Tidbits and Snippets for September 27th

The Good News About Your Work Nobody Sees - "Moms and wives at home feel frazzled. And often they feel resentful or alone. It’s little wonder why the feminist movement so easily persuaded them to leave home. We all crave evidence of our hard work. We want a grand building at the end of the day, to hear the oohs and ahhs. It’s human. But according to God’s word, we are building something grand, and earthly accolades are not the prize." (Generation Cedar)

3 Reasons Why Our Family Avoids Sleepovers - Great thoughts here, also a good list of resources at the end of the post. (The Humbled Homemaker)

Why Allow Women in Combat if We Won’t Allow Them to Compete Alongside Men in Sport? - "This push for women in combat despite all the evidence also fits the weird modern determination to have sex everywhere but gender nowhere, to resent everything and see nothing when it comes to masculinity and femininity. But it’s not just an academic game." (John Robson, writing in the National Post, hat tip to Challies.com)

"[P]roponents of women in combat don’t just want male soldiers who will shrug off the violent death or torture and rape in captivity of female colleagues, which ISIL would doubtless post online. They want male soldiers willing to riddle the other side’s women with bullets, blow their heads and arms off, pick them off at long range or sneak up and bayonet them while looking into their eyes. I cannot square this desire with feminist outrage at societal indifference to male violence against women."

End of Summer Picnic - I loved this idea! We made it work this past weekend, even though summer has officially ended. It will pair perfectly with the Caramel Apple Party that we have also made an annual tradition. We paired it with a desert hike and tonight's lunar eclipse. (Raising Arrows)

At the top of the mountain. Notice that the 9yo chose to wear his Hawaiian lei and his French Louis XIV mask, and that the 3yo insisted on wearing pajamas over his day clothes. Yes, they're our children.

Dusk in the desert.

A really crummy picture of the eclipse.

Supporting a Friend Through Pregnancy Loss - "Stillbirth has show me what it means to be held, both by the Lord and by precious friends and family."  (The Humbled Homemaker)

You can read the poster's stillbirth story here: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

What Every Mother With Severe Morning Sickness Wants You to Know - Excellent material here. (Mama Gab)



The Recipe Corner

We loved this roasted cauliflower soup recipe (low-carb, GF). I added sage and butter, and reduced the amount stock from three cups to two cups. I also doubled the recipe, as one recipe doesn't make much. Definitely a keeper!

This roasted broccoli and cheddar soup (low-carb, GF) was also superb, and again, I reduced the stock from three cups to two cups (I love thick soups!).

New Mexico enchiladas (I used this enchilada sauce) - easy and delicious. We served with homemade refried beans and Mexican rice to finish off our unit study on New Mexico.

This recipe for country apple cake was superb! I split it into two 8x8 pans - one for church, one for us. On both fronts, it went quickly.

Come to think of it, I haven't yet found an apple cake that I didn't love.

With a growing family, storebought macaroni and cheese is quickly on its way out around here due to the cost. My two boys can easily put away a whole box in one sitting, and when you add a third child and my husband, two boxes aren't enough. Thus, I've been trying homemade recipes. This recipe for homemade stovetop macaroni and cheese is the winner so far!



From the Bookshelf

Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever

I expected another "how to declutter" book (which I love!), but this volume included much more - history, economics, trend forecasting, and all of the cultural factors involved in our culture of conspicuous consumption. Perhaps not unexpectedly, I disagreed with many of the author's points. That's just what happens when you pair a liberal-progressive author with a religious-conservative reader. But despite the fact that I often disagreed with the author's conclusions, I enjoyed this book very much - and I learned a lot. Worth a read.








The Wahl's Protocol: A Radical New Way to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions Using Paleo Principles

An amazing book. The author, herself a physician, developed a protocol of diet and lifestyle changes that she used to reverse her own case of secondary-progressive multiple sclerosis. This is amazing, especially in an age where degenerative and autoimmune diseases of all kinds are routinely managed, but not cured, with hard-hitting pharmaceuticals that cannot touch the root cause of the illness.

I am more and more interested in the ongoing development of functional medicine. Instead of prescribing drugs to manage the symptoms of a condition (conventional Western medicine), a doctor of functional medicine uses diagnostic information (diet, vitamin and mineral imbalances, gut health, stress, chronic infections, heavy metal toxicity, etc.) to investigate why a person's body is degenerating in the first place - and then works with the person to reverse the disease by addressing the underlying problems. This is a super-exciting area of medicine, and I wonder, on a personal level, how effective functional medicine would be in hyperemesis prevention. Read more about functional medicine here.


Dear readers, have a wonderful week!