Worse in the a.m., better by p.m.

It's interesting how instant the effects are - as soon as something bad goes into his tummy, it shows up on his face a few hours later. It's in fact quite amazing that I can track his eczema day by day, moment by moment. His face didn't look so great when he woke up. I've decided to put up just his chin instead of his entire face, even though I can't get enough of his face and love showing off his little face. But you can see how it has gotten a bit redder this morning.


Breakfast was the usual - fruit: apples, mangos (high sugar, not really great for anti-fungal diet, but what the heck, my kids can't get enough of them) and pears. Each of them ate one whole fruit in each category. Yep, they can pack it in, especially when they know all they're getting for breakfast is fruit. Lunch was simple - some cornish hen, which I roasted in a Deni convection oven, one of those cute little round glass bowl ovens that will cook your frozen meat to perfection and it did, with a side of parboiled spinach with oil (olive + Udo's DHA oil). My kids much prefer the cornish hen, which we of course call, "chicken" (every white meat is chicken, except for pork, which can sometimes be mistaken for chicken as well, at least in my family) and I had to insist that my son eat his spinach. My daughter is well-trained, so she ate most of her spinach first and learned to savor the best for last - she's the best.


Spinach is an amazing food or a superfood if you want to use the proper buzz word. I swear my son's face gets better every time he eats spinach. Kale is amazing like that too. It must be the vitamin A or maybe it's the chlorophyll. I'm never too sure. All I know is that I can't go too long (1 or 2 days max) without serving my kids spinach or kale. It is sooooo good for them, that I will tie them down on the floor or give them an hour of time-out to make sure they eat it! I'm kidding, mostly, but thankfully, I've never had to do that. I have, however, allowed meal time to extend to 2+ hours because food was still sitting in the bowl. Mama always wins - until she gets tired and decides to give in.


Dinner was simple too, as I'm trying to recover his chin back to where was. I do think that the key is balance and I suppose this principle is what we should adhere to for ourselves as well. We can junk out one day, but get back on track and eat well tomorrow and the rest of the week perhaps. How long you sustain the healthy eating days or junk food days will determine your overall health. Everything moves in cycles, life is all about cycles, things loop around and back many times over until Darkness hits us and all lights go out. OK I digress again, dinner yes - cauliflower and carrots. I parboiled them with some virgin coconut oil, then sprinkled a mix of spices into it (curry, Ayurvedic blend + Nutritional yeast vegetable seasoning - recipe from Traci at bestfoodist.com). My kids don't like plain steamed veggies anymore. They ate out in restaurants too often, tastebuds got used to the royal Salt Treatment, so now I have to find ways to make food flavorful without being too salty or spicy.


I had meant to put up a pajama pic to show how well the night ended, but it got stuck in my Samsung S860. I snapped it not realizing I didn't have an SD card in it and I can't find the USB connector cord to get the photos out. Why do they give you an internal drive anyway? And why doesn't the camera tell you when you have no card in there?


I'll end on this note - it makes a huge difference the quality of the meat you use. I bought a big log of pork loin for $1.49/lb. on sale once, used a fancy recipe from one of my 50 cookbooks and it was delish. At this price you know the pork was loaded with antibiotics and fed GMO soy or whatever. I decided not to care, because sometimes I think everything I'm doing is totally crazy, that the whole organic health movement is a conspiracy to get us to spend more money, etc. Sometimes I just want to be able to afford a new wardrobe or a trip to Italy and stop caring about what I shove into my mouth. You know what I mean? But there are always consequences that come back to haunt us. Next day my son's face was pretty bad. I had done my usual, gave him huge portions of vegetables with the pork, nothing else seemed to stand out or caused such a reaction in the past. So deductive reasoning would lead me to believe it was the pork. From that point on, I only give him the good stuff, the stuff without all the chemicals. No big deal I tell myself, as too much meat is not good for any of us and many of the health gurus tell you that meat should only be 20% of your daily diet anyway. But who does that? And if you're doing meat, then you should skip the grains, so it's one or the other. No kidding. I did not care about health until after I had kids, was a proud, overweight foodie (don't trust thin people's restaurant recommendations), so I struggle with overwhelming moments of rebellion against all this health advice.