Barefoot Shoe Expo

This past weekend we took a road trip to Chicago (the western edge of Chicago) for a foot health expo. It's officially called the Barefoot Shoe Expo. It lasted two days and had speakers going on all day in one room and another room to shop for barefoot/minimalist shoes, foot health accessories, and specialists who can help with balance, gait, and movement in general. 

We spent Saturday with the speakers (with a little peek at the exhibit hall) and Sunday in the shopping room. 

The first three speakers on the schedule were surprisingly good. They left me with a bunch of foot stretching exercises to do at home. 

The balance training session was probably my favorite. Balance is something lacking in pretty much everyone, and it's the easiest and quickest thing to build back because it's neurological (compared to improving muscle, strength, etc). Even just practicing standing on one leg with your eyes open and closed can improve your balance!

We had to partner up and toss a hacky sac back and forth while on one leg. Then they challenged us to do a tap of the ball before catching it. Then they told us to announce which hand our partner should catch the ball in while on one foot. After that we had to say right or left, but the partner had to catch with the opposite hand of what we said. Whew! That was tough. All in all, fun and good practice, which is the Foot Collective philosophy on improving balance. If it's not fun, you won't do it. 

Katy Bowman was the speaker I looked forward to the most (and the last one we listened to before checking into our hotel). I listen to her podcast about movement and she's the person who inspired me to look into minimalist shoes in the first place (and my chiropractor who said I had the beginnings of a bunion on my right foot 😅). 

I had her sign my book at the end of her session and we were able to chat at her booth a bit on Sunday afternoon. 

We did squeeze in a Costco run, ate supper at a deep dish Chicago-style pizza place, and went to church Sunday morning before the second day of the conference started.

Sunday we spent the whole time in the exhibit hall checking out vendors. I took a ton of notes about shoe brands, their fit/cost, and future shoe possibilities for Jaron. We did buy a few pairs of shoes, and a pair for Jaron. He slept for a good chunk of the shopping, which made it much easier. 

Two challenging things about the weekend: packing food. I wanted to bring lunches for us both days, so I made a cold pasta salad for Saturday and a deconstructed spring roll salad for Sunday. Saturday's meal was great, but Sunday's salad would have been better if we had eaten it on Saturday. I did have plenty of snacks along, so we didn't go hungry, but the prep for getting us to that point took a lot of brain power and energy. 😅

The other challenging thing was that my baby carrier got left behind. 😭 It was sitting on the bench in the basement with a couple other last minute items to be packed, and when I came downstairs with Jaron, they weren't there. I assumed G had grabbed them. He thought he must've taken them, remembered something else he wanted to grab, and set them down somewhere. 

Devastating because I had planned to strap Jaron to my back so that both G and I could participate in the sessions and we could shop uninterrupted by an 18 month old who just wants to walk. It ended up being okay. G entertained him so I could participate in the session activities. He even got Jaron to nap on his chest! It still would've been easier with the carrier, but it worked out okay in the end. 

Will we go back to the conference? I would recommend it to anyone in a heartbeat (only $15 for both days), but it's not going to be a yearly thing for us. We'll probably go back at some point, when Jaron is older and needs more shoes.

Protein Ball Mix-up

I love having protein balls in the fridge for a quick snack or a prebreakfast tideover until real breakfast can be made. I've been making a double recipe because I go through them so quickly, but this time I had the idea to use some of the homemade nutella as a substitute for peanut butter. Not sure if it would turn out, so I did a single recipe of the nutella and a single recipe of the normal. 

But when I mixed them up, both batches were very sticky. 🤔 That never happens. 

So I added more almond flour. Still sticky. More flax seed. Still sticky. More ground chia seeds. Still sticky. More oats. Still sticky. What's going on??

Then I realized I had halved all the other ingredients, but I put the doubled amount of honey in both recipes. 🤦‍♀️ 

At that point I was sick of stirring. The mix was pretty sticky, but rollable, so I rolled a few and then decided to put the rest in a container to either roll out later or eat straight out of. 😅 

The hazelnut ones don't actually taste very chocolatey or hazelnut. It was a good experiment but I wouldn't make them again. Maybe I should mix both batches together and see what happens. 

Fruit Room Update

I've decided to call the fruit room the cave of wonders. Jaron loves going in there, seeing all the colorful things on the shelves. It brings me a lot of joy going in there as well. 😅

With all the freeze drying we've been doing, we need more shelf space, so I did an overhaul of the fruit room adding more shelves basically anywhere I could. 

Some shelves are at specific heights to hold tall items we keep stocked, like lemon juice and olive oil. Some are short for pint jars and the rest fit quart jars. 

I even found space above the door frame for putting salt, my vanilla extract mother jar, and medicinal tinctures - i.e. things I don't need to access frequently. 

This wire shelf got rehung over a stud section that has an electric wire running up the side. I had avoided putting wooden shelves there because I would've had to cut openings for the wire and that seemed difficult, but with this shelf I could go right over top!

And it's deeper so it can hold the bigger bags of items that wouldn't fit on the wooden shelves. 

The back low wooden shelf got reorganized too. Now it holds our chips, broth, and beverages. Those come in large numbers so I can have them stacked deep and be able to access everything still. 

All in all, a great project finished! Now time to tackle the laundry room...

Homemade Cayenne

I am not a huge fan of spicy food. I'm working on increasing my spiciness tolerance, but it's still pretty low. Somehow, I ended up with a couple of cayenne pepper plants in my garden last year. Probably freebies from the garden center. 😂 I hate throwing plants away, so I stuck them in the ground and figured I would find a use for them.

Of course the peppers were quite prolific and I ended up with so many I had plenty left over even after giving a bunch away. I dried them so they wouldn't go bad, and left them in my pantry for months. 

Eventually I had the idea that I could grind them up to make them into ground cayenne. I do use cayenne in cooking from time to time. Also, I found a recipe for boosting chicken egg production that uses cayenne, so worst case scenario the chickens get to eat it!

Wear gloves to protect your skin and eyes from the heat. Pick the green tops off.

Save a few seeds because ground cayenne is actually a really good idea and I didn't have any in cayenne seeds in my seed stash.

Grind them in a spice grinder! 

I wasn't sure if the seeds would grow. I remembered that I dehydrated some of the peppers in my dehydrator and some of them were left to air dry. I couldn't tell the difference, so I saved/planted seeds from both- one pepper had darker seeds, possibly dehydrated? The other had lighter seeds, probably air dried.

I had horrible pepper germination earlier this spring, so I made sure to plant a bunch of seeds, expecting a low germination rate. Of course they all sprouted. 🙄 Both kinds too! Anyone need cayenne pepper starts?? 😂
 

Freeze Dried Avocados

We are the people in the math books. 😂

It was my idea. Costco had a great price on avocados. I happened to freeze dry one a long time ago and it rehydrated super well; you could hardly tell it wasn't a freshly cut one. So I told G to stock up. We ended up with about five bags. 

They ripened super quickly, just in a couple of days. I sliced them, froze them on trays, and popped them in the freeze drier. 

It didn't take as long as I expected. There must not be that much water in avocados. They don't pack into glass jars very well because of their shape, but I had enough jars to fit them all. 

Quest: Banana Muffins

I really like my current banana muffin recipe, but it is way too sugary for babies, so yet another quest... This time for a sugar free/low sugar go-to banana muffin recipe.

There are a number of highly rated recipes out there, and of course I want to try them all to find the best. 😅

First option is from the Yummy Toddler Food blog. This one uses bananas and applesauce as sweetners. 

Pros: 

makes a lot- 48 mini or 24 regular muffins

was quick to mix together 

has good banana flavor 

Cons: 

came out flat, don't look super appealing 

the high ratio of banana makes it tough to tell when they're done

I don't love the texture, but Jaron seems to be a fan. 🤷‍♀️ 

The quest continues! 

Nasty Gnats

Those horrible black biting gnats are officially here. 😭 

I thought I spied one as I got out of my car, but thought "it's too early and it's been cold!" I was wrong. Poor Jaron bore the brunt of that...

We spent yesterday afternoon outside - moving the potato containers, pulling dandelions in the garden, and hauling mulch to make pathways in the garden. 

Just two of the potato containers have sprouted so far the red and purple. None of the garden planted potatoes have sprouted yet.

Jaron was quite content to play with the rocks in the driveway and then play with a bucket of dirt in the shade next to the garden. I noticed bugs flying around my face but didn't get bit. 

I looked over to see how Jaron was doing and saw blood literally dripping down his neck! 😱 I thought he'd scratched himself really bad somehow, but after running over, I saw the bite marks. 

Poor buddy. He must take after me because they didn't bother him at all yesterday, and then overnight they turned itchy. I had to hold his arm down until he fell asleep so he wouldn't scratch. 

This is after getting him cleaned up. I put some honey tallow salve on the bites, then later some elder salve. Hopefully they heal quickly. 

We went back out after dousing ourselves in vanilla spray and Bug Soother. The gnats didn't bother us the rest of the day!