Nourishing Traditions (or an explanation for my absence)

I'm still here though things have been pretty quiet here on the blog over the past couple weeks.  I mentioned in my last post that I have been reading Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon recently.   This book has inspired such a huge change in our house.  I skeptically got this book from the library after listening to friends rave about it and traditional foods in general for the past couple of years.  They had some influence on our family for sure.  I've been cooking with coconut oil for a couple years now, I occasionally soaked my grains, was known to make bone broth a couple times a year and I had developed a healthy (if expensive) kombucha habit.  We ate whole grains almost exclusively at home and ate some produce from local farmers' markets, but we weren't really eating a real/traditional foods diet on a daily basis. W and I would grab fast-food lunches often if we were out and about (way more often than I ever care to admit) and I drank diet soda like it was going out of style. It only took me a few days reading and cooking from the book to realize how much this is revolutionizing the way our family eats.

At first my plan was to implement a couple things here and there, but the more I started preparing and eating these real foods, the more I craved them and the better I started to feel. It was like a fog was lifted.  Then, one day W and I were out and hungry and decided to stop to get some fast food.  BIG mistake.  I felt sick and sluggish for three days afterwards.  It's not an experience I care to repeat anytime soon.

I also started reading Real Food by Nina Planck and found it to be a wonderful companion to NT.  Honestly it has had a bigger impact on the types and sources of the foods we are now eating than NT has I think.  I've been getting more of our food from the local farmers markets and much less from the grocery store.  I found a local milk source at one of the markets.  It's not raw, but it is grass-fed, local, whole and unhomogenized (and since we always make the majority of our milk into yogurt or kefir, I'm okay with it for the moment).  I feel like it's the best I can do while I seek out a source of raw milk.  I've also found a wonderful meat and egg vendor that we are also frequenting along with all of our favorite produce vendors.

Okay, so on to the fun stuff going on in my kitchen now!  Just look at what I have going on above my kitchen cabinets!

One of my first projects was starting my own kombucha scoby.  It seemed to take forever, growing that first scoby from a bottle of GT Dave's, but,  I now have three jars of kombucha going and multiple bottles in a second ferment stage. (In the picture above the jars covered with clothes are my first fermentation stage jars and the bottles next to  them are the second fermentation stage). This makes me very happy and I can honestly say I don't even want to think about diet soda anymore.  For me, I think the kombucha made this such an easy and much needed transition.

I also have jars of cortido, pickles, ginger carrots, beet kvass, bean paste, and peach/tomato salsa fermenting up there.  The two jars on the right contain my sourdough starter.

I realized this past week that we are buying far fewer processed items and that I am now really making almost everything from scratch including most of our breads, tortillas and pastas.  What all of this has meant is that I spend way more time in the kitchen than I did previously and that I have to be way more organized about our meal planning and food preparation than ever before.  This is especially true for any foods containing grains or beans that need to be soaked or sprouted or meats that have to be thawed.  It has also meant that much of the computer time I do have gets devoted to researching information, recipes and tips than ever before (so less time for blogging).

The challenge now, seems to be getting the rhythm of all of this worked out so that I can do small amounts of food prep a few times a day to maintain it all and do the other things that I want or need to do done.  I hope within a week or two I will have that part sorted out a bit better.  In the mean time, I am enjoying the creativity and health of this new way of cooking and eating.

Simple Joys: Spiritual, Emotional and Physical Nourishment

One of my greatest needs that has been the hardest to meet since we moved here has been finding a new church for our family to attend.  I'm finding this much harder this time than I did in our previous city.  At that point, W hadn't been born yet and it never occurred to me that I needed to find a church to meet his needs as well as my own.  We were lucky with our church home there.  They have wonderful children's programs, and a nursery staff  who were kind and loving and who knew our family well.  We didn't even use the nursery there all that much.  W stayed with us in services till he was a year old and started becoming disruptive.  Before he turned two we started keeping him with us for the first part of the service and taking him to the nursery if sitting still and quiet started to become an unrealistic expectation for him.  He is a toddler and I think that an hour long service is a long time to expect a little boy to sit quietly and not be disruptive, even if he has plenty to occupy him.

Now, with his new job my husband is working on Sundays so I am also left to take W to church on my own.  In the past he did much of the active parenting during church, respecting my need to be able to participate fully in worship as a way to recharge for the week.  We have tried quite a number of churches since we moved here.  Some were just bad fits all the way around.  Others would have been wonderful places for me, but did not have other children W's age or even nurseries for him.  Another, which I thought was going to work for our family only had a nursery intermittently, and we had very bad results when they did not.  The last time we went to that church, I left in tears as I chased W back through the doors after his third energetic running screaming trip down the aisle during a prayer.  I left feeling more drained and spiritually and emotionally depleted than when we arrived.  It was suddenly very obvious, that this church, while lovely, was not going to meet the needs of W or myself on a regular basis and our search started all over again.

This past week we tried yet another church, and I'm cautiously optimistic.  I took W into the service to start, and he loved all of the singing that started the service.  When he started to become fidgety, I took him to the nursery and he had a wonderful time!  The nursery was staffed by a paid attendant (never realized just how important this is in terms of the nursery being a safe and reliable place before) who had her son who is W's age there too.  She met his needs in a kind and loving way and took the boys outside to play.  I could hear them outside having a wonderful boisterous, energetic time while I was in the service and it was really freeing for me.  The service was very different from what I am accustomed to, but it was deeply nourishing spiritually, and I felt recharged in a way, I have not been since we moved here.  The experience could not have been more different from that of the previous week.  I'm praying that our future experiences there will be as positive.  W had not wanted to even go to church again after the experience we had the previous week.  On Sunday, while I was putting him down for his nap, he turned to me and said "Mama, I love church".

After the service W and I stopped by our local farmer's market for the first time.  It was wonderful!  Almost everything I could ask for in a farmer's market.  It's big!  Lots and lots of vendors who grow crops locally.  Many sell plants as well as produce. The prices were quite reasonable.  Most were comparable or better than what we've been paying at the grocery store.  The herb man is wonderful and knowledgeable and we had a wonderful conversation about the uses of different types of lavender.

This is what we ended up buying at the market...

Two bags of lettuce, asparagus, kohlrabi, sugar snap peas, radishes, baby potatoes, a bag of English lavender, a bag of French lavender,  a chocolate mint plant, an elfin thyme plant (which is the cutest daintiest thing I've ever seen), an English lavender plant and a zinnia.

W couldn't wait to try a radish after we read Peter Rabbit hundreds of times this spring.

He spit it back out pretty quickly so I'm guessing he thought the flavor was a bit strong.  He has been eating them in salads this week though.    We have eaten so well this week and the market ingredients have really energized my cooking. Each dinner has featured some ingredient from the market.  So far we have used our farmers' market ingredients to make several salads,  asparagus pasta (as a treat we added some shrimp and I also added lemon juice and dill to the recipe), steamed sugar snap peas,  a lavender cake (heavenly), and roasted kohlrabi and baby potatoes.  I've also taken to having a cup of lavender tea in the evening before bed.  I think we will make a habit of going to the market each week after church.

All in all, by the time we arrived home last week I felt so nourished: spiritually, emotionally and physically.  Even better, I knew that W had been as well.  It makes our situation after this move feel much less desperate too, which is such a comfort.

In other good news this week, we also found out on Sunday that W and I have been accepted into the Parent-Child class at the local Waldorf School for September.  It feels like such a long way off, but it really gives us something to look forward to as well.  We are really excited!

Where We've Been And the Farmer's Market season has begun again!

It has been months since I posted on this blog.  Unfortunately, we have been experiencing technical difficulties that took us two months, all of our IT guy friends, and switching internet providers to solve.  Our internet was so slow for two months, that I just could not see even trying to put up a blog post.  Sadly, during this time I also seem to have lost my camera.  I wanted to post this blog today, and really wanted to include pictures too, but since my husband takes his camera to work with him.  There fore, I am just going to have to use words to describe our wonderful farmer's market and culinary experiences from today.

Today was the opening day for the West End Farmers Market which is the closest market to our house.   I was sad that my two favorite vendors from last year were not there, and are not on the vendor list for this year.  I'll have to see if I can hunt them down and find out if they are at other local markets this year.

Still, I was delighted to meet a vendor, who is new to this market, Rona, from Sullivan's Pond Farm.  Not only was she wonderful at introducing myself and other customers to her delicious goat cheeses, but she also was selling the most beautiful buckets of goodies!  At $20.00, I think they may have been one of the best deals at the market today!  My bucket included a dozen beautiful speckled brown and green free-range eggs, a bouquet of Irises and other flowers and fragrant herbs, perfect for our nature table, a bundle of beautiful fresh asparagus and parsley and  a wonderful little husk wrapped package of Sandy Bottom, a delicious goat cheese coated in ground black pepper.  She also slipped a recipe for an omelet using these ingredients.  I sampled and just loved her Tidewater raw goats milk cheese, however, Rona had already sold out of it today.  She graciously offered to set some aside for me on Wednesday, if I send her an email.  This type of interaction with wonderful producer/vendors as well as the incredible quality of the products are what farmers markets are all about for me!

I also bought a bar of Patchouli with clove soap from KJ Soaps.  Patchouli and clove are two of my favorite scents but not two I would have thought of putting together.  I have to say though, the combination smells even better than either one would on it's own.  It's spicy and earthy but also has a certain sophistication to it!  Needless to say, I am eagerly awaiting my next shower!

After W woke up from his nap this afternoon, I made us a large omelet using the recipe I received at the market today.  I also added a little chopped smoked salmon that I had on hand and needed to use.  W and I both just loved it!  W has always refused to eat asparagus before, but gladly ate it in this omelet!  He especially loved the goat cheese though.  His face lit up every time he tasted it!

Such a rewarding  and delicious day  for my little guy and I!

Our Trip to the Farmer's Market

A new farmer's market opened up recently and is fairly close to our home but we had not gone to it yet. This morning Will and I got up early and left the house when DH left for work. I am very excited about this market! It's not very large but the produce was beautiful and there were also vendors selling eggs, chicken, seafood, beef, lamb, sorbet, bread and other baked goods and local honey as well as several handicraft vendors. One of the stands selling lamb also was selling beautiful wool yarn!

My purchases were as follows:

• new potatoes


• strawberries


• spinach


• romaine lettuce


• whipped raw cinnamon honey


• lamb stew meat

I came home and started putting together a lamb stew for dinner incorporating the lamb and the potatoes. I plan on serving this with a spinach and strawberry salad this evening. If possible, I also would like to make some bread to eat with the honey. We will see how patient DS can be with me this afternoon.

I would love to be able to go to the market to purchase ingredients for dinner at least once a week. It is so much fun and I love talking to and learning from the local producers!