Kitchen / Garden / Sanctuary - Urban Homesteading to Nourish Body + Spirit

Month: May 2011 (Page 2 of 2)

A Quiet, Rainy Day

There’s nothing like a cozy, rainy day. I’m loving all the rain we’ve been getting lately, and loving the amazing lushness it’s creating all over the city. I’ve always wanted to live in greener, lusher surroundings…and suddenly I do! It probably won’t last, and summer’s heat will be here soon enough, so I’m really savoring this days-and-days-of-rain pattern. I don’t like biking in the rain, and don’t have anywhere I need to be, so I’ve just been hanging low and staying home. Bliss!

I’m also feeling thankful for being able to work from home. After 5 years of working in a dark basement cubicle with no natural light, it feels like heaven to be doing work whilst sitting by the bedroom window, listening to the rain, sipping tea…nice n’ cozy in my slippers and robe (which Hubby and I call “The Hugh Hefner Robe” because of its luxurious red-velour-like resemblance to something likely to be found in the Playboy mansion!).

So what’s the weather been up to in your area?

Gratitude Sunday * May 15, 2011

My lovely friend Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots has started a new tradition — Gratitude Sunday. Sunday’s a quiet and contemplative day, and a good day to share what we’ve been grateful for over the past week.

Each night I write in my gratitude journal at least 3 things that I’m grateful for that day, though the list is often much longer. I love this quiet ritual, and I also love going back through past years’ journals to see what I was doing “this day six years ago.”

So feel free to participate! What are you grateful for? Leave a comment!

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Here’s what I’ve been grateful for this past week:

– An amazing almost-3″ of rain that we desperately needed.

– A string of misty, cool, cloudy, wet, green days this week! Love them!

– A mug of hot tea on a chilly, rainy night.

– Waking up to an incredible dawn chorus of birds this morning, before the city noise began.

– Space heater to press my feet against.

– Spending time in my garden on a priceless glorious evening.

– Taking a break from garden work to eat watermelon with my neighbor on her lovely back porch. She’s 81 (acts like 61!) and is like a grandmother to me. We have a special bond. 🙂

– A magical bike ride at dusk.

– The garden’s growing so well!

– Eating salads where every single thing is homegrown.

– Cool spring air. Our apartment is comfortable and not yet too hot. I’m savoring it!

– Doing some contract work for my former employer; it feels good to use my knowledge and “expertise” again, and we both benefit — they get good work done by someone who knows the ropes of the place, and I get to earn some side money.

– Finishing a big, brain-frying project for them that I worked on all week; it seemed like it would never end, and it involved aggravating sentences like: The company will integrate event escalation procedures to identify incidents that require declaration of an incident. And… All data encryption keys must be stored encrypted and in a secure location. Key-encrypting keys must be stored separate from data-encrypting keys within applicable applications. But it’s done! It ended, I’m happy with how it turned out, and I sent it off tonight. That feels good!

– Not working a daily 9-5 job — just doing contract work from home.

– Got 3 loads of laundry done this weekend.

– Having fresh lilacs and lily-of-the-valley in vases around the house, and smelling them as I pass by.

– Eating a lime-juice popsicle. It tasted so good!

– A quiet, subdued week. A good week.

Mid-May Vegetable Garden Photos

I went over to play in my garden yesterday, and was astonished at how much it’s grown since last week! The beautiful vegetables have really taken off — the mere sight of them just feeds my soul. I never tire of watching my garden grow!

Here are some update photos:

As you can see below, the baby peach and plum trees that I started from seed almost 2 1/2 years ago are doing great! They grow very fast…

And now a photo of the salad I made yesterday. This was the best salad I’ve ever eaten in my life. You’d think a salad would be a salad, but this one — with everything picked just minutes prior — was the sweetest, tenderest, most incredible-tasting salad. My theory is that the two straight days of rain we just had made the flavor more incredible than normal. I’ve noticed that rain makes the grass a different shade of green than tap water does…rainwater is special stuff. Collect it and treasure it! My grandma would collect rain water to water her houseplants and rinse her hair with!

The best salad ever. Fresh from the rain-soaked garden: baby arugula, spinach, lettuce, radishes, dill, cilantro, parsley, and onion greens. Dressed with olive oil, balsamic & red wine vinegar, salt, and pepper.

Gluten-Free Chunky Monkey Bars

Time for a recipe! These “Monkey Bars” are a delicious mid-afternoon or after-school snack for both adults and kids — plus they’re grain free and high in protein!

Gluten-Free Chunky Monkey Bars

(Based on this recipe)

1/2 cup coconut flour*

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

6 eggs

1/2 cup sucanat (sugar), or 1/3 cup honey

1/3 cup coconut oil, melted

1 Tbsp vanilla

3/4 cup mashed bananas (~2 standard-sized bananas, or 3 smaller ones)

1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

1/3 cup shredded coconut

1/4 cup chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat oven to 350°. Grease a cake pan…mine happens to be 12″ x 7.5″, but you can use a different size and just alter the cooking time as necessary. You could also make these into muffins.

In a medium-sized bowl, stir together the coconut flour, salt, and baking soda. Add everything else and mix well. Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 20-30 minutes, or until golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool and slice into bars. (For muffins, fill the tins 3/4 full. The baking time is the same. Makes 12 muffins.)

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*If you’re not familiar with coconut flour, it behaves differently than wheat flour; it’s high in fiber and is therefore a very thirsty flour, which is why you don’t need much of it to do the job. 1/2 a cup in this recipe doesn’t seem like nearly enough, but it actually is! Coconut flour also requires lots of eggs to achieve the light texture of wheat-based baked goods. But it’s a lovely flour to work with! Just a little different. I love it. In fact, in this recipe I can’t even tell that there isn’t any actual wheat flour; the texture is light, moist, and tender, and the taste is yummmmmmy! Enjoy these!

A Day in the Life: Tuesday, May 3

There was nothing special about today…just felt like documenting it with photos, for fun! I’m still not feeling too great, but I’m tired of being sick and I had things to DO today. So I pretended that I had the energy, and did ’em!

The kitchen this morning...and sauteeing some apples with coconut oil & cinnamon. I should really clean up the kitchen. Maybe tomorrow...

Finally cleaned up the living room! And put the tomato seedlings in the open window for the day. A clean house makes me feel good 🙂

Even cleaned the bathroom too! ! I love lilacs in a vintage bottle vase...

My bike is my car...and it's time for errands!

I like to admire this house on my route to the library...

Isn't this sweet?

Someone's pretty flowers...

First stop is the library. I had some stuff on the Holds shelf. I love the library. If I could give it a hug, I would.

Ya know, just your typical curbside lettuce garden.

Trash

The other errand was to go vote.

Crockpot dinner that was smelling SO good when I got home from errands! Chicken-n-onions w/ Penzey's BBQ 3000 seasoning -- yummy!

I made this basket a couple months ago, and I felt so old fashioned picking Vinca flowers in it today. I'm going to go press them right now...maybe while I watch a cooking show, or listen to some music I got from the library.

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