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

Month: June 2011 (Page 2 of 2)

Free Shipping Today Only (Monday, June 13) at Tropical Traditions!

It’s a Free Shipping Day at one of my very favorite companies, Tropical Traditions! The free shipping will save about $10-15 off your order, so it’s a good day to stock up, or try them out if you haven’t before. I really love this company’s products, and use them daily. Today only, Monday, June 13th through Midnight EDT, they’re offering free ground-only shipping when you enter coupon code 61113 at checkout.

Click here to read about which products I love most.

And if you’re a new customer and have never bought from them before, you can also get this Virgin Coconut Oil book, with information  & recipes, for free (any time, not just today) by entering my User ID, which is 6032410. When you’re going through the checkout process and you’ve added your shipping address and phone number, you will see the question “How did you hear of us?” Just choose “Referred by a friend” and then a new “User ID” field will appear below that where you can enter my User ID. I also get some sort of little gift if I refer a friend, so that’s nice too.  🙂

(screen shot below)

Gratitude Sunday * June 12, 2011

Sunday’s a good day to remember what we’ve been grateful for over the past week, don’t you think? I’m joining Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots in her Gratitude Sunday tradition, and here’s my list:

– Sticking my head out the window just in time to see a big shooting star fly across the night sky.

– Not having to get up and go to work on a weekday!!!!

– Baking cookies in my solar oven. I love how I can now have baked cookies in the summertime without heating up the house with our regular oven!

– Loads of fresh oregano on my Greek salad. How could I go back to dried now that I’ve used fresh!?

– Getting a lot of backed-up garden work done this week/weekend. Feeling like I’ve got a much better handle on the garden.

– Deciding to bow out of a weekend trip to a family reunion that I didn’t really want to go to, and knew I wasn’t up for anyway. Listening to my body; respecting its limits right now and not ignoring them.

– House sitting for my parents (they were at the reunion) this weekend and being able to do more garden work, hang out with my cat, and quietly relax outside in the oasis-like backyard.

– Playing lots of piano at mom & dad’s house, with no one listening to hear my mistakes! It’s my grandma’s baby grand piano…so special…shipped out to Colorado for me when I was a year old by my granddad. I think he even helped pay for piano lessons, too. I hated those dang lessons, but am so thankful I was forced into them, because I love being able to play the piano — I’m so thankful for that! It’s a real stress release, and very centering and satisfying. It just felt so good to play this weekend… especially good… and I could have just kept going and going.

– Getting some new clothes at the thrift store. Clothes shopping is not a favorite activity, but I need some new items, and the thrift store is always my first (and usually only!) stop. And I love how I can go about my shopping and not get asked ten times, “Are you finding everything OK miss?”

Got a laugh out of this sign at the thrift store!

– Being outdoors on a cool, fresh morning.

– So much beautiful garden lettuce that we’re eating salad after salad, straight from the garden and into our stomachs. I don’t know what I get more of — nutrition, or JOY!

– Adding heaps of fresh herbs to my salads — parsley, oregano, dill, and cilantro. Herbs are so potent and healing and full of vitamins and minerals and I feel so good putting them straight from the plant into my body. They are medicine!

– Drinking steaming tea, outside, in the cool air, at twilight.

– Inhaling the sweet, blossom-filled June air as I ride my bike through it.

– Getting stuck at the neighborhood garden center during a thunderstorm!

Rode home from the garden center with a couple nice big heirloom tomato plants.

– Feet up & a big glass of fresh mint iced tea after wearing myself out in the garden.

– Watching my cat sleeping soundly this morning after a rough night chasing moths.

– Coming home to my Hubby after the weekend away house sitting. It was SO, so good to see him!!! It’s so nice just laughing and being together. I’m the luckiest girl ever…

*****

What about you? What are you grateful for this week? Leave a comment!

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Transitioning the Garden from Spring to Summer

I had a wonderful day in my garden yesterday! I haven’t been feeling well enough to do much garden work lately — and a lot needed to be done — but yesterday the stars really aligned because I felt good, I’d gotten all my “money-making” work done and didn’t have any meetings to go to, and weather-wise it was a million dollar day! Usually I like to do my spring-to-summer garden transition in late May, but that didn’t happen this year, so I’m a little behind. But that’s OK! You just have to say “oh well” sometimes.

So basically I have two different gardens each year — “spring” and “summer” — all in the same beds. (You can read more about how I plan my dual gardens here.) The “spring carryover” veggies will stay in the ground through the summer, so I don’t need to worry about those. But the spring veggies (like lettuce and spinach) are at their peak right now and will be pulled out soon (but not quite, because they’re still producing like mad), so I like to plant summer veggies in their midst. (Click here for a list of spring, summer, and carryover veggies.)

In the photo below, you can see that I’ve pulled out enough lettuce to plant a tomato. This works well because the lettuce provides a bit of protection to the tomato seedling, and by the time the tomato starts getting big, we will have harvested all the lettuce.

I did the same thing below by harvesting enough spinach to open up a circular area where I planted winter squash seeds. The spinach will shelter the seedlings, and by the time the squash gets big, the spinach will be gone.

I don’t have a picture to show you, but in another bed I decided to just pull out all the spinach (it was ready anyway) and plant my cucumber seeds. Since I like lots of cucumbers and plant several rows, it just made the most sense to pull out the spinach completely rather than trying to plant multiple seeds in multiple rows in amongst the spinach plants.

But I do have a picture of the laundry basket full of spinach I harvested from that cucumber bed! Look at it all! Gorgeous stuff, and so delicious.

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What’s your garden up to right now??

Gratitude Sunday * June 5, 2011

Sunday’s a good day to remember what we’ve been grateful for over the past week, don’t you think? I’m joining Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots in her Gratitude Sunday tradition, and here’s my list:

– Being able to hang very low this week and not having to worry about calling in sick to a job.

– Letting my body sleep as much as it needs. I am so grateful for that luxury.

– The peony flower that scents the entire bedroom! I think that old fashioned pink peonies are one of my favorite scents on Earth!

– That my hubby knows so, so much about computers and can fix anything that ails them; his knowledge absolutely blows me away.

– The feeling of a warm summer evening.

– That my veggie garden is growing so well, and that even though it’s a very buggy year in general so far, the aphids are being completely controlled by beneficial bugs and I don’t need to do anything whatsoever. I truly appreciate this!!!

– More solar cooking. This week, more black beans, spinach, and sprouted lentils cooked with chicken bone broth, a bay leaf, and a clove of garlic left whole — one of my very favorite dishes!

– A nice little bike ride with F., over to see my parents & neighbor today, on this beautiful 80-degree day.

– My mom giving us a ride to the store today to do our grocery shopping — we felt pampered!!

What about you? What have you been grateful for this week? Leave a comment!

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Give Your Health a Boost with Refreshing Green Smoothies!

Mmmmm, these green smoothies are a lush-tasting way to sneak more veggies into your diet — and the time is now, since it’s spring and salad greens are in season!

There are so many variations to this concept — please be creative and dream up your own! — but here’s how I make mine:

Green Smoothie

kefir (or yogurt thinned with water)

banana pieces (pretty much essential for adding some sweetness)

apple pieces, or any other fruit

spinach leaves and/or lettuce leaves and/or cucumber slices (or two green smoothie frozen concentrate cubes!)

several fresh mint leaves or parsley sprigs

vanilla extract

ground flax seed

First, add kefir and your greens and mint leaves to the blender and blend thoroughly. Add everything else, blend thoroughly, and enjoy!

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