Stew; the perfect fall meal

I'm sitting here eating Terra chips and drinking a big glass of water as I try to get in a quick blog post. It's almost 1 a.m. and the baby is finally asleep. She was so excited after getting to go to a ladies' Bible study and then to the grocery store that it took her a long time to fall asleep.

This kid doesn't want to miss a thing! She manages to stay awake for many hours at a time if there is anything interesting going on. But she's sleeping for a stretch of 7 hours or more at night, so I don't mind. :)


I had forgotten that I generally get a flare-up with the first big weather change of Autumn. Even with my deficiencies in eating and sleeping the last couple of months, this one hasn't been as severe as in the past. I'm tired and uncomfortable, but am still able to do most things. The girls are still sick with coughs and the baby with a stuffy nose, so we've all been taking long afternoon naps whenever we can.

As the years go by I seem to get healthier and get fewer contagious illnesses as well as milder and less frequent flare-ups. That's so encouraging.

Baby E is still so much happier now that I've cut soy and chocolate out of my diet. I'm getting better at finding soy-free foods to eat. It's actually forcing me to eat healthier and plan ahead a little more.

I was excited to discover that my favorite chips don't have any soy products in them. Terra chips are like potato chips, but they're made of taro, yucca, sweet potato, batata and parsnip--all root vegetables similar to potatoes, but with a unique flavor and great variety. They're cooked in canola, safflower and/or sunflower oil, not soybean oil like so many other products. They're expensive (about $5 for a 7.5 oz bag), but so good, so I will very occasionally treat myself to a bag.

The Safeway I shopped at tonight had really great customer service. A couple of the employees even went out of their way to find me a place where I could sit and nurse the baby when she got hungry. I've been known to walk around feeding the baby discreetly while pushing the cart and selecting groceries with the other hand. But with a bigger baby and as tired as I was, I wanted to find a place to sit down. Safeway let me use their breakroom and even arranged two chairs and pulled a curtain so I could put my feet up and relax in privacy. I was very impressed.

I know I shop at one local store often because they have a supervised, free childcare area that my two older girls love to go play in. If a store set up a semi-private area with comfortable chairs where people could sit to rest, wait for someone, or nurse a baby, I'll bet that would draw more customers to shop there. I think I'll make that suggestion at the grocery stores I frequent.

At the store I bought the ingredients for a hearty stew--beef, red potatoes, carrots, celery, turnip, spinach and mushrooms. I'll add a few things like herbs from my garden, onions, garlic and squash and put it in the crock pot tomorrow morning. Usually I'd add some beans or lentils, but I'm not sure I want to risk that. I've been avoiding all legumes lately since soy bothers the baby and nuts are closely related and a huge allergen, and I'm not sure about beans.

With the colder weather, a stew will be perfect for dinner tomorrow along with a loaf of homemade bread.

With my bread machine, it's so easy to just dump in the ingredients and a few hours later there's a loaf of bread. I really like my bread machine. Actually, I have two bread machines--one was a wedding gift and I picked the second one up at a garage sale for $5. It's nice to have two, because one loaf of bread is enough for about a day for my family--or two meals if it's good bread. I like to have two or three different kinds of bread at once, especially if we have company and will go through more than one loaf of bread in a meal.

There's something about colder weather that makes food more appealing and cooking more fun. My mouth is already watering thinking of tomorrow's dinner.