If it's that bad I might consider medical attention.

I naturally and even a bit unexpectedly conceived at 40. Good luck!

We do a current events thing every week and the one we did based on this article from the UN was one of the most interesting in some time. It allowed for research and discussion on the founding of our country as well as class inequality and also how media can shape beliefs. We may even continue it into another week because it brought up so many interesting areas to research and learn about. I love hearing my child's take on things like this and his ideas on how to improve the problems brought up in the article. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=58300#.Wj2mnXNlDqA Eta...it also links to the actual full statement which is interesting to read as well.

Usually I get a card that my son makes for me or something like that. I'm hoping for that and maybe some time to relax.

I wish I had a suggestion for meringue but I don't. I've found some solutions for bread so that it's better but it's still not like it was at sea level. I've read the thing about more egg, also read less sugar, higher temp so it doesn't have time to over rise, but I've not experimented with meringue.

I aim for as much variety as possible to hopefully get a variety of nutrients. I do the same thing where I try to take what positives I can from each study about which food is healthy etc. I'm really addicted to growing heirloom veggies honestly and have found so many more veggies I love by experimenting with less known varieties. In some ways I think I condition my brain to love veggies by how I have made them a large part of my life. This time of year my new seed catalogs arive and I start dreaming about and marking the pages of which varieties to try next. Then in spring it's fun to plan what goes where and how much to grow of this or that and what plants are good companions to plant near each other. Then when things are growing it's really exciting to watch their development and see how beautiful some veggies are. So I think after all that, when I eat it my brain is already telling me I like it lol.

Lol...my toddler tries to feed me things like that all the time.

It's hard to know what kids will eat or not it can be frustrating. With my son I would have him help with the gardening and I would talk about what different veggies were and say how he's allowed to pick leaves from this plant or pods from that plant whenever he wants and he just kind of started eating a variety of veggies on his own while playing outside and I then had him help pick the varieties for each new crop. He used to hate salad but when sampling things in the garden he tried the Merlot lettuce we grow a lot of and he liked it so I made him a salad with that and other things he loves in it and now he loves salad if I make it with his favorite varieties. Maybe part of it was the merlot lettuce is red and not green, who knows. I prefer the taste of it over other lettuce myself by far though. The toddler loves raw peas and beans...especially Lincoln garden peas and Dragon Tongue Wax beans (these are really pretty). If he is outside in summer he is always carrying around a bean or handful of peas. But not all kids would be that way at all I know, I'm sure a lot of it is luck really.

Lol!

One thing that happened with me was that my tastes for certain foods expanded a ton as I started growing more and more foods. I eat so many more things now that I never liked in the past. Part of it I think is I find freshly picked food from my garden so much better tasting, and also I can grow the specific varieties I like best. My son eats so many veggies that I doubt he would have tried if we weren't growing them. It's a challenge sometimes to harvest certain things before he gets to them. He loves snacking on basil leaves for instance but I need a certain amount for a batch of pesto and I have to compete with him for it lol.

That's awful...I believe it though as I've learned that people are not as honest as I used to believe. I was traveling once and accidentally bought fruit at a stand and it had stickers on it from a supermarket.

Lol!

Finally I at least decided on what to eat Monday. We settled on lasagna this year! It's progress at least. Nothing is wrapped yet though.

You're right, some veggies get sweeter from the cold. We keep certain veggies in the ground for winter and just dig up as we need them. In fact I did that today for some beets for dinner.

One member of my family can't figure out what the silver lever on the side of the toilet is for.

Ack...not ready at all lol.

I do the same thing. I just love books so much I can't resist LOL.

I'm not an expert on this but I can speak from my personal experience and knowledge. What I have found is that the regulation comes directly from the plants. So whether growing a plant in the ground or in hydroponics, if it has a nutrient deficiency or other problem it will definitely tell me. There are a variety of signs and symptoms of a less than healthy or nutrient deficient plant and I wouldn't ever be able to skimp on the health of my plants because it decreases their yield or they are sick looking icky plants I wouldn't want to eat. So there really isn't a way that I know of to cut costs by skimping on nutrients but still get a product in the end that is worth growing. So the way we have cut costs was switching to non circulating hydroponics because it is so much more cost effective in every way but still provides wonderful produce. Traditional hydroponics requires more elaborate and more expensive equipment to circulate the water and nutrient solution, it requires more water, it requires more nutrient solution, it requires electricity, and it requires more work. Non circulating hydroponics only requires basic, simple to make equipment, no electricity, less water, much less nutrient solution, less time, and way less work on my part. With non circulating hydroponics I can typically set up a new planting in a table with it's water and nutrients, and then I typically don't have to do a thing to it until I start harvesting, including never having to add more nutrients or water. So that is the only real way I know of to dramatically cut costs with hydroponics. From my experience, if I were to skimp on nutrients to save money, the plants would show it and overall would be a waste because they would have yellow leaves or weird spots on their leaves or just would fail to thrive etc.

Oh I see what you mean. We don't really find that an issue. A lot of the things we dehydrate we eat by using in soups and stews with extra liquids in the winter so by the time we eat it in a recipe it isn't more concentrated it's just rehydrated back to normal. We snack on some things while still dry and it is easier to overdo those kind of snacks for sure.

This is one reason non circulating hydroponics is becoming more popular. It is a lot cheaper and less work than traditional hydroponics.

I've never added sugar to my foods to dehydrate them. I just for instance, slice up a sweet pepper then dehydrate it and store them in a jar. Or with greens I just dehydrate them and use my food processor to make them a powder and store in a jar to add to things like pasta dough or smoothies or soups. Or dehydrate tomatoes and store in the freezer in bags. I can use them as a substitute for sun dried tomatoes in recipes in winter. Eta...although we snack on the dehydrated tomatoes all the time, they are sort of like a fruit leather, kind of chewy, so they often don't make it into recipes lol.

We have been hoping the cost goes down so we can get panels, they are still so expensive unfortunately.

I'm sure that's true but I'd love to see all the Wal-Mart's and Costco stores around us with food growing on their huge flat roofs.

I get that, but I also think that there are many places where it would work and would be beneficial so it's better to have it in some places than none at least.

Lol!