Counting My Nourishing Cyber-Blessings

Today I’m excited to introduce you to Paula – a blind GNOWFGLINS reader. She’s been blind since the age of 16 months. She is married and has four children who she homeschools. And yes, she says, “…my kids do sneak around and get away with stuff sometimes.” She’s the sweetest person you ever could meet, and a great inspiration. In this guest post, she gives us a peek into her life, and she shares how nourishing food blogs have helped her and her family. She’s pretty funny, too!

As you seek to prepare nutritious food for yourself and those you love, what kitchen equipment do you find most helpful? Your slow cooker, a powerful blender, or perhaps a grain mill? As a blind homemaker, I am eager to try any gadget that might make kitchen chores easier. For example, I have various kinds of braille labeling and tactile marking equipment, which enable me to mark everything from stove knobs to cans and jars. (Or sometimes I just grab a kid and ask what’s in a particular package). Lately, however, I’ve found that one of my most useful pieces of food preparation equipment is something that does not actually reside in the kitchen.

For many blind and visually impaired people, the home computer has opened up a whole world of possibilities, perhaps even more than it has for people with normal vision. Special programs have been developed, which cause a computer’s sound card to speak what is displayed on the screen. Using this screen-reading software, a blind person can read and write e-mail messages, browse the web, and perform other computer-related tasks, such as–well–write a blog post.

In addition, with a scanner and OCR (optical character recognition) software, people who are blind can now purchase a print book from any bookstore, scan it into a computer, and hear the computer read it aloud. By contrast, only a small percentage of the books published each year are ever produced in an accessible format such as braille or audio recording. The majority of recorded or braille books come from state or national lending libraries for the blind, and must be mailed back when finished—not very helpful for books you want to refer to again and again, such as, say, cookbooks. Thus, until the advent of computers and scanners, most blind people possessed few, if any, books of their own. Needless to say, scanning and reading technology has been a tremendous blessing to the blind and visually impaired community!

Even though this incredible technology is continually being improved, some materials do not scan well–particularly cookbooks, where the fractions in recipe measurements are often misrecognized by OCR programs. Scanning is also time consuming, and like most moms, I have difficulty with time management. Years ago, after reading an article about the book Nourishing Traditions, I ordered a copy of the first edition and scanned a few chapters. Although I found the book fascinating, I never finished it. I had too many other scanning projects, such as parenting books and home school materials.

A few months ago, when I became interested in making kefir, I began doing Google searches to see what I could learn. I stumbled onto a wealth of information about real food that I never imagined to be available–wonderful sites like Wardee’s GNOWFGLINS, Stephanie’s Keeper of the Home, Kimi’s Nourishing Gourmet, and many others. I could hardly believe my eyes–um–ears! All these recipes and food preparation tips, in a form I can access with my screen reader, rather than first having to scan it in and fix all the errors! I can download articles and recipes onto a special PDA with a braille display, and have pages of useful material literally at my fingertips. I can read a recipe and decide whether I think I can manage it, and whether it has ingredients I’m comfortable using. No need to scan a whole cookbook, or have my kids read recipe after recipe aloud, only to find I don’t care for most of them–the recipes, that is, not the kids. 🙂

Before our first child was born, I made most of our food from scratch. I used only whole grains, and my husband and I purchased few processed foods. Over the years, however, meal preparation degenerated into opening packages and punching buttons on the microwave. I am now in the beginning stages of preparing more whole foods for our meals.

Like most people, my time and energy are limited. The suggestions I most appreciate from Wardee, and other real food bloggers, are the simple techniques I can use to make our food more nourishing–soaking grains and nuts, making kefir, sprouting, etc.

I want to be a good steward of God’s gifts of life and health. I know that neither I nor my loved ones are going to live forever in these earthly bodies. I don’t want to put my hope in fleeting things, like health or even life itself. I’m looking forward to a glorious future, because Jesus paid for my sins on the cross. His resurrection guarantees that I will one day rise in a perfect body. But while I’m here, I want to take care of the body He has given me. People who eat wisely still get sick sometimes, and everyone dies of something. I believe God is in charge of how long I live and how healthy I am, but I believe He wants me to do what I can to encourage good health. I consider myself blessed to be able to take advantage of the many nourishing foods He has created and the knowledge He has provided for how to benefit from them.

I feel a debt of gratitude to the many ladies who take time from their own busy days to share what they are learning about real food and real life. My hope is that some day, I will have the time and the computer savvy to develop my own blog, and help pass along some of these nourishing cyber-blessings.

Thank you, Paula. I feel a debt of gratitude to you for opening up your heart to us! You are a wonderful inspiration. God bless you and your family!

Are you interested in guest posting at GNOWFGLINS? I would love it! Please use the contact form to get ahold of me! I’m sharing this post in Real Food Wednesday, this week hosted by Ann Marie @ Cheeseslave.