Mad mission for me

So here I am reeling from our 3rd life interrupting sickness in as many months. I knew coming into 2014 that this year would be the year of self-care. I know I have neglected me. Its gotten to the point where feeling stressed out and in crisis is my normal feeling. That’s not good. It’s not right and it’s not helpful. Of course guess what it makes me sick. There is a shocker right. So time to take a step back and evaluate.

so now I’m on a mad mission to take care of me and I am starting with the food. It seems when I get buys that my ability to eat good food disintegrates. Take today. We (Little and I) were morning people today. Which means she has school in the morning and I have work in the morning. So I woke up helped her get dressed feed her, took the dog out, feed the dog etc etc. You know the life of a mom. What ended up happening is that I walked out the door without having eaten. fast forward its 1pm I still have not eaten and I am leaving the office to go pick up Little. Who announces that she is hungry and thirsty. I do have some snacks in the car and so I get a few handfuls of trail mix. We rush home. I take the dog out. Get little situated with a snack and some water and then off we go again on more errands. During said errands I make a bad food choice in the form of a lot of sugar and even though I feel better at the moment I know I will pay for it later. I guess it convinced me and I got to thinking of what I was reading last night. A very inspiring post on eating clean and doing a sunday prep. It got me thinking of doing a food prep day or days. I got to thinking of the different foods that would work for me and my family and the first two are what I’m sharing with you in this post.

I am slightly embarrassed by the first one. I joined in the salad in jar craze. I don’t know. I hope it works. It does seem like something I can grab and be able to have lunch at work. It also seems like a nice pre made lunch I can have at home when I am in the middle of life.

I also made 12 smoothie packs. I was inspired by this blog and modified the recipe based on the fruit I already had in the freezer. I plan to make some with her recipe because they sound good. It didn’t take that much time to put them all together which is nice and I am sure doing them all in a big batch like that actually would save time as opposed to doing them individually each morning. Whats more the work is done which frankly is needed in my crazy mornings. One last benefit is that no more greens melting before I get to them! I do hate to waste food. Win win win!

now I’m working on list of foods that I might make every week during food prep day. Do you have any foods you make every week? do you have foods you wish you made every week?

This Weeks Dinners

Chicken au Champagne

Mexican Baked Eggs and fruit. I always make breakfast for dinner on a full moon.

Tomato tart and green salad

Bibimbap With Beef Bulgogi

Pizza and Movie Night

Honey Glazed Chicken, Peach, and sweet Potatoes Kabobs.

Blackberry Glazed Grilled Pork Chops

Delicious Experimental Raw Jam

Yesterday was jam day at Case de Cielo (which is what I have named my house) and I decided to make an experimental raw jam. It turned out amazing!

I am beyond pleased with it. It’s not overly sweet and the taste of the fruit really came out.
ingredients are fresh fruit
chia seeds (1 tablespoon per one cup of fruit)
lemon
honey.

How I made it.

I filled up my 6 cup cuisinart with strawberries and one Plout. Little hit the pulse button a few times until we had the right constancy.

We put the processed fruit in a large bowl and added 6 tablespoons of chia seeds in. We also added in what I will guess was maybe half a cup of local honey, and the juice of one lemon from our tree.

we mixed it up with a spoon and put it into jars, and put the jars in the fridge. This morning we had it on toast and it was so yummy!

Bees and plums

 

I went out to this beautiful tree to pick some plums for the folks of the office and as I got closer I could tell the air was a live with buzzing I know the bees are all over a nearby Salvia (I think not sure what it is yet) but the tree is no longer in flower but fully in fruit as I got closer this is what I saw

All over the tree bees are busily filling themselves on the sweet ripe plums. The property down the hill from us have bee boxes and I am guessing that is why we are blessed with so many. I wonder what the honey taste like if it is from plum juice.

 

Midsummers

 

In Mostly Pictures

 

A visitor early in the morning enjoying some unripe plums.

 

 

Early morning chores.

 

 

 

Family Dinner grilled pizza.

 

 

 

Mine on Gfree bread. Fig, bacon , fire roasted jalapeños, with mozzarella. Delicious!

 

 

 

To see what the Swedish Midsummers Cake should look like and how to make check out here. This is what it looks like when set on the table of the family and it is eaten with hands.

 

a bon fire on the beach

 

Masterpiece Monday Cake

I am now 34. I had a lovely birthday filled with lovely people. I got to play in my garden and made a significant dent in the garage.e Which is slowing becoming our play room/ craft room/ laundry room. I also made myself a cake. I scored Pinterest for a recipe and then tried and tried to make it. Of course I had to modify a cake so it would be gluten-free. I also enlisted the help of a friend, fellow mommy and all around amazing woman to teach me how to make frosting and frost a cake.

This is the second batch of caramel I made. It ended up crystallizing but hey it still tasted ok.

This is my first and second batch of caramel you can see the first one was way to light.

Here is me with my cake in my friends kitchen. She is an amazing teacher and has more tools than I had any clue you would need to frost a cake. We started with a measuring tape to get the layers even and all kinds of knives and spatulas.

and finally right before we ate it I put a rose on it from my neighbors rose-bush. It took a lot of time and a lot of trial and error and a lot of effort, and what better gift can I give myself.
you can find
The cake recipe here
The caramel sauce recipe here
and a swiss buttercream frosting here.

and that my friends is this weeks master piece.

Breakfast Smoothie

This is a smoothie how to and since it is pretty much the same as mine I thought I would share it. Plus I just love how happy and upbeat Kandee is. So Good morning and I hope you have a wonderful day.

Of course while your blending this all up use your witchy self to put good intention in. Think of you healthy and strong and feeling great.

Masterpeice Monday Bread

Turned out pretty good if I do say so myself. Not bad for gluten-free bread of course we cheated and used Pamela’s Mix but still it turned out well and Little had fun so maybe next week we will try our own. Maybe

And 3 cheers for actually being back into a rhythm again! Even if it is for one day I will take it!

Poppy’s Pagan Planning Ostara (1)

For our family the biggest celebration of Ostara we do is Egg Day. We don’t know how many years we have done this event but we do it ever year. This type of egg decoration is called pysanky and is done with drawing on the egg with wax and then dipping in many colors light to dark. If you follow the above link you can see some up close pictures of the process. I find it very fun and it is something our friends and family look forward to each year. So that is where I am starting Ostara planning this year.

of course for decorations we have our years and years of eggs we have made.

here is a small sample.

I like this idea for displaying

Source: flickr.com via Poppy on Pinterest

So we have our decorations and we have our activity so this will be a very food centered post.
Sunshine eggs are always good as most people tend to bring very sugary foods

Source: Uploaded by user via Poppy on Pinterest

Someone (often at least two someones) bring one of these

Source: ericasweettooth.com via Stacie on Pinterest

but back to “real food” I am thinking of making this

Source: google.com via Meghan on Pinterest

because I simply always love soup and soup with new spring vegetables sounds like heaven.

This looks very good too as we start early I think it might be a nice breakfast. goat cheese quiche with hash brown crust.

Source: delish.com via Vintage on Pinterest

and some other very pretty quiche ideas

Source: basilicoepinoli.blogspot.com via Erin on Pinterest

They are so nice as they use up all that egg that we have blown out of the egg shells that we will decorate.

of course I will make scones because well mom will want them. some other finger food.

Source: luculliandelights.com via Heather on Pinterest

Source: pinspire.it via Jennifer Ann on Pinterest

chicken salad on celery

Source: yumsugar.com via Teresa on Pinterest

I hope that got you thinking of fun stuff to do an eat. For me a holiday has many parts. One is the spiritual aspect and then there is the family/ social aspect of it. Do you have certain family traditions with the different holidays?

Dinner prep