36

I'm 36 years old today.  How did that happen?  

I'm closer to 40 than 30.  I thought I'd feel older when that happened.  But I don't.  I feel good...great in fact.  Sure, my knees hurt a little more than they used to (they sound pretty bad too!) and the floor grappling that we do in class makes me feel like an old lady.  Those are minor things though.

Thanks to Krav Maga and eating a GMO-free and mostly grain free diet, I'm at the lowest weight I've been in 13 years, and I'm in better shape than I've ever been in.  I am healthy.

After 14 years of marriage, my husband and I are closer than we've ever been.  Our relationship has grown into something amazing.  I thought I loved him when we got married, but that was nothing compared to how I feel about him now.  

The years and the experiences God has given me have molded me into the woman that I am and I am thankful.  I care less about what people think about me and more about what my kids and husband think about me.  I'm less concerned with what I SHOULD be doing and am focused on what I feel led to do in the moment.

I no longer feel the need to live up to others standards of how I should parent or homeschool.  I am more confident in my abilities and intuition as to how we are raising these kids.  They were given to us for a reason and I think between us and the Lord, they are turning out pretty darn good.

I feel strong and useful and filled with love.  This season of my life is very good and I'm soaking up each moment as best as I know how.   I am content, and it is wonderful.

GMO Free Grocery Shopping

Our family has committed to purchasing GMO free foods only.  As I talked about in my post Genetic Roulette, we were ALMOST there, but after I attended a March Against Monsanto meeting, the resolve was made.

There was a little bit of sticker shock to our grocery budget initially.  However, we were also really surprised at how many convenient options we had available.

While organics are a pretty safe choice since they cannot be knowingly made with any GMO ingredients, products that have the Non-GMO label are excellent since they've been verified by a third party to be GMO free.  The kids and I get really excited to see that awesome stamp on products we love.

Here in Alaska, groceries are already expensive, but the local options for veggies are improving all of the time, as is the access to a lot of quality products.

Here are some of the ways that I keep my family's food intake as GMO-free as possible...

I order through an Azure Standard drop each month for bulk groceries and lots of unique natural household items.  

We also have a new place named the Co-op Market that opened this year and they offer natural and organic items only and have tons of local produce, which is so exciting for me.  

The local Farmers Market is also an excellent choice wherever you live.

My favorite grocery store is Fred Meyer (it almost rivals Target for me, and you know how I adore Target!).  I can get nearly everything I need there, and their organic/natural section is excellently stocked.  

I did a shopping trip to Fred Meyer and then took some photos when we got back home.

Most of these products were delicious, though the cultured cottage cheese was too sour for my preference.  

To see the agonizing process that sometimes takes place when purchasing a product, check out what Kristin at LiveSimply posted about Kerrygold 

We don't always buy this many convenience products, but for the sake of this post, I wanted to see how many things I could get GMO free to replace those quick snacks and meals.

   

These are delicious replacements for Reese's Peanut Butter cups

The kids are thrilled to have an M&M replacement.  The colors are made with vegetable dyes.

 

These aren't good for teeth, but as a treat, it's nice to have an alternative to Smuckers.

This particular load of groceries cost me $303. Yikes!  In the lower 48, it would likely be around $200-$225, depending on your location.

There is no meat in there as we buy that in large quantities at Homegrown Market.  I am able to occasionally purchase a 1/2 beef, lamb or pig from local farms.

 Dave has also started fishing for salmon and trout and will hopefully bag us a Moose or Caribou this season.  

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My next goal is checking our wine, beer and spirits to make sure they're GMO free.  Also, deciding what to eat when out and about.
 

 Thanks so much for reading about my journey to get my family healthier and I hope it might inspire you to start looking for GMO free ingredients for your own family. 

Genetic Roulette

Last night I attended an educational meeting hosted by a grassroots organization here in Fairbanks called March Against Monsanto (you can check around to find an MAM group in your area).  

I have long been interested in learning more about Genetically Modified/Engineered Foods and this meeting was very helpful in putting the information together in an easy to comprehend format.

They had us watch the film "Genetic Roulette".  This is an excellent documentary that I can't recommend highly enough.  

On June 15, this film will be available to watch for free from their website.  You can also watch it from YouTube from what I understand. 

It's long and nearly painful to watch when you realize the crime that's being perpetrated on all of us...without our consent.  We are being used as test subjects...as science experiments, but yet they don't gather real data to know how what the outcomes are (sorta like with vaccines.  By the way, The FDA just approved the first GMO flu vaccine! - it contains reprogrammed insect virus.   -Awesome-).

 http://www.aperfectworld.org/10195.html

 

My family eats about 80% organic right now, but this meeting convinced me to make sure that we are almost 100% GMO free.  There are so many options out there now, it's not as hard to do as it may seem.

The Non-GMO Project website is very helpful in figuring out how to support the companies that are GMO free and how to keep my family healthy.  They even have an app for the iphone where you can verify products that are GMO free.  I have an android phone, so I'm on the hunt for an app for it now.

I'm asking all of you to (please) become informed about this issue.  It is affecting all of us already, and will continue to affect our children and grandchildren for generations to come.

Vaccines

I don't typically post about controversial things since I dislike drama, but I feel that this video lays out well how I feel about vaccines.

We do not vaccinate our children for a multitude of reasons, but this is probably the biggest one.  The children being born today are 2, even 3 generations into a vaccination schedule that has not been kind to their immune systems.

In our quest to avoid illness and viruses, we have created a scary monster that no one understands.  Parents like me aren't conspiracy theorists, we are scared of the world we're seeing around us. 

I beg you to keep an open mind as you watch this video.  I believe we need to demand the government get out of bed with the pharmaceutical industry and actually get into the business of our health...it's what we're forced to pay them for, so we might as well get something good out of it.  

The tests need to be done, and until they are, you will not see me injecting my children with toxins in order to avoid disease.      

Primal, baby!

Have you heard about eating Primal or Paleo?  

I've known about Paleo for a while, but that eating style wasn't super exciting for me because it seemed too limited, not just just on grains, but on fats.  I know that when a diet is too limited, it makes it very hard to stay on a certain eating plan, so I blew off eating Paleo.  

Then my friend Heidi started talking about eating "Primal", and how she'd lost quite a bit of weight effortlessly.  That got my attention.  Heidi's post here is a great one as to how it has changed her family and their eating habits.  She directed me to Marks Daily Apple as a great source for eating primally and this post here explains the difference between Paleo and Primal.

I started eating primally in December while Dave was deployed and really felt liberated.  No more grains and no more sugar means no more grains and no more sugar!  Simple.  

Dave was very hesitant at first, and he did have a harder time going from the SAD (Standard American Diet) to eating primal than I did.  It was simple for me (shockingly), but I think Dave was more addicted to sugar than I was.  Within a couple of days though, he started feeling better and we've continued this eating style now for nearly 4 months.  

We have allowed a couple of cheats since then (mostly ice cream and pizza), but overall have stuck to the plan.  I've lost 15lbs so far.  I'm averaging a pound a week which seems slow, but in reality, weight loss is not the overall goal.  It's a side effect of a good diet.

The result of primal eating is that we feel SO good.  Really.  The main thing we notice is that we don't get to that "chew your arm off" hunger stage.  There aren't the blood sugar dips.  Dave used to turn into a bear when he was hungry, but he doesn't anymore. This came in really handy on our trip when we often did not have a plentiful amount of food and a typical meal on the road was some jerky, nuts, dried fruit, carrots and hard boiled eggs.  Before, that would not have been okay for me, but now, it's satisfying enough.   

The other huge change for me is that I feel stable.  No more bloating, no more "fat days", no more skin breakouts.  I don't get feel nearly as lethargic.  When I have a tired day, it's sort of like a recovery day, because by the next day I'm back to feeling energetic again.

  

This style of eating is much more intuitive than other eating plans I've been on.  It's obvious what you can and can't eat.  It's a very back to the basics on fats...butter, animal fat, coconut oil and nut oils.  If you're tolerant of dairy, you can have whole milk (ideally raw, unpasteurized), cheeses, and heavy cream.  Our salad dressings are made with full fat plain greek yogurt seasoned to create a sort of ranch.  Instead of sour cream, we use greek yogurt.  My daily coffee is made with heavy cream and a tsp of pure maple syrup (that makes a pretty rad cup of coffee, let me tell ya).

This would be a typical meal for us. Some sort of meat (we're loving Rib-Eye steak right now) and a large serving of veggies or a huge salad.  Delicious!

I haven't totally switched the kids over to eating like this.  They eat more primally than they used to, but I'm taking it slow...weaving in ideal foods to replace the foods they love. They're becoming less resistant and more open to trying new things.

Unlike her older siblings, Lydia prefers primal foods.  She is 10 months old, and while she loves to nurse often, she is obsessed with eating and takes it very seriously as you can tell in these photos.

 She eats any or all of these things on a given day:

Avocados

Olives

Cheese

Teeny pieces of meat (sausage, chicken, pork etc..)

Bananas

Tomatoes
Mushrooms
Wilted Spinach

Blueberries

Raspberries

Blackberries

Bites of omelet

Diced Apples

Diced dried plums

Dried Cranberries

Freeze dried fruit

Yogurt

Cottage Cheese

 

She doesn't like strawberries or egg yolks.  She will choose a primal approved food over a grain based food every time which is really interesting and very different from how the other kids were at her age.

Mark has a 21 day challenge to weave you into the Primal Lifestyle

 I loved The Primal Blueprint as the most comprehensive in learning how to integrate the lifestyle into your day.  While I don't agree with Mark's premise on evolution, we do know there was a primal man, and this eating style just makes sense to me.  

  If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, you should try it.  I think you might just love it like we do! ♥

Viili Update

Now that I'm on my 6th batch of Viili, I thought I'd give an update.

To get the right consistency for yogurt, I don't use simple milk, but a good quality half and half

 

We use it mostly as yogurt, sweetened with pure maple syrup.  When I eat it myself, I add in some homemade applesauce for extra texture and flavor. 

Ephraim eats it nearly every day (crazy Isaac had to be in the photos)

When it's unsweetened, the flavor is a little sour cream, a little plain yogurt.  We haven't had the opportunity to use it for sour cream since I've been culturing it, but I'm looking forward to seeing how it tastes when used in that manner.

I cultured a batch with just whole milk to get the right consistency for ranch dressing, and then I stirred in an organic ranch mix I bought.  I like it a lot, though the mix has a little too much pepper for the kids tastes.

To culture a batch, I just take 2 tablespoons from the previous batch (unflavored) and mix in however much liquid I want for my next batch.  Then I leave it out on the counter covered with cheesecloth.  It takes around 8-10 hours to culture it to the right consistency.  To stop the culture process, I just put it in the fridge.

Viili has an interesting smell that my oversensitive pregnancy nose doesn't care for.  It's kind of sweet and sour at the same time.  I don't think it will bother me once the baby is born, but we'll see how it goes.

The other thing I've used it for is as an acid soak to lacto-ferment breads, oatmeal, waffles and pancakes.  I'm still working out the kinks for it though.  It's not super complicated, but it's a learning process.  I'm LOVING the cookbook/educational book Nourishing Traditions to learn how to feed my family in a healthier, more beneficial way.