5 Ways I Battle Seasonal Virus Potential

My days are busy with preparing things in my kitchen that I believe will help lessen or even help my family totally avoid the common illnesses of the season.  I know that once we or one of us receives a new virus, our bodies will make antibodies to it and it won't be able to attack again..that is if the immune system is kept strong.  I am okay with that too but, I am an avid hand washer and non chemical hand sanitizer user for myself and the children when we are in public!  I wanted to share some things here that take time away from more fun things to do but I feel are well worth the investment of time.  The payoff is a family of healthy folks.  I am not a health expert, just a mom who reads about this stuff often.

1. Take Vitamins.  We use quality assured ones which means the dose is what it says it is when some others are not "guaranteed"  but I think that taking them is just important even if you don't go through a practitioner but get them at your health food store.  Vitamins and supplements, a good overall multi is essential daily if possible.  That goes for children too.
2. Probiotics.  I buy them through our Frontier co-op but again, I have seen good quality, multi strain is ideal, brands, refrigerated at HEB or other stores.  Its important to take them as our immune system begins in our gastrointestinal system.  You are surely going to get plenty of the good fighting bacterias killed off is you drink soda water, drink water in restaurants or any other non filtered and fluoridated water, not to mention other bugs, literally, from salads and other produce.  Also especially, especially after antibiotic use.
3. Pesto!  This is a pile of Italian and Curly leaf parsley, some organic, some not, from the grocery store.  The recipe is for basil but since I cannot grow or buy that in bulk now, I use the two parsleys..the Italian makes the flavor milder.  For Walnut Pesto, in your food processor, toss in 1 cup walnuts, 6 garlic cloves, 1 tsp sea salt, 1 cup of olive oil, process till smooth.  Add 3.5 cups of fresh basil (parsley) and juice from half a lemon and process again until smooth.  Store in a mason jar in the fridge and it lasts for weeks.  Spread on toast or bring to almost room temp and drizzle on scrambled eggs or, toss to coat and flavor a hot pasta salad with tomatoes and seafood.  Delicious, nutritious, high in vitamins you need and easy.  My children like it!
4. Immune boosting herbs for all.  My husband and I take them in caps but for the children, I make Immune Booster pops using Wishgarden Herbs Immune Boost bulk herbs.  Drop a handful in a quart mason jar, add boiling water, steep till cool, mix with one part organic orange juice with pulp or fresh squeezed if you really want it fresh and a little liquid Stevia to sweeten it up a little more.  Juices seem to loose their sweetness when frozen.  The children love these, even in cold weather.  Wishgarden has other more specific herbal remedies too that have been effective for all of us.  Martin loves the Sore Throat Soother..calms his cough in seconds.
5. Eat orange.  Pumpkins, Butternut squashes, Acorn squashes, carrots, etc.  The high levels of Vitamin A are critical in battling viruses and bacteria.  See this book and this book for some ideas on preparations for these foods.  You can even make pumpkin smoothies with canned organic pumpkin..just don't overdo the sweet part.

So those are the basic things I try to do regularly around here to keep our bodies healthy during this cold and flu season.  What things do you do to boost your families immune systems?  Please share.

Making Ginger Beer

ginger beer started bubbling on a heating pad on the kitchen counter..it has a muslin/washable coffee filter rubberbanded over the top to keep insects and kitties out; began March 27th

Nourishing and cheap to produce in my own home. Those are two things I like best when it comes to food in my kitchen, inexpensive and nourishing. With growing children and a man in survival mode from cancer treatment and a mama that is, uh, holding on to middle age to care for all of them and for herself at the same time, I love these old folk remedies, tonics, etc. I have ventured into making kombucha tea and kefir and have found a nice website (linked for you right back there in this sentence on "kombucha" and "kefir") with not only what you need to get started, again very affordably so, but with information and links as to why you need to consume these things as well as videos ( I love it when you show me, not just tell me, right?!) on how to make these concoctions. I have watched several of these videos and I would agree with how she is doing things here and like how she shows you how really easy this is to produce these things. But for now, I seem to be interested in making Ginger Beer. What is ginger beer? See this link for a general history of ginger brew. This morning, I was wondering, just what is the alcohol content since I do plan to serve to my young children....upon reading, uh-oh...well, it can possibly be as high as 11% which is as high as beer or wine. That can happen the longer you ferment it. The longer the ferment time, the more alcohol you will get. Opppss....well, we shall see just how much fermentation I am able to get with my brew...I will try it out on my husband and I first for sure. I did serve my children kombucha tea in small amounts on hot summer days and do not recall being concerned with alcohol content then....hummmm...I guess that we did not drink more than 8oz or 16oz per adult per day and maybe 4 to 6 oz. or less for the children and at the time, T was too tiny anyway to drink it or drink more than a taste anyway. Overall, the good bacteria consumption is key, the alcohol is likely low, see this article here under "A Little Goes A Long Way", and that is the goal for us all, to get the good things in our gut and stop supplementing with very expensive probiotic supplements. To keep my family of five in regular probiotic supplements can be around $30 per month whereas with kombucha tea, kefir water, ginger beer...it is a fraction of it and I daresay, much more natural and therefore more "alive" and truly useful to the body. We are at home anyway and can use the capsule or powdered supplements when away from home. I will report my findings on making of this new brew, new to our family anyway. Today is day 8 of making the "bug" to start the actual batch to ferment a drinkable brew. I am keeping the warm temperature steady by placing my jar on a heating pad on low temp right on the kitchen counter. This is not difficult ya'll and it is not dangerous. I read recently that when making your own fermented anything at home, ginger beer, kefir, vegetables, etc., if it is ruined and toxic, you will not only not be able to eat/drink it but the smell with toss you backwards. Carefully prepared and, using good directions, see this advice as well at the above linked how to videos, these fermented foods/drinks have been traditionally used, read this, and thought to be vitally nourishing for the body. As a sidebar, did you happen to notice in the photos of the native people in shelters following the tsunami in Japan, they were eating fermented vegetables. Normal everyday food for them that is beneficial. I noticed it! By the way, if you are reading this and you have found a good source for buying flip top, rated for fermentation, quart size bottles...please advise!

Happy home brew ya'll! Go ahead, try it!

The Calorie Un-Counter

I posted about using The Calorie Counter Book and since then have been sick. It was the kind of allergy sick when I don't want to eat as much as usual so this works well and I did not count calories except for one day and I hit way below my expected amount to lose those 15 pounds anyway. I don't suppose I can count on this strategy though. I did find that using the book did not always show things easily that are whole foods like for example, a bowl of oatmeal..how many calories? I don't know. And neither does the book. But generally, over time and just looking up things at various times (not always recording it) I did get an idea of what I was overdosing upon, how many calories things actually have and so now have to amend that if I want to change....this will be a slow change. I still want to enjoy my glass of wine and homemade cookies too.

The nice part of this battle of the bulge? My husband thinks I am beautiful the way I am. Nice isn't it? ;-)

Madeline and highlights of the school week

This record is only a snapshot as I am homeschooling all day long and could not possibly include everything..but here it goes. Our daily routine includes bible history and a Wee Sing song or two. We are currently on Abraham and W2 loves the song 'Father Abraham' in Wee Sing. On Wednesday, the children and I went to a guitar store to take in my sickly guitar that I have had since the third grade. I have noticed on Wee Sing, guitar chords on the bottom of the sing along book soooooo..it is time to fix the guitar and play for my wee ones. I think they will not be too critical of me.

We used Five In A Row again last week to study five subjects using the story of Madeline written and illustrated by Ludwig Bemelmans. Monday was Social Studies/Geography. This is the cover of G5s lapbook. Now, on the subject of lapbooking. That is a post on its own but I can tell you briefly, it is a collection or, a record of our research on the subject at hand. At this point, I lead the layout and the what? part of what we put in G5s lapbooks. However, whenever he wants to jump in...he does it himself. I determine whether or not he is going to get too involved and overly frustrated in the cutting part rather than the learning part so he does some cutting and pasting and sometimes I do it to get to the point of learning. So, moving forward with Five In A Row...he starts by putting a story disk (paper drawing circle to remember the book title)everyday on our world map for Paris, France and talk about the Seine River or other things about France. We noticed that Germany, where Oma and Opa and one uncle live, is quite close to the country of France.






This is an overview of the interior of G5s Madeline lapbook.





G5 made a flag of France in paper for his lapbook you see at upper top left. Again, I cut the three colors of the flag and he noted how to arrange them, then pasted them to the mini book. Below it is a 'Where in the World is France' mini book and inside, he colored super duper inside the lines, the country of France. He is a perfectionist child. I have to encourage him when he gets intimidated and also appreciate his perfectionism. See his perfectly colored little France below? Pretty neat and tidy for a 5 year old? Too much I think. ;-)





On Tueday, Language Arts, we looked at rhyming as a literary device. I was surprised at how he did not at first know what rhyming was until I gave lots of examples from the book. I have always been careful to introduce poetry and Little Golden Books with rhyme but this is the first time I have ever focused on it. So, it was interesting for him and he came up with some on his own for the Rhyme Time book now in his lapbook. He is learning something new! For example: What rhymes with 'door'? He came up with 'snore' and 'boar'. That will work! Each tab held others he came up with on his own too. It was fun.

On Wednesday, we studied my favorite, Art. Specifically, architecture. I was able to introduce him to real buildings in Paris that we found photographs for that matched the illustrated ones in Bemelmans book..through his artistic lens. G5 liked this cutting and matching mini book..see it here. (He did all the cutting himself with pleasure...you just never know!)

All of these structures are in the book. I forgot when we looked at it but I also traveled to France in 1998 and went inside the Eiffel Tower..I don't have pictures to show G5 so that is probably why I forgot to tell him. Oh well....


On Thursday is Math. I cut out 48 girls quickly and then we divided and counted them. G5 made groups of 12, four times. The questions were like this: 'If Miss Clavel wants the girls to go to the sink in groups of three to wash their hands, how many groups do you have?' He did really well with this...maybe he will not inherit my challenges with math afterall! I would have to remind him to use all the girls..all twelve. See the Math pocket on the lapbook interior above. It is yellow with a hat on the center right.


On Friday, Science. In the book, Madeline has her appendix removed. We talked about illness you cannot prevent, like Madeline, but there are things you can do to protect your health. Wash your hands! I say this without thinking. If I could count how many times I have supervised this little task...it would take forever. I did a mini book, in lapbook at far right, and asked questions like 'when is it most important to wash hands?' So glad we talked about it purposely because, it took some leading questions to get him to remember...'after using the bathroom'!! He is learning isn't he?


In closing, my favorite thing G5 did all week was on his own initiative. Of course, it is Art. He made a drawing of Madeline herself and I mounted it in the back of his lapbook. Not bad huh? I love her wild hair.

For next week, I have been looking into including Nature Study and how to use it more intentionally..beyond just messing around in the dirt or the backyard and just gathering bugs, etc. Although, all of that is great too! I have been encouraged this week and see that even though the first couple of weeks were a tough learning curve, I think we are developing a rhythm to this schooling with a purpose thing. I am still working on developing activities on a list that I can put W2 and T1 onto when I am schooling so they are content and engaged in something. It is challenging! Next week, we are reading A Pair of Red Clogs and we are taking a field trip to the Cockrell Butterfly Museum. I look forward to sharing our adventures!