My, what a busy season of life we seem to be in lately! Ryan recently dropped down to working one weekend a month at the hospital; previously he would work three to four days each week. We assumed (as I’m sure most people would), that this change would make us less busy, but strangely the opposite has happened! His days, and often evenings, are filled with web design work, which truly is a blessing. It has been wonderful to see work pour in for him so soon after he started freelancing; but it has made for a very busy time to say the least.

On top of this, we are preparing to move at the end of this month, getting ready for a five day, four night vacation to San Diego in a week, plus trying to get plugged into a new church and of course all things baby! And April 1st Ryan starts his new job working for a friend of ours in his computer repair business. Whew, just typing it all out is exhausting!

Amongst all this, my housework has often fallen by the wayside which truly just adds more stress to our lives. Ryan and I hate having a messy home and it often serves as a source of frustration for us both. This week, my only goals are to pack as much as physically possible and to keep up with the dishes, laundry and other basic cleaning (nothing too in depth, just keeping the place presentable). Because of this, I have made our menu plan as simple as possible. All of the meals are quick and easy, and create minimal dirty dishes; I also purchased paper plates and plastic cups to help control dishes in the next couple weeks as we prepare for moving and vacation. Perhaps not the most environmentally friendly choice, but for this season, it will do!

Our menu this week is longer than usual, including next weekend so that I don’t have to make another trip to the store before we leave Monday evening. Saturday we took friends of ours who are moving soon to a great local restaurant (if you live in the Cincy area, definitely check it out!); they have the BEST tater tots! I know, it sounds silly; but seriously, they are incredible. Anyway, here’s the plan–

Breakfasts: fried eggs & toast, yogurt, soaked oatmeal (opt. add-ins: honey, coconut, berries, milk, cinnamon, chopped nuts), cereal (for Ryan, matched a sale & coupon to get Cascadian Farms cereal for $1.49/box!)

Lunches: lunchmeat sandwiches, dinner leftovers

Dinners:

Sat 3/6: out to dinner w/ friends

Sun 3/7: canned soup (with a sale & a coupon, I got organic soup for $1 each!) + sandwiches

Italian Sausages + oven fries + veggie + smoothie

Masoor Daal (carry-over from last week!) + brown rice + veggie + fresh fruit

Loaded Nachos (make 3x taco meat & freeze) + veggie tray w/ dip + smoothies

Sausage & Cheese Egg Bake + coconut flour muffins + smoothies

Chicken Bombay (carry-over from last week!) + acorn squash + fruit salad

Sat 3/13: Crock-Pot Roast + mashed potatoes & gravy + veggie + salad

Sun 3/14: take-out after church (perhaps Chipotle?)

Mon 3/15: (if we have time, our flight leaves around 6:30 pm) Tomato Soup + grilled cheese + salad

Snacks: stove-popped popcorn w/ butter, smoothies, cheese, fruit, ice cream-less chocolate milkshakes

This post is linked to Menu Plan Monday.

At the end of January, I began a series on homebirth. My first post was about what my intent is not during this series and my second addressed the question of whether or not birthing at home is safe. You can read Part One and Part Two here.

For the last post in the series, I thought I’d address the issue from a more personal level and share why my husband and I decided to plan to have our baby boy at home. I welcome any questions, comments, concerns or thoughts you may have and as always, I enjoy hearing the varying perspectives of my readers.

I have wanted to be a mother for my entire life; from a very young age, playing with dolls and pretending they were my babies was my favorite pasttime. One year in elementary school on career day, I remember going to school in my regular clothes and telling everybody I was a stay at home mom. It’s a dream I’ve had for as long as I can recall.

When I thought about actually having a baby (ie, giving birth), I naturally assumed I’d be in a hospital. After all, that’s how most women do it; I didn’t know anybody who had their baby at home and didn’t even realize it was a viable option.

The first time I heard about home birth was in college. My husband (then friend, soon-to-be boyfriend) was actually the one who told me about it. He was attending a house church and the pastor and his wife had just had their son at home. I had the same reaction as most people who hear about home birth for the first time: is that even safe? I was very skeptical to say the least but quickly shoved the issue to the back of my mind. After all, I wasn’t even married much less pregnant so it wasn’t exactly pertinent to me at the time.

Fast forward about a year and a half. I was married, not in school anymore, working full-time. We weren’t trying for a baby but knew that pregnancy could happen at any time since we weren’t using any form of birth control (a tiny bit of natural family planning, but even that wasn’t a very concerted effort). I was slowly beginning to dive more into the whole natural living/crunchy scene and encountered home birth a few times on various blogs I enjoyed. At this point, we also had a number of friends who had given birth at home. So my exposure to the concept was quickly growing.

I did quite a bit of reading on the subject and began to warm up to the idea of giving birth at home (still not even pregnant at this point). Ryan was open to the idea but neither of us were 100% “sold.” Even after I got pregnant in September, it still took us a month or so to decide for sure that home birth was the route we wanted to persue.

So what finally made up our minds? It was important to both of us to have a birth that was as natural as possible. Obviously we realize that medical intervention can be a blessing, but neither of us think it is necessary in many situations. The more we read and talked, the more we became convinced that having a home birth would be the easiest (ha!) way for us to achieve the natural birth we wanted.

There would be no doctors or nurses trying to convince us to use medication or procedures we didn’t want. I’d be in the comfort of my home and free to try any position I’d like, I could eat and drink during labor which would help keep up my energy levels. There would be no poking and prodding in the middle of a contraction, no ivs or internal monitors. I could labor at my own pace, in our own home, how I wanted and needed to.

We talked to some friends and found a midwife whom we now love! Not for a moment have we regretted our decision to go this route. We have chosen to visit a doctor (who is very home/natural birth-friendly) on the side as parallel care, mainly so we have access to labs and ultrasounds that our midwife can’t provide for us, and also so that we’ll have a doctor we already know and trust in case something happens and we end up needing to transfer to a hospital during the birth.

Like I said in my first post, I don’t think that everybody has to have their baby at home. Rather I believe it to be a matter of Christian liberty. I believe that all parents should make an informed decision and decide what is best for their family. This is simply what we’ve chosen for our family and our baby!

I hope that you’ve benefited from and been encouraged by this series and I welcome any feedback–questions, comments, concerns, personal experience–that you have to offer!

Ok, so maybe these muffins aren’t truly “a little taste of heaven,” but they certainly are incredibly delicious. This is a recipe my mom would fix when I was growing up; it originated in a Taste of Home magazine, and they were always a favorite of mine. I don’t fix them very often because they aren’t the healthiest of all things, but for a once-in-awhile treat, they are perfect! Of course I’ll have to wait until baby is born to indulge again since they contain gluten.

These little gems go perfectly alongside a bowl of soup or chili and are best fresh out of the oven, slathered with yummy butter. I hope your family enjoys these as much as ours does!

Coffee Shop Corn Muffins (yields about 18)

 1 1/4 cup cornmeal

1 cup all-purpose flour (you could sub whole wheat flour if you’d like)

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup white sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 egg

1 cup buttermilk

3/4 cup oil (I used olive oil, you could also use melted coconut oil or butter)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Grease a muffin pan or line with paper or foil baking cups.

In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients. In a small bowl, combine the wet ingredients (egg, buttermilk, oil). Pour wet mixture into dry and stir until just combined. Don’t overmix or you will have flat, dense muffins.

Fill the muffin cups 3/4 full and bake for 12-15 minutes, until muffins are golden brown and a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.

This post is linked to Ultimate Recipe Swap at Life as Mom. Go check it out for plenty more recipes using flour!

Wow, can you believe it is March already? I know February is a short month, but this year is already flying by! Hopefully this means that spring is just around the corner as I’m getting pretty tired of all this cold weather and snow. Oh well, it is certainly beautiful and makes delicious ice cream so I’ll be grateful for that at least!

Last week’s menu went very well. I really like the flexibility of just planning the meals and then deciding as we go which day we have what. Plus I like to ask my husband sometimes which meal he prefers on a particular day.

Saturday we had our niece’s first birthday party in the afternoon, then we had dinner at Chipotle with Ryan’s mom. Sunday I fixed this Minestrone in the crock-pot to be ready when we got home from church, but we ended up picking up Wendy’s and taking it to a friend’s house to hang out for the evening. So we’ll have the soup for lunches this week, which works just as well for me! Here’s our menu for this week:

Breakfasts: scrambled eggs & sausage patties, fruit & yogurt parfaits, soaked oatmeal (opt. add-ins: honey, coconut, berries, milk, cinnamon, chopped nuts)

Lunches: leftover minestrone, lunchmeat sandwiches/roll-ups

Dinners:

Beef & Black Bean Tacos + veggie tray w/ ranch dip + smoothies

Masoor Daal + brown rice + veggie + fresh fruit

Chicken w/ Cheese & Broccoli + salad + corn

BBQ Meatballs + garlic mashed potatoes + green beans + salad

Chicken Bombay + veggie + fruit salad

This post is linked to Organizing Junkie’s Menu Plan Monday.

For those of you who don’t have an Aldi near you, it is a deeply discounted grocery store that sells almost exclusively private label brands (meaning everything is “Aldi brand”) and has rock-bottom prices on most items.

When I talk about a “real food” diet, what I mean is this: eating foods that are as close to their natural state as possible. It means skipping the packaged, processed convenience foods and opting rather for foods in their “whole” form, such as meat, eggs, cheese, milk, fruits, vegetables and whole grains. It means making food from scratch rather than pouring it out of a can or pulling it out of a box. It often includes preparing foods using traditional methods like soaking grains or fermenting veggies.

So can Aldi fit into this sort of diet? Is it possible to find “real food” at such a conventional (and cheap!) grocery store? I believe it is, although shopping there for healthy foods requires a discerning eye and the self-control to say NO to the nacho cheese corn chips and ice cream sandwiches. While there are healthy gems at Aldi, most of the food is full of sugar, high fructose corn syrup (aka, more sugar!), hydrogenated oils and/or monosodium glutanamate (MSG).

I should also note that Aldi (at least our local store) does not carry any organic foods, so by shopping there you are giving up the organic label. Personally, I am okay with this. In terms of how I prioritize our food spending, “organic” foods are not at the top of the list. If it is high up on your list, you may want to reconsider shopping at Aldi.

So what do I buy from Aldi? Here are the foods I purchase there unless I find a great sale at the local Meijer or Kroger:

Baking Needs: baking powder, baking soda, cocoa powder, olive oil (sometimes), select spices (ie, oregano and cinnamon), all-purpose flour/chocolate chips/brown sugar (used sparingly & mostly when making food for others)

Meat & Dairy: eggs, sour cream, cream cheese, cheese (block form & sometimes shredded), bacon (sometimes), ground turkey, chicken (sometimes)

Produce: spinach, potatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, cucumber, broccoli, bananas, apples, oranges, strawberries, pineapple

Canned Goods: coconut milk, tuna fish (in water), chicken broth (if I don’t have homemade on hand), tomatoes (diced, paste, sauce), black beans

Frozen: fruit (strawberries, mixed berries, blueberries), corn

Miscellaneous: tortilla chips, orange juice, corn tortillas, taco shells

Many of these ingredients are still not “ideal.” The frozen corn is not organic and therefore probably GMO (genetically modified organism), the baking powder contains aluminum, the olive oil is not cold pressed, and the meat, eggs and dairy don’t come from pastured animals. But for this season of life we’re in, I’m okay with buying all of these products. Perhaps some day I will be able to afford to buy all of the ideal foods for our family, but right now I will simply do the best I can with what I have and be thankful for the bountiful food God has provided for us. After all, He is ultimately the source of good health, not anything we can do or eat!

To my beloved son,

We now have less than four months until your due date! Your papa and I are so excited to finally meet and hold you, and it’s amazing that your birth day is so close. I can’t wait to see your little face and hands and the tiny feet that have been pummelling my bladder these past few weeks, to count all your fingers and toes and see what color your hair and eyes are, and if in fact you do have a “Benhase nose” as your papa proclaimed when we first saw a picture of your adorable profile.

Over the weeks we have been able to tell that you are growing and changing. My belly is popping out more every day it seems, and your swift kicks to my insides grow stronger and stronger. Every time we have heard your sweet heartbeat, it is strong and healthy, a reassuring sign to your mama. Yesterday at the doctor’s office you even kicked the dopplar when the doctor put it on my belly. We got a good laugh at your little antic! At the ultrasound a few weeks ago, you were breech but yesterday the doctor said it sounds as though you may have turned. Please stay that way, as I’d rather not have a breech birth if we can avoid it!

Your papa was finally able to feel you kick a few weeks ago; what an amazing experience that was! I am so glad he could feel you and I know he was, too.

I am still enjoying being pregnant with you, although I am starting to feel some of the effects of having this belly. Bending over to put on shoes and socks is a little tricky at times and it’s getting harder to find a comfortable sleeping position at nighttime. The heartburn that plagued my first couple months of pregnancy is slowly returning, but all in all this is a small price to pay to have such an incredible blessing that you will be to our lives.

We think that we have decided on a name for you: Jericho Ryan. At first, I mentioned the name as a joke, since it is actually the name of a city in the old testament. But the more and more your papa and I think about it, the more we truly love it. It is certainly unique–but not weird–and has beautiful symbolism behind it. Jericho was a wicked and corrupt city, yet God tore down its walls and conquered it. Likewise, we pray that although you, like all of us, are a sinner, God will conquer your heart.

Your mama and papa love you so much, my sweet boy, and we can’t wait to meet you in a few months. We thank God for the blessing you are to our family and pray that you will live all your days to glorify and honor Him!

Always with My Love,

Mama

Time for another menu plan! Last week’s menu went pretty well; we didn’t get to the Zuppa Tuscana Soup, although we finally made the salmon cakes. Honestly I wasn’t too crazy about them. Ryan liked them, and we both thought the garlic-herb sour cream was really good! I can see that working as a great condiment on a number of meals. I just think I don’t like salmon, which is a shame since it is so good for you and inexpensive (at least canned). Once I’m eating bread again (aka, after baby comes), I want to try these salmon melts; maybe the cheese will help!

Saturday we had my whole family over to play cards and I fixed this crock-pot spaghetti sauce, a large salad with veggies and homemade garlic focaccia. The food was delicious and we had a great time! I’m just a little bummed I couldn’t sample the bread; it smelled delicious. Sunday we got out of church around 6:30 and decided to pick up some Chipotle (steak burrito for Ry, crispy chicken tacos for me) and take it home. Yum!

Here’s the plan for the rest of our week–

Breakfasts: fruit & yogurt parfaits, soaked oatmeal (opt. add-ins: honey, coconut, berries, milk, cinnamon, chopped nuts), eggs (fried or scrambled w/ cheese)

Lunches: dinner leftovers, lunchmeat sandwiches/roll-ups

Dinners:

Sage & Apple Pork Chops + salad + corn

Creamy Chicken Curry + brown rice + veggie

Parmesan Chicken Strips over salad + coconut flour muffins + smoothies

Inside-Out Cheeseburgers (an experiment) + salad + oven fries

Thai Peanut Noodles w/ Chicken (Ryan loved these!)+ veggie + orange slices

Snacks: stove-popped popcorn w/ melted butter, smoothies, cheese, Zucchini-Chocolate Chip Muffins

What are you eating this week?

Waaay back at the start of 2010, I posted my new year’s goals for the whole blogosphere to see. Now that we’re a month and a half into the year, I thought I’d share an update on how I’m doing. I hope to do this again because it helps hold me accountable, kind of like posting my to-do lists!

Personal Goals

- Keep up with the dirty dishes.  Well…let’s just say I’ve “improved” in this area, but there is still much room to get better. At least we haven’t run out of anything before I finally buckle down and wash dishes (okay, except maybe spoons one time)!

- Declutter each room of our home.  So far I’ve done the dining room closet, and that was actually the area that needed decluttering the most; I’ve also started the bedroom. The kitchen was decluttered shortly before Christmas so it should be good, but I will need to go through the rest of the rooms in the next month and a half, because that is when we’re moving to a new (and much smaller!) apartment.

- Finish Feminine Appeal.  No, I still haven’t finished this one unfortunately. It’s just hard to find time to read and I already have two other books that take priority over this one! But I still have the rest of the year, right?

- Read Shepherding a Child’s Heart with Ryan.  We’re working on this one. Ryan is about 2/3 of the way finished and I’m nearly halfway. We should finish in a month or so.

- Put away food in the freezer for the month or so after baby is born.  Obviously I haven’t done this because I don’t want the food to be freezer burnt by the time we eat it! I do need to start planning what I want to prepare, though. Hopefully that can happen in the next month or two.

Blogging Goals

- Post more consistently each week.  I’ve definitely improved on this; each week since the start of the new year, I’ve posted at least 3 times per week. My bare minimum goal is to post Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but I’ve also been able to throw a few extras in, especially links to other articles I’ve found particularly interesting or noteworthy.

- Try to include pictures with most posts.  I still need to work on this one. Part of the problem is that I’ve been having issues with the functionality of inserting pictures, so once that is fixed I will really be able to work on this goal.

- Write & schedule posts at least one day ahead of time.  With the exception of  the menu plans, I’ve had all my posts written and scheduled ahead of time! This has made posting so much less stressful since I don’t have to scramble in the morning to get something written and posted.

- Brainstorm ideas on a regular and consistent basis.  This one has also been going well. Instead of sitting down and having brainstorming “sessions,” I find it more helpful to just write down ideas as I think of them. I still have a few more weeks worth of ideas to use and more keep coming!

- Get Google Ads up and running in the next month.  Obviously this has not happened yet, as there are no ads to be seen! This one can’t really be helped though. My husband was working on this, but lately he’s been super swamped with web design work, plus his part-time job at the hospital, so he simply hasn’t had time for this right now, which is totally fine. It isn’t a big deal and when things slow down for him, it shouldn’t be too much longer until we get this squared away.

Overall I feel pretty good with this progress; the two biggest areas that still need work are keeping up with the dishes (this is a never ending battle!) and decluttering the apartment. Next up on my decluttering list is our bedroom, and I’d like to tackle that in the next couple weeks. And pretty soon we’ll need to start packing, too! When it rains, it pours, right?

Since going gluten-free about a month and a half ago, I’ve had a few very interesting encounters. If any of you work, or have ever worked, in an office, you probably know that there is constantly food around, whether it’s a potluck to celebrate a promotion, or someone who brought in a plate of brownies “just because.” Before January 1st, I’d usually indulge and my co-workers came to understand that I had a sweet tooth!

Now, when they offer me a cookie or cupcake, I have to decline and naturally they want to know why. Most of them don’t really get “gluten-free,” so to keep things simple I normally tell them that I have to avoid wheat products due to a suspected intolerance. And this is where it gets interesting. I’ve found that a surprising number of people don’t realize that cookies and other baked goods contain wheat, that almost all flour is derived from wheat, even if it isn’t labelled as such. They seem to only think something contains wheat when it specifically says “whole wheat.”

At first, I just got a good laugh about this (not in front of them, of course!). It seemed remarkable to me that they didn’t know that all purpose flour comes from wheat.

As I thought about it more, though, I realized that their lack of understanding is very revealing about our society and its relationship with food. Gone are the days when everyone has a vegetable garden in their backyard, where one man’s milk is traded for another’s eggs. Very few mothers spend hours in the kitchen during summer and autumn, preserving the harvest’s bounty to feed their families throughout the winter months. A warm, home-cooked meal has become a special treat when we visit grandma’s, instead of a daily occurence where families reconnect around the kitchen table (this brings up another issue entirely, about the deterioration of the family unit, but that is another post for another day).

We’ve lost any connection to our food and where it comes from. Many people don’t cook at all and neighborhood farms are all but a thing of the past. Breakfast comes out of a box in the freezer, lunch out of a can, and dinner from a box or a drive-thru at the local golden arches.

The food industry has become so industrialized that children today grow up never realizing what goes into growing the food that they eat. Kids aren’t out in the garden, weeding under the hot sun. They don’t know all the work that had to happen to put that bread and peanut butter and jelly on their plate. There is a huge disconnect between food’s production and its consumption.

Perhaps if we teach our children where food comes from and how to garden, if we explain the value in preparing wholesome, simple foods at home, if we take them to farms where they can see and touch and smell the soil where potatoes grow and pet the cows that make milk and feed chickens that produce eggs, then perhaps they will take more of an interest in the quality and the value of the food they eat. Perhaps then they will no longer be satisfied with enriched macaroni shells and sauce made from cheese product and hot dogs made from who-knows-what topped with corn syrup-laden ketchup. Maybe we can raise a generation of healthy children who know good food when they taste it and who truly care about being a good steward of not only the earth, but of the bodies that God has given them.

This disconnect is alarming, and quite frankly it’s time for change. And what better place to start than with our children?

Every week when I plan our menu, I go through three steps to decide on the meals we’ll have:

1. Did we miss any meals the week before? Rarely do I stick 100% to our menu; things come up: we go to friend’s house for a meal, we end up going out to eat, I don’t feel like cooking and we eat sausage dip and smoothies for supper. Each week, there are probably one or two nights when we don’t eat the meal I had originally planned. This is not a problem because my meal plan is there to help me, not the other way around. It is not a rigid schedule I must stick to, but rather a tool I use in order to save money and time in the kitchen. But if I regularly miss meals and never fix them at all, that is a waste of money because I already have the ingredients on hand and most likely they will just sit in the cupboard unused. So by carrying over missed meals to the following week, I am saving money!

2. What are my husband’s favorites? I try to make the majority of our menu include my husband’s favorite meals. This keeps him happy, and also keeps it simple because we I know how to fix them by heart and it keeps a nice routine. When I decide on three or four of his favorites to make during a particular week, I always try to have a variety between ground beef/turkey, chicken, vegetarian and grains (ie, spaghetti or pizza).

3. What is a new recipe I’d like to try this week? I love experimenting in the kitchen and find trying new recipes to be fun, relaxing and exciting! But Ryan would probably not appreciate me fixing a new recipe every night of the week, so I try to limit myself to one or two new recipes each week. This gives him the familiarity and comfort he enjoys and also allows me to get creative!

Here is our plan for this week:

Breakfasts: yogurt parfaits, Lazy Granola w/ milk, peanut butter toast + yogurt

Lunches: leftover bean bowls, turkey sandwiches (Ry), tuna sandwiches (Em)

Dinners:

Mexican-Style Salmon Cakes w/ Garlic-Herb Sour Cream + veggie + smoothies (carryover from last week)

Tacos + salad + smoothies

Italian Sausages + veggie + oven fries

Brown Rice Spaghetti w/ Meat Sauce + salad + corn

Zuppa Tuscana Soup  + salad + coconut flour mini muffins

Head over to Organizing Junkie to see hundreds of other menu plans for this week!