The Vegetarian Adventure.

So we've been slowly converting over to being completely vegetarian. We are vegetarian 6 days a week and I use one day a week to use up some of the meat in my freezer. We have stew meat and a chicken and 2 gallon sized bags of smoked turkey stock left. I plan on using the stew meat tomorrow. Since Trevor originally was okay with eating locally family farmed meat, I had ordered meat from my milk source. However, as I brought the meat to the car, Trevor said he wasn't going to eat it and he didn't want to eat any meat at all. Fine. I did explain that I had bought this meat and I wasn't about to throw it away and so we would just go through it slowly. Otherwise, we have pretty much been vegetarian.

I don't actually remember if I blogged this, but I bought a vegetarian cookbook called "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" by Deborah Madison. It is a fabulous book and was everything I was looking for. I wanted a book that had REAL recipes (as opposed to recipes using way too many fake meat products or tons of bean stew recipes), used real ingredients I could find at a regular grocery store, and had everything in it I could ever want. This book is almost like a vegetarian version of the Nourishing Traditions book- without the quotes in the sidebars. It's got recipes for stocks, salad dressings, sauces and then everything else from salads, to main courses.. everything. And everything looks good while being relatively easy to make. I read a review on the book and someone said that this was a recipe book that just happened to be vegetarian. And it's exactly true. So we've been using the book a lot.

The first week we were veggie, we ate stuff like pizza, black bean burritoes, tofu hotdogs. This week we have had seasoned pinto beans on corn tortillas with cheese, lettuce and salsa (I fried, but did not make the tortillas). Baked eggs with potatoes and swiss chard stems (which were a hit with everyone and I wish I had made more!), black bean soup with avacado and smoked cheddar, tofu in peanut sauce and soba noodles with asparagus, scallions and some really tasty soy sauce/sesame marinade. Tonight we had coconut dal over rice with homemade flat bread. Oh, and ray did bring home pizza one night. So we've definitely been eating well and everything has been REALLY easy to make. Trevor was not a fan of the asian noodles with asparagus but he adored the tofu in peanut sauce. And that was all of like 15 minutes of cooking.

So we've been eating well. I've been making what I jokingly call "poor man's stock" where I save all my vegetable scraps and when I have enough, make stock. I did this for chicken stock as well, but I found I needed more veggies with straight up veggie stock and nothing gels like I am used to having with chicken stock. I've also been inspired to get back to baking bread- for a while I stopped, then I used a bread machine, then I stopped and bought bread again. But nothing tastes quite like a load of bread baked in an oven. I'm no expert artisan bread baker or anything, but I can make a passable daily loaf of bread.

So it's been good. I like being vegetarian again. I'm definitely a healthier vegetarian this time around, though! Trevor gave me that kind of kick I needed as I have been personally contemplating going veggie again for a while. Trevor's liking the food, the girls are liking the food and even Ray likes the food (but Ray will eat anything, he's certainly not a picky eater). Below is a bread picture. I took a picture of our dinner, but while it was good, it wasn't exactly appetizing looking, so I didn't post it. heh.


Bread I baked today. A basic loaf of white bread. Usually I make whole wheat or 75% whole wheat bread but I felt like a basic sandwich bread today.

Chicken mummy, cont...

I guess this is week two of our chicken mummy. The book said to check the chicken and change the salt daily the first week. I checked on our chicken all week and, since the salt wasn't excessively wet, I didn't bother changing it. I just made sure the salt wasn't soaked- though it did get damp. Today we decided we should change the salt out. Honestly, I think the salt could have lasted another couple days.


Here is our chicken in the plastic bags before we changed him out. I guess this is like a 3 lb chicken.


Trevor mixing the salt/baking soda/baking powder mixture.


Trevor using his mad photopraphy skillz. :) This is the chicken after we have scraped the salt off him. We needed to scrape as much salt off as possible, refill the cavity and recoat the bird. We put him in a new set of bags. Yes, I am wearing no gloves. I washed my hands well afterwards. I would not allow the kids to touch the chicken- they put their fingers in their mouths more than I do.

A couple notes: what surprised me the most, although it really shouldn't have surprised me at all because I have fermented and cultured foods quite a few times- just never cured anything, was the lack of odor. I was scared I would open the bag and be knocked back by the scent of stinky, rotten chicken. But no. There was no odor really, at all. The chicken was not smooshy to the touch. The surface was moist because of the salt, but not really wet.

Also.. Trevor made this really cute video where he talked about the mummification process in general and pyramids, etc. He talked about robbers visiting the graves and stealing things. It was very good and totally off the top of his head. But, when I plug the camcorder into the computer, all the buttons face downward and I guess I accidentally deleted it! I was so bummed. It was really good! So you just get nasty salty raw chicken pictures. Sorry!

History this week...

And I am so mad I forgot to take pictures! We are still on ancient Egypt in Story of the World. We're taking it slow and I find no need to hurry through it. Egypt is interesting to Trevor and I both. We've hit the section on mummies and so have checked out many books from the library on Egyptian beliefs of the afterlife, the mummification process and pyramids. And.. believe it or not, one of the "optional activities" in the SOTW book is actually making a mummy! No, not a paper mummy. No, we're not going to wrap a doll in linen. Yes, a real mummy.

So today we took our victim, a small chicken from the grocery store, throughly washed him in water and then in wine, patted him dry and doused him with a salt mixture of salt, baking soda and baking powder. He is currently sitting on my kitchen counter in a couple plastic bags (we read the Egyptians used as much as 500 lbs of salt to cover the body in during the drying process- we used on big box of table salt. heh). The whole process took 70 days for a human body and will take about a month for our chicken. The first week requires checking it every day, drying out moisture and repacking it. After a week, we're supposed to leave him alone for a week. Hopefully this will not turn out to be a stinky experiment. During the second process where we use oil on the chicken, we'll rub some spices in, too, like the Egyptians would have. However, we will not be building a pryamid, nor will we be burying him with toys for the afterlife. I think we might bury him. I haven't decided.. we have about a month to think about that.

So the kids had fun with that. Tomorrow we review Chemistry and will do our experiment on Friday. So lots of hands on stuff this week!

A couple more videos

After our hour was up we went to the baby hill- made for 2-4 yr olds. We were the only ones there on the hill so we got to rough house a little. We entertained ourselves on the slower hills by playing bumper tubes. The girls would go down and then I would go down on my stomach and bump into them. Trevor is also standing on the tube like he's snowboarding down. he had some pretty good balance.

Videos of our tubing trip

Here Ray and Ariel are going down the hill. This was when we first got there.



This video has some extra stuff in it I haven't edited out. But Ray gave the video to Trevor and he filmed Rachael and i going down the hill. If you watch closely, you will see us start ok and about halfway down the hill, we hit the side of the hill and then start spinning. What you can't really see is that we actually tilted and I thought we were going to flip. You also can't tell that we are going REALLY fast- we must be going 50mph at least down these hills. This was the last run the girls made with us because the hills were getting super icy. Technically, they weren't old enough to be on the hills- I think it's a weight thing. They were so light and we were going so fast Ray and I were both scared that the tube would catch air and flip. You'll hear the guy say "There's ice chunks on lane 1" We knocked them loose we hit the side so hard and the guy had to tramp down and kick the ice out of the way before Trevor could go down the hill. heh.

It's a birthday!

Ariel's 3rd birthday was yesterday! We had a family party and took our celebration to the tubing hills of White Tail. I have video on that I'll put up as a seperate post as i haven't put the videos on my computer yet. So here's pictures from while we were home...


It's the birthday girl!!!


And here's the birthday girl's pretty cake! We got her a vanilla buttercream frosting cake from Whole Foods. It say's "Happy Birthday Ariel" on it.


Ariel looking thrilled at her cake. And she was! We ate it with strawberry ice cream.


The obligatory shot of Chaos in a birthday hat. He looks less downtrodden than he did last year when I put a bday hat on him.


Ariel's gift from her FL grandma. Neigh stamps! she was excited and we played with them before we left for the slopes.


Close your eyes, Ariel!



Open them! A trike sized just for her from mommy and daddy. Ariel is always trying to ride her sister's bike, or the bigger trike we have. This one fits her perfectly. She was quite excited but a bit bummed that right now it's like 15 degrees out and a bit too cold to take it outside. What happened to the 70 degree weather from last week? Ah well.

After opening presents we took a hour or so to play with all the new things. Then we went out to White Tail to go tubing. Given the choice of port Discovery or sledding, Ariel chose sledding. We had a blast and I have videos to put up. After we got back from sledding it was probably around 8:30pm. Ariel had fallen asleep in the car but woke up long enough to open her present from her other grandma. This one arrived while we were gone. Ariel knew it was coming and talked about her package from grandma like all day long! So she woke up long enough to open it!


She looks a little out of it in the picture.. and she is! She's very sleepy. She was thrilled though and took her new little Pucci maltese to bed with her, along with the food and bone he came with.

So we had a wonderful day!!!

OK. I'll come out of the closet...

Or I'll bring Trevor out.. He's officially a vegetarian.

It all started with Story of the World. Our history curriculum. We began by talking about the Nomads. Then the Nomads settled around the fertile crescent and became farmers. The book said something to the effect that the nomads discovered they could tame and pen up the wild animals and they didn't have to hunt anymore.

"that's cruel to the animals, mommy!" Trevor exclaimed.
"Um, how do you think we get our food now? The animals live on farms. People don't hunt all the often anymore." I replied.

Well.. the conversation kept on getting more and more indepth. I didn't mean to go into things, but by the end of our conversation- which *was* a conversation and not me being preachy- Trevor was a vegetarian.

"But Trevor, we get our meat from small family farms that allow their animals pasture and help them grow up in as natural an enviroment as possible."
"I don't want to eat meat anymore."

OK. Trevor has known- all the kids have known- that a chicken on a plate is the chicken we see at Frying Pan park. And a steak or burger is a cow. I have made this abundantly clear because I wanted them to know that they were eating an animal. I don't hide the fact that a carrot comes out of the ground or a peach grows on a tree. It was just a fact of life, nothing to make a big deal about. Well, I think this was the first time Trevor actually THOUGHT about it. To him, it wasn't fair that we trapped the animal and raised it solely to kill it- he thought the cow wouldn't really agree with that. Honestly, having been vegetarian myself, I had to agree with him. Given a choice, I'm sure the cow would rather not be eaten.

I remember playing this story based video game way back when I was younger. It was no pictures.. one of those stories you read and then you type something like "Go west" , etc. Well, I'd come across animals and I would say "Eat the ----" and the computer game would say "I don't think the --- would like that." I think that's the way Trevor feels.

So he's completely justified in how he feels about it. At first I asked if he would eat meat from small farms like we get our meat from and he agreed. So we ate vegetarian for a week until I could get my order from my local milk/meat people. I went Wednesday to pick it up. As I loaded the heavy, frozen, expensive bag into the car Trevor said "That's meat, mom! I don't want to eat meat!" *sigh* So he changed his conviction. I told him that I would fully support him if he was vegetarian but I would (probably) continue to eat meat sometimes as long as it was sustainably farmed. I thought FOR SURE, he would cave in his conviction. I should have known better.. he's my child- he can be passionate about things and focus on them completely. He's smart, he knows what he's talking about, he's not old enough to be swayed by a "trend factor" (oh, it's so trendy to be animal rights! It's so trendy to buy local!) so I should know better than to think he would cave when I did something like make the Zook's chipped steak I bought last night into steak sandwiches with onions and peppers. He ate a bun with cheese and a fake hotdog. This morning while we ate his much loved Niman Ranch bacon with eggs and hashbrowns, Trevor skipped the bacon and just ate eggs, hashbrowns and sourdough (the eggs also come from the milk source).

So he's pretty strong in his resolve to be vegetarian if he will skip BACON. He loves bacon. And i'm proud of him for sticking to his views even while we are enjoying bacon with breakfast. I'll help him.. I do see his point of view, and quite often I feel that way. I just also feel pretty crappy if I eat a great many carbs and no meat- which often seems to be the case in a vegetarian diet. Besides sourdough bread- my weakness- I am not a carb fan and that includes beans, pasta and potatoes. I am currently looking for a good whole foods EASY vegetarian (or vegan) cookbook which uses minimal meat substitutes as i still believe tofu isn't all the healthy, esp if eaten in quantities. I wonder if Nourishing Traditions can be taken in a vegetarian context.

The implications? Mom, New Bern.. I don't mind packing a cooler with a few things for Trevor. I don't know if vegetarianism will stick with him or if he will compromise and eat the meat I buy. If he sticks with being vegetarian, I'll pack some Boca burgers, etc for him in New Bern. For Pam.. if he's vegetarian while we're in Rome- I'll totally have lots of easy stuff on hand. ;) Mac n Cheese is vegetarian! It's always a favourite. heh. As of right now he is a pesco-vegetarian in that he will eat fish and dairy and eggs.

Let's apply that knowledge, shall we?

Trevor has been doing Chemistry. His curriculum is specifically by Keller and is called 'Pre Level I Chemistry". Trevor is definitely into science more than just about anything else (though he loves history, too- mainly Story of the World rather than general historical topics). So far we have learned about atoms and how atoms join to form molecules. He's learned that atoms can be neither created nor destroyed but they can change places to form new molecules. He knows this is called a chemical reaction. We've done a couple science experiments and our most exciting one so far was last week when he got to mix various household things to see if they would react or not. His favorite was mixing the baking soda-water solution with lemon juice or vinegar to get a bubbly concoction that mommy was NOT expecting would overflow the cup all over the table.

So anyway, while Rachael and Ariel don't participate in the chemistry lesson, they are always there to help with the experiments (hello.. making molecules from toothpicks and marshmallows? Who wouldn't be there?). So Rachael and Ariel are learning a little bit because Trevor is.

Yesterday we had to run out to the grocery store and we were finished, I was tired and thinking about dinner, kids were all hyper and running around like maniacs. As we walked into the parking lot I exclaimed "I'm a fridge and you're magnets! Stick to me!" so the all linked arms with either me or eachother. Rachael piped up "We're ATOMS!" Trevor said "hey! we're molecules because we are all joined together!" Then when we all got to the car I told them to climb in and Trevor, all excited, said "It's a chemical reaction! first we were with you, and now we're with the car!"

They are so smart! Who needs school when we have life? ;)