moment of mindfulness...under my foot

wherever you place your foot, there rests a blessing....

the leaf of every tree brings a message

from the Unseen world

look! every falling leaf is a blessing. ~rumi

When I am not being fully aware, it is easy to miss opportunities to be grateful. I might look at this soggy ground and think only of the mud that my dog and child will inevitably track into the house, or the bare patch of lawn that will need to be re-seeded....again.

I might miss spotting the leaf that reminds me to be grateful for the tall oaks that grace our creekbank. Or, I might forget about the beautiful sunrise that I witnessed reflected in the same puddle at dawn...

or miss out on the joy of puddle stomping with my child...

There are always a multitude of things for which to be grateful.  I know this...all I have to do is remember to look right under my feet to bring them to my awareness.

:::

Check back on Monday morning...I have a very exciting announcement!

wabi sabi moments...erma's basins

she had no clue 

why I would want to take 

this picture

and I suppose that

was one of the 

reasons why

:::

you can see the complete wabi sabi moment collection here

:::

this week has been a lesson in letting go of many things I normally do and planned to do, such as, visiting the blogs of the special people who visit here and leave comments AND making the transmutable photo cards for Faith Hope Love Infant Rescue...I got strong messages to slow down this week...I finally listened.

have a blessed weekend!

homemade...local fast food aka quick quiche

When I need a meal that is easy and does not take too long...I go to my quick quiche recipe which I adapted from this one to use local ingredients and to use alternatives to conventional flour. And as I started to make it this time, I was literally chasing the light around the house to take a few snapshots just to prove how easy this is, but unfortunately, I ran out of light. So I have a few photos and more words.

I love that I was able to use mostly locally obtained ingredients for this version (except the butter, olive oil and the flour)...as with a lot of my recipes they change depending on what is in season or what I have on hand. So as I show you how to make quick quiche, I'll also introduce you to a few of the friends that feed us.

After lighting the oven and setting it to 350F, I start off mincing the shallots.

I got these this summer from a local grower who grows mostly root crops and onions for sale at our local grower's market...although he gave Jude a hyacinth bean plant which delighted Jude and me too with their bright purple flowers and beautiful seed pods.

Put a little olive oil in a skillet and cook until the shallots are starting to get translucent.

I sliced jerusalem artichokes thinly.  I don’t bother to skin these.

I get these from Cindy, another local grower.  When I saw she had them at the market last week, I was happily surprised.  She is also who introduced me to cultured veggies and gave me my kombucha scoby.  Jerusalem artichokes are great starch-free potato alternative…and are actually the edible tuber of a species of sunflower.  You could substitute potatoes here if you wanted.

After sliced throw them in with the shallots and continue to cook until the Jerusalem artichokes are tender.

Grate up 4 ounces of cheddar cheese.

I get mine from another friend, Brian, who raises grass fed jersey cows.  He ages his cheese in a cave and a dear friend of mine who died last year designed and built the door for the cheese cave and also my husband’s workshop.

I managed to gather up a handful of parsley that was thawed out in the garden.  I chopped that up and placed that with the cheese in the bottom of a buttered pie dish. (I sometimes add crumbled cooked cottage bacon to the bottom as the original recipe calls for it.)

In a medium bowl, whisk together 1 teaspoon of salt, ¼ cup almond flour, ¼ cup spelt flour (or whole wheat flour) 4 eggs, 2 tablespoons of melted butter (mine isn’t melted in the picture…obviously), and 1 ½ cup of milk.  I get my eggs, milk and sometimes butter from my friend Erma, who is a self described horse and buggy Mennonite, and one of the most generous down to earth women I’ve ever known.  I usually leave with more than I came for and often without paying more...fresh peas, a soup bone, some bread whatever she has extra which is in of it self is amazing because she has 10 children and is due to have another babe in May!

Pour this egg mixture over your cheese and parsley and cook for 35 minutes until light brown and puffy in the middle. 

Wait a few minutes after taking it out of the oven before you slice it.  YUM!

Enjoy!

local quick quiche

what you need:

3 shallots minced

3 jerusalem artichokes sliced thinly

1 tablespoon olive oil

4 ounces of grated cheddar cheese

1 handful of chopped parsley

4 eggs

2 tablespoons of melted butter

¼ cup almond flour

¼ cup of spelt flour (or whole wheat)

1 ½ cup of milk

1 teaspoon of salt

what you need to do:

1. cook shallots until translucent in olive oil on medium heat.

2. add Jerusalem artichokes and continue cooking until they are tender

3.  place cheese and parsley in greased pie dish

4.  wisk together eggs, milk, flour, melted butter, and salt

5.  pour egg mixture over cheese and parsley

6.  carefully place full dish in oven and cook for 35 minutes until light brown and fluffy.

enjoy!

***I am starting to list transmutable photo cards in our shop as I make them...100% of the sale price goes to the Faith Hope Love Infant Rescue in Port-au-Prince, Haiti***

moment of mindfulness...sprouts

The same day we planted those small spruce tree seeds last week, we sowed a mix of seeds for microgreens.  Microgreens are really just regular green (as in lettuce, beets, cabbage, radish, etc.) seeds that you grow in a soil medium until they reach about 2 inches.  They are really good in sandwiches or as a garnish on soups.

I went upstairs after I wrote the small seeds post last week and saw that the greens had started to sprout...a little sign for me...prayer received and processing.  Then, I spent the rest of the week being truly inspired by all the projects that were sprouting up all over the place to support the people of Haiti.  My list of seeds that I was watering grew....

Craft Hope for Haiti
Earthmama's Walking Meditation
All Buttoned Up's Plea for Haitian Orphans
Shivaya Natural's Etsy Shop 
Indie Fixx's Silent Auction
Our Hearts Go Out to Haiti Fortune Cookie Sale
Green Acre's Heart to Heart Care Kits
Awake is Good's Meditation for Haiti (towards bottom)
Through the Eyes of a Yak's Hearts for Haiti Project

And I continued to find reasons to be inspired. I've kept Haiti in my heart and on my mind. I've been trying to discover more ways to help. I missed the deadline for Craft Hope for Haiti's shop, but I decided not to let that stop me. I will be adding some valentine cards to our shop this week, and 100% of the proceeds will go to Faith Hope Love Infant Rescue that is run by two American women in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. My niece, Katie, went there 2 years ago on a mission trip to help this orphanage and produced this video to document their experience. Keep in mind that the photos for this video were taken 2 years ago before the earthquake.

My hope and prayers are that Haiti will finally get the help that they needed all along...that a new Haiti will emerge that can support its people, especially its children. They have all suffered enough.

'Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has
been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed
there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.' ~Henry David Thoreau

Please let me know if you have or know of a great project that someone started to support Haiti.

blessings~

handmade...needle felting with yarn

I'm digging into the archives a bit by sharing this project that I did exactly 2 years ago as a gift for my niece.  I fulled a really lovely green sweater that I thrifted (it was already fulled a bit from the previous owner;).  I added a thrifted belt for the handles and created a lining from an upholstery sample and some other fun prints in my stash.  Yeah...there is a lot going on inside this purse, but I really love mixing up linings and I thought this purse could use a bit of that because I wanted to keep the outside simple.

Then I took a design from one of my favorite prints and traced it onto paper and transfered the shape onto the outside of the bag with a washable marker.  I used yarn (some that I dyed with coffee) to needle felt the design onto the outside of the purse.

This year, using felt from the same sweater, I made what might seem like a pretty silly gift for John...

it's a toothbrush travel case.  I know not the most romantic of gifts, but I am always trying to replace the plastic in our lives, and when we were travelling in december, I got it in my head that he needed this.  I was going to needle felt some elaborate design, but that is so unlike me and so unlike John...so I simply did his monogram by needle felting some of that coffee dyed yarn that I used in the purse project above.  Who doesn't need a monogrammed toothbrush travel case?  Well, silly or not, wool is the perfect material for this...it absorbs liquid and has natural antimicrobial abilities.

And that sweater for the black apple doll I showed you last week came from the same sweater.  That's what I love about repurposing...there is no end really.  I always save little bits of repurposed wool because there is always something else you can make with them.

Here are some other needle felted yarn projects I dug up to inspire you....

felted vest with needle felted yarn embellishment

needle felted laptop sleeve

needle felted cuff bracelet

Do you have a favorite repurposing or needle felting project in your archives that you'd like to share....put a link in the comments.  I'd love to take a peek;)

Have a blessed weekend!

wabi sabi moments...weathered lamb

I stood in the cold

watching this lamb

lose its coat for the first time

it struggled

and my wool socks felt

warmer

you can see the complete wabi sabi moment collection here

homemade...winter salads

My body has been really craving greens and other fresh vegetables lately.  These are just not available locally this time of year.  Last week I drove 45 miles to a grower's market that I have never been to before, and low and behold a grower had mache.  I couldn't believe my eyes...fresh local greens.  I felt slightly stingy grabbing up two small bags, knowing they were like gold this time of year in central pennsylvania.  But I am so glad that I did.  Here are a couple of winter salads that I created to use some of the cultured veggies I told you about here.

Mache salad with cultured carrots

1 bunch mache or other green like spinach

1 handful of bean sprouts

2 tablespoons olive oil (first cold pressed from italy or greece)

4 tablespoons cultured carrots (or shredded carrots with a splash of apple cider vinegar)

12 kalamata olives

1.  Pull the mache apart into individual leaves and place into separate bowls.

2.  Place a bit of the bean sprouts on top of the mache

3.  Drizzle 1/2 tablespoon olive oil over the greens and sprouts

4.  Place a tablespoon of the cultured carrots on top of the greens

5.  Add 3 olives to the top of the pile of carrots

enjoy!

This was a salad I made up to disguise cultured carrots so that Jude would eat them.  The lemon, olive oil combine with the carrots to be very cleansing for the liver....so don't skimp on the olive oil!  This may be a little tart to most palates so you may want to mix it up as is and add honey or agave nectar to individual tastes, but it will all depend on how sweet your carrots are.  I like it as is without the cranberries, but they make a very colorful presentation and they are a favorite of Jude's.

Cultured Carrot-Apple-Cranberry Salad

3-4 grated carrots

1 grated granny smith apple

1 grated piece of 1" square ginger 

2 tablespoons of cultured carrots (or 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar)

1 handful of dried cranberries

1 handful of chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)

2 tablespoons of chopped parsley

3 tablespoons of olive oil

2 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice

honey or agave nectar to taste

1.  Mix together grated apple, carrot, ginger.

2.  Add in the cultured carrots, cranberries, nuts, and parsley

3.  Stir in olive oil and lemon juice

4.  Add honey or agave nectar to taste

Our one small change project is going pretty well...this is the batch of veggies I have going right now...celeriac, black radish with a bit of beet juice, beets...cultured beets are really tasty.

And finally to reveal what was in that brown paper bag....

kombucha starter!

I am just starting my first batch today so I'll have to report on this later, but I am quite excited since I bought my scoby in november, and I love kombucha.  Some times even small changes require a certain alignment and motivation.  

***I'm using a new post editor with blogger, and I can't seem to get the spacing right....it looks really bad on my computer...how does it look on yours?  I just reread the last sentence in my post...and let's just say it made me laugh.***

To follow up a bit... The kombucha is fermented tea. The scoby is used to ferment the tea and in the process creates a really yummy drink that is slightly carbonated. It is said to have really great health benefits and has been consumed for hundreds of years. As for the cultured vegetables, you have to use common sense here. If you are not comfortable with eating them, you shouldn't eat them. If the veggies are spoiled and not fermented they will smell bad and the color will be dull in color. The salt inhibits bad bacteria and allows the good bacteria to grow. Once the good bacteria grow they keep the pathogenic stuff from growing. But I am not an expert and I suggest that anyone who is interested in making their own cultured vegetables use some of the resources that I linked to in the orginal post and read some more before they dive in...although this is really not complicated at all and people have been fermenting vegetables for centuries.

moment of mindfulness...small seeds

When I wake up in the morning, I do a body prayer.  It ends with me on my knees, kneeling forward so that my head is touching the floor in front of my knees.  (For the yoginis out there…the child’s pose).  Yesterday, when I did my prayer, I stayed in that balled position for quite a while.

The bigness of the devastation in Haiti heavy on my mind and in my heart…I think “Lord…I feel so small.”

There was a time in my life that I could have easily retracted into that smallness and stayed there, and trust me the temptation is still there plenty.  But ironically for me, going back to that place of smallness also opens a door to something so vast that words would never fully capture it. I use lots of word symbols to try to convey this vastness…God, Divine, Source, Creator, Universe….most assuredly even these are too enormous to grasp.  But they at least point to this vastness in ways that allow others to relate.

So there I am in a small ball of humanness when the vastness replies back that I don’t have to big to be powerful.  I don’t have to move mountains.  I have to believe that mountains can be moved... 

Reflecting on that, I remember the small seeds that Jude and I planted to grow spruce seedlings the day before.  My thought at the time was who would think that something as huge as a spruce tree can start off as small as a tiny seed the size of a grape seed. We have spruce trees that are almost 100 years old in front of our home.  Looking at the seed and the trees that tower over our home at the same time was mind shifting.  Never the less, we planted those tiny seeds with the expectation of a tree growing…and that is the way my prayers need to be too. 

I pray with the expectation that my small feeble effort is heard by vastness and transmuted into something big and powerful.  Today, I am intentionally using small things (eating, drinking, making tea) to serve as a reminder of how blessed I am and also to serve as a prayer for needs of the Haitian people.  Then my life becomes a prayer by scattering my small seeds where ever I go.


Inspiring seeds that I am watering:
Craft Hope for Haiti
Earthmama's Walking Meditation
All Buttoned Up's Plea for Haitian Orphans
Shivaya Natural's Etsy Shop (opening wednesday)
Indie Fixx's Silent Auction
Our Hearts Go Out to Haiti Fortune Cookie Sale
Green Acre's Heart to Heart Care Kits
Awake is Good Meditation for Haiti (towards bottom)
Through the Eyes of a Yak Hearts for Haiti Project


Please let me know of the other inspiring seeds out there...let's be inspired together.

moment of mindfulness...lighting candles

for Haiti

please join me
privately or here
so we can shine our collective light
 on this inordinate share of suffering

handmade...black apple doll

I made this little dolly as a Christmas present for Jude...he is a little black apple doll. This is the second black apple doll I've made, and I actually started this little guy back in June when I made the first one for a Craft Hope project.  Dolly number 1, who I named Gabriel, is in an orphanage in Nicaragua hopefully snuggled in some little ones arms...or let's make that an even better image...Gabriel travelled to a new home with some little one who once lived in an orphanage in Nicaragua but now has a very loving family to care for him.  I like that one much better.

Jude's doll, who does not have a name yet, ended up looking like a little gnome.  I made him a pair of overalls out of a super soft cotton velour type material and his sweater and hat is from a green felted sweater that I made a purse out of a couple of years ago.  Nothing gets wasted around here.  After I got all the clothes sewed up, I realized Jude has a favorite outfit in just these same colors....his carhartt overalls and a green hooded sweater.

Yesterday, we tried to make the doll some pajama pants, and I had so many problems I just had to walk away from it.  Bad timing I guess.

I have a couple of more handmade Christmas presents that I made to share over the next couple of weeks...but if you would like to take a peek at the handmade Christmas presents I received pop over here.

blessings~

wabi sabi moments...shadows and prints

tip-toeing through my black and white tendencies
to look for narrow passages between
that are not gray
but full of color and light

then moments after I wrote the above, I got this response...

"Out beyond the ideas of the final way
and the only way there is a dreamy field.
I'll meet you there."~Rumi

::
see the complete wabi sabi moments collection over at flickr
I promise more color next week (she says with a smile and a wink)
blessings~

homemade...cultured vegetables tutorial

This has been quite a week, and it almost got away before I had the chance to share this promised tutorial. I was honored to be featured in an article over at Shivaya Naturals this week, and it has been a really incredible to connect with so many inspiring and creative women as a result. All I can say is wow...how blessed I am!

I chose making and eating fermented foods as my one small change for January. I've made cultured veggies before and purchased them from local growers, but my new commitment is to get into the habit of making them for my family regularly so they are available and consumed with every meal.

This time of year it is really important to try to up the nutrition we receive from our foods because we are not eating from our garden or from local sources. Eating cultured veggies does just that. It ups the vitamin content of the vegetables, provides important enzymes, and provides us with healthy bacteria for our digestive tract. And making cultured veggies is super easy and even young children can participate in the preparation. Here's how...

Gather your materials. You need whatever veggies you want to use ( see the end of the post for some recommendations), some sea salt, and we used some caraway seeds (this is optional). You need something to grate or chop up your veggies into small pieces.

Make your veggies smaller by grating or chopping them. You want to increase their surface area...I like keeping things simple and using a grater.

Jude got into the action with the grater.

Then we got out this crazy chopping contraption which was a hit.

Of course you could use a food processor instead.

After the veggies are smaller, use your hand...

potato masher, or spoon to squish the veggies and release their juices.

Add salt to taste. Enough salt is necessary to inhibit the microorganisms that we don't want.

We added some caraway seeds too.

Transfer to a clean dry jar or ceramic crock (no metal).

Push the veggies down until they are submerged under their juices.

Add a bit of water and additional salt if you need to.

Set the jar in a shallow container or bowl in case it overflows and cover it with a cloth or loosely with the jar lid (gases need to be able to escape).

Put the container in a warm spot in your house (ideally 72F). Check on it after a couple of days to make sure the veggies are staying under the liquid. You will start to see bubbles on the surface. You can taste it every day to see how it changes. It will take on a tangy taste, and you get to decide when they are done...generally 3-6 days. Then store your container of cultured veggies in the refrigerator.

You can use all sorts of veggies for culturing. Beets, daikon, and of course cabbage all work really well. You can add ginger, garlic, other herbs in various combinations. The real purpose of this tutorial is to show you how simple making cultured veggies is, but I love experimenting. There is lots of room for that with cultured veggies.

I've always eaten cultured veggies as a condiment, in other words, a tablespoon or so with my meal. I chose to give carrots a try this time because I have a mama hunch that Jude will like these.

In case you are a video person, I found a really great video of Sandor Kantz demonstrating how to make cultured veggies. His website has a wealth of information on fermentation too.

There are numerous recipes out there on the web, but I really enjoyed reading Making Fermented Foods: the Why and How and encourage you to take a look if you are not sure why eating fermented foods is such a good idea for your health. Additionally, there are a great collection of basic recipes at the end. I am particularily interested in trying Shivani's bread, which is a flat bread made from fermented grains...gluten and wheat free if you choose.

But the next fermented food I'm going to try making is still waiting patiently in that brown paper bag ...I'll let you see the results, hopefully, next week!

moment of mindfulness...breaks in the clouds

The warmest part of the day has found us outside for fresh air and inspiration. The garden comfy under a blanket of snow, I seem drawn more instantly to the creek than usual. Yesterday, while we were watching the water slosh against the edge of the ice that has formed along the creek bank, we were graced with the occasional burst of light. We started looking for and anticipating the breaks in the clouds.

our bodies soaking up vitamin d

our souls longing for warmth

our spirits craving light

We go for long stretches without sun this time of year. I have periods in my life that seem like an endless series of sunless day...one thing after another threatening to bring me down. I have to make a point to get out there with hopes of finding these kind of breaks in the clouds, opportunities to rejoice in the beauty and love that surround me everyday if I choose to look for it.

blessings of abundant love and light~

handmade...scarves

The number of crafting projects I try to tackle in December is a bit ridiculous for the amount of time I have to do such things. I think I understand where the idea of elves came about. I don't know how I manage to do so much in such a short period of time, and why I can't manage to spread it out over a longer period when there is not as much happening. Or for that matter why I can't be that productive at other times of the year. But I am grateful that I was able to pull it off.

As many have been doing since the beginning of the year, I am backtracking a bit to share some of the handmade gifts I created. I'm going to spread this out over a few posts, because let's just say I've already felt the shift in momentum. My productivity peaked around December 24 and its been in a free fall since.

First up, a scarf that I made for my mom from a really beautiful Japanese print of chrysanthemums outlined in gold and a solid cotton. I used stitches in play's super simple scarf tutorial that I found when Heather posted a picture of her beautiful scarf and said it was super easy and super worth it. It was really simple and saved me. The fabric choices make the scarf, and while I really started off with the intention of using silk for the ends, I just had to use the Japanese print because it was so striking.


The second scarf was extremely last minute, as in I finished it the morning I was leaving to visit my family in Georgia. I made this one for Mimi, my grandmother. At first I thought I was going to go with one pearl button's easy ruffled scarf wrap, and I loved the version they made. But with my fabric choices it looked too frumpy (too much contrast between the turquoise and the off white for that design I think). So after getting to the point of sewing the ruffled edge to the main part, I cut it all up into strips and serged the pieces together. There are three repurposed sweaters in this one. The blue one is cashmere (it had holes in it). The others were thrifted with the intention of repurposing them.

So there you have it...two handmade gifts that were fairly easy to make and appreciated by the recipients. I'll be sharing some more of my handmade Christmas gifts to come in the weeks ahead.

wabi sabi moments

clothesline in january

I decided I needed a new project for the new year so I started a new collection of photos called wabi sabi moments. My hope is to post one here every week. I will be archiving them in a collection on flickr by the same name. Thanks for taking a peek.

(look here for a shot of the clothesline in june...if you are like me it will make your heart sing;)

one small change

I have been so inspired by all the one small change projects that I have seen popping up on various blogs. Recognizing the power in little acts and always enjoying good company, I decided to jump on board. Hip Mountain Mama started this project to encourage folks to pick one small thing each month to change in their lives to make a "positive green impact and follow through with it" for the next four months.

So what to change?

We do a fairly good job of living in a sustainable way, but we are always striving to do more and enthusiastically embrace new ways to become more so. It's my nature to stretch the boundaries of any assignment...so stretch your definition of environment when you consider my one small change.

My small change for January will be making and consuming fermented foods. Now at first thought, you might not consider this eligible. How is making fermented food better for the environment?

When we begin to take care of our internal environment and consider the interconnections among what we consume and our personal health and well being, even on emotional and spiritual levels, we inevitably begin to see the interconnections in the external environment in which we live. We support an internal environment within our bodies. My desire is to nurture organisms within my body (and in the bodies of my husband and son) that will coexist peacefully and healthfully.

"Your environment becomes you, as you invite microbial populations you share the Earth with to enter your diet and your intestinal ecology." -Sandor Katz

Additionally, taking the time to mindfully prepare food always connects me more to the food. I cannot grate a carrot without thinking about where it was grown (even if I am not sure where it was grown). Fortunately, a large portion of our food comes from people we know or that we have grown ourselves. Those connections are significant and help us not only appreciate the food but the environment from which it comes and of course the people who grew it.

To be completely on the record, I consume fermented foods from time to time already. The change will be to begin making them for my family so that they are always available and to make them a regular part of our lives and our meals. By making them, it will also cut down on packaging and expense.


I've had intentions for this small change for this for a long time. In fact, I have a little friend in this bag that has been waiting patiently to become part of my life... I'll introduce you to them in the near future as well as offer a super easy cultured veggie tutorial this week because even a small change takes commitment and accountability on some level.

blessings~