The Little Farm Company – Larraine Segil's Books, Recipes, Products, Children's Music & More!

Hi there – no video blog today – my nose is blocked , my eyes are streaming and it is not a pretty sight. However – I LOVE to cook so would not miss a chance to share some cooking tips with you to do with children.

First some great news – I am writing a cookbook of Things to Cook with Kids – like my favorite, peach pie, soups, salads, all sort of yummy recipes also using my slow cooker – a great way to have children help in a safe way.

But back to my Tuesday tips, here are 5 quick ones ( forgive the brevity – having a cold has me down but not out…..). Did you know:

1. Putting lemon juice onto bananas or apples once they have been sliced will prevent them from going a horrible brown color?

2. Spraying PAM or Canola/Olive oil spray on your frying pan will enable you to reduce the calories in that dish by about 200 when making scrambled eggs?

3. About those eggs – cooking them VERY slowly on a low heat will make them fluffy and creamier – takes time and patience however….most of us have too little of that.

4. Children LOVE cracking eggs – its messy and the shell gets into it – but its such fun to watch them do it and to teach them how to be gentle

5. Making cake from a box is a simple way to help children start to cook independently – except for turning on the stove and handling the hot pans, a 5 year old who can read, can do it all himself. Our four year old grandson can read – and so he reads the instructions to me. I believe in short cuts don’t you?

More next week on Tuesday tips – hopefully video blog if my red nose stops shining…. Here is  a picture of my two oldest grandsons ( 2 years and 4 years old) helping to cook eggs for breakfast.

My son sent me this picture this morning – and said – the twins are twinning. I didnt know what he meant until I looked at it – yep- this is twining. We need to paint a toenail or we will not know who is who!  How much fun this is going to be as they grow! It is already fun for RockinGrandmaMusic!

Three days later Fireman Bob picked up Billy,
Dressed him in his uniform and escorted him from his hospital bed to the waiting hook and ladder truck.

Billy got to sit on the back of the truck and help steer it back to the fire station. He was in heaven.

There were three fire calls in Phoenix that day and Billy got to go out on all three calls.

He rode in the different fire engines, the Paramedic’s’ van, and even the
Fire chief’s car. He was also videotaped for the
Local news program.

Having his dream come true,
With all the love and attention that was lavished upon him, so deeply touched Billy, that he lived three months longer than any doctor thought possible.

One night all of his vital signs began to drop dramatically and the head nurse, who believed
In the hospice concept – that no one should die alone, began to call the family members to the hospital.

Then she remembered the day Billy had spent as a Fireman, so she called the Fire Chief and
Asked if it would be possible to send a fireman in uniform to the hospital to be with Billy as he made his transition.

The chief replied, ‘We can do better than that. We’ll be there in five minutes. Will you please do me a favor ?

When you hear the sirens screaming and see the lights flashing, will you announce over the PA system that there is not a fire ?’ ‘It’s the department coming to see one of its finest members one more time. And will you open the window to his room ?’

About five minutes later a
Hook and ladder truck arrived at the hospital and extended its ladder up to Billy’s third floor open window ——–

16 fire-fighters climbed up the ladder into Billy’s room!

With his mother’s permission, they hugged him and held him and told him how much they LOVED him.

With his dying breath, Billy looked up at the fire chief and said, ‘Chief, am I really a fireman now?’

‘Billy, you are, and The Head Chief,
God, is holding your hand,’ the chief said.

With those words, Billy smiled and said, ‘I know, He’s been holding my hand all day, and the angels have been singing.’

He closed his eyes one last time.

My instructions were to send this to at least four people that I wanted God to bless and I picked you.

Today I am featuring my song Start The World All Over Again. I wrote it as an inspirational song thinking about all those who give their time, love and even their lives to make the world a better place for all of us. And to thank THEM and move YOU to do good deeds and give to others from our world of plenty.

Today I have had the privilege of listening in person to the #43rd President of The US talk about vision, belief and committment with amazing brilliance,eloquence and humor and then Francis Ford Coppola who spoke about creativity. Their remarks resonated in my heart – the smaller the budget the bigger the idea Francis said – you need to be creative when budgets are small and strained – and The President said that Entrepreneurship is the creator of 70% of all jobs – we must unleash that in ourselves. I am so very blessed that my grandchildren have developed the ability in me to write music and books for children so as to incorporate their innocence their joy and potential and regardless of a very very VERY small budget to be able to share them with you.

Together these stars have created ZONES with computers in the hospital rooms of children who are ill so that they can connect with other children on line live with the same or similar challenges. Starlight Foundation,(www.starlight.org) and the Troy Aikman Foundation (www.Aikman.com) create the program and Garth Brooks puts his stardom behind it along with his donations to promote this amazing work. They are my Philanthropy Friday stars. We thank you.

We are so very excited – our newest grandchildren arrived safely – and are just perfect. Here they are – Noah and Gabriel – 5 lbs and 5 lbs 2 ounces – I could not be happier. Kudos to their mommy who was on bed-rest for over 2 months and their daddy who took care of her while running his business and taking care of Jack, 4 and Jonah 2.

Jack loved meeting his babies for the first time – Jonah decided that he would stay in hospital with his mommy and that the babies had to go ‘home to find their mommy’ . Hmmm. To be expected!

How blessed we are. You can see how happy Rockin Grandma Music is!

Every Friday I will FEATURE a Mom’s special charity – and encourage folks to give to it – even a dollar is helpful! So please email me at grandma@RockinGrandmaMusic.com with your favorite Mom related charity or post it on my facebook page www.facebook.com/RockinGrandmaMusic and I will post it on my site too.

Featured Foundation:

Today I am going to highlight the foundation I have set up for young women who want to study business and law. The most ethical institutions I know of for doing both, are The Drucker School of Management in Southern California at Claremont Graduate School and Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles.

Peter Drucker believed strongly in ethical business practices – the ‘soul’ of business and management and his teachings permeate the school and its faculty. Southwestern is a school that supports women in the legal profession, and ethical practices for lawyers.

My foundation awards scholarships every year to young women who want to do the joint JDMBA program .  I also donate 10% of every sale of two or more of Sam’s Special Boxes containing his three books and two CD’s to these young women through the foundation.

The name of the foundation is:

The Larraine Segil Strategic Alliance Scholarship Fund and the address for checks to be sent is:

Attn: Debbie Leathers, Assistant Dean,

Southwestern Law School
3050 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90010
Tel: (213) 738-6700 Fax: (213) 383-1688

Please email me Grandma@RockinGrandmaMusic.com to let me know if you are contributing. And thank you.

Although I wrote my children’s stories and music to entertain, I have found that using Sam, The Broken Robot as a mommy’s helper is a great way to facilitate the grandchildren to do their chores. Four and two is rather young, you may say, to have chores, but the kids actually LOVE doing them at this age. Jack who is four, and Jonah who is two, both make their beds. Is it hospital perfect? No – but they are getting better every day. Pulling up the sheets and covers and straightening the toys and pillows is about as good as it gets and the way I get them to do it is to say: SAM SAYS MAKE YOUR BEDS! And off they go. Then I pretend to be SAM The Broken Robot, and give them high fives all over the room. The same approach works for putting diapers in the pail, clothes in the wash, toys in the box and cleaning teeth. And they are two proud little boys when they do help. Do your children do chores and if so how do you encourage them to do them?

“How do you teach your children to react when dealing with kids who are mean?”

I put this question out to multiple mommy-bloggers and received some interesting answers. Some said – don’t talk to young children about mean kids as they will become judgmental. Others said – 2 is too young 5 may be ok. One man said he had been a mean kid and was just calling out to be loved. Yet another said that love and compassion could solve all. And another person said ‘pick up your child and take them away’.

All of the above are right. However the reality is that children do need coping strategies of their own when parents are not there. This is what we tried and it seems to be working. 

“Try being really nice to a child who is being mean to you. And if that doesn’t work, walk away and find someone else to play with”.

Love to hear your comments

I made peanut butter cookies today with my grandchildren – a great way to build coordination and hand strength as well as organizational capability – they had to pull the stiff dough into balls, then roll them in sugar and place them equidistantly on pans – and then of course eat them! We had such fun and they presented them to their parents later with great pride. I personally had to get those cookies out of the house or would have consumed them all – I will share the recipe on TASTY THURSDAYS weekly when I will post a different recipe each week to cook with /or without your little ones!

I wrote this to my sister yesterday when she asked me how things were going? My daughter-in-law is on full bedrest as we await the arrival of identical twins and I am so thrilled and blessed that she has asked me to help her ( and her Mom) with her life while she has to stay in bed. She is a highly competent mom, a pediatrician, an athlete and gorgeous too – I adore her. Here is what I wrote my sister – and friends – and they convinced me to share it with you! So here goes – unedited – a day in the life of a VERY active Grandma – me!

I slept over at my son and daughter – in- law’s home again last night – was up at 6.15 with the two boys this morning – change diapers, clean teeth make breakfast for them, help my son and daughter in law – get dressed pack snacks/lunches for school get change of clothes for boys and school stuff ( the little one wanted to take his Halloween things with him) into bags, jump into car, drive to school drop them off at 9, rush to Whole Foods , do major shopping, rush back to school by 10 for Mommy’s day – crawl through huts, jungle gym, go on obstacle race, play instruments, make playdough pumpkins, paint, read, have snack ie do the day that they do, rush upstairs to the other classroom to get the two year old, get both kids bags, rush ( rush is a relative term when dealing with Four and Two year olds – you moms and grandma’s out there know what I mean) to car, drive to Rubios, order lunch, deal with peepee in underwear for two year old who is being toilet trained, change his clothes, wash up, deal with temper tantrum of two year old, feed kids, fill up juice with refills, break up fight over something silly, propel kids to car, wait interminably for four year old to do up his car seat ( has to do it himself) two year old learning to do it – so help him (hands off – he wants to do it himself) drive four minutes to house – another peepee in new clothes, arrive at house, make up lunch for mommy in bed, try to put two year old to sleep, deal with screaming fit again, finally get him into diaper, and onto bed, tell story till he falls asleep, jump back into car with four year old , back to shops – Target this time to buy Halloween stuff, come home, stuff bags with Halloween treats that have to be delivered to three homes in their hood or their house will be tp’d, make more food for mommy, fill up her water and juice bottles (every hour this has to be done – she is amazing BTW – amazing – so energetic and has followed instructions to stay in bed TOTALLY – I am so very proud of her and love her more each day for how she is handling all this), make beef curry in crockpot with rice and make up salad,  two year old wakes up in bad mood crying because I didn’t cook with him, make up a salad with him so he feels I cooked with him; housekeeper has personal problem and has to leave to do something with her child, chat with mom for a bit to catch up on plans for next few days, read books to children, play ‘teach me’ on Ipad and iphone- each child wants one – stop kids from bouncing on Mom’s bed too much, make up snacks for both boys which turns into dinner because they are hungry again. Run bath for little one – make up stories to get him to do it; help older one make fruit dessert – simply cut fruit with cut up string cheese and a little mango smoothie – his recipe btw, for mommy (since he loves to cook too). Then he needs to poop – sit with him while other one is in the bath

Are you tired yet?

Then wait for my son to come home – as he comes in – I leave to get into the car to join a webinar about my new website and how to create an app for iphone/Android for it and that lasts while I drive home for two hours -traffic is awful and they are repairing the freeway everywhere just to frustrate rush hour drivers! Then come home, husband is hungry – I made him dinner before I left home but I make him more when I get here – talk with him for a while – we haven’t seen each other for a few days since I have been staying with kids….

Ready for bed – are you surprised? But no time – I have two hundred emails, want to check that orders were shipped for those wonderful folks who bought product on RockinGrandmaMusic today and also review documents for a board meeting tomorrow. Oh did I mention? Tomorrow morning I have to be up at 4 am for a board meeting in Boston that I could not physically get to – since I didn’t think it was right for me to leave the west coast this week. Am on call to go back to the kid’s house certainly will see them Saturday when I will go at 7am to pick the boys up to come to the farm ( good exercise digging and planting, picking up snails for the chickens, and cutting roses for the goats) maybe to stay for the weekend…. not sure playing it by ear.

Also have to make cheese here tomorrow – have thirty gallons of milk – and also Sapote jam- the crop ( and about 40lbs of it sitting on kitchen counter) requires it be done soon. Living on an urban farm – its fun and work too!

Would I change any of this? NOT FOR A MOMENT!! It makes me feel alive, loved and happy ( and exhausted – yes I do admit I sleep VERY soundly at night). And when you look at the two little guys holding hands ( their idea not mine) it’s all worth it isn’t it?

We are shipping out orders today like crazy to catch up with our backlog! Still waiting for our identical twin boys to be born – hopefully this or next week. The whole family is anxious and excited too. What a miracle! I will let you know when they arrive, in the meantime I made a large slow cooker meal today for the family who are pitching in to help with our four and two year old grandsons and bedresting daughter in law and hungry hard working son! I will post the recipe under Poultry in the Recipes section or you can click here to get it. This is Lolly, one of Sam, The Broken Robot’s friends and family – and he loves to dance – so do our little ones. Do you dance at least once a day? It liberates the child within us.