bee creative

in season: food choices

Saturday mornings often start with paging through cookbooks and making lists.  This morning was no exception...

My newest cookbook at the moment is Super Natural Everyday by Heidi Swanson.  I'm finding lots of intriguing recipes in both the cookbook and at her blog that support how I've been changing my diet; most importantly at this time, less sugar. 

After 3 weeks without dairy, wheat, sugar and a few other things I am feeling different enough to know that I was eating too much of these foods.  I don't have any extreme allergies or intolerance's, as I've reintroduced everything and still feel great, but I am also amazed at how much better I feel.  More energy, less congestion, no stiff joints. 

One of the recipes I tried today was for power bars.  They came out tasty but crumbly...I will try it again with just a tad less dry ingredients to see if it holds together better. 

I also tried fine-tuning my mocha recipe:

This week I've been sweetening my coffee with honey.  Today I added some chocolate to the honey.  I melted about 1 ounce of chocolate in about 1/4 cup honey.  I added about a tablespoon to my espresso along with some hazelnut milk.  Tastes very, very good.

And then there was dinner.  Swiss chard that I shredded and marinated with a bit of apple cider vinegar and olive oil, bread from the farmer's market, and a bean burger made using a recipe from Daniel Orr's cookbook, Farm Food.  I tweaked the recipe a lot so after I test it out again I may post a recipe. It's made with black beans, lentils, wheat berries and a few other things.

I loved it! 

Now there are more dishes to do.

 

green, green, green!

This surprised me.  I used pansies in an aluminum pot (India Flint's technique for frozen flowers).

The pansies I used.  I just kept saving them as I dead-headed.  The cheesecloth I used for straining turned a lovely periwinkle blue so the green might be from the aluminum pan.   Just a theory. 

First batch, soaked for one day.  A faint green.  Tested on cotton, silk, and wool. 

One week soak.

I hope it lasts. 

 

stages

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players:  they have their exits and their entrances..."  Shakespeare

Beginning:  quinoa with apples, dried cranberries and apricots, a touch of honey and some cinnamon.  Yum.

Some stitching while I waited for the dew to dry.

The garden.  The raspberry patch was alive with bees.

Middle.  Taking a break during the hottest part of the day.  I originally checked this book by Carol Deppe out from the library.  I liked it so much that I went and bought a copy.  

Back to the garden.   Pulling weeds.  Poking around to see if the beans are sprouting (they are), planted basil, more lettuce and some sunflowers.  Plotting out where the squash and corn are going to go. 

And then....more stitching.  I wasn't quite sure where the spiral was going to go when I started.  I started thinking about how spirals like this often represent the wind for me.  And so it became a windflower.

 

The end.

(not really) 

 

crossroads

My woven blanket has found it's name. 

Crossroads. 

Every place that fabric meets fabric is an intersection of sorts... 

And considering that perhaps those times of day when dark meets light, dawn and dusk, that those moments are a kind of crossroad.

That the present moment is a crossroad between the past and the future. 

Which direction to go? 

one face

Not quite finished, but a good reminder of what can be done in one hour.