bluejayway's Profile

Sleep sacks can safely be used for years! I have one that is for ages 1-3! You should try a Grobag. You can find them online or at Amazon. They are all my daughter uses. If you get a nice 2.5 tog one and dress her appropriately, it will keep her warm with room temps down into the 50s. I live in the northwest and our house is kept at 67 degrees. My 15-month old sleeps with a flannel sheet, footie pjs, and a 2.5 tog sack every night. Grobags are such great quality, that even after a year of nightly use and many washings, it's ready for the next baby this winter!

Never hear of it. I am from the Northwest, but my husband is from a Midwestern Catholic family and he wasn't aware of this tradition either.
That said, if I saw butter molded into the form of anything for sale at the grocery store, I would be all over it.

I have made this twice. The first time I made a very elementary mistake of too much butter and adding too many onions to my pot (I didn't have a big enough skillet, so I used a big Le Creuset pot). I wasn't really measuring and I thought, "You can never have enough butter!" Turns out, you can. After like two hours, those onions still weren't carmelized very well. The second time I did it, I split the onions into two skillets to carmelize and only used enough butter to coat them. Turned out much better. I also used a bit of bourbon and vinegar as someone suggested. Delicious.

My mother's homemade chicken noodle soup. She had a very particular way of doing things. A specific store and type of chicken she bought for the broth. The weather had to be just right for the noodles to dry and be cut properly. She could never make too much of this for our family of seven. It was delicious. Now I am an adult with a child of my own, and am a vegetarian, so I've had to modify the chicken bit. But I find myself craving this soup and thinking of the day I'll teach my daughter to make homemade noodles.

I am an American, but I have been living and working in the UK for two years. My first child is due in July, and I was shocked to hear about the great maternity benefits in the UK, as compared to my homeland. I get up to a year off, 9 months of it are paid to varying degrees and the last three are unpaid should I choose to still be on leave. I am also guaranteed my job back and I have health coverage, benefits, etc. throughout. And there is not a social stigma associated with being a professional and a mother. Yes, the tax rate is higher in Europe to support more social services, and yes, a lot of Americans don't want higher taxes. But you continually see American falling farther behind the rest of the world in many respects. Americans are consistently rating lower in happiness, life expectancy, income, etc than European countries like Norway. When will people start to realize that the way America does things is not necessarily the best in the world anymore? If America continues on this path and continues putting children at a disadvantage, then we can only expect to be worse off in the end.

I'm a vegetarian and my husband is not. I make a version of this and use half the sauce with Morningstar hamburger crumbles. It's delicious.