The Patriarchs

I'm really enjoying documenting our school projects each week, so here are the next set of photos for this past week's lesson. 

We were studying the patriarchs in the Bible (Father Abraham, etc.). Part of the lesson was to learn and understand the way they lived back then. We made apple oat muffins only using ingredients they might have had. We ground the wheat ourselves and only used honey to sweeten it. I explained to them all the processes that the ancients would have had to do themselves, but that we are lucky to bypass.  

After the muffins we made lentil soup. The kids did not appreciate this at all, but Chris and I sprinkled pecorino romano on it and loved it (perhaps not very authentic of that time period, but certainly made it delicious).

Our favorite adventure was building the tent. Father Abraham and his sons lived in tents, so this was a great way to give the kids an idea of what it was like to live back then.

We used a wooden ladder on top of the coffee table to give the tent some height.

And then used clothespins to keep the sheets together.

They made it the whole night sleeping in their tent!

CHICKEN AND SPINACH BURGERS FOR WHOLE 30

I've now made it a little over two weeks on the Whole 30 plan. I have to admit this diet has been really hard for me. Cutting out my favorite food groups has not been easy. I've been trying to get more creative with our meal planning to give me incentive to keep going strong, and this is one of the easy meals I put together for us last week that turned out really tasty.

Our drink was just a little grapefruit and lime squeezed into water.

The tomato salad was just chopped up tomatoes, cucumbers, purple onions, garlic, cilantro, and jalapeño. I squeezed a lime over it and added salt and dill weed to taste. I also added leftover salad dressing that I shared in this previous post.

The recipe for the Chicken Spinach Burgers is as follows:

Mix together

1 lb ground chicken
2 c chopped fresh spinach
1/2 c cooked and mashed sweet potato
1 egg
1/2 t salt

Mold into patties and then cook in about 2T of coconut oil about 5-7 minutes each side. Serve with homemade mayo or (my favorite) a potato/garlic mash (mashed potatoes blended with garlic, salt, fresh squeezed lemon juice, and olive oil).

Enjoy!

Homemade Salad Dressing for Whole 30

My go to salad dressing is simply plain olive oil and balsamic vinegar, but now that the mainstay of my diet has become salads (thanks to the Whole 30 diet that I'm still plugging away on), I'm trying to put a little more effort into my salad dressing. 

This isn't always easy when many vinegars contain chemicals or sugars, and any normal brand salad dressing contains all sorts of ingredients I'm trying to avoid. 

Here is my recipe for one of the various salad dressings I've been making lately . . . 

In a blender or food processor, blend these ingredients:

1 clove of garlic

2 small red sweet peppers

1/4 bunch of fresh cilantro

The juice of one lemon squeezed by hand

2 dried apricots (the natural organic kind without any additives)

1/4 c organic white wine vinegar

2T apple cider vinegar

1/2 c olive oil

1t real redmond salt

This dressing has tang from the vinegar, a freshness from the cilantro and lemon, a spicy bite from the garlic, and yet still sweet from the peppers and apricots.

Casual Date Night and Whole 30

Chris and I got to go out on a fun date night Friday. We did the whole shebang, too--we walked down to the river, chatted, had dinner, walked through all the shops, relaxed at Starbucks and then caught a late movie. We tend to stay up late most nights, but it's for practical purposes. Friday we were actually out till 1 and it wasn't because of work. That felt good. I was just a girl and he was just a boy.

The river was peaceful and the sunset beautiful. We dreamed and talked, and dreamed some more. I guess we're already grown up, but we still talk about what we'll do when we grow up.

We planned to have a real casual dinner, so I kept the look low key. If you notice, I purposely wore something that you can't easily nurse in to celebrate the fact I was baby-less for the night.

The restaurant we chose was a mediterranean place that boasted gluten free plus organic options. This was important to us because recently I chose to start the popular Whole 30 diet for the sole purpose of losing the last five to seven pounds of baby weight I had left. I had some friends and family members who lost a lot of weight on it, and I thought it would be the safest (because I'm nursing), fastest and healthiest way to lose it. My goal was to only be on it a week or two until I got the pounds off, and then add back in a few natural sugars like honey and a few gluten free grains. 

After only one week and two pounds lost, I was ready to quit, but Chris was ready to start. I've reluctantly agreed to continue the diet with him and now we're striving for the whole 30 days. The idea of taking everything enjoyable that you eat out of your diet is pretty depressing for me, but my husband is already reaping many health benefits and since I've dropped one more pound, I'll stick it out. 

Thankfully the diet didn't hinder either of us from wanting to go out to eat and we found that with a few small tweaks, mediterranean food had some great options for us!

Dress - Target (thrifted) - $5

Booties - Gap - $7

Bag - Antonio Melani - $62

Jacket - Old Navy (thrifted) - $5

Weekend Adventures

Saturday's lofty plans got interrupted by Chris's migraine, but my lil sis came to the rescue with the idea to meet me half way by driving out to see me in a little MI town at a mall. That solved our problem of needing to let Chris have a quiet dark house to himself, but still satiated my desire to do something fun on our free day!

We got the kids rides in the kid zone at the mall...

Got an early dinner at Panera...

And then spent hours window shopping at T.J. Maxx, Target, and Toys R Us (for the kids).

So fun to get to see her before she heads back to college!

I'm wearing:

JBrand jeans - Goodwill - $2.70

T-shirt - Express - $7

Hat - Old Navy - $.97

Espadrilles - Nine West - gifted

Sun Ripened Raspberries

My favorite food ever are raspberries. Bright red ones. My in-laws know this, so when we moved here, they brought us over a few raspberry bush starts they had in their yard. We've lived here almost 5 years now and our bushes are quite grown up.

This is our first bucketful of raspberries since having the bushes!

My daughter and I had fun picking just a few more in preparation for some pie baking.

I can't give you a recipe on how we made the pies, nor can I share with you pictures on the pie making process. I did not use a recipe and I did not measure to even recite what I did. And quite frankly, in my attempt to get a flaky crust, I had trouble rolling it out, so the process was quite messy and not very pretty. 

I can assure you, however, this was a very delicious pie, which was even more delicious because it was made with the berries right in our very own backyard.

After pie making, my daughter played me pretend piano and sang a song she made up herself. She's too cute!

Lovin' this summer!

My Two Favorite Foods - Dark Chocolate and Raspberries

As a chocolate addict, I'm always looking for ways to curb my cravings, and or indulge without the high price of calories and unhealthy fats. I've been meaning to try the avocado chocolate mousse recipe that's been all over Pinterest for forever, but only last night finally got around to it.

I didn't even follow the directions exactly or even blend it very well (do you see that tiny spot of avocado to the left of the photo below?) and yet it was still so rich and creamy! Definitely hit the spot!

There are plenty of variations of this recipe out there already. I patterned mine after (this) one.

Here is my altered version of the recipe in the link above:

1 ripe avocado
1 over ripe, freezer burned banana zapped for 20 seconds in the microwave (hey, it was all I had on hand)
4 heaping Ts of raw organic cacao powder
4 T maple syrup
3 T extra virgin organic coconut oil
1 pinch of redmond real salt

Blended it all in a blender, refrigerated it for 10 minutes, and ate with a heaping portion of fresh raspberries. If you haven't tried this already, you really should!