Where Have I Been?

Ingrid, over at Raw Epicurean, was sweet enough to email me with a "hi, how are you and where have you been?" email. Ingrid, thank you...I really don't know why I have been ignoring my blog...I knew, knowing me, that I wouldn't be consistant with it...that is my M.O. This is what I do....take for example, soapmaking. I bought a home-made bar years ago, fell in love with the smell, the texture, everything about it. So I go out and buy a book on soapmaking...I ended up buying a great book, the bible of soapmaking...but was that enough for me? No, I had to go out and buy four more! Then I have to read them all, before I even start...THEN I go crazy buying everything a person could possibly need (or not) and, finally, sometimes months later, I begin. Now, this was all ok to do with soapmaking..I fell in love with the process and I continue to make my own soap to this day (5 years later!) and I will always make soap. My point to all this is: I have a tendancy to go into something (like my blog) full force, with all the optimisim and promises to keep it going, and, sometimes, not always but sometimes, I fall short or move on to something else. I have done so with my blog....I was having an absolute ball with it, and getting feedback from the likes of Ingrid and my daughter was realllly gratifying. I don't remember, but I imagine I began my Christmas planning in October and got crazy over finding just the right recipes for cookie making and pretty soon time went by, and I kinda checked out of the blog. By the way, Ingrid I did keep checking in on your blog and over at tastespotting etc. and found many, way too many, recipes that I have clipped and piled on top of all the others I have clipped and promised myself to start trying!
So, thanks for the nudge Ingrid and I am going to check back in. But now that you know, don't be surprised if I am AWOL every so often....just seems to be the thing I do. I have been eating much healthier and much more vegetarian and feeling great. In January, I started juicing again on my days off . Trying, a couple of days a week, to give my body a rest from digesting heavy foods...a day of green juices and tea and then a light dinner or salad if I want to do a "raw" day. I stop at the Whole Foods and buy kale, spinach, beets, parsley, cucumber, broccoli, carrots, apples, ginger, limes and juice 'em all up and drink to my health! I just love it and, I think, the main reason is that I feel I am feeding my body exactly what it wants and needs!
Spring is finally just around the corner...no more 30 below zero days and I can hardly wait. I'll get back to you soon!

Raw Treats

I still consider myself a "flexitarian", but definitely more vegetarian than a carnivore. I never have a craving/wanting for steak, but maybe twice a year I will really crave a well done, with blu cheese on top, hamburger. On my days off I continue to stir up new vegetarian recipes and I am finding more and more that I love it and how it makes me feel, physically as well as mentally. I could go this route entirely, but when I am also cooking for others, I find myself throwing in a chicken or turkey now and then, along with fresh fish when available. I grew up living and eating off a garden...my mom and dad were farmers at heart and always had a huge garden full of tomatoes, carrots, asparagus, potatoes, peppers, beans, peas, etc., and so we ate GOOD! Best food memory? My moms fresh vege soup. She would cut up all the veges and serve it up in a warm milk broth and oh yummm, I can taste it now! My mom never preached good eating of good food...it was just what she did and how we ate and (like I always warn my daughter) what you see as your growing up is what you end up doing! My dad was a big hunter and I have eaten more than my share of venison and steak (he was, after all, a butcher)....but somewhere along the line (sorry dad) I was easily able to give up those choices! Now I continue to look at different eating options, and recently I have looked over a few of the raw food blogs. I have a lot of reading to do on raw food, as I don't know even the basics of it yet. One of the blogs, the Raw Epicurean (rawepicurean.net), is a favorite and this last weekend I made her Hazelnut Truffles. They are light and slightly sweet and satisfying and they went together fast. I am usually much heavier on the sweet side of a recipe, so these took a little bit of getting used to for my sweet tooth, but I will be making these again. They are a great ending to a meal and I even have a few with me at work to bite into at snack time. Her blog has gotten me looking into other raw blogs and articles and it seems like all these raw foodies loose weight eating that way!!! That right there is enough to start me introducing raw food into my everyday meals...why not....and if I end up a combination vegetarian/raw foodie, well, I think that would be just fine.

Bookmaking Urge

A few years back, I took a community ed class and learned how to make a "basic" book. I have loved the process ever since and have gone on to make a few more and ventured from there to papermaking. I have never blocked out a lot of time to concentrate and get "really good" at it. Instead, once a year I will sit down and make a journal or book, or spend an afternoon making paper. The problem with doing something like that so sporadically is that I always have to spend hours going over the steps to get started. Well, I have a small pile of beautiful pink, green, white and blue homemade paper and I have been reviewing bookbinding instructions, so I am going to try and dedicate these Fall months to bookmaking! I'm a funny duck, I am fascinated by the love I have for paper (and I passed that on to my daughter, who grew up wanting to sell tickets, or take orders, play office...anything to do with paper!). Seriously, I will find a sale on blank notebooks or on paper and I will buy them and then just "look" at them!! Crazy!! Actually there was a time that I did the same thing with chocolate....I would buy it, put it in a drawer and leave it....I felt good just knowing it was there!! I digress.............back to bookmaking. Cutting and covering the boards for covers, selecting paper for the body, gluing , cutting, pressing, sewing...it really is time consuming but to end up with this book that you created and put together....well, it is a joy. BUT, I never write in them!! I think am going to start giving them away....also, I do want to start journaling, but I've been saying that for years now, so whether it will happen or not is another thing. I understand the whole catharsis feel associated with journaling and I believe it, yet I really hesitate at putting my thoughts down on paper......I wonder why? I do, to some degree, here on the blog....and maybe that is enough for now. Anyway, art books and travel journals also interest me so I may put my energy into one of those and see what happens...maybe I need to stick to the "creation" of the book, and leave the "writing" to another time. Well, those are the thoughts for today......

Summers last cold soup

I love cold soups...probably cuz they taste more like dessert than dinner, and I love dessert! I had a cold cantalope soup at a restaurant a few weeks back and it wasn't sweet nor did it taste like dessert, and I loved it!! It had mint in it (I grow mint!) and I always have cantalope at home so I whipped some up the other day and it was really good! Cantalope has such a mild taste so the mint really kicked the taste up a notch, along with the lime. This is really a compilation of a couple of recipes that I looked at before emptying my fridge.

Cold Cantalope Soup

1 medium, ripe cantalope

1 individual serving of plain yogurt

1 individual serving of Stonyfield Banilla yogurt

2 T. mint, chopped fine

juice from 1 lime

zest from 1/2 lime

Macerate the zest and the mint in the lime juice. Blend all the ingredients in the blender and refrigerate. Makes about 4-6 servings.

All the ingredients can be played with...I used Banilla cuz I LOVE it, but plain or vanilla would still give a great outcome. Mine ended up sweet enough for me, but you could always add some agave nectar if you wanted to make it sweeter. The Fall has moved in and the temperatures have dropped. I find that I really do cook according to the season, so I think this will be my last summer soup. In fact, last night I found myself salivating over the thought of some black bean soup. My darling daughter and myself just came back from a cruise in the Caribbean and I bought two cookbooks that look GREAT!!......one of the first recipes I plan on trying is the black bean soup...and being a Caribbean recipe, they, ofcourse, add rum!! What can be bad about that!!?!

Lavender Sugar

I have been moving my lavender plants around my garden for a few years now, in search of the spot they will love to grow in. I knew they liked soil with drainage and since we have sand for soil, I wasn't too fussy about first planting them. But nope, they needed something more....long story short, they are now in a spot that is rocky, gravelly, sandy, elevated off the ground and they are happy little guys! This is my favorite herb...I really don't care if I didn't use if for anything except smelling...that would be fine. There is nothing like the fragrance of lavender....at least for me. So, this year one of my plants favored me with three flower stems which I cut, inhaled deeply, photographed and stared at. Not enough flowers to cook with or dry so I decided to make lavender sugar! I took about a cup of organic cane sugar and broke up the flowers and stirred them into the sugar, covered them with cheescloth and, as I do with anything herbal and infused, put it into the sun for a couple of hours. Since then I let it sit on the counter for a week or so and this weekend I sifted the flowers out of the sugar and now I am ready to use the sugar in teas or on top of cookies or strawberries or........just stick my finger in and take a taste!

There was a time when I would get a migraines alot and if I could catch them before it got too bad and if I would rub lavender oil on my temples, I could avert alot of hours of suffering. Fortunately, I don't have the headaches anymore but I always have lavender oil in my medicine cabinet. It is fabulous on burns or a dab on the pillow to relax you at bedtime. I infuse it in olive oil by the quart and then use that for soapmaking. Gosh, now that I think about it, if I could be buried in a bed of lavender I would be a happy, happy corpse!!