Yogurt making

   And the question of the day is....how do you make yogurt? It is really easy! The further I get into the quest for real food the more amazed I am at how lazy we are. Seriously....I am the queen of as little effort as possible to achieve the maximum result possible, but I think that on the timeline of food, we've definitely missed the maximum result. You're looking at a peach yogurt, a strawberry yogurt and a vanilla yogurt....the vanilla is actually much lighter then the pic...I'm not sure why it looks so dark on here...

   My friend Kathie makes her own yogurt regularly so I asked her how she does it and took what she said, and the link she sent me with information on it, and put them together. First I took the biggest pot I have and the second biggest pot I have and I filled the biggest with water and put the second biggest inside it to make a double boiler. I filled the 2nd pot with milk. The amount of milk you put in here will be the amount of yogurt you get so you can make this as much or as little as you want. I then heated the milk up to 185 degrees and maintained it at this temperature for about 10 minutes (Next time I will try and maintain it for closer to the 30 min recommended for thicker yogurt). While this was boiling I put a large glass bowl in my sink and filled the sink around the pot with ice water. I dumped the milk into this bowl and chilled the milk down to 110 while stirring the milk to make sure it cooled evenly. When the milk gets to 110, add a few tablespoons of live culture plain yogurt (after the first batch, you can save some of your own yogurt to mix use as the starter, but the first time, use a store bought brand...I used Stoneyfield Farms). I went ahead and put the yogurt into jars at this point and sealed them and placed them in a cooler. I then took the water I boiled earlier and poured it over the jars and added extra hot tap water to the cooler to keep the jars warm. I closed the cooler, and left it there overnight. When I woke up, I had yogurt. I stirred the jars a bit and then put the jars in the refrigerator for a few hours in order to thicken a bit.

    A lot of people leave the yogurt plan and flavor as you eat it...I opted to go ahead and flavor a head of time and leave it jarred in different flavored jars. To make the strawberry, I took a quart of strawberries and pureed them in my food processor and added strawberry puree and blue agave sweetener to taste. I did the same for the peach as well. I then realized I had some frozen blackberries in my freezer from last year and defrosted them and used them as well. The last flavor I made was vanilla. I took about 2 tbsp's of vanilla extract and a tsp of blue agave and it came out great as well! I think I may like this better then the yogurt you can by and I know there are way way way fewer ingredients in mine then there are in the store bought ingredients.
 

    The even more awesome part of this was making the go-gurt pouches. Jonah is a go-gurt addict. Those things get expensive...and they have lots and lots of sugar in them...and if you've met my sweet boy, you know sugar is not something extra he needs. My dad got me a food saver for my birthday (I'm such a crazy crazy exciting person, did you know you could make vegetable steam bags with that thing??) so I took the bags and made little pouches with them, and cut the top of the pouch, filled it with yogurt and resealed it. It took a few rounds of practice, but then Diane and I got a nice little assembly line going, and now Jonah has about 20 pouches with more in them then a normal go-gurt with a much much healthier alternative.

   I really didn't think that this would work so well, so I wasn't really good about taking pictures while I was making the yogurt, so I definitely will take pictures next time. I think I will probably make it in smaller quantities so it takes less time next time. I will probably make a half gallon and call it good next time :-) I think I will probably let Jonah help me next time since it will be pretty hard for it to be messed up as long as the temperatures are controlled and he loves to be helpful. 

Slowly headed back to the real world

Today was my first glimpse into what the real world is like...just a tiny glimpse...I got up this morning with Jason, made breakfast and put a chicken in the crock pot (A SUPER easy crock pot recipe with not very many ingredients at all that my neighbors saw and thought of us) and was out the door by 7:30. It's not as early as I need to be out the door for school, and I still am missing an exercise component that I would like to have in my mornings, but it was something. I ran some errands and went to school to get my classroom started. When I got to school, I got some of the stuff off of my tables and put where it goes...then had lunch....which I had packed a head of time from the lemon salmon a couple of days ago and had a healthy lunch without much effort at all. I finished up at school and came home to finish my yogurt project (which gets its own post). The chicken was already done in the crock pot at 3 so I left it on warm for a few hours and it was juicy enough to not dry out. It literally fell off the bone. Loving my Yonder Way Farm chicken!

Crock Pot Chicken and Carrots:

1 whole chicken rinsed and seasoned with salt and pepper
1/2 cup of diced onions
1/2 cup of diced carrots
Fresh thyme
1 lemon, juiced.

Put all ingredients in the crock pot and set on low for 8 hours or high for 6 hours...that's it...you're done...awesome dinner ready when you get home. I steamed some green beans and my friend Diane made a fruit salad and she and Rod came over and we had a ::gasp:: KID FREE DINNER! It was very very exciting.

And then afterwards......Jason and Rod did the dishes :-) Don't they look ridiculously happy to be doing the dishes??? It's because Diane begged to go to Yogurt Worx as soon as Jonah got home so they were all very excited. 

3 more weeks....

     That's all that I have left of summer....3 more weeks...I go back to school on August 20th. I am ready to be back in my routine and to have kids back on a daily basis, and to have adult interaction on a daily basis. Today Jonah and I had a playdate today and made zucchini pizza (made just like french bread pizza except instead of using bread, you use slices of zucchini. This is a big favorite around our house...I'm not sure how a kid who has been allergic to wheat since he was 14 months old could love pizza as much as Jonah does.

     I am starting to get systems in place that will hopefully work for the next school year. I have breakfast down to an art for now. I have 2 divided containers that have vegetables sliced up into them and I take those containers and throw some of it in a skillet, put some salsa on top along with a piece of turkey bacon or some chicken sausage and call it breakfast. It only takes about 10 minutes so it's definitely do-able for school mornings. Jason has a keurig that he used in his last office, but his new office has a keurig so he obviously doesn't need it. I am going to take it with me to school and use it for hot water to make oatmeal or tea and things like that. I'm pretty excited about that. 

    

    Tonight for dinner, I made some blackened Mahi Mahi with a fruit salsa on top and some long grain rice and when I got home to cook it all, my across the street neighbors had brought over some salad that she had made so I didn't have to make one :-). I love that other people are starting to work towards holding me accountable for what I am eating and doing. I appreciate the encouragement on all sides. 

Here's the super yummy Mahi Mahi recipe...I love love love fish. It's easy and quick to cook and doesn't require a whole lot of prep time. 

1 cup of diced strawberries
1/2 cup diced kiwi
1 tablespoon of chopped cilantro
1 tablespoon of lime juice
1 minced jalapeno pepper {with or without seeds}
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon paprika
pinch of cayenne pepper
2/3 lb of mahi mahi

 In a large glass bowl, combine the strawberries, kiwi, cilantro, shallot, jalapeno and lime juice.  Stir together and cover.  Refrigerate for 1 to 2 hours.

In a small glass bowl, combine the onion powder, garlic powder, salt, pepper, cayenne pepper and paprika.  Sprinkle evenly on the top side of the mahi mahi.  Heat a caste iron skillet over high heat.  Add a little bit of olive oil and place fish in skillet.  Cook for 4 to 5 minutes and then flip for another 3-4 minutes.  Fish is done when it flakes with a fork.

Jonah is going to Schlitterbahn tomorrow with Jason's mom and his cousins...so Jason and I used our date night well....we made some yogurt :-) I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow....hopefully it's good.

In the interest of full disclosure...

     For a blog post that has nothing to do with food... well I'm sure that it will have something to do with food, but in the interest of full disclosure and transparency...I think it's only fair to share where I am right now emotionally. I am awake at 1:20 am...which is partially because it takes me about a month to get back into my normal sleeping pattern after having surgery and partially because I had decided to write this blog post this morning at church, and hadn't and really feel like I'm supposed to write this down for myself and maybe for someone else too.

  

    I hadn't realized it really and fully (probably because I hadn't allowed myself too) but I am incredibly angry with God. I remember getting to this point before when we were trying to get pregnant with Jonah, and I remember feeling so so guilty about it then, too. I was at FCC (Florida Christian College) at the time as a student and I remember sitting in class with Professor Howard and hearing him say over and over that God could take anything we could throw at him because he was bigger then our anger. That was the first time in my life (and I've had quite a few just really unfortunate situations) that I let myself feel angry with God and not just angry at other humans. I feel like Jason and I are good parents. We give Jonah a healthy dose of just enough crazy to make him interesting, but balance and security and love enough for 10 kids. We try and do the best for him in everything. I feel like no matter what, he knows that he is the center of our universe, and even when he's a total and complete toot, he's still overall a really good kid. How is it that I know of people who literally throw away perfectly good pregnancies when I would give just about anything to get a yes from God on one? How is it that people with no business with babies, get tons and good parents sit without the desires of their heart? It's honestly seriously just not fair. I say it's OK...because it has to be...but it still sucks. Infertility sucks. I am so so thankful that God heard me and gave me the child that I begged for once and I almost feel selfish thinking and feeling like I should get so blessed and chosen twice. 

  

     Our life group is wonderful. It is made up of the biggest hodge podge of 20 and 30 somethings that could've been thrown together. We are all different and have had just about every experience I could think of. We are a balance of creatives and analytics and artists and thinkers and overall people who just love fiercely. We are very honest and very real with each other just about all of the time and I know that  if I called just about anyone in that group, they would drop whatever they could to help us, and have. The girls in our life group and from various other spots around our church last year came together for an evening just for me to encourage me and to pray for me because I was clearly feeling way more broken then I realized. It was incredibly encouraging and I still hold onto just about everything that was said that night as encouragement for when I am spiritually attacked by satan because the first thing he says to me is "you don't matter to God or anyone else" and forever, I will hold onto the truths that were spoken to me that night (that I know have been spoken 100 times before, by my family and others who love me) and rebuke him. Anyway...I sat there with my lifegroup  on Tuesday night as we worshipped, and became completely uncomfortable with even being in the room worshipping. That has NEVER happened to me. I was seriously looking for a way out of the room. I didn't want to be with God and I didn't want to feel God. It was a feeling I never want to forget because it hurt so badly and I never want to feel it again, but I didn't know how to break it, so I sat and I felt it. 

    

     Today in worship, our minister asked us to pull out our Bible, pick a chapter and stand and proclaim a verse. The verse of the day on the Bible ap that most of us use was Galatians 6:9 so it was what popped up when most of us opened the ap so quite a few of us went with that...Galatians 6:9 says "Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary." Wow. I think that Carl was used today to point that out to a good number of us. He said today in his sermon that we would remember that verse more then anything else in his sermon, and he's completely right. I am going to be 100% honest, I have no idea what his sermon was about today...because I was/am totally stuck on that. I have been looking for a verse to put on a pinterest project (I know, I'm addicted) and that is it. I was sitting there about to go into a pitty party and one of my friends that I have set to alert posted shared that on her fb. It dinged on my phone and I went and commented on it and said that was my verse as well and she commented back and said that she was just not ok today and was feeling weary. And at that moment, I got it. It is OK for me to be angry with God, but it is not ok for me to not be obedient. I am called to encourage and to love people. So in my brokenness I went and poured out every prayer I had on my friend and in that moment found a little bit of healing for myself. I prayed for her to be encouraged as she is encouraging and for her to be given a super natural energy and peace about everything going on in her life. I prayed for her and for her family to experience healing in everything that is ailing her physically and emotionally and at the same time, I prayed and proclaimed those things for myself. I am so thankful for her transparency and her willingness to feel what was going on with her publicly so that it could bring healing to those around her. 

  

   Our church has a system of prayer cards. Everyone is encouraged to fill them out weekly for anything and everything, they are copied, given to all elders, staff members, and if they're not confidential to a team of people that have volunteered to pray for people throughout the week, and then passed back out during the same service. I have often times filled them out for others, but never really for me. Today, even before this happened, I filled one out for me. I feel like God is working on me to worry about me. I feel incredibly selfish saying that, but I am honestly not one to spend any time on me, and I know that's not his plan for me either. Our chiropractor recently joined a new practice (and if you know me, you've heard me talk about how this was a total blessing) and was able to remold his practice from pain management into more of a wellness practice along with the pain management/sports medicine end of things. His partner is a nutrition and wellness ninja and looked at me the first time he met me and said something to the effect of "God wants you to be able to live life to the full so you can become everything he designed you to be and achieve everything he created you to be able to achieve" and those words spoke into me a determination that I have never felt even though I have heard things similar to that over and over again. 

  

     I had to stop the birth control that I was on to cycle before the fertility drugs because it messed with my liver. My ENT happened to run a liver panel before my surgery and my liver enzymes had doubled since before I started the meds. The fertility drugs would mostly likely do more to my liver then the bc did so we are waiting until I get a completely clean liver panel to start again. It may take a while for that to happen, and so until then, I wait and I work towards health. Everyone around us keeps asking what our plan is...and I always have the same answer....we're waiting. Adoption may be in our future, but I haven't heard God give me a go on it yet. I have a sweet sweet friend who is willing to carry a baby for 9 months and then give it to me which is seriously the most beautiful thing anyone has ever ever offered to me, but we're waiting. We have considered IVF and IUI, but we're waiting. My son wants a sibling, but he knows that babies have a hard time growing in mommy's tummy, so he's waiting. I feel like God will make it abundantly clear when and where we're supposed to do something, but until then, we're waiting. I honestly feel like right now, God is trying to heal my body of the imperfections in it. My thyroid that was thought to be doing nothing is gradually beginning to work again, I don't know if it's temporary or permanent, but it's something. It's documented that my body is doing something it is supposed to do. I was able to come off of my PCOS meds and my insulin levels still look wonderful. I am for the first time ever, successfully losing weight...so we're waiting. I may just be intended to love my one child (and the 100 others that are handed to me every year at school) spectacularly and fiercely and if that's what God has for me, it will be OK and I will be at peace with that, but until I hear that in finality, we're waiting. 

So easy...so so easy

    Dinner tonight was probably the easiest recipe I've ever made...seriously so easy. It was a lemon flavored salmon with squash and zucchini.

    I got enough aluminum foil to make a pouch for the salmon that would close it off completely then laid that flat. I thinly sliced a lemon and laid it flat then put the salmon on top of it. I put about a slice of butter on top of both pieces of salmon and then closed the pouch. I put it in the oven on 300 for about 30 minutes.

 

     While I put that in the oven, I sliced up a few squash and zucchini and put it in a grill basket, mixed in about a tablespoon of butter (it could have easily been coconut oil or something else), sprinkled some cracked pepper on it and then put it on the grill on low. I went out twice and squeezed a little bit of lemon onto it but mostly I just ignored it until the salmon was done.



This morning we made our weekly farmers market trip and I've decided that Jonah will eat just about anything that he gets to help pick out from that place. The people there are really nice and will talk to him forever...which is a success in the book of Jonah...He really just loves to meet people. When I gave him his dinner tonight he looked at me like I had 6 heads when I tried to get him to eat squash and zucchini. He has had it before, so I'm not sure what the issue was...but he had a 4 year old mental road block up against it. As soon as I reminded him that he helped me pick out the food at the market this morning problem was solved and he ate it all, no questions asked.

    If your kids are refusing to eat foods, try letting them be the ones to pick them out of letting them help cook it, even if Jonah just stirs a few times, if he feels like he helped make it, it makes the dinner battles so so much smaller. It works on other kids, too. I was a nanny in college (and right afterwards) for two boys (and another boy before that, and a boy and a girl before that), one of which would eat just about whatever you put in front of him and the other that it could be world war three to get him to eat anything other then spaghetti or cheese balls. If he got to help me make dinner though, the dinner battle was over. I am happy to report that he now eats like a rock star...maybe it was just that I stopped cooking for him when I moved to Texas...Jason's not the only one who had to eat a lot of ugly food. I never told them I could cook when they hired me, I just promised to love their babies :-)

Down home on the farm

Jonah and I...well really me...Jonah's just a long for the ride....so really...I got this crazy idea last night to take Jonah to go to a farm today. Like a farm that does something....so really a ranch or hydroponic farm or dairy or something. So I did what any 20-something google addict does...I started googling stuff and found a dairy that we had actually gotten milk from when Jason's aunt Becky went and picked it up for us once. It's only 20 minutes away! Success! So I messaged them on Facebook, they said come on, and off we went.

   I think my kid might have been meant to live on a farm...although my poor husband definitely wasn't. We got there, and he was out the door with the cows....They have calfs that are in little mini-pens with houses while they're growing into the pasture and I was pretty sure Jonah was going to try and take one home. I grew up across the street from cows...so it wasn't uncommon for us to play in the pasture (it wasn't a whole herd, normally just 4 or 5 in the whole pasture) or feed them whatever we could find growing around there (lots of citrus trees and berry bushes) and apparently the animal love has finally passed on through into Jonah. He asked the ranch hand that was there if he could help feed the cows and feed the cows he did "Just like I feed Mac". He got to learn about how to mix the feeds for the calves and got to help carry buckets and was just ridiculously excited to be there.

   We went in the store and got some milk and eggs and cream and some little individual sized milks "for the ride home" They make their own chocolate milk and it is SPECTACULAR...Jonah though has decided that he likes the raw milk enough that he just wanted plain milk. We are making a return trip next week with some friends to learn about how the dairy works (and get some butter that they were out of today).

    I feel like right now I'm focusing a lot of energy on getting the right food into our routine and the wrong food out of our routine. We are not following a certain "diet plan" as a family. Jason and I were talking last night and I was talking about how I didn't feel like there was a whole lot that we can't eat... because we were so close to the gluten free as a family for the last 3 years that that was probably the easiest transition for us to kick over, but we're eating so much quality food that is taking a little more effort to prepare, but I don't feel hungry and I don't feel like we're missing anything. It's not in the house to eat, and good stuff is, so you eat what's available to you. We've gone through almost 50 peaches and 4 quarts of strawberries and 3 pints of blueberries since Jonah and I got back from Florida on July 5th...which I just realized has only been 3 weeks...It's amazing to me what a change we've made this summer. I am glad that I did this during summer and not during the school year. I have a system planned that I think will work to keep us stocked during the school year. We will be using Yonder Way Farms for milk and chicken since they deliver straight to where we are and will be using our own cow that will be in in September for beef. I will continue going to the farmers market on Saturday mornings and getting most of our produce from there. I will probably make once a month trips to Calico Dairy for cream and butter and we have a teacher who owns an organic farm (Peas Farm, Conroe) that delivers eggs and produce to our school weekly. It's a couple of extra stops, but I think that it's definitely doable.

    We went out to dinner tonight for the first time in 2 or 3 weeks. I was doing some shopping for a baby shower and to get some soap from the awesome antibacterial soap We went to Pei Wei and I ate lettuce wraps and Jason had gf sweet and sour chicken and Jonah had gf sweet and sour shrimp with brown rice....I didn't realize it...but the lettuce wraps that I always eat (normally I get a pair of crab rangoons too) are only 300 calories...so I got extra lettuce and ate till I was full...which was about 3/4 of the plate. I consider that a successful dinner out...

Don't cry over burnt...tacos....

    Like I said before, I tend to overcommit myself. I overcommit, and then I over-plan and then I over-do and then we're just stuck in a vicious cycle. Please don't do anything to try and stop it when it starts, because I'm either overdoing, or I'm underdoing...which really means I'm doing nothing at all.

   Jonah asked me today if someone could come over for dinner tonight. He asks me this while we're on our way to Target to get supplies to make cleaning supplies (remind me to tell you about my amazing soap scum removing shower cleaner...super easy, super cheap and works REALLY well) so I agree and don't really think to much about the time line here. I call my mother-in-law and set up dinner for 5:30. I forgot that we have chiropractor appointments at 4...It's close so not a big deal. So my natural progression in the cycle of over begins...and I enter into the over planning. We are now having Tacos and Rice and Beans...not bad, except I just couldn't leave it at Tacos. Then before I could even help it I was making homemade refried beans (which I've never done, so that was it's own adventure) and had precut all vegetables and precooked meat (along with just about every spice I had that said pepper on it) so that all I had to do when I get home is get it all out and finish the rice and beans and we're good for dinner.

    So I get home and start working on the beans (I had pinto beans that I left in the crockpot on while I was gone) and sautéed some onions, tomatoes and jalepenos. I smashed up the beans with a potato smasher and then put them in the skillet with the sautéed vegetables and cooked them for about 10 minutes...Refried beans are really easy to make, and pretty yummy when they're homemade. I cooked some long brown rice and called it good. I did have Jason stop and get some guacamole from HEB because I don't like guacamole and I don't know anything about it...and the lady at HEB makes it right in front of you, so it is always a winner around here when people who eat guacamole come over.

   In the midst of all of this, I decided that it'd be great if I put the taco shells (Trader Joe's organic corn cooked in sunflower seed oil) in the oven to make sure they were warm and crispy. Well...I forgot...because I over-everything.

    Yes they actually are as burnt as they look and yes, they were mostly eaten anyway. I got the ground beef a little bit to spicy so Jonah was not a huge fan of dinner tonight (along with the cranky mood he is in from no nap today) so he had some guacamole and veggie and flax seed chips along with some roast beef and called it good. I really wanted to be angry and upset and stressed out about my burnt shells, but I decided instead to enjoy what was good (most definitely everything else, my father in law is pretty mexican food picky and will very gently let you know when food "tastes healthy" and he voluntarily took some of the leftover beans home)...and move on with a good night. 

Dinner tastes better when it's pretty....

Our family has always had yellow gravy for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I thought all turkey gravy was yellow to be honest. When grandma came to Texas for the first time for Christmas, she was in the kitchen helping mom make dinner (keep in mind, I grew up across the field from my grandparents in a little town called Dover, Florida, lived there until I was 14 when we moved to Texas and this Christmas in question was when I was probably 16 or 17) and asked me to bring her her purse. I assumed this was either for money for a grocery run, or medication or something, but instead she pulled out yellow food coloring. Clearly for some reason she had decided that we wouldn't have yellow food coloring but regardless of why, it was so important to her that the food look a certain way that she brought her own supplies to make it happen. I asked her why and she explained to me the importance of presentation. I clearly didn't get it at that point and my husband has spent a lot of time eating a lot of really ugly food...but I think I might have finally gotten it. 

Last week when I made our meet order, I let Jonah pick out one type of meat and he picked chicken wings. We don't normally even eat chicken wings, but he decided he needed it, so who am I to argue. I picked up our order from Yonder Way Farms at our chiropractors office yesterday and the first thing he said was that we needed to have chicken wings for dinner tonight. So we did. I couldn't make this easy and use a store bought barbeque sauce...no no, I made my own... and am so so glad I did. It was amazing...so amazing in fact that I took it over to the neighbors and made them try it. I'm not claiming it's healthy as in low calorie count...but it's tasty...and it's whole food...and gluten free so it's a winner for our house. 

Barbeque Sauce Recipe

3/4 cup light brown sugar

2/3 cup tomato paste (I've heard ketchup will work as well)

1/4 cup peach infused vinegar (The other recipes I've seen have used red wine, which I'm sure would work, but I had peach and I'm all about a little bit of a fruity taste whenever I can get it)

1/4 cup water

1/2 tbs Worcestershire Sauce (I found an organic, no high fructose corn syrup one at Trader Joes)

1 tsp Ground Mustard

1 tsp Paprika 

3/4 tsp salt 

1/2 tsp black pepper

I mixed them all together in a bowl, brushed it on the wings, and then let it marinade all day. Jason put them on the grill with the asparagus (which I marinated for about half an hour in some of the peach vinegar and some olive oil) and I put the corn (husk and all) in the oven on 350 for about 40 minutes and that's about all it took to get dinner on the table for us tonight. The actual cooking took as long as it took for the corn to cook and Jason played baseball with Jonah in the back yard while the chicken was on the grill. Super easy, if I can do it you can do it :-) 

On a not-so random side note...my weight has now had 2 (TWO!) 10's place changes since I started. Not 20 lbs...but enough to make it change twice (TWICE!). I may or may not have made Jason come weigh himself to prove to me that the scale was in fact working...I'm a little skeptical, what can I say.

Breakfast around these parts

I will be the absolute first to admit it....I don't like Greek Yogurt. I have strange texture issues... I don't like guacamole either. The downside to this is that Greek Yogurt is ridiculously healthy....serious dilemma. I have found a solution. I take about half a cup of greek yogurt, then add half a banana sliced up with some blueberries and strawberries and then throw in about 1/8 of a cup of granola. It manages to cover up the gross texture of the yogurt and still get the health benefits of it. Yay me!

Jason is not as easily convinced... This morning he had eggs with some strawberry habenero salsa with some cilantro and onions along with some berries on the side. We made our first farm fresh co-op pickup yesterday. We started small with a gallon of raw milk, a carton of eggs, some chicken wings (I let Jonah pick out something), a whole chicken and a roast. I am allergic to eggs and Jonah's not a huge fan (he tests positive to an allergy for them so even though I've never seen him react, I'm not going to push it for now), so Jason's the only one who gets that benefit. He really likes having eggs every day and I think as long as I keep mixing in something new every day he'll be good to go.

Jonah is the best breakfast eater we have. He goes through a bowl of fruit, some milk and some yogurt just about every day and is ready to go.

I am actually running out of food for the first time in a long time. Not because it's gone bad, but because I'm actually using the food that I've bought instead of eating out regularly. The farmers market is on Saturday and that's where I have been getting just about all of our food from (short of a trip to Trader Joes about once every 10 days). Where do you go to get farm fresh food in the middle of the week?? I googled it (because I'm a perfectly logical person who googles everything) and you go to the mall. Our mall has a farmers market on Wednesday afternoons...who would've guessed. So Jonah and I will be making a farmers market run this afternoon along with a TJ's run to get some more turkey bacon/ chicken sausage. I'll be working on some homemade chicken wings this afternoon...If they come out like I'm hoping they will I'll post the recipe later.

Here we go again...

    I have started this blog at least 6 different times with just as many different aspects of life to focus on. This time, I have intentionally made the change in our lives and waited a good solid 2-3 weeks to make sure it would stick at least that long before trying to talk through life with myself. My focus has always always been on losing weight. I hate being overweight (as I'm sure every overweight person in the world does) and have to fight exceptionally hard to lose any weight at all. I think that I'm finally in a semi-emotionally healthy state and am ready to focus on overall health for my whole family. I am ready to be proactive about living life to the fullness that God has intended for us to and to stop dealing with individual health events instead of trying to prevent them in the first place.

  We walk a delicate balance in our family from really wanting to be in the crunchy, hippy state of medical care and really knowing that until things drastically change (and even probably after that) we all require some level of daily medical intervention. We are a walking mess of asthma and allergies and all sorts of other things. As a bit of background, I'll fill you in on the things that we fight against medically and some of the background on why we are eating the way that we are and doing the things we're doing.

   I have a thyroid disorder (Hashimoto's, causing your thyroid to attack itself) and PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) and those have been the two biggest focuses on my journey to being healthy for quite a while. These two conditions breed a whole host of other issues and make endocrinologists give you that look that says "Yeah, I'm really sorry you're overweight...." without a whole lot of hope for change. Since May, I have 100% cut out soy from my diet. I have known for a long long time that soy was bad for thyroid production. When my endocrinologist and primary care doctor both saw my thyroid numbers jump up I knew that I needed to do whatever I could or my thyroid would be totally gone forever and I was only 26 and hopefully have a long long full life to live and would love to do that with all body parts that I can working. Since making that one change, my thyroid meds have been able to be dropped twice and are feeling like they could probably be dropped again sometime soon. I consider that in and of itself to be a success.
   
    Jason has always had some sort of gastrointestinal issues and has always struggled to gain weight. Talk about opposites attracting...He constantly feels sick to his stomach and is commonly up in the middle of the night with some sort of stomach upset. He is a typical man though (whom I love greatly) and went to see his doctor once, they ran some labs, told him his thyroid was fine, told him to make some diet changes, and told him to come back if it didn't get any better. Did he? Absolutely not. He instead has continued to be uncomfortable and to be honest a bit cranky about the whole thing. After I jumped on this ride and have started to have some success with better health overall, he decided that he wanted to try cutting out gluten from his diet. That is totally the cool diet right now, but it makes for an easy transition for our family so I said sweet, lets go with it. He has had almost immediate relief. He is no loner frequently in pain, he is slowly but surely gaining weight and is a much much happier person. He hasn't been back in to have the test done to see if he is a celiac, but at this point if it said he wasn't I probably wouldn't believe it.

    I mentioned above that I have PCOS and Hashimoto's and that it leads to a whole host of issues. One of those is infertility. It is awful and horrible and gut wrenching, but it is what it is at this point. Jason and I have been married 8 years. We have never not tried to get pregnant. Jonah is the result of a whole bunch of stuff before starting fertility drugs and then 6 months on fertility drugs. Since then we've tried to start them again, but my liver is not loving the drugs so until I can get clean scans and labs on my liver (and hopefully that will come with losing weight among other things) we are totally put on hold with that unless God decides to work a miracle. I have days when I am completely mad and angry with God over the whole situation and then I have days where I'm ready to go and do something about it. Our prayer when praying for Jonah is that we would have a baby and be satisfied with one (even though we always dreamed of a big family) if that's all we were intended to have. Most days I am satisfied, but some days it just feels like it isn't fair.

   Back to Jonah. Jonah is a walking mess of a four year old boy. A very allergic, itchy boy. We drive 3 hours to see our allergist in Waco (his name is Dr. Russell Perry in case you're in Waco and need a spectacular allergist) because he moved...and he loves our kid, and our kid loves him and he's the only person we've found willing to work towards a solution instead of putting bandaids on the symptoms. Jonah is allergic to all sorts of outside things (we're not even completely sure what yet, since allergies continue to come up until kids are about 5 or 6), nickel, wheat and a chemical called ethylene diamine. Doesn't sound to bad...until you realize that wheat is in just about everything...and ethylene diamine is in almost all allergy medications. That's right, my kids allergic to allergy medication (except a few random ones and benadryl) . Ridiculous I know. We have known abut Jonah's allergy to wheat since he was about 15 months old when his very observant preschool director picked up on it after snack time. He has been on a gluten free diet since then so we thought that we were doing pretty well diet wise for him. I am now thinking that we were not doing so great. We were just replacing most of the gluten with corn, which is almost all genetically modified anyway so I was still putting junk in.

    We are on a quest to eat as closely to the way that God intended us to as possible in a crazy busy, modern family situation. I am a teacher (so I'm sure that will find it's way into this blog somehow when school starts back), Jason builds EHR software (medical records software for doctors) and Jonah goes to preschool full time so extra time is not something that we have a lot of. I tend to overcommit to life and am so ridiculously ADHD and scattered that there's no telling what I've got going on at any point in time. So there's us in a really large nutshell, and here's to hopefully using this blog to document a transformation in our family.