I just wrote about cutting back on our food spending, and we have been, but a few weeks ago I decided to try out a decadent recipe. Not super economical, but super delicious. It’s the recipe for Chocolate-Avocado Mousse from the Cooking with Coconut Oil Cookbook. It immediately made me think of my sister and I need to share the recipe with her. Truth be told, I’m not a huge chocolate fan (I know, people think that’s crazy!) Jeff had been reading about what a superfood chocolate is and decided to get some to experiment with (he made some crazy good treats.) I knew we had some chocolate in the cupboard and some avocados and thought we had all the ingredients for the recipe. Most of you probably would have checked to see that you had all the ingredients before you started making the recipe. But I don’t always do that. I dove in only to realize we didn’t have everything for the recipe. We probably had a bit less than half of the chocolate that it called for. (That’s why mine is such a lighter color above than it shows in the cookbook.) I also tweaked the recipe a bit and left some things out (coffee granules, maple syrup, and vanilla extract.) I figured it was already sweetened with dates so it didn’t need any other sweeteners. It turned out really good. I don’t think I can claim that it was as delicious as my grandma’s homemade chocolate pudding because she has grandma magic that makes everything incredibly delicious, but it was definitely a hit around here. (Plus a yummy treat and healthy ingredients is pretty awesome.) It will be fun to play around with that recipe more in the future. First discovering avocados in smoothies, and now this. I’m loving avocados even more than before.

 I mentioned to Jeff there was a good idea in the Primal Blueprint Quick & Easy Meals Cookbook. It was to puree cauliflower and make it a creamy consistency, similar to mashed potatoes. We had extra cauliflower that week so he steamed it lightly,  put it in the food processor and then made a sauce with homemade bone broth and some homegrown mushrooms. It was so good. I love cauliflower so much that I’m happy to just eat it steamed and not even do much to it, but when you’re eating it many days in a row it’s fun to change things up a bit.

I saw these wild sardines at the grocery store, saw the price tag (only 2 dollars and something each) and then saw that the cans they come in are BPA free. Awesome! Truth be told, I’m nervous about seafood these days because of mercury contamination, but I also understand how important seafood is for health. Being such a small size, these sardines are not a huge risk for that. And looking at seafood watch, it looks like they are a good choice. Everyone in our family likes these, they are really mild in flavor. They’re a good source of calcium for us (here is a post about getting calcium when you’re dairy-free) and healthy in so many other ways. (Here’s what it says on the back of the package: “Nutritional Powerhouse: Ounce for ounce, Wild Planet sardines provide more calcium and phosphorus than milk, more iron than spinach, more potassium than coconut water and bananas and as much protein as steak. Once can of Wild Planet sardines contains 313mg EPA and 688mg DHA Omega 3 and is an ample source of Vitamin B12, Vitamin D, and selenium. Sardines contain Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), a nutrient found in the body’s cells and believed to have antioxidant and immune boosting properties. These sardines are considered a Best Choice for Sustainability by a consensus of environmental organizations.” See what I mean? Wow. I’m happy to have such an affordable source of protein. Now I just need to make it a habit to eat these regularly because I keep forgetting about them in the cupboard. We ate some today with our lunch and I thought writing about it here would help it stick. Writing things down does that for me oftentimes.

 We traded with our neighbor for more beets. Bracken and I came down one morning to see Jeff cooking a bunch. It made the skins come off easily and then when chopping them up was time consuming, he thought of a great solution. He used a tool for slicing apples. It worked great and saved a lot of time. He is fermenting the beets in a crock, just like we make our sauerkraut. All of our crocks are full right now. Two with sauerkraut and two with beets. We have to wait for our ten gallon crock of kraut to finish before we can make some pickles. So all the cucumbers in our garden are being eaten other ways in the meantime. 

 We also traded our neighbor for a bunch of basil. We grow basil, but never in enough amounts to get a lot all at once. I asked Jeff his vote for pine nuts or sunflower seeds for pesto. He voted for pine nuts. I got some at the store, not really paying much attention to the price, until my total was way more than I was expecting and I went out to the car and looked at the receipt. Yikes! They’re spendy. Next time I plan on using sunflower seeds, but I told Jeff that this was a really special batch of pesto! So we’ll enjoy it to the fullest. The pine nuts really are delicious. We came home Saturday night from market, exhausted. I put the basil in the fridge and planned on making the pesto on Sunday morning. When I awoke I realized I hadn’t soaked the pine nuts overnight, so I soaked them that morning. (Here’s a post where I wrote about soaking nuts and seeds.) Jeff suggested sticking the basil in the freezer in the meantime and that’s what I did. I made pesto that evening. The basil had changed color just a little bit, but not much. Ideally I would have dried the pine nuts and then made it, but I rinsed them and added some straight to the pesto. I had never made pesto before and used Beatrice’s Pesto Your Way for inspiration and as a guide. Our food processor wasn’t doing a very good job, but luckily the Vitamix did. I wrote down the recipe I did so I’ll know for next time. I blended 5 cups basil, 1 cup pine nuts, 1 cup olive oil, 2 tsp. salt, 2 tbsp. nutritional yeast, and a few cloves garlic. At first I hadn’t added enough salt, then I added more and it ended up being a bit too salty. As an afterthought, I wish I would have added a touch of lemon juice. It turned out good, though, and I was happy to get some little jars filled to put in the freezer. (You can’t really tell from the picture, but I left some headspace.) By the way, what are your favorite pesto recipes? I’d love to hear!

 I included this picture because something I make multiple times a week is coconut oil treats (as Bracken and I have been calling them.) Bracken and I usually each have one after breakfast. Sometimes he eats another one after lunch and some days he only has one. I like to have at least three of them a day. Sometimes I eat more than that and sometimes I eat less. I measure it out so there is 2 tablespoons of coconut oil in each one. I should add here that when you first start coconut oil, to start slowly. It’s so detoxifying and you can have an intense detox reaction. When I was first starting out, I had too much a few different times and got pretty nauseous and sick feeling. But now I’ve worked my way up slowly over time. These days it seems the more coconut oil I have, the better I feel. And I want to be working my way up even more. I cook with it, eat it in coconut oil treats, add it to smoothies, and more. I should also add that not everyone likes the coconut oil treats. Jeff is one of those people. (If they had more in them he probably would, but these just had a pinch of bee pollen and some frozen blueberries.) The consistency takes some getting used to when it’s frozen. I’ve gotten used to it and I like them because it’s a good way to know I’m getting my dose of coconut oil each day.

 Jeff has been drying lots of mint from the garden because he puts it in sun tea nearly every day.

 We’ve been drying calendula flowers on screens too. (For Magical Healing Salve.)

 As usual, Jeff has been collecting a lot of seed from the garden. These are watercress or arugula.

 Jeff brought in so many greens this week. Some he cooked and froze for the winter.

 Sunny days, cloudy days… nearly every day this week we’ve harvested zucchini, green beans, and cucumbers. One day Bracken wanted to help me harvest the cucumbers, but they had “pokeys” on them. (My whole life I never knew cucumbers could be pokey until I had a garden, it came as a shock since they were always smooth at the store.) Bracken ran inside to get some socks to put on his hands and I then reminded him that I had gotten him a pair of gardening gloves. They work much better (but his sock hands always did make me smile.) The cucumbers can hide so well and Bracken is so good at spotting them, he helps a lot with finding them.

We’ll be getting yellow summer squash soon.

 And something very exciting for all of us… we got a ripe fig this week! A neighbor told us of only two fig varieties that ripen in this area. The kind of fig we have is not one of those varieties. The fig by our front door is huge, it’s taller than the first floor. It gets covered in green figs every year, but we watch them grow every year knowing that we won’t be able to eat them because they hardly ever ripen. Maybe one a year if we’re lucky. Jeff said it could have gotten much more purple than it was, but it felt squishy to me and tasted ripe and delicious to us.

 We’ve been getting the cutest little pullet eggs this week. I opened the door to one of the nesting boxes to let in some light so I could take a picture of one of the wee eggs all nestled in the straw, it looked so adorable to me. It’s good news that we’re getting some new layers because we’ve been going through a lot of eggs each day. Most days we make scrambled eggs and then when we add some yolks to our smoothies in the evenings, it uses them all up. It’s nice to have extras for hard boiled eggs, other recipes, and for trading with neighbors.

 And not food related at all, but something that Bracken found and was very excited about this week. He discovered it near our front door and told me that it was a lizard skin (since we see a lizard near there all the time.) I thought it was a snake skin, it never occurred to me that a lizard would shed it’s skin until Jeff told me that they do that. Bracken put it on our nature altar, where we like to put many of our nature treasures.

We’ve been getting our first ripe plums. It seems every single one has a worm in it, but if you cut around the bad part and wash them off, they are delicious and most of the plum is edible. I hope that doesn’t gross you out. (That thought occurs to me after I write things sometimes.)

On another note, this week has not been an easy one. Today I intended to write a post filled with food and harvests, but at first I had so many other things on my mind. As I looked at pictures throughout the last few weeks it helped shift my perspective a bit and reminded me of all the good things that have been happening. I needed to be reminded. Bracken’s behavior has been a bit challenging lately. I’ve felt exhausted and frustrated. I’ve been losing my temper and feeling out of sorts. Sometimes I didn’t know whether I wanted to yell or cry. Yesterday he didn’t have a nap. The way he acted later showed how much he needs them. (We skip them on most Saturdays, but we do our best not to skip them any more than that.) Honestly, sometimes I get desperate for his naps to happen because it is the only time I get to myself each day. It’s not necessarily time to relax and kick back, I use it to get my computer work done and business work done, but it’s still time for me to have some quiet to myself and collect my thoughts. I need that time. Most days I wake up at the same time he does, so don’t get time to myself in the mornings and we go to sleep at the same time each night so I don’t get time to myself then either. (At one point I did try to get time to myself after he fell asleep, but that never worked out. And I don’t want to wake up earlier because I feel like I need all the sleep I get these days.) Yesterday my sister called and I did my best Eeyore impersonation saying “if you want to talk to someone chipper and positive, you better call somebody else.” We both talked about our annoyances and made each other laugh. Talking to her and my mom on the phone helped immensely. Today went much better. I decided to change things up a bit. (Sometimes I wait until things are really not working before I make a change.) We’re making some changes and they seem to be helping. Bracken had a nap upstairs in bed (rather than the couch downstairs like we had been doing) and I worked in the room next to our bedroom. Jeff was able to move freely downstairs between his work room and his shop. Usually he has to stick to one or the other and be quiet until Bracken falls asleep, which can take awhile. He got so much accomplished and was stoked. (It might sound rather obvious and you might wonder why I didn’t do this before, but in the past bringing Bracken upstairs always made him wound up that time of day and never resulted in a nap. But I figured enough time had passed to try again. I needed to do something differently.)

Before becoming a parent, if I felt out of sorts, I could take some time to myself to get back in balance. I could go for a walk in nature, write in my journal, or go do some artwork. After becoming a parent, one of the hardest things (after sleep deprivation, that was number one) was not having time alone to myself. I’m a person that needs time alone and some quiet to myself. It’s important for my well being. I need the world to stop moving so fast for just a bit. But where do you get that when you are a full time parent? No matter how much you love someone- your child, your spouse, a family member, a friend…. you still need some time to yourself. It’s important. I have to tell myself this because there’s a part of me that still feels like I should be able to be okay without it. Ideally, Jeff and I would be sharing parenting responsibilities 50/50. But that’s not the reality of our life right now. People sometimes assume that since Jeff works from home, that’s the way it is. It’s not. (Jeff works all the time. He needs to so we can eat, pay our bills, and survive.) Don’t get me wrong, Jeff helps in so many ways. I don’t want to sound ungrateful. (My heart goes out to single parents because I can’t imagine how hard that would be.) When it comes to parenting, though, it’s mostly my responsibility most of the time. And sometimes I need a breather to set the re-set button so I can get refreshed and come back with more patience and energy. Sometimes I need to ask for help when it gets to be too much and sometimes Bracken just really needs his dad. So we’ve started doing “dada time” again. A bit of time each day for just the two of them, where I can get caught up on some other things. And thanks to that I was able to finish this post. I intend to write more soon, but this is already longer than I’d planned. I just wanted to share more with you today than just the recipes and the harvest pictures. I’m writing this because someone out there may be able to relate. Perhaps you’re being too hard on yourself, expecting yourself to be a “parenting superstar” and you need a little friendly reminder to take some time to regenerate before you blow up. I think being a parent is the hardest job there is. It’s something you do all the time. I feel like it requires more patience than one single person could ever possibly have. Having people to hug you, support you, and make you laugh on the hard days makes all the difference in the world. Being able to take just a little step back every now and then can make you come back with more love, more energy, more patience. You can look at your child and know with all your being that being a parent is absolutely the greatest honor and blessing you could ever imagine.