food – piligrace

:finally fall:

October 1, 2018October 1, 2018 PiliLeave a comment

Fall is my absolutely, hands-down favorite season of the year!

This weekend I had a perpetual grin on my face because knitting season has arrived!

We are settling in to our little homestead, but when I say that it’s not the kind of settling in where there is a respite from doing.

Oh, no.

Not. At. All.

It’s more about us starting to find our footing in the rhythm of work needed to make this property into what we see in our heads. It comes with ups, like the beautiful, heavily ladened vines of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. And downs, like the vines getting decimated by birds and resulting a very poor harvest. It’s about figuring our how to work around D’s new work schedule. It’s about despairing our chickens were cannibalizing their eggs, and then finding the hidden nest with thirteen eggs. It’s about a disastrous first attempt at making jelly, and the triumph of finally getting a perfect gluten-free, made-from-scratch apple pie…with apples from our own orchard. (It’s not pretty, but the taste was amazing!)

So, now I have the freezer packed with local, grass-fed chicken, beef, and pork. My knitting mojo is letting me get through long neglected projects such as these two pairs of Stepping Stones for my parents. And I have also thoroughly cleaned and re-oiled my Ashford Traditional. That’s a braid of undyed Shetland wool Atalanta is trying to spin.

And of course, I had to include the photo of a kitten falling asleep in a shoe.

Unfortunately, the last month has proven to be horrid for my fiction writing. The story I was working on is just…gone. I’m not ready to give up, so I keep approaching it from different angles, but it just doesn’t seem to want to let me continue.

I am not willing to give up just yet though.

:fueling up:

June 8, 2018June 8, 2018 PiliLeave a comment

So, I wanted to pull up a an old (and dear) subject. One I don’t share very much anymore.

Nutrition.

Now, my days of telling people what to eat are over, so I am only sharing what I do for myself and my family. I was a restaurant manager (with the degree to prove it) and then a CrossFit Level I coach, so my involvement with food has spanned almost twenty years.

I love food. Love it!

But, I also use it as an emotional anesthetic.

Rocket Fuel Latte: cocoa powder, cacao butter, cinnamon, vanilla, stevia drops, collagen

In my life I have used food to celebrate, to numb myself, to hate myself, to fuel myself, to feel in control and to feel out of control.

Food and I? It’s complicated.

I’ve been on every diet or nutritional plan. I did Slim Fast. My mom talked me into doing the Cabbage Soup diet with her. I was a vegetarian for years. I did the Zone. I did Paleo. I did Flex dieting. I went Keto.

They all worked…somewhat. What none of them addressed was my mind, my heart, my soul, and my relationship with food.

Then, through a keto podcaster, I heard about intuitive eating.

What? Eat what you want? No limits? Trust your body?

That all seemed sacrilegious to me. I had already learned I could not trust my body. Here was a “diet” that advocated doing exactly that. After “falling off” the keto wagon yet again, I looked at the looming holidays and said OK.

Yes.

So simple.

So life changing.

For the first time in twenty-five years I ate what I wanted, as much as I wanted.

The first couple of weeks, I was eating bread and cookies and all the things I had denied myself. Every time I told myself I was fine. I was OK. I was allowed. Weeks moved into months and something strange started happening. The bread lost it’s appeal. The cookies went from four or five to one or none. Quite simple the forbidden fruit, once no longer forbidden, wasn’t quite so tempting any more. By the time my Christmas cruise to the Caribbean came around, I was back to eating mostly paleo, high-fat with the occasional sweet treat thrown in. It turns out that’s the way I like to eat, and how I feel best. The few pounds I gained during the initial weeks of intuitive eating came off.

So, after decades of hyper fixation on food, now I just enjoy it. I start every morning with a fat fuel latte (keto). I eat a breakfast of eggs and veggies (paleo). And if I want dried mangos or a croissant, I eat it.

I no longer need to “forgive” myself, because there is nothing to forgive.

:thursday:

April 26, 2018 PiliLeave a comment

Thursdays are always the day I put the most time in behind the wheel. By the time dinner rolls around it’s all I can do get something on the table. This is tonight’s effort, a fry-up. I cannot remember where I learned to make this, but it’s a lifesaver when your too tired to be creative.

fullsizeoutput_2 — Eggs, breakfast sausages, tomatoes, and kale.

When I called them in from the dinner, my boys came in bearing a sprouted chestnut they found out in the side yard. We have two chestnut trees in front of the house. They are beautiful and big, but I haven’t a clue about what kind of chestnut tree. Chestnuts are not native to California. The American chestnut is actually called the “Redwood of the East” and is native only east of the Mississippi. In trying to figure out if mine are American, Japanese, Chinese, European or a hybrid I’ve become fascinated by these trees.

The day we came to the open house, and first saw what would be our new home, we had to wait for the selling agent to sweep a path from our car to the front porch due to the thick carpet of chestnut burrs all over the ground. The trees are only just now starting to show signs of waking up after their winter sleep. Green is peeking out from the buds here and there.

I’m looking forward to roasting chestnuts for yule at the end of the year. If anyone knows anything about chestnut trees, please help me figure mine out!

fullsizeoutput_3 — The kids want to plant it.

Have a lovely night everyone.

:first blackout:

April 18, 2018April 20, 2018 PiliLeave a comment

So we just had our first blackout. It only lasted about half an hour, thank goodness! We have not yet gotten a generator. The giant diesel one on the property was fried long ago. We just lit some candles and the kids decided to make a “prepper” list of things we need to do if this was a serious situation. LOL!

Sitting around talking in the candlelight was a great way to end the day. Here are a few photos I took of our day. Have a great night everyone!