In my post on Healthy Cookware I mentioned that I was trying a new-to-me brand of safer pots and pans called Xtrema by Ceramcor. They sent me a skillet a few weeks back and I have now had a chance to use it in the kitchen. Their pans are high temperature ceramic that is non-scratch and easy to clean. I don’t see a non-stick claim on their site but in my opinion they are very much non-stick. They can be used on stove top, oven, under broiler, freezer, frig, microwave and on a barbeque grill. The company recommends that you use nylon, silicone, or wood cooking tools with these pans but as you can see in the photo above I used  a metal spatula for cooking eggs. I don’t like plastic or silicone spatulas and wooden ones are too thick for flipping eggs. It didn’t scratch the pan but for all other types of cooking I used wood spoons.

For fried eggs this pan was great. They cooked like a dream and they flipped very nicely without sticking. The pan was also a snap to clean. I also used it to make some fresh fish for the kids, and also to saute mushrooms and onions for other dishes. IMO it took a bit longer for food to cook with this skillet than in my stainless steel skillet. That said, I must also share that I recently went from cooking on an electric range to a gas range again and I am NOT digging the cook times for gas, so that could be the issue as well.

This isn’t my new favorite pan or anything but it is very nice for cooking eggs on weekday mornings, or browning up some mushrooms for lunch… when I don’t have too many people to cook for. It is super easy to clean, which makes me VERY happy and it is a nice looking skillet as well. I am happy to give this healthier skillet a home. I would like to try the Xtrema Wok and give it a nice test run as well.

Why Its Healthy:

* Handmade using natural gas, clay and water

* No trace metals or chemicals leach from the cooking surface

* There is no harmful PTFE coating and it produces no harmful PFOA gas which can occur with most popular petroleum based non-stick coatings.

Why Its Green:

* Materials are inorganic natural minerals from our earth’s crust

* The non-scratch ceramic cooking surface on the Xtrema cookware is non-reactive and 100% non-toxic

* Durability – These pans will last for a long time and cannot be scratched… even if you use steel wool. There is even a 50 year warranty.

Not much going on… just trying to stay cool during this heat wave. We have a nifty indoor/outdoor temp display so as soon as the outdoor temperature gets cooler than the indoor temp (around 10:00 PM) we throw open the windows and put fans in them. Those stay until about 9:00 AM. I actually get pretty cold in my room at night and LOVE it!

Plus I just like the look of box fans in the windows.. reminds me of summer days on the farm when I was a kid. Fresh picked Hydrangeas from the yard are a welcome site too.

This two younger kids pretty much go from sandbox to pool all day long.. back and forth. I spend the day cleaning up the sand in the house (and in my bed) and washing clothes that get tossed on the floor sopping wet. My older son broke his arm rollerblading so he is limited in what he can do outside… thus he is spending more time with his DS.

Meals are simple and easy when it is this hot… watermelon for breakfast, pasta salad for lunch, egg salad sandwiches for dinner or veggie soup in bread bowls. For dessert we had homemade peach frozen yogurt… so GOOD!!!!!

What are doing on hot summer weekends?

Not All Who Wander Are Lost –  Lord of the Rings

The above is my favorite quote. I have a necklace with that saying engraved on it even. My greatest desire has always been to wander.

Many months ago (if you recall) I blogged about the idea that my family and I might move to Costa Rica and stay there for a year or so. It was VERY exciting to me, to realize that we could afford to go on my salary. Yes, we would have to sell off most of our belongings (which we did in great part) and we could not maintain a home here in the US as well … but we could go live elsewhere on my income. We put things in motion and started researching places to live and the customs in Costa Rica, as well as the visa requirements. It was a source of stress to think that my work at home income would be the ONLY income we would have but I wanted to make that leap.

Our dreams were kind of dashed when we started talking to relatives. The hints were not so subtle that our leaving would be like knifing them in the heart.  And if someone took the children I love more than life, out of the country for a year, I too would be upset. I can understand and so we abandoned that dream with a heavy heart. Maybe if we hadn’t… things might be different now.

I would still love to do more traveling because it has always been a big part of life up until I had kids. My green lifestyle would make travel a challenge but one that kind of excites me. I still hope to find a compromise that will make some extended travel possible. We may have to set down some roots and expand my income so we can maintain a “home base” that we can return to often. Or we can broaden the plan to include a travel group larger than the 5 people in our family. Maybe we could make our home base mobile via a motorhome that could be parked for relatively cheap when we wanted to go beyond the borders of our continent. I follow the blog of several families who have veggie oil motorhomes and they travel the US in them. There are several states I want to see before I decide on the best place to set up our base camp. We have many options for our wandering hearts and I cannot give up on the dream.

I love to read books about families who have made the leap….

Monkey Dancing – About a man who took his two kids on a round the world trip after a painful divorce.

All in the Same Boat - It is about a trial lawyer and a teacher and how they decide to quit their jobs, buy a boat and sail away. They even raise two daughters from infancy on their boat.

One Year Off: Leaving It All Behind for a Round-the-World Journey with Our Children – About a man and his wife who sell off everything they own and use the money to travel with their kids for a full year.

One family, whose blog I follow, just released a new book called “Extended World Travel – How to take a break from the rat race and travel the world with your family for 6 months – or more!” . This family of five is Swedish and they travel for large chunks of time… like 6 months or more, in places all over the world and this book is a compilation of their formula for how they are able to travel this way.

Recent developments in my life have made me realize that the rat race is sucking the life out of us. We need to Grab Life By the Disco Balls and Dance. There is no time like the present and repeatedly ignoring our dreams is not working out for us.

This is my one and only life, and its a great and terrible and short and endless thing, and none of us come out of it alive. – Holly – P.S. I Love You

Do you have dreams of extended travel or some of other wild dream? Are you working towards it every day?

I am raising a real “girly” girl and that is kind of hard for me because I am a total tomboy. I let my hair air dry with barely a comb through. I wear no makeup. I like really old tees and flip-flops. I love action movies. My older son and I have tons of stuff we can do for mother/son days but finding something to do with my daughter is a bit harder for me.

When asked what she would like to do for some mom/daughter time, I am inwardly groaning at her answers… makeovers, ear piercing, coloring on her hair, manicures, and pedicures. This is alien territory. I think I would rather have some teeth pulled before I will wear a set of acrylic nails or sit through an air brushing session.

But as long as I don’t have to sit in the chair I have opted to take my daughter for a monthly salon day. There won’t be any hair coloring but I can deal with children’s manicures and pedicures. I don’t want to squash her interests just because they are not mine. Although I am very nervous about all the potential for exposure to chemicals. We can request nail polish without nasties since many brands make safer polishes and I can use safer polish remover before we go, so that the nail techs don’t have to use theirs. But when they poured some blue powder in her foot bath today I had NO idea what was in it. I will have to research these things.

All in all though, I think the big smile on her face all day long makes the time well spent. She made new friends, chatting with all the little old ladies getting their blue highlights and foot massages, and the stuff she told people! Geez Louise! She told the lady next to her that she toilet papered people’s barn on April Fool’s Day… WITHOUT bothering to mention that this was on Farmville!!! Everyone there thought she was hysterical.

The biggest surprise of the day was that I have to admit that even this tomboy mom wouldn’t mind having some of that cute toenail polish! I might find myself in that chair next to her after all.

Last October I posted about Ohio Issue 2 and why I thought it was a monumental mistake to vote yes on it. Basically it gave agri-business representatives and their appointees the ability to create an agricultural board with unchecked power over livestock rules and regulations. It passed in Ohio, which is no surprise because this is an agribusiness state.

But imagine my surprise this week when the conservative vote to appoint this Animal Care board and block animal rights legislation has now come full circle to bite them in the behinds. I did not see this one coming!!

Our lovely Governor here in Ohio, Ted Strickland, came to a deal with that board along with the HSUS (Humane Society) and have committed to recommend the enactment of a series of eight landmark reforms on animal welfare. These regulations would phase out battery cages for chickens, hog crates, and veal crates. It would also effectively ban ownership and breeding of many exotic animals (think tigers, bears, alligators, venomous snakes, etc.) and it would deal a serious blow to puppy mills and dog breeders.

I never would have imagined that this board would essentially “sell out” the farmer’s and animal breeders that put them into power and strike a deal with the bleeding heart liberals. It is a HUGE step to facing animal cruelty issues that plague farms in Ohio. I am certain it has much to do with a certain video of a dairy farmer in Ohio that was released about a month ago. Voters decided to trust agri-business in Ohio when vocal farmers stood up and said that this board would protect small family farms and that farmers were uniquely positioned to know what is best for animals and that they will not allow blatant animal cruelty. A video showing the owner of a prominent dairy farm stabbing baby calves in the face with a pitchfork and pummeling them in the face with a fist up to forty times, has perhaps made voters aware that we cannot trust this industry to regulate itself.

HSUS was set to put a new bill on the Ohio ballot and instead of letting that happen.. this compromise was made. This is an awesome move by our Governor. Go Teddy!

In other animal rights news… California deserves props too! I saw this on Huffpo today:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed A.B. 1437, a bill backed by The Humane Society of the United States that requires that starting in 2015 all shell (whole) eggs sold in California must come from hens who were able to stand up, lie down, turn around, and fully extend their limbs without touching one another or the sides of an enclosure. In other words: California will become a cage-free state.