Which school?

I've been doing the whole school tour thing over the last few days. Where we live you need to have picked your primary school by the end of first term and be ready to enrol at the start of the next term.

We had already picked the school we wanted to send Little B to in our minds. It's linked in with his current preschool, it uses the Walker Learning Curriculum from Prep to Grade 2, it's small (only 240 students), has a hugely involved parent and local community and fairly close to wherever we end up buying a home. But knowing in your mind and seeing in real life are two different things.

Plus I wanted to scope out a couple of other options, should our first choice turn out to be a complete dud :-)

Originally I thought we would keep him back until he was 6 but I have been duly informed by his 3 year old and 4 year old preschool teachers that it will be crazy to do so, and he will be extremely bored. Something I'd already guessed since he's starting to read already off his own bat.

But back to school tours. The first one was dismal - they ignored me at the office, then the principal was late, the tour was rushed and he felt no urge to answer my questions. I wasnt allowed to see any of the classes. Luckily this school was not on our choice list really, I just was checking out the options in the area.

Then came our favoured school. My experience couldnt have been more different!! The school tour was unhurried, I saw all classes of all ages (without asking), the prep teachers stopped to tell me about their classes, I saw the Walker Learning method in action (love it, love it, love it). The whole school was small, child centred, community minded, and passionate about what they are doing.

At least that's one decision down, and now Little B can attend the transition program when it starts in May. But it's been a bit of learning curve - I guess each age brings new experiences and challenges for both parent and child.

Quiet Potter

After the last hectic month, today was one for quiet pottering. Little B and I have just taken a day to ourselves to hang out, play games, paint and be merry.

Little B has been painting pictures of our future house (aren't I lucky - not only do I get a new house but it will have two suns!!LOL).

And a gorgeous giant lady bird has been following me around the garden as I put in climbing frames for our peas and snow peas. Apparently she's super friendly and only eats rotten weeds and snails (yes please - she can live in my garden any time!)

I've needed this down time with Little B as we seem to be caught in the joys of preschool and it's endless array of germies. So chilling out in the sunshine with my faithful side kick, a paint brush in one hand and my garden trowel in the other, makes for a really great day.

this saturday i'm grateful for for sale signs!!

This week has been hectic but today I'm grateful for:

* for sale signs - our house is officially on the market and we had our first open today *happy dance*

* a moratorium on house renovations - we've renovated 2 houses in 3 years - enough already I say LOL

* relaxing with a good book - you can never have too much relaxing and reading if you ask me

Check out Maxabella loves for more gratefulness...

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.  Inspired by soulemama

 

 

Gluten free books

I am loving these two books at the moment. Granny B has been diagnosed with coeliac disease and has gone gluten free. Which means that I have been on a learning curve with regards to cooking and baking. So the first thing I did was reserve what felt like every book at the library about gluten free cooking :-)

I knew some of the basics but even then with issues of cross contamination in the house it's still been a bit of an eye opener. Anyways, I have found these two the most helpful with ideas, suggestions and recipes. Especially the low GI guide to gluten-free cooking by Prof Jennie Brand-Miller. It has some great guidelines for getting heaps of nutrition and variety and its recipes are really tasty.

Gluten-free recipes for the conscious cook by Leslie Cerier has also been great. We like vegetarian meals so anything new to try is brilliant plus I love experimenting with new grains and foods. My only complaint would be it focuses a little too much on gluten free oats which we are avoiding at the moment. But there are some delicious stew, smoothie and porridge recipes to make...yumm.

But in the last 5 weeks, Granny B can breathe properly for the first time in 10 years, has lost 4 kgs without dieting, and her thyroid has gone down. She is no longer tired all the time, her joints dont hurt and she says her brain feels clearer than it's been in years. And that's worth learning to cook for!!

Food Dilemmas

Picture courtesy of www.daytondailynews.com

I've been having a few food dilemmas lately. I think it's probably a side result of coping with so much else (house on the market, doctors appts, sick bubbas) that my mind finds other things to worry about.

With food changes / shortages as they are, I'm finding that I have to make different food choices for our family that challenge me. I prefer to buy organic first and foremost, followed by local food. But last week, on our trip to our local organic fruit & veg grocer, I found that I couldnt buy what we needed. Nor did our local produce store have what we needed.

With Little B's allergies, I have a small-ish repertoire of fruits and vegetable choices available to me. Case in point - celery. I couldnt buy local or organic and ended up at one of the big two supermarkets and bought some there. AND it stuck in my craw. I dont want to have to buy old fruit & veg from a conglomerate - I want to support local businesses and have better access to fresh food.

How does one live seasonally if you cant eat what's in season? Deep down I know it's more important for me to feed Little B all the vegetables he can eat and I dont have the luxury of making a moral stand about where to buy his food from (though I flat out refuse to buy imported fruit & veg). Organic food is great when you're worried about toxic chemicals and being chemical free but lack of access is no reason to starve. I also completely understand that it is a luxury to worry in this way when they are people who have little or no access to fresh food full stop. 

Another thing is I like to be (read need to be) frugal, so I cant spend a trillion dollars on our food budget. Thankfully pears are cheap at the moment as the only other fruit Little B can eat is bananas (and 4 of those cost me $10 the other day).

How do you balance out your hard held beliefs with your living reality? How does an allergy family survive in such a massively changing food market / world? Obviously growing as much of our own veggies is the key but if have a bad growing season, then what?

Local is great but what if they suffer from the same poor growing season or natural disasters, then what? Too much to stretch my poor head around at the moment. But an interesting area to ponder, investigate and prepare for in our future methinks.

PS Can anyone tell I watched "The Future of Food" recently? :-)

No Oven

We've had no oven for the last week. Granny B's just up a died and then we found out you couldnt get parts for it anymore. So now we await the new oven which is on order.

So we've been experimenting with different ways to get our cooking done. I've fallen back on the breadmaker to make bread, and we've been trying out different things in the Weber Q (like roasts, grilling vegies).

Its at times like these it's really handy to have back up options and I think back up options that dont necessarily run on mains power. Obviously my breadmaker is one of these things but having different methods for a power outage situation is a great idea. We have a Weber (works on hot rocks/charcoal), and Weber Q (gas bottle) but we also have a camp oven to work over a fire (and have practiced cooking basic things like meat, damper, casseroles when we have camped).


But having no oven makes you think a tiny a bit outside the box. I've changed our desserts to fit around the methods we have to cook. And also some of our meals. But it still takes me unawares how much we rely on the oven, especially since we cook so much from scratch.

I'd love a Solar Oven like Bec & Tricia have recently posted about using. But what I'd really lurve is a wood fired oven that's is freestanding. Yes my friends that is my idea of absolute heaven. Maybe at the next house.