Category: Uncategorized

Judah Zane Culley
Born June 24th, 7:13am
9lb 15oz, 21 inches

I’ve joined Weight Watchers Online……..again.

I did this once before and lost a bunch of weight and well, things have gotten outta hand again and I gotta do something.

So, here we are starting this all once again. I wish I weren’t, but the truth is…..I am.

I’ve got to lose some weight and if I just dick around, I’ll be the same weight (or more) in 3 months or 6 months from now. And so, here it goes……..

I’ve pounded down a 2 point green smoothie that consists of 2 cups of spinach, 1/2 a cup of frozen mango, 1 pear, a cup of water and some ice.

We’ve got brunch with my family to celebrate my brother’s 30th birthday and I counted that out at between 10-12 points depending on whether I have toast or not……I have a total of 30 points per day.

I know that you all are just loving all this “points” chatter, aren’t you? Don’t worry. I promise that I’ll talk about something else beside weight loss and food and points.

I’ll take a current photo today so that I can see where I’m at and then later….where I’ve come from.

Oh, the joys….this is so much fun..NOT! But, it will be worth it! Right?

I’ve been watching the 30 Days of Nothing over at Owlhaven, and thinking of giving it a try.

So, as of tomorrow, we will be starting our own 30 days of Nothing. I’m not exactly certain how it all plays out for us…I’ll be talking to Jon tonight and then hopefully I’ll have a plan all set in place for tomorrow, but as of right now the plan is to do some form of the 30 Days of Nothing. One that works for us.

This should be interesting. I’m not a big shopper, but I do buy more than I should from time to time. So stick around and see how well, or poorly I do this month.

In other news, I slept for 11 hours last night. At 8pm,I laid down to read with Jeremy and then cuddled with him and fell asleep. Then we woke up this morning at 7:00am….Wow! Now, the baby was up at 2:30am and again at 4:30am, but still I got a 6 hour uninterrupted stretch, and I feel SO AMAZING! I’ve managed to get quite a bit done today. It’s one of those things that if I went to bed every night at that time, I’d be able to get up earlier and get things done. I think that the 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep is the trick. Even though Siah goes down around 7:30-8pm every night, if we go to bed around midnight, and then he’s up at 2or 3ish….well, that’s only 2 or 3 hours that we are getting before the first interruption….and that’s just not enough in my books. I know that I could let him cry it out, but I’m not there yet….not saying that we won’t get there, but not just yet.

Well, tomorrow is the official GRAND OPENING – I’m laughing at that because it sounds so official. – The OFFICIAL GRAND OPENING of the store.

For the first week, we will be having a buy 2 and get a 3rd of equal or less value for free.

Check it out…..there should be something that you’d like for yourself or even for a gift.

I’m not feeling so great. I have the WORST sore throat, and IT SUCKS!

It’s the start of the weekend, and I’m tired. I think that Siah’s been feelig the same as me, and he’s been up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up…..at nights. It’s been a party.

Last night, just to try to get some sleep for myself….I just kept him in bed with me, and well – if it were possible to get even less sleep…yah it happened.

If he’s feeling at all like I am – well, that’s just nasty.

Okay, enough moaning.

I gave a few samples of the deodorant to a few people, and the response that I’ve had so far has been really good.

I just need to find some good containers to put the finished product into, and I think that I’m gonna sell it. It is truly THAT GOOD!

Jon even “tested it out” with out me knowing. He went 2 days between applications, and said that even at the end of the second day that he was only starting to smell and from only one pit.

Thanks for the info, Honey! Way to test it out for me.

But, now you all know that you should be able to go for two days in between applications -good info, eh?

I’m gonna go and make a HUGE pot of tea and sip and sip and sip and sip and sip until the tylenol that I took kicks in.

I went on vacation….now I’m back…

It was AWESOME.

I have a bazilion pictures that I’m going through. trying to unpack. Take Geli to French Camp, do laundry, deal with a one year old – man are they a lot of work – buy school supplies, exercise, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I actually have something really cool that I want to share, but I gotta go to bed ’cause 5am comes around really early.

Hopefully I’ll be able to get some time tomorrow.

Talk to you soon.

While you are waiting for me….what have YOU been up to?

I have an idea.

I’m sure it’s not a new idea, but still, I’m not currently a part of anything like this, and it’s something that I hold near and dear to my heart, and something that I’m invested/ing in…and well….I just enjoy it a ton.

I am still in the planning stages, but I think that this could be something that could be a lot of fun, and could help some, and it could possible grow and become something that could be helpful to me in the future.

See, here is my idea….

I am LOVING learning about eating healthy and cooking good food and living healthy and living simply and I run into people that ask for my recipes, and well….I wondered if anyone would be interested if I started to write up a newspaper or flyer or bulletin or somthing like that. It would have tips and ideas, recipes, and things to think about…all geared towards living healthy, living simply and all of what that entails…

I’m by no means an expert but I do have a fair amount of recipes that we currently eat that are healthy and DELICIOUS. I like to try and come up with “normal” food that takes your food choices or allergies or intolerances into consideration. I like to get a hold of recipes that someone I know has actually tried, and that they taste like actual food, and not YUCKY. Now, I know that taste is relative, but I’d like to think that I make delicious food….I’d really hope that was the case…regardless, the recipes would all be ones that we currently use and eat, either regularly or for special occasions…and then there could be product reviews, and tips on how to eat healthy for as cheap as possible….’cause I’m all about saving money….all this and more….

So, What do you think? Would you be interested in recieving something like this?

It’s the kind of thing that I might start a bit smaller and then grow over time….I might start out doing these newsletters for free for the first few, and then charging a subscription or something like that…

It’s not all worked out, but I wonder how much interest there would be in something like this?

If this is something that you’d be interested in – could you comment and let me know or if you know someone who is currently trying to eat healthy or healthier or has allergies or intolerances or something like that, then could you send them this way, and if we can figure out if there is some interest in something like this, then I could get working on putting something together sooner rather than later.

This is something that I’m TOTALLY excited about, and would love to share, but I don’t want me to be the only one that I’m doing this for….so….let me know if you or anyone you know would be interested.

Well, the title is completely unimaginative…is that even a word….but I thought and thought and thought and really couldn’t come up with anything terribly witty and I gave up because it was a waste of time to stall and I have very limited time at this point….you know with the baby and kids and all…

So, I made a mistake on Monday night and read my recipe wrong…or rather I didn’t read it, and thought that I needed a TON of starter, and doubled my starter and ended up with 2 swimming pools of starter and now I either throw it out – which seems like such a waste to me – or use it. I’ve opted to use it, but again with the limited time thing…that makes things interesting.

Now, the deal with the sourdough starter…it is really simple to make, but when you don’t know what you are doing, it can be a bit stressful, and I haven’t really found any place that shows you pictures of what your starter should look like along the way or when it’s ready to use. AND….I found nothing that talked about making a sourdough starter with Kamut or Spelt flour….which is what I wanted to use because those are our grain of choice around here.

Basically you mix water and flour and let it sit around, and it collects bacteria from the air, and ferments and becomes all bubbly and then rises. You have to “feed” it every 12 hours so that it stays alive…..that can get annoying. Then you have to store it somewhere. I keep mine in the oven with the pilot light on because it likes to be a bit warm. I read somewhere that it’s a bit like having a pet because you have to take care of it, and really, it’s true. I’m a bit sick of “taking care of it”, but I like the fact that I can make stuff that’s healthy for my family and that costs us considerably less than storebought stuff.

So far, I’ve made bread, twice; Pizza Shells, 3 times, and crackers, 3 or 4 times. There is definately a learning curve, and each time I make something – it gets better and better, so we are definately on an upward trend and that’s a good thing.

The first time I made the bread – I have no pictures – I made the fast bread. It required the most amount of starter and the least amount of time to rise. It made two little loaves that tasted pretty good. They had that nice sourdough taste, but they were SOOOOO dense. Read that to say thick and heavy…like a brick. They still tasted pretty good, and we are pretty used to thick heavy bread so it was okay.

Here are some of the loaves from the second time around (This was the medium time frame bread that took 7 hours to rise as opposed to 2 hoursfor the quick bread and 12 hours for the longest rising bread)….I know that it doesn’t look like it, but I promise you that these were ginormous compared to the first loaves.

The recipe that I have says to slash the tops with a rasor blade, and I reluctantly did – I was worried about them falling, and..well…. they never did rise any more, so I might not try it the next time and I’ll just see if they rise any more than this current batch. I would like it to rise some more…..to be a little lighter and bigger.

See, here is a shot of those “slashes of death”….

So, here are the loaves, cut into slices. We cut the loaves up and then wrapped them and put them in the freezer. They have no preservatives, and so unless we plan to plow through all 6 loaves in the next few days, then I have to freeze some of them.

Of course, I had a helper in all of this, and I must throw in a gratuitous shot of my baby, right???

Look at those little lips… Isn’t he so darling? I could just eat HIM up, forget about the bread.

So, last night after all the little monsters darlings had been sent to bed, I decided that I would whip up some Pizza Shells because from start to finish it takes about 45 minutes, and I had that much time before I was headed off to bed, and for crying out loud, I gotta use up some of the “throw away” starter that I got sitting in a giant popcorn bowl in my oven.

Here is the stack of pizza shells after the first “pre-bake”.

There are only 7 in this stack although I made 8, Jon and I ate one last night, and boy was it yummy. These shells puffed up a bit bigger than the last batch I made. I rolled the last ones VERY thin, and it was more like making pizza on big round crackers.

Here you can see the size of them…they are a bit bigger than my hand, so the perfect size for a personal pizza.

And this is how thick, or thin – should I say, the suckers are.

If you are interested in making your own bread from just flour and water, I am more than happy to just give you some of my starter, but I’d suggest that you google it, and read up on the effort required and what all is involved because it’s way different than just throwin some ingredients into a bowl and making bread and then putting it all away and enjoying. It’s easy, but a lot more effort. Oh, and I have a spelt flour starter…if that works for you…at least this one is.

Also, I want to THANK YOU for your comments, although I feel absolutely terrible, because as much as I LOVE to hear from the people reading, I totally didn’t mean that you who do read are not important or that I don’t appreciate you. I was commenting to myself – in a very poor way, but I did have the luxury of knowing what I was thinking inside my head – about how brutal and sporadic my posting has been. I’m trying to have grace with myself because I know that I am in a different phase of life than I was a year ago and 6 months before that and the years before that, but I “like” to write things out, and to keep a record, and to be able to “craft” a post so that it’s funny or makes you think or something, and yet recently – it’s basically just been throwing words on paper, and not in a good way, and not very often, and that bothers me, and I know that I’ve lost some readers over the past year, and I blame that on my crappy and sporadic posting.

THANK YOU, seriously THANKS for your comments, but if I made you feel bad, then I APOLOGIZE, sincerely. I really do. Are we good? I hope so. Hugs, Kisses, loves all around.

Alright now, I’ve typed those last two paragrapghs with one hand because the baby was screaming himself silly – which for any of you who know him, that means he fussed two times – and so I nursed him to put him out of his misery and now he is almost sleeping and I gotta go and get some stuff done. Gotta make the most of my hands free time.

….I know that’s what all 4 of you were desperately hoping to hear about….was more food, right?

Well, I’m gonna share about it anyway.

I’ve been working on making a sourdough bread starter with only flour and water….the first one I made didn’t work out too well….or something, BUT….

The second one I tried is going along FABULOUSLY…if I do say so myself.

I should probably take a picture, and I will tonight…of the 6 loaves of bread that I made this afternoon from 3 ingredients. FLOUR, WATER, and a pinch of SALT.

That is it. I’m thrilled. Seeing as natural sourdough bread is about $4 per loaf from the store, I have the means now to have delicious spelt or spelt/kamut bread whenever I want for next to nothing. The mix will always be a bit of spelt because I made the starter from spelt and so that is the base of it.

I currently have a swimming pool of starter sitting on my counter because I goofed up and read the recipe wrong and thought that I’d need 8 cups of starter for this one recipe that I have, and that I’d get 4 one pound loaves from that recipe, but no….it was 1 cup of starter and 8 cups of flour for 4 one pound loaves, and I doubled it and wsa able to make 6 one and a half pound loaves, but I have a TON of starter that I’m going to make into pizza shells to freeze so that we can make pizzas whever we want.

Pizza was actually the focus of this post, can’t you tell?

I actually made some pizza shells yesterday and we had pizza for dinner last night. It was SOOOO much fun and tasted SOOOOOOO good.

The recipe for the pizza shells called for the throw away starter oil, and flour. You basically mix 1.5 cups of the starter that you are not feeding (the throw away stuff) 1 Tablespoon of Oil and 1.5 cups of flour. I increased the starter and the flour to 2 cups and use a overflowing Tbsl of Oil, and made 8 personal small pizzas. I partially baked the shells and set them aside until dinner time (but you could totally freeze them, which is what I will be doing).

We cut up and prepared all the toppings. I made some chicken pinchos morunos (a spicy tapas Moorish dish), some farmer’s sausage, and some ham. Cut up some Yellow, Orange and Green peppers. Split some Kalamata Olives, and grated some cheese. I used a small can of tomatoe paste and filled it with herbs, and then with our pizza shells we were good to go.

We painted on some Olive Oil so that the shells wouldn’t get soggy.

Next came the tomatoe sauce….mmmmmmmm it’s looking good.

Then we put the toppings on. I used the chicken with the pinchos spices and the kalamata olives, and I couldn’t wait to find out if it would taste as good in real life as it did in my head.

Can you see the little pile of cheese under my hand? We don’t eat Cow’s Milk, and so this is Sheep Cheese and it is DELICIOUS! WAY milder than goat cheese….it doesn’t taste so…so….well, it doens’t taste like you’re eating a goats tail – which in my opinion is NASTY!

Here is the gratuitous Family Smile shot…..don’t you just LOVE it….don’t we look like such a happy little group?

Once we got all the ingredients on, into the oven they went. Here is Jeremy’s Pizza before the oven….He only threw on the two veggie pieces because we mae him and he grumbled about it the whole time….I guess in his mind pizza is meant to be ALL meat.

Here we have Xani, completely enjoying her bite of pizza…eyes closed in the sheer rapture of the moment……

Even ‘Siah got in on the pizza action, although without the toppings, its more like a cracker or piece of bread than pizza.

Here is a shot of THE MOST DELICIOUS PIZZA IN THE WORLD. Yup, it’s the one I made, and it was even better in real life than it was in my head. So, So SO good!

I’ll definately be making this again. I think that the nicest part of this was that we could all have pizza. It didn’t cost us a fortune. There was nothing in the ingredients…in any of the ingredients that we couldn’t eat (no dairy, no sugar, no wheat…etc) and we had as much fun making the dinner (as a family) as we had eating it.

And, seeing as I have an overload of the starter, I’m going to be making up a bunch of the pizza shells and freezing them so we can use them whenever. YAH for quick, cheap meals.

I might talk a bit more about the whole Sourdough Starter tomorrow and why I’m even doing it, and show you if my 6 loaves of bread worked (or not) and then I think I’ll talk about some other stuff…not food related. (but i won’t forget about the spicy peanut noodle salad…I promise)

Alrighty, well. Siah is screaming his head off and as fun as that is to listen to, I guess that means that my computer time is finished for now.

ps. you can click on the pictures to taje you through to see the whole pizza set…if you want?

I’m not really certain how I’m doing right now.

I’m feeling like I’m at the end of my rope. We’ve had a bunch of stuff that we’ve been dealing with for a long time, now, and I feel like I’ve been holding my breath for far too long.

I feel like I just really need a break, and I have absolutely no idea when we are going to get one, and that in itself is really crushing.

I don’t just mean a vacation, but I mean a period of time when the stresses of life actually seems to catch up with life and we are able to live in a semi-stress free zone……..free from squashing financial issues, free from communication issues, free from ADD/ADHD issues, free from dairy intolerance issues, free from……

It’s not even that I want to be free from those things, but just that they wouldn’t seem to be sitting so heavy on us and feeling like they are crushing us under their weight.

I keep trying to think about what I could do to change how I’m feeling right now, and I can’t come up with anything. I know that this post may have a few people contact me all worried, and I don’t know what to do about that.

I am feeling overwhelmed, but I don’t know that there is anything that you can do for me. I’m not opposed to having help, I just dont know what that “help” would look like. I hate that my house feels cluttered. I hate that my brain feels cluttered. I hate that there are things that I would like to do and I have neither the time, nor the energy, nor the means to make any of it happen….that leaves me feeling pretty freakin’ useless.

I HATE FEELING USELESS!

I really hope that this is just a phase or a “moment” and that this moment will pass sooner as oppsed to later. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?

How about a subject change….just for fun?

I made this “Summer ‘Slaw” yesterday, and it was DELICIOUS! If I do say so myself, which I do.

It was very easy to make; and good for you, too.

Here is the list of ingredients:

2 fresh beets
1/4 head of purple cabbage
2 carrots
1 chunk of Daikon
2 Tbsp of Newman’s Own Dressing (the original oil and vinegar)

I chopped up the beets, carrots and daikon into 2-3 inch strips, and chopped up the purple cabbage into shredded pieces. Threw it all into a bowl and added approx. 2 Tbsp of Newman’s Own Salad Dressing, but really any oil and vinegar dressing would do. I will be making some as soon as I use up this bottle, but for now it was quick and easy to just dollop some on. Tossed everything and set it on the table.

The sweet of the beets is complimented by the tang of the Daikon and it’s just the perfect amount of crunch.

I had pulled out a small bowl and set aside some before I poured the dressing on – to appease Angelica and Jeremy who both seem to have some weird sauce thing going on, but seeing as the “weird sauce issue” probably came from me….I try to work with them…SOMETIMES! Other times, I just make them try it and choke down a few bites. Usually by the 4th time that I serve something, which means that they have to try one bite everytime…they’ve managed to overcome whatever issues they had in the first place…either that or they just give up on whining about it.

But regardless of my kids weirdnesses…..give this salad a try. It’s delicious and we’ll be definately be having it again sometime soon.

I also want to talk about the flour and water sourdough bread starter that I’ve managed to make, and how I should be enjoying fresh bread sometime very soon. And…how I used the starter that you throw away at each feeding to make some crackers for the kids and how those crackers are a HUGE hit. It fact ALL the crackers that I made last night are already gone…..but I gotta get the pics off my camera first….and I haven’t done that yet.

Oh well, I’m off to make some more crackers for tomorrow.

So, how are you doing? Do you have any good healthy salad or summer recipes that you love to make?

Hey! Guess What?

Today is Jon and my’s anniversary.

Happy Us!

I’m super tired. Siah’s being a little bugger….teeth or something. I’d apologize, but I’m too tired to even care that I haven’t posted and that I’m getting further and further behind and am getting a HUGE backlog of things that I want to record and share, and….well….I’m tired.

Later!

Hopfulley sooner, rather than later.

Here, get a good laugh at our expense….aren’t we babies?

I threw in the picture with these guys included so that we can ALL have a good laugh…and not just at us, but also at them too…Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha….’cause it’s like “double the pleasure, double the fun, right?” Dont we look darling?