When Homeschooling Is Not Lovely: Chaos and Space

Homeschooling can be such good, good stuff.  Getting to spend so much of our time together during these early years, attending classes at the nature center and the botanical gardens as a family, learning simultaneously with our children, enjoying dinner conversations about classical music and art and history.  

It is a great life.  

Except for when it's not.  

Normally, when we hit a brick wall, I know well enough to step back and take a few days off from our lesson plans, to let the learning happen organically as we set aside the worksheets and the assignments and explore other interests, seeing where they take us.  

But our Christmas break was only a few weeks ago, and I think some of our current problem may be that we are in need of more structure rather than less.  The Boy Wonder would have seen it as a reward to go in a freer direction for a few days, and that was not the sort of message I wanted to send after the whining and foot-dragging that has been going on as of late.

Now, he is a boy, of course, and a seven-year-old at that.  Being a slowpoke is in his job description, and even on the best of days, I have to say "Come ON, buddy," at least 57 times.  Eating a sandwich takes 45 minutes.  Brushing his teeth takes a minimum of 5 minutes.  Feeding the dogs can take up to an hour, allowing for time to watch a lizard, to pee off the porch steps, and to completely forget what he is doing and head to the sandbox for a while.  Luckily, he is able to focus when he is reading a book, but then the focus is so complete that he doesn't hear me calling him unless I use a megaphone.

Sometimes I understand why teachers are so quick to recommend Ritalin.  A classroom full of distractible children does seem like it could get the tiniest bit frustrating, doesn't it?

Oh, of course I am kidding.  Mostly.

I like structure, you see.  Schedules, to-do lists, and the like.  Where this gets dicey is when I don't notice that some tweaks need to happen to our routine and I just keep trying to force a square peg (The Boy Wonder) into a round hole (my schedule).  

Before we had children, structure was so much less important, but as Life with Baby began to sink in, I realized the only way anything would ever get done again was if I paid attention to the baby's internal clock and scheduled all other responsibilities around it.  It would work for short periods, and then he would shift his napping or nursing schedule, and I would put all my clients on hold for a few days until a new rhythm was established and then I would juggle the rest of our life around it and move on again.

Until a new schedule shift happened, at which time we would repeat the whole cycle.  We were living on the edge, you understand.

The real issue right now, I think, is that we have been following this current routine for so long that it didn't occur to any of us that it wasn't working any longer until, lo and behold, it very much was not working at all.

Oy.

And I'm the one who keeps espousing a desire to be more present, yes?

So embarrassing.

Small changes have been happening on their own lately, with me recognizing the need to rise before everyone else and to make time for yoga and scripture reading before I wake the rest of the household; and then to end the day with a little bit more time for reading or writing once the kids have closed their eyes and have again begun to resemble the angels they can be.

It is those 12 hours in the middle that merit adjustment, and it is there that I have aimed nearly all of my attention in order to ferret out what must change.  Heather from Beauty That Moves posted her household routine recently, and there was one thing she said that has been my overriding inspiration and comfort while I have contemplated shaking up my kids' (and my) previously set-in-stone routine.  Her daily rhythm is set out in blocks of time, which is the same sort of way my own mind works when attempting to fulfill each of my roles on a daily basis.  As she stated in her post, "Blocks of time are not meant to be filled to the very minute, rather they are space held for certain tasks or projects to be completed within."

Yes.  

[Breathe in.  Breathe out.]

It is a most lovely way to think about it.  Somehow everything seems so much more doable when I think about space being held for each of the responsibilities of our day.  I can hold space in the early morning for my quiet time.  Space will be held at 5:30 for our family dinner time.  The children's story- and bedtimes are less of a chore when I realize I have held space for that time in the late evening.  

I simply need to rearrange our time blocks right now, until we find a way to work and learn during the best times of day for those things to occur for each of us.  I must only hold the space for work, for learning time, for the children to play and run around.  Out of chaos, I will hold space.

On the Nourishing

Sometimes I can be terribly dense about recognizing ways to nourish myself.  I can occasionally dredge up moments of intelligence, at least enough to realize that in the hot, muggy days of summer, I prefer cold, sometimes astringent foods.  Marinated cucumbers, cottage cheese topped with fruit, granola stirred into yogurt, cold bean salads.  And if that is the case, the idea that cold foods are best in the summer, then the inverse must also be true at the opposite time of year, yes?

In a perfect world, I would be aware of the correlation, but the truth is, even though I do begin craving hearty soups when the weather turns colder, I seldom remember to stick with warming foods throughout the season.

Inevitably, on a chilly afternoon, I will crave a coffee treat, and so I will shoot into the kitchen to whip up a coffee milkshake, only to find myself shivering and cranky an hour later.  Or I will make a green smoothie for breakfast when it is 30 degrees outside and our hardwood floors feel like sheets of ice, and then I won't quite understand why my mood is so edgy and my stomach feels tense.

Self-awareness stumps me when I get too flighty to pay attention to my surroundings.  This past fall, when I was a bit desperate to re-balance myself, and I embarked on a seven-day cleanse, I began to read up on Ayurvedic constitutions and its corresponding nutrition information, and I finally began to put a little more thought into the types of food I was consuming at this particular time of year.

I should point out that I do not fully subscribe to Ayurveda as a way of life, but I do think a lot can be learned by studying its holistic and preventive approach to health.  If you are interested in reading just a little snippet on what it is all about, this is an easy-to-understand and very non-threatening primer on the subject.

My constitution, according to what I have read and understood thus far, is almost equally balanced between two of the types, so I find the nutritional advice a bit confusing and disjointed, but what I have gleaned is that at this time of year, when I have trouble getting warm, and focus is harder for me to come by, warm, moist foods are very important.

Knowing this, and following it relatively closely, has had an immeasurable difference in my energy levels and concentration for the past few months.  At a time of year when I am often out of sorts and prone to very mild depressive tendencies, I have found myself calmer, less prickly, and much more inclined to think creatively.

This is nothing to sneeze at, my friends.  Last winter was brutal.  And it followed a very emotionally draining fall in which we lost my beloved grandfather and came dangerously close to losing The Carnivore as well.  To have gone through such sadness and stress so quickly, immediately before the coldest months of the year, was a recipe for disaster, to be sure.  This year was almost certainly going to be a walk in the park in comparison, but I was brooking no uncertainty this time around.  Thus the focus on internal awareness, on being more present in each moment, on practicing yoga daily, and on altering my diet just enough to provide a more nourishing atmosphere.

And the difference is striking.  Dinners include more chili, lentils, casseroles, and roasted or braised vegetables.  In addition to my steel-cut oatmeal, I have experimented with other hot breakfast cereals, using barley or quinoa (as shown in the photo at top, with blueberries and bananas).  Cinnamon and ginger find their way into each of the cereals, as do cooked fruits.

It is so simple, isn't it?  Raw, cold foods in the summer.  Hot, moist, stewed foods in the winter.  Working with the weather to find a way to a proper place of nourishment.  It is simple, yes, and also so very comforting.

Chocolate Vegan Death Cake

I have lately taken to carrying my camera around in my purse again.  For too long now, I have relied on my phone as my primary camera, and the result has been that I no longer remember to take daily photographs.  Habits are important to me, little rituals to keep me focused; without them, I flounder around forgetting to do simple things like washing my hair, or going to the grocery store.

We had dinner at a friend's house last night, and I was so glad I remembered to bring my camera.  The evening was lovely, and deserved to be commemorated.  There was a scrumptious African sweet potato stew, a baby who charmed us with his gummy grin, and the only two pictures I have of myself and A.M. together were taken about 25 years apart.  Last night would have been a great time to have taken another, and to have gotten a snapshot of that glorious stew.

If only I had remembered to take my camera out of my purse.


Gah.

At least the first part of the day was preserved for posterity's sake.  After suffering through the excesses of Christmas, we have gone mostly dessert-free around here for the past few weeks, but I finally reached the end of my rope.  I needed chocolate, you see, and I had one particular recipe in mind.

My friend B.S. (you have no idea how happy I am that those are her initials) has a little bit of cake magic in her, and she has been known to show up at tough times with magical foods.  It will likely irritate her that I mention her inherent goodness in a public setting, but I don't really care.

She turned up at the hospital last year when my grandmother was having surgery, and put her hilarious pudgy baby into my anxious mother's arms.  Then she reached into her purse and pulled out a few pieces of this cake, wordlessly handing them over to me.  I nearly wept.  Not because it meant so much to me that a friend would come to the hospital with goodies (even though that was weep-worthy), but because the cake itself was so ridiculously delicious.

I mean, it is a vegan cake.  How good can it be, right?  This cake is absurd, it's so good.  So moist it is shocking that it even holds together, with a tender, chewy crumb, and a purity of flavor.  There is no butter, which is normally the overarching taste in a cake (not that there is anything wrong with that).  In this case, rather than butter, there is coffee and chocolate, melding together into a perfect simple essence.

Love songs should be written about cakes like this.  The recipe is from my favorite vegetarian restaurant The Grit, which means it already has The Boy Wonder's stamp of approval - he has, after all, eaten his way across their entire dessert case and back, at least twice.  As a matter of fact, this is probably the fourth of their cake recipes that I have now baked at home (although one or two of them had to be replicated to the best of my ability, because those recipes were not in their cookbook).

This one is in the cookbook, but because B.S. (best initials ever) serves it without the frosting, and that is therefore how I crave it now, I chose to go without the icing as well.  Also, I did not want to trouble myself with running to the store to pick up some silken tofu.

Other than that, I changed very little about the recipe.  I made it using raw sugar and homemade vanilla extract, and because I do not care for caffeinated children, I used decaf coffee in the recipe.  Decaf does not have the freshest flavor though, so if you can hide the cake from your own heathens children, I strongly recommend using full-voltage coffee.  I also added about 1/4 cup of cacao nibs to the batter, partly because I didn't have quite enough cocoa, but also because I have been trying to find a way to use these nibs.  They gave great texture to the cake, adding a bit of crunch , but the nibs are intense in flavor, and if you don't dig extremely bitter chocolate, you will not want to even consider such a thing.

Also, since it's vegan, feel free to call this cake a health food (even though it is the farthest thing from it).

*****

CHOCOLATE VEGAN DEATH CAKE, adapted from The Grit

Note: I used a 10-inch, super deep springform pan for this cake.  You can also use a Bundt pan, but do not fill more than 3/4 of the way - if there is leftover batter, just make a few cupcakes and freeze them (this cake freezes beautifully).  If making a layer cake and frosting as well, bake this in three 9-inch round cake pans.

• 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 cups sugar
• 1 cup cocoa powder
• 1 Tbs baking soda
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
• 2 Tbs pure vanilla extract
• 3 cups strong brewed coffee
• 1/4 cup cider vinegar

1. Grease and flour pans (see head note), and preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In the large bowl of your electric mixer, sift the dry ingredients together.
3. Add oil and vanilla extract.
4. On low speed, blend until fully combined.
5. Increase speed just a little, and gradually add coffee.
6. When mixture is smooth, reduce speed to lowest setting, and add vinegar, blending only until combined.  Do not overmix.
7. Divide batter between pans, and bake for 20 to 30 minutes, just until a knife comes out clean when inserted into the middle.

The Accidental Vegan-'Til-Six

I have long toyed with the idea of eating more vegan meals.  Not going entirely vegan, mind you.  I love cheese and eggs way too much for that sort of thing, and I do not believe in giving up anything I love unless the reason is compelling.

At a point though, It seemed to me that I was including unnecessary dairy in my meals, and so I switched out milk for soy or rice milk in my cereal a few years ago.  Then I got a little cranky about the processing involved in packaged non-dairy drinks, and in lieu of learning how to make my own almond milk, I just began to avoid cereal altogether.

Maybe a year ago, I started leaning vegan for breakfast.  Green smoothies, oatmeal, peanut butter toast, or baked apples and the like.  I started feeling more energetic in the mornings.

Not much later, due to better dinner planning, leftovers became more scarce and I had to start re-thinking lunch as well.  Without giving it much thought, I began falling back on my old staple of brown rice with beans and olive oil for lunch, or a big green salad topped with garbanzo or cannellini beans and a homemade vinaigrette.

Have you heard of Mark Bittman's habit of vegan before dinnertime?  It is what he credited for his weight loss a few years ago, along with other improvements to his health, and I thought it was a great idea when I first read it, especially for someone like me who enjoys challenging the mindless eating habits that are so easy to fall into.

But of course I forgot about it rather quickly.  Like so many other things I read.

A few days ago though, I realized I had gone the way of the part-time vegan myself.  Breakfast and lunch just happened organically {snort}, but even my snacks had gone vegan as well.  Instead of a piece of cheese or a small carton of yogurt, I found myself reaching for an apple or a handful of pumpkin seeds.

Huh.  And it's been going on for a while apparently.

Well, except for that day last week when I had an hour to kill in between appointments and I found myself both childless and flush with cash.  I snuck into a coffee shop with my computer and a wicked grin, and ordered a ginormous, completely ridiculous, overpriced and fully decadent, highly caffeinated drink.  With full-fat dairy.  And an extra shot of high fructose corn syrup.

And it was goooooooooood.

Spicy Cornbread

I used to joke that I married The Carnivore for his cornbread.  Even at the point when I took over all the cooking for our little family, cornbread was still his purview.  He claimed to not have a recipe, you see, so I couldn't take it over.  And I kind of liked it that way.

The only cornbread I recall having as a child was made from a box mix, or it had the unmistakable sweetness of sugar in it, and I just didn't care for any of that.  Then I fell in love with The Carnivore, and he began cooking for me, and he kind of blew my mind with his cornbread.  It was spicy rather than sweet, dense instead of fluffy, with a crisp crust and actual corn kernels inside.

Ridiculous yummy.

But we had two flaws in the system, the first being that The Carnivore never got home from work in time to make the cornbread when we needed it to go with lentils, or with Cuban black bean soup, or black eyed peas and collards.  The other problem, and a crucial one, was the waste factor.  We never managed to eat an entire batch in one sitting, and the leftovers didn't warm up well on the second day.

Waste makes me a little bit nuts.

Then I bought The Art of Simple Food with some birthday money a few years ago, and Alice's simple cornbread recipe started calling my name.  I knew enough of The Carnivore's tricks (add cheese, onions and jalapenos to the batter; and preheat the pan with a little bit of fat) that I thought I could adapt the recipe from the book to suit our purposes, while adding a few touches of my own.

The crowning touch was that I finally got wise enough {slaps forehead} to realize if I baked half the batch in my smaller 5-inch cast iron skillet, then I could also avoid the waste problem.  The other half of the batter could be refrigerated until the next day to go with the inevitable leftover beans.  Eureka.  Fresh cornbread two nights in a row.  No waste.

I cannot believe it took that long to figure that out.  Please, someone, anyone, act like this is the best advice you ever heard and that I am a genius for imparting my wisdom here.  Pretty please.  My ego is smarting.

I made quite a few changes to the original recipe in The Art of Simple Food - so many, in fact, that attribution is hardly necessary.  But here is the beauty of that particular cookbook, the whole thing is written so that you can take the general outline of her ideas and then run with it to make it your own.  She is lovely that way, you see, with her pure joy regarding food and the grace she allows for others to take her knowledge and change it all up a little.

I love that in a cookbook.  When I open the pages, I want to be inspired, not overwhelmed by recipes that seem to complicated for home use.  I want general advice, and cheeky little headnotes, techniques that make me excited to get into the kitchen.  This cookbook is perfect that way.  In fact, it is probably one of my handful of desert island cookbooks when it all comes down to it.

Which, by default, makes this my Desert Island Cornbread.

*****

SPICY CORNBREAD (inspired by The Art of Simple Food), makes 8 pieces

• 1 cup cornmeal (the coarser, the better)
• 3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder (you can make your own)
• 1 1/2 tsp coarse salt
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1/2 onion, diced
• 1 to 2 hot peppers, minced (or 1 to 2 tsp crushed red pepper), optional
• 1 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese
• 1 cup corn kernels
• 1 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 4 Tbs butter, melted (plus 1 Tbs butter for the pan)

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  
2. For the crispiest crust, put a 9- to 10-inch cast iron skillet into the oven while it preheats, with 1 Tbs of butter in the skillet.  
3. In a large bowl, add the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, and salt.  Stir together.
4. In a small skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-low heat, then add the onion and peppers (if using) and saute until onion is translucent, about 3 to 5 minutes.  Let cool for a minute or two.
5. Add the sauteed onion & pepper to the flour mixture, along with the cheese and corn kernels.  Stir together.
6. Pour the milk into a small bowl, and whisk in the egg.
7. Add the milk & egg to the flour mixture, and stir until well-mixed.
8. Stir the 4 Tbs of melted butter into the batter.
9. Take the skillet out of the oven, tilt it to distribute the melted butter, and pour in the batter.
10. Bake for 20 minutes, until cornbread is nicely browned on top, and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

The Ritual of Morning

There is nothing quite so peaceful as a gray early morning, cloudy and still, the air full with the promise of an impending storm.  I awoke today to the loveliest heavy cloud cover, grateful to know the darkness would keep the kids in bed even longer than usual (bless the long silent minutes before the daily bloodshed begins).

As I have for the past few weeks, I began the day with yoga, so much better for me than my former habit of waiting until mid-morning to begin my practice.  With the house completely quiet, and only a lamp on in the living room for muted light, the time is perfect.  Just me and my mat, and the beautiful women of Namaste Yoga.  And a touch of lightning this morning, which I found nearly intoxicating.

After yoga, I sip hot water with lemon, in my chair by the fireplace, where I also spend a few minutes with my Bible, which I am currently reading in chronological order for the first time.  Have you ever read the Bible this way?  Fascinating to put the spiritual realm into a more historical context.  I wish I had tried it sooner.

Then comes coffee, a phone call to my mother, a little blog reading, and then (with a bang) comes the day.  If I didn't stay up so late reading, I swear I would wake up at 5 am just to revel in that beloved early morning stillness.  Today, though, with the bedroom still so dark, the children slept in and I didn't have the heart to wake them.  Why rush the day, yes?  The homeschool lessons, the nonstop Hobbit meal schedule, the work on my desk, the endless onslaught of emails.

No need to hurry, you see.  Intentional living means enjoying this moment, this serene time before the clamoring begins.  And so I took my coffee to the porch, in the welcome sixty-something degree January temperature, and I listened to the rain and the muted sound of distant thunder, and I watched the brilliant red cardinals fluff themselves up in the bare colorless trees.  And it was perfect.

Tranquil.

Languid.

And now here it is, nearly ten o'clock at night, and I can still hear the heathens giggling in bed.  It's a fine how-do-you-do, my friends.

As God is my witness, I will never let them sleep so late again.

The Thankful Game

There are days in which this little view of the outside world is where I focus my gaze in order to quiet my mind.  Days when there are just too many topics in my head vying for attention, when the world (of homeschooling these hooligans) seems too noisy for my taste, and my to-do list is filled with the monotony of the unimportant.

I have been reading snippets from Voluntary Simplicity here and there lately, and last night, having finished On Writing, but not wanting to start anything new since I had a hold to retrieve from the library, I picked it back up and started reading from where I left off a week or so ago.

Do you read two or three books at a time?  In my younger days, I would never have dreamed of doing such a thing, but these days I often find myself in the middle of a tiny stack of books.  It comes from my dependency on the library, I believe, because if a hold comes in from another library in the system, I must stop whatever else I am reading in order to return the non-renewable book in time.  I kind of like it, actually, but since I am happiest when surrounded by ample reading material, this extra little quirk won't come as much of a surprise to anyone who knows me.

It was in last night's reading of Voluntary Simplicity that I found a succinct description of what I so often find frustrating in myself: "The crucial importance of penetrating behind our continuous stream of thought is stressed by every major consciousness tradition in the world: Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu, Sufi, Zen, and so on.  Western cultures, however, have fostered the understanding that a state of continual mental distraction is in the natural order of things."


In a world where we are thought to be more successful or more productive if we have fifteen balls in the air at the same time, and where advertising and popular media surround us with impossible-to-ignore loud noises and flashing lights and bright colors, there seems to be little or no reward for learning to quiet our minds and focus our thoughts to a place of singular thought, a state of perfect calm.

In living such a fast-paced lifestyle, driven by the unconscious urge to consume, acquire, and accumulate, we fail to notice our children's need for attentive conversation, our own mental and emotional need for silence and communion with God, and our physical need to breathe more slowly.

Oh, of course there is a lot to do.  There are dishes in the sink, and clothes in the dryer, lessons to plan, and piles of work on my desk.  There are educational goals to strive towards with the children, different creative endeavors that each of us want to pursue, and always, always, a to-do list to attend to.

And I have no plans to take only what I can carry and move into a hermit cabin in the woods.  I like the society I belong to.  I am grateful for modern conveniences, for smartphones, for access to newspapers and radio stations from all around the world.

But that does not mean there are not ample moments during the day to put a stop to all of the competing interests ping-ponging in our own minds, to slow down the breathing, the rushing, and the disjointed thoughts competing for a corner of our awareness.

Tonight, when The Carnivore worked way past late, and I was terribly frustrated over not being able to get quickly to my desk, and the irritation I felt towards the children for being so emotionally whacked out today was threatening to make my brain explode, I gazed out my kitchen window for a few breaths, and then I carefully, and deliberately, set the table for three.

Princess Hazelnut said the blessing, "Dear God, thank you for the food, and our friends, and our family. In Jesus name, Amen."

Then both kids asked for a little bit of the red wine vinegar that I was sprinkling over my lentils, and a lively conversation was sparked about the nutritional aspects of vinegar, and about protein and high-fructose corn syrup and pumpkin seeds and packaged cereals and how vinegar could possibly be different from wine if they both came from grapes, and suddenly the work on my desk seemed less important.

The only thing that mattered was this time spent talking about food and nutrition with my curious children.  For the first time all day, I was not in a hurry, The Boy Wonder was not on the verge of a temper tantrum, and Princess Hazelnut was not clamoring for attention.

Suddenly, the princess shouted, "Y'all!  We forgot to do our thankfuls!"  And so we went around the table, doing one of the only things we do correctly as a family, stating what we were thankful for that day.

The Boy Wonder, so innocent and still so present in each moment, said the most profound thing I had heard all day, "I am thankful for this talk we are having."

And me?  I am thankful for a son who takes such great joy in dinner conversation, and for the reminder that what I was doing right at that moment, eating dinner with my children, was the only thing that mattered right then.  Everything else could wait.

Steel Cut Oatmeal

My cookbook collection, I am finally willing to admit, is here to inspire me on techniques rather than recipes.  As much as I love flipping through the pages and admiring the pure fabulousness of the complicated recipes and the beauty of the photographs, I inevitably find that I take one tiny idea from each book and use it to tweak my own recipes.

It was not always this way.  Six or seven years ago, when I was beginning to grasp the awesomeness of creating meals at home (meals that went beyond the ubiquitous black bean and brown rice burrito), I would follow recipes to the letter, schlepping myself to multiple stores in order to source every last ingredient, and then measuring carefully to ensure that I stayed within the lines.

But that gets a bit monotonous after a bit, wouldn't you say?  And expensive.  Too often, I would find myself purchasing herbs or spices that would lose their potency long before I ever used more than a teaspoon-full (Chinese Five Spice Powder, anyone?). It's just silly really.  But the more I cooked, the more I learned to substitute and to re-interpret, to trust my own instincts for tweaking recipes to suit our family's tastes.

There are some general Beam Family rules of thumb that I have learned to keep in the forefront at all times: add an extra 1/4 tsp of salt to almost everything, use dark chocolate anytime the recipe calls for milk chocolate, add a few shakes of Crushed Red Pepper to any recipe with 'spicy' in the title.  Most recipes involving flour (with the exception of cakes) can be altered to use 1/2 all purpose flour and 1/2 whole wheat pastry flour.  Brown rice will win out over white rice every time (as long as you allow for the extra cooking time).  If the recipe looks like it uses too much sugar, it probably does.  Reduce it by 1/4 (unless it's a cake).  One clove of garlic is never enough.

But I will never have enough technique in my arsenal, and I'm always a little bit shocked by the magnitude of difference the tiniest adaptation to execution can make in the finished dish.  Sometimes, the difference cannot even be tasted - it may simply be a matter of time savings or even a reminder to freeze the leftover portion of an ingredient in which only a tiny portion is used.

Clearly, I still have a lot to learn.  I hope to never stop learning, actually.  Isn't that at the point in which you die, after all?  Learn, woman, learn.


In the winter, namely December and January, or at least until fresh cranberries stop showing up at the stores, I eat oatmeal for breakfast.  Oatmeal with walnuts, cranberries, and cinnamon, to be precise.  It's almost a knee-jerk response to the change in the weather.  Without even noticing, I will cease using steamed or baked apples in my oatmeal, and switch to cranberries until that season ends, then I (again without thinking about it much) will begin buying frozen pomegranate seeds until, all of a sudden, the weather warms up, and I start making granola again instead of oatmeal.

Most of the time, it doesn't even bother me that I'm such a creature of habit about breakfast.  Whole wheat pancakes with blueberries & pecans on Saturdays, fried egg sandwiches when I feel like I'm running low on protein (and when I have local eggs in my fridge), oatmeal in the fall and winter, homemade granola in the spring and summer.

Recently though, I picked up some steel-cut oats instead of my usual rolled oats, and I wasn't totally thrilled when I followed the recipe on the box.  The flavor seemed too one-note, it needed a little salt, a small kick of flavor.  I tried adding a little salt on my own (I added way too much) and then I used the tiniest amount of vanilla extract (also not right).  Honey made it too sweet.  Even with the cranberries and walnuts, it seemed like gruel.  Did it need a small amount of fat?  A more elaborate array of spices?

My cookbook collection is relatively diverse, and I can often figure out rather quickly which book(s) to reach for when I need help.  When the CSA gave me too much kale, I went to Moosewood and Mollie Katzen.  When I needed a red velvet cake recipe for Princess Hazelnut's birthday, I had no doubt Southern Living would treat us right.  And when someone gifted me a beautiful bag of rye flour, and when I ran into difficulty with a box of steel-cut oats, I went straight to Good to the Grain, a veritable treasure trove of whole-grain perfection.

And I wasn't disappointed.  The index took me to a recipe for Steel-Cut Oatmeal, and right there, in the head notes at the top of the page was the instruction to toast the oats before cooking them.  Well, of course {slaps forehead}.  As Kim Boyce, the goddess of all things whole grain, states in the recipe, "...these oats are much more flavorful if you give them a quick toast in the pan before longer cooking.  This brings out their natural sweet nuttiness and gives bite to the oats."

Good grief.  What a revelation.  The difference was profound, and now I'm hooked on steel-cut oats.  The texture is so much more interesting than that of rolled oats, and the flavor is richer, nuttier, rounder.

I would be lost as a goose without these cookbooks.

*****

STEEL-CUT OATMEAL (serves 5)

In my house, I'm the only one who eats oatmeal.  I make the full recipe on Monday morning each week, and refrigerate the leftovers, warming up a small bowl full each morning in the microwave (adding a little bit of water to keep it the right consistency), and then topping with the nuts.  This would be terrific to make on the weekend so that you can warm it up in a hurry on rushed weekday mornings.

• 1 Tbs unsalted butter
• 1 cup steel-cut oats
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• 4 cups water
• 1 cup whole, fresh cranberries
• chopped walnuts
• honey, to taste

1. In a 2 quart pot, melt the butter over medium heat.  
2. Add the oats, the cinnamon and the salt, and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring very often.
3. Add the water and the cranberries, and adjust the heat to low.  Simmer, uncovered, for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. Top with chopped walnuts, and a drizzle of honey.  Serve hot.

Homemade Vanilla Extract

Random Acts of Consumer Anarchy continue to occur around here, and they show no signs of abating (there are still so many more things I want to learn how to make myself - castile soap, I'm looking at you).  In light of recent events though, maybe I should call this The Occupy Your Shopping List Project.  The point is, after all, to whittle down the shopping list, to participate just a little less in the consumerist machine, to spend less money; to consume less, and to create more.  

To date, the items we have removed from our shopping list include shampoo, baking powder, dishwasher detergent, laundry detergent, facial cleanser, body lotion, hot pepper sauce (recipe one and recipe two), play dough, glass cleaner, and now vanilla extract.

The vanilla extract is a biggie.  Have you looked carefully at the cost of a good-quality organic pure vanilla extract?  Pricey, I say.  The less expensive brands of vanilla extract, even the ones that claim to be pure vanilla extract, often contain dubious ingredients, and even then, the cost per ounce is relatively high.

And I use A LOT of vanilla extract.  Those tiny little bottles never lasted long around here, so I started looking into ordering an 8-oz bottle online.  {Enter sticker shock}.  Then I looked into making my own, and, well, eureka.

Making your own vanilla extract is really quite simple - just a matter of stuffing some split vanilla beans into a bottle of vodka and then letting it steep for two months.  So, sure, the first batch takes a wee bit of patience, but you can make giant containers worth at a time, or you can make smaller batches, and always keep another batch going in a dark cupboard.

The price savings are intense, and the quality is excellent.  So far, I have used vodka for my extract, since that was what I saw recommended most often in the recipe sites that I consulted for my initial batch, but I am curious about the difference when using bourbon.  Next time, for sure...

*****

HOMEMADE VANILLA EXTRACT

When purchased in bulk, you can find organic vanilla beans for around $1/each right now.  A year ago, when I made my first batch, I found organic vanilla beans in bulk for about half that price.  My first batch came in at about $0.50/ounce, and my most recent batch was more expensive, at about $1.00/ounce (still a bargain compared to $2.00/ounce for the commercial organic vanilla extract).

• 750 ml bottle of vodka
• 12 vanilla beans

1. Remove about 1/2 cup of vodka from the bottle.  What you do with it is totally up to you.  I don't want to know.  Unless you make a vodka sauce for pasta, and then I want your recipe.  
2. Using a sharp knife, split the beans lengthwise along one entire side of the bean (this is to expose the pulp inside).
3. Stuff the vanilla beans into the bottle of vodka.  Close tightly and shake.
4. Store the bottle in a dark pantry or cupboard for two months, shaking it weekly.  
5. After two months, when the liquor has been fully infused, pour some of the extract into a smaller bottle (for ease of use), and stuff one or two of the beans into the smaller bottle as well.  Use as you would commercial extract.  

*****

This post was also featured on Frugally Sustainable and Natural Mothers Network.

Abhyanga and the Normal Girl

In September, everything got a little unbalanced around here.  We had just returned to our homeschooling lessons after a solid two months off for summer break, and at the same time, I picked up two big new clients.  We went from the hot, slow-moving days of summer into the busiest time for our household in years.

I was off-kilter, which quite frankly, meant all of us ended up off-balance.  Dinners became rushed affairs, the most oft-heard phrase from my lips became "Mama needs to work now, sweetheart," my yoga practice fell by the wayside, and I began to feel uncomfortable in my own skin.  I woke up tired every morning, my muscles felt tense and rigid, and meals left me bloated.

It was ridiculous.  I know better than to let stress get such a leg up on me.  And the pressure of my workload, while not quite avoidable, was something that I knew would pass.  The extra work would smooth out once I became accustomed to each of the new clients, and the learning curve wouldn't last forever.  There was, to be sure, no need to panic.

But panic, I did, at least at first.  Too much had been added to the schedule at once, and I wasn't slowing down enough to see that I needed to pull back at least a little bit in order to practice some much-needed self-care.

Self-care is such a loaded term, isn't it?  The modern lifestyle just isn't conducive to taking the time out of our busy schedules in order to tend to our own needs, and so many women feel guilty about even thinking of putting their personal needs on the list of Things That Are Important.  It seems self-indulgent, self-centered.

To that, I say Hogwash.  It is none of those things.  You know how being kind to someone with whom you have a testy relationship ends up improving the situation?  And you find that extending a little grace to a difficult person results in you liking them more?

Try extending a little of that same grace to yourself.  Show yourself a little kindness.  It just might improve that antagonistic relationship you have with your own body, your skin, your hair, your emotions, your health.

Late in September, just as I was on the verge of contacting a naturopath for help with the insomnia and the bloating and the general feeling of discomfort in my body, I happened upon an article in Yoga Journal about their 7-day Fall Detox, and, after breathing a sigh of relief, I decided to postpone my impending breakdown and see if participating in the cleanse would help.

Oh, my stars, how it did help.  It was a gentle detox, nothing dangerous or even all that difficult.  I ate kitchari at every meal, drank spiced teas, followed the prescribed yoga practices, eschewed caffeine and sugar, and got just a little bit more sleep than I had been getting.  Very little else changed.  My schedule, with it's homeschooling and work commitments, was not altered.  But I felt better almost immediately.  The bloating I had been experiencing after meals disappeared, as did three pounds of apparently unnecessary weight.  The quality of my sleep improved.  I remembered to breathe deeply.

Part of the benefit of the detox was simply the end-product of having paid more careful attention to myself for seven days, because while I still needed to cook other meals for the rest of my family, there was a ritualistic quality in eating the kitchari for 21 straight meals, in simmering the spiced teas, in reading the daily email that came during the detox, in consciously paying attention to my cravings and what I was putting into my body.

Interestingly though, the most long-lasting impact of the detox was that I learned about the benefits of abhyanga, the practice of massaging the entire body with warmed oil before bathing.  For quite some time now, I have used jojoba oil to massage my face and scalp, but adding the ritual of whole-body self-massage with warm sesame oil was a revelation indeed.  The Banyan Botanicals website has a much more comprehensive article about the practice, some of which may seem like so much hooey to you skeptical types, but it would be hard to deny that taking five minutes out of one's day to rub warm oil into our tired muscles and dry skin before bathing is going to be in our best interests.  Even if it doesn't actually turn us into Wonder Woman.

The idea is relatively simple.  You take organic sesame oil, and warm it up (in the microwave, in a pan on the stove, immersed in a sinkful of hot water, however you like).  Then you pour a little bit into your hands, and you massage it into your skin, using circular strokes on the joints, and firm, long strokes on your limbs.  Rub your ears, your scalp, your temples, your jaw.  Press a little more deeply in the areas you carry tension, the back of your neck, the tops of your shoulders, the top of your spine, the backs of your calves.

You will not need to wash the oil off of your skin with soap in the shower.  The water will take away the greasiness, and sesame oil has cleansing properties on it's own.  It would be a shame to wash off the lovely moisturizing qualities of the oil with soap, wouldn't it?  And I have found that by gently patting myself dry after the shower, enough of the oil remains that I no longer need to use commercial body lotions to lock in the moisture.  This small gesture of kindness to myself has become as integral to my physical well-being as my yoga practice and the attention I pay to my meals.

It only takes a few minutes, but that precious tiny amount of time spent paying attention to yourself and how you feel will stay with you all through whatever the day may bring.