Meeting Recap - October 24, 2013

On this chilly morning we met in the Youth Fellowship Hall for a little change of scenery. The meeting started with a long list of announcements:

• On Tuesday, Oct. 29 there will be trick or treating at the Laurels at 4pm. Sign up by the Facebook post or contact Marianne T.
• If you have extra shoe boxes that you can donate to FBC for Operation Christmas Child, please bring those to the next meeting.
• Melissa W. passed around a sign up sheet for a freezer meal swap. Here's how it works: participants will each make quadruple the size of 2 dinners (for a total of 8 frozen meals). Then you would bring 6 meals with you (3 of each dinner) and "swap" meals with 3 other moms, so you will have a total of 8 different frozen meals to stock your freezer. The first meal swap will be on Nov. 7 after the MOPS meeting. To participate in this first swap, contact Melissa W.
• Craft Night will be on Friday, Nov. 1 at 5:30 and will feature holiday crafts - stockings, card making, or as always, you can bring your own craft to work on. Contact Amber Y. for more information and be sure to pick up a supplies list if you plan to make the stocking.
• Start your Christmas shopping early! At the Nov. 21st meeting, we will have a Mom's Market to highlight MOPS mamas with a home-based business (Mary Kay, thirtyone, etc.), or who have a special craft/sewing skills. If you would like to be included in the Mom's Market, please contact Lauren B.
• We have an opportunity to participate in a service project for SHE (the Shelter for Help in Emergency) by adopting families this year during the holiday season. Sign-ups will be available at the next few meetings. Wish lists for the families will be provided before Thanksgiving and are due mid-December. Please contact Cari B. for more information.
• Continued prayers, visits and cards are appreciated for Mundy Richards, still at UVA hospital in the ICU.
• We sang Happy Birthday to our very own Nancy Ryalls as she celebrated a "big" birthday on the 25th. Happy Birthday, Nancy!

As always, please check the newsletters, blog and Facebook page for more detailed information on upcoming events!

Next up, Brette Karas shared with us a bit about her beautiful "hot mess" of a life and about her journey to finding Jesus, finding her husband, and finding herself in Charlottesville. She also told us about the fantastic time she had at MOMCon this year and shared some highlights from two of her favorite workshop speakers - Jen Hatmaker and Shauna Niequist. Jen spoke about how parents these days tend to "parent scared" and how we should not try to solve all of our children's problems ourselves. Shauna's workshop dealt with the subject of comparing ourselves to others versus connecting ourselves to others. Brette plans to go to MOMCon again next year, and you can too! Mark your calendars for a road trip October 2-4, 2014 to Louisville, KY.

After that, Lauren introduced our not one, but two guest speakers, Tessa Sansovich and Robin Cole, who talked to us about making better food choices. We got the lowdown on trans fats, preservatives, additives, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, rBGH, GMOs, the dirty dozen, and the clean fifteen. While finding and cooking delicious, good-for-you-food takes more time, energy, and yes, money, it's totally worth it for the health of your family. We were encouraged to start with small changes, like avoiding trans fats (hydrogenated oils) and avoiding (unnaturally) brightly colored processed food, like boxed mac & cheese. Feeling overwhelmed?! We were too, and thankfully we received their list of recommended books, blogs and publications listed below. Now.. drop that non-organic, pesticide-laden strawberry and check out these additional resources:

• The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
• author Joel Salatin
• Author, blogger Dr. Mark Hyman - Tessa's recommendation as the best author of nutrition books
• 100 Days of Real Food
• Elana's Pantry
• local resources - RelayFoods.com, Edible Blue Ridge Magazine
• Several local farms were mentioned including Polyface, Quarters Farm, Bellair Farm

Tessa shared a story about baking a flourless cake, made with white beans, and sharing it with a group of kids that gobbled it up! She used the recipe here. For the liquid sweetener you don't have to use honey like the recipe recommends. You can use any liquid sweetener - Tessa uses liquid coconut nectar (the liquid version of coconut palm sugar). You must use coconut flour. Regular flour will NOT work in this recipe.

If you'd like to add your two cents about additional resources, local farms, recipes or tid-bits on healthy eating, please leave a comment!

We had a wonderful meeting and hope to see you at the next one on November 7th!