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By Lindsey, March 4, 2012

~ I’m once again joining Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots in her Gratitude Sunday tradition. ~

Gratitude Sunday is a time to slow down and remember those thankful moments that graced our week. One reason I love keeping a daily gratitude journal is because it helps keep things in perspective for me. Each Sunday, I open my journal and share some of those moments with you here. If you’d like to join in, just leave a comment!

Gratitude is powerful energy. I love hearing others’ gratitudes!

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- Finishing my mittens! That felt great. Doesn’t it feel great to accomplish stuff that’s been lingering around?

- Gettin’ stuff DONE this week! But man, the week went fast…

- My Honey, F, and how much he makes me laugh!

- Meeting him for lunch one day this week — that was so nice and we both loved it! And, it’s often really hard for me to find something to eat at a restaurant that my stomach will tolerate, and a lot of times it’s more torture than fun to be at a restaurant when I want all that stuff but can’t eat it… but this time there was something just right on the menu — a very small cup of delicious beans n’ rice. Yum!

- The comfort of piping hot tea with milk.

- The wonderful little woodcarving set my dad gave me today!! He didn’t know it, but I’ve really been wanting wood carving tools for at least a year now. I would keep thinking “Yeah, I’ll have to manifest that” which is my way of saying “I’d like to do that but don’t wanna devote the time/energy/money/whatever to pursuing it right now”  — and look what shows up in my life! To boot, it’s an extra special set because it’s one that his parents bought for him many, many years ago and he only used once or twice. I’m so excited!! And just the other day, I sawed up our Christmas tree on the kitchen floor (why, doesn’t everyone?), stripped the bark, and saved a couple sections of the main trunk for “making something.” And voila, along come the tools to help me with that… love it!

Sawin' up the Christmas tree

- Living close to my mom and dad so that I can easily spend time with them. I am so, so grateful for this.

- An impromptu walk and visit with my mom one afternoon this week. Sweet.

- All the many, many, MANY things I want to do/figure out/learn about — and gaining more and more energy to actually do them!

- Starting and finishing The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball this week. I loved it. And I loved reading a book not to gain knowledge, but simply for enjoyment and entertainment.

- Braised leeks, my new obsession.

- Gazpacho with avocado pieces instead of olive oil… my continuing obsession!

- A pay check through the mail… yes those are so nice!

- Beautiful weather today and garden work begun.

- Gardening by moonlight tonight.

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What gratitudes have graced your week?

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By Lindsey, March 1, 2012

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Comments (1)

By Lindsey, February 23, 2012

This (snowy) morning...

It was a true February day today — gray and humid and chilly and snowy. But it was a spring snow — drippy and slushy! Over the weekend it just began feeling more like spring here. The quality and angle of the sunlight, the buds on the trees, the tulips pushing through the ground, and definitely the particular birdsongs that we’re hearing outside our window of late.

I was up and at the kitchen table by the window fairly early this morning with a steaming mug of tea, watching the snowflakes falling gently. I’ve rediscovered a CD I have called The Tranquil Harp by Paul Baker. It was perfect for this peaceful, snowy morning.

The streets were still warm from yesterday’s balmy temperatures, and so this afternoon most of the snow was gone from them, making my quick trip to the health food store a much easier proposition. Much as I love the snow, clear streets really are very nice.

Okay, so remember how yesterday I told you all about my great restraint in not buying more varieties of tomato seed? Well to demonstrate that iron will, I suppose I should show you what I bought today:

So anyway, I thought I’d also show you a great seed catalog I picked up yesterday for Southern Exposure. I’ve never ordered from them but I like their philosophy: “Our mission is to ensure that people retain control of their food supply, that genetic resources are conserved and that gardeners have the option of saving their own seed.”

Looks like they sell almost all heirloom or open-pollinated stuff (I really like that), and have some pretty interesting offerings. Their catalog also gives detailed growing info for each type of vegetable. It looks like a company worth ordering from.

Well it’s dusk now, and time for some tea I think.

It’s been a good day. Hope it was for you, too…

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Comments (5)

By Lindsey, February 22, 2012

Man, these past few days have flown! I’ve been in almost an altered state, with a one-track mind focused solely on this year’s vegetable garden. There are big bags of dirt in our kitchen, and open seed catalogs have littered the living room floor like banana peels waiting to snag unsuspecting passerby (sorry honey!).

There’s been much reading, researching, figuring, dreaming, decision making, studying of past garden notes, and starting of seeds. The energy, enthusiasm, and time that seemed absent last year are all right here in front of me to be feasted upon — and I am feasting.

Yesterday I bought seeds for a couple fun last-minute additions to the garden plan — leeks and romanesco cauliflower — and today my mom & I got seeds for a few more things that’ll be new to the garden this year too — tarragon, bok choy, and onion seed (I’ve always grown my storage onions from sets in the past).

I also counted up that I have 37 different varieties of tomato seed. Lest you think that’s excessive, let me tell you that it takes great and continuous restraint to not buy more! But it’s already hard enough choosing only 16 varieties for the garden…

Yesterday I started all my wall-o-water tomatoes as well as my cabbage, romanesco cauliflower, regular cauliflower, yellow bell peppers, and leeks in their seed tray over a heat mat. That was a good accomplishment.

And today, even though my main spring planting time is still a few weeks away, I planted some radishes in the wall-o-water I had set up a couple weeks ago, along with some arugula in the open space next to that. I’ve found that walls-o-water are a great way to sneak in an early crop of radishes, which are in and out before it’s time to put the tomatoes in.

It felt great to get my hands into that cold, fragrant Earth.

They’re calling for snow tomorrow, and I think it’ll be a good day to get the broad beans started, and then come back down to earth a bit by going over my moneymaking work and preparing for a Friday meeting.

I hope you’re all having a nice week. And tell me — what’s currently going on in your own garden??

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By Lindsey, February 13, 2012

Here’s a recipe that I love. It’s for gingerbread, which is so warming and comforting when it’s chilly and gray outside. Serve it with tea or coffee, and a dollop of freshly whipped cream if you like, or just a simple powdered sugar heart, for Valentine’s Day — or any day!

The secret ingredient is dark, stout beer; don’t leave it out! Just as wine gives depth to sauces, the caramel-like flavor of dark beer adds the depth needed to make this cake really awesome!

Classic Gingerbread

3/4 cup dark, stout beer (such as Guinness or something fairly similar)

1/2 tsp baking soda

2/3 cup molasses

3/4 cup sucanat or brown sugar, slightly rounded

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour, plus extra to dust pan

2 1/2 Tbsp dried ground ginger (yes, tablespoons!)

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp finely ground pepper

2 eggs

1/3 cup coconut oil, melted

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Preheat oven to 350°. Grease and flour an 8″x12″ pan (or an 8″x8″ if you like).

In a medium saucepan, bring the stout beer to a boil, and simmer for several minutes to allow the alcohol to dissipate. Do be present in the room while the beer is on the heat, since it can (will!) rise and spill over the sides of the pan very quickly! Remove beer from the heat and stir in the baking soda. When the foaming subsides, stir in the molasses and sucanat/brown sugar, and stir till dissolved. It will likely still be quite foamy; that’s OK.

In a separate bowl, mix together all of your dry ingredients.

Pour the beer mixture into a large bowl and whisk in the eggs and oil.

Then whisk the dry ingredients into the beer in three parts — after each addition, stirring vigorously until batter is totally smooth.

Pour the batter into your pan and tap against the counter a few times to dislodge any large air bubbles.

Bake on the center rack until a toothpick stuck into the center comes out clean, about 35 minutes (slightly longer if you use an 8″x8″ pan).

Cool the cake, slice, decorate, and enjoy!

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Comments (4)

By Lindsey, February 10, 2012

What a busy week! I’m so glad it’s Friday. I’m ready to vege out!

This week, amidst many other not-as-fun things like meetings, headaches, bus rides, and blood draws, I finally began my Mitten Project. It deserves those capital letters because it’s turning into quite the time-sucking ordeal (mostly because I have no idea what I’m doing, so am inventing as I go), but the mittens are going to be awesome when I’m done. I’ve worn out my old mittens & am tired of my hands being so cold while I’m outdoors & on my bike, so I decided to make myself some super duper custom-fit 3-layer fleece-lined wool mittens out of a couple of sweaters I felted.

It’s been quite cold and snowy this week. Even our neighbor squirrels look cold (although plenty well-fed I’d say!).

I got so excited one night this week because I stumbled upon one of my favorite movies/documentaries of all time, “Alone in the Wilderness” about Dick Proenneke. Have you seen it? I love it. I hadn’t seen it in a long time, and after a long and exhausting day it felt like such a gift that it was on our local PBS station. Anyway, many years ago I read his book called “One Man’s Wilderness” and in both the book and documentary he talks about making sourdough flapjacks. I was inspired, then, to go get some of my own sourdough flapjacks going so they could ferment overnight. I cooked them up the next morning, and they made a wonderful snack eaten in the cold wintery air on my walk from the bus stop to Darlene’s house, that wonderful neighbor I talked about in my Gratitude Sunday post.

Darlene is a massage therapist and gave me a wonderful massage as a gift. It was heaven. My body has been so un-fun to reside in for the last couple years, and to have it feel so good for those two hours was so nice. Interestingly, the massage really stirred things up in my still-healing body; I actually felt quite bad and sick for the rest of the day and the day after. Hmm. Well now I know — massages are powerful medicine and they really do get things moving!

Yesterday I made minnestrone soup for lunch; it was awesome! I’ll share my recipe for it soon (Edit: here’s the recipe), but the beauty of it is that you can really deviate from the recipe which is what I did yesterday. That soup was SO good!

And today… is finally Friday! Part of the exhaustion this week was needing to be lots of places and not being able to ride my bike because of the deep snow & icy, rutted roads. Therefore I rely on city buses which introduces some stress into my journey as well as making it much more of an ordeal to get from here to there. It also involves more walking which my poor lil’ body was not really up for this week. But finally, today, I was feeling much more myself with more energy, and could finally ride my bike again as the sidewalks & some of the roads were clear enough. After a major snowstorm, I always have such an appreciation for again being able to transport myself freely and independently via bicycle.

I had another 2-hour meeting today after working hard this week on moneymaking stuff even though I felt like crap & my body was screaming GO TO BED! But today I woke up feeling good, and I liked getting up early and looking nice and going to my meeting and contributing something. At times, I feel like a full time patient, and therefore quite useless. I didn’t feel that way today.

And then it felt great to be home again! After being out and about, I always love coming home to our sweet little apartment… and today when I arrived home at 12:30 the sun was streaming in the kitchen windows, and with our new furniture arrangement it just felt especially good in here.

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I’m looking forward to a quiet, relaxing weekend ahead!

Do you have any fun plans?

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By Lindsey, February 4, 2012

We’ve gotten well over a foot of snow since Thursday night! If you’ve hung around here long, you know how much I love the snow, and especially these big blizzardy storms. What fun! Snowfall is so peaceful, too. As you can see below, we can hardly even see out our living room window anymore. I really like being snowed in!

And I love the indoor time — we’ve been rearranging some things in our apartment and I’m loving the new energy that comes from shifting stuff around. Plus, working diligently on getting rid of more stuff. Among other things, I organized the pantry yesterday and am enjoying it each time I open the door. It feels so good to be getting a handle on our house! It seems like when my illness got really bad in April, time stopped. When you’re so sick you feel like doing absolutely nothing, guess what? Absolutely nothing gets done! Huh. So I’m finally picking up projects that I had started in early April, which then got basically frozen in time. It feels great to be continuing them in earnest once again! And the crap that has piled up in the house in the space of 10 months… it feels so good to finally be addressing it.

I hope you all are having a wonderful and relaxing weekend! Tomorrow we’ll head to my parents’ place for the Super Bowl. It’s all about the food, the commercials, the company, and yeah, we might even watch a little football too…

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By Lindsey, January 31, 2012

Look what I saw yesterday! Snowdrops! Spring is coming. The birds know it, the plants know it!

It was a beautiful, warm day yesterday. Admittedly, I was more in the mood for a snow day so that I could stay in and get indoor things done. This is the season of hibernation and hunkering down, and sometimes I don’t want to feel lured out by the sunshine and warmth. In wintertime, I want winter. Buuuuut…you gotta strike when the iron is hot — so I let myself be lured out anyway, and I enjoyed it so much!

I was craving Ethiopian, my favorite type of ethnic food, so I got take-out and took it to a nice nature spot, took off my shoes, rolled up my sleeves, and ate in the sunshine. Then I took a short, leisurely walk. It felt so good to be outdoors in the warm air.

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By Lindsey, January 20, 2012

Some scenes from our house on this bright, sunny, kinda warm, and very windy Friday:

Cranberry-Pumpkin Muffins

Sagebrush on the bedroom wall

Hanging dragonflies

The Ficus

Homemade basket

The hoosier

Heat register

Crown of Thorns - Euphorbia milii

Taken in Sydney

Peruvian Rug

Typical

In the living room

Bits o' nature

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