Birthday season is over, but the CAKE was divine

Aug. 22 ended birthday season around here, when Emma turned 17.

ABC’s Wife Swap, filmed in 2007, when you agree to do the show, waltzes in and figures out what they can string you up for. (I knew they would. I considered it a game.) For me, it was the green smoothies, and the fact that I tell my kids, “The bus leaves at 7:22,” and then I leave them to walk to school, if they’re not ready.

None of that bothered me. What I didn’t see coming was that they would make a federal case about the two times I rented out a skating rink, or the municipal pool, for back-to-back parties for my kids. Each had their own party, their own cake, their own friends and presents. It wasn’t cheap to rent out the pool, and my kids decided that was what they wanted.

We did it just twice, the last time 6 years ago. The kids had a ball at their party.

Wife Swap made out that I am “obsessed with efficiency” and “won’t let them have their own party.” They purposefully failed to mention that all four of my kids are born within 3 weeks of each other. They made it seem as if my four children born at different times of the year are forced against their will to have a joint party because I don’t care about them.

I recently brought Patty out from Creative Health Institute. She works for us fulltime now, and we love her!  She became a long-term volunteer there for 18 months. I will tell you Patty’s story later, on a video, with her making Choca-Maca-Laca that I learned at CHI last year from Madeline Wilson.

The recipe is named that for the superfood ingredients Maca and Lacuma. But I LOVE this yummy recipe, and Patty lost tons of weight eating the Ann Wigmore diet plus two whole quarts, daily, of Choca-Maca-Laca! Wow. I guess “a calorie is not a calorie is not a calorie,” because that’s a lot of calories. Remember Colin Campbell discovered in the Oxford-Cornell China Project that those eating a plant-based diet stay lean eating 200 calories a day MORE than animal-flesh eaters, who were not lean, ate!)

I also posted Patty’s raw peach cobbler on the blog a year ago.

Patty is a Level III raw chef, and she made this delicious cheesecake, with the ingredients in my kitchen, for Emma’s 17th birthday on the 22nd. All the kids loved it. She blends tangerines and peaches from my tree, into Rejuvelac, and tells the kids it’s Powerade. Even though she’s not a mother, she has the instincts: she tells them it gives them energy for school and sports. (It’s true, of Rejuvelac.) She puts a half gallon of it in the fridge, like at CHI, with a masking-tape label saying “Don’t drink this after 6 pm!” That’s because it’ll keep you awake.

The photo is of Patty with Cade (19), Emma (17), Libby (15) and Tennyson (12).

Sunday I’ll post the recipe!

Posted in: Healthy Weight, Relationships, Whole Food