Where has it been all my life?

My grain mill that is.



Rene and I have been reading about how flour loses 45% of its nutrients just 24 hours after being ground, and by 72 hours it has lost 90%! So that stuff you're buying at the grocery store, isn't much more than starch, even if you're buying whole grain.

Some interesting and alarming info about the making of flourhere


We decided we wanted a grain mill, and budgeted our tax rebate to include enough for a mill and some grain. We got the nutrimill online, and our wheat berries from Hyvee, at $16 a 25lb bag.



It is so easy to use, and the flour smells wonderful. Really, I didn't know flour smelled of anything! But freshly ground flour smells great!



I haven't actually made bread with it, because we've had a lot of bread from foodnet. But I've used it to make strawberry shortcake, cakes, muffins and pancakes.



The food is denser than when you use store bought flour, of course. But the flavor is incredible! Truly delicious. Full, rounded, almost nutty flavor. I'm so pleased with it! It's no louder than a vacuum cleaner, or a blender or whatever. I make enough flour to last a few days and I store it in the freezer, to preserve nutrients.

I'm like a kid with a new toy at Christmas. I'm loving the flour and I'm loving baking with it. And it's good to know that my baked goods pack a punch in terms of nutritional value, instead of just adding more empty, starchy carbs. And they're yummy.

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Real Milk

I'm Lacto-ovo vegetarian, which means I drink milk, eat dairy and eggs. The most convincing argument I've heard towards going vegan is that buying dairy is supporting the meat industry. Which I don't want to do. Maybe one day I'll take the plunge and go vegan, who knows.

Meanwhile, I've been reading about dangers of homogenized milk (gotta love an article that begins: "a human is not a fish") and about the benefits of raw milk. Now, this is a highly controversial subject and you will find strong arguments on either side. You know by now that I am a fan of natural and I tend to think that God knew what he was doing in the first place, so going back to nature is often the best way.



Of course there is a place for technology and we've learned a lot through science. One such thing we've learned is how to keep equipment sterile and avoid contamination of our food, which is why raw milk from a safe, sensible source, which is careful to consider food handling hygiene is much safer than raw milk used to be. It's not like you'd imagine, squeezing from the udder into an old bucket, stopping to wipe sweat off your brow then go back to milking.

Rene and I were thrilled to find a local source for grass fed, safe, organic raw milk. There's nothing like being able to see where and how the milk is made, and being able to pet the cows that produce the stuff you pour into your breakfast cereal.



(They usually are out in the pasture, btw. They don't live in this pen.) And you get to look into their eye and see that they are being well treated, they are healthy and treated with herbal medication where appropriate.





And we recently found that our friend a few miles north of us, has truly free range egg laying chickens. They are not fenced in by anything. They eat organic grain, and peck bugs from the ground. The eggs are delicious, such dark, strong, yellow yolks. And I love how non-uniform they are. All different shades, shapes and sizes. How do they even make the eggs so uniform in the chicken farms? I don't think I want to know.

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Baby Led Solids

When Kaya was a baby, the advice was to start solids at 4 months old. I think we waited a week or so after she turned 4 months, and by then everyone around me seemed to think she was going to starve to death. So I started her on baby rice. Yuck. Have you ever tasted that stuff? It's disgusting, processed, tastes horrible, runny, much less healthy than breastmilk, and babies usually don't even know what to do with it.

She ate it, but it took a long time to get it in her, and she cried a bit. It would have been much faster to just pick her up and put her to the breast. In fact, that's what some of the advice at the time said; if baby gets frustrated, take a half time break and breastfeed them, then give them some more when they feel calm and their tummies are filled.

It all went completely against my natural instincts. She did ok with it, and we eventually got her onto fruits and veg. I must admit, I really enjoyed using my Annabel Karmel books to make up my own healthy baby purees, and I felt like mum of the year. But looking back, I realize now there's a much better way to go about it.

It seems God figured out the baby weaning process far before we ever did. He's built it into us to know how, what and when to eat if we are left to do it in our own time. Baby led solids is all about letting your baby eat when they want to, skipping on the frustrations of spoon feeding purees and letting them skip to finger foods and self feeding. Contrary to what you might think, it's actually been shown to reduce risk of choking.

Gill Rapley from UNICEF conducted research, backed by the World Health Organization, which concluded that the baby puree stage is unnecessary. Previous research had found that introducing solids before 6 months could be harmful to baby's health, and after 6 months there is no need for pureed food. The benefits of child led solids include better chewing skills, reduced risk of choking and improved motor skills and hand eye co-ordination.

Read a news article,
a blog post,
another article or listen to a discussion for more fascinating information on the topic.


Glenn is 6 months now, and right on queue, he decided it was time to start solid foods. We were eating lunch, and he started fussing, so Daddy picked him up and sat him on his lap while he ate. For the past few weeks Turtle has been watching us eat, while he drools and pretends to chew. He's been building up to this for a while. And Saturday was the big day. As Daddy was eating a banana, Turtle yanked it out of his hands and started chomping down. He knew exactly what to do, like a pro.

Of course I ran for the camera.



So we've started letting him sit in the high chair at meal times, and giving him some finger foods to play with.

This morning was the first try with a spoon. It's all just experimental right now, figuring out textures and playing around. I may have scarred Lana for life when she walked in on me squirting breast milk into a bowl of porridge for her baby brother this morning. But it made the porridge nice and creamy, and Turtle didn't seem to mind.

He didn't quite know what to do with it at first..



But he figured it out eventually...



What a big boy. Where is the time going?

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The weekend

Today I'm thankful for the weekend! Rene let me sleep in an extra couple hours this morning, which I really needed. Made such a difference. Since we're all still snuffly and under the weather, we just had a relaxed lazy day today, which we don't usually do on a saturday, but I really enjoyed it for a nice change.

We did briefly go out, to a goodwill store. We picked up a couple of cloth diapers in really good condition for 75c each! Bargain.

It's about bed time now. So goodnight.

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