We aren’t all that big on desserts around here. I think that may be because we live within 15 minutes of what has been called America’s best ice cream… the local artisan creations from Jeni’s. I have no problem loading the family into the car and making a trip there once or twice a week but recently we decided that needed to change some. We aren’t worried about our health or the size of our jeans. Rather we are trying to reduce the “dining out” portion of our monthly budget. Dagnabit! Since we can easily spend $30+ for each trip to Jeni’s we decided to get creative and make more dessert at home.

The first way to accomplish this was pretty glaring. We can have Jeni’s at home by using the recipes in her book Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home. So once or twice a month we plan to make some of her delicious recipes. Secondly we want to make more frozen kefir and frozen yogurt. I have made my own frozen yogurt from homemade yogurt but I have yet to make my own frozen kefir. Sadly I let my kefir grains die over the summer and need to buy some more but when I passed some Lifeway Frozen Kefir at the market I decided to give it a whirl.

We have tried two flavors now… original and strawberry. My 5 year old and I went to town on the strawberry and ate the whole container earlier this week. Don’t tell my other kids! I reserved the original for dessert tonight and spiced it up with some homemade blackberry compote. YUM!!!

The blackberry compote was super easy. I just simmered a cup of blackberries with 3 Tablespoons of Thai Coconut Sugar and a couple tablespoons of water. When it was sufficiently reduced and thick I blended it up in the Vita-Mix and poured it over the kefir. The one pint size was perfect for me and my 3 kiddos (Dad works at night). Divide by four and serve. I can see us buying these more often in the future. At $1.24 per serving (family of four) it will definitely help us keep the budget in check.

If any of my readers want to give it a try Lifeway has graciously given me a couple coupons for a free pint. Comment to let me know you want one and I will draw a winner at random next week. Good luck!

A few months back my husband and I fell in love with coconut juice/water. I had long known the claims surrounding it and we already used coconut oil, coconut flour, and the fresh meat from young coconuts for raw desserts, coconut yogurt and coconut kefir. Coconut is just all around one of the most AMAZING foods you can consume. But despite that we didn’t buy the individual bottles of coconut juice. Water seemed to work just fine for our hydration needs.

Earlier this year though my husband kind of kicked off a new wave of fitness goals around here when he joined a workplace challenge. Unlike many workplaces in this country my husband’s actually wants to try and do something about outrageous healthcare costs and so they negotiate breaks on insurance costs by actively encouraging their employees to be healthier. The employees participate because the payoff might be a large monetary bonus or a new flat screen TV. The company benefits by having healthier employees and by getting cheaper rates when they can show their insurance carrier their progress. Well, my husband started running every day and lifting weights. He didn’t end up winning the challenge at work but he won in his mind and mine because he started looking like his teenage self again. Both of us were pretty muscular and active in years past and seeing him get closer to his old physique was enough to send me to the gym too. ;) Both of us embarked on a journey into fitness, weight lifting, running, barefoot shoes, protein shakes, food supplements, and various other things including… coconut water.

What makes coconut water different from plain old water is the electrolytes: calcium, potassium, sodium, magnesium, and phosphorous. When we exercise for any length of time and sweat a lot, our body can be depleted and the electrolytes help us recover faster. This is why sports drinks are so popular but I happen to think Gatorade and most other sports drinks taste nasty. They also have artificial sugar which is no good IMO. Coconut water is a natural source of electrolytes with natural sugars and it is low in calories and fat if you want to watch that type of thing. I happen to like the extra calories (compared to water) because it can be tough to get all your calorie requirements met when you eat heavy on the fruits and veggies. I just went over this with my mom who was not eating nearly enough calories on her almost vegan diet and replacing water with coconut water in her twice daily green smoothies was just one way to get more calories without making her feel like she was eating all day long.

Anyway, we tried and liked one of the major coconut water brands. The only issue was that I did not like the way they tasted straight up so I it was green smoothie or nothing for me. Then I came across Amy and Brian Coconut Juice on Twitter and they offered to send me some cans for review. It has turned out to be a match made in heaven.

One issue I had with some other coconut drinks is that they come in plastic bottles or non-recyclable juice boxes. I didn’t really care for either of these packaging options. Amy and Brian Coconut Juice comes in cans, which have their drawbacks as well, but I prefer them overall. No one is making a glass bottle coconut juice/water that I know of. ;) Also I like the taste 1000% better than any other brand I have tried and that may be because it is coconut water mixed with some of the coconut flesh. My fave option, as well as my husband’s, was the coconut juice with pulp. It looks a little strange but it is delicious! I LOVE the chunks of coconut swimming around and I can drink it straight up or in a green smoothie.

The cost is not to bad either. These are big cans with two servings so we can easily use half and save it for the next day if we want. My husband prefers to drink only one serving but I have no issue downing a whole can. You can buy a 12 pack on Amazon and use the subscribe & save feature to get them for  just over $25. That qualifies you for free shipping and the per can price is just over 2.00.  Hubs and I buy Amazon gift cards through Giant Eagle so we can get the fuelperks to and that ends up knocking off another $6 on two 12 packs. Right now my husband and I are both lifting 4 days a week. We will usually have Amy and Brian Coconut Juice mixed in a green smoothie on gym days. On off days we drink almond milk and whey protein powder shakes. It seems to be working out well for us right now and we plan to keep buying since we like them so much.

But what about their impact on the planet? Well, I came across an article on the Mother Jones web site that addresses the sustainability of coconut products and overall coconut farming is pretty easy on the environment. Coconuts require little fertilizer, and their giant root systems help prevent soil erosion. The tough husks also mean that pesticides are rarely used. For the most part coconut farming is still done by small scale family operations so that that is a nice perk. Shipping to the US is the biggest environmental impact, as with many products. Coconut products go on my list of acceptable compromises (along with bananas and pineapple) in our household.

Green Smoothie Recipe:

Popeye’s Coconut Surprise

1 can Amy and Brian Coconut Juice w/pulp
1 banana (frozen or fresh)
1 cup of frozen fruit ( I used peaches)
3 cups fresh spinach
1-2 scoops greens powder
Ice cubes

Last week I completed the Recyclebank challenge to green my school supplies shopping and prep. This week Recyclebank is challenging us to green the first day of school.

Luckily we did not have to get up at 6:00 a.m. like the mom in the challenge. Yikes! Our day started at 7:00 a.m. I got up and showered about a few minutes before that and then woke my daughter so she could shower next. She has to have time for her waist length hair to dry. ;) My oldest boy was already up and ready by this time, dressed in his khakis and polo uniform. He ran out the door at 7:30 when the car service his school uses arrived. On a normal day his sister would be catching a bus about 15 minutes  later but today both parents had to be at the school for the first day so she drove with us. My husband had the task of getting our youngest up and dressed while I contemplated breakfast and lunch. All three kiddos will be taking buses or a carpool to get to school/therapy so definitely the greenest option, other than our own two feet. Honestly we do like that our house is outside of the walk zone. I totally admit that. When we did the walking thing the year before last it was very good most of the time but the coldest parts of winter were pretty bad, especially when neighbors and even the school itself did not regularly shovel walks. We like the bus after that experience. We get 10 points via Recyclebank for doing so…

Although it was not smooth sailing for my youngest kiddo and his speech classes. The bus never came to pick him up and when I called the transportation department so ask what was up. They were like “duh” the bus ins’t there so take him to school yourself. The guy literally told me to stop bugging him since he was busy. Oh and he would “try” to put him on a bus home. Can I take 10 points away from that heinous anus transportation director? Grrr!

Anyway… more points were to be had for considering what you can do to green your child’s classroom, study habits, and their lunch experience. I pledged to serve some leftovers in school lunches so that less resources are used. That is easy enough for me since I already do that. During the school year dinners are planned specifically to make leftover lunches easy.

Most of the challenge in greening your school year is done in the planning and shopping phase but there is still much to be done on the first day to. I came home with a bunch of useless paper so I am off to see how much can go in my printer and how much can be used as scrap paper for my little artists. How did your first day of school go?

“Today most OB’s are very responsive to the mother’s plan for delivery,” MYTH

“Women should be permitted to make decisions regarding their care, but should also be informed of all risks, benefits, and alternatives to their selected treatment.” TRUTH

These are a set of quotes from an e-mail I received from a doctor-friend of mine concerned about my choices for childbirth. I had chosen, for my second childbirth, the same as my first, to have a water birth at a local birthing center in the care of a group of midwives.

This friend of mine was concerned for me, as his wife was due on the same day and she had previously had a cesarean section. His concerns were of potential life-threatening situations that may arise and having no “medical” staff nearby.

While his concerns may be valid, as birth is inherently risky, he has been mis-informed about the culture of birth in hospital settings. Hospitals are in place for a good reason and they can respond to serious situations quickly, but what is not a serious situation is often being treated as one. In my case, I had two very low-risk pregnancies (a requirement to be a patient at the birthing center) and felt that the birth center would be the least risky place to deliver my baby. In fact, with my first pregnancy, I did what most newly pregnant moms do and found a local respected OB to see for my routine visits. Once I began learning about the birthing process through my Bradley Method Childbirth classes and speaking to the OB about my wishes, she was not respectful AT ALL of my concerns. I was told in a matter of words that if I wanted a natural childbirth I should seek other care.

Does this sound like someone who is responsive to a mother’s plan? That’s just it though, most mother’s don’t have a plan and trust their doctor to do what’s best for her. I came in with a plan and the doctor did not like what I had to say, so I left and found a caring, loving, embracing birthing center to deliver my babies. I have had many friends and family who have had experiences in a hospital that have led them to look back and try to make a choice that more suited their situation for subsequent births. These mothers, although planning to deliver naturally in a hospital setting were confined to their beds without being allowed to move around to deal with their pain. Who wouldn’t want some medicinal relief if this were the case? Birthing in hospitals has become medicalized and what applies to one woman applies to all. All women will be confined to their beds, all women will receive pitocin at the same time, all women will get an epidural when ready. Frankly, this is sad and women should be appalled.

The good news is we DO have a choice, and we can choose better options for our births. A hospital option may be okay if your provider is understanding and willing to stick to your birthing plan. A birth center is a wonderful middle ground for those concerned with choosing a homebirth. I feel that the birthing center was as close to a homebirth as I could have ever asked for.

I felt that the midwives at the birthing center gave me the best care I could have ever asked to receive. The midwife, nurse and my husband were by my side throughout my entire labor and birth. It was quiet, dimly lit and peaceful for me and ultimately my baby. I was trusting that since the midwife was constantly by my side, she would have a better understanding of what was going on with my body and my baby than any hospital OB would, who rushes in just for the delivery. If something were to have gone wrong in my birth the midwife would recognize it immediately and we would head to the hospital.

Once I collected my thoughts and responded to my doctor-friend with why I made the decision that I did, he was still unwilling to accept the fact that hospitals may not always be the best place to give birth. I told him that my local hospital has a c-section rate of 45% and he suggested that it might be due to advanced maternal age, expectations for pain relief and obesity/diabetes. He never gave in to the fact that many hospitals just aren’t respecting women’s wishes and the time it takes to generally labor and have a baby naturally.

In the end, it makes me realize that we have a long way to go to change the minds of the general public about the birthing options out there and that women’s safety in childbirth isn’t generally better in hospitals. Women do have a choice and a hospital is just one of them.

Rachel McFadden, the Author of Happy Green Babies shares her experience with natural childbirth and the obstacles one can encounter from those who are unfamiliar with the safety of various birthing options.

TGIF! Have an awesome weekend everyone! I haven’t done a Friday wrap-up with awesome links in a loooong time (like years). And of course, it’s time I changed that.

I am a glutton for learning. I usually have 20 books checked out at the library at any given time, I am toying with the idea of taking some foreign language classes at a nearby college, and I have many hundreds of blogs in my RSS reader. I LOVE to learn and read about new stuff. That is what makes life so wonderful IMO. I am here to learn and absorb like a sponge. Lately that has been headed in the financial direction so many of my links will be to awesome financial resources and blogs.

The book that has recently changed my whole outlook on money and finances is first at bat. I have never been very responsible with money even though I have read tons of books about the issue. We don’t struggle to make ends meet but we can never manage to save much. For people who have two VERY old cars that could break down at any moment and who want to buy a house soon… this is not good.

At the library last month I picked up The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach and I am sooooo glad I did. The title almost put me off because I hate cheesy titles like that and I don’t aspire to be a millionaire either so it seemed like a waste of paper to me. It was the “automatic” part that made me check it out. In my job (I work from home) much of my income is passive… it is on autopilot. So the idea of set and it forget it is my kind of tactic. I ended up devouring the book in a couple hours an haven’t shut up about it since. It motivated me to reactivate my Mint account (which is a most awesome free money management program), encourage my husband to double his 401K contributions, set up a ING account for myself, and an IRA fund. The book not only demystified a lot of financial jargon that eluded me before … the automatic process that he recommends is spot on. I now have a habit of taking any income that comes to me and taking 12% off the top immediately… for our future.

The only thing that slightly bothered me while reading the book was that it was several years old and written before the 2008/09 financial mess. But alas he also wrote a book written last year called Start Over, Finish Rich which addresses finances in bad times. It is equally awesome.

Oh and if you are looking for good fiction books to read… I read an amazing one recently. Wither is a new trilogy that knocked my socks off. It is about a young girl who lives in the US after an attempt to genetically engineer humans so they are disease free, goes terribly wrong. A genetic mutation spread the world over now causes men to die at 25 and women to die at 20.

Okay… on to other links.

On Mint Life I spied the article Don’t Let Your Baby Blow Your Grocery Budget. It has some great advice that is pretty green too.. aka not buying that yucky processed baby food and not buying all the baby gadgets that are marketed to us.

On My Dollar Plan this morning is a great article titled 6 Surprising Benefits of the One Car Household. We went with one car for so long that even now we mostly use one car out of habit. Our second vehicle is parked 95% of the time and it saves us tons of money but there are other benefits to.

Did you know that people with cluttered and messy houses are typically the same people who have have messy finances? Yikes! Yesterday I picked up an ebook that I am actually enjoying quite a bit. I posted a link on my Facebook page along with a coupon code to get the book for 1.00. That deal is expired but you can get it for $2.00 at the moment. The book is Creating Your Perfect Cleaning Schedule. Ironically I was thinking the other day that I wanted a chore chart of some kind to check off loads of laundry and see a visual of my “success” when I manged to stay on top of it. This ebook has a couple printables and one of them is a checkbox list where you can check off each load of laundry to go in the washer and dryer. I ended up doing 5 loads yesterday! Still can’t see the bottom of the basement floor but hey.. progress is progress. Code: 200for2

LOVED this Slow Family Living Post: Do You Want to be Right or Connected? Powerful stuff.

The Artful Parent posted an awesome tutorial on making Leaf and fern print t-shirts. I have some blank tees that could really use some fern printing on them to spice them up! I so want to do this!

DealPulp is offering a  group buy deal on stainless steel cups. We have had some of the steel tumblers for years and we love them still. They are actually pretty hard to find so when I saw this deal I knew I had to share it. There is also a sale on BabyLegs until 9/6. Use code HALFOFF to get 50% off. That makes most pairs only $6. We had to get some of the candy corn BabyLegs.

And lastly the Nourished Kitchen is offering an awesome ecourse on How to Cook Real Food. Learn to prepare wholesome, traditional foods easily with this online course.

Spied any awesome articles or blog posts this week? Share below.