putting my money where my mouth is... weekly menu

I thought it may be of interest to some people to show you some of what we are actually eating on a day to day basis. I cook or make pretty much everything from scratch, so I mainly just buy ingredients. That way I save a lot of money and I can also be sure that what we are eating is as natural and healthy as possible. Oh yes and I do enjoy cooking, the kids and I work together in the kitchen preparing meals and it is a good family time for us and way for me to express my love and care for them and also for myself. So here are a few samples of things we eat:

 Breakfast

• Cereal or museli (I buy these ready made but am avoiding any with lots of added nasties) and organic milk
• Toast made with home made spelt bread and jam or peanut butter
• Eggs, the kids love boiled eggs and we have them with soldiers/ fingers of toast
• Pancakes 
• Smoothies, at the moment we are adding spirulina to them, they make the smoothie a fantastic green colour and we are hoping that if we drink enough of it we might turn green from head to foot like aliens, well Benny is hoping that! 
• Yoghurt with fruit and seed granola sprinkled on top
• Breakfast rice. If we have rice in the evening I make extra that I keep in the fridge over night. The next morning I add milk, cinnamon and raisins and re-heat it for a lovely quick, hot breakfast

 Lunch
This is usually a simple meal as the kids have lunch boxes for school that I pack with crackers, salad, a piece of fruit, a scone and such like. So we often would eat hummus and bread and salad, soup, or if we didn't have eggs for breakfast an omelette.

Dinner

• Vegetarian spag bol, corn spaghetti and salad. When I make bolognese sauce I make a huge pot using whatever veggies I have in the house, mixed with a whole packet of quorn mince and about 250g of red lentils and a jar or two of passata. I freeze this in portions and I use it for a quick meal, or to make lasagne. It would feed us for about 4 nights and is always a firm favourite.
• Soups and salad
• Sadlebacks, the kids love these and we only recently discovered them

Saddlebacks: cut a potato in half length ways then with a sharp knife cut slits along the back of the potato but without cutting all the way through. Grease a baking tray with a little olive oil (use your hands) then rub your oily hands over the saddlebacks as you place them on the tray. Sprinkle with a little salt (at the moment I am using pink Himalayan salt). Bake in a moderate oven for about 20-30 mins depending on the size of the potatoes. These are lovely served as a side dish or we frequently eat them as our main with different salads.

• Pizza: When i am making spelt yeast bread I make some extra and roll these into pizza shapes and half bake them in the oven then freeze the bases when cooled. Then you only need a bit of passata and some toppings, or for a nice change some garlic and herb pesto and goats cheese.
• Quorn sausages
• Fallafel and salad in wraps
• Chili using quorn mince as a base

Treats and Desserts

We've been eating a little too much of this of late so I am trying to cut back to just once a week, but we would perhaps have something like:

• yoghurt, berries and seeds
• fruit
• home made vegan ice cream (so easy and there are loads of great recipes online you can find)
• cake/ biscuits (home made, we love brownies and muffins and of course carrot cake)
• chocolates:

I first tasted these raw cacao chocolates at a friends house, little did I know how easy they are to make and they are oh so delicious. The kids and I prefer them to milk chocolates

raw chocolate fudge
100g raw coconut oil
150g smooth nut butter (we use peanut but I think any is fine)
100g raw cacao (if you can't get this a good cocoa is also fine, I've used Green and Blacks)
2-3 tbsp honey (or agave syrup)

gently heat the cocnut oil and nut butter together until they are runny, add the rest of the ingredients. Pour into tiny cake cases or I use those silicon tiny muffin cases or ice cube trays. allow to set in fridge for 30 mins or 10 mins in the freezer. actually I freeze mine and keep them in the freezer and the kids and I take out one each after dinner to enjoy and oh boy we do enjoy them.

If there are any other recipes you'd like let me know.
In terms of recipe books I have quite a few but tend not to use them very much, I enjoy just making it up as I go along, the internet is great for recipes if you have the time to trawl through them all. I recently bought myself a copy of The Mystic Cookfire, which I really love and recommend. It is a vegan cook book, but uses ingredients you are likely to have and won't cost a fortune to buy.

I have another post in mind for this wee series coming shortly :-)

i think you'll love this...

I am sharing this film with you here. I have never been so moved by a film in my life. It is breath takingly beautiful and makes me so happy to be a part of the incredible human race. I could write so much about it but really I am moved beyond words.
It is a couple of hours long, so save it for a time when you can sit down with a cuppa and enjoy...I really think you will!

growing ~ June

 for eating...

tomatoes and swiss chard

more tomatoes, lettuces, spinach, rocket

courgettes

basil

Benny's potatoes

peas and berries

beans climbing up the wig-loo

more peas and strawberries under the net

In the field...

some very dry carrots

onions

 for beauty...

i am hoping the sweetpeas will climb up this cotton trellis 

Rebe added a butterfly to our 'Mother Nature'

Oh how I am loving the garden, the green, the growing, the freshness, the excitement and the huge sense of achievement.

sunny summer days

sand left in the bath after an afternoon on the beach

camping out and bbq in the back garden, the four of us

toasted marshmallows at dusk

custom 16" doll on her way to her new home

the final doll on my list!

Now I have reached the end of my long, long list of custom dolls and the sun is shining and the garden is blooming and school is nearly over it feels like it is truly summer here. We are loving every second of it!

cowboy armadillo

Look at this!!

 A cowboy armadillo!

 Rebe took Benny's very special armadillo 'Sandy' away at bedtime into her room and during her quiet time she made him this brilliant cowboy outfit.

 She did it all by herself and brought him down to show me just now (where I grabbed him for some pictures) before tucking him into Benny's sleeping arms to surprise him in the morning.

 He has a hat, waistcoat complete with Sheriff's badge, button and belt all stitched carefully from wool felt.

I love his hat! I am in awe of this wee girl's ability to make things. Nothing is too big a challenge she has an undoubting confidence in her sewing ability that I admire so greatly.
Well done dear Rebe, Benny will be so thrilled :-)

a doll...for me!

 A couple of days ago a friend of mine told me that she was moving house soon and had a wee present for me that she wanted to bring over. A while back she had come and to do a waldorf doll making workshop with me. It was a lovely day and we had all felt it was very special at the time. C had gone on to make some snuggle buddy style waldorf dolls for her sister's creche that are now well loved and played with. Since attending the workshop C has found the same love of doll making that I have. However, she has gone on to try other styles and this is the style of doll that she made for me:

Isn't she wonderful

 She is sitting watching over the living room, so beautiful and serene.
 But that was not all, she had also made a gorgeous bunny for Rebe:

and a little bear each for the boys.

 These are so well loved and played with so much already.

In the card she gave me she had written this quote, it is so touching I wanted to share it with you here:

"A friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive; and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born" - Anais Nin

Shucks!

putting my money where my mouth is..a follow up

So it has been a week or more since I have decided to put my money where my mouth is. I have had a few conversations with friends since then about the changes I am making to our diet and I feel now that I am in a better place to be able to put into words why I am trying to make these changes.

I have not always had a good relationship with food. 

This is mostly to do with the fact that I have not always had a good relationship with my body. 

In fact from a very young age I would even go so far as to say that I hated my body.

 I didn't like being over weight, I didn't like what that meant for me in terms of how society viewed and talked to me. I felt wrong and ugly.

 So consuming food for me was not about nourishing and cherishing my body. 

At times it was a comfort. It helped me to feel better when I was feeling bad. A packet of biscuits gave me the energy to get through the day when Rebe was a tiny prem baby and wouldn't sleep for longer than 45 mins, night or day. 

At times food was a punishment, it was a way for me to say 'fuck you' to myself or to the world.

But I am in a different place now, I love who I am and I love my body. So I am experimenting with also loving food. Not just loving the taste of food, or the making of food, but also loving the buying of food and the growing or gathering of food. 

I want to eat consciously, in way that expresses love for myself, the planet and all people. So for me this means being conscious of where my food comes from, what impact it has on the planet, animals and people. I want to feel good about eating so I need to feel good about the food I eat. I am experimenting with trying to eat a mainly plant based whole food diet, that also takes into account fair trade, carbon foot print, waste production and the impact on the environment.

Of course making this sort of change means lots of research and re-thinking menus and planning and seeking out the best resources.

I think I have found a pretty awesome resource. I heard about the Irish Health Food warehouse about a year ago. It is about an hour's drive from where I live and they sell whole and health foods to health food shops and other businesses and lucky me, they open the doors to the public on Saturdays.

So with a list of the foods I wanted to buy in bulk and my hard saved cash the kids and I piled into the car for the beautiful drive over there. We arrived just before 10am and there was already a queue of people there. 'A queue?' you say. Well yes because they also sell off all of their short dated refrigerated and frozen items and anything that is being discontinued at a crazily cheap price.

we picked up all of this for a mere 17 euro!

It was really funny actually watching all these earth loving hippy types elbowing each other out of the way to grab all the organic butter and tofu they could. I tell you there is no peace, love and harmony when it comes to who is getting all of the vegan cheese!

The kids and I mooched around picking up the things we thought we'd like. Rebe got into the spirit of it and kept coming back with more goodies (that I think she had taken out of other people's bags).

I got some superfoods that normally would be soooo out of my budget,

and I got yoghurts to last (even Joa) a week or 2, and lots of other tasty goodies including some mineral sunscreen that would have cost me 14 euro  in the shops!

 After the free-for-all the kids and I wandered around the warehouse trying to locate all of the other bulk items that we had come to get.

 Being really honest, it was super hard work with the kids, they were bored and had been cooped up in the car for too long, so they sort of ran riot while I tried my best to steer the big trolley thing and hulk 25kg sacks of flour around.
 But it was worth it we stocked up on essentials like cordial for Benny's hot squash

 and organic spelt flour

 and fair trade coffee, organic honey and apple cider vinegar

 The whole lot cost me 170 euro (plus about 5 euro petrol) but it should last a good few months. I will definitely be going back there again regularly, (without the kids) and I am hoping I might be able to set up something with friends to take it in turns going up there.
On the way back we stopped at the farmer's market to get the fresh fruit and veggies we'd need for the week,

 Infinitely nicer than shopping at a supermarket

 the goats cheese and wild garlic flat bread was to die for!
 So, over all our change in eating is going well, I am excited to have found some great resources and the kids and I are feeling light and healthy and full of energy.

Oh and the other exciting thing that happened yesterday...

tooth number 5 :-)