My husband and I are running Cross Creek Cattle Company, which offers grass fed beef to the public.  I write for Texas Homesteader, Welcome to the Ranch!, and My Creativity Blog as well as other books and poems.  I am also running my Fresh From the Farm Store, which sells goat milk soap and handmade tote bags.

At church, I just attended the Women’s Retreat with my daughter.  The leader of the Women’s Ministry recommended a book, 50 People Every Christian Should Know by Warren Wiersbe.  Not being able to pass up a good deal on a book, I purchased it.  I immediately flipped through it and decided to read the chapter on Amy Carmichael.  I was already familiar with her life story so I began with her.  She was one tough missionary in India.

If you are interested, read about her.  I am not going to discuss her story; however, I was greatly impacted by a quote as I read.  Ms. Carmichael said, “Beware of the barrenness of a busy life.”  The word barren immediately connotes emptiness to me.  Other words like unfruitful, unproductive, and lacking are synonymous.  Who wants that kind of life?  Those things occur when you are lazy, when you do nothing, when you are not serving others in some regard; however, Amy Carmichael saw that the busy-ness of life can produces the same results.

You can be so busy that you do nothing of importance.  You fill your schedule with activities, work, and recreation, but nothing has eternal significance.  You blame your busy-ness for not allowing you to volunteer, to minister to others, and/or to serve.

King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 about the seasons of life.  It begins, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.”  I am in a certain season right now with my family and responsibilities; however, I have been really chewing on Amy Carmichael’s advice, “Beware of the barrenness of a busy life.”

As I continue to digest this and try to re-evaluate my own life, I wanted to share what was on my mind with you.  Making sure that your priorities in life are aligned properly is wise.  I would like to hear your thoughts on what makes a truly productive and fruitful life and/or how this sage advice has affected your life.

As we are finishing up raising our two hogs for meat, I could not help remember a story she told me about her experience raising pigs.  To understand the story better, you have to realize that my grandmother was a proper lady from the city.  Her in-laws lived in Houston, but at this point in time it was considered rural.  My grandfather was a visionary man, who always looked for creative ways to make a buck.  He had decided to go into the pig business on the side.  He purchased numerous piglets and convinced his parents to raise them for him on their homestead.

My great-grandparents, like myself now, grew tired of feeding and caring for the pigs.  They were ready to complete the project, which required either selling the pigs live or butchering the pigs.  Apparently my grandfather put his parents off for several weeks, but his mother was not to be put off for long.  Finally she called him at his office job with an ultimatum.  The pigs had to go and she did not care how.

My grandfather calls Mama and tells her to drive to his parent’s home, hitch up a trailer, load up the hogs, and deliver them to the Houston Stockyard.  She had no idea what she was getting herself into, but she dutifully drove out to her in-laws.  Her mother-in-law, a.k.a. Granny, helped my grandmother load the whole batch of hogs into the trailer.  She hopped in the vehicle beside my grandmother, who was nervous about pulling a trailer.

My petite and proper grandmother was horrified to see the trail of pig poop that was being strewn all over the roadway as it fell between the wooden slats of the floor of the trailer.  To make matters even worse, every time she was stopped at a stop sign or red light the vehicle and trailer would shake and rock because, to put it in Mama’s own words, “the pigs wouldn’t stop making love.”  She was beside herself with embarrassment.

People were shooting her looks of disgust or laughing and pointing as she continued making her way to the sale barn.  All she wanted to do was get home and try to erase this memory from her mind.

When they finally pulled into the parking lot of the Houston Stockyard, the gentlemen working there informed my grandmother that they were no longer accepting pigs.  It was too late.  The thought of driving all the way back to her in-laws farm was too much.  She wanted to cry.  Luckily, Granny was there.

Granny, who I never had the pleasure of meeting, was one tough old bird.  She looked at those men square in the face and gave them two choices.  They could load those hogs into the chute and sell the hogs as planned or she was going to open the gate on the trailer, unload the hogs herself in the parking lot, and leave them.  Under no circumstance was she taking those pigs back to her home.  The men looked at her and then at each other, sizing her up.

My grandmother and great-grandmother pulled out of the Houston Stockyards with an empty trailer and huge smiles on their faces.  In hindsight after the embarrassment of the situation faded, my grandmother thought the whole affair was hilarious.  She would giggle as she would describe the events.  The giggles would soon turn into chuckling peppered with a few high squeals of laughter.

Oh, how I miss her.  But stories like this one, keep her memory alive to my children and I wanted to share this one with ya’ll.  I hope it brought a ray of sunshine in your day like she brought to my life.

In Memory of Joyce Adrienne Paschal Holliday (1924-2010). 

When I began I had little knowledge about the diet.  I had read the book, Breaking the Vicious Cycle by Elaine Gottschall, which is an invaluable resource for explaining the why and the how.  It also has some good recipes in it.  Pecanbread is a good site to acquire an extensive list of foods that are legal or non-legal as well as the reasoning behind it.  This site walks you through the different phases and also has recipes.

Once established in the diet, we fell into a routine.  As soon as we tired of those plain meals, then I began experimenting with new recipes or getting brave enough to make up my own.  This led to several failures and many successes.  As I look back, I can’t help but wish that I had known some things before we began.  So here is a short list of lessons learned.

If I Had Only Known

• Our tastes change.  Years before I tried to get my children to eat raisins.  They hated them, picked them out of cookies, ate around them in bread, etc.  They completely rejected the name I gave them, “God’s candy.”  Once on the diet for a few months, they absolutely love them.  Raisins are now one of their favorite snacks as well as California dates.
• The versatility of vegetables.  In the past, we had our favorite ways to eat vegetables.  We stuck with them, but vegetables are one of the ways to diversify your menu.  We experimented with new vegetables like kohlrabi, relied heavily on squashes and cauliflower, and learned that almost any vegetable is terrific roasted with extra virgin olive oil.  My children literally get excited and hug me when they see that I am roasting cauliflower in the oven.
• Larabars exist.  Literally three weeks ago I read that certain Larabars are SCD legal.  For our camping trip, I decided to purchase some.  Oh my gosh!  They are not only delicious and filled with natural and healthy ingredients, but they are easy to throw in your purse so you have something to eat on the go.  The hardest part of the diet was going without if you did not plan ahead.  My favorite is Cashew Cookie, but Lemon Bar, Coconut Cream, Peanut Butter Cookie, and Pecan Pie are all really delicious too.  My little boys love Cherry Pie and Apple Pie.
• To visit No More Crohns online.  Don’t let the name fool you; you don’t have to suffer from Crohn’s Disease to learn from it.  It is a website to support and encourage those on SCD.  This site informed me about Larabars as well as legal fruit leather, which kids like.  The recipes are fabulous.  I have not tried one that was bad.  Butterfingers are divine and are a family favorite.  My husband smoked pork ribs last night and I made Jim’s Sweet Rib Sauce.  Only one word is necessary: Incredible.
• Special Occasions and Holidays will still be memorable and fun.  At first, I worried that Christmas would not be the same without yeast rolls and cheesecake.  Or, Thanksgiving without cornbread dressing would leave us filling cheated.  Easter without a chocolate bunny would somehow diminish the significance of the celebration.  How silly was I!  We had some of our nicest holiday dinners this year with fully legal SCD menus.  Birthdays were celebrated with gusto and delicious fare.  Eating on SCD does not mean deprivation and bland foods.

Looking back these are the most important lessons I learned this past year.  Now that we are able to reintroduce foods, I am not as excited about it as I thought I would be.  I like eating this healthy.  I don’t want to readjust our tastes to follow the Standard American Diet (SAD).  This feeling is quite unexpected.  It is certainly not how I felt a year ago.  I wanted to get this year over and begin adding foods as quickly as possible.  Now I am dragging my feet.  If I had only known, beginning the diet would have so much easier.

I love chocolate.  Dark chocolate is my favorite, but I don’t turn down anything made with chocolate.  That is, until last year.  Throughout the year I turned down a lot of chocolate, especially recipes with unsweetened cocoa powder in them.  No sugar, no starch, but chocolate is not legal on SCD.

Not having chocolate was a lot easier than I expected.  There were only three times in the entire year when I really wanted chocolate and had to fight temptation to cheat.  People would ask me, especially as we neared the end of our year, “What is the first thing you are going to add back into your diet?’  I always answered quickly, “Chocolate.”

To celebrate our year on SCD, I made my first batch of chocolate cupcakes.  Every ingredient was legal, except for 2 Tbsp of unsweetened cocoa powder.  I thought it was a good, safe way to begin adding some chocolate back in our lives.  The batter smelled divine. As I whipped up my Incredible Icing to accompany the chocolate cupcakes, I could hardly wait for them to cool.

Finally they were ready, I sat down, carefully peeled away the paper liner, and prepared to enjoy every delicious morsel.  What an anticlimactic moment!  The cupcakes were good, but not near what I had remembered chocolate to be.  Hmmph, maybe my tastes have changed.

The one thing that I did not realize I would miss so much was communion.  Since SCD requires fanatical adherence to properly heal your gut, my family and I did not partake of communion for an entire year.  I hate to admit it, but I guess we took communion for granted.  We did not realize how much it meant to us as Christians.  To allow it to pass by was harder than expected.

Sunday evening our small group from church met together to have a Passover Seder meal as we prepare our minds to celebrate Easter.  My family and I celebrated all the Biblical Holidays two years ago so we were familiar with the ceremony.  However I was again touched with the beauty of God’s plan for redemption and the symbolism of each element of the meal.  God purposed that His people would always remember the things He has done.  Walking through the Seder meal is a touching way to do just that as well as pass it down to the younger generations.

Knowing that unleavened bread plays a big role in the Passover meal, I made some before we left home.  Since Passover and Easter are both celebrated this week, I wanted to give you the recipe.

Unleavened Bread

3/4 cup blanched almond flour
1 lg egg
1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
1/4 salt
1/2 tsp Herbes de Provence (optional)

In a bowl, mix 1/2 cup of almond flour with the other ingredients.  Stir to combine.  Add the additional flour to make it more dough-like and less wet.  Combine well.  Grease a cookie sheet or pizza pan with olive oil.  Place the dough in the middle of the pan, cover it with plastic wrap, and roll it out to your desired thickness.  I made mine about 1/4″ thick.  With a fork, poke holes all over the dough.

Place your bread in the oven.  Turn it to 350 degrees.  The dough will slowly cook as the oven preheats.  After the oven reaches the desired temperature, watch your bread.  I let mine cook about five more minutes.  The bread gets a golden brown color and a crisp feel.  Allow it cool on the sheet.  Use a pizza cutter to slice it in large sections. 

The bread was quite good.  My children ate all the leftovers in the car on the way home from the Seder meal.

As we partook the unleavened bread and fruit of the vine as well as the bitter herbs, salt water, and haroset while reading the Last Supper account in John, my soul was touched deeply.  So after a year of a long list of withouts, the one I missed the most was without a doubt communion.  And the one I expected to miss the most, chocolate, not so much.  Even a diet can teach you what is really important.

Kyla had the most remarkable transformation.  She lost 35 pounds and grew almost four inches in just a matter of months.  Lane also experienced dramatic weight loss.  He does not suffer from acid reflux or indigestion either.  His chronic sinus congestion is almost non-existent.  Isaac had a year free of any of his usual symptoms of stomach ache, diarrhea, rashes, hives, etc.  He also grew three inches and has a very flat stomach area.  Andrew grew three inches.

As I shared months ago, I am no longer requiring an adrenal or thyroid gland support.  In fact my body is not needing even a vitamin supplement.  For the first time since delivering two boys back to back, I am completely healthy.  For most of the diet, I had no physical changes.  I did not lose but maybe four pounds.  However, internally my body is working properly.  I also no longer have the hypoglycemia moments of fogginess, shakiness, and cold sweats.

All of these can be directly attributed to our diet.  It is amazing how much your diet affects your health.  The old adage is true, “You are what you eat.”  Since experiencing such remarkable results, I get a little nervous about the prospect of adding more foods back into our menus.

This week I am going to write about our experiences and share information that I wish I had known a year ago.  The beginning of the diet is without a doubt the hardest.  You are limited to so few things and your body suffers from withdrawal.  My husband and daughter took it the hardest.  They literally became sick with flu-like symptoms.  You know that your gut has a bad bacteria and yeast problem when you deny yourself sugar and pay for it.  Luckily they quickly die off,  and you don’t feel any bad effects of the diet.

You begin to realize how much sugar you were consuming.  Dr. Oz says that “the average person consumes 150 pounds of sugar in a year.”  He goes on to contrast the diet of people in 1700s, who only consumed 7 1/2 pounds per year.  Wow, let that soak in.  I am picturing 30 5 lb. bags of sugar.  The next time I go to the grocery store, I plan on counting out 30 bags just to try to wrap my head around this information.

We were not allowed to have granulated sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar, lactose, glucose, dextrose, maltose, or any starch that converts to sugar.  According to the research associated with SCD, you can only consume mono-saccharides, which require no further digestion.  This would include honey and almost all fruit.

Once we were able to add more foods into our diet, eating became more enjoyable.  Almond flour helped add variety to our menu and baked goods helped satisfy our appetites.  The addition of beans helped out our grocery bill as they are inexpensive and filling.  As I became more familiar with what we could have and found and/or created some recipes, the easier the diet was.  Now eating this way is just second nature.

If you are considering changing your diet, regardless if it is SCD or not, please take heart.  If we can do it, anyone can do it.  We have no more willpower than anyone else.  I am not a gourmet chef.  We set a goal based on Breaking the Vicious Cycle by Elaine Gottschall, and through hard work and determination, we crossed the finish line.  How rewarding it is to say, “Mission Accomplished!”

Well, I was honestly somewhat disappointed with the amount of contestants entered in the Lessons from the Hen House by Carol Alexander giveaway.  You have much better odds in winning this than the much hyped $540 million lottery drawing tonight.  However, we do have a lucky winner: Lisa Mikitarian.

Congratulations, Lisa!  Look for my email later today.  Thank you to all who entered the contest.  If you are still interested in purchasing either Lesson from the Hen House or Lessons from the Seed Catalog ebooklets, please go to Ms. Alexander’s site, Lessons from the Homestead.  You get over 50 lessons for just a few dollars.

Despite the fact that I grew up in the country, I have a hard time driving a trailer.  It is one of my many faults.  I can speak another language, memorize lengthy passages, cook, but find it extremely difficult to pull a trailer.  My husband finds it humorous.  I think in part because it comes as second nature to him.

In spite of this hardship of mine, I had to transport my children’s swine projects to the Grimes County Fairgrounds last night for tag-in.  Unfortunately for me, this job required a trailer.  Thankfully, it is a small one.  We would have been out of luck if I had to pull my dad’s 24 foot long trailer.

Needless to say, I was nervous driving to the fairgrounds.  Not only did I have two pigs in the trailer, but my vehicle was filled with four of my children.  I cannot say that my older children were very supportive.  They could sense my anxiety and found it humorous.

I knew driving to the destination would be uneventful and was not the part I was really worried about.  My fear was that once on site I would have to back up or do some fancy maneuvering or something crazy like parallel park.  God was on my side, and nothing like that was required.  In fact, it was quite painless.  However, I was never so happy to pull up in our driveway.

Apparently my weakness in pulling  a trailer has occupied my husband’s thoughts.  He was watching our three youngest sons playing on the rug with toy trucks and cattle trailers.  As they played Lane noticed that they were using the 4″ wide decoration, which frames the rug, as a roadway.  At the corners, each boy turned his truck wide so as to clear the corner without cutting the rug too short.

Engrossed in his observations, Lane thought back to his own childhood.  He played with trucks, cars, motorcycles, etc.  He loved to pull trailers behind them too on their tiny hitches.  Therefore, he has made a hypothesis.  Playing with trucks and trailers results in the ability to pull actual trailers with ease.  The reason I have a difficult time is obvious; you did not find me playing with cars when I was a little girl.

Maybe he is right.  I would love to hear any tips about trailer pulling and/or what you think about his hypothesis.  If Lane is correct, then I guess I need to go sit down on the rug with my boys and start playing.