Traditional Sauerkraut

Would you like to start eating more "traditionally?" Are you confused as to where to start?

How about here? Sauerkraut.

Making sauerkraut is simplicity itself. You can even do it with little children. They love messy projects, and this can turn into a messy project. A fun, messy project.

Additionally, organic cabbage is quite cheap. I got two heads for under two dollars at Lassen's. You can make sauerkraut with red or white cabbage.

Supplies needed:

1-2 medium heads of cabbage
Sea Salt
Filtered Water
Homemade Whey
Shredded Carrots (optional)
Extra-Large Mason Jar

1. Use a large knife to shred the cabbage. Have your little ones stuff the shreds into the mason jar. If you want, shred some carrots into the mix. I added a few shreds at the very end for flavor.

2. Pound the cabbage down to release the juices. I do not have a mallet, so I used the wrong end of my large knife sharpener.

3. Pour 1/2 cup of homemade whey over the cabbage. Fill the rest of the jar with filtered water, just enough to cover the top of the mix. You want to be sure to cover the cabbage completely, as the process is anaerobic- if oxygen gets into the cabbage mixture, your batch may be ruined.

4. Add a heaping tablespoon of sea salt.
5. Loosely cover the jar with cheesecloth, secure with a rubber band, and set out in a fairly warm place to begin fermenting. After three days, put a jar lid on and move to the refrigerator. The good bacteria that will begin multiplying are very useful for repopulating your digestive tract with beneficial substances. Modern diets, toxins, and antibiotics wipe out these "pro-biotics", but you can easily reintroduce them into your body for less than $2!

I eat two or three spoonfuls a day straight out of the jar, but you can add your sauerkraut to hamburgers, stews, soups, and the like! Let me know if you have any questions.

Here is the only belly picture I have from the last few weeks. I am 26 weeks pregnant and growing!

PS- Homemade whey is also very easy to make. Buy a container of full-fat yogurt, dump it into a large, fine sieve and set it over a larger bowl, one that liquids can easily drain into. Leave it straining overnight. In the morning, you will have whey in your bowl, and the most delicious cream cheese you have ever tasted in your sieve!

Family Health: Movement

Luckily for us mommies, little children naturally like to move. It is usually getting them to stop that is the problem.

How do you sustain that desire to wiggle as your children grow? I have not yet raised a child past the age of 4.75 so I can't speak from a mommy standpoint. But I did grow up in a house where both parents valued the idea of physical activity.

My mother is a Type I diabetic, and needs to stay active to keep her diabetes under control. Some would say that she overdoes it (she just broke her foot two months ago- the bone popped because she walks so much!).

My father coached football for most of my young life and loved to be outdoors. I have vivid and fond memories of riding bikes, playing handball, throwing baseballs, and bumping volleyballs with my dad. It is how we communicated.

Every night after dinner, since we had no TV, our family would go for a walk. In most families, this would be a leisurely stroll, ambling along while chatting. My parents would powerwalk through our neighborhood, fists pumping. After many years, my sisters and I got smart and starting riding our bikes. It was way easier.

My parents made us do all of our own chores. We had a sizeable house and yard, so Saturday chores would literally take all day. All day. We hated it. It was horrible. But now I see the value in what my parents taught us. We were too tired to misbehave on Saturdays, and our family got to spend the day together. On our weeks off, we would take a long bike ride with a picnic lunch.

For three-quarters of the year, my mom would often lock the door and tell us not to come inside. We had to play outside all day long. We could come inside in the winter, most days.

Anyway, we were an active family. We were tighter-knit than I thought at the time. My parents knew that a worn-out, well-fed kid was a better-behaved, better-disciplined kid. All three of us girls have "caught" a lifelong love of physical activity. As a mother today, I feel like I am swimming upstream in a culture that promotes laziness and inactivity. I have to be very intentional about making sure the children get outside play time each day. I, against every anal-retentive, type A- bone in my body, let them make forts and jump inside until their little hearts are racing and content. I finally won the battle to get a big trampoline outside, and they bounce on that thing every day. They put coats on in winter and string a garden hose up there in summer.

The dirt is good for them. The water is good for them. The sun is good for them. The Xbox? Not so good. Cartoons? A beautiful and lovely tool for a stay-at-home mommy, but not a crutch or babysitter. Well, not a crutch or babysitter most days.

I want them to want to love to move their bodies for the rest of their lives. God has been so good to our family to give us three healthy children who can move. He has given me, and Beau, good health at this point. Our bodies are made to move- to feel strong, and powerful, and fit. We are made to enjoy the whole earth, not just our beds, couches, and carpets. As keepers of the home, it is our job to nurture and protect the health of the little bodies and hearts the Lord has entrusted to us. I don't want to teach them that "exercise is necessary". I want them to know "God has gifted us with healthy bodies and we are so thankful that we can run and jump and swim!" I want them to love to move for the sake of moving. And I want our family to love to do this together.

One of Beau's favorite quotes is from Plato- "One can learn more about a man in an hour of play that in a year of conversation". Playing with our children can round out the picture of who they are and who they will be. What a gift to be able to do this!

How do you play with your family? How did your family nurture your playful side as you were growing up? Will you do things similarly with your own children?

Happy Friday, dear friends.

Family Health: Rest

As a reminder, there is no perfect family. There is no perfect way to raise a family. Try as we might, we can't raise a Christian, or a perfect child. These posts are just my thoughts I want to share with you- things that are important to me. I could share with you all of my shortcomings and sin issues, but I think it is more appropriate to share edifying, encouraging things of the practical nature. These posts are simply food for thought. Thanks for taking the time to read.

On that note, let's talk about rest. If you are human, you have had a night or a few nights, or a year of nights that result in inadequate rest. For some reason, you cannot sleep (and I am grateful to report that the Lord has granted me deep, restful sleep for the past few months!) and you emerge from your bedroom the next morning bleary-eyed, confused, and on edge. Your self-control is at a minimal level. It is difficult to think straight.

You are a grown-up and you feel this way. Now, imagine a child who gets the same inadequate rest. I have a hard time getting my children to obey and be civil as it is. Throw in a poor day and night's rest, and I may as well not even try at all!

So I make sure that my children are well-rested. What does this look like?

First of all, they have a set bedtime each night. Do we stick to this bedtime like glue? No. But we try our best to get them in bed each night by 8:30. They sleep until at least 7:30 the next morning, sometimes later. The baby sleeps 7:30pm-8am. On our Bible Study mornings, they must be up by 7:15, so I move bedtime up by a half hour.

They also have rest time each afternoon. The big kids (relatively...3 and 4) don't necessitate a nap every day, but they go into their rooms every afternoon to play quietly, read, or watch a slow cartoon. We don't miss rest time. We all get time away from each other, which is very important for our mental well-being.

The baby still has a morning nap and an afternoon nap. We follow the Babywise principles, which are similar to the Ferber method, or the Contented Little Baby technique, which is what my Aussie girlfriend ascribes to. The principles are similar- eat, wake, sleep- with an emphasis on good rest.

We talked about breakfast earlier. A disastrous recipe for a child looks like this:

poor breakfast + inadequate rest= poor little kid.

It is not the fault of the child that they are in a store, screaming their heads off. A parent can nip this in the bud, or at least cut down these incidences, by ensuring proper nutrition and proper rest.

PS- this does not work all the time. We will no longer be going to Blockbuster video due to some unfortunate yelling/running incidents. Even with good food and sleep, kids are still kids and don't possess the self-control we hope they will. Heck, I don't possess all the self-control I hope I will.

All that to say, you can make your life a little easier if your kids get good rest.

Family Health: Breakfast

They come out, one by one, bedraggled, rubbing eyes that are adjusting to the light.

First question: "What are we going to do today? Tell me everything we are going to do."

Second question: "Can I have a choice for breakfast?"

Sometimes the answer to the second question is "yes" and sometimes it is "no". It is very important to me that the children get a good breakfast. You can spot the children who have had a good breakfast, and the ones who have had a nutritionally poor breakfast.

I generally like to try to make my life easy. Especially with children. And giving them a good breakfast helps me accomplish this very self-serving goal.

Their little bodies have been fasting for 15 hours, so a good meal is essential. Here is what our typical breakfast looks like:

1 egg
1 piece of whole-grain toast with lots of real butter
banana, apple, or berries
whole milk (raw if budgeted for)
small cup of Daddy's leftover breakfast smoothie.

I make them eat pretty much the whole thing. I don't care if they finish lunch or dinner, but I really want a good breakfast in them.

Why? It really affects our tone for the day. Some fat and protein and warmth in their tiny stomachs helps them to be calmer and more obedient. Dry cereal is a treat, something that is given as dessert. I have seen my kids after a bowl of cereal, even "healthy" cereal. The sugar and simple carbohydrates turns them into crazy little bouncing things. This is not the type of child I would like to present to the general public, so I make sure they get some good nutrition at breakfast.

I am sure you have heard that ADD, ADHD, and other behavioral disorders have a nutritional link. I have read numerous times that a high-protein, low-processed-food diet improves the behaviors of affected children in a very measurable way.

If the kids are sick of eggs, I will give them whole-fat cottage cheese or whole-fat unsweetened yogurt (I add stevia and pumpkin pie spice). The key is to get something into their bodies that takes some time and energy to digest, maintaining steady blood sugar levels for an extended period of time.

Family Health: An Introduction

Sometimes I want to blog, but I don't know what the heck to blog about. So I was thinking through my "foundations", and along with Scripture and my family itself, one of my passions is health and nutrition. So I shall share with you my thoughts.

As my husband routinely needs to point out to me (passion sometimes borders on obsession), I am not a doctor. Some of the books I read are not written by MDs. Some of the people I consult have non-medically-credible licenses. But I just think that makes them more fascinating. But don't take my advice blindly. Talk to your own doctor.

Nutrition became a passion to me while I was pregnant with my second child. I had a new friend over, and she had me buy a huge book called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Dr. (that's right!...well, Dr. Dentist) Weston A. Price. Little did I know that there is a huge underground following of people who ascribe to the religion of Traditional Eating. Underground, because Traditional Eating goes completely against the "Diet Dictocrats" and the USDA. Religion, because some people literally put all of their faith in how they feed their bodies.

Most of us know a little better, thanks to the illumination of the Holy Spirit. We can't add a day to our life or a hair to our head. God is sovereignly in control of every part of our lives, no matter what we eat or don't eat. But this doesn't mean we can't exercise wisdom with how we nourish our families. It is our job, after all.

5 She gets up while it is still night;
she provides food for her family
and portions for her female servants.
¹⁶ She considers a field and buys it;
out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.
¹⁷ She sets about her work vigorously;
her arms are strong for her tasks. (Prov 31)

So, armed with a bunch of new books and some Scripture to ponder, I began reading everything I could get my hands on concerning this traditional way of eating. I was fascinated by the notion that I could eat fat and protein and eggs and red meat and still be "healthy". Maybe even more "healthy". I read about diet's impact on pregnant women and growing children and even one's mood and immunity. I studied up on nutrients and vitamins and little components of food and how each one can impact one's physical and mental health.

Many times, I had to be reigned in my by exceedingly practical and cynical husband. He analyzes Big Things of the World for a profession, and he is fond of telling me that my information needs to be backed by data, research, and studies. One man's opinion, one woman's anecdote was not enough to convince him to spend $50 on a vat of expeller-pressed, extra-virgin organic coconut oil. And hell no, he would not use coconut oil in place of deodorant even if I backed up my findings with a peer-reviewed journal article.

In other words, he expects balance from me. He trusts me to feed and nourish the physical needs of our family, and I have to prove to be trustworthy. This includes keeping to the budget.

So I read new things, and I run them by him. I have to gear myself up for a Lincoln-Douglas style debate. I have to be really willing to defend my points, and if I am prepared and it is important enough to me, then the structure of how I nourish my family can slowly change.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to attempt a "series". There are a few cornerstones of our family's nutrition that I would love to share with you. There are some peripheral things that come and go. Let me know what you think. Ask me questions.

We could even set up a Lincoln-Douglas debate.


Up first: Breakfast.