Crunchy Stewardship
In this podcast we are taking a deep dive into what it means to steward our lives as God originally intended for us with the resources that God has given us. We will look at topics like food, medicine, finances, mental health and lots more through a natural lens with a biblical foundation.
Crunchy Stewardship
The Unfiltered Update: Sugar Detox, Toxic Paint & DIY Cough Drops
Join Chrissy and Katie for a very real life update episode! In this candid conversation, the cousins dive into what's really happening behind the scenes of their crunchy journeys.
Chrissy shares her intensive 6-month gut reset program with a naturopathic doctor—complete with dramatic sugar withdrawals, surprising food discoveries (yes, even sushi has sugar!), and the emotional rollercoaster of preparing her body for pregnancy naturally. Meanwhile, Katie opens up about the chaos and decision fatigue of renovating their new 2.5-acre homestead, from researching non-toxic paints to learning that LED lights might be affecting more than just your circadian rhythm (spoiler: it gets wacky...)
You'll also hear about DIY cough drop experiments, balcony garden planning, the great almond butter debate, why carrots are flammable, and how God's grace covers even our crunchy failures.
Plus: The cousins need YOUR help naming these special life update episodes—drop your ideas in the comments or Facebook group!
Topics covered: gut health protocols, sugar addiction, healthy home renovations, non-toxic building materials, balcony gardening, DIY health remedies, and finding peace in overwhelming seasons.
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Hello and welcome to Crunchy Stewardship. My name is Chrissy Rombach.
Katie:My name is Katie Fiola Jones. We are two cousins who are passionate about learning and sharing knowledge to equip others to steward their spiritual, mental, emotional, financial, and physical health in order to honor God in every aspect of their lives.
Chrissy:In our podcast, we take deep dives into what it means to steward our lives as God originally intended for us with the resource that he has already given us. We look at topics like food, medicine, finances, mental health, and tons more through a natural lens and with a biblical foundation.
Katie:Now we are going to dive into today's episode, and we're actually going to do a kind of life update episode. We did one, I think about like 10 episodes or so ago. I can't remember what we decided that we're gonna do these every like 10 or so episodes just to kind. Give you guys an update of like what we're doing in our lives, what we're learning specifically in the moment. Not just like,'cause every episode we have, we're, we're teaching you about what we're learning, but every episode typically is focused on one topic, where these kind of life update behind the scenes what's going on, of episodes are just like a random hodgepodge of all of our random revelations. And so because of that, we are going to actually skip over our segment called Random Revelations, um, and just kind of dive into what's going on in life. And actually this is a, this is a shout out or a, call for action or assistance help, if you may, um, that we need help these episodes where like they're kind of. Behind the scenes of our lives. I'd like to come up with some fun, catchy phrase or name for it, because I don't know, I, I have another podcast that I listen to and they have the, their episodes like this are called Behind the Mic, and I think that's so cool. So like whenever you see on their episodes, they have like a Behind the Mic episode. I really like those ones because you're like, oh, it's just totally about what they're doing and their lives and they're just kind of chitchatting and whatever. anyway, I obviously don't wanna steal the name of their episodes, so if you have an idea of what to call these specific episodes where it's just us gabbing about life and what is going on. Let us know we could use help because we have not come up with anything yet. Um, this is only the second episode like this, so it's not like we have a ton of them, but we'll do them every 10 ish episodes, uh, from here on out. And yeah, it just kind of gives us a chance to let you guys know what's going on in life. Now before we actually dive into this and share all of our life's details, if you've been enjoying our podcast, please be sure that you are subscribed to it and leave us a rating and review to let others know that you are enjoying it. It does help people find this podcast, and feel free to share these episodes with a friend that you feel like would enjoy joining along on this journey that we are going on to just, yeah, learn more about honoring God with our lives and with our health and, and all things crunchiness. So yeah, be sure to share it around. So without further ado, we will. I don't know. We're just kind of diving right in and it's kind of like, I don't even know where we're going with this episode because these episodes we literally don't plan anything except for kind of coming to it with like, oh yeah, maybe I could share about this, and I'm doing this in life. So, why don't you kick us off and just share with us what is going on. We know last time you kind of shared with us that you got a new job and I don't know, tell us what's going on, girl.
Chrissy:Yeah, so new job life is going well. It's still quite the transition of figuring out how to switch my mindset from three 12 hour shifts a week to five shifts a week for eight hours a day. Um, but you know, it's working, it's going. Um, I'm enjoying my new job. The stress levels are way lower than working in the hospital, so that's a plus for those of you who don't know. I'm now working in home health. So I essentially, um, am going to a bunch of patients who have chronic illnesses, who are newly diagnosed with chronic illnesses or if they have chronic wounds. And I'm essentially just teaching them how to manage their illnesses and also helping them heal their wounds. Um, and so it's an environment where I personally have a lot of freedom. To share recommendations and things like that. And so, um, it's one of the few places in healthcare where nurses can suggest things and patients can do it without really needing a doctor's orders. So I don't need a doctor's orders to tell my patients to drink bone broth, to heal their wounds or to drink beet juice to heal their wounds or to decrease their carbohydrate intake for their diabetes, which most diabetics already know that they're just very, very bad at actually decreasing their carbohydrate intake. But that is honestly a struggle for all of us. Um, so in addition to this new job that's going well, my husband Max and I have started a new, um. I guess I would call it a gut reset program. Uh, we are working with a naturopath doctor, because as many of you know, we've been trying to get pregnant for a while and it has not been working as of yet. And so we didn't really want to go to a fertility clinic'cause I wasn't loving the idea of injecting myself with synthetic hormones to force a pregnancy on a body that's just not ready for it. And I was like, okay, how can I create a body that is truly ready for a baby? Because ultimately I wanna bring a baby into a healthy world, a good place to be. And that starts with my body being at its peak health. And so, and you know, max is 50% of the equation and so he's doing it with me. And, um, so we're doing a six month program with a naturopathic doctor right now. Um. And essentially the program starts off with weaning down our diets to just meat and vegetables. And then after we've taken a month to wean down, we stay at that place for about a month of eating just meat and vegetables. And it's like a full detox during the second month. And then during month three through six, we slowly but surely add different food items back in. And let me tell you guys, I did not know how addicted I was to sugar. I thought I wasn't addicted to sugar. Honestly, I'm very quick to. Not eat the dessert. And if I do eat the dessert, it's not like a, oh my gosh, I need it right now. It's more of like a, oh, that'll taste kind of nice to have after dinner. And so I'll have a bite or so, like I'm not a multiple servings of dessert kind of person when I'm going for a snack in the afternoon. It's like a piece of fruit or some Turkey and cheese, like not super high in sugar. Things that I thought. But then they told us to take out sugar. And let me tell you, when I saw that sugar was in legitimately everything. Bacon has sugar in it. Sausage has sugar in it. The sushi you get at the grocery store has sugar in it. Don't ask me why the sushi has sugar in it. I don't know. Couldn't figure that one out. But it does. So literally everything has sugar in it. Both Max and I experienced quite significant mood swings coming off of the sugar. Um, and then of course the week after they took out sugar, then they took out caffeine. And so, um, needless to say,
Katie:I didn't realize you were doing caffeine too.
Chrissy:oh my goodness, Katie, I'll go through the whole, the, the process of weaning down. It's quite intense. But yeah, so I'm off of sugar now. I'm off of caffeine and surprisingly enough, I actually feel incredibly better and I have way more energy now than I did before taking even just those two things outta my diet. So the sugar was the first week and then the second week they took out gluten, caffeine, and corn. Corn is also very inflammatory and has a pretty high glycemic index. Um, so that was the second week, this third week we are in right now. So we're still working on weaning things down. We're really not even at the meat and vegetable. Well, no, at this point we're practically at the meat and vegetables diet, but there's a few more things that they're taking out next week. But this week they took out soy dairy of all forms. Um, they took out grains of all forms, including even like brown rice and quinoa, which are generally good for you, but when you're healing your gut, they can be inflammatory. what else did they take out this week? oh. They took out white potatoes, which white potatoes have a very high glycemic index also. And they took out alcohol, which honestly was kind of already. Scratch with the sugar part,'cause alcohol has a lot of sugar in it. But those were the steps for this week and next week they take out tomatoes. I know that for sure.
Katie:Really?
Chrissy:told yes tomatoes because I guess they're really acidic and can cause irritation I don't know. But I guess we're making chili this week because, um, we we're trying to figure out ways to cook and. We already cooked pretty healthy, but it often ended up being like, um, meat, rice, and vegetable or meat, potato, vegetable. And now it's kind of becoming, okay, meat, vegetable, vegetable, or let's make a full soup. We made a minoni soup the other night that didn't have any pasta in it, but it was mostly just like the vegetables and the meat of regular. And we actually does regular minoni soup have meat in it? I don't think so, but we added the chicken, and it was delicious. Let me tell you, that was like one of the most filling meals I had had in a very, very long time. Another thing that I've noticed with this is even within like one week of taking out sugar. I have realized that my sensitivity to sweet things has grown dramatically. So for instance, I have these brownies that I make. They're no baked brownies. They're fantastic. I love them to death. They are made of dates, cocoa powder, vanilla, and walnuts, and that's it. But when I was eating a lot more sugar in my diet, they were rather bitter, and I didn't really like them being so bitter. And so I would even like sprinkle some monk fruit on top or some honey over top of it to make it a little bit sweeter. But now, after taking sugar out of my diet completely, these brownies are like the sweetest things on the planet. I take a bite and I'm like, holy moly. It's like a whole new world. And then berries are almost like too sweet to me right now because. Like I, I'm not eating anything else that's sweet except for a little bit of fruit. And so like every time I take a bite of fruit, I'm like, oh, it kind of punches me in the face with how sweet they are. So that's the biggest updates with what Max and I are doing in our lives. And let me tell you, it's been a whirlwind the last few weeks.
Katie:Yeah, it's, it is kind of crazy when you start to realize like how much sugar is in everything. I found that a lot of condiments had sugar, especially like salad dressings. So we've actually. We've basically stopped buying salad dressings at all, and we just make all of our own. Um, and so, you know, then that it doesn't have sugar and it doesn't have seed oils, which are the two culprits in so many, uh, different salad dressings. So that was a big one for us when we stopped doing lots of sugar. We, I still really enjoy natural sweeteners, and I think that you told me off podcasts that you can't do any natural sweeteners either, but maple syrup is like one of my and I love maple syrup on lots of things. Um, especially on my oatmeal. I love that flavor in my oatmeal, so I'm like, that would be, so that would be hard.
Chrissy:Growing up, did you eat the little Quakers packets of maple and brown sugar oatmeal?
Katie:oh my gosh, Chrissy eat, I ate one of those again recently and then not super recently, it was like a few months ago, and this is after I stopped. eating a lot of the sweet stuff. That stuff is so nasty to me now because it is like
Chrissy:Really?
Katie:sugary. Like it is
Chrissy:You know,
Katie:eating
Chrissy:I was, it pretty much is, but I was very surprised at the ingredients in it. I was expecting high fructose corn syrup and xantham gum and like all of these preservatives and things like that. The ingredients, aside from sugar are decently clean, honestly, with that oatmeal. But I agree. When I was a kid, I'd be able to eat like the whole box in a day in one sitting. I would just go at it and now it's like, no, definitely not.
Katie:same thing with a, a lot of cereals. We grew up, um, eating a lot of honey bunches of oats, which we always called almond cereal growing up, and now that cereal is very sweet to me. I, I actually don't know if it officially, it probably has sugar. It's, it's pretty sweet. Uh, but yeah, we, I, we've really been trying to not eat cereal like at all because it is no, even if it has really clean ingredients, it's still heavily processed in general to get those flaky bits that you have in cereal. We've, it, that's been one of the hardest things for us because both Wes and I cereal a lot, and so we've done a really good job. Like whittling that down in our own diets. But I'd say still like a couple times a week we'll have cereal for breakfast or for like a snack or something like that, that that's been hard. And we have a couple brands from Costco that are decently clean. It's actually, this is the, this is the challenge that we have found. You can either get like the organic brand, but it has seed oils in it, even though they're like organic seed oils. Or you can get the non-organic brand, but it doesn't have seed oils in it. And so you're kind of like, ugh. Because when it comes to cereal, there's a lot of like, whether it's processed corn or wheat or oats or something like that, and those crops are very heavily sprayed and they're very heavily, oftentimes genetically modified. And so you know that if it's not organic. you are basically eating glyphosate for breakfast. And so it's like, which, which trade off do you make? Do you eat the non-organic one that has lots of pesticides and might be genetically modified? Or do you eat the one that is organic but has lots of seed oils in it? And it's like seed oil sometimes will be like the second ingredient or something and you're like, why does this have so much vegetable oil in it? Or canola oil or flaxseed or
Chrissy:So I have to ask you, what has been your go-to breakfast thing then, since you've gotten cereal out or have weaned down on the cereal?
Katie:oatmeal? I really like oatmeal. I like it too because I can make it pretty
Chrissy:Uh.
Katie:anything. So we, we get a big thing of organic oatmeal from Azure Standard, uh, and. It, it's like something like 10 pounds of oatmeal. It's a lot, it's a lot of oatmeal. And I, I add a lot of different stuff into it. I love adding some kind of protein powder to it. Wes likes a chocolate protein powder. I just like a vanilla one so that the other flavors of other things come out.'cause I then I'll add like cinnamon and, uh, flax seed and chia seed. And I have some like bee pollen that I add in a little bit of, and of course I add some maple syrup. Oftentimes after I cook it, I'll add a splash of my raw milk. Um, and then typically a fruit, whether it's, we, we get a lot of, uh, frozen fruit from Azure Standard too. So we get like five pound bags of organic fruits. And keep those frozen. So we'll add like blueberries or strawberries, or sometimes I'll mash in a banana and put it in there and then sprinkle on some kind of nut on top. Typically walnuts is my go-to, so that's like my go-to breakfast. Uh, otherwise I have been trying to do more eggs just to get more protein in the morning. Um, I definitely have a sweet tooth even though we, we've been doing pretty well, staying away from sugar, like the white cane sugar kind of stuff, it's hard for me to get away from just sweet stuff in general. So something like maple syrup or even fruit, I, I definitely tend to lean towards wanting that kind of stuff for breakfast versus a more savory breakfast like. Uh, sausage and eggs and potatoes I do. I actually crave that kind of breakfast food for lunch, and that's actually what I had for lunch today, now that I think about it. I had an egg some potatoes and some zucchini and just all cooked it in one pan basically, and that's what I had for lunch. That's like my favorite kind of lunch right now, is that kind of stuff, which is just kind of funny.
Chrissy:That's great. I love it. Since, um, taking ev literally everything outta my diet. Another thing that they've encouraged us to do that's like part of the program is having, two servings of cooked vegetables with every meal and to have 50% of our calories coming from good fats. I think I mentioned the whole list of good fats in the last episode and beef tallow wasn't included in there, but I think I'm including beef tallow in my good fats list. But yeah, so I've been having frittatas for breakfast and they are so good. I'm just talking like two eggs and some red pepper, spinach, onion, boom. Done so good with a little avocado on the side. Sometimes I'll have a handful of. Raw cashews. Those have actually, so with this whole like taking sugar out, we've definitely had a lot of sugar cravings and one thing they recommended was to, if you need to snack, they, they don't recommend snacking at all, but if you need to snack, they recommend snacking on raw nuts, specifically raw cashews, because they have a really high fat content and a really low sugar content. And so the fat content gives you that long-term energy and it doesn't give you the quick burst, and then you're quickly hungry again. So it actually, I've even noticed, like it's kept me pretty satisfied for quite a while, so that's been good.
Katie:That's my go-to snack. We get, that's another thing that we get from Azure Standard or like these big five pound bags of organic nuts. And so actually make like a homemade, uh, trail mix and so put all the nuts in there. I put some, uh. I was like, what are those things called? It's not raisins. I don't like raisins. I do like cranberries though. Put some cranberries in there. I do have chocolate chips in it, which they're not any healthy brand of chocolate chip. Man. My goodness. If anybody has a good chocolate chip recommendation of something more healthy, that is so hard. They, the ones that I've seen are so expensive and it is just not worth it for me. Sometimes like the organic, the better stuff is like slightly more expensive and I'm like, that's okay. But the chocolate chips are like more than double and it is like, oh my gosh,
Chrissy:Your own.
Katie:chocolate chips.
Chrissy:Yeah,
Katie:How?
Chrissy:melt. Um, I think it's, don't quote me on this, I think it's either coconut oil or butter. Cocoa powder, and then some form of sweetener, which I think you can pretty much use any sweetener That would be good. And you just like melt it in a pan and they sell like these, um, silicone molds essentially, and you just like pour it into the silicone mold. And then once they're dry and cooled off, you have like chocolate chips.
Katie:Chrisy.
Chrissy:Don't quote me on the recipe, but I'm pretty sure that's, I've seen it done on Instagram, which means it has to be true.
Katie:good idea. I actually never, I've never, I, like I am usually a person who's like, I can make that in, in fact, I really wanna make these, I don't know if anyone's seen them. They're like the, uh. Quinoa, chocolate, like snacks. They're really good. Um, and I was like, I could totally make those and you have to like, like make your quinoa puffed and stuff. So you have to like cook it a certain way. All this stuff. And, and I've looked up some recipes and I like, it's on my list of things to do to make, because I really like that and I wanna use like a good chocolate to do it. I never, for a, like, for a second even considered making chocolate
Chrissy:Chocolate chip. Yeah, it was probably cheaper than even regular chocolate chips too, with the amount that you can get from it. I think your biggest cost there would be the cocoa powder.
Katie:I was thinking about when you were explaining your recipe for making the chocolate chips, that you could do kind of the same thing and melt it all down, but instead of getting like a mold for all the chip chocolate chips, you could hypothetically, I don't know if this will work, you could put it in like a baking sheet. Like even just the one that has like the half an inch lip or whatever, so it doesn't spill over the sides and then chill it, so freeze it or something. And then, you know, in my mind, this would work out. I don't know how it would dump it out and then break it down. Kind of like how you would make, uh. Uh, what's it called? Peppermint bark. You know, when you like, you put it in the sheet pan kind of thing, and then you just break it up into the chunks that you like, the sizes that you want. Well, hyper like hypothetically. Again, I don't know if this will work, you could just break it down into smaller bits where it's more like chocolate flex, so they wouldn't be a uniform size or anything. And then you'll get some that are bigger or smaller or something, but that could be another way that you can make your own like chocolate chippy, like things without necessarily needing a mold. I should try that. I don't know why I've never thought of that. Hmm.
Chrissy:That's your new job this week. Let us know on the next podcast.
Katie:Also, melted chocolate is just so good. Like literally if you like melt chocolate and butter and just eat it together, this the like
Chrissy:Okay. Can I tell you the thing that I have been eating by the spoonful lately? Almond butter. Literally, like I, I learned that celery dipped in almond butter is like the best thing since sliced bread because sliced bread is illegal for me right now. Um, and yeah, celery, my husband came home and he was like, Hey babe, I'm really feeling some celery and almond butter. Do you? Where did that head of celery go? That we bought yesterday? And I was like, oh, um, it's gone. I ate it. It's completely in my tummy.
Katie:Oh my gosh. I, I like almond butter, but I also sometimes don't like almond butter. It has like a slightly different consistency than peanut butter, it's almost like I want it to have the same consistency as peanut butter, but slightly tastes different. so sometimes I just don't really like it. What brand of almond butter do you use? Do you know?
Chrissy:I currently have two brands in the pantry because I have this tendency to not realize when we have enough peanut butter or almond butter or any kind of those
Katie:Mm-hmm.
Chrissy:nut butters. I just don't realize when we have enough and I'm going to the grocery store and I'm like, oh, we need more of that. And so I just throw it in the cart. And so we end up with like five jars. And it also is different jars depending on which grocery store I'm at. So when I went to Sprouts, I got the Sprouts brand. Very good. Love it. Then I went to Whole Foods and did my whole, oh, I don't think I bought almond butter. I'm gonna buy some, forgetting that I already bought almond butter, and so I put the Justin's brand in the cart. Um, I haven't actually tried that one yet, but I can try it right now if you want me to. I'm kidding. I won't do that. Um, but yeah,
Katie:that
Chrissy:the, the Sprouts one is pretty decent. The one thing that I've realized though, is important to stay away from with any of these butters. Peanut butter, almond butter, cashew butter, whatever you're looking at, the nut butters is make sure you don't get the no stir, because the ones that are no stir actually have additional seed oils added to them, and that's what makes the consistency that you don't need to stir it. So I. You know, unfortunately, it is necessary to stir the nut butter because if you're not needing to stir it, then they've added more things into it to make it that way, which is quite unfortunate in my opinion. But it is the reality of eating natural. You know, like God didn't create our food to be convenient. He created our food to be delicious and nourishing, and it's often a tossup of you have to make a choice. Do you want convenience or do you want delicious and nourishing? And it's up to you to make that choice.
Katie:Yeah. Hard choices sometimes. I actually, my favorite place to have almond butter is in a smoothie. I mix it in with smoothies, and I like that. I like the flavor, like the compliment to the fruit more than I do peanut butter in my smoothies. So, I don't know, just kind of a random, A random thing.
Chrissy:Another thing that I've actually done my, my first round was kind of a fail, but I have a strategy in place on how to make it not a fail, is I made my own cough drops. So when Max goes on work trips, he is talking a ton. He will literally go to these conferences and be talking all afternoon and his voice is just completely shot by the end of the time. And so he usually, when he goes to his work trips, is eating cough drops left and right to try to keep his voice up. this year I decided, you know what? I'm gonna try to make our own cough drops for you so that that way when you go, you know, you don't have to worry about eating so much sugar with your cough drops. Because that's one of the biggest problems with cough drops is like you're getting a ton of sugar, like artificial colors, artificial flavors, and then menthol, which like can be every now and then one drop of menthol is not, not a problem, but you know when your voice is, you have a sore throat or you have a cold or something like that, you're kind of popping cough, cough drops left and right. And so. That can cause some problems. And so I made these, um, they're more like, uh, jelly consistency of cough drops. And the ingredients were, if I remember correctly, honey, lemon juice, ginger and agar agar powder, which essentially is a plant-based gelatin. Um, it's derived from red seaweed, which apparently has a lot of really great health benefits to it. I dunno, whenever I did the research, that's what I got. Some of my jelly drops turned out fine. Some of them never really solidified and just stayed melty. So I think my problem was I didn't actually like melt it down long enough. You know, with like gelatin in general, you kind of need to like stir it on the pot for a while on low heat for it to actually jello, jello wise become jello.
Katie:Jello eyes. I like that word.
Chrissy:Yeah. Become a jelly-like thing. Um, and I think I was just impatient and didn't stir it for long enough on the stove, but yeah, so they tasted really good. And next time we need cough drops. I fully intend on making them because unfortunately they're, I mean, they're natural just like everything else. And so they actually have an expiration date, and their expiration date is not three years down the road. It's actually like a week or two down the road. So it's one of those things that you like, make it when you need it, keep the ingredients on hand and you know when you need it, you make it. And honestly, lemon juice is pretty easy to always have on hand. Ginger, it's very cheap from the grocery store. Easy to get if you don't keep it on hand. So, um, yeah, I've tried that. It was a fail the first time I plan on trying it again, and I'm looking forward to it actually working the second time. But that's how a lot of these things are. You know, you try new things, trying a new recipe, trying a new, um, like medicinal thing, uh, with herbs and things like that, you know. We're going to mess up and we're going to fail a few times, but that's the beauty of this is it's all just a lot of practice and it really is just changing our lifestyle. And so yeah, when you're changing your lifestyle in terms of anything, you're going to mess up a little bit and that's okay. We just laugh about it and then try again.
Katie:Exactly. That's why God's grace is so good because we don't have to have it all perfect the first time. think that's one of those like beautiful things that even though we sin continuously, because like we're just sinful, we're like our nature is just to default to sin, which is just the unfortunate reality of our lives and it's just so good that we have a God who just continues to reign on us with His grace every time we mess up because we're not going to get it perfectly. I know that that. Messing up on your cough drops is not a sin, but I just thought there was a beautiful illustration there of God's grace.
Chrissy:You never know.
Katie:It's kind of forcing it,
Chrissy:Actually, it could become a sin depending on my reaction.
Katie:ah,
Chrissy:The, the reaction to the cough drop mistake could be sinful. I don't think mine was because we really just laughed about it and moved on. But, um, yeah. Another thing that I'm actually looking forward to doing is, um, so in the spring I plan on creating a garden. Crazy enough, I, when we were living in our house, we had like actual grass in the backyard and I kept making all these excuses on why we couldn't have a garden because, oh, we're in a rental and blah, blah, blah. And now I'm in a one bedroom apartment on the second floor and I'm like, I'm gonna have a garden because that just makes more sense. So. My plan is in January to create this garden because, you know, most things grow in the spring and so I thought that was a good starting time. Um, we have approximately about like 10 square feet on our balcony where I can create, like put a raised bed in and I've been strategizing which produce options I can grow.'cause I really, with that limited square footage, I'm kind of limited to like three or four different veggies if that, if I can get that many in there. And so I'm doing a lot of research right now to try to figure out a, which ones we actually use quite frequently. I'm like, okay, we use tomatoes and red peppers a lot more than we use like sugar snap peas and like love green beans. But don't those, those require a vine, kind of like a trellis thing. And I don't have a trellis so I can't do that. Garlic is great and onions are great, but do I really need that many kind of thing? Um, so I'm like analyzing which ones will go really well next to each other, which ones we can hold off on. And also like the financial component of it, because there's always a financial component of which ones are gonna be most beneficial towards our saving money. You know, like can I get these seeds from the organic produce that I buy at the grocery store and start my vegetable garden from the seeds, from vegetables that I already bought. So I'm strategizing and learning and planning and I've got about a month and a half to figure it out until January comes. No, two and a half months.
Katie:like,
Chrissy:Two and a half months.
Katie:I was like, what month are you living in?
Chrissy:I dunno. My patients today didn't know, but I guess I don't know either.
Katie:That's funny. Uh, I'd suggest if you guys cook with herbs, that's potentially a good one because herbs can be. and yet super easy to grow. yeah, if you're looking for recommendations to add, but tomatoes are a really good one.
Chrissy:I'm very bad at herbs. I've done it. I had a little, a tiny little herb garden, and maybe my problem was that I didn't give my herbs enough space to grow, but my basal leaves were very skinny and kinda shrive even when I was really good at watering them. And my oregano just like completely died very quickly. It just went kaput. I don't know what I did wrong there, but I'll try it again this year. I mean, buying the full thing of basil and rosemary and things like, it's like$20 for four of'em. So. buying the plant is not the super expensive part. It,
Katie:Mm-hmm.
Chrissy:the harder part is actually figuring out how to maintain them because I did not inherit my mother's green thumb.
Katie:Mm.
Chrissy:Unfortunately. She actually, my mom has the beautiful vegetable garden in their new house. It's like on the side of their house. You can't really see it very often until she like brings you out and shows you her vegetable garden. They're growing like cucumbers and tomatoes and zucchinis and like all these things. I'm like, since when and I need to learn.
Katie:gardening is a lot of fun. I am really excited to to have a garden, hopefully this next since we just bought a house. And that's kind of where all my updates come from is just all house stuff, really. And it is. A lot of work right now. So we closed on our house right around my birthday in September, the end of September. And we basically like a what? The day after? Yeah, we closed on Thursday and then so Friday we started ripping the kitchen out. Like we just hit the ground running, started pulling things out. And now at this point it's been two-ish weeks and the whole kitchen is out and we're just working on the next things we did. So we did all the demo ourselves to save money. Um, you save like thousands of dollars by not having contractors come and do the work and throw out all the stuff for you and all and and all the things. So we have been doing that and so now my. Like the, it's really interesting, like now going through and thinking about all of the things now we want to put into the house as far as cabinets go and appliances go. And then you have to think about light fixtures and trim and flooring and even the paint on your walls. And from a crunchy, healthy perspective, all of these materials and things that you can put in your home have chemicals in them, especially things like flooring and paint. Like they often have metals or different toxins in them to make them stick better or make them, uh, flame resistant. And so. When you put anything in your home, especially when it is brand new, whether it's furniture or the building materials, they have an offgassing period where they literally like off gas the chemicals from them that them what they are. Especially like mattresses are a big one because they're often, uh, sprayed with or made with flame resistant materials, and those tend to be like the worst. Any, anything that's like resistant of something, whether it's stain resistant or flame resistant or uh, stick resistant, like we talked about Teflon pans a while ago in an episode. All of these, like things that are resistant to nature often have really toxic chemicals in them. So I've been doing a lot of research on. What kind of things to be putting in my home. In fact, actually today my friend and I were talking about the lights in our homes because LED lights are also really bad for your health. We had a really funny conversation, my friend and I, a little bit ago. She sent us this article about how, uh, this is so, it sounds so silly coming out of my mouth that I'm about to say, but I, I do kind of believe there might be some truth to it. I, but again, this is just, I don't know, apparently all of the LED lights our lives, so you think about like in our homes and from our computers and from our phones and even like the little tiny lights on your refrigerator and your microwave and all these things, have this impact on your body that actually changes your. Sexual orientation. So basically, long story short, LED lights are making you gay and, and it was just like, we were laughing so hard about it when we were like reading this article and she was sharing this information,
Chrissy:I was fully expecting you to finish that sentence by saying they impact your body by making your circadian rhythm messed up, or it messes with your hormones, which I guess could have an influence on making you gay. They're all connected. I'm learning.
Katie:Exactly.
Chrissy:are all connected when, so one of the things that they did with this naturopath that I'm going to is they drew our labs also and they looked at like over 40 biomarkers and they looked at over 180 food sensitivities also. And. When we were looking at our labs, both Max and I had insulin resistance, and we had, um, my stress levels were super, super high and crazy enough also get this, my testosterone was really high, which did not make any sense to me,
Katie:Ah,
Chrissy:but you know, that's besides the point. And the doctor looked at me, he goes, so how's your sleep? And I was like, huh? Like, he's like, yeah, so that testosterone level that's probably related to your sleep. And I was like, no way. So, um, yeah, it's all related. So I could see, I think it's probably a bit of a stretch to say that LED lights make you gay, but I don't think it's too big of a stretch to say LED lights impact your sleep, which then
Katie:Mm-hmm.
Chrissy:your hormones. Of all forms, like your hungry hormones, your satiation hormones, your sex hormones, like all of them. There's over 300 hormones in your body, I think.
Katie:Whoa.
Chrissy:And yeah, they are all connected and a lot of them really go back to sleep. So I could see it. I think it's a stretch to say that LED lights make you gay though.
Katie:Yeah, I, just keep joking about it. Now when I am looking at anything that has to do with lighting and I'm, and I'll ask'em, I'll be like, I can't have these in my home. They'll make us gay, but it's just, it's hilarious. Anyway, so lighting, we were talking about lighting and what the best ones are for your health, but primarily your circadian rhythm and all that has to with that. I mean, you and I talked about eyesight and how LED lights actually are making our eyesight worse, and so that's another factor when it comes to lighting. There's a lot of interesting things that I've just now been. Learning like all these like deep intricate things about the light and that like Jesus is the light of the world and don't know, I, it's just such a, that that keeps coming to mind when I'm like thinking about lighting and stuff and I'm like, Jesus, I just need Jesus as my light. Let's have no lights in our house and just use Jesus as our lighting. It's like, okay,
Chrissy:You could, you could go back to, you could go back to oil flames.
Katie:That
Chrissy:could get whale blubber
Katie:great.
Chrissy:and burn the whale. Blubber in the, the oil lamp.
Katie:I think Wes would really appreciate that. I think he
Chrissy:You would.
Katie:be on board. He was super
Chrissy:I've heard
Katie:told him, we're not getting a microwave.
Chrissy:really,
Katie:Yeah, we're not gonna
Chrissy:I actually, personal opinion, I love not having a microwave. In our last house, we didn't have a microwave and we have a toaster oven. It works just the same, just takes a little bit longer. And now moving to this apartment, we do have a microwave, but it functions as a clock.
Katie:Ah.
Chrissy:And that's about it. It doesn't function as anything else. And okay, you know what I did realize Katie though, is the coffee mugs that you gave maximi for our wedding, the, the ones that say Mr. And Mrs. And like cute little golds plated. Yeah, they spark like nobody's business in the microwave. I think I, like one of them had a full flame on it and now there's like a burn mark on the side of the mug where it caught on fire in the microwave. So, um, if you do still use microwaves, don't, but if you're going to anyways, just don't put like metal plated or like gold plated things in there. Also, another fun fact that's crazy is carrots are flammable. Raw carrots. Yes. I learned that the hard way because when I was in college, I really wanted cooked carrots for some reason. I don't know, I just wanted like soft cooked carrots, but I didn't have time to make them because they take a long time to actually get that way right? And so I was like, oh, I'll just throw'em in the microwave. It'll be great. No, they freaking caught on fire in that thing I learned. It's because, you know, carrots are grown in the ground and so they have very high mineral content from the soil if they're grown in good quality soil. And so those really high mineral content in the carrots, like the high zinc and magnesium and all those like are what make them flammable in the microwave. Fun fact.
Katie:That is super weird because, I mean, growing up we did like quote unquote baked potatoes in the microwave. Often we would just like stab the potato with a bunch of holes to like let it let the steam come out, you know, so they wouldn't explode we would pop them in there and that's how we would cook potatoes often. And if we didn't have a lot of time to like put them in the oven to bake
Chrissy:Oh yeah, we do that with potatoes just fine.
Katie:Yeah.
Chrissy:You would think. But I guess carrots have a higher metal content than potatoes. I don't know.
Katie:Well,
Chrissy:Yeah, don't put raw carrots in the microwave.
Katie:So I'm actually really excited when we were looking at appliances, they make a lot of ovens these days with an air fryer option, so that's like a really awesome alternative to microwaves is using the air fryer. And so I'm like, we won't even need to get new appliance. We don't have an air fryer currently, but if we have an air fryer option, I did research all of the technology about it.'cause I was like, is this still some kind of like radiation to it or whatever? But it's, no, it's like a traditional air fryer where it's just using the heat a specific way and, and fanning it around. And so it's like a no preheat air frying option. And a lot of the ranges that I was looking at have that feature now and I was like, that is really cool. I've never actually experienced that yet. So I, we definitely will be getting one that has the air fryer option so that way. We have that available to us. But we have been using the, my parents gave us a little toaster oven thing that is now on our counter, and we've been trying to use that a lot more often. But I recently learned a podcast episode that if you have something that doesn't need to necessarily be crispy, but you want it to kind of have moisture, like you almost wanna steam it back to life. You know, microwaves typically keep things kind of steamy when you, you know, when you put something in the microwave and it comes out soggy almost. So
Chrissy:Like rice.
Katie:yeah, exactly. So if, if you're looking for a quick way to heat something back up, that was more on the steamy side. So especially like vegetables, like if you have cooked vegetables and you're trying to reheat them, I can't, I don't even remember who recommended this on a podcast episode, but I thought it was brilliant using your. Uh, pressure cooker. So an, like an Instapot and just putting it in there for, I don't even remember what the setting was, but she just puts it in there for like a few minutes and it reheats it and it keeps it nice and like moist versus like crispy. And so I was like, that's a really good alternative too.
Chrissy:I just put a wet paper towel over my vegetables in the toast oven.
Katie:Oh, that's a great option. I never thought about that.
Chrissy:Mm-hmm. Keeps some the moisture in and then, I mean, some of the water from the paper towel will evaporate. That's kind of inevitable. But yeah, it works well for me.
Katie:Yeah, that's cool. I did find a paint brand that is no toxins. Um. remember the name of it off the top of my head, but I actually saw it recommended. This was like, it was perfect timing. Chrissy. I was on Instagram and one of our favorite podcasters, um, Alex Clark on her stories. I was watching it the other day and she had a recommendation for a no toxin paint brand. So I don't actually, I haven't looked too thoroughly into it, so I, I don't know how expensive they are. They could be ridiculously expensive and it could just be not worth it. Or maybe, maybe I'll do like a bedroom or two with it versus like the whole house. So
Chrissy:Like the baby's bedroom.
Katie:yeah. Yeah, that's a good idea. So yeah, I've been looking into lots of like materials, even, even things like drywall. I was reading about drywall the other day and like how toxic it is and. Especially, uh, like, uh, well I don't even remember. There's like a material in it that is just really not good when you are like breathing it in. And so they make drywall that is like no also. But when I looked at those, those were like so expensive. And so we do have a decent amount of drywalling primarily in the kitchen. Um, and so I, I don't know if we'll end up getting any of those because it was so expensive, but we'll see. We haven't gotten to the point yet where I have to like make official decisions on the materials, but I have like no joke, been experiencing decision fatigue for sure, because when you are going through and renovating a house, there are so many like teeny little decisions that you have to make every step of the way. And so. other night I was just feeling so stressed out about it. And yeah, Wes, Wes was doing a good job, just kinda like helping me recenter myself and like just, yeah, we prayed through it and, uh, it's been, it's been exhausting. I am really looking forward to the day when, when we get to just move in, but it probably won't be for a couple more months. It'll be going on for a bit. but I'm excited. I'm, I'm excited. Especially right now we're focusing all on the inside and then once we kind of do that and then get settled, know, it'll be new Year's will kind of pass, and then we'll get to start thinking more about like the exterior projects. So like thinking about the chicken coop and building a chicken coop and putting in the garden and. bought a property with two and a half acres, so it's really large, but it's very wooded. And so we have to take out a handful of trees to like get in a good sized garden and get the light coming in, um, to be able to on the garden and make our plants grow. So we have to kind of think through and do all that. we've been super thankful for all of the help that we have had from our new church community out here. It's been
Honestly, such a blessing. I mean, I, I can't even begin to describe how grateful we are for all of the people who have stepped up and who have helped. And I mean, we only moved here just a few months ago, and so people have come alongside us and have guided us. Um, we have one friend from church who is a retired. Contractor. Um, he used to do like project management for, a construction company out here. And he has basically just decided that he's going to be our project manager. And I could not be more thankful because there are so many moments, or they have, there have been so many moments so far where we have. Literally hit a wall, no pun intended, in trying to figure out what to do next. And he has stepped up to be like, okay, here's what you need to do. This is what we're going to do together and here's what I'm going to do. And, and he's just like, taking charge. And I am very thankful because we kind of went into this project thinking like, yeah, we've got this. I've, I've watched lots of DIY stuff, and, both Wes and I have a decent understanding of how to do some things, but. Not to this extent. And so anyway, I have been very thankful, uh, for all the people who have just helped us.
Chrissy:That's awesome. I love it. Well, we are nearing the end of this episode. So Katie, before we sign off, do you have any closing comments that you'd like to make?
Katie:Oh yeah. I think because this season has been very busy and very exhausting. Trying to think of like the right word. Like what word? What word really captures it. A lot of peace. I think, from my time in the word, have been much more diligent at getting up earlier, on prayer walks, reading my Bible, spending time just like meditating on the word. And even like choosing more focused listening activities, like just things to listen to from my phone during the day have really been helping me right now. stay. Like I, like, I've just been finding a lot of peace in that because have been feeling very exhausted and overwhelmed with all the things that we have going on with the house projects and with Wes' job, you know, he has this new job and he just started seminary and I also started a new job, kind of, I mean, I did not kind of, I didn't kind of start a job. I did start a new job at a nonprofit here in town, just 10 hours a week. But there's just been a lot of change and a lot of stuff going on, and I'm a part of like a few different moms groups and stuff, and I've just been feeling very overwhelmed by a lot of it. But it hasn't overtaken me. Like the, the craziness hasn't like just completely overtaken me I feel very filled up by my time with the Lord. So. Where I'm going at with this is just encouragement for whatever you may be facing right now, that it's so important to stay connected to Jesus and rooted in Jesus. Um, and yeah, really using him as your source of energy and strength it's so easy for us to think about just getting that strength from ourselves, but we really need to be doing that with Jesus. Anyway, I, yeah, I've been finding a lot of peace in that.
Chrissy:That's awesome. I love it. Well, thank you everybody for tuning into our conversation today. Make sure you subscribe to our channel and go join us over on our Facebook group, crunchy Christian Mamas on a budget where we are continuing this conversation. We would love to hear on there what resonated with you, what thoughts you have, and some thoughts and ideas about what we should name these episodes so it can be consistent for you guys, for you to, um, go back and listen to them. Until next time, my name is Chrissy
Katie:And my name is Katie.
Chrissy:and thanks for listening to Crunchy Stewardship. Bye.