To go along with “Africa week” for the Give Your Child the World book club:

“Without periods, there would be no people!” If that’s true, why does the world in general have a stigma about menstrual periods? 

Did you know that in places where women don’t have access to feminine hygiene supplies, girls and women stay in their rooms and sit on cardboard until their period has passed? They don’t go to school. They don’t contribute to the family work. They don’t eat unless someone brings them food. This makes me so sad I start crying!

Some people are working to change this, as part of the Days for Girls International organization. Watch the story below of Celeste Merges, the founder of Days for Girls, and hear her story of why and how she started Days for Girls.

Some of my favorite line from Celeste’s TED Talk featured above:

• “I am no longer an orphan, I am a leader of women!” A 12 year old girl said this after she started teaching other women how to make resusable menstrual pads.

• If a girl stays in school at least one more year in primary school

she will help raise her nations GNP, and much more.

• An educated girl has profound impact on the development of her community!

• “What other questions have we not asked yet?” for how we can serve others?

• “Our goal is that by 2022, every girl, everywhere, has access to the resources that work for her to manage her periods.

In my Eternal Warriors classes, we talk about passion projects. Sewing kits for Days for Girls qualifies as a huge passion project! If you can sew, please consider doing this or pass the word on about it to others who can sew and have time on their hands. I wish I had a houseful of teenage girls to get involved in this! When I was in Utah I saw that my niece was doing this with her church young women’s group as part of their summer camp activities. Wow, I think this is the best “craft” project for Young Women’s camp ever!

Here is a page with the patterns to make the pads and the kits. 

Here is a page with all of the instruction videos on how to make the kits.

There are many chapters in Utah who get together to sew the pads. Here is the page for it. Sew on! 

How are you coming with Africa week in the Give Your Child the World Book Club?

I have experienced sheer joy finding some Africa books at the library, pitching them to my kids over dinner (reading the plot summaries on the back or the dust jackets) and reading some of these books aloud to them. My 14 year old started reading The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind this morning. I am so excited! Maybe it will spark some inventiveness in him.

Here are some LDS resources to go along with the themes for last week and this week!

For last week’s theme of “Multiculturalism”, these two excellent General talks about loving all of God’s children resonate with me:

• This General Conference April 2016 talk, “Whoso Receiveth Them Receiveth Me” from Elder Neil L. Andersen
• This talk from Elder Patrick Kearon’s talk, “A Refuge From the Storm” from last General Conference 2016 

Then here’s some stuff to go with the “Africa” theme of this week: 

• This story about growing up in Africa from Elder Alexander A. Odume and F. Onyebueze Nmeribe called “Being Content”
• Friends in Africa article from the Friend April 1972
• A General Conference talk about a temple for West Africa by Elder Glenn L. Pace
• Junior Mkhabele of Johannesburg South Africa
• A story of parents in Africa who fasted and prayed for a daughter, and got twice the blessings: twin girls, Sophie and Elodie!
• A paper doll of a girl from Africa
• Tendai, a boy from Zimbabwe

I am reading aloud the chapter book below, about a girl who becomes orphaned when her missionary parents die in British East Africa during the influenza epidemic of the early 1900s. She is sent to live in England and learns that ““If you are among evil people, you must be like the lion, gathering strength and awaiting your time.”

This is me with the fabulous females in my cabin that I got to learn from at the 2014 Moms’ Retreat.

Where else can a mom have a getaway, that includes lodging, three meals, a wonderful environment called the mountains. in order to connect with God, and estrogen bonding, for only $79?

I highly recommend the Moms’ Retreat that Melanie Ballard and her crew put together every year in Heber Valley Utah!

This year’s Moms’ Retreat is Friday August 5-6 2016 at the Heber Valley Girls’ Camp in Heber, Utah.

Don’t delay, register today, right here! 

I attended for three years, before I moved to Utah, and loved every second of it! In fact, I had a breakthrough at this last one in 2014 that changed my life forever. If you miss this Moms’ Retreat, you will be missing out! Melanie and her team think of everything in order to make your experience totally enriching, delightful, and revelational!

Here are the blog posts about the times I went. 

2012 Moms’ Retreat

2013 Moms’ Retreat with Carol Tuttle

2014 Moms’ Retreat- looks like I never blogged about this one, but it was super awesome as well. That is the year we got to hear from Chris Williams and hear his story of forgiveness. Also the year that I had my breakthrough.

So what are you waiting for? Go sign up before the registration ends on July 15th!

I have a tooth with a cavity, so I hope to heal it with the instructions in this video. The sad part is I have to give up stevia to do so. When I gave up mainstream sweeteners and went “low carb” stevia was the one thing I could use to have sweet stuff! So I am giving myself July to wean myself off and start the “cure tooth decay protocol” in August. I am hoping and praying I can handle this! I can already live without grain and white sugar and sucanat, but no stevia?!

It can be tempting to indulge in pasta and buns in the summer at all the picnics, but if you are wanting to be low carb to keep your blood sugar and insulin levels down, then pasta and buns are out! (Insulin makes you fat. Think, insulin = insulate with fat.)

For your barbecues and picnics, focus on eating the grilled meats without a bun. Use a lettuce leaf for a wrap instead, or just top the meat with condiments, onions, pickles, and use a knife and fork. The bun doesn’t have much taste anyway, the taste is in the condiments and the meat. Eat your vegetables with lots of butter and sour cream so that you have fat to help you absorb the fat-soluble vitamins and minerals in the veggies. Eating meat with lots of butter and sour cream helps too. Skip the carby desserts and make your own ice cream with cream, raw preferably, and stevia. Here’s my favorite grain free brownie recipe that I like to take to picnics.

I liked this blog post at Dr. Jason Fung’s web site for low carb tips in the summer months. It has a yummy ice cream recipe at the end. An easy version and a hard version. I like that the writer suggests putting butter, bacon, or avocados on all your meat. Yum! Enjoy your fat this summer! 

This is a great poem to memorize for Independence Day to impress the grandparents! We’ve been working on it all week and will do it for dad on Monday. It captures the philosophy of Americanism perfectly.

‘TIS fine to see the Old World, and travel up and down 
    Among the famous palaces and cities of renown, 
    To admire the crumbly castles and the statues of the kings,— 
    But now I think I’ve had enough of antiquated things.

           So it’s home again, and home again, America for me! 
           My heart is turning home again, and there I long to be, 
           In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean bars, 
           Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars!

    Oh, London is a man’s town, there’s power in the air; 
    And Paris is a woman’s town, with flowers in her hair; 
    And it’s sweet to dream in Venice, and it’s great to study Rome; 
    But when it comes to living there is no place like home.

    I like the German fir-woods, in green battalions drilled; 
    I like the gardens of Versailles with flashing fountains filled; 
    But, oh, to take your hand, my dear, and ramble for a day 
    In the friendly western woodland where Nature has her way!

    I know that Europe’s wonderful, yet something seems to lack: 
    The Past is too much with her, and the people looking back. 
    But the glory of the Present is to make the Future free,— 
    We love our land for what she is and what she is to be.

           Oh, it’s home again, and home again, America for me! 
           I want a ship that’s westward bound to plough the rolling sea, 
           To the bléssed Land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars, 
           Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars

Yes, you heard it right! Broccoli fries! I know it might sound yucky, but I promise, these are super yummy! I have made these twice this week and loooved them. I am into finding all the low carb recipes I can right now. I suspect that I have inherited insulin resistant genes from half of my grandparents so I have to be careful about what I eat to maintain my 70 lb. weight loss. If I eat popcorn on one day, it can’t be too much, or my weight goes up. I am shooting for 25 grams of carbs a day or less.

My kids didn’t really like these broccoli fries, but that is OK, more for my dear husband and me! I will be making these on Independence Day to go with my bun-less burger! 

Here’s the recipe:

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

2. Grease a cookie sheet with a leftover butter wrapper. (You keep those in your fridge right after you remove the butter for your butter dish right? The wrappers are perfect for putting a pat of butter on and then smearing butter all around on a cookie sheet when you bake cookies or do these fries.)

3. Wash your broccoli and slice off the super tough ends. But don’t discard the stalks. Cut the broccoli into thin strips, with the florets attached to the stalks.

4. Melt 2 to 4 T. of butter on low to medium low heat. Put the broccoli in a bowl and then pour the melted butter over the broccoli. Then with your hands, mix the butter and the broccoli together so you feel like the broccoli is evenly coated by the butter. Then sprinkle on the seasonings you want: lots of salt, a little pepper, and maybe some chili powder or garlic powder.

5. Spread the broccoli strips on the cookie sheet, and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until slightly golden brown and crispy. The recipe I used said to go 20 to 25 min. but 25 min. was too long and they burned a little. Adjust the time if you know your oven tends to cook too hot. 

6. Eat and enjoy! Dip in ketchup if you want but I found they tasted perfect as they were. 

You could probably do this with any vegetable, maybe even eggplant, to make it taste great!

If you are into historical fiction, you might want to pick up a free copy of this book,The Centurion’s Wife. It is free right now in the Kindle format on Amazon here. I was visiting my sister-in-law last week and she mentioned her daughter likes books by Janette Oke, the “When Calls the Heart” series. This book pictured above comes from a new series called “Acts of Faith.” It sounds wonderful! Here is the synopsis featured on Amazon:

Janette Oke has dreamed for years of retelling a story in a biblical time frame from a female protagonist’s perspective, and Davis Bunn is elated to be working with her again on this sweeping saga of the dramatic events surrounding the birth of Christianity…and the very personal story of Leah, a young Jewess of mixed heritage trapped in a vortex of competing political agendas and private trauma.

Caught up in the maelstrom following the death of an obscure rabbi in the Roman backwater of first-century Palestine, Leah finds herself also engulfed in her own turmoil–facing the prospect of an arranged marriage to a Roman soldier, Alban, who seems to care for nothing but his own ambitions. Head of the garrison near Galilee, he has been assigned by Palestine’s governor to ferret out the truth behind rumors of a political execution gone awry. Leah’s mistress, the governor’s wife, secretly commissions Leah also to discover what really has become of this man whose death–and missing body–is causing such furor. 

This epic drama is threaded with the tale of an unlikely romance and framed with dangers and betrayals from unexpected sources. At its core, The Centurion’s Wife unfolds the testing of loyalties–between two young people whose inner searchings they cannot express, between their irreconcilable heritages, and ultimately between their humanity and the Divine they yearn to encounter.