Renee's Special Surprise at School



 

I am writing this post about a teacher named Renee:

I want to share what happened on Monday at the home school coop that we joined this year.  The teacher of a class on the Civil War (in which I am an assistance) had come to a class I taught 5 or so years ago about eating God's foods.  Small world isn't it?  She mentioned it the first class and we talked a bit about my teaching FoodsbyGod classes again this year.

 

Then she surprised me with a very special treat this past Monday.  Since the class is about the Civil War, she searched for an authentic Civil War dessert, and found Civil War Ginger Bread.  She brought some to class for all of us to try.



She found the recipe on-line and took it a step further by making it with all healthy FoodsbyGod ingredients; grinding her own soft white wheat berries and using organic butter.  She picked a recipe that contained no sugar and brought a copy of the recipe for me!

 

Wow - thank you, Renee!  It was so fun to enjoy the snack with the class and for the kids to taste a sweet made without sugar.  I was so impressed and so appreciate the thoughtfulness.  It was tasty and very moist.

 

Please be sure to tell others about your FoodsbyGod diet - it is so important to share what you are doing, especially if you are trying to go 100% and eliminate all of the man-made foods that rob us of our health. 

 

This was a double blessing this week for me, since I also learned of four women struggling with various stages of breast cancer.  Hearing about each one and their journey breaks my heart.

 

This doesn't have to be.  Please take your diet seriously and work through the weekly challenges.  Don't wait until you are diagnosed with a serious disease.  Coming down with cancer is not a matter of bad luck - most cancers develop because of diet.  Don't be the next victim of the food industry and man-made medicine.  Take your diet seriously and may God bless you as you break free from the modern American diet.

"Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?  If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him, for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple."  1 Corinthians 3:16 - 17  

Weekly Challenge - Week 40 (October 1, 2013)

Take time to smell the roses, and the lavender, and the basil and oregano and thyme and....



Herbs and plants have incredible healing powers just by smelling them or breaking some off and rubbing them in your hands to release their life force - their essential oils.  You may be familiar with the amazing properties of pure excellent quality essential oils (not the cheap imitations sold at the local grocery store) and you may know that they are very expensive. 

Well you can have free access to many of these same oils through the plants you grow.  I don't think I have emphasized enough the importance of adding fresh herbs at the very end to your healing soup.  This is a large part of the healing power.  You don't want to cook them in the soup and destroy the properties of the essential oils within these plants.  In fact, just working with these fresh herbs will bless you as you inhale their fragrance and handle them with your fingers.  I find learning about the healing properties of these plants that God has given to us fascinating.  If you do too, educate yourself and read about each one's special properties.  For example, this site has information about basil and the anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory properties of its essential oil which is obtained from its leaves.

I love what my friend, Lynn, wrote to me this weekend on this very subject.  I had written to her and told her that I had gone out to the garden and cut some lavender, then rubbed it in my hands while inhaling the fragrance.  What a wonderful, wonderful, experience this was and uplifting to my spirit.  She wrote back,

"I believe God gave us our five senses for us to discover what He made, and Him ultimately.  Smells from what the Lord has made are life giving (herbs, oils, flowers, ocean, ETC) by increasing the frequencies of our bodies and reaching deep into the recesses of the mind vs. man-made smells which are imitators and lower the body's frequency making it susceptible to disease (think Plug-Ins, pollution, carpets, ...).  I love fresh herbs.  They are easy to grow in north Texas.  I had peppermint and cilantro in the greens we ate Friday.  And the egg salad I once had at your house with fresh herbs was the best! I love rubbing my hands on the rosemary growing in the backyard...."

 

I think this is a wonderful word picture of what going 100% means.  Experiencing the life-giving forces from our foods and the plants around us.  Lynn fixed me the most delicious dinner last Friday night, shown in the photo above.  She had a wonderful salad with grilled pineapple and red bell pepper (plus the mint and cilantro she mentioned) with 100% grass-fed burgers and sauerkraut.  She always accompanies her meals with fresh cut greens or sauces containing fresh herbs.  I was feeling a bit under the weather by the end of last week, and wanted to just rest at home Friday night.  But God had other plans in mind for me.  Instead, Lynn fed me this wonderful dinner and we went to a presentation on the healing powers of essential oils. 



Inspired, I used a lot of fresh herbs in my meals on Saturday.  I had eggs with green chili salsa and my herbs for breakfast, and a large dollop of homemade sour cream with fresh herbs on my bowl of chicken sausage gumbo for dinner.  Plus I cut some lavender (on my breakfast plate) and rubbed it in my hands and inhaled the wonderful fragrance as I prepared the meal. 

 

By Sunday I was feeling incredibly energized and renewed.  Remember that you must be intentional about what you are doing -  just thinking about what you want to do is not enough.  Did you master the challenge from Week 14, to plant and use fresh herbs?  I hope so.

This week, go out and smell those herbs you have planted.  Smell those roses you have in your yard (and stop using pesticides and herbicides which pollutes our senses and weakens the plant).  If you have not bought any herbs yet, get some this week (basil is a warm weather annual so don't plant that outside at this time of year). 

 

If you already have some herbs and flowering plants, add something new to your yard, garden or patio collection of pots.  Think about what essential oils are available and get a plant of one of these.  The fresh healing herbs in the healing chicken soup all have excellent anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and anti-fungal properties.  The basic ones to start with include rosemary, oregano (and/or marjoram), thyme, parsley, and basil.  I also love having lavender in my yard (it does not like receiving much water) and it is an herb that is good for alleviating allergies and headaches to name just a few of its abilities.

So go outside this week and smell the roses and other life-giving plants that God has provided for us in His creation and praise the King of Kings for His provisions.

"...nard (lavender) and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with every kind of incense tree, with myrrh and aloes and all the finest spices." Song of Solomon 4:14  

Hummus and Crackers



If you are short on time, this is a very simple lunch that takes no time to prepare.  I like to make my own hummus, and these individual cups are a bit small, but they are a great option to have in your refrigerator when in a pinch.  I packed two cups for this lunch, with some Whole Foods water crackers, carrot sticks and some fruit salad.

Healing Soup Lunch When Feeling Under the Weather

 



This is perhaps the most important lunch to have available to pack up, especially during the school year as germs are spread around and it seems that everyone is sick.  It is a good plan to weekly make homemade broth and a batch of healing chicken soup during the fall and winter months.  You can keep portions of soup (and biscuits) in the freezer, so they are available when needed for a lunch.

 

At the slightest sign of a cold, flu, or stomach bug coming on, it is critical to watch what is eaten.  Absolutely no sweets of any kind and no cold drinks, not even ones with natural FoodsbyGod ingredients.  Sweets feed cold germs and your body will be hampered and not be able to ward off the illness.  Gut health is also very important, and the healing chicken soup with homemade broth is the best way to heal one's gut.  Also stick with room temperature water or herbal teas when fighting as illness. 

 

Be sure to have a wide-mouth thermos on-hand in your house (or multiple ones if you have several children).  When packing something hot, while heating up the food to pack for lunch, boil some water and fill the thermos with hot water.  When the soup or other food is hot, pour out the hot water and immediately fill with the hot soup and screw on the lid of the thermos.  If you pre-heat the thermos in this manner, the food will stay hot until lunch time. 

 

Typically when one is not feeling great, one's appetite is diminished.  Listen to your body and teach your children to do the same.  Eat a light lunch and drink plenty of room temperature water throughout the day.  If I were not feeling great, I would not pack up much for lunch (as shown in the photo).  The thermos of soup and a few whole grain sweet cream biscuits would be plenty. 

 

Taking precautions like this can save you time and money, allowing you to avert an illness.  However, this is a delicious lunch even if you aren't feeling sick!  Leftovers soups and stews for lunch are great choices, especially as the weather turns cooler.  I would then add a fresh raw veggie and fruit to my lunch (remember to eat the fruit first).  An excellent lunch option - enjoy!

Weekly Challenge - Week 39 (September 24, 2013)

Create new food triggers and memories. 

 

 

Certain smells and songs and even foods can bring to us nostalgic good memories of happy times with loved ones.  Unfortunately for most of us, the foods that are associated with these memories are junk food (birthday parties at McDonald's?) or sweets loaded with processed sugar.  So this week's challenge is to become aware of your food triggers, and if they are not good ones involving FoodsbyGod, work on establishing new ones.

We discussed food triggers at our September class.  I brought the bowl of fresh fruit salad above.  This is one of my good food triggers, but not all my food triggers are good choices like this one.  I told the class that though I have not had any sweets with processed sugar in years now, I absolutely LOVE a good white wedding cake and that I was not sure if I would have the willpower to pass that up!  (As you might know from previous posts, I am a sugaraholic and have been very addicted to processed sugar in the past).  Wedding cake was the first thing that came to my mind when mentioning food triggers and the strong desire for a piece of white wedding cake that this memory produced was amazing to me. 

Since the class, thinking more about why white wedding cake sounded so good, I realize it is not the taste that is so appealing (it would be so sickly sweet to me now - yuck) but the emotional feelings associated with it.  I thank God for showing me this because after recognizing the emotional pull of this food this last week, I know that I now could easily pass it up if offered some.

I pray that each of you can piece together these connections too and bring them into your conscious mind and become free of them.  I think my love of white wedding cake stems from my two older sisters' weddings - I was in both.  I was a flower girl in my oldest sister's wedding at the age of three and watching all the preparation and seeing my big sister in her beautiful white wedding dress was magical for me at that age.  Ending the night with a piece of the sugary sweet bakery white wedding cake planted deep memories into my mind of fairy tale happiness. 

Joanna brought this idea of food triggers to my attention the weekend before our class (thank you, Joanna).  Her food memories are of special times at home with her family after a long tiring day indulging in an endless supply of store bought sweets: cookies, cake and ice cream. Her family would eat away while they relaxed and laughed together.  What great memories of family bonding but all wrapped up with wrong food choices.  

 

Thus the pull of wrong food choices is difficult to overcome especially if you are unaware of the emotional connection.  If you come home tired after a busy day, you don't want to reward  yourself and your family with this kind of unhealthy food.  This is the type of food trigger memories that one needs to realize and break. 

 

A bowl of fresh fruit salad that I brought to the September class is an example of one of my good food triggers.  For several reasons, a big bowl of fruit salad brings back wonderful nostalgic memories for me.  Even more special would have been placing the mixed fruit salad in a watermelon bowl rind.  This is a good food trigger which I have and fortunately will be one of the 'happy' food memories that my sons will probably have.  The memory of relaxing summer morning bonding with the family and eating fruit salad on our screened porch.  It is also a standard that I fixed for their birthday parties which hold happy memories.

 

Another 'good' food memory that we have established in our house is popcorn and Izzie nights.  We have an air popper in which we pop our organic popcorn, and then I drizzle it with real sweet cream butter and season it with freshly ground good quality sea salt.  We would watch a movie together and take a break half way through to make the popcorn.  Then we would put a tablecloth down in the center of the living room floor (just eating food outside of the kitchen area was a special treat) and finish our movie night with popcorn and 'soda'.

 

So my challenge to you this week is to begin to replant good food memories into your mind and into the minds of your children.  Be intentional and claim victory.

 

"Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God - this is your spiritual act of worship.  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of you mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - His good, pleasing and perfect will."  Romans 12: 1 - 2

Waffle and Smoothie Lunch





Yesterday's To_Go_Lunch idea, a salad, may not be an option for your child's school lunch, but today's lunch idea is a very kid friendly option (even for big kids like me!).  I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in my school lunch almost everyday growing up so even to this day, I don't really enjoy a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  But there is something special about nut butter on a waffle... 

 

 



 

I love my gluten-free waffle recipe and thus whenever I make waffles, I make extras and freeze them.  After the extras have thoroughly cooled to room temperature on a cooling rack, I put waxed paper between them and seal them in a Ziploc bag and put them in the freezer.  They reheat easily in the toaster or if you are packing a lunch, they don't need to be thawed.

 





 

I like to use different nut butters, not just peanut butter, on my waffles.  My current favorite is raw walnut butter (but it is VERY expensive!).  Raw almond butter is also a good choice plus there are many other kinds of nut butters.  I typically buy organic nut butters.  Also, be sure to read the label.  Many nut butters contain sugar - don't buy those.  I like to buy the ones that are packaged in glass jars.

 

If you are packing a lunch, put nut butter on both pieces of waffle and then sandwich the pieces together.  I like just the nut butter on the waffle, but you can also drizzle on a bit of raw honey.

 

With this lunch, I have packed some fresh organic raspberries that were on sale at Costco last week (a special treat for my raspberry loving guys) and some raw carrot sticks.

 

I have also made a yogurt smoothie which I've poured into a thermos.  A nice, wide-mouth thermos (as shown in the photo) is an essential item if you pack lunches.  It can be used for cold or hot foods.  Be sure to pre-chill your thermos with ice water before filling with your smoothie and your smoothie will still taste great hours later.   There are many, many different smoothie possibilities - experiment and have fun creating your own favorites.  



Lunch Salad Which Satisfies



I typically don't snack between meals, but only if I eat a satisfying breakfast and lunch.  So if I have a salad for lunch, I need to add some good protein and fat to it. 

 

For my salads, I always start with a bed of greens, typically spring mix lettuce or baby spinach (I usually buy the one pound organic half and half mix from Costco) though there is nothing better than lettuce from the garden.  (Lettuce is a cool weather crop for North Texas and is easy to grow.)  Triple washed store bought organic lettuce is a quick and easy alternative though.  I also usually add at least one other fresh vegetable to my salad.  On the salad in the photo, I have added sliced organic cucumber (which is a summer crop and thus won't be in season much longer).

 

My favorite protein to add is leftover shredded cooked chicken (it is really good if you pre-grill it as described in the chicken salad recipe).  When I cook chicken, I typically make extra, shred it and put it in the freezer.  It is then easy to take out a bit for a salad.  If you are packing a lunch you don't even need to thaw it first.  Be sure to pack your salad in a insulated lunch bag though and include an ice pack since the meat and dressing need to stay chilled. 

 

For the salad in the photo, I added some sliced ham pieces.  Be sure to buy a ham that is not loaded with additives.  Hard boiled egg is another good protein option for your salad.  I topped my salad with some grated cheese.  Remember to grate the cheese yourself since pre-grated cheese contains anti-caking additives.

 

The last key ingredient is a good salad dressing.  Don't skip the dressing, you need good quality fats in your diet to properly absorb the fat soluble vitamins.  If you are packing your lunch, be sure to put your salad dressing in a separate small container or your salad will be wilted by the time you eat it.  If you don't make your own, buy a good quality dressing.  I like the Annie's Organic Caesar dressing shown in the photo.  The things that I look for in a good dressing are:

 

 

1.  Expeller-pressed or cold-pressed oil (though don't pick ones that contain soy oil).

2.  If sweetened, only with honey, no sugar.

3.  No artificial ingredients (store bought dressings typically contain xanthan gum, which is a thickener and o.k.).

 

I have included some crackers with my salad for this lunch.  It is difficult to find crackers that do not contain ingredients on the foods/ingredients to avoid list.  Most organic crackers contain enriched flour, one of the ingredients that I never eat.  The crackers shown in the photo are something that I picked up at the store recently.  Other Back To Nature crackers contain enriched flour, but this one does not, though they are not organic and are high in salt.  Two other cracker options that are acceptable (though none are optimal) include Mary's Gone Crackers (contains soybeans) and Whole Foods Organic Water Crackers (made with white flour).

 

Developing a good cracker recipe is one of my goals for this coming winter.  In the meantime, I use crackers sparingly.

 

Salads are a great lunch option and there are so many different possibilities you can make.  Let your creative juices flow!