Tree of Life Mothering

Here’s a great pumpkin bread recipe that uses natural yeast to make the wheat flour more digestible. When I make something for dinner to use up leftovers in the fridge, I often make bread pudding or a treat like this pumpkin bread as a dessert for my kids.  That way I have something to bribe them to eat the less appealing entree.

Start this pumpkin bread the morning of the day when you plan to serve the bread for after dinner. Or get it going the night before. You use natural yeast to make a “sponge” with flour and milk that you let sit for several hours, for the yeast to act upon the dry flour you add to the sponge. This allows the natural yeast to neutralize the phytic acid in the whole grain flour. This allows the whole grain to be much more nutritious for you. If you don’t know how to make natural yeast, here is the best book ever to teach you:

and here are some video tutorials by one of the authors, Melissa Richardson, on this blog post over here. Melissa’s blog over here also will teach you how to  make natural yeast.

OK, on to the recipe:

Natural Yeast Pumpkin Bread

Mix the following the night or morning before you plan to serve:

1 cup natural yeast starter

1 c buttermilk (you can substitute 1 c milk with 1 T apple cider vinegar)

1/2 c sucanat

1 t salt

2 c flour

The next day, or several hours later cream the first three ingredients and then add the rest and mix together:

1/2 c melted butter

3/4 c sucanat (whole brown sugar, can buy from amazon.com or azurestandard.com)

2 eggs

1 c pureed pumpkin

1/4 t cinnamon

1/4 t cloves

1/4 t nutmeg

1 t baking soda

Add chocolate chips or chopped nuts if you like.

Pour batter into two greased loaf pans. Bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes until a knife inserted comes out clean. Enjoy!

Here’s a free Kindle book (at the time of publication) full of recipes for pumpkin-y baked goods. It’s not totally whole foodsy, so I suggest a few substitutions:

• melted butter for canola or other vegetable oil
• sucanat for sugar
• maybe raw milk with a bit of sugar added for the sweetened condensed milk
• bone broth for the vegetable broth

Oooh, boy, I have been waiting for autumn to come to share this recipe! It is the perfect fall treat! It’s warm and comfy and spicy and soooo satisfying!  I know it kind of looks like some kind of fried chicken with gravy, but it’s actually a dessert!  It’s Buttery Lemon Bread Pudding with the most delicious sauce ever. I don’t always even save it for a treat, sometimes we have it for breakfast! Chockfull of goodness, it has lots of healthful fat, protein, and carbs from healthful sourdough bread, which makes the grain more digestible.

This is the best thing to serve on a gray, drizzly fall morning when the family doesn’t want to get going. I feel more motivated to get out of bed when I think about the lovely, spicy smells that come wafting out of the oven when it’s baking. It does take a long time to bake, sometimes up to an hour,  however, so plan accordingly.  As a bonus, It also uses up all of your leftover stale bread.

I remember eating a white bread version of this at my baby sister’s home two years ago, when we had a Girls’ Night Out involving the LDS General Women’s meeting. My sister’s wonderful husband made it. I felt like swooning after eating one bite, it was so amazing!

So I was delighted to find out how to make this recipe with whole wheat sourdough bread to make it  whole-foodsy. I’ve been making bread out of natural yeast for years now, with a recipe from The Art of Baking With Natural Yeast that I modified to work with my breadmachine. I like to toss any heels from the loaf or pieces that get toasted and then not eaten, into a breadbox in my cupboard, after I tear up the pieces. I leave the lid off the container so that the bread dries out. After the breadbox is full, it’s time to make bread pudding. Yum! You never have to throw out any old bread pieces again!

(Note: lately my old pieces of bread have been turning moldy. This didn’t use to happen. Supposedly naturally-yeasted/sourdough bread is not supposed to go moldy as fast as regular homemade bread, but that’s not holding true around here.  I am not sure why it’s happening now, but I will be throwing the torn up pieces of bread into a ziploc bag in the freezer on from now. Also, the above picture looks crumbly because I used stale bread chunks pulverized in the blender. I like to store bread crumbs in the freezer and use for various recipes. I used old torn up pieces of bread for the bottom layer, and ran out, but I still had lots of bread crumbs, so I used those.)

So here’s the recipe:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Butter an 8 x8 baking dish, or a circular dish like the one in the picture. Then fill it up with torn up pieces of stale sourdough bread. Make sure the bread chunks are submerged in the liquid so they will be soft and not rock hard after baking. If you have a big family, like more than 6 people, you might want to use a 9×13 dish and double all the ingredients listed below.

Mix together the following:

3 eggs

3 c milk

1/4 c sucanat (you can buy sucanat from Amazon or azurestandard.com. Sucanat is whole brown sugar with all of the vitamins and minerals from the sugar cane intact.)

1 T vanilla extract

2-10 drops of lemon essential oil, depending on how lemony you want your pudding

2 T melted butter

1/2 t cinnamon

1/2 t nutmeg if you love nutmeg like I do!

Pour this mixture on top of the stale bread/breadcrumbs mixture and then pop into the oven. Bake for 45 minutes or until a knife inserted comes out clean. It might take an hour or more, especially if you double the recipe.

While the pudding is baking, don’t relax yet. It’s time to make the sauce!

Sauce

Mix the following ingredients and cook on medium heat until bubbly.

1/2 c cream, preferably raw,  or milk (preferably raw) if you are out of cream

1/2 – 3/4 c sucanat, on the higher end if you have a sweet tooth

1 t vanilla

1/c butter

2 to 10 drops of lemon essential oil, or orange, to taste

Smother your bread pudding with the sauce and enjoy every mouthful! I feel so nourished whenever I eat this! Since reading the Trim Healthy Mama book I have been eating more carbs and my symptoms of hormonal stress are going away. This is a healthful dessert that will mildly raise your blood sugar level, not spike it, so enjoy if you are needing some carbs right now! It’s definitely not THM approved, as it uses sucanat.

P.S. If you have leftover oatmeal, you can sneak some oatmeal into this, if your family is not super sensitive to detecting leftover oatmeal like my kids are.

Photo Credit: betsy-tacysociety.org

Do you ever wish you could turn back the clock and see a childhood free from commercialization or pressure to rush into adulthood?

As a mom who wants to encourage my children to work hard and play hard without screens, I know it can be hard to do that. The world beckons so seductively with all of the electronic media. TV, the Internet, video games, and mobile devices all clamor to suck our children away from simple play, natural delights outdoors, and classic books.

That’s why I love the Betsy-Tacy books. I read one of these books aloud to my two younger children over a year ago, and I’m delighted to see that some of the Betsy-Tacy books in audio are free online. The Betsy -Tacy books were written by Maud Hart Lovelace.

So who is Maud Hart Lovelace?

(The following is copied and pasted from the betsy-tacysociety.org:)

Maud Hart Lovelace is best known for her beloved series of Betsy-Tacy books which were set at the turn of the twentieth century in Mankato, Minnesota (Deep Valley). These captivating  stories of small town life, family traditions and enduring friendships have captured the hearts of young and old for over 65 years. Few books engage readers of all ages and are passed from generation to generation as these books have.

      The honesty and detail of the books makes them interesting historical and social documents of the period, as well as entertaining reading for all ages. The “Betsy-Tacy” books have attracted interest from scholars since they represent a rare example of turn of the century literature written from a child’s perspective.

All thirteen books in the Betsy-Tacy series were published by Thomas Y. Crowell Co. (now HarperCollins) between 1940 and 1955. Due to their enormous popularity and demand, they were reprinted in the 1970s, 1990s. In 2000 HarperCollins released a commemorative 60th anniversary edition. The books have been translated in many different languages including German, French, Italian and Japanese.

Click here for the first book, Betsy-Tacy.

Click here for the second book, Betsy-Tacy and Tib.

Betsy and Tacy Go Over the HIll

Happy listening!

I first heard about Trim Healthy Mama over a year ago on one of my favorite blogs, written by a large family mom. She endorsed it, saying it’s what allowed her to lose weight. Then my sister told me about it. At that time, I was in the middle of my weight loss journey using a different method. I filed the idea way, to be visited sometime in the future. Well, now it’s the future and I’m revisiting it. I lost 70 lbs and have maintained this loss by some intermittent fasting and staying low carb. But…I have been wondering if this low carb style is affecting my hormones. I am having early night waking, insomnia, and other issues that make me think maybe I need more carbs?  Maybe Trim Healthy Mama is the way for me to go to lose the last stubborn 10 lbs and maintain the rest of my life. Instead of doing my LCHF/IF method.

One of my EW Healthy Eating students mentioned THM as the method she was using. I decided to check it out, and finally got the book pictured above from the library. I actually had to use the inter-library loan system because my local library didn’t have it on hand. Basically the idea is to eat all three macronutrients: carbs, fat, and protein, but be careful about how you combine them. The authors of the plan, sisters Serene and Pearl, recommend eating mostly protein with carbs, or protein with fat. They say be careful about combining fat with carbs. That’s because the body will always burn the carbs first and then store the fat. If you don’t combine them, then the body will burn each on its own. The video below shows the basics.

Here’s the story behind how they discovered this plan and the theory behind it. One of them was vegan for 7 years and got super thin. The other was into fast food, and then had a near constant issue of blood, like the woman in the New Testament. She healed that by eating whole grains, but then she gained too much weight. With further research and consulting together, the two sisters finally found a balanced diet to solve their health problems.  Hence, the diet outlined in the book, Trim Healthy Mama.

blogger 

I really like their use of scriptures about God endorsing all food groups: grains, oils and protein, like in Deuteronomy. I can see that for a season, as it was for my case, it can be good to decrease or eliminate the macronutrient of carbs,especially simple carbs, but never protein or fat. But for long-term, a higher amount of complex carbs has its place, as I am learning. They make the point, “Excess insulin is the root of all disease.” Wow, even for cancer? For heart disease? For gut issues? Yes, I think so. So that’s why limiting simple carbs is wise.

One YouTuber says she lost 70 lbs using THM. She went form size 24 to size 6. Here is a video testimonial of another YouTuber about the diet from a blogger I trust, Wardee of Gnowfglins fame. She says she lost 30 lbs using the THM plan. She did the plan using traditional food, as in Weston A. Price diet. Here is what she learned from doing the diet. I was very much interested in her point of view about the only two sweeteners in the plan, erythritol and stevia.

So I am looking into it to lose the last 10 lbs, instead of the LCHF/IF, because that was stressing my hormone levels too much. Serene and Pearl say that a low carb diet over time does that.

So now it’s time for me to get the cookbook and study that and get going with S, E, FP, and XO meals. I am still figuring out the initials. I have gotten into a huge rut with my diet where I have eaten the same thing for weeks. The plan book talks about so much yummy food it was making my mouth water. I am looking forward to drooling over the cookbook. It’s frustrating that the recipes aren’t in the plan book, only in the separate cookbook. I understand though that the original book that had both was too thick, 600+ pages, so the authors separated the plan from the cookbook.

Another blogger I found says that the THM diet works, but she cautions against using stevia. She started a blog based on THM and whole foods here. She says stevia might cause fertility problems and miscarriages. Yikes! I have already weaned myself off stevia so that’s no big deal for me and I haven’t dared touch erythritol because it looks and sounds so fake. Right now I am maintaining my weight with occasional use of sucanat, like in my super yummy kettle corn. Does this mean people on the plan have no healthy sweeteners available? Wardee talks about that in the video above.

Has anybody had experience losing weight with THM? What are your thoughts about stevia or erythritol? The afore-mentioned blogger, “Zsuzsanna” says on her family blog that she was able to lose weight even though she used sweeteners not on the plan, such as coconut sugar and honey. Any of you Tree of Life Mama readers?

This movie came out over a year ago, so I know I’m a bit late to the party on the review. Maybe y’all have seen it already. But just in case you haven’t, read my review right now and go watch it. Dh and I finally saw it for a date night at home. I highly recommend it, more as a family night movie, than a date night movie, because there’s not much romance. So if you are OK with not much romance in a date night movie then watch it for date night. Anyway, tt’s the story of a high school football coach who has to go out of state to find a job coaching high school football because of his anger issues. He ends up in McFarland, CA, a real place. He discovers that he really wants to coach cross country running. What follows is such an inspiring story full of a mixture of the following themes:

• how to strengthen family ties, and what we can learn from the Hispanic culture about this
• how to inspire young athletes
• how to integrate into a new culture
• how to bind a community together
• the reality of the hard working life of migrant farm workers

We will definitely be showing this movie to the kiddos!  A few swear words appear, so if that bothers you then see if you can watch it on vidangel.com. There’s no graphic violence, although there is mention of it. It’s clean and wholesome, so get some popcorn going and go watch it! I borrowed the copy I watched from my local public library. You can rent it online as well. It’s definitely a feel good movie that will leave you smiling. I also love the acoustic guitar soundtrack!

Here’s a little bit about the back story.

Here’s the part shown about what happened to the real guys who ran on the first team. It is inspiring to see that they broke out of poverty and went to college.

We have been so duped as a society into thinking that we shouldn’t eat fat. I remember as a teen, my best friend’s dad had heart problems so the doctor put him on a no cholesterol diet.  I felt so sad that he was told he couldn’t eat fat! I also remember Bill Cosby, as Dr. Huxtable, telling his wife on The Cosby Show why he didn’t want to eat the rice cakes she bought for him. “Zero fat,” she said, to which he replied, “zero taste.” I wish I could go back in time and tell my friend’s dad to cut out sugar instead of saturated fat. He had his leg amputated last year because of diabetic complications and last I heard, was about to get the second leg amputated as well.

Are we as a nation any healthier decades after the low-fat craze? Everywhere I look, people have tons of health problems that they are on medication for. Not to mention the obesity epidemic. Please listen to the podcast linked below about the above pictured book The Big Fat Surprise.

http://wisetraditions.libsyn.com/45-the-skinny-on-fat

Here’s a description of the episode, copied and pasted from the podcast page.

#45 – Nina Teicholz  The Skinny on Fat   Show Notes

Yesss!!! I figured out how to make kettle corn with non-hydrogenated oil and real brown sugar, i.e. sucanat. This recipe was inspired by our trip this past weekend to an apple orchard and pumpkin patch. It was so fun, despite what the 15 year old will tell you. The kids saw some kettle corn for sale and asked for some. When I saw the big bag (the only size suitable for our family of  6 still at home) for $12, I told them no, because we would go home and I could make it for a lot cheaper. Some day they will thank me for my frugal ways!

I wanted to find a recipe that uses butter, instead of hydrogenated oil, and sucanat. I didn’t think that was too much of a tall order. But apparently, after a few fruitless Google search attempts, it was. Everything I found in the limited amount of time I had  called for hydrogenated oil. So I gave up that Saturday night and just air popped the corn, and then poured on melted butter with sucanat and salt stirred in. In case you are wondering, that doesn’t count as kettle corn. The sugar didn’t dissolve and was in clumps on the popcorn. It still tasted good though! I was tired after a Saturday away from home and we were hungry and my family didn’t know any better so we ate it willingly for our family night movie (Disney’s Night Crossing, in case you are wondering.)

I was determined however, to make real kettle corn. So the next night, after much sleuthing, and by combining two recipes, I found what works. Here you go, real kettle corn with real food ingredients: real butter (clarified), real brown sugar (sucanat) and real salt! To get the real kettle corn taste you have to pop the popcorn in fat (no hot air popping) with the sugar added in before the popping starts. That way the sugar is caramelly-glazed onto the popcorn and doesn’t fall off. I am a huge caramel corn lover, but I prefer kettle corn now because it’s not so messy. I have never made kettle corn at home so hadn’t really thought about the difference until now.

Real Food Kettle Corn

1/4 cup clarified butter, aka ghee (create clarified butter by melting butter and spooning out, as much possible, the lighter yellow solids). You can also buy ghee already made.

1/2 cup popcorn kernels

1/4 cup sucanat

1/4 tsp mineral salt

It is important to use ghee or clarified butter instead of regular butter because the ghee has a higher smoke point. So it can be heated higher, which is what you want when popping corn on the stove top.

While the butter is melting on low heat so you can separate the milk solids from the golden yellow fat, assemble everything else you need close to the stove top. You will be working quickly so you want everything in reach. This is called “mis en place” if you want to get fancy and French-y.

Mis en place:

• a big pot (the thicker the bottom of the pot, the better) on the stove top with a tight fighting lid ( you want a lid to act as a splatter screen or you will have hot butter and sugar and popcorn flying EVERYWHERE!)
• two potholders or oven mitts
• the salt
• 1/4 c sucanat
• 1/2 c popcorn
• a wooden spoon

OK, now for the popping fireworks!

After you have 1/4 c of melted ghee, put it in the pot. Place three popcorn kernels in the center of the pot. Heat on medium heat. Wait patiently a few minutes for all three kernels to pop. Then take off the lid and add the rest of the popcorn. Quickly pour the sugar on top, then stir the sugar in with the wooden spoon so it’s all mixed evenly. Then do some hula dancing with the pot. Grab the oven mitts or potholders, hold the lid on tightly, and swirl and shake the pan around over the burner. Soon the popcorn will start popping! Keep swirling the pot over the burner until you can count 2 seconds between pops. Then take off heat and let sit for a few minutes while the residual heat makes more of the kernels pop. When you think you won’t have any more kernels popping, take the lid off and pour into a big mixing bowl. Mix in the salt with the wooden spoon. Make more batches if you need more for your hungry family! I made three batches for our family of 6.

Controversy exists about what to do with the unpopped kernels. I was hoping to recycle them, with my thrifty ways, but dh told me to throw them away, saying they can’t be used again. But I found this article saying that you can eventually pop most of them. Some people say to soak them in water to increase their water content so they will be more likely to pop. Time for a homeschool science experiment!  I had so many unpopped kernels next time I am going to try using just 1/4 c kernels.

If you end up burning some of the sugar mixture, which leaves black stuff in the bottom of the pot, an easy way to clean it is by boiling some water in the pot, pouring out the boiling water, then scrubbing the black stuff out with steel wool, baking soda, and dish soap.

If you haven’t heard of the powers of bone broth, it’s time to learn about them right now! Bone broth will change your life! Bone broth is one of those things that used to be common in most households 100 years ago, but has fallen out of favor as our tastes have been changed by the modern industrial food complex. If you start using bone broth consistently, the promise is that your digestion will improve, your skin, hair, and nails will look better, and your joints will work better. Bone broth is also allowed during the Intermittent Fasting for weight loss and curing of diabetes that Dr. Jason Fung elaborates on in the book, The Obesity Code. It’s a beautiful thing to have on hand for any illnesses to sustain nutrition. It’s a superfood! Even Dr. Oz and Dr. Josh Axe are talking about it. Dr. Axe recommends it for detoxification in the video below.

So here are some videos about bone broth, one from Heather D. aka Mommypotamus, and then Dr. Axe. I am also including  a podcast episode from Wise Traditions about it below.  Click on the link below to listen to the episode. A synopsis of the episode copied from the Wise Traditions podcast page follows.

Listen here to the episode.

Bone broth is growing in popularity for all of the right reasons. It offers an astounding number of benefits for our health. In today’s episode, chef Lance Roll explains how first and foremost, it helps heal our gut, improving our digestion and the absorption of nutrients from all that we eat. Broth has anti-inflammatory properties, in addition to healthy fats and minerals. It makes an excellent recovery drink for athletes and many consider it something of a “weight loss secret.”

You can hear the excitement in Lance’s voice as he tells stories about individuals whose conditions cleared up from eczema and leaky gut, to ulcerative colitis. Lance was once a chef who was primarily concerned with making flavorful dishes; since he became familiar with the Weston A. Price Foundations and the Wise Traditions diet, he makes sure to cook up dishes that are nutrient-dense, as well as flavorful!

So for one of our recent movie date nights at home, dh and I watched this movie, The Wedding Chapel. I found it on DVD at our local public library. I give it 3 1/2 out of five stars. It was fun to watch but wasn’t super amazing or meaningful. Here’s the synopsis from YouTube:

Synopsis: Uninspired and newly single painter Sara is down on her luck and wants nothing more than to get away from her problems. When she decides to take a trip to visit her mom, she becomes involved in the efforts to save a local church which is in danger of being closed down. Determined to help preserve the historic building, Sara embarks on a mission that not only gives her a new outlook on life, but enables her mother to rekindle a long lost love from her past…a story about love, forgiveness and embracing new beginnings.

It was fun to see Shelly Long, who plays the mother of the main character, act out the character of an older woman. She has aged somewhat, putting on pounds and wrinkles, but is still delightful. The movie was clean and wholesome. It is also Christian-based. Shelly’s character wears a cross necklace in most of the scenes. It was great to see the power of community come together to save an old chapel from being demolished. There were some sparks between the main character and the leading man, so that was fun to watch too. So if you are ever in the mood for a light romantic comedy, this might fit the bill for you.