thought was "hey, I could make this all sorts of montessori!"... and it cost me all of $1.

This project was super easy.  All you need is permanent markers in the appropriate colors and then carefully color in each continent. I think if you didn't want to see all the borders and country names, you could probably use paint pens, but they're much more expensive and I sort of like being able to see what's underneath.  I already had the sharpie markers in the right colors, too, so that was lucky.

Colors you need:
Europe -  red
Asia -  yellow
Africa -  green
N. America -  orange
S. America - pink
Australia - brown

Antarctica did not need to be colored because it was pretty much white to begin with.

Vibram Five Fingers "Sprint" Review

I know there must be thousands of reviews of VFFs out there, by now, but I just thought I'd throw my input out there.  I've been running in my sprints (off and on, they're not my favorite at this point, but they were my first minimal footwear) for about 15 months.  Here's my take on it:

I will preface this by saying I've only tried two kinds of minimal shoes (at this point) for running - my VFF sprints and my Merrell Barefoot Pace Gloves.  Aside from that I've run completely without shoes, so that gives you an idea of my experience.  Generally I run 3-4 miles per run, although I've just signed up for a half-marathon, so I'm excited to see how my barefooting holds up!  I've worn my VFFs trail running, street running, and also for hiking/general walking, not to mention just casually.

Most people's first question is "what do they feel like??"  Well, they feel basically like wearing gloves on your feet.  They're not difficult to get on if you have any ability to move your toes, though there's a slight learning curve - the first couple times were a little weird and I needed to use my fingers to guide my smaller toes in, but now I'm pretty used to it and they slip on easily.  The fabric is thin, about the thickness of the material in a woman's bathing suit, though not quite as stretchy.  Before I ordered them, I thought the pictures always looked a bit puffy, as if they're made out of maybe neoprene or something, so I was a little shocked to find this out when I received them.

I'll concede that probably some of the problems on here may, or even certainly do relate to the style (the "sprints" vs. other styles of VFF)

PRO:

• These shoes are very thin and flexible.  You can literally roll them right up.  Really easy to pack to take with you on vacation or whatever.
• When wearing them you can feel little bumps and rocks in the road, though not enough for it to be uncomfortable.  Still, a lot of ground feel, thus, very similar to barefoot - more similar to barefoot than my Merrell barefoot pace gloves.
• It's easy to spread my toes.
• They LOOK really cool and get asked about a lot.  This can be a con if you like to hide, but I kind of like the opportunity to enlighten people.  Sometimes their faces look horrified and they say "WHAT IS ON YOUR FEET?" though and I reply with sort of a meek "uh... shoes?" but that usually leads into a discussion of how they feel and why I would wear such a thing and whatnot.  

CON:

• Though the toes fit my toes well, occasionally they twist when I'm running and feel sort of funny (not a huge issue, but I do squirm my feet around while running once this happens and lose focus)
• I'm not a huge fan of the velcro.  It sticks to things sometimes (like if it's in a bag with other stuff), and occasionally it cuts in/chafes my skin if I haven't worn them in a while.  I'm considering trying one of the types of VFF that is a bit more like a sneaker.
• The heel slides down, but when I pull it up, the sides cut into my ankles and are uncomfortable.  I think it's possible that I should downsize, but here's a picture of what I mean: 

down

up

             See how the blue velcro is touching the top of the sole in the first picture (and not in the     second)?  That is a bit annoying while running.  I noticed that the newer style they've made        some changes to this part of the shoe, so it's possible that that is no longer an issue.  I do know         that in other VFF styles, the heel cup is more like a sneaker, which would fix this issue entirely, I expect.

•    The infamous VFF stench.  Funny because the first couple months of using them I didn't really get much of the stench... but oh boy, yes, now I get it.  And ew.  It's possible that they've managed to fix this in the past year, too... 
• This is minor since these have so much ground feel, but running in them is still different from running barefoot.  If you only ever run in minimal shoes, you should give completely barefoot a try if for no other reason than to see the difference.  I mean, these are *really* minimal and I can feel rocks and stuff through them, and it's still somewhat different than running completely barefoot.
• My last complaint is that these don't have enough grip on the bottom.  They only have thin little razor slices in them.  I'll admit that this is completely due to the style.  Other ones have more grip... and honestly more grip, I assume, would result in less ground-feel, but these are not shoes I would recommend for a lot of trail running.  They slide in mud... not exactly what you would want for a trail run.  If you're set on VFFs for trail running (which I was), definitely check out some of the other styles with more grippy bottoms.  Totally would be worth it, and again, I'm seriously contemplating getting those.

Anyway, so that's it!  Would I buy sprints again?  Hmm... I think they'd be great water shoes or for water sports, definitely.  For me, however, I would prefer something with less velcro and with a better heel cup/collar.

Family Harmony

fightless, whineless tv zombies

So, this week was the kids' week-off for spring break.  I have to admit, I was terrified.  They wear me out just in the hours they are home from school.  This is how I usually deal with their fighting and whining:

1. Turn on TV. 
2. Enjoy fightless, whineless tv zombies.
3. Berate self for not being a "better" mother.
4. Rinse, repeat.

Pretty sure I'm not the only one.  However, this week I promised myself I was going to do better.  Private school is expensive and I am hoping (perhaps to my own detriment) to homeschool them next year, since I'm not that thrilled with their private school, either.  I decided we would have a no-tv week, to try and practice/prepare for homeschooling.

My first plan, to compensate, was to start them on a bunch of chores, to give them a sense of ownership in our house, so a couple days ago we sat down and talked about what  chores they'd like to do and came up with way too many for them to be expected to do daily, so I scheduled it out over the course of a week.  My kids are 6, nearly 5, and 2, so we had to scale back a bit from the grand chore scheme they had come up with.  I made sure that the chores they had were age appropriate things that I knew they could do (and had done in the past).  I wrote the chores on a chalkboard, and change the chores daily (except make bed and help clean up, those stay).  It seems to be going well so far,  but I was still getting a lot of whining and fighting.  That would be when I came up with something sort of strange and shockingly simple out of the blue.  It could be something brilliant, but possibly it only works with my kids... or possibly only for a few days, we shall see, but so far it's worked beautifully.

So, what is it??  WHAT???

I realized what we needed wasn't my screaming at them to stop screaming at each other.  This seems like a no-brainer, but this is what it had come to in our household.  What we needed, I thought, was some way to impress upon them that when they're whining, or arguing for the sake or arguing, or whatever, it was ruining something that could be great.  It was ruining our family harmony.  So we sat down and I defined "family harmony" to them and talked about how great it would be if we all worked together and had some wonderful family harmony.  They agreed that it would be awesome.  So then I explained that family harmony is something we all have to work on.  If we all just argue for the sake of arguing, or start screaming when someone does something we don't like instead of discussing it reasonably, we'd never have any family harmony.  Beyond that, sometimes we have to actually compromise, that is, do something you don't WANT to do or not get everything YOUR way every time, just for the sake of family harmony.  I pointed out times that I had done it in the past, and times that I recall that they had compromised and things went more smoothly than other times when they didn't.  We have discussed compromise before, but only from an individual perspective... not from the family harmony angle.  So after a nice long discussion about family harmony, I asked them if they thought we could all work toward this this week.  They seemed sort of excited at the prospect!

Since that discussion, whenever they start fighting or whining (with the older two, the 2 yr old still doesn't get it, of course), I go to them and say "but, is this worth fighting over or is family harmony more important?"  or "do you think you can compromise on this one for family harmony's sake?" or something along those lines.  The kids are responding astonishingly well.  There's only been a couple times when we had to figure something else out, but *gasp* I actually had the energy to work with them on it because I wasn't so exhausted from dealing with all the fighting!  I'm thrilled!  I totally have my fingers crossed that this will work long-term.

Hope that helps someone else.

Elana's Cinnamon Bun Muffins (and transformation to paleo "mug" recipe)

I have a new favorite go-to sweet: the Cinnamon Bun Muffin from Elana's Pantry! I made them this morning (without the frosting) and my kids gobbled them up. OMG, they're so good. I prefer to use honey in place of agave and melted butter in place of the oil she uses, though, but I'm sure they're wonderful the way the recipe is written, too. Look at the texture! It's so nice to get a nice fluffy muffin when using no xanthan gum or gluten. Gotta love that... and it's technically "primal" though if you use a different oil (probably would be fabulous with coconut oil) you could call it paleo, though I'd warn you against basing much of your paleo/primal diet on this because of how much honey is in it.

I've even tweaked the recipe to be one of the wonderful "mug" recipes - instant microwave gratification! Here's my tweak of the recipe:

Mug Muffin:

2 Tbl butter, melted
1 Tbl (or so) honey
1 egg
1 tsp of vanilla
1/3 c almond flour
2 tsp coconut flour
a pinch of baking soda
a pinch of salt

Mix the wet ingredients together (make sure the melted butter is not hot before you put in the egg!), then add the dry ingredients. Mix well, and then microwave it for 1 1/2-3 minutes or until the top looks no longer squishy/wet. I'm sure it'll depend on the microwave.

Topping:
1 tbl butter cut into pieces
a drizzle of honey
a sprinling of cinnamon

While the mug muffin is still hot, put the butter pieces on top and let them melt. If they're not melting very well, you can put it back in the microwave for 10 seconds or so. Drizzle on honey to taste, then sprinkle with cinnamon to taste. Enjoy with a spoon while warm!

Let's talk birthdays!

Since the last post I made, we have discovered that the milk intolerence I discussed previously was actually caused by a gluten intolerance. How, you may ask, did we find this? Welllllll... my husband found out he had an autoimmune disease and it was recommended that we cut gluten for him. Turns out it made a huge difference in his pain levels, so we have kept it, ever since. SO, for a while we were dairy-free AND gluten (and most grains) free. Six months later, I decide to take the plunge and try out the paleo/primal diet, for health reasons. Within A WEEK, my anxiety went away and most of my depression symptoms. I was shocked, but obviously thrilled. Sure enough, if I have more than a bite or two of something containing gluten, I get anxiety and insomnia for the next few days.

Of course, after that, we sort of automatically started cutting out most of the gluten for the kids. Then, after a couple months of being mostly gluten free, Oliver (my older son with the supposed dairy issue) is handed a couple pieces of cheese (uh, by me - total mommy fail), but NOTHING HAPPENED. We were shocked and assumed it was a fluke and continued with our dairy-free lifestyle for several more months before we decided to try him on the dairy again. It seems that being gluten-free can heal up the "leaky gut" enough so that the dairy no longer bothers him. The weird thing is that it takes more than one dose of gluten to get much of an effect, but used to only take a tiny bit of dairy. Anyway, so now we're mostly grain-free (I've found that most non-gluten grains bloat me terribly), and not dairy free, though I've become fairly adept at dairy-free cooking since we were dairy AND gluten-free for almost a year!

So, anyway, I'm sure you're all wondering where this is going. My second son (third child), Avery, had his second birthday last weekend! I made wonderful "triple chocolate cupcakes" from Elana Amsterdam's "Gluten-Free Cupcakes" book. I love her site, too. TONS of grain-free recipes that *gasp* actually taste good! Who knew you could get complements from grain-eaters saying "Well, I could go gluten-free if it was all going to be like this!" Needless to say, it was well worth the purchase of that book. Highly recommend.

Last summer, for Oliver's birthday, however, I was in the midst of trying to be gluten AND dairy free. That's when a bit of magic happened! I received my copy of Martha Stewart Living and on the cover was a fun, spectacular, beautiful cake! And it happened to be DAIRY AND GRAIN FREE!! I had to go for it, of course. Turns out it's also delicious and totally worth the time and effort. FYI, if you make this cake, don't use huge papayas. I used like 1/2 of one papaya's juice and it was too much and made that layer a bit too icy, but the other layers I made were wonderfully light and creamy. Delicious!

Montessori websites

Ok, I realize this blog kind of jumps around a lot, and I really haven't had tons of time to update frequently, but with three kids under 6, it happens. Anyway, I'd like to do a montessori based homeschooling with my kids, so I've been looking up montessori information. Figured I'd post it here so that I don't lose it. :)

http://homemademontessori.blogspot.com/
http://montessorird.com/index2.php?cPath=1
http://www.montessoriforlearning.com/FreeDownloadIndex.html