Food for Thought - French Toast

I've told you before that my mom and dad raised 8 kids on a teacher's salary. Mom was always SO careful with money. We had a farm, so that meant fresh milk and eggs. Mom made her own bread, so that was always plentiful. It was only natural that French Toast was part of our diet. Mom made hot breakfasts five days a week, Monday through Friday and the breakfasts were pretty set. We had eggs one day, pancakes one day, French toast one day, mush one day...(I just skipped breakfast on mush day)...you get the idea. Mom made good French Toast, but I had never really appreciated French Toast until my sweetie made it for me! He uses four or five loaves of bread and three dozen eggs, so cut down the recipe for your family. We like to eat it cold after church since it is pretty much a Sunday morning thing. I think the key is really the cinnamon and that extra dash of sugar. I have always loved jam on French Toast, but some of my kids prefer syrup. And get this, my sweetie eats his smothered in applesauce! I hope you enjoy it. Leave me a comment and let me know.

French Toast

butter (for griddle)
3 dozen eggs
2 pinches of salt
2 tablespoons of sugar 
3 cups of milk
2 tablespoons of ground cinnamon
4 or 5 loaves of white bread


Beat eggs well, then beat them some more.

Add salt and milk. Beat. Add cinnamon while beating and then beat fast for a minute or so to get the cinnamon stirred in.

Dip bread and cook on buttered griddle.

Flip and cook the second side until golden brown.  Butter griddle between each batch.  Enjoy!

Mommy Bumps

I asked Bossy to help me locate some pictures of me when I was pregnant so we could link up with Shell's little "bump" game. Bossy thought it would be great fun to totally humiliate me with pics from my first little ones rather than the last...that means big hair and the 80s.  Ok, Teach was born in 1991, but I never was at the height of fashion. This is me being pregnant with her.

This one shows me being pregnant with Bossy, and yes I was a teenage mom, but barely. She was born in November and I turned 20 in January. Don't you just love the plaid? It's back in style again...I must be old.

Sadly, I kept my bump after each and every child...this is Bossy just a few days old in 1984. But she is so cute, she was worth every pound.

One last one for you to giggle over. This is me pregnant (and annoyed at the camera) with the Gym Rat in early 1987. Don't you love that red couch? I guess I'll have to search through and find more pics for you of some of the other babies that were born in THIS century! I've aged quite a bit since then...but that's not necessarily a bad thing...

...if you're cheese!

**Editor's Note: As you can tell Mom doesn't like the camera. I wasn't trying to be mean, but most of the photos of her are post-bump with newborns. She really doesn't do the bump documentation. Also my (slow going) digital archiving project, is a mountain of pictures that are all of the older kids because after 2005 Mom had a digital camera. In fairness I was going to allow her to post a truly big bump picture of me. But I can't find my copy and she wouldn't email me hers. 

We are still looking for photos and I will keep adding as we find them.  Here are the latest discoveries. See me working on the room for Grandpa? This was about six weeks before Baby Doll was born in 2010.

I told you I look like a cow when I am pregnant.  Here is me one month before Curly was born - July 2008. Isn't Scout cute?

All dressed up for Cow Appreciation Day!

Torture Chamber

So in January, the Dog Walker and I made a resolution to exercise every day. We started on January 2, and so far we haven’t missed a day. Most of the time we play an exercise video game together like DDR and lately it’s been Just Dance on the wii. We had to make a change because for some reason my body doesn’t seem to like exercise.

In January I was playing basketball two days a week and DDR with the Dog Walker the other five days. About six weeks into that routine, I started feeling pain in my right foot. First it was on the bottom, but it slowly spread up my heel until at least several times a day I was having shooting pains run up and down my leg. They were kind of like cramps, but no matter how much stretching I did, they wouldn’t go away. Finally I made an appointment with my doctor. He took X-rays and gave me a diagnosis… Plantar fasciitis and Achilles tendonitis. Then he gave me a referral for a specialist.

I "drug my feet" about making the call. I didn’t want them to tell me I needed surgery and at first I wasn’t even that excited about a cortisone shot. I changed my routine…I traded basketball for volleyball and we switched over to Just Dance without the feet movement. None of it seemed to help much, so after a couple more weeks, I made the call. I had in mind the foot specialist who had done Teach’s surgery last summer, but he was booked six weeks out. I took what they offered and I was able to get an appointment within a few days.

You know you are getting old when the "specialists" are younger than you are. He spent about five minutes with me and told me the only answers to my problem were a night-time "boot" (that keeps me awake half the night…it is so uncomfortable!) and physical therapy. Now I’ve had physical therapy before, once right after my knee surgery and then again about three years ago to fix the problems from the therapy 15 years ago. I was NOT excited to hear this news. It took me another three weeks and two cancelled appointments to finally get myself to the PT office.

My therapist was named Doug and he seemed nice enough…at first. He made me walk for him, then he worked my muscles a bit. Then he asked me if I’d ever heard of ASTYM. Apparently that was the therapy my specialist was recommending. I use therapy only in the loosest sense of the word. It’s really a code word for TORTURE! He has this set of plastic tools and the idea is to press as hard as he can to break all the capillaries in my leg to stimulate new growth in my ankle. Yeah…you got it…they want to totally bruise my leg twice a week for three weeks…on purpose…with tools… And I’m going to let them…does anybody see anything wrong with this picture??

During the first appointment I was still in shock and besides I couldn’t very easily run away since I was lying on a table behind a curtain and there were lots of other people in the outer room to see me trying to make an escape. When I got home I showed the red bruises that ran from my calf down to my ankle to my sweetie. He offered to make dinner. Maybe this wasn’t so bad after all…until the second appointment. I took painkillers in anticipation of all the fun I was going to have, but it was still incredibly painful. Today I had my fourth appointment and I discovered that if I distracted my therapist with conversation, sometimes he would forget to push as hard. I still came home with an impressive trail of bruises. I’m not sure my leg is getting any better, but with all this bruising, who could tell? I’ll keep you posted…

The Interview

Last Thursday my sweetie, Baby Doll, Grandpa, and I took off for Cedar City around noon. It’s a four-hour drive and we had a deadline. The Drama Queen was directing her first one-act play and she really wanted us to be there. We got stuck in traffic in Utah County, but the rest of the trip was pretty smooth sailing. I rode in the back with my Baby Doll since this was her first long road trip and it wasn’t long before my legs were totally cramped and aching. Did I mention that I have Achilles Tendonitis in my right foot? I’ll tell you all about that and my torture (therapy) sessions next week…but for now just keep in mind that an 8-hour car ride was not pleasant. 

 

 Yeah, we drove down, spent a couple of hours in Cedar including the play (which was amazing by the way) and turned around and drove home. Normally we would have spent the night, but Bossy’s graduation was at 10:30 the following morning so we had to get back. About two hours into our ride home, I got a phone call from Bossy. "Guess what, Mom?" she shouted excitedly into my ear. It was already pushing 11:00 pm, so maybe I wasn’t as excited as I should have been. "What?" I asked. "Brooke Adams from the Salt Lake Tribune has requested an interview!" I sat up. Suddenly I was listening. "You’re kidding," I responded. "Nope! You’ve  finally arrived!" (That’s about the 5^th time she has told me I’ve arrived…). 

 **Editor's Note: This  doesn't make sense to anyone else, Mom.  For the first month she kept asking me, "When do you know your blog has "arrived?"  Like there was a magical pop-up that would greet her one day.  "Congrats!  Twelve Makes a Dozen is now a real blog."  So I started teasing her at every blogging milestone.**

I don't remember the rest of our conversation, but when I snapped my phone closed, I was unable to slip back into that dozy place. An interview! Nothing like that had ever happened to us before. Brooke wanted to talk to me about twelvemakesadozen and why I blog. When we got home I sent her an e-mail agreeing to the interview and she sent me a bunch of questions. Bossy’s graduation ate up most of Friday and we spent Saturday cleaning the house and preparing for her graduation party on Sunday. 

We fed and entertained 48 people at our house who all came to express their congrats to Bossy. When they were finally all gone, the house was under semi-control again, and the kids were all in bed, I sat down with the list of questions. It took me over an hour to answer them all. Some things I had never given much thought to, like WHY I blog. I sent them off to her and headed to bed. 

 She responded first thing Monday morning…the answers were just what she wanted. They were planning a huge spread on mom bloggers in the Mother’s Day Feature section. They also wanted to send over a photographer on Wednesday to get some pictures! That meant another day of cleaning the house while trying to settle my racing heart. 

My sweetie stayed home from work on Wednesday morning and took all the kids to school so I could sleep in. When I finally dragged myself out, he was touch-up painting in the kitchen! I was thinking mopping the floor would be a good idea, but painting!? We spent the morning together with me scrubbing and trying to avoid fresh paint while he crawled on the floor one minute, then stood on a chair the next. We took the youngest three (who are still home during the day) to McDonald’s for lunch. We didn’t want to chance making a mess. 

The paint was dry when we got home…that’s when my sweetie discovered he’d grabbed the wrong can and all the sand-colored paint he’d touched up on the walls was the wrong color! We had little lighter patches of paint everywhere…so much for impressing the photographer! She showed up that night just a little early. I was surprised how uncomfortable I was in front of the camera. Teach said, "Don’t worry so much, Mom, she can’t make us look any skinnier!" But maybe she can make my walls all look the same color. 

Pick up a copy of Sunday’s Salt Lake Tribune or read it on line. Let me know what you think. I'll even give everyone who leaves a comment about the article an additional entry in our new contest that starts on Monday. Have a fabulous weekend and Happy Birthday, Gamer!

Birth Story: Crafty

Crafty was born in September of 2000. The Summer Olympics were in full swing and I was very happy to have something to watch on TV during the long hours I had to wait during her induction. I don’t know why I have so much trouble trying to have a baby by myself, but for some reason, I can’t make it happen without plenty of Pitocin flowing through my veins. My doctor is the coolest because he always wants to be present at every birth. He doesn’t have any partners, so he schedules inductions in the late evening so the babies will be born during the night and he won’t have to interrupt his office hours. I have no idea when or if he sleeps!

We showed up at the hospital on the appointed day at about 4:00 in the afternoon. Things were relatively slow and it wasn’t long before I was changed into my pretty hospital gown and hooked up to all the necessary machines. My doc showed up about 6:00 and broke my water, but things were still moving pretty slowly so he took off and offered to return in the wee hours for the delivery. We switched on the Olympics and hunkered down to wait.

I love the Olympic games! I’ve never wanted to be that kind of athlete, but I can appreciate the hard work and dedication required to get where they are. We watched basketball, swimming, and diving. Then we saw some great footraces. As the evening drew on, the sports got stranger and stranger. About 1:00 a.m., the Greco-Roman wrestling began. We had never heard of that sport, but we knew an American was supposed to be pretty good, so we were interested in watching (besides, it’s not like we had anything better to do…). The Russian, Alexander Karelin had been undefeated for 13 years. He had not even had a point scored against him in six years! We were pretty sure that Rulon Gardner didn’t stand a chance, but we figured it would be entertaining.

The match began at 5 centimeters and by the time we got to 8, the nurses called my doctor. He was only a few minutes away and he arrived just in time for me to measure 10. As he walked into the room, he glanced up at the TV. Usually the nurse would switch it off about that time, but since Rulon was so close to victory (as was my little Crafty), we let it stay on. "Is he still winning?" asked the doctor as he scrubbed his hands in the little sink. "Yeah," my sweetie said. "We think he might get the gold!" The doc snapped on the gloves. "Yeah, he’s a good kid," he said. "How do you know?" I asked. "He’s from my hometown," he said, matter-of-factly. We all glanced at the TV. Rulon was still winning and the match was nearly over. "Did you know him?" I asked. The doc laughed. "Everybody knows everybody in Star Valley, Wyoming," he said.

Star Valley Panorama by Scott O. Smith

He opened his tools and spread them on the tray. "He was a little punk kid. We hauled hay together." Shortly after that Rulon won the gold (I guess he grew a little from his hay-haulin’ days), but we got the real prize…a beautiful little dark-haired, hazel-eyed girl. (Good job on Biggest Loser, Rulon!)

The Biggest Loser on NBC

Pain and Triumph

I have fat genes and I have fat jeans! Unfortunately for me, thunder thighs seem to run in my family. I’ve been on dozens of diets, but losing weight is definitely one of the hardest things I’ve never managed to do.

When I was pregnant with number 4 I was borderline gestational diabetes. I was unhappy and unhealthy. The scales tipped past the 300 mark and my baby was born at 10 lbs 1 ½ oz. She was beautiful and healthy, but she looked like she was 3 months old rather than a newborn. I managed to drop back below that ugly number, but then I got pregnant again. Number 5 was 9 lbs 2 oz. This trend just couldn’t continue.

It was about that time that we started building a new house in a new neighborhood. I was excited to learn that church sports included volleyball. My sweetie agreed to join me on the co-ed team. I loved to play, but my weight made it difficult for me to move quickly around the court. I tried my best, but one Thursday night I moved toward the ball, heard a small "pop," and that was it. I couldn’t stand up! My knee was totally gone.

My hubby got to me first. He and a neighbor pulled me upright but I had no control over that leg and nearly collapsed. They moved me to the sidelines and then eventually to our car. I had torn my ACL and the only way to repair it was surgery. It was 1995 and the surgical techniques were not as advanced as they are now. I was forced to choose between a cadaver and my own hamstring for the repair. Since I was not excited about the thoughts of someone’s dead body part in me, I chose my hamstring. That was my first mistake!

It is still painful… No one mentioned that it would be a year before I would be able to have mobility without pain. That I would have to wear a brace for months…that crutches were difficult when you had a two-year-old crying and wanting to be picked up. As lousy as the recovery proved to be, one good thing happened…I lost weight! Lots of weight! Over 40 pounds!

It was just too hard to drag myself to the kitchen to get food during the day and I had to rely on someone else to take care of me at night. I managed to keep that weight off and it has made all the difference in how good I feel and how much exercise I can do. The knee still aches when the weather changes, and I have lovely scars that run up the front of my leg, but as far as diets go, it was the one that worked the best.