Afternoon Frenzy!

One of our daughters started first grade this year. I have to say... this transition has been miserable most afternoons. I hear phrases like, "I hate you" and "You're not my mommy anymore" all too frequently. I understand the emotional toll school has taken on her this year, but COME ON! I am really fed up with this part and being the patient parent, that reflects back to her saying, "I hear you. You sound really frustrated" or "Wow, you're angry this afternoon," is becoming harder each day. I miss our children when they are away, and having our six year old gone from home from 7:10 AM (when we leave in the morning) until 3:40 PM (when we make it home most days) sucks! OK?! It really sucks!!!

So all that to say, Monday afternoon I goofed and scheduled dentists appointments for the girls and did NOT plan dinner. We arrived home after 5 PM and all three of us were so hungry (even with snacks in the car) and I was set in MY way. We are going to eat supper and no more snacks until then. It's almost ready! I didn't want them to fill up on anymore snacks. Alas, this idea was not the best, as we all ended up lashing out at one another in our respective ways. It was a disaster, however even more amazing to see the simple transformation when everyone took one bite of our roasted broccoli and red beans and quinoa! Mmmmm.

 Although it took a little time, it was so simple. What threw us off, really, was the rice that I didn't add enough water too. Luckily, I had a stash of prepared quinoa in the refrigerator.

Roasted Broccoli
6 stalks of Broccoli (which we are eating conventional, as broccoli is one they say has less pesticides - saves a bundle at the grocery)
Coconut oil - about 2 tablespoons
2 Fresh Garlic Cloves - chopped
Himalayan Sea Salt (or a coarse salt of your liking) - about 2 teaspoons

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Trim off any dried out end of broccoli stalks. Chop broccoli so it has a little stem. Lay flat on a pan covered in parchment paper or foil. Using a basting brush, lightly coat the broccoli with coconut oil. Chop garlic in to fine pieces and sprinkle on the coated broccoli. Sprinkle salt (and pepper, if desired) and lightly toss around. Bake for about 12-17 minutes, depending on desired texture. We like ours with a little crunch to it. We left ours in the oven with the oven off for a few more minutes and parts turned brown, however it was still amazing. We ate all of it between the four of us.

Prepare rice as instructed... make sure to use enough water :) All was well. The rice will come in handy for another meal.

As far as my realizations about the fiasco of Monday night: I discovered how important it is for me to be aware of our hunger and how tired we all are. After-school things do not work for us right now, and I accept that. Meal prepping is a key, especially if we will not be home until later.

Blessing!

What I LOVE About Fall

I guess this title is somewhat deceiving, as there are countless things I LOVE about fall. I used to believe that I was egotistical because I was born in fall and to love the time you were born must, well, be egotistical?! Yeah RIGHT! I love the season so much probably because I WAS born in this season and I feel in my element. The cooler temperatures bring out some of my favorite sweaters and jeans, as well as offer an opportunity for more outdoor time - I don't prefer summer with her sweet mosquitoes and swim suites! No offense Cancer, Leo and Virgo.

I love hiking in the fall. Being outside in nature, surrounded by the changing colors of Tennessee's trees... Ahhhh... nothing beats it! I also love the time with apple cider, pumpkins, celebration of life for one of my moms and grandmother, Halloween, Thanksgiving, (my birthday), the birthdays of two of my siblings, the birthday of our eldest daughter (can you imagine four Sagittarius in on family?!), changing leaves, running in my awesome shorts with knee high compression socks, outdoor festivals.

This past weekend we experienced the Autumn Equinox. This day is a reminder of balance - both light and dark are almost exactly present in the space, with approximately 12 hours each of light and dark. I love remembering balance in all areas of my life. My pendulum surely likes to swing in one extreme or the other quite regularly. I was reminded today to live in the gray! I allow myself to sit in the discomfort and peace of the balance today, and to enjoy the beginning of my favorite season.

In honor of the cooler temperatures Lentil Soup! (OK, can you tell I cannot wait?! It's only been in the low 70s)

We make a large batch and freeze most of it for later use. 
3 cups Lentils (we used Green Lentils)
8 cups Water +
4 Bay Leaves (or more, if you wish)
Fresh Cracked Pepper
Himalayan Sea Salt
5 Carrots, sliced into rounds (local, from our backyard)
10 Mini White Carrots, sliced into rounds
Large Bunch of Kale (local, in season)
2 Tablespoon Coconut Oil
3 Garlic Cloves
1 tsp Cumin Seeds
1 tsp Coriander
Salt and Pepper, to taste
Lemon Juice
Whole Fat Yogurt

Boil the water with lentils, bay leaf and salt and pepper until soft (I love this link for more tips).  Chop the carrots and kale. Chop the garlic and saute in one tablespoon coconut oil until aromatic. Transfer the vegetables and garlic to the lentils. Add more water to the lentils if needed. With the remaining coconut oil saute the cumin seeds and coriander for a few minutes. Combine spices. Add juice of one lemon. Garnish with plain, whole fat yogurt. If you like a little spice, we added garlic, chili sauce (not for the children).

Welcome fall! I LOVE YOU!

Blessings on the Journey!

Desserts CAN Be Healthy

I wanted to share an amazing site that I absolutely LOVE. It is Chocolate Covered Katie. She has a similar perspective that I hold: foods that taste good can be healthy, too! She has been inspiring me lately to run off and try some new recipes (and create many of my own).

And just a side-note: of the Rice and Beets, hubby said it may be my best YET. (I think he was just really hungry).

Blessings on the Journey!

Broken Oven Finds Family Time

As someone that loves to cook, the day you turn on the convection oven and smell a horrible (so horrible you call the gas company because you swear there is a gas leak) is one you hope will never come. Alas, I have been without my oven for three days and I am about to go nuts! I did not realize just how much I bake! If you are new to meeting me, you may think I am a sweet-freak (OK, I am to some degree), but really I just love to cook. I am a gluten-free baker that is seeking (as soon as our kiddos are both in school) to have my own "thing." I honestly do not know what that "thing" is yet; I do know it has to do with cooking, being with my family and sharing love through food. The journey is still being revealed.

I had high hopes for this weekend: grain-free zucchini bread, grain-free apple spice muffins, and possibly a little blondie action. No oven=no baking. I also had an order for my Martha Muffins and can't bake those either. You would think I was back in that dreaded boot and couldn't run (I spent January to April in a boot for a triple-stress fracture injury from "overuse" - that's an entry for another day)! Today, I am excited to report that I am more grateful for my handy side oven today! Dinner is not lost! Our sweet little roasted beets made it into an 8x8 pan (I cannot remember when I made something that small)!

 

 So for supper we're having roast beets (from our garden) with kale (from our farmers' market) and beet stalks (per our eldest daughter's request) with Amish-made butter and nutritional yeast.

4-5 large beets (roasted - I went with 500 degrees for about 40 minutes in my little side oven, that runs pretty low in temp)

2 cloves garlic 

1 tablespoon coconut oil

6 stalks of kale, stalks removed

about 1 cup beet stalks (save the greens for smoothies or salads later)

2 tablespoons butter (or coconut oil or butter substitute)

1/4 cup nutritional yeast

3 cups cooked rice (we used jasmine)

splash of Braggs Amino Acids (or gluten-free soy sauce) 

1 teaspoon coriander

salt and pepper to taste

sunflower seeds

Heat the coconut oil until fairly hot. Add the garlic, salt and pepper and saute until aromatic. Add the kale and beet stalks and saute on medium heat until slightly tender. Add cooked rice and combine until all are warm. Add butter and nutritional yeast. Stir until combine. Add the splash of Bragg's Amino Acids and coriander and stir. Add salt and pepper to desired taste.  Garnish with raw sunflower seeds.

Once beet are roasted, transfer from pan into a bowl of ice water and peel the outsides off. Chop beets and toss into rice/vegetable mixture. Serve hot.  

To prepare for this meal, we had some family time outside. Saturday, we had our visit to the farmers' market; our weekly farmers' market trips are favorites for us. We love seeing the people that picked out food! Today, our three year old was playing music with a stick and a shovel, my husband was picking his guitar, our almost seven year old was cutting beet greens and pulling beets, and I was observing, in silence. I would come in and out of the house, collecting the plants they were collecting. Then, our older daughter chopped the beet greens and went off to her art project. I roasted the beets, and made the rest of the meal.

Enjoy a meal and time with your family tonight!

Blessings on the Journey!

Paleo-rific

I'm one of those that hears about a "new diet" and I want to take a plunge into it. This is not because I want to lose weight as much as it is my thought that I want to see what it is like. I mean, if it's food related, I love to learn about it and experience it. When I heard about the Paleo Diet, I was intrigued, to say the least. Sometimes I think we should all go back to a more cave-man-stlye life. Not the man-bashing-the-woman-on-the-head-with-a-club part, but the dirt-floors-no-shoes-living-outside-and-in-a-cave part. Ahhh... I could really go for that! Anyway. The Paleo Diet consists of living on wild meat and plants and eliminating all grains (corn, wheat, rice, etc.). For our seeking-to-be-more-vegetarian family, the meat part is sort of our for us. As for baking however, I am in!

I ran across this great site and I really felt inspired. I have to say, I have never followed a recipe. I always add a little part of my style to the recipe - probably the ever-improving-cook in me. I ran into a really great blogger at PaleOMG. I tried out her Simple Blueberry Muffins and added dried cherries and frozen blueberries. We were not so keen on the berries, however the base is SPECTACULAR! The coconut with the almonds makes a great starter for me to develop and build what I'm looking for. We plan to add chopped apples, cloves, nutmeg and more cinnamon to make an apple spice muffin. It is, you know, apple season here in Tennessee and we just got a bushel to work with.

So all that I've found with the Paleo baking has really been interesting. Cooking gluten-free for more than five years taught me so much. I'm going to be honest, though, I was less impressed with many of the gluten-free recipes I tried. All the grain combinations did not always turn out the way I wanted. Using nut flours is an entirely different story. So far, I am more impressed with coconut and almond flours than I ever have been with rice flours!

I made a grain-free bread, as well. It turned out pretty nice, however it did not really like our bread machine! Sorry, I don't want to make bread if it can't work in our bread machine (WE EVEN HAVE THE GLUTEN-FREE SETTING!!!). The bread was overcooked and the bottom was hard - definitely would have worked better being simply baked in a loaf pan in the oven, but, alas, I had to head to hook-up. Am I the only one that does NOT feel comfortable leaving bread in the oven when I run to pick up kids?!

So it may still be taboo to have dirt floors (I guess that means I have to start mopping again), I think we can go for some of this Stone Age eating. More to come!

Blessings on the Journey!

"forgiveness can be just a change of attitude"

So often, changing my attitude about anything saves me. How often are things NOT as I perceive them? Resentment can matriculate into cancer... holding onto that negativity can only hurt my body!

"forgiveness can be just a change of attitude"

gluten-free calzones

In the process of contemplating my reentry to blogging, I thought, "What do I do WELL, LOVE and I do OFTEN enough for this to make sense?" The answer came simply: cooking. So may be aware that I have a small "business," if it can be called that at this time, that has much to do with food. Muffins, actually. I make a gluten-free, vegan, nutrient dense muffin that consists of bananas, goji berries, and pepita seeds (for those of you unfamiliar with pepitas, they are pumpkin seeds).

Oh, sorry. I am back now. I just went into the bathroom to check in our our youngest to find the lovely water logged floor from her washing the carrot she just pulled from the ground for her calzone tonight. Geez! As I asked her to clean it up, and I finished for her, as she is only three, I said to myself, "Well, this floor needed to be cleaned." That's the story of my responses these days.

Nevertheless, back to the food. I have been working to simplify my life when it comes to food and meals, and although I am no where near getting, I believe this week I have a much better system. I downloaded the web version of Google Calendar onto my iPhone so that I can view multiple calendars. Then, I created a Menu Plan calendar and planned our meals for a week. Thanks Fly Lady for encouraging me daily with asking me "What's for dinner?"

Today is Calzone Day. This is a new venture for me. I have committed to trying new things in the arena of dinner meals, as I feel confident with breakfast options and a little limited with supper choices. I have recently been asked to make meals for a few families and am undertaking one at this time, so I need to expand my menu. (This is the beauty of progress, not perfections. I can learn as I go, today... one day at a time).

Nicole Hunn has a great Calzone Recipe and offers a really solid pizza crust recipe to follow for these little babies. Now, all this is not JUST about food for me. We are very specific about our food. We buy mostly organic. We buy gluten-free. We make most of what we eat from scratch. We eat food that nourishes the body and has as much goodness put into it from the people's hands that work the land to our table. So... in the spirit of these principles, here is what our meal looks like.

We used Pamela's Amazing Wheat free and Gluten-Free Bread Mix with the above recipe. We had options, so everyone can choose their own stuffers.
Local Organics:
* Garlic
* Onions
* Zucchini
* Beet Greens
* Tomatoes
* Carrot (as mentioned above - however, she ate most of it from the bathroom to the kitchen)
* Baby Beets
* Homemade Pesto

We are using Trader Joe's hormone free Yogurt Cheese and Himalayan sea salt and extra virgin olive oil.

Right now, as our dough rises, our children are leaping from the twin bed in this room onto the floor atop a pillow topper for our queen mattress. As I bring all of this into a deeper space for myself, I see how the Calzones are so much where our life is right now. Each of us want something different inside our space. Each of us takes time to rise. Each of us is unique and authentic. Hmmmm... I will contemplate this more.  Maybe trying to make associations with Calzones and where we are in life right now is a little of a stretch. I will let you know how all this turns out.

To finish this up, we placed the Calzones in the oven at 425 for 15 minutes, per recommendation, and they turned out crispy, golden brown. One note, don't forget to put your cheese in with the stuffing. I got cheese into the children's pockets and forgot it with the adults'. Probably because I walked in to this:

Blessings!