Lemon Water, First Trimester Tonic

I am very proud and excited to announce that I am a writer for the amazing new website Wholesome.


I will be doing about two posts a month about fertility and pregnancy.  


Here is my first post, about my happy experiment with Lemon Water.  It has become my go to cure all for first trimester yuckiness.  


Enjoy!



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10 Healthy Foods My Toddler Will Eat

Penelope is a mildly picky eater.  She wont eat everything that is put in front of her like she did when she was a baby (we did baby led weaning), but there are still plenty of healthy and nutritious things she will eat.  

Here are her Top 10:


1. Eggs.  Scrambled, fried, hard boiled, or raw in her smoothie.  She eats about 2 to 3 eggs a day.


2. Steak.  She is not a fan of chicken, but she will eat an entire steak for dinner.


3. Hotdogs.  I know this may be questionable, but I personally think it is fine.  I buy organic with no nitrates and I peel the skin.


4. Smoothies.  She gets a smoothie most every day.


5. Fruit.  She loves apples, bananas and all kinds of berries, frozen and fresh.

6. Almonds.  She likes almonds and pecans.  I soak them and dehydrate them to make them easier to digest and give her about a handful when she wants them.


7. Cheese.  I wish she would eat raw cheese, but I have not found a flavor that she likes. She will only eat mossarezzla string cheese.  Which has some protien and nutrients in it, but because it's processed it really lacks the vitamins and nutrients of raw cheese.  But I figure it's a better snack than chedder bunnies.


8. Raw Milk.  Once I night weaned her, she started requesting cow's milk.  I give her about 2 sippy cups full of raw milk a day. I made the mistake of letting her have some Horizon Organic vanilla flavored milk at Starbucks one day and now I have to put a bit of it in her raw milk.  So I mix about an ounce of the Horizon vanilla in with her cup of raw milk.


9. Fish Nuggets.  When she was  a baby she would eat baked salmon, but not anymore.  I found some wild caught, Alaskan fish nuggets that are Gluten Free and she LOVES them.


10. Brocolli. Sautéed in a ridiculous amount of butter.  She will eat like 2 cups worth when I fix it.  But it has to be fresh, she wont eat it heated up the next day.


She also loves to eat soup, and on occasion: bacon, sausage, butter straight with a spoon, yogurt bites with probiotics, guacamole (but not avocados) Go Raw granola bars (sprouted and soaked grains) and the random vegetable other than broccoli, asparagus and corn mostly, and the occasional organic Elmo cracker or veggie sticks chips.

What does your toddler's eating habits like?  Is there anything you wish he/she ate?  I wish Penelope still ate fried bananas!  Oh, and liver pate. She used to love her some liver pate, now she hates.  :(



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Gluten Free, Grain-Free Chicken Nuggets

As long as you are using good quality ingredients (organic grass fed butter, humanely treated chickens, etc), I think chicken nuggets are damn good and healthy meal.

You can use bread crumbs if you want, but if you are finding out that you have a hard time digesting grains, even ones that are sprouted and soaked, this modified recipe is for you!

As you know, my week of no-sugar and no gluten was a big eye opener for me. Once I introduced gluten and sugar back in, I realized how horrible they both make me feel.

Now, I am on a mission to eat gluten-free as much as I can, eventually, I would like to be grain free for at least a period of healing as well.

So here's my recipe:

2.5 pounds of chicken breast meat (I bought chicken strips to save time on cutting the meat up)
1 cup of finely grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup of almond flour
Salt, Pepper, Thyme, Basil, to taste
1/2 cup butter

Mix the dry ingredients together in one bowl.  It gets really gunked up, so I like to put half in one bowl and half in another, so the crumbs stay crumbly longer.

Then melt the butter.

Dip the raw chicken meat in the butter, then the dry mixture, and place on cookie sheet.

Then put in the oven, at 375, for at least 20 minutes. Every oven is different, so keep your eye on them. Take them out when they are golden brown.  These freeze great, so when you take them out frozen, just heat them at 375, till they are warm.

Don't pay attention to how ghetto my cookie sheets are.  New ones have been on my wish list for awhile.  I realize in hindsight, why people have big weddings!!

Also, a side note about cookie sheets and non-stick pans, they have chemicals in them that leach into your food.  I use a cast iron or stainless steel to cook with when I use pots and pans, but my sheets are crap.  You can line them with parchment paper if you don't have stainless steal sheets.  But I always forget.  Got get better about that.

Enjoy! Both Peter and Penelope devoured these!  This is what your family plates will look like if you make these nuggets! And if you have kids, you know how much they love chicken nuggets.

Now, you have a recipe that you can 100% feel great about feeding them instead!

And check out Miss P.  She is a big girl now, no more high chair.  We were given this hand me down booster seat last week.  She LOVES being able to eat off the table like us.  She will actually sit in her seat now and eat (before she would stand up and do yoga, while eating).  Amazing.

Toddler Smoothie Recipe

I started making fruit smoothies for Penelope when she was about 8 months, maybe even a little younger, I can't remember. Note to self for next baby: write shit like that down!!

My love for smoothies has just gotten deeper over time.  They are a powerhouse and workhorse in my arsenal for making sure Penelope gets all her nutritional needs met in a given day. As she gets pickier and pickier, navigating her way through toddlerhood and loving the realization that she can say NO! To EVERYTHING!  She used to eat anything I put in front of her: pickles, salmon, green peppers, whatever. Now, she still eats well, she just eats only certain foods. And it changes every day. One day she is a freak about bananas and peanut butter and the next she acts like its poison and gives me a look of how DARE I offer such a thing to her.

She gets a full mason jar of smoothie per day.   Sometimes a little more, sometimes less. I give it to her throughout the day. As a snack or apart of her meal, depending on her mood. No mater what I put in it she loves it. She has never turned her smoothie down, Thank You Jesus and Knock On Wood.

As for the recipe, it varies from week to week. I play with the combination of fruit to give her variation, or because something was on sale, but I always have a base of strawberries and blueberries, her all time favorite fruit, and then add whatever else I feel like.

I mix a full frozen bag of organic strawberries, a full bag of blueberries, then like half a bag each of two other types of fruit. Then I add a half bag of veggies, like frozen peas and usually a banana or two. One mom I know adds a bottle or two of pureed green veggie baby food. I have another friend who puts whole kale or spinach in hers and another puts spirulina in hers.  You could probably get away with putting a tablespoon or two of a powder veggies supplement.

When I blend it together, I add a tiny bit of fresh juice that I juice myself. Before I had a juicer, I bought the best organic juice I could get. I put in just enough to help with the blending and to give a little sweetness to the smoothie to make sure she eats it. One of  friends puts raw honey to add sweetness.

Then I pour the big batch of smoothie into individual jam sized mason jars. I label the top with the date and put them in the freezer.  As I go through the week I pull them out and defrost it the fridge.


Now comes the really nutritious part of the smoothie!

Once the mason jar has defrosted, I pour half of the smoothie into another clean mason jar. So I have two mason jars half full of the pure fruit smoothie.

Then I add one raw egg yolk, yes I said raw.  When she is older, I will probably start adding two egg yolks.

Then I add fresh, raw yogurt, that I make myself. When I first started making her smoothies, I added coconut milk keifer and then later I used raw cow milk kiefer. And only in the last month, I have been doing yogurt instead of keifer. I think she prefers the taste of yogurt.

Then I add more fresh juice, usually spinach-apple. This juice has very little apple, and mostly spinach.

By the time I add the egg yolk, the yogurt, and spinach juice the mason jar is filled back up again.

Adding the raw egg yolk and the yogurt add lots of protein to balance out the sugar of the fruit, so her blood sugar doesn't spike after drinking it. With the egg yolk and yogurt and spinach, you couldn't ask for a more perfect snack or accompaniment to a meal.  And by not freezing the egg yolk, yogurt and spinach, she is getting tons of raw, fresh ingredients chock full of important enzymes, good bacteria and nutrients.

Now, go make your tot a smoothie!  Oh, and I drink some too!  This is a perfect snack for any mom, especially a trying-to-conceive, pregnant, nursing mom.

Raw Egg Yolk for Babies?

So this was supposed to be a post about toddler smoothies, but as I started typing, it digressed into a post about raw eggs. So here you go: a post about why raw eggs are very important to your young child's diet.


Last night my husband and I got into an all out brawl, because he noticed me putting raw egg yolk into the blender and he was all: "um, are you putting raw egg yolk in her smoothie?" To which, I replied, "um, what does it look like?!" Imagine the sarcasm dripping from my lips, because I have been putting egg yolk in her smoothie for almost 6 months. 6 MONTHS! He has seen me make it, many a time, and he is JUST now realizing I put raw egg yolk in it?


Oh, Lord Jesus, save me now,  I just might kill him.


Anyway, so then he looses his mind and says that I should have talked him about putting raw egg in her smoothie before doing it and that he doesn't think its a good idea because she can get salmonella, blah, blah, BLAH.


So then I loose my mind, because he is essentially saying I am putting her in harms way, and here I am busting my ass to give Penelope 100% perfection, in regards to her nutrition, AND I can't freaking STAND IT, when people make fear based decisions and have not done any research whatsoever to back up their purely emotional reaction. The argument ends with me stamping me feet (seriously) and yelling, "I am RIGHT and you are WRONG!"


I know, I'm so mature, right?


Once I calmed down, I apologize and say I should have known that he would like to have a say in what goes in her smoothie (I love him, but good grief, the man has to have a say about EVERYTHING) and that he needs to do his research and back up his statements and then we can have a civilized conversation about what is best for Penelope later.


So now I have to gather my research and present my argument to Peter and all of you get to come along for the ride.


First off. Know your eggs. I would never in a million years give Penelope conventional, industrial raw eggs from the grocery store. Not even regular organic, "free range" eggs. I only give her eggs that I go and pick up myself from the farmer. In a pinch, I will buy farmer eggs from New Leaf, but that rarely happens anymore.


Here's a quote one of my favorite blogs, Nourished Kitchen:


"Raw egg yolk tends to get a bad rap – and it’s unfortunate that consumers have become so fearful of their food. While everyone recognizes potential dangers of food borne illnesses, like salmonella from raw eggs, what they don’t consider is that only about one in every thirty thousand conventional eggs is infected and the incidence is even less among pastured eggs in which hens are kept in optimally healthy conditions: on grass with free access to consume the foods most natural for them. Raw egg yolk, are a potently rich source for two nutrients critical to health: biotin and choline.  They are also rich in omega-3 fatty acids, lecithin and enzymes."


Here are a couple of links from the Weston A Price Foundation website: 


This one has some information about egg allergies (usually kids are allergic to the egg white, not the yolk) and how many eggs to give a child per day (as many as they want!).


This one talks about how egg yolk supplies cholesterol needed for mental development as well as important sulphur-containing amino acids. Egg yolks from pasture-fed hens or hens raised on flax meal, fish meal or insects are also rich in the omega-3 long-chain fatty acids These fatty acids are essential for the development of the brain. Parents who institute the practice of feeding egg yolk to baby will be rewarded with children who speak and take directions at an early age. The white, which contains difficult-to-digest proteins, should not be given before the age of one year.


This one says that eggs have been a highly valued foods since the beginning of time—eggs from chickens, ducks, geese, turtles and fish. Egg yolks are the richest source of two superstar carotenoids—lutein and zeaxanthin. Not only are bright yellow yolks loaded with these fat-soluble antioxidant nutrients, they are more bioavailable than those found in vegetables, corn and most supplements. While these nutrients have a reputation of combating macular degeneration and cataracts and supporting overall healthy vision, they have a long list of other benefits, including protecting the skin from sun damage and even reducing one’s risk of colon and breast cancer.


Another quote from of one my favorite blogs, The Healthy Home Economist, from her post about The Right Way To Feed Babies, she says:


"Children who receive sufficient omega 3 fats in their diet tend to speak clearly and understand verbal direction from the parents at a very early age.    I just went back and looked at my children’s baby books and all 3 of them (even the boys) spoke short sentences by 15-17 months of age (with first words at around 7 months).   While these sentences were very simple (“Get that”, “Don’t want that”, “More of this”) I have no doubt that getting ample omega 3′s from their diet played a big part in their ease of communicating at an early age with clear enough diction to be understood by even those outside the family."


This is a quote from a local personal trainer and nutritionist: "raw eggs are soooooooooooooooooooooooo good for you!"


I mean really, do I need to say anything more after that?


Penelope is right on par with her verbal skills, which is pretty awesome, considering almost everyone (professionals we worked with when trying to get her to nurse) told me she would have speech problems from her tongue tie and TMJ.  And she astounds me by how much she understands.  Pretty much everything I say to her she understands completely.  Her perception of what I am saying is 100% right on.  Now, I do spend a fair amount of time talking to her, reading to her, doing baby sign language and other things to build her verbal skills, but I really think the egg yolks play a huge part in how smart she is.


I feel that good nutrition is so important in general, but even more so, the first 3 years.  What she is eating now is setting her up for the rest of her life.  Maybe its a little fanatical, but I think egg yolks are going to make a major difference in her mental success later in life.  I have no doubt in my mind that Penelope will be smarter and more emotionally balanced because she got enough omega- 3's in her diet early on.


Ok, ok, but why RAW EGGS you ask?


Heating the yolks destroys some enzymes, reduces certain nutrients and destroys cysteine (amino acid) which helps make glutathione, which is the master antioxidant (and p.s. Protandim also increases glutathione). They are also just plain easier to digest raw.  Raw egg yolk is the perfect complete protein.  Notice I said PERFECT, nothing comes close.


I found this analogy on another blog and I think it explains the difference between raw egg yolk and cooked well:
 
"Imagine a delicate crystal vase. Now imagine someone smashes it with a hammer and then tries to convince you that it is the exact same vase as before they destroyed it because, hey, all the pieces are still there. Well, obviously it's not the same. It not only looks different, but it can't perform the important function of holding fluids or displaying the beauty it had prior to being smashed with the hammer.
Well, an unheated egg yolk may seem similar to a cooked egg yolk, but it is far more complex and precise. We just don't appreciate that as we can't see it at the molecular level. If we could, the picture would be just as clear as with the vase."

So, to my dear husband, while I appreciate your concern for our daughter's health, and yes I should have asked you first,  please stop acting like I was putting a rice krispy treat and some goldfish in her smoothie.  I have this area of her life under control.  Not only do I have under control, what Penelope is eating is very close to absolute perfection.    You can thank me now, or thank me later,  as in, when she has a full ride to Standford Medical school.


And Mama's, if anyone gives you shit, just print this out and stamp your feet!!


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Fermented Lemonade

After Penelope's first birthday, I had a dozen organic lemons left over, that I had used as decoration.
I planned to make regular lemonade from scratch and then happened to find this post about how to make fermented lemonade and I was so happy to give it a try!

Fermenting adds enzymes and probiotics to the lemonade that make it a healthy alternative to regular lemonade or juice, not to mention this recipe doesn't call for regular white sugar.

I followed the directions from the above post and it came out great! I only used lemons, but you can add limes to the mix if you want.  It was very tasty. Not like sugar-laded,  store-bought, pasteurized lemonade, but very tasty.

I got this juicer for Christmas, so I am excited to try more fermented juice recipes. I know I can't protect Penelope forever from store bought juice, but I hope to always make any juice I give her and keep her from being addicted to sugar, like 99% of kids in our country.

Anyway, just wanted to share that this is a good recipe and it came out tasty. This is a perfect way to start doing fermentation at home.

For more fermented beverage and food recipes, check out this cookbook.

P.S. I got those bottles at World Market, but you can also find them online or at a local brewery supply store.

Gonna Eat My Placenta

Yup. I am.

I realize this officially makes me a Radical Mama.  I am using the word radical instead of weird, because I honestly don't consider myself weird.  Different yes, but not weird.  I love me some Pottery Barn and Banana Republic, I am a conservative Catholic (except for a few things, like gay marriage, which I fully, 100% support and I think its wrong, wrong, wrong that we don't extend equal rights to everyone), I drive an SUV and live in a neighborhood that looks like it came out of the Truman Show, complete with white picket fences.  So in some areas, I am pretty traditional and American, but increasingly, in other areas, I am about as radical as it gets.

I have always been a bit different, going along my own path, but when Penelope arrived, things have gotten more radical in nature, because I care so much about her, her physical and emotional health and the condition I leave this earth in for her grand babies.

If you have been reading this blog, and have stuck around, you know that I am kind of different.
I make chicken stock from scratch, I cloth diaper and do elimination communication, I don't vaccinate Penelope at all, I will breastfeed for as long as Penelope wants, even if that means she still nursing when she is 5. Yes, 5.  I want to home-school or send Penelope to a school like Grass Roots or Montessori, I practice attachment parenting and co-sleeping, yoga is a huge part of my life and Penelope's.  I am a home birth advocate and aspiring Midwife, I like to make things myself and I am as environmentally responsible as I can be by doing things like gardening and using cloth toilet paper.  But even with all of that, I feel like I can still wear some pearls and authentically fit in with most of the women in the Junior League and in my neighborhood.

But oh, eating my placenta might change that!  I feel like eating my placenta is a huge milestone!  Yoga, eating organic and even cloth diapering are pretty socially acceptable these days...but eating your placenta!?  That's crossing the line!  I might forever be known as, the-lady-who-ate-her-placenta, but I don't give a shit. The nutritional and healing benefits far outweigh any gossip and discrimination that might come my way.

My original plan for my placenta was to bury it and plant a tree on top of it.  But we never did it, because I couldn't bear to plant it in our current backyard with a impending move to Chile (which is not happening anymore), so I kept it frozen, planning to just plant it eventually.

But then last week, I had a few minutes to myself and opened up my Google Reader to the hundreds of unread blog posts, that I never have time to read and quickly grazed the list and clicked on this post.

It was almost like a switch got flipped in my brain,after reading it and I realized, "duh!!  I should eat it!!"

And just in case, I am ostracized for eating my placenta, I convinced my two best mama-friends to eat theirs with me.  We are going to one awesome dinner party.   A PLACENTA dinner party!

Stay tuned folks, its only going to get crazier!

Penelope's Birthday Cake

It came out a little lopsided, but as Peter says "it's ok, it just looks homemade!"

And it was, well semi-homemade I guess, to be exact. I used an organic cake mix box and tweaked to make it healthier and tastier.

Again, the credit is due to my friend Tara for the recipe. Thanks Tara!

I made a cream cheese icing, from the Red Velvet cupcakes icing in the cookbook A Thyme to Celebrate.
Then I decorated it with teal blue sprinkles on top and lemon drop candies on the sides.

I made two cakes the night before her birthday, so she had one mini cake on her actual birthday on Thursday, and then she had a piece of the bigger cake at her party. On her birthday, she wasn't a big fan on the icing but really liked the cake. At her party, she wanted nothing to do with either. All her guests gobbled it up and gave me compliments, so who knows why she didn't want it.

Here are the ingredients:

Raw milk
real butter from grassfed cows
real range free eggs 3
Dr. Oetker's organic cake mix
One bag of thawed frozen organic strawberries pureed with 2 tablespoons of Rapadura

I used the recipe on the back, but substituted melted butter for vegetable oil and decreased the milk from 3/4 cup to 1/2 cup to balance out the liquid ratio because I added the strawberry puree.

Here is what the mix looks like. When it cooks the batter looks kinda of brown.
I buttered a glass pie pan and poured it in. For Penelope's personal mini cake I used a little ceramic bowl from my friend.

Don't let her face fool you, its a very moist and tasty cake!

Let me know if you try it. :)

Sausage-Sweet Potato Soup

Ok, so its not exactly the consistency of soup but its really freaking good!

 

4 to 5 sweet potatoes
1 cup of lentils ( I got the French Black Lentils from New Leaf in the bulk section)
1 pd sausage (I bought Thompson Farms Hot Sausage from New Leaf)
1 pd collard greens
1 onion
1 tablespoon garlic
2 cups chicken stock


A woman named Tara gave me the recipe for this meal. It sounded so delicious and nutritious when she told me about it, I went out to New Leaf that day to round up the ingredients. It's a great Fall recipe too, with the sweet potatoes and the warmth of the soup to warm you up on a cold day.


It made a ton of food too! I had enough for dinner plus leftovers and then two other containers made it to the freezer each holding enough for dinner and leftovers.


I served with cous-cous, but you could any kind of rice, both Penelope and Peter inhaled it.


First, I boiled the sweet potatoes and lentils. Wait, back up, first I soaked the lentils over night in water, to make them easier to digest. I just found this article that says you can ferment potatoes in keifer or yogurt to make them easier to digest, so next time I will do that.


While the potatoes where boiling I cooked the sausage. Then I added the onions and garlic and cooked them in the sausage fat drippings. Yum!


Then I added the collard greens and let them sit on top of the onions for a few minutes. When they started to get soft, I started folding them nice and easy.


Once the potatoes and lentils were soft I put them in the food processor and pureed them with the chicken stock. Peter and I both like our soups pretty thick, so mine is pretty thick. I think it would take another cup or two of chicken stock to make it more of a soup consistency. On a side note, you can not puree potatoes and lentils in a blender. Maybe if you have a nicer blender than me, I don't know. Mine's a piece of you know what. My food processor is on the top shelf that I can't reach without standing on a chair and I was trying to save 5 seconds by not getting in down,instead I wasted like 10 minutes attempting in the damn blender and then getting the food processor down and transferring it all in. Not to mention dirtied it up for no reason. Ugh, lesson learned.


Then you just mix it all up and enjoy!

 

 

 

Cranberry Pork Roast

This is a such a yummy way to do a pork roast in the slow cooker. And such an easy freezer meal.


Here is a picture of the final product all lined up, labeled and ready to go in freezer!


Here is the recipe I modified.  I went the fresh cranberries route.

This is a picture of the roast I made right away. You just dump the pork roast in the slow cooker and the cranberry sauce on top. That is it!

For the freezer bags you do the same thing, dump it all in and seal it up!


This is a really yummy meal that freezes well, the only thing I would do different next time is double the amount of cranberry relish.  

Sunday Surf 10.17.10

Homegirl at the Healthy Home Economist has blown my mind. Again.
Think raw veggies are best? Think again!

She has one little line about alfalfa sprouts that came as a big surprise to me. She said that they are mildly toxic and an immuno suppressant! Shit! I have been sprouting seeds, including alfalfa, for several months now and I thought I was being such a healthy rock star. Nope! Learn something new everyday.

Did you have a cesarean birth? Have you ever had any procedures done to your cervix before you gave birth? There very well may be a correlation! And better news, an easy way to fix it! Some women who have scar tissue on their cervix have a hard time dilating past 1 to 3 cm and end up having a cesarean for "failure to progress".  Check out this article to learn more.

I forgot to mention this new Tallahassee online resource last week, it's got something for everyone in Tallahassee.  Check it out!

This is a neat article about how cavemen (and cave women) used to parent. Just fyi, it's called Attachment Parenting nowadays!

And lastly, an amazing article about Positive Discipline. I am very new to this and am very excited to learn more.


For more Sunday Surfing, visit Gems of Delight, Enjoy Birth, Breastfeeding Moms Unite, Domesticated Women, This Adventure Life, Maman A Droit, Hobo Mama and Baby Dust Diaries.

Cornais Spinach Pie

The picture does not do this pie justice. It is SO YUMMY! Its so yummy it makes the ridiculous amount of work involved to make the pie worth it.

Part of the reason it is so time consuming is because I used fresh spinach. 5 pounds of fresh spinach. 5 pounds of washing, steaming, draining and choping takes FOREVER.

Next time, I am going to cheat and use organic frozen spinach and see how the taste compares.  I am all about making things from scratch these days, but good God this really did take forever.

Eating this pie brought back so many memories. This is Peter's mother's recipe and she made some for us while she was visiting when Penelope was just born. I ate Spinach Pie for several days after I gave birth. Actually, the first several days all I wanted was steak then after that I ate Spinach Pie.

Spinach is so good for you! Its high in Vitamin K (which is a great to eat more of in late pregnancy and brand new post partum if you are going to skip the Vitamin K baby shot like we did), Vitamin C, Iron (which helps increase your milk supply), and whole bunch of other vitamins and minerals.

This dish is so tasty, my husband, who HATES vegetables, especially green ones, will gobble this up. Penelope gobbles it up too.  It's got bacon and boiled eggs in it for added protein, so it really is a complete meal.

Ok, enough rambling. Here's the recipe.  FYI, I doubled it and made two pies. I cooked one right away and froze the other (just the pie filling in a freezer bag, and it was perfect when I cooked it later).

-5 bags of pre-washed spinach.
-3 boiled eggs.
-1 onion, chopped.
-half a package of bacon.
-2 whole eggs.

Boil the spinach for 10 to 15 minutes and place in a colander after that to cool and drain. When the spinach is cool, use your hands and press all the water out. Then chop and set aside.

In a pan, cook the bacon, when done, saute the onions in the bacon grease. When the onions are done take the pan off the stove and add the spinach, boiled eggs, add about two beaten whole large eggs (save a little bit of that for later) pepper, nutmeg and pour into a frozen pie shell (cover the bottom of the pie shell with some plain bread crumbs, to absorb excess moisture).

Take the second pie shell and cover the first pie, make some little holes with a fork, and if you want use a little bit of the egg you left aside and brush the top of the pie crust with some.

Bake for 30 minutes at 350 or until it's a nice light brown color.

Enjoy! Let me know if you have any questions.

Fried Bananas for Babies?

Yup.

Fried bananas for babies is a great snack for them! And for Mama's for that matter. Penelope used to love bananas and now she is sort of on a hiatus, although she will eat them dried with her dried strawberries that I get from our local Co-op.

First get you some good bacon fat. By good, I mean fat from organic, natural, grass fed, nitrate-free bacon.  Save your dripping in a glass jar the next time you cook bacon and just put it in the fridge. The picture above, is of bacon fat not yet coagulated. It will turn off white and hard in the fridge.

















Then put some bacon fat in the frying pan and heat it up.  Then add some banana slices.

Then flip them over once they start to brown and brown the other side. It only takes a few minutes. Then dry them out on a paper towel and serve to baby! Or eat them up yourself!

Here and here are some articles from the Weston A. Price Foundation website, about feeding babies and toddlers.

And did you know that babies first food should be egg yolk? And that cereal is about the worst possible thing you could give them as a first food? And that they really shouldn't have any grains till age 2?  Check it this blog post to learn more.

This post is in the Monday Mania Carnival at The Healthy Home Economist.  Check out the other links for some great REAL FOOD blog posts.

Cornais Family Pizza

I found this recipe in a magazine several months ago and tweaked it a bit to make it our own.   It has become a family favorite and we make it at least once a month.  And now that Penelope is trying meat, she gets to eat a little bit of everything on the pizza, except for the goats cheese.  Remember the pizza I was talking about on my first post about Once a Month Cooking? Well, this is it.

It is so yummy. And healthy. And substantial. It will fill you up and leave you feeling satisfied.  And it is EASY to make!

This is a picture of all the ingredients:
-pizza dough (I buy the pre-made dough at Publix, they have a white and multi-grain and we use the multi-grain. I have also used the sprouted whole wheat pizza dough from New Leaf, but its not as good as the Publix dough),
-a pound of ground beef. I almost always use organic, grass fed beef.
-mushrooms. I started out using only one container, but they cook down so much and I like lots of veggies on my pizza, that I started using two.
- a can of chopped tomatoes, or one big tomato chopped up.
- one onion, chopped.
- a package of goat cheese. Usually I use goat cheese from Sweet Grass Dairy, but this time I just grabbed a random brand from Publix when I went to get the dough.

First you saute the onions, then add the mushrooms, till they are fully cooked and tender. Then you set the onions and mushrooms aside and brown the meat in the same pan. I flavor the meat with a meat spice mix that we bought in Miami at Norman Brothers. Once the meat is browned, you add the vegetables back in and also add the tomatoes. Mix all together. Then put on top of your pizza dough. Lastly, add the goat cheese. I just drop little spoon fulls all over the pizza. Goat cheese does not spread when cooked, so fill in all the spaces of the pizza with cheese now.  I never put enough on, so be generous!  Bake in the oven, at whatever the directions on the pizza dough say. Usually at 400 degrees for 15 minutes.

And enjoy!