Tree of Life Mama’s Product of the Week: the Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker

Posted on July 30, 2024 by treeoflifemama
Photo Credits Above and Below: amazon.com

Summer will be over soon as July turns to August and then September. If you don’t already have the product above, I implore you to get it before the summer is over. It will make your summer that much better, I promise you! Who doesn’t like ice cream? It’s the perfect way to cool off. If you have lactose intolerance, you can make dairy-free ice cream with almond or coconut milk. If you are vegan, you can make the same or just use fruit juice for sorbets. If you are sugar-free/low-carb/keto, you can make sugar-free ice cream with allulose or another alternative. If you just plain like to eat without any restrictions, you can make good old-fashioned ice cream with all the animal fat and all the sugar you want. Ice cream is the perfect treat for a hot summer’s day. It’s so easy and fun to make your own with this machine. I love to make ice cream for Independence Day, Pioneer Day, and Sunday summer dinners. Yum!

You keep the inner cylinder in a freezer so it’s cold and ready to pop into the machine when it’s time to make your recipe. The machine turns the cylinder around and around with the dasher inside, mixing the ice cream. After about 30 minutes, the mixing is done and you can either eat the dessert right then or transfer it all to another container and freeze the ice cream to a firmer texture. I love that the cord has a pocket underneath to fit into so it’s not dangling all around, one of my pet peeves. I also love that it comes in red! You can also get plain boring silver. It’s over here on amazon.com. I receive no compensation for promoting this, I just love it so I’m spreading the word. I got ours 8 years ago this coming August for our wedding anniversary and it’s still going strong.

The only two problems I see with this machine are:

  1. The churning process is loud. After 30 minutes I’m ready to turn it off for a break.
  2. I just wish it made more. The one pictured above is 2 quarts. If you have a big family, like more than 8 people, and they have big appetites, you may want to get two machines. How fun to make two different flavors at once!

So I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars. It is the perfect gift for an anniversary, wedding, or older person’s birthday. Kids can easily learn how to make the ice cream using it and garner lots of compliments.

Want some recipes? Go here and scroll all the way to the end to get to the recipes. I’m excited to try blackberry ice cream for our next Sunday family dinner. Here are even more: My Mint Chocolate Ice Cream is here, Pumpkin Ice Cream is here, Lemon is here, and my new favorite Pistachio is here.

Want to know how you can make it, then transport it, keeping it cold, for a picnic? Go here. How fun to have homemade ice cream ready to scoop after a hike or playing in the park.

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07/29/24 Tree of Life Mama’s Recipe of the Week: Pistachio Ice Cream

Posted on July 29, 2024 by treeoflifemama

My life has shifted with having two young adult sons moving back home recently. Suddenly I have more hands to help fix food and I am asking more people to choose menu items and fix them. So now each of the four children has a dinner night to fix dinner, my husband does Saturday, and I’m on Sundays. That just leaves Friday where we have our standard popcorn and smoothie for a quick supper amidst busy Friday night activities. (As a ketovore, I abstain from the popcorn and smoothie. I usually abstain from eating at every dinner but still sit with them. I ask questions using my conversation starter questions, trivia, and quiz cards that I have mostly collected while thrifting to spark conversation. It takes my mind off of not eating and allows us to connect over the meal.)

For Sundays I love to serve homemade ice cream after our dinner. I especially love it when the grandsons are here. To see them happily dig into my ice cream gives me so much joy! We’ve been having fun trying out different flavors. I recently found this book below while thrifting. I’m excited to learn from the experts Ben and Jerry so I can up my ice-cream making game. (As a ketovore I usually abstain from eating it and eat my homemade Greek yogurt with stevia instead. But soon I will be making blackberries using berries I got from my neighbor’s patch ice cream and won’t abstain from that!)

Image Credit: thriftbooks.com

One of my adult sons picked pistachio ice cream recently when I asked him what flavor he wanted. It turned out super yummy. I confess I had a small portion even though I am usually keto. Next time I might make a keto version for me using allulose. This homemade version is not as pretty as store bought with the bright green color, but it tastes better and isn’t full of the artificial colors and flavors, not to mention antifreeze, which is in all commercial ice cream, according to Sarah Pope of the healthyhomeeconomist.com. Next time I make this maybe I’ll try adding a little bit of pureed spinach to make it green, like I learned how Serene and Pearl, of Trim Healthy Mama fame, do for their sugar-free key lime pie. I tried that with avocado too, for a Mint Chocolate Ice Cream, you can get the recipe here.

OK enough of my chitchat, here is the recipe:

-4 cups cream or any combination of raw milk and cream, the more cream you use, the creamier it will be

-1 c maple syrup, or 1 1/4 c if you want a bit sweeter

-1/4 tsp sea salt

-1 tsp vanilla

-1/4 c to 1 c crushed pistachio nuts depending on how nutty you want it

Mix everything together at the beginning except the nuts. Taste test to make sure it’s sweet enough for you. Freeze and stir according to the ice cream maker’s directions. If you don’t have an ice cream maker, check out the alternatives here. Add the nuts towards the end. After it’s mixed and frozen, serve if you enjoy the soft-serve texture. If you don’t eat it right away and want a harder texture, put ice cream into a clean empty container and freeze longer in your kitchen freezer. Enjoy! I love the combination of saltiness, crunch and fattiness of the nuts with the sweetness of the maple syrup and the fattiness of the cream. Pure bliss!

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Turning a Testimony from a Seed to a Tree: Experiment Upon the Word

Posted on July 29, 2024 by treeoflifemama
Image Credit: Unshaken YouTube Channel

I have always loved, loved, loved Alma 32 from the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. That’s because it describes the most important experiment anyone could ever do. That’s the “experiment upon the word.” That means planting the word of God, the scriptures, into one’s heart, praying about it, asking God if it’s true, then acting on it. I just love Alma’s metaphor because it pairs perfectly with Lehi’s vision of the Tree of Life. The seed is the word, and when planted in receptive soil, it grows into a testimony tree, whose fruit is the love of God. The fruit is such an apt symbol because what makes fruit is that it has seeds. It’s just so splendid that fruit represents love, because what else do we want to propagate more with seeds, than love?

Brother Jared Halverson has so many insights into Alma 32 and this experiment in the videos below. One of my favorites is where he says that when people say “The Church isn’t true,” he asks if they have been true to the Church. He points out that it wouldn’t be smart to say “The gym isn’t true,” if someone hasn’t been going to the gym. The gym works for the person if the person works out at it. The Church works for people if they work at it.

I love the acronym he gives to help us remember how this “experiment upon the word” will unfold:

S= Swell

E= Expand

E=Enlighten

D=Delicious

It’s just so beautiful to experience this process and have in the end something so delicious from Jesus: a knowledge of Him, a love of Him, and an increased sense of love from Him. He always loves us, unconditionally, but it is easier to FEEL His love when one has a testimony of Him. The seed, the word of God, grows in your heart to become like a portable tree, growing deep inside you, that gives you everything symbolically that a tree gives: nourishment, shelter, shade, and beauty. I love that Jared connects the knowledge that comes from a testimony with a desire to go forth and do good.

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7/27/24 Tree of Life Mama’s Date Night Movie of the Week: To Dance With the White Dog

Posted on July 27, 2024 by treeoflifemama

My date night movie of the week is To Dance With the White Dog. It is a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie from 1993. You can watch it free on YouTube.

Gradually, I am adding more and more movies to my “married romance movies” list. This is the latest addition. In the movie, Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn play Cora and Sam Peek, an elderly couple who have just celebrated 50 years of marriage. You can tell they are so in love with each other. It’s a tender movie that is clean and yet not cheesy. I’m not going to say much more about it, except to say that it’s a bit mystical. If you can’t handle mysticism because that just isn’t plausible for you, then don’t watch. If you can, then go watch it with your husband. It’s especially grand if you are in the mood for some subtle romance and themes of long-lasting marriage, growing old, maintaining independence when growing old, dogs, and extended family dynamics. Then this will fit the bill quite nicely. Knowing that Ms. Tandy and Mr. Cronyn were married in real life for over 50 years makes the movie even that much sweeter and more beautiful! You can watch the making of the movie below, and even read the book the movie is based on. My favorite quote from the movie: “There are no endings, just new discoveries.”

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7/26/24 Tree of Life Mama’s Video of the Week: Mollie Kaye on the Cure for Loneliness: Dressing Up and Going Out

Posted on July 26, 2024 by treeoflifemama
Photo Credit: TEDx Talks YouTube Channel

My video of the week is all about the power of dressing up, going out, and talking to people. In this video, you will hear how one woman, Mollie Kay, found the cure for her loneliness. I love all of her vintage outfits. You can see many more here. I love them all! She has been dressing up and going out every Tuesday since COVID to do her own challenge of “Turned Out Tuesdays.”

I encourage you to read all the comments on this video in YouTube, go here. I just love reading from so many people about how they apply the principle of doing something active on their own to cure loneliness. We don’t have to wait for people to come to us. Even if we don’t go out, we can feel better by dressing up. One woman says that her mom was dying of cancer but dressed every day like the Queen of England was coming for tea. We don’t have to dress up either. Another person in the comments says that he or she takes a little dog everywhere and connects with people that way.

If you don’t feel like dressing up or just don’t have the energy/time/money to find stuff to dress up in, just go out, for a walk or on a bike. Be the first to say hello and see how many people you can connect with. If you want an easy way to dress up, start with what Mollie calls “The Hello Zone.” That’s the collarbone and up, which you can dress up with a pin, jewelry, or hat. Oh my, I would love to start dressing like this, I have long loved the 40s and 50s styles. I’m excited to talk with my married daughter more about how to find these vintage clothes when thrifting.

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07/25/24 Tree of Life Mama’s Chapter Book of the Week: A Lantern in Her Hand by Bess Streater Aldrich

Posted on July 25, 2024 by treeoflifemama

In honor of Pioneer Day yesterday, a state holiday in Utah, I’m blogging about the pioneer life. (You can see my previous blogs about Pioneer Day here. It’s so cool that once we got to actually be at a real pioneer place, Cove Fort, on Pioneer Day years ago when all my children lived at home.) We had a great celebration last night at my brother’s house with my parents, 3 out of my 4 siblings, and most of their descendants. I was so pleased to hear that my grandson won the watermelon eating contest for his age group at the This is the Place State Park. I love that place! We’ve been a few times and even had a Hilton family reunion there. I want to go there every year on Pioneer Day but don’t so I’m glad my daughter and her little family got to be there with her in-laws.

Today I’m sharing this book, A Lantern in Her Hand, by Bess Streater Aldrich for my mama book of the week. This isn’t a true story, but it’s worth reading! It’s historical fiction. I love that it shows the devotion of a mother who gives up her own comfort to support her husband in his dream of living the pioneer life on the frontier of Nebraska.

Here’s what goodreads.com says about it:

“Perfect for fans of Little House on the Prairie: In the late 1800s, married couple Abbie and Will live as pioneers on the American frontier. Together they face the Nebraska plains, determined to build a house and a life for themselves…

“The classic story of Abbie and Will Deal—pioneers who left everything behind for a new life on America’s frontier.

“Abbie Mackenzie dreamed of becoming a fine lady like her aristocratic grandmother, devoting herself to music and art. But at eighteen Abbie found a different dream, turning away from the promise of a comfortable life as a doctor’s wife to marry handsome, quiet Will Deal. Together, they eagerly accepted the challenge of homesteading in Nebraska territory, where the prairies stretched as far as the eye could see, and only the strongest survived for long.

“For over 90 years, people have cherished Abbie’s story—an inspiring story of struggle against unexpected perils, of love, of the land she helped nurture, and the family she raised.”

We read this book in my homeschool group for the moms’ class last year and then discussed it. It was such a pleasure to read it. It’s as much about the pioneering spirit as it is about the heart of a wife and mother and the beauty of how much she sacrifices for her husband and children. I almost cried when it was over, just because I was sad that I couldn’t read it any more. Goodreads.com, however, says it’s part of a series, so I can’t wait to read the next one, Song of Years, although the cast of characters involved in the synopsis of the second book looks completely different. I remember my sister telling me about this book years ago. I’m sad that I took so long to read it, I was really missing out. Reading it helps me to continue to hold onto my dreams through the trials. If you are a fan of mothering and pioneering, you will love this book! It’s probably at your local public library, as well as in everand.com so you can read it today. (Go here to learn more about everand.com, it’s the most fabulous resource for every bibliophile.)

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Ezra’s Eagle Update in Light of the Trump Assassination Attempt

Posted on July 23, 2024 by treeoflifemama
Image Credit: ldsfreedomforum.com. All points shown in image are from the creator of the image, not treeoflifemothering.com

So how do we view the recent assassination attempt on Trump and the withdrawal of Biden, in light of the Ezra’s Eagle prophecy?

I’ve referred to the Ezra Eagle prophecy before. Go here if you want to learn all about it.

Here is Michael Rush’s current analysis below:

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A Gospel-themed Love Story from Nigeria

Posted on July 22, 2024 by treeoflifemama
Photo Credit: https://africawest.churchofjesuschrist.org/the-miracle-of-change

I found this love story in the Gospel Library app of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and have to share it, it’s so beautiful! It’s a love story that also involves the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, so I especially love it.

It’s called “Florence Chukwurah: the Miracle of Change.” You can find it here. Go read it, you will be glad you did!

Here is a one paragraph summary. As a young girl in Africa, Florence realized her family was poor. She vowed to herself that she would seek God her whole life and do three things 1. Obey her parents, 2. Study hard at school, and 3. Work hard with her hands. She stayed true to those promises as she grew, eventually becoming a nurse. It was marriage proposal at first sight for her husband and her. She had been praying for a good man devoted to Jesus who would avoid alcohol, and he was looking for a good woman. When he first met her, he was so impressed and felt her wonderfully good spirit that he proposed. After praying about it, she said yes. As a couple, every New Year’s Eve they would have a special family fast. For that year, the family fast was to find the right church to join. Soon after this fast, Florence and her husband each independently of the other felt the Spirit prompt each to go visit a friend. So they visited the friend. As the friend got out soft drinks, he told them that he no longer drank beer because he had been baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

You probably know where this is headed! I’ll let you go here so you can read it in all its glory. My favorite quote from the story is “We love each other so dearly that we can speak with our eyes. After looking into each other’s eyes, we immediately asked, ‘How can we become members of this church?”

You can read a children’s version of Florence’s story becoming a nurse here.

Image Credit: 19eli14 at pixabay.com

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7/18/24 Tree of Life Mama’s Podcast of the Week: Sarah Mackenzie on Fairy Tales

Posted on July 19, 2024 by treeoflifemama

I have a dear friend I met through homeschooling who first introduced me to the idea that the gospel of Jesus Christ is embedded in fairy tales. I had never heard of this before. I was immediately fascinated! So I got this copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales shown above at a thrift store and have read them to my children on and off through the years. I admit, some of these stories are so horribly strange! I often am left scratching my head when the story is over, wondering exactly how that story relates to the gospel.

So today I’m highlighting this podcast by Sarah Mackenzie of the Read Aloud Revival Podcast over here because she is bringing up this idea again to my attention. I’d love for you to listen and tell me what you think. Yes, I can see how Sleeping Beauty and Snow White show the symbolism of Jesus Christ as the bridegroom waking up the bride (more on Jesus as the bridegroom here, which I’ve been thinking a lot about lately) but I don’t see the gospel in many of the Grimms’ obscure tales, such as The Fox and His Cousin, or The Louse and The Flea.

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7/17/24 Tree of Life Mama’s Product of the Week: Ruby Sliders for Furniture Legs

Posted on July 17, 2024 by treeoflifemama
Image Credit: rubysliders.com

Now that I’m pretty much unpacked and organized from my move, I’m hoping to blog every day. Today’s blog is a review of this wonderful product I found during our move. It is Red Ruby Sliders. These are like little “slippers” to put on the bottom ends of chair legs that sit on hardwood floors, not carpet. This new home has a lot of hardwood floors. The landlord asked us to use furniture pads under the end of any furniture leg or corner for any furniture we put on the hardwood floors, in order to prevent scratches. After seeing the ugly long gouge made in the floor of one of the rooms by a previous careless tenant, I was convinced of the need for using pads. The landlord left a package of large pads in each room. (I confess, my untrained eye, without my glasses on, and my uninformed brain looking at these from afar thought that these pads from the landlord were packages of Oreo cookies sitting on the windowsills when we first toured the home LOL!)

We used the pads left by the landlord up and then bought smaller pads for the legs of our dining room chairs, shown above. (I just love, love my new dining room with the bookshelves!) You’d think putting the pads on the chairs would be a “one and done thing” but nope. Those pads were so annoying! Anytime I used these chairs, mainly for mealtime, I would get up and walk away and discover a pad stuck to my shoes. Ugh! The adhesive was not very strong.

Photo Credit: rubysliders.com

When on a visit to ACE Hardware to get something else, I found these Ruby Sliders. They looked like the perfect replacement for the chair pads. So I bought a pack and tried them out. You simply stretch them over the bottom of the chair legs. We’ve had them on for over a month, and none of them have come off because of the quality industrial glue. The pads stay stuck to the silicone caps. I love them so much I went back to the store and bought enough for the rest of my chairs and replaced all the old pads. I chuckled to myself as I left the store the second time. I hadn’t read the packaging close enough the first time and thought they were called Ruby Slippers. Guess I have too much Wizard of Oz on the brain, haha, although I don’t know why, I haven’t watched the movie in decades.

Bottom line: if you want to protect your hardwood floor from getting scratched by furniture legs, these are the best. They are easy to get on and off, they are transparent so the beauty of the wood of the furniture leg will still show, they glide over the floor easily, they don’t scratch the floor, and they are made to fit most legs of chairs. Probably not anything like fat square legs. The company website is here or you can find them at ACE Hardware. I’m not getting paid to promote these. I just found a product I love and am sharing how great they are.

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