Joel Deacon Williams

Joel Deacon Williams arrived on June 17th at 8:10AM weighing 8lbs 10oz and 21½ inches long.  He fits perfectly into our family!

New Blog

I have decided to start up a new blog to keep all my Primal stuff in.  So go check out my new blog My Primal Family.  I am still working on it so be patient!  Everything about eating primal, the primal pregnancy, getting our kids to eat primal, recipes and my daily food log with all be on the new blog. I still plan on keeping this blog for homeschooling and other family things.  I just post so much about eating primal that I thought it would be appropriate to have my own blog just for that!

7 Months

Wow, this past month flew by.  I am already 7 months along! I can't believe it. Only 11 more weeks until the baby is here.  I have gained a total of 24 lbs. I was looking back at my 6 month posting and I noticed I only gained 2 lbs this past month.  I was shocked!  I haven't swelled much. Some days I forget I am pregnant.  But then other days I feel like I have been hit by a truck and everything hurts.  Overall this pregnancy has been pretty easy.  Let's hope it stays that way.  We have been discussing names tonight.  I think we may have finally agreed on one but I think we are going to wait until we have the baby to tell everyone.  Part of the reason is we are not 100% sure on the name and mostly because I want something to be a surprise since we already know the sex.  Who knows, we may end up just telling everyone because I am not very good with secrets.

Primal Chicken Nuggets

Ok, I am super excited about finding this recipe. I found this recipe on a blog I read, Life as a Plate.  My second son is a pretty picky eater.  He is getting a lot better though.  But I always tell Josh he is our processed food kid.  He will eat any processed food you put in front of him.  He loves the noodles, the frozen breaded chicken nuggets and things like that.  Anytime we cook "real" chicken, we can barely get him to get eat it.  Well, I made these chicken nuggets tonight and I put four on his plate and he ate those then asked for more! So I gave him two more and he ate both of those too! He kept telling me he, "I like this chicken". I was shocked.  One step closer to getting the boys primal. Today was a good day! So here is the recipe.  You can find the original recipe on Life as a Plate.  The one below is how I made it.  And best of all you can make a big batch and freeze them and use them as you need them.  An easy fast meal.  I make the chicken nuggets but do not cook them. Then I put them on a baking pan so they are not touching and then stick them in the freezer until they are fully frozen (overnight) then I stick them in a plastic freezer baggy and put them in the freezer. Then they are just as convenient as the frozen chicken nuggets in the bag, only healthier!


Primal Chicken Nuggets
What you need:

• 3-4 chicken breasts, diced into chunks
• 1/2 c. mayo
• 1 tbsp honey
• 2 tbsp yellow or dijon mustard

Breading:

• 3/4 c. almond flour
• 1/4 c. Parmesan cheese
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp onion powder
• pinch of salt

What you do:

• Mix the mayo, mustard, and honey in a bowl and put in the chicken chunks and coat.

Mix the breading ingredients on a large plate

• Remove the nuggets from the mayo mix and roll in breading
• Lay on foiled cookie sheet.

Bake at 350 for approx 30 (time varies depending on size of nuggets) until brown, crispy, and cooked through.

27 weeks ultrasound and stuff

Wow, I haven't posted in a while.  I had my follow up ultrasound on Monday and the ultrasound tech said that the placenta is still low.  I will have to follow up with my doctor.  I have another doctors appointment with him on April 11, so hopefully I will know more then.  I am hoping and praying they do not move my c-section date.  I was due with my second baby on March 17 and they did the c-section on March 2 and he spent a week in the NICU. I just don't want the baby to be born too early and have to go to the NICU.   They are already taking him 8 days early, which makes me nervous.  Hopefully with the placenta still being low, they will not move the c-section unless they absolutely have to.  And I already know VBAC is out of the question.  I know they do not allow vaginal births if the placenta is low.  
Jack had his two year check up on Monday too.  He is only 25% on his weight and 12% on his length.  He is a little guy! He has always been on the lower end for weight and length so it did not cause any concern.  If I remember correctly, he was 6% on length last appointment so he actually grew a lot!
We found out today that my husband will be starting a new job in two weeks.  WHAT A RELIEF!! If you only knew how excited I am about this!! I NEVER knew how hard it would be to have a husband that worked nights.  Not only is it hard for me but it is hard on the kids.  They don't get to see him and hang out with him nearly as much as they would like.  It is also very hard on my husband too.  Not only is the job he had very strenuous and hard on his body, it was hard for him to get enough sleep during the day.  He would always try to stay up a few hours in the morning to hang out with us and then that would cut into his sleep.  He was lucky to get 6 hours of sleep.  And very rarely was it a straight 6 hours of sleep.  And then not to mention the two hours of overtime a day plus some Saturdays.  Sure the paychecks were nice with all that overtime but it just is not worth it.  We would rather have a husband and dad at home than to have money. I could go on and on about how happy and thankful we are that this job came but I will stop because I would be up all night.  So the two week count down begins!!

Glucose test came back fine!

Not that I was really worried that it wouldn't come back fine. Well, I was a little worried it might not come back fine because of the whole fasting thing, not knowing if I was suppose to fast before the test. But I wasn't really worried that I would have gestational diabetes since this is my third and I had no problems with the other two.  And my second ultrasound to see if the placenta previa corrected itself or not is on Monday.  I am really nervous about it.  I am thinking it did correct itself just because that is what happened when I was pregnant with Jack and that is what I am really hoping and praying for but then I get nervous thinking that it did not correct itself.  Which I plan on having a c-section anyway since my first two were c-sections but I don't want them to take the baby any earlier.  They are already taking the baby 8 days early which makes me nervous enough.  They took Jack two weeks early and he had to spend a week in the NICU and I really don't want to have this baby go through that too.  Well, being a little selfish now, I don't want to have to go through that again either.  It was awful and I feel so sorry for any family that has to go through having a baby in the NICU.

Primal Pizza!

I got this recipe off of Primal Matriarch's blog. This pizza was sooo good. I think I may be able to go 100% primal now that I have my pizza! I forgot to take a picture of the pizza before my family dug into it.  The kids even loved it!


What you need:

• 3 c. almond flour
• 1 c. sour cream/plain organic yogurt
• 1/2 c. grated Parmesan
• pinch salt
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• fresh parsley (optional)

What you do:

• Mix dry ingredients
• Beat egg into sour cream and slowly add to the dry mixture.
• Beat until well blended.
• Mixture will be batter-like and not dough-like, so you must SPREAD this with a spatula onto parchment paper, about 1/4-in thick.
• Bake at 350 for around 30 minutes or until brown all the way over, like this.
• Top with whatever your heart desires.
• Stick back in the oven for five minutes to melt the cheese and toppings.

Chicken Vegetable Soup

It all started last Sunday evening when my youngest boy got the stomach flu. Then nobody else in the family got it and we thought we were in the clear when it was Friday and still nobody else got it.  Well, we were wrong.  Friday night I got it in the middle of the night then about 5:00 Saturday morning my older son started throwing up.  Which I am happy he waited until then to get it.  My husband got home around 5:30 Saturday morning from work because he works nights.  Usually it is me taking care of the boys all week by myself since my husband sleeps during the day and works at night.  So we couldn't have picked a better time to get sick because my husband does not go back to work until tonight at 5:00 so he was able to take care of us all weekend.  I felt really bad for him because he had to come straight home from work and take care of the boys because I was sick, so he got no sleep at all!  He even kept the laundry caught up, kept the house cleaned, watched after the boys, cleaned up after my older one who was sick, waited on me, did the grocery shopping and even made up homemade chicken vegetable soup.  And he only got three things that weren't on the list, and of course not primal. Well, really two.  He got Sprite but I told him I wanted some and yes I have been drinking Sprite but right now I am just worried about staying hydrated and that was the only thing that sounded good.  He got Cheese its, which is fine because he got them for Jeremiah to eat. And he got a big bowl of spaghetti from the deli for himself for lunch.  The funny part is he is the one that was so into our whole family becoming primal and has been trying to talk me into for the past two years and I think he cheats more than I do! Oh well. He deserves spaghetti after the day he had.  I think he should get super husband/dad award! He was great!  I am use to the stomach flu only lasting 12-24 hours.  It is now Monday and I think I feel worse today than I did yesterday.  And Josh is actually at the doctor right now with Jeremiah because he still has a fever and was up all night crying because he felt so bad.  This stomach flu just sticks around.  Not fun at all. I am just hoping Josh doesn't get it now. 

So here is what was in the soup

Homemade chicken stock

One whole chicken

Carrots 

Celery

Onions

Mushrooms

Broccolli

Cabbage
Can of diced tomatoes with the juice

Fresh parsley

Usually our chicken vegetable soup is whatever veggies we have sitting in the fridge.  It always turns out pretty good. This time Josh said he used the twisty spatula to separate the chicken. I liked it that way better and it seemed like it was easier for my youngest to eat it.

Happy St Patrick's Day!!

 The boys actually colored the shamrocks yesterday and they made their names out of pasta today.  This morning Jeremiah gave me the idea of making their names out of pasta because he was taking his shredded cheese off his eggs and spelling his name on the table.  And I remembered we had this pasta....and since we don't eat pasta anymore I thought PERFECT!  We use to do "art projects" two or three times a week then I just got tired and lazy and blamed it on the pregnancy.  But now that I got back onto eating primal I have a ton more energy to actually do stuff.   Going on three days of NO cheating I have eliminated my heartburn, have more energy and lost three pounds. Not bad!

My day

Today I decided to make almond flour for the pizza I will be making on Saturday.  I read how to make it and they made it sound so easy.  I had to make 3 cups and it took forever. Next time I will just be buying it already made. It is pretty expensive at the store.  It is about $12.99 for a 1 pound bag.  I found some on ebay for only $45 for a 10 pound bag. So that would save us about $85! 10 pounds of almond flour seems like a lot and I am not sure how long it will take us to eat all of that.  But I asked the seller how long it would stay fresh and he said you can put it in a ziplock bag in the freezer for up to a year.  So I am thinking we will be able to finish a 10 pound bag in a year. I read that one pound of almond flour is about 4 cups and just the pizza recipe takes 3 cups. I am hoping to start cooking with almond flour more.  I am really trying to get the boys to be primal.  There is a good recipe for chicken nuggets using almond flour. 

I think I am going to try to work on my blog for a while tonight. I want to make a recipe section to post all of my recipes and I also saw this chart thingy on someone else's blog that charts what she eats everyday.  So then I can chart it instead of writing a post about what I ate everyday because obviously I can't keep up with that! So hopefully I will have some free time tonight when the boys go to bed to work on it. 

As I mentioned before, I had been cheating a lot lately.  But the last two days I have been doing so well and not cheating.  And I have already noticed that I no longer have heartburn!  I was popping two tums before I went to bed every night for the past couple weeks because my heartburn has been so bad it felt like I couldn't breathe.  Then last night I was getting ready for bed and I noticed I had no heartburn at all!! None whatsoever!! This was enough to motivate me to keep going primal because the heartburn was killing me.

The world's best omelet...so far

This morning I made the best omelet ever.  I got the recipe from a cooking show. I never realized how good fresh herbs are! I always just substituted the dry herbs instead of using fresh.  I made one omelet with fresh basil and I am hooked. I have been missing out!!  I think I want to switch to all fresh herbs. I think I need to grow some herbs now.  So here is the recipe.  I actually did not have any Romano cheese so I substituted mozzarella cheese instead. I have not cut out dairy from my diet yet.  I was thinking after I have the baby I am going to try to cut out all dairy.

2 eggs
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
1/4 cup Romano cheese

And that is it! Mix all these ingredients together and place in your hot skillet flip and voila!  Believe me you won't be disappointed! I can't believe I have been missing out on something so simple!

25 week appointment

I had my doctors appointment yesterday and everything is going well.  I am measuring 27 weeks but I am really only 25 weeks.  Not a big deal though. I also had my sugar glucose test yesterday.  I asked my doctor if I needed to fast and he said no but after I went down to take the test the lady said, 'Now go get you something to eat!' Which I thought was a little weird.  At that point the test was over so I didn't want to ask if I was suppose to fast because I was afraid she was going to make me start over another day.  I figure if I was suppose to fast hopefully I will still pass. And if I don't pass I would just have to retake the test anyway. The doctor is calling the ultrasound doctor to get my 28 week ultrasound set up to see if the previa corrected itself.  I am keeping my fingers crossed that it has corrected! I had it with Jack and by 28 weeks it was fine so let's just hope it is the same with this one too!  I am now 25 weeks.  I am getting a bit nervous because this is usually when I start packing on the pounds and swelling and all that great stuff.  I am hoping that eating Primal will prevent that.  So I am going to start really buckling down and limit my cheating.  I have really been craving pizza so I am searching for a good pizza recipe.  Hopefully I can find a good one.  I will post one once I make it and let you know how it is.

6 months

I am a little behind posting my 6 month picture and update.  We have had birthdays, parties and a wedding. So our schedule has been crazy and of course so has our eating.  I haven't been eating the greatest lately.  But I am hoping to change that and get back on track and get our hectic schedule calmed down as well!

As of this past Saturday I was 24 weeks.  I have gained a total of 22lbs.  I have 15 weeks left of being pregnant, since they are taking the baby a week early. So that means if I want to stay within my goal I can only gain 13lbs tops! It is going to be rough.  Good news is I gave up sodas for lent so that should help tremendously!  The past couple weeks I have been drinking a lot of sodas.  I just got finished reading this one lady's blog and she was talking about how she ate Primal during her pregnancy and it helped a lot with the swelling.  I have noticed my ankles are starting to swell just a bit so I want to make sure I start taking this eating Primal thing serious.  I had awful swelling with my other two.  The first one was the worse. Reading her blog got me back into wanting to take this serious because I know I will be so happy I did. So here we go again. Hopefully this time I WILL stay on track until baby gets here:)

02/17/11

 
Breakfast: 2 egg omelet with cheese and ham

Lunch: Taco bell :)

Dinner: Tilapia, steamed broccoli and a salad

02/16/11

Breakfast: 2 scrambled eggs with peppers and ham, turkey bacon and strawberries and kiwi

Lunch: Ham and cheese roll up.  I wasn't too hungry after that big breakfast!

Snack: Celery

Dinner: I made a whole chicken in the dutch oven and a sweet potato.

Valentine's Day!

Breakfast: Scrambled eggs with red, yellow, orange and green peppers and turkey bacon

Lunch: Taco Bell 

Snack: Sugar cookie. Oh wait, I had two sugar cookies.  My husband surprised me with my favorite cookies from Donut Bank and then at daycare my dad made sugar cookies and my mom brought them in for our Valentine's Day party.

Dinner: Wasn't very hungry so I heated up a piece of leftover salmon from the other night. The one I wanted to eat but saved for my husband.  Well, he ended up not eating it because he got sick and didn't eat for like 3 days.

Early Valentine's Day dinner

Breakfast: Scrambles eggs with red, yellow, green and orange peppers and onions and sausage

Lunch: Ate a couple pieces of totinos pizza that I fed the kids

Snack: Me and the boys made some cupcakes for Valentine's Day.  I ate two!!

Dinner: Since my hubby has to work tomorrow we had our Valentine's dinner tonight! Lobster tail, crab legs, sauteed shrimp and garlic cheddar biscuits. It was awesome!!!

02/12/11

Breakfast: Danish (I always end up regretting decisions like this. I felt like crap all morning)

Lunch: Big salad with mesquite chicken.  I bought the precooked chicken breast at Sams today that comes in a 3 lb bag. It only takes 3 min to microwave.  I thought this would be a healthier choice when I forget to set things out for dinner.  So I heated one up and cut it up and put it on my salad. All I have to say is WOW! It was so so good.  It reminded me of a salad you get when you go out to eat.  You know, the $10 salad. 

Snack: Some frozen berries

Dinner: Steak, salad and sweet potato.  The sweet potato is not in the picture because it was not ready when dinner was ready. So I ate it after dinner.  I had to eat the steak dinner with my kids that were eating hot dogs.  My husband was actually home for dinner but is sick so he didn't even eat with us:(

02/10/11

Haven't posted my meals the last couple days.  Last night I made the best pot roast ever! I got it out of the Primal Cookbook by Mark Sisson.  Except I added carrots and did not put rosemary or thyme in it. I don't really like those two spices.  But I am definitely putting that on the "make again" list! i have not had a soda since Sunday and it feels great!!

Breakfast: 2 egg omelet with red, yellow, orange and green peppers, mushrooms, ham and cheese

Lunch: A couple of pieces of totinos pizza and a salad.  Bad idea! I went shopping after I ate and I kept feeling dizzy and out of it, like my head was in a fog.  I blame the pizza.

Dinner: Salmon and steamed broccoli.  I was very tempted to eat the piece of salmon I made for my husband because I am still hungry but didn't because I have to limit my fish intake due to being pregnant and Sunday we are celebrating Valentines Day and my hubby is making us crab legs and lobster tail! YUMMO!! I am thinking about making some cheddar garlic biscuits to go with it but that is so not primal so I am going to TRY to think of an alternative.  But I may just have to make them!! Can't wait!  So I will probably grabbing a pb&j before I go to bed. 

I am so happy that this week I have been sticking to primal pretty well.  I think the biggest part is no soda, but I am feeling great! I can tell a huge difference in my mood and energy level.

02/07/11

Breakfast: 2 egg omelet with red, yellow, green and orange peppers, onions, ham and cheese.

Lunch: Buffalo wings with a salad.

Snack: Nutri grain bar at daycare. (Not primal) Working at the daycare is killing me because I always eat what they are having!

Dinner: Primal chili with ground chicken, yellow squash, zucchini, diced tomato, red and green peppers, onions, and chili powder

I had two sugar cookies after dinner. I couldn't resist. My dad makes the BEST sugar cookies in the world.