2/3 cup quinoa

1 1/3 cups water

4 eggs

1/3 cup milk (can substitute almond or rice or coconut milk)

1 tsp. vanilla

1/4 cup coconut oil

1 1/2 c. organic cane sugar

1 cup cocoa

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

Cook the quinoa in the water. Set aside and let cool.Combine the quinoa, milk, eggs, coconut oil and vanilla in a blender (if the coconut oil is solid then melt and cool first).

Puree the ingredients in the blender.  Mix all the dry ingredients together and then add the wet to the dry and combine until mixed.

 Bake in 9×13 inch pan at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes.  Top will looked cracked when done.  While it is still hot sprinkle the top with chocolate chips and when the heat melts them spread around with a spatula for the icing.

 Cool and enjoy!  You will never know there is no flour in these!

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1 cup brown rice

1 cup quinoa

1  3/4 cups   H20

2 tsp. honey/agave/or maple syrpup

2 tsp. apple cider vinegar

1/3 cup ground flax seed

2 tsp.  b. powder

Place the brown rice and quinoa in a bowl and cover them with water.

 Soak overnight.  For additional benefit, add 2 tbsp. of apple cider vinegar to the soaking grains.  Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  Put two 10″ cast iron pans into the oven while it is preheating.

 Rinse and drain the grains in a strainer, then place them into a high powered blender with the rest of the ingredients, except the baking powder, once blended add the baking powder and blend again.

If  you don’t have a high powered blender process the grains very thoroughly.

 Remove the preheated pans from oven and lightly oil them with olive or coconut oil. Slowly pour the batter into a thin layer in the hot pans, using a back and forth motion.  Bake for 15-20 min.

Cut and enjoy!

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I knew at an early age that being a mom would be my passion. I have enjoyed a successful career as a hairdresser,but having my children has been the icing on my life’s cake.

I thought this motherhood thing was going to be a breeze until my oldest son had his first grand mal seizure at 11 weeks old. Then I was again totally shocked when my youngest son developed anaphylaxis to peanuts! The reality that he could actually die if he ingested them rocked my quiet, contented world.

I then realized that what I did now could affect them later in life. Reading food labels, often with unpronounceable ingredients, looking for anything that might indicate a trace of peanuts became the norm. Learning about food cross-contamination was frightening to say t

he least and I soon realized that my creativity would take on a new direction – that of preparing healthy and safe food for my family.

The more I read, the more I realized that my new passion included not only avoiding peanuts but also a host of other dangerous chemicals. This new focus in my life has been tremendously rewarding and I hope your family will benefit from what I have learned about keeping our precious children healthy.

When my oldest son Brady started school I saw what the other kids were bringing for lunches and I was shocked at what was being sent. I started reading a lot of books and really became a food detective. I realized that not just because of Tyson’s peanut allergy should I be making everything from home, but also that all those other nasty ingredients that cannot be pronounced were even worse and the only way to ensure my kids stayed healthy was to make everything myself from scratch.

I started looking for healthy cookbooks and there was lots, but everything tasted like a ‘bale of hay’ and the kids did not want it. I realized that healthy serves no purpose if the kids would not eat it. I started making my own recipes with kid appeal.

I started to get phone calls from teachers and other mothers about what I was putting in Brady’s lunch. I knew that there was a lot of need for this as coming up with lunch ideas is hard enough but to have them be healthy was virtually impossible. I knew then that I had to write Lunchbox Love.

Things have progressed quite alot from those early days of Lunchbox Love, we have added a new member to our family through adoption, a little girl named Serenity.  The boys have cut their hair, Murray has had a diagnosis and we now know why he had a heart attack and it had nothing to do with our lifestyle.   I have now figured Facebook out and hopefully Twitter soon.  Tyson is my my new web guy, thank goodness as he is cheap, we pay him in food.  The boys are growing and thriving and Serenity is our new joy who makes us all laugh on a regular basis. and once again I am being reminded how busy 2 year olds are.  Homeschooling has taken on a whole new focus but still really great!

My passion is still “whole foods from scratch, nothing from a package” but we are currently on a wheat free challenge and this has spurred many more recipes to share from my repertoire!    So come on and check us out we have a lot to say and a lot to share!

Lunchbox Love was just the beginning… enjoy

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me!

Sally J. King is an author, educator and an avid homeschooling Mum.  She currently is homeschooling 2 boys, Brady 15, Tyson 12 and Serenity 2 who is more of a homeschooling deterrent than participant at this point.

Homeschooling and Life

I think it is odd that I am a homeschooler and such a strong advocate of it no less.  Why you ask, well I was one of those anti homeschooling people who thought that it was the height of arrogance to think that anybody could give their child a better education than someone with a four year university degree.  How unbelievable!

And then I had kids, nope still anti homeschooling, then my kids went to school and suddenly this slippery slope started to occur and before you knew it we were moving out of the town we were living in and pulling our kids from school and bringing them home.

There were many things that I needed to learn from homeschooling, and the first lesson was to relax and breathe.  I needed to adopt the mentality of ‘home schooling’, not bringing school home, because there is a big difference.

Homeschooling at least for me was not just about curriculum it was about relationship.  Relationship with my husband, relationship with my children, relationship with God and relationship to life. What do I mean?  I needed to learn that homeschooling could take on the form of just being part of this life, the everyday stuff and the not so everyday stuff.

School was not just about reading and writing and arithmetic.  It was about being a good citizen, a good friend or good son or daughter.  It was about how to live in this world and thrive.  About getting along in a world where some days it is darn hard to do just that.

That being said is homeschooling perfect?  Far from it as a matter of fact.  Some days it is difficult and frustrating and I wonder what ever possessed me to think this was a good idea and nothing would be better than to just make them a lunch every morning, kiss them and send them on the bus sipping a cup of tea as I wave them off.

But the truth is homeschooling, as I mentioned earlier is about bringing learning home not bringing school home.  There is a lesson and learning in everything we do and that was a hard shift for me to make as I was caught up in the trap of curriculum and is it aligned with the province and am I doing a good job and are they getting a good education?  And then one day it hit me like a ton of bricks, learning can happen in everything we do, not just from a textbook and sometimes the better lesson comes from life.

In 2009, my husband had a near fatal heart attack and it derailed our world; he was young and very healthy and I myself was a cookbook author and educator on healthy food and I knew he did not have a lifestyle heart attack.  How could God do this to us?  How did this happen and more importantly, WHY?

And as is so often the case, there were so many lessons in that crisis.  My husband was home for six months and I went to the library and got all the nerdy science books, and stuff on flying and all the stuff that bores me silly and my husband and my boys went through them all and spent all this quality time with their Dad 24 hours a day.  Who gets that opportunity, ever? What a blessing that time was.  And there was learning in that, just not from a curriculum.  Homeschooling allowed us to do that.

In 2011, we welcomed a little girl into our lives through adoption, she came in October, and for a month we did no formal schoolwork, we just got to know our new little girl, she was 10 months old and had been in a different home for her whole life and so we needed to learn about her and she needed to learn about us and the boys wanted to learn about changing diapers and bathing a baby, and all of the things that they had never experienced before, and there were many lessons in that, homeschooling allowed us to do that, but no textbooks were present.

For me this has been a fantastic, frustrating, tear inducing, laughter-filled, memory creating experience that I would not change for the world.  But easy or obvious were not part of the equation.  I know God put all those experiences in our path so that we could learn, and laugh and cry and experience life from a completely different perspective all in the comfort of our own home.

And through it all we got to know Him better and ourselves better.  Homeschooling allowed us to do that.  So if you ask me, would I change anything?  Nope not one thing would be different, God has His plan and who am I to question that?  And because of all of this, homeschooling allowed me to learn that.

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I was watching TV the other day and I saw a Wendy’s commercial with Dave Thomas’ daughter Wendy toting how great her father was (not saying he wasn’t a lovely man, never met him, wouldn’t know) and how much he liked a great burger.

Ok did they forget the fact that the man died very prematurely  of “I believe a heart attack or a stroke and was extremely overweight.  Now said daughter Wendy is extremely overweight.  How is that good advertising for their company and how does that make people still go there and eat?

The CEO of MacDonald’s just died of cancer a few weeks ago and the previous one died prematurely of a heart attack.  The most recent one had worked at McDonald’s since he was a young man and his claim to fame was he ate at McDonald’s everyday of his life.  The begs the question, What the &@%!?

Seriously people when are we and you and everyone else going to make the connection that consuming this type of food is just plain stupid?

How is eating at McD’s everyday of your life working for you?  Dead at 41, seriously, stupid is as stupid does.

I don’t mean to be mean as I feel badly that these people died and now there are families who have no Dad but honest to goodness why were their families not worth enough to these people to do the right thing.  If you know anything about me I am not a lover of McD’s as a whole but I am also not a fan of any other fast food chain that takes low quality ingredients and preserves the hell out of them in order to let them have a shelf life for a year or better.

When are people going to make the connection and care?  How many people have to die?  How many kids have to get sick?  How many kids have to grow up fat and bullied and unhappy?  I was that kid and trust me it was no fun, I was also that overweight adult and that was not fun either. And you may say to me, but Sally I am not overweight and I eat at these places.  My response just because you are not fat does not mean you are healthy and lots of thin people die of heart attacks and cancer everyday.

And just for the record you cannot out exercise a bad diet, no matter what.  I know I sound preachy but darn it all when are people going to care?  What does it take to pull people’s heads out of their asses and make them see that eating this way is bad for them, their children and the earth?  When do we care, when it is too late?  I don’t know I just feel disillusioned some days and wonder how an overweight rich woman is a good endorsement of a fast food restaurant.  Sadly it seems like I am one of the few who actually cares.

Until next time.

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So I am starting to see a trend forming and I must comment, because for those of you who know me, I can’t help myself.  As you all know I am a homeschooler and on Facebook I follow many homeschool forums and blogs.  Now as much as I enjoy those I feel the need to say something and beg people to cease and desist!

Please do not make it sound as if everyday is pure perfection and you wake up in the morning and have family prayer time together, have a lovely breakfast and then your loving children jump happily to their homeschool studies with exuberance and glee.  If that is the case tell me what I am doing wrong.

Here is how my mornings go.  I am usually awoken by the baby who is up to her eyeballs in a wet diaper and extremely unhappy about it.  Once she is changed then I wake up my youngest son.  I go downstairs and try to figure out what to make for breakfast and then go to the basement to make sure my older son is up  (thankfully he usually is), and then it is back up to see if my other son is getting out of bed, (he usually isn’t) .  At this point the baby has gone walkabout and is no doubt into something she shouldn’t be.

I quickly start breakfast, get the kids fed and then and only then we start homeschool.  There is a whole bunch of other stuff in there that I don’t mention as they are too boring to mention. There is usually a discussion about what to start with.  Brady my oldest would rather cut off his left arm then do language arts and Tyson feels that way about math.

All the cajoling and coercing done they dig in. I could then go throw a load of laundry in or whatever domestic fun I am embarking on that day, only to be 20 minutes into it and hear giggling coming from the homeschool area.  I go investigate and they are playing with the baby,

I reprimand and tell them to “get busy” and they say, “But Mom she is so cute!”  I know but get busy and ignore her so she will play on her own, something she is not good at as she always has the boys attention.  Frankly she thinks they were put on this earth to serve and entertain her.

The domestic chores continue to get interrupted with “Mum I need help”, or “Mum I can’t find my calculator”, or whatever the case may be.  I go help and spend half an hour sitting and going over whatever lesson they have deemed pointless., some days there are tears, some days there are proclamations of this is stupid and “I will never need this  again”.  Sound familiar?  The best part of my day is breaking up fights or arguments, because someone touched someone’s work or computer or I need that pencil because I am left handed or those are my scissors or…. Name the day and that will be the issue.

Do you see a theme forming here?  So no people, homeschooling is not perfect, it not always even fun.  Some days it is frustrating and maddening and I feel like crying and wonder why in the heck I thought this was a good idea.  But this is what I will tell you and this is why I still do it and will continue to do it, flaws and fights and all.

It allows me to truly watch my children grow up and become men.  It allows my husband and I to be the main influence on their life and it allows us to guide them and shape them and teach them about God, about life and about hardships without outside influence from people who do not share the same core values as us.  It allows us to get frustrated and fight together and find a way to work it out.  And yes, some days it does allow us to pray together.

With all its frustrations and pitfalls, it is still one of the best decisions my husband and I ever made and I would not change anything for the world, but “PERFECT” never comes into a homeschool day, but forgiveness and understanding and sometimes fun definitely does.

So for all of you out there thinking I have it all figured out, let me assure you I certainly do not and don’t expect to anytime soon.

So my advice is relax, let it flow how it flows and know that the reasons you started this are still there and still valid and you are doing the right thing for your family!  Enjoy it as much as possible because they grow up so fast and soon in a blink this will be a memory and I just know it will be a good one.  Until next time.

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Here is a juicing video (like my hair lol)

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Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong era.  I am just sure I could have been Amish or have been born in the 20’s.

They were so resourceful and lived off the land and made and grew and hunted for their food.  No one worried about what they were wearing and how big their butt was.  It is a fantasy of mine…and then reality hits, NO ELECTRICITY! , which means NO Bosch mixer, no food processor, no blenders and no FOOD NETWORK!

Ok perhaps I am being a bit hasty and not as rough and tough and motivated and resourceful as I think.  And then I realised, what would we do with no DVD player in the car.  How did any child live to see 10 in those days?  I mean seriously, I love my kids and , but man driving anywhere with them just sitting there sucking all the oxygen out of the car is more than any mere mortal can bear.  I mean after all I am only human.

So perhaps it is right that I was born when I was, at this time and I am here at this moment, to learn and grow and be a pioneer in my own way.  Maybe I am supposed to help myself and others go back to a few of the old ways with the help of new inventions and time saving devices.  I am no tough rugged pioneer woman but I am a pioneer in my own right I imagine or dream or hope.

So sadly, I live in the here and now, and I don’t live off the land or hunt for my food and I do worry about the size of my butt, but does having a garden count?  I don’t know, I am just doing the best I can but there is still this huge fascination for me of the old ways and a simpler life.

I think I will ponder this while I get out my Bosch mixer and make my own bread

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So the gig is up!!!  I am not ‘super mom’ and I am by no means ‘wonder woman’ either, frankly ‘super mom’ and ‘wonder woman’ need to piss off and leave us all alone.

And don’t even get me started on Martha Stewart!!!!!!

My Mum died when I was 18 and when she was on her death bed she was working on an embroidery piece and it said “Cooking and cleaning can wait till tomorrow, for babies grow up I have learned to my sorrow.  So quiet down cobwebs, dust go to sleep, I am rocking my baby because babies don’t keep”  After she died a friends mom finished it for me and had it framed.  I has been in all three of my babies rooms.

People have got this misguided opinion that I am ‘super mom’.  That I do it all, that I cook perfect organic meals all the time, that my house is always clean and that God forbid I should lose patience with my kids.

WRONG!!!!

There has been many days that I have felt like snuffing the very life force out of each of them, burying them in the back garden, going into the house pouring myself a glass of wine and not having remorse for a good two three hours.

Now of course I am not serious here, well not entirely, the wine part maybe, but not the rest.

The truth is, I am who I am.

I try to keep up but the reality is my husband is gone for two weeks each month and I am a single parent half the time (to all you single mothers out there full time my hat goes off to you!), but ultimately the kitchen runs away on me, and so does the laundry and God willing it won’t be the baby that runs away on me.

Do I yell at my kids?

Yup guilty!

Do my kids think I am the worlds worst mum, most likely twice to three times a week, but honestly the feeling is mutual some weeks.

Most days I wake up completely overwhelmed because there just seems like too much that needs my attention.  But here is what I am good at.

I am good at what is important at that moment, I am a pro at putting out fires (figuratively speaking) but not so good at preventing them. I have this dream to be a preventer, but who am I kidding?  There will always be something in the way for that, and for now I have to be okay with that.

I am great at impromptu dance parties, baking and trashing the kitchen, reading the classics and watching The Walton’s, Dr, Quinn Medicine Woman, and Little House series with my kids.  I am good at laughing with them and I am good at joking with them and I am good at crying with them.

Now on the flip side that makes me an emotional and passionate person so I am also good at yelling at them!  That is just the trade off  for this Mum and this special kind of crazy!  Love me or hate me there is often no middle ground.

But this is how I roll.So deal with it.

life is full!!  It is full of fun, full of blessings, full of messes, full of kids and it is also full of pain and frustration and sadness.  It is always a double edged sword.

I need, and so do my friends need, to be okay with that, because truth be told I don’t see it changing for some time.

My Mum died so young but my memories are so great of her.  I want that for my kids!  I want them to know that I loved and lived for them.  I want my husband to feel loved, cherished and appreciated but with that comes the cranky tired and ungrateful me.  Do you see a pattern forming here?  Life is a double edged sword and that is real and truthful.  It is crazy and exciting but not always fun!  That is just the way it is.  I do my best to make healthy meals and yes I work darn hard at it, because it is a priority for me.  I try to keep my house as neat as possible because disorganization for me brings out a very special kind of crazy and nobody wants that.  It has been said that I may be a bit OCD.  Oh well there are worse things, you will never see me on a episode of hoarders.  So all these things being said, I am a real person, with real faults and real inadequacies.

But I love my life, (well most days), I love my kids and my husband and the rest well it is a work in progress and sadly I may not ever get there, but for now I am okay with the process.

Until next time.

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 How is it that big companies make any money at all? Now look, I am no business graduate or guru but what the heck happened to common sense? I would just love to know. I went for groceries the other day and as always I headed to the organic section in Safeway. I headed for the peppers (as they are on the dirty dozen list) and they had lots. I was so excited when I walked up and then I grabbed one and it was soft, picked up another one and it was also soft, found another and it was better but really not great. None of them were. I asked the produce guy if they had any fresh ones and he said that they did not. Shoot. Now a couple were not too bad but they would have to be used fairly quickly as they were on their last legs so I said to the guy reduce the price and I will buy them. The guy looked at me and said he wished that he could but it is a policy that Safeway is adamant about. They do not discount anything in the produce section. So all of these peppers would not be bought and Monday when they got a new shipment would just be thrown out. If he had discounted them I would have bought a lot and taken them home and roasted them and froze them. I would have been happy, Safeway would have got at least their money back from them and they would have gained a loyal customer. The produce guy was awesome and said that if he could discount them he would have and was very frustrated that his hands were tied, as obviously I was not the first to ask.
So tell me Safeway, how good of a business practise is this? I think it stinks! It is also a terrible environmental and global responsibility practise. When you walk in the door they preach about how plastic bags are bad and bring your own which (I might add I did) and then when you walk through the doors they are throwing food away as, in my opinion, it is an act of childish rebellion, (if you won’t buy my peppers no matter how soft they are then screw you, no one gets them and I will throw them out). Nice, very mature, very good business practise, (apparently the word capitalism means nothing to the person or persons who came up with this policy). Does this make me want to shop here…No! It instils in me the childish mentality, then fine I will take my money and my reusable bags and go home! Take that Safeway! I don’t need your peppers. So go throw them out like an insolent 2 year old and I will go home and introduce you to the world of social media and blog about how stupid you are. Nanana booboo!

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