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mamakim

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Posts posted by mamakim

  1. La Varenne Pratique by Anne Willan and La Technique by Jacques Pepin would be good for your preferred style of learning. Both are excellent books.

    http://www.amazon.com/La-Varenne-Pratique-Anne-Willan/dp/0517573830

     

    This seems to be an updated version of La Technique (along with La Methode, his other great book) and may be more accessible:

    http://www.amazon.com/Jacques-Pépin-New-Complete-Techniques/dp/1579129110/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410094489&sr=1-6&keywords=La+methode+and+la+technique

     

    For learning to think about flavor combinations so that you can become less dependent on recipes once you have your technique down I recommend Culinary Artistry. I often have DS refer to this. It's a good "cheat sheet" and shortcut for someone who hasn't spent years cooking.

    http://www.amazon.com/Culinary-Artistry-Andrew-Dornenburg/dp/0471287857/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410094847&sr=1-1&keywords=Culinary+artistry

     

    I like Pepin as well :-).

     

    Another one that is just lists of flavor combinations to spark ideas once you've cooked through a good instructional book is The Flavor Bible. It's kind of fun - like, "Whoa, the sage in my garden is getting out of hand. I suppose I could do chicken, but yawn . . . let me grab The Flavor Bible and see what else I can do with some of it". 

  2. The Hashimoto's Institute is having an online summit in a couple of weeks - free, you just have to register. I'm looking forward to it. 

     

    My body just won't absorb iron correctly so every few months I get IV iron transfusions - would your doctor be open to that? They're usually administered a week apart for two or three weeks; that'll last me 2 or 3 months. My ferritin was 4 last month, for example, but 3 rounds of IV iron fixed that up. It's not like I'm energetic after that, but the worst edge of the exhaustion is taken away.

  3. For French style, I like Julia Child's cookbook (I'm sure there's more than one, LOL, but I forgot what it's called; I got it at Costco a few yrs ago)

     

    Julia Child's "The Way To Cook" is awesome for everything . . . that's the book I used to teach myself to cook when we first got married.

     

    James Peterson's "Cooking" is another one that teaches well and is highly recommended (check out the Amazon reviews) (this is what we now give for wedding presents).

     

    I have also heard highly recommended Madeleine Kamman's "The New Making of a Cook: The Art, Techniques, and Science of Good Cooking".

     

    I prefer learning from cookbooks, too :-).

  4. We started the youngest at 3. He still deals with the allergies and asthma (didn't end up helping any), but he has a really complex medical picture in general so his experience doesn't necessarily apply.

     

    Shots will reduce symptoms for many, but by no means all. Five of our children have gone through the whole several-year course of shots and two have been helped quite a bit, the other three only slightly. I've heard figures all over the map, but most often hear that 60% will respond, so it's not a guaranteed help.

     

    The thing that made the biggest difference for us was using the Bionix Shotblocker. You used to be able to buy 'em all over, but now just on eBay, but one is under $10 and it has really really really really worked to make the little ones not feel the shot.

     

    Our two other tricks were the ice packs as mentioned above, and a brightly-colored bag of a type of toys that he didn't have at home (little cars/men) that only came out after his shot.

  5. My advice, as someone whose well planned out school year was derailed by my own cancer diagnosis last year, is to temporarily not worry about school work.  Do what you can do school-wise, but let the rest go.  Focus on getting your husband and family through this period of time, and when things have calmed down a little and your schedule can get a little bit back to normal, THEN worry about school.  The kids will be fine.  You might even be surprised by how much you/they actually ARE able to accomplish, even in the midst of chaos.

     

    Just focus on your husband's health and your health.  The rest will wait.

     

    I just received my "you're in remission" news two weeks ago - two years with the cancer. My experience paralleled scrappyhomeschooler's. I was fascinated by my children's standardized test scores after a year of cancer-schooling (our state mandates yearly testing). They slid a bit in math, but all of them had huge jumps in their reading scores with more time to read than when so much more of their day was taken by directed learning. Not that I'd do that again, just that there was a silver lining.

     

    More to the point, there are two dear women in our church who kept homeschooling through their husband's fights with cancer and both of them have expressed two things: that they feel guilty about especially their younger children falling a couple of years behind, and that they are so glad they kept the children home. That it was very difficult at the time, but both of the fathers very much needed that. And those younger children are catching up, of course.

     

    I'm sorry you're having to go through this {{{hug}}}. It's so hard emotionally on the spouse.

  6. I have an Optimus Elite through Virgin Mobile's no-contract, $35 a month for 300 talk minutes and unlimited text and data. They use the Sprint network for that. I find it super easy to text because it comes loaded with Swype, which I like. I'm not having the problem trinchick speaks of - if I need the keypad when a call is in progress I just jiggle the phone a little and it lights up and is usable again.

     

    I really, really, really like my phone. Dh has the HTC One V also with above plan and while it's fancier than mine, I like my interface a lot better. I'm not smart enough for his phone ;-)

  7. Rosy, I only drop in very occasionally since the format change, as well.

     

    Maranda, I'm like you. Only two children in CVA and the 8th grader just does math. The first grader does language arts, math, and science.

     

    I've thought all along that this would be our last CVA year. Very different this year with such minimal teacher interaction. I'm not even convinced she reads their stuff - no reflection on her, I'm sure they have vast numbers of students. It's just what CVA has become. I'm trying to re-shape my attitude from the real sorrow I feel about the end of all that was good about CVA to just being happy for all we had during those golden years. It's very financially tight around here, but goodness knows we've done it before and we can do it again.

  8. We've had ours for awhile. Very, very easy to clean if you do it right away. We use ours and would buy it again, BUT that might just be because we got it for our super-allergic daughters, who are now able to have "ice cream" that they can make themselves any old time. I don't know if we would feel the same otherwise. But if you like frozen fruit desserts in general, the Yonana is super easy and easy to clean.

     

    And the texture somewhere between smoothie and sorbet, probably closer to the latter.

  9. So someone else's foot preliminarily shaped the shoe. If you buy a shoe from a shoe store, it's not going to exactly match your kid's foot either. What's the difference? Either way each kid has to break in shoes that are new to him.

     

    This. It's not like there are teams of pediatric podiatrists involved in the creation of every new shoe last by every brand, and even if there were, SKL's point holds - it's not your child's foot.

     

    I think that's one of those myths passed down by grandmothers who heard it from shoe salesmen back in the day. This would be the same day when we all got Xrays to fit our shoes, in the shoe store, for the same "reason". Fun Wikipedia article on that here.

  10. I had an ulcer last year at this time. Ulcer symptoms can really vary for people! But I had a very bad stomach ache that didn't differ upright/lying down/ morning/ evening. Mine was wierd in that one day everything was fine, the next day was the onset of pain, just boom like that. I asked the GI doc later about that (didn't make sense to me) but he said that ulcers can show up like that.

     

    My labwork and CT scan did not show an ulcer (they were perfectly normal), even though it turned out to be quite large. It was only seen via endoscopy.

     

    editing to add: while stress can certainly exacerbate the situation, by far and away the vast percentage of ulcers are caused by H. Pylori, and are therefore quite treatable! That's the good news :-). Not like a lot of health problems that drag onnnnnn and onnnnnnn.

  11. This is a little over your price range (currently $130)

     

    http://www.walmart.com/ip/Tramontina-8-Piece-Cookware-Set/5716478

     

    but Cook's (I think this was the magazine) rating this product line as equivalent to All Clad. I have a bigger version of this set and I love it. Stuff rarely burns in these pots compared to my other stainless steel pots that just have a disk on the bottom. They are heavy pots but really nice.

     

    Both Cook's Illustrated and America's Test Kitchen rate these highly in their reviews

     

    BUT

     

    Be careful. Tramontina makes two lines of pans. One is fully clad, which means the layers continue up the sides. The other just has the disk on the bottom. The set linked to is one of the good sort though, and would really be a lovely start.

     

    Whatever you end up buying, you'll want to make sure the cladding goes up the sides of the pans. Most brands you look at will have lines that have the disc on the bottom and other lines (usually more expensive) where the encased layers go up the sides.

     

    I have two pieces of All Clad that I found at thrift stores; they're gorgeous and I give them little kisses because I adore them, but honestly that Tramontina set is just amazing for the price (I have the larger set as my main cookware, got it when we banned nonstick from our home).

  12. First 4 "land" births, next 4 waterbirths. Night and day. The water made all the difference to me. I love the comment above - poster "pink sparkly hearts" water birth :D. Yup, that about says it for me, too.

     

    I did get in a fishy pool with #2 and bathtub with #3 and found the former's sides not rigid/grab-able enough and the latter just way uncomfortable.

     

    We ended up with a 150 gallon Rubbermaid stock tank and have since loaned it out to friends, so it's seen lots of babies born. Another nice option is the actual birth tubs many midwives have to rent, or available online for rental. I plan someday to turn that stock tank into a pond/fountain landscaping feature.

  13. I've been on 8 mg Zofran once daily for a year now for my cancer nausea (not chemo nausea) and honestly, it just dials it down where I can function, it never really gets rid of it. I have side effects to Phenergan, though, so I stick with the Zofran.

     

    It was also true for me that just taking one pill (or even another 8 hours later) didn't help at all. It was only when taking them for a period of a couple of weeks daily that it started helping. Which wouldn't work in your situation at all!

     

    :grouphug: hope that second one helped.

  14. Could it possibly be ulcers? When I had a large ulcer, it felt like that and they sent me home from the ER after CT scan showed nothing, ultrasound, labs fine, etc. But they did put in a consult for GI, and they did an endoscopy and found an ulcer that way.

     

    I will say that once the ulcer started hurting it didn't go away, though. I'm not sure if that's everyone's experience with ulcers.

     

    :grouphug: I so hope you feel better soon.

  15. If we had a boy, I thought Ian was the perfect name to go with our last name. DH didn't like it and had some Liam's among the cousins and so he thought it was too similar. There are tons of boy cousins or really 2nd cousins, so it seemed like ever name was already taken. He also vetoed naming a boy after himself. DH is a Junior, so if we had a boy he'd be a III.

     

    My Mom wanted us to name DD Eli if she was a boy. My cousin name his son Eli just 1 year later, so it is a good thing we didn't do that.

     

    My DH didn't have any names that I vetoed.

     

     

    My dh had an immovable "none of my cousins" rule, too, and some of my favorite boy names were on his cousin list :glare:.

     

    I wanted to name a dd "_________(feminissima first name) Georg" because we always use family names as middle names and I have Georg ancestors and I thought it was very appealing, like George Sand and George Eliot, but nooooooo.

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