This holiday season, you too can make those around you ooh and aah in utter amazement at your skills!

You could either spontaneously grow a third arm, or simply make this edible cornucopia… 

I’ve been making this for years, two at Thanskgiving and two at Christmas, and it’s really become a “tradition”.  It’s really very simple to make once you get the hang of it, so I thought I’d show you how in very simple steps.  Have fun!

 

You will need:  large cookie sheet covered in foil; three cans of refrigerated breadsticks (any flavor – we like garlic); an egg beaten with 1 tbsp. cold water, extra foil to make “mold”.

 Tear about 36″ of heavy duty foil; fold in half, then create a cone by rolling from one end.  Tape to secure. 

 
Ball up foil to stuff inside to secure cornucopia mold.  Coat tray and mold with nonstick spray.

 

 
Beginning at small end, start wrapping breadsticks around mold.  Overlap, press to secure.

 

  Reserve last three breadsticks to braid.

 
Gently stretch out to about double original length, pinch ends together, braid.  Finish by pinching other ends together.

 
Press braid around front of mold, as shown.

 Coat breadsticks with egg mixture.  I also sprinkle a little oregano and paprika on for color and taste.  This is optional.

  
Bake in preheated 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes.  Approximately 30 minutes in, cover cornucopia with foil tent to prevent overcooking on top.

And you’re done!  Cool completely.  Carefully remove foil, place on platter, and fill with vegetables, fruits, or any appetizer.  “Spill” them out the front for a beautiful centerpiece to any holiday table!  Made fresh, it’s entirely edible.  From start to finish, I can make this in under an hour.

If you’re traveling, I recommend leaving the foil inside so that it has strength for the drive.

 

Hope you give it a try!

In our anticipation of Santa’s visit, Autumn and I made a Christmas Chain.  She has now stopped asking me – every morning – if this is the day Santa comes…

(disregard the chore chart in the back… this was the only place I could find to hang the chain!  And, as usual, Autumn’s face has food all over it… sigh.)

After Christmas, we’ll make a chain leading to Ayla’s birthday, then to Autumn’s birthday.  She thinks the chains are the KEWLEST things EVAH!

Here I preach and holler and say women must do their research for childbirth options, become informed, arm themselves with the data they need to have the childbirth they want, and I find out this morning that *I* was misinformed on something and took it at face value and didn’t do MY research!!!

I taped this great show from Discovery Channel called “Freebirthing“, I was mostly curious if the mentality of the United States has started to understand that most childbirths need no intervention (I was disapponted to see there’s still myths and stigmas, however).  They stated that feebirthing (childbirth without medical assistance – at home, with just daddy or mom, no one in the medical field) WAS legal in all states, with very few restrictions.

My doctor told me it was illegal. (DUH… I really should’ve known a doctor would’ve said that, why I took it and ran I don’t know).

Dammit.  I would’ve had Ayla at home. 

I would’ve had all of them at home, in hindsight.

Anyways, the show was beautiful.  The woman they were focusing on that encourages and teaches about freebirthing, Laura Shanley, was amazing.  I highly recommend everyone that is expecting, with a low-risk pregnancy and anticipated low-risk labor, to read her site and research her information.

The focus on pain-free birth was what I found most amazing.  I managed to have them, even though I was in a hospital setting.  How that can be was summed up by one mom - scared = tense, tense = pain.  She reiterated over and over again how she wasn’t the least bit scared about childbirth, and I can see now why she and millions of other women including myself could have pain-free childbirths.

The discussion of birth rape was brought up again, and I’m beginning to re-evaluate the experience I had with Brett in a military hospital 15 years ago.  For some reason, I feel angered every time I “re-live” his birth in my mind, from the bully doctor telling me I HAD to have an IV, to the incessant internal exams, to the unnecessary constant fetal monitoring, to being told I was laboring too fast, to the blatant disregard for my wishes not to be cut, and on and on an on.  The unnecessary episiotomy caused me problems in labor #2, caused me to tear, and I again had to remember my anger and disappointment in Brett’s childbirth.  For childbirth #3 I was VERY very very (can I say VERY?) vocal about my wishes, I made them known to anyone that came by, I said “no” many times during labor, and dammit, I had the childbirth I wanted, other than the fact I thought I had to be in a hospital.  I went home within hours, not days, and was happy.  Same for #4.

So why am I ultimately unhappy with chilbirth #1, even to this day?  Can I call it birth rape?  I am beginning to think that’s what it was.  I was constantly being told by doctors I didn’t know what I wanted, that I would demand drugs (one nurse even rolled her eyes when I said I would be refusing any drugs), and I was mutilated by an unnecessary episiotomy.

I am mortified, however, at the Brit’s mentality about freebirthing.  One woman had a child at home, everythign with the baby was fantastic, but she failed to deliver the placenta in a reasonable amount of time (not mere minutes like the hospital forces a mom to do).  After a few hours passed, she made the decision to go to the hospital and have assistance with the placenta.  The nurses and doctors treated her like, well, CRAP.  It was sad, it was pathetic.  They acted like she was an idiot.  And to top it off, they’re sending the Britain equivalent of children’s services to her home to evaluate her as a parent.

Are you KIDDING ME????

While the show encouraged me and gave me hope that women all over the world are empowered enough to take control of their own bodies, it frustrated me as well, seeing the medical profession still be such bullies to women.

Yesterday, Autumn kept telling me she wanted chocolate bananas.  I didn’t quite understand what she was talking about, so she kept repeating it, getting frustrated in the process.

She finally went into the kitchen to show me, proudly finding two bananas that fell behind the fruit bowl… they were quite dark brown.  Chocolate bananas.  Can’t beat the thinking there.

 

Banana bread is in our plan today!

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/19/america/transition.php

Since Global Warming Climate Change is a natural, cyclical part of the Earth’s ever-changing environment, and nothing man does will do a damned thing to “stop” it, he must think he IS a god to be able to do anything about it!

Wow… more of our hard-earned tax dollars going towards a futile effort to change something that will eventually cycle back around and we’ll be paying to impede an Ice Age.  Al Gore is counting his money as we speak.  Ridiculous.

Ladies, you HAVE to take charge of your own care.  This should not be tolerated.  Birth rape, like genital mutilation during childbirth (completely unnecessary episiotomies) should never happen.  Stay home if you can, get a midwife, get a low-inervention doctor.  Get someone who CARES. 

YOU are in charge of your birth, not the guy with a piece of paper on the wall.  Believe it or not, he may not know what’s best for you.

 

http://www.truebirth.com/2008/02/more-than-a-traumatic-birth/

Like rape victims, women who are victimized during birth are made to feel responsible for the act itself. They are told that it has to be this way, or that their baby will die if it isn’t done this way. Sometimes, they aren’t even given the opportunity to say no, as they are (like Pam) held down against their will. Later, they are told that they were bad, and it had to be done. Coercion is a tactic that many assailants use.

http://sweetbydesign.blogspot.com/

http://www.howobamagotelected.com/

“I think I’m not as informed as I thought I was, ” says an Obama supporter, after she cast her vote and was asked a series of questions about our government and current events.

The understatement of the FREAKIN’ CENTURY!  Christ on a cracker, these are the people that are not only voting, but they’re behind the wheels of cars.  They’re teaching our children.  They’re handling our food.  They’re destroying our country.  Holy crap.  They voted for this inexperienced marxist community organizer, and can’t even tell you whether it was Tina Fey or Sarah Palin who said a quote!!!! 

If you’re not scared, you’re not paying attention.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm1KOBMg1Y8]

 

512 Obama Voters 11/13/08-11/15/08 MOE +/- 4.4 points

97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates

Results to 12 simple Multiple Choice Questions

57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)

81.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)

82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)

88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)

56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).

And yet…..

Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes

Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter

And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her “house,” even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!

Only 2.4% got at least 11 correct.

Only .5% got all of them correct. (And we “gave” one answer that was technically not Palin, but actually Tina Fey)

So I was nursing Ayla to sleep last night in my bed and was watching a show on ID about an obstetrician who had his license revoked because of patient complaints against him.

I don’t know enough of the story to say whether or not he should’ve stopped practicing medicine.  Whether or not he was negligent isn’t something I will judge.  He was judged, and I’m not sure I agree.  It’s a he-said, she-said for a couple of things, and to me only a handful of complaints over 25 years is pretty amazing – I mean, whether a “botched” childbirth was his fault or not, a mother who loses a child will want to blame someone, and that’s why doctors have malpractice insurance.  I don’t want to diminish the loss of the few people that suffered one at his hands, but doctors are not gods and shouldn’t be considered perfect.  Nature does hold a hand in some birth deaths, there are things doctors can’t prevent.  But I digress.

My understanding is that he practiced for 25 years, had the lowest C-Section rate of any physician in the hospital he practiced in (6% – that’s PHENOMENAL!!), had lower infant mortality, less complications, and *gasp* advocated natural childbirth.  Imagine that, a doctor advocating low intervention.

The exclamation isn’t mine – it seemed like every nurse and doctor at this hearing really found that idea to be awful.  How dare he let the mother control her labor.  He’s a bully, they said.  He demanded his patients be cared for to his standards.  His patients didn’t want interventions, he didn’t want the nurses to push needles in the spine.

In the words of one doctor, “it’s cruel” (to the mother not to give her an epidural). 

I almost jumped out of bed on that one.  WHAT?????  Cruel – not to give her a drug that is used in warfare.  Not to give her a drug that is NOT safe for mother and child, has proven complications, can make labor longer, leads to more interventions, and leads to major surgery (unnecessary c-sections) that causes mortality rates to rocket soooo much higher than natural vaginal deliveries.  This is a drug that shouldn’t be the “norm”, it should be the exception to the rule.  Period.  Not to mention the recovery time afterwards… natural childbirth about an hour, c-section about five days. 

These women chose this doctor because of his beliefs.  They made an educated decision.  They knew that if their doctor didn’t advocate for them when they most needed him, they would cave to the list of unnecessary interventions, done for the convenience of the medical staff, not the mom.

Cruel.

What has our Western Culture come to when natural childbirth is considered evil.  Bad.  Cruel.  I’m mortified. 

It seemed the nurses didn’t care for this Dr. Morgan either, because he didn’t want his patients having all the interventions.  Maybe because then they (the nurses) couldn’t control the situation?  They didn’t have a woman captive in a bed, strapped to monitors and IVs, so they could determine what was best for her?  I mean, God forbid she want to walk, or eat, or labor for hours… we must have the situation under control.  Har har har.  We are the nurses, we are the experts, mom doesn’t know what she needs or wants, it’s not possible.  Daggone it.

Here’s some quotes which are factual and wonderful, but his “peers” find apalling:

On prescribing pain medication to women in labor: “I need to know more than just the patient is being uncomfortable again.”

On computers predicting birth weight, a factor in delivery risk: “There’s no way to anticipate what the size of the baby is going to be.”

On internal electronic fetal monitoring: “I consider sticking a screw into the baby’s head as an invasion of their primary defense for infection, and I try not to do it.”

He added: “I feel like I don’t have to do it.”

 

Sigh.  Now before I get 100 emails about how awful this doctor was, I’m not debating his guilt or innocence.  I’m wondering why his philosophies are so CRUEL.  They’re not.  They’re beautiful, normal, NATURAL.  There is no cruelty here.

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