Hodge Podge

A couple weeks ago Jeremy bought some honey from our local farmer's market.  I don't know if it's just this seller's honey, or if it's because it's local and fresh, but it is FUCKING DELICIOUS.  It's so good, in fact, that I've stopped using sugar in some of my hot tea flavors, which for a southern girl, is a miracle in and of itself.   It's just.... sweeter..... and, more flavorful. 

I don't know how to accurately describe it except to say we had to buy another jar today.  A larger jar.  To last us more than two weeks.

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Mary has inspired me to start making bread again.  I made it all last spring and summer for Lydia until I found one style of one brand she seemed to tolerate and then I just stopped.

The thing is, Lydia has been back on Zantac for three weeks now.  She'd been off of it since December 1st.  All of her symptoms (distended stomach, not sleeping through the night, overall cranky disposition) had slowly come back to haunt us within a 6 week time period.

Our new approach is to not feed her anything we haven't made ourselves (except her coconut milk) and no meat that doesn't come directly from a grass fed/grass finished cow or pasture raised pig.  We think and kind of hope, if only to find the source, that even with the hotdogs, lunch meats and bread we thought were "safe" for her to eat, we are still slowly poisoning her little system. 

She has one week left of Zantac and I pulled the last loaf of store bought bread out of the freezer this morning.  Lydia seems to be back to happy, again, and I'd like to keep it that way.  Even if I have to kneed 2 loaves a bread a week and cook like it's 1811.

Except with a propane cook top and oven because my land lord says wood burning stoves are dirty.  

Clearly he's a man's man who likes to chop wood with his manicured nails and haul it over to the woodpile in his little Corvette sports car.

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On the menu this week:
Saturday: Ham* and Potatoes
Sunday: Classic Beef Chili*
Monday: Bean Soup* (using Saturday's leftover ham & hock)
Tuesday: Chicken Fingers and Salad
Wednesday: Veggie Soup (cleaning out the fridge, style)
Thursday: Left Overs
Friday: Shepherd's Pie*

*crockpot suppers

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We've decided to use our State Tax return to buy ourselves an exercise bike.  We originally wanted a treadmill or elliptical but they are so big and bulky we didn't know if our next house would accommodate such a thing.

(The treadmill we have is just a borrow.  And a crappy borrow at that.  It's old.  Cumbersome.  It skips.  And it's dying and trying to kill us.)

(We've found that neither one of us has any motivation to fast walk or jog on something that is going to kill you with it's skipity nature.)

So.  Project Take Better Care of Ourselves is going rather smoothly.  Or, it will be after the bike arrives next Friday.

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Kyra, working on her school work at the kitchen table.

 You'd think she was blind, judging by how close she gets to her paper to write.

 But, no.  This is the same kid who likes to play I Spy in the car and has you trying to guess something a million miles away and you'd never see it, anyway, without the aid of binoculars.

 It's at this point of pondering her blindness, or lack there of, when she says, Mom... you're trying to distract me!

I'm sorry, Love.  I'll leave you alone, now.