something witty and clever

I can't ever seem to come up with a post title. I hate post titles. I think they were invented by communists. Or those rare individuals who can always think of something witty and clever to say. So yeah, communists.



Figured out something this week about feeding Maezie-bell: Come at her from above, and drop it in her little mouth, birdie style! (Though I refuse to chew her food for her first, or regurgitate it. Sorry, kid.) That way, her head is back, and gravity does the work for her. Gravity! Who knew?!



all baby food kinda looks regurgitated. I'd be nervous, too.



The walker appears to be the best thing to sit her in and achieve the proper angle.



big sissy is feeding her something. I should be concerned.



We still have a therapist coming to evaluate her on the 1st, but she seems to have made some progress in the last 3 weeks. At least as far as eating is concerned. Still no babbling or consonant sounds, or any shaping of the lips when making noise. We'll know more in a week. In the meantime, a full baby is a happy baby!



Speaking of birdies - I've spent the last week or so playing nursemaid to a couple of our chicks, who have twisted necks. Some people call it "stargazing" but that sounds like they're just sweet, wistful dreamers, as opposed to poor, miserable little things. I've done some research and so far what I've come up with is that it's either disease, nutritional, or due to fluctuating humidity in the incubator. I'm leaning toward one of the latter 2, because all the other chicks are still healthy, and so far these 2 have not gotten worse, they just have floppy, twisted necks. I've been giving them liquid vitamins in their water. I brought them in the house to keep them separate from the others for about a week, and then 2 days into a killer migraine I remembered that DUH! I'm allergic to birds! This is why we started brooding them in the coop in the first place. Much as I want to give the poor things a good shot at survival, I need to be able to live thru the experience as well. And if I didn't kick that headache, somebody was gonna die. They're still able to eat and drink, and don't appear to be getting any worse, so, we'll see. This morning when I went out to the coop they looked better than they had in days. I hope that's going to continue. I haven't been able to find out much definitive info on a cure for their condition.

On a happier, holy-crap-could-summer-actually-be-winding-down?!? note:

I harvested our very first pumpkins!! Mini pumpkins! I checked the forcast, and the temp is supposed to be 98 today, but I swear to you, I can feel a little bit of fall crispness on the breeze... I might even be able to smell cinnamon. That last part is probably all in my head. Leave me alone. I'm happy.









"tongue tied" is not just a figure of speech...

Every mommy wants to be the best mommy they can. At least I certainly hope they do. I know that my kids are about the most precious thing in the world to me, and I can't stand it when there's something even slightly wrong. So now I'm kicking myself over something that I didn't even know could be a problem.

Most everybody has heard of  being "tongue-tied", even if they're not sure exactly what that means. I was vaguely aware that some babies are born with tied tongues or cleft palates, but I never thought much more of it.

When my youngest was born, she was a robust, healthy thing, and she seemed to me to be feeding pretty well, but she pretty rapidly lost weight (not to the point of her being in danger, but she was a scrawny little thing there for a while). I did notice that she drooled while breastfeeding, and was hungry every hour, and she wanted to feed for an hour. This got worse over the course of 3-4 months, and I thought it was because my milk supply was drying up, which I attributed to trouble with my thyroid. I started pumping and bottle feeding, and she started putting on weight and being more satisfied with her meals. She's now 8 months old and completely bottle-fed. She was also an extremely "puke-y" baby (which she has outgrown some), and drools constantly. She leaves a trail wherever she goes, I'm not even kidding. I started transitioning her over to solid foods at 5 1/2 months, and it was a total mess. She just pushed the food out everywhere, nothing went in. So I waited a week or 2, and then tried again. A little better, but still messy. But hey, practice makes perfect, right? So I kept at it. She's been eating solids for a month now, and she still can't really get all the food down. I noticed that she thrusts most of it out with her tongue, and can only get it down if I shove the food to the back of her mouth. So that got me thinking. I had noticed that her upper lip was really attached to her gums, to the point that I was wondering if she had any upper gums -they're that far up there under her lip. And the tiny band of skin that connects the lip to the gums comes all the way down and even wraps around her upper gums, right in the middle of what will someday be her 2 front teeth. I started wondering if maybe that was causing her trouble with eating. So - I googled it, and aha! my poor sweet girl has an attached upper frenulum. It's similar to what happens to the tongue - the band of connective tissue is too short or too thick, and movement is restricted. I started reading about all the problems other mamas were having, and there it was - the drooling, the trouble breastfeeding, trouble eating... I wanted to cry for not having noticed this sooner. I had no idea that this was something that could happen.

So - off to the dr we went (she really needed a checkup anyway), and not only is the lip tied, but so is her tongue. She is otherwise a healthy, happy, beautiful baby girl, and her weight is still good - thanks to my moment of genius when I decided to start making her "baby smoothies" in her bottle rather than trying to cram it down her throat on a spoon - and all of her other development is excellent. The doctor reffered us to an early intervention program offered by the state so that they can evaluate her and see what the best course of action will be. We met with a coordinator on Friday who did Maezie's initial evaluation. Basically she just asked a lot of questions: is she able to eat at all? not without a bottle. does she make any kind of consonant sounds when she babbles, bababa, nanana, etc? nothing. does she combine vowel sounds, oowee, eeeyo, etc? not at all. does she drool? copiously. does she put things in her mouth a lot? EVERYTHING. does she suck or chew on her fingers? yep.

Next step is to have a therapist come out and determine exactly how delayed in her speech and eating she is. Then she starts therapy, or goes on to an ear, nose and throat doctor to see about surgery. Which scares the stuff outta me.

I know that this isn't the worst thing in the world that could happen to my girl, but it's still upsetting. And nothing to mess around with. As the coordinator explained - the biggest danger to her development is that because she is otherwise a smart, bright, healthy little girl, when she tries to do the things that her brain is telling her she should be able to do (talking, eating), it's very frustrating, and after a while, she'll just stop trying altogether, which can have a negative impact on her brain development, and really slow her down for the rest of her life. And she is waaay to smart, and bright and beautiful to let that happen! I just really want my baby girl to be able to function normally, and take part in everyday life with the family. Perhaps the most frustrating part of all is that this should never have been a problem. It should have been caught and fixed when she was tiny - and then it could have just been snipped and she would never have known the difference. Now she's too big to be snipped, and they won't do anything without more evaluation.

Yesterday I took the girls out for ice cream with their nana, and it was Maezie's first day sitting up in a high chair instead of in her infant carrier (she is getting WAY too big for it!!). She was so excited to be up and a part of what was going on. I tried giving her just little tastes of my ice cream, just so she could share in the experience, and she couldn't swallow any of it. It just drooled out all over her shirt. I kept trying, because she was loving that little bit of sweetness on her tongue, but it was really breaking my heart. I want my baby girl to be able to sit and eat ice cream with her mama and her nana and her big sis. She should be able to do these things. I want her to be able to say "dada!" and "mama!" and "sissy!" I hope that therapy works. I hope that surgery is completely unnecessary - or if it is, I hope it is over and done quickly.

I can't take the heat...

...it's makin' me just a little crazy.


Been thinking a lot today about summertimes past - I'm sure because it's so freakin' hot here (the heat index today is 110!!) - and about how on earth I ever managed to survive. These days, when the temp gets above 85, which it does frequently, I just want to curl up and .. I don't know.. sleep? pass out? skip through a wardrobe to a magical land where it's always winter (but never Christmas)? It doesn't help matters that our air conditioner is about as effective as the proverbial fart in a windstorm. I get done what I can in the morning, and when the back sweat starts to roll (around lunchtime or so - lovely, isn't it?) I plop down on the couch and pray for mercy til at least dinnertime. And cooking? HA. Make yourself a salad already.
It's kind of surprising that I don't handle the heat better. I grew up in Florida, just north of Tampa.. you know, in that hot part of the state too far from the ocean to enjoy the cool breezes. 90 was a balmy spring day. 75 was a cold snap. If the temperature did manage to drop below 60, we were busting out hats and scarves. I vividly remember peeling my thighs off the vinyl seats of the old powder blue station wagon, and not being able to touch the seatbelt for the first 5 or 10 minutes without risking 3rd degree burns. (To the genius that decided that cars should have vinyl seats - bite me. You suck.) 
But I also remember going to Disney World and Busch Gardens in the MIDDLE of summer, and playing football or basketball outside with friends, or riding bikes to my best friend's house.. baseball games, picnics, trips to the park, etc. All done smack in the hottest time of the year. I didn't die. I don't recall particularly feeling that I wanted to. That feeling seems to be something that I have acquired with age. And possibly a reduced heat tolerance. I SWEAR it was not this hot when I first moved here. Beautiful, wonderful, temperate Tennessee has betrayed me. It's gotten ridiculously hot, and there's no ocean to cool off in.


I want to be here right now!!

 We bought the girls (ok, we bought Davey) a little blue plastic swimming pool the other day. It helps. It's no Gulf of Mexico, but it gets the job done. Thursday we're getting a loaner window AC unit to help our poor, geriatric central AC, and things around here should improve. I eat a lot of popsicles. And ice cream. And freeze-pops. And salads. I expect to be 10 pounds lighter by the end of the month. Ah, silver lining!!

morning coffee

One of the things I love most about our little farm is getting up early (when I actually manage to wake up - which is much easier to do when the hubby is shaking you, saying "The baby wants to talk to you!" This usually means that she has pooped, because otherwise he'd just get her a bottle himself and she'd go back to sleep and I would have missed this gorgeous morning. But, I digress.) and enjoying my coffee on the front porch. This morning it was actually cool enough that I needed a sweater, which in these days of 90+ degree weather, is really a welcome change.
I love the early morning sounds here on the farm. All the birds are chirping and singing, and the hawk family is calling to each other across the front pasture. I have a sort of love/chagrin relationship with those hawks. They are so majestic and beautiful, and one time I even got up really close to one when it was sitting on a stump eating some small critter or other, which was just so cool! But then there's the whole "can't free-range the chickens" thing, because seriously, with all the trouble we've had keeping chickens alive here, hawks are the last thing we need. Still, they are incredibly beautiful - as are the blue herons, cardinals, goldfinches, indigo buntings, wild turkeys (which I think are pretty cool, even though the bastards wiped out my blackberry patch!), and about a thousand other birds I can't even name. Then there's our muscovies. It took me a little while to get used to ducks roosting in trees (which muscovies are wont to do), but it's pretty fun to watch them swooping from the pond to the trees and back again.  I also had another unexpected visitor this morning - a doe - munching on our (VERY) unmown grass by the chicken coop. She didn't stay long, but still!! She was only about 20 feet away. See, honey? There's a really great excuse not to mow the lawn!

And, speaking of chickens - we're trying again. 11 new babies and 2 more turkeys. I'm thinking about setting up a tent next to the coop and living in it with my shotgun. I only wish I was kidding.

Summer time, and the livin' is easy..

So it's been almost a month, and not a peep from me? For shame!
Seriously, though - it's summertime, and that means that things have been super busy around here. We had a week of camp to run at Smoky Mountain Christian Camp, which was so stinkin' fun, and then we had family in from Florida, and in the middle of it all, I had to have emergency oral surgery to remove the wisdom teeth I should have had cut out 10 years ago but was too chicken to take care of (and for the record - I'm still all hopped up on hydrocodone because my jaw is jacked up now, so if none of what I'm typing makes sense, well, there you go). There's been barely any time to do much in the way of gardening, or cooking, or crafting, or any of that stuff I love to do. Any free time I have had in the last two weeks I've pretty much spent drooling on the couch. So. To briefly sum up what's happened here at the farm: our chickens were wiped out AGAIN while we were away at camp. So much for whatever-proofing the chicken run. We think it was a racoon. Or a whole dang pack of them. Like a 50's gang of greaser punks with little black face masks and pointy noses. Urgh. I hate racoons. The garden nearly got overrun with weeds while we were away, so Davey took the weedeater to them, and since then he's been putting down layer after layer of straw.. it looks so nice! We've harvested pickling cucumbers, peppers, peas, yellow squash and zucchini so far, with lots more still to come. I lost all the tomatoe plants in my kitchen garden to spider mites and aphids.. well, really what did them in was the homemade pesticide. It killed the bugs, and fried the plants to a nice crispy black. Got new plants from the market to put in. Now I just have to stop drooling long enough to get the job done.
Today I ripped out the peas and kale, and about double my body weight in weeds, so I'm feeling optimistic. The fact that it's not 110 degrees out sure does help alot.
Tonight's chores are making pesto and figuring out how to turn 15 pounds of zucchini into dinner. Hooray for summer!

Stretching the budget

(I know I'm on a bit of a food kick here lately... I think it's because of all the good fresh food we've been having. Not to mention that I just love food. A lot.)

When Davey and I first married, I freaked him out a little when I boiled and deboned various cuts of chicken to make a pot of soup for dinner. He had never seen it done before, and thought it was strange (he has since become a fan). I thought it was strange that he thought it was strange. I’ve been deboning cooked chicken for chicken and dumplings, soup, etc, since I was old enough to pull up a chair to the counter. In fact, as a kid, it was a job that I really disliked. As I got older though, and had to pay for my own grocery bill, I understood why my frugal mother cooked this way. I know that for a lot of people the only chicken they use is the boneless/skinless tenderloins/breasts, or maybe those precooked strips in the freezer section. I love me some tenderloins, and there are some meals I make that practically require that particular cut of chicken. But when you think about it, that's like the filet mignon of chicken. When we started raising chickens of our own, I really started to consider the whole bird in terms of food. Do you know how many chickens have to die to make one package of tenderloins or breasts? (hint: there's only 2 per bird) What about all the rest of the chicken? Cheaper cuts of chicken or beef can have a huge impact on both the quality and quantity of food I can cook for our family each week. And with only one income, and 2 kids in diapers, well… that’s pretty darn important.
Last week at the store I found a 6 and a half pound whole chicken on for a little over 4 dollars. You can bet I snatched that baby up. When I got it home and got ready to cook it, I was all prepared to throw it in the stock pot and get a few meals out of it… but then I realized how big this bird was. It seemed a waste to only boil it. So, in a fit of culinary frenzy, I decided to stuff it, roast it, and make all the trimmings. It was like Thanksgiving in May! I only had box stuffing, which was a little disappointing, but still pretty good. I greased the bird lightly with shortening, seasoned it with garlic, thyme and paprika, and cooked it for about 3 and a half hours. Along with gravy, (real) mashed potatoes, and green beans (and of course homemade biscuits!), this fed us VERY well for 3 days. Today I boiled what was left into a gorgeous broth and deboned what chicken was left and wound up with enough to make 2 more meals, both of which will most likely last us at least 2 days each. So that’s 7 days of eating out of 1 chicken. Not too shabby! Not to mention delicious!

I know that cooking is quite a challenge for some, and I was fortunate to grow up with a mother who cooked regularly and well – mostly due to my wonderful great-grandmother, who, hands down made the best fried chicken on the planet – but learning to cook can be a real budget saver. Not to mention tasty and nutritious. The simple fact is this: good food doesn’t have to be expensive!

biscuity goodness

This weekend is National Biscuit Fest in Knoxville, and in honor of that, I'm talkin' biscuits today. Here in the south, seems like folks are especially passionate about their biscuits. And everybody can remember how their Meemaw made the best biscuits ever. I didn't have a "Meemaw", (because in Florida we think that plain ol' "Grandma" works just fine, thank you) and apparently if your ancestors hail from Southern Georgia, that makes them cornbread folks, anyhow. As a result, I can make 4 different kinds of cornbread, but I'm still trying to master the art of the biscuit.

For years, the only biscuits I'd ever had came from Kentucky Fried Chicken or Cracker Barrel, or the occasional sausage biscuit at McDonalds. Sad, I know. But now that I live in Tennessee, I've actually had some real, honest-to-gosh homemade biscuits, and there is truly no comparison. Back when I was a "career woman" (HA!), there was a sweet lady I worked with who made delicious biscuits and brought them in to work, still hot, and shared them with us. They were amazing! Just before I left my job, I asked her for the recipe, and in true Meemaw fashion, it wasn't scientific - just put some self-rising flour in a bowl, add some kind of fat, and buttermilk. I tried to get measurements out of her, but she had a specific bowl she put the flour in, and a certain cup for the buttermilk, and she just eyeballed it. Joy.

That was 6 months ago. And I'm still trying to get it just right. I've tried shortening, olive oil, cold butter, room temp butter, shortening. I've tried 2 cups of flour, 3 cups, 2 and 1/2. Last night, I came very darn near to success, if I do say so myself. Cold butter is definitely key. Good quality self-rising flour is also important. And lots of buttermilk. If the dough is too dry, the biscuits are tough. And nobody likes a tough biscuit. As for measurements, well, you just have to eyeball it. That really is how it works.

So here it is. My biscuit recipe:

 I usually start with 2 cups of self-rising flour, a 3rd of a stick of butter (COLD!) and about a cup of buttermilk, and add more flour as needed. Really, though, you want the dough to be as sticky as possible but still manageable. I cut the cold butter into the flour with a pastry cutter or fork, and when it's relatively well mixed and crumbly, add the buttermilk and stir to form a somewhat cohesive ball. Try to stir it as little as possible. It should not be smooth. Then I dump the whole thing onto a clean, floured countertop and press it out to about 1/2 inch thickness, and then cut into rounds with a glass dipped in flour. Try to cut all the biscuits on the first go-round, because if you have to reshape the dough and cut again, those biscuits won't be quite as soft. Place them on a greased cookie sheet and bake at 375  for 15 minutes, or until they're slightly browned on top. You can also brush the tops with butter before baking to get that lovely golden brown color (I prefer pasty white biscuits, myself). I'm still working on the fluff factor. I'd like them to rise more, but so far I've only had a good rise when there was waaaaay too much baking powder and it ruined the taste. I'd rather have a biscuit that's a little more dense but still delicious. Slather these babies with a little homemade blueberry preserves (really, any jelly or jam will do, but blueberry preserves are my favorite!) and you've got yourself one tasty breakfast.

So there you have it. Homemade biscuits, Meemaw-style.


***editor's note: I just heard that I have apparently been forgetting the hot water in this recipe. That would explain so much. So. Add a few tablespoons of hot water. The recipe above still works, but adding the hot water will make them EVEN BETTER. Now I need to go make some more biscuits.