Friday, March 27, 2009

Fun Food


When your food choices are limited, sometimes presentation makes a heap of difference! I found these cute little pancake molds in an Avon catalog for $14.99. I think they've gone to $9.99 now. There is a butterfly, a heart, and a duck. So when the kids have their squash & nut butter pancakes, they can pick a shape. This was Paco's duck, along with his "leaked" eggs ;o)



This is one of our soups - Paco's favorite way to eat it is when he can see each vegetable and know what it is. He gets suspicious of me if things are blended or chopped too finely...




My kids think I'm weird for taking pictures of food, but I like the visual presentation. This is Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride's recipe for Tuna Salad found on page 125 of Gut and Psychology Syndrome. When I was making the salad, I wondered why I was taking pains to layer everything as opposed to just mixing it all together. Then when I was finished I knew why - it is so pretty! And it was pretty tasty, too :o)

Happy GAPS cooking!

Thursday, March 26, 2009

"La Sopa Smith" Takes on New Meaning!

Little did I know when I started "La Sopa Smith" that our soup habits were going to take on such major changes, nor that our title would take on a whole new meaning!

When I started this blog, it was really more to keep in touch w/my homeschooling friends; to share what we're up to, what we're learning, etc. It was also to have a way to share our journey and the kids' school happenings with grandparents & other friends & family. Just the things that we want to share publicly, really. The struggle of what to write or not, what to share or not, and whether to just take my tag off my email signature since I'm updating so infrequently, etc., sometimes made it easier for me just to pretend I never started a blog in the first place - hah! And I don't really have just *one* focus like some blogs do. A cooking blog, a homeschool blog, a faith journey blog, a financial blog, an organization blog, etc. This is just our life, so I guess just skip what doesn't interest you?

Here is yet another attempt for me to get motivated to start writing again! We are making a lot of soup, and I mean a LOT of soup! Broth, to be exact :o)

Paco's doctor has him on a diet called the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. I then found another diet, the GAPS Diet (Gut and Psychology Syndrome), which was developed by a doctor who had tweeked the SCD to make it more healing. The companion book, written by a mom in Canada, is called Gaps Guide. So the first book is all the medical background, and the second puts it all in practical step-by-step terms. We are in our fourth week on this diet, and I am amazed at the changes in Paco! So I just had to share. I may continue to share :o) It's a difficult road, as those of you who know us personally have witnessed. And for those I'm just getting to know, I hope that as we share you will be encouraged along your way as well. I truly am amazed that we already have this sense of healing less than a month into it, but we do.

If you or someone you love has digestion problems, any kind of what our society calls "mental" or "emotional" problems, has ADD/ADHD, or is on the Autism/Apserger spectrum, or even has eczema, please take a look at those two websites. Between the diet, some supplements, and detoxification, you can find healing! I always knew that somehow Paco's diet played a part in his issues, but I never understood that therein lay not only the cause, but the cure! I won't go into all the details, as that is done very well between the links above. But I do want to spread the word to anyone who, like us, has been searching for an answer for so long.

I have not turned away from raw food preparation completely, as ultimately I expect to get back there. However, where we once swore off meat completely, now I think we will always include meats and animal fats. Right now I have bone broth cooking on the stove almost 24/7, chicken or beef (you can also do fish, but Batman has a severe fish allergy). And to that we add a variety of meats and veggies. We've been going through the progressive additions, and now have added ghee, eggs, nut butters, avocados, olive oil, and roasted meats. Yesterday I made carrot juice that the kids drank down to the last drop! In the next few days I will make some grain-free bread (made with nut flour) and prepare a few raw veggies.

What I still need to do is learn how to ferment vegetables... for now, probiotic supplements are our only source of probiotics. But we'll get there! Next time I post, I'll include some pictures.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Charlotte Mason Words I'm Pondering

The wonder that Almighty God can
endure so far to leave the very making
of an immortal being in the hands of
human parents is only matched by the wonder
that human parents can accept this divine trust
with hardly a thought of its significance (Vol. 1, p. 333).

It is as the mother gets wisdom liberally from
above, that she will be enabled for this divine
task (Vol. 1, p. 348).

Mothers and fathers do not well to forget that
their children are, by the very order of Nature,
their disciples (Vol. 2, pp. 66, 67).

Friday, December 26, 2008

God Rest Ye Merry

Beautiful post that our family needed today... Thanks, Sheila. God Rest Ye Merry.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Another Bittersweet Christmas

Honestly, I'd rather be writing about whether we should or should not do Santa. This morning (okay, I admit... it was really this afternoon) when I woke up, I had a lot in my head, and thought it might be a good time to blog. But a lot of what is there is not stuff I want to write about, because giving voice to something makes it more real than I want it to be. Like if I don't say it, it isn't happening (although I know that isn't true, it's happening). I had the same feeling this time last year, when we lost our dear Great Aunt, Pig. I wasn't able to write about it until January. That post is here: The Last Bath

And now we're back to a similar place, but this time with my Pap-Paw, one of my life-long best friends. He had a terrible fall on Friday night, and when I arrived to see him in the ER my first thought was what fragile packaging we are wrapped in. I thought of a car in a horrible accident that is so badly damaged that we don't fix it, we trade it in for a car in better condition that can take us another 100,000 miles. And I wanted to tell God that this body He gave Pap-Paw is all worn out and very banged up now, so we'd like to just order a new one, please. And thank you. But before I could get that silliness into a prayer, I knew we can't trade our bodies in for new ones. Well, we can. And Pap-Paw will. And I'm afraid it will be sooner than I'll ever be ready for.

The body repair guy, well, the surgeon, did the best he could. And today Pap-Paw is recovering, whatever that means when you're 98. Yesterday when he began reaching out into the air, my heart sank. I've seen that before, and it was in Mam-Maw's final days and again in Pig's final days... I've asked each of them what they are seeing, but they can't say. I guess I'll have to wait and find out for myself.

I know he won't read this. But I have to say it while I can. I love you, Pap-Paw.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Offerings at Christmas

This is a very quick post, and I apologize to all my readers (all 3 of you?) that I haven't written in so long. We just kinda go through busy spells where I can live or I can write, but I can't do both - do you? And I can't bring myself to post just for the sake of posting - I feel like I have to have something to say, something to offer...

Here are my offerings for Christmas - if you live in my area (you know who you are) and would like to be involved in a ministry to assist families in need on a personal level, please please let me know. Check out Scotty's Gifts and get in touch with me via email or leave a comment here & let me know how to contact you.

My other offering is a short post by my friend Laura at The World is Our Classroom. You'll never look at the Red Kettles the same way again...

Merry Christmas.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Old Things New


A few years ago, we had one of Sr. Smith's (aka Batman's) co-workers & his family over for dinner. Pablo (the friend) gave me a compliment that I just loved the wording of, "You have lots of cool old stuff in your house!" And I appreciated it because I do truly love old stuff - especially if it once belonged to someone I love, or if it connects us to a family member that we never knew but know we would have loved had we had the chance. Like my engagement ring, for instance. It belonged to Sr. Smith's maternal grandmother. I never knew her, but wearing her ring makes me feel like I belong in her family. And this wash stand in the picture above was Pig's. She gave it to me in high school, and it was painted green then. Sr. Smith refinished it for me during our engagement (it gave him something to do - haha!), and now it is in the entry of our home topped with a doilie passed down from my great aunt Nora, an assortment of nature items, a couple of vases, and a new guest book that we recently started keeping (thanks for that idea, Javamom!). But old things also remind me not to be too connected to my "stuff". They remind me how quickly life on earth passes, and how this world will eventually pass away...

Now on to some of my old things...

I have to comment on these nature items... the pressed flowers sitting on this plate are 14 years old. Last week I dug out my old leaf/flower press that I made in graduate school the summer I got married. I was taking a Science in the Elementary School class, and our class made presses & then went out on a nature walk to collect items to press. Jirafa is taking Botany this year, so I pulled out the press for him. When we opened it, I couldn't believe my eyes - it was full of flowers! I picked a few for our nature display, and let him have the rest for his Botany book cover. Very cool.



The final picture here is a little basket of wildlife nests we've found along the way. A wasp nest from Brambleside last summer, a dirt dobber nest from our neighbor, and the last 2 sparrow nests from my hanging plants on the back porch. The other day Paco & I did our outdoor "Autumn cleaning" which included retrieving the last nest. The birds had found some great soft lining this year! I carefully removed it from the plant, and Paco (ever the observant) said, "Look! There's something down there" pointing down in the leaves. Well, sure enough, 3 little eggs had been kicked out of the nest and were sitting whole down below where the nest had been. So we have included them in our display as well.



"You turn winter into spring

You take every living thing

And You breathe Your breath of life into it over and over again

You made the sunrise, day after day after day

But there's a morning coming, when old things will all pass away

And everyone will see You make all things new"

- from "All Things New" by Stephen Curtis Chapman

Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come. 2 Corinthians 5:17