Dairy Free Cottage Pie

So I made this one up based on cottage pie that I'd made before.  I forgot to stick in a little tomato sauce to make things less dry, though it didn't come out dry at all actually.  Since I am trying to be as zero waste as possible, I put in how the food is packaged in parentheses.

For the mashed potato topping:
4 medium to large baking potatoes (loose produce), peel and boil.  Save a cup of the liquid.*
Mash the potatoes and season with salt, pepper and garlic salt to your liking.  Add in some of the liquid while you are mashing, to make the potatoes creamier in texture.

For the pie filling:
1 package of ground bison (plastic packaging)
1/2 onion (loose produce),
2 big sticks of celery (loose produce)
4 shitake mushrooms (loose produce)
Spinach (CSA but in a plastic bag)
Fresh basil and parsley (from kitchen counter garden)
Garlic (from a jar)
I chopped all the veggies pretty finely.

This is my new favorite thing to cook with!  Makes everything delicious!

I browned the bison, seasoning with garlic n herb spice jar I have in the pantry.  I also sprinkled liberally with coco amino acids.  Once browned, I put it aside and sauteed up the chopped veggies.
I bought bison at the CSA.  I guess it was 1 lb?  Weirdly, it did not say on the package but it was two very thick already shaped burgers.  But I just thawed this enough to break them into ground beef like you'd do for tacos or something.

Then I put the meat aside and in the same pan I sauteed up all the veggies.  This is when I forgot to add a little bit of tomato sauce.  Oops.  Then I incorporated the meat and veggies together.  For my veggie hating family the veggie to meat ratio was not good, so I only mixed in half the veggies and saved the other veggies for leftovers (maybe for an omelet?).

I put the meat mixture in my pie pan and then spooned the potatoes over it to make a nice pie crust of mashed potatoes.

Baked in oven at 350 for 20-30 minutes.  At the last minute I topped the potato crust with finely chopped green onions and sprinkled some paprika on there as well to make it look pretty.

I serve the heated tomato sauce as a sort of gravy.

*I've discovered a new trick for remembering to save the water when cooking things like pasta and potatoes.  Some recipes want you to use some of the cooking water, but I would always remember after I had already dumped the pasta or potatoes in the colander in the sink.  But I came up with a neat way to remind myself.  When I notice that I have to save some cooking water, I immediately grab a mug from the cabinet and set it by the stove. Then I put a pot holder on top of it.  When I go to drain my water out I reach for the pot holder and lo and behold there is the mug!  My brain goes:  oh yeah, need cooking water.  So I dip the mug in and get as much water as possible, set it aside and then drain the food.  I am so proud of myself for thinking up this little trick up!  Aren't I brilliant?  LOLOL.

Sausage and spaghetti

I made a delicious meal last night. 

I got 1 lb of sausage from my local CSA.  I browned it up thoroughly (always afraid of raw pork). 

I cooked up some Jovial brown rice spaghetti. 

I put the browned sausage into some tomato basil sauce (jar - I think it was Newman's Own brand).  I only used about 1/3 of the jar because I knew B didn't like a lot of tomato sauce.  I let that burble on the stove while I browned up some chopped up shitake mushrooms in olive oil, garlic and salt.

I drained the spaghetti when done (you do have to be careful with rice pasta. It doesn't do al dente well, I've found). 

Then I mix in the sausage, tomato sauce and incorporated it all together well.  We topped this with the chopped mushrooms.

It was heavenly.  Not too tomato-y at all for B and she usually turns her nose up at mushrooms but she loved these!

It was so good, I had it for breakfast. 

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

I broke up with the American Solidarity Party.  I wish everyone involved well.  I truly do.  But frankly, I think it has a snowball's chance in hell of really working out.  It is a noble project, to try to be be a pro-life for the whole life party.  But unfortunately there are too many factions that contain fringe politicos and people who seriously have no idea of what solidarity is supposed to mean.  They think it means posting facebook memes but then backstabbing your fellow party member who disagrees with you.  It got too dysfunctional for me.  I am weak and can get sucked into that behind the back talking, power struggle stuff.  I am too emotional.  I couldn't figure out how to navigate it.  I stuck with it for over a year and it did make me happy and helped me get through the Trump election.  I was happy to be involved for a while there, but the dysfunction just got to be too much.  It distracted me from what I should really be putting first, here and now in my life.  So I left.  I am sure people are angry at me.  I am sorry.  I truly am.  I just don't want to be involved in any more tempests in teapots.  Too life-sucking.

I am praying for all involved.  We are all human and fallen sinners.  Me, foremost.  I am especially aware of my sins today.

Menu Planning for the week

So we've had a lot of hits and misses.  More misses actually.  I did make homemade gluten free bread.  This tastes good right after you bake it.  Not so good the longer you wait. But I plan to make bread crumbs with the leftover bread.

Last night we had a movie night and had popcorn (made with coconut oil which really tastes good!) and soda.  I am not a big soda buyer so it was a treat.

Now to plan for the week.

I bought a big bag of frozen berries.  I have been avoiding them to be zero waste but I can't make that my focus right now.  B needs those vitamins.  So we can have smoothies.  She rejected the coconut milk but I think we'll try again.  Instead we've been using almond milk, which she does like. 

This morning we'll also have banana pancakes and bacon. 

Dinner - pot roast, potatoes roasted in olive oil with rosemary, Caesar salad

Breakfasts will be either eggs cooked in some way, smoothies or oatmeal.
Lunches are either leftovers, eaten out, or some variation of vegetables soups with nice deli ham or turkey.

Dinners:
Monday - pasta with tomato sauce and sausage, salad with lots of added veggies
Tuesday - cottage pie, salad, applesauce
Wednesday - Baked chicken with rice, veggies, fruit salad
Thursday - Stuffed sweet potatoes (stuffed with shredded leftover chicken and cranberries), salad and veggies
Friday - crab cakes, roasted veggies, carrot slaw

Sweet Tooth

So things have been kind of depressing around here, food-wise.  Last night, while B and R were working on their Harry Potter jigsaw puzzle that B gave R for Christmas, they had a craving.  So R suggests ice cream, but B isn't supposed to be eating dairy now.  He wound up going out and getting Katz donuts from the nearby Giant Food store.  These are gluten and dairy free and actually pretty good!  You have to keep them frozen and then heat them in the microwave for 3 to 5 seconds.  They do a good job of satisfying a craving.  However, they come in a box, in a plastic sleeve, in a plastic tray.  The box can be recycled, the plastic sleeve is headed for the landfill and the plastic tray is supposedly recyclable but I know that most plastics don't get recycled.  Still technically it is accepted by our trash co as such.

But this made me realize that I have to have on hand snacky stuff, other than fruit, if we are going to stick to this thing.

So I'm brainstorming here:

Peanut butter cookies - I've made these before and posted about them.
Popcorn - maybe kettle corn to satisfy the sweet tooth?
Banana ice cream - I think we experimented with this a long time ago.  1 ingredient ice cream.
Popsicles - this mango-coconut version sounds good.  To make it zero waste, I'd have to buy mangoes, let them ripen, chop them up and freeze them.  Also, I need reusable Popsicle molds.  I used to have some a long time ago when the kids were little.

And I don't want to encourage eating tons of hard candy, but occasionally treating oneself to some of those hard candies that come in little tins might be just thing to lift B from feeling sorry for herself and her deprivation to maintaining a good attitude. 

Another thing also would be to have a soda for a treat.  I occasionally buy root beer in glass bottles, so that's another way to go.

There are other more complicated recipes that I need to try.  The nutritionist gave us a handout with lots of recipes for 'energy balls' or 'bars' that are supposed to be good for snacking or desserts. 

I think B might get into making these things.  She does like to bake.  So maybe that will transfer to preparing this stuff. In fact she latched on to one of the recipes for a breakfast smoothie, a kiwi-mint smoothie.  The nutritionist suggested it when B said that kiwi was one of her favorite fruits.  So B actually prepared everything last night so she could get up this morning and make this for her breakfast.  I went out and bought two mint plants because you are supposed to use fresh mint leaves.

Menu for today:
Breakfast:  Kiwi-mint smoothies
Lunch - lentil veggie soup (organic from the store) with little ham - red pepper-cucumber kabobs.  I got the ham over the counter.  Boar's Head which is gluten and msg free.
Dinner - chicken-broccoli pesto gf pasta and salad.

Anti-Inflammatory Diet

My poor 16 year old has been struggling for a long time now.  It truly began her sophomore year though I think it was coming on slowly her freshman year as well.  But in February she went on a field trip up to New York with the theatre department of a local high school.  She has a good friend she knows from the community theater there who attends and she went up with her.  There she had a bad anxiety or panic attack?  I'm not sure of the difference.  Now she'd complained about milder issues before, so this wasn't totally new to us.  But I had written it off as her just being melodramatic.  She is fairly melodramatic so I always to fight a boy-who-cried-wolf reaction whenever something happens like this.  She never just has a headache - she's always practically dying, etc.  You know, girl drama.  Except that after coming back she definitely seemed out of sorts.  She had less energy, she cried more, her pms got horrible.  Then she came down with a flu for the whole month of April practically.  And she who was so proud of her good grades suddenly couldn't function very well.  She'd been complaining and freaking out over Biology class all year but getting A's.  But the last few months she really struggled.  Her ability to concentrate was really shot.  She limped through the summer and in August she was diagnosed with Hashimoto's.  We are not new to this.  My husband and two of her siblings already have it, having been diagnosed in the last couple of years.  Rick and my oldest daughter are asymptomatic and S has had such a checkered history that it seemed like the least of things.  And for them they simply got on the synthroid and everything was fine, apparently.  Well, this isn't happening with B.  It is taking a lot longer to find the sweet spot for her meds.  Her numbers are unusual.  She's been up and down all year.  We've had to ease her course load.  We've had to live with a depressed teen, if any of you know what paradise that is!  Anyway, at the recommendation of her doctor we had gone gluten free.  But then the doctor referred us to a nutritionist, who we just saw yesterday morning.  A lovely young woman, very personable (she's got her own blog) who wants B to go on an anti-inflammatory diet. 

B cried a bit.  She doesn't want to be sick and she doesn't want to have to have a nutritionist and she doesn't want to give up eating cheese. She hates always having to be accommodated whenever there's a pizza party or some kind of celebration where they have cake and cookies.  She is brimming with resentment. 

On top of this, my family has the worst attitude.  They resent me being gluten free at home.  My thing is: I'm dealing with a grown man, a 22 year old and a 19 year old.  They are free to go get their gluten elsewhere.  I do feel a bit sorry for the mom and child staying with us.  They pretty much have to eat what I cook, though not always. 

But honestly, for all our health we should just all jump on this band wagon.  I mean two of the people also have Hashimoto's.  Rick keeps having mysterious strokes and had a heart attack at 39 that they never figured out the cause for.  They don't know why he had the strokes.  He's had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis since he was a boy that he still suffers from.  Why wouldn't he want to change the way he eats if it might help.  At least try it out?  This is the same diet they recommend for people with arthritis.  He is so stuck in his ways and so rigid.  It's amazing.  It's like someone who is still smoking cigarettes as they die of cancer.  It's crazy to me.

Anyway, we go back to the nutritionist in a couple weeks and she's going to help with meal planning.  In the meantime, I'm just going to shut up but when I cook I'm going to try to ease into buying the food and making dishes that lean towards anti-inflammatory. 

Last night we had slow cooker chicken and a big green salad, with raspberry applesauce for dessert.

This morning I am going to use up the gluten free batter (with milk) I made for Sunday's breakfast.  B and I can have Cava for lunch.  Tonight for dinner I'm making beef stew with lots of veggies.  Wednesday I'm planning on having vegan pesto with chicken and broccoli and gf pasta.  That's as far as I've gotten.

If you think about it, pray for us.  Pray for healing, patience and perseverance.  Thanks.

Monday Zero Waste Meals - Soup and Salad

Potato cheese soup is a family favorite that I've found has been easy to make nearly zero waste.  I originally got the recipe from Laurel's Kitchen.

3-4 pretty large baking potatoes - keep peels on, but scrub them thoroughly (loose in produce section)_
2 carrots (loose produce)
1/2 a large onion or a medium onion, chopped (loose produce)
butter (I try to get the local kind wrapped in wax paper)
salt to taste.  I'd say a good tsp at least.
milk (local in glass returnable jugs)
cheese (bought over the counter using my own container)

You can cut up the potatoes and carrots to make them cook faster, then cover them with water in a pot and simmer until soft.  Don't let the cooking water boil away.  You need it!
In the meantime, chop your onion and then saute in butter until soft and translucent.
Take the pot with the potatoes, carrots and cooking water and let cool.  If I'm in a hurry and have room in the fridge, I'll set it in there for a bit to hasten cooling.
Once cool enough, peel the potatoes.  Put the peels in the compost and the potatoes back into the water.
I have an immersion blender which comes in handy for this next part.  Mash or blend the potatoes and carrots in the water until it is smooth.  Add in the onions and continue to blend.
Then add in 2-4 cups of milk - depending on how much you have and to your taste.
Heat everything back up gently on the stove.
Add salt to taste.
Grate or chop finely your package free cheese.  Anywhere from 1 cup to 3 cups, again, depending on what you have available and how you like it.
Add the cheese into the hot milky soup and stir gently until it is all melted.

This soup is good hot or cold.  It actually tastes a little better the next day.  It makes a nice breakfast soup too!

Zero Waste Cobb Salad

Buy your lettuce, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, green onion, celery, mushrooms, whatever you can get loose/without packaging.  Wash, dry and chop to make the salad.

Add in:  nuts and/or seeds you bought in bulk (bringing your own container or bag), chopped up deli meat you bought over the counter using your own container, ditto for cheese.  For a bit of sweetness you can also chop up an apple and add that in as well.

Dressing - around here there are no places to get bulk items such as olive oil, vinegar or honey.  EXCEPT!  I just made a trip to a new grocery store in my area, EARTH FARE, and they do have these items in bulk!  However, I hardly ever go to that area of my county, so I'd have to plan a special trip and I'm not sure the gas and the time is worth it.  I wish the store was closer!

Anyway, making your salad dressing is pretty easy.  The formula is 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar.  You can also add in lemon juice.  Depending on our mood, we might add in any of the following:  salt and pepper, chopped garlic, mustard, mayo, a cooked egg yolk, honey.  If you use the cooked yolk to thicken the dressing, you can slice up the white of the egg and add that into your salad.  How fancy we get with our dressing all depends on how inspired we feel!  Or you can just do oil and vinegar.

Zero Waste Home - Book 3

Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson is kind of the bible of the Zero Waste movement, I think.  Bea Johnson sort of launched the zero waste movement in the U.S.  She's been featured on TED talks.  In fact she's coming to my area (Washington D.C.) in April to give a talk.  Since I became an advocate trying to move towards zero waste myself (I have such a long, long way to go!) I've been meaning to read her book.

I have to admit I have not been reading it cover to cover.  Actually, I am reading it on my Kindle, so I don't have covers!  But I mean I haven't really been reading it from beginning to end.  The first part is suitable to read that way, because it details her journey to zero waste, but after that it becomes a reference book on how to reduce one's wasteful lifestyle in different situations.  The one area I am still trying to work through is the kitchen and cooking.  But she has other sections on travel, the workplace, holidays, make up and lotions, etc.  So I've been skipping around reading what grabs my attention as issues come up in my life.

This book is really practical in many ways.  She lists lots of alternatives.  The resource list at the end is invaluable.  She's very to the point but with some humor.  She points out where people might criticize her, for instance because she still eats meat or she still flies airplanes.  She knows that everyone will have some limits because no one can be truly zero waste.  But she has really thought things through.

One way she was able to get so far in her journey is that she has a husband fully on board.  For those of us who don't have that, it's a lot harder to hoe the row!  But I keep telling myself, every little thing is good.  Baby steps.  As long as we keep moving in that direction, no matter how slow we go, we are still living in a better way.

I highly recommend this book as a one stop resource for gleaning information and ways to cope with limiting waste.  You won't be able to do everything, but that's ok.  The book is also inspiring.  So if you feel yourself lagging or backsliding, it is a good pick me up as well.

Two thumbs for people who want to live a little gentler on our home, Earth.

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Zero Waste Monday Meals

Bacon Egg Cup

I forget where I got this idea from, but you can google this and come up with many mentions.  This is gluten free and can also be zero waste as well.

Bacon - I get my bacon over the counter* at a nearby grocery store.  I bring my own container.  I took a photo a couple days ago but seem to have mislaid my phone between last night and now.  So no photo of bacon curled up in my little tiffin.

Eggs - Buy these in recyclable cardboard, not the ever more present plastic egg cartons.

Cheese - buy this over the counter  Bring your own container. 

Line a muffin tin with a strip of bacon in each cup.  Heat oven to 350 and cook the bacon 10 or 15 minutes (depends on thickness of cut).  Take the muffin tin out and crack an egg into each cup.  I crack the egg into a saucer first so I don't have to worry about cracking them onto the side of the hot muffin tin and possibly getting shell into the already partially cooked bacon cups.

Sprinkle some cheese on top of each egg and then put back in the oven for about 20 minutes.  You can also top each egg cup with chives.  Though I have not bothered to do this.

*You may have to hunt around for a store near you with an old fashioned deli/butcher counter.  Around here stores like The Fresh Market, Whole Foods, Harris Teeter and Wegman's  all have counters.  Places like Trader Joe's, Aldi's and Target do not.

You can round out this breakfast or brunch dish by cooking up some fried potatoes (potatoes and onions bought loose in the produce section. This a great use for leftover potatoes) and fruit salad (selection of fruit bought loose as well).

Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell - Book 2

I choose to read Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell because I thought it was the one novel by her I hadn't read yet.  In the classics challenge I am doing this year, one of the categories was a book with a one word title.  But the minute I started reading it, I realized I had already read Ruth.  It's another novel, Sylvia's Lovers by Gaskell that I haven't read yet.

However, Ruth is a really good novel so it was a great reread.   I was still thinking about misogyny when I dove into this book.  Ruth is seduced by a man when she is barely 16 and then abandoned by him.  A dissenting minister with a crooked back and his sister take her in.  She's pregnant and has a child.  How does this household deal with the problem of her 'sin' while trying to raise the child up in a way that protects him from his origin? 

What I liked about this novel is that all the characters are deftly crafted.  Everyone is a sinner, from the mildest like Miss Benson to the greatest like Mr. Bellingham, the seducer, or Mr. Bradshaw, the quintessential Victorian patriarch.   They are all real, sympathetic people.

This is a Victorian novel and Gaskell was a good friend of Charlotte Bronte's and even wrote the first biography of her.  But Gaskell never gets as over the top or as supernatural as the Brontes tend to in terms of melodrama.  Gaskell writes really deeply Christian works that I think get Christianity much better than the Brontes.  The Brontes were in revolt against their domineering, feared (but also loved) father's version of Christianity.  But Gaskell has a far deeper grasp, so her novels are more about how Christian virtue sees one through the hardest times and makes them meaningful and gives beauty to suffering. 

The book also reminded me of Mansfield Park by Jane Austen because it is also about a powerless, outcast woman who has an accurate interior compass when it comes to steering herself towards what is right.  What do you do if you don't have any power and if people keep misinterpreting what you do and condemning you for it?  Good people of poor judgment who are less in tune with what is truly right and wrong keep pushing you into situations that cause greater sin.  The answer in both books is to cultivate a great, long suffering strength in one's relationship with Christ.  If that is the center then everything else will eventually work out. 

So I am glad I reread Ruth.  I highly recommend it!  Now on to Sylvia's Lovers!

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

City of God - Book 1- 2018

Well, it has taken me over a year to read this book, but I did it!  And I'm glad I did it!  I feel like I should just go back to page one and start over again because 1) It took me so long to get through it, I can't really remember the beginning! and 2) It is so full of wisdom and profound, thorough thought that it deserves many, many readings.

I started this December 2016 because I was in a group twitter read lead by a theologian from Catholic University.  He recommended everyone reading the first book (chapter) before we even officially started.  I did so dutifully.  Then the semester began.  I was suppose to complete this book in a semester, just like a college student who was studying this book with the professor.  Life however got in the way and, though at times I tried to rush through it, I didn't force myself much because I found it hard reading and not worthwhile if I wasn't comprehending what I was reading in my rush to get through it.  So by the end of the semester, I had read little more than half.  I had followed the comments people were making in the group read, but since I had gotten behind I couldn't contribute myself at the end there. 

So the rest of the year was spent either "being good" and reading a bit every morning as a sort of meditation to start the day off with, or I would go weeks and weeks without picking it up at all.

City of God by St. Augustine is his great masterpiece.  His other masterpiece is his Confessions, which is shorter and an easier read, imo.  I read the Penguin Classics edition translated by Henry Bettenson.  I found one typo in the whole book!  The word angels spelled angls.

Usually when students study this work they skip right to Part II.  Part I has ten books in it each one assessing what is wrong with the city of man - that is man's sinfulness that is played out in Augustine's world of the late Roman empire and the pagan cults around him.  That society blames Christians for all its ills.  Augustine takes on the task of pointing out in great detail just how much they've got it wrong.  Augustine's mode of attack is to lay out what the other side says and then go over it with a fine tooth comb to expose all the fallacious thinking.    He is quite devastating in how he does this.  Not one detail escapes his notice, it seems.

Part II is a thorough examination of Christianity itself.  Augustine asks such questions as whether the ages people lived in the Old Testament could have been real or what angels are and the like.  Many, many questions, some of which I'd never thought about before.  Augustine is nothing if not thorough.  He is methodical and witty as he moves carefully through every topic he wants to analyze.  And he wants to analyze everything!    He'll often make the aside comment that he'd love to delve more into a particular topic but he can't because the book is too long as it is!

There are so many points of beauty in how Augustine describes the various aspects of Christianity.  His vision of the greatness of God and the profundity of the Church and her relationship with Christ is so wide and deep that it is easy to feel lost and at the same time overtaken with amazement at the breathe and depth of his grasp on it all.  He ends with what he images heaven to be.  He really has such an awesome view of God's unfathomable glory and love.  Augustine gets us a far as his prodigious intellectual capabilities can get us into the mystery.

One thing I was on the look out for was Augustine's supposed misogyny.  I'd heard rumors of this and seen quotes here and there that seemed to support this take on him.  I wish I had taken better note of where I'd read things that flew in the face of this judgment of him.  Apparently, the critics are taking these things from earlier writings?  Not sure, but while I do think Augustine was a creature of his time in terms of male-female relationships, he says many thing that belie his misogyny.  In fact, he says misogyny is a sin caused by the fall of Adam.  In paradise, man and woman were equal, hence Eve coming from Adam's rib rather than his foot.  So it is because we live in a sinful world that women are subjected to men's dominance.  And he says other things besides that really don't line up with a misogynist view.  I found him pretty refreshing in that way.

And I always wondered about that particular interpretation of him anyway, since I know his mother, Monica, played such an influential and critical role in his life.  Can you be close to your mother and have respect for her, take direction from her, and still be a misogynist?  Just seems unlikely, especially with a man of such searching intellect and deep reasoning.

I would love to get a lecture series on this book so I could understand it better.

Two thumbs up but a difficult, long and intellectually overwhelming read (at least for little ole me!).

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Zero Waste Cooking This Past Week

I feel like this week I got into a groove for being super conscientious about zero waste menu planning.  Of course it was easy this week because a lot of activities haven't really started up yet.

My delicious homemade soup, salad and yummy gluten free muffins!

                                           
But still!  For instance tonight I made homemade vegetable soup.  I used chicken broth I made myself from a chicken that served us for 2 meals (Meal 1 was roast chicken; Meal 2 was quinoa cooked up with leftover chicken and veggies).  I made the broth in the slow cooker I've borrowed from my daughter.  To make the soup, I put in potatoes, mushrooms, carrots and onions.  It was delicious!  In addition to that we had a tossed green salad with lettuce, red bell peppers, cucumbers, celery, mushrooms and green onions - all bought package free in the produce section.  We had homemade salad dressing.  And we had muffins (King Arthur gluten free - there is a plastic sleeve inside the cardboard box).  So the amount of plastic used was:

1) Chicken bought from the CSA frozen and in a plastic bag.
2) Carrots were from a big 5 lb bag.  I usually buy carrots loose but when I was at the store, their only loose carrots had these huge tops on them still which were completely saturated in water from that spray they do to supposedly keep veggies fresh.   Well, I can't figure out how to use carrot tops so that means paying a lot of money for the leafy part I don't even use.  So I opted to go with a big bag of carrots instead.  But this was unusual.
3) Muffin mix plastic inner sleeve.

Another thing I did this week was to make peanut butter cookies.  These are gluten free and almost zero waste.

Peanut butter - I took a clean jar into Mom's Organic Market and ground my own peanut butter.
Sugar - Domino's in a paper sack
Vanilla - glass jar
1 Egg - cardboard egg carton

1 cup of pb, + 1/2 tsp of vanilla + scant 1/2 cup sugar + 1 beaten egg.  Bake at 350 for anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes depending your oven, how dark your pan is and how crisp you like your cookies.

We've discovered these cookies also make good breakfast cookies.  Get your coffee in your to go mug, two or three cookies and a banana.  Nice quick breakfast you can eat in the car!

Will (a.k.a Eli) Made the Cover of the Boston Globe!

I am delighted the Boston Globe cared enough to write this up.  I'm happy my son did such a generous and brave thing - though he's says it's only medium brave, not like, super, super brave!

Check out the article.  I think the writer really got the gist of things. Here's the link. 

 

I have to admit I didn't think the photos are so great in the article.  Here we have the back of Will's head!

Lord Jesus, may your gift of faith grow stronger in us every day and find expression in all our ways of living.  -Son of the Virgin Mary, have mercy on us.

The above is one of the intercessory prayers taken from morning lauds today.  I think it sums up all the new year's resolutions burbling around in my heart and head.  I always want to make new beginnings throughout the year because I am always so aware of all my shortcomings and failures.  Even though new year resolutions are so easily forgotten, especially by me,  I still have a need to keep trying.  Like Mother Teresa said, we aren't called to be successful but faithful. 

I think the two ideas I want to focus on this year are health and environment.

Health

First:  Bodily health
Drink more clean water - this means remember to change the filter in the fridge and also to look into getting more water filters for the house.

Eat for health - this means keeping on with the gluten free and more home cooking from scratch, avoiding junk as much as possible.

Walk - Darci Isabella (a youtube channel I've been watching - check her out!) goes for a walk every single day!  And they live outside Chicago where it can be bitterly icy cold. 

Daily stretching and physical therapy exercises for all my various little aches and pains - a little bit a few times a day.

For the kids - While S has regular exercise, both J and B don't have good habits.  How can I encourage them?

Emotional, Spiritual and Mental Health
Keep priorities straight

Reduce time on internet

Connect more with people

Have a daily prayer routine

Have set times to work on outside responsibilities so they don't become these heavy mental blocks I'm so good at building. 

Have set activities to do for those who are less fortunate than I.


Environment

Keep up and build the Catholics for Zero Waste Group

Get more involved with the Care for Our Common Home

Keep trying to get better at my own household habits.

Also, for my own home - maintain it so it is a pleasant refuge for those who live here.

Work on redesigning our yard and starting raised bed gardens this spring.



I think I'll stop there.  Better to keep it short and simple! 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!