Judah, the author.

My soon-to-be six-year-old, theatrical, pirate-centric, budding-writer son wrote this "book" for me Monday night after writing one for Christy. He took a brown paper sack, cut it into strips for pages, and then dictated the stories to me and to Daddy. Christy's is held together with clear duct tape and mine has a safety pin at the top. On mine, each page has a small illustration of a stick pirate or ship or both. I just noticed that the themes are very similar. Here we go!

TREASURE ISLAND by Judah Rees Todd, 2/22/10, age 5

Once up on a time, there was a pirate. His ship got destroyed by evil villains. They threw him overboard and while he was crying out for help, he went under the water altogether.

Then, as I said, the evil villains sailed away with his ship. The evil villains came upon an enchanted island. On that island there was a pile of rocks with a ring inside it. The evil villains tied their ship to the ring in the rocks.

In that pile of rocks, there was a treasure box. Then, the evil villains took the treasure box and buried it. The whole world fell to pieces and left the evil villains dead in the ruins.

The End.

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This is the book for Christy. This is a book about pirates. this book is about to start.

[NOTE: he had me write that little intro on the first page and some concluding remarks on the last page.]

PIRATES DISCOVERY by Judah Rees Todd, 2/22/10, age 5

Once upon a time there lived a pirate, and he stole gold from every ship that he could set eye on. But one day he found a pile of rocks and in those rocks, a humongous treasure box. He took the treasure box on his ship, but the treasure box was too heavy, and his ship sank. And he had to swim to shore.

All his crew met him on an island. On that island, Captain Kidd's treasure was buried. They started to dig. Then, they saw the gleam of a box. And then they saw the water. The whole island fell to pieces. The pirates had a narrow escape.

They swam in the sea until they came up on a mysterious island. Then they realized--it was enchanted!

Then, a great sea serpent rose out of the sea. He was about to break the ship in two. The pirate captain clicked his fingers and called to his crew, and all the crew got their weapons in hand and cut the sea serpent to bits.

Christy, this book ends. But we would love to make you more books. The End.

Yummy Yummy Yum Balls

My friend Crystal asked me for my Yummy Yummy Yum Balls recipe, but I couldn't find it anywhere on my blog! I need to stop posting so much on Facebook and start posting more here.





THE STORY


When we were visiting Ashley and The Warren Nation in Colorado this past October, we got introduced to Yum Balls. Judah tried one and said, "You shouldn't call these Yum Balls. You should call them Yummy Yummy Yum Balls!" So that's what we call them. They've become something of a staple in our home. SOooooooOOOOOoooooo easy to make and obviously super YUMMY!





THE RECIPE for Yummy Yummy Yum Balls (from Chef Ashley Warren)

Put all ingredients into a large mixing bowl:
1 cup almond or peanut butter
1/2 cup honey
2 cups shredded unsweetened dried coconut
1 cup oat flakes (traditional rolled oats) or crispy rice or Ezekiel cereal or granola (or combo)
a pinch of salt.



Since I use the peanut/almond butter jar to measure everything (makes clean up VERY easy), my recipe looks like this:


1 jar peanut or almond butter
1/2 jar honey
2 jars coconut
1 jar oat flakes or granola
a pinch of salt if not in peanut butter or granola



Mix, roll into balls, and FREEZE. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

ADDITIONAL MIX-INS
Other ideas for adding flavor and/or nutrients:
flax seed meal (ground flax seeds)
ground nuts (almonds, pecans, cashews, walnuts, hazelnuts, pistachios . . . )
wheat germ
cacao nibs
carob chips
dried fruit bits
chocolate chips (all natural, of course)



I like to change it up every time and use what we have on hand. They're ALWAYS yummy!

NOTE
I usually separate each layer of the balls with parchment paper to keep the ones on top from sticking to the ones on the bottom. I don't leave space inbetween each one since breaking them apart is super easy.

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For more ideas, here's a link to some Almond Butter Balls (and the place that found the picture):


http://thebrassicadiaries.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/almond-butter-balls/

Homemade Granola sans Shellac

Well, I did it. I made the homemade granola from this site:
http://allrecipes.com/HowTo/Great-Granola/Detail.aspx

Oh, WOW, it's good. I chose the cherry/almond/coconut flavor, used coconut oil in the wet ingredients, and baked it for 30 minutes total, adding the cherries after 20 minutes. DELICIOUS.

Next time I make homemade granola or granola bars, I'm doubling or tripling the recipe.

Oh, and my granola happens to contain ZERO grams of shellac.

Shellac? Yep.

You see, I've influenced a few friends and family members with my label-reading obsession, one of whom found SHELLAC listed as an ingredient in a box of granola bars. Thinking it was some sort of varnish (to make the granola bars shiny) but not really sure what it was made from, we looked it up in my handy unabridged dictionary.

Shellac is "lac that has been purified and formed into thin sheets, used for making varnish."

Well, we couldn't stop there, of course. We had to find out the definition of "lac," too, which happens to be "a resinous secretion of the lac insect deposited on trees and used in making shellac."

Not everything used in the production of processed and packaged foods is actually food.

Label-readers, unite!

Homemade Granola Bars = MMMMMMMM

I made homemade granola bars again yesterday. They are SO SO SO good. I don't want to lose the recipe, so I'm posting it here:

http://www.joyfulabode.com/2008/04/11/homemade-granola-bar-recipe-no-high-fructose-corn-syrup-in-these-bars/ (picture is also from joyfulabode.com)

Basically, you toast the dry ingredients (you could do a "raw" version and forego the toasting--the flavor is a bit different but both ways are good), heat the butter (use REAL butter!!!) and brown sugar and honey (I used about a third of what it calls for since I made them before and they were plenty sweet and sticky) and then mix the wet and dry ingredients together, press the mixture into a pan with parchment paper, let it cool, and cut into bars. SO EASY.

This time I used pecans instead of almonds (the recipe calls for peanuts but I haven't tried those yet) and dried cherries instead of dried apricots (recipe just says dried fruit). Last time I used 1 tsp of almond extract and 1 tsp of vanilla. Mmmmmm.

I also did part flaxseed meal instead of the full 3/4 cup wheat germ both times and threw in two handfuls of whole flaxseeds this time. I also added a small handful of all-natural chocolate chips and cacao nibs this time. I'm sure I made other substitutions, but I don't remember them right now.

I want to try making this granola next:

http://allrecipes.com/HowTo/Great-Granola/Detail.aspx