"Clean" Eating

I try to "eat healthy" most of the time. Sometimes I do better at this than others! But as I'm getting older, I'm trying hard to step up my game in the healthy eating department, endeavoring to not only eat "healthy", but to eat "clean." But what does that mean, to "eat clean"?

Well... like any dietary guideline, the definition is not black and white. At one extreme, it may be eating only raw plant foods, while others might consider simply avoiding unnatural ingredients and refined foods to be "eating clean"  For me, it's somewhere in the middle. I've been vegetarian since my teens, and have avoided artificial ingredients, preservatives, etc for many years. It was a New Year's Intention of mine to try to back to a vegan lifestyle, so lately I've also been trying to avoid dairy and eggs, as well as sugar, and anything refined.  I've been sticking to tons of veggies, a few whole grains like oatmeal, brown rice and quinoa, seeds, nuts, fruits and beans.I have really noticed that when I'm eating a nice clean diet, I feel great! And on those occasions when I do indulge in some refined carbs, sugar or dairy, I don't feel so good. Being aware of how my diet affects the way I feel definitely helps keep me motivated to make healthy choices.

So what does a "clean" diet look like in real life? Well... here are some sample menus of what I've been eating lately:

DAY 1

Breakfast:

Oatmeal, with raisins and flax, and a little stevia.

Snack:

Apple slices w/almond butter

Lunch:

Lentil Stew

Snack:

half an avocado

Dinner:

Tofu, veggies and quinoa, with ginger nama shoyu sauce.

DAY 2

Breakfast:

Banana, handful of walnuts

Snack:

Pineapple chunks

Lunch:

A big salad, with garbanzo beans, hemp seeds and tahini dressing.

Snack:

Veggies with hummus

Dinner:

3 bean chili with diced avocado, small salad

DAY 3

Breakfast:
Millet with dried fruit and hemp seeds

Snack:
Green Smoothie

Lunch:
Vegetarian Minestrone Soup

Dinner:
Veggies and buckwheat noodles with spicy peanut sauce

Breakfast! Oatmeal w/flax and stevia

Lunch! Big, awesome salad.

Dinner! Veggies, buckwheat soba noodles and spicy peanut sauce

There are days when I find it more challenging than others to eat well (particularly when the rest of the family really needs a Mac-n-Cheese fix!) But I try to just take it one meal at a time, one day at a time.  Next post, I will share some ways to make it easier to make good choices, even when life gets really busy.

This Year’s Garden, (so far)

I planned on getting some pictures of the garden beds in progress after work today, but it is just raining cats and dogs out there! I’m pleased with this rain, though… as we all know those little seeds need the rains as much as the sun in order to grow!

Even though I can’t get any good pics right now, I’ll still share a rundown of what we have going on out there, so far!

Berries…. In our tiered strawberry bed, our strawberry plants are doing great! They came back bigger and healthier than ever this year, and they’re spilling out of the bed and trailing all along the ground!  Some were starting to creep into the rose hedges and the raspberry bushes, so I dug those up and shared them with friends.  Speaking of those raspberries… we gave them a pruning back in early April, and we put some new trellises up behind them. Next to the raspberries and strawberries, we’ve got two blueberry bushes. We’ve had them for 3 years now, and have yet to see a berry… there seems to be lots of new growth and buds of them so far, so maybe this will be the year we see some fruit!

In addition to our little berry area, we also have seven 6x8 foot raised beds:

Lettuces… We have one bed dedicated to salad greens. In this bed, I have planted some Simpson lettuce seeds, some Bibb lettuce seeds, and some spinach seeds. Still waiting for it all to sprout!

More greens… in another bed, I’ve put in some kale, cabbage, collards and broccoli. These were starts from a local garden center. So far, so good!

Peas and Potatoes… a couple of weeks ago, I planted some pea seeds (right after last frost!) They have sprouted and are coming along nicely! In the same bed, I planted some seed potatoes last weekend, Yukon golds on one side, russets on the other.

Cukes, summer squashes and beets… a couple of weeks ago I planted some beet seeds, and then last week I put in some pickling cucumbers plants, some zucchini plants and some crookneck squash plants. These were starts from the garden center, and they seem to be doing well, so far. Still waiting for the beets to sprout.

Tomatoes, carrots and herbs… For tomatoes this year, we’ve got 5 kinds of heirlooms, along with some cherry tomatoes and some romas. I put those in two weeks ago, and they look great so far. The week before that, in the same bed, I planted carrot seeds, and also put in some basil and parsley.

Beans, squashes and melons… in the last two beds, I have planted green bean and wax bean seeds, sugar pumpkins, acorn squash and watermelons. Still waiting for those to sprout, too!

Peppers… in pots! We ran out of room in the beds, so this year we put our peppers in pots! We’ve got some sweet banana peppers, red bells, poblanos and habaneros.

Although we got a late start planning our garden this year, I’m pleased that we managed to get everything into the ground by mid-May, right on schedule. We managed to catch up by buying starts from the garden center, rather than grow our own seedlings. This is definitely a much more expensive way to start the garden, though it certainly took a lot less time and effort.

So now we watch, water, weed and wait!  

Family Time: A Spring Hike!

This time of year is quite busy for our family! Little League season, dance recital season, lots springtime activities with our homeschool group keep us going almost non-stop. In spite of our best efforts to keep our schedule from getting too overwhelming, (a popular topic, for me!) we often end up with a month or so here and there where we seem to have a LOT of obligations on our time. But when things get this hectic, it becomes even more important to schedule in some quality "downtime" wherever and whenever we can squeeze it in! Yesterday, we realized we had NOTHING on the calendar... not even baseball! We seized the opportunity, and had a perfect Family Day. We started with a big pancake breakfast, made by Ladybug. Then we puttered about the house, enjoying the fact that we didn't have to RUSH to get anyplace. After lunch... the highlight of our day... a gorgeous spring hike at a local reservation!

Noodle, Monkey and Ladybug, enjoying the view

Hiking is a favorite activity for our family. We love to be outside, and we like to stay active. I also love that it's something we can do together as a family, that costs absolutely nothing! We are very lucky to live near some great hiking places. There are several parks and reservations within a short drive of our home. Yesterday's trail was a 4 mile hike on rocky terrain which gave us lots of beautiful views. We were out for about two and a half hours, but it was such a beautiful day that it felt much shorter! We came home tired, but happy, and wrapped up our day with some homemade pizza and a family movie. BLISS, I tell you.

Today we're back to business as usual... Monkey's got a baseball practice this morning, and then we've got some household projects to tend to, and some stuff to do to prepare for the work/school week... but after our nice "Day Off" yesterday, we are refreshed and ready for whatever the week may bring.

Next post: a Garden update!

Growing Potatoes Indoors: The Final Results

Well,  it turns out our Indoor Potato Growing Experiment was, as my older kids like to say, an "epic fail."  We planted, we watered, we waited, we watered some more, and we waited some more. And THIS is all we ended up with when we dug them up:

Sad, no? We've always done well with our outdoor garden potatoes, and while I wasn't sure of exactly what to expect with our indoor experiment, I did expect that our results would be better than this. I'm not sure exactly where we went wrong. Did we not give them enough space? Did we not give them enough time? Maybe not enough sunlight? Hmmm. We do plan to do further research, and to try this experiment again sometime.

But in the meantime... we are VERY focused on getting the OUTDOOR garden ready for the season! I usually try to have everything in the ground by mid-May. I'm a little bit behind schedule this year, but I am plugging along, getting out there every chance I get. Sometimes those chances are just 10-15 minutes here or there, but it's all adding up, and the garden is slowly taking shape. I will post photos of our progress, soon!

Homemade Citrus Cleaner

Well, hello! It's been awhile... but I've got something good for you today... We made some awesome new All Purpose Citrus Cleaner! I can't wait to tell you all about it!

For most general cleaning purposes, I use my basic window/glass/all purpose cleaner, and it works great. But, I was looking for something that has a little more "oomph" for tougher cleaning jobs, such as greasy stove tops. Many years ago, I used to buy a commercial citrus cleaner which worked great, and I realized that when I stopped buying cleaning products and started making my own, this is one item which I never really replaced. And so that brings us to our current experiment! Here's what we did:

First, we saved up some citrus peels! You can use any citrus peels for this... lemon, orange, clementine, grapefruit, whatever... as long as it's citrus, it will work! Ours were mostly clementines, with a lemon peel or two. Next, we stuffed those peels into a jar, poured in white vinegar to cover the peels, capped it, and wrote the date on the top. Next, we let it sit for two weeks. This was the hardest part! I am not the most patient person. At the end of the two weeks, we strained the now-citrus-infused vinegar into an empty spray bottle and diluted it 50/50 with purified water. That's it! (BONUS: If you have a garbage disposal, don't just throw the spent peels away... you can toss those peels into the disposal to freshen it up... makes your whole kitchen smell great!)

I am sold on this recipe. It works GREAT. I was most surprised that it really doesn't smell too vinegary, but really smells VERY citrus-y!

I have more stuff to share with you soon... Remember our Indoor Potato Experiment? (see also: Indoor Potato Update)They look like they are ready to dig up! Stay tuned....

Drying Peppers

So The Man of the House loves himself some hot peppers. The hotter the better! On a recent shopping trip, he picked up a whole bunch of habaneros. For those who have never tasted a habanero, let me tell you, these things are HOT. Habaneros are generally considered to be about 60 times hotter than jalapenos... Yikes!

What this basically means is that we had a big bag of hot peppers that no one in the house except for The Man was willing to eat. And there were far too many peppers for him to eat before they went bad. Since we are all about Simplicity and frugality, we don't like to waste food, so we went looking for the best way to preserve those peppers so The Man could enjoy every last one of them.

We ended up settling on drying the peppers. I washed them all and set them on a baking rack, which I put into a very low oven. I do have a food dehydrator, but I didn't feel like taking it out since I had another project going on the counter that day. So the ol' oven it was.

I did notice that some of them dried faster than others, so if you try this at home, be sure to watch them carefully. I did pull some out sooner, once they seemed done enough, and left the rest in to finish up. Once they were all dry, I put them in a jar for storage.

The Man has been known to open this jar, and just bite right into one of these. Crazy, I tell you!

Garden Planning, and Indoor Potato-Growing Update!!

Preliminary Garden Plans

Typically, February is the time when we start milling through seed catalogs, making lists and planning out our garden for the year. Thinking ahead to the Spring in this way really helps us get through those long, dark, final days of winter. This year, we are a few weeks late getting started (January and February were a blur and we're still recovering) but, better late than never, no? This past week we pulled out our Garden Notebook, and we've started a page for 2013! We're making lists of things we want to plant, and drawing our diagrams of what may go where. When making our garden plans, we always look back at our previous years plans, so we can remember what did well in which beds, what didn't, and what needs to be rotated this year. 

While all this planning is going on... our Indoor Potato Experiment continues to thrive! These things are growing like crazy! I'm beginning to think that maybe I put too many in, and they are a bit overcrowded. Something to remember and learn from for next time, I suppose! 

Potato Plants!

I am hoping to start posting more frequently again soon, as we try to settle back into "normal" life. I'm sure I will have much to write about, as this is a very exciting time of year here at The Homestead.