Halloween Hangover, anyone?

Is there such thing as a sugar hangover? 

Well, let's see... 

Alcohol and sugar act similarly on your system, creating a blood sugar high followed by a blood sugar low.  If you don't stop the cycle, you crave more and nothing else appeals to the palate.  Overindulgence in either pulls water from your cells (dehydration), though with sugar you get simultaneous dehydration and bloating- know that feeling?  Both tax the immune system and prevent your body from fully utilizing available vitamins and minerals.

So in my opinion, yes.  Halloween Hangover is real.  And it sets you up to reach for those candy leftovers again and again (especially at about 10 am, 3:30 pm, and 9 pm).  Right up until a few days before Thanksgiving when they run out.  And after that, 'the holidays' take over. 

January 1, everyone's holiday adrenaline crashes.  Bodies realize they've been running on fumes for at least 6 weeks, and cold and flu season sets in with a vegeance. 

Wow, Maureen, thanks for painting the most wonderful time of the year with such bleak strokes!!!

While other mommy bloggers are laying out plans for homemade Christmas cards and tree ornaments, hand-knit scarfs for everyone on the block (and their dogs), and recipes for artery clogging, brain-fog-inducing treats, I'm drwaing up battle plans to defend your little darlings from invading viral forces.

So, fellow mothers and health-food freaks, here's the plan:

1) Throw out any remaining Halloween candy.  You can utilize a magical falsehood we like to call "The Sugar Fairy."  You leave aaaaaaaall your extra candy on the front porch at night and she flies by to pick it up before sunrise.  She takes the candy to her home in the woods and uses the sugar to spin snowflakes for the upcoming winter.  (We do this the night of Halloween and there's no more candy.  They get 10 pieces each.  This year Rosie and Isaiah didn't even make it through their 10 before choosing to stop due to feeling sick.  John Paul, on the other hand, ate all his and had a wild night.)

2) Remember that Vitamin C you stocked up on after reading my last post on whooping cough?  Utilize it.  You might not believe Vitamin C therapy is for real- bully for you.  But I've seen it work too  many times to scoff.  I don't use high levels of Vitamin C on a regular basis, but in high-stress situations, I don't hesitate.  ("Holiday diets," ie moose tracks, candy canes, and sugar cookies, are a nutritional stress on your body and its reaction is the same as to any stress: increased need for Vitamin C and increased production of stress hormones.)  The protocol is simple.  Take it and give it to your little people until you see loose stools, then back off a bit.  A gram is plenty to start with for wee ones; increase from there.  An adult under stress might need 10 grams or more before seeing loose stools.

3) Take your own homemade dessert to any and all functions you attend between October and January.  Apple Crisp is my little people's favorite.  Some all natural "soy whip" might be in order if I need to distract them from the mountains of brightly-colored crap also on the table.  (Recipe forthcoming, io prometto.)  Worst case scenario, you didn't bring your own dessert, eat a big healthy meal before you eat 1 or 2 servings of your FAVORITE THING- cheesecake or death by chocolate in my case.  Carry mint tea bags or really strong peppermints or brush your teeth after that to help you limit your sweet intake. 

4) Herbs and vitamins.  In a perfect world, all our nutrition would come through our totally balanced, mostly raw, fruit-and-veggie-ful diet.  In the real world, we need an insurance policy for 'sugar season.'  That's why I'm extra careful with vitamins and herbs during the winter months.  And there are, apparantly, a plethora of winter months up here in Nebraska.  *Sigh*.

Come back by tomorrow and I'll have a list of my favorite ready-made herbal and vitamin products up for you.  That is, those of you who procrastinated and didn't make up multiple batches of elderberry syrup and rasperry-licorice-cinnamon tincture!


"Buddy: We elves try to stick to the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corns, and syrup!"
-Elf, the movie

Pump Up Your Oatmeal

For the record, my husband doesn't like this oatmeal.  My little people, though, loooooove it, and so do I.  So experiment at your own risk!

We use either rolled or steel-cut oats, soaked and cooked in our usual manner.  Then, in a bowl, we crack an unwashed farm egg and whip it with some hemp or sunflower or almond milk till light and frothy, then we dump in the oatmeal and stir till it is thoroughly combined.  Pop the bowl in the microwave for 1 minute, then top with raisins and cinammon, or fresh berries, and more milk.  You can, of course, drizzle on some raw honey or agave nectar.  See how mcuh they like this?

This is a great way to sneak some protein into your little people's breakfast, if they abhor a scrambled egg, an almond, or anything like that before 11 am, like mine do.  They call this oatmeal pudding, and I think it would be delicious to add carob powder or raw cacao powder to make a chocolate oatmeal pudding, too!

"Never work before breakfast; if you have to work before breakfast, eat your breakfast first. "
~Josh Billings

Tips for Picky Eaters

I learned a lot about feeding picky eaters from my grandmother. When my oldest was a toddler, she would cut his food up into tiny bites, put it on a dessert plate and stick some toothpicks into some of the pieces. It never failed to amaze me how much more he enjoyed eating with little helps like that.

Over the years I have developed a set of strategies to use with my picky eaters. (My children tend to be pickiest when their allergies are acting up, most notably hay season in the fall and early blooming season in the spring.)

-Problem foods don't live here. For my kids, that means store-bought crackers never come home in our shopping bags. For other children it might mean a long fast from cheese or cow's milk... I know some kids who will literally scream for cheese or milk when other foods are served. These foods might be allowed away from home, when eating with friends. But since the bulk of anyone's eating happens at home, simply excluding 'addictive' foods from your kitchen can be really helpful in avoiding fights over them.

(Is this cruel? That's what many people think. But I don't think so. When my kids ask for crackers I don't say "no," I say, "we don't have any." No yelling, no bickering. And generally kids will eat when they get hungry. I don't think it hurts a child to refuse to eat while figuring out that mom really means there's no cheese in the house.

-Reasonable portioning. When our oldest was a toddler, my husband thought he didn't eat enough. We were putting food on a dinner plate for him and my husband would get upset when he didn't finish. I started serving his food in small portions on a dessert plate and then he would ask for seconds! Don't serve food to little people on big people plates. Use salad plates for 5 or 6-12 year olds; dessert plates for 1-4 or 5 year olds.

Portions for children: If you serve yourself 1 cup of raw carrots, serve 1/4 cup to small children. If you eat a whole pb&j, maybe serve your child 1/4 to 1/2 a sandwich. They will always ask for seconds if they want more! For instance, the newest dietary recommendations for a 2-3 year old: 3 ounces grains (1/2c rice, 1/2c oatmeal, 1 slice bread), 16 ounces milk (or equivalent dairy), 2 ounces meat (1 egg and 1Tablespoon pb), 1c fruit, 1c veggies, and 3t fat (butter, salad dressing, etc). This is not that much food. You add extra servings for extra-active kids, like mine!!!

-Always let the child shop with you. Even if your child is a terror in the grocery store! Take him or her and let him or her choose a couple bright fruits and veggies to try. If your child screams for cookies when walking down that aisle, it may need to be an extra trip you take with your children, after the basic shopping is done. Go straight to the produce and only shop there. But I'd rather put in this type of positive effort than fight at the table, myslef. It's about teaching lifelong habits and developing good health habits, too. Hassle? Yes. Worth the work? Yes.

-Make food fun. Tiny bites, eating with toothpicks or chopsticks, using an icecube tray or other snack tray like this trayfor individual bits of food, cookie cutters in your child's favorite shapes, and the like seem time-consuming and annoying, but it pays off.

This

is not a bento box, but a baby-food storage tray. We have repurposed it into an AWESOME nibble tray/ toddler bento box. It is made by the company BEABA and I'll be doing a full review next week. (It's lid is water tight!)

Hobby Lobby usually has sturdy cutters for 50 cents or a dollar. Let your picky eaters each choose a couple, for apple slices, sandwiches, cucumber, etc. Also, Amazon sells this setof super-fun shape cutters great for bananas, zucchini, carrots, apples, you name it.

-Let yourself and your children get hungry. Again, some mamas think this is 'mean,' but I totally disagree, and this comes from a very gentle-discipline sort of mother. Go to the park or take a loooong walk with a big water bottle, but no snacks, while your lentil casserole cooks in the crock pot. It is AMAZING how much better food tastes when you are REALLY hungry!

-Let the children 'cook.' Here is Rosie sprinkling "cheese" (nutritional yeast)

on her homemade personal pizza. She rolled the bread dough out, spread the sauce and ground beef, and after cooking decorated it with "cheese." She ate every bite! Your little person might like to cut lettuce with scissors for the salad, sprinkle nuts or seeds on the oatmeal, use cookie cutters on their sandwiches or toast, etc. Have them stir the ingredients into the granola, push the buttons on the blender, anything they want to help with!

(I recently purchased John Paul a set of train silverware for his meals because we're low on kid forks and he loves them. Silly things like this really help a 2 year old try new foods, in my experience.)

I'd love to hear YOUR tricks for picky eaters! Leave a comment and get entered in the drawing for some fun lunch tools at the end of April.


"How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young?"
-Paul Sweeney

What's for Lunch??

I have a pretty limited lunch repertoire, to be honest. Yes, our diets need variety, but on the other hand, we mothers need sanity. And though I love food, sometimes it makes me nearly hyperventilate to start another meal juuuuuust as I finish cleaning up breakfast! So as long as lunch is healthy and whole food, there’s no need to stress, in my opinion, if raw carrots are the lunch veggie of choice for days on end. And some kids really like routine. Mine do. ( If I try to serve something other than oatmeal for breakfast Monday through Friday, the frowns are very serious.)

In fact, in addition to eating oats EVERY MORNING for breakfast, they would be happy to eat pb&j for lunch EVERY DAY. However, I don’t think peanuts, even organic ones, and wheat, even organic wheat, need to be on the menu every day. So I reaaaaally try to stay out of the lunch rut. I definitely need a few easy lunches. Ok, at least more than 1!!!

So here’s my list of easy lunches that work well as lunch-on-the-go or lunch at home around the table:

-PB&J on whole grain bread (organic pb with no sugar or oil added, no-sugar added fruit spread or raw honey or sliced banana) with raw veggie of choice (cucumber and carrot are our faves) and fruit

-Hot dog octopuses (organic, grass-fed, uncured hot dogs, Applegate Farms is the best) with onigiri (rice balls, a traditional Japanese lunch food) and veggie of choice (edamame, cucumber, carrot, broccoli) and fruit

-Hummus with wasa or other whole grain cracker, veggies and fruit

-Ham roses (uncured chemical-free variety, of course) on a bed of spinach, ranch for dipping, fruit and crackers

-Tuna salad (my kids have a love-hate relationship with tuna salad…) with crackers or toast, fruit and veggie

-Marinated tofu with bread 'n butter, fruits and veggies

Fillers: a few raw nuts, a scoop of granola, some raisins or dried papaya, a single dark chocolate

That gets you through a whole week of cold lunches! That’s pretty good, in my opinion. Lots of weeks we will have soup or leftovers for a lunch, so not all of these lunches get made every week. And like I said, some weeks we have the old PB&J more than once!

Here is my kids other favorite lunch, the hot dog octopus lunch (see how nicely that allows you to avoid nasty old hot dog buns?), from a plate to the ECOlunchboxes Three-in-One lunch box:

(That’s a big lunch for little people who’ve been running in the canyon all morning!)

The ECOlunchbox didn’t look big enough to hold it all, but it did.

To make the hot dog octopuses, cut each dog in half, then make (2) 1" slits up from the cut end. Boil in water for 5 minutes and the tentacles will curl right up! At this point a Japanese mother would deocrate the octopuses with eyes and such... but for this lazy American mama, the sea creatures are straight-up done at this point.

Come back tomorrow for a full review of the ECOlunchboxes Three-in-One lunch cube.


"Above all, the child must be well-fed."
-Charlotte Mason

Magical Rice Tea

I originally got this "recipe" from a midwife, during my 2nd pregnancy. I came down with a stomach virus 7 months pregnant and became so dehydrated that contractions began. My midwife told me to drink this tea and if it didn't stop the contractions and rehydrate me in 1 hour, to head to the hospital for an IV.

Thankfully, it worked. And it has worked every time I've tried it since.

(My mother-in-law has confirmed that this same 'tea' is used in Mexico for vomiting, diarhhea, and stomach upset.)

This last week we all had a stomach virus, a 24-hour but very violent one. My husband insisted on 7-Up and Gatorade, but the children would take a sip of 7-Up and their poor little stomachs would just convulse in a big "NO THANK YOU." It was gross.

So, thankfully, I remembered the rice tea, and if I may say, this stuff is as close to magic as I've ever seen. I myself was considering going to the hospital for an IV, but this tea again saved me. Every sip settled my digestive tract a bit further on. It also completely and immediately banished the abdominal bloating that accompanied the bug. My daughter who coudn't keep anything down for 12 hours took 1 sip and proceeded to drink a whole quart.

Rice is one of the few foods recommended for stomach bug recovery- bananas, rice, applesauce, toast- the BRAT diet, if you've ever heard of it.

Rice Tea for Digestive Tract Distress of Any Type
1/2 cup brown rice, well-rinsed
8-10 cups water

Combine in pan and bring to a boil, turn down heat and boil gently for 30-50 minutes, until liquid is semi-opaque. (I am at high altitude and it only takes 15-20 minutes.)

Strain. The rice can be used like porridge. My kids like it with strawberries and nut milk.

To drink, add stevia and vanilla to taste. I also add 4 drops ginger tincture per cup to help with nausea, or you can add a piece of ginger to the pot while cooking, but then your rice porridge will taste like ginger, too. Add a shake of natural sea salt if the drinker has been vomiting, to help with electrolyte balance.

That's it. Seriously. Another embarrassingly simple, but very helpful, recipe from BreadwithHoney.


"The power of love to change bodies is legendary, built into folklore, common sense, and everyday experience. Love moves the flesh, it pushes matter around.... Throughout history, "tender loving care" has uniformly been recognized as a valuable element in healing."
~Larry Dossey

P.S. I have my computer back, but my camera is lost! Pictures returning soon- I hope.

Vegetables in the Snow

It snowed.
It is snowing.
It will snow again.

A lot.

So much for all the locals predicting a dry winter!

I like snow on Christmas and on ski slopes. That's about it.

So nice to come home, just so... snowy.

I trekked back out in the snow to the grocery store. I can't handle it when my vegetable shelf is empty.

I went a bit nuts:

7 avocados
10 jewelled yams
3 heads of brocolli
2 pounds of carrots
3 enormous heads of garlic
2 extra large onions
3 heads of lettuce
a head of cabbage
a cucumber
a zucchini
a red bell pepper
and a huge butternut squash

And thank goodness mandarin oranges are in season!

Tomorrow we will eat a large portion of those veggies raw, with hummus.

I'm doing something with cabbage and jewelled yams for dinner.

What, that doesn't sound good to you?

You'll see!

And Tuesday I'm going to make something stew-ish or chicken pot pie-ish, depending on how I feel and how much time I spend unpacking.

"When the bold branches
Bid farewell to rainbow leaves -
Welcome wool sweaters."
~B. Cybrill

Baby Step #10: To Supplement or Not To Supplement: That is the Question

Everyone has an opinion. Of course, the ideal is to get all the vitamins and minerals one needs from one’s food, every day.

But the argument is that our food isn’t as nutrient-dense as it was even a hundred years ago. Our produce and grains are grown in depleted soil; our animals are full of synthetic hormones and antibiotics and who-knows-what-else. No one really knows if, even on a 100% organic diet, it is even possible to get the necessary nutrients for good health from food alone.

Then again, just like pharmaceuticals, vitamins are Big Business. Someone stands to gain by convincing you that popping pills (‘natural’ pills, this time…) is the solution to a poor modern food supply.

So- to supplement or not to supplement, that is the question.

Do you have plenty of energy for the things you want to do? Do you sleep well and feel fine once you drag yourself out of bed? Do you bounce back quickly from a bad day? Do you rarely experience cravings for junk food, candy, or coffee? Do you eat a wide variety of foods in as close to their natural state as possible? Do you get sick once a year or less and recover easily? Do your bowels move easily and regularly?

If you said yes to all of the above, then you may not need supplements. The main reason people supplement, and stick with it, is that they feel better with the supplements, and worse when they stop taking them. I, personally, will not go without my high-potency multi-vitamin. I have a (medically confirmed) chronic zinc deficiency, and I could never eat enough green peas to provide the zinc my body needs. So I have no qualms taking it in pill form. If you are against vitamins, and you feel good, that’s wonderful. I hope you are extremely careful to eat a balanced diet high in fruits and vegetables, and that you studiously avoid foods that rob your body of vitamins and minerals- caffeine, white sugar, and white flour.

If you answered ‘no’ to several of those questions and suspect that you could be helped by supplements, I suggest that you gather lots of information before buying a single bottle of anything. My most trusted source for supplement facts, what to take, and safe ceilings (maximum amounts) for all different vitamins and minerals, is Fertility, Cycles & Nutrition 4th Editionby Marilyn Shannon. The newest edition also contains safety data on many herbs and other ‘natural’ supplements. It is also the best source for safe supplementation during pregnancy and lactation.

Other resources I have used in designing my own safe, energy and health-promoting supplement regime are:

Rosemary Gladstar's Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health, this book is especially useful for people who are against all synthetic vitamins and want to enhance their health or overcome health issues using only nutrition and herbs. Rosemary Gladstar, depite being one of the most famous herbalists of our time, is very balanced in her approach, never an extremist, and has a lot to say about combining natural and allopathic (mainstream medical) therapies. And her teas and other recipes will give you whole-foods, all-natural solutions at a FRACTION of the price of the “alive” vitamins and supplements on the shelves at the health food store!

Another source I use is Let's Have Healthy Children -please note that a portion of the information in this book is quite out of date. However, there are so many useful suggestions in this book for pregnancy and more, that I hate not to mention it. ****************Just be sure, as with any self-help book, that you cross-reference any nutritional, herbal, or other type of treatment in at least 3 published (i.e. NOT internet-only) sources. (This is, in fact, the herbalist’s rule of thumb- never use a remedy with finding it in at least 3 trustworthy places!)******************

Marilyn Shannon does suggest that supplementing the adult(s) in a household is far more important than supplementing children, provided the children’s diet is high-quality whole foods. I agree. It is very hard to find an all-natural, sugar-free, iron-free vitamin for kids. And if sugar and white flour are mostly avoided, children’s systems tend to absorb nutrition from their food far better than adults’ systems do.

One more note: regular grocery stores and drug stores are no place to buy supplements. The iron in drug-store variety vitamins, and ESPECIALLY in prescription pre-natals, is particularly damaging to the body’s intestinal flora. Most drug store-type vitamins are difficult or impossible to digest. One chiropractor I know suggests that people who feel they can’t afford good-quality health food store vitamins should buy an iron-free multi-vitamin and ***chew the tablets.*** This, at least, helps with their digestion. It’s really gross, though.


"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door," he used to say. "You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to."
~J.R.R. Tolkien, "Three Is Company," The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, 1954

Baby Step #9: Sugar Season Strategies

My husband thinks Baby Step #9 should be "Listen to Your Husband 100% of the Time"; at least, listen to him, my husband, because he's always telling me not to worry about anything. Ever. And relaxing, in his opinion, is just as important as nutrition for good health. I told him he's right. And if God would just transplant our personalities for a single day....

Sugar Season is that season that comes this time of year. Starting shortly before Halloween and lasting until, say, January 15. Have you noticed that flu season revvvvs up just as Sugar Season (thank goodness) fizzles to a close? Hmmm. And that everyone in sneezing distance has a cold in January and February? Hmmmmmm. And Seasonal Affective Disorder starts to bother people late in January? Hmmmmmmmmm.

I realize that there are many factors involved in these winter plagues. But who can argue that the sugar orgy of late fall and early winter is certainly not helping your body fend them off?

Nobody ever mentions these things- doctors, the media, pharmeceutical companies... but your body is exposed to germs all the time. You would die without germs. Your body's immune system constantly fights off unfriendly germs. Doing so keeps your immune system strong, in fact. You get sick when your body's defenses get overwhelmed. That's why when 2 people who get exposed to the same germ, one might be unaffected and the other might be in bed for 9 days. It's why some kids catch everything that goes around, while other kids run a fever for an afternoon then hit the ground running.

Genes affect your body's defenses, too. But good nutrition will keep your immunities functioning your personal best.

Avoiding sugar and junk food is my #1 strategy for surviving Sugar Season without contracting the plague. Excercising regularly despite the bad weather is good, too. This is easier said than done, of course, with dozens of invitations to parties, which means lots of party food and late hours. Present wrapping, celebrations to plan, cards to write, songs to sing, books to read, decorations to make, lights to hang, not to mention the usual 3 meals a day to cook, noses to wipe, baths to give-

Ya, sure, plus excercise and eat properly, too! What's the big deal? You're super-woman, right?

Sigh. No. At least, I'm not. So what's a mom to do?

Christians have a good excuse to give up sugar for Advent (the 4 weeks before Christmas), since it is traditionally a penitential season. That's what I do. I explain to the children, every year, why we are doing it. I've found that it is easier on all of us if there are no exceptions to this rule, otherwise every day seems to be the occasion for an exception.

Halloween just ended. My 2 older kids each ate 1 piece of candy after lunch knowing that we'll have no sweets (no white sugar) till Thanksgiving. They know that on Thanksgiving they can eat as much of their grandmother's famous apple pie and pumpkin cheesecake as they want (after a big plate of turkey and green beans and salad, of course). The holiday seems very special that way. Then it's a fast again till Christmas Mass. After which I pretty much drop the reins till New Year's.

I always take a big sugarless apple crisp to holiday parties so my children have something yummy to enjoy, and to prevent them from resenting our no-sugar fast. I also feed my kids before parties. It sucks.

Parties used to mean "Woo-hoo, I don't have to cook dinner!" but it always ends up badly. Half the time the food will be covered in cheese (Isaiah gets much more messed up by dairy in the winter than in the summer), or else there will be no protein in sight. So I've learned: if I want to enjoy the party, feed the brood beforehand.

On the days I know we'll be eating unhealthier-than-usual fare, I try to give the kids acidophilus- the friendly bacteria your intestines need to keep candida- yeast- at bay, and to keep things, uh, moving smoothly. We also take our elderberry syrup and echinacea tincture sporadically (that is, whenever I remember) during Sugar Season.

The other thing we do regularly when the temperature drops is to bring out the neti pot. This: is the neti pot I gave several people for Christmas last year. We have one that I sterilize between uses. (Everybody is supposed to have their own, but I thought 3 neti pots was just too much in my cabinet!) My 7 year old does his own nose himself with it. My 4 year old uses an eye dropper on her own nose because she won't let me use the neti pot on her. John Paul, our baby, gets his nose washes with saline in an eye dropper, too. And I use a teeny pinch of baking soda and a teeny pinch of Himalayan Pink Sea Salt in warm water. It's a winter ritual, really, and we usually giggle a lot watching each other's funny faces while 'neti-potting.'

What's the point? Well, the saltwater washes the "bad germs" off your mucus membranes, where they lodge and multiply. Plus, the salt hydrates your mucus membranes. Winter weather tends to dry them out and leave them even more susceptible to germ invasion. Drinking hot tea and gargling salt water also help keep your mucus membranes clean and happy.

Is there something you do to survive Sugar Season healthily? I'd love to hear about it!


"Things sweet the taste prove in digestion sour."
~William Shakespeare, King Richard the Second, 1595

Baby Steps #7 & #8: EAT ME! DRINK ME!

I’m getting sick of these baby steps! I have so many other things to tell you.

So tonight I’m condensing 7 and 8, EAT ME! And DRINK ME! (I just got a copy of Alice in Wonderland (full of vintage illustrations!) for 50 cents so I’m feeling very Wonderlandish. I’ll just assume you caught the allusion.)

Even if you couldn’t do any of the other steps, these 2 would cover a multitude of evils. And they are so simple.

EAT more fruits and veggies and DRINK more water.

Wow- do they pay me to come up with this brilliant stuff?

Well, no. They don’t.

But we all need to hear it more often than we do.

What if you decided you’d eat a fruit and a vegetable at every meal and every snack for the next week? Or that after breakfast you were going to eat nothing else till you’d eaten 10 (Ok, maybe 5) servings of fruits and veggies? For starters, if you’re trying to lose weight, you’d add a lot of fiber to your diet and that would help you feel less hungry all day. You’d also be less likely to feel those sugar-coffe-pop cravings in the afternoon and evening.

I don’t have much advice for people who think vegetables are gross. Except maybe, wake up and smell the cancer, and, for heaven’s sake get creative!!! And if you need help eating fruit then you may, in fact, be beyond hope in the nutrition department….

And what if you decided that after breakfast you’d drink only water for the rest of the day? Did you know that even mild dehydration can contribute to headaches, fuzzy brain, cravings, and overeating? Did you know that studies have shown that an apple and a glass of water decrease afternoon sleepiness better than a cup of coffee? Did you know that lots of people don’t drink water till they feel thirsty, when they are already quite dehydrated? There’s a great book called Water: For Health, for Healing, for Life: You're Not Sick, You're Thirsty!. I highly recommend it if you think I’m being silly on this water thing.

If you don’t like to drink water, then I’ll give you a big AMEN! I think tap water, in the dozens of cities and farms where I’ve drunk it, is super-yuck. Water should taste sweet and smooth. Most tap water is so riddled with impurities that it hardly goes down without a lot of doctoring up. There are lots of ways to doctor up plain water- lemon, cucumber, even cantaloupe chunks, frozen, for ice cubes (really good in the summertime). But you could also just drink water that tastes good. Many folks think a home-purification system is a luxury. But if you buy soda pop, juice, milk, coffee, tea, and whatever else people drink these days, you’re mistaken. A good-quality reverse-osmosis or steam distillation system costs between $300 and $1,500. And over the years, you will spend that much and more on drinks. Shoot, I have a friend who buys 2 Tropicana jugs a week at $6. In 1 to 3 years she could have a very nice drinking water system paid for, save her body a ton of empty calories, and prevent a lot of waste in the landfill.

The other reason to filter your water is for you (if you’re a woman) and your daughters. LOTS of people flush birth control down the toilet. Some on purpose, others because they don’t fully digest it and out it comes. Your municipality DOES NOT filter out pharmaceutical agents. You get antibiotics, hormones, and anything else people flush or don’t fully digest. Yum. And studies point to these agents as potent factors in many cases of infertility and hormone imbalance.

So, again, even though these Baby Steps are pretty simple, sometimes just hearing common sense for the zillionth time is refreshing and inspiring. It’s refreshing to me just to write it down.

And yes, we had a sugared Halloween, for those of you dying to know. We went to Halloween story time and trick-or-treated (two different times, in fact!). We survived and today there is NO CANDY in my house. Because otherwise I would eat it. All of it. Even the stuff I don’t ‘like’.


"Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong."
~Dandemis


Please note that since this is my blog, and I am the editor, and no one really cares, I’m not footnoting these posts. If you want to find the studies to which I refer, Google is your friend. If you still can’t find them, you can email me, and, eventually, I will reply with the info that I will have to go find. I read constantly and sometimes I forget where I found something. I am an abysmal note-taker. Cheers!

Baby Step #6: Read Yourself Healthy

I find that anything I'm interested in gets old. Eventually. Nutrition and cooking not excepted.

So I like to find ways to stay motivated in the areas of my life that I don't want to fizzle.

I've read The Secret of the Rosary about 10 times, because it keeps refreshing me. Same with my old house-keeping standby, Sink Reflections.

In the kitchen, I've found lots of interesting books that I use and pass on to friends. The Wonderful World Within You is one I keep around. I like it because it is full of graphs of the nutritional density of foods. The visual difference between pizza and peanut-butter-and-jelly-on whole-wheat is pretty cool, and looking at the charts is helpful to keep me on track, nutritionally speaking. This book also made me fall in love with mushrooms; they are the most dense food, nutrition-for-calorie. You also get to see which vitamins and minerals are highest in what foods, which I find very helpful.

Recently, I came across a dumb-sounding book and started reading it out of curiosity. The Thin Commandments : The Ten No-Fail Strategies for Permanent Weight Loss. I don't really need to lose weight, but I'm sometimes asked what diet I think is the best, and I never have an answer. "Just eat real food and you'll get full before you get fat," isn't really that helpful, is it now?

I was very pleasantly surprised by this book. The 10 Commandments are actually not about what to eat and what not to eat to lose weight. The book is all about strategy, structuring your environment, and re-learning how to think about food. Now, the goal of the book is weightloss, but ANYONE who has food allergies or who wants better nutrition can benefit from this book.

One of his good points: no one gets fat (or ruins their immune system) from Christmas dinner.

No. You get fat (or sick) from the 2 weeks before Christmas and the 3 weeks after Christmas. The junk snacking, the leftovers you can't stop picking at, the endless parties. We stretch out the feast so much that there are no fasts in between!

We KNOW what to do to be thin (or be healthy). But we don't do it. Even when we want to.

One cookie isn't going to make you fat (or ruin your health). But so many of us eat the cookie. Then 5 more. Then tomorrow we eat the rest of the batch. Then we decide to make some more 2 days later.

Cravings. You can't reason with cravings!

But this book is full of strategies to help you deal with foods you are addicted to, are allergic to, foods you love, foods you hate, and emotional eating. I've intuitively developed my own strategies to deal with junk food cravings, and many of them are in this book!

My personal weakness is vacation. It's very hard and very expensive to eat healthy when I'm not in my kitchen. And if I only went on one vacation for a few days every year it wouldn't be a big deal. But my last vacation was 2 weeks, my next one will be 2 weeks. That's a lot of meals and snacks to deal with! So I'm taking notes furiously and trying to make a smart plan for our trip to Kansas for Thanksgiving.

My main beef with this book is that the author makes no distinction between whole foods and chemical food. At the end of the book, he suggests a lot of 'lite' foods riddled with artificial sweeteners and additives. I think some of them might be ok as occasional indulgenges, but I hope no one would eat them regularly! Especially when trying to restrict your food intake, 97% of your food needs to pack a lot of nutritional punch in every bite.

In any case, I'm glas I finally have a book I can refer readers and friends to when they ask about weightloss and dealiong with cravings.


"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you're the easiest person to fool."
~Richard Feynman

Baby Step #5: Choose Your Poison Wisely

Honey, raw honey, Really Raw Honey, agave nectar, maple syrup grade A, maple syrup grade B, Yacon syrup, xylitol, stevia, evaporated cane juice, raw sugar, natural beet sugar, coconut sugar, organic pure cane sugar, demarara, rapadura, brown rice syrup, barley malt syrup, organic corn syrup, old-fashioned molasses, black-strap molasses:

Ummmmmm- where am I?

If you guessed the "sweetener" aisle at any given health food store, you've got it!

Confusing. To put it mildly, eh?

Now, let me say it: I'm biased. Yup, me. Biased. Not shocking, I know, as I do enjoy shoving things down people's throats (more than I usually allow myself to do). But hey, the great thing about a blog is you can just click 'x' if it makes you mad.

But I hope no one will get mad over a little bit of sugar, and for the record, I hope I'm not shoving anything down your throat. Although if you were here, I'd shove a whole wheat cinammon roll down your throat because I just made some- and MAN are they good.

But I digress.

Sugars. They all have one thing in common, on every diet, ever- they are NOT free foods. Carrots and celery= free foods. Sugars? No.

Sugar makes you fat.

Sugar messes with your mood.

Sugar is delicious.

That's the crux of the matter, right?

The question is, when you are going to indulge, how are you going to do it?

I'm not going to go into WHY I think you should ditch the white sugar, even the organic stuff. It's a highly refined, often genetically modified, chemicalized food which you can read about a zillion places. (Try Sugar Blues or Suicide By Sugar.)

I have a bias towards the more natural sweeteners: raw honey, agave nectar, maple syrup, brown rice syrup, and stevia. Barley malt is a good choice, but I'm going to leave it out because it is outside my area of expertise. I'd love comments from someone who cooks regularly with barley malt!

Honey is great because the good stuff is raw. Unfortunately, once honey is cooked, it's main benefit- enzymes- are destroyed, and as such, I try to only drizzle honey on top of things, or add it to teas that have cooled. The main thing to look for in honey is raw and unfiltered. (Raw honey shouldn't be fed to babies under 12 months old.) It does make a great, safe cough suppressant. Even real doctors grudgingly admit this.

Maple syrup is definitely a whole food. Just tree sap, cooked down. Formaldehyde is NO LONGER USED to produce Grade A maple syrup. But Grade B is still much yummier. This was the 'cheap sweet' of America before white sugar production became a chemical, cheap, industrial process (read Farmer Boy- mmmm). Back before America got fat, we ate maple sugar. (Maple sugar is crystalized/ evaporated maple syrup.)

Agave is pretty new to the American health scene. It is produced just the same way maple syrup is, but is much cheaper. I will say that RAW agave nectar is sorta a fuzzy thing, because it is made by fermenting agave juice with mold spores, and the process is proprietary (i.e. they don't have to tell us jack about how it's really made). I'm not big into mold spores. And raw agave gives me a splitting headache, while regular agave does not. Regular agave nectar/ syrup is my sweetener of choice for special occasion baked goods.

Brown rice syrup is made by cooking brown rice with enzymes. It is a traditional food in Asian countries. But it's not very tasty. My kids love it on toast, but I keep it on hand for sweet emergency use only. It is good for baking, since it is already cooked, but produces a dense texture.

And now, my baby, my favorite, my sweetener of choice:
Stevia.

Stevia leaves are green and they come off a plant. They are like a bazillion times sweeter than sugar. They are amazingly good added to loose-leaf tea or to ground coffe, right in the filter. They can be dried and powdered and added directly to foods. BUT stevia doesn not contribute bulk or texture to foods which makes it quite tricky to bake with.

Stevia extract can be obtained by a chemical or a natural process. That white powder stuff is not a whole food. It is a purified, isolated element from the stevia plant. It is sold as 'stevia extract', and in brands like TruVia and Rebiana, it may be called Rebaudioside A. Whole food extracts are available, too, and are my sweetener of choice. A natural stevia extract is liquid, either with grain alcohol as the extractive, or else water and vegetable glycerine.

These are produced by soaking the leaves in the liquid medium- a tincture! Yep! And you know how to make tinctures now, right?

Unlike honey, agave, or any other sweetener (including most artificial sweeteners), stevia has been proven to have a negligible effect on blood sugar. Also, unlike other natural sweeteners, it is calorie-free. Add all you want to your tea or coffee or quick bread, but beware! Too much stevia gets very, very bitter. I think many people who don't like stevia simply tried too much and found it bitter.

So remember, this Baby Step means don't indulge too often, and when you sweet, sweet responsibly!

Tomorrow: Baby Step #6: Read Yourself Healthy


"In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest."
~Henry Miller, The Books in My Life

Baby Step #4: DON'T BUY ME EITHER!!!

Artificial sweeteners.

Yuck.

Worse than sugar hardly seems possible, but it is. Worse than HFCS? No one's sure. But they're on, about, equal footing.

I'm not a big fan of coffee drinking, but every time I see a soda pop in someone's hand, I just want to beg- please, please have a cup of coffee! All the caffeine, none of the man-made chemicals.

Now, as I repeatedly say, I am not a healthcare professional, a chemist, a nutritionist, or an herbalist. And I encourage everyone to do their own reading up on subjects that interest- or incense- them.

But let's face it- if diet pop, diet cookies, and artificially sweetened ice cream really worked, we'd be a skinny nation.

Right?

The bottom line is that NO artificial sweetener is a whole food. Period. And if Mother Nature didn't invent it, it doesn't belong in a "natural kitchen."

Unfortunately, saccharin, sucralose, acesulfame potassium, and some new, seductive combos of these hide in lots of places. Accidentally grab the wrong bag of no-sugar-added frozen fruit, and it's drenched in the stuff. No-sugar-added jam? You thought that was good, right? But if you don't read labels, you're bringing home gram upon gram of Splenda. Ditto fruit juice, popsicles, sunflower seeds, and even bread. Ya, because those 3 teaspoons of honey in that loaf of 100% whole wheat bread are what's making America fat.

Right.

What about my little darling, stevia extract? Hmmmmm? How can that be a whole food?

Well, because you can make it in your own kitchen. From real foods.

But not all stevia extracts, or even honeys and maple syrups and agave nectars, are created equal.

And that's what we're talking about tomorrow in-
Baby Step #5: Choose Your Poison


"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
~Theodore Roosevelt

Baby Step #3: DON'T BUY ME!!!

OK, I'm not a doctor, a chemist, or a nutritionist. But it's finally common knowledge: high-fructose corn syrup IS BAD FOR YOU. Sure it comes from corn. (So does the ethanol that you put in your gas tank.) But the process it passes through turns it into a chemical.

In a nutshell, in laymen's terms, as I understand it: Your body doesn't biologically, physiologically recognize HFCS as a food, though it tastes sweet and contains calories. So unlike that slightly lesser evil, common table sugar or sucrose, HFCS doesn't trigger your brain's satiation response. One of the MANY reasons a person can drink three soda pops in an hour, but could never down 47 teaspoons of sugar in an hour!

So, in short, this baby step to a healthier family invovles throwing out any box, jar, or bag in your home that lists HFCS, high-fructose corn syrup, corn sweetener, or anything similar. When in doubt, google. You can find good lists of how this chemical is creatively named to hide in your food.

Even many health-food store foods contain HFCS. Notorious for HFCS:

-Jelly, jam, preserves and the like. Look for one made with only fruit juice concentrate as the sweetener. Or make my Rose-Hip Jam!

-Yogurt, especially the single-serve cups. Most folks don't binge on entire cartons of yogurt, so why pay extra for the portion-controlled cups? Buy a nice, big plain organic tub of it. (I noticed recently that at our grocery store, you can get organic for about the same price as regular now!) Add your own fruit, vanilla, honey, or whatever.

-Cereal bars, granola bars, and other pre-packaged junk. The problem with these snacks, in addition to the possibility of tons of HFCS in the cheaper brands, is that they take the place of the healthier snacks you and your kids should be eating when you're hungry throughout the day.

By simply saying "no" to HFCS, you'll save a lot of money and a lot of health. You'll make losing weight and keeping it off easier. And you'll be forced to expand your diet to fill in the gaps.

A winning strategy all around!

Baby Step #4: DON'T BUY ME EITHER!!!


"What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it."
~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated from French by Lewis Galantière

Baby Step #2: Breakfast

Breakfast. The mother of all meals.

A healthy breakfast, as a habit, is one of the best gifts to give your little people while they're young.

To start- chuck the ceral boxes. Please. Unless you're eating Uncle Sam- and you're probably not, cuz let's face it, Uncle Sam tastes like cardboard- then your cereal isn't really worthy to break your fast.

Granola might be ok, if you've made it yourself, but the store-bought stuff, including the health food store stuff, is so sugary you might as well eat a Snickers. Seriously.

And if 'Eggo' lives in your freezer, you'll have to kick him out, too.

The truth hurts.

While oatmeal is the easiest, cheapest healthy breakfast- especially when dressed up- all oats are not created equal. Instant oats are not your friend. And old-fashioned cook just as quickly. Really they do! If you like the texture of instant, try steel-cut oats cooked overnight in the crockpot.

Try applesauce, fruit-spread, grounf flax, almond or coconut milk, chopped nuts, cinnamon, carob powder... but not all at once, he-he. Try an oatmeal sundae bar. That's always a hit around here!

Homemade whole-grain pancakes and waffles (skip the Log Cabin on top- try agave nectar, real maple syrup, or raw honey), egg anything, leftovers from last night, and smoothies (if you use a protein in it) also make healthy breakfasts. Most people do best on a protein with a high-fiber carb. A handful of raw almonds with the carb when I don't feel like making eggs usually works fine.

If you struggle with low-blood sugar, protein in the morning is very helpful. Personally, leftover chicken soup is my favorite breakfast. One suggestion from my favorite book- Fertility, Cycles, and Nutrition- is to not consume wheat at breakfast. Find another grain, since the American diet tends to be so wheat-heavy.

Oh, and no, I don't care if you're not hungry. Skipping breakfast is the best way to build up the craving to binge later in the day. And if breakfast makes you super-hungry all day, try a different breakfast. You might need more protein or more fiber, or a healthy fat.

I'd love to hear your own favorite healthy, hearty breakfast!

Tomorrow- Baby Step #3: DON"T BUY ME!!!

"To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring." ~George Santayana

Baby Step #1: Sandwiches

Sandwiches are not just a main-stay of American lunches. The Irish eat them. The British eat them. Even Mexicans eat tortas; though tortas are so much work, I'd just as soon cook a 5-course turkey dinner, myself.

If you are like 11 out of 10 mothers in America, you feed your kids peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Unless your kids have peanut allergies, and you feed them almond butter and jelly, or they have gluten allergies and you feed them pb&j on rice-bread.

The good news:

pb&j is in.

The bad news:

Oscar Meyer is out.

To start: you need a good bread. It needs to have less than 7 ingredients and you have to be able to pronounce them all. It needs to be 100% whole grain, no exceptions- wheat, rice, spelt, rye, whatever. It will doubtless cost you an extra dollar or two. Accept it. Cheap bread is not worth the bag it comes in.

Next, you obviously need something to put on your bread. Real foods are good. Chemicals, not good.

Start with your peanut butter. It needs to be made out of peanuts, and salt or not. That's it. Anything else in there? Toss it out. The same is true for almond, cashew, and sunbutter. Sunbutter is great for those with peanut issues, but you have to find one without sugar added, which isn't easy.

Next, the j.

Your jelly most definitely should not contain High-Fructose Corn Syrup. The best 'jam' is a 100% fruit spread. It should contain fruit, apple or grape juice, and pectin. Added citric or ascorbic acid is ok.

But raw honey, sliced banana or strawberry also make great pb accompaniments.

Unfortunately, cold lunch meats just don't make the grade. Sorry for the bad news. One popular brand that touts itself as 'natural' is Boar's Head. Found in Kroger stores around the country. But guess what? While slightly less horrendous for you, their meats are just as chemical-filled as the house brand.

Don't believe me? Well, ask for nitrate-free Boar's Head next time. They do make it.

It costs $15-21 per pound.

Believe me, there are better ways to spend your hard-earned dollars!

Instead, try spicing up and cooking a turkey breast or a chicken breast, cooling it in the fridge, and then slicing it as thinly as possible. You can do a week's worth at a time and you'll save a lot.

Of course tuna salad, tuna patties, fried eggs, egg salad, and leftover roast. Hummus and avocado are nutritious additions. Don't tell me you don't eat avocado because you're trying to lose weight! Your body needs 'good' fats and avocado is one of the best fats there are.

I eat 2 a day when I'm pregnant; 1 a day when I'm not. If they're on sale, of course.

This may not be earth-shattering information to most of you, but I know how it is to get in a lunch rut. It's really not that big a deal, actually, as long as the rut is healthy in the first place! Have your sandwich, add some crunchy raw veggies with fruit for dessert, skip the crackers/ pretzels/ jello and Little Debbies. And then go out and play... while you stil can....

Baby Step #2: Breakfast


"It's so hard when I have to, and so easy when I want to."
~Annie Gottlier

Eat Better, Feel Better: 10 baby steps

I was going to work up a post on natural toys, with the holidays fast approaching. But then, let's face it. What your little people are putting in their mouths is WAY more important than what they're playing with. Even if they chew on their toys.

Food builds health and destroys it. In children, food can promote good behaviors and sunny dispositions or it can sabotage them. Really, it does so for us big people, too, when we care to admit it.

I realize that many people aren't willing to make wholesale changes in the way they eat. Food is social, psychological, and just weird, in our heads. We know what we ought to do, but we don't do it.

But there are so many little things, tiny things, we can do to shift the scales for our families in the direction of healthy and away from obesity-cancer-and-everything-else.

Healthy habits don't make us invincible, but they do make us better.

Baby Step #1: Sandwiches


"Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures."
~H. Jackson Brown, Jr., Life's Little Instruction Book

Healthy Food Hacking, 101

The basic concept here is, take your 'crutch' foods- mac 'n cheese? Tyson chicken nuggets? Totino's pizza rolls? and figure out a way to clean it up.

Mac 'n cheese is actually the easiest! I don't have a picture, because we don't eat even a healthy version of it here. It takes no longer to boil 100% whole wheat pasta and toss it with butter and shredded cheddar. If your kids, or you, are addicted to that cheezey saucey stuff, you can buy it, plain and without added chemical junk, from many health food stores and bulk food websites. It'll take an investment of time, yes, but once you figure it out, you've got a cheap, super-easy meal, and you'll have cut out a very unhealthy food from your family's diet.

Chicken nuggets? A touch more involved. But once a month you can chop up a family pack of chicken breast, toss in a plastic bag with oil or melted butter, then in a bag with flour or breadcrumbs seasoned with salt, paprika, and garlic powder. Bake till crisp in a 350 oven. Cool and freeze in bags or plastic ware. An hour of work in exchange for many quick snacks or meals, and, again, a very chemical-laden food out of your freezer.

Pizza rolls? Pats of bread dough, rolled flat, add your toppings, roll up, brush with butter or oil, bake till golden. You can make a hundred of these at a time to freeze. Do it while you are stuck at home working on other projects.

Once you get in the habit of cooking like this once every week or 2, it becomes second nature.

Good luck, and leave a comment if you have a healthy food hack you'd like to share!


"Change is inevitable - except from a vending machine."
~Robert C. Gallagher

Water, Water, Everywhere...

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
-The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

One problem many mothers face is children who want to drink their calories. Little taste buds get spoiled quickly on milk and juices, and it can seem a lost cause when a mom tries to make changes in the beverage arena.

A major problem with drinking your calories- and smoothies and shakes can actually be overdone in this regard, too- is that your brain never receives signals of satiation. Only chewing will provide the brain with the chemical, physiological signals that make you feel 'full.'

OK, so I mentioned Kool-Aid.

Here's a way, maybe not the greatest way but a step in the right direction, to kick the juice-and-milk addiction.

I would ONLY do this with dye-free Kool-Aid for my kids, but if yours need the color to make it attractive, well, it's up to you! My podunk Kroger store doesn't even carry the dye-free packets, so my sample is colored.

Well, it's not rocket science, folks. Take your packet, empty it into your pitcher, add 1/2 gallon water and ice, then sweeten with liquid stevia to taste.

Mmmm. Smells like childhood.

Really, Maureen, you spent a whole post on stevia-Kool-Aid?

Yep. Is that any better for my kids than fruit juice? Yes, actually, if they drink the pasteurized grocery-store variety. It keeps their tummies open for real foodand won't produce a sugar crash. You can start watering this down a little more every time, till you've got them drinking plain 'ole water.

And tomorrow we're going to turn that red stuff into a cheaters green smoothie.


The human story does not always unfold like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four. Sometimes in life they make five or minus three; and sometimes the blackboard topples down in the middle of the sum and leaves the class in disorder and the pedagogue with a black eye. ~Winston Churchill

In the Land of Perfect

In the land of Perfect,
I never run out of produce;
I never resort to screen time;
I always have a nutritious snack, with green in it somewhere, when someone whines, "I'm hungry!"

But of course, children don't whine in the land of Perfect.

In the land of Perfect,
I sleep until I'm not tired anymore;
I'm patient and sweet all day;
Everyone in my household eats ten servings of fruits and vegetables a day.

In the land of Perfect.

I don't live in the land of Perfect,
And neither do you.

I live in the Real World,
As I imagine you do, too,
Where groceries are %$*#! expensive ($1.25 for an avocado? Seriously?),
Where nerves wear thin,
Where children go on carboholic kicks,
Where mothers sometimes get... snappy.

It's ok.

Everyone looks better on paper, or perhaps I should say on screen.

While I wait for my herb order from Mountain Rose to arrive, I'm going to share with you some 'food hacks.' For everyone who feels as if they'll never get from here to there.

Come back tomorrow for a 'recipe' featuring Kool-Aid. Ya, Kool-Aid.


"Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without." ~Confucius, Analects

Confessions of a Tired Purist

Sometimes I write to remind myself as much as anything else. I'm actually not much of a purist, on any subject. Nope not even when it comes to food.

I will firmly maintain that white sugar and (even more so) high fructose corn syrup are bad for your body and shouldn't have a home in your kitchen. Chocolate, despite media blitz to the contrary, isn't good for you. You crave chocolate when your body us low on magnesium, but the sugar accompanying the good stuff renders it null and void. Go get yourself a bottle of magnesium tablets!

Raw, unprocessed cacao is definitely better for you, but it still contains
enough caffeine to mess you up.

Yet if caffeinate yourself you must, there is a certain order of evils, if you will. Soda pop definitely tops the evil caffeine scale- no, I don't care if it' sdiet, it's just as bad.

Next comes coffee and chocolate. You know my beef with coffee and chocolate.

Next comes teas of all sorts. I recently had a conversation with a 'tea expert.' He mostly explained the physiological difference between the way the body uptakes the caffeine in coffee vs. the way the body absorbs caffeine from different teas.

Well, it was during a sleepless toddler phase- which is still going on- so by golly, I let him convince me. I've been drinking a cup of Yerba Mate, a South American herbal, but caffeinated, tea, on the mornings when I've been up an ungodly number of hours in the dark with John Paul.

An experiment, if you will.

And I must agree, I get no jitters with it, I don't feel super-energized like I do with coffee, even weak coffee. I just feel... normal. As opposed to totally fuzzy and groggy, overwhelmed by my desire to lay down for the rest of the day.

Like I said, I'm not a purist. I'm a survivalist when I have to be. A little compromise to keep a household running and a toddler nurtured.

Works for me.


"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything,
That's how the light gets in."
~Leonard Cohen