Chickens

Hey look! I'm actually back on topic today! There will still be a picture with a baby though.

The chickens are all grown up! Those noisy little chicks have been replaced by a quietly clucking herd of hens (and a couple of roosters). They love to wander around the yard and have a nasty habit of making patches of mustard greens and kale disappear if not watched. They also leave lovely large brown eggs behind for us every day. Every few days they leave an egg or two more than before. I see much custard and many boiled eggs in our future.

Diet Food Does Not Have To Suck

That's right. I said it. Eating with the intention of weight loss doesn't have to be a miserable experience.

I know that runs contrary to what I was often lead to believe growing up and as a young(er) adult, but it's true. Our meals lately have been simple and amazing. They've been whole grain, fresh, and packed with flavor. A large potion of our meals have been built around what is available in the garden, cooked from scratch, and rarely had more than a half hour of time spent on cooking and prep. I've been favoring Thai inspired dishes (coconut soup and a red curry pictured below), but other, more traditional dishes have been on the menu as well. Roasted or stewed vegetables, greens, and steamed grains have made up several other simple meals (stewed summer squash with toasted couscous of a bed of raw spinach pictured above). Flavored with fresh herbs from the garden, this has been a quick, tasty way to put a meal on the table at the end of a long day, or to whip something up for lunch while simultaneously chasing the toddler.

I have been cheating a bit on my dietary plans. The call of the drive through has not been ignored as much as it should have been on a few occasions when I was under prepared will meal and snack solutions while out with the kiddos. I also have a bit of basmati rice habit when I cook certain things. While I have no problem with carbs, I'm trying to stick to options that may be a bit less processed than white rice.

Even with my occasional cheating, so far, so good. As of this morning's weigh in, I'm down eight pounds. Not bad at all, in my opinion. I am also cheating a bit in that I'm also nursing a baby, which theoretically helps with postpartum weight loss. It didn't work out that way for me after Mellie was born, but circumstances were different that time around. My goal, at this time, is 40 pounds of loss by Dahlia's first birthday. At the current rate of loss, with ten months to go, my prospects seem pretty good! Here's hoping.

The Eat Real Food Diet

I have a few (more than I would like to admit) pounds of baby weight leftover from having my daughters. While I try to put vanity low on my list, I admit that I would really like to be my pre-first pregnancy size again. I'm not a fan of this whole overweight thing. I've tried it and it's just not working for me, so I'm thinking I may try a little dieting experiment.

I'm going to call this the "Eat Real Food Diet". The premise is pretty simple, my diet will not include heavily processed foods or artificial ingredients. This isn't a huge stretch from how we eat normally, but I will be going to extra efforts to eliminate those occasional fast food pit stops that we are prone to on busy days out or while at work. Refined sugars and white flour are also going to be making their way out of my kitchen in favor of other sweeteners (honey, fresh stevia leaves, unrefined or minimally processed sugars like turbinado) and whole wheat or other grain flours.

I will try to include more raw food, both for ease of preparation and for nutrition. I stopped eating vegetarian about halfway through my most recent pregnancy, and am not planning to go back to it at this time, but any meat will be carefully selected. As hunting season is fast approaching, and we always end up with some venison being given to us by friends and family in the fall, that will probably make up a large portion of it. There will be more cooking and packing lunches to help avoid the temptation to swing through a drive thru.


What I am not restricting is the much longer list. I have zero intention of counting calories, carbs, or grams of fat. There will still be ice cream in my freezer (though it will likely be homemade as the store bought varieties that meet my other parameters are not within my budget parameters). I will eat when I'm hungry and until satiated. Dessert will still grace my table, as will pretty much anything else we are in the mood for.

Now, on that note, I'm off to start lunch!

When It Rains, It Pours

I had every intention of picking figs yesterday evening and roasting them to make some yummy tartines with the last of the bread I baked over the weekend. Mother nature apparently had other plans. I literally had my hand on the first fig I planned to pick when the not terribly menacing looking clouds decided to dump rain down onto us. A little water doesn't bother me, but it was accompanied by a generous serving of lighting. I try not to stand under trees in open fields during thunder storms.

So I picked a handful of figs in the immediate vicinity of where I was standing and headed for cover. That didn't really result in enough figs to base a meal for two and a half people on, so we had a change of plans. Instead, hubby stuffed a couple of acorn squash that we had with some brown rice, garden veggies, and goat cheese. They were delicious, especially for a last minute meal. I'm now convinced that more acorn squash deserves a spot in our fall garden plans!

I did manage to get out and pick those figs today. I only managed about a gallon this afternoon (my quick once over of the trees on the first day I picked them this season yielded almost five gallons, for comparison), but it was plenty to try out the roasted figs with honey and rosemary recipe I found on The Kitchn a week or so ago. I haven't tasted them yet, as they just went in the oven, but our entire house is filled with the delicious sweet scent of figs and the fir tree smell of fresh rosemary.

I hope they turn out well. I'm taking them to a potluck meeting tonight. I'm always anxious about taking a dish I've never cooked before to be enjoyed by others, but it the aroma coming from my oven is any indication, these should go over well.

Not So Lazy Saturday

I had a deceivingly short list of things to do today. Take some three week portraits of Dahlia, bake some bread, finish up an encapsulation project and deliver the capsules to the client, and then laze around the house with family some. Maybe take a nap. So, yeah.. about that plan...

We used up the last of the spring potatoes, which brought to my attention that we were out of a number of things. I knew we were out of bread, thus the plan to bake some, but I've not yet figured out how to whip up aged cheddar in an afternoon, grow coffee in our climate, or successfully milk a goat that needs to be freshened, so a trip to the Farmer's Market joined the list. The last few potatoes were delicious though.

Then I remembered my soft box light was visiting a family member, and I would need to go get it if I wanted to take the portraits I had planned. Determined to get that done today (it didn't happen), that got added to the list. By the time the bread got baked, the capsules were ready to go, and my light was loaded in the back of our car, a massive thunderstorm had rolled in.

After waiting for the storm to pass, wading through traffic because I failed to consider that the storm I was hoping would pass by was going the same direction we needed to go, picking up some supplies from the market, and getting back to our side of town, it was after 9pm by the time we were all home and the car unloaded. So much for my lazy day. At least my client got their capsules on schedule and my little helper and I got the bread baked.

Simple Sandwich Bread
This is a pretty basic, straightforward bread recipe that makes a semi-dense, but nice, soft, and moist sandwich bread. It's not the healthiest recipe in the world with the all purpose flour, but it gets the job done for a quick lunch solution.

2 cups warm water
1/2 cup sugar
1 packet active dry yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup coconut oil (you could substitute another oil, but coconut makes it wonderfully moist without being crumbly)
6 cups all purpose flour

Directions:
Stir sugar into water, then add yeast. Let it sit until yeast is foamy.

Add salt and oil. Oil should be liquid. If room temperature is under 77 F, you may need to run the oil container under warm water to bring it to a liquid temperature.

Slowly add flour, working it into the mix. Knead until smooth after all flour is added, then cover with a damp cloth and let it rest for roughly an hour, or until dough ball has doubled in size.

Punch dough dough and knead lightly, then divide into two halves. Shape into loaves and place each in a loaf pan.

Begin preheating oven to 350 F while letting dough rest under a damp cloth. Let dough rise for 30 minutes before placing in oven to bake.

Bake for 30 minutes.

Figs, Figs, and More Figs

I went looking for other ideas for cooking with figs and found some rather interesting ones. These look delicious!

Fresh Fig Tart

Grilled Figs with Honeyed Marscarpone 

Roasted Figs with Rosemary and Honey

Fig Cocktails

Wheat Berry, Fig, and Red Onion Salad

Fig and Sesame Jam

Fig and Lavender Goat Cheese Galettes

Fig Salami

Fig Season

In my part of the world, the fig trees are now dripping with ripe fruit. A few gallons of figs are easy to gather in an hour. I have a love/hate relationship with figs. On one hand, I grew up eating them and they are comfort food for me in every way. The bright pinkish red insides are distinctive, beautiful, and deliciously sweet. Fig preserves on a warn, toasted piece of bread, muffin, or biscuit in the dead of winter warms my soul. On the other hand, they're probably one of the most delicate fresh fruits I enjoy all year. Drop one and it may be bruised beyond recognition when you pick it up. Wait more than 24 hours to use your freshly picked fruit and it may already have rotted. It is somewhat ridiculous the care and speed needed to utilize these little beauties when they are picked ripe.

At least the chickens adore the ones that don't make the final cut.

They are also a sign that summer's end is creeping closer. Growing up, this made figs the last thing I enjoyed eating fresh from the tree, vine, or bush before returning to school for the rest of the year. As I've spent most of the summer pregnant, I'm scrambling to put away as many figs as possible for the colder months to fill out the space left by my lack of preserving much of anything else this year. I managed to gather and freeze some blackberries, but that's been it. My plan is to fill in the remaining space with figs, dried, preserved, and turned into jam.

So far we have fig preserves, fig and ginger jam, and dried figs. I'm hoping to make some habanero fig jam as well with some of the extra peppers from the garden. Looking forward to a tasty winter!

Drying Chiles

Last night we sat down at the dining room table after dinner with a big pile of red chiles and a mission: to get them bundled and ready to hang for drying.

The process is very simple. All you need to get peppers stitched into a nice little bundle is some thread, a needle, and a bit of patience. Simply push the needle through the lower part of the stem, threading each pepper on one at a time.

Make sure to tie a loop at the top so it can be hung in a cool, dry location until you're ready to use your peppers. Our chile pepper plants are quickly becoming covered in peppers again.  expect to do this a few more times before winter arrives, then to enjoy some spicy vegetable soup when it's cold outside!

Birthday Weekend

It feels a bit silly to write a weekend recap on a Tuesday night, but I think this past weekend warrants it. Sometimes it seems that babies have some secret communication, preference for a weather pattern, or maybe just like a particular lunar phase. Whatever the cause, this weekend brought the "I think I'm in labor" call from every doula client I had with a September due date. Calvin's birthday party was also this weekend, as was a Georgia Birth Network event I had previously committed to attending. It was a wonderful, but exhausting few days. Monday was spent relaxing with a friend for a much needed day off.

So now that I've mostly caught back up on sleep and spent some time with my little girl, I have lots of pictures to share!

My table at the Birth Ball was a bit sad looking next to others with larger displays. I guess I need to add some height to my presentation.

Mellie wore her new dress out to play (and promptly found a mud puddle).

I did some henna for a friend while Mellie played with her little ones during our day off. The design was based on a Tree of Life, with some alterations that were symbolic for the recipient (such as a bird for each of her children).

My mother was kind enough to provide us with some great food during the crazy weekend. Poached asparagus and black bean salad make a fantastic cold lunch.

Tomorrow it's back to work around home. With any luck, tomorrow we can get some peppers bundled and hung up to dry and some more clearing done on the lot for the house!

Oh Yum!

Today was a bit of a crazy day, but I did get a chance to sit down and enjoy some of the gourmet marshmallows I had ordered from my friend Kathy's new Etsy shop. (This package was the cause of the hike up to our mailbox mentioned in the previous post.) Her shop is named "Oh Yum", and the name fits!

I had plans for smores and hot chocolate, but they didn't last long enough. While I can't say how they are toasted, I think the fact that every marshmallow has been consumed in the span of two days, in a household that eats few sweets at that, speaks volumes. The coconut went first, followed shortly by the almond. The fruit flavors I was a bit more hesitant about, but after trying them I'm in love. While the almond is still my favorite, lemon flavored marshmallow goes amazingly well with a glass of iced tea after garden work on a hot day!

If you have a sweet craving that needs sating, need a very tasty party or wedding favor, or just want to help support a very awesome work at home mom, check these out!