It’s been a Fun Week!

This week has been interesting. I have felt really good and have gotten a bunch of things accomplished.

• Cut up a bunch of celery and carrot sticks to keep in the fridge. It is so handy having them ready.
• Washed 3 heads of lettuce and put the leaves between paper towels in plastic bags. I am hoping this will help them stay fresh long enough for me to use them.  Plus I was left with a bag ready for salad or green smoothies.
• Made a batch of bread which finally turned out good. The last couple batches had been too dry. I have no idea what I did differently.
• Cut up and packaged a ham ready for the freezer. That should give us about 7 meals. I like to use it in scrambled eggs, omelets, and macaroni and cheese.
• Thursday brought about my yogurt experiment. I used a whey-based drink mix in place of the milk and used an acidophilus capsule for the starter. That didn’t work at all. So I added 2 tablespoons of yogurt to the already hot “milk”. That didn’t set up but it will work in place of buttermilk. For the final batch I boiled new “milk” and added more yogurt and extra whey-based powder. It is currently in the fridge setting up. It looks pretty liquidy.
• Made refried beans to put in the freezer. I put it in 1-1/2 cup servings and use it in chili. I like them on tortillas with cheese but no one else does.
• Broke down a bunch of cardboard boxes.
• Read 3 books. This was a surprise as I can hardly get through a book these days.

Food Enzymes

I love to research things, especially nutritional topics, and my latest project has been digestion. So for part of my research I did an experiment with two brands of food enzymes that I had in my cupboard.

I took 1/2 cup of cooked oatmeal in 3 bowls. The first bowl didn't get anything added. To bowl #2 I added the contents of one capsule of Rainbow Light's Advanced Enzyme System. To bowl #3 I added the contents of two capsules of Nature's Sunshine Food Enzymes.

 

As soon as I stirred the Rainbow Light capsule contents into bowl #2, the oatmeal instantly became liquefied and broken apart. (You can see the difference between the two bowls.)

 

After about 30 minutes, the oatmeal in bowl #3 with the Nature's Sunshine capsule contents had softened but was still quite a bit more solid than bowl #2.

 

Here are the three bowls after sitting on the counter all day. Bowl #2 is definitely the most "digested". Bowl #3 is still about twice as thick as bowl #2. However, bowl #2 is much softer than bowl #1 with no enzymes.

Oh, and I learned how to turn on the date/time stamp on our camera in the middle of my experiment.

I can do school too!


Check out my new chair.

Pictures

Downstairs Kitchen

Rec Room

New House

Here are a few pictures. I will get the rest of the rooms when I can.

Living Room

Entry way from garage

Dining Room

Kitchen

Enjoying Sister's New Toys

Belated Birthday Shopping - Thank you!

Playing ping pong with Daddy at Thanksgiving

Playing cars with sister on my new (to me) rug

Birthday Time

MCITP: Database Administrator

Once again I am super proud of dh! He passed the two tests he needed to add Microsoft Certified IT Professional: Database Administrator to his transcript. It's been a long time coming and we are very happy! God is good all the time!

Fun Weekend

The day started with the "Kid's Train" including a yummy breakfast.





Next a sight of Mt McKinley on the way to Talkeetna.




Then an enjoyable walk into town.


Next came lunch and a little ice cream.


Finally there was the waiting for the train back to Anchorage.

A Hairsylist in the Making

Dd11 fixed dd4's hair this morning.