Vibrant Moms

Here’s a new dessert we created for Rosh Hashana.  It took advantage of two recent finds: a) coconut milk at Trader Joes for .99 a can (versus $4 something at Whole Foods), and b) 24 ounce jars of mango for .50 each that I bought this past week.  Anyway, here’s the simple recipe.

Mango Ice

• 2 c. coconut milk
• 2 c. mango

Blend everything together until smooth.  Freeze until mostly frozen, then blend again.  Let freeze once more until solid.  Serve.

We had a guest who was a vegan and only eats raw food, and even he had this (I warned him that the mango was from a jar).  If you’re used to a very sugary ice cream, you might think this needs more sweetener.  But for our family, it was just right - mildly sweet and pleasant tasting. 

You could probably substitute other sweet fruits like banana for an alternative flavor, or combine two or more fruits.  The Trader Joe coconut milk is ‘light’, and I think that full fat coconut milk would also work well - it would probably solidify faster and have a creamier, less icy texture.

Avivah

Last night I made my first batch of elderberry syrup.  It is filled with antioxidants and is good for preventing colds or treating them, depending when you take it.  I bought dried elderberries online, but if you are able to pick them fresh locally, all the better!  Here’s how simple it is to make:

Elderberry syrup

• 1/2 c. dried elderberries (or 1 c. fresh)
• 1 cinnamon stick (optional)
• 3 c. water
• 1 c. honey

Put the berries in a pot and cover with water.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cover.  Let simmer for 30 - 45 minutes.  Mash the berries with a potato masher, and strain through a fine strainer.  Add honey while liquid is hot, stir, and bottle.  Keep in the fridge - should last 2 - 3 months when refrigerated.

I made four times this recipe and I ended up with three full quarts plus one 16 oz honey jar. I forgot to mash the berries, but since they were dried to start with, I think this was probably less important than when using fresh berries.  I added the cinnamon sticks because they taste good, but also because cinnamon kills bacteria and is great for fighting infections.   I used crystallized honey that was sitting around not being used because the kids said it doesn’t taste as good when it’s crystallized.

Here’s a breakdown of the cost to make it: I bought the dried elderberries for 7.95 lb, and used 2/3 of that (wanted to save some to tincture), so the berries were $5.30.  I used three cups of honey, and if I figured the cost correctly, each cup was $3.33 cup.  That seems high to me (I thought I paid about 2.50 per cup, less when I recently bought small 16 oz containers for 1.99 each), but I based it on googling how many cups of honey are in a gallon (supposedly nine); I buy a gallon/twelve pound container for $30.  So the honey was $10.  I’ll add in .14 for the cinnamon sticks, since I got a container that had thirteen sticks in it for .88 so each stick rounds up to .07.  The total for 12.5 cups of elderberry syrup came out to 15.44.  

When you consider 4 fl. oz of Sambucol costs around $12.99, or to use their cheaper price for a larger bottle, 7.8 oz is $21.99, that’s a real bargain! Elderberry syrup from Mountain Rose Herbs is similarly priced with a 4 oz bottle being $13.25.  To put it further into perspective, 4 oz is about a quarter of a cup and 8 oz is half a cup - so I’m getting about thirty five times as much for the same price (my price for 1/4 c. is .31; 1/2 c. is .62).

Because this has a limited shelf life and I don’t want to use up my fridge space hosting three quart sized jars for months, for immediate use I kept one quart plus the little honey jar, and canned the other two quarts so I can keep them on a shelf out of the fridge.

This can be given when a child is showing signs of the cold or a flu, a tablespoon every hour or two, or you can give them a teaspoon each morning as a general immune strengthener.  This could easily be added to tea or (if you let the water boil down more so the final result is thicker) poured on top of pancakes or waffles.  Getting kids to have some of this isn’t hard at all.  This morning we gave the younger kids who aren’t fasting a teaspoon each, and a minute after ds3 got his spoonful, he came back holding out a cup and asked for a cupful!

Avivah

I’ve been wanting to move my blog away from my business site to an independent  blog site for quite some time, for various reasons.  And since we’re starting a new year, now seems to be the right time to do it. I’ve thought of several names, but none of them seem to be just right to me.  I’m looking for something that includes all of what I share here - not just homeschooling, parenting, or frugal living.

So I decided to ask all of you for feedback - what does this blog represent to you?  How would you sum it up, with a blog name and a tagline?  (For example, my business site is called Vibrant Moms, the tagline is Real Support for Real Moms.)  To help get your creative juices flowing, I’ll be giving a $25 Amazon gift card to the person whose idea I use.  You can submit as many ideas as you want, however specific or general they are - post whatever bursts of inspiration you have in the comments section of this post so I can keep track of who suggests what. :)  To give everyone time to think about it, I’ll make the final decision right after Yom Kippur, on Sep. 29.

Thank you all in advance for your help - I’m really looking forward to tapping into your creative energy!

Avivah

Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are very important times in the yearly calendar, times that even those who aren’t very religiously affiliated go to synagogue.  It’s no suprise that a time like this can become confusing for mothers to navigate - how does mothering young children and going to shul fit together?

I can only share my own decision - everyone handles this differently.  I believe there’s a time and season for everything, and the expectations we have of ourselves have to change accordingly.  For me, that means that as long as I have young children, my way of serving H-shem/G-d can’t be to spend long hours in synagogue.  H-shem sent me these children to raise to serve Him, not just on humdrum days of the week but at times that are deeply meaningful.  I believe my job is to mother them and to serve H-shem in this role - that no longer means spending uninterrupted hours in shul on holidays.  I choose not to enroll my children in the available babysitting at the shul because I don’t feel that’s the right environment for them on such a special day.  I can’t say that I would never consider it in the future, and I certainly understand mothers who make a different choice than I do.  But until now this has been my feeling, one that doesn’t seem to be widely shared.

Some mothers find time in their busy days to pray at home.  I’ve done that and continue to do that, but honestly it’s not usually inspired - probably because it’s usually when everyone is sleeping and I’m already at the end of a long day.  If it’s in the middle of a day, I’m sneaking the time during the naptime of the littles, hoping to get in as much as I can before they wake up.  What is most important for me is to appreciate whatever I can do and in whatever way, instead of comparing it to how I davened before children.  It may be different, but one way isn’t better than the other - the question is what is better for me at this particular time.

I generally go to shul for shofar blowing - I used to go at the regular time but that wasn’t relaxing because there’s the pressure of keeping everyone quiet.  Then I started meeting dh at the end of davening and being there for the second blowing.  I was blessed for the last couple of years with a neighbor who blew for the women on the block, but he just moved.  :(   That was especially wonderful two years ago when I had a week old baby and the walk to shul would have been physically taxing for me. 

Wherever you do or don’t daven this Rosh Hashana, I wish all of you a wonderful yom tova and a year filled with happiness, health, meaning, and abundance of all good things.  K’sivah v’chasima tova - may you each be written and sealed for the good!

Avivah

Despite me being out of things this week, the kids got a lot of yard work topped off!  It will be nice to go into the holidays having most of the signs of summer yard projects cleared away.

The 12,000 pound mountain of excavated dirt has finally all been moved - this is a major accomplishment!  Just today dd13 was talking to the daughter of one of you in a different city who mentioned seeing a picture of our yard (Google maps?) and commented on the huge pile of dirt.  Yes, that was our yard. :)  Once the dirt was moved, the fourth new raised garden box was put into place and filled.  Ds dumped the grass clippings from the three yards he mowed this week into these beds to boost the soil - grass clippings are high quality soil enhancers.  Since the grass that would have lined the paths was killed when the dirt was on top of it, the kids spread a thick layer of the wood chips we got for free last week around the beds.  It looks nice and neat now. 

My plan is to build up the soil for the coming season by starting now and let the beds ‘cook’ over the next few months.  Soil strength/quality in large part determines the size of your crop, the nutritional value, and resistance to disease, and once I’m taking the time to garden, I want to get the most value out of it that I can.   

As I write ds8 and ds10 are pulling up the summer garden plants in the lasagna beds. When they’re done, the last load of dirt will be spread on top, and then the rest of the wood chips will cover all of it.  The dirt and wood chips provide a lot of biological ‘brown’ and will need to be balanced with ‘greens’ to eficiently break down. I’ll be adding the usual kitchen vegetable/fruit scraps and whatever grass clippings and leaves I can get before winter.  I have about 3 - 4 gallons of ashes from our campfire that we’ll sprinkle over all the raised beds and the lasagna beds.  Then I’ll let the sun and rain and time do the rest of the work.

One thing that will remain of the garden will be some of its fruits - several of our simanim (symbolically eaten foods) for the Rosh Hashana dinners were freshly picked today and are being roasted together - butternut squash, leeks, and beets.  And the apples weren’t  ones we grew, but we did pick them yesterday afternoon.

Avivah

>>I was wondering if you can give me some advice on my situation. Ds2  was always very attached. I let him be as clingy as he needed, and eventually he became more independent and not so attached anymore. Then I gave birth (edited - and was in the hospital for two days). Now I know a homebirth would have prevented this issue, but the issue now is:
He is traumatized that i left him.  He asks me to hold him whenever i’m nursing the baby, is biting me and hitting me, has asked to nurse (though he’s weaned 5 mos already) and is just in general being VERY clingy. He insists on coming with me to the bathroom and watching me when i shower…

So my question is- what do i do now?
Just let him be as clingy as he feels the need to, to reassure him that i’m gonna be there for him and won’t leave him, and let him become more independent when he is ready to do so?  Or be very loving and warm to him, but set limits like “no coming with mommy to the bathroom” or “no watching mommy shower”?  And what do i do when he wants to be held while i’m nursing the baby?<<

Today on the way home from our full day of shopping, we listened to a cassette that I got a couple of years ago - it was a talk on parenting given at a homeschooling conference in 2001.  The speaker was extremely funny - my kids were cracking up, and so was I (though laughing hard isn’t a good idea right now for me, since it caused me to throw up several times - but it was worth it!).  The premise of the talk was that there’s not much support for parents nowadays, and that though people complain that kids today aren’t disciplined, parents who do what is necessary to develop a disciplined and well behaved child who knows his limits and has self control are criticized.  It was a great talk and I mention it here since he shared a philosophy very similar to mine, and touched on a point that you’re asking about - the place of discipline. 

I don’t encourage clinginess, but I do support giving a lot of love and warmth.  It might seem it’s two ways of saying the same thing, but there’s a significant difference.  When you give a child a message that he is emotionally needy and you’re there for him (that was the first option you mentioned), that’s a very different message from he’s healthy and fine and you’re there for him (option number two).  One encourages his weakness and one supports his strength. 

Kids need discipline.  It’s not a kindness to refrain from establishing clear limits with your children.  It’s no favor to give them all that they want (hmm, this is sounding like what I wrote about last night that was lost even though it was on an entirely different topic).  

When a child goes through a situation like this, they do want your presence.  It’s frightening for the person who is the center of your universe to disappear for two or three days, especially when you’re little and have no sense of time, and may even be afraid that they aren’t coming back at all.  He’s not asking just for your physical presence, but for  your reassurance that you won’t disappear again.    There are lots of non verbal ways to do that, but you don’t need to aquiesce to all that he’s asking for if it’s uncomfortable for you.  I don’t mind letting my toddler watch me brush my teeth, but that’s about it as far as my comfort level goes regarding my time in the bathroom and the company of little people.  Moms are entitled to at least that tiny bit of privacy, aren’t they? :)  Practically speaking, I suggest you take a shower either before he wakes up or after he goes to sleep to avoid the issue for 2 - 3 weeks.  With time he’ll become increasingly secure about your presence. 

In general, give him a lot of attention, but don’t overdo it so he thinks that you’re trying to make up for bringing the baby into his life.  Then it will reinforce his feeling that you’ve done something to wrong him.  Newborn babies nurse alot, but they sleep a lot more than they’re awake.  That gives you loads of time when your attention is totally on him.  But even when the baby is awake or nursing, he doesn’t need much of your emotional attention.  When you’re nursing the baby, you can make a point of gathering him into one arm and hugging him - he doesn’t have to be on your lap if you can’t manage that.  You also can give him a special hug right before you feed the baby.  Right after I have a baby, I make it a point to make nursing sessions special reading time for my toddlers.  So instead of feeling resentful that Mommy is spending so much time holding the baby, they love it because when I feed the baby it means they get to cozy up on the couch next to me and hear a story of their choosing. 

Congratulations on your new baby and enjoy this period - it goes by soooo fast!

Avivah

On the heels of the hacking excitement came this morning’s fun.  I was planning to leave for a day of shopping by 10:30, but was able to get an appointment with my chiropractor to do some work on me for the breathing issue so I didn’t get home until 11:15 am.  (BH, though it wasn’t entirely cleared up this was tremendously helpful.)  Then dd14 didn’t want to leave until she washed all the dishes in the sink (it’s my job but I haven’t been up to doing much more than sitting in one place for the last three days) because she didn’t want to come home to a mess.  The reason I’m mentioning this is that because of these delays, when dd14 finally finished the dishes and started to go outside to get a cooler to take with us for the raw milk, she saw someone in the middle of prying the lock off our garage with a crowbar. 

She didn’t register right away what he was doing, but he ran off the second he saw her (as she described it, ‘he looked up with guilt written all over his face’).  I called the neighborhood patrol to report it but if I had time to think about it would have called a different patrol that responds in the day and has a quick response time.  I did call them afterwards, but five minutes had already gone by and that’s too late to catch him.  I did go around and warn the few neighbors who were in to be careful and keep their eyes open.  

Isn’t it great that we happened to be home?  Since we were going to be out all day, there would have been nothing to have stopped him from totally cleaning us out - we don’t have much of value, but it took us months until we replaced the bikes and mower that were stolen last time and it would be very disheartening to have them all stolen again.

Since I didn’t know if he’d try to come back today and I knew we’d be out until tonight (I know, it seems stupid to go back to somewhere where you were spotted, but breaking into one of the better secured garages on the block belonging to one of the few homes that has someone home almost all day every day wasn’t exactly bright, either), I asked the kids to move all the bikes out of the garage into the house and then find a different place for the mower.  Joining all these bicycles in the living room are two bench seats from the van, removed to make space to bring all our groceries home.  Now that we’re finally home with the groceries, there really isn’t room to move anywhere. 

Tomorrow we’ll finish unloading the groceries from the van, clean out the van, put the bench seats back in, return the bikes to the garage, put away the groceries, and maybe even do some Rosh Hashana cooking. 

Avivah

>>You’re back, albeit missing some well-written content <<

Yes, I am back, and I’m so glad that I am!  If you checked my site after midnight last night, you probably saw the creepy message about my site being hacked (done by a radical Muslim group).  Within a couple of hours my host server deleted that message so the only message you you would have seen was that the site wasn’t accessible.  For those who didn’t know what was going on, now you know!

I was initally concerned that it was my personal site that was hacked into, but discovered my host server was hacked as well when I tried to get their phone number off their website and the website displayed the same graphic and message.  (I also discovered there were other large sites also hacked into by the same group around the same time, by googling when I was trying to figure out what was going on and what to do.)  I think I must have been one of the very first to call them to let them know.  So I think that all the sites connected to my server were hacked into.  I went to sleep with a lot more peace of mind knowing that it wasn’t going to be all up to me to figure it out!  First thing this morning they called me back and left a message that they know who did it, they’re fixing it, and it would be back to normal by this afternoon.  I was doing my monthly shopping today and didn’t get home until 8:30 pm, so I didn’t check until the house got somewhat quiet.

Unfortunately the two posts I wrote last night are gone.  One was posted for a very short while before the site was hacked (it was too new to have been included in the saved databases of my server), the second was lost when I pressed ‘publish’ - that was when I discovered the problem - it was lost the second I pressed the button so no way that could have been saved.  So if you happened to read whatever I read last night, I’m glad, because I don’t rewrite posts.  :)

I was really sad at the idea of losing all the posts I’ve written over the last three years, and you can’t imagine how grateful I feel to have them back. 

Avivah

Last week a couple of people asked me what I’m doing to prepare for the upcoming flu season, particularly regarding swine flu.  The first thing I told them is, I’m absolutely not getting a shot for it!  

I try to operate from a proactive and holistic perspective, so while shots (particularly these for the swine flu, which are highly experimental and untested - and in the last wave of swine flu, more people died from the shot than the flu) aren’t anything I would recommend for anyone, there are a few things that I’m planning to do.  Most of these are things to prepare for any kind of winter sickness, not just the flu.

Firstly, I’d like to can up a bunch of chicken broth so I can quickly pull some off the shelf and have a sniffly child eating it within a few minutes.

Next, I just noticed that I have almost no vitamin C powder left.  I can’t believe that it’s all finished since I bought four pounds less than a year ago.  But I’ll order another 2.2 pounds of sodium ascorbate from Bronson Lab.   

Next, I’m going to order some dried elderberries so I can make elderberry syrup.  Elderberry is the thing to have for the flu - it’s a key ingredient in preparations like Sambucol.  (The Latin name of elderberry is Sambucus nigra - you see where Sambucol gets its name, right?)  I tried to order some a few months ago but they were sold out at the place I get my herbs, so I’ll get some with my next order.

Next, I’m going to make an echinacea glycerite.  Echinacea is an infection fighter and a natural antibiotic.  I want to make a glycerite versus a tincture since a tincture uses alcohol, while a glycerite uses glycerine; the alcohol tincture isn’t as appealing for kids as the sweet glycerites.  (This isn’t for the flu, because of the cytokine storm issue.) 

I also plan to buy kosher glycerin capsules and a capping tool so I can fill my own capsules.  There are several powdered spices that I buy in the food section in a large container, knowing that they are helpful medicinally, too.  Some of these include: ginger, cinnamon, tumeric, and garlic.  It’s not practical to eat a large amount of them, but if I can put them into capsules, it would be easy to give a child feeling queasy, for example, a ginger pill.

We already have a stock of vitamin D, which is effective in small amounts as a flu preventative, and in extremely high amounts, is a curative.  We aren’t taking it daily at this point.  We got this specifically with swine flu in mind. 

There’s a homeopathic remedy called oscillococcinum for the flu - the local health food store didn’t have any when I checked in the spring, but it looks like I can order it online.  Another item I’d like to have on hand. 

Something I did for my personal health today was to start a lobelia glycerite and a mullein glycerite brewing.  Last winter I shared how some doses of mullein and lobelia tea ended my asthma symptoms.  But since the camping trip a week ago, they suddenly resurfaced and I’m having a hard time breathing throughout the day and particularly at night.  Hopefully this will help.  (I’d appreciate any prayers coming this way - Avivah bas Feigel Rochel - I’m getting pretty worn down by the effort of breathing.)

Since most people who die of the flu actually die of dehydration, I have several recipes in my notebook for homemade rehydration formulas.  This came in handy a few weeks ago when dd8 was playing all Shabbos long but not drinking much, and suddenly began vomiting repeatedly.  She couldn’t keep any liquid down, but the rehydration formula was great and I was very glad I had it since it saved us a trip to the emergency room. 

A suggestion in an entirely different direction is to stay out of public areas as much as possible.  Another suggestion along these lines is to have enough basic food supplies on hand so that if you get sick, you won’t need to run to the store.

As I wrote last year on the topic of boosting immune function for kids, try to keep white sugar and processed foods out of your diets as much as possible, since they bring down your immunity.  While eating a good diet doesn’t guarantee an absence of illness, the better your diet is, the healthier you’ll be.  

 Avivah

>>With the price of gas being what it is, is it really worth making a 2-3 hour trip to shop really worth it? >>

Well, let’s look at the numbers.   If I get 13 miles to the gallon, then I need 15 gallons for the entire day (it’s 100 miles in each direction).  With gas now at about 2.50 a gallon, it works out to $37.50.  So I need to save at least that amount before I start to benefit.  I gave the example of having saved over $110 when I bought three bags of wheat.  I don’t buy wheat every month (can’t eat nearly that much in a month!), but everything I buy is significantly less than it would be if I bought locally, not on sale.  (That’s not to say that everything is much cheaper, but that the things I buy are much cheaper.) I started buying 5 gallon buckets of coconut oil when I do my big shopping (it’s an item the store doesn’t carry but specially orders for me) - the shipping that I used to pay for one bucket was about $40.  And of course, I get much, much more than just one item - we have a 12 passenger van, and I remove one bench seat before I go.  The van is generally packed full when I get back - that’s why it takes me part of the following day to get everything unpacked and organized!

I wonder how much people spend on their gas costs for their small trips every couple of days to the store?  Most people don’t think about there even being costs associated with it, but whether they think about it or not, they’re still spending that money on gas and shopping.  I think that’s it’s highly likely that most women spend just as much as I do on gas each month with shorter but more numerous shopping trips - but spend a lot more time in the stores than I do.

However, it’s in large part due to the gas costs (and time needed) that my shopping trips have become more and more spread out.  At this point, I go shopping about every 7 weeks instead of every four, and supplement in between the big trips with small local trips every couple of weeks.  So the gas costs are really much less significant than it seems even from the number I gave.

>>I have an Amish area about 2.5 hours away but that takes a day away from regular life (school, hanging out, etc) and everyone’s tushies get tired from being in the car for that long (even with our audio books and torah tapes).<<

 I don’t see it as taking a day from regular life as much as it being a day of regular life.  I try to do some kind of trip on that day, when I can - like going to a living history museum, a chocolate factory, potato chip factory, dairy.  It doesn’t always work out but the kids enjoy going with me anyway.  I can’t say exactly what they enjoy about it - a friend came with me once and I know it seemed boring to her from a kid’s perspective.  One thing the older kids said they like is having a long block of time to shmooze with me, which is why I don’t generally agree to have anyone come with me.  I generally buy some kind of treat for everyone, in addition to buying something for lunch and then (weather permitting) we have a mini picnic.  It’s generally pretty simple but the kids enjoy it. 

>>In buying bulk, do you worry about bug infestation and how do you store everything?<

Bulk grains are put into the freezer for 24 hours, sometimes more.  When it’s the winter time, this is greatly simplified by storing them on the stairs leading from my basement to outside that are covered by storm doors - that freezes them very quickly.   If there are any insects in it, they will be killed by this.  In the summer I find this much harder to do - I only have one freezer and generally need the space for perishable foods.  But whether the grains are frozen first or not, I transfer them from the bags they came in to food grade plastic buckets (most are five gallon, but the rectangular ones I prefer are a bit smaller).  They seal tightly and can be stacked somewhere in the corner of your laundry room or basement.  It doesn’t take up much space. 

Avivah