Monday, May 31, 2010

Memorial Day & a Giveaway!

Here is what we ate today....

Breakfast - Oatmeal with flax, almond butter, raw almond slices and a little maple syrup




Lunch - Chipotle with the gang





Dinner - All beef, organic hot dogs and wonderful side salads.

The first was a recipe (Summer Vegetable Potato Salad) I found in the latest issue of Better Homes & Gardens. It was good, but not make-again good. The inspiration I did get was to throw in some raw corn in my next potato salad. What a wonderful crunch it added.



The next salad was something I threw together with some leftover quinoa I had. It was about 2 cups quinoa mixed with cucumber, grape tomatoes, parsley and raw sunflower seeds. The dressing was the juice of 1 lemon, a couple glugs of olive oil, salt and 1 crushed garlic clove. I liked this one, but Rhett said it was "different".



Dessert was fruit pizza. Sugar cookie crust (homemade with whole wheat flour), whipped cream and fruit. This dessert is always such a hit. I love making them, because they turn out so beautiful.




The kids got to celebrate Memorial Day with 2 brand new (to them) bikes. They were sitting in the living room waiting for them this morning. Seth wore his bike helmet alllllll day long. The only time he took it off was to go into Chipotle....and even that took a nice arm twisting.

I hope you've had a great holiday!




***Giveaway***

I am giving away a copy of the Indigo Dreams Garden of Wellness CD for children.



My kids love these CDs. They are always asking to listen to "stories". This CD is filled with child-friendly stories that help promote healthy eating, stress/anger management, and relaxation. There are also sections of positive affirmations and calming music. I can't say enough about how wonderful these stories are.

If you would like to win this CD, please leave a comment below. I will be posting the winner on Friday night. Good luck!

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Weekend Round Up

Here is what we ate on Saturday...

Breakfast - Our power went out during the night and didn't come back on until 10am. So, we ate apples and played outside. It was fantastic.




Snack - Raw nuts and kombucha juice.



Lunch - Salmon salad sandwiches and red pepper.



Blake, Rhett and I were talking over lunch about how Blake can get some guitar time in while he's here for the summer. We started joking about how he could go downtown into Old Town Alexandria and set up on the pier where there are tons of people walking by. We laughed about all of the different outfits he could wear....the naked cowboy of Alexandria, his thrift store purple jumpsuit, etc. A few minutes after lunch Blake comes up from his room in his purple jumpsuit with guitar in hand. Long (and funny) story short, he went downtown and played his guitar and harmonica, sang songs and Seth played the drums. It was such a fun afternoon.....and he made $30 to boot!






Dinner - Because of the power outage, the kids had pancake saturday several hours late. These were a combination of oat groats and buckwheat that I soaked overnight. I put that in the blender with an egg and some nutmeg.



Rhett and I got to go out to dinner for our anniversary. We were planning on eating at Mt. Vernon, but there was a wedding reception. So, we drove down the George Washington Parkway and ate at the Cedar Knoll Inn. Rhett got roasted duck, and I got chicken. The food was good, but the company was better.






Here is what we ate on Sunday....

Breakfast - Goat yogurt with agave, blueberries and raw oatmeal.




Lunch - Sunday nachos. Blue chips, refried beans, guac and raw cheese.




Dinner - Brown rice pasta with tomato sauce and spinach mixed in. Fresh herb salad.




Treat - I had some raw pecans that have been sitting for a while. So, I made some dairy free pecan sandies. Pecans, flour, brown sugar, coconut oil, and vanilla. Yum!




My brother is a guitar player and had a couple house shows while he was at school this past year. Fictionist, Libbie Linton, Drew Danburry, and Julia Mecham. Blake has been playing Fictionist while he's been here and I've completely fallen in love with them.

Enjoy!





*Links for the day*

If Life Is A Game, Here Are The Rules

Should You Use Sunscreen?

Friday, May 28, 2010

Friday Eats

We've got a graduate in the house today. Seth "graduated" from preschool. He started going to a mainstream school a couple months ago, 3 hours a day. His teachers have no idea that he use to have autism. We are so proud of our boy.







Here is what we ate today....

Breakfast - Oatmeal with bananas, flax, maple syrup and granola. Smoothies with spinach, coconut water and berries.




Lunch - After grad kiddie party




Dinner - Grass fed burgers with raw cheese on lettuce. Sweet potato fries. Veggie medley with roasted corn, zucchini, grape tomatoes, green onions, cilantro and salt/pepper all sautéed for a few minutes.




Prep for tomorrow - Soaking oat groats and buckwheat for tomorrows pancakes.




*Links for the day*

Simple Finger Foods for Toddlers

Harmful Drinks in America

Polyface Video

Ice Cream Sundae Cupcakes


Happy 6 year wedding anniversary to me and the cutie pie!!

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Wednesday Eats

Here is what we ate on Wednesday...

Breakfast - Goat yogurt with agave, granola and strawberries. Almond butter banana muffins.




Lunch - Lunch wasn't formal today. We just snacked.....blue corn chips with raw cheese, larabars, apples, etc.




Dinner - Salmon, asparagus and roasted potatoes. This is my brother, Blake's, favorite meal. It's up there in the top 5 for me also. So so good, and so so nourishing.




Kids-are-in-bed-treat - This is actually from Tuesday night, but I had already blogged for the night. Full fat greek yogurt with agave, vanilla extract and cocoa powder. This is so good, we could have eaten it by itself. But, we dipped strawberries in it instead. Oh. My. Goodness. This will be repeated a lot in our house.




*Links for the day*

Waldorf Inspired Homeschooling

My alma mater's claim to fame

Eat Mindfully, Live Vibrantly


Wednesday, May 26, 2010

2 inspiring links

I needed to read this today.

Share your passion



This is what homebirth is all about. This video is just beautiful.

Wake Up America!

Years ago the rate of autism was 1 in 10,000 children. The rate of autism skyrocketed to 1 in 150 children when Seth was diagnosed, 2 years ago. Today it is estimated to be 1 in 95 children.

The rate of autism in Amish children is 1 in 15,000

What are the Amish doing that is preventing autism? Organic natural foods, natural births, no TVs, and NO VACCINES!

The research is out there, you just have to dig for it. Thank you to a college friend who found this article for me.


No Autism in Unvaccinated Amish Community


No Autism in Unvaccinated Amish Community

The Dangers of Thimerosal

Dan Olmstead, Autism's Dick Tracy

By EVELYN PRINGLE

According to officials in the nation's regulatory agencies, the main obstacle to proving or disproving a link between the autism epidemic and the mercury-based preservative, thimerosal, that was contained in childhood vaccines until a few years ago, and is still in flu vaccines, has been the inability to find a large enough group of people who have never been vaccinated to compare with people who have.

In fact, a few months ago, CDC officials claimed that such a study would be nearly impossible. On July 19, 2005, the CDC held a Media Briefing on the topic of vaccines and child health. On the issue of government research on autism, a reporter asked CDC Director, Dr Julie Gerberding: "are you putting any money into clinical studies rather than epidemiological studies, to verify or disprove the parents' claim about a particular channel, a particular mechanism by which a minority of genetically suspectable kids are supposed damaged?"

Gerberding replied: To do the study that you're suggesting, looking for an association between thimerosal and autism in a prospective sense is just about impossible to do right now because we don't have those vaccines in use in this country so we're not in a position where we can compare the children who have received them directly to the children who don't.

Dr Duane Alexander, of the National Institute of Health, agreed and said: It's really not possible ... in this country to do a prospective study now of thimerosal and vaccines in relationship to autism. Only a retrospective study which would be very difficult to do under the circumstances could be mounted with regard to the thimerosal question.

However, Dan Olmsted, investigative reporter for United Press International, and author of the Age of Autism series of reports, appears to have solved this problem when he came up with the idea of checking out the nation's Amish population where parents do not ordinarily vaccinate children.

First he looked to the Amish community in Pennsylvania and found a family doctor in Lancaster who had treated thousands of Amish patients over a quarter-century who said he has never seen an Amish person with autism, according to Age of Autism: A glimpse of the Amish on June 2, 2005.

Olmsted also interviewed Dick Warner, who has a water purification and natural health business and has been in Amish households all over the country. "I've been working with Amish people since 1980," Warner said.

"I have never seen an autistic Amish child -- not one," he told Olmsted. "I would know it. I have a strong medical background. I know what autistic people are like. I have friends who have autistic children," he added.

Olmsted did find one Amish woman in Lancaster County with an autistic child but as it turns out, the child was adopted from China and had been vaccinated. The woman knew of two other autistic children but here again, one of those had been vaccinated.

Next Olmsted visited a medical practice in Middleburg, Indiana, the heart of the Amish community, and asked whether the clinic treated Amish people with autism.

A staff member told Olmsted that she had never thought about it before, but in the five years that she had worked at the clinic she had never seen one autistic Amish.

On June 8, 2005, Olmsted reported on the autism rate in the Amish community around Middlefield, Ohio, which was 1 in 15,000, according to Dr Heng Wang, the medical director, at the DDC Clinic for Special Needs Children.

"So far," according to Age of Autism, "there is evidence of fewer than 10 Amish with autism; there should be several hundred if the disorder occurs among them at the same 166-1 prevalence as children born in the rest of the population."

In addition to the Amish, Olmsted recently discovered another large unvaccinated group. On December 7, 2005, Age of Autism reported that thousands of children cared for by Homefirst Health Services in metropolitan Chicago have at least two things in common with Amish children, they have never been vaccinated and they don't have autism.

Homefirst has five offices in the Chicago area and a total of six doctors. "We have about 30,000 or 35,000 children that we've taken care of over the years, and I don't think we have a single case of autism in children delivered by us who never received vaccines," said Dr Mayer Eisenstein, Homefirst's medical director who founded the practice in 1973.

Olmsted reports that the autism rate in Illinois public schools is 38 per 10,000, according to state Education Department data. In treating a population of 30,000 to 35,000 children, this would logically mean that Homefirst should have seen at least 120 autistic children over the years but the clinic has seen none.

It looks like the problem is finally solved. Thanks to autism's Dick Tracy, the government now has thousands of unvaccinated people to compare to people who were vaccinated.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Tuesday Eats

Here is what we ate today....

Breakfast - Sprouted english muffins with raw butter, raw cheese, turkey and fried eggs. Apples on the side.



Lunch - Bad mom of the year award. It's ok because they are made from almond butter, right?!




Dinner - Balsamic chicken with spring vegetables. I put chicken thighs in the crockpot and covered them with salt/pepper and balsamic vinegar. Then I chopped 2 zucchini, 2 yellow squash, a red onion, a yellow pepper, a orange pepper, and 5 cloves of garlic. Covered those with salt/pepper and vinegar and threw it all in the crockpot on low for 6 hours. I put this on a bed of quinoa and millet cooked in chicken broth.





I am the proud mother of a recovered autistic child. Seth was diagnosed when he was almost 2 years old. He has now dropped his diagnosis. He is still a very special boy, with very special needs. But, he's not autistic. Everyday is a challenge, but he is a completely different child than he use to be. I do not think that vaccines are the one and only cause of his regression. I think it was a combination of my impaired body ecology (bad nutrition) while I was pregnant, drugs given during childbirth, a traumatic birth experience (for both of us), environmental toxins, formula instead of breastmilk, improper infant feeding (following doctor's orders to start rice cereal at 4 months...I shudder when I think about that now), more incomplete nutrition as a growing baby, and vaccines. His 15 month vaccines pushed him over the edge. He regressed overnight into autistic Seth. He use to laugh, play, eat food, etc. Overnight we lost him. The screaming started and it has only recently started to slow down. Recovery from this kind of autism is possible.



I am proud to say that I was at the Green Our Vaccines rally in DC with Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey.

You can watch the entire movie here (11 different videos)

Monday, May 24, 2010

Monday Eats

Here is what we ate today....

Breakfast - Smoothies. Spinach, frozen mixed berries, 2 raw egg yolks and probiotics.




Lunch - Chipotle with Uncle Blake





Snack - Synergy Kombucha. I have never tried the strawberry flavor before. Absolutely love it, so did the kids.




Dinner - Salad. Lettuce, cucumber, grape tomatoes, alfalfa sprouts, hard boiled egg, bacon. This was a perfect salad for a hot afternoon.




Family Home Evening Treat - Cookies! Gluten free, dairy free, high protein, and absolutely fantastic! These cookies are some of the very best I've ever had.

High Protein Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 jar almond butter
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup sweetener (I went nuts and used brown sugar)
1/2 cup of dark chocolate chips (I used the gluten/dairy free kind)
1 tbsp vanilla

Mix everything together. Cook for 8-10 minutes at 350 degrees. I always pull them out of the oven before they look quite done...they will keep cooking on the cookie sheet. Let them sit and cool for a few minutes, because they will crumble if you don't.







Exercise - Blake got great exercise today, running sprints with the kids. I got exercise trying to keep up with them and take pictures. All in all, this was one of the best days ever.