Category — Writing Life

. . .things that changed my life in 2009:

1. Preparing and eating real food. Although my interest in the real-food movement actually began in 2008—when I first encountered such books as Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma—my personal journey began in earnest this year. I read more books, including Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions and Nina Planck’s Real Food. I looked for and found local sources for grass-fed beef and lamb, pastured chickens and eggs, raw dairy, and in-season fruits and vegetables. I learned how to sprout grains and beans, as well as soak and dehydrate nuts and seeds; I tried my hand at making butter and cheese; and I converted the recipes for many of my family’s favorite dishes to meet real-food ideals. My husband and children went along—warily but willingly—on the journey with me, as we cut back on the refined flour and sugar in our diet and incorporated such new and strange (at first) staples as fermented cod liver oil and kombucha tea.

2. Reading some great books. Clearly, I’m a believer in the statement “You are what you eat.” And by now, you’re probably getting the idea that “You are what you read” would be another suitable credo for me. Simply put, books are—and always have been—a big deal in my life. I can recall at least one engaging novel I read in 2009—The Girls, by Lori Lansens (a diary-style portrayal of the life of conjoined twins)—but for the most part it was a nonfiction year for me. Aside from the above-mentioned food titles, the rest of what I read mostly revolved around marriage and parenting. Favorites here include The Mission of Motherhood and The Ministry of Motherhood, both written by homeschooling mom of four Sally Clarkson. I can so relate to the personal challenges she recounts—from the physical and emotional strength required to be a 24/7 caregiver, nurturer and teacher, to the doubts and feelings of inadequacy that often creep in from a culture that places almost no value on those roles. What I so appreciate about Clarkson’s writing is her ability to transcend all of that—and to help me do it, too!—by putting those roles into an eternal perspective. Her books gave me a renewed sense of purpose that I continue to cling to on those difficult days when I desperately need a good answer to the question, “Why am I doing what I’m doing?” Another author who struck a similar chord with me this year is Gary Thomas, whose book Sacred Marriage has garnered him speaking engagements at churches worldwide. Shawn and I were able to attend one here in Arizona in September, and since then I’ve added a few of his books (including Sacred Influence and Sacred Parenting) to my list. Sacred Marriage (subtitled What if God Designed Marriage to Make Us Holy More Than to Make Us Happy?) intelligently and thoughtfully exposes the ruse of romantic love as a means to (elusive) fulfillment and instead challenges those of us who choose marriage to see the difficulties it inevitably brings as a way for God to shape our character and for us to demonstrate our commitment to Him. I haven’t delved into Sacred Parenting yet, but from all indications, the theme continues on its pages. In a particularly powerful essay Thomas uses to open a book of devotions based on Sacred Parenting, he writes: “I’d like to suggest a motto for Christian family life: ‘God is in the room.’ While God is always there, so often we act and think and behave and speak as if he were not. . . .Think of how differently we might treat our children in those frustrating moments if we responded to them with the knowledge that God is in the room. If we truly believed that the God who designed them and who is passionate about their welfare was literally looking over our shoulders, might we be a little more patient, a little more understanding?. . .Tell it to yourself, every morning, every noontime, every evening: God is in the room. Tell it to each other, every time you’re tempted to yell, or to criticize, or ridicule, or even ignore each other: God is in the room. Tell it to your children, throughout the day: God is in the room. Let’s keep telling it to ourselves and to each other until we practice it and live it, until we live and breathe with the blessed remembrance: God is in the room.”

3. Having a homeschool room (where I especially need to practice the above-mentioned motto!). When we added two bedrooms and a bathroom onto our small home last year, we decided to convert one of the existing bedrooms into a homeschool room. It meant that our four children would have to double up and share the remaining bedrooms, but we were all OK with that. Shawn outfitted the room’s closet with plenty of shelves to store books and supplies, and he built new cases to replace the broken ones on three cast-off desks from the charter school where one of my sisters works. A bulletin board, dry-erase board and world map later, we were in business! And we haven’t looked back to the days when books, papers and manipulatives almost always covered the living-room floor and the dining-room table. Sure, we sometimes still “do school” in those other rooms, but having a place to put everything away when we’re finished—and a door to close when we haven’t had time to tidy up the mess—has gone a long way toward keeping me sane (see No. 2) and all of us organized and on track.

4. Finding financial peace. No, we didn’t win the lottery, receive an unexpected inheritance or invent the Next Big Thing and suddenly become fabulously wealthy. (I’m sure I would have remembered if any of those things had occurred this year!) What we did do was solidify our financial philosophy as a single-income family with a tight budget and a desire to live relatively simply and to be completely debt-free. Toward both of those ends, we’ve begun a serious campaign to get rid of things that we don’t really need or especially love, and to pay off everything we owe (which is really just the mortgage, a car loan and a credit-card balance). Our champion of sorts in the process has been Dave Ramsey, author of The Total Money Makeover, host of radio broadcast The Dave Ramsey Show, and creator of such catchphrases as “Sell so much stuff the kids think they’re next,” and “Live like no one else, so that later, you can live (and give) like no one else.” Shawn and I completed his 13-week Financial Peace University course at our church this fall and discovered that we were actually in decent shape with regard to some areas of our money, but that we needed to make a few changes and do a better job in other areas. Above all, the class helped us talk things through and agree on some goals to keep us focused. We’ve even gotten the kids on board, switching their “allowance” (which implies entitlement to free money) to “commission” (which solidifies the concept that money is earned).

5. Receiving an iPod Touch. As a lover of all things Apple, I’d had my eye on an iPhone for awhile, but because the only cell-phone carrier to offer it doesn’t provide good coverage in the areas I travel most frequently, I’d pretty much ruled it out. As a second choice, I liked the iPod Touch, but without the phone functionality I couldn’t really justify buying one. “Sure, it’s cool, but would I really use it?” I wondered. Shawn surprised me with one on Mother’s Day, and that question was quickly answered in the affirmative. The marketing lingo “There’s an app for that” became a reality for me as I started to use the iPod Touch for all things usual (checking e-mail and Facebook, surfing the Web, and keeping the kids entertained with movies, music and games) and unusual (recording Kellen’s first piano recital and watching TV—mostly late-night online streaming of current episodes of The Office and Parks and Recreation). And sometimes it’s an absolute sanity saver: It makes multitasking a cinch, as I can use it while I’m cooking (see No. 1) or folding laundry. And at the risk of sounding like a really bad homeschooling mom, I occasionally use it to tune out the constant din created when 2 Bigs + 4 Littles almost always occupy the house under 1 Midsize Roof (see No. 2). Whenever I need a little break, I simply pop in the ear buds and download a podcast of The Dave Ramsey Show (see No. 4) or listen to my current playlist faves (the cast recording from the Broadway musical Wicked, or the new Sidewalk Prophets album, These Simple Truths. To hear the Sidewalk Prophets song Just Might Change Your Life—which is, after all, the theme of this post, click the play button of the audio player below.)

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6. Starting this blog. I’ve only been a blogger for half of the year, but the impact of finally finding my voice—I’ve never been much of a first-person writer—as well as the guts to share it here—I worried whether I had anything relevant to say—has been huge. I’ve “met” so many other bloggers who are living inspired—and inspiring!—lives, and I’m writing more frequently than I have in a long time. And I can’t leave out the incredible learning curve I had to conquer just to set up the blog and publish a post! When I first started, I didn’t know a tag from a category or a plugin from a pingback—and HTML code? Forget about it! (Click here to find out about the Beginner to Blogger course that helped me get up and running.) Not that I’m all super tech-savvy now. I have much more to learn, for sure, but I’ve come a long way since I began, well, at The Beginning (my first post).

Please note: It is my goal to provide a top-quality, content-driven, ad-free blog. That said, I do occasionally include affiliate links in some of my posts. For example, if you click on any of the book or CD covers above, you will link to Amazon.com, where you will have an opportunity to purchase the items—and if you do buy them after clicking through from my site, I will receive a small commission to support my work here, as well as my own book-buying habit. Seriously, though, I’d be just as happy if my recommendations inspired you to check out the title from your local library or borrow it from a friend.

A few friends have asked me recently how I got my blog up and running—which got me thinking there might be more of you out there who’d like to venture into the blogosphere but who need a little (or a lot of) help with the technical stuff. That was certainly the case for me. I knew what I wanted to write about and who my target audience would be; I had a blog name or two in mind; and I even had a vague idea what I wanted it to look like. But I didn’t know much of the important stuff: What blog platform should I choose? What did it mean to have my site hosted? Where would I find a theme? And then there was all the lingo: I didn’t know a keyword from a category, or a widget from a plug-in. And forget about html code! Did I really need to know all that? Well, yes and no, as it turns out. In the months since I started my blog, I certainly have gained an education in all of the above. But I was able to get started pretty quickly despite the enormous learning curve because of the Beginner to Blogger e-course I signed up for upon the recommendation of a friend who already had a fairly established blog. Instructor Traci Knope laid everything out in 20 lessons (five lessons a week for four weeks) that offered step-by-step navigation through what would otherwise have been an intimidating and overwhelming process. The amount of research she saved me—although I’ve done a fair amount of that on my own, as well—was worth the $39.95 I paid for the course. So if you have something you want to share but you’re not sure exactly how to get it out there, you might want to consider taking this e-course, too. If you do, please let me know so that I can look for your work someday soon!

Please note: It is my goal to provide a top-quality, content-driven, ad-free blog. That said, I do occasionally promote something that I love and that I think would be of interest to my readers. For example, if you click on the Beginner to Blogger logo above, you will link to the site where you will have an opportunity to purchase the e-course—and if you do buy it after clicking through from my site, I will receive a small commission to support my work here, for which I thank you.

Autumn is finally in the air—or, at least as much of that season as we can seem to muster here in the desert Southwest. While we haven’t yet packed away our shorts or pulled out the flannel sheets, we find ourselves gravitating toward the warmer, more substantial meals we typically turn to when the weather cools off.

This week, I sprouted some more pinto beans and then cooked them for just about an hour before using them in a hearty crockpot chili that—along with a batch of gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free cornbread—really hit the spot after a busy homeschool co-op day. (On Wednesdays, we usually have piano lessons in the morning, and then meet with friends in the afternoon to study chemistry, art and Spanish together.) Along with the sprouted beans and some of their cooking liquid, the chili included one pound of grass-fed beef, a diced onion, a 12-ounce can of tomato paste, and a mixture of herbs and spices that I threw in, unmeasured, until I liked the taste—such as chili powder, garlic powder, cumin, oregano, crushed red chili flakes, cayenne pepper and sea salt. We topped it with grated raw cheddar and sour cream. The cornbread recipe I use is an adaptation of one I received via e-mail from Living Without magazine’s free Recipe of the Week newsletter. (Click here to sign up for the newsletter and to view the recipes posted on the publication’s Web site.)

In addition to beans, I sprouted some organic soft white wheat I’d ordered from Azure Standard, dehydrated it in the oven, ground it into flour in my Vita-Mix and used it to make chocolate-chip cookies—adapting a recipe in Janie Quinn’s book Sprouted Baking. (Her recipe calls for maple sugar and carob chips, which I didn’t have on hand, so I used Rapadura—unrefined cane sugar—and Enjoy Life chocolate chips—dairy-free and gluten-free—instead.) I really watched the grains during the sprouting process to determine whether I was achieving the goal of truly sprouting (and not drowning) the grain, as I expressed concern about last week. After soaking the grain overnight, I did observe that the endosperm had emerged from each grain (whether because it was swollen or not), but I also observed definite growing shoots that could only be considered true sprouts. I’m calling it a success! The cookies I made with the sprouted wheat flour were delicious, and while I didn’t test them out on Kellen (they included dairy and eggs), I did manage to convince my sister-in-law, an officially diagnosed celiac (and a very brave one, I might add!), to try one. It’s been less than 24 hours since she ate it, and so far she is symptom-free. I’ll keep checking in with her over the next few days to see what, if any effects she experiences. At the request of my editor at Living Without, I’m on the lookout for a medical doctor specializing in celiac disease to interview about whether sprouting gluten-containing grains might make them tolerable and safe for those who are gluten-sensitive. It’s controversial, and so far I haven’t had much luck.

This post is part of the Tuesday Twister blog carnival hosted by www.gnowfglins.com. To link to today’s Tuesday Twister on that site, click here.

On Saturday, I had the pleasure of interviewing Nourishing Traditions author Sally Fallon for an article I’m working on for Living Without magazine. Having read her entire book—a weighty tome of 680 pages, packed with more than 700 recipes and a wealth of nutrition knowledge—earlier this year, I was eager (and a bit intimidated, I might add!) to speak to her specifically about how traditional methods of food preparation (including sprouting, soaking, culturing and fermenting) might help those with food allergies, intolerances and sensitivities to overcome their symptoms. As you might imagine, it was incredibly inspiring to speak with her. Not only did she provide what I pray will be a fresh perspective for the readers who will eventually read the article, but she also graciously answered many questions I couldn’t help asking about my son Kellen’s specific situation. What’s more, she offered hope that he might actually be able to eliminate some of his food-allergy symptoms, and she suggested several things to try to help him eventually get to that point.

Nourishing Traditions isn’t a new book. The second edition was published 10 years ago. But the information and ideas it contains are new to me, and I’m so grateful to the community of bloggers I stumbled onto (especially Wardeh Harmon of www.gnowfglins.com) who first introduced them to me and who continue to inspire me with their own innovations based on the principles and techniques outlined in the book. They, too, have patiently answered questions and shared recipes as I’ve worked to convert my kitchen to meet real-food ideals.

With renewed zeal, I tackled a few tasks this week that were foremost on my mind:
• Homemade chicken stock. Sally Fallon writes extensively in Nourishing Traditions about the healing properties of homemade meat stocks—in particular, the natural gelatin they contain, which aids digestion and allows proteins to be more fully utilized. (Store-bought stocks are not a good substitute, as they don’t contain the beneficial gelatin, and often do contain undesirable preservatives). She suggested that I give Kellen lots of meat stocks and broths to help heal his gut. I’d like to have enough on hand that he (and the rest of us, too!) can eat a little with each meal.

• Sprouted pinto beans. Living in the Southwest, we tend to eat a lot of beans. But although I’d heard about the added benefits of sprouting beans before cooking them (especially that sprouting increases enzymes that help aid digestion), I’d never tried it before. I started sprouting several quart-size jars’ worth on Sunday, and they should be ready to cook today. I’ve been told that sprouted beans cook in about half the time that it usually takes for regular dried beans, so I’m looking forward to keeping the stovetop heated for just an hour or two instead of half a day.

• Salvaging our squash. We came home from a trip to my in-laws’ home in northern Arizona a couple of weeks ago loaded with produce from their garden—especially the ever-prolific zucchini and yellow squash. Not wanting to waste one bit, I’ve been working it into as many meals as possible. After last night’s feast of stuffed zucchini (a Nourishing Traditions recipe that calls for a filling of whole-grain breadcrumbs, eggs, Parmesan cheese, onions and, of course, the scooped out flesh of several large zucchinis—to which I added ground beef), I have just enough left to make a soaked version of zucchini spice bread (another NT recipe). The yellow squash will go into the roasting pan with some other veggies as a side dish later this week.

This post is part of the Tuesday Twister blog carnival hosted by www.gnowfglins.com. To link to today’s Tuesday Twister on that site, click here.

Please note: It is my goal to provide a top-quality, content-driven, ad-free blog. That said, I do occasionally include affiliate links in some of my posts. For example, if you click on the book cover above, you will link to Amazon.com, where you will have an opportunity to purchase the book—and if you do buy it after clicking through from my site, I will receive a small commission to support my work here, as well as my own book-buying habit. Seriously, though, I’d be just as happy if my recommendation inspired you to check out the title from your local library or borrow it from a friend.

I’ve been thinking over the past several weeks about how to start this blog, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve thought about it way too much and that it’s just time to write already! Probably because I am a writer and editor, I’ve put a lot of unnecessary pressure on myself to put together the perfect first post. Part of that pressure comes from questions I have asked myself as I have delved into the process of getting set up—which, by the way, involved a serious learning curve and an incredible expansion of my high-tech vocabulary. Questions such as, “Does the world really need another blog?” “Do I have anything to say that somebody else isn’t already saying?” and “Do I have the energy, creativity and time to keep it going?” My answers? “Probably not.” “I doubt it.” and “I can’t believe you can ask yourself that question with a straight face.” Still, I find myself unable to resist a forum such as this—a place where I can share ideas and experiences with people I know well and people I don’t know at all—yet. And I’m drawn, too, by the knowledge that I’ll be forced to exercise my writing and editing muscles, which often lay dormant too long between free-lance assignments.

So what will I write about, exactly? Well, I plan to follow the old rule, “Write what you know.” Which, for me, means writing about my family and my place in it; the things we strive toward and thrive because of (or in spite of); our life experiences; and our hopes, dreams and heart’s desires—from the minuscule to the grandiose. Topics at the top of my list include homeschooling (which is a huge part of our lifestyle), healthy eating (both for optimal nutrition and to accommodate our family’s food allergies) and hobbies (from digital scrapbooking to urban farming).

The Hemmings Half Dozen includes my husband, Shawn, and I, and our four children: Kellen, 9; Kerrick, almost 7; Kennah, 3 1/2 (don’t forget the 1/2); and Keillor, 20 months. We live in a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona, in a mid-size home that often feels crowded and chaotic. And we love it—most of the time. If you find us here, I hope you’ll contribute to the conversation where you can, and that you’ll extend a bit of grace my way as I continue to navigate this uncharted (for me) territory. In fact, for this first post (and maybe beyond,too), I’ve decided to adopt as my motto the following quotation from Dr. Seuss: “Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”