Baby Update and Real Food Alternatives to Dairy

Baby I. and I are coming along.  She is strong and sweet and not too hard to soothe.  I gave her her first bath today.  She has a head full of ash blond hair and long slender fingers.  I cannot get enough of her!  I would like to spend my whole day cuddling and feeding her.  Mr. Flavivius has off from work all week and has facilitated much of my babymoon desire, but tomorrow we will begin the new schedule.

A sweet friend came over yesterday and took some professional baby pictures of I. in the beautiful layette made for us by one of the ladies from church, her birthday suit, and then in her baptismal gown.  We have never had professional pictures taken of any of the children.  It was such a special treat!  I. slept through much the event and nursed a little bit, but was fairly contented for much of the 2 hours that Amber was here.  The couple that I saw were so beautiful.  I can't wait to share them with y'all.

Nursing started out great, but now I worry that maybe I'm not making enough milk, that this little nibbler is a bit too laid back, etc...  this happens to me everytime there is a new wee bean in the house, but I have the added concern that she is nor having enough bowel movements (only 5 since day 3).

I will be calling the pediatrician tomorrow and trying to decide what to do next.  She had a touch of jaundice on day 3, but it was not a concern then.  Bilirubin is stored in the tissues, but is primarily elimated through waste (a small amount through urine, but the majority through stooling).  Keep us in your prayers, please.  Also, if you've ever wished a real stinker on that know-it-all-not-yet-a-parent-friend, please, pass all that passion and fervent wishing/praying on to Baby I.  All poopy prayers are welcome.

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Okay!  One of my motherly peeves around the Fast is how, in effort to keep the fast, we will replace a real food with a fake food.  Now, if I was being honest with myself, then no butter would mean, no butter substitute.  That would certainly put an end to my margerine/transfat/what-exactly-is-Earth-Balance-and-why is-it-kinda-grey? anxieties.  I eventually shelve these minor-freakouts for the sake to being able to cook fast friendly food that the kids will eat.  Invariably, this eventually leads to a soy overload and then freakout #2 "what-is-all-this-soy-doing-to-us?!"  

Soy products, in general, are the answer to the question:  What to do with all this agricultural waste?!  Fortunately, for all of us, the Church and Christendom have being dealing with the question of Lenten cooking for millenia (two actually).  If you to have concerns about the effects of soy on you and your children  then here is an easy dairy alternative for the nut milk inclined.  First. a little history on use of Almond Milk and then a recipe.  I hope you find it useful.  By making your own almond milk, you can also avoid all the yucky sweeteners and Bisphenol A that end up in a comercial product.

In the Middle Ages, animal milk was, of course, not refrigerated, and fresh milk did not stay fresh for long. Most cooks simply did not use much milk as the short shelf-life of the product made it a difficult ingredient to depend upon. Many recipe collections of the time advise that cooks should only rely on milk that comes directly from a cow, something not possible at all times, and purchasing milk was a dubious practice, for streetsellers of milk often sold wares that were either spoiled or diluted with water. Milk’s use had to be immediate, in cooking or by turning into cheese & butter. It was these difficulties that forced Medieval cooks to look upon milk with great reluctance, and so having milk in the kitchen was usually unheard of.

Rather than animal milk, Medieval cooks turned to something they could depend upon, and that was the milky liquid produced by grinding almonds or walnuts. This liquid, high in natural fats, could be prepared fresh whenever needed in whatever quantities. It also could be made well ahead of time and stored with no danger of degeneration. Because of its high fat content, it, like animal milk, could be churned into butter, and because it was not animal milk, it could be used and consumed during Church designated meatless days.

Almond milk was used extensively in period; all existing cookbooks call for it, and it must have been found in literally every Medieval kitchen. It's the prime ingredient in many, many recipes, and the modern cook recreating Medieval food will have to learn its production in order to prepare the most common of dishes. Fortunately, it's easily made.  from here

Homemade Almond Milk 
2 cups of raw almonds soaked overnight
5 cups of filtered water
1-3 teaspoons of natural sweetener of your choice (I like maple sugar) optional

Grind your soaked almonds with the water. Let steep for an hour.  Stir and strain through cheesecloth or a fine sieve.  You can save the ground remains to dry and grind again to use as almond meal.  Stir in sweetner if you choose to use it.

24 days to go . . .

and I'm in a brain fog.  I wish I could rally to get some last minute things done, but I'm not succeeding.  Here is a photo journal of our latest escapades.

we went to the Stock Show

I saw my future (just kidding)

the kids ran wild

my new favorite lunch

we made some ugly dolls and the boys learned to sew

the girls were silly

really silly

we made bottle cap brooches for St. Valentine's day

our co-op order came

E. took 45 pictures just like this one

When It Happened. . .

***I feel like I should post a warning here.  A couple of people have mentioned that this is very . . . raw.  I don't mean for it to be, but then I'm on an enormous amount of painkillers and maybe a tad bit desensitized from all of it.  So proceed with caution. . . ***

More from the saga about my ankle.

We live seconds from a firehouse that also houses EMS and an Ambulance.  You can see the roof of my house from the driveway of the fire station.  This has always served me as a great comfort that they are there watching over our neighborhood as silent guardians.  On the night that I smashed my tibia to bits, the knowledge that Emergency Medical Service-members were literally seconds from storming my home to rescue me from my pain, fear and the watchful eyes of my horrified children and husband gave me the strength to not cry out.  It reminded me that I had indeed been in equal or almost worse pain and that relaxing, cleansing breathes were all that separated me from the present terrible moment and an ambulance ride where I could weep, be afraid, and likely receive some relief in the form of an i.v. analgesic.

Please note:  I am no martyr.  It is not that I am some great self-controlled stoic.  There are only two things I know for certain about crisis (which is most certainly where I had landed):

1. panic makes everything worse 
2. children do not need nightmares to come to life

In Which Worldly Trouble Uncovers Abundant Blessings

or ... how I learned not to prophesize . . .
(My how lofty that sounds!) This is a brief post to relate some news.

Thursday, December 2, was A.'s birthday.  Birthdays in the Motherworks-Flavius household tend to be well celebrated family affairs.  We have not typically gone in for the large elementary school gathering that I grew up with, but we do tend to stretch out these natal celebrations for a full week.  The school parties, the home gatherings, the grandparent celebrations . . .  it is a big deal.  I tend to make 2 or sometimes 3 desserts for these multiple birthday party week's festivities.  All of this is to cover over that there will not likely be 50 gifts from little friends, a material explosion from family members, a pre-Christmas Christmas (and even then presents aren't the prominent feature of that holiday either).  We do not run short on the singing, the celebrating, and the feasting (as best we can during a fast such as the Nativity Fast).

With some sisterly help A. planned her meal and picked out her cake.  She asked if we could celebrate at my mother's and Gran readily consented.  So I baked a cake, Mr. Flavius wound up his work day, and the children prepared to go a'celebrating.  The cake was a tall, three layered, chocolate affair covered in raspberries, filled with raspberries, and smothered in chocolate.  Seeing as we would be traveling to mother's I plated the dessert and went searching for a cake cover.  I spied with my little eye a glass cake dome that I inherited from my grandmother.  Perfect.  I grabbed a chair (a well built, sturdy chair of generous proportions and counter-heighth) and proceeded to try and fetch the dome.  Alas!  It was too high and so I set about climbing down from my perch to ask Mr. Flavius to obtain the object for for when . . .  the chair went sideways.  Even now, it seems beyond physics that it could have turned sideways, but it did.  My foot slipped between the rungs of the chair as I fell without a cry toward the ground.  Somehow things were twisted and wrenched and slammed and snapped.  Specifically my tibia was torqued and snapped and my fibula apparently tore through flesh to make up for the extra pressure and science of my circumstances. I landed as  though I had leapt to my stead from the balcony of a saloon and I was preparing to get  out of town.

I did not pass out or faint or cry out or go into shock.  I knew from the pain that my ankle was broken.  I glanced down, the grave injury hidden by my pant leg, and saw blood on the ground.  As Providence would provide, I landed in front of the telephone.  I immediately called 911, explained that I was need an ambulance and then laid down on the ground to wait.

Since then I have had 2 surgeries and an 8 day stay in the hospital.  I am currently at my parents' home recuperating.  I will write more and update you as time allows.  But I did want to thank everyone for all their prayers, gifts, well, wishes, and support.

This broken leg has turned out to be a gift of many blessings.  I hope to adequately relate them to you in the near future.

The Chain Grocery OR the Farmers' Market and Long Time Ago

Last week, I got caught at the end of the day sans plan for dinner.  The boys mentioned that they had missed out on the cinnamon rolls at school-breakfast (I know, I should be all, up and rearin' to go in the morning, but I'm not.  Also.  School breakfast is under a buck.  Probably as sugary and trans-fatty as they get, but there it is.  It is a bit bizarre that I do not buy processed food for my family, but I don't make bag lunches or breakfast everyday.  What can I say?)  I wanted to make up for the loss, so I immediately agreed to breakfast dinner featuring Cook's Illustrated, Quick Cinnamon Rolls with Buttermilk Icing.  The first snag: no butter.  Second: no brown sugar.  No problem, I live point-nuthin' from the grocery store.  Zip-zip, I was in, got a few things.  To be exact: brown sugar, butter, 1 pint of buttermilk, 1 pint of strawberries, one box of veggie sausages.  $13.87.

This really bugs me.  $13.87 for hardly anything.  As I am handing over the cash, I remember my grandparents.  In 1948, when my grandparents married, there were no jobs.  Their rent was $50.00 a month, her beautiful green Oldsmobile was $50 a month, and if you spent $50 dollars on food at the store, you could eat for a month(they did not because that was way more money than they had).  He was lucky enough to get a job as a Oil Rig Engineer Trainee working for Haliburton outside of Shreveport, Louisiana.  Trainees dug ditches.  They were paid 85¢ an hour.  He had to work at least 80 hours before they would give him his pay.  Remember I said lucky to get a job?  At the end of 12 months, there was a balloon payment due on her car.  They had to sell it.

Eventually, a position opened back in their home town and he took it.  They moved back and bought a tiny duplex.  The payment like to have killed them.  Their mortgage was $85 a month.  They were able to rent out the other side and that helped.  His new job paid $185 a month.  It was the most money he'd ever made in his life.

On the weekends, they would go to the football game at the high school, the highlight of the week.  One of the men that worked with Granddaddy was a poor, black man.  Granddaddy was fond of Clarence and he knew that he would enjoy the football games, but he couldn't afford the ticket.  Even if Clarence could have afforded the ticket, he wouldn't have been allowed to sit in the stands because of the segregation laws in place at the time.  So together with Gram they devised a plan to help him see the games, without having to buy a ticket.

With the help of Pearlie, their maid, they cooked up 200 hotdogs and made some fragrant and delicious chili.  Then they would go down to the game and sit where the breeze would pick up the scent of the chili and carry its perfume all over the stands.  Hotdogs with chili sold for a quarter a piece.  They sold out before the game started.  The next week, they made up 1000 dogs and an even bigger pot of Pearlie's delicious chili.  Again they sat where the breeze would catch the scent of the chili and again, they were a wild success.  This time they sold out before halftime.  The next week, they made up 2000 hotdogs and as much of Pearlie's scrumptious, heavenly chili as they could carry.  Again they sat in their favorite breezy spot.  By now, Gram, Grandaddy, and Clarence were the hit of the game.  Gram was so tickled that she lost interest in the game and was just floored by all the quarters that their ploy had garnered them.  When they ran out of dogs after Halftime, they sold chili on buns for a quarter.  This is one of my favorite stories that Granddaddy tells.

It is for this reason that spending $15, $20, $40 on a home cooked meal makes me crazy.  I for all my failings in organization, am the queen of <$5 dinners.  Increasingly, this is becoming next to impossible to do while shopping at the local Grocery Store.  I hate cutting coupons, I don't get the paper, I won't be playing the Grocery Game anytime soon.  So as a picture is worth a thousand words, I wanted to share with you my weeks worth of veggies from the Farmer's Market (which cost $23.56, but when combined with beans, tortillas, and grains from our pantry this will last us all week).

Clockwise from the left: fava beans, cactus paddles,
 okra, ginger, spaghetti squash, napa cabbage, cantaloupe,
cute  little brown mushrooms, summer squash, roma tomatoes,
cucmbers, organic carrots, tomatillos, and
cream peas.

Oh! Logismoi!

I was driven from sleep and not long thereafter, my bed, by the flood of anxiety-inducing, mind spinning, thought-racers, logismoi (log-iss-MEE).


For the uninitiated, it goes something like this:


What if?What if!  I bet she thinks that, if she said that to me then I would say this! And then in typical fashion she would respond with 'X' and I would say [insert brilliant remark here].  And that would show her.


Or more commonly:


Hmm.  I'm awake.  The baby hasn't woken up yet.  What time is it?  I'm afraid to look.  What if he isn't breathing?  What if I heard his not breathing and that's what woke me up?  I'm afraid to look.  Should I get out of bed and go over there?  I can't.  He'll wake up or worse not wake up.  Maybe I should wake up Mr. Flavius and get him to check.  Mr Flavius is snoring.  Snoring can be a sign of sleep apnea.  Does he have sleep apnea?  Maybe that's why he does [insert random idiosyncratic tick].  Maybe I should wake him up?  He could check on the baby. Whatwasthat?!  Was that the dog?  Does the dog have fleas?  Fleas carry parasites.  Parasites are so gross.  Can they get in your epicardium?    

This is my brain on logismoi if I do nothing.

The logismoi is the unending stream of thoughts that are always with us.  Freud called this the id and ego, but I truly think that this was giving it too much legitmacy.  Freud believed the ego was the 'I' and the id was the impulse drive behind the 'I.'  The fathers talk about the nous and the logismoi.  Simply put the nous is the heart or the eye of the soul and the logismoi is

the thoughts which are connected with images as well as with the various stimulations originating from the senses and the imagination. The thoughts logismoi evolve to sin through the stages of desire, action and passion. They are called logismoi because they act in the reason (logiki).

~Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos

The Fathers would say the nous, the heart is the 'I' and the mind, full of this logismoi, is the thing that distracts us from our authentic selves.  That most of us do not know ourselves and misidentify the authentic self as this stream of consciousness is sad.  It makes the rise of stream of consciousness as a writing technique and therapeutic tool even more sad.  Is there no place that we have not given over to our lowest passions?  But this is the deal, right?


In reading the Fathers, speaking with my priest, and listening to the podcast of Archmandrate Meletios Webber there is but one consistent answer:  prayer.

I am a particularly lazy woman and sometimes (okay, let's be honest:  all of the time) I would rather stay in bed and drown in this dross rather than struggle against it.  Were it not for the anxiety actually causing me to twitch and fidget, thus giving rise to my other great anxiety and physically driving me out of bed and then my bedroom I might actually succeed in drowning in the dross.  And once out of bed I find myself with 3 choices:  the Interwebs:  Extra! Extra!  Google all about it!  Logismoi drowns woman searching internet for endocardiac-parasytic-infections-from-fleas-related-to-sleep-apnea!  TV, to drown out the logismoi and avoid the struggle.  Or finally, the Icon Corner, to wrestle with our defeated foe and throw myself on Christ's mercy.  I wish I could say that I chose Door #3 more often.  Struggle, struggle, struggle. 

I have nothing particularly enlightening to say here about all of this other than to say that Metropolitan Jonah says that when in the course of your struggle you feeling like things are getting worse then it means you're actually getting better.  Maybe it is because we are actually engaged in the struggle.  Fr. Joseph Huneycutt related a story about some-holy-father-whose-name-escapes-me, who said that "when the Devil with his temptations keeps pricking, pricking, pricking at me . . .  I thank him.  'Thank you for reminding me of my Lord.  I had forgotten him, but for your reminding me'."  He went on to say that after that the Devil will leave you because even he will not work for free and bring benefit to your soul. I like what Fr. Stephen of Glory to God for All Things has written about it and I invite you to go read what someone, who is far smarter and holier than I, has said about it.

Everyday Mishaps: Scorched Pot Day

I had hoped to finish posting my canning recipe for this month.  Instead, I managed to scorch a double recipe of clementine marmalade.  Curses!  Worse, this is the third giant pot of something I've scorched today.  First, two batches of oatmeal this morning and now the marmalade.  

SO without further adieu, I give you:  How to Save Your Great Pot That You Just Ruined For Forever AND Ever.  Amen.