Missing blogging at a time I need to be blogging!

Missing blogging at a time I need to be blogging!

After weeks of ups and downs and backs and forths, God clearly is telling us now is the time to move from the Lowcountry and head west. This has been our dream and goal for so long and yet as it is actually happening there is definite apprehension mixed with the excitement. We have some very special friends here and truly care about our current bosses. We have just found true fellowship with other believers that we have desired for 5 years. Though there are many 'why now?!'s said with a very sad heart, we fully trust God, His leading, and His plan. Everything is for a purpose. God is never late and is never early. His timing is always perfect. There is such comfort and peace in following Him as well. I dont worry that 'we' are making the wrong decision since it really isnt ours. We know His plan for the future of our whole family is perfect. Every time.

And so we have been preparing to leave our job and home here in the Lowcountry and head to the high mountains of west central Idaho.

I am really going to try and update along the way since God has moved in so many ways that have left us speechless. I dont want to forget them and I know others can be encouraged by them.

In all thing, to God alone be the glory!

Vitamins and Such

I am going to write a full post on this topic but there are several who have asked me my recommendation for quality vitamin and mineral supplements.

My first suggestion is to use Senseable Supplements and get their 9 mineral drops, electrolytes with the 4 buffers.  However... since I know that is a bit overwhelming to look at -and on the expensive side initially (though really not long-term), here is what I would recommend instead:

Womens MultiVitamin
(Yes, I know it says women over 40 but the vitamin and mineral content as well as the other whole food components are excellent for every age.)

Childrens Chewable MultiVitamin
Excellent Liquid MultiVitamin(great quality but not always easy to take without mixing with juice)

Mens MultiVitamin


In addition to the above, I recommend additional Vitamin C, D3, Magnesium and Selenium.

Adult capsules/tablets:
Vitamin C(though I also highly recommend the Frontier powder and if you are local, you can order it though our co-op for less than $20 a bag!)  Adults dose is a minimum of 6,000mg for most everyone.  Yes, that is written correctly.
Vitamin D3(yes, take all 10,000IU unless you spent the day outside, then cut it in half and take only 5,000IU)
Magnesium3-4 tablets daily
Selenium2 tablets daily

Childrens Chewables (if they can take the adult pills/capsules, they are much better than the chewables but I know little ones take a while to get there)
Vitamin C(the powder is great here too for mixing with juice -especially when sick- but this is a good chewable alternative.
Another Chewable C
Dissolvable Vitamin D3
Magnesium Powder (epsom salt baths is another great way to get magnesium into your little ones and help them relax for sleep!)

All of these are ones that we either currently use or have used in the past and I checked to be sure none of the ingredients have changed.  There are several things you must be aware of and look for when purchasing supplements such as this.  I will include that information on the full post as soon as I can get to it.  In the meantime, please do email or message me if you have any questions at all.


The law requires me to tell you that there are affiliate links in this post.  Amazon gives me a small commission for purchases you make through the links included here.  I would greatly appreciate any purchases you make through this post!

Redecorating the kitchen

The challenge: Find a paint color for my kitchen to match this. The hard part? It must be in the grey-blue family.
If you know me at all you know I am overwhelmed with just the thought!

Sourdough Brownies

Unbelievably simple and so delicious.  Finally a chocolate treat that is basically healthy!  Remember: It is the quality of ingredients you use more than anything else.  We will be making these a LOT from now on!  

Original recipe is from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Fermenting Foodsbut like most baking recipes, I didnt follow it exactly.  Her book includes all of the information you need to start your own sourdough starter as well but getting a bit from a friend is the easiest way!

Here is what I did:  

Sourdough Brownies

Makes one 8 or 9" pan

Ingredients:

4    eggs

3/4 cup organic baking cocoa powder

1    cup (scant) organic raw sugar (any unrefined)

1    stick butter

1    teas vanilla extract

1/2 cup whole wheat sourdough starter (fed within last 12 hours)

Directions:

• Take the stick of butter and butter the pan with it. 

• Melt lightly melt remaining stick of butter.

• Put all ingredients (eggs, cocoa, sugar, melted butter, vanilla, and extract) into medium mixing bowl and mix well -wisking until smooth and well combined.  

• Pour batter into buttered pan.

• Bake 25-30 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.  

• Remove from oven and let rest for 10-15 minutes.  It will pull away from the sides a bit.  

Serve plain or with fresh whipped cream or ice cream.  Store leftovers in the fridge or freezer.  

My very first attempt at anything soughdough... English Muffins! Will go great

My very first attempt at anything soughdough... English Muffins!

Will go great with our potato-egg casserole and sourdough pancakes with pastured bacon for dinner!

Freezing Lemon Juice

We were given a HUGE bag of lemons a few months ago that we had planned to freeze the juice from.  Well, the weeks -and now months- went by before I got a chance to even pull them out of the bag unless I needed to use one!  Finally, I set the children to work peeling a bunch of them so that we could juice them and freeze it.  They peeled a huge bowl of them and that bowl then sat in the fridge for about a week before I Dale finally juiced them for me one night.  In other words... they lasted forever and still had tons of juice even after sitting in the fridge all unpeeled!  (Thankful for a Husband who continually helps me in these ways too.)

Initially I was going to use ice cube traysbut can you believe I dont have a single one!  I went to buy some but then as I thought about it more, I decided I wanted to freeze the juice in 1-lemon servings.  Ice cube trays are an ounce or less per square and an average lemon (or recipe calling for the 'juice of 1 lemon') is 2 ounces.  Hmm. What to do...

I finally decided to juice them and freeze the juice in jelly jars-which I have a lot of- and then pop the juice out of the jars, put them in baggies and back into the freezer.  It worked great!!

The Great American Fruit Tree Campaign will have full details on how I froze my juice soon so here are just a couple of pictures to hold you over and give you an idea how you could do it too.

(We peeled the lemons; sliced in half cross-ways -revealing the seeds; picked out some of the seeds but not all; and then juiced in our juicer.This gave us lots more juice than hand squeezing but even doing it by hand would be worth the effort!)

Bowl of lemons. The smaller ones are the ones given to us by friends and that we just juiced. The large ones are Meyer Lemons -those are up next!

2 oz/ 1 lemon 'cubes'

Baggie of frozen lemon juice cubes!

Freezing Squash

Kroger had a great price on Organic Butternut Squash ($2.99 each and they were huge) so I grabbed a bunch -eating some now but also wanting to preserve some for later.  I decided to freeze three of them and thought I would share how I did it so you can see how simple it is.  Anytime you have extra veggies that you wont be able to use before they spoil (or a great deal like this), simply freeze or otherwise preserve the extras and you will save money as well as adding to your 'emergency' food supplies.

The 3 I chose to freeze

First peel off the outer skin.  You may need to go over the squash twice in order to get all of the skin off.  See the color difference here?  You want the lighter color all removed so all you have is the deep yellow flesh left.  

(No idea why these two pictures are backwards!?)  

Cut in half (pic below) and then cut off the stem end (above).

Cut the top section in half, slice into crescents, and then dice into pieces.  

Slice the bottom in half revealing the seed section.  

Using a large spoon, scoop out the seeds and pulp.

I saved the seeds to eat later.  (Rinse and soak overnight in salty water then dehydrate or bake until crisp -yummy!)

 Slice off the bottom end

Cut the blossom/hard portion off and save the side pieces.  (Its all about saving every bit you can!)

Again,slice into strips and then dice into pieces.   

The container of diced squash pieces.  

I wanted mine in 4c portions as that will be about 1 meal for my family.  

You can freeze them in ziploc bags if you only want to freeze them for a few months. (Up to 6.)

Or you can vacuum seal them and they will remain fresh for years in the freezer.  (I love our FoodSaver-Jarden GameSaver Silver but even the more basic FoodSaver - GameSaver would be great!)

(Note I recommend labeling your bags BEFORE you put the squash in them -sure is hard to write on those chunks of squash in those bags!)  

If you prefer, you can also cook the squash chunks, mash them and then add them to ziploc bags for freezing.  I may go back to Kroger and get a few more if they still have the sale and do that.  We love butternut squash mashed and cooked with lots of yummy butter and sea salt!