Any extroverts out there withering amidst all this social distancing? My extroverted children are feeling it. Anyone else had a painful conversation with your kids about why they can't join the neighborhood party that seems to be going on outside your door? One of the most difficult things about this crisis is that we can't socialize as we normally do. Social connection is one of the most effective ways to cope with stress and anxiety.
If you remain unconvinced of the reasons for all this extreme social distancing, please look at these simulations https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/
There are ways we all can connect while abiding by social distancing practices. Here are some things that are working for my family It's more important than ever that we connect socially. I hope you'll try some of these ideas.
Cousin Bookclub
My siblings and I have organized 3 bookclubs for our kids ranging in age from 3 - 16. We have been using a free zoom room with the breakout rooms feature. The kids all start in the same room (CHAOS!) and then we break them into three separate rooms. Our first meeting, the kids all brought a book they have read or are reading to share with the others. They each gave a "book commercial" to share why they like the book and why their cousins might want to read it, without any spoilers. Then they talked. The oldest kids spent most of their time sharing books and decided they all want to read and discuss The Girl Who Could Fly at their next meeting. This book is appropriate for middle grade students too so many of the middle kids are planning to read or listen to it and they might discuss it too but they were most excited to see each other and talk. The littles needed help from their moms but loved it. I know all the cousins are looking forward to next week's meeting. Google hangouts could work for this too.
Online classes
Our homeschool co-op has moved all our classes online. The upper elementary, middle school, and high school students all have at least one online class option. These classes are helping our kids stay connected to their friends and teachers.
Family Time
My family has the benefit of living with 5 people under one roof. These are the only people we are allowing ourselves to have physical contact with. I'm encouraging more of it. More hugs, sitting closer to each other while reading or watching a movie, holding hands while taking family walks, jumping on the trampoline together, etc. Many of us are starved for physical contact.
I would encourage those who live alone to find another person or small family to spend physical time with often. If you both agree not to interact physically with anyone else, the risk is low and for those who live a lone, total isolation could be life threatening, from a mental health perspective. I would not encourage two families to get together. I would not encourage a large family to invite anyone over. But those who live alone need a "family" they can be with physically.
Family meals, family movie time, family walks etc. are all extra important right now. Is your family doing some things together every day, on purpose? If not, consider adding one regular family activity to your daily routine.
Phone Calls/Video Calls
I know it's old fashioned technology, but for decades, this was the only way friends and loved ones who lived far from each other could stay in touch. A phone call with a good friend really is so good. Try it.
The modern version is facetime.
Marco Polo
I was slow to adopt this one but my sisters convinced me. Once I got over seeing myself on the screen, I really came to love Marco Polo. It has enabled me and my 3 sisters to have an ongoing conversation for over a year. It isn't live. Each person in the conversation records themselves talking to the group - this little recording is called a polo. Then everyone else in the conversation can watch the polo at their convenience. Sometimes I watch polos with a headset late at night or early in the morning without bothering anyone around me. When it is convenient, those who want to respond, can do so. Everyone in the conversation watches the polos and responds at their convenience. My sisters and I are all Moms. Our "free" moments are fleeting and unpredictable. There's no way I would be so in touch with them if it weren't for Marco Polo.
Group Text Chats
This was another one I was slow to adopt. I believe there are several apps for this. I have been using What's App. It makes group texting so much easier to follow and participate in. I really don't like group texts. But I'm a fan of What's App chats. Great for keeping in touch with various groups of friends and family.
Emailing
Another old fashioned technology. Did you know it could be used for more than promotional junk mail?! Have your kids ever sent an email? Now is the time to teach them how. I consider typing an email school work for my kids as long as it's not a string of emojis.
Conversation Across the Street
As we were coming home from our family walk yesterday, we had a lovely conversation with neighbors across the street. We both stayed on our own sides of the street and spoke a little louder. It was nice to see and hear some human beings outside of our own family.
Books
John Adams famously wrote, "You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket." I do love poetry but I also consider many of my favorite characters from books friends. Reading is a great escape and really can take you beyond your own four walls with zero risk of spreading or catching coronavirus. Me and mine have been reading a lot lately. It's so nice to forget about real life for a little while each day and I know of no better way to do it than getting lost in a story. Each of us experiences books differently. Some will be more immersed by listening to a book while some, like me, need to see the words on the page themselves for full immersion. Let me know if you need a book recommendation, I might have a few hundred to recommend...
This is just the things my family has tried. I know there are lots of additional ideas out there. What is working for you?
Showing posts with label disease prevention. Show all posts
Showing posts with label disease prevention. Show all posts
Thursday, March 19, 2020
Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Meditate. Meditate. Meditate
How's your anxiety today? 2nd day of sudden home schooling for thousands of families. Even though this is what my family does all the time, it's still extra hard in the current atmosphere. Everyone in my family feels it. Nothing is normal. We started our day late today and didn't do a lot of things on our "plan." I'm totally ok with that. That happens, often. And it is not a problem. It all works out in the long run.
The one thing I'm really holding on to and making sure we do every day, no matter what, is meditate. It REALLY makes a difference. If you are a person of faith, as I am, I would include prayer in this category. IMHO, prayer is a form of meditation and meditation can be a form of prayer. But whatever your beliefs, slowing down, connecting with your body, shutting out the swirl of crazy outside you and breathing deep will enable you to keep going for another day with more clarity, less anxiety, and a sense of purpose. We all need that now more than ever.
As I wrote in a previous post I like to use the Calm app. My husband uses Calm and Headspace (He's a bit of a junkie). He likes them both for different reasons.
Guided meditations with an app are simple. They can be as short as 1 minute though I definitely find greater benefits from something at least 10 minutes long. My kids have been practicing meditation with me intermittently for over a year. They aren't perfectly still or even quiet while we meditate but they keep getting better at it. And it really does help. A lot.
The one thing I'm really holding on to and making sure we do every day, no matter what, is meditate. It REALLY makes a difference. If you are a person of faith, as I am, I would include prayer in this category. IMHO, prayer is a form of meditation and meditation can be a form of prayer. But whatever your beliefs, slowing down, connecting with your body, shutting out the swirl of crazy outside you and breathing deep will enable you to keep going for another day with more clarity, less anxiety, and a sense of purpose. We all need that now more than ever.
As I wrote in a previous post I like to use the Calm app. My husband uses Calm and Headspace (He's a bit of a junkie). He likes them both for different reasons.
Guided meditations with an app are simple. They can be as short as 1 minute though I definitely find greater benefits from something at least 10 minutes long. My kids have been practicing meditation with me intermittently for over a year. They aren't perfectly still or even quiet while we meditate but they keep getting better at it. And it really does help. A lot.
Sunday, March 15, 2020
Structure Time Not Content
As mentioned in my post about mitigating anxiety, routines are really important. All of our routines have been blown up by coronavirus. Parents who used to leave the house every day for work are now working from home, working different hours, or not working at all. Kids who used to go to school, appointments, team practices, and lessons are now home all the time. Families who used to go to church on Sundays are now worshiping at home instead. There's hardly any differentiation between the hours of the day or the days of the week. It has so many of us feeling untethered and anxious.
It is time to establish some new routines. My family is going to spend a lot of time figuring this out today. You don't need to read the rest of this post unless you like all the details of how someone else does it. The important thing is to establish new daily and weekly routines for your family.
Here's what I know we need in our new routines:
Weekly
My family embraces and seeks to apply the principles of Leadership Education. One of the principles is Structure Time Not Content. This principle will guide us as we figure out new routines. My understanding of the principle is that one should designate time for certain kinds of activities but let the actual what be decided day-to-day and possibly even in the moment. Let me show you what this looks like for my family. Remember this is just the way we apply the principle. It's not the "right" way or the only way, it is just our way.
Worship
This is going to be really interesting. We've only done 1 week at home so far. The local congregation of our church will be offering a short live streamed service of some kind on Sunday. Then, the rest is up to us. I'm not sure what it will look like. I think it will include scripture reading, singing hymns, discussion, and maybe watching something inspiring.
School Time
We will have at least 3 hours of school time every weekday. At the beginning of school time, I will help my 11 yo twins write a school plan for the day. There are certain things that must be included in plans every day but the order in which they are done and what resources they use to do these things can vary according to my children's needs and desires. I specifically don't give them a checklist of tasks to complete or they will do it as quickly as possible and the quality will be poor. Instead I require that they spend 3 hours on school work, as defined by me. Some days it might take 5 hours to get 3 hours of school work done.
My 16 yo daughter organizes her own school time with very little help from me. She is in Scholar Phase and has several scholar project classes she is committed to (they've all moved online now) and a lot of homework for each of them. She also works on math, foreign language and her own projects. She makes a weekly plan of when and how to get it all done and I check in with her a few times a week to make sure it is happening. When she needs help or resources to get it done, she comes to me, Dad, or one of her project mentors. She has had several years of practicing and developing scholar skills. She is an advanced scholar and she happens to be a particularly skilled and mature 16 yo. Everything about schooling my twins with their special needs and learning disabilities has been totally different than with her. I expect that trend will continue when my twins transition into scholar phase (hopefully in the next 2-4 years).
Pre-coronavirus, we attended a home school co-op every Friday. Now we are doing classes online.
Saturdays
This has always been a day of relaxing and family fun for us. It still will be. It will just look a little different now. We sleep in, stay in our pajamas longer, mom and dad work on projects, kids play, maybe go to the park. We often watch a movie as a family. And at 8 pm, all kids must be in their rooms while mom and dad have a date downstairs. Our favorite at home date is Quiet Pasta. It's quiet because there are no children present, and we eat pasta, one of our favorite foods. Lately my husband has been making noodles and sauce from scratch. So good! I usually make a dessert for us to share as well. After we eat, we like to watch a TV show or movie together. It's good bonding time and we look forward to it all week.
Family Activities
Especially as our oldest gets closer to leaving the nest, we are realizing our days as a family living under one roof, are limited. Sometimes the demands of family life at this stage seem like they might kill us and at the same time, the thought of this stage of life ending breaks our hearts. So we are trying to make the most of it. One of the ways we do this is family activities. We don't do anything too elaborate. Things like taking a family walk, watching a movie together, having a family dance party. We used to go on outings to museums, parks, libraries, plays etc. but other than parks, we are staying away from public spaces right now.
Counseling and Therapy Appointments
I currently see my counselor online. My son has an ABA therapist that comes to our home twice a week. For now that is continuing and we hope it stays that way. We have stopped going to therapy appointments outside of our home. So far, all the extra time at home feels like a blessing.
Personal Hygiene and Personal Chores
Establishing a wake up time and a time when everyone should be ready for the day is critical to a successful routine. At our house, everyone is supposed to be dressed and ready for the day, sitting at the breakfast table by 8:30 am. What happens more often is, I'm waking kids up, urging them to get in the shower and calling for them to come down to breakfast. They are usually all there by 9 am. But the more consistent I am, the closer we get to the goal. Especially if I have breakfast ready by 8:30, kids can smell it, and they are more likely to show up on time. I also expect my kids to do a few personal chores in the morning. Things like make your bed, clean your room, clean up your part of the bathroom, fold your personal laundry (if there is any ready to be folded). In reality, these personal chores often get done in the afternoon but it's really nice when they are done in the morning.
Meal Time
The benefits of eating family meals together are numerous. Regular, predictable mealtimes are critical for a healthy routine too. My family aims to eat breakfast at 8:30 am, lunch at 12:30 pm, and dinner at 6:30 pm. What actually happens every day is 30-60 minutes later than scheduled but we aim for these times and that's enough to provide structure and predictability to our day. As with so many things in family life, the more consistent and prepared I am, the closer we get to the ideal actually happening. I expect all my kids to help prepare breakfast and lunch. My oldest is responsible for dinner one night/week. I want to train my 11 yos to cook dinner too but we aren't there yet.
Family Devotional
Usually during breakfast time, me and the kids have a devotional together. Dad is already working by that time. It's pretty simple. We read a verse of scripture and discuss it. We might sing a hymn, share something that inspired one of us, or listen to a chapter of scripture.
Meditation Time
I mentioned in a previous post that my family has begun doing meditations every morning to help mitigate anxiety in this time of crisis. We start school time with it. We use the Calm app and do a 10-15 minute meditation together.
Family Work
Every afternoon, after school time, we do chores. In our family, privileges are tied to responsibilities. My oldest has several significant responsibilities including part of laundry, loading and unloading the dishwasher, cooking dinner once/week, and driving siblings to things like dance class or dentist appointments. Obviously she's not doing a lot of driving right now. For the most part, she decides when and how to do her chores. But she isn't able to do the things she wants to for fun if her chores aren't done.
For my twins, we use a token system. I'll write about that in a separate post, later. I require the twins to each do 3 chores per day. What the chores are changes every day, based on what I need them to do. It could be sorting dirty laundry, taking garbage or recycling out, sweeping or vacuuming, clearing and washing the kitchen counters, hand washing dishes, or picking up a messy family room. I decide each day based on what I see that needs doing. And not all at once. Each child is supposed to come to me during chore time and ask "Mom, what's my first chore?" Then I look around and tell them what to do, based on what I see that needs doing. When it's done, it is the child's job to check back with me and ask me to approve what they have done. I frequently ask them to redo part of it or finish something that hasn't been finished adequately. Then they ask me what their second chore is, check back, and then ask for their 3rd chore and check back.
They get tokens for doing each of these steps and they cannot have free time or redeem tokens for privileges until chores are done, even on Saturdays and Sundays. It takes a lot of parental effort to teach kids to work but it is so worth it. On days when my kids do their chores, everything at home looks so much better. And we all feel better in a cleaner house. I will never have a magazine-worthy home to show but it's mostly clean at least half the time and my kids are learning to work. I call that success. (Don't ask me how I feel about it on the days when no one does their chores.)
Free Time
It is important for everyone in the family to have time everyday to do things they want to do, without agenda. At our house kids have freetime in the afternoon after school and chores are done. I encourage my kids to spend this time outside but I generally don't require that. Parents get free time in the evening after kids go to their rooms for the night.
Time outside and Moving
In a previous post I talked about how getting outside and moving helps mitigate anxiety. I'm making this a priority in our routine. At the very least I will go get the mail and invite others with me. At best, we will take a family walk together, adults and teen will exercise (we all prefer different kinds of exercise) and the kids will spend time on the trampoline, at the park, and riding their bikes.
SSR
Did you do SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) when you were a kid at school? Or maybe DEAR (Drop Everything and Read)? This is one of those magical things that seems to good to be true. But I'm telling you, try it and you'll see. We try to do SSR every evening at 7:30. We all (including Dad - this is critical) sit in the family room together and everyone has to choose something they want to read for fun. It can't be on a computer screen. Maybe on a kindle if I trust the reader to actually use it for reading. I set a timer and we read for 15 minutes. The first few times we did it, one of my kids struggled to focus and stay silent, but they are getting it now. The benefits of SSR are truly magical. Like the #1 most impactful thing you can do for education. We're talking, improving test scores and helping students fall in love with learning. More than any class, any activity, any intervention, any therapy, any teaching of any kind, SSR is the best. It's so simple its hard to believe and easy to dismiss. If you want convincing read The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease and The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. It truly is astounding. Try it. You won't be sorry. It is critical that the adults participate and that everyone chooses what to read- the content can't be assigned.
The End of the Day
It's important for our brains and bodies to get lots of signals when the day is coming to a close and it's important that these signals happen in a predictable, routine way. This will lead to better sleep and reduced anxiety. The sun going down is a nice natural signal. At our house, after SSR, we ask kids to get their PJs on, brush their teeth and then go to their rooms to read, listen to audiobooks, play quietly, draw, etc. Ideally, we would also have family prayer together and maybe do a meditation together. But I'm not gonna lie, as our kids got older they stopped wanting us to tuck them in and the prayer part of the routine went with it. I think we'll work on bringing that back into our evening routine. By 8 pm, kids are expected to stay in their rooms. Mom and Dad have some free time to talk, watch TV, read and be together. Kids lights go out at 10 pm. Mom and Dad try to have lights out by 11 pm. But often it's more like midnight. Some of our kids struggle with falling asleep before midnight which makes it difficult for us to go to sleep too. I think if we focus on following our daily routine, this will become less of a problem.
Bottom line, routines make life smoother. They are essential for mental health and happiness. Work on developing your own.
It is time to establish some new routines. My family is going to spend a lot of time figuring this out today. You don't need to read the rest of this post unless you like all the details of how someone else does it. The important thing is to establish new daily and weekly routines for your family.
Here's what I know we need in our new routines:
Weekly
- At least 3 hours of school time, 5 days/week (M-F)
- 1 day of worship (Sunday)
- 1 day of relaxing, working on projects, and having fun together (Saturday)
- Family activities
- Date night for me and my husband
- Counseling and therapy appointments
- Personal hygiene and personal chores
- Family Devotional (week days)
- Meals
- Mediation
- School time (week days)
- Family work and chores
- Free time
- Time outside and moving
- SSR (15 minutes of sustained silent reading for the whole family)
- The end of the day
My family embraces and seeks to apply the principles of Leadership Education. One of the principles is Structure Time Not Content. This principle will guide us as we figure out new routines. My understanding of the principle is that one should designate time for certain kinds of activities but let the actual what be decided day-to-day and possibly even in the moment. Let me show you what this looks like for my family. Remember this is just the way we apply the principle. It's not the "right" way or the only way, it is just our way.
Worship
This is going to be really interesting. We've only done 1 week at home so far. The local congregation of our church will be offering a short live streamed service of some kind on Sunday. Then, the rest is up to us. I'm not sure what it will look like. I think it will include scripture reading, singing hymns, discussion, and maybe watching something inspiring.
School Time
We will have at least 3 hours of school time every weekday. At the beginning of school time, I will help my 11 yo twins write a school plan for the day. There are certain things that must be included in plans every day but the order in which they are done and what resources they use to do these things can vary according to my children's needs and desires. I specifically don't give them a checklist of tasks to complete or they will do it as quickly as possible and the quality will be poor. Instead I require that they spend 3 hours on school work, as defined by me. Some days it might take 5 hours to get 3 hours of school work done.
My 16 yo daughter organizes her own school time with very little help from me. She is in Scholar Phase and has several scholar project classes she is committed to (they've all moved online now) and a lot of homework for each of them. She also works on math, foreign language and her own projects. She makes a weekly plan of when and how to get it all done and I check in with her a few times a week to make sure it is happening. When she needs help or resources to get it done, she comes to me, Dad, or one of her project mentors. She has had several years of practicing and developing scholar skills. She is an advanced scholar and she happens to be a particularly skilled and mature 16 yo. Everything about schooling my twins with their special needs and learning disabilities has been totally different than with her. I expect that trend will continue when my twins transition into scholar phase (hopefully in the next 2-4 years).
Pre-coronavirus, we attended a home school co-op every Friday. Now we are doing classes online.
Saturdays
This has always been a day of relaxing and family fun for us. It still will be. It will just look a little different now. We sleep in, stay in our pajamas longer, mom and dad work on projects, kids play, maybe go to the park. We often watch a movie as a family. And at 8 pm, all kids must be in their rooms while mom and dad have a date downstairs. Our favorite at home date is Quiet Pasta. It's quiet because there are no children present, and we eat pasta, one of our favorite foods. Lately my husband has been making noodles and sauce from scratch. So good! I usually make a dessert for us to share as well. After we eat, we like to watch a TV show or movie together. It's good bonding time and we look forward to it all week.
Family Activities
Especially as our oldest gets closer to leaving the nest, we are realizing our days as a family living under one roof, are limited. Sometimes the demands of family life at this stage seem like they might kill us and at the same time, the thought of this stage of life ending breaks our hearts. So we are trying to make the most of it. One of the ways we do this is family activities. We don't do anything too elaborate. Things like taking a family walk, watching a movie together, having a family dance party. We used to go on outings to museums, parks, libraries, plays etc. but other than parks, we are staying away from public spaces right now.
Counseling and Therapy Appointments
I currently see my counselor online. My son has an ABA therapist that comes to our home twice a week. For now that is continuing and we hope it stays that way. We have stopped going to therapy appointments outside of our home. So far, all the extra time at home feels like a blessing.
Personal Hygiene and Personal Chores
Establishing a wake up time and a time when everyone should be ready for the day is critical to a successful routine. At our house, everyone is supposed to be dressed and ready for the day, sitting at the breakfast table by 8:30 am. What happens more often is, I'm waking kids up, urging them to get in the shower and calling for them to come down to breakfast. They are usually all there by 9 am. But the more consistent I am, the closer we get to the goal. Especially if I have breakfast ready by 8:30, kids can smell it, and they are more likely to show up on time. I also expect my kids to do a few personal chores in the morning. Things like make your bed, clean your room, clean up your part of the bathroom, fold your personal laundry (if there is any ready to be folded). In reality, these personal chores often get done in the afternoon but it's really nice when they are done in the morning.
Meal Time
The benefits of eating family meals together are numerous. Regular, predictable mealtimes are critical for a healthy routine too. My family aims to eat breakfast at 8:30 am, lunch at 12:30 pm, and dinner at 6:30 pm. What actually happens every day is 30-60 minutes later than scheduled but we aim for these times and that's enough to provide structure and predictability to our day. As with so many things in family life, the more consistent and prepared I am, the closer we get to the ideal actually happening. I expect all my kids to help prepare breakfast and lunch. My oldest is responsible for dinner one night/week. I want to train my 11 yos to cook dinner too but we aren't there yet.
Family Devotional
Usually during breakfast time, me and the kids have a devotional together. Dad is already working by that time. It's pretty simple. We read a verse of scripture and discuss it. We might sing a hymn, share something that inspired one of us, or listen to a chapter of scripture.
Meditation Time
I mentioned in a previous post that my family has begun doing meditations every morning to help mitigate anxiety in this time of crisis. We start school time with it. We use the Calm app and do a 10-15 minute meditation together.
Family Work
Every afternoon, after school time, we do chores. In our family, privileges are tied to responsibilities. My oldest has several significant responsibilities including part of laundry, loading and unloading the dishwasher, cooking dinner once/week, and driving siblings to things like dance class or dentist appointments. Obviously she's not doing a lot of driving right now. For the most part, she decides when and how to do her chores. But she isn't able to do the things she wants to for fun if her chores aren't done.
For my twins, we use a token system. I'll write about that in a separate post, later. I require the twins to each do 3 chores per day. What the chores are changes every day, based on what I need them to do. It could be sorting dirty laundry, taking garbage or recycling out, sweeping or vacuuming, clearing and washing the kitchen counters, hand washing dishes, or picking up a messy family room. I decide each day based on what I see that needs doing. And not all at once. Each child is supposed to come to me during chore time and ask "Mom, what's my first chore?" Then I look around and tell them what to do, based on what I see that needs doing. When it's done, it is the child's job to check back with me and ask me to approve what they have done. I frequently ask them to redo part of it or finish something that hasn't been finished adequately. Then they ask me what their second chore is, check back, and then ask for their 3rd chore and check back.
They get tokens for doing each of these steps and they cannot have free time or redeem tokens for privileges until chores are done, even on Saturdays and Sundays. It takes a lot of parental effort to teach kids to work but it is so worth it. On days when my kids do their chores, everything at home looks so much better. And we all feel better in a cleaner house. I will never have a magazine-worthy home to show but it's mostly clean at least half the time and my kids are learning to work. I call that success. (Don't ask me how I feel about it on the days when no one does their chores.)
Free Time
It is important for everyone in the family to have time everyday to do things they want to do, without agenda. At our house kids have freetime in the afternoon after school and chores are done. I encourage my kids to spend this time outside but I generally don't require that. Parents get free time in the evening after kids go to their rooms for the night.
Time outside and Moving
In a previous post I talked about how getting outside and moving helps mitigate anxiety. I'm making this a priority in our routine. At the very least I will go get the mail and invite others with me. At best, we will take a family walk together, adults and teen will exercise (we all prefer different kinds of exercise) and the kids will spend time on the trampoline, at the park, and riding their bikes.
SSR
Did you do SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) when you were a kid at school? Or maybe DEAR (Drop Everything and Read)? This is one of those magical things that seems to good to be true. But I'm telling you, try it and you'll see. We try to do SSR every evening at 7:30. We all (including Dad - this is critical) sit in the family room together and everyone has to choose something they want to read for fun. It can't be on a computer screen. Maybe on a kindle if I trust the reader to actually use it for reading. I set a timer and we read for 15 minutes. The first few times we did it, one of my kids struggled to focus and stay silent, but they are getting it now. The benefits of SSR are truly magical. Like the #1 most impactful thing you can do for education. We're talking, improving test scores and helping students fall in love with learning. More than any class, any activity, any intervention, any therapy, any teaching of any kind, SSR is the best. It's so simple its hard to believe and easy to dismiss. If you want convincing read The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease and The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. It truly is astounding. Try it. You won't be sorry. It is critical that the adults participate and that everyone chooses what to read- the content can't be assigned.
The End of the Day
It's important for our brains and bodies to get lots of signals when the day is coming to a close and it's important that these signals happen in a predictable, routine way. This will lead to better sleep and reduced anxiety. The sun going down is a nice natural signal. At our house, after SSR, we ask kids to get their PJs on, brush their teeth and then go to their rooms to read, listen to audiobooks, play quietly, draw, etc. Ideally, we would also have family prayer together and maybe do a meditation together. But I'm not gonna lie, as our kids got older they stopped wanting us to tuck them in and the prayer part of the routine went with it. I think we'll work on bringing that back into our evening routine. By 8 pm, kids are expected to stay in their rooms. Mom and Dad have some free time to talk, watch TV, read and be together. Kids lights go out at 10 pm. Mom and Dad try to have lights out by 11 pm. But often it's more like midnight. Some of our kids struggle with falling asleep before midnight which makes it difficult for us to go to sleep too. I think if we focus on following our daily routine, this will become less of a problem.
Bottom line, routines make life smoother. They are essential for mental health and happiness. Work on developing your own.
Saturday, March 14, 2020
Mitigating Anxiety in the Time of the Coronavirus
Are you feeling the swirl of anxiety in and around you? Everyone at my house is feeling it at varying levels of intensity. It is everywhere online and in stores too.
I've lived most of my life with anxiety. The intensity varies, but it's always with me. Welcome to my world. It is something you can get used to. It is something you can manage. It is something you can mitigate. I wasn't born knowing any of this. I had to learn it. You can too. I'm not an expert, just an experienced acquaintance of anxiety. I hope maybe my thoughts on what has helped me will help someone else.
I'm seeing my immediate family members, especially my children, suffer increasing levels of anxiety. I'm worried about all of them. Anxiety is a sticky mess that wants to keep snowballing and suck everyone in. But it doesn't have to. Here's how I'm mitigating it at my house. I hope at least one idea here resonates with you. Don't feel compelled to do it all. This is an idea list, not a check list.
Meditation
Regular, daily mediation has been proven to help reduce anxiety. I have personally experienced this effect and seen it work for my family members too. I like to use the Calm app. My husband uses Calm and Headspace (He's a bit of a junkie). He likes them both for different reasons.
Seeing the growing anxiety in my family as life gets less and less normal, I've decided to meditate with the kids every morning. We might start doing it in the afternoon too. Guided meditations with an app are simple. They can be as short as 1 minute though I definitely find greater benefits from something at least 10 minutes long. My kids have been practicing meditation with me intermittently for over a year. They aren't perfectly still or even quiet while we meditate but they keep getting better at it. And it really does help.
Talk About It
When I see signs of stress in my family members, I label it and try to get them talking about it. For example after my son bolted out the door to go jump on the trampoline (as soon as he heard the Press Conference all about coronoavirus start yesterday), I made a mental note to talk to him when he came back inside. When he came in I said, "Are you worried about coronavirus? " He nodded. I asked him if he had any questions and I can't remember what he said but we talked for a couple minutes. I hugged him and reassured him as much as I could. Mostly I listened. It only lasted 2-3 minutes and then he went off to play legos.
Talking about it doesn't make it go away but it kinda does. It dissipates the feeling and lessons it's power. It allows you to let go of it. Anxiety will come back at some point but knowing that it will also go away again makes it so much less threatening.
Routine
A huge part of what is so stressful right now is how unpredictable everything is. The circumstances around us change every hour. Nothing looks or feels normal. Predictability is really important for human beings. Variety can be fun but stability is critical. We all had routines we were following without even thinking about it a week or 2 ago. Now they've all disappeared. Time for new routines. My family is still figuring out our new routine. I'll share it after we figure it out. A routine will anchor everyone. It will provide some much needed predictability. It will give each member of your household purpose and something to do besides worry.
Get outside and Move
Moving your body will reduce anxiety. This has been proven. Something as simple as a 5 minute walk will do it. We have a trampoline and my son uses it almost every day. I can see it reducing his anxiety. A walk to the mailbox really helps me. Family walks work for all of us. My husband has been running outside everyday. All three of my kids like to walk to the park, often. All my family's ways to move also get us outside. Spending time in nature has also been proven to reduce anxiety.
Talk Therapy
I have benefited so many times in my life from talking with a licensed therapist. I currently have a therapist I meet with online. This is referred to as tele-health. It can take some real effort to find a therapist that's available and a good fit. It is worth the effort. A couple of services I've heard of that exclusively offer therapy via tele-health are Better Help and Talk Space. They are relatively inexpensive and I've heard good things about both. I found my current counselor by calling and emailing around to different offices and asking for recommendations of therapists who offered tele-health counseling. It took a month to find exactly what I was looking for. Worth. It.
Medication
I have a handful of very close family members and friends who swear by medication. I have not yet felt the need for it but I think sometimes it is necessary and I wouldn't rule it out.
Supplements
Under the care of a Naturopathic Doctor, I have been taking health supplements that have made a real difference for me. I have also watched a family member use a variety of supplements on the recommendations of other friends and family and end up in the ER with serious problems. Supplements can be just as powerful and dangerous as medication. Don't just take them because someone you know recommended them. Do your own research and consult a professional (ND, MD, Herbalist etc.) before using supplements.
Things to Look Forward to
We all need hope. This can be generated through spiritual practices and thought work. I also find it helpful to plan some fun things into my routine and schedule for the week. It could be as simple as a good book to read at the end of the day, a family movie time every afternoon, dessert on Saturday night, a phone call with a good friend. It could also be more elaborate and involved. My siblings and I are coordinating a family book club online for our kids (the cousins) while everyone is out of school. My family will be celebrating Easter over the next month and we will spend time preparing and celebrating here at home.
I've lived most of my life with anxiety. The intensity varies, but it's always with me. Welcome to my world. It is something you can get used to. It is something you can manage. It is something you can mitigate. I wasn't born knowing any of this. I had to learn it. You can too. I'm not an expert, just an experienced acquaintance of anxiety. I hope maybe my thoughts on what has helped me will help someone else.
I'm seeing my immediate family members, especially my children, suffer increasing levels of anxiety. I'm worried about all of them. Anxiety is a sticky mess that wants to keep snowballing and suck everyone in. But it doesn't have to. Here's how I'm mitigating it at my house. I hope at least one idea here resonates with you. Don't feel compelled to do it all. This is an idea list, not a check list.
Meditation
Regular, daily mediation has been proven to help reduce anxiety. I have personally experienced this effect and seen it work for my family members too. I like to use the Calm app. My husband uses Calm and Headspace (He's a bit of a junkie). He likes them both for different reasons.
Seeing the growing anxiety in my family as life gets less and less normal, I've decided to meditate with the kids every morning. We might start doing it in the afternoon too. Guided meditations with an app are simple. They can be as short as 1 minute though I definitely find greater benefits from something at least 10 minutes long. My kids have been practicing meditation with me intermittently for over a year. They aren't perfectly still or even quiet while we meditate but they keep getting better at it. And it really does help.
Talk About It
When I see signs of stress in my family members, I label it and try to get them talking about it. For example after my son bolted out the door to go jump on the trampoline (as soon as he heard the Press Conference all about coronoavirus start yesterday), I made a mental note to talk to him when he came back inside. When he came in I said, "Are you worried about coronavirus? " He nodded. I asked him if he had any questions and I can't remember what he said but we talked for a couple minutes. I hugged him and reassured him as much as I could. Mostly I listened. It only lasted 2-3 minutes and then he went off to play legos.
Talking about it doesn't make it go away but it kinda does. It dissipates the feeling and lessons it's power. It allows you to let go of it. Anxiety will come back at some point but knowing that it will also go away again makes it so much less threatening.
Routine
A huge part of what is so stressful right now is how unpredictable everything is. The circumstances around us change every hour. Nothing looks or feels normal. Predictability is really important for human beings. Variety can be fun but stability is critical. We all had routines we were following without even thinking about it a week or 2 ago. Now they've all disappeared. Time for new routines. My family is still figuring out our new routine. I'll share it after we figure it out. A routine will anchor everyone. It will provide some much needed predictability. It will give each member of your household purpose and something to do besides worry.
Get outside and Move
Moving your body will reduce anxiety. This has been proven. Something as simple as a 5 minute walk will do it. We have a trampoline and my son uses it almost every day. I can see it reducing his anxiety. A walk to the mailbox really helps me. Family walks work for all of us. My husband has been running outside everyday. All three of my kids like to walk to the park, often. All my family's ways to move also get us outside. Spending time in nature has also been proven to reduce anxiety.
Talk Therapy
I have benefited so many times in my life from talking with a licensed therapist. I currently have a therapist I meet with online. This is referred to as tele-health. It can take some real effort to find a therapist that's available and a good fit. It is worth the effort. A couple of services I've heard of that exclusively offer therapy via tele-health are Better Help and Talk Space. They are relatively inexpensive and I've heard good things about both. I found my current counselor by calling and emailing around to different offices and asking for recommendations of therapists who offered tele-health counseling. It took a month to find exactly what I was looking for. Worth. It.
Medication
I have a handful of very close family members and friends who swear by medication. I have not yet felt the need for it but I think sometimes it is necessary and I wouldn't rule it out.
Supplements
Under the care of a Naturopathic Doctor, I have been taking health supplements that have made a real difference for me. I have also watched a family member use a variety of supplements on the recommendations of other friends and family and end up in the ER with serious problems. Supplements can be just as powerful and dangerous as medication. Don't just take them because someone you know recommended them. Do your own research and consult a professional (ND, MD, Herbalist etc.) before using supplements.
Things to Look Forward to
We all need hope. This can be generated through spiritual practices and thought work. I also find it helpful to plan some fun things into my routine and schedule for the week. It could be as simple as a good book to read at the end of the day, a family movie time every afternoon, dessert on Saturday night, a phone call with a good friend. It could also be more elaborate and involved. My siblings and I are coordinating a family book club online for our kids (the cousins) while everyone is out of school. My family will be celebrating Easter over the next month and we will spend time preparing and celebrating here at home.
Friday, May 18, 2012
Pesto Asparagus Risotto
My husband, contender for pickiest-man-alive, and huge fan
of cheese, couldn’t believe this creamy risotto was dairy free and begged me to
make it again soon. I will!
1 batch of Vegan Pesto
1 T EVOO
2 cups shiitake mushrooms, cleaned and diced
3 pounds of asparagus, washed and cut into 1-inch pieces
3 c Arborio rice
8 c broth (mushroom, chicken, or beef)
- Make Pesto first and refrigerate (definitely add the “optional” lemon juice and zest)
- Heat EVOO in a large sauce pot on medium high
- Sauté mushrooms for 3 minutes
- Add asparagus, rice, and enough broth to just cover rice. Bring to a boil, then turn down to a low simmer. Stirring often, watch for the liquid to be absorbed by the rice and add another cup whenever the liquid is mostly absorbed. Keep stirring and adding broth until it is all absorbed and the rice is cooked through. Don’t rush this process. Let it take 30-45 minutes at a very low simmer for the creamiest results.
- After all the liquid is absorbed, turn off the heat and stir in the pesto. Let it sit for at least 10 minutes to absorb the pesto and then serve.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
The Woes of a CSA Subscriber
Beckie, this one's for you.
When you sign up for a share in a CSA(Community Supported Agriculture) Farm, in addition to fresh, delicious, local produce, you are signing up for work. It forces you to develop a totally new way of preparing food for your family. Here are the main challenges I’ve faced in my relationships with CSAs followed by my strategies for dealing with them. I don’t have it all figured out but I’ve made progress and I’ll keep at it until hopefully one day I will always know just what to do with the produce that shows up and never throw any rotten produce away.
One of the things CSA subscribing does is challenge the conventional wisdom that gave us grocery stores. I think that deserves challenging. So with all the struggles you face as a CSA subscriber consider the whys of everything – there are some really important answers to those questions and I’d like to see people think through those for themselves. Don’t just take what the grocery store or the farmer says and accept it—think about it for yourself.
Common Challenges For CSA Subscribers
I Don’t Like _______. What Do I Do With It?
Most CSAs offer you a weekly share of whatever they harvested that week. Which means you get what they give, no more, no less. If you don’t like something in the box that week, your problem.
What’s With All The Beets And Kale?
I don’t know why but most of the CSAs I know offer lots of beets and kale, regularly. Maybe they are easy/cheap to grow and underappreciated. I’m sure it’s different for every growing region and each one probably has its own “beets and kale” type of vegetable that grows well and isn’t terribly popular.
Where’s The Fruit?
Fruit seems to be scarcer in most CSA boxes. Probably depends on where you are living and what grows well there. I think fruit is more challenging and expensive to grow, harvest, store, and deliver. But oh, organic farm fruit is the food of the gods – so worth the trouble and expense.
I’ve Never Heard Of _______. What Do I Do With It?
We are so used to the standard array of fruits and vegetables at the grocery store that it can be overwhelming when all these unusual plants start showing up in your box. Organic family farmers seem to have a special love for the underdogs that never make it into the US grocery system. It’s important to know that the produce that has made it is usually chosen for things like how little it bruises and how cheap it is to grow. Taste and quality are almost always sacrificed.
My CSA Lifestyle Strategies
I’ve been using CSAs for 5+ years. I have much to learn but here’s what I know today.
Strategy 1: Cook Your Way Through it All
When I have plenty of time (ha ha, who ever does?!) or I'm really in a cooking mood I spend a couple hours with my cookbooks, recipe files, and online searches to find recipes that will utilize all the beautiful and strange things that arrived in my box this week. I am always on the lookout for a good cookbook or recipe that emphasizes produce. Here are my favorite resources for this:
Cooking Light Salads
In Season
Mediterranean Kitchen
Williams Sonoma: Vegetables
Mariquita Farms Recipe Database
Giada De Laurentiis recipes
UPDATE 6/2/12 I started using Pinterest and have a board for Feeding My Family with recipes and more cookbooks I love.
Strategy 2: Try a Custom Order
Some farms grow certain things all year. Find out if yours does and see if they will let you have a weekly custom order of things you know you will use. For the last year I had a standing order of lettuce, potatoes, avocados, apples, bananas, and carrots. Now I'm back to the seasonal box and it's so exciting to see what's in it each week!
Strategy 3: Work With More Than One Farm
Most local, organic, family farms grow a limited number of items. More and more I’m seeing small farms band together for CSA purposes. My local CSA, Klesick Family Farm, sources out organic produce from several farms, including some in Mexico. So I get a lot more fruit and things like bananas, avocados and oranges that just don’t grow here. If there isn’t a combo CSA in your area, talk to a few of the farms and see if you can facilitate something.
Strategy 4: Order a Double-Share of Fruit
My family never seems to have too much fruit. Whatever shows up in our box, we eat in a few days. If your CSA offers fruit, ask for double or triple the normal share of fruit.
Strategy 5: Go Raw
The vast majority of fruits and vegetables can be eaten raw. Wash, peel, and cut up whatever you’ve got, set it on a platter with some dip and chances are it will be gone by the end of the day. For fruit I like peanut butter and honey mixed together or vanilla yogurt and honey as dip. For veggies I like hummus or ranch dressing. You can also grate or dice fruits and vegetables and toss them into a green salad.
Strategy 6: Use Master Recipes
Most fruits or vegetables can be prepared in one of the following ways. When you don’t know what to do with something in your box, try one of these. A basic cookbook can get you started. I suggest working on one of these preparations, say soup, until you find your favorite version and get good at making it. Then you can move on to roasting.
Pasta Salad
Basically all you need is cooked pasta, chopped and blanched veggies or fruits, and tasty dressing. You can add cheeses, herbs, sauces, and other condiments to fancy it up.
Soup
Spend some time finding a vegetable based soup recipe that you really like. Add whatever veggies you have on hand that week. Leave it chunky or puree if you like. I find the following ingredients make a great flavor base for any veggie soup: potatoes, bacon, pesto, tomato paste, and Parmesan.
Smoothie
Start with fruit and liquid. Bananas and oranges make a great flavor and texture base. I use water for my liquid but you could use juice or milk too. If you have a good, high-powered blender, it’s easy to slip some carrots and spinach in and no one will ever know. Frozen bananas or berries make it frothy. Sweeten with honey, sugar, or maple syrup as needed. If fresh mint shows up, this is a great way to use it.
Roasted Veggies
Wash, peel, and roughly chop whatever you’ve got on hand. Spread it on a foil/ parchment lined baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Bake at 425 until tender (maybe 25-45 minutes?) Serve roasted veggies alongside meat, mix it with hot pasta or rice and herbs, or puree for soup.
Strategy 7: Get into a Routine
I’ve developed a lot of habits or routine’s that incorporate produce into my daily life. If it’s not part of my routine it won’t happen for more than a week or two. We eat pretty much the same things every week, which makes it easy. I don’t spend a lot of time these days thinking about what we’re going to eat.
First and foremost – process your produce the day it arrives. Get a lettuce keeper and some of those plastic containers designed to lengthen the shelf life of produce. They really work. I try to wash, chop, and dry my lettuce first. I keep it in the salad spinner in the fridge and it stays good for several days. Wash, peel, and chop anything you intend to roast, puree, or otherwise cook. Put asparagus and herbs stem side down in a tall glass or jar of water in the fridge, like you would cut flowers – but don’t wash them until you are ready to cook them. Wash, peel, chop or grate things you will use in salad or eat raw with dip. Don’t do any of this with fruit or tomatoes. Just wait until you’re ready to eat them. But things like potatoes, zucchini, squash, carrots, leeks, celery, broccoli etc. will do fine if you clean and cut them and keep them in the fridge, especially in those nifty produce containers. And you will almost certainly use them if the hard part is already done. This is the best way I know of to eliminate rotting produce in the fridge.
Then you need a daily meal routine.
We eat fruit for breakfast almost every day. In the summer it could be in the form of a smoothie or alongside toast. In the winter it’s probably mixed into oatmeal.
For lunch we have sandwiches or soup, with raw fruit, veggies, or green salad.
For dinner we have one of the following accompanied by steamed, roasted, or souped veggies: pasta, rice and beans, polenta, bean tacos, soup and salad. Seriously, we just rotate through those same dishes over and over. I vary the flavoring here and there and make other things on special occasions but this is what we habitually eat. These are things we all like, I can make without thinking, I feel good about feeding my family, and they go pretty well with veggies. It has to be simple if I’m going to do it regularly.
Strategy 8: Learn What to Do With Beets and Kale.
Or whatever it is that shows up regularly in your box. Just this year I learned how to make Kale chips. What a revelation! They are so yummy! And easy! Wash and dry the kale. Tear it into chip-sized pieces and lay it out on a foil/parchment lined baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper. Bake at 425 until crispy but not burnt, 10-20 minutes.
Now I gotta figure out what to do with beets…I should try roasting.
With some farms you can say, no beets for me thanks, and they will exclude them from your box.
Strategy 9: Keep Complimentary Ingredients in Your Fridge or Pantry at All Times.
If you know what flavors you really love with veggies and you keep them around all the time, it’s easier to bring a new veggie into your repertoire. Things with salt, fat and intense flavor tend to compliment veggies well. When I use them as condiments, and make veggies the star of the dish I see no problem with the fat or salt content. I try to keep bacon, Parmesan, olive oil, butter, sun-dried tomatoes, sea-salt, olives, tomato paste, pesto, nuts, and my favorite French vinaigrette around. With these I can make tasty salads, pasta, soup, rice, and polenta.
So how is it going with your CSA box?
When you sign up for a share in a CSA(Community Supported Agriculture) Farm, in addition to fresh, delicious, local produce, you are signing up for work. It forces you to develop a totally new way of preparing food for your family. Here are the main challenges I’ve faced in my relationships with CSAs followed by my strategies for dealing with them. I don’t have it all figured out but I’ve made progress and I’ll keep at it until hopefully one day I will always know just what to do with the produce that shows up and never throw any rotten produce away.
One of the things CSA subscribing does is challenge the conventional wisdom that gave us grocery stores. I think that deserves challenging. So with all the struggles you face as a CSA subscriber consider the whys of everything – there are some really important answers to those questions and I’d like to see people think through those for themselves. Don’t just take what the grocery store or the farmer says and accept it—think about it for yourself.
Common Challenges For CSA Subscribers
I Don’t Like _______. What Do I Do With It?
Most CSAs offer you a weekly share of whatever they harvested that week. Which means you get what they give, no more, no less. If you don’t like something in the box that week, your problem.
What’s With All The Beets And Kale?
I don’t know why but most of the CSAs I know offer lots of beets and kale, regularly. Maybe they are easy/cheap to grow and underappreciated. I’m sure it’s different for every growing region and each one probably has its own “beets and kale” type of vegetable that grows well and isn’t terribly popular.
Where’s The Fruit?
Fruit seems to be scarcer in most CSA boxes. Probably depends on where you are living and what grows well there. I think fruit is more challenging and expensive to grow, harvest, store, and deliver. But oh, organic farm fruit is the food of the gods – so worth the trouble and expense.
I’ve Never Heard Of _______. What Do I Do With It?
We are so used to the standard array of fruits and vegetables at the grocery store that it can be overwhelming when all these unusual plants start showing up in your box. Organic family farmers seem to have a special love for the underdogs that never make it into the US grocery system. It’s important to know that the produce that has made it is usually chosen for things like how little it bruises and how cheap it is to grow. Taste and quality are almost always sacrificed.
My CSA Lifestyle Strategies
I’ve been using CSAs for 5+ years. I have much to learn but here’s what I know today.
Strategy 1: Cook Your Way Through it All
When I have plenty of time (ha ha, who ever does?!) or I'm really in a cooking mood I spend a couple hours with my cookbooks, recipe files, and online searches to find recipes that will utilize all the beautiful and strange things that arrived in my box this week. I am always on the lookout for a good cookbook or recipe that emphasizes produce. Here are my favorite resources for this:
Cooking Light Salads
In Season
Mediterranean Kitchen
Williams Sonoma: Vegetables
Mariquita Farms Recipe Database
Giada De Laurentiis recipes
UPDATE 6/2/12 I started using Pinterest and have a board for Feeding My Family with recipes and more cookbooks I love.
Strategy 2: Try a Custom Order
Some farms grow certain things all year. Find out if yours does and see if they will let you have a weekly custom order of things you know you will use. For the last year I had a standing order of lettuce, potatoes, avocados, apples, bananas, and carrots. Now I'm back to the seasonal box and it's so exciting to see what's in it each week!
Strategy 3: Work With More Than One Farm
Most local, organic, family farms grow a limited number of items. More and more I’m seeing small farms band together for CSA purposes. My local CSA, Klesick Family Farm, sources out organic produce from several farms, including some in Mexico. So I get a lot more fruit and things like bananas, avocados and oranges that just don’t grow here. If there isn’t a combo CSA in your area, talk to a few of the farms and see if you can facilitate something.
Strategy 4: Order a Double-Share of Fruit
My family never seems to have too much fruit. Whatever shows up in our box, we eat in a few days. If your CSA offers fruit, ask for double or triple the normal share of fruit.
Strategy 5: Go Raw
The vast majority of fruits and vegetables can be eaten raw. Wash, peel, and cut up whatever you’ve got, set it on a platter with some dip and chances are it will be gone by the end of the day. For fruit I like peanut butter and honey mixed together or vanilla yogurt and honey as dip. For veggies I like hummus or ranch dressing. You can also grate or dice fruits and vegetables and toss them into a green salad.
Strategy 6: Use Master Recipes
Most fruits or vegetables can be prepared in one of the following ways. When you don’t know what to do with something in your box, try one of these. A basic cookbook can get you started. I suggest working on one of these preparations, say soup, until you find your favorite version and get good at making it. Then you can move on to roasting.
Pasta Salad
Basically all you need is cooked pasta, chopped and blanched veggies or fruits, and tasty dressing. You can add cheeses, herbs, sauces, and other condiments to fancy it up.
Soup
Spend some time finding a vegetable based soup recipe that you really like. Add whatever veggies you have on hand that week. Leave it chunky or puree if you like. I find the following ingredients make a great flavor base for any veggie soup: potatoes, bacon, pesto, tomato paste, and Parmesan.
Smoothie
Start with fruit and liquid. Bananas and oranges make a great flavor and texture base. I use water for my liquid but you could use juice or milk too. If you have a good, high-powered blender, it’s easy to slip some carrots and spinach in and no one will ever know. Frozen bananas or berries make it frothy. Sweeten with honey, sugar, or maple syrup as needed. If fresh mint shows up, this is a great way to use it.
Roasted Veggies
Wash, peel, and roughly chop whatever you’ve got on hand. Spread it on a foil/ parchment lined baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Bake at 425 until tender (maybe 25-45 minutes?) Serve roasted veggies alongside meat, mix it with hot pasta or rice and herbs, or puree for soup.
Strategy 7: Get into a Routine
I’ve developed a lot of habits or routine’s that incorporate produce into my daily life. If it’s not part of my routine it won’t happen for more than a week or two. We eat pretty much the same things every week, which makes it easy. I don’t spend a lot of time these days thinking about what we’re going to eat.
First and foremost – process your produce the day it arrives. Get a lettuce keeper and some of those plastic containers designed to lengthen the shelf life of produce. They really work. I try to wash, chop, and dry my lettuce first. I keep it in the salad spinner in the fridge and it stays good for several days. Wash, peel, and chop anything you intend to roast, puree, or otherwise cook. Put asparagus and herbs stem side down in a tall glass or jar of water in the fridge, like you would cut flowers – but don’t wash them until you are ready to cook them. Wash, peel, chop or grate things you will use in salad or eat raw with dip. Don’t do any of this with fruit or tomatoes. Just wait until you’re ready to eat them. But things like potatoes, zucchini, squash, carrots, leeks, celery, broccoli etc. will do fine if you clean and cut them and keep them in the fridge, especially in those nifty produce containers. And you will almost certainly use them if the hard part is already done. This is the best way I know of to eliminate rotting produce in the fridge.
Then you need a daily meal routine.
We eat fruit for breakfast almost every day. In the summer it could be in the form of a smoothie or alongside toast. In the winter it’s probably mixed into oatmeal.
For lunch we have sandwiches or soup, with raw fruit, veggies, or green salad.
For dinner we have one of the following accompanied by steamed, roasted, or souped veggies: pasta, rice and beans, polenta, bean tacos, soup and salad. Seriously, we just rotate through those same dishes over and over. I vary the flavoring here and there and make other things on special occasions but this is what we habitually eat. These are things we all like, I can make without thinking, I feel good about feeding my family, and they go pretty well with veggies. It has to be simple if I’m going to do it regularly.
Strategy 8: Learn What to Do With Beets and Kale.
Or whatever it is that shows up regularly in your box. Just this year I learned how to make Kale chips. What a revelation! They are so yummy! And easy! Wash and dry the kale. Tear it into chip-sized pieces and lay it out on a foil/parchment lined baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper. Bake at 425 until crispy but not burnt, 10-20 minutes.
Now I gotta figure out what to do with beets…I should try roasting.
With some farms you can say, no beets for me thanks, and they will exclude them from your box.
Strategy 9: Keep Complimentary Ingredients in Your Fridge or Pantry at All Times.
If you know what flavors you really love with veggies and you keep them around all the time, it’s easier to bring a new veggie into your repertoire. Things with salt, fat and intense flavor tend to compliment veggies well. When I use them as condiments, and make veggies the star of the dish I see no problem with the fat or salt content. I try to keep bacon, Parmesan, olive oil, butter, sun-dried tomatoes, sea-salt, olives, tomato paste, pesto, nuts, and my favorite French vinaigrette around. With these I can make tasty salads, pasta, soup, rice, and polenta.
So how is it going with your CSA box?
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Online Coupon for Spud
I just got my spud.com grocery order (yea!) and noticed a coupon code for my friends who sign up. If you are in Seattle, Portland, LA or San Fran and want to give it a try use this coupon code for $5 off each of your first three orders and $10 off your fourth. CRSEA-JARJEN
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Cranberry, Apple, Yam Oatmeal
This is what we're eating for breakfast this morning. It's one of my favorite combos so far.
Cranberry, Apple and Yam Oatmeal
Combine in a pot
3 cups water
1 cup steel cut oats
1 apple, peeled, cored and diced
1/2 large jewel yam peeled and diced
handful of dried cranberries (fresh would be better)
1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
Refrigerate and soak overnight. This activates some of the live nutrients in the oatmeal making it even healthier and everything cooks faster the next morning.
Cook over medium heat 5 - 10 minutes until water is absorbed
Yummm!
Update: The twins LOVED it! The kept asking for more (with baby signs). I added a little sea salt and maple syrup to mine but I overdid it - it didn't need the sweetener. Still, it was so good! Can't wait to make it again. I think I'm going to experiment with this combo in muffins...
Cranberry, Apple and Yam Oatmeal
3 cups water
1 cup steel cut oats
1 apple, peeled, cored and diced
1/2 large jewel yam peeled and diced
handful of dried cranberries (fresh would be better)
1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
Refrigerate and soak overnight. This activates some of the live nutrients in the oatmeal making it even healthier and everything cooks faster the next morning.
Cook over medium heat 5 - 10 minutes until water is absorbed
Yummm!
Update: The twins LOVED it! The kept asking for more (with baby signs). I added a little sea salt and maple syrup to mine but I overdid it - it didn't need the sweetener. Still, it was so good! Can't wait to make it again. I think I'm going to experiment with this combo in muffins...
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Feeding My Family
I love food. I love cooking it, eating it and sharing it. I also love good health. I like to feel my body working at it’s best, feeling, strong and clean. Sometimes I find these two loves at odds with each other. Reconciling them is something I’m constantly working on. In this post I will share my experience with making my own baby food and feeding all three of my kids. My oldest is 6 and my twins are 14 months old.
First I want to share my family’s eating philosophy. I have read a bit about the links between health and diet and as a result my family has chosen to eat a certain way. We are what many describe as flexitarians. We believe there is an ideal way to eat for the greatest health and we aim for that ideal but we take plenty of detours from it. We believe the ideal diet is vegan, organic, non-processed, mostly fruits and veggies, low in sugar or other sweeteners and grown by and purchased from local producers. Truly ideal would be producing it all ourselves. Like I said, we take a lot of detours from this ideal – it’s just something we shoot for and we hope to get better at it every year. The closer we get to it the better we feel and the fewer health problems we experience. I did try for 6 weeks; to live according to the Eat to Live
rules and I did it perfectly. It was amazing. I wrote about it in an earlier post. Our weaknesses are dairy products, sweets, summer BBQs, holidays, bread and pasta.
rules and I did it perfectly. It was amazing. I wrote about it in an earlier post. Our weaknesses are dairy products, sweets, summer BBQs, holidays, bread and pasta. We have based this philosophy on a handful of books that I’ve read and discussed with my husband. He’s read some of them. They include, Eat to Live, Disease Proof Your Child
, How to Get Your Kid To Eat But Not Too Much
, In Defense of Food,
Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual,
and most important to us, The Word Of Wisdom from The Doctrine and Covenants.
, Disease Proof Your Child, How to Get Your Kid To Eat But Not Too Much, In Defense of Food, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, and most important to us, The Word Of Wisdom from The Doctrine and Covenants.My favorite healthy recipes come from the following cookbooks: First Meals, Whole Food,
In Season, Cooking Light: Salads,
and Mediterranean Kitchen. These include non-vegan recipes but I tend to skip those and focus on the plant-based recipes.
In Season, Cooking Light: Salads, and Mediterranean Kitchen. These include non-vegan recipes but I tend to skip those and focus on the plant-based recipes. I totally reject the notion of “kid food” – things like fruit snacks, fishy crackers, lunchables, juice boxes, and other processed, snack food marketed to kids. It’s a modern invention associated with the SAD (Standard American Diet) way of eating that is linked with very high rates of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. I believe starting toddlers out on “kid food” just primes them for fast food and junk food and deprives them of the opportunity to develop a taste for healthy food.
Here’s how I feed my kids.
Birth – 6 months
Idealy, breastmilk only. I adopted all 3 of my kids and did manage to breast feed them but had to supplement with formula. Happy to share more with anyone looking into breastfeeding an adopted baby.
6 months – 12 months
I started all 3 of my kids on pureed vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, peas, carrots, potatoes, yams, winter squash, and sweet potatoes. I want them to develop a taste for vegetables, especially the ones that aren’t sweet, before I introduced fruits. My 6 year old still loves broccoli better than just about anything. Of course they still get most of their calories from breast milk or formula. With my twins, our dietician and doctor encouraged me to start with baby cereal but I found they had a hard time digesting it so I stopped it and just fed them pureed veggies. After about a month of veggies I start introducing pureed fruits like bananas, apples, mango, and pears. I also start mixing things together and making the texture chunkier. Once they can handle chunky textures and pick things up with their fingers I give them soft, cooked veggies and fruits. When I’m low on cooked veggies and fruits and short on time I used canned – not ideal, but better than a lot of other options! I also give them raw banana and avocado chunks, frozen peas (awesome on sore, teething gums!) and canned black beans (smaller than most beans). They started consuming less milk about this time. After my twins were doing well with all the finger food and their systems were digesting all the veggies, fruits, and beans well I started offering them bits of whole wheat bread (sometimes I make my own) and making grain-based casseroles for them. They wouldn’t mind eating these with their fingers but I can’t handle the mess! I make a sweet casserole and a savory casserole. My 14 month-old daughter prefers the savory while her twin brother prefers the sweet. I suspect this reflects their unique dietary needs. One casserole will usually last for the whole week.
Sweet Casserole
Combine in a casserole dish:
1 to 2 cups of cooked steel cut oats
Homemade applesauce (peeled apples, cinnamon, and water)
Any soft, raw, soft-cooked, or canned fruit that you have on hand like peaches, pears, cranberries, grapes, apples, bananas (add them fresh right before serving), mango, blue berries, and apricots. Make sure it’s all baby-bite-sized.
¼ tsp of cinnamon
Savory Casserole
Combine in a casserole dish:
1 to 2 cups of cooked brown rice
Any soft, raw, soft-cooked or canned vegetables you have on hand like, onion, carrots, celery, peas, mushrooms, green beans, broccoli, potatoes, yams, winter squash, sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, avocado, and beets. Make sure it’s all baby-bite-sized.
1 can of beans. (Black are nice and small, others probably need to be cut in half)
1 can of cream of mushroom soup (I feel guilty about this but my daughter is a little picky and she will eat any veggie coated in cream of mushroom so I think it’s an okay trade off. I should learn to make my own soymilk version….)
I don’t bake them but you could. I just mix them, refrigerate them and warm up a small bowl for each feeding and my twins gobble them up. I try to make sure that at least half of the volume comes from fruit or veggies.
When we are out of the house for mealtime, I take small containers of beans, peas, canned veggies, and a couple slices of bread with me. Easy, cheap, and healthy.
12 – 24 months
I start letting them sample what the rest of us are eating at the table, as long as it’s not dangerous for them. We wait until 2 yrs old on peanut butter, nuts, honey, strawberries, green salad (need teeth for that!), and citrus. We also don’t share cookies or other treats with them. I have not and don’t plan to introduce regular cows milk or juice to my twins. I still give them formula 3- 4 times a day. I will eventually start offering them soy and nut milks in small quantities. This really helps my husband and I focus on healthier eating – we don’t want to set a bad example for our kids. For breakfast this includes oatmeal (steel cut is best but instant is so much easier), fruit, green smoothies (pureed fruit and spinach) toast, and pancakes. For lunch we typically have PB sandwiches, fresh and dried fruit, salad, nuts, and veggies and dip. Our dinner staples are pasta (whole wheat or multi-grain) w/marinara and parmesan, soft polenta made with parmesan and butter, massive green salad with beans and sometimes grilled chicken, steamed veggies, veggie soup and homemade biscuits (nothing healthy about these), rice and beans, and grain-based salads.
2 years old (or whenever they have a full set of teeth) and on
They eat what we eat. If they don’t like what we’re having for a given meal, they might be hungry but I won’t make them anything else. Our 6 year old has done very well with this. She goes through picky stages and sometimes she’s not satisfied at the end of a meal but she usually makes up for it later in the day or the next day. I just keep offering her a wide variety of healthy food and she sometimes discovers that now she likes something she used to hate. I don’t force my kids to eat anything; I just don’t offer them much that’s not healthy. When my oldest goes to parties or other places away from home she is very attracted to junk food and will eat as much as she can but I don’t worry about this because we’re pretty healthy at home. She seems to be losing her taste for dairy. We only have Parmesan and butter on a regular basis. On Sundays I make one of our less-healthy favorites like lasagna, fettuccine alfredo, chicken and cheese enchiladas, and homemade pizza. My daughter recently declared that she doesn’t like melted cheese. She will not eat pizza with cheese (I make a small part of it with just sauce and pepperoni for her), or any cheese-based sauce. At friends houses she has refused milk and string cheese – she used to love both of those things. I’m curious how my twins will do going forward. My little girl is definitely picky. I know more than I did when my oldest was a baby and I’m feeding my twins even healthier.
And for all of us it’s a work in progress. We get better every year but we’re still a long ways off from the ideal.
UPDATE: I forgot to add that we get most of our produce from Klesick Family Farm. Each week they deliver a box of fresh, organic, mostly locally-grown, delicious fruits and veggies. We always order lettuce, potatoes, apples, carrots, and broccoli. I order additional things each week based on what's in season. We love it. Everything is so much tastier than what you get at the grocery store and because it's so fresh it lasts longer without spoiling. I can keep the lettuce in my fridge for more than a week. If you live in the Seattle area, check out Klesick. If you live somewhere else google CSA in your town. CSAs are community supported farms and they are a growing trend.
UPDATE: I forgot to add that we get most of our produce from Klesick Family Farm. Each week they deliver a box of fresh, organic, mostly locally-grown, delicious fruits and veggies. We always order lettuce, potatoes, apples, carrots, and broccoli. I order additional things each week based on what's in season. We love it. Everything is so much tastier than what you get at the grocery store and because it's so fresh it lasts longer without spoiling. I can keep the lettuce in my fridge for more than a week. If you live in the Seattle area, check out Klesick. If you live somewhere else google CSA in your town. CSAs are community supported farms and they are a growing trend.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Comfort Salad
I love comfort food. Relying on food to soothe or enhance my emotions is one of my ongoing struggles. I hope to someday conquer it. In the meantime I try to find healthy recipes that feel like comfort food to me.
Avocado Tomato Salad is one of my current favorites. The avocado is creamy, the tomato, lime juice, and salt make it super-flavorful, and it totally satisfies me. I also love knowing that the avocado and tomato have tons of disease-preventing nutrients and heart-healthy fat. You could serve this over a bed of greens for a bigger salad.
Avocado Tomato Salad (Makes 1 lunch-size serving)
1 tomato
1 avocado
EVOO
Lime Juice
Salt
1. Dice the tomato and avocado and combine in a bowl
2. Drizzle with EVOO
3. Add lime Juice and Salt to taste. Start with just a little of each and keep adding until it tastes just right.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Green Smoothies
I absolutely refuse to be sick this Christmas. I have spent too many Holiday seasons with a cold or the flu and last year was the worst. I came down with a make-you-want-to-die version of the flu on Christmas Day and the next 10 days were terrible. I missed out on many family plans, including Christmas Dinner and instead of enjoying time with my husband off from work, I barely remember it. I know he was thrilled with the experience too.
I’m one of those people who believe that good nutrition, good sleep, and exercise can solve a majority of health problems. I’ve experienced it myself and I know it works. So this year I’m going to do everything in my power to stay healthy and prevent illness. The problem is, it’s hard to eat really healthy all the time and it’s especially hard during the holidays. I struggle most with getting enough greens and veggies in. I recently discovered a shortcut: Green Smoothies. My friend Rachel introduced me to the concept. Thanks Rach!
A Green Smoothie is packed with disease preventing nutrients, yet it’s much easier to eat than a plate of salad or vegetables and especially useful when you’re in a hurry. It takes 5 minutes to make and about 10 minutes to eat. After I drink two glassfuls, I feel really satisfied and my energy level goes way up for the rest of the day. It also minimizes my desire for less healthy options. I’m betting that this year, if I eat at least one green smoothie a day, I will avoid the dreaded Christmas cold or flu.
So what’s in a green smoothie you ask? You can make a Green Smoothie with any combination of fruits, leafy greens, and water that can be pureed in a blender. It sounds weird, I know, but it really does taste good. Some versions actually look green while my favorite version looks dark purple. I shared my pitcher of green smoothie today with my daughter and her 3 visiting friends.
Their faces tell the story--they loved it.
My Favorite Green Smoothie
3 bananas
2 satsumas, mandarins, or tangerines
4-6 cups of spinach
2 cups of frozen berries (blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries)
Enough water to make it a smoothie
1. Puree bananas, oranges and some water
2. Add spinach a handful at a time, puree and add more until you’ve added it all. Add water as needed
3. Add frozen berries a handful at a time until pureed. Add more water as needed.
4. Serve it up and enjoy. This makes 7-8 cups.
I’m one of those people who believe that good nutrition, good sleep, and exercise can solve a majority of health problems. I’ve experienced it myself and I know it works. So this year I’m going to do everything in my power to stay healthy and prevent illness. The problem is, it’s hard to eat really healthy all the time and it’s especially hard during the holidays. I struggle most with getting enough greens and veggies in. I recently discovered a shortcut: Green Smoothies. My friend Rachel introduced me to the concept. Thanks Rach!
A Green Smoothie is packed with disease preventing nutrients, yet it’s much easier to eat than a plate of salad or vegetables and especially useful when you’re in a hurry. It takes 5 minutes to make and about 10 minutes to eat. After I drink two glassfuls, I feel really satisfied and my energy level goes way up for the rest of the day. It also minimizes my desire for less healthy options. I’m betting that this year, if I eat at least one green smoothie a day, I will avoid the dreaded Christmas cold or flu.
So what’s in a green smoothie you ask? You can make a Green Smoothie with any combination of fruits, leafy greens, and water that can be pureed in a blender. It sounds weird, I know, but it really does taste good. Some versions actually look green while my favorite version looks dark purple. I shared my pitcher of green smoothie today with my daughter and her 3 visiting friends.
Their faces tell the story--they loved it.
My Favorite Green Smoothie
3 bananas
2 satsumas, mandarins, or tangerines
4-6 cups of spinach
2 cups of frozen berries (blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries)
Enough water to make it a smoothie
1. Puree bananas, oranges and some water
2. Add spinach a handful at a time, puree and add more until you’ve added it all. Add water as needed
3. Add frozen berries a handful at a time until pureed. Add more water as needed.
4. Serve it up and enjoy. This makes 7-8 cups.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Books that changed my life
Insomnia is a great opportunity to catch up on things you’ve been meaning to do. I love the website: http://www.goodreads.com/. It’s fun to see what all my friends are reading and even better to have a record of what I’ve read for myself. I finally updated my bookshelves with the things I’ve read over the past few years – it was especially fun to rate them. Check out my list if you are curious. I included reviews of some of my favorites.
I used the rating system this way:
1 star – Not worth reading
2 stars – Ok but probably not worth the time
3 stars – I’m glad I read it, probably won’t or at least shouldn’t read it again
4 stars – Loved it, part of my personal classics lists, will read it again
5 stars – One of my very favorites, have read it many times and will keep reading it over and over
Within my 5-star category are a handful of books that have changed my life. I try to read these books every year. They are foundational to my family’s lifestyle and culture. They all support and compliment each other too. Each one calls for pretty intense and dramatic lifestyle changes. I consider it my life’s work to learn to live according to the principles in each of these books. When and if I do, I will be perfect. I’m trying to accomplish this with a small but consistent daily effort. I can measure the success of any given day, week or month by how well I followed the principles of these books. Here are my top 5 life-changing books:
1. The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Christ
This is the central classic of my life. I try to read from it every day. I took Moroni’s challenge when I was 12 and my testimony of Christ has continued to grow throughout my life. Moroni wrote,
“Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.
“And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
“And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.”
2. The Bible
I confess I have not completely read this book. I am halfway through the Old Testament. I have referenced it my whole life and am very familiar with the stories and I love it. I believe it is divine. I am amazed at how many references there are to the Bible in classic literature. You can’t fully understand the classics if you haven’t read the Bible. I will have more to say on this book once I’ve finished it.
3. A Thomas Jefferson Education
My life is dramatically different because of this book. It was a major part of mine and my husband’s decision to homeschool our daughter. It is about much more than just education. It’s about leadership and the purpose of life.
4. Eat to Live
I don’t know how anyone can deny the author’s conclusions about the right way to eat after reading this book. This is not a theory or philosophy; its conclusions are based on scientific fact, proven over and over by more than one group of scientists or doctors. I believe it fits right in line with the Word of Wisdom guidelines taught by my Faith. I followed the Eat to Live plan perfectly for 6 weeks and the results were astounding. I lost 12 pounds in just a few weeks, my very severe acid reflux problem went away within a week, my painful shoulder tendonitis disappeared, frequent migraines vanished, I slept spectacularly, and my complexion rivaled Nicole Kidman’s. I know I’m enthusiastic by nature but this is not an exaggeration. Staying on the plan is difficult and I have not done it consistently. As I resumed my old ways, all my ailments resurfaced but they disappear whenever I follow the plan closely. It is empowering to realize how much you can control your health without drugs.
5. Money: It’s not just for Rich People
My family’s finances will never be the same. We’ve never been horrible with our finances but we’ve also never been great. We’ve struggled to achieve our financial goals. This is the first financial advice that has made a material difference in our lives. Here are some of results of our efforts to follow these principles over the last year:
· Eliminated all credit card debt
· Husband received a pay raise that was retroactive for the previous 8 months
· Husband received multiple bonuses
· Finally established a significant emergency savings fund that earns interest every month
· Increased our retirement savings rate
· Finally figured out how to control our daily spending habits
· Learned many new ways to spend less
· Have increased our charitable contributions
In addition to all of these fantastic results, we have clarity about our financial goals and are confident that we will be able to achieve them.
So what are the books that have changed your life?
I used the rating system this way:
1 star – Not worth reading
2 stars – Ok but probably not worth the time
3 stars – I’m glad I read it, probably won’t or at least shouldn’t read it again
4 stars – Loved it, part of my personal classics lists, will read it again
5 stars – One of my very favorites, have read it many times and will keep reading it over and over
Within my 5-star category are a handful of books that have changed my life. I try to read these books every year. They are foundational to my family’s lifestyle and culture. They all support and compliment each other too. Each one calls for pretty intense and dramatic lifestyle changes. I consider it my life’s work to learn to live according to the principles in each of these books. When and if I do, I will be perfect. I’m trying to accomplish this with a small but consistent daily effort. I can measure the success of any given day, week or month by how well I followed the principles of these books. Here are my top 5 life-changing books:
1. The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Christ
This is the central classic of my life. I try to read from it every day. I took Moroni’s challenge when I was 12 and my testimony of Christ has continued to grow throughout my life. Moroni wrote,
“Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.
“And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
“And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.”
2. The Bible
I confess I have not completely read this book. I am halfway through the Old Testament. I have referenced it my whole life and am very familiar with the stories and I love it. I believe it is divine. I am amazed at how many references there are to the Bible in classic literature. You can’t fully understand the classics if you haven’t read the Bible. I will have more to say on this book once I’ve finished it.
3. A Thomas Jefferson Education
My life is dramatically different because of this book. It was a major part of mine and my husband’s decision to homeschool our daughter. It is about much more than just education. It’s about leadership and the purpose of life.
4. Eat to Live
I don’t know how anyone can deny the author’s conclusions about the right way to eat after reading this book. This is not a theory or philosophy; its conclusions are based on scientific fact, proven over and over by more than one group of scientists or doctors. I believe it fits right in line with the Word of Wisdom guidelines taught by my Faith. I followed the Eat to Live plan perfectly for 6 weeks and the results were astounding. I lost 12 pounds in just a few weeks, my very severe acid reflux problem went away within a week, my painful shoulder tendonitis disappeared, frequent migraines vanished, I slept spectacularly, and my complexion rivaled Nicole Kidman’s. I know I’m enthusiastic by nature but this is not an exaggeration. Staying on the plan is difficult and I have not done it consistently. As I resumed my old ways, all my ailments resurfaced but they disappear whenever I follow the plan closely. It is empowering to realize how much you can control your health without drugs.
5. Money: It’s not just for Rich People
My family’s finances will never be the same. We’ve never been horrible with our finances but we’ve also never been great. We’ve struggled to achieve our financial goals. This is the first financial advice that has made a material difference in our lives. Here are some of results of our efforts to follow these principles over the last year:
· Eliminated all credit card debt
· Husband received a pay raise that was retroactive for the previous 8 months
· Husband received multiple bonuses
· Finally established a significant emergency savings fund that earns interest every month
· Increased our retirement savings rate
· Finally figured out how to control our daily spending habits
· Learned many new ways to spend less
· Have increased our charitable contributions
In addition to all of these fantastic results, we have clarity about our financial goals and are confident that we will be able to achieve them.
So what are the books that have changed your life?
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