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Primal Blueprint Meal Plan

Tonight's dinner was the start of the Primal Blueprint Meal Plan that I purchased with that $39 dollar deal. I sent it over to my husband to see what he thought and he said the meals looked like good options. I made Moroccan Chicken with Cauliflower Rice (he and the kids had basmati rice). I had 4 extra chicken thighs so I just tossed 'em in and I'm glad I did! The chicken is delicious. I loved the whole thing, I literally drank the last bits of soup out of my bowl. Will. make. again.

My skin is HORRIFIC. I'm thinking about taking pictures so that I have a before set. I am hoping that this meal plan (which does include some dairy and sugar in the chocolate) will work as well as the Whole30 did for my complexion. A Whole30 is too strict for my husband, even just for 30 days, but if he enjoys these options then it's a win in my book.

The meal plans come in every Tuesday so that you have time to go to the store, and the meal plan goes Sunday to Saturday. The trouble is that my Washington's Green Grocer delivery comes in Thursdays and I do my grocery shopping on Wednesdays so it is taking a little juggling, looking at the first meal plan to see what I need for the rest of THIS week and next week's meal plan to make sure I get the stuff for the beginning of NEXT week. Thankfully they've got each of the ingredients on the grocery list labeled with the numbers that correspond to the meals. That way I can go through the grocery list and know that I need to purchase the ingredients for 16-28 of this week and 1-15 of next week. Then I have to figure out the best deal for each item and plan to purchase items from my farmer (which I have to plan a week in advance). That's due on Thursdays. But this week I have it figured out and I just have to make sure I'm paying attention on Tuesday next week. ;)

It's Monday!

I have not been so "good" at sticking to my plan. I put it in quotes because nobody is perfect and I am trying hard to be rid of the perfectionism that plagues so many of us. I've still managed to get some great nutrition into my body however I have allowed some not-very-nutritious foods in. That is the difficult part to eating differently than your family. :) Sometimes the decisions are conscious, other times it is so easy to mindlessly reach for whatever is in the bag right next to me. Thankfully I have been on Facebook more than usual lately (and this is about the only time you'll see me say THAT!) because there's a deal in the paleosphere. For $39 you can get a ton of e-books as well as some meal plans! I picked the Acne meal plan from Nell but it's full of olive oil and flax meal and flax seed oil. After reading Skintervention I like using a variety of oils and more than chicken and fish so I don't know if I'm going to end up using it. However, Mark's Daily Apple has a meal plan for $9.99/month that you get one month for $0.01. I got my first week in my email and all the recipes look great. There is TONS of variety - eggs, chicken, bison, beef, lamb and you can use any "oil" you wish which allows me to have variety there as well. My skin has broken out. I expected this especially as my period came around in the middle of my detox period. Thankfully straight tea tree essential oil is doing the trick on spot treatments. It's not overnight but I can definitely tell a difference after using it at night and checking back in the morning. It Starts With Food. We have a wedding to go to on Saturday and I'd like for my skin to be as clear as possible so I have a goal in mind. Since your skin replenishes quickly I should see results fairly soon. Dinner last night was a grill bonanza. We had steak with Northwoods seasoning (for me), burgers/hotdogs (for them, but there are two patties minus cheese for me for leftovers), asparagus, artichokes (with homemade mayonnaise), grilled potato wedges (I had a few :)) and homemade guacamole. Breakfast this morning was two scrambled eggs in coconut oil, sauteed grape tomatoes in olive oil with garlic powder, onion powder and Fines Herbes seasoning, and leftover guacamole. I also had a cup of coffee with coconut milk and took my Royal Blend CLO/Butter Oil. I did sneak a couple of the chocolate mini donuts everyone else ate for breakfast (I need to be accountable) but my husband, for the first time, took the bag away from me. I was so thankful for that. :) On the homeschooling front we are still deschooling. I have all of the windows open (it's supposed to be 75 degrees here today!) and it's still 79 degrees inside. April 8th is too soon for the air conditioner! ;) We will be going outside in a little bit to work in the garden. I have another garden bed to fill and mulch to spread and peas to plant. Science and experiential learning for the win! In the afternoon we'll be heading into the kitchen together to cook. We're making Sweet Potato Banana Donuts, ground beef and ground venison jerky, and kale chips. I also need to marinate my chicken for the grill tonight which requires cutting it into pieces. I need to figure out veggies. I am thinking about brussels sprouts. :) Since I'm back to talking about food, I think I have decided to follow the Mark Sisson Primal Blueprint Meal Plan. My husband might even like some of the items listed. Wish me luck!

Deschooling

I am now convinced that the purpose of deschooling is not so much for the kid but also for the parent!! I have so much to do between reading through the Oak Meadow syllabus I purchased, sorting through notes and handouts from the conference, finishing up the garden, meal planning, paying bills, and cooking a ton of food. See, I broke one of the refrigerator door shelves. You know, the part that holds everything on the shelf? Where I felt I didn't have enough room to begin with I *REALLY* don't have enough room. Combine that with the massive amount of cooking I am doing to make room for the pig share that arrives in a couple of weeks, just, EEK! I just roasted 3 heads of broccoli, finished a batch of lamb stock (from the leg of lamb roast on Easter), made a batch of emergency breakfast protein (1 lb sausage, 1 bunch swiss chard, one onion, a splash of fish sauce and coconut aminos), got strawberry/banana fruit leather in the Excalibur as well as a bowl of popcorn for the kids snack this morning. I still need to boil artichokes for lunch, figure out what I'm doing with ~12 red bell peppers and the epic amount of cuties that I bought when everyone was into them and now they aren't anymore, as well as hope this wind dies down so I can grill these chicken thighs I pulled out of the freezer. Out of the next 4 days, we have activities that require at least one of us to leave the house every day. Every late afternoon/evening we have plans. It's going to be busy. So, with all of that, I am trying to not let myself feel guilty. For the first time we ALL played in the DIRT yesterday! We found earth worms! We started our tomato, bell pepper, cabbage and herb seeds indoors. We are making plans for the future. There's a toy train expo, a lego expo, and a reptile show in the next few months. My mom is moving 4 hours closer next week so I am hoping to be visiting more often. I am eager to get the relationship going between my kids and my mom/grandparents. Yet another great thing with homeschooling is allowing that flexibility. For those who don't know what deschooling is, it's a period of time many homeschoolers recommend in order to help your child unlearn the routines they had in structured school. Your home schooling philosophy and practice can be just as structured but it isn't going to be the same as someone with a class full of other children. My daughter keeps asking about our Morning Message and we don't really need one. She's starting to understand that we can plan our days a different way and have flexibility. She's starting to understand the need, at times, to wait until after her little brother's nap before we can do a specific activity. She also gets that she needs to help out around the house in order for us to have more time together. I know that more understanding will come with time. :)

My Garden

This is the third year we're starting a garden. The first year was.. chaos. I got too many things, my husband didn't want to go near that orb spider no matter how safe it was (she LOOKED scary), and I started to work on my fear of bugs. I am a city girl, or at least a suburban girl, and I never had a garden growing up. I remember being in awe of my friend Holland's backyard and the year her parents let us help harvest at their house. I was 7 years old. It wasn't until my daughter was 3 that I really saw what the plants looked like that grew the food I ate. It felt like I was a stranger in a strange land, taking my 3 year old to Great Country Farms for u-pick and having to follow everyone else's lead on where we were going and where to find the food. I have truly enjoyed the experience! Last year's garden.. I'm not sure what happened. My husband kept forgetting it was there (we live on the middle floor) and he had been named Harvester of the Garden since I had done all the work planting it. We hardly got anything out of it. There was a lot of work, a LOT of weeds, and then I found baby rabbits in one of the squares of my raised bed. I think part of the problem was that they were back against a fence which didn't allow me to harvest from both sides. I thought I had solved that problem from SFG by making them 8'x2' beds instead of 4'x4'. It also just did not *look* attractive. I understand the things Mel Bartholemew mentions in his book are great for function but I needed something pretty, I guess? This year I am moving the beds. We have a small backyard (ahh, townhouse living), and the front of my house faces east and the rear faces west though there is a row of townhomes in that direction. We still get a fair bit of sunlight - around 7 to 8 hours in the backyard. There's no shade back there either save for our small deck. Thus far I have emptied the beds, moved them, and started amending the tough clay soil around the perimeter of my yard. I have purchased 2/3's of Mel's Mix (I didn't have enough room in my car for the vermiculite) and it is in my garage waiting to go. I purchased enough to finish amending the perimeter along the fence. I also purchased some sedum to plant around my a/c unit. Around the fence will be my daughter's flowers - zinnias, sunflowers, and some other random seeds I've collected the last few years. I'm a little late in the game, but we'll be starting our seeds over the next couple of days. I am hoping to get out there after nap time today to mix up the dirt and plant the sedum and get the peas planted in the hopes that we might see a harvest from them. It might be too late, but it's worth a shot.

Paleo and Skintervention

I have wanted to have clear skin forever. The moment I hit puberty all bets were off, my skin broke out. I have tried just about every possible thing to clear it and the closest that came to it was ProActiv. I still had a lot of little bumps all over my face.

In January 2013 I completed my first Whole30. By the end of the first week I noticed the bumps started to clear. My skin felt soft, even. I had never felt it this way. Once the 30 days was up I floundered and we had a lot going on that kept me from focusing on it again. Until today.

A month ago my husband bought me (as requested) The Skintervention Guide. I went through it and some of it I knew already but it had lots more that I didn't know. It answered some of my questions (so THAT'S why the oil cleansing method didn't work for me the last two times I tried) and I was able to come up with a plan. I took notes and printed it out and have it on the wall next to my sink.

About a week and a half ago I quit using Proactiv and started the OCM program. I've started to get larger pimples, and they hurt. I kept pushing off the food portion knowing in the back of my head I needed to get on it in order for this to work. Today I'm on it. I've been using my inhaler almost every 4-6 hours for the last 3 weeks. My asthma had vanished on my Whole30, too, after it randomly came back in November after a multi-year hiatus. I am looking forward to relief. Now that I have more on my plate need the clear mind I had in January. I was focused and energetic.

Today is Day 1.

I won't always take pictures of my meals (I might from time to time though) but it is important for me to be accountable somewhere and hell, maybe this will help someone! I'm not sure how to tread with posting how I am following the Skintervention guide. Because of that I won't post my entire plan but I'll post bits and pieces. I have also been following this series and I'm working on making a month of freezer meals for my family in order to follow it with success. That won't be until mid-April as we've got a wedding to attend which I can at least be mostly paleo compliant at.

For breakfast I am a fan of reheating leftover vegetables to have with a freshly cooked protein. I usually scramble a couple of eggs in the fat of my choice (butter/ghee, olive oil, or coconut oil) or brown some sausage patties. I do like the Japanese style of serving salmon for breakfast where you cut it into portions, salt it, wrap it up and put it in the fridge then sear it stovetop in the morning.

For lunch I am enjoying a simple salad of mixed greens, hearts of palm, avocado, tomatoes, red onion, pine nuts with lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper as the dressing. With it I will include either leftover protein (great if I've made a whole chicken in the oven or crock pot) or canned sardines, tuna, or salmon.

Utilizing leftovers and/or keeping it simple on breakfast and lunch make dinner easier for me to make by either combining leftovers to make something (like a batch of grilled chicken thighs into a stir fry, or Well Fed's pad thai, or our own favorite Arroz con Pollo). I like to buy a whole chicken and two pounds of ground beef from my farmer and purchase chicken thighs from the store. Purchasing pre-cut chicken parts any other way is too cost-prohibitive and I don't have the knife skills or time at the moment to do it myself. Some of our favorite whole chicken recipes include Grilled Spatchcocked Chicken, this method for stretching a chicken to make stock and 2-3 meals (the creamy chicken skillet recipe there is *awesome*), and a whole roasted chicken. Sometimes I will cut the legs/thighs off a whole chicken, separate them, season with salt/pepper/garlic powder and bake in the oven at 375 for 30 minutes or so, then use the breast cubed for a curry or kebabs or pan-fried. Then I can throw the carcass into a pot for stock easily. The ground beef makes for great chili (my husband makes his own but I love this one when I'm going beanless as it has more texture to it), tacos with your own seasoning (I haven't tried using lettuce as a shell yet but I'm going to), meatballs (though I typically like ground lamb for my meatballs these days), or a bolognese sauce over spaghetti squash or zucchini noodles.

I also throw a few non-paleo meals in there for the rest of my family members because, hey, we're transitioning. I have tried the shove it town their throats version and it. does. not. work. They're down with most paleofied baked goods I make and that is the majority of our transition now. The kids love their beans and rice so for now they get to keep it. It's still way better than they used to eat. I can sneak in a sofrito of tomatoes, onions, garlic, bell pepper and sometimes some carrot, celery and/or spinach/swiss chard for rice or lentils. I make "smoothie popsicles" for my son with coconut milk or coconut kefir, coconut water if I have it, bananas, wild blueberries (we love the giant 4 lb bags you can get at Costco), chia seeds, pepitas, spinach and cocoa powder (from Wilderness Family Naturals). Sometimes we use raw dairy or organic whole milk yogurt instead. I am working on applesauce muffins and trying to see what else I can make that will satisfy their palates until the transition is through and they are brave enough to try new things with a palate that isn't saturated with refined sugar and too much sodium.

A sample of what my kids ate today:

Daughter, 6 years old: Orange dark chocolate chip scone, toast (Udi's GF bread) with Kerrygold butter and fruit-sweetened jelly, frozen peas, grilled cheese sandwich with Udi's bread

Son, 3 years old: Two servings of yogurt (plain!), half of an apple, half of a banana, a few bites of an orange dark chocolate chip scone, the remaining bits of our Chex Rice cereal

Dinner tonight will feature baked chicken legs/thighs with fried potatoes in lard (ketchup for the husband/kids, with agave, which is refined but is better than sugar IMO) and leftover veggies for me.

I should take a moment to say that I am no wordsmith and I have never considered myself a writer. My posts can be erratic at times and jump quickly from subject to subject mid-paragraph with no transition. I don't remember the rules of English composition. This is a nice outlet, though, and I am hoping that the information I put out here will help someone the way so many other blogs have helped me. I will have to put a disclaimer up somewhere. ;)

Homeschooling

On March 22 and 23 we went to the Virginia Homeschooler's Conference. I had taken my husband because I knew of no other way to get as much information into him as possible without distractions. It worked. We started with the two Friday sessions: Homeschooling 101: Homeschooling for Non-Homeschoolers and Beginning Homeschooling. Homeschooling 101 was WONDERFUL. Aside from the amazing turnout (ever seat was filled plus people were standing up along the wall and sitting on the floor) there was a lot of the stuff my husband needed to hear: numbers. Jeanne gave a ton of statistics, showed us graphs, then gave us a lot of real life examples of thinking outside of the box. My favorite was a creative way to get information into her very active boys: she stood and read while they rode their bicycles in a circle around her. Brilliant! In a world where we know our kids need way more activity than they get, I just loved this idea! Beginning Homeschool went through all the legalities of homeschooling, what the requirements are, how to show that your kids are learning throughout the year, etc. That was great timing for me, because the rest of the sessions were convincing us to homeschool so we didn't have these nagging questions of how it would be possible to get our kid out of school.

When we decided to go to this conference I had a very hard time figuring out what sessions to take. There were so many great options! I am hoping that many of the ones I missed out on will be available next year. This time we took a sessions on Waldorf Homeschooling (a type of curriculum), Beginning Homeschooling, Part 2: But What Do I Do Monday? (several other curriculum types), Eclectic Homeschooling: Combining It All and Making It Work (where you take several types of curriculum and use them all together), Homeschooling Preschool (for our son), and finally Homeschooling Questions: Asked and Answered (which I figured would be a great way to finish off the day). Each speaker not only gave us different information but they echoed a lot of the same sentiments. Some of the big things we learned:

Socialization: The dreaded "s" word which has somehow come to be every non-homeschooler's reason for NOT homeschooling. We learned that not only is there not an issue with not socializing, that many times there is an issue with *too much* socializing! Case in point: By 9am this morning, Monday, I already had 3 homeschool activities planned out of the next 5 days, and they're recurring.

If you build it, they will come: Sometimes there is an activity, or coop, or field trip that you want to go to/on but everywhere you look you can't seem to find one. Start it up yourself. It is almost guaranteed that there will be interest. Case in point: a friend of mine posted that she was hosting a playdate and she found 6 families within her *neighborhood*. Another friend started up a Lego day every month and it was so popular she had to lock down the Yahoo Group for it.

If there are tears/frustration then STOP. The beauty of homeschooling is that you aren't on a schedule to learn XXX by XXX date. If one of you is crying or yelling or otherwise frustrated then learning is not happening and you need to put it away for the day, or the week, or whatever you're comfortable with and change the subject. It is also okay to switch curriculum in the middle of the year (or multiple times during the year) to find what works for both of you. How many times have YOU been frustrated with an assignment as a kid and wish you could put it away and go back to it? I failed MISERABLY at geometry the first year I learned it, but the next year I aced it.

The only question that could not be answered for us was how to handle one particular situation: an unsupportive family member. Speakers were asked this in almost every session and they danced around the topic well. My mother-in-law is not crazy about homeschooling and she has made that known from the get-go. We had agreed at some point to share the cost of private school but that was before I was as educated about homeschool as I am now. Most of the speakers explained that, in most cases, it was a fear of the unknown that caused the family member to not support it. On our drive home to pick our kids up my husband and I were going through all kinds of scenarios to figure out what to say if they said *this* or *that*. We got there, and didn't say a peep about the conference. Neither did my in-laws. My daughter exclaimed "DID YOU LEARN HOW TO HOMESCHOOL ME?! WHAT DID YOU LEARN!?!?!?!" but thankfully that was out of earshot. ;) The next morning my mother-in-law called and spoke to my husband enough to find out if we were truly considering it. He says that she knew that there were a lot of education options and knew we wouldn't have a problem teaching her, but she was concerned about -- guess what? Socialization. He did a great job explaining to her that it's actually an issue of too much in our area. She said she needed to digest it. Whereas before I would have been so anxious about her opinion, I feel absolutely certain in our decision to homeschool. We would not have had that without this conference. I have pages and pages of notes and supplementary handouts and I have spent nearly my entire day looking at websites and curriculum and books and figuring out The Plan which is more than I could have ever done on my own.

We got great suggestions as well. One was to start a blog or use some sort of calendar or list to write down what you're doing every day or week. The idea is that by the end of the year you will forget all that you have done, unless you have saved work, and it's nice to go back and see the progress you have made together. That's what has spawned this renewed interest in my blog. I have been scouring Craigslist and Ebay for deals and so far I have found a few which I'm waiting on my husband to look through. I have joined several local homeschool groups for support.

What is our plan at this point? I really like Waldorf's approach to using arts and crafts and music. One of the speakers in the Waldorf session explained that in first grade one of the cool projects is to make your own knitting needles, then learn garter stitch to create rectangles which are then turned into animals. That blew my mind! I want to do that! Since my daughter is already an avid reader we will continue with reading whenever she wants, and she also enjoys worksheets/workbooks so I have printed out several worksheets (that were free!) to laminate and use with dry erase markers. I saw this post when it came out and I saved it, knowing it would want to use it one day, and we will be working on it this week with Spanish months/days (which we'll rotate through each day) and planning our activities. We have already put a list together of things to do. I am looking for ideas for Spanish curriculum as well as some Pagan curriculum ideas (yep, I'm one of those ;)). I want something that will really focus on the meaning of each season and the cycle of the year and very.. earthy/natural (which is why Waldorf appeals to me). We'll be doing baking probably every other day which will help reinforce the fractions she was already learning in kindergarten. We are working on our garden which will be our science element for now. She has learned about some of our former presidents with money so I will continue with that somehow, too. I have my work cut out for me!