Tooth Faerie

When Littletree started losing her baby teeth, I decided not to mention the tooth fairy; like with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, I don’t want to lie to my child – especially not about faeries, since we believe in them anyway – no need to sully our knowledge of *real* faeries with imaginary fairies that parents use to con their kids into brushing their teeth and behaving well.

But of course, being a real child in the real world, Littletree heard about the tooth fairy from other kids. I was careful not to say anything for or against the tooth fairy, just that some people believe in her and some don’t. Littletree was one of the ones that did, apparently.

When her first tooth came out, I swapped it for a rose quartz, but the second tooth I forgot to do anything with, and it stayed in Littletree’s little “tooth box” on her temple for several days. Until one day she came running up to me all excited with a little plastic jewel (that I swear had been in her craft supplies box), saying that the tooth fairy had given it to her for her tooth.

The tooth was still in it’s little box, so I took it and kept it with the first baby tooth (yes, I keep them, I’m just sentimental like that). And so it went, with Littletree putting her own gifts from the Tooth Fairy in the tooth box every time she lost a tooth, me remaining non-committal in regards to the existence of the Tooth Fairy, and all was well.

Until one day a couple of weeks ago she came home from a friend’s house, stomped in the front door and asserted, “You LIED to me! The Tooth Fairy is NOT real. I feel so HUMILIATED!”

What could I do? We just had a cuddle and she cried a bit and we talked about it.

The next day she happened to lose another tooth – the 8th one! Since I still wanted to keep her baby teeth, I had an idea and said to her “Since the tooth fairy isn’t real, how about I buy your baby tooth from you for $2 because I want to keep them.”

She was outraged, “How could you SAY such a thing? The Tooth Fairy IS real! Don’t ever say something like that.” and she stomped off to put her tooth in the tooth box.

Argh!!!

I had to laugh about it, and shortly after, I was in town and saw this in the window of the toy store:

“Tooth Fairy” Every Child’s “HERO”

I had to laugh! I can’t even decide if this is unnecessary quotations or not!

I won!

I won a raffle this week! Even better – it was a free raffle, at the organic butchery. When they called me up to tell me I’d gotten the second prize, my reaction was: “but I never win anything”

Well, I suppose that’s not entirely true – I did win a jellybean guess at the school fair when I was about 9 years old. But I think I was the only kid who didn’t just ‘guess’ – I counted the beans visible on the base of the jar, counted the number of beans going up the height of the jar, and multiplied. The irony was that I didn’t like jelly beans!

Anyway, I went in to the butchers – The Southern Cross Organic Butchery in Murwillumbah – to collect my prize. I love the guys there (even before I won the free raffle I thought they were great) – they’re always friendly and happy to cut up beef knucklebones for me to make stock, and since I’ve now healed a bunch of cavities in my teeth from eating stock and following the Weston Price dietary guidelines, I love it even more :)

The butcher handed me a $50 note – I was expecting to get a $50 credit for meat, but he just gave me the money. Of course, I bought meat with it! LOL Yep, it’s not very vegetarian, but I like my teeth better than I liked vegetarianism ;)

So I got a kilo of chuck steak (among other things) and made Beef Bourguignon – it was DELICIOUS!

RECIPE FOR BEEF BOURGUIGNON:

1. 1kg cubed beef, marinated all day in 2 cups red wine with a bay leaf, some fresh thyme, parsley and whatever other herbs are fresh in the garden. Drain the beef, put aside the marinade and pat beef dry with paper towel.
2. Brown the meat in a big frypan (in batches) and add to a big casserole dish (note that the dish should be big enough – mine wasn’t and the casserole bubbled over and burned on the bottom of the oven, filling the house with smoke).
3. Pour the remaining marinade in with the beef, add 1 cup home made beef stock and a big spoon of flour, mix it up, cover and pop in the oven at 180C for about an hour and a half, stirring every 1/2 hour.
4. Heat 30g butter and a schluck of olive oil in a heavy pan, cook about half a dozen small onions, peeled and halved for about 10 mins, set aside. Then fry in the pan 200g mushrooms, set aside with onions. Then fry about 250g bacon, in strips until crispy.
5. Add the onions, mushrooms and bacon to the casserole dish with a cup of water, stir into the meat and back into the oven for another half hour.
6. Serve over rice or couscous. ENJOY!!!

Cavity-Free and Full of Ice Cream!

I went to the dentist today. Yeah, you all probably cringed a little just reading that, but don’t worry; I ate a whole bowl of ice cream before I went!

Forgive me Dentist, for I have sinned. It’s been over a year and a half since the last time I went to the dentist, when I was told I have eight teeth that are decaying and need filling. At the time, I decided not to get the work done, but to start following the Weston A Price traditional diet recommendations.

I bought the book Nourishing Traditions, and started making bone broths and chicken stock and eating organ meats and raw, organic, grass-fed dairy; I started taking good quality Cod Liver Oil and High-Vitamin Butter Oil. It was quite a diet-shift! But I didn’t give up sugar or acid foods. I still eat loads of cake, as always, and my awesome ice cream, which I believe is actually good for teeth, as well as sinfully delicious.

So today, I went to the local dentist for a cleaning, and he looked at my last-seen-ridden-with-eight-cavities teeth, and declared:

“Your teeth are in perfect condition and I think if you keep taking care of them they’ll last you the rest of your life.”

My jaw nearly hit the floor! I pressed him, “Are you *sure* there’s no decay? 2 years ago I was told I need some fillings”

To which he replied, “Oh, you have one tiny brown spot on one tooth, but that’s nothing to worry about; it should be fine.”

WOOHOO!!! I went skipping out of the dentist happily! Who would have thought ice cream would be better for cavities than getting fillings?

The First Tooth

Littletree lost her first wobbly tooth! It was wobbly for a couple of weeks, and she has two more wobblies to come out.

Of course, she looks cuter than ever with the little gap.

I'm not really sure how I feel about the tooth fairy. I'm absolutely not into doing Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, because I'm not going to lie to my child. She has plenty enough magic in her life and a world full of fairies without me faking it to create more. LOL

Besides; we managed to get this far without her really knowing about Santa or the Easter Bunny.

The Tooth Fairy... well, I'm still not wanting to lie to Littletree to create a fairy that doesn't exist (especially when I would find it insulting to the hoards of real faeries inhabiting our garden).

But Littletree heard about the Tooth Fairy on her own. I asked her what she knows about the Tooth Fairy, and she told me that the Tooth Fairy is the first faerie she ever met, and it was she that taught her all about faeries and faerie magic.

When the tooth fell out, Littletree found a little magic box to put her tooth in to await the visit from the Tooth Fairy, along with some crystals that apparently the Tooth Fairy had given her when the tooth first started wobbling.

My friend asked Littletree if the Tooth Fairy would give her money for the tooth, and Littletree replied, "well, I've been REALLY good, so there's NO WAY the Tooth Fairy would give me money. She'll give me something MUCH better than that. Like, the BEST thing in the world. Maybe a dress-up, or a Diamond. Yeah, for sure it will be a Diamond"

So I was left thinking, 'how on earth am I going to get a diamond... in our little village... at this hour?'

In the end, I forgot about it :o and only the next day I swapped the tooth for a rose quartz. Littletree didn't seem phased at all.

Say CHEESE!

For about a year I've been getting into the Weston Price dietary recommendations, in an effort to stop my teeth from decaying. This involves eating raw dairy products, lots of dark leafy greens and things like bone broths and organ meats.

Raw milk is fairly easy to get most places around here - you can even get organic, unhomogenised milk in the supermarket - heck the major supermarkets have their own brands of it! But raw cheeses are a little harder to come by.

Lately I discovered Fromart. It's a small company run by a Swiss guy who makes cheese by hand in the traditional way, and also imports cheeses from Switzerland.

They were having a special deal last week, so I ordered the 1kg deal as well as a 300g sample pack of raw cheeses. It's pretty pricey, especially compared to generic brand cheddar from the supermarket, but I think it may be worth it for the sake of our health. And it's definitely cheaper than a root canal ;)

Anyway, my package arrived, and I opened it up excitedly... inside the post bag, on the bubblewrap, was a hand written note, "you were lucky". I didn't know what that meant, but it was exciting.

When I got through the layers of bubble wrap I found out why - they had run out of the special deal cheese, and in it's stead, sent me a 2kg selection of 9 different kinds of cheeses!!! Woohoo!!

It was like cheese heaven. So we invited a couple who just moved in down the road to come over and enjoy a cheese tasting with us :)

mmmm

Littletree liked the Mont Soleil best, our new neighbours (whom I will call the Barefoot Doctor - BD and M) liked the Gruyere, Purple's favourite was the D'alpage. I couldn't pick a favourite. The Truffle one was good (it has shavings of truffles in it and truffle oil!) and the Jura Mountain was yummy too.

my pearly whites

A few folk have asked what I did in the end with my dental dilemma, I did a lot of reading and soul-searching, and finally decided not to have the work done, mostly out of sheer laziness.

I kind of had this idea that I should be able to heal my teeth through nutrition, I know my best friend has done a lot of work on re-mineralising his teeth. Though he's also done a lot of work on getting fancy silver fillings ;)

Anyways, it seemed reasonable to assume that the dentist was really looking to make some extra money and I don't need to have the work done just yet.

So, thus begins my journey into the wild depths of nutritional healing on my teeth. I'm learning a lot about Weston A. Price and taking care to brush more and eat more dark green leaves.
Well, the green leaves part is easy ;)
I shall definitely update as I get further down this path...

In other news;
My wonderful computer, who is still pretty new and therefore under warranty, is playing up a little, so I might be sending her in for a service :(
The fun part was that I had to backup my hard disk, and re-install everything. :(:(:(

Of course I blame Vista for all my problems, and naturally, Vista makes it easy to do so.
During the install wizard, I got this screen:
A more secure environment
Spend less time fixing problems and enjoy a faster, more reliable online experience with Windows Vista

What!?? I would never have seen that screen if not for trying to fix problems. and then just minutes later, my computer popped up a little box to tell me it found some problems and I should click on it to see what they are and how to solve them. That got me to this screen:Problem caused by Windows
This problem was caused by Windows, which was created by Microsoft Corporation. Currently there is no solution for the problem that you reported.

Yep. Next time I'm getting a Mac
LOL