CHEESESLAVE

Tonight I’m making fish stock for the first time. I used two carcasses from wild-caught Thai snapper.

Fish heads should be added — they include the thyroids which are full of iodine. And I need iodine since I am deficient.

I actually think most people — even our children — are deficient. I’m looking into giving Kate iodine supplementation (with Lugol’s). I don’t think she’s getting enough — since I’m not breast feeding and we don’t eat enough fish and seaweed in this country. And our soil is so depleted — so we’re not getting iodine from the soil.

Not to mention all the iodine blockers in our diet — soy, bromide in bread, etc.

Until I figure out how much to supplement her with (have to talk to the iodine doc), I’m going to start giving her fish broth.

It isn’t hard making the stock. Whole Foods filleted the fish for me — and made me a separate package of bones and heads. Easy-peasy!

For breakfast, Kate had 2 scrambled eggs (cooked in butter) and organic blueberries with raw cream and coconut oil with a little bit of added whey (from yogurt). Oh, and one big organic strawberry and half a banana (she was still hungry so I kept feeding her).

For lunch, she had 1/2 tsp cod liver oil, one chicken liver (cooked in butter), beef broth, avocado, and mango with raw cream. And a little bit of homemade chocolate ice cream (made with raw cream, organic unsweetened cocoa powder, maple syrup, and raw egg yolks).

Dinner was light — goose liver pate and raw milk cheese with some probiotic lemonade (I fermented it with kefir grains).

In addition to meals, she gets her homemade raw milk formula. She drinks 3 or 4 6-ounce bottles per day.

Ha — yes, she’s wearing the same shirt she had on yesterday. She actually has two shirts that are exactly the same — one is 24 mos and one is 18 mos. Both pretty much fit so I let her wear both.

Kate and I were planting seeds this afternoon. She ate dirt for the first time. I think it’s good for her — builds the immune system.

Of course, when I called Grandpa Otter to tell him, he said the same thing — verbatim!

Not done planting the seeds yet, but here’s what I planted so far:

Dandelion
Echinacea
Chamomile
Basil
Jalapeno
Bell Pepper
Roma Tomato
Hosta
Impatiens
Stinging Nettle
Astragalus
Calendula

I made a kind of gross sorrel liver soup tonight for dinner. (Seth’s out of town so I’m experimenting.)

They had sorrel in my CSA box this week. I added russet potatoes and onion and butter and chicken stock to make soup.

It was pretty good. Especially with the added raw cream and homemade cream cheese.

But of course I wanted to make it even more nutritious so I added one cooked chicken liver to my bowl of soup.

It was almost good. Not bad. Kind of gross, but almost good. I ate almost all of it.

I need to get healthy so I can have another baby.

Kate had scrambled egg and chicken liver (cooked in butter) for dinner. She liked it. Ate until she was done and when I tried to feed her more of the liver, she took it in her fist and threatened to toss it onto the floor.

At which point I exclaimed happily, “All done!”

We are going away for a few days tomorrow. Just to Palm Springs. Seth is staying here. Kate and I are going with my mother, sister, and my two nieces (they are all flying in). We’re going to swim in the pool and relax.

We are celebrating Kate’s first birthday (a little early — her birthday is April 13th).

We’ll come back on the weekend — and hang out here a few more days, go to Venice Beach.

I still have a lot of packing/preparation to do. Not so easy when you have to make homemade formula, deal with cloth diapers, etc. I’ll get it done by tomorrow.

If I have time, I will blog — but I doubt I will be online.

See you next week!

Kate in her brand new Radio Flyer wagon. She got it from her grandparents for her first birthday (we opened it early). She loves it! Smiles the whole time she’s riding in it.

Kate’s been such a messy eater lately, I figured it was just easier to feed her naked. She had duck liver pate and avocado — and yes, it ended up in her hair.

Kate clowning around on our morning walk:

Yesterday morning Kate and I got dressed and headed over to the local farmer’s market early. We got a big flat of strawberries from our local organic farm so I could make strawberry ice cream.

She tasted feta cheese and then we got to visit the petting zoo. They don’t always have a petting zoo — it is a special thing they do for Easter.

We saw an Easter mama sheep and her lambs:

An Easter bunny:

And some chickens. A perfect way to spend Easter! What better way than to see baby animals and visit the farmers at the farmer’s market?

As many of you know, Easter is not just a Christian holiday. It is actually a pagan holiday that goes all the way back to the Babylonians. The eggs and bunnies are symbolic of fertility. (Think about it — Playboy bunnies.)

“The egg was a sacred symbol among the Babylonians. They believed an old fable about an egg of wondrous size which was supposed to have fallen from heaven into the Euphrates River. From this marvelous egg - according to the ancient story - the Goddess Astarte (Easter) [Semiramis], was hatched. And so the egg came to symbolize the Goddess Easter.”

Source

This thing goes all the way back to the Babylonians with the goddess Ishtar (which was pronounced “Easter”).

Ishtar is a goddess of fertility, love, and war. In the Babylonian pantheon, she “was the divine personification of the planet Venus”.

Ishtar was above all associated with sexuality: her cult involved sacred prostitution; her holy city Erech was called the “town of the sacred courtesans”; and she herself was the “courtesan of the gods”. Source

Joseph Campbell, a more recent popularizer of mythology, equates Ishtar, Inanna, and Aphrodite, and he draws a parallel between the violent yet loving Hindu goddess Kali, the Egyptian goddess Isis who nurses Horus, and the Babylonian goddess Ishtar who nurses the god Tammuz. Source

I don’t personally worship the goddess Ishtar. Or any of the others. But I do like to celebrate the arrival of spring.

We bought eggs and onions and potatoes and asparagus and green beans. I really wanted to buy a blood orange tree at Guadalupe’s stall (she sold me my avocado tree two weeks ago) but I ran out of cash. Next week!

We also saw our friends (and neighbors — funny, they are our neighbors but we never see them) Jada and Walter. The bizarre thing is that I never see Jada and Walter except for at these random places. Like at the raw milk store downtown. Haha!

Jada told me all about how she’s making her kombucha and how they’ve been drinking raw milk and eating grass-fed beef, and how much better her health is. She says she has kombucha SCOBYs if anyone needs them. Me, too — need a SCOBY, let me know in the comments. We can mail it to you for the cost of postage.

Anyway, it was a fun morning. When we came home, Kate napped.

After that she and Julianna went with Yensi and Luis (Julianna’s daddy) to the park and the grocery store while Seth and I stayed home and worked.

In the afternoon, Yensi and I cooked up a storm. I made dill pickles (they’re fermenting on the counter now) and coconut water kefir. And for Easter dinner we made:

Garlic Rosemary Lamb Chops
Asparagus with Lemon and Olive Oil
Potatoes au Gratin
Homemade Strawberry Ice Cream (made with raw cream from grass-fed Jersey cows, and sweetened with maple syrup, not sugar)

Beets, avocados, and roasted chicken.

Daddy came home early and we all got to eat dinner together at the dining room table.