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Wednesday 25 February 2009

Lard


Lard has something of a negative image due to all the bad press given to saturated fats (which is actually attribuatable to man-made rather than natural saturated fats but that's beyond the scope of this post) and is something that I had never used until recently. I was inspired to use it by Amanda who actually renders her own lard although I have not gone that far and just buy it from the supermarket.

I first tried out lard in baked porridge (oatmeal). I did it half and half which tasted fine and have since had it with just lard which still did not taste significantly different to when I made it with butter. I use 4oz in the recipe which at £1/250g is 44p for butter and at 28p/250g is 12p for lard (or 28p if I do half and half). Since lard is 72% cheaper, the savings can add up over a year.

I also discovered another advantage of lard. I've always used margerine or butter or oil with flour to stop biscuits, bread, cakes etc. sticking to the tins. Unfortunately this has never been very successful and I have often had trouble getting things clean or even getting the contents out of the tin in one piece. One day however I decided to try out lard mainly because it was cheaper so I figured I might as well try. The difference is amazing. I have just greased the tins by rubbing the block of lard on them (without adding flour) and everything comes off really easily. It has been so effective with bread that the tins almost don't need cleaning afterwards. Even if you are not convinced of the healthiness of actually eating lard, it is worth using just for this.

Sunday 22 February 2009

My Web Wanderings (weekly)


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Saturday 21 February 2009

If a twelve year old can get it...



... then why do so many people support abortion?


Sunday 15 February 2009

My Web Wanderings (weekly)

  • tags: pro-life, Large families

    • There is quite a lot of talk going on about how the doctor should not have 'let her' get pregnant again when she had six children at home. If we begin using a limiting rule for some families, it won't be long before we are right behind China is controlling people's reproduction.
    • we need to be thankful that Ms. Suleman was willing to carry her babies, even at the risk of her own life, instead of employing selective reduction. When Jamie Lyn Spears announced her pregnancy, many mommy blogers wrote in her defense because she did not decide to end what most saw as an inconvenience rather than a human life. The same argument applies here. Both women were in less than ideal situations, and thought they made choices we don't agree with, the fact that they did not abort demands our thankfulness.
    • there is something of a double standard when it comes to accepting multiples in America. The McCaughey septuplets were heralded as miracles, and their parents were not publicly attacked for not choosing to reduce. The Gosselin sextuplets were heralded as miracles, and their parents were not publicly attacked for not choosing to reduce. I have seen interviews with both of those families where they were asked if their choice to use fertility treatments was maybe irresponsible because of the risk of so many babies, and both families gave an unequivocal no, because the odds were so, so slim that it was never a consideration.
    • It's like saying people are irresponsible for going outside when there is a 1 in 1,000,000,000,000 chance they will be hit by a meteor.
    • And while many are upset that using 6 embryos was unethical, it would seem this was the same plan they had used for the previous pregnancies. None of those pregnancies produced more than twins, and that only happened once. Even with the chance there that all 6 might develop, no one could forsee two of them splitting into twins. How can we criticize someone for something even the medical community did not see coming?
  • tags: pro-life, Large families

    • So, say someone wants a big family. Life-long dream. No progress the traditional way (married and trying to conceive), so we move to the advances in science to see if they can provide a solution. We do W+X and get Y, which is a baby. Repeat 4 more times, and get Y (except once when it results in YY). So we have a precedent here of W+X equalling Y. Even the margin of error resulted in only YY. So for a sixth time we do W+X, and get YYYYYYYY. Even people who work in statistics and probability will tell you there was no way to know that was coming. We have created a way to fiddle with the human body in order to get what we couldn't before- surely you had to figure somewhere it was going to backfire. You can't even buying an appliance without a warning that if you use it in a manner other than what the manufacturer intended it for, he will not be liable for what happens to you.
    • Then I keep reading comments about how a single, unemployed mother should never have that many kids- one is enough. Whoa! (so much for a woman's right to control reproduction, BTW!) If the problem is that she can't possibly care for all those children and give them what they 'need' (read: everything advertised on TV)because she is not working, then why subject even one child to a life of doing without? Feminism's jagged pill is that you have the right to demand whatever the world says is normal, but anything beyond that and you're on your own. If it is an ethical dilemma, what impact does the number of kids have? She would be just as 'unfit' to one child as to 14, no? So you're willing to pay taxes to support a woman with one kid, but that's the cut-off? You people are deranged.
    • Well, her house is too small. Does anybody remember the house the septuplets went home to? Or better yet, the homes our great-grandmothers not only raised large families in, but gave birth to those families in?
  • tags: Breastfeeding

    • She did this, she told the camera crew, in part out of compassion for a suffering child, but also to help lift the stigma against breast-feeding in Africa, where men often think women can't have sex if they're still nursing. "So the husbands, of course, of these women are really encouraging them to stop [breast-feeding]," Hayek said.
  • tags: Breastfeeding


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Wednesday 11 February 2009

Rear facing Car Seat

This is an autopost. I'm not here at the moment because we're off in search of a rear facing car seat for Little Girl. Hope fully by the time you are reading this we have got one.

Here's why:




I'll probably post some more links/info when I have time.

Sunday 8 February 2009

My Web Wanderings (weekly)


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Sunday 1 February 2009

My Web Wanderings (weekly)

  • Are they serious? That works out about £9000 per child per year!

    tags: pro-life

    • Sophy said the expense of raising 14 children will likely be prohibitive, citing studies that estimate it costs roughly $2.5 million to raise a child to adulthood. Using that math, raising 14 children would cost roughly $35 million.






      "And that's basic stuff," he said. "That doesn't include swimming lessons and things like that. It's very costly and hopefully the planning that needs to be done was done upfront."

  • tags: home-education, homemaking, children

  • Amazing - this lady plans to breastfeed her octuplets.

    tags: Breastfeeding

  • In the UK supposedly it is rare for aborted babies to be born alive due to the 24 week limit but this American baby was only 22 weeks when he was born.

    tags: pro-life

    • Rowan's mom, Angele, aborted him on April 2 at one of abortionist James Pendergraft's six Florida mills, EPOC Clinic in Orlando.

      But Angele experienced an epiphany when, after deciding to undergo the induced-labor abortion procedure (aka "live-birth abortion"), she saw her nearly 23-week-old aborted baby move in the toilet where he had just been delivered.

    • Angele wrote me, "The very moment I saw my son was alive, nothing else in the whole world mattered but Rowan's safety! I fell immediately in love with my baby boy and was afraid of nothing that I ever feared before. Only one thing mattered to me: getting Rowan help. I begged, repeatedly."

      It was abortion-clinic worker Violene whom Angele begged.

    • So Violene literally shut the bathroom door on Angele and little Rowan, along with the "blood everywhere," as Angele later recounted.

      And Angele was left hopelessly alone with her small, dying newborn.

      Angele panicked and called her friend who was awaiting her return at a nearby hotel. The friend called 911.

      As the minutes that seemed like hours ticked by, Angele did the only (and maternally natural) thing she could think of: She sang to her baby ... and he turned his head toward her voice ... and he grasped her finger with his little hand ... and he died.

      The police finally came, but it was too late.

    • Angele recognized the wrong she committed, but did not let that keep her from overlooking the wrongs that were committed against her and her son. Angele overcame her own shame in hopes of saving other mothers and children from the same fate.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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