Tonight's Imbolc dinner!

I had potato soup in a bread bowl last night with friends to celebrate Imbolc, but wasn't sure what to do tonight for just me and Sprout.  I found some sprouts in the back of the fridge that needed to get eaten, and while I was searching for a good salad dressing to use with them, I found this site: http://sproutpeople.org/
On that site, I found a recipe for a sprout snack that includes throwing some herbs and salt and pepper with a little olive oil into a mix of sprouts.  You can see it here. I only had clover sprouts, but they're surprisingly nutritious and packed with protein! So I mixed them up with a chopped up tomato and the herb blend and it's sooo yummy!

For the 'main' dish, we'll be having roasted potatoes and yams flavored with some salt and pepper, butter, rosemary, and thyme.  It smells SO good in here.
For dessert, we'll be having some honeyed milk that I'll make with the raw milk I got today from a local dairy.  The cows looked so happy (well, as happy as cows can look) munching on their green hay and wandering around their big dirt field.  I saw a calf with his mamma, and Sprout excitedly said hi to them all.  It didn't smell like sewage, like the crowded grain-fed farms smell.  It smelled like happy cows, green food, and sunshine. :)

Tonight I will be trying a new way of eating: mindfully.  I have been reading The Way of the Hedge Witch, and it has a lovely section on how to bring magic into your everyday cooking and cleaning. I've come across this philosophy before, but magic is really my preferred language at the moment, so it really sunk in this time.  Eating mindfully basically consists of focusing on your food while you eat--don't rush through it, or think about everything else, or eat without even looking at it while you watch TV or surf the internet. Take the time to actually feel the gratitude you have for the good food in front of you. Inhale the aromas and let your imagination go to the root origins of your meal, or whatever makes you fully appreciate what you're eating. Tonight my mind will take me to walk in sun-warmed potato fields (barefoot, of course!), following the living sprout nutrition into my veins, and back to the lovely farm where I bought fresh, raw milk this morning. Enjoy your food tonight!

The Joys of Barefooting!

My new obsession requires the purchase of.. NOTHING!  I have been walking around barefoot as much of the time as I can.  I go shopping barefoot, walking to the mailbox barefoot, driving barefoot, and of course I'm always barefoot inside the house.  I've caught a few odd looks, but no one has complained, even though I also go barefoot at church.  I think I really love my ward though.  They seem to accept me in all my weirdness, and it's a wonderful thing that I know not everyone can find.

(these are not my feet. my feet are less hairy.)

Why barefoot? 

1. It's healthier!  I feel my tendons and muscles stretching and strengthening, and the soles of my feet toughening up enough to handle whatever the outside throws at me.  My lower back has loosened up considerably, just because I've been walking differently.  I expect my knees are also being given a break as my feet are no longer a source of heavy impact and shock on my joints.  I just feel better. There are numerous benefits outlined in the linked article above, and I encourage any readers to look into barefooting to help heal things like joint problems, or plantar fasciitis. It's also almost impossible to develop any kind of fungal infection or athlete's foot when your foot is not enclosed in a sweaty, germy shoe.
2. I get to connect with the Earth every day.  In my pagan paths, I'm very connected with Nature, and the spirit of Earth.  I constantly try to find more ways to feel connected to the rhythms of seasons and cycles of this wondrous place in which we live, and walking barefoot is an easy way to absorb some of that special energy that can't be replicated by humans.

3. It's cheap! I have always, always hated buying shoes.  It's so hard to find shoes that are comfortable, affordable, and attractive.  My criteria for comfortable are many: they cannot slip off my heels, my toes have to have room to wiggle and move about, they can't dig into my heels or any part of my foot, there can't be support in the wrong places (sadly, I often find myself shifting my foot around even in my Vibram FiveFingers because the left one doesn't fit quite right), and the list goes on.  It's also nigh on impossible for me to walk in high heels, and they hurt my joints (not a shocking fact).  Barefoot goes with almost everything!  While I don't see myself running about barefoot in the snow (at least not for long periods of time), pretty much every other situation is barefoot-able.  I'm working on some barefoot sandals that look something like this, so I'll have something nice to wear for church.  I may make a few more pairs because they won't annoy me and I can make them exactly to my own specifications.  Also, some people in our culture do freak out at barefoot people, and the barefoot sandals can somewhat hide the fact that I'm barefoot.

4. I want to.  I've always loved being barefoot, and it's a badge of pride for me to be just a little bit different than the status quo.  I was born that way.  So there you go.

The Deliciousness of Green Stuff

8:35 PM

Ever done a green smoothie cleanse?  Apparently you can do month-long fasts, eating only raw green and fruit smoothies.  Not really my cup of tea.  Sometimes I need a grilled -cheese sandwich (I am actually looking into the GAPS diet, but that's a whole other post). I like to do wimpy cleanses that only take a day--24 hours of raw vegan food in the form of green smoothies and some handfuls of raw nuts to make sure I'm getting enough protein and fat.  I feel lighter and cleaned out by the end of the day, and it can help knock a sugar binge out of my head.  When I'm organized enough, I have a green smoothie for breakfast, and I drink the other half with dinner.  I've made smoothies several times for my family as the vegetable with our dinner and they've been consumed with gusto, even when they're more green than fruity.  And if my two year old will eat it, you know it's family-friendly.

Here are some ideas for creating your own green smoothie (taken from various places, some of which are linked at the bottom, and some from an iPhone app called Green Smoothies that I highly, highly recommend):

1. Start slow! You won't want to keep drinking them if you have to force them down.  A good ratio to start with is 3 parts fruit to 1 part greens.  You may worry about the sugar, but you're probably getting much more nutrition from that smoothie than you would with a limp pile of steamed green beans.
2. Greens that are great: kale, spinach, swiss chard, lettuce (all kinds), beet greens, celery (not my favorite, but some people like celery), parsley (in limited amounts! Find a recipe!), and pretty much anything you would put in a salad.  Make sure to rotate your greens--if you eat spinach for a week straight your body is going to have buildup of alkaloids that can be harmful.  Read here for more information.  Also, with chard and kale, make sure you don't add the stems or thick ribs--they're very bitter.  Greens can be frozen in ziploc bags if they're starting to wilt, and only take a few minutes to thaw out for a smoothie.  The nutrients won't be AS good, but it's still better than something canned (in my humble opinion).

3. Fruit that's great: mangos (make it nice and sweet and add a great texture), bananas (perfect for texture), peaches, pears (a good sweetener), apples (they make things a little chunky, like applesauce, but are good for sweetening things up), pineapple (great paired with mango and/or banana), berries (blackberries and raspberries can be pretty seedy so avoid those if you don't like that), and pretty much any fruit that you love to eat.  Frozen fruit works well too.  A word of warning: persimmons will eat your blender alive if you don't have a really good one.  They will turn your smoothie into a weird, mucousy texture that gets so thick it can bind up the blade on even an upper middle-class blender.
4. Order of operations: This is what I've found to work for me, using my regular non-fancy blender.  I add the cut up fruit first, with a little water if it won't mix well.  Then I add the leaves slowly, occasionally taste-testing to get it just right.  Then I blend on a higher speed (the smoothie setting usually) for about a minute to make sure it's as smooth as I can get it.  Then I pour it into a quart mason jar and screw on a plastic lid so I can shake it before I pour it if I need to.  I've found that the gravy shaker thing that my mother-in-law gave me years ago is perfect for keeping a smoothie shaken up while on the go.

Last but not least, here' s one of my favorite recipes:

2 mangos

1 banana

1 pear

2 cups spinach

(I add more spinach now, but it's still quite yummy!)

Core the pears. Blend it all together into a blender full of DELICIOUS HEALTHINESS. Enjoy!

Stop that migraine in its tracks!

It's official! I have found the magic recipe to get rid of a migraine.  It has been proven by my extensive study (one person tried it one time and it worked).  I got this particular recipe from this website as part of a bonus set of lessons on herbs when I ordered a board game from them.  It's meant to be a nice drink to help fight colds and coughs, but then I read that ginger is good for migraines.  So I mixed it up and gave it to a friend who had started to see a migraine aura.  A few hours later, when she normally would have been fighting pain and dizziness and nausea, she was fine! No pain, no aura.  So here it is:


Ingredients:
2 inches fresh ginger root
juice of about half a lemon
2 tbsp honey
3 cups water

Grate ginger root into 3 cups of water and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for about 15 minutes.  Strain into a mug, add lemon juice and honey. Enjoy!

Thanksgiving? Or a day of mourning?

Note: I will be borrowing liberally from the post of a good friend.  All quotes are hers, and her original, brilliant post can be found here.

After talking with a good friend, I recently decided to change up my holidays a bit.  I've been attempting to follow the wheel of the year this year, adding feasts that are mostly found in some kind of ancient tradition (even if not every tradition celebrated every feast).  I love the idea of finding reasons to celebrate throughout the year that have meaningful things to celebrate: fertility, harvest, departed ancestors, rebirth, etc.  There is so much to remember, so much to integrate into my cycle of living.  Time becomes more of a spiral, and less of a long, straight line with the scary unknown at the end. 

One of the changes I've considered is quite recent: after talking to Tree, we have decided that celebrating Mabon and Thanksgiving is somewhat redundant.  Also, Thanksgiving is a celebration that commonly portrays a fictional account of our history. 

"Turns out, actually, that the original Thanksgiving feast with the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag nation was not in November of 1621. More accurately, that communal celebration was held around August or September–the traditional time of harvest for northern latitudes. In that case, if Americans want to honor that celebration, it would be more appropriate for them to celebrate the harvest at the traditional harvest celebration known as Mabon."

"Hey," you say to me, "there's nothing wrong with being grateful.  It's a good time to get together with friends and family and stuff our faces with delicious things."  Oh, I agree--there's a time and a place for that.  Though I think it's disrespectful to God/dess to waste the food we've been given by purposely overeating.  But I'm sure the Native Americans we so often think of as the friendly equals of our ancestors would have loved to spend that November with their own friends and family.  Just surviving, even.

"Within 17 years of the harvest feast between the settlers of the Mayflower and the Wampanoag tribe, relations deteriorated to such an extent that the Wampanoag lost their political independence and much of their homeland. By 1676, their chief had been killed and his son and many other Natives were sold into slavery. Today, the Thanksgiving holiday is a reminder of bloodshed and betrayal, which is why each year they gather around the statue of their fallen chief and hold a vigil in the memory of their ancestor’s struggles and the loss of their land."

I wish that I could join that vigil, but I am not located anywhere near that tribe.  So instead, our home will be observing Genocide Awareness Day instead of Thanksgiving.  We will probably eat a simple meal based around fish (something the Wampanoag tribe ate a lot of), and donate the money we would have spent on a turkey and all the fixings to a charity (which I have yet to choose) that supports people affected by the ravages of imperialistic aggression.  We are grateful, and we have been given much.  I believe that an appropriate celebration includes feeding the hungry, and alleviating suffering.

Some more ideas:

"1. Place a candle in your window sill in remembrance.

2. After your Thanksgiving meal, take a walk through your neighborhood with family and friends while carrying lit candles.

3. Instead of a large feast, prepare a simple meal to share with family and friends and donate the remainder of what you would have spent to a any number of organizations that are working on human rights issues.

4. Each year, choose an organization or effort to which you can donate or volunteer around the Thanksgiving holiday. Invite children, family and friends to join with you in these efforts.

5. Organize a vigil in your community or neighborhood during the week of Thanksgiving.

6. Blog, tweet and facebook about the true story of Thanksgiving and what you do to remember societal injustice.

7. Instead of Black Friday deals at major retailers, shop local and free trade to ensure that your purchases are not produced by exploitation of laborers, or check out the WAVE Holiday Shopping Guide for online shopping options."

This year, I'll be taking a candlelit walk around the neighborhood, perhaps with some pamphlets or cards to hand out to people with information on charities they can donate to.  It's my way of showing gratitude in the most authentic way I can think of.  How will you show your gratitude this year?

So, what do YOU do to organize yourself?

I consume massive amounts of information on how to make my life into a simple, clean, organized, and calm state of existence.  I lost count of how many apps are on my phone to help me remember to do laundry, complete homework, and even make sure Sprout gets enough attention from me (I tend to get caught up in housework...)
Life hacks! Housework checklists! Freezer inventory! Filing systems! Clouds! Calendars! Day planners! Fiteverythingyouwanttodoinonesingleday!

Yeah. My house is sometimes clean, sometimes not.  Dinner might be on the table by 6, and it might even be nutritious.  I think I'll be able to earn A's this semester, but next semester I'll be going from coasting along on the lower division quiet country lane with only 13 credit hours to the scary highway of upper division credits, clogging my brain with 18 of them.  I'll still be married, I'll still have a toddler, and I will still reign supreme as Empress of Laundry and Kitchen Queen.  I will still have a strong interest in following my spiritual urges and in taking courses on magical things.  And I will still be a perfectionist (or at least, a wannabe perfectionist...).  I will demand of myself a report card lined with perfect grades.  Oh, and I will need to lose some weight and get super healthy, with perfect sleeping habits.  Oh crap.  It's past my bedtime.  Someone help me...

Calling all Earthlings!!

Links to other earthy blogs

Simple Mom Life Hacks

The Brighton's Kitchen

The Nourishing Cook

Green Smoothie Girl

Heavenly Homemakers

Cookus Interruptus