Back to School, Rural Style

 We start school early, in mid-August. Desert Boy wanted it to start even earlier, as he really missed his friends. So when we went to back-to-school night, he could barely contain his enthusiasm. He picked out his desk, got his school supplies, and played on the playground. The parents learned about the daily schedule and dress policy. Then we went home and made sure Desert Boy was in bed by 8.

 The next morning, Desert Boy was up at 5:30, wondering why he had to wait so long to go to school and start his first day as a first grader. Good thing his dad was up that early!

Living in such a rural area, we don't have to choose between private and public, charter and magnet, one-language or bilingual schools. We have an old-fashioned one-room schoolhouse system. Grades kindergarten through second grade are taught in one town by a teacher and a teacher's aide. Grades 3-6 are in a different town in another one-room school (actually it has two classrooms and a library/computer room, but the main subjects are taught in one classroom and the other one is used as the music room/science room/cafeteria). Grades 7-12 go to a third town where several teachers teach in their specialties and the other subjects are taught via TV/Internet connections. We have a bus system that takes the kids where they need to go.

Class size is small. Last year's graduating class was about five. That's quite large. We don't have any kindergarteners this year. The first grade class has six students. The second grade class has three students, so my son is in a classroom with nine students total. The combined grades in the classrooms seems to work, mainly because we have very talented teachers. The older students help the younger students, and the younger ones see what the older ones are doing and want to do it too. (This especially applied to Desert Boy with math last year, he wanted the harder math sheets. Talk about getting his mom to smile!) Most students go on to college.

We've already told our kids that they are going to college. One morning Desert Girl surprised me by saying, "I can't wait to go to college, it's going to be so fun!" Way to go, pre-schooler, you keep thinking that way!

 Back to the first day of first grade. Desert Boy was ready to be the star of my camera. I love this photo!

 We went over to the bus stop for more photos.

 And a little comparing of who had grown more over the summer!

 But the camera got old, and the kids got tired of the photo shoot. They wanted to get to school!

 Soon it was time for the bus, and eager kids remembered the rules and stayed put until the bus doors opened and then marched in a nice line onto the bus. Good job! Desert Boy lost his backpack over the summer, so he's using a temporary one in a nice bright color that hopefully he won't lose. He has homework four days a week, so he has to learn to bring it home, do it, and take it back.

My husband wasn't such a good student, he wanted to stay out under the desert sun and go running around, so we're thrilled Desert Boy is liking school so much. We're trying to encourage him and also give him good food to fuel his body and mind. My goal this school year is to send as little processed food as possible, especially after learning how artificial food dyes have been linked to hyperactivity and how the American diet includes several times the amount of sugar we need.

Here was our day 2 lunch: left-over whole wheat spaghetti with sauce (Desert Boy picked out the zucchini from the sauce the night before, but he doesn't even know it's whole wheat spaghetti), a whole-wheat banana-chocolate chip muffin (yes, a couple ingredients in the muffin aren't the healthiest, but hopefully the banana helps balance those out!), baby carrots (he still calls long ones adult carrots), and strawberries. Yum.

Maybe part of going back to school fun are the lunches. Oh, who am I kidding? His favorite part of the day is recess!

What's your favorite back-to-school memory?

New Food: Pomona's Universal Pectin

When it was apparent that our apricot tree was going to have an abundant crop this year, I prepared to make some jam. I had plenty of bottles, lids, and rings, but I needed some pectin. Up to now my favorite has been Sure-Jell Premium Fruit Pectin Light. It uses less sugar, but the amount of sugar is still quite high--about 3/4 cup sugar per 1 cup apricots.

Since I've been trying to eat healthier this year, I decided to do a little more investigating and came across Pomona's Universal Pectin. It's available from Azure Standard and Amazon
(and probably from many other stores, but I live over an hour from a grocery store so have limited choices).

If you've made jam, you probably know how the main brands (Ball, Sure-Jell), tell you how to follow the recipe to a T. No substitutions, changes, nada. When you read the Pomona's instructions, you get a totally different feeling. They tell you you're welcome to develop your own recipes and give you some helpful hints. They even tell you how to use other sweeteners like honey, maple sugar, juice concentrate, sucanat, xylitol and stevia.

I wasn't feeling quite brave enough to make my own recipe, but I was willing to follow one of theirs. They have three main categories: Cooked recipes with low sugar or honey, No-cook freezer recipes, and cooked "all fruit" recipes. I've tried the cooked recipes with honey and the cooked "all fruit" recipes, with concentrated apple juice sweetening the jam. Both have turned out great, and neither have any white sugar added. Yippee!

The reason that Pomona's can get away with no white sugar is that it is citrus based. The pectin is extracted from the peel of a lime, lemon, or orange. It activates with calcium water (which you mix up with the included packet).

The jam that we made tastes fruitier with the Pomona pectin, which makes sense because there really is more fruit in it. I highly recommend this pectin, and find that not only is it healthier, it's also cheaper, because one box makes more jam than the other brands of pectin. What a win-win. This is the only pectin I'm going to be using from now on. And with two big boxes of fruit arriving later this month, I'll be ready!

p.s. For more of my adventures in new, healthy foods, click here.

This post includes an affiliate link to Amazon. Should you click on this link and decide to purchase anything, I will receive a small commission  and you will have my sincere thanks for supporting Desert Survivor! 

Tips for Watching the Perseid Meteor Shower with Kids

Desert Boy holding a meteorite

You've probably heard that the peak of the Perseid meteor shower is tonight. Are you ready to watch this exciting natural phenomenon? Here are some tips to make the most of it.

1. Find a Dark Spot

We are lucky out in the rural desert to have a very, very dark place to watch the meteor shower. However, we even have some stray lights around. So to make it as dark as possible, we'll try to position ourselves to use buildings to block out that extraneous light. Tip: out in the West, the moon will set around 10:00, so it will be even darker after then. (You can find your moon and sun times for your area here.) Also, use red flashlights or regular flashlights covered with red tissue paper to preserve your night vision. It can take 15-20 minutes to get your eyes accustomed to the dark!

2. Get Comfortable

I've gone for night hikes to watch meteor showers (partly to stay warm!), but perhaps the best way is to sit down or lie down. We're planning on hanging out on air mattresses in the back yard with sleeping bags and pillows. That way if the kids fall asleep early, we can still enjoy the meteor shower. 

3. Be Patient

The Perseid meteor shower is expected to have 80-100 meteors per hour. That's over one a minute. But that still leaves about 40 seconds of every minute with nothing. That can be difficult for little kids (and sometimes adults) to wait. Things that might help are to look at the constellations and listen to stories about them, to join a meteor viewing party so there are more people to talk to, or to play games about where the next meteor might be. (Hint: this is called the Perseid meteor shower because many of the meteoroids appear to originate from the constellation Perseus, which is in the northeast sky under the "W" of Casseiopeia.)

Hope you see some good meteors! (And if you happen to get lucky enough to have a meteorite land near you, send it to me!)

Definitions from The Free Dictionary:

Meteor: A bright trail or streak that appears in the sky when a meteoroid is heated to incandescence by friction with the earth's atmosphere. Also called falling star, meteor burst, shooting star.

Meteoroid: A solid body, moving in space, that is smaller than an asteroid and at least as large as a speck of dust.

Meteorite: A stony or metallic mass of matter that has fallen to the earth's surface from outer space.

The Perplexing Plum Tree

 My husband noted that a tree near our house was producing fruit. He had never seen it produce fruit before, so we went and took a closer look.

 The fruit came in two sizes, the larger about an inch and a half in diameter, the smaller about the size of  a cherry. We discussed if this could be a Potawatomi Plum, but neither of us was sure. Potawatomi plums (Prunus munsoniana) are native to the southeast, but were reportedly brought by miners and Mormons to the Colorado Plateau and Great Basin. I did a bit of Internet searching to find more, but ended up more confused!

Here's a closeup of the fruits. As you can see by the fruits in the background, many of them were split. If you know anything more, please leave a comment.

And what about the taste? My husband said he had eaten one a few days earlier, and he was still alive, so I tried a few. They tasted sort of like a plum, but left a cottony feeling in the mouth, which isn't all that pleasant. Perhaps these would be better in jams.

Survey on Pregnancy and High Elevation

My five-month pregnant friend at 13,000 feet elevation

I've been out hiking to mountain tops this week with a friend who is five months pregnant. During one of our hikes, we got in a conversation about high elevation exposure while pregnant. My friend conducts fieldwork on mountain tops. Her doctor had looked into the literature, but hadn't found much information, so had cleared her for staying two weeks above 10,000 feet. For her next jaunt into the mountains, her doctor recommended that she spend the evenings at a lower elevation to make sure that her oxygen levels would resaturate in case her baby was having any stress during the days. My friend was hiking as well as I was, so I was really impressed!

Between hikes, I had a chance to check my email and saw a request from two doctors to post a link to a survey about pregnancy, exercise, and high elevation on my blog. It's not like you can really run a controlled experiment on high elevation pregnancy exposure ("hey, you pregnant lady, go spend two months above 10,000 feet and tell us how you and your baby do, you may or may not have some consequences"). However, this survey can gather some information that may provide doctors with a little more data for making recommendations in the future.

I filled out the survey, and if you'd like to, just click on the link below.

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Looking For Female Participants For a Research Survey on Pregnancy, Exercise and High Altitude Exposure

Very little is known about the safety of travel and exercise at high altitude during pregnancy. Furthermore, although exercise is considered safe during pregnancy some activities, such as downhill skiing, are discouraged and many women modify their exercise regimes during pregnancy
We are conducting a research project to study what kind of exercise women participate in during pregnancy and whether they travel to high altitude during pregnancy. Our goal is to use the information obtained in the survey results to provide advice to physicians and their pregnant patients who want to travel to high elevations. If you are physically active and have been pregnant you may be able to provide useful information for our study, which is being run jointly through the University of Washington and the University of Colorado.

If you choose to participate, you will find a link to the anonymous on-line survey at the bottom of this email. The survey will take 15-20 minutes to complete and does not require you to provide any personal information.

Eligible participants are women who have completed a pregnancy and are physically active. You do not need to have been to high altitude during pregnancy to participate. If you are currently pregnant with your first pregnancy, please wait until after delivery to complete the survey.

Participation in this study is voluntary. You may decline to answer any question in the survey. All of the information you provide in the survey will remain anonymous. Although you will not benefit directly from this survey, we anticipate that information learned from the survey will help physicians and pregnant women who wish to travel and exercise at high altitude.

If you have any questions, feel free to email us at linda.keyes@aya.yale.edu oraluks@u.washington.edu, although please be reminded that the confidentiality of emails cannot be guaranteed. We appreciate your time and effort in completing this survey and look forward to reviewing the information you provide.

Click here to complete this survey: https://catalyst.uw.edu/webq/survey/aluks/204130
If the link does not work, you can copy and paste it in your web browser.

PLEASE REMEMBER TO CLICK ON "SUBMIT" AT THE END OF THE SURVEY TO ENSURE THAT YOUR ANSWERS ARE ALL SAVED PROPERLY.

Sincerely,
Linda E. Keyes, MD
Assistant Clinical Professor, Emergency Medicine
University of Colorado, Denver

Andrew M. Luks, MD
Associate Professor, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine
University of Washington