This isn't going to be the post you think it is. Seriously. My boys' current fascination with breasts has very little to do with the titillating prospect of female nudity. No, my boys' current fascination with breasts is purely based in their function -- just when I think I've learned everything I need to know about breastfeeding, my boys teach me something new.

This is a hearty soup that my whole family enjoys. It's a great way to use up the Swiss chard we receive in our CSA order and tastes even better as leftovers. It can easily be doubled, but be sure to use a large pot -- I always find this makes more than I expect!

Lentils or split peas can easily be substituted for the mung beans, and the Swiss chard can be exchanged for spinach or other fresh greens. Vegetarians can omit the chicken without sacrificing flavour.

It makes approximately 6 main dish servings. Add a slice or two of garlic bread and you've a fairly substantial meal-in-a-bowl!

Sauerkraut is incredibly easy to make - just chop the cabbage, add some non-iodized salt, and let it do its work. There is a bacterium which lives naturally on the cabbage, that begins to thrive in an environment which has the right salt concentration - 1/4 cup of pickling salt per 5 lbs of cabbage will do the trick nicely. As the bacterium grows and reproduces, it consumes carbohydrates in the cabbage and excretes a type of acid that is similar to household vinegar. This lowers the pH of the mixture, which in turn preserves it. In fact, when done properly, the sauerkraut need not even be canned - my grandfather, who was an immigrant from Ukraine, used to have a huge barrel of sauerkraut in the back porch, and used to scoop from it year round for his daily intake.

I know that some people will look at this title and think that I am overstating things - and perhaps maybe I am but only to a small degree. Cellphones may not be the root of all evil, but they sure are the root of a considerable amount of it. Or at least an extreme enabler to those evils. I've actually had this conversation with dozens of people over the last few years, and I've gotten most of them to agree to most of the points I make below. But nonetheless, I have not really had any success in getting people to kick the habit and throw off their shackles.

For the record, I used to have a cell phone but it has been about 8 years now that I have been a free man. My wife and I originally bought them when we moved out to the country, and in all honesty if we were still living in the country I'd probably have one for the sole purpose of being able to call for help on a back country road if the car breaks down. That is perhaps one of the very few legitimate uses I can find for a cellphone, but even still, I suspect most people's needs would be met here with a no-plan phone since all phones can call 911 even if you are not paying for a plan with a provider. Though I guess calling 911 for a broken down car may not be a legitimate use of the service.

The biggest issue with cellphones is the environmental cost of them - based on just my own anecdotal observations of friends who have the things, it appears to me as though most people change phones on average about once a year. A quick google turns up this 2002 article from Wired Magazine which says that by 2005, Americans will be discarding 130 million cell phones a year. I do not have any statistics for today, but I think it is probably safe to assume we've hit that mark and have most likely surpassed it. This article from 2010 says that 100 million a year are discarded in Europe. That is an incredible amount of waste, even if the things are given up for recycling instead of tossed in the garbage. To me, this is just a very disgusting example of our consumer society gone wrong. Even if they are recycled.

I prefer to avoid commercial diaper ointments, creams and balms for Boy#3. Mainly, I don't like the idea of rubbing chemicals into the skin in his diaper area, but a lot of mainstream rash creams are very bad for cloth diapers -- coating the fibers and rendering them unable to absorb liquid.

When I do need to use "a little something" as part of the diapering routine, I like to use my homemade Bottom Balm. It's easy to make, has 2(!) ingredients -- both of which you can pronounce ;), and it gives a nice sheen to the skin making the next diaper change that much easier to clean. The beauty of using coconut oil is that it is naturally solid at room temperature!

Those of you who know where I work, know that the shop offers a great "how to cloth diaper" workshop every month. Susie, the owner, also has a blog with great tips, tricks and more about diapering, baby-wearing and parenting. Having cloth-diapered 3 boys, though, I feel compelled to write up my own "Cloth Diapering Basics" post and share my "(assuming cost isn't an issue) Imaginary Stash" for people starting out with cloth. I'm linking all the diapers I mention to the Extraordinary Baby Shoppe's website, but am not being compensated for it in any other way than having an awesome place to work where my baby is welcome and I get to talk about "fluff" all day long. ;) And, to be honest, that's pretty awesome compensation!

When our first child was born back in 2002, I wanted to use cloth diapers to help lessen the load on the environment. My wife at the time was not so thrilled with the idea, but I was adamant that it was something we had to do, and as it turned out it only took a few days of using them to completely win her over as well. Nowadays, she calls herself a "cloth diapering evangelist", and actually went on to work at a local cloth diapering store, and absolutely loves her job. My work here is done :-)

Back in 2002 the cloth-diapering revolution was just beginning, but even back then it was true that "these aren't the cloth diapers your grandmother used". When people hear the words "cloth diapers" they generally think back to what their granny may have used - the old square pieces of cloth, with diaper pins, pails, and so forth. While those old sqaure (or in the vernacular, "prefold") diapers can still be a useful part of a modern diapering system, the world has changed a lot since back then, and there is an incredible variety of cloth diapers available to today's eco-conscious parent. When we first started there was no local cloth diaper shop except for a local green-products shop that carried a single brand of diapers, and in fact at that time the woman at whose shop my wife now works started the shop out of her home for exactly this reason. We literally combed the internet looking for different diapers, and ended up trying over a dozen different brands from large national brands, to various work-at-home mom-entrepreneur brands, and everything in between. The variety available even back then was pretty impressive, and today it is even greater. As we found out back then, though, the quality and efficacy of the various products varied greatly.

I'll start with a quick overview of what is involved in cloth diapering, and how easy it really is, then move on to what my favorite diapers were with our last kids, and which ones did not work so well for us. And finally, we'll look at some of the options that are available today, what we've decided upon with our latest addition to the family, and what to look for in a good diaper shop given that there are actually a lot of them out there these days.

I just read this article by Marisa from Food in Jars, which is a quick rundown on some canning techniques which are considered unsafe, and I thought that it was important enough that I should do my own version of it since I've seen these techniques and more used by friends and family. And of course because it is that time of year again and lots of people are hauling out their canners. I will not go into the full details of the techniques which are considered safe, so please do not treat this as any sort of "How To". In fact, one thing I always say to people over and over again, is that if you have never read a good modern book on home canning, you should absolutely not be doing it! And like Marisa says in the article I linked to, I also tell people that you should never, ever, ever learn home canning from a previous generation, because they almost certainly use techniques which are no longer considered safe today. Do not get me wrong - I love my mom, rest her soul, but I would never can anything the way she did. Same goes for my wife's grandmother - the dear sweet woman that she is.

What is Safe?

First let us take a look at what is considered safe. Basically, 2 techniques - one is called "boiling water canning", and the other "pressure canning".

Boiling Water Canning

With this technique, you have a large pot that is a fair bit taller than the tallest jars you want to use. You fill the jars with your preserves, put them into the pot, and then fill the pot with water so that the jars are submersed with at least an inch of water over the top of them. Then you boil - or "process" in the vernacular - the whole thing for a given period of time as specified in your recipe, and according to the size of jars you are using - larger jars requiring more processing.

This method is only suitable for high acid (low pH) foods. The reason is that one of the key nasties in home canning is botulism, and while the live bacterium is killed by boiling water, the spores are not. But high acid (low pH) does denature the spores such that they are not a risk.

Pressure Canning

With this method you fill your jars with the preserves, then put them into a pressure canner. A pressure canner is basically the same thing as a pressure cooker except that it is typically larger, and has a pressure guage on the lid so that you know exactly what the pressure is inside. The books I've read say that if you do not have a guage, you should not use it for canning. Unlike the boiling water method, you do not need to cover the jars with water because it is the pressure that is doing the work for you. So typically you put in enough water so that it will not boil dry while processing - typically an inch below the lids of the jars. With a tall enough pressure canner you can even put a trivet on top of the bottom layer, and stack more jars on top.

Then you turn on the heat, and once it starts streaming steam out the top you time 7 minutes before affixing the "pet cock". Once affixed, the canner will come up to pressure - either 5, 10 or 15 psi according to your recipe. Once at pressure, you start timing. Once done, you allow to come completely down to room temperature before opening.

This method is safe for all foods - even those which are high pH (low acid) because the high pressure denatures the botulism spores, as well as the bacterium itself. However, you may not want to use it for high acid foods because the high pressure can create a texture in the finished goods which is not as appealing. I personally use pressure canning for all my preserves just because I find it easier to always use the same technique.

I've recently converted to cast iron cookery for a number of reasons, and the no-stick properties of a well-maintained pan is just one of them. Check this out - I started making a double batch of pancakes with about 1/2 teaspoon of lard in the pan, and a good hour later at the end of the batch, the pan is dry but the no stick properties are still rocking my world! In the end I do not even have to wash the pan!

There is nothing quite like a good hamburger, on a quality bun. I woke up this morning and almost immediately had a craving since we had not had burgers in a number of months. So down into the basement I went and hauled a couple of packages of ground beef out of the deep freeze, and came up and set it out to thaw. I then got out the bread machine and started on a batch of dough to make buns. Whole wheat, of course.

For buns I use my basic dough recipe, that I use for bread, buns, pizza dough, cinnamon buns and more. It is extremely versatile, as you can see. When the machine is done with the dough, I take my little kitchen scale and weight out 83g balls. The recipe makes a kg (2.2lbs) of dough, and 83g per makes an even dozen. When you are weighing out exact amounts of dough like this, you sometimes end up with one big piece, and then 2 or 3 little pieces added to it in order to make up the full amount. In a case like this you really have to give the new ball a quick 5 or 10 second knead to make sure all of the pieces that make it up are fully integrated. If you just try to squeeze it together in your palms like making a snowball, it will at first look like it worked, but as the buns rise the pieces will separate again. Arrange them on a well greased sheet or pan, cover, and allow to rise in a warm place for one hour. Then preheat the oven to 350F and bake 20 minutes. I turn off the convection for my buns so it does not dry them out.