A lifetime favorite

Pineapple Cream Cheese Pie!

Sorry, I have never taken a picture of “the pie” — but plumeria blossoms are tropical, too.

For as long as I can remember, over 60 years, this has been my favorite!

My mother was given this recipe by a good friend while serving as WAVES in the US Navy in World War II.  It was Devra’s family recipe.  Now, it’s historic.

All my life, “regular” cheesecake has seemed heavy and gummy and dry compared to this light and creamy delight.  For over 20 years, this has been a special someone’s only birthday dessert.

It’s been one of my family’s favorites ever since WWII.  That’s long enough to make it ours, too.  The original recipe is handwritten in fountain pen in the front of my mother’s favorite cookbook.  It simply lists the ingredients, and which go into the filling and which the topping.  The details are mine.

Note:  There are two crust options these days, since I am not the only person who feels better gluten free.

We make it in a standard 9″ pie pan.  It’s a cream cheese pie, not a cheesecake.

Over the years, I have tried low fat and sugar-free variations, and they were awful.  In the memory of the brave women who served in our military, one of whom shared this recipe with a fellow WAVE officer, or for the sake of historical accuracy, please make the filling with the old-time original ingredients that were available in the 1940s, real cream cheese and real (whole milk) sour cream.  Save that chalky low fat for another recipe.

This pie is well worth a dietary sacrifice at another meal.

ORIGINAL (Graham) Crust

12-14 graham crackers, crumbled fine, OR 1-1/4 c packaged graham cracker crumbs
1/4 c melted butter

Mix together, pat into pan.  I save 1/2 tsp to sprinkle on the top when it is all done.

GLUTEN FREE (Toasted Almond) Crust

1-1/4 c almond meal (I use Bob’s Red Mill, it’s coarser)
Few drops pure almond extract
1/4 c melted butter or coconut oil

Toast almond meal to the color of graham crackers. Reserve 1/2 tsp of toasted almond meal. Mix the remainder with melted butter or coconut oil, pat into pan.

FILLING

12 oz. (one large and one small Philadelphia Cream Cheese, the real, original stuff) Important, must be at ROOM TEMPERATURE

2 large eggs

3/4 c sugar (sometimes I use 1/2 c white with 1/4 c brown or palm sugar)

2 tsp real vanilla extract, I always use bourbon vanilla

1 small can crushed pineapple, drained and liquid reserved

TOPPING

8 oz. sour cream, the normal old-fashioned kind

3-1/2 Tbsp sugar

1 tsp vanilla

Juice drained from pineapple

(We mix the topping while the pie is baking, so the sugar dissolves nicely.)

ASSEMBLE PIE

Whip the room temperature cream cheese well.  Add eggs one at a time, then sugar, vanilla, and well drained pineapple.

Pour into crust.  Bake at 350 degrees till the center is just barely set.  In my oven that’s 35 minutes, but your oven may be hotter or slower, so to be safe, check till it barely jiggles at all when the edge of the pie plate is tapped.

Cool 5 minutes.

Apply the topping evenly over the top, sprinkle on the reserved 1/2 tsp of pie crust material randomly on top, and bake 10 more minutes.

Cool on counter, then refrigerate at least 8 hours before serving (it makes a difference).  This pie actually is capable of staying fresh for days and days in the refrigerator, but tastes much too good to last that long!

This recipe is very special to my family.  If you try it, please post a comment, thanks!

Copyright 2015, Laurie B. Adams

birthday reunion, Frenchie style, a rescue story

A year ago, Becca at True Blue told me she had bought a little puppy for $20 from a drunk in a bar the night before, to save its life.

But the puppy was so little and she wasn’t sure what to do; she knew I was a dog person, could I help?

The “breeder” had said it was a “rare, valuable” cross of American bulldog and Catahoula. (This cross is normally made to create very large, tough, independent dogs capable of stalking, catching, and taking down wild hogs.)

Becca was in love with the puppy’s tremendous sweetness, but didn’t need another dog.  And my friend Pam had tried all summer to find the right smart, watchful but fearless Catahoula pup because her Chihuly boy is really old, and neither puppy she had reserved had worked out.

So I called Pam.  Then Becca handed me the puppy and I took him home to try to get him healthy till Pam could drive down.

Becca with the puppy

The tiny black and white pup (except he was so malnourished, his black fur was dark gray even after a bath) had only had his eyes open a couple of weeks.  His mother must have been half starved throughout the pregnancy, and full of worms to pass along, and the puppy clearly had not had enough milk or food.  I believe he must have been at most 5 weeks old.

He had severe roundworms plus the telltale stench of coccidia (he must have had a lb of rounds in his gut; I was worried about fatal toxic shock when the worms all died).  Either problem by itself can easily kill a young or undernourished pup.

Very weak

One thing I noticed, that tiny guy was SMART, he watched everything, even when he was scary limp from the worms and cocci.  He was awfully weak.

AFTER worming and coccidia meds, after the first meal he had where there were not too many worms in him to leave room for food, he weighed (just barely, if I breathed hard on the scale) four lbs.  Yet both his parents were breeds that most people would consider large, if not extra large.

Before Skye and I met, she belonged to a breeder, and her job as a spayed runt girl with a luxating patella was to be the little auntie, playing with and helping to raise the puppies.

If she taught them her attitude towards life, there are some very lucky Frenchie owners out there!

So Skye was inside-out with excitement to meet this tiny puppy, someone new to love and teach to play.  She started out so gently, as if she could tell he was fragile.  She poured her heart into him through eye contact and play, and he responded with growing joy and delight.

The teacher and the student

I watched her teach him, by example, with looks and pauses only, no meanness or fuss, that insanely hard play was fine, was the BEST, but to always be careful to avoid hurting anyone.  Size doesn’t matter if you know how to play right.  (Skye plays as an equal with a now full-grown Maremma many times her size.)

And constantly, Skye and Cooper played hell-for-leather Frenchie style, over and around and upside down, till they both dropped.

We be jammin’, we be jammin’

Pam came and fell in love.  Took him home forever.  Her sister named him Cooper.

Cooper fits in well with an amazingly diverse pack at Pam’s, some of whom are not easy for various reasons (Dogs With Issues).  The one we most feared would not tolerate Cooper at all fell in love with him and adopted him, doting on him as if he were her own pup.  Whew!

Cooper has turned out to be an exceptional dog, quiet and extremely observant, but independent and generally fearless.  He is doing so well in his Barn Dog training, he may go on to study other things as well.

His full name is Samuel Cooper Johnson.  It suits him.  Cooper may be his nickname, but with his brains, he is certainly a Samuel Johnson.

Just about a year since a sickly scrap of a puppy came home with me to get healthy enough to go with Pam, he came back to our farm with her on a visit.

Cooper is big and strong now (although quite small for either an American Bulldog or a Catahoula his age; he looks more like his bulldog parent, but has behaviors that Pam can tell came from the Catahoula).

Cooper at a year old

Cooper is still always watching and thinking.  Amazingly, he recognized something about the farm.  Or maybe it was someone.

Moments after Cooper and Pam arrived, it was obvious he and Skye recognized each other, and instantly took up where they left off.  Wore our eyes out just watching the two of them!

Maybe we medicated and fed and loved Cooper during his short stay with us, but Skye the fast-flying Frenchie taught him how to have FUN!

And fun is love.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, COOPER!

Recognition

I started work at the Kennedy Space Center when Ground Support Operations was gearing up to start the Space Shuttle program.  Back in the dark ages.

In the Documentation section, my inimitable boss, John R, had a poster by his desk. It showed Charlie Brown the Peanuts character, in a dark suit and cap. The text ran “Doing a good job around here is like wetting your pants in a dark suit. You get a nice warm feeling, but nobody notices.” I thought it was horribly cynical.

But the longer I worked in corporate America, the more right John seemed.  Didn’t matter how hard I worked or what it cost me.  I was Charlie Brown in a dark suit.

Over time, I gave up craving recognition. I had strong skills, but definitely not the kind of personality that people gravitate to, the confidence, or the ease. Many years later (too late to help at work) I was diagnosed with mild, fluctuating Asperger’s syndrome. A strong personality without social skills. That definitely makes people uncomfortable.

I was too intense, too idealistic or unrealistic, too unsubtle.  And I missed most social cues. It isn’t that I don’t have normal feelings, I do. It’s just that all too often, I don’t pick up on those of other people, no matter how I may try, or if I do try to guess what someone is feeling, I am often wrong.  Socially tone-deaf.

As a technical writer, I had to meet deadlines for final documents even when the technical people got their input in late or incomplete or both. When the documents were done on time, management (who kept interrupting real work for annoying meetings) and the technical people (who all too often submitted input late and incomplete) got the kudos.

I was support staff, expected to be seen and not heard, a cipher.  I got chronic fatigue and increasing complications from it, from years of heavy overtime.

Charlie Brown had it right after all.

When I no longer had a job, it took a long time to start getting over feeling numb.  I had been so pigeonholed, so trapped in a world that was not a good fit, that I tried my heart out for and rarely even got a thank-you from, that my heart had long since fogged over with despair. The fog had frozen. I felt paralyzed.

Finally, I turned my thoughts to things ~I~ wanted or wanted to do. Learn silversmithing and how to cut stones, check. Learn to spin yarn from a variety of fibers, check. Buy wool directly from shepherds on shearing day to get better wool, check. Acquire a small farm so I could buy my own sheep and breed selectively for outstanding wool, check.  With dogs for over half my life, and rare chickens, and then with sheep, I learned to play with genetics and breed to improve.

I love silversmithing. I love cutting cabochons so much, I am working on developing a class I can teach. I love my little farm, and the beautiful, highly individual sheep who over the years have developed better and better wool.

And because of the sheep I love, at last comes recognition.

At the recent 4th Annual Florida Sheep and Wool Festival in Ocala, ten of the top 15 fleeces were from my ewes. Since I had gotten too busy to prepare for the festival, on my way out the door, I grabbed bags of wool pretty much at random for judging and to sell, wondering if I might get a ribbon or two, but not getting my hopes up.

Despite my shameful lack of preparation (long before submitting them, I should have pulled out each fleece and checked it per the standard qualities the judge examines), we won first, second, and third place, Best in Show, and Grand Champion. Five of the six ribbons awarded for wool.

Fleeces are judged according to a set list of traits, and scored numerically for a maximum total of 100 points. So the judging was objective. That made the win more precious to me.

And I did it with a rare, critically endangered, historical, dual purpose landrace, a formerly feral breed. Not a modern (less than 400 years old) man-made breed designed to be like cookie cutter animals with specific traits.  A gene pool I had worked hard on.

Recognition.

No more Charlie Brown.           

recognition makes life brighter

If Liberace had kept sheep….

He would have ADORED this young Jacob ram!

I always thought the two sets of horns on Jacobs and some other primitive breeds  looked like candelabra, and biiiig candelabra can’t help but remind me of Liberace.

   
Doc Holliday of Valley Oak Jacobs, Cindy Knowles, Shepherd

Bare Nekkid Ladies (ewes soooo happy to be SHEARED)

For several weeks now here in north-central Florida, temps keep hitting the high 80s F.  Yesterday was the vernal equinox (we have two young rams named for that, Summer’s sons Vernal and Equinox.)

The first day of spring.

Forget tulips!  The ewes have worked hard raising lambs and growing fleece for us, but they are ready to let ME have all that soft thick wool.  They want to be nekkid.

Today they got their wish.

Our shearer Rosemarie came from Tifton GA, and Cindy from the other side of High Springs, and except for Freckles and the ever elusive Alex the wether, all the adult ewes got sheared.  (We don’t shear babies, we shear first around the first birthday, and the first shearing of a yearling or hogget yields one of the longest and finest fleeces of the sheep’s lifetime.   Well, our sheep generally STAY soft and fine.  We love that.)

Rosemarie shearing Francine as Cindy holds her

I really like Rosemarie’s “girl” style shearing technique.  She puts a sheep on her side and has special holds she taught to Cindy, to keep a sheep under control during shearing.  (Not much is needed; a foot under the shoulder and a hand gently on the face.)  My girls are generally very calm when sheared like this.  Cindy’s knee got pretty tired before we finished 31 sheep, though!

Cindy was the catcher and holder and did hooves for the worst off.  Rosemarie sheared, and she and Cindy both helped round up woolly ewes when we ran out.  I did my best to skirt the fleeces.  They were dirty as usual, (it’s too hot here and too wet in summer to coat them) but luscious.

Last year because we kept trusting the usual shearers to call us back before we gave up on them, it was late SUMMER before the flock got sheared, and then only because we called Rosemarie for the first time.

Those poor sheep had gone through the entire rainy season with extra-long fleeces.  If you ever took a felting class, you probably learned that heat, water, and movement cause wool to full or felt.  Those fleeces were so compacted, they were almost ready to be used as rugs.  What a waste of good wool!  (No fun for the shearer, either.)

To get the flock onto a more reasonable schedule (spring shearing), this year we sheared after only 7-1/2 months of growth, expecting that might mean a year of too-short fleeces that I would have to toss. However, due to the longer staple length gene we lucked into, only 5 fleeces out of 31 were not as long as I would enjoy spinning.  (Felters, have I got some fleeces for you!)

The majority of this year’s fleeces are 4-7″ staple length, very fine (mostly low 20 micron range), crimpy, and LUSTROUS.

I used to hear that luster is primarily found in the Leicester longwools.  This breed could not be more different from that very man-made, old English breed.  I am so happy to produce lustrous wool right here in Florida, from a hardy native breed that was feral (after escaping from the Spanish Conquistadores) for about 400 years.

We have pure Gulf Coast native sheep, hardy and each unique.  I love a landrace because of the individuality, and in this breed you get it in spades.  Check out Warren’s photos of our first two years of sheep by going to the bottom of the page and selecting sheep at www.warrensarle.com.

I have been working hard with three bloodlines to develop colored Gulf Coast, and to maintain fineness, crimp, and increase staple length, while maintaining the hardiness of the breed, and the size/meatiness, reliable twin producing, and excellent mothering the previous breeder had worked on for 12 years.

We have some outstanding ram lambs this year, sired by Jennifer’s Romeo, whom we bred and were thrilled to borrow back.  Several are colored, but the fleece on the white ones is truly drool worthy.  We have two proven 3-yo colored rams with exquisite wool for sale. We also have some proven 2-4-yo, proven twin-producing young ewes for sale to fiber oriented homes.  A few have color, a few have the extra staple length gene.  All are wonderful.

I am breeding to achieve specific genetic goals within the breed, not just produce a crop of lambs to sell to anyone who shows up with cash.  So, we need to make room for the 4th generation of that hard work by selling some of the 2-4 year old ewes as starter flocks for serious fiber folks.

We are in north central Florida near Gainesville.  Please contact me if interested in a starter flock of these amazing sheep.

Bare Nekkid Ladies, Ahhhhh!

 

 

My typical morning (midnight to noon) (the a.m. feeding frenzy)

​​When does a day start?  Officially, a minute after midnight.  With luck, I am already asleep by then.  Although it isn’t easy to fall asleep.  And then it isn’t always easy to stay asleep.  Or, if wakened, to slip back into that delicious oblivion.

The dogs are so interactive, even at night.

Even if I have only managed a couple of hours of sleep, the dogs seem to need to wake soon after dawn to go outside.  Skye has a trick of dancing on my near-bursting bladder with her tiny, incredibly heavy feet to give me no choice.

They don’t both come in at the same time, so first I have to listen for Jubal’s deep bark.

Skye, bless her odd delicacy, feels strongly that she should never bark at or even near a person.  Rarely, she will bark at her best buddy Pink the Maremma in their wildest play.  But the little one is oddly silent of intentional sounds.

In a bizarre compensation for Skye’s peculiar silence, to notify the resident humans she wants in, she bursts out with the Yeti Yodel of Death.  It sounds like 1940s comedian Joe E Brown, the human air raid siren, played through a wa-wa pedal, and wounded and aggrieved, even when she has waited less than a minute.  (I failed to read her mind.)

Frenchies. Expect. Service.

So do cats, unfortunately.  I have to feed Barbara and Cassie, each perched on a porch railing, paws patting out to snag my attention for their hunger.  (They will beg and snag again mere minutes after each has cleaned her dish.)

Photo:  Manx sisters Barbara and Cassie waiting, waiting, waiting, not just before a meal, but after!

So, once the cats are fed and dogs are both back in the house, I try with varying degrees of success to get back to sleep.  Hah!

When I get up again (prompted by heavy humid mastiff breath in my face and a pestilence of poking paws and snoots of various sizes and configurations — it feels like half a dozen dogs, not two), I am escorted like a perp being walked by cops to the kitchen to prepare breakfasts.

As soon as any lamb sees me through the kitchen sliding glass door, my goose is cooked.  The “feed us” chorus begins.

First, I mix up a bucket of formula for the ewe lambs I hoped to tame (got to start them a LOT younger next year!)   Then without even catching my breath, I have to rush back to the house to prepare house dogs’ food:  meat (beef, turkey, venison or quail), usually with bone or organ meat ground in.

Jubal’s pill and the perna calculis (NZ green lipped mussel) caps have to be well hidden.  Since he cracked many of his teeth on hard bones between age 5 and 6 (he’s nine now), and the vets back then said not to pull them until they started bothering him (and now he is geriatric with a minor but worrying heart condition that makes me afraid to put him through the trauma and pain of multiple extractions), I put his breakfast on a tray in the shape of twelve 1/4 lb meatballs to hand feed him.  Oh, the slime!  If he is hungry, he can blow spit bubbles the size of walnuts!

It’s hard to get Jubal started eating, but once he swallows the first raw meat ball, he will usually finish the tray.  It’s great food, real quality, he looks like a 5-year old.  Not nine.

Skye would be happy to eat 25 lbs at a sitting (she only weighs 20), and so her meals are Never Enough.  Never!

I try to help her feel full by putting leftover veggies around her meat in the dish.   Even though feeding veggies to a dog entails certain risks to human comfort.  Ahem.

As a French bulldog with typical problems of the breed, and epileptic on top of all that, Skye takes a lot of medicine that has to be artfully hidden:  two Elavil for her epilepsy, half a human antihistamine to reduce congestion so she can breathe, a quarter of a chewable cranberry tablet to prevent a uti because she was spayed so young, at almost age 4, her lady parts are baby parts.

All those pills and parts have to be hidden in a mere 1/4 lb of meat (one twelfth of Jubal’s meal).  Then I squirt 0.85 cc of Potassium Bromide liquid (her main epilepsy med) on top, and she precedes me to her dish, pirouetting and circling because I weigh more than 20 lbs and can’t possibly get there as fast as she wants me to.  OK, let’s get real, as fast as Skye wants the food to arrive!

Because Skye IS a Frenchie, and therefore inclined to push me, we play NILIF (nothing in life is free) with her food, and she has to sit and wait till I verbally release her to eat.  She is so prone to anticipate the command if I repeat a pattern that it is necessary for me to vary the wait time and to go to different areas around the room before calling her.

She does love to challenge me.  Now that I am getting older, she feels I need more mental and physical stimulation, like so many humans, and she works hard at providing me ample opportunities.  We can, after all, be a difficult species if not managed carefully.

With luck, at this point, I can slip back into bed.  I may be too awake now to have a prayer of more sleep, but I’m tired and glad to get off my feet, and there’s email to check while I gag down my big bowl of meds and healthy supplements (which takes forEVER).

Science Daily and Odd Stuff magazines await me online, and there’s an extensive list of comics I follow.  Life becomes too grey if you don’t look outside your own head or laugh enough.

Morning chores are not over yet by any means.  I am supposed to eat a high protein breakfast, a necessity now.

I have to feed The White Girls (Maremmas Kelly and Pink) before I eat.  They naturally eat outdoors, in separate pastures.  Preferably without Frenchie Assistance.

The sight of a human anywhere near a pasture gets all the ewes and lambs bellowing for hay, and optimists that they are, they will keep bellowing for quite a while, in hope.  But next I really need to walk past them to the chicken house to feed the elderly chickens.  Warren comes out to feed the other sheep.

Ahhh.  Everyone is finally fed.  Whoops, except for ME!

OMG, look at the time, I need to get cleaned up for physical therapy, and the choice is to eat breakfast and arrive naked, or arrive clean and dressed, with a gurgling tummy.  By the time PT is over, it is past noon.  Another morning has left me behind.

Ruff nights

There’s a lot going on in my room at night, thanks to the dogs.  Two culprits:  the elderly mastiff and youngish French bulldog.

Jubal the mastiff can’t be happy unless he is so close to my bed that I can’t get over him to get up without a lot of finagling.  He is an exceptionally talented obstacle, impediment, barricade.  Heaven help you if you drank too much water before bed!  His deep, richly mellow snores are excellent sleeping music that can lull me to drowsiness.

His kicking the bed frame in dreams is another matter.  I haven’t lived in a major earthquake zone for over 40 years, but I probably have more earthquake dreams than people in Anchorage or fault-line California.

Skye the blue Frenchie snores like a cross between a large purring cat and a tiny but powerful outboard motorboat.  She snores when she is asleep, too, although being asleep is not necessary for a snoring Frenchie.

Skye has different favorite sleeping places, and if I happen to be there first, that doesn’t prevent her pre-empting her choice of spot.  She simply occupies the space on top of me till ~I~ give up and move.  Did you know that each of her funny little feet weighs fifty lbs?  It’s amazing.

When I am reading in bed, Skye likes the arm of the read-in-bed pillow as her perch.  When I am trying to get comfortable in fast-fading hopes of falling asleep, she MUST be between my feet but outside the covers, her dense little body preventing me from rolling over into a more comfortable position.

In the middle of the night, Skye can be found behind my back, roughly between my shoulder blades, like those spiky squishy aliens in the B movies that attach to your body and never let go.  Or like a medicine ball, those old-time leather gym balls about the size of a basketball, but not quite round, and surprisingly heavy.  Between my shoulder blades is an excellent location for Skye if I do not want to miss her slightest quiver in the night.  But if she has gas, she returns to the arm of the reading pillow to be more strategically positioned.

Have I mentioned that Skye is a pervert?  A food pervert.  She adores veggies like no dog I have ever seen.  The discarded ends of celery or cukes make her whuffle and pirouette with eye-sparkling delight.  Carrots I can understand:  they are sweet (I used to use organic carrots as chew toys for teething puppies).  But LETTUCE?  Any dog that loves lettuce is a true perve.  Really.

In the throes of the lifelong battle to keep a Frenchie vaguely dog-shaped, I try to load the edges of her dish with lower-calorie foods, and that means veggies.  Foods dogs were not designed to digest.  And that means gas.

After four or five generations of raising  mastiffs on a raw, species-appropriate diet, I am so thoroughly unaccustomed to a dog having gas that if any escaped, I assumed it ~must~ have been one of the humans.  Or so I could safely assume, till I acquired a food perve.  Now, it’s (slightly) more likely to be the dog.

Create a word: lambdemonium

A recent Blogging 101 assignment was to invent a word, define it, and tell a story using it.  How about two stories?

Lambdemonium:  wild, noisy disorder, confusion; an uproar, frenzy, chaos:  a cacaphony or frenzy involving lambs (baby sheep), with or without their mothers.

 I had to go out at 1:30 am because the house dogs were upset and woke me when they heard noise in the pastures (what a nifty alarm system).

Turns out it was because Ester’s still-damp newborn ewe lamb out in the NW pasture had somehow gotten into the middle of one of the cut-open big pvc pipes we use as feeders.  Little girl was already trying to learn to stand and walk, and could not even keep her feet under her in the slippery pipe.  She was shouting her baas, she was so upset.  (Great lungs, and what a vigorous baby.)

As soon as I put the wooly white lamb on the ground by her mother and brother, the sudden silence was wonderful.

Both babies were eagerly nursing as I left the pasture.

But that wasn’t all.  Forget going back to bed yet.

At the same time, two of the lambs from the east side got back into the back yard from the east pasture through the space between the gate and gate post, and then frantically wanted their mothers.  The mothers wanted their babies.  Lambs were baaing, mothers were almost screaming their baas.

Lambdemonium!

One little explorer was easy to catch and put through the gate to the pasture where his bellowing mother was dancing in frustration and worry.

The other lamb went behind an empty trash can in the storage half of the shelter, and was panicking.  He had stuck his head thru the fence to the east side, and even though his head was too small to get stuck in the 4×4 wire, he thought he was trapped behind the can, which I lifted out of his way with one hand.  His mother was close to breaking her neck, butting the fence, trying to get through the wire to her frightened little boy.  He too was handed through the gate.  The sudden silence was almost shocking, but then a relief.

Shortly after 2:00 am, I pounded in a pair of metal fence posts to block the spaces between the gate post, gate, and adjacent fenced space.  It annoyed Barbara the blue Manx cat, but machs nicht.  She can go over the fence.

The cries of upset babies had drawn critters to the fence from the outside, which is never a good thing.  I saw eyes too high up for possum, raccoons, or bunnies, not tall enough for deer.  Worrisome.  But now the babies are all taken care of, and can’t get separated from their mothers that badly again.

Quiet lambs are generally happy, secure lambs.

If these wooly brouhahas were synonyms for lambemonium, the antonym of lambdemonium is peace.

Happy birthday Jubal! the mastiff is nine (UPDATED)

Tigris Templar Jubilation, my Jubal, was born January 30, 2006, an extra-red apricot brindle like his daddy, CH Tigris Black Forest Cake, great-grandpa Rufus (Farnaby Fearful Symmetry, UK) and several other near and dears.

He’s nine!  A good old age for a mastiff, and he sure is enjoying his life.  He likes to shake his head after taking a drink, decorating himself with a jeweled snoot loop.

Jubal is still attached to me at the hip, but that’s A Good Thing.  He does manage to survive when I have to be gone a few days.  But then he’s pitiful.  (Me too.)

He eats a healthy raw diet (he loves the Blue Ridge Beef meats), especially the beef and venison, and he will be getting LOTS of venison from them next week.   Jubal looks forward to their food.  (Of course, he looks forward to ALL high end food, LOL.)

Jubal loves the farm, but it’s nice to get out sometimes.  Once in a while, there is a real surprise when we go places.  He went into town with us yesterday and got to go to the vet school for his first ever repro evaluation.  He did so well, his new name is Tony Randall.

Jubal beside the kumquat tree on his 9th birthday.

Happy birthday, old man!

 

UPDATE

Jubal is getting (healthy, but don’t tell him!) goodies for supper, but he also just got something wonderful:  a new squeaky toy.

Newness is very important.  When Jubal was a puppy, he could desqueak a toy in sixty seconds.  He had to vanquish whatever it was.  As he got older, he was more inclined to play for a while first before chewing out the offending noise maker.

When he got older (over five), he noticed how much it tickled me to hear him play with a squeaky toy, and he started trying to play squeaky symphonies.

Jubal would squeak the toy till his jaws MUST have ached.  He found ways to vary the tone and volume, although it tended to be less than melodious.  But he loved the attention and laughter he got during the longest pieces.  In fact, instead of immediately murdering the squeak mechanism, he would wear it out by using it.

Today at the store, we squeezed a lot of toys to find one that sounded good, and brought it home.

Jubal lit up when he saw and smelled his new toy (it’s a little bunny), and he took the entire thing in his mouth, and experimented with his new instrument.  He’s a happy boy.  (And pretty shiny for an old guy overdue for a bath, LOL!)

Daily choices to significantly improve post-cancer health

No day is perfect, and neither am I.  Life butts in and takes over, especially on a farm.   But since my breast cancer was diagnosed and I learned that my typical American diet probably contributed significantly to the development of the cancer, these are my daily health goals, carefully kept in mind.   Don’t want the cancer back.  Want to be healthier, feel better, slow the age-related rate of deterioration.

1.  Eat a small, high-protein breakfast every day.  Don’t skip meals, or eat them too far apart.  Don’t eat supper late at night (not always easy for this pair of night owls).

2.  Drink 32 oz of roselle tea every day for its exceptional antioxidant qualities.  I use one to 1-1/2 NuStevia packets in 32 oz, to smooth the zing a little.  Roselle or hibiscus tea is fabulous brewed with a few whole allspice or served with a splash of just-squeezed orange juice, and is equally delicious hot or iced.  Check out my post about Roselle.

3.  Avoid gluten and processed sugar as much as possible.  (This is hard if you eat lunch out every day in a VERY small town).

4.  Avoid processed foods to the maximum extent possible.  Instead, eat foods that have been prepared fresh that day.

5.  Eat organic foods, especially fruit and veggies, and organic, pasture-fed meat.  Avoid grain-fed beef.  GROW your own organic foods.  We live on a farm, and sheep “gifts” make awesome compost for big beds of organic veggies.  Snow says the Lacinato (elephant) kale is awesome!

6.  Cook fresh mushrooms in my food.  Good thing I love them!  A study of the health benefits of mushrooms included common white and brown ones, and the researchers were surprised that common grocery-store cooking mushrooms were nearly as good at cancer prevention as the expensive, rare ones.  And so much cheaper that anyone can afford to benefit from them.

7.  Use coconut oil and olive or nut oils for cooking, and avoid heavily processed oils like canola.  (Canola is made from rapeseed, and is actually toxic until processed heavily.)

8.  Take healthy supplements:  curcumin (the active ingredient in turmeric, a powerful cancer fighter); vitamins B-12 and D3; chelated magnesium; cinnamon; an excellent probiotic; thyroid and iodine; resveratrol; a baby aspirin; Vascepa fish oil caps; Co Q-10; and my prescription medications.

9.  Every day I eat at least 5 Brazil nuts as a natural source of selenium, and about an ounce of dry roasted, unsalted almonds to help lower bad cholesterol, raise the good stuff, and to fight cancer as well.

10.  I eat at least two squares of high-cacao dark chocolate a day.  By high-cacao, the dr said the chocolate must be at least 72% cacao.  I especially love Ghirardelli Intense Dark Sea Salt Soiree  (with almonds).  Yummiest prescription in the world!

Other:  When I just HAVE to have cookies, I make my new favorites, almond flour cookies made with palm sugar (a lot like brown sugar, but less sweet for a much lower glycemic index, and with deeper, richer flavor), organic nuts, and cacao nibs instead of chocolate chips. Perfect!

If you’d like me to post the almond flour, better than chocolate chip cookie recipe, post a comment!