Searching for Answers

I know they are out there--all the answers.  I keep searching and searching  but I am constantly amazed at how much I don't know.  Then one day I read The Walk by Richard Paul Evans.  It didn't have all the answers, but it had the answer.

A homeless man inquires:  In school, the teacher had the teacher book--the one that all the answers in it.  Why don't they just give the teacher book to the students?  Then they'd have all the answers.  Isn't that why they go to school?

The traveler responds:

You know, everywhere I go, I...keep looking for the teacher book.  I found it once you know.  I found it and started to read it, then I passed out before I could get all the answers.  I was on the ground, unconscious.  It was too much to know. 

Sigh....

Happy Father's Day...

 

TRADITION!

 

 



Just as our society seems to be teetering on the edge of disaster, I can't help but call to mind the words of Tevye in the movie Fiddler on the Roof:
 

  How do we keep our balance?  Tradition!

Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as a fiddler on the roof!

 

These authors would agree: 

 

Humankind has ridden a long way on the traditional family, with fathers providing the added resources that lifted mothers, families, and whole societies from meager subsistence toward innovation and abundance. Fatherhood has been the goose that laid the golden eggs, contributing the essential surplus that permitted one innovation after another.

By now, perhaps, we may have enough golden eggs stored up in our silos somewhere to sustain us for another decade or so. But do we really want to chance it? Do we really want to allow our culture to butcher the goose that laid all those golden eggs, and see if we might squeeze a few more individual rights and privileges out of the stupid goose? Are we willing to abandon our fundamentals while other nations catch up to us and sail on past?

The term "head of the family" is an honorary title and does not mean "omniscient sage" or "commander-in-chief."  Men are the providers and protectors.  Traditionally, the man was expected to commit himself to the support of his wife and children.  In return, so far as he upheld his responsibilities, he was honored as the head of the family.  See the trade-off?  In exchange for supporting his wife, doing what she and the children require of him, deferring to her when she is upset with him, and losing when he tries to argue against her, he was honored as the head of the family.
 

So long as we fail to recruit men into families, we face a lower quality of life for ourselves and we bequeath the same to our posterity. Would it be too presumptuous of us to suggest that we acknowledge the folly of our relationship revolution, reverse the tilt against men, support equal participation, and uphold our traditional families as a cherished heritage?
                                                                                           

                                                                                                       Opposites as Equals (2009)
                                                                                                               by Richard Driscoll, PhD
                                                                                                               and Nancy Ann Davis, PhD

To good fathers everywhere: A blessing on your heads!  Mazel tov! 

 

 



Candida Warrior Recipe.... 





For those of you who are scrambling to find a seasonal food for a healthy diet, this is it!  Breakfast, lunch or dinner, it's a meal in itself.  Yeah, I know rhubarb and strawberry combinations have been around for a long time, but it's the no-wheat, no-sugar, no-milk super-power crunch that makes the difference here.

The original came from one of my favorite web sites below:  Radiant Life 
As usual, I have tweaked it to my own liking:
 
STRAWBERRY RHUBARB CRUNCH
 
Chop up four stalks of rhubarb (about 2 cups) and 2 cups of strawberries.
Add zest of 1 lemon and juice of 1/2 lemon.  (Stir in 6 tablespoons xylitol or sprinkle powdered stevia extract to taste if you want it sweeter.) 
Mix and place into a 9x9 baking dish.

Place in a blender:
1 cup of sprouted nuts.  (Here's where I had fun.  I used a mixture of almonds, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds.  Then I threw in 2 scoops of Garden of Life Super Seed which includes: flax seed meal, whole chia seed, cinnamon and sprouts of amaranth, quinoa, millet, buckwheat, garbanzo bean, kidney bean, lentil, adzuki, flax, sunflower, pumpkin, chia, sesame.)

Add 1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut to the nuts and chop briefly in your blender.

Mix together:
3 tablespoons coconut oil, melted
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
a sprinkle of stevia, opt.

Stir nuts, coconut, coconut oil, cinnamon and ginger together and spread over fruit mixture in pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.
Serve warm or cold.
Top with coconut milk, opt.

 The Lord of the Manor and our favorite son named Matthew liked it.  (We have three favorite sons.)

I hope you like it too!


http://blog.radiantlifecatalog.com/bid/64759/Grain-Free-Strawberry-Rhubarb-Crumble-with-organic-coconut?utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=8608203&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9QALMkLHV8HdvTl0m9KHK5bLOTSVsvm1j9LXJp9Es9tXbxgCgnVds7m-W6Oln3dIK_sRIi32wV9CqXeNYl9LZwONlr7A&_hsmi=8608203

A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary. 

                                                               ~Dorothy Canfield

 

Moms Make a Difference....Eventually

 

Men often recognize the special gifts of women: 

 

I would my horse had the speed of your tongue.
(Bendick to Beatrice, Much Ado About Nothing)

Women sometimes recognize their own special gifts: 

 

Do you not know that I am a woman? When I think, I must speak.
(Rosalind, As You Like It)  

 

But more often than not, women rail against their own seeming inadequacies. In a recent television program one of the female characters, disappointed that she wasn't more effective in righting the criminal wrongs of the story, cried in desperation:  I'm just not enough!  And if I'm not enough then why should I keep trying?  Indeed, this is a sentiment that strikes home for most of us at one time or another.

Why keep trying?  Because we have to hope that sometime, somewhere we will make a difference...it just may not be readily obvious.  In fact, we may be dead before we know what that difference is, but does that really matter? 

My youthful selfish self says:  I want to know that I am enough right now!  But my seasoned grandmotherly self knows that even though my influence is not always immediately apparent--actually, mostly ignored--I shouldn't give up. 

One study shows that grandmothers can have a significant influence in families and may even help their families live longer.  Well, that's encouraging.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865565313/The-grandmother-hypothesis-Grandma-may-help-you-live-longer.html?pg=all

In another study, Dr. Daniel Amen, M.D. said:  Of 15,000 people signed up for my health project, 85% were women. When the women got better, their families got better.   It is women who will change the world.

I will have to take his word for it.  Would that my influence had the speed of my tongue!

Candida Warrior Recipe....

WATERMELON FRUIT CAKE

I have long been troubled about birthday cakes.  They seem to be one of the first comestibles that set children on the road to obesity and other ailments.  Not because of one cake, mind you, but because of the numerous sugar-laden cakes, cupcakes, brownies, cookies, doughnuts and candies that tempt us at every corner, nearly every day of our lives!  To quote a well-known phrase:  

Bet You Can't Eat One!

 

My daughter, Julie, found a perfect substitute and was kind enough to let me share her creation with you...

                                          

 

...and it received raving reviews from her kids! 

Source of inspiration:

http://www.thegfcflady.com/2010/06/05/better-than-birthday-cake/

Want some more clever ideas?  Take a look:

http://lesliekeegan.com/blog/2013/04/make-watermelon-cakes

http://www.simplifylivelove.com/2012/06/happy-birthday-fruit-cake-a-tutorial.html

In the news....


Magic Valley's Dubious Honor


I live in the banana belt of Idaho, Twin Falls and the surrounding farm communities known as the Magic Valley.  Our quiet, inauspicious environs have been noticed and mentioned in the New York Times Bestselling book, The Omnivore's Dilemma (Young Readers Edition, 2009) by award-winning journalist and food activist, Michael Pollan.

     Before I began working on this book, I never gave much thought to where my food came from....I didn't spend much time worrying about what I should and shouldn't eat.  Food came from the supermarket and as long as it tasted good, I ate it.

     Until, that is, I had the chance to peer behind the curtain of the modern American food chain.  This came in 1998....My reporting took me to the Magic Valley in Idaho, where most of the french fries you've ever eaten begin their life as Russet Burbank potatoes.  There I visited a farm like no farm I'd ever seen or imagined.

It was fifteen thousand acres, divided into 135-acre crop circles.  Each circle resembled the green face of a tremendous clock with a slowly rotating second hand.  That sweeping second hand was the irrigation machine, a pipe more than a thousand feet long that delivered a steady rain of water, fertilizer, and pesticide to the potato plants.  The whole farm was managed from a bank of computer monitors in a control room.  Sitting in that room, the farmer could, at the flick of a switch, douse his crops with water or whatever chemical he thought they needed.

One of these chemicals was a pesticide called Monitor, used to control bugs.  The chemical is so toxic to the nervous system that no one is allowed in the field for five days after it is sprayed.  Even if the irrigation machine breaks during that time, farmers won't send a worker out to fix it because the chemical is so dangerous.  They'd rather let that whole 135-acres crop of potatoes dry up and die.

That wasn't all.  During the growing season, some pesticides get inside the potato plant so that they will kill any bug that takes a bite.  But these pesticides mean people can't eat the potatoes while they're growing, either.  After the harvest, the potatoes are stored for six months in a gigantic shed.  Here the chemicals gradually fade until the potatoes are safe to eat.  Only then can they be turned into french fries.

That's how we grow potatoes?

I had no idea.

     
They say there's no such thing as bad publicity....hmm.... 

Welcome to Idaho.

Candida Warrior Recipe....

Kale Chips

Wash and pull leaves from stems of about 20 fresh stalks of kale. 

(Or buy a pound of pre-packaged kale.)

Blend in a food processor:
3/4 cup pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
4 tablespoons hemp seeds
1 tsp sea salt

Place seed mixture in a bowl (or blend briefly in a food processor)
Add 3 T olive oil and 3 T lemon juice.
Pour mixture over chopped kale and knead in with hands until the leaves are coated.
Spread on dehydrator sheets and dehydrate overnight at 105 degrees.
(Or use your oven on lowest possible temperature, alternately turning it on and off for 2-3 hours.)