Snow, Death and Christmas Presents

The past week has included all of the above. We were kind of snowed in for about two weeks. I didn't drive anywhere for 16 days. Lawrence went on small errands for me and also took me downtown on Christmas Eve to finish up some last minute gift and grocery shopping. Walking there wasn't even really an option, because the snow on the sidewalks was knee-deep and many were forced to walk in the street. I believe we ended up getting over 18". That's an unusual amount for our area. I think it's the most we've gotten in 40 years. We had a white Christmas and I did enjoy the snow. It was beautiful and peaceful. It quieted and slowed everything down. We are also lucky enough to be self-employed and able to dictate our own schedule most of the time so driving wasn't much of an issue because Lawrence didn't go to our shop much during that time. He did work a lot this weekend to try and get caught up, however. I did have worries about the snow load on the back part of our roof, which were allayed when Lawrence climbed up to clear off our satellite and scraped all the snow off the roof, and falling limbs and/or trees; we did lose two limbs, but they weren't large enough to do damage.

That garden gate and fence are about 36" tall.

Killer icicles hanging from our eaves (Lawrence kept telling me they couldn't do serious damage)

We also made an ice cream type of thing from snow, milk, cream, maple syrup and vanilla. It was delicious. Lawrence was concerned about fumes having settled in the snow since it wasn't really fresh the second day we wanted to make it, so we only made it once, much to the girls' disappointment.

Sadly on the night of Dec. 22, Maddy's guinea pig, Elvira, got very ill and she died in the middle of the night. She was much beloved and there was a lot of grieving. Now Cookie is by herself, which isn't good for guinea pigs because they are social. I tried desperately to find a female guinea pig for Christmas for Maddy, but still haven't had any luck. Females are very hard to find! I'm still looking.


I got the girls' Christmas gifts done in the nick of time. I was furiously finishing them on Christmas Eve evening so they could open them that night before bed, since they were stockings. Tonia posted a link to a tutorial using wool sweaters, but I looked at Goodwill and had a heck of a time finding 100% wool sweaters and they were priced quite expensively there, in my opinion. Teri emailed me a link to a stocking pattern using wool felt and I ended up going with that because it was relatively easy and I could count on finding wool felt at our local quilting shop.



Our Christmas day was lovely, spent with friends, drinks, a pot of chili and other tasty items. Adults talked and children played for the most part. It was really nice. Gifts leaned to the more practical this year and no toys, but I did order a game that didn't arrive (and still hasn't) due to weather conditions here and at the store I ordered from, handmade pj's from Nana didn't arrive until Saturday for the same reason. However, I heard it said more than once by the some of the girls that this was one of the best Christmases ever.

I hope you all had a great time as well and were safe in the weather.

Merry Christmas!

We've been snowed in here lately and I've been kind of stir crazy, worrying about trees and limbs and collapsing roofs, so not much has been getting done (of interest anyway). More interesting posts will come after the holidays, I promise.

Meanwhile I wish you and yours a Merry Christmas and a belated happy solstice. I hope that all of you spend your holidays with friends and/or loved ones, plenty of delicious food and beverages, and have a wonderful and peaceful day.

A Winter Wonderland

The Pacific Northwest is a fairly temperate place. Sure, we get a lot of rain in the fall, winter and spring, but we don't get freezing temperatures everyday and we sure don't get snow very often. This week we've been in the throes of several winter storms. Sunday night saw us getting about 3" of snow and below freezing temperatures which have dipped into the teens at night and haven't gotten up to freezing since. We are getting more snow and possibly ice in the mix today and tomorrow, possibly totaling 6". This has been thrilling in a way, because we haven't seen weather like this since we moved here more than ten years ago. It is awfully inconvenient. Driving is difficult, if not impossible for people like me. One good thing is that we live nine blocks away from our regular grocery store, so walking isn't too bad, though slick and somewhat slow going.

For now, we are staying close to home (except Lawrence who had to venture to the shop for the first time in three days) and keeping warm and making occasional ventures out to play in the snow.

This was the scene Sunday morning as it first started to snow.

And then it started to accumulate!

So I made homemade macaroni and cheese for dinner on Sunday.

Monday was bright and sunny, but very cold.

The girls played outside in it, of course. Juliana got to make snow angels for the very first time!

The sidewalks were icy as we headed downtown yesterday.

Juliana's face was freezing after Lawrence pulled the girls around on an inner tube!*

Grey and snowy today. It's still coming down, though it doesn't really look it in this picture. The flakes are coming down fast right now!


*Juliana has heard of the much loved inner tube for the past few days, so when Lawrence pulled it out yesterday she exclaimed, "Is that the wintertube?"

Mocha or Chocolate Crinkles

See those cookies behind that delicious looking coconut Mayan hot chocolate? Those are chocolate crinkles (or you can make them mocha crinkles with the addition of a couple teaspoons of instant espresso granules). I made them for a real life cookie exchange at Angela's.

• 2 2/3 cups of packed brown sugar (or if you run out like I did this time, you could use 1 2/3 cup of packed brown sugar and 1 cup of sucanat and about 2 tablespoons of molasses)
• 1 cup of melted coconut oil
• 1/2 cup of sour cream
• 2 eggs
  
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 3 1/2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 cups cocoa powder
  
• 4 teaspoons instant espresso granules (if you want them mochafied)
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• a cup or more of powdered sugar

Beat brown sugar and oil in the bowl of your mixer until blended. Add sour cream, eggs and vanilla and blend.

While these are mixing, mix flour, espresso granules, baking soda, salt, and pepper in a separate bowl. Then add to the wet mixture and start the mixer up slowly to avoid the dry ingredients flying out. Mix until well blended.

If possible, chill dough for a couple of hours, but if you are in a pinch for time like I normally am, spread mixture into a shallow dish and freeze it for about ten minutes.

Preheat oven to 350F and dump about a cup of powdered sugar into a pie tin or the like.

When dough is firm, shape dough into 1" ball and roll balls in powdered sugar, then place on cookie sheet a couple inches apart. Bake for 10 - 12 minutes, until the top is firm to the touch. Don't over bake because burnt chocolate is really not good and these will also get rock hard if you do over bake them.

Coconut Lentil Curry

This is a dish I prepare fairly frequently, which in our house means once per month or every several weeks. When Angeleen came over to learn soap making, I had a bowl of this in the fridge and we had some for lunch. She requested the recipe.

This is a dish that easily lends itself to change. If you don't have regular brown lentils on hand, use green or red; if you want to make it vegan, use water or vegetable stock; toss some vegetables in towards the end of the cooking time, I've done sliced zucchini and also squash with good results and will try dried zucchini soon. The girls and I like to eat it with rice and Lawrence likes it without. It would be good served with a side salad or roasted winter squash or curried cauliflower on the side.

• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 tablespoons coconut oil
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped, peeled fresh ginger
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• 2 teaspoons sea salt
• 1 jalapeno, finely chopped
• 4 - 5 cups of chicken stock
• 1 1/2 cups of lentils
• 1 14-oz can of unsweetened coconut milk

Heat oil in heavy pot over medium-high heat; add onion and cook until it starts to brown, about 5 or 6 minutes. Add ginger and garlic and cook for about a minute. Add cumin through jalapeno and cook, while stirring, for about a minute.

Add chicken stock, lentils, and coconut milk. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for about 20 or 25 minutes until tender. Serve with chopped cilantro if you are a cilantro enjoying type of person.

INFP or The Healer

Yesterday I was reading Melinda's post about personality types and getting to know yourself. I've taken Myers-Briggs personality tests before and gave the results a cursory read before moving onto something else. I didn't have very many new blog posts to read and I really respect Melinda's opinion, so I decided to give it a more in-depth look.

I took a test again and the results were INFP. That's Introverted, iNtuition, Feeling, Perceiving. Apparently 4.3% of the US population is INFP like me. Introverted was the strongest preference, intuition was slightly expressed, feeling moderately expressed and perceiving slightly expressed. I've taken other tests in the past and get INFP or alternately INFJ, the J being Judging. Judging is always slightly expressed, which may account for the swing between INFP and INFJ.

David Keirsey created the Keirsey Temperament Sorter and linked it to the Myers-Briggs groupings though they aren't strictly associated. Keirsey identifies four different temperaments: idealist, rational, guardian, and artisan. Each of the eight temperaments have two roles divisions: directive and informative. This results in sixteen role variants which ties in nicely with the sixteen possible personality types in the Myers-Briggs system. An INFP correlates with The Healer while an INFJ correlates with The Counselor, both idealists. After reading the description of The Healer, I had an "aha!" moment.

The Healer role variant description is actually quite accurate. Using the term healer, made so much sense. It said much about where I am in my life, desires that excite me and drive my quest for knowledge, and my future aspirations. I'm a full time mother and care-giver and gardener; I take the most active roles in our health care through nourishing my family and also learning as much about natural medicine as I can. I'd love to become an herbalist if only for our own use. I'm idealistic and emotional, though in a quiet way (a quiet spazz as I've been lovingly called).

Here's the some of the Wikipedia entry for The Healer:

"Healers are introspective, cooperative, informative, and attentive. They are highly compassionate and empathetic to the needs of others. Healers care deeply about a few favorite individuals or causes and they desire to bring about peace and integrity to their companions and to the society at large. They want to heal the problems that trouble individuals and correct the conflicts that divide groups in order to bring health to themselves, their companions and to the society.

Healers tend to be private individuals who have a strong sense of right and wrong and an idealistic worldview. They are deeply committed to things that are positive or good and may be inspired to make extraordinary sacrifices in attempts to achieve their ideals. They are prone to errors of fact as they follow their feelings more than they follow logical analysis. However, following their feelings also means that Healers seldom make errors of feeling.

Healers are often misunderstood as children. In practical minded families, their devotion to idealism may be frowned upon and may even be punished. Most other role variants can shrug off the parental expectations that don’t fit them, but healers are greatly affected by it. They want to please their parents and their siblings and, in attempt to do this, they may mask or hide their differences. This can create inner turmoil within the Healer. Healers are often better at detecting this inner turmoil than other role variants. Healers seek unity of mind, body and spirit, perhaps because of the inner turmoil caused during their upbringing.

Healers are adaptable, patient with complicated situations, and welcoming of new ideas and information. They are impatient with routine details. As they are aware of people’s feelings, Healers relate well with others. They are also comfortable working alone given their private nature. Healers have an interest in scholarly activities and often have exceptional language skills."

The Counselor was pretty accurate in its own way but The Healer seemed more me than The Counselor did.

Try it for yourself. Maybe you won't learn anything new about yourself or view yourself from a different light, but maybe you will and gain a new perspective about your personality. Perhaps you will be inspired by yourself!



*These are all pictures of medicinal herbs from my garden.

A Christmas Challenge

Not surprisingly, I was late in recognizing and then posting about Buy Nothing Day, which was on November 28. I inadvertently participated in it. I don't go to malls unless I absolutely have to, in the instance of, perhaps, buying a pair of good quality shoes for one of the girls since our local shoe store doesn't carry a variety of children's shoes. I actually haven't been to a mall for years and that is just fine with me. I can't imagine going to Walmart or Target before dawn on Black Friday and braving the mad (as in crazy) crowds. Crowds that are frenzied with the potential of acquiring ever more stuff and save a few bucks at the same time. Crowds that have the potential to kill.

In fact, we will be simplifying this year for Christmas. If you scroll to the bottom of this page, you will find a Christmas Challenge. I intend to follow the spirit rather than the letter of the challenge.

I love Christmas. I love the festive spirit, the music, the food, and time to celebrate the birth of my savior, though I know He wasn't really born at the end of December. I love the decorations and traditions we have built as a family. I even love the gifting aspect. I have grown to dread the accumulation of un-needed items, no matter the kind intentions behind it.

With the difficulties that are plaguing our planet right now, including dwindling resources and economic turmoil, this is probably the year that we will be able to control ourselves and take the steps in simplifying more seriously than we have in the past.

So, we will give far fewer gifts than we ever have before. They will have more of a focus on items that we need and are practical, though they won't be boring. They will also be handmade if possible and if it's not possible to buy handmade, we will buy locally. There is one gift that isn't handmade and not available locally that I will likely purchase because it is in line with our values and will enrich our play time. I will make a gift for the girls like I normally do and I know that someone else is making gifts for them as well.

We will have a very enjoyable holiday season, because we will be together and we will also be sharing bountiful food and friendship with those close to us. And that's the real spirit of the holiday season.

Another Assault on Consumer Food Choices

The most recent one I'm talking about is an incident in La Grange, Ohio that was carried out on December 1. A SWAT team, along with the Ohio Department of Agriculture raided the home of the Stowers family, who have run the Manna Storehouse for years. The Manna Storehouse is a well-known food co-operative in the Cleveland area. The Stowers family--adults, children and toddlers--were kept in the living room, guarded with guns for approximately 9 hours while their computer, cell phones, customer records and about $10,000 of food was confiscated and the co-operative was virtually shut down.

It looks like this was started by an inquiry into non-meat industry meat that was found in a freezer at Oberlin college and was traced back to Manna Storehouse. This meat was purchased by a student group at Oberlin who had joined the co-op in order to purchase natural, organic foods in bulk. When it was traced back to Manna Storehouse, the co-op contacted the ODA to get assistance in complying with state law. Instead of a response from the ODA, it is alleged by the Stowers that a man tried to infiltrate the co-op and when he was denied he came back several times and also that this man was with the team raiding their home; that he had been an undercover ODA agent.

I have found articles/posts regarding this raid at these links and you can probably find more by Googling:

• Swat Team conducts food raid in rural Ohio
• Action Item: SWAT Raids Co-op in Rural Ohio
• ODA "swats" Manna Storehouse Co-op
• More on ODA's Manna Storehouse Raid

They haven't said that this was about raw milk, but apparently the ODA has tried to crack down on raw milk farmers by having sting operations and Manna Storehouse also provided raw milk products in addition to other natural and organic foods.

This type of abuse of power really disgusts me for many reasons. First is that we should have the freedom to buy and consume the food products that we choose. I think that it is a consumer's job to research what they are buying and consuming with honest labeling being a requirement. If, after doing research, a person decides to buy, say, raw milk or farm raised meat, why should that provider have to live in fear of having their business shut down. I know a few farming families and know that this is a legitimate fear of at least some of them.

How can it be possible to go to the grocery store and load up my cart with Doritos, Cokes and Twinkies without that grocery store or the food manufacturers fearing any repercussions and I go to my local raw milk farm, who isn't allowed by law to advertise their product, has to label that it can contain harmful organisms, the product is much more expensive because they don't receive subsidies and they also have to worry that they could be shut down?? Why doesn't the corporate food industry have to label foods with a label saying that this contains trans-fats or antibiotics and hormones or genetically modified organisms and can sicken you?

If we don't have flourishing small farms and food providers, then who is controlling our food supply? Big business and government, that's who. My local farmers see me weekly or possibly monthly and know my family and children. I believe they have higher standards because there are faces attached to those consumers and they are presenting their products directly to us and must stand behind it personally. They are business people and want to make a profit, but they are also personally involved with their customers. For big ag business and food processors, we are just another faceless consumer. If our child sickens from their food, they don't care unless we happen to file a lawsuit or convince others to stop purchasing their food. And that is the bottom line on the attacks against small farmers. More and more people are turning towards local producers and natural foods and big food business is terrified that their profits are going to continue to be affected, especially as our economy worsens and people tighten their belts.

People have power and we have the power to change things by griping and voicing our disgust and taking our dollars somewhere else. If many people complain about raids like this, then we can make a difference. Motrin took down a babywearing ad that many mother felt was offensive because of a viral internet complaint campaign. It was pulled less than two days after it first aired because of a huge number of blogging and Twittering mothers. That is just an example of something that was annoying, not something that is truly scary, but if we all raise our voices when abuse of power occurs, I believe that we can also make ourselves heard.

Meat Processing Day at the Farm

**Warning, the following post might be offensive to my vegetarian readers**

Weekly, we head out to a local farm to pick up our 1 1/2 gallons of raw cow's milk. It is a working farm, so you never know what you are going to see when you go. One day it might be a new cow tethered to the walnut tree looking at you with those beautiful big brown eyes that Jersey cows have, another day it might be goat kids jumping and running around and playing chase with the children like little puppies. It could also be helping to gather eggs and finding a chicken carcass or looking through the yard and finding a goat kid that didn't make it through the night.

This past Tuesday when we went out, I got out of the van and immediately smelled a metallic smell that reminded me of the smell of the small meat processor when I picked up our goat in the spring. I didn't really look around, though, just headed into the self-service farm store. Our friendly farmer told me that it smelled like death today because they had hired a local processor to come out and process chickens and lambs. I looked out and realized that the lumps in the bucket of the tractor were actually lambs.

Those of you who know us in real life or have been reading my blog for awhile know that it is very important to us to teach our children about our food sources. Living in the city, it isn't always easy to do this with the animal sources of our food. Since we have aspirations to move to the country eventually, Lawrence may help friends process a pig, we will help to process chickens soon and we would eventually like to raise our own meat rabbits (a very viable self-sufficient meat option for we city dwellers) this was an ideal opportunity for our kids .

We want to have respect for the animals that we eat, make sure they are humanely raised and processed and also use everything we can from the animal so as not to waste. This is somewhat limited since we don't raise our own and don't have access to the hide and such, but we do use all the bones and organs we get.

We are also very firm in the belief that if we can't stomach where our meat is coming from, that we shouldn't be eating it. That doesn't mean that we have to personally slaughter all the meat we eat, but if the opportunity arises, then we shouldn't expect somebody else to do the dirty work for us. We have told Maddy (mostly her since she's older) that she is welcome to become a vegetarian if she is opposed to the concept. We are serious; it's not a phrase that we throw out to use reverse psychology to get her to clean her plate.

Taking all this into consideration, we were presented with the opportunity to watch a lamb being field dressed. I've never seen it and the girls obviously hadn't either. I've never hunted or watched any animal being field dressed, so it was an education for me as well. I assumed that the girls would look briefly and then be ready to leave. However, they watched him do an entire lamb and even documented it with photos. They thought that it was gross when he removed the organs, but weren't overly disgusted with the whole process. I was mightily impressed with their responses. I think that the meat processing man was a little taken aback by being watched and photographed by two girls!

When we left, we talked about it and how they felt and what they thought. They told me that it wasn't as gross as they had imagined it would be. They also talked about how they were glad that they lambs were already dead because they thought the hardest part would actually be killing them and they didn't think they could have watched that.* They also thought that they man who did it would also feel sadness at killing the animal and I shared with them that I thought he probably didn't feel a whole lot about it because he had just met them and it was a job and a product for him. That, probably, farmers who kill their own animals feel much more because it is animals that they have fed and cared for. It was a very unexpected and unusual education experience and I'm glad that we are afforded these opportunities to keep our children in the loop of life and our food sources.

EDIT: Just to clarify, this wasn't something that we had prearranged to go see, it just happened to be going on when we went to pick up our milk. I realized it wasn't entirely clear on this point after talking to a friend yesterday. I don't know if it even makes any difference, but there you go. I don't actually know that I would have arranged it, thinking that the girls may not be able to watch it, but since the opportunity presented itself, I took advantage of it and they outdid my expectations.

*I agree that I don't think they would have been able to watch the actual killing. I also probably wouldn't have let them watch that part at this age.

Christmas Decorating Interrupted

Late Saturday afternoon we headed out to a local Christmas tree farm. This is our second year going to this farm. The woman who owns it is very nice, remembers a great amount of detail and still has rabbits that her grown daughters raised for 4-H projects! The price can't be beat, $8/Douglas fir, $15/grand fir and $20/noble and she always has home baked goodies and hot chocolate and coffee out. This is her fourth or fifth year in business and we are happy to support a local business that is still establishing itself.

We brought our reasonably sized (as opposed to the monstrously large that we sometimes accidentally cut; they look much smaller in the field!) tree home and realized that it was going to take some doing to get the tree in the living room. The piano we got off Freecycle earlier this year was occupying the previous Christmas tree space and we had to spend the evening rearranging, reorganizing and cleaning under furniture to get a place cleared out for the tree. Then after having dinner after all this, it was too late to decorate the tree.

With the Greek dinner last night, we still weren't able to decorate it. So, here we are two days later, with a bare tree in our living room. At least it smells nice!

Another Greek Dinner

We don't have any local Greek restaurants and even in this whole area there seems to be a dearth of them, so I like to cook up a big Greek feast every once in a while when we are having friends or family over. Yesterday my cousin and his wife were coming over for his birthday and they missed the last big Greek family meal in May (right before their wedding), so I did this one especially for him.

On the menu was :

• Greek roasted potatoes
• Tiropita (cheese pies)
• Spanakorizo (spinach and rice, but I make this quite frequently and just swap the spinach for whatever greens we got in our CSA share; this week we had collard greens)
• Dolmas
• Chicken and beef souvlaki (not skewered, I always run out of time).
• Galataboureko (basically custard sandwiched between phyllo dough with a lemon syrup poured over the whole thing [Maddy's favorite dessert ever, she even requested this for her birthday dessert this year instead of a cake]), pictured below.
  

The dinner would have been even better if Lawrence had come home on time. Instead he got stuck at a customer's (our best one actually), trying to get something done on time for them so they could resume production. It was a bummer that he missed the whole thing except for about the last twenty minutes, but despite having lots of perks, self-employment does have its drawbacks. One is that you have to keep your good, quick-paying, very close customers happy even if it means working when you hadn't planned and you rather wouldn't. He did get to eat some when he got home, we didn't eat it all before he came!

We also got to see an ultrasound picture of my cousins' baby. They are due the first part of June, and it is their first baby, so there was much excitement. Isabel thought the picture was creepy. She didn't want to look at it.