(The bottom shelf is empty in the last picture because the kids have the three bins holding miscellaneous plastic containers out for pretend picnic purposes.)

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers.

After my fourth pregnancy I used a three-pronged approach that has me comfortably fitting back in pre-pre-pre-pre-pregnancy jeans. Several of you have asked what worked, and I am happy to share that with you here.

In this little series on recovering my pre-baby body, I have talked about the natural liposuction of breastfeeding and the strategic use of compression garments in moving back to a normal, healthy body weight. I have leveraged those two elements consistently after each pregnancy with moderate success.

there’s the rub

The one lingering issue for me was that my thighs would rub together. I never had this problem pre-baby, and I certainly wasn’t excited when it became my “new normal.”

Running was a potential solution, and in fact my desire to conquer thigh rubbing was the motivation behind my attempt to follow the couch to 5k program. Unfortunately, knee pain and repeated mastitis put at least a temporary end to that fitness goal.

Another idea came from the writing of Catholic blogger Jennifer Fulwiler, who mentioned what she calls the Saint Diet. In a nutshell she finds it easier to concentrate, to regulate how much she eats, and she has higher energy levels when she eliminates flour and sugar from her diet.

Intrigued, I read more at Wellness Mama, the blogger to whom Jennifer linked. Kate lists a number of benefits of grain-free living, and one of them is reduced seasonal allergies. Having experienced spring and autumn allergies for the first time in my life last year, I decided I would try this grain-free thing and see if I noticed any improvement on the elimination diet.

Having never dieted before, I simply jumped in, going almost without grains (I already ate little sugar) for 60 days. I prepared crustless quiches for breakfast but otherwise ate what my family did, simply omitting any rice, bread, or pasta that accompanied each meal.

The early days were tricky as I didn’t have that full carb feeling to tide me along. I ate more meat and vegetables and ignored the inconvenient (and highly unusual outside of pregnancy!) cravings for doughnuts and brownies. My nightly snack became a glass of milk rather than a bowl of cereal.

signs of improvement

After a while – maybe around two or three weeks, the cravings vanished. Fortunately I enjoy meat and vegetables, so I didn’t feel deprived at all.

At around four weeks I began to notice that I sneezed only on days when I had indulged in Ben’s tasty pancakes or French toast. The sneezing had become consistently bothersome prior to my dietary experiment, so this was enough of an incentive for me to continue. Even if it was all the grain elimination did for me, it would have been enough.

As a bonus, though, I have also noticed that omitting grains has reduced the size of my thighs so that they no longer rub together. I had been able to squeeze into pre-baby jeans between my pregnancies with Nikki and Michael, but now I slide into my favourite Zara denims easily.

Currently I am experimenting with adding white rice to my meals. I also recently read Perfect Health Diet. I am still making sense of how the authors’ research translates into day-to-day eating, but I don’t think I’ll soon go back to regular wheat consumption. The benefits of grain-free living are real enough for me.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers.

First up, don’t miss the kiddo quotes that should have gone out last Friday.

Second, the very, very, VERY good news is that my blog host was able to retrieve my old database from 2 January 2012. This means that the archives of Blissful E are complete except for the comments from 2 January to 19 January. I’m sad about losing those comments. Overall, though, it’s a huge relief to have so much of my site back. Whew!

Third, things are still going to be a little messy around here while I tweak the site and give it a bit of a facelift (I love this sort of stuff and can’t resist an excuse to mess about with code). If you have any questions, suggestions, concerns or comments regarding how the blog looks or how you prefer to use the site, this is a good time to let me know.

Finally, THANK YOU to each of you who has stuck with me through this upheaval. Your support and comments throughout have kept me from giving up several times. You guys are the best. :)

You can view the video by clicking here: http://youtu.be/W0me_pxR0zw

Healthy, tasty, easy and frugal food is an ongoing, near-daily challenge. Thankfully, technology is a big help. Here is the process I am currently using to find, try, and keep good recipes available.

1. Collect tasty-looking recipes on Pinterest.

When I see a delicious looking recipe on any website – especially if it is described as “slow cooker” or “crock pot” – I pin it to my “yum” board so I can find it later.

2. Write a menu plan into a spiral notebook.

Yes, this is low-tech, but it works very well for us. We write the name of each recipe we want to cook that week, with a little symbol (and page number, if applicable) of where to find it if it’s not something we make a lot. We also annotate that week’s menu plan with a list of staples as we run out of them (for instance, baking soda, peppercorns, or my favourite snack, dried apricots).

3. Clip or copy/paste new recipes I want to try into Evernote.

If I’m feeling adventurous and want to try a new recipe, I copy the recipe from the internet into Evernote, with a tag “recipe”. I have a search set up in Evernote for notes tagged “recipe” but NOT tagged with “eBook”, so that only recipes I haven’t tried will appear in this search.

4. Order groceries online.

 

I cannot tell you how much time, energy, and even money (due to less impulse shopping) this saves us. With menu book in hand, we look up recipes wherever they are – Evernote, eReader, cookbooks – and click to order the required ingredients.

5. Cook dinner, tweak and evaluate.

If a new recipe is good, I reformat the recipe in Evernote to match my other recipes, noting any changes or substitutions I made. I then copy and paste the new recipe in the appropriate section of the 700-page Open Office Writer document that has become our family’s personalised cookbook. After the recipe is in Writer, I add the tag “eBook” to the recipe in Evernote so that it won’t show up in my “new recipe” search anymore.

If the new recipe isn’t to our taste, I tag it appropriately in Evernote and remove it from my “yum” board on Pinterest.

6. Export my updated cookbook as a PDF, then upload the PDF into my eReader using Calibre.

Having the cookbook on my eReader makes it searchable and easily accessible in my kitchen using this cover with integrated kickstand.

7. When someone asks for a recipe, I easily email them my annotated version via Evernote, or simply send them the original URL.

Evernote automatically saves the source URL when I copy and paste from any website, so I can always give credit to the original recipe creator.

With a smart phone or tablet you could eliminate the extra steps of copying approved recipes to a word-processing program and exporting as a PDF. Accessing everything in Evernote directly from a portable device would make the process even simpler.

How do you find and manage the recipes your family enjoys?

Adapting this recipe I found via Jen, I used my Thermomix to grind wheat and make the dough, and then all I had to do was roll it out.

After the dough rose and rested, I divided each batch into eight equal-sized balls.

Lightly oiling a piece of baking paper, I placed a ball of dough on top, drizzled the dough with a bit more olive oil, topped it with another piece of baking paper, then pressed it with my cast iron skillet.

I rolled the dough thinly to prepare it for 90-second cooking in the wood fired pizza oven. Each flattened crust was then stacked between sheets of baking paper (and later aluminum foil when I ran out of baking paper). Not only does the baking paper or aluminum foil separate the bases for freezing, it also serves as an excellent medium for sliding in and out of the pizza oven without getting wood ash directly on the crust.

Two batches of dough or 16 individual-sized crusts fit into one 13×9 inch dish, which I covered and froze until Nikki’s celebration day. I made and rolled out two batches of dough per day for three days leading up to Nikki’s celebration in order to produce 48 crusts.

The dough did not rise much but it was tasty and held toppings well.

The kids’ favourite pizza combination this time was olive oil, Italian sausage, and mozzarella.

Our children enjoy choosing the colour of their birthday dessert. Nikki selected purple for her fifth birthday. Ben and I put our heads together and came up with a mixed berry cobbler topped with butter cookie crust and homemade whipped cream.

Delicious!

DaD’s birthday meal was his request of spinach alfredo lasagna and homemade oat bread served with carrot raisin salad and topped off with angel food cake and poached strawberries.

I was excited when I realised that the entire meal, right down to the butter for spreading and the mayonnaise in the carrot raisin salad, was homemade with love by me.

My mum helped us break in my new ravioli maker this morning.

Grandma rolled the dough so nice and thin.

We made three dozen whole wheat ravioli filled with roasted butternut squash and goat’s cheese.

Dried for a few hours, boiled in veggie stock, and topped with Parmesan, they made a tasty and fun meal for my noodle-loving crew.