To 2018!

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

Dear Reader,

If we do have any readers now or in the future, hopefully you realize we never intended to be particularly consistent here. We have been busily sugarfree all this while, but so busy living it we hardly found time to document it! We don't feel a need to keep posting recipes. We prefer the written word ourselves, and the internet is full of recipes like ours now. It's wonderful! This blog was started as a vehicle for a health presentation, and while it doesn't accurately represent all our of our cooking aspirations, some of you enjoy hearing a bit of what we do.

Last year we had Sugarfree baby #7. I (Mom) have difficult pregnancies. At least I find it hard to get enough nourishment (or keep enough down) to supply myself and the darling creature inside of me. My body was sensitive to everything, and I ended up eating a diet that was entirely vegan, flour free, with all grains sprouted. Google Dr Christopher Herbal Legacy if you want more details of why I did this. I kept nearly all of my food down, and had my easiest pregnancy. While it was a lot of work to consume enough calories, he was my 2nd biggest baby, so I call it a success.

Well, after baby came and I found I could again tolerate all kinds of food, we continued to sprout our grains but also added sourdough, some meat, and dairy for those of us who tolerate it. We are of course sugarfree. Mostly. If just creeps in like a weed, so in 2018 the children were making New Years resolutions and one of my daughters wanted to not eat any sugar. We don’t really have any processed sugar at home, so that’s easy, but she wanted to avoid it outside our home as well. Which requires a lot of self control in the environments she is in. The other children thought that was a good idea, but weren't really interested until I offered $100 to do something fun with to anyone who wanted to join her. Then they all jumped right into the bandwagon!

We’re all Sugarfree right now, except the 6 year old who found daddy's powdered sugar at the top of a cabinet and has been sneaking it by handfuls. As a child my parents offered me to go off candy two separate years growing up for the same incentive I am offering, so the fact that I am not rising with inflation helps me feel the reward is small enough that the majority of the motivation will be internal. That is how I judge if an external reward in appropriate. If the effort required is far less than the reward itself is worth, the motivation is still internal, which is what I am going for. My kids could earn $100 in just a few days of piano teaching, so the money isn't the deciding factor. I feel great about that. I have nothing against a bit of worthy bribery.

We won't be offering any of our readers any financial reward, but you could promise yourself something! I did. I told the kids they could do something fun with their money. Fun for us would be buying books or going to a museum, but I bet you can think of something more exciting. The thought that my children might go without me has already kept me from eating a Lindt truffle that I could have eaten in peaceful solitude no one ever would ever have known about.

Here's to  a sugarfree 2018!