The best kept secret on milk must be shared here! Okay, maybe I’m the only one in the dark on this.

Hubby had a Braum’s ice cream craving last night…so while in the restaurant, we moseyed over to check out the price of their milk. Only $3.15 a gallon compared to the over $4 that our local grocery store is charging! Wow.

But even better, they advertise on their dairy cabinets that their dairy cows are not given antibiotics or growth hormones, etc…basically this is organic milk! (I’m not claiming that it is, can’t remember the exact details…but still very impressive!)

A while back I chatted with our nutritionist, aka, applied kinesiologist, about wanting to find a local dairy from which to buy raw milk…one with a more natural approach to production. Dr. T said that they are really hard to find because they, for the most part, already have a full clientèle and no one is talking/sharing! She’s been sworn to secrecy as to their source of organic milk, b/c the dairy farmer doesn’t need the headache of more rules and regs and more customers than he can keep happy.

But now I’ve got Braum’s!

Do you have a Braum’s in your area? Psst, a dozen eggs there was $1.43! (Cheep!)

This is so scary! Juli emailed me this link today, and I felt it was worth alerting all of you. A young boy died hours after swimming, even after walking home with his mom and sister…later his mom found him in bed, his face covered with a ’spongy white material’…

Read the article for more details and signs to watch for.

That’s what it’s been about at my house this past couple weeks. Hubby and I finally purchased our dream exercise equipment, after watching eBay carefully for the perfect deals. I’ve wanted a Gazelle Supertrainer for years, and he’s wanted a Total Gym…you know, the kind Chuck Norris endorses? Well, I couldn’t get to town to utilize a gym membership, so we brought the gym to me! And I’m loving it, especially when dh works out with me!

And all this exercising is really making me aware of the foods I’m eating. After all, who wants to spend 45 minutes burning fat to put it back on again during a ten minute snack fest? So I’ve been cutting my meals in half, and the first week I lost a whopping 9 pounds! I’ve lost two more since then, and it’s blowing my mind how much food I used to eat. In trying to analyze it, I think “eating more” during my years of pregnancy and breastfeeding (I bf my girls more than a year when possible) became a habit that I never realized. I’m not a big snacker, but I do love real food. In becoming cognizant of eating only until I’m satisfied–not quite full, but not hungry, I’ve noticed that I’m losing the familiar “urge” to eat more. It’s great stuff!  

I’ve also been reading helpful weight loss tips, some from magazines, some from the net, and have gleaned some from friends. Here are the ones I’ve found helpful:

Paul McKenna’s 4 Golden Rules

I knew nothing about this man before a friend began talking about some of his techniques and “golden rules” of weight loss. So I looked him up online and began reading his site, and the forum comments. Gleaned a bunch of goodies. I really liked his tip of squeezing the thumb and forefinger of your left hand together and thinking nasty thoughts about the foods you’re craving when those inevitable desires arise! It works! We ate at Pizza Hut after church this past week, and I opted for salad bar only…watching my family eat slice after slice was hard until I tried this and my stomach actually ceased growling at me! For motivation, and more on these ‘rules’, definitely visit www.mckenna.com.

The Maker’s Diet

My friend Deborah perked my interest in this one, and I immediately got my hands on a copy of the book. You can check Jordan S. Rubin’s book and testimony out at this link: The Maker’s Diet. It’s based on Biblical guidelines for eating, cleansing, etc. I just finished the book, and highly recommend it. Jordan Rubin was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and after seeing over 70 doctors and health practitioners, he looked like a concentration camp survivor…definitely at death’s door. He regained his health 180% by in-depth study of the Bible and following God’s prescription for diet and health. Fascinating reading! And an especially informative Appendix at the book’s end contains simple and delicious sounding recipes, resources (books and websites) for places to purchase organic foods, essential oils (Biblical ones!!), sweeteners, grains and flours, popcorn…non-toxic household cleaners and odor removers…it’s unbelievable what’s available out there. Informative read!

Don’t Get Distracted

Savor each bite. We’re aiming for chewing this a few more times (25-30 or more) than your normal mom-in-a-hurry bite-and-gulp routine. Concentrate on your meal, and on stopping when you feel satisfied. This has really worked for me. That and drinking a ton of lemon-water if I don’t quite feel satisfied when I’m determined to stop!

Get Distracted

Sometimes you just have to let a little time go by and your common sense will overtake those cravings. Get busy doing something else. I REALLY wanted one of the homemade biscuits I’d made to go with supper the other night. I reasoned that I’d skipped the mashed potatoes and gravy, and only had half a piece of the chicken fried steak, so one little biscuit wouldn’t hurt anything, right? Well, I put it off, thinking it would be a nice treat after we’d cleaned up the kitchen, but I kept eyeing the ziplock bag of leftovers, wondering if it was really worth it. By the time we finished clean-up, I was glad I hadn’t gone for it. There are still biscuits in the bag two days later, untouched by yours truly! (Can you tell I don’t feel at all deprived?)

Be Too Smart to Be Tricked

Foods with the appealing titles of “Home-style Fried Chicken” or “Grandma’s Sticky Buns” tempt us, saying that the food must “taste better”…nah, probably not. Think how long you’d have to work out to burn those calories that you’ll forget minutes after having consumed them!

Keep Track of What You Put in Your Mouth

I haven’t been doing this, but I think it’s a great idea to help us be more aware of how much mindless consumption we’re guilty of. One article I read advised to write down every food before you put it in your mouth.

I’ve never been a calorie counter either, but my Gazelle keeps track of how many calories I’ve burned and a 30 minute workout on there says I’ve burned 160-300 calories (depending on how fast and furious I’m going!) so I got online and started researching some of the foods I’d been eating at CalorieKing.com. Yikes! Go get educated…the bottom line is that most fruits and veggies have barely any calories, while the hamburgers hubby fixed for us the other night each contained 218 calories, plus the 70 calorie slice of cheese, the 1 calorie leaf of romaine lettuce, two slices of tomato at 3 calories each…equals an almost 300 calorie meal. I skipped the bun and ketchup, but had a little mustard at 0 cals. Think I’m obsessed? Well, it’s been interesting correlating the two, burning calories and consuming them. (Yeah, I’ve never seriously dieted before!)

Keep Healthy Snacks Around

I’m snacking more diligently to keep from “starving” between meals. Baby carrots, watermelon cubes, celery sticks, bell pepper, broccoli, two or three tablespoons of tuna fish with lime juice and garlic (as a veggie dip), 6 oz of V-8 Juice…things under 35 calories per serving. They’ve really taken the edge off.

Stay Away From Fat-free and Sugar-free Products

I just read a very informative book called Sweet Poison on the dangers of Aspartame. Really wanted to review it on the blog but ran out of time. If you or anyone you know likes diet pop, or diet/sugar-free/fat-free anything, you need to read this book. Really. It could save your/their life. Did you know that Aspartame is even in children’s Tylenol? It’s in most of the available yogurts, sugar-free gum (both things we consumed prior to reading this book), etc. The author’s  compelling testimony of being diagnosed with a fatal thyroid disorder, Grave’s Disease; she was about to have her thyroid destroyed by doctors (irradiated) when she did her own research and found that her devastating health problems (hair loss, vision problems, migraines, weight gainall tracked back to her daily diet pops and overuse of Aspartame. Within 30 days of giving up Aspartame products (de-toxing, essentially) she was back on the road to good health, and her doctor eventually announced her cured of Grave’s disease, which is uncurable. Anyway, visit the link, it’s much more convincing than I am! (My girls are mourning the loss of sugar-free gum…b/c we don’t chew gum otherwise!)

Well, there’s a lot of “thought for food” to keep ya’ll busy! I do want to stress that it’s not about starving yourself, it’s about moderation! There are SO many ways to cut back, as I’m discovering. I’d love to hear your favorite tips in comments!!

Hello all!

I thought I better update you friends on our situation with my seven year old daughter’s upcoming foot surgery. In case the details are fuzzy, here’s the quick long rundown:

In October she got a splinter in her foot from sliding down in our hallway–in sock feet even. Evidently there was a slivered section in our wood floor–argh! I got out an immense one-inch sliver here at home, and took her to the doctor to have him dig around for the rest of it. He thought he got it all. About a month later, she developed two purplish cysts further down on the bottom of her foot. So back to the doctor we went. Second painful experience with the doctor. He lanced the cysts and drained them, didn’t see anything to worry about. Hmm.

When the cysts refilled, we took her two different places. First to a podiatrist who ran a lot of expensive tests. A sonogram finally showed us that she still had over an inch long splinter in her foot. He recommended surgery.

For a more natural approach, we went to a Chiropractor who practices applied kinesiology and prescribes nutritional whole food supplement regimens. She assured us over and over that leaving the splinter in would be no big deal. It was walled off, encapsulated in the cysts, and this doc thought our daughter’s body was putting up a big enough fight against it on her own. So she put our daughter on a rigorous nutritional supplement routine to build her immune system up.

Still, that’s one big splinter and we weren’t feeling led strongly either way. So we kept asking for our friends and family to pray for wisdom and scheduled the surgery eight weeks out. Buying decision making time, essentially. I kept thinking about how sometimes you just have to step out and trust God to shut the door if you’re making the wrong move.

So this last Tuesday we had our second pre-op appointment, this time with the podiatrist. He went over the what-to-expects of surgery and we left feeling very unsettled. First, he didn’t think the hospital would allow one of us to stay with our daughter during surgery. Ha. Did they really think they could keep us out? Yeah right. Second, the anesthesia plan was to use general anesthesia, which means the whole tube in her throat route and someone pumping oxygen into her at the bedside. Oh, and he kept emphasizing that we would have no idea how she would react to the anesthetic, and talked about the possibility of death…right in front of our 7 year old!

Now, hubby was really getting second thoughts. Of the two of us, he’d been more inclined to choosing surgery. So he lined me out to make several phone calls to “trusted medical” friends…translated: they have the same natural philosophy that we do, while yet being well versed in the medical field. These people all advised us against surgery. They felt the scar tissue and nerve damage weren’t worth the risk, especially as the splinter isn’t causing our daughter any pain whatsoever.

So we’re following their advice. One of them was the MD that delivered our first two girls. She left the family practice clinic to pursue alternative health. Would you believe that she told me a story of a girl who stepped on a toothpick, and after digging around on the girl’s foot a few times, they decided to let it be. A few months passed and the toothpick worked its way out the top of the girl’s foot.

Thank you all for your prayers and for all your previous comments and emails concerning our daughter’s situation. We’d appreciate continued prayers for protection and eventual resolution of this stubborn splinter!

I apologize that it’s taken me so long…but the fact is, I am not completely sold out to the baking soda &vinegar hair wash theory.

For any newbies to the blog, here’s the link to my first post on the subject. It outlines the basic how-to’s and whys of going “no poo”. If you check it out, don’t miss the great comments from others who gave it a try. And read on here, because I haven’t completely given up on the idea!

I gave it a go for almost a month, and one night I just went berserk. We’d been invited over to play cards with friends and a quick glance in the mirror at my hair left me feeling sick. I grabbed a small mirror and looked at the back of my head, and my hair just looked lank and iron gray. Ugh. In a frenzy I bent over the tub and sold out to bubbly shampoo. Within minutes my baking soda & vinegar experiment was washing down the drain.

But! I discovered that giving my hair a long rest from shampoo really restored it! My hair, after the quick shampoo, dried so soft and silky–it was amazing. So I left the soda and vinegar in the bathroom and still use it twice a week with great results. I’m also experimenting with natural shampoos, unwilling to go back to typical Wal-Mart brands that leave my scalp itchy and are full of chemicals.

My oldest daughter loves the baking soda and vinegar wash. Her waist-length hair is thick and unmanageable, and as long as we brush it out before washing, it combs out as if it had a coat of conditioner on it. Best of all, it’s so gentle on her flake-prone scalp. She’s the real reason I realized going cheap on shampoo isn’t smart. (Unless you’re talking baking soda & vinegar–b/c nothing is cheaper!)

Right now we’re trying out a brand called Naked Naturals. I happened to see it in Walgreens for a buy one get one free special. It smells of citrus and boasts of the following:

• No Lauryl or Laureth Sulfates
• No DEA or TEA
• No animal by-products
• No artificial colors
• No synthetic fragrance
• No harsh chemicals
• PH-balanced
• Not tested on animals

We like it!

Have any of the rest of you been more faithful to the “no poo” experiment than I have? Would love to hear about it in comments, and also if you’ve found a favorite alternative to take the place of the typical shampoos and conditioners.

And what’s the big deal anyway? Well, check out the ingredients in your toothpaste and baby wipes (and shampoo) among other things. See anything called “Propylene Glycol”? It happens to be the main ingredient in antifreeze and hydraulic fluids and is commonly used as solvent! It’s a toxic chemical, and so is Sodium Laureth Sulfate. Want to know more? Here’s an article that tells exactly what these two toxins are in, what health problems they cause, and why we should avoid them.

It’s called MRSA, a drug-resistant strain of staph that is getting out of control in U.S. hospitals. Check this article out in it’s entirety for a sobering read, and then Google “MRSA stay out of hospitals” for more. This is precisely why I don’t want my daughter’s inch long sliver cut out of her foot in a hospital:

“If you are an American admitted to a hospital in Amsterdam, Toronto, or Copenhagen these days, you’ll be considered a biohazard. Doctors and nurses will likely put you into quarantine while they determine whether you’re carrying methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a deadly organism that is increasingly common stateside, especially in our hospitals. And if you test positive for methicillin-resistant staph, or MRSA, these European and Canadian hospital workers will don protective gloves, masks, and gowns each time they approach you, and then strip off the gear and scrub down vigorously when they leave your room. The process is known as “search and destroy”—a combat mission that hospitals abroad are undertaking to prevent the spread of germs that resist antibiotics. Our own health authorities, meanwhile, have been strangely reluctant to join the assault.”~excerpt from Squash the Bug by Arthur Allen

He goes on to say:

“In the United States, MRSA kills an estimated 13,000 people every year, which means that a hospital patient is 10 times as likely to die of MRSA as an inmate is to be murdered in prison.”

Now, fear and worry are sin, and God hasn’t “given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7) And as hard as it is for me to imagine that my 7 yo daughter’s 1.25″ (3.6 cm) sliver is okay just “stagnating” in her foot, it’s even harder for me to blithely drop her into the hands of a hospital surgeon and pretend that it’s not a big deal.

The alternative therapy lady we visited ended up practicing Applied Kinesiology on 7 yo. It’s a little weird, even for a “wacko” like me who relies more heavily on her chiropractor than her medical doctor! Even so, I was impressed at this doctor’s knowledge and advice. She says that 7 yo is fighting several infections in her lungs, kidney, liver, etc. But dh and I still don’t have clear direction on which way to go.

Podiatrist says the sliver must come out. The Alternative Doctor says we can fight it out with nutritional supplements.

What to do? Any input? And believe me, I’m not trying to be an alarmist about the MRSA. Do your own research, or better yet, share your story in comments.

My 7 yo and her calamities will be the reason I’m completely gray by January of next year. No kidding.

Busy day today. Friday mornings are reserved for Bible study and lunch, usually here at my house, with my parents. Our recent six inch snowfall, and the slippery hill up to our home made an easy excuse for me to pack up the girls and my half of our lunch and go over to Mom and Dad’s. Main reason, we have four-wheel drive. They don’t!

We had a great time with them, and afterward headed North to one of my favorite shopping towns…hoping to find the “perfect gift” for my nephew, in time for tonight’s birthday party. Mission accomplished, and in time to swing by Baskin Robbins for ice creams all around. (You would have thought I was Santa Claus, btw, my girls were that excited about single dips!)

We arrive home with just enough time to put away groceries and get everyone changed into party clothes and while I’m in the shower I hear those words every parent hopes they never hear while they’re in the shower…or anywhere else, for that matter: “MOM! Come quick, (7 yo) is hurt, BAD!”

Argh! What does BAD mean anyway? That I still have time to rinse the soap off, or that I need to wear bubbles to the ER?  

The high-pitched wailing soon answers my question. I’m toweling off as my daughter stumbles into the bathroom, blood all over her chin and running out her mouth. Immediately I do what all parents do when faced with a crisis. Pray. Actually, it was more of a yelp for help. I hollered to 10 yo to look up the dentist’s phone number in the phone book and got an instant migraine when I saw two of my 7yo’s upper middle teeth hanging sideways and shoved back in her mouth.

Why is it, when things like this happen, you can’t remember ANYTHING? I honestly think that is why husbands are so necessary. Yes. Anyway. I could NOT remember if my dear girl had lost BOTH upper front teeth! I knew she’d lost one, and thought she’d lost both, I mean, don’t most kids lose their two front uppers and bottoms early on in their tooth loss journey? I knew one of the ones dangling was a primary tooth, but the other one looked dangerously adult!

I know something about myself now. When it comes to my children, I am not good in a crisis. I managed to get myself dressed and OF COURSE, it’s after dentist hours, so I bother mine at home, only one problem, he’s not home, not even near our fair city. OF course. But his wife is a gem and gives me all of his dentist friends’ phone numbers. Hee hee. Only they’re not home either, nor at their offices, nor answering their tellies. Maybe they know better on Friday nights. A-hem.

So hubby FINALLY gets home. Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you what happened while I was in the shower. Evidently in their excitement over aforementioned birthday party, and possibly still high on Jamoca Oreo ice cream cones, my two oldest girls were wrestling around (yes, girls rough-house too, amazing isn’t it?) and oldest kicked middle in the mouth. So oldest is weeping the whole time, heartsick that she’s left her dear sis maimed for life. Because mother dear (that’d be me) was absolutely sure that it was a permanent tooth hanging half in and half out of 7yo’s mouth. And I’m really praying by now, because when I ran out of dentist numbers to harass, I tried calling my parents, and both sisters and couldn’t get through to ANY of them to have them pray!

Hubby and his parents are all here by now and having a pow-wow crouch around 7 yo’s open mouth. Of course, all the bleeding has subsided and it’s easier to see that the duo teeth are both primary. THANK YOU, Lord! Our dentist’s wife called around that time and said her hubby would be back in town in an hour and a half, and would meet us at his office. So we sent our 10 yo and our 3.5 yo along to the birthday party with their grandparents, and sweet-talked 7 yo into yanking the looser of the teeth out herself. The dentist easily got the other one out, and pronounced it good to go.

When we got to the birthday party, 7 yo ran up to big sis and said, “Thank you for knocking out my teeth!” Seriously, it was a blessing, because 7 yo has a tooth condition in which her primary roots don’t dissolve, so her loose baby teeth take FOREVER to fall out. She usually has to have them removed by our dentist, so that her permanent ones have a shot at coming in straight. So, yes, “all things do work together for good.”

Btw, if your child does happen to lose one of their permanent teeth, don’t put it in milk (The ER told us to do that if it finished coming out–this was when I was convinced it was permanent). Our dentist said that the best thing to do, as long as you aren’t worried about it being swallowed, is to have them tuck it in their bottom lip. The saliva protects it and keeps it till the dentist can put it back. Getting them in quickly guarantees it will bond better and heal as good as new.

Well, my tooth fairy duties are calling me. How much do you think these two teeth should be worth?

My oldest is helping her Grand-dad work calves this 19 degree weatherful mornin’; my middle daughter is lying on the couch watching Little House on the Prairie after a miserable night of fever and little sleep, and youngest is still in her footie pajamas, coughing but happy.

After just discussing my stance on letting fevers run their course in the comments of the Vick’s VapoRub on Feet post, you all would have been raising your eyebrows at my frenzied run for the cupboard and some Tylenol last night.

Meltaways rolled from my palm, onto the countertop, then off to the floor. At the same time, my little girl cowered into me, alternating between hiding her eyes and furtively looking beyond us to the doorway. If you’ve ever seen Sixth Sense you know how creeped out I was. She’d woken up, sweaty and disoriented, hallucinating. What was she seeing, what scared her so much? People. Lots of them. Ones I couldn’t see.

She’d been running a 104F fever (40.0 C for my NZ friends) for probably 4 hours at that point, but since she was resting well, I wasn’t worried about her needing Tylenol. And I’m still not sure the Tylenol did her any favors, because well within its 4 hour parameter she had two more episodes–hallucinations. It was so strange, because we had her giggling, and listing off all the names of our dogs, her cousins, the 27 books of the New Testament and right in the middle of seeming lucid, she just went off about the giants in the kitchen and begged me to turn off the kitchen light so she wouldn’t see them anymore. Of course we prayed for/with her and I held her close on the couch most of the night, but what a horrible experience. She did this last year when she had influenza but somehow I’d forgotten.

This morning her fever is 103F. Her hot little forhead is heating up cold washcloths almost as fast as I can replace them, but thankfully she is drinking 2-3 cups of liquid an hour. Thanks to the hydrogen peroxide treatments she has little to no cold symptoms anymore, only the fever and malaise, though she did vomit once last night…

Thank you all for praying, my little girl needs it! I’m just so thankful for plumbing, and that midnight jaunts to the outhouse in zero degree weather aren’t necessary!

On the home front, dh finished the “mini-bathroom” remodel up last night. We are rejoicing to have a working shower and bathtub again! We even found the exact match to our bath tile-board, so we only had to replace the one wall section…

How are all of you guys this end of the week Friday?

Cough medicines are not only hazardous for your child’s health, they do no good whatsoever. At least in my humble experience. I wonder if they’d make a good weedkiller?

Anyhow, I just have to pass along this great information because I’ve tried it several times now, on different kids, and my mom has tried it–all with success…it’s just so amazing, I can’t not share it with you!

It all started with an email forward. As with most email forwards, there is no way of contacting the original author either to fall down at her feet and praise her blessed name or to ask her permission to publish this at my site, but I figure she probably won’t mind. Forwards being forwards, and all.

Anyway, my mil sent this to me, the Vick’s skeptic that I am…only because I’ve suffered through having it on my nostrils and throat one too many times throughout my childhood and never thought it made an ounce of difference, will all the Vick’s VapoRub survivors say aye, aye? Aye, aye.

But I could barely sleep one night due to my 3 year old’s coughing. Finally I decided to try the vaporub on her, but she was in footie pajamas and on the top bunk so I figured Vicks being Vicks, I’d smear some on her throat and chest and call it good. Half an hour later–she’s still hacking. In fact, she ended up coughing so hard she vomited.

So here I was, at midnight, cleaning her up. Since she was out of her PJ’s at this point, I went ahead and slathered some Vick’s on the soles of her feet. Followed it up with socks, clean sheets and re-tucked the exhausted little thing in bed.

Nary a cough the rest of the night. Nor the rest of the week, thanks to me smartening up and applying Vick’s before PJ time each night. And as I said, I put my 7 yo through the same ritual when she was fighting the chest cold a week later. Worked great. And ask my mom how it allowed her to get much needed rest at night during her own cold.

And now with no further ado from your’s truly: the email forward that started it all…

VICKS VAPORUB…TRY IT, IT WORKS

I wish I’d known this when my family was young during winter colds and coughs. I am going to try it myself. Share with young parents.

Isn’t life strange? When we had a lecture on Essential Oils, they told us how the foot soles can absorb oils. Their example: Put garlic on your feet and within 20 minutes you can ‘taste’ it.

Some of us have used Vicks Vaporub for years for everything from chapped lips to sore toes and many body parts in between. But I’ve never heard of this. And don’t laugh, it works 100% of the time although the scientists at the Canada Research council (who discovered it) aren’t sure why.

To stop night time coughing in a child (or adult as we found out
personally), put Vicks Vaporub generously on the bottom of the feet at bedtime, then cover with socks. Even persistent, heavy, deep coughing will stop in about 5 minutes and stay stopped for many, many hours of r elief. Works 100% of the time and is more effective in children than even very strong prescription cough medicines. In addition it is extremely soothing and comforting and they will sleep soundly.

I heard the head of the Canada Research Council describe these findings on the part of their scientists when they were investigating the effectiveness and usage of prescription cough medicines in children as compared to alternative therapies like acupressure.

Just happened to tune in A.M. Radio and picked up this guy talking about why cough medicines in kids often do more harm than good due to the chemical makeup of these strong drugs so, I listened. It was a surprise finding and found to be more effective than prescribed medicines for children at bedtime, in addition to have a soothing and calming effect on sick children who then went on to sleep soundly. Polly tried it on herself when she had avery deep constant and persistent cough a few weeks ago and it worked 100%! She said that it felt like a warm blanket had enveloped her, coughing stopped in a few minutes and believe me, this was a deep, (incredibly annoying!) every few seconds uncontrollable cough, and she slept cough-free for hours every night that she used it. If you have grandchildren, pass it on. If you end up sick, try it yourself and you will be absolutely amazed by the effects.

Mary again:

I am not a doctor! I’m just passing this info along in the hopes that it helps you and your loved ones get some much-needed sleep and relief from the coughing that commonly arises at night for cold sufferer’s. Please visit the Vick’s VapoRub website for more info on this product, and use your own good judgment from there.

Nowadays, it seems we all know someone with Celiac or Sprue Disease, aka, gluten allergies. My husband is in line for it, genetically. His mother has it, so that ups his chances by ten percent, from what I gather.

Recently I came across a recipe for an interchangeable flour mix for people who can’t tolerate gluten. Here it is for you to use or pass along…

Best Flour Mix (from the Gluten-Free Gourmet Cooks Fast and Healthy by Bette Hagman)

• 2 parts white rice flour
• 2/3 part potato starch flour
• 1/3 part tapioca flour

Make a large batch of this flour mixture to keep in a canister for ready use when flour is needed in a recipe. In a pinch, quinoa flour works well on its own. Try white or brown rice flours, garbanzo flour, and may others if you want to experiment and see what works best for you.

How many of you know someone with this allergy?