Sunday, August 31, 2008

Flour, Cakes and Weston Price

Recently I've been experimenting with cakes recipes and soaking my grain, after reading about the benefits of soaked grain in our Nourishing Traditions cookbook. Much of the cooking in it takes a little planning, ie deciding what you will eat the day before you eat it, but overall I'm finding it very worthwhile as my digestion has totally improved. It seems according to much of the Weston Price research that soaked, or fermenting is what helps to make and grain, and in fact many other things, digestible for humans. This of course doesn't really suit industry, who threw many of these old fashioned practises out the window for speed, only now we're all suffering.

Anyhow I thought I'd also try varying a few recipes that I particularly like, by soaking the grains first, for those that are interested here's my first. If you're like me and not so keen on using loads of sugar, just use less, that's my plan for next time.

Chocolate Brownie Pudding
200g Butter
200g Spelt flour
330g Rapadura chocolate

3eggs
1 1/2 vanilla pods
200g unrefined/ rapadura chocolate

Melt chocolate and butter in a double boiler and melt slowly until mixed. Take off heat, and add flour. Mix flour through thoroughly and place under teatowel overnight.

Grease loaf tin

Set oven to 160celsius.

Beat eggs, vanilla seeds and sugar together. Continue beating, and add in large spoonfulls of the chocolate mixture until all is mixed. Pour into loaf tin and bake for forty minutes.

The mixture will be ready when the top is set, but it should be soft and goopy in the middle. Take out of oven, leave to cool slightly in tin, and serve with raw cream/ ice cream for desert.




Thursday, August 21, 2008

Reading Detour

Both my Amazon orders arrived today, so I was quite excited....piles of books that I'd been waiting weeks for! A few interesting cookbooks on raw food, and one from the Weston Price Foundation, some good homeschooling ones,........and The Princess and Curdie!

Everyone was very excited, we were enjoying The Never Ending Story, but enthusiasm for George MacDonald won. So we're back to him.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Water Works

I had planned today rather nicely that we would go to the anthroposophical bookstore buy a birthday present for a party tomorrow, come home and do some school work. We had brunch- we all got up late today, and got ready to leave. Unfortunately at this point my plan went wrong, as I discovered that I had no idea where my house keys were (and actually I still haven't found them). So, since Arden was asleep I got Willow to do her activities while I searched. First she had a four form drawing to do (and still no keys!) and then she painted the tower of Babylon (and still no keys!!!). By now Arden is awake, and I've given up having phoned Damien and asked him if he knows where they are, and so we headed out to the garden to make a water way.









We got the idea from a fabulous little book called "Earth, Fire, Water and Air"  by Walter Kraul,I bought recently from the Anthroposophical Bookstore, and it has so many simple clever ideas- though we need to get a better saw. The kids did some of the hammering, and the wood was left overs from a furniture store around the corner, combined with some branches and coconut shells and we had a mini-garden stream. Everyone had loads of fun, and Gabriel is trying to invent his own simpler version now.

The Neverending Story

We've just started "The Neverending Story", and from what I've been told it's much better than the movie, so I'm looking forward to seeing it progress.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

The Last Week

This week we've been doing allsorts of things. The main thing was our homeschool review, which fortunately was successful and is over and done with now til next year.

Otherwise we've tried a bit of wet felting with mixed results. We'd done beads before but we tried to do some felt sheets and although they felted the results were patchy. In the end, I think the multiple attempts on the same bit of wool didn't help for getting consistent results. It was fun though, especially when Arden decided to chase our soapy water around the room!

Crocheting wise I've just finished the scarf and hat for my brother, and I'm quite happy with them. So hopefully he is too. Now I need to get back to Damien's jumper, I did two more rows last night, so there's still a small chance he might get to wear it for this winter.

We went to The Bead Hive today for our homeschool outing and everyone made beautiful jewellery. The kids made some great pieces, and it was a relaxing way to spend the afternoon. I picked out a few beads to add to a hat I'm planning to crochet for myself (I already have the wool). And I think we might have to do it again...though it'll have to wait a little while, as I'm starting to gather a bit of a list of interesting homeschooling activities.

Finally we finished The Princess and the Goblin (Puffin Classics - the Essential Collection), it is one of the best kids books I've read. It's only a small book but everyone loved it, and I think we finished it in around 2 weeks. I've just order the next book, The Princess and Curdie (Puffin Classics) off Amazon, so we're rather keen to get into it.

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Ballet and Alice

Earlier this year we read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass , and today we were lucky enough to head out for a children's ballet performance of the book. We went out for lunch, and noticed on our walk through the mall that Starbucks had already disappeared- it would be even better to see McDonalds go too.
Then we headed to the Festival Centre for the performance- it was quite busy, and there were a few nice touches, with the characters dancing through the audience, and the children being able to meet them at the end.

Willow and Gabriel said hi to the white rabbit and Alice at the end, and really enjoyed the performance.