Sunshine and Seeds

FINALLY, a few warm days and you manage to feel a thousand times better about life. This warm front can stick around as long as it wants despite what my 8 day forecast predicts is going to show up in 4 days.

We have been exploring our tiny town on foot this week, little sassy in her stroller and big sas trucking around in her bike. We actually got a little pink the other day, its been so long since anyone in this house needed sunscreen on that I totally forgot to use it. Ooops...

We also have picked up seeds to start for this summer, so if you live in a zone 3 you need to start your plants ASAP. Our last day of frost is roughly May 20th which definitely means that my orange, yellow and jalapeno peppers should have been started 2-3 weeks ago. Sweet peas can go into the ground and so can your bulbs. A lot of herbs can also go in before the chance of frost is gone. Also vegetables like kale, broccoli, cabbage, beets, carrots, onion, potatoes, spinach and snow peas can go into the ground 4-6 weeks before the last chance of frost.

We started our seeds in old egg crates we have been saving all winter long. I have not a single clue what I am going to do when it comes to re potting them. We are planning on selling our excess seedlings at the end of our driveway this year. Also a friend and I are starting a small garden on her property that we are going to sell the extra from. She has the land and we have a great location in town, hopefully it will work out well and we enjoy ourselves.

We just moved into our home this past December and its so interesting to go out and look in our garden beds and see the new surprises popping up, we have discovered lilac bushes, raspberry and blueberry bushes, tulips and even a rhubarb!

This is our first year not having our vegetables as mainly container plants. It should be a very fun filled time. Still debating whether we should do raised beds or just plant straight into the ground.

The Non Diet Parts to Being Primal

So you have the general idea of eating primal, but is that it? Can it really be so simple? Almost. Most primal philosophy believe that you need to engage in some type of exercise, the general thought is that you should be able to run fast enough, jump high enough, climb far enough to save your own A$$. If you are older, or unable to do that its completely understandable. You should however be doing as much as you can. Mr. Sassy has a soon to be 90 year old aunt who insists on climbing the stairs up and down to the basement to carry up a stick of firewood at a time. She refuses any type of help in this saying its her exercise. The woman is as sharp as a tack and funnier then heck I would dare say she is in better shape then I am.

You should also be doing some type of walking (low level aerobic exercise) just as our ancestors did to forage, hunt for food and carry water. You also need to lift heavy things, whether this means throwing your kids over your shoulder and attempting house work or pumping iron at the gym there is a need to strengthen our body to make us able to "save our own A$$".

I will start by saying this, you need to play. Have fun, chase your kids, walk the dog, make a snowman, throw a snowball and run after a Frisbee. To enjoy life to have fun just for the sake of having fun. "Specific instructions for an unstructured activity are impossible (and counterproductive), but there is a basic guideline: anything goes. That’s about all I can tell you. Any further direction from me or anyone else as to how, what, and when would compromise the spontaneous nature of true play. It’s important to discover your own particular brand of play. Indeed, I think the desire for active leisure is hardwired into our genetics (just look at the benefits), only it’s often smothered by the rigors and pressures of contemporary adulthood."

Walking, we were made to walk, we have been walking for hundreds of thousands of years.

• Kids who walk to school are fitter then kids who don't.
• Older healthy adults who walk briskly live longer than those who don’t
• Healthy adult males who engage in short bouts of brisk walking experience lower resting blood pressure and postprandial triglycerides.
• Regular walking improves working memory in older adults.
• Walking improves longevity in women over 70 years of age.
• Walking programs improve cognitive ability in people with Alzheimer’s.

Walk slowly, walk quickly, walk uphills, walk downhills, in sand, over rocks. Walk as far as you can and do it often. Get outside or if its too cold indoors somewhere and walk, move your body and dance, get your heart rate to a level that's comfortable to talk that's right below can't talk.

Lift heavy things, women carried their babies around, they moved rocks, they hauled water, they carried animals they had killed, our ancestor lifted heavy things as an ongoing part of their day. Give it a try, carry a gallon of milk around your house 3x, it gets heavy fast. They lifted themselves into trees and climbed up rocks. You only need to do it 2-3 times a week, for 30 mins at a time.

Sprint, really, really fast. Sometimes our ancestors had to run for their lives, and they needed to be ready for that, by lifting heavy things around everyday, walking all over the place and playing. They were ready when the time came to get out of the way of an angry animal. You should be able to run fast enough to save your own butt. Once a week run as fast as you can for as long as you can, walk until you cool down, do it at least 8x, in less then 10 minutes.

Rest, recover, recuperate. Historic man did not go all out all day every day. He took a break, when he was tired he had a rest. If you sprint once a week and lift heavy things three times a week, that still leaves you with three days to play in. Golf, tennis, basketball, chasing the kids, hiking, whatever makes you happy and keeps you moving. Also in this point is sleep, get it and then get more. The average person needs around 8 hours of quality sleep every night. Go to bed by 10 and be up by 6, do the math and give yourself time to adjust but make sleep a priority during the 30 day challenge. Every once in a while you will slip up and not be able to get your sleep but hopefully if you are getting good quality sleep the rest of the time its not such a big deal. Sleep deprivation causes all manner of nasty problems in our bodies, we NEED sleep to reset our bodies and for our mind to process things. Not getting enough sleep at night? Noisy neighbor, waking kids, stuffy nose keeping you up? Nap, lie down and take a siesta, if your not getting good sleep at night at least try and lie down every day and get some wakeful rest if sleep is impossible.

Get sunlight every day. Vitamin D might just be the most overly talked about vitamin in this day in age, but that's because it is SO important. If you live in the far reaches of northern no where (like we do) you might have to supplement.

Avoid trauma. A broken bone was more then likely death if not being a permanent cripple in cave man days. Getting hurt is no fun, avoid it at all costs. Eliminate destructive behaviors, start wearing your seat belt, stop smoking, do not do drugs, don't drink to oblivion.


Avoid poisonous things. This should be even MORE simple then avoiding trauma, eating things that are inherently bad for us is bad!

Use your mind, challenge yourself mentally. Make friends, connect to your spiritual side, volunteer your time somehow, join a book club. Do sudoku, crosswords challenge your mind by do trivial pursuit. Start a blog ;).

Eating Primal

So this whole primal thing can be confusing. You might say well I don't eat grains or sugars or processed foods. You are cutting out bad fats. Which is FANTASTIC but what do you do to take that a step further, to really embrace primal eating? Mark over at Marks Daily Apple has a great article on this, plus about a thousand other articles and a book covering all this. So I will sum it up for you this best I can to help break it down and tell you what we do. Tomorrow I will break down the non food parts of this lifestyle.

Step 1: Avoid grains, sugars, processed and unhealthy foods. Even if its a "real" food like dairy and you don't feel good after eating it, AVOID IT!

Step 2: Stop being scared of real foods, butter, oils, red meat, eggs. You get the point, almost every food in history has been demonized for one reason or another. The simplest thing you can do for yourself is to eat real food, the closer it is to the way it grew the better. Eat fat, eat meat enjoy and experiment.

Step 3: Eat more protein. The average American eating an average diet tends to not meet their daily protein needs often enough. " At a minimum you need .5 grams of protein per pound of lean mass/per day on average to maintain your “structure”. If you are moderately active you need .7 or .8, and if you are an active athlete you need as much as 1 gram of protein per pound of lean mass. That’s at a minimum, but it’s on a daily average. So a 155 lb moderately active woman who has 25% body fat (and thus) has 116 lb of lean body mass needs 93 grams of protein on average per day (116 x .8). If she gets 60 or 80 some days and 110 on others, she’ll still be in a healthy average range. And even if she exceeds the 110, it’s no problem if she’s eating low carb because the excess protein will convert to glucose, which will reduce her effective carbohydrate needs (see below). At 4 calories per gram, that’s between 320 and 440 calories per day in protein. It’s not that much"
Step 4: Be wary of carbs. By not eating sugars and grains it is really hard to even come close to eating over 150 grams of carbs a day. Eating under 150 and closer to 80 is a sure fire way to keep insulin levels low and help our bodies burn protein, fat and stored fat as fuel. Sure potatoes and starchy root vegetables have a good amount of carbs and so does fruit. A medium potato has 31g carbs, an apple has 17g of carbs, 1 cup of blueberries is 21g of carbs. Even if you ate all of that its only 69 grams of carbs. The problem with carbs is twofold, one they increase our insulin levels. With the outlook being that in the next 10 years 1 in every 3 Americans will be diabetic or prediabetic this is serious. Two, our bodies will use carbs as fuel first every single time, our bodies can easily access and break down carbs and use them quickly while storing all the fat and protein we eat. Which means an hour or so later we are hungry again AND you stored away the fat and protein you just ate. That equals out to weight gain. Our bodies do not do well being overweight, we are programmed to be lean and fit. That is how we thrive and prevent disease by being healthy, ironically enough when you eat healthy your body follow suits and looks healthy.

Step 5: Do not fear fat, saturated fat and learn about cholesterol. Do run scared from bad fats. Bad? Canola, corn, peanut, sunflower, safflower, cottonseed, soybean and all trans fat anything hydrogenated fats are pretty scary too. Whats left? Olive, fish, coconut, palm, avocado, walnut, macadamia, sesame seed I will add here butter and animal fats as well. Fats are an amazing source of energy for our bodies. Our bodies are made and designed to use fat as fuel.

Step 6: Try to eat more of the animal. Make your own broth or stock from animal bones. Eat liver, heart, etc. We need the vitamins and minerals associated with these pieces of the animal we usually discard. The good thing is they are generally really cheap. The bad thing is, it takes a lot of nerve to start trying it.

Step 7: Eat more seafood, all types. Avoiding the higher mercury seafood and eating not much of the medium mercury.

I think that covers the basics, I also think it helps address the "what now" when you stop eating the grains, sugars and processed foods. Start small and change one thing at a time. It can seem really overwhelming to address this all at once so start with not eating processed foods. Then move on to avoiding sugars and grains. You get the idea, do what works for you or your family. The most encouraging part of eating this way is the immediate result of feeling so much better.

Reality and Hope

Today big sassy is sad. There is a little 4 year old sassy girl at her school who has cancer. She is so upset and confused. She doesn't understand why someone so little has something so bad. She keeps saying "she didn't even smoke one time and now she has cancer."
How, how, HOW on earth do I explain to my daughter that life is not fair, that just when we think we have it figured out something like this pops into your life and proves you wrong. That some sweet, sassy, innocent little girl is suffering something so big and scary is heartbreaking no matter what her age. Her parents are heart broken, her big sassy sister is heart broken and who can imagine what that brave little girl is thinking as she falls asleep every night.
I explain to big sassy about chemo and radiation, about iv's and needles I explain that her hair might fall out and that her skin will hurt from all the drugs. I tell her in the simplest plainest terms that I can the unfairness of life and the pure rawness that is cancer. Something that breaks you open and tears you apart, like humpty dumpty, with everyone running around trying to put you together again. We talk about cells, that they are like legos and how cancer is the bad cells and how the medicine that saves you can make you so sick. And she is so sad, what must my poor little sassy think in her silence as she absorbs the cruelness of the world.
There is a benefit supper, a raffle, there is a walk to give hope and all to help raise money because putting this poor little sassy girl together again is a never ending flow of money. Its hours in the car to the hospital that is hundreds of miles away, its needles, medicine and prayers. Its the brief glimpse of hope and the heartbreak of losing that hope.
 All of this while trying to remember to spend every second, every moment with your little sassy, denying death, refusing to let it in. Knowing in your heart that it is still possible, that this little girl is a gift to her parents, to her sister, to her community.
Sassy wants to hug her, she wants to go take this girl for a walk to the park and give her cookies. I explain how this is not possible that she is too ill for all of that. So now big sassy is making bracelets, beading her heart away on little stretchy stings and praying to God that he help this little girl. She wants to sell all the bracelets and necklaces and donate all the money, she wants to walk, she wants to put her toys into the raffle.
I look at her and I am proud, I am brought to my knees with her honesty, with the love she has for someone she has never met. I am honored to have a daughter who looks at someone else's pain and wants to do anything she can to fix it, to make them forget it, at least for a moment.
I cannot wait to walk the hope walk with her, to help teach sassy that while there is unfairness in this world, that there are good people out there. People like her who make a difference, no matter how small, no matter how insignificant it seems at the time there are truly good, amazing people in the world who help to make all of us feel better. I want her to know to stand up for what she feels is right and to fight against what she knows to be wrong.
Cancer might not have been the lesson I thought I was teaching sassy about this week yet somehow I feel so blessed to be able to do just that. To teach her that often times others problems are so much larger then our own and the way we respond and the things we do to help are what make us better people. To teach her that she lives in a community that stands beside each other when we have a need and rallies one another up.

Meal Plan Monday and a Challenge

Ahhh the life of the slacker blogger. I spent last week, I mean literally almost every waking moment, out of doors. It was amazing, over 70 almost every day, temp today? 30, with a windchill of absurd. So back to the grind ;). Of course its Monday and that generally means I should plans some meals. I am also instating a full 30 Day Challenge, based on the Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson.

Mr. Sassy and I have been super slackers when it comes to our diet, not our main meals mind you, but eating out crap, snacking on dessert treats after the sassy girls are in bed and all manners of badly influencing each other.So that means today starts day 1 of the 30 day challenge, if you want to join let me know, either leave a comment below or go to the blogs face book page HERE and leave a comment.

Not willing to go all out primal yet, or ever? I challenge you to a 30 day eat better challenge. Close off your pantry, no processed foods (that means ingredient lists), eat whole foods, butter not margarine, fresh or frozen vegetables and fruit not canned. Cut out your sugar and grain intake, SERIOUSLY, cut it out. If you need to sweeten your coffee or tea use the bare minimum you can. The longer you refrain from white sugar, high fructose corn syrup, honey, syrups, etc the more you will realize how fruits and vegetables are naturally sweet and your desire will change to eating less sugar. The last part of the challenge is to see how you feel. Really think about it after you eat a meal, pay attention how hungry are you at the start of the meal, halfway through and when your done. Give it a solid week if you cannot commit to 30 days. Most people experience withdrawals when they cut out sugars and processed foods. Your body has to adjust to not just burning sugars and carbs as quick fuel and start depending on the fats, proteins and fresh produce.

A little musical inspiration, (from back in my good ol' days!)

Monday
B-Oatmeal
L-Chicken and Salad
D-Crock pot Pulled Pork, Apple Coleslaw
Tuesday
B-Scramble eggs and cheese
L-Chicken and Salad
D-Leftovers
Wednesday
B-Yogurt with Toasted Nuts
L-Chicken and Salad
D-BBQ Burgers, grilled vegetables
Thursday
B-Paleo Pizza Muffins (lazy mom moment, will be replacing the tomato step with pizza sauce)
L-Leftovers from dinner
D-Sausages, roasted root veggies
Friday
B-Leftover Pizza Muffins
L-Haddock and Salad
D-Crock Pot Paleo Pineapple Pork Ribs,
Saturday
B-Crispy Potato Skillet
L-Leftover Pork Ribs
D-BBQ Rotisserie chicken,
Sunday
B-Coconut Flour Pancakes
L-Leftover Chicken and Salad
D-Weekly Fridge Clean/Leftover Night

phew! Thats always such an ordeal...I really need to get better at this for some reason its really time consuming for me lately meal planning. I am excited to start my 30 day primal challenge, I really need to get back on the boat.

Pink Slime Now Optional

I'm so glad the government is now allowing Schools the choice to purchase pink slime added or pink slime free ground beef to their lunch menus for NEXT year. I also love that while they provide the pink slime added ground beef, schools have to fend for themselves to find the non pink slime beef. Way to force an already stressed system a little more guys.

Pink Slime Update, Click Here.

Meal Plan Monday

After a lovely weekend of sickness we are back, and almost better then ever. Now to figure out some way to guarantee that no one else gets sick!

When I look at this blank menu, at times, it makes my headache. What a pain, it really is a hassle sometimes. I know its worth it and helps to budget but it seriously feels overwhelming when its empty.

A friend suggested last week to do more crockpot meals, and she right. I used to do more and drifted out of the habit but I do have some ol' faithfuls that I will start incorporating. Especially for Fridays since that is big sassy's gymnastics day. Due to the timing of it all we never seem to get dinner started and end up with pizza or drive thru dinner which is a huge budget blower since it wasn't planned for.

Nice spring days like this make me want to JUMP,JUMP!
Monday
B-Fried egg
L-Toast and leftovers (I am still recovering so gentle foods!)
D-Leftover boiled dinner (nom nom nom)
Tuesday
B-Squash and apples with bacon
L-Clean the Fridge
D-Ham and Potato soup
Wednesday
B-Coconut Flour Pancakes (gluten free)
L-Soup and Salad
D-Roasted BBQ Chicken (bone in skin on), Roasted Broccoli
Thursday
B-Ham and Egg cups
L-Chicken and Salad
D-Primal Pizza (gluten free)
Friday
B-Leftover Coconut pancakes (reheat in toaster)
L-Chicken and Salad
D-Crockpot Pulled Pork, crunchy apple slaw (with honey not sugar)
Saturday
B-Crispy Potatoes and Eggs
L-Leftover Pulled Pork
D-Having company so not sure
Sunday
B-Kids request day
L-Leftovers
D-Mr.Sassy makes dinner

Mr.Sassy has been requesting pre made breakfast so I guess I should really step up my game with the whole Mason Jar Meals. Also I know I need to get more seafood in our diet but with sensitive tummies this week it ain't happening. Really struggling with ideas in that sense. It seems most people get their kids to eat them in "stick" version but since we are not eating grains that makes this hard.