Cooking with the Basics

I am so excited to be starting a new blog called Cooking with the Basics! www.cookingwiththebasics.com     I love to cook from scratch.  I love that I can choose what goes into my meals.  I love to cook healthy foods.  When Dallin was a few months old, he got eczema all over his sweet little body.  The worst of it was on his face.  It was so hard to keep him from scratching it.  I had to put little socks on his hands at night so he wouldn't lay there and scratch all night.  I took him to the doctor and they just prescribed creams to put on his skin.  I did that for a while and it didn't help.  With my medical background I knew I didn't want to just keep masking the symptoms I wanted to know what was causing the rash!  You just don't get eczema.  I knew there had to be something going on in his body.  So I read and researched about eczema and found out that most cases are caused from foods and how our bodies digest the food.   I knew I needed to clean up my diet (since I was nursing him) and my families as well.  I always thought that we ate pretty healthy.  But I learned so much about what is in processed food and what it does to our bodies.   My goal was to eat less processed foods and more fruits, vegetables and whole foods. Which meant that I needed to start cooking as much as I could from scratch so I could monitor what was going into our meals.  Growing up my mom always cooked everything from scratch, so I knew how I just needed to implement it!  I learn how to make bread with a natural sour dough yeast to replace instant yeast.  I made pancakes, pizza dough, rolls, crackers and cookies with the sour dough start.  Using a natural yeast breaks down the gluten in the wheat and lowers the glycemic effect.  There are so many great health benefits from using a natural yeast.  I started a little at a time and made more and more of our food with just the basic ingredients I had in my pantry.  As I did this I bought less and less of the processed foods we use to eat.  I learned that I really enjoy cooking and when I can make an entire meal from scratch I get so excited!!!  I not only learned that what we put into our body can effect our skin, but what we put on our bodies effect our skin as well.  I learned how to make homemade lotion and skin care products that we love!

New family pictures

Evan's Baptism Pictures

Love My Family

Browne Lake 2012

Tyson is 4

Happy Birthday Tyson!  We celebrated his birthday 2 days in a row.  His birthday was on a Thursday and I had to work so we celebrated his birthday on Wednesday.  He got a awesome new bike.  He was so excited to ride it and it was so cold outside, so he got all bundled up in his snow clothes and went outside to ride his bike.  The bike is a little tall and he can't get on it by himself so we have to hold the bike up and get him started.  He can get off all by himself:)  While Gavin took his naps Tyson and I made and decorated his "dirt bike cake"!  Tyson was so excited to have a "dirt bike cake"!  We had
Clarke's over for cake and ice cream that night.  He got money, books and Grandpa Evan's made him his own dump truck and an awesome garage that he can park it in.  On his "real" birthday (Thursday) he went to preschool and celebrated his birthday there.  On March 11th we will celebrate his birthday with Houghton's and Broc, Landon, Drake and Adyson.  Lots of March birthdays!

A Time Out

This last weekend I was able to go to Time Out For Women with my mom and sisters! It was so awesome! I always come home refreshed and renewed to be a better me.  This years theme was "Seeking the Good".  Misty had a awesome idea to put together a blog that we could find the good in our lives each day and share it on the blog.  I am loving it.  I love that I feel so much closer to my sisters and mom just by reading what good they have found in their lives.  The simple good that we have everyday!  I am so thankful for the gospel in my life and for my testimony. I love my family so much and am so thankful for them!

Sweet little Ann

Little Ann was born on Feb 3rd.  After TOFW we went over to the hospital to meet our new little neice.  BranDee and Ann are both great!  She is a cutie!  We are so excited to have another little girl in the family:)