Somewhere along the line we were fed the line that when it comes to food, availability and convenience trumps all else.

“You don’t have time to cook. Let us do it for you.” Never mind the fact that we can’t afford to be competitive AND feed you good food.

So, instead of a eating a chicken who lived a happy life hunting worms and sunning himself outside, companies have stacked them 40 high in a barn where they live their whole life in a cage that barely allows them to turn around. Where unless you are the top chicken you are getting $hit on, and you are fed chemicals to keep you from dying, because lets face it, getting $hit on your entire life, isn’t healthy.

What it is, is cheap.

As my long time readers know. It was a chicken that changed my life. When Jamie Oliver demonstrated how chicken nuggets are made, I vowed then and there that I needed to know where my food came from, how it was prepared, and if at all possible, who prepared it.

And I’ve done pretty good.

I’m not perfect.

I realized things needed to change, and I changed them.

Not in the pantry raid, food dump method we’ve all seen on tv. I made one small change at a time. It’s been nearly two years since the nugget incident. I’m still not perfect.

It started with the nugget. I refused to buy them anymore. I started with buying tenders and breasts. I am now, two years later, to the point where I buy only mostly whole chickens.

Two years ago, my pantry was stocked with sugar cereal. Today, there is a partial bag of Rice Krispies that were bought for Rice Krispie treats because, come on, those are delicious.

This past March I stopped keeping soda in the house.

Which is HUGE.

I still drink a lot more than I’d like to, but it is not a convenient thing for me to do, and it gives me the opportunity to make better beverage choices.

I’ve switched to grass fed beef. I buy maple syrup. I replaced corn oil with coconut oil. I buy organic fruit when it looks good. I make my own enchilada sauce. The honey in our house is wild.

These choices were small, easy, healthy.

This week, I messed with the holy grail. I am not prone to all or nothing thinking, but I WILL NEVER BUY CHOCOLATE AGAIN.

That’s right. You will NEVER find another Hershey product in my house. I found cacao.

Cacao is not cocoa. In fact, I cry that they share the same letters.

If you have a Hershey bar, or next time you are waiting in line at the grocery store, read the ingredient list. You’ll notice something called PGPR.

I’m fuzzy on food theology, but God did not make PGPR. Chocolate processors did.

When you hear about the “benefits” of chocolate, it does not mean PGPR. PGPR is the crap that chocolatiers came up with to keep the product cheap. They keep it cheap by selling the beneficial bits to make-up companies and replacing it with some sciencey sludge that is good enough.

While I have made 50 changes to my diet that makes it healthier, I have so much more to go.

You don’t have to quit cold turkey. You don’t have to learn how to grow your own sprouts today. What you can do is take a look in your own pantry. Find a food that you know isn’t good. Find a healthier alternative. When that choice becomes comfortable, make another one. Over the course of a couple of years you will change your life.

Is eating healthier more work? Yes. I have to shop multiple times a week because the food goes bad, I cannot just throw a pile of whole food into the microwave and get a meal out of it in 90 seconds. Is it more expensive? Yes. But if I have $5 and have to choose between a fast food meal and a bin of berries, I’m going for the berries. Does it encompass all my dietary needs? No, but it certainly is a lot healthier than fast food.

Don’t think you have to make all the right choices today. Work on making better ones today than you did yesterday. Abolish the “all or nothing” attitude.

Unless it’s cacao.

A recipe in a magazine inspired me.  It was a recipe for orange, ginger butter.  It had me at orange, ginger.  The recipe in the magazine was full of highly processed infused with corn syrup and not at all whole or raw.

So, I decided to make my own.  Invent something with my mind.

Citrus goes well with chicken.  So I decided on a breaded chicken with a sauce.

I will give you the whole, from raw version of the recipe.  It took no time at all to prepare this from whole, so no excuse to substitute.

1 Chicken breast/person cut into 1 inch cubes

Bread the chicken by dipping in egg, then flour, then egg again, then flour with sesame seeds.

Pan fry in as little oil as you can.  I would suggest sesame oil, I used vegetable oil as I could not find my sesame oil.

Slice an orange into rings and remove the rind. Put into a sauce pan, grate fresh ginger into pan, maybe a tsp per slice, and cover with agave nectar.

When the chicken is done and the oranges are heated, just toss them together on some rice.  YUM.

As for the asparagus, I heat a fry pan, really hot, then put the asparagus in and just enough water for it to steam them quickly.  Takes all of 10 seconds after the pan is HOT.

You have to try the orange ginger concoction.  I don’t care if you try it with chicken, on a salad or on top of your whole, raw vanilla ice cream.  It is FABTASTIC.

I’m wondering how it can be my new whole/raw gu on long runs.

Let me know if you try it.

I was waiting in the room.  Checking Twitter. Commenting on Facebook.

Whatever.

“Knock, knock, I’m the doctor guy, if you could lay down, I’m going to push on your hips for a moment.”

Well, since you are kinda cute if you feel that it’s necessary.

It was then that he realized that his high tech paperless office might not be as cool as he’d intended.  I’d been clicked into the wrong exam room.  Oops.  He was looking for the hip dislocation in the other room.

Although, I might have gotten some better drugs……

All I got was dessicated thyroid.

and an offer for Ambien.  Because I’m not sleeping.

I tried to go to bed last night at 10 – couldn’t sleep.

Since I’m not sleeping, I  have extra time on my hands, which I used to make TV better.

I propose a character switch.  Ultimately it will mean the death of a much beloved character, but I can live with the fake death of fake person.

So, we take Dr. Reid from Criminal Minds

and move him into the apartment with Leonard, on The Big Bang Theory.

We then move Dr. Sheldon Cooper

to the BAU on Criminal Minds where Morgan

gets annoyed with him and shoots him.

You’re welcome.

My reasoning behind this is that both Doctors Reid and Cooper have eidetic memories.  Doctor Cooper annoys me.  Amy Farrah Fowler may actually be convinced to pro-create with Doctor Reid.

While Doctor Reid has his issues, he wouldn’t whine and cry like a four year old every week.

I think it’s brilliant.

This is my favorite thing EVER.  It has replaced ketchup and mustard on the hot dog.  Seriously, you should try it.  It’s super simple.

Take this

Three bell peppers, I use red, orange and yellow

and a pineapple.

Grill them, (super easy camping food).

and then dice them up and yum.

I consider this to be a whole raw food, I grilled them ever so lightly to impart some smokey flavor as well as heat kill any bacteria they might have gathered in transport.  They are still crunchy, and that is my own personal criteria.

Yesterday, I started my latest parenting experiment.  My middle child is a picky eater.  He prefers his food to come out of a foil bag or a drive thru window.  I am trying to get him to eat some fruits and vegetables.

This issue is a problematic one.  I know I bear some responsibility for his eating habits.  I spent years letting him decide what he wanted to eat, giving in to his tantrums and feeling like a horrible person if he didn’t at least eat something.  Ohmagash he’s going to starve to death.

Now we are at the point where he would live on chips and, well, chips if given the choice.  He will go days without eating if things aren’t to his “liking” and it is something that needs to change.  He’s eleven and if he doesn’t develop some decent eating habits now it will negatively affect the rest of his life.

I know that I can’t turn him into a whole, raw food vegan over night.  Not that I want to, but I also want him to know how good real food is.  This is going to be a process.  I know I can’t be the only one who struggles with this with their kids, or even personally. So, I came up with a one fruit, one veggie, one month plan.

In March my only food requirement for the middle child is that he eats a serving of fruit before breakfast every day.  I am having the rest of the family join in as well, although the other kids had the benefit of coming into the family after my own eating habits got a little better, so their diet doesn’t concern me as much.

A serving size, in my non-professional opinion, is the size of a fist.  That goes for everything, except fats.  You wouldn’t want to eat a ball of peanut butter the size of your fist.

His current fruit of choice is the banana.  I’m ok with that.  If he wants to eat a banana every morning for the whole entire month, that will be fine by me.  My guess is that he’ll want to try some other fruits eventually.  He, does eat grapes, apples and oranges. While we may never move past these mainstays this first month, I’m guessing we will eventually.

Next month, I’ll be adding a vegetable to dinner.  Each month I’ll add one fruit or one veg to the routine.  My hope is that it gets fruit into him, avoids the power struggle of “eat better” and instills in him some healthy habits.  It’s my ultimate goal, and responsibility, to make sure he has good eating habits when he leaves the house as an adult.

Since, when did we limit our children to having stuff they “need”?

They don’t need DVD players in every SUV on the road, but apparently we have them.

Kids don’t “need” to go to Disney World, and yet apparently, parents still take them.

Kids watch TV.  We give them cell phones, and video game players when all they really need is love.

Well, love and 2,000 calories a day.

My eleven year old boy has a Facebook account.  He’s had it for almost a year.  He chats with his grandma and litters my stream with requests for cows and fencing materials for Farmville.

OK, I see her point there.

My rant is not specifically geared towards Mrs. Obama.  It’s “parenting experts” in general.  Parenting experts are EVER Y WHERE these days.  My particular favorites are the ones with either no kids, or really young kids.

We’ve all been there.  We’ve all swore we’d never screw up our kids like our parents screwed us up, and yet there are six year old kids who still have a pacifier.

American’s have the great luxury of giving their kids all of their needs and most of their wants.

I like that my tween has a Facebook, and I’ll tell you why.

There are things that I, as his parent, cannot teach him.  Sure, I can say “son, you are eleven, let me teach you about a budget.”

Oh yawn.  Do you think he’d listen?

No.

Bo-ring.

But, he plays Farmville.  He needs to buy a combine.  He’s got to figure out how to buy a combine.  He’s got to plant crops with a high yield so he can buy one sooner.   He needs friends to help out with his projects.  He needs to help them with their projects.  All very valuable lessons in my opinion.

Another valuable lesson that Farmville and Facebook has taught my son, is when you agree to do a job, and don’t do it, people get mad.  Seriously, someone got very upset at him for agreeing to participate in a farming job and not completing it on time.  He was upset, but I was able to explain why someone would be so mad about it.  Then I got on my own account and told the other farmer to chillax just a bit, he’s a kid, your farm is fake, shut the hell up.

But it was a good lesson for him.

There is a Farmville.com and he could certainly play the game there, but I cannot monitor it there.  When he interacts with his neighbors, I get an email.  Fred from Paducah has requested him to be a friend.  I get an email.  His grandma sends him a message.  I get an email.

We don’t have a lot of contact with our extended family.  We chose to move far away when he was young.  Facebook has given him an opportunity to get to know, at least by gaming, some of his relatives,  and family friends.

Does he need any of that?  No. When my grandmother’s family moved west her mother did not see her own parents for sixteen years.  She lived to be a ripe old age. She clearly didn’t “need” contact with her family, but I bet she would have enjoyed it.

Maybe my son isn’t out there playing with all the other kids.  He spends way too much time on the computer.  He is pasty and weak and lacks social skills.  You can blame Facebook, but you can probably get your answer if you shift your eyes 10 feet to either side of him and notice one or more of his pasty, weak, antisocial parents on one of their computing devices.

There are as many ways to raise kids as there are kids.  I barely know how to raise my own kids, and I certainly don’t know how to raise anyone elses.  Although, it is kind of my job.

Anyway.

I got to keep six kids.  With number one, I did some things right, I did some things wrong.  Same with two, although he has the benefit of me learning from previous mistakes.  Child three has reaped some serious reward from being the middle child, I’ve gotten better at some things, and still care enough to put forth the effort with him.  Also, he gets the hand me down iPhone in a couple of months, at which time I’ll explain why my 11 year old has an iPhone.  The last three are each completely different from the three completely different older ones.  Child number four WILL NOT have a Facebook at 10, even if it still exists.  He’s a different child, with a different temperament.  We may have to bribe him with cash and cookies to spend any time with us at all by that age.  Who knows?

Oh that’s right. I do.

So, thank you very kindly Mrs. Obama and all you other parenting experts.  I will do what I feel is appropriate for my own family.  And if I want your opinion, I’ll be sure to ask.

Instead, I got an iPhone, that is less a phone and more an awesome.

Yet, secretly, can be used as a phone.

But rarely.

In the holiday spirit of good cheer and whatnot, or maybe a New Years resolute to get people to get moving, one of my favorite apps (normally $9.99) was free.

You know I love me some free.

So I got this.

The runkeeper app is pretty cool.  Gives you a breakdown of your pacing, mileage, elapsed time.  Unfortunately, and I don’t know whether to blame Apple, AT&T or Runkeeper, but it’s a huge battery drain.  Don’t plan on going much further than 8 miles with it, if you also want to listen to music.  (and Tweet) I have learned that my outdoor pacing is horrendous.  OMword.  I’m either running 10 minute miles or 20 minute miles.  But at least I know, and now I can work on it.   Love it. Two thumbs up.

Then Sk8rboi alerted me to this find.

I think he may have seen it on Oprah, that has yet to be confirmed, but still.  It’s the Sleep Cycle App.  You put it on your mattress while you sleep and it records your movements by using the accelerometer located in the phone, or by tiny gov’ment spies one of the two, and gives you a report in the morning about how long you slept, how much time you spent in REM sleep and deep sleep.  It will then wake you, inside a window of time you determine, at the most opportune time in your sleep cycle in order for you to wake refreshed.

I don’t know how much having another person in bed with you affects the results, it doesn’t indicate whether or not it does.  During the testing phase my phone did pick up my husbands movements and vice versa.

I really like it.  After the first several days of using it, I determined that I am coming out of deep sleep around 5:00 and am almost awake anyway at 5:45 so I may as well just wake up then.  While I’m not thrilled at learning that I’m a morning person, it has helped me not to be on the downward spiral towards deep sleep an hour later when I had been choosing to wake up.  So, basically, it has given me an extra hour a day.

Full disclosure: I have not actually gotten out of bed an hour earlier yet.  I just lie there, catch up on Tweets, and Facebook, and email after playing with this app….

It’s the Heart Rate app.  It measures

wait for it….

your heart rate.

It claims to work best with an iPhone 4, which I don’t have.  I have the 3GS, and it works fine.  You place your forefinger over your camera lens on your phone and it detects the color change in your finger when the blood is rushing through.  Magical.  I know.  With the iPhone 4 you can simply turn on the flash mechanism, which the 3GS does not have.  I just need to be near a light source, or in bright daylight.

With this app, I found my fat burning zone.  Which I had been looking for.  I discovered exactly where I needed to be to burn the most fat.  Which is much slower than I’d been running.  Happy surprise.  Knowing where the zones are is very beneficial to me.  I know where my cardio zone is, my fat burning zone, and when I need to work a little harder.

It has helped my training simply by knowing how hard I’m working at the moment.  I’m certain that over time I will have to work harder to stay in the fat burning zone, but now I will know.

So, those are the things that are draining my battery lately.  What apps do you like?

POSSIBLY.  Emphasis on possibly.  We are very shortly into the the thinking about a dog stage of our life.

Blah blah blah, he came to stay with us today.  I texted and called the number on his tags.  Got a text response, wondering why my friend had not kept the dog.

Who cares?  Do you want your dog?

Haven’t heard back.

I’m about ten seconds from calling “Finders keepers, losers weepers.”  If you want your dog, come get it or fess up to not wanting it.  Either way, I’d like to know.  Even if you need me to keep it for a week while you move, or whatever it is that you are doing that you cannot come and fetch your ding dang dog.

An aside?

He may be our dead dog reincarnated.

Same nervousness, same stretchiness, same aversion to the floor.  You’re a dog, it’s ok to sleep on the floor.

Ever. Ever.

It all actually started on Tuesday.  Or last week.  Depending on which half of the story I’m telling. We’ll start with the morning that started yesterday.

My phone rang.  Numbers only, no names.  I don’t even know anybody from Illinois. The exact type of phone call I never answer.  NEVER.  Because I don’t like talking on the phone, much less talking on the phone with persons unknown.

For some reason, though, I felt compelled.

So, so, so, so, so glad I did.

It was Lalu.

How does one explain who Lalu is?  I’ll try.  A bazillion years ago, he worked for my grandfather.  He was going to Bible college and I’m guessing he worked for my grandfather during the summers.  Who knows?  Anyway.  I knew him.  I loved him.  Can’t remember why.  Maybe because when you are four Lalu is a fun name to say.  He got married. Had kids.  We saw less of him.  He moved back to India.  We saw even less of him.

Fast forward to awhile back when he came up as a “friend suggestion” on Facebook.  We messaged back and forth and I was devastated to learn that he had been to the City by the Sea a few short months before and had tried to call.  Except the only number he had for me was my land line, which….what are those again?

Fast forward to Tuesday.  He was in town with his wife and suggested that we share a meal together.  Could not have been more excited.

Tech Support, however, could have been.

Lalu?

Yes, you know the “black” guy who turns out was not black, but Indian.  Taj Mahal not tee pee, who worked for grandpa when I was, like, four????

Of course.  Eyeroll.  Sounds fun. Eyeroll.

So we met this morning for breakfast.  I saw his wife first.  The awesome.  After this morning she sky rocketed to the near top of my most awesome people list.  I swear there is no sweeter person on this earth.  She oozes essence of Spirit fruitl.  I want to be her when I grow up.  You may have noticed I still have a LOT of rough edges.

Love her.

Now, Lalu? In between giving the waitress a hard time and giving the waitress a hard time, we reminisced about the town we once shared.  His work in India.  How he was a good salesman.  All sorts of stuff that means nothing to anyone but the four of us at the table.  I learned about geography, weather, population density and religion and time flew by.

The one thing I took away from that table this morning was this.

God fills up the gaps in your life.

At one point, my family was his.  He is now mine.

Now this evening started last week, when Tech Support was invited to attend a dinner for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Center.  Speaking this year was Bum Phillips.  He was a football coach about the time Lalu was building my house with my grandfather.  His son is Wade Phillips for those of you who don’t know.

Anyway.

I, eyerolled, as Tech Support RSVP’d in the affirmative.

Because going and listening to an 87 year old guy talk about football is going to be Fu-un.  (That there is a rough edge, in case you were unsure)

But, I had a smokin hot dress and I have resolved to be less of a bitch so I put on my happy face and went.  And had a grand ol’ time.

We saw many people.  One of whom lived in a tiny town in Montana 20 some years ago at the same time as Tech Support.  Seriously.  There were like 23 kids in the whole school.  And two of them were at this dinner tonight.  That only happens when Tech Support and He Chef are together.  Otherwise.  No two people from that small town have ever been seen together outside of that small time.  True fact.

Then, we ran into a dear old friend who has a deaf child the same age as one of our kids.  I believe they learned of his hearing loss when he was three.  They had to learn sign language and stuff.  And they did.  Because they wanted to talk to their child.  Now, this may seem a no brainer, but you would be surprised at the very few people who do that.  People suck.  Your kid is deaf.  Learn the language.  I learned every bit of sign language I could when we had a girl who lived with us for less than a month who communicated that way.  Another story for another time.

Then I hear

“ANNIE”

Like it was my bff whom I hadn’t seen in 20 years.  No, it was someone I’d met twice, who apparently loves my husband who is awesome.  She was happy to see us and sat us at her table, with a famous guy whose name I’d heard, but still had to Google to know why he was famous.

Then it was on to the main event.   Dinner.

NO ONE TOLD ME ABOUT MASHED SWEET POTATOES.

Why?

They are the awesome!

Then the old guy talked about football.  And everything else.

Let me tell you this, if you want the truth, ask an 87 year old.  You’ll get it.

I was so glad I was there.  Amazing person.  Amazing story.

Sometimes you quit your job in the middle of the day and take a left instead of a right and it changes your life.

Also.

Love Jesus.

Accept him as your savior.

And, he loves football, but he loves his family more.

So after today, it is my goal to be the sweetest person I know.  To tell the truth like an 87 year old.  To keep it me, I’m not going to stop acting like my shoe size.  I have learned to play again.   And being sweet, honest and fun?

What could be better?