Dying Fish

Today I headed out to Goldstream Park for the Salmon Run. I knew it was almost over, so was not expecting to see much. I bundled my little ones up in muddy buddies, grabbed some snacks and the baby carrier (love love love my ergo) and off we went for a drive. Once we got there, the parking meter was not working. I looked in another parking lot, ran into a park attendant and he said not to worry about paying. Now how often does that happen in Victoria? The city that is queen of pay parking??? Needless to say, I was happy and off we wnet in search of giant puddles to galosh in.
We got to the stream and it was severly full. Of water that is, not salmon. The banks were a bit flooded over, but nothing too major. There were dead white salmon floating here and there, a reminder of the life cycle for all of us. My little one did not mind seeing the fish in the water as some of them were still alive, and she could not tell which ones were dead. There were a few on the ground around us, and I decided to not show them to her. Mainly because I was kinda creeped out looking at the eye sockets that were eaten out and crazy pointy things coming out of the gill areas. I'm not too big on dead things (I am petrified of zombies and all that jazz), probably stemming from growing up on a farm and having to deal with dead animals now and then.
Anyways, we wound our way up to the Nature House and enjoyed a mug of hot chocolate, watched a great dvd projected big screen about local parks (which we bought because my 3 yr old said she really liked the smiley white haired man who likes eagles...) and I'm trying to encourage watching shows that are more informational rather than...Cars or Dora or Pocoyo or... you get the idea. We got back to the car - and this was after I discovered that I can, in fact, carry a 10 month old in my ergo carrier on my back AND carry a 3 year old on my shoulders at the same time. We were warm, dry and ready to have snacks on the way home while we talked about the park. Not too bad in my opinion!

And for the cooking portion - I made baked beans as per my husband's request from scratch. They were ok. But I used cayenne pepper instead of chili pepper. Oops. Dh and I thought it was good, but the kids ended up having bacon and veggies for dinner instead :) I do have another recipe that I just got for baked beans from a family friend that I'm going to try out next month!

Ode to the Rain

It's November in Victoria. For those who do not live here, let me tell you that this means it's raining right now. Doesn't matter what time you are reading this, or what day. It's raining in Victoria now. Funnily enough, I actually don't mind the rain. I don't work outside, I have boots and a rain jacket, my kids have muddy buddies, and I don't melt in the rain. And it's not even cold out, just wet. So what the heck is the big deal? I guess people don't like the rain if not prepared. I've been caught in a downpour sans a decent jacket or shoes. That lovely squelching feeling of cold wet feet when wearing lovely little flats is not new to me. But that doesn't even really phase me. I love to get home and put on fluffy dry warm socks and wrap myself up in a blanket.

One thing I do not like about November in Victoria is the wind though. I have an absolute irrational fear of a tree falling on me while I'm in bed. To the point where I have made my husband get out of bed at 2am to make up the sofa bed in the living room for us to sleep in, all because the living room is at the other end of our house and has no tree to fall on it really. Silly? Well, have you ever woken up at 2 or 3am with a fear? Yeah. Thought so.

Anyways, my 3 year old is getting her full share of puddle jumping and carrying her lovely little pink umbrella outside. She loves the rain. Puddles are amazing right now. I went and bought my own pair of rubber boots so I could jump too. It's more of a gentle hop though, as I usually carry my 10 month old on my back in his carrier. The only thing we need to complete our outer outfits are waterproof gloves. I'm sure they are available somewhere - mec anyone?

Anyways, on another note. I made stuffed tomatoes for dinner. I loved them. My 3 year old loved the melted cheese on them. And my husband remarked that I must be getting domesticated if I'm making stuffed tomatoes. Hmmmmm. Funny how men can be so damned funny when meals are made for them every night practically, hey? Maybe I'll plan a meal for him to cook on his nights that requires multiple steps while he's taking care of two kids...... hmmmmm. Escargot, homemade bread, and maybe a dish that requires fine chopping and dicing? lol

The Ways of Waldorf

Right now we are taking our preschooler to a Waldorf School. I haven't read too much about Steiner's philosophy, which is key to this school. I am gong through a very basic intro type of book right now to his works and I'm trying to twist my head around a few concepts. I'm hoping a Waldorf student or knowledgeable parent might email me to enlighten me a bit more (although I have very few readers as yet...ahem.)
So, kids don't start reading until they are like seven....that's right. 7!!! Seven years with no alphabet. I grew up with Sesame Street....I wrote "Jen is a mutt" when I was like four or something. (Thanks sis! lol) I always assumed that learning to read was the basic stuff of kindergarten. Not according to Waldorf. Their teachings encourage the use of play and freedom of growth, if I had to try and explain. (the two chapters I read put it much more succicently). I'm having a hard time twisting my thoughts around that. It makes sense when I read about it, but when it comes to application to my children....I don't know. I'm so used to a mechanical world where a plus b equals ab. Not how to form lines to learn how they feel. I am feeling a bit out of the loop still, but am going to learn more.
Waldorf is certainly still on the top of our list though. I do understand a bit of what they are aiming for, but I am not sure how to encourage it in our home life. No plastics are used there, toys are quite simplified to encourage imagination, and it's very hands on in all activities. I love love love that all, but when it comes to the curriculum, I am still stuck on the idea that kids learn things according to the rules. It's hard to let go of that idea I guess. I hope I am explaining things right - please correct me or help me understand if you are reading this and have some insight.
So, no reading till 7 in school. My daughter loves books. She absolutely loves to look at the pictures and pretends to read. Maybe it's a form of escapism for her too, as she doesn't watch much tv (dvd's). Which are, of course, not recommended to Waldorf students.
Anyways, there's my ramble for the night. Here's a great bread recipe that I did get from our friend Miss Polly :)

Acorn Hill Whole Wheat Bread (from Waldorf school)

1-2 tbsp dry yeast
1 tsp honey or maple syrup
1/2 cup warm water
-mix these in a small bowl to sit until bubbly

1 1/2 cups warm water
1/3 cup honey or maple syrup
1/3 cup oil
1 tsp salt
6 cups (approx) whole wheat flour
-mix together the top four ingredients in a large bowl. Add the yeast mixture plus three cups of the flour. Stir well, then add remaining flour, one cup at a time until dough is stiff enough to turn out onto work surface. (*I just knead it in the bowl, but whatever!) Knead for about 8-10 mins adding more flour as needed utnil dough is smooth and elastic. place in greased bowl to rise until doubled. punch down and shape into loaves or rolls. let rise until double and bake at 350 for 45 ins for loaves and 20 mins for rolls.

***tastes awesome with homemade butter!!! I have a super easy recipe for that too if you like!

My Garden

My poor poor garden. I'm going to half blame having two young children for its condition. The other half is due to my total lack of commitment to it. And my procrastination and poor watering and weeding skills. I think I've officially failed Gardening 101. Thankfully, there's always next year.
Our garden is about 12' x 12' and is full of dirt, weeds, some leftover scraggly plants and a handful of tiny carrots that never got thinned so stayed eternally tiny. I keep hoping that by some miracle I will turn into a gardening goddess and will have thriving healthy plants bursting with vegetables, laden with the bountiful harvest sown by my two strong hands. yeah. Anyways, back to reality. I do enjoy gardening, really. It's just the time involved that throws me off. It just seems like there's always something else that needs to be done. Laundry, cleaning, playing, work, etc. I am beginning to see why gardening has it's appeal. It's time away from cleaning and laundry and work!
I never know where to get compost from, and is it better to plant seeds or seedlings? How often to water? How do I keep the damned neighborhood cats from crapping in the dirt? Why do the crows dive bomb me when I do try to work out there? Such is life, I guess. Maybe next year I will put more time into it. I'll have a 3 1/2 year old to "help" me, as well as a 1 1/2 year old. Sounds interesting and I know it will involve trampled plants, worm hunting, sticky sunblock, and dirt everywhere. I'm actually looking forward to it.
It's not all bad news when it comes to my garden. I actually have done very well caring for the hardy herbs. Rosemary, lavender, thyme, mint (the creeping mint!), sage and oregano just keep growing and providing a great little harvest each year to cook with. They are very easy to care for.

The Good Planet Company

I stopped by this new location of Fort St. earlier this week. I didn't know what to expect, but it was raining out and just getting inside an area with no rain was wonderful. Especially with a puddle jumping toddler and wiggly baby on my back. We walked in and I swear the air smelled clean. There's no other way to describe it. It actually felt like there was no fumes or crap in the air. hmmm.
My daughter walked off to the corner where they had wooden toys set up for kids to play with - I hope, anyways. She got fairly engrossed with the cooking set and car set, so I wandered around a bit. I kept her in sight, but there was a baby section AND a cooking section right near the back where I could not see my little one anymore. Thankfully, the woman working that day offered to keep an eye on my daughter while I browsed, so I smiled gratefully and wandered into green heaven. I could hear my daughter getting the woman to play cooking with her and her laughter could be heard every 10 seconds or so, much to my motherly ears pleasure.
They had everything in this store, I swear. Cooking stuff, baby stuff, kid stuff, cleaning, bath and beauty options, linens, beds. And it was all supposed to be good for the planet, or at least not as horrible as some of the other stuff out there.
I ended up buying a bottle of bubble bath for the kids and a wooden beaded maze toy for my son. $50 in an instant. The bubble bath is good, but someone got there's hands on it (who knew she could reach that high?!?) and used it to bath her doll's hair. So, we have less than half a bottle left now. My son likes the beaded toy BUT it's made in china and his finger got caught in it yesterday. I think I'll take it back.

Ewwwwww

I had two goals this month. First one was to meal plan, and the second was to incorporate at least two vegetarian meals per week into our diet. So far no good. I am good at meal planning, really. When I have at least 20 minutes to myself to do it. That does not bode well with two young children, a ton of housework and a tired mom. However, I pursue the idea of an ideal month long meal planner that fits into our budget and miraculously offers us nutritional meals on a regular basis that we all like. Yeah. Right. My husband doesn't like green beans, fish (unless freshly caught, preferably by him at a mountainside lake miles away), salmon, cheese, and anything with a milk based sauce. My 3 year old will eat cheese, salmon, and foods that are not mixed. ie, no sauces, no meatloaves, no casseroles. My 10 month old will eat pretty much whatever he can fit into his mouth. I love him. I will eat whatever is on the table and is somewhat warm still. Hence my 20 extra lbs on my once slender belly. Hey, having two kids in three years takes it's toll on a woman's physique. So does chocolate, but whatever.
Anyways, I am totally stuck on vegetarian meal ideas. Again, lack of time. I will make time. After I am done posting this perhaps.
Oh, and we also have a small freezer now - an apartment size chest freezer in hopes that I will be able to double up some recipes to freeze. I bought glass containers to freeze extras in and so far they've been used to take leftovers to work and work quite well as a set of drums for little ones. I bought a few roasts to make pulled pork and a beef roast. My husband carefully marinated the beef roast overnight in a very aromatic in a mouthwatering way sauce full of rosemary and garlic and balsamic vinegar amongst other things. So delicious. I popped it into the oven and did not realize the lid was not on tight. Dry roast 4 hours later. Yum. I made the pulled pork today and overcooked it. We now have pork jerky. Yummmmm.
But, I am one stubborn woman. So I will continue on my small motherly quest for healthy food and tasty meals.

Art fun

I work at a local gallery and love it. Those who know me, know where I work so I won't mention the name. I highly doubt that I have an internet stalker, but for some reason I still feel funny putting that kind of info out there. Even though it's so easy to find out stuff like that. So, back to my gallery position. I've been there for over a year and it's a breath of fresh air most days. Except when that white haired guy smokes out in front of Starbuck's. Ugh. Anyways, we have two shows coming up and I am really looking forward to them. When I first started at this gallery, I was totally self conscious at these types of events. The schmoozing, the cheese, the random social talk to people I really don't know. Thankfully, I am starting to feel a bit more comfy at these things. Still lots of schmoozing and cheese (which I love, the cheese, I mean), but I am starting to know a few more clients and can actually talk about art without sounding too presumptuous hopefully. It's a hard line some days, as I love the artist's we deal with. They are awesome people for the most part. Seeing how they work and what they bring in is like Christmas for me. But, like most jobs, I need to edit the relationship between what my brain thinks and what comes out of my mouth sometimes. One day I will be able to do it better maybe.

For example, we got in a new sculpture one time. It was fluid and graceful. Beautiful lines, wonderfully done. But as soon as I saw it, all I could think was that it looked like a giant vagina. Now I have to see it every time I work. And it's been moved to in front of our work desk. I have to look up and see this giant vagina several times a day now. The only relief I got was when I told this to my coworker and now she shares the same problem. Thank goodness she's got a mind like mine.

"Blessings on the Meal"

Growing up, we did a fairly simple grace before eating our dinner each night. "Thank you for this meal, amen." Nothing fancy, nothing too religious, but a brief acknowledgment of the fact that we were thankful for the food on the table. When I moved away from home, I stopped doing this. I was 18 and was way too wrapped up in myself to bother it seemed. Or it just didn't occur to me. Whatever the reason, this simple ritual didn't appear in my life again until almost 10 years ago.

We were at my not-yet husband's aunt's house for the first time and before we ate one of many to come wonderful meals, they all joined hands and sang a song. At the end of the song, we said "Blessings on the meal." I felt self conscious for some reason and couldn't make out the words, but thought "huh. That was different," and continued onto my meal. I had never met anyone who joined hands before eating, let alone sang a blessing. It turns out it was a Waldorf verse, and now that our daughter has entered this system, I am learning more about the verses shared before eating. (You can google "waldorf verses" or check out openwaldorf.com if you want to learn more.)

So, now we have our own family blessing. We've always made it a point to sit together at suppertime, and my husband and I have added a simple verse to our meal. We light a candle, which is totally exciting to our 3 year old daughter. The first time we joined hands, my husband and I exchanged one of those parenting semi grins that ensured we both felt a bit odd doing it. I held my daughter's hand and my son's arm gently(he is almost 10 months old and must use both hands to eat at all times while seated) while my husband did the same.

"Earth who gives us our food, Sun who makes it ripe and good, Dearest Earth and Dearest Sun, We won't forget what you have done. Blessings on the meal."

It's been several weeks now, and it only took our daughter maybe three nights to learn the blessing. It took my husband and I almost a week (we're kinda slow that way - at least we're well matched). The only thing that has changed is that our daughter likes to lead the way and when we get to the last bit she says, "Blessings on the coconut meal," and giggles like crazy.

Homage to the Potato

I have a thing for potatoes. I love them mashed, baked, fried, french fried, coated in mayo, covered in salt, plain, roasted, and in soups. Maybe it's because they are so versatile that I like them so much. They don't require too much work (that would be the lazy part coming out) and most people eat them somewhat favorably. They're healthy and robust - like me!

My love may stem from... when I was a child (why do pink floyd lyrics still pop into my head after all these years!) ...I grew a potato patch. I have no idea really how big it was, maybe 8 square feet? Anyways, there is a picture of me with long hair braided back, grinning a big grin standing waist high in a lovely patch of potatoes that I grew myself. Well, I'm sure now that I had help of course...lots of it, but in my child mind I grew it myself.

Fast forward to now. I have two young kids and need healthy food for them. Oh, and for my husband and I too, of course. Potatoes have come back into my life in the form of plastic bags. I tried to grow some in our garden in the back yard, but all the neighborhood cats have decided that our garden is their litter box. Yuck. So being paranoid about parasites and ingesting cat poo, we buy our potatoes. My favorite hands down way to make them is simply mashed. Or smashed potatoes as we tell our 3 year old. Boil em, mash em, coat em in a bit of butter and milk, and voila! smashed potatoes.

Hmmm. Plastic bags. Those who know and put up with me know I have a thing about plastic. Maybe next time I head to the store, I'll brown bag them instead. Or reuse something to cart them home in. I'm sure I can think of something.

Welcome to my Healthy Eating and other random things blog

My husband brought home a book about blogging for me. Funnily enough, I read through parts of it and actually decided to start a blog. Mainly for the fun of it, and also because I've realized that I'm getting a bit better about learning about a lot of things. Especially on the internet. I will take a moment to say that whatever I write on here will be my opinion, of course, and that I will try not to "research" my topics using totally random websites. Hopefully the topics will be somewhat referenced by quasi-reputable sites.
Anyways, Lazy Suzan's Table. Yes, after thinking for about two hours intermittently about a title, I had come up with Lazy Suzan, which of course, was taken. So here we are. I'll try to write about things like food (mainly healthy or healthier options), eco friendly toys and parenting tools, all the good stuff in life that will sustain our planet for a few more years. I'm not perfect by any means. I still own a gas guzzling car (my dh would argue about that) and I still buy bananas from Equador, but I also compost and cloth diaper a lot. I even entertain the thoughts of making gifts in my spare time! I also paint and take photographs when I can. Sometimes with a toddler running 10 feet ahead of me and a 25 lb almost 10 month old strapped to my back, camera weilded around my neck and a diaper bag/camera bag in tow. I'll write about recipes with delicious food, advise about not so good foods (I'm recalling a certain loved ones trial with anise flavored tomato sauce), and try not to digress too much. But, what the hell, it's my blog and you're reading it.

So, keep on reading. I'll try not to talk about my kids and husband too much (even thought they are the highlights of my life), and hopefully you'll get a few tips and ideas outta me!