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

Month: December 2011 (Page 2 of 3)

Challah bread on a bike…

So how do you transport — on a bike — an 18-inch loaf of fragile and delicious 6-braid challah bread? Funny you should ask, since I just did that last week…

You take the bottom of the box that your new canning jars came in. You fold it in thirds and tape one end shut. You wrap your challah like a mummy, lay it in its box, and keep everything together with a couple rubber bands.

Stick it in your backpack, taking care to tie your zippers together with a couple of twisties twisted together to make an extra-long twistie…lest the zippers unzip and the challah fall out.

And voila! It will arrive perfectly intact after its ride across town:

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And join me a little later this week when we’ll bake challah together and I’ll show you (in a video) how to do a 6-braid loaf.

Update: click here for challah recipe & instructions.

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Gratitude Sunday * December 11, 2011

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

– Getting a lot accomplished this week — moneymaking work and otherwise. A couple days were a bit frazzling and kind of stressful, but then I laughed when I compared it to the stress at my former job! HAH. It’s good to remember that and keep things in perspective.

– Fraudulent charge taken care of fairly painlessly. Despite my very prudent online purchasing habits, someone stole my credit card number, name, and address, and purchased a giftwrapped Harry Potter book set from barnesandnoble.com. What an idiot! Thankfully I use my credit card (rather than my debit card tied to my checking account) for online purchases, and thankfully it was just one charge, and thankfully I got my card cancelled before any more charges could be made, and thankfully Barnes & Noble was really nice and reversed the charge when I called them and told them the situation. I’m thankful that the whole thing was a minor inconvenience rather than a disaster!

– Turning off the computer early and lighting candles instead. What a difference in atmosphere!

– Coming back to center one day after feeling groundless, defeated, uncertain, needy, lonely, and afraid. Realizing how much my physical state affects my mental state… and acknowledging that. Sometimes just recognizing and acknowledging something is enough to lessen the weight of it.

– Getting moneymaking work done early so that it didn’t hang over me all week long. That felt so great!

– Homegrown potatoes. They taste SO good.

– Homegrown green tomatoes continuing to ripen! It feels incredibly good to still be ‘eating out of the garden.’

– One morning having a delicious breakfast of miso soup made with pastured bone broth, half an avocado, and my all-time favorite snack of cucumbers in cider vinegar with salt & pepper. I have such a new appreciation for food! All of that tasted so, so good.

– Morning sunshine flooding in the windows — and even better, not having to leave it and rush off to work.

– Making amazing Christmas decorations out of fresh greenery with my mom this week. Gosh that was neat!

– Getting whiffs of fresh pine and juniper as I pass my swag in the hallway!

– Our neighbors in the house to the south of us have moved out! This is such fantastic news! With luck, the new neighbors will be a little quieter.

– A dark morning of freezing fog. Oh how I love those cloudy mornings… always hoping it’ll stay cloudy, though it rarely does. I lit candles, turned on soft music, cooked my oatmeal, and revelled in the quietude and coziness. Cloudy days usually feel like a relief as sometimes the sun feels too energizing and blaring and harsh. And then when the sun did come out, the light reflected off all the frozen fog particles and the air was full of sparkly glitter! What a sight!

– Getting lots of errands completed yesterday, and then coming home to our cozy, homey apartment.

-Meeting up serendipitously with Hubby yesterday at the health food store! He’d gone on a bike ride, I’d gone to do errands on my bike. My last stop was the health food store, and when I pulled up to the bike rack, there he was, locking up his bike! The timing was incredible — we couldn’t have done that if we’d tried!

– Putting cold hands into hot dishwater!

– Full moonlight coming through the window.

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What’s on your gratitude list this week?

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Decorating!

A couple weekends ago, my mom and I were admiring some beautiful wreaths and swags at the local garden center; they smelled so good, and were so Christmasy! There really is nothing like the real thing when it comes to greenery at Christmas… and really, there’s nothing like the real thing with just about anything in life, I’ve decided.

But instead of buying them, we wanted to make our own — and so yesterday we did. Across the street and through the snow we went, clippers and bags in hand, to the park across the way. We gave some of the trees a ‘light pruning’ while filling bags with fragrant boughs, then cleared off their dining room table, turned on some Christmas music, brewed tea, and got to work.

We learned quickly that gloves are a must for a project like this!

Our creations began to take shape, and we admired each other’s work, exclaiming how that wreath and those swags were even better than the ones we could’ve bought. And how they were totally local, totally fresh, and totally free. What satisfaction to make something so beautiful! They smell incredible, too — something I didn’t really expect from city pine trees. Like a mix of fresh Christmas trees and wood smoke.

Here’s the wreath my mom made for the front of their house. Isn’t it beautiful!! I love how she added pine cones and some bare lilac branches.

Here’s the swag I made for inside our apartment:

A miniature one for the bathroom:

And a table centerpiece:

I love fresh winter greenery in the house!

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Nightcaps

Except in storybooks, you don’t really hear about nightcaps much, do you? But if you’re a cold sleeper like I am, they’re so helpful! I began wearing one to bed during the winter a couple years ago, and couldn’t believe the difference it made! So I wear one each night and stay a lot warmer now.

Do you ever wear a nightcap to bed on cold winter nights?

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Gratitude Sunday * December 4, 2011

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

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*This list is a little belated, but still full of gratitudes!*

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– My strong body. It really is so strong, and I’m so thankful for it. Many times in the past months I’ve been so sick I actually wasn’t sure I would make it through the night, but then the next day I would be a lot better. My body amazes me with how fast it can bounce back from feeling so horrendous. I have a whole new respect for it now.

– Being HOME. Home home home. Geez, what a week. I’ve gone from feeling the absolute worst I’ve felt yet in 19 months, to almost the best I’ve felt in 19 months!! Early in the week, the antibiotics got me into a vicious circle, where the side effects were making me feel so awful that I wasn’t eating or drinking, and then each subsequent dose (with no food and not much water to “pad” it in my stomach) made me feel even worse…and then not having nearly enough fluids to help flush out previous doses…made for a very potent combo. Tuesday I couldn’t keep any liquid down at all, and that night went to the ER for severe dehydration. My resting pulse was 122 when I got there, twice what it normally is, and my body was jerking uncontrollably. They replaced a gallon of fluids through IV; we were chuckling later, because they put the first two liters in simultaneously — two bags dripping full blast, draining into the same line going into my arm! I’ve never seen that. So they kept me overnight and most of the next day too, until I could keep fluids down on my own. And when I went home I was feeling heaps better, and have been feeling a lot better since then! Something seems to have shifted during those intense two weeks on the antibiotics. And they’re definitely powerful drugs, especially in my sensitive body, and now I know my body’s limits with them. If need be, I know I can stop again and take a little break.

And I’m so glad to be HOME!!

– Being able to eat more! For the last few months my stomach has been extremely touchy. But I’m noticing that I’m able to eat more foods and they are settling better! I can’t even tell you how wonderful this is, and I really hope it continues. I can eat avocados again! I’m not sure which way I love them more — with nama shoyu raw soy sauce, or with lemon juice and salt!

– My family. ALWAYS. They are the single most precious thing in my life.

– Receiving more reiki from my friend; what a wonderful gift.

– Being in a hot bath with snow falling outside.

– A steaming bowl of soaked oatmeal on a frigid morning.

– Walking to the health food store! (2 or 3 miles round trip.) I used to walk everywhere, no problem, but haven’t felt well enough to walk even around the block for so many months. What a good feeling to do a long walk & have mostly sufficient energy for it. That is truly huge!!!

– On a bitterly cold night, soaking my feet in hot water while doing some art. Really fun!

– Yesterday. It started out as a very bad day; my illness symptoms were all back and I was feeling really disheartened and trapped in my body and was mentally sinking fast and nothing was helping. So I began antibiotics again (the plan had been to wait till Monday so my body could get firmly back on track). I decided I needed to take action for the health of my spirit, so called my mom and joined in with her plan to go listen to kids sing Christmas songs at a local church, and then go to another church and listen to an adult choir sing for Christmas. It was so great! Then we went back to their house for dinner & had a wonderful evening. It ended up being exactly what I needed. And it was so nice to get out and do things that I wouldn’t normally do. Have new experiences. My mom and I agreed that getting out and making the effort to have different experiences out of your normal everyday life… to get out and do different stuff… is what makes you feel alive. And that’s just what yesterday afternoon did. It made me feel like I still had some control over my circumstances — that I was able to consciously turn my day around. It made me feel like I was out in life, living, doing things that lifted my spirits… rather than just having another day inside the apartment.

– Being sung to by a group of carollers; there was no one else around, so they asked if mom and I had a song request. I chose Carol of the Bells and felt bathed in their angelic voices as they sang to us! How special.

– Having a warm house. Tonight’s supposed to be -5°. It’s so nice to be warm inside!

– Baking a seasonal treat of challah bread, and how incredible it makes the house smell!

– Going outside last night at my parents’ house; it had begun to snow again, and outside there was just silence. Total silence. It was bitterly cold, and no one was out. A couple houses on the block had Christmas lights on. Winter nights like that just feel like a whole other world; those are some of my very favorite moments of the entire year. They touch a spot deep in my soul that nothing else does. I sure do love winter. Here’s a picture:

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What blessings have you counted this week?

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