I saw a set of cheater chopsticks that are hinged like a clothespin and I thought, "I can do that!" So I did. And you can too. Easy. Maybe not as easy as the rubberband trick, but a lot cooler. =D

So here's how you hack a set of chopsticks in five easy steps:

1. Get some to-go chopsticks and a clothespin.

2. Take them both apart.

3. Slip the end of the chopstick in the hinge from the clothespin, like this. Decide where you want the crossbar to go and mark it. Mark the other chopstick in the same place.




4. Make a small groove for the crossbar to fit into. Yep, I just used a butterknife.




5. Assemble. This may take a little maneuvering, but it's not *that* hard. You'll figure it out.




And there ya' go! Easy!




And here, Pickle is trying them out. If I did it again I would place the hinge a bit closer to the end and turn the sticks so that the crossbars went across the widest sides of the sticks, instead of the narrowest... and that is my advice to you. Have at it!

Since Roe vs Wade, the amount of women & children at poverty level has increased to a majority, not decreased as was supposed would happen. This is because men are now less likely to marry a woman bearing their child --after all if she hadn't wanted to raise a child alone she could have aborted it. Our culture of abortion isn't freeing women from "unwanted" children, it's freeing men to be childish.

Thank God, I was blessed with a man who stepped up and decided to call me "My Lovely Wife" instead of relegating me to "My Baby's Mama". And thank God or the life of our precious son (who is almost 16yo now), and the two children that followed him.

Ya' know I've got that Feedjit widget over in the side bar.... well I've noticed that a few of my repeat visitors arrive on the same page every time, a page other than the home page. And then they don't stay long. So I'm thinking some of you may have bookmarked my blog while you were viewing a category or a post. If that's the case, then when you show up it may look like I haven't posted anything new 'cause it's the same thing you were looking at the last time you were here. So if this is happening to you, [I'm posting this in as many catagories as I can so maybe you will see it] just click on the "Home" link in the menu at the top of the page to check for new posts.

I'd also like to invite y'all to look around the sidebar. I've added a link to a page where I will be adding videos and audios about Christianity, Health Issues, How-to, and whatever else strikes my fancy. I don't have much there yet, but I wanted you to be aware of it.

There's also a new gadget from Blogger called Followers. I didn't know what it was all about, but the description basically said it is for people who like like my blog, to let me know they are following it. It also lets folks who read my blog, find the blogs of other folks who read my blog.I figured that was cool so I added it.

Anyway, I want to encourage y'all to look around and take a little more time checking out the blog.

WR

We buy Celtic Sea Salt from The Grain & Salt Society and our latest order arrived yesterday. So I decided that, not only would I show you one of my antique store finds, I'd show you how I "prep" my salt.

First, today's favorite... This is an old general store "5 pounds" jar that I got for $5 at a really great junky little antique store (which I rarely get to shop at, let alone buy at). I love this jar!









We buy the salt in five pound bags, so this jar has been perfect for storing it.

When the salt arrives, it is still damp. When you put damp salt in a salt grinder it will clump. Not only that, but when you try to grind it will stick to the outside of the grinding mechanism and if you don't get it off it will clump up and dry hard.

So this is what I do... I cut open the bag and spread the salt out on the largest, rimmed, cookie sheet I have. Then I put it a warm oven for a few hours and stir it occasionally. When I think it's sufficiently dry, I take it out and let it come to room temperature.



Then I add powdered kelp.



I stir again, scoop it into the jar, and refill the salt grinder.



This time, I also put some in a jar for my Mom and Dad.



And here's that wonderful jar of salt.



WR

I read labels. Yep, I'm one of "those people". Ya' know, the ones you see in the grocery store, with a baby in the cart chewing on the handlebar, two other kids blocking the aisle by chasing each other around in circles screaming "I'm gonna to tickle you!", while she's distracted staring at the labels on the sour cream containers so she can find the one that just says, "Cream, Cultures".

We have been on the path to a healthier way of eating for a while now. And, even though we still aren't where we'd like to be, I thought I'd let you in on our plan to get there.

First, you have to understand that we believe the best food is real food. Real food may not be what you are used to thinking about when you think of health food. But nutrition is all about nutrients. We, as a society, seem to have lost sight of this very important fact.

We all know, at least superficially, that good health is dependent upon "good nutrition". But what that really means, is that your body relies on a steady supply of a wide variety of nutrients in order to properly function and repair itself. And the best place to get these nutrients, is from food. Specifically, nutrient-dense, real foods. Problem is, most of the food we eat here in the USA, especially the "health" foods, are either mostly devoid of usable nutrients, are "fortified" with a few synthetic nutrients that your body doesn't know what to do with, or they all contain the same few nutrients over and over again.

So, the goal we are moving toward, is to make every bite count by getting rid of the empty-calorie, processed junk and eating nutrient-dense, real foods.

These are the kinds of things we eat at our house:

• Beef
• Chicken
• Pork
• Eggs
• Milk & dairy products
• Veggies
• Fruit
• Nuts & nut butters
• Whole grain bread, rice, and pasta
• Olive oil, coconut oil, butter
• Natural sweeteners

These are the things we normally try to avoid, or are working toward eliminating from our diet:

• Soy
• High fructose corn syrup
• Hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated anything
• Oils processed with solvents or high heat
• Canola oil, Soybean oil, and Safflower oil in any form
• Highly processed or chemically preserved foods
• Artificial sweeteners, colors, and flavors
• White flour (bread, pasta, etc.)
• White rice
• Sugar

The veggies we eat are organic about 95% of the time, or they come from our garden.

We don't eat very much rice or pasta (pasta is basically just empty calories), but we do eat quite a bit of bread. I don't make our bread (SweetPea would like to learn how, though), but we buy only whole wheat bread with no high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) or hydrogenated oils.

When we can, we travel about 1 1/2 to 2 hours (one way) to buy organically raised, grass-fed beef, beef liver, beef bones, and pork. But that's not as often as we would like because it is a long, expensive trip. The bones are for making beef broth/stock --a very healthy, nutrient-rich food.

The milk we drink is real milk, and we would like for more of our dairy products to be raw and organic.

We usually buy eggs that come from pastured or free-range hens. As for chicken meat, buying pastured chickens is just too expensive for us right now, so we would like to start raising our own chickens for meat and eggs. We've had a few laying hens in the past so that's no biggy. But we would have to learn how to "process" [slaughter & clean] chickens at home if we didn't want a meat locker telling us which parts of our own chickens we would be allowed to keep after they'd processed them. (They usually don't let you keep the feet, heads, etc. because they can sell these to ethnic markets and exporters.)

We want to do more wild harvesting of fruit, berries, and nuts, grow our own fruit trees and berry bushes (we have some planted but they're not producing, yet), and get our mature pecan trees to produce better. But even if they don't, with a little planning, we should be able to pick up all the pecans we want from some local trees we know about.

We need to eat a wider variety of meat --like lamb, game birds, more fish, and venison. The venison shouldn't be hard to find, here in the Southeast. But you pretty much have to be a hunter to get game birds inexpensively. And lamb may be a pipe dream, unless we raise our own. And though we do have the land to raise at least one lamb or miniature cow, none of us are familiar with animal husbandry so that's kind of a scary thought. LOL!

And I'm looking forward to adding tallow, schmaltz, and lard our list of cooking fats, but we haven't found affordable organic sources for them yet. I plan to ask the butcher about beef and pork fat the next time we make the trip. If I can get the raw fat from him then I will render it to make tallow and lard. To learn more about why we would include these supposedly unhealthy fats, click HERE.

The sweeteners we use are honey, maple syrup, molasses, stevia, and occasionally one of the varieties of unrefined sugar. Unrefined sugar isn't completely unrefined, it's just sugar that has not had all the molasses and nutrients removed in order to make it white and give it a more neutral flavor. It resembles brown sugar, but conventional brown sugar is just white sugar with some things added back in to make it brown and flavorful - it doesn't have the nutrients of the cane juice that it came from.

Another thing we need to eat more of is fermented and cultured foods. I used to make kombucha but I ruined the SCOBY's. Just recently, an OLF volunteered to send me some of her spares. So as soon as they arrive, I'll be in the 'bucha making bidness again!

We do eat organic, whole milk yogurt with live cultures, and I make kefir. I use the kefir in just about anything that I would use buttermilk in. But other than Pickle and myself, no one else in the family will drink it straight. Although, Rooster and SweetPea do get some in an occasional smoothie. So, I ought to get my act together and make some sauerkraut, more beet kvass, and try some of the recipes I have for fermented condiments and "pickled" veggies.

Now I must admit that during our yeast cleanse, things have been different. We buy stuff I would never normally buy, because it is "legal" on the diet, convenient, and keeps us all from feeling deprived. Also, Bull "has to have" sodas (I find myself craving them, too). So he brings home at least one 2 liter just about every weekend and we all partake. Usually he'll only bring home sodas that are made with sugar instead of HFCS. During the candida cleanse it has been only sodas sweetened with Splenda (which is one of those things I would normally avoid like the plague).

I know that some of the things I've talked about, need some 'splanin' but that will have to wait 'til another day and another post. I just wanted to get started on this topic and so this post is the first but not the last time I will talk about what I'm learning and trying to put into practice concerning real food and nutrition.

WR

I started this post a while back but couldn't post it 'cause I couldn't get the photos off the camera, and then after downloading them, I forgot about them for a while. So here's the conclusion to A Bird in the [S]and.

I said that I'd try to get pix of the baby Killdeer when they hatched. Well I was at my parents house when it happened, but Bull tried to get a few photos for me.

WR

Probiotics are a must, while on a Candida cleanse. You have to replace the Candida that you're killing off, with something that will compete against what remains and keep it at bay. Otherwise it will just keep growing back. I bought some probiotic supplements but I also make my own in the form of.... KEFIR!

Kefir is an odd word (but then, kefir is an odd beverage so it's only fitting). It doesn't follow English phonic rules. Of course, it's not an English word, so why should it?

When we try to apply our phonic rules to the word kefir we come up with kē'-fûr or KEE-fur. LOL! That sounds so funny to me! I'm a Southern gal, so I know what it's like to be laughed at for how you talk.... but, KEE-fur coming out of the mouths of otherwise very dignified folks, never fails to make me smirk. I sounds like a nickname I would have come up with in jr. high if I'd had any friends named Keith. "Hey! Keith... Keif-FEE... KEE-fur, meh man!"

But I've heard the correct pronunciation from a Russian acquaintance (also from recordings online) and apparently, it's pronounced with a short e and a short i sound, kě-fĭr' or keh-FEAR, with the emphasis on the second syllable. It sounds sort of mysterious and foreign, but pleasant. Not at all like an annoying nickname. LOL!

Well, enough of that...
Now, on to the kefir grains!

Beware: what you are about to see are kefir grains in their naked state... au naturel... nothin' on but a milk coat. Don't be afraid, they are harmless (and it is only a picture). In fact these ugly little fellows might become your best budd's. Some folks become very attached to their grains. I used to call mine Freddy, Fred, and Ed, but then they kept multiplying, so now I just call them The Bumpy Boys.

And these are they, er, them, er.... Here they are!

Or at least some of them. I recently decided to split up the gang and start making two batches at once. And so I photographed the process so I could do this little show and tell.

Now, on to the making of the kefir!
This is really simple, folks. Here's the equipment.

Kefir grains (in the Newman's Own jar), a clean spoon to get them out (oh, and a clean bowl, if you want to wash them --or take a picture of them), a clean jar for the new batch to percolate in, and milk (I use real milk and highly recommend it -- just look at the cream line on that milk! Yumm.).

After you've got all that together, fish out the grains with the clean spoon... [Now some folks are really upset at me right now 'cause I'm telling you that you can use a metal spoon. It's supposedly a no-no to let metal touch the grains. But I think that's been blown way out of proportion. Sure, it would be pretty dumb to store your kefir or kefir grains in a copper pot or some such thing --you'll kill 'em. But I don't think that a two second ride on a stainless steel spoon is going to leave a lasting impression on their health. Ok, now on with the show!]

...and either wash them off with filtered water (no chlorine! chlorine is used to kill microorganisms --Duh!) or just plop them in the clean jar. Some folks wash them every time. I washed them this time, but I usually don't. I read a study that said they are healthier and produce more probiotics if you don't wash them so often.

But let's say you washed them. Then, pour the milk in the jar up to where it starts to curve, and add the grains.

Put the lid on the jar, but don't tighten it too tight. You want air to be able to escape. And put the jar in a warm, but not hot, place. Shake the jar a few times in the next twenty-four hours (remember to tighten the lid first and loosen it after).

I usually leave the jar out for twelve hours, and then put it in the fridge for twelve, before using the kefir. But these two batches had to be left out longer because I was using fewer grains per batch.

The finished product should be slightly thick, kinda like a yogurt smoothie. And it will have a sharp taste, kinda like a mix between plain yogurt and buttermilk.

Now on to drinking the Kefir!
Here's a batch that's thru ripening. I had just poured some for Pickle and there he is drinking it.

Here's a picture to show you the characteristic pattern that forms when kefir washes down the sides of the jar.

Now on to more info!
Here's a website with more information about kefir than you ever wanted to know. Dom's Kefir In-Site

Here's to your health!
WR

You've heard the old saying, "A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush", but we've found that for these feathered friends its, "A bird in the sand...". They've made a nest out of a sandy spot in our side yard! As you can see, it's right out in the open, not hidden in a bush or a tree as most other birds prefer.

Bull saw a bird sitting on the ground one day about a week ago, and though it was hurt. So, he started over toward it and it started limping around with one of it's wings out, which looked for all the world as though he was right --it's wing was broken. Then he saw the egg.

There was a depression in the dirt and a single, speckled, egg was resting sweetly in it.

He called us all out to see it. I ran back in and got the camera and took a few pictures of the egg. And since the hen had long since given up on making us believe we could have a quick lunch if only we would follow her away from the nest, she and her mate were perched in some trees at the edge of our property.

We didn't know what kind of bird this was so I posted the pictures on WellTellMe and asked my OLFs [OnLine Friends] if they could, well, ...tell me. ;D

They said it was a killdeer. Killdeer make their nest on the ground in open areas and they will pretend to be injured in order to lure predators away from the nest. The eggs are camouflaged really well by the dark speckles. Even when you are standing very close to them, they are surprisingly hard to spot.

I looked up some info on them and found out that the hen lays one egg a day for four days before she starts incubating them. So, we had found them on day one.

I also found that the eggs incubate for four weeks! Bull was ok with that --no mowing the side yard for a month.The reason they incubate so much longer than other birds, is because Killdeer do not feed their young in the nest. The babies hatch and immediately start following mom and dad around hunting for food.

So I decided to take photos periodically, to document the experience... and so that, just maybe, I'll get a photo of the babies before they are gone.

I'll keep you posted.

WR

P.S. All the close-ups were taken with a "zoom" lens, I wasn't actually that close to the birds or the eggs. Also, if you look closely at the photos of the Daddy bird standing over the nest you can see the eggs on the ground between his feet.

Stand anywhere in my yard. Take a DEEP breath.... Hhhhmmmmm... smell that? That intoxicating fragrance is coming from my Gardenia bush. I only have one, but the breeze carries the sent all over the yard.

Here are instructions for making a diaper bag.
http://www.bundlesoflove.org/diaperpattern.htm

How to make a baby romper (onesie) from a t-shirt.
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Baby-Romper-from-a-T-Shirt

Instructions for making a newborn footed sleeper.
http://www.touchinglittlelives.org/nbsleeper.html

Here's a pattern for a footless sleeper for a preemie (4 to 6 lbs).
http://www.touchinglittlelives.org/prsleeper.html

Instructions for using a towel to make a bath robe for a baby. http://www.sewmuch4retirement.com/projects/babyrobe/babyrobe.html

Adult bath robe from towels.
http://www.ez-fit.com/bath_towel_robe.cfm

How to make a t-shirt dress.
http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/cr_kid_crafts/article/0,1789,HGTV_3256_1371470,00.html

Baby Booties
http://www.heatherbaileydesign.com/Booties.html

A different kind of baby booties.
Click Here

Great instructions on how to bind a quilt
http://heatherbailey.typepad.com/photos/continuous_quiltbinding/index.html

Really nice headbands
http://www.heatherbaileydesign.com/Headband.html

Instructions for Peasant Skirt
http://www.jcarolinecreative.com/Merchant2/peasantskirt_inst.html

Simple baby quilt (three for one --very easy --although, you do need specialized quilting tools)
http://quiltmaker.com/patterns/patt230.pdf

Hand Towel Bib
http://www.mormonchic.com/crafty/dsh_twl_bibs.asp

We dug our Elephant Garlic a few days ago. We didn't have a whole lot of it planted but we plan to turn around and plant cloves from all but the smallest bulbs next year. That way we can start to build up the amount of plants we have, from the same plants that we started with. These plants are kinda special to me 'cause they came from my grandparents garden and they have both passed on now.

I just wanted to brag on my Princess (SweetPea). She is learning to cook and one of the things we are doing is reading a book called The Mary Frances Cook Book, written by Jane Eayre Fryer in 1912. The author wrote several books about the Mary Frances character that were aimed at teaching children different skills. So, of course the cookbook is about learning to cook. You can read it online at http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/html/books/book_64.cfm

Here is one of the recipes, from that book, that SweetPea made...