One of the reasons I became interested in experimenting with raw food was to get me in shape to participate in the Baha'i Fast. I've had a hard time fasting since I started again after I was all done having babies and nursing. Last year, I got sick after the first few days, and I really wanted to be healthy enough and have the stamina to do it this year. The fast was such a special time for me pre-babies and it taught me all I know about obedience and submission to God. The fact that I still have a long way to grow in these virtues really motivates me to get my body ready for it, so I can keep working on those and whatever other virtues I feel I need to grow in this year.

Two aspects of the raw food movement have really helped me handle the fast better this year than last. The first one is mental. There's such a lot of knowledge out there, talked about ad nauseum by raw foodists, about how the body digests raw vs. cooked food and especially how to get the most nutrients out of foods and choosing the most nutrient-rich foods out there. Basically, it's about optimizing the eating experience for efficiency, while keeping and even enhancing taste. The effect this had on me was really liberating because I didn't feel like I had to worry so much about trying to get all the nutrients I need every day from the guidance of the USDA food pyramid. Trying to follow that guidance always left me feeling like nothing I did was good enough- I could never succeed in having a healthy, balanced diet- it was just too hard, partly because I'm allergic to half the foods on that thing. But I got the feeling from both how the food science was pursued and also the focus on simplicity in the raw food movement that if I ate certain simple raw foods, I could get all the nutrition I needed without having to even encounter my allergens, in practically any recipe. It gave me an attitude of suffiency instead of lack. My efforts are enough, I am enough, and if I eat fresh and simple and follow some basic science of nutrition, I will get enough good food to not have to worry about food all the time. I can move forward and focus my attention on the life I want to live! That attitude has been a God-send for me during this fast. I don't feel deprived by not eating food all day because I know that the food I eat before the sun rises will keep me going and healthy all day. Even if I feel hungry, I know, deeply, that I am nourished.

So the other aspect that's helped me through the fast is the raw food itself. Is it a placebo effect where I've decided that I'm getting enough of the right things to eat to keep my spirits up or is it really what I'm eating that's making the difference? I have no idea, but it sure is working. And the food that's helping the most is the smoothie I have for breakfast every day. First of all, it's just easier to digest liquids than solids because your body has to do less work. Because it's so easy on the system, I can drink a smoothie even if I'm really sleepy or even sleep deprived, as I often am during the fast. Second, I put enough protein in them that I feel like it's a substantial food, not just a fruit drink. I've posted my smoothie recipe already and there are infinite varieties out there, but I have learned a few things that are especially important to include for my particular body. I gotta have seeds for protein- I like sesame, hemp, flax, and pumpkin so far. There's gotta be coconut oil to make it smooth and rich. Just a tablespoon or so really makes it a meal, and that stuff is just so darn good for you! It's gotta have a couple servings of fruit, especially a banana, again for smoothness and also sweetness. And it's gotta have green superfood powder so I can get all those minerals and great proteins from algae and seaweed and grasses. Also, I really love goji berries, and always put just a few for their taste, although I've heard they are a nutritional powerhouse too. Those are the highlights. Read anything by David Wolfe if you want to know which foods do what for you and why. He's a fun teacher.

Just though I'd share my experience. I still eat plenty of cooked food for dinner, just so you know. I haven't eliminated many foods so far, just added on.

Hello and welcome to week four of experimenting with raw food recipes. Above, you can see Jenny tasting the almond milk (yum) which was really easy to make (yeah!).

I just soaked a cup of raw almonds overnight, then rinsed and drained them and threw them in the blender, along with:

4 c water
2 T coconut oil
1/4 c agave
1 t vanilla
a pinch sea salt

and mixed them up in the blender for a few minutes and strained it through a strainer lined with a piece of cheesecloth. That's it! Simple and good. Matthew Kenney's recipe above also calls for 1 t lecithin, but I don't know how to get ahold of non-soy lecithin, and honestly, we didn't miss it.

And the almond mash that's been strained out is quite good mixed with a little with a little honey and chocolate sauce, according to Billy.

The other lovely food that we made (well, Jenny made, I watched) was Thai salad with creamy thai dressing. It's an exotic and beautiful salad. Billy and Jenny really liked it. It wasn't quite to my taste, but I find my tongue a little sensitive during the fast. It was really fun to make, though. And the point of it is to be a salad that's a whole meal, which I heartily approve of. Usually I make mine mild and tame compared to this lovely thing. Here's Jenny showing us how to take the top off of a young coconut (also called a water coconut).

Here's the lovely Thai salad. I was really excited that we got to put the curried cashews on it that I had made a few weeks previous.

2 handfuls mixed greens
1/2 c finely diced pineapple
1/2 c soaked, finely diced sun-dried tomatoes
1 avocado, sliced
sea salt
black pepper
1/2 red bell pepper, cut into strips
1/2 c thinly sliced young coconut meat
1/2 c chopped curried cashews
1/2 c creamy Thai dresing
cilantro leaves, for garnish

Layer greens, pineapple, tomatoes and avocado, add salt and pepper to taste. Add a layer of bell pepper, coconut, cashews, dressing and cilantro.

creamy Thai dressing
3/4 c sesame oil
1/2 c nama shoyu
1/4 c olive oil
1/4 c lime juice
1 T maple syrup
4 Thai bird chiles or 3 t red chili flakes
1 t sea salt
1/4 c. chopped cashews

Blend it all in a blender till smooth. (All recipes are from Matthew Kenney's "Everyday Raw")

Jenny didn't care for the dressing. I think if we made it again it would have less sesame oil and I wouldn't put any shoyu-type thing in it, of course, since I'm allergic to soy. I imagine the lime and olive oil w/cashews and salt would make a good creamy dressing all on their own, in my bland little world.

I'm trying to figure out how to make interesting dinners with raw foods. So I really wanted to try something breadlike to be a good building block and base for spreads or beans or whatever. I REALLY like cumin so I picked cumin flatbread from "Everyday Raw" and it was really easy. Yeah!

Teresa like it too!

Here's how:

1 c flaxmeal
1 T dried basil
2 yeallow squash, roughly chopped
1 1/2 c walnuts, soaked 6-8 hours
4 t ground cumin
1/4 c olive oil
1 shallot, minced
1 T nutritional yeast
2 T agave
1 1/2 t sea salt
Black pepper

Set flax meal aside and process the rest of ingredients in a food processor until it's smooth-ish (I used my blender cause I don't have every durn gadget...yet). Mix it up with the flax meal, spead out on Teflex sheets and dehydrate (if you don't have a dehydrator, you can spread on cookie sheets and put in an oven on the lowest setting with the oven door propped open- innefficient, but fine if you want to experiment). Dehydrate at 115 degrees for 6-8 hours. Cut up and transfer to dehydrator screens, dehydrate for 24 hours. I stored mine in the freezer and they stayed crisp and deeply flavorful.

Here's the flatbread after I've cut it up and spread it out to finish dehydrating.

The great news (and no bad news follows) is that they are delicious! Like a cracker but SO full of onion-cumin flaor. Mmmmm....here's how I ate them last night...topped with black beans flavored with onions and cumin too and sweet little tomatoes. SO GOOD! Kale salad and homemade sprouts on the side were perfect complements. Eating this after a long day of fasting (it's the Baha'i fast now- where we don't eat or drink while the sun is up so our lives can come closer to being ruled by the spiritual intead of the physical) felt deeply nourishing.

I miss her very much but she has been reported as having a very good time at the Statue of Liberty, etc. so I'm not too nervous anymore myself. I can't wait to hear how giving her speech in front of all those people and discussing environmental issues in 'committee' and going to see "Memphis" on broadway and and all the New York trip went!

Immunity Smoothie - from Matthew Kenney

1 1/2 c frozen banana
1 packet (100g) frozen Acai
1 c frozen blueberries
2 cups coconut water
1 t vanilla
1 pinch sea salt

Those pointy things are young coconuts with part of the outside hacked off. You have to really go at them with a cleaver to get them cracked enough to get the water out. It was fun!

Well, I went a little too fast, went a little crazy with the trying of new foods on the day I made the immunity smoothie and curried cashews. Those were the next two recipes in "Everyday Raw" that Jenny and I are using to learn about preparing raw foods. I ended up with an unhappy stomach after trying that winning combination. But I learned a lot from the experience, as follows:

1. The immunity smoothie is SO GOOD that even I didn't mind a bit that I was drinking cononut water. Not even kidding. All the rich, deep berry flovor was complemented perfectly by the creamy softness of the coconut. However, it was so good that I couldn't stop myself from drinking a whole smoothie cup full of the stuff. (In my house, a smoothie cup holds about 2 1/2 cups.) As you can imagine, this was not a good idea. Especially since I had already eaten another smoothie that day for breakfast. My intestines could not handle it, and they revolted.

2. You have to be really patient when you're using a dehydrator to prepare your food because it takes days, not minutes or even hours, to dehydrate a lot of the foods in the recipes we're making. Case in point- curried cashews. After soaking the cashews to get rid of the enzyme inhibitors they're coated with, you dehydrate them for 48 hours. Then you mix them up with agave, curry powder, cayenne, and salt, and dehydrate for 24 hours. Break up any clumps, and dehydrate for another 24 hours. Presto! Done! So it's a very different mindset. As long as you plan in advance, though, it's very simple to mix things up and spread them in the dehydrator and check on them once a day. It's kind of like taking care of plants. (Ha ha! It IS taking care of plants!)

3. The great thing about curried cashews is that by the time you get all the spices on and spread them all out on the dehydrator racks, they're already edible and completely delicious, so I kept opening the lid and snagging one. Dangerous. Especially since I found that cayenne is not my friend yet. We'll need a little longer to get acquainted. I have never liked spicy food (except for kim chi) and apparently it's for good reason. My stomach was not happy with them in there. But they're so yummy- so sweet with a little kick at the end. Billy and Layli liked them very well and didn't have the stomch upset I did, so I'm pretty sure it's just me. Here's the recipe for those of you that like a little spice in your life:

Curried Cashews from Matthew Kenney

6 1/2 c cashews, soaked 1-2 hours, drained, and dehydrated 48 hours
2 1/2 T agave
1/4 c maple syrup (I just used more agave)
2 t curry powder
1/2 t cayenne pepper
1 3/4 t sea salt

Mix it all up in a bowl, spread on dehydrator screens and dehydrate for 2 days. Separate the large clumps and dehydrate 2 more days.

4. To sum up, I learned that it's really easy to overdo it on raw food. It's not meant to be eaten in large quantities because it's such concentrated, potent stuff. Also, it should be simple and harmonious with your body's needs.

5. Organic blueberries and acai berries taste amazing together. Unbelievable.

6. Curried cashews make fun Ayyam-i-Ha presents in little jam jars;)

P.S. My intestines calmed down after a couple days. My friend Naifen tells me that coconut water is a cooling food (according to the Chinese rubric of heating/cooling foods) and can speed up your digestion quite a bit. Since I don't need any help in that department, coconut water is not a good choice for me, at least at this time of year. However, if you have a hot body type (That doesn't sound quite how I mean it, I think, but how else can I say it?) this very cooling smoothie will be heavenly for you.

Also, in defense of smoothies, I've been eating a green smoothie for breakfast every day for the last couple weeks and it's been just fine, digestion-wise. That's kind of amazing for me, seeing as I have never, since I was old enough to choose my own breakfast, been willing to forsake my daily bowl of cereal. Never. No fruit, no protein of any kind, no juice. But I tried it and they're really yummy, in my opinion. I especially like how they make me feel full and energized and without that low blood sugar feeling around lunch time that I had become so used to.

Here's what I put in my breakfast smoothie-
1. Fruit: usually a frozen banana, an apple and/or some berries, dried goji berries, or whatever I have on hand.
2. Nuts and seeds, just a handful: soaked golden flax seed, pecans, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, and/or cashews, sometimes a little dried coconut.
3. Powders: GREEN Superfood, Hemp Protein
4. Water and sometimes some juice

Blend it all up till it's smooth and green. I try to vary the flavors every day to keep things interesting. Sometimes I add some cocoa powder to make it chocolatey (which actually works really well with green powders and all the nuts) or add pineapple juice and citrus fruits to make it tropical. At first, I added a squirt of agave syrup too, but after a few days, it seemed too sickly sweet and I decided that the fruit made it sweet enough. Next I'm going to try adding coconut oil. I hear it's super good and smoothes out blood sugar even more than the nuts.

We made a start on our raw food adventure! I borrowed Zivar's dehydrator, Jenny gathered the ingredients and made raw granola and a blue green algae smoothie. I had sick kids that day, so Jenny did all the work and I just brought the dehydrator over and got to taste everything.

First, the smoothie. I have never been a fan of coconut water- even living in the Caribbean for a year didn't get me used to it. Knowing that this smoothie had coconut water as the base, I didn't expect to like it, but it's so darn good for you that I really wanted to. Well, the first sip was definitely the best. It had vanilla in it, which masked the coconut water pretty effectively. But it slithered out after the first few sips and I couldn't drink more than a little of it. Emotionally I liked it because I felt like I was being deeply nourished, but my tongue was not impressed. Now, that granola was heaven. You can't really go wrong with granola anyways. But this stuff was at a higher level of granola consciousness. It had a bright citrus flavor from orange zest that balanced the dark dried fruit and nut earth-tones. It was immediately sweet from the agave, but it didn't linger and make it taste like a cookie, just a quick 'Hi, I'm agave, nice to meet you. Have you met my friends sunflower seed and dried cranberry?' Yum! And after it went through the dehydrator, it was all clumpy and crumbly, just like any other granola.

Here's the dehydrator. I ended up buying my own this week- 60 bucks at Farm and Fleet. Those farmers know all about dehydrating.

Next up, super immunity smoothie and curried cashew snacks. We're going through the book from the beginning, so it's drinks and snacks first off. I don't think I'm going to write out the recipes we use every week, because I'm lazy and because the book we're using, "Everyday Raw" by Matthew Kenney is sitting there at your library, hoping you'll check it out (at least if you live in a foodie-lovin' town like Shampoo-Banana).

Dear Mr. Kenney,

I am a mother of three with lots of food allergies and I have just bought your book, Everyday Raw, about preparing raw foods simply and deliciously. I know only very elementary things about raw food. It comes out of gardens and farms and if you're lucky enough that it comes out of your garden or farm, it's as simple as pick, wash, eat. At least at the moment of harvest.

Of course, there is a whole year of planning and experimentation and hard work that went into that harvest. And the moment the food passes from that outer season of work and into your body, it begins an inner season of work. The nutrients get absorbed into your body and creates parts of yourself that allow you to move and breathe and plan-experiment-work all over again.

I can understand the broad strokes of the notions I've just laid out, but I don't know very much about the science of digestion and how each food plays a different part in that science. I've been reading "Eating for Beauty" by David Wolfe that has a great summary of the benefits of having a large percentage of raw food in one's diet and how raw foods work in one's body. It's fun reading for me because I'm at a point where I need to dive deeper into understanding what the best food to grow humans is and how to prepare and eat it. I've been faced with many food picking and preparation challenges in my life, dealing with multiple allergies, relearning how to cook after each one manifests itself in my body, my husband's or my childrens'. I've been feeling a need to know more, get underneath all the nutrition fads that come and go, and learn the basics of human nutrition from a scientific viewpoint, unaffected by the interests of the pork lobby or the dairy lobby or anyone that's trying to get me to eat something for their own monetary benefit instead of the inherent goodness of the food itself (thank you Michael Pollan, for that clarity).

Also, for myself, I know I really need to let go of eating lots of sugar-filled foods and have a better-balanced nutrition base. I've been working on my work-home balance this year, getting paying jobs after a decade at home with children. It's really helped me see a need for balance in other parts of my life.

The thing is, though, that thinking about eating healthy food and having a good understanding of nutrition has always been a very serious subject to me. It's not fun. It's never been joyous. It's felt, at one time or another, controlling, angry, guilt-ridden, frustrating, up-tight, humorless, exclusive, and snooty. I'm seeing now that it needs to be full of light and simplicity. And fun, definitely. So when my nutrition-minded friend Jenny Torok asked me to be her partner in a 'Julie and Julia'-style adventure with a raw food book, it was just the right opportunity for me. We'll have fun together preparing raw food recipes from your book and writing about the process here on my weblog at http://webble.orangecrayon.com/. I'll get to learn by doing and asking questions along the way. Yippee!! It's gonna be great! And lots of other things too, I'm sure.

So, Jenny thought it would be a good idea to write to you and tell you what we're doing. We thought you might get a kick out of it, I hope you don't mind, and also to ask for any advice or pointers about getting started.

Thanks for all you do. You're enriching lives.

Sincerely,

Bahiyyih Baker

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As I read Bahiyyih's letter to you I am struck, immediately, by the fact that women of such similar circumstances: mindful mamas, nutrition enthusiastics, slogging-it-out-in-the-middle (per se) everyday doing the dance of balancing our inner and outer lives with children, work and marriage - can come to raw food with very different backgrounds.

I have been fascinated with the raw food movement since 1998, when introduced to it's "magic" through the Bountenko family. (for those unfamiliar, they are a family of 4 who cured chronic illnesses through their mama's courageous act of declaring the family "raw foodists" in a day. Not only are they epitomies of health, they are also inspiring teachers and decent raw food chefs. This is the very abbreviated story )
When I discovered them I was steeped in the world of professional theater and dance, fighting doggedly with my own body to 'behave' and stay underweight. All the while I ignored my natural need to be satisfied by food on every level, and ignored my cycles of energy and fatigue. I was struck by the Boutenkos' passion and calm. I made a commitment that day and became a %100 raw foodist for a year.

I can honestly say I have never had more sustained energy in my life. It was as though someone had polished the lense through which I was viewing the world and everything EVERYTHING was clearer and cleaner. That said, feeling cleaner and clearer was fun, but also had challenges.
What was supposed to make everything in my life "better", of course brought new lessons resulting from my body and mind detoxifing.
I became intolerant of "cooked food addicts" - as I so affectionately allowed myself to call people who weren't willing to delight in my raw flax crackers with sprouted hummus.
As well, I couldn't relax at parties and social events with old friends, as I was constantly pulled in wanting a drink or a steak.
I occasionally sought solace with new raw foodist friends and, although we shared a passion for all foods uncooked, we often shared little else in common.
Finally, after a year of missing my friends and my old sense of humor, I abandoned my 'dream' of being a lifelong raw foodist and started eating cooked food again.
I share all of this because it is the canvas of who I am today, and why Bahiyah and I approach you.
What is the result today?
I have an indescribable gratitude to all of the wise, courageous, and creative teachers of raw food nutrition and preparation, as well as 12 more years of wisdom - marriage and motherhood took place in between - and a deeper knowing about holding fast to dreams and desires, while allowing others to have divergent ones beside me.

I came to your book Matthew, EVERYDAY RAW, the way an artist comes to a new expression of their medium, with genuine fascination in seeing "how another raw food chef creates beauty with the tools of fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds."
What I found was THE FIRST raw food recipe book that I feel bridges the gourmet and everyday meals of a raw food diet.
I found recipes that were delightful and accessible: delicious for my eyes and mouth - yet wouldn't require days of prepartion.
I love food. I love to eat. I also love the way I feel when I eat a %100 raw food diet, and genuinely desire this kind of vibrant health for my whole family.

That said, I no longer believe this kind of diet is "right" for everyone, yet know that the more I am instrumental in bringing this world of food enjoyment to my children, the better I rest at night.
Bahiyyih and I share a passion for food and nutrition. Although we come to this point with different backgrounds, we share a deep desire to get closer and closer to the magic of simple foods.
It is in this spirit that we embark on our version of "Julie and Julia" through your book EVERYDAY RAW. We are grateful for any and all support you give.

I grew me some sprouts! Aren't they cute?

Here's my elaborate sprout set up with the finished product in the middle. They don't care that everything's frozen solid outside!

I just soaked a spoonful of sprouts overnight in an old peanut butter jar. In the morning, I poured off the water with a tea strainer, and left the jar on the counter. In the morning and before bed, I filled up the jar with water, swished it around, and poured off the water, shaking it at the end to make sure most of the water ws out. In a few days, I had sprouts! Yum! There are some cute videos on YouTube showing how to do this too. Growing these cute little guys gave me a little taste of gardening, which, as you know, makes me very happy.

Georgia really wanted to get growing too, so I gave her some lettuce and cilantro seed I had saved from last summer and she made a little salad garden. She delights in asking everyone, "Do you want a piece of lettuce?" and proudly presenting any takers with a thumbnail sized leaf, which already tastes like lettuce! Amazing.

The other thing that's growing like forgotten zucchini is my desire to learn more about nutrition. My friend Jenny, who's studying to be a nutritionist, is telling me all sorts of interesting, wonderful things, especially about how good raw foods are for a body, and I've been reading the following books about the subject:

Eating for Beauty is a textbook for eating raw food and the science behind it from the angle of what enhances beauty, which is fine, but not really my point. I love reading about how the basics of chemistry intersect with nutrition- minerals, enzymes, Ph, etc. It's great fun, and all written by this little, wiry Lebanese New Yorker, that furious ball of energy, David Wolfe. Check him out on Youtube too. That guy's intense!

The other is a 'cook' book about preparing raw foods simply but with gourmet taste, written by chef Matthew Kenney, who seems like the calm, earthy counterpart to David Wolfe's bouncyball personality. It's an education from the other direction. As I read the recipes, I learn about different processes for preparing raw food and how different ingredients will taste good together or complement each other nutritionally. Everything looks like it tastes so deeply good. I want to make everything!

The bowl of twigs in the above picture is actually a really yummy salad, believe it or not.

See? Doesn't it look better now? (if slightly out of focus- darn weak winter light!)

This dish is not entirely raw (cooked beans) but there's no need to go extremes when it comes to nutrition. Moderation is much better for the digestion. Which reminds me that I've also just finished reading Molly Wizenberg's "A Homemade Life", which is part memoir, part cookbook, and which doesn't subscribe to any particular nutritional guidelines, except those dictated by personal taste. It's a very sweet book, especially if you like reading about food and those that love it with a passion. And it's got me excited about good food and writing about it making it. So In Molly Wizenberg style, here's a recipe I made up to end my 'chapter'.

Warm Winter Salad
(the greens part of this borrows heavily from Jennifer Cornbleet's Mediterranean Kale Salad- which she demonstrates on Youtube. She's so cute!)

1. Soak and boil some cannellini beans till they're very tender (or just pull a can of them out of your pantry). Set aside.

2. Prepare the greens: Pull the stem out of the leaves of one bunch of lacinato kale (or curly kale, whatever you like) and cut into fine strips. Quarter a small head of purple cabbage, cut out the white stem, and slice crossways as fine as you can. Put all that into a big bowl along with 1-2 t. lemon juice, 2 T. olive oil, and a good covering of salt shakings. Now get your hands in there!!! and knead the greens like they're bread dough, really squeezing and mushing and stirring vigourously until the kale looks all wilted and small. Doesn't it look good? All shiny and colorful? Now lick the bits off your hand! Yum!

3. Cut up some grape tomatoes if you can find them this time of year (our local co-op had them in especially for Valentine's Day- how cute is that?) and mix them with a splash of your favorite viniagrette (May I recommend Drew's? It's flat out the best I've ever tasted.)

4. Now, to assemble: Warm up a bunch of beans or ladle them straight from the pot into your bowl. Salt them a little if you like. I do. I just got this ancient sea salt with all these trace minerals in it that I tend to get excited about. Add about a half cup of the tomato mixture. Mix it up. The warmth is spreading! Cover it all up with a generous amount of the greens mixture. Mix it up. Now it's just right. Enjoy with a good friend (or preferably someone like your sister that just moved to town- Yay Layli! Woo-hoo!) so you can laugh at each other when your lips and tongue turn purple.

What's Hot

1. Snow Days! I don't think 6 inches makes it a snow day anywhere north of here, but C-U is pretty much shut down by the storm, and it was really fun to get out in it and shovel the driveway. There's not much I like to do outside in the winter, but I really do like shoveling- maybe because the exercise keeps me warm.

2. Crocheting granny squares- not me, I can't crochet at all, but Georgia learned to crochet from a book, and has figured out how to make granny squares. They're really pretty. I'd put up a picture, but she up and sold them all to a friend of ours. Always the business woman. I'll have to put in an order.

3. Paper piecing! This time it's me being crafty. I tried paper piecing, which is a method of piecing a quilt square that helps you make really precise shapes really easily by stabilizing the square with a paper pattern that you sew right through. It's harder to explain than it is to do. It's really addictive because you don't have do really precise cutting to make the shapes come out well, you just have to follow the pattern on the paper.

4. Mini quilts! These are the bits that I made with the above paper piecing. They're a really quick quilting fix because they're so little. And since there's not much to them, it's no problem to sew beads all over them!!! SO much fun! I am inspired by my sister's beading business to just go nuts with beads. They're so pretty! Pretty pretty beads!

5. A quilting scrapbook- Amy (Billy's mom) talked to me about making one and I got really excited. I want to make a real physical scrapbook with pictures of the quilts I've made and the story of each- sort of a creative process diary thing- but until I make that happen, I've put up an online quilting scrapbook on flickr. It's just the pictures so far, but it's a start, and the mini quilts are on there too.

6. Learning how to cook- The more I cook, the more I realize how little I know. I like that about the learning process although it can be overwhelming sometimes. I like learning from food blogs with lots of pictures (The Pioneer Woman, Tea & Cookies, etc.), from friends whose health I admire, and from experimenting with recipes I look up randomly on the internet.

7. There's more, but other snowed in people want to get on the computer too, so I'll curb my enthusiasm. (Except I have to mention that getting together with friends in winter is especially sweet because of the trouble involved in doing so. Makes it more valuable somehow.)

What's Not

1. Whining! To get on the computer!

2. Picky eaters!

3. Cold so deep it dries everyone's skin to sandpaper and hurts to breathe outside. I don't enjoy that. A reasonable cold so that the snow won't melt I can appreciate, but single digits is just unnecessary.

4. Tiny house- The house seems to contract in the winter, probably because we spend so much time in it. I just close my eyes and repeat to myself: A tiny house has tiny energy bills. Live simply so others may simply live.

I'll stop there. Sorry I didn't do the embedding thing to make my links clickable. I am a hack. I'm sure it will get fixed later by my fastidious administrator/husband. [Update: Done. Must ... update ... blog ... software ... -FA/H]

So, that's the job. And I was really scared of doing the interviews because I didn't know how I was going to be able to get people to talk and how to ask the right questions to get a good speech sample. And did I mention that the interviews are all recorded, and that my boss and another professor type person would also be there in the room, listening silently to the interview? Yeah. So I've been really freaked out about it. But I finally made a conscious effort to let go of the fear and hold on to the love of God. I meditated about it all and tried to see what spiritual principles were at play that I needed to get stronger in. And after reading Baha'u'llah's Hidden Words for a while, I focused in on being generous and showing as much love as I could. I had been so blocked by fear that I couldn't really see the person I was interviewing. So what I'm trying is listening well, being generous with my attention and showing love. Today, it really worked during my interviews (the test is in field trials right now, so our interviewees are all volunteers who are in it for the feedback we give them) and I felt much more relaxed and creative and I felt like I connected with each of the people I met. Yeah! Thank you God! Love really works, as a strategy. I recommend it.

And today is the Birth of Baha'u'llah, so I feel doubly blessed to have received this gift today. Yeah!

Monday, September 28th, Teresa went to school for the first time. Montessori Habitat preschool, to be exact. Part of the same school that Georgia, Maya, and cousins Nadine, Mariah, and Amy attend. And the exact same school that her friends Paige, Sierra and Ava attend. So she's been wondering why she doesn't get to go too. We finally decided she was ready and met with the teachers. They are wonderful and sweet and have the right spirit for little children. Teresa's made a pretty easy transition so far. Her easygoing nature helps a lot, I'm sure.

It's been a huge new thing for me too because now they're all in school (at least for part of the day, Teresa gets out at 1:45) and I have time to get back to being an ESL teacher. Right now I'm woefully underemployed on that front with a whopping 2 paid hours a week tutoring. It'll be up to 8 in November, but I'm still working on job searches, etc. But still.. YAY! I get to be a teacher again! I feel so visible and ready to take on the world, walking around campus in my not-gross-from-mom-work clothes. It's a part of civilization I've missed. Oh, and get this: someone wants to pay me to be intelligent! That is such a relief for me. I feel like my life is slowly starting to tip back into balance.

Back to Teresa though. We need more than just pictures to celebrate this new phase in her life. Hence the movie about her first-ish day of school (actually shot on the 3rd day- who wants a camera in their face on their 1st ever day of school?) and her school physical. The audience I aimed this movie at are our little friends who live far away, like Elsa, Olivia, Amia, and Liam as well as big friends and doting relatives far and near. This is how I scrapbook.

Teresa: Mom, are our library books overdoomed?

(I don't care so much about forgeting library books, but I hope I never forget 'overdoomed')

I wanted to share this song with Janie and this was the only way I knew how to do it. Yes, the technological part of my brain is very limited. It's often squeezed into a corner by large thoughts about flowers and music and blueberries.

Cute cabbage from the garden

Georgia's potato harvest
So far, the most fun in the garden this year has been had digging for potato treasure. So satisfying and so exciting for the girls.

This is the harvest of an idea, naturally from the Idea Garden on campus. Some of their window boxes had a pink and gray color scheme that was very pleasing to me. Sometimes I get irritated with loud flower colors and sometimes I love it, but on that day I was the irritated sort so I found the gentle colors soothing. Also, I have a variegated willow (the bushy thing at the top of the picture) and was wondering what to plant near it.