I haven’t noticed much difference in how I feel physically other than I find I tend to have a pleasantly full tummy most of the day.  Moving from breakfast to the mid-morning snack is my hungriest time.  Other than that I tend to be pretty full unless I sit around reading about food (I do that a lot right now :p)  I’ve also been nice and regular going to the bathroom which has been a problem for me so I’m pleased.

So Much Soaking

The biggest part of the challenge has been all the soaking.  Going from mostly canned beans to dried beans means remembering a lot of soaking.  Pair that with oatmeal that needs to be soaked every night, several nights of rice, and nuts and I feel like I’m doing a lot of soaking.  

I read a tip today to put soaked beans in the fridge – I may start soaking all of my beans on Saturday or Sunday night, then putting them in the fridge the next morning to be ready for the week.  It seems like it will be easier for me time-wise to do all the prep for soaking at once.  I could probably do the same with oatmeal for the week, actually.

Dry Bean Tip

A bean idea (Scott actually thought of it) that’s been working well for me is to have my beans soaked one night, then put them in the crock pot on low the next night.  By morning I have great beans.  I’ve been bringing them to a boil on the stove, then pouring them into the crock pot; I may try a batch without that first step.

Dishes that Never End!

Another challenge that’s come up is dishes – I’m preparing food so often, and so much food to fill the family up, that there are always dishes.  Cassidy washes our eating dishes (plates, cups, silverware) – but I do the pots and pans, and on nights when we’re running behind, I have everything because Cassidy goes to bed.  Scott has a project going at work right now and has been late some which means supper is late.  I don’t mind that (it gives me more time to have everything ready!!) – but the dishes are getting overwhelming. 

We generally hand wash though we have a dishwasher.  I feel it’s important for kids to have responsibility and the dishes are a good one (plus we’d go through all of our dishes before we got to supper if we didn’t hand wash between meals.)

I’ve begun to try and make sure I wash pots/pans/cooking utensils as soon as I’m done with them.  It’s hard though, because as soon as it’s done it needs to be on the table, and then we’re sitting to eat.  Maybe I should fill the sink with hot soapy water and dump the pots and pans in as soon as the food is served, then do a load quickly after we eat and before Cassidy does dishes.  I could put them on the dishwasher racks to dry.  Then it would be being used for something…

How the Kids are Doing With It

I have noticed that the kids, especially Cassidy, have had mostly cheerful dispositions the past few days.  They’ve also been willing to go and play outside – Cassidy and Asher for long periods.  This is really nice, especially since we’ve been having weather down into the tens and under during the day.  They come back in happy and warm. I really think good food helps to make a cheerful and calm child (other things help too, mind you!).

I’m still hoping that this 30 days will see Cassidy gaining some weight.  I’m also hoping all the good fats and warm foods will help the kids’ hands to be a little warmer.  They tend to have cold hands and that’s always bugged me.  I feel like they should have warm hands, because it seems if their hands are cold, they must be cold.

Scott

We’ve been trying Scott on properly soaked oatmeal this week and thus far that seems to be going well. I load our oatmeal down with butter and a bit of coconut oil, which I suspect probably helps. I’m also trying to make sure he gets plenty of good snacks to help him stay away from the carbohydrate-full snacks, we’ll have to see how content that keeps him, or if he’d prefer me to stock his normal snacky stuff (chips and salsa… which I’d like to make for him once I can get some corn!)

Trying New Things

We tried kombucha for the first time last night and it was pretty good. Definitely fizzy. I may try making it here at some point. It seems like it might be a nice refreshing drink in the summer. Since I haven’t had soda in years the “fizzy” feeling isn’t something I miss or long for. But kombucha is a nice probiotic drink and I can see benefits to having it around, especially when it’s hot. Which it isn’t at all right now :p

A Couple More Tips

So thus far my major challenges are in planning/executing traditional meals because there is extra preparation involved.  I’ve already found the beans in the crockpot idea, and making a huge salad to last through three dinners works well.

Another thing I’ve found is I can usually steam a veggie over something I’m already cooking – last night I steamed over the red potatoes I was boiling.  Tonight I steamed over the beef stock I have going on the back burner.  It’s easy to pop the food in a steamer basket and set it over the pot.  I successfully avoided microwave steaming because of this! I’ve also found I can place a double-boiler pan over a pot that’s already cooking to melt butter for a sauce if I need to.

Thoughts for the Coming Days

Next week I’m hoping to get a raw meat dish in at least for a snack for the kids and I (not sure how keen on the raw dishes Scott is yet).  I’d also like to finally get around to sprouting some nuts.  I’ll continue to work on streamlining my kitchen time and hopefully will continue to see cheerful dispositions and full bellies with the children!

I’m also hoping to see that I stay regular in bathroom endeavors :p And that Galen of course continues to grow and remains the relatively laid-back little fellow that he is. Feeling a bit less fatigue would also be great – though I’m not sure I’m going to get that because I think being a homeschooling mother of four, running a business, and being wife to one great hubby kinda means I’m going to be tired some of the time!

I sat down a couple of weeks ago and went over my goals for 2008 then set out my goals for 2009. I feel good about 2008 – I accomplished my major goal of having a healthy baby, and I redesigned my site with a fresh design and clean code.

Several of my 2009 goals center around our nutrition and I’m going to share those here:

Improve our overall family nutrition to be more in line with traditional nourishing diets:  We’re starting this with our 30-day WAPF challenge (eating only from the WAPF “best” and “good” foods for the entire 30 days). I plan to maintain that eating style as much as possible this year with my main focus being on properly soaking all our grains/beans/legumes/nuts.

Keep our family supplied with homemade fermented foods: sauerkraut and beet kvass are the two I want to keep going on all the time. I’d also like to learn to make kimchi and kefir this year.

Start a small square foot garden in the spring and have it produce through first frost in the fall.  We’re hoping to do 16 squares (1 square foot each) this year as we learn to keep up our own garden

Stock our pantry: I’d like to have a 3 month food supply stored in our pantry. This is challenging to since I want it to be as WAPF/PPNF friendly as possible. It also needs to be gluten-free so no wheat!

And some minor goals I have are to look into healthy cookware and how to eliminate microwave use, as well as move towards mostly green home and personal care products!

See more nourishing resolutions and get inspired at the Nourishing Gourmet!

Learn more about the WAPF and PPNF.

I’ve decided since I’m going to be working intensively on our nutrition that I’ll join the Menu Plan Monday brigade   Deciding this late I’m just barely going to make it on Monday

I’ve decided to try serving multiple-course suppers this week, in the hopes of actually filling my family of bottomless pits up.  Thus far this has effectively resulted in more food being served at supper, however I can’t exactly pull off serving separate courses – I just end up with all of them on the table at once.  We’re having a salad, soup, and main dish with every meal.  This brings us to two soups a day most days, as we almost always have soups with (or for) lunch.  Anyways, on with the menu plan:

Monday – B: Egg, mushroom, zuccini, and beef scramble.  Soaked oatmeal with butter, cream, and yogurt for the kids an I, leftover roasted potatoes for Scott.

L: Homemade nachos supreme, homemade tomatoe soup, sauerkraut.

S: Balsamic Carrot Salad, Coconut Chicken Soup, Liver with Mushroom and Onions, soaked rice.

To-do: Soak oats, crockpot cook chicken (for tomorrow’s soup and extra chicken to freeze for enchiladas next week)

Tuesday -  B: Veggie, beef, egg scramble.  Soaked oatmeal for kids and I, soaked rice with coconut oil for Scott.

L: White bean chicken chili soup, sauerkraut.

S: High Enzyme Salad, Chicken Rice Soup, Chicken supreme with rice (rice leftover from yesterday).

To-do: boil black beans and transfer to crockpot to cook through morning, soak rice, soak oats, start sunflower seeds sprouting, pick meat off yesterdays chicken; start stock

Wednesday – B: Veggie, beef, egg scramble.  Soaked oatmeal for kids and I, soaked rice with coconut oil for Scott.

L: Black bean soup, sauerkraut.

S: Cucumber yogurt salad, Roman egg soup, chicken gumbo w/ rice

To-do: soak nuts, soak oats, start sauerkraut

Thursday – B: Veggie, beef, egg scramble.  Soaked oatmeal for kids and I, soaked rice with coconut oil for Scott.

L: Beef stew, kraut

S: Salad, Mexican soup, Black bean enchiladas w/ guacamole and sour cream

To-do: start stew at breakfast, start fish stock, soak oats, roast nuts

Friday – B: Veggie, beef, egg scramble.  Soaked oatmeal for kids and I, soaked rice with coconut oil for Scott.

L: Coconut fish soup, kimchi

S: Caesar salad, Soup (whatever takes my fancy), Roast

To-do: meal plan/grocery list, thaw liver

Saturday – B: Scott does weekend breakfasts!

L: Pate with crackers, Soup, steamed squash, kimchi

S: Salad, Mexican soup, Tacos garnished with avocado

To-do: grocery shop

Sunday – B: Scott does weekend breakfasts!

L: Omelettes, soup, tomato slices, sauerkraut

S: High Enzyme Salad, Simple veggie soup, Roast Chicken w/ potatoes

To-do: soak rice, soak oats, grind beef heart (for breakfast’s ground beef), soak black beans, soft-boil eggs (for snacks for the week), soak marrow (for snacks for the week)

Thanks to Cheeseslave for the idea of publishing our menu plan

Visit Organizing Junkie for more menu planning ideas

And I want to feed them well. I have been working on progressively improving our diet. We’ve been focusing a lot on traditionally cultured foods lately – like sauerkraut and pickles made in a brine solution, not vinegar. These foods, like traditional yogurts, have many probiotic bacteria in them that help enhance health. (Look forward to seeing some information about my kitchen experimentation in the blog :p)

We’ve also been eating more nutrient dense foods like organ meats, and trying to get as much meat as we can from pastured animals. We eat a lot of eggs and enjoy healthy traditional fats like butter, coconut oil, and tallow.

Now why would I choose to eat like this?

Doctor Price’s Invaluable Work

An extremely interesting study carried out by a dentist named Dr. Weston A. Price brought a lot of valuable information to the table (no pun intended) about the nutrition of traditional cultures. Much of research and observation is highly interesting to me because it centers on the health of children and women – women pre-conception, women pregnant, and women nursing their children.

Dr. Price went to many, many traditional societies around the globe in the 1930′s and observed these peoples and what they ate. He found that as long as they ate their traditional diets the people were healthy and had almost non-existent tooth decay. He noted that the children were healthy and happy, and that mothers had good pregnancies and made rich, abundant milk.

He noted that women hoping to get pregnant, pregnant women, nursing mothers, and children ate lots of foods especially high in nutrients.

And he found that where traditional cultures began to eat “modern foods” – processed flours and sugars, canned foods, sweets, etc. – their dental health deteriorated remarkably. And the bones structure of children being born was weaker, children and adults were more disease prone, women had trouble with pregnancy and nursing, etc.

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words…and Dr. Price took thousands of pictures of his findings. His work is amazing and it truly proves the benefits of eating good traditional foods – meats from animals eating what they’re supposed to (so animals raised on pasture…not in cages), fermented foods, organ meats, clean raw dairy, good fats (butter, coconut oil, olive oil, palm oil, rendered suet and lard – yep, even saturated fats!) – all kinds of food we’ve been told for years not to eat – and we just keep getting sicker and sicker.

I get a lot of information about eating real, nutrient dense foods (and preparing them) from a foundation set up to help get the word about traditional nutrition out – the Weston A. Price Foundation.

For a basic tour of the WAPF and vital nutrition principles for you as you’re TTC, pregnant, and raising your child click right here!

The WAPF gives its information away free of charge so that you can get tons of valuable information. They do provide a membership and one of my favorite benefits is their quarterly journal – I look forward to every issue, and many, many of their issues are on baby and child health – and health while TTC and pregnant.

I highly recommend membership so you can increase your knowledge on nutrition and give your children a legacy of health that will touch generations of your family Click here to print the membership form – feel free to put my name (Kristen Burgess) as the referring member!

The need for good nutrition continues into pregnancy and nursing and throughout childhood. Solid nutrition helps to build solid, happy, healthy babies and children. But one of the challenges mothers (and mothers-to-be and mothers preparing to conceive) face is finding the time to cook good foods. In fact, you may not even really know how to cook good foods. Cooking and domestic life is not really taught in schools anymore. You just have to flounder around and figure it out for yourself!

In the past couple of months I’ve come across some resources and ideas that have made a big difference for me – helping me to make better meal choices and learn how to manage making meals without feeling overwhelmed. Surprisingly I’ve found cooking has become fairly easy – and I’m cooking nutrient dense meals from scratch! This is especially wonderful because I know that even through my tiring early pregnancy weeks I’ve provided my family with something tasty and good for their meals.

Speaking of meals, I need to run now to work on supper. But I’ll write tomorrow to share a little more about my favorite resource and the tips that have helped me the most!

I am a firm believer in the Brewer Diet after having had three very healthy babies born after three wonderful labors and excellent births – all while following the Brewer diet. While my second child was a baby I began to read a little on the works of Dr. Weston A. Price and became very interested in his work after my third child was born. I have been working on the diet for pregnant and nursing mothers recommended by the Weston A. Price Foundation since I got interested in Dr. Price’s work.

This diet is the Brewer diet with some extras and notes added in. It includes focus on rich bone broths, yummy fermented foods, and just a lot of good common sense. I’ve been following this diet and adding in some things found to be good for conception in with them.

I really think diet is one of the keys to a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby which is why I stress it so much on NBBC and stress it with myself. It can be a challenge to “eat so well,” especially when there is so much convenience food out there. It will especially be challenging in early pregnancy if I feel sick at any point. With my previous pregnancies I felt some nausea, and with my third baby it was persistent nausea for weeks. I’m hoping the good nutrition starting in the preconception period this time will prevent that. But I know it could be an issue.

With that in mind I’ve been thinking of ways I can plan very healthy meals that don’t take too much energy. I’m also working on my meal planning techniques. I have been able to do effective menu planning for awhile – it just takes practice. It makes it much easier to get all the nutrition needed in. Now I’m working on learning how to plan meal preparation. One time period of chopping all my veggies for the week makes for a solid block of time in the kitchen but saves a lot of later labor. It seems to work best shortly after the shopping trip.

I think this will help during pregnancy because even if I feel tired or ill I can quickly throw pre-chopped ingredients together. And the planned meals will let me be sure that I have everything I need in my diet – from protein to yummy greens. I’ll continue more about nutrition and meal planning later.