Lisa Zahn

Between George and I, we have been baking the no-knead bread non-stop the last couple weeks. It is starting to be a problem. Oh, I could sense the problem coming on almost at the beginning. The lead weight feeling in my gut. The bubbling and gurgling of my insides. The, um, lack of toilet time (how do I put that delicately? My grandma wouldn't believe I'd even mentioned it!). The more bread I ate, the more bread I wanted. Make that, the more bread I eat, the more bread I want because up until last night I've still been eating it. There is something about wheat that's addicting, especially when you shouldn't eat it, I think. But now it's time to stop. Last night, after the triple whammy of homemade pizza (triple whammy of wheat flour, nightshade vegetable tomato sauce and greasy cheese), both Eli and I laid around moaning and groaning. And I've been up since 3 a.m. feeling the pain. It's time to stop. We can't make the bread anymore. It has been lovel...

I just started my new blog for my Herbal Medicine practice. Check it out at www.fallingstarsherbal.blogspot.com . I don't have much so far, but I have some info. about my practice, my education and some links. I hope to post on classes I will teach, sometimes recipes and herbal remedies (without prescribing), etc. More later! Lisa

A farm/bed and breakfast we stayed at in southeastern Minnesota last summer. Can you call it a mid-life crisis if you're only 37? When do these things actually start? When George and I got married, he was 35 and I was 24. I loved telling him that I was his mid-life crisis. It was so reassuring to me that he'd chosen me to "run off with", and gave me hope that he wouldn't run off with some floozy at age 50. We'd still be happily in love by then, right? Well, he's almost there and all signs look good and stable for our marriage. Except, that I'm now 37 and not sure what to do with my life. Well, sort of. I have some ideas. Too many, perhaps. Mostly I still want to be a homemaker, stay-at-home, homeschooling mom. But I have other interests too. For example, today I had my first *real* paying herbal consultation with an actual client today. I made some money! And I loved it. And I think the herbs we picked out are going to help my client. And it's a h...

The start of our neighborhood's annual 4th of July parade. Fun in the summer, why not winter? Other bloggers complained about the "February Funk" but here in Minnesota, if we get too funky in February we'd be in real trouble in March. March is the longest month here. This morning when I woke up it was only 2 degrees F. Now at noon it's about 5 degrees. Yuck! We are so sick of cold weather by this point. And the ground is still covered with a foot of snow. This is spring break week. I imagine some people have taken advantage of this to go somewhere warm. I had a few friends who just got back from Florida. Lucky them! Not so, us. Mainly, we don't have the money for a vacation. We never do. We are usually house poor, because of some improvement we've recently made. In our current home, most of the work was done two years ago and we've subsequently been too broke to do anything else. The furnace became a fire hazard and had to be replaced immediately,...

I'm skipping church today! I love our little Unity Church, right in our neighborhood, but as soon as church begins to feel obligatory, I'm inclined to opt out for a while. This, after years of going to church because I felt I should (not to be saved, mind you, but because my husband wanted to go and it was good for family unity, blah, blah, blah). I have gotten over this. We've been attending this Unity Church just a few months, and some of my blog readers have been wondering what a Unity church is all about. Unity is actually the Unity School of Christianity. Here are the basic beliefs/ideas, which I found on the www.unityonline.org website: What are Unity’s basic teachings? We encourage you to explore and apply Unity teachings based on your own spiritual understanding. We believe this spiritual understanding is enhanced through reflective prayer and meditation. The five basic ideas that make up the Unity belief system are: 1) God is the source and creator of all. Th...