New fluff

I love this new diaper cover for Marsi! Oh and you can see how well her scar is healing too.

Accomplishments

It is amazing to see the accomplishments that Marsi has done in the last couple of weeks.  She is consistently standing by herself.  I was amazed that she was able to stand long enough for me to take the picture.  She is now being able to stay standing while dancing and waving...yes, she waves now.  I even taught her to wave bye bye to the bath water as it goes down the drain. :)

She also is crawling up stairs.  She is awesome like that. You can also see from the video that she also crawls around on her hands and feet now instead of hands and knees on the concrete and grass.

TVP

TVP- Textured Vegetable Protein, used as a meat extender or replacer.

I have waited a while to make this post because I wanted to try out multiple ways of cooking the TVP and make suggestions on how to best use this product, so I knew it would be a time intensive post.

I was most interested in the TVP of all the products available at Mother Earth Products. I have not used all of the different products yet, so I will give a review and suggestions for cooking for the ones that I have used.

General TVP review - You open the bag and it smells like the meat it is supposed to be.  Chicken smells like chicken.  Bacon smelled like bacon and so on and so forth.  I was skeptical of how I would like this and it was reassuring that it at least smelled like what it was replacing!

The chunks are a little smaller than the pieces I would usually cut my meat into, but I am not picky about things like that so, although it is a general downside, it isn't one for me.

The bits are the small ground beef size with none of the big chunks of ground beef you get when pan cooking it without breaking it apart well.

For me, I learned that once I poured out what I thought the dish would need, I had to put some back.  A little goes a long way!  I was really surprised by this and I don't know why.  I guess I never measured the amount of cooked meat I was putting into my dishes and you also have to know that the TVP is more compact in measuring than cooked meat.

Now onto more specifics...

Chicken Chunks - I used this in a chicken Fettuccine Alfredo dish.  The dish turned out wonderfully.  I added the chicken when I would normally add the cooked chicken because I wanted to make the chunks pretty soft and I tested one chunk with water before cooking to see how it held up.  There was a slight smoky flavor to the chicken....it is hard to describe, but it was good.  To me, it didn't take away from the total taste of the dish, it added to it.

Taco Mix - Endrit and I aren't big taco fans, so we never have made tacos out of this specifically.  We love to do a beans, rice, and taco meat dish with salsa.  In the dish, we usually add extra taco seasoning anyways (we don't buy the packets of seasoning just bulk), so it wasn't surprising that we added just a bit more seasoning to the dish after it was made the first time.  If you like the seasoning of a regular packet of taco mix, it is awesome!  We use the TVP as a replacer with this dish.  There is no need to add meat in because the TVP is amazing by itself!  We love it.  Marsi loves it, even the cats have eaten it!

Beef Bits - I will be honest, the first time I made a dish with this, I was less than impressed.  I added it in the same time I would add in regular ground beef and it lost all texture and turned into a big globby mess.  But, wanting to make it work and knowing how incredibly good the other TVP had been, I decided to experiment.  Since the taco mix TVP didn't boil in water and kept its texture, I decided to make the dish first and add in the TVP beef bits at the very end of the cooking.  It made all the difference in the world!  It was the TVP taste and texture I came to know from Mother Earth Products!  I had all faith in the product and was really glad that just changing the cooking routine made it work out well.  We also use this as a meat replacer and a little goes a long way with this as well!

Bacon Bits - Let me not drool on the keyboard as I write this.  SOOOOOO good!!!  I opened the bag and it was bacon.  I felt like the dog in the beggin' strips commercial!  I am not one for strips of bacon so bits are all I need.  I made an omelet, wonderful. Salad topper, wonderful.  Anytime you ever use bacon bits, wonderful!  I don't think I will buy meat bacon ever again.  I am completely sold on TVP bacon bits!!!

Ham Chiplets, Sausage Bits, and Pepperoni Bits - Ditto to everything I have said about bacon bits.  I will use these instead of the meat any day hands down!

The next thing I will try are the burger mixes.  I am interested to see how those are.  I will try them both as an extender and a replacer instead of just a replacer to see the difference in the burgers.  All in all, I am EXTREMELY impressed with the TVP products from Mother Earth Products.

An Article

I saw this article linked through a blog of another mommy of a baby born with congenital heart defects.  Since Marsi's birth and subsequent diagnoses and surgery I have become a researcher in what could have caused the heart defect she was born with and what to do with trying to diagnose things with any future children we may have.  I know why it took so long to diagnose Marsi with her PDA.  She was THRIVING!!  Who checks for heart conditions when a baby is reaching every milestone even if they have a murmur?  Not many people at all.  I know that I wasn't worried.  Well, hindsight is 20/20 and if future children have any symptoms Marsi had, I know what I am going to ask for.  One of the first things that I will ask for is a foot O2 reading. This article explains why.  Marsi was monitored for O2 while in the hospital, so it may not have worked for her, but it is a very good starting point for a lot of CHD patients.  Even if me asking for it makes doctors think about it or know about it.  All I know is that God helps you through things that you are given.  I was given a precious little girl with a heart defect.  If I can help one other person, it is completely worth the emotions that I have gone through with this.  I love my little girl more than anything and I would hate to see a family lose a child when non invasive testing can root out a majority of moderate, unknown at birth, CHDs.

Professional Pictures

When Marsi and I got back from Missouri, my cousin Maggie McBride took new pictures.  I think they are adorable.  Maggie is incredibly talented and Marsi is a great model.

For Father's Day, I wanted to make a photo collage for Endrit.  So, I went out and bought a D and an A, some paint and asked Maggie to take these pictures.  I LOVE them.  There are 2 sets.

Strawberries and Bananas

For my first review, I did a little bit of market research.  Knowing that freeze dried Strawberries and Bananas were pretty much the only product that are marketed towards toddlers as finger foods, I wanted to do a comparison.  I bet you can guess which ones are from Mother Earth Products and which are Gerber.  The ones on the left that look like the sliced fruit is the Mother Earth Products and the little pieces on the right are the Gerber.

I bought the Gerber product a few days ago.  Marsi loves the taste of them but finds it hard to pick  up the tiny pieces.  They break up SO small that it is even hard for me to pick them up and Marsi has always liked to munch on larger pieces so we end up putting 2-3 pieces of Gerber product in her mouth at a time and she would get really frustrated that she couldn't feed herself with the small pieces.  Just to add, she does excelent with self feeding puffs which are pretty small, so it isn't that she doesn't have the skills.

With the larger pieces with the Mother Earth Products, Marsi was easily able to pick them up.  I did find that it was better if I broke the pieces in half.  But, better to have to break them up than have too small of pieces!!!  She always liked the taste of the freeze dried fruits, so she loved to be able to sit and self feed her snack.

Of course, I also eat the things that Marsi eats.  As far as taste goes, the bananas are very similar in taste between the 2 brands.  They taste excellent!  Freeze dried foods truly keep their shape, texture, and taste.

With the strawberries, there is a distinct difference!  Mother Earth Products strawberries are by far better.  I don't know if it is the size of the product or if the strawberries themselves are of better quality.  I think it is the quality that is different.  If you can see from the picture, the chunks of Gerber strawberries are very light in color as if they were freeze dried before they were ripe.  The Mother Earth Products strawberries are all very rich in color and flavor.

All in all, I am very, very impressed with these 2 products and am excited to try many other products!

Mother Earth Products

My uncle Theodore Pope is the owner and operator of Mother Earth Products.  In all honesty, I have never really been a fan of dehydrated foods (banana and apple chips included!) I was SO happy to see that he not only has dehydrated foods (which are wonderful for cooking, not so much for my snacking taste) but also has freeze dried fruits and freeze dried veggies which are lighter and easier for snacking!  Another food storage item that I didn't know about until he opened this business is TVP or textured vegetable protein. I will be doing a review of these products in the future.  I hope that Marsi likes the freeze dried fruits and veggies because these would be SO much healthier than the snacks that are currently being given out for babies and children.  Why eat wheat puffs that are manufactured when you can have fruit and veggies that last a long time in the diaper bag?

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