Church attendance is up—
the parking lot is packed.
People wait with anxious faces,
day-worn and dreary in the early evening cold,
eager to receive the warm comfort
of a meal they didn’t make,
a bit of tender nourishment
amidst the hectic rush
and flow of pandemic worries…
I watch them as I walk by to pick up my daughter from ballet,
these people united though apart,
their cars waiting in line
at Church’s Chicken.
In my last post, Making Our Own Headlines, I wrote about the idea of writing our own headlines for each day, focussing on the little things that matter to us and bring us joy, rather than all the huge world news and depressing statistics. If we can each find more beauty in our days, and be grateful for it, we can bring more hope to the world.
So here are a few more of my “happy headlines.” I hope they inspire you to notice many joyful moments in your own day, and if it’s a harder one for you today, here’s sending you a giant hug, and wishes for a better tomorrow! 🥰
Bees Keep Buzzing, Blissfully Ignoring World Pandemic
Tired Mom Receives Home Spa Treatment from Tiny Masseuse
Summer Brings More Family Time For Fancy Baking
Mother and Daughter Bring Joy to Neighbour by Sharing Home Baking
Save-On-Foods Grocery Delivery Service Saves the Day for Car-less Family
Well, I realize many of my happy headlines have to do with food…I guess feeding people is my love language, and stocked cupboards make me feel safe. I am so lucky to be able to take such good care of the kids in this way, while my hardworking accountant husband slogs away to earn our daily bread. Thanks, honey.
Lately, I’ve been trying to be resourceful about using up the food at the back of the cupboard, since our grocery delivery service is so busy they can usually only make it once every two weeks, and we are trying to avoid going out as much as possible. If our pretending we live in our little house in the big woods, and making homemade bread instead of running to get some can, help less people get sick, then we are going to do it.
So, even though we actually live in a big house in the city, with seven kids instead of three, I’ve been trying to find my inner “Ma Ingalls,” because she could make do with almost no stores and make everything from scratch. With varying results–my attempts that is! The most explosive result, so far, came from making homemade hummus.
If you know my husband at all, you will know he is a hummus connoisseur. Yes, that’s actually a thing. Having been to Israel, and tasted the real deal, he is pretty hard to impress. Not that he won’t eat store-bought or homemade hummus quite cheerfully, but he will often make reference to the truly amazing hummus he had in the Middle East. Probably it’s partly just nostalgia. Doesn’t everything taste better overseas?
However, like the rebellious obliger that I am, I felt two things:
1. A challenge to create a really great hummus at home, so it’s not always just “alright.”
2. The pressure to make it good enough to compete with holiday memory hummus.
Kinda silly the whole thing. In any case, all we had was dried chick peas, so I soaked them over night. Then, I followed the instructions for “Magical Hummus” from my husband’s Israeli cookbook step by step. Mostly. Ish. After rinsing off the soaked chickpeas, I was supposed to cook them in a pot with baking soda for 40 minutes or so, until super soft and soupy, all the while skimming off the foam bubbles in the top.
I don’t have time for that; I’ll just do it in my instant pot.
Famous last words. Normally, I absolutely love my instant pot. It’s so handy! You can whip up dinner all in one pot in less an half an hour, even if things are frozen, and it comes out tender and delicious. It’s the closest thing to having another woman in the kitchen without polygamy.
But! I shouldn’t have ignored the instructions about scooping off the foam…and when I flicked open the pressure release valve to let the steam out after cooking the chickpeas for 25 minutes, out came sputtering hot and foul smelling yellow scum!! Aaaagggghhh!!
I had to throw a towel over the pot to close the pressure valve without getting burned by my hissing, volcanic pot. After wiping chick pea scum off the cupboards and floor, and letting the pressure release naturally, which is what I should have done, I opened the lid to see a mass of bubbly, frothy soupy greyish chick peas, and to smell…. awfulness!!
Mom, what’s that gross smell?! Eeewww!! Are you making fart soup??
The house did indeed smell like one giant diaper; the kids weren’t even exaggerating. So I went around laughing like an idiot and opening all the windows and doors and putting the fans on. My poor neighbours!!
That Eastland family, what are they up to now?
I thought this attempt at homemakerliness was going to be a total fail, but here’s the suprising part: after I partly drained, then blended the chick peas with lots of tahini, some lemon, garlic, and salt, it turned out great! Except quite a bit too salty…as I was worrying about masking the imagined awful taste…but after I added some water, more lemon and olive oil, it was lovely. And it made a great dressing for homemade falafel, the next day, which surprisingly, turned out just fine, and even satisfied my Middle Eastern loving hubby.
All’s well that ends well. Sometimes it just really stinks along the way!
We went to the Dosa Factory restaurant
with a very good old friend
and our seven kids.
They were very good:
one napped quietly and the others played card games like “Go Fish”
and set up their Littlest Pet Shops on the lazy Susan
to show our sweet friend
who expressed genuine delight.
They sat in their seats and were very good indeed…
except the toddler
who played musical chairs
and repeatedly catapulted himself off his high chair,
grinning delightedly under his cropped golden mop:
“Wheee! Whahoo! Wheee!”
Of course the encouraging smiles of the surrounding people
just added fuel to the fire
and when he hid under the table
it wasn’t in shame but in jest…
he was playing house!
It was all well and good until he spilled water all over his pants
and decide to strip down, then and there, in the high chair….
and then bolt–laughing!–
as Daddy followed in hot pursuit.
After being bribed with “Coffey” (sweet milky chai tea)
he temporarily settled back into his high chair
(now in his pants again…which were only pjs…but still)
and sipped his drink off a spoon with relish:
“It’s yummy, Mama; it tastes GOOD!”
And while all this went on
we ate mutter paneer dosa, and chicken korma and naan
and talked faith and philosophy,
the importance of being yourself
and why the little things matter,
and I nursed the baby
and bounced her as she cooed and giggled
those new little laughs
that are like spring flowers
meeting with the world for the first time
to share their loveliness.
And once the kids escaped their seats
and scampered about eating fennel seed candy,
we settled up and walked home in the slight rain
to the scent of June roses
perfuming the grey evening with hope
and splashes of colour.
Some people think homeschool must be very messy…uh, yeah!
If you’d like to bake some pumpkin muffins yourself, here’s the recipe…with some nice melted coconut oil full of omega 3’s to power these mad scientists!
Recently we discovered that one of my daughters is lactose-intolerant, and have been modifying our cooking and baking to accommodate her. Avoiding the stomach aches, headaches, and general bad moods that follow her consuming dairy make the extra effort worth it. This morning we turned a classic lemon loaf recipe by Jean Paré (author of the Company’s Coming series) into moist dairy-free muffins that were great for breakfast.
Ingredients:
Wet:
1/2 cup Vegan Becel margarine
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup original almond milk
2 tbsp lemon juice
Dry:
1 cup sprouted whole wheat flour
1/2 cup white flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
Grated rind of one lemon
Optional: a handful of blueberries.
Instructions: Mix wet, mix dry, mix together gently until flour just blended in. Spray muffins tins with oil and scoop in the 12 muffins. Since half my kids like blueberries, and half not, I just stuck about 5-7 blueberries in the top of half the muffins, and left the others just lemon.
Bake at 350 C for 18 minutes or until golden brown.
Mix juice of one lemon with 2tbsp white sugar until dissolved. Slowly pour a little lemon glaze on each muffin and let sit a few minutes.
The muffins were nice and tender, and had a bit the texture of cornmeal muffins, likely due to the sprouted whole wheat flour. Enjoy for breakfast or afternoon snack with coffee, tea or juice!
Here’s a quick recipe for one of those days when you feel like you have nothing but odds and ends in the cupboard. I usually make this as a black bean and rice bowl in the rice maker, but was missing lots of the essential ingredients…black beans, onions, garlic, salsa….so here’s what I made instead! This recipe was inspired by Robert Irvine’s Red Beans and Rice recipe on the foodnetwork.com.
This might seem like a less than thrilling topic, but it’s actually really important. Keeping your system cleared out when you’re producing waste for two people instead of one is quite essential. I know; I get really sick if I don’t.
In all of my pregnancies but one, I’ve gotten a late pregnancy condition called colistasis, which means that at that point my body can’t cope well with the toxins from baby and myself, and doesn’t know how to get rid of them. So instead of eliminating them, it puts them under my skin. Sounds fun right? 😬 Especially when you’re too itchy to sleep. So you see the importance of trying to prevent such a thing…but how?
The only really effective way I’ve found to keep my body regular and on track is to eat Bran Flakes every day. Yup, good old Kellogg’s has done more to keep me healthy than trying to eliminate sugar, fried fat, excess salt, etc, even though those things are of course important, too. My OB suggested trying this in my third or fourth pregnancy, and when I’m really faithful to it I am much better. With my fourth I didn’t even get colistasis at all.
The tricky bit is keeping on eating bran every day. But this seems to be the key. A few times I went through most of the pregnancy healthy, and then when I got a bad cold or cough neglected my bran flakes for a few weeks. That was enough to do it; I got colistasis again. And this condition is not only uncomfortable but increases the chance of stillbirth as your pregnancy progresses. I’ve experienced this. I don’t wish it on anyone.
So that’s why I thought I’d share this simple trick, to keep up your bran which clears out your guts and keeps your system running clean, so you can be a safe environment for your baby to grow and develop. Here are a few ideas on how to consume it:
My big sister—
the poet, the editor, the mediator
the strong survivor, the loving mother
the beautiful woman
my inspiration, my friend—
gave me this Dutch cake mix for appeltaart
when she last came to visit us.
And though she’s a province away,
when I make it with my girls—
carefully chopping the apples together,
blending in the butter,
brushing with egg to finish the masterpiece—
I am with her, too.
“Lekker gezellig!” deliciously cosy…
The love of my sister
wraps around me like these strips of dough
around the nested apples,
soft arms scented with cinnamon and sugar.
Just East Of Crazy Land 