a hippie with a minivan

mmm…. bbq season is back….

Well officially for me every season is bbq season but this winter when I went to make supper one evening I found that the burner had completely rusted though… So we were stuck for a few months without the great taste of grilled food….

I didn’t feel like finding the parts that I needed to bring the BBQ back from the dead so I decided that I wanted a new BBQ this year… and I am going to try to sell the old one to someone that won’t mind doing that…

So on Friday, after looking around for a few weeks, I decided on a new one… I picked it up yesterday and then today we brought it in the house this morning started the daunting task of putting it together…

After 2 1/2 hours of figuring out the puzzle that they call a BBQ…. I finished putting it together, brought it outside and fired it up to make sure it works… and it did…

Guess what we are having tonight 😉

Miso Paté

This may not look very appetizing but don’t let looks fool you. This is a kind of paté that can be very versatile. You can use it as a spread on bread of vegetables, in a sandwich or with crackers. EVeryone enjoyed this in the house, which is saying a lot.

2 cups broken pieces whole wheat bread
1/2 cup water or broth
1/4 cup tahini
2 tbsp miso
1 small onion (minced)
1 tbsp sesame oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tsp of poultry seasoning (mix of sage, thyme, rosemary etc)

break the bread into pieces and add the broth or water and mix until moist with your hands…
add the rest and mix well…
put in the fridge and let it sit for a least a few hours… but better the next day….

So good!!

keep on swimming…

Keep on swimming… keep on swimming… swimming.. swimming…

I have been trying to go swimming 2-3X a week and slowly it is becoming easier to actually get up after supper and go…

It is not far away… So to swim for the hour that is open… I am gone from home from about 6:25 to 7:35… that works out to be right after supper while the kids are in the bath and gettin ready for bed… then when I come home I can nurse the little ones to sleep…

the first day I went I worked myself a bit too hard… I was sore before I left the pool… but now I go slowly and steadily and I am slowly building my endurance… by the end on an hour I end up doing about 25-30 laps… which may not be much but at least I am moving and I keep on moving…

What’s hard though is that swimming is a great excersise but you get really hungry when you are done… I really need to find some good snacks that will fill me up without just adding back all of the calories that I just burned off…

First Haircut!

I decided that it was finally time to give Khéna his first haircut…

though I don’t mind… he was being called a little girl by everyone that saw him… but mostly… it was getting into his eyes…

It was hard to decided though because it would mean losing his curls… I love baby curls…

Before…

After….

In that last pic you can also see a bit of his teeth… Surprisingly he has all of his teeth now…

16 of them!!

So teething is pretty much all over until the 2 year molars come in!

oh… and here is what is left of the snow in our front yard… at least it is starting to melt more quickly now…

What colour are white marshmallows?

Wanting to make some homemade snack bars that the boys love… (made with cereal, granola, nuts, seeds, dried fruit and a few chocolate chips and held together with marshmallow) I picked up some marshmallows at the grocery store over the weekend…

Xavier has been asking me to make them since then…

So this morning I get out a few things and just as I was about to open the bag of marshmallows I noticed the ingredient list…

“colouring”

Why I didn’t check while at the grocery store? I don’t know…

If you have been reading here for a while, or have read the archives a bit we have been avoiding food colouring for the boys for about a year and half… Colin has physical reactions and Xavier has behavioural…

Dr Feingold and the diet he promotes has been telling families with hyperactive children to avoid food colourings (along with other foods and additives) for a long time believing that they are linked to behaviour problems…. and these diets have helped many families dealing with ADHD and an array of other problems… and though I have never read any of the books and don’t follow the diet I do think that there is a lot of truth in his ways of thinking…

however… for many the link between a cracker or a yogourt and behavioural problems is something that is hard to grasp and the fact that food colouring is in so many foods makes it really hard to avoid even when you eat mostly whole foods…

I hadn’t seen but last year there was finally a study…

Though Feingold was proved to be right that food colouring can aggravate the symptoms of ADHD… and that avoiding them can have great effects… the link had never been made officially between “normal” kids and behavioural problems linked directly to food colouring and additives.. until now…

Food additives and hyperactive behaviour in 3-year-old and
8/9-year-old children in the community: a randomised,
double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial

Background
We undertook a randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, crossover trial to test whether intake of artificial food colour and additives (AFCA) affected childhood behaviour.

Methods
153 3-year-old and 144 8/9-year-old children were included in the study. The challenge drink contained sodium benzoate and one of two AFCA mixes (A or B) or a placebo mix. The main outcome measure was a global hyperactivity aggregate (GHA), based on aggregated z-scores of observed behaviours and ratings by teachers and parents, plus, for 8/9-year-old children, a computerised test of attention. This clinical trial is registered with Current Controlled Trials (registration number ISRCTN74481308). Analysis was per protocol.

Findings
16 3-year-old children and 14 8/9-year-old children did not complete the study, for reasons unrelated to childhood behaviour. Mix A had a significantly adverse effect compared with placebo in GHA for all 3-year-old children but not mix B versus placebo. This result persisted when analysis was restricted to 3-year-old children who consumed more than 85% of juice and had no missing data . 8/9-year-old children showed a significantly adverse eff ect when given mix A or mix B when analysis was restricted to those children consuming at least 85% of drinks with no missing data.
Interpretation Artificial colours or a sodium benzoate preservative (or both) in the diet result in increased hyperactivity in 3-year-old and 8/9-year-old children in the general population.

I know that there are some that brush this off because their kids might not become more active after eating food additives or either don’t believe it or just don’t care… Think if the bad rep that sugar has gotten as parties and how it has been proven to not be the cause for the hyperactivity… what if it was the all of the food colouring and additives that have really been the culprit all along… the fact that food additives that have NO other function than to make a food look prettier and can have such an impact on behaviour is scary at best and I know for sure that I will never be able to turn a blind eye…

and the white marshmallows…. I called the number on the back of the package to ask what colouring was used… they have blue… but couldn’t say whether it was #1 or #2….