I know these rustic chocolate chunks don’t look very pretty, but. . . they are soooooo delicious! I ran out of my homemade chocolate stash this past week so I had to make more. I didn’t have the patience to hunt down my cute Easter molds that I got from amazon years ago like the ones here and make Eastery-looking chocolates. That will have to happen this coming week, in time for Easter. The best thing about these chocolates, regardless of how they look, is that on top of being super yummy, they are not fattening, as long as you don’t eat them with carbs and exercise portion control ;-). Like, don’t eat the whole batch in one sitting! Which is hard to do by the way, because of the wholesome natural fat in them that is so satisfying and filling. Just stop eating when you are pleasantly satisfied, or barely satisfied, if you want to lose weight.
These are low carb chocolates. That means they are low on the glycemic index. I used the recipe from the Trim Healthy Mama cookbook. You can see variations of the THM recipe here. I like to use cocoa butter instead of coconut oil. I get it from iHerb.com for only $6, NOW brand. This is a super deal, as I used to pay $10 for the same size container at my local health food store, and on amazon the same stuff is over $9. I sometimes get different brands of cocoa butter other than NOW on amazon as well. The cocoa butter makes these chocolates taste like “real” chocolate when I do that. They are super easy to make and totally worth it to have on hand. A batch usually lasts me a week or so.
I melt the cocoa butter by gently heating the container it came in in a pot of water on low heat. While the cocoa butter is melting I get out a loaf pan and line it with wax paper or parchment paper. Then I mix the ingredients together and pour the mixture into the pan and set in the freezer for a few hours to harden. Then I lift out the wax paper, with the chocolate on top of the paper, peel the paper on the sides back, and cut or break into chunks. Oh my! eating a chunk of this chocolate, or two, or three, after a THM S meal is the perfect crowning touch to a lovely, nourishing, dining experience. I love, love the slight salty taste from mineral salt (I use RealSalt) mixed in with the chocolate-y taste and the smooth, fatty, velvety cocoa butter taste. It all combines to make heaven in my mouth!
I’ve also made chocolates using the wellnessmama.com recipe here. Those aren’t low carb though because they are made out of honey. If all you have is honey and coconut oil, not any of the special THM sweeteners or cocoa butter, then by all means make some chocolate that way. I am a firm believer that God made chocolate for women to be happy! If you are at your goal weight, then eating honey is OK now and then, according to the THM authors, Serene and Pearl. But if you want to lose weight, they recommend avoiding honey and using sugar alcohol sweeteners and stevia. Some people do claim to have lost weight using more whole foodsy ingredients of honey or maple syrup, and some of them are in a Facebook group called “THM Whole Foods Style.” I know that Wardee, over at traditionalcookingschool.com, says that she is OK with using stevia, the Sweet Leaf brand, and that she lost 30 lbs on the diet. So if you are a true food purist at heart, you might want to try the Sweet Leaf stevia, as the sweetener in your skinny chocolate. Forget the “doonks,” using a dollhouse-sized spoon for measuring the stevia! I have found that I need about 1 tsp of stevia per 1 tsp of cocoa because cocoa is so bitter. You will have to experiment with that, taste testing and adjusting before you put the chocolate to set in the pan.
Here’s a video of Pearl, one of the THM authors, explaining how to do another version of homemade chocolate. It’s a little bit different from the recipe I linked above in that it uses cream and peanut butter. Skip to the 5:17 mark if you want to get right down to the business of making chocolate with the recipe. The part before that is Pearl talking to her mom with some of the back story of the THM Plan, which is interesting but may be annoying if you have a chocolate craving that has to be dealt with right away! (Note, in the video Pearl recommends using NuNatural stevia, but it seems the general consensus around the THM community is that the company changed the way they make it and it no longer tastes as good as it used to. THM makes it own brand of stevia now, which you can find here, or you can find Sweet Leaf brand at your local Kroger chain, iHerb, or amazon.) Enjoy this recipe, and don’t forget to save some chocolate every week to chop up finely and use to make THM chocolate chip cookies!
If you want to branch out from making chocolate and want to try other healthful candy options, I love this post here by Wardee of “53 no junk candy” recipes you can use for Easter, or all year round.
Here are some variations of the THM Skinny Chocolate recipe here: coconut almond, peppermint protein, and peanut butter. Yum, yum, yum! I can’t wait to try those versions. Happy chocolate eating everybody as you get ready for Easter and then celebrate Easter! Remember, you can have your chocolate and still be healthy.
Have you noticed that if you don’t keep the wonder in your life alive, your brain starts to die? Your spirit too. That’s because your brain is part of your spirit. I really love this Ensign article that explains why it’s important to keep a sense of wonder alive. Wonder is part of staying humble to learn new things, whether it’s in regard to academic stuff, like studying how lightning travels upwards, the history of Machu Picchu, or nurturing your testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.
I have been a stay-at-home mom for over 23 years. I love it because of the freedom I have everyday to listen/watch/read about new ideas and share new ideas with my kiddos during our homeschooling day. After high school, I went to college, and then after college I worked temporary jobs until I got a permanent position working as a lab assistant for a medical professor at the University of Utah. I worked the 9 to 5 grind analyzing radioisotopes until two weeks before my first baby was born, then I quit my job to be a SAHM.
I distinctly remember the day I graduated from college, which was back in April of 1992, hey that means I am coming up on my 25 year anniversary! I was so happy that I had accomplished my dream of getting my bachelor’s degree, and even happier that I could now read whatever I wanted to without feeling “guilty” that I was taking time away from all the assigned reading and writing I had to do for school. I felt such freedom to read whatever I wanted. I felt like a kid in a candy store!
Here is a list of some of the things I do for intellectual stimulation to nurture my happy, inquisitive, curious self as I go through my chores and supervise my kids in their homeschooling tasks and pleasures. If I don’t keep a constant flow of new ideas streaming into me, I’ve noticed I get bored, grumpy, cynical, and despondent. My life feels bleak and nihilistic. I start to drag my feet to do household chores. But when I can listen to something while I work, suddenly life is so much easier, and more fun and meaningful, so that I breeze through my chores. Chores like fixing dinner, mopping with my kids, or cleaning out my fridge become enjoyable. I let my kids listen to stuff too while they work when I feel too busy to read aloud to them and it helps them work faster too. I love having the audible app on my phone to help with that.
So here is my list. These are listed in random order of subjects, not according to preference. I love them all, to say I have a favorite would be to say I have a favorite of my seven children.
Podcasts/things to listen to (search in your iTunes store or stitcher to subscribe):
More Academic Stuff
-The Tom Woods Show, a libertarian perspective on economy and other stuff. Last Friday’s episode had my three favorite libertarian celebrities: Tom Woods, Connor Boyack, and Ron Paul, all in one episode! You can also listen on YouTube (as is the case for some of these other podcasts)
-Wallbuilders Live, this gives me a conservative, Christian perspective on current events as well as America’s founding period.
–Classical 89’s Thinking Aloud. This gives me very interesting insights into a wide variety of topics, from music, to economics, to politics, to philosophy. I almost bought a used car from the host, Marcus Smith. As soon I heard his voice, I recognized him from this show. I thoroughly enjoyed chatting with him and found out he knows my dad.
-the Dave Ramsey Show
-The Dangerous History Podcast
-Classic Tales. This podcast just did Pride and Prejudice, in several episodes. Highly enjoyable!
-Read Aloud Revival
-The Luminous Mind, by my homeschooling friend Rebecca Bohman
-Wise Traditions, the podcast for the Weston A. Price organization
–The Apple Seed from byutv. This podcast features my high school classmate, Sam Payne, pictured below, telling delightful stories from near and far. I love it!
LDS Stuff
-I love, love, love to listen to General Conference and Ensign magazine articles and stories on my Gospel Library App. These aren’t podcasts but I am listing them here anyway because they have an audio format. During breakfast time I play Friend and New Era stories for my children. It is sooo interesting and fun to hear all these stories and talk about them. They make me cry and laugh. I hear about people living the gospel and having their prayers answered, and see the hand of God in their lives.
-The Mormon Channel podcast
-BYU Speeches
-BYU-Idaho Speeches
Books on Audible
here are some deals, of which we picked up a few, like Anne of Green Gables and the Green Ember. I also got The Seventh Sense on Audible because I was reading the book for the Liber Communities Summit. I find it hard to make a ton of time for reading so I am so grateful that I can often find books I am reading on Audible and switch back and forth, and listen while driving or doing housework or grooming.
Things to Watch:
First, stuff on youtube. Here is some academic stuff:
Universal Model videos to explain a much needed model for science based on natural law, not theories.
–Roman Roads Media, full of videos about the classics from a Catholic perspective. I’m LDS, not Catholic, but I find these videos useful for understanding the classics.
–The Great Books, from the Great Books TV series that was on cable TV in the ’90s. These are more useful videos for understanding the classics of the western world.
–The Ten Boom Institute, founded by my friends Blaine and Audrey Rindslisbacher. These are video book reviews of classics, both for kids and adults.
Mises Media, to get a liberty-based perspective on economy, philosophy, and politics
Crash Course, I take the secular humanism of the Green brothers with a grain of salt because I like the quick synopses of literature, science, philosophy, history, and more.
Wallbuilders, again, I like David Barton’s Christian perspective. I also find other YouTube videos by Wallbuilders founder David Barton by simply doing a YouTube search for his name.
LDS Stuff on YouTube
This one below about DNA Evidence and the Book of Mormon is my current favorite. It is almost 4 hours long and took me a week to finish it but it was so worth it, it’s so fascinating! I am intrigued by the “Heartland Model” of Book of Mormon geography. I’m not ready to accept it as gospel truth but it is fun to think about.
–Latter-day Learning. These are videos put out by American Heritage School, an LDS-based private school that LaDawn Jacob‘s parents helped to start. You can watch videos of their conferences, including the most recent one here.
–Hard to Find Mormon Videos. Oooh, this channel is full of gems! It has some oldies but goodies,that I can’t find anywhere else, like “The Phone Call” and the “Free to Choose” series from my 10th grade seminary days when we studied the Book of Mormon. Plus old BYU film productions. It also has some old church firesides and The Fourth Witness, a video about Mary Whitmer, who was the fourth witness to the plates that the Book of Mormon was translated from.
–YabbaDabbaDooTheChurchisTrue Don’t you just love that name? This is another gem of a YouTube channel, featuring the oldies but goodies Mormon films, like “Spiritual Crocodiles” and “The Mediator” below. But wait there’s more, it has firesides by church speakers, like John Bytheway and Troy Dunn and George Durrant. Wow! These make for great watching, especially on the Sabbath Day for my kids, and we can listen to the firesides on car trips when I have them captive. It also has audio goodies for adults, like a lot of Truman Madsen lectures. Wow, I think it must be someone who is an insider of Deseret Book?
–BYU Religious Education Channel The BYU Easter Conference has videos here, as part of the BYU Religious Education Channel. It also has videos from the Sidney Sperry Symposium and the BYU Scripture Roundtable discussions.
–BYU Virtual Tours. This channel has tons of cool videos showing places where American history and LDS Church history happened.
–BYU Maxwell Institute. These videos show the Institute’s work in weaving faith and scholarship together.
–C.S. Lewis Doodles. These videos take C.S. Lewis writings and have a narrator speaking the words while someone draws out the ideas. They are so wonderful!
–The Kid Should See This, this is a supercool site that curates the best videos about science, nature, and technology, suitable for children to watch.
I joined the Trim Healthy Mama membership site so I have been watching the “In the Kitchen” videos as well to increase my cooking skills regarding fuel separation. Sometimes the two sisters get a little too cackly and chirpy when they interrupt each other, but overall I enjoy these. After cooking almost three meals a day for over 25 years, it is great to get more inspiration, especially on how to cook tasty food for a large family and lose weight at the same time.
I love all the shows from BYUTV, like American Ride and The Food Nanny and Relative Race. There’s so much more than Studio C. Great stuff! YouTube has some clips from these shows.
Things to Read:
Of course first comes the scriptures, which I focus on first for the day. I make it a point to have my scriptures be the first text that I lay my eyes on every morning. After the scriptures, I read blogs and Kindle books, listen to audiobooks on CD and the audible app, and read old-fashioned print books. I like the video above by a vlogger Heather who gives great tips on how to read when you are a mom. I’ve done most of them!
–mormonmomma.com, done by an acquaintance, Alison Moore Smith, from whom I bought my used piano back in 2005. She is a veteran homeschooler mom and highly opinionated. I just love highly opinionated people when I agree with them most of the time, LOL. When I don’t agree I still appreciate their energy, if I think they are at least half-right.
–momdelights.com This is a woman who went from a U.S. soldier to a mom of 15 kids! I love her easygoing tips on frugal living, homeschooling, and practical crafts, like how to do download McGuffey Readers and then put pretty bindings on them. Something I fantasize about doing, haven’t found the time to do it yet!
Then I have my books, which I love to collect by finding killer deals of classics at thrift stores. I often share what we are reading here on this blog, like here.
In the past few months, since 2017 started, I have finished The Seventh Sense, like I mentioned above, and Before Green Gables, the prequel to Anne of Green Gables. With both of those books, what helped me “get through” them was having audio versions. I got the Seventh Sense on audible and Before Green Gables on CDs from the library. I would not have been able to “read” them without those audio versions.
I am having an online discussion for Before Green Gables, so please go here and make a comment if you want to join the online discussion. It had lots of sad parts but what do you expect, Anne was an orphan in rural Canada! Even though it was sad it was a joy to read because it gave depth to all that happens in the Green Gables book. Some of my girlfriends in my book club said they wanted to throw the book out the window because of all the sadness, but I just knew that Anne would overcome all the sadness, and she did!
I have kept track of a sliver of what I have read in my life, on goodreads.com, and would love to be your friend there. So sign up please and friend me! I love to get book recommendations from friends.
My super wonderful friend Jonell, from my Veggie Gals group, tells you how to fix a leaky gut in this video. Jonell had terrible health problems until she learned how to fix her gut. Now she climbs mountains and builds snow caves with her kids, all 9 of them, and is about to become a grandma!
This recipe is inspired by the Trim Healthy Mama Pancakes from the THM cookbook, p. 259. It gives you pancakes that look and taste like IHOP white flour pancakes, but they aren’t. They use no wheat flour at all, white flour or whole wheat. They don’t spike your blood sugar like those ones. These pancakes are basically made out of cottage cheese, oats, and egg whites. I have tweaked the THM recipe a bit to involve soaking the oats overnight to neutralize phytic acid in the oats. I also just use stevia powder, instead of the THM Super Sweet blend. The recipe makes a single serving, which means two large pancakes or three medium ones.
The night before you want pancakes, soak 1/3 c oats in 1/3 c lowfat cottage cheese.
The next day, put mixture in blender.
Add to blender and mix well:
3 egg whites
1/2 t baking powder
1 t stevia powder
2 pinches mineral salt
1/3 t vanilla
Generously spray your griddle with coconut oil spray or melt butter in it. Pour batter onto hot griddle. Flip when bubbles break.
Top pancakes with my new recipe for stretching maple syrup, which is below.
Boil together:
1/2 c maple syrup (a no-no on the THM diet plan, but since I am maintaining weight right now I use it)
2 cups water
1/4 t mineral salt
1 tsp molasses
After you bring this all to a boil, whisk in:
1/2 t glucomannan powder
Taste and adjust the salt and sweetener so you have the right balance of sweet and salty.
I also love to top them with 0% Greek yogurt and blueberries. As I eat the pancakes, sometimes I keep adding more berries and yogurt and syrup and sprinkle stevia powder on top of all of it to stretch out the goodness. Yum!
In the original THM book, which combines the details of the plan with the recipes, you get the back story to this recipe. The authors explain that they got their THM pancake recipe from a friend who had a carb addiction, specifically to pancakes. She loved them, so much she ate pancakes every day. But she knew she needed to lose weight by cutting out refined grains and sugars that she was used to eating at her restaurant meals. She searched high and low for a nutritious pancake recipe that wouldn’t spike her blood sugar, knowing that if she could eat non-refined grain pancakes every day, she could stay on the whole foods diet bandwagon . She came up with this recipe using oats and cottage cheese and started eating them every day, and she lost 40 lbs! Who has ever heard of losing weight eating pancakes every day! I love it!
OK, so this book is giving me my non-fiction fix for several months! I have posted about the Universal Model before, with the podcast that came out interviewing the creator of the UM, Dean Sessions, here, and then the magical night when I got to meet Dean in person here. After that meeting, I got the digital copy of Vol 1, but I still found it hard to get around to reading it. So….I am so happy to announce that now the summary of the Universal Model, written by Dean’s daughter, Brooke, is available in Kindle format! This is so exciting!!! Now I can read it right on the Kindle app on my phone! You can get it here, free if you have Kindle Unlimited, $4.95 if you don’t. A total deal either way!
I am starting a Universal Model Online Discussion Group. We will be meeting on a Wednesday in each of the next two months to discuss this. So come join us! The first meeting will be:
Wednesday April 19
7 to 9 PM Utah time
We will discuss the first four chapters of the Summary for the April meeting.
May’s meeting will be the last four chapters
Then I think we will take a summer break and dive into discussing Volume 1 in September
The Universal Model makes the following claims, check them out!
20 UM Extraordinary Claims & Discoveries:
1. The entire world has been in a Scientific Dark Age for more than a century
during which not even one significant new natural law has been
discovered..
2. The idea that our Earth is not a magmaplanet, and that magma itself is a pseudotheory.
3. The modern-science Rock Cycle is a pseudotheory.
4. Many mysteries exist in geology today because the true origin of rocks
is not understood.
5. Major catastrophic events occurred in the past which affected and have shaped the Earth in ways never observed by modern science.
6. More scientific evidence exists about the Universal Flood than any other global geologic event in Earth’s history.
7. The Hydroplanet Model explains the origin of the volume of water necessary for the Universal Flood.
8. Modern Science does not understand the true origin of weather, including the true origin of lightning, auroras and the Earth’s energy field.
9. The modern science dating system is fatally flawed and its faulty dates must be replaced with verifiable dates before we can understand when natural events actually occurred.
10. Because the Earth’s age has been based on the dating of allegedly magmatic (igneous) rocks, the Earth’s age estimates are incorrect.
11. Active, in-process fossils do not exist anywhere in Nature.
12. The fossil layers that supposedly succeed one another in the same evolutionary order do not exist anywhere in Nature.
13. The Evolution Pseudotheory is a belief, not science, which denies natural laws and mingles truth with error.
14. Without measurement, there can be no science and some of the most fundamental measurements in modern science are incorrect.
15. Modern science does not have the correct definitions for mass, weight, length, time, energy or matter.
16. The Theory of Relativity is a pseudotheory.
17. The true nature of the atom and its structure is delineated.
18. The origin of the dual nature of light is explained for the first time.
19. A new Revolutionary Universe Model is shown to replace the Big Bang Pseudotheory which has contributed to the current Scientific Dark Age.
20. The true origin of most meteors, meteorites, and craters are set forth and demonstrated to be different than currently taught in modern science.
All this and much more is summarized in this small book which directs its readers to explore the complete story of the Universal Model: a New Millennial Science.
Fascinating right?! Maybe not, if you are not a science fan like I am. Even if you aren’t, get your geek on and come join us on Wed. April 19 to discuss! Comment below so I put you down for me to send you the link to the video classroom.
I finished this book! Remember when I posted here that I was reading it? Well, I finally finished it, on top of all the other stuff I have been doing, like reading the Seventh Sense (another book review for another day). It was “positively providential” that I discovered it in January as it turned many a plain day into a satisfying one. It is the story of Anne of Green Gables before she comes to live with Marilla and Matthew on Prince Edward Island. It is written by a Canadian author, Budge Wilson, who was authorized by the heirs of L.M. Montgomery to write the book. It is just as delightful as L.M.’s books! So if you love the Anne books, you will probably love this one too. I am quite picky about works that are inspired by Montgomery’s books, whether they be books or movies. I loved Kevin Sullivan’s first two “movie miniseries” productions, “Anne of Green Gables,” and “Anne of Avonlea,” even though the latter strayed a bit more from the books than the first one.
But the third one…”Anne of Green Gables, the Continuing Story,” ugh! I didn’t even bother to watch it after hearing from my sister that it was not faithful to the books at all. She described the plotline to me and it left me thoroughly disgusted that the movie writers strayed from the original story. These two quotes from reviewers on amazon sum up my thoughts exactly:
Please pretend like this Continuing Story was never filmed and don’t watch it. Terrible and unnecessary third installment. End your Anne experience with the Anne of Green Gables Sequel and you will have lovely memories of Anne, Gilbert, Marilla and Matthew to sustain you.
and then this quote:
My dislike is that this story has nothing to do with the original Anne books. It is like they took a completely different script idea and threw Anne and Gilbert into the mix just to sell the movie. If you want to know what happens after Anne of Avonlea then just read the books. Don’t bother with this one.
I agree! It wasn’t Gilbert who fought in WWI, it was one of Anne’s sons. Anne was never a spy in Europe, and Gilbert never vanished. The very idea! So I refused to even watch a smidgen, and have gone on my way, thinking that there were no more faithful works sparked by the original story. I have been so sad that there hasn’t been more to feed my fascination with Anne. I read the whole series of 8 books in my teen years, plus almost all of the other books that Lucy Maud wrote, such as Emily of New Moon, Chronicles of Avonlea 1 and 2, Kilmeny of the Orchard, The Story Girl, and Magic for Marigold. I also enjoyed watching some of the episodes of “The Road to Avonlea,” based on The Story Girl, when I could find them. I thought I had read everything there is relating to Anne. Then I discovered Before Green Gables and I got it on CD from my local public library. If you can get it the book on CD, snatch it up! The narrator, Rene Raudman, does a beautiful job bringing Anne to life. I love all the voices she has for the different characters of the story.
For my local book club, we are discussing this book next week, but I also want to discuss it with my blog readers too. So come join me for an online discussion!
Wednesday April 26, 2017
7 PM Utah Time
comment below and I will send you the link to the video chatroom
Now go get the book and dig in! You will learn about where Katie Maurice came from, how Anne knew how to get Minnie May through the dark night of whooping cough, and how Anne got such an active imagination. The book starts before Anne’s birth, and goes right up to the day when Matthew picks her up at the Bright River station.
Btw, I found that audible has the Anne of Green Gables audiobook for sale, performed by Rachel McAdams, so I have been listening to it everyday with the kiddos. They are finally getting exposed to it in liberal doses! It sounds much better than when I read it, which they have studiously resisted. I had forgotten how the book has so much more meaning and nuance than the movie. So go get that too! You buy the Kindle version first for $1.98, then you can add Audible narration for $1.98 on top of that. What a deal! This page by podcaster and homeschooling mom Sarah Mackenzie explains how to get it. It was so fun to listen to Before Green Gables to the very end with my kids, and while their minds were wondering what happened next, switch right over to the rest of the story in Anne of Green Gables in audible format. I love, love, love having audiobooks on my phone with the Audible app!
Enjoy and see you on Wednesday April 26 for a discussion!
Last weekend for our date night movie, it was my turn to pick, so my husband and I watched the above documentary called “A Courtship.” You can watch it here for free if you have Amazon Prime. My husband wasn’t that thrilled to watch it but he was a good sport and watched it anyway.He probably thought it was going to be as fun as watching paint dry. I think he ended up liking it. It’s a real life story of a young woman named Kelly. She is in her 30s and has decided that she is tired of dating. She wants to be courted and get married. She also intends to save physical intimacy, including kissing, for her wedding day. Part of this desire stems from seeing her own parents’ marriage fall apart when she was just leaving for college. As a ballet teacher, she lives several states away from her mom and stepdad so she asks an older man in her church, a husband to Dawn, and father of two young girls, to be her spiritual father and screen her potential suitors. So anytime anyone asks her out, they have to be interviewed by him and pass his scrutiny. It was fun to watch his body language as he sized the main suitor featured in the documentary. Ron, the spiritual father, and his wife, Dawn, asked Kelly to move in with them. So the documentary shows a lot about their household, how it runs, and their conservative beliefs. They actually run the website, beforethekiss.com, which sells products to encourage Christian courtship, such as the book pictured below.
It was also fun to watch for the different features of their conservative homeschooling life that I recognize in my own life such as the picture book, The Princess and the Kiss, that Dawn read aloud to her daughters. Hey, I have read that aloud to my kids! (Also the companion book, The Squire and the Scroll.) Then there was the scene with Dawn sitting in a chair, reading a book with an Interlibrary loan label on it, and then a scene with the Duggars second book pictured on the stack of Kelly’s books on her nightstand. It was also fun to feel anticipation with Kelly when she got excited about seeing Ross again and texting him back and forth, and then having him over for family dinners so they could all observe him interacting with the family. I also liked watching Ron interact with Ross over “guy toys,” like an RC helicopter. I also learned something new, haha, which is, when you want to talk over something privately as a married couple, go sit in your minivan in the garage to do it! LOL! I’ve never thought of that one before.
I won’t spoil the documentary for you by giving away the ending. You can watch the preview above. I enjoyed the whole thing because it was sweet, touching and thought-provoking. Ron and his wife Dawn are such loving people to be willing to open up their home to someone outside their immediate family and provide guidance. The ending really gave me material to think about, like, would the same thing have happened if Ron and Dawn weren’t involved? Would Kelly have ended up being disappointed and frustrated or would something worse have happened if she had continued with the path her heart wanted? What is the role of parents/spiritual parents in guiding the courtship process? What is the role of a young lady in courtship? Is it OK for her to set her sights on a guy and ask him out? Is it OK for her to just sit back and totally wait for a young man to show up and ask her? I am going to have my older kids watch this and we will be discussing it by video conferencing.
The other night we celebrated dh’s birthday. Oh my, the food was heavenly. I fixed the Trim Healthy Mama Smarty Pants Stroganoff, which is on p. 44 of the THM Cookbook. So good!!!! I ate it on top of sliced sauteed cabbage and the rest of the family ate theirs with plain old pasta. I felt exquisitely nourished from the tips of my toes to the crown of my head when I had my first bite. Then even more so as I continued to eat it. I felt I was dining so luxuriously! My hubby liked it too, I could tell by the adoring looks he was giving me from across the dinner table. For dessert, he had requested mint chocolate chip ice cream to use up the leftover Thin Mints he bought from the Girl Scouts last month. He always has a soft heart for buying Girl Scout cookies. I would rather save the money and make my own cookies, especially since I usually almost always want to avoid white sugar, refined grains, and hydrogenated oils.
Anyway, I combined two recipes to come up with what is pictured above: The recipe from the Trim Healthy Mama cookbook, called Creamy Indulgent Ice Cream, p. 346, and Mommypotamus’ Mint Chocolate Chip recipe here. The ice cream that came from my spur-of-the moment combo of the two recipes was so delicious. I did relax my purist standards and ate a generous serving. It tasted like a bite of spring, zippy and creamy and satisfying in every bite! You can’t see the Thin Mint crumbles, but they are in there! Next time I will stir them in by hand so they don’t get pulverized by the stirring of the ice cream maker.
So here is my recipe for Healthful Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream:
1 qt cream (or do coconut milk if you want to be dairy free)
6 egg yolks
1 qt water, or 1 qt milk (use water if you want more icy, or milk or cream if you want more creamy)
1 c sucanat or demara sugar, ground fine in a blender. This makes the brown color less brown so it doesn’t clash too much with the green look that you want. If you want this sugar free then use your favorite low glycemic sweetener to taste. You need quite a bit of sugar to mask the spinach leaves and avos (Shh, don’t tell the kids you are putting in spinach and avocados!)
2 tsp gelatin, bloomed or softened in 4 t cold water and then mixed with 4 t hot water. Make sure this is fully dissolved/blended in. I didn’t and we had little chunks of undissolved gelatin in the ice cream, ugh. Maybe next time I will have to blend this mixture separately in a blender
4 small avocados
2 handfuls of spinach leaves
10 drops peppermint essential oil
Mix the avocado and the spinach in with the cream in a blender. Blend until the spinach leaves are as fine as you want and you have a pretty lime green color. If the green is not dark enough for you, add more spinach leaves until it is. Or you could add liquid chlorophyll, and if it’s mint flavor, then that’s a bonus, for you won’t have to add as much peppermint EO. Transfer to a stand mixer bowl and add all of the other ingredients. Mix until well blended. Taste and adjust to your preference. Pour into your ice cream maker. Any that’s leftover just pour into a plastic container and freeze. Follow the ice cream maker’s directions. Towards the end of stirring the ice cream in the ice cream maker, add crushed up Thin Mints or your favorite sugar-free chocolate, like the THM skinny chocolate or Wellness Mama’s chocolate here. Or stir in by hand if you think they will be pulverized. Enjoy!
We are almost done reading aloud the classic book Laddie by Gene Stratton-Porter, my three littles and I! They are ages 12, 11, and 7. This book has antiquated language so my kids haven’t been overly thrilled with it. It’s one of those books that you have to chew and digest instead of a twaddle book, where you can get what’s in there with half-hearted reading or listening. Truth be told, they groan every time I have announced that I am going to read it aloud. But once we get into a chapter, and hear the main character, Little Sister, talk about how much she hates being cooped up in the schoolhouse when she would rather be outdoors, I think they start to relate. 🙂 I think they also like the descriptions of family life with the different events. Although they haven’t admitted it, I think they like the different stories about farm life, like the fate of one of the geese.
This book has soooo many good quotes about whole family roles, true love, and courtship. In other words, it shows what it looks like to find happiness as a husband and father, a wife and mother, a son or a daughter. It also has quotes about how to use leisure time wisely, the importance of education and the classics, loving your neighbor, and being God-honoring. If all my children go about courtship, like Laddie did, I will be sooo over the moon! This book also has great quotes about marriage and shows a vision of a great marriage. I love how Little Sister’s parents are so in love with each other. And that they have worked so hard to create a beautiful homestead and farm where everyone wants to be. The story shows that they have succeeded with this because one of the older sisters decides that she would rather have her wedding in her childhood home than anywhere else.
I am looking forward to our online discussion on Wed. March 29 at 7 PM Utah time. If didn’t already comment on this blog post here when I first announced the discussion, then please comment on this blog post in the comments section below. I am compiling a list of people interested in the discussion, and I will email you the link to the online classroom so you can join me for the discussion.
“Is he well educated?”
“Yes, I think so, as far as he’s gone,” I answered. “Of course he will go on being educated every day of his life, same as father. He says it is all rot about ‘finishing’ your education. You never do. You learn more important things each day…”
― Gene Stratton-Porter, Laddie: A True Blue Story
“When it grew cold enough to shut the doors, and have fire at night, first thing after supper all of us helped clear the table, then we took our slates and books and learned our lessons for the next day, and then father lined us against the wall, all in a row from Laddie down, and he pronounced words—easy ones that divided into syllables nicely, for me, harder for May, and so up until I might sit down. For Laddie, May and Leon he used the geography, the Bible, Roland’s history, the Christian Advocate, and the Agriculturist. My, but he had them so they could spell! After that, as memory tests, all of us recited our reading lesson for the next day, especially the poetry pieces. I knew most of them, from hearing the big folks repeat them so often and practice the proper way to read them. I could do “Rienzi’s Address to the Romans,” “Casablanca,” “Gray’s Elegy,” or “Mark Antony’s Speech,” but best of all, I liked “Lines to a Water-fowl.” When he was tired, if it were not bedtime yet, all of us, boys too, sewed rags for carpet and rugs. Laddie braided corn husks for the kitchen and outside door mats, and they were pretty, and “very useful too,” like the dog that got his head patted in McGuffey’s Second.”
― Gene Stratton-Porter, Laddie: A True Blue Story
“Secrets with Laddie were the greatest joy in life. He was so big and so handsome. He was so much nicer than any one else in our family, or among our friends, that to share his secrets, run his errands, and love him blindly was the greatest happiness. Sometimes I disobeyed father and mother; I minded Laddie like his right hand”
― Gene Stratton-Porter, Laddie: A True Blue Story
“Father said man was born a praying animal, and no matter how wicked he was, if he had an accident, or saw he had just got to die, he cried aloud to the Lord for help and mercy before he knew what he was doing.”
― Gene Stratton-Porter, Laddie: A True Blue Story
“A lady must be born of unsullied blood for at least three generations, on each side of her house. Think for a minute about where you are going to fulfil that condition. Then she must be gentle by nature, and rearing. She must know all there is to learn from books, have wide experience to cover all emergencies, she must be steeped in social graces, and diplomatic by nature. She must rise unruffled to any emergency, never wound, never offend, always help and heal, she must be perfect in deportment, virtue, wifehood and motherhood. She must be graceful, pleasing and beautiful. She must have much leisure to perfect herself in learning, graces and arts—”
― Gene Stratton-Porter, Laddie: A True Blue Story
“Had I life to live over, I see now where I could do more; but neighbour, believe me, my highest aspiration is to be a clean, thrifty housekeeper, a bountiful cook, a faithful wife, a sympathetic mother. That is life work for any woman, and to be a good woman is the greatest thing on earth. Never mind about the ladies; if you can honestly say of me, she is a good woman, you have paid me the highest possible tribute.”
― Gene Stratton-Porter, Laddie: A True Blue Story
“I was ignorant at first of bookish subjects, but in his atmosphere, if one were no student, and didn’t even try to keep up, or forge ahead, they would absorb much through association.”
― Gene Stratton-Porter, Laddie: A True Blue Story
“This is a house of worship. The Lord may be drawing her in His own way. It is for us to help Him by being kind and making her welcome.”
― Gene Stratton-Porter, Laddie: A True Blue Story
“They knew so well how it felt, that they kept one bed in the boys’ room, and any man who came at dusk got his supper, to sleep there, and his breakfast, and there never was anything to pay. The girls always scolded dreadfully about the extra washing, but mother said she slept on sheets when she came out, and some one washed them.”
― Gene Stratton-Porter, Laddie: A True Blue Story
“My mother was the best and most beautiful woman who ever lived. She was clean, and good, and always helped “the poor and needy who cluster round your door,” like it says in the poetry piece, and there never could have been a reason why God would want a woman to suffer herself, when she went flying on horseback even dark nights through rain or snow, to doctor other people’s pain, and when she gave away things like she did—why, I’ve seen her take a big piece of meat from the barrel, and a sack of meal, and heaps of apples and potatoes to carry to Mandy Thomas—when she gave away food by the wagonload at a time, God couldn’t have wanted her to be hungry, and yet she was that very minute almost crying for food;”
― Gene Stratton-Porter, Laddie: A True Blue Story
See what I mean? I could you not love this book if you give it a chance! So come join us to talk about and enjoy its loveliness even more! See you Wed. March 29 at 7 PM Utah time!
I talked to Dean Sessions today. He’s the creator of the Universal Model, featured in the podcast interview above. He told me that a summary of the Universal Model in digital form is available for free, for a few days at least. He said that later this week it will go on amazon and be 99 cents.
So, if you have been wanting to learn about a model of science that allows for the Universal Flood, natural law, and God as Creator, go snag a copy of this summary! It condenses all three volumes of the Universal Model into 90 pages. Go here to the website and sign up for the newsletter in the box so that you can get a copy.
In the video above, we learn that Volume I of the Universal Model has at least six new words to explain concepts introduced. These are concepts behind natural laws that explain what modern science can’t explain. Modern science doesn’t have the complete picture.
The video below tells you how to order Volume I in print, if you want the uncondensed version of Volume I. This model of science is fascinating! I got the digital copy, and my 11 year old daughter begs to read it at least twice a week!
![SUMMARY: An Introduction to the Universal Model: A New Millennial Science by [McKay, Brooke E.]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51FUMIuTDgL.jpg)
Tree of Life Mothering 