Alluring

caramel sauce.

I made caramel sauce today for the very first time.  So easy...and so divine.  It is sugar-free (I used coconut crystals) and most definitely not dairy-free though the recipe I used gave dairy-free subs which I may try sometime.  Gem stated he was not interested in trying the sauce so this time I went whole dairy hog.

I am exhausted.  In my post-Philly sleep deprived hyper-sensitive state I have crashed and burned in the food department.  I keep stepping off the grain- and sugar-free wagon and can feel the various side effects of inflammation kicking in.

I am just taking it moment-by-moment.  I made a lovely fennel dish tonight.  I am enjoying a much cleaner apartment.  I am soothed by temps that keep dropping.

Peace and love.

End of day

No Philly pics yet.

It was a full and lovely day: the kids and I cleaned up the front room and their room down to vacuuming, we had a leisurely visit with Tiina and her kids, I had a restorative appointment with Vinny, I picked up two cookbooks from the library, we have a menu set for common meal and Cap is doing the food shopping as I type...

I just read a wonderful Op-Ed piece by Ann Patchett (if you've never read Bel Canto, do so pronto) about the non-Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  You can see it here.  Important insights for book lovers, eloquently stated.

Peace and love.

Shot of lovely

We're back from a wonderful weekend in Philly/south Jersey.

The one thing that wasn't great while away was sleep.  I slept poorly/not enough both nights.  Yesterday, my sleep deprived body did not bump up well against the Summery temps and extreme pollen count.  The kids and I made it to the twice-a-year Craft and Bake Sale in the park, but we didn't hang out long.

Sag and I, in particular, needed our "chill time" (as he calls it).  Our introverted/highly sensitive sides were fried.

Thankfully, the air cooled overnight and today won't be as hot.  I do feel better this morning (splitting headache occupied me throughout the evening). 

Our front room looks like a bomb went off in it, I need to think about meals this week (we're hosting common meal and I am starting Dragon's Way), there are bills to pay, blah blah blah.

I am going to get on some of this life stuff.  Hopefully, I'll post some pics from the trip later today.

In the meantime, here's a shot of my Craft fair purchase.  Lucy made these pots in her pottery class.  They make me happy...and peaceful.

Better

Didn't want to leave y'all with that last post as I head off for the weekend.  I am feeling better this morning.  (And even had the last brown rice wrap.  I heart breakfast burritos...scrambled two eggs in Kerrygold butter...melted the last handful of shredded mozz on the wrap in the cast iron pan...dashed on some hot sauce from Costa Rica from the in-laws...and boom.  Breakfast of champions.)

I'll be posting Philly moments on Facebook, no doubt, but likely won't be back here till Monday.

Peace and love.

Note to self

...stop eating the brown rice wraps.

...PRACTICE QIGONG.

...go outside every day...make it a walk around the block.

...ask the doctor about getting hormones checked.

My mood has plummeted today.  I am pretty sure all of the above would help prevent a swing like this.  Or at least allow me to navigate it with some grace and dignity.

Instead, I am barely present for the people I choose to have in my life and all I want to do is cry or bang my head (musically, not literally).

This is my go to head banging tune (thanks, Shannon)...

Gummed up/warmed up demo

I was messing around on YouTube while playing a Lego game with the kids and came across this gem.  LOVE.

Buzz...kill

Way too much caffeine being consumed in the form of milk tea with honey.  The brown rice wraps are making me sluggish.  Realizing too late we could have gone to the first ever home game of the Philadelphia Spinners (our local team of the brand spanking new professional Ultimate league that debuts this weekend) in lieu of the Phillies game (and saved lots of dough).

Turning on some tunes to shift gears.  Hoping to get stuff done and into bed early-ish.

(I'm okay about the Phillies game.  We all love going to the ballpark to see a game and it's going to be fun.  We may go from there to the Ultimate...)

The now and the now and the now

A few weeks ago I went to Terra with Tiina and ended up having a bite to eat rather than just a cuppa.

I love eating out.  But eating out does not love one who eschews sugar and grains.  It remains a challenge to balance these parts of me.  One thing I look forward to about doing Dragon's Way is taking a break from this challenge by removing both, in essence, from the equation for awhile.

As wonderful as Terra is in all its fair trade locally sourced organic goodness, it has become hard for me to eat there because just about everything has grains or legumes or sugar in it.  Intrigued, I saw they had a new addition to the menu: you can have any sandwich with a brown rice wrap.  Rice is grain, yes, but I was peckish.  I had the special "panini" with local cheddar and fresh tomato.  It was good.

Fast forward to now.  The week before doing Dragon's Way, as it is encouraged, I think about the foods that I anticipate letting go.  And savor them.  

I haven't been into meat lately.  The pastured lamb is staying in the freezer for now.  Having already let go of grains and sugar there hasn't really been much in the time-to-say-goodbye department.

Turns out, what I want to enjoy now is hot wraps.

I can pluck the Terra lunch and Pure Wraps experiences from different spots on my recent timeline.  And they bring me here.  The Pure Wraps whet my appetite for the wrap.  But, they don't work well "hot" because of the high coconut oil content.  While I am on the precipice of a cleanse...might as well indulge.

Breakfast: brown rice wrap heated in cast iron with thin slices of raw Mahón cheese (of course I discover a new favorite cheese just prior to bidding dairy adieu)...with the last big dollop of leftover saag panner.

Yum.

: :    : :    : :

Back to planning our Philly weekend.  It is so much work, but fun.  Late last night a series of wonderful strokes of initiative and luck and flow came together and we bought tickets to a Phillies game.  

The Phillies are Sag's second favorite baseball team and he had hoped to go to a game while we were in Philly.  I don't really pay attention to sports unless it pertains to Red Sox, Celtics or Patriots, and even then, my attention is fickle.  So, I was surprised and dismayed when Phillies tickets, this early in the season, versus the Mets for heaven's sake, were impossible to get through the team's website.

The tickets available on StubHub were prohibitive by cost and/or seat location.  We moved on.

Until the wee hours of last night.  I had Friday densely mapped out and Sunday was fully planned.  Saturday I had figured out the first half of the day.  Something about going back to the hotel for an afternoon swim followed by dinner in suburban Philly, which would actually be South Jersey, seemed...anticlimactic and not very "Philly".

I remembered that the Phillies game we'd hoped to attend was Saturday in the late afternoon.  The blank slot in my sheaf of notes was calling out for something...and the game would truly fit the celebrating-Sag's-tenth-birthday-vacation vibe.

So I went back to the Phillies website.  No tickets.  Went back to StubHub.  I clicked back and forth between the two sites to get the views from various far flung sections of the stadium.  Gem is afraid of heights, particularly in open spaces, so all of these sections were dicey.  Cap and I could easily imagine scenarios of Gem freezing in his tracks faced with a flight of stairs ending in the heavens to get to nosebleed seats. 

I was about to throw in the towel.  I was scrolling into ticket costs pushing the extreme outer limits of our budget...when, I saw the word "infield".  Huh?!  There they were.  Four seats together, on the aisle, no less, at field level (though I have a hunch we are in the very back row), right behind home plate.  And the price, though pricey (and not as pricey as Red Sox tickets), was doable.

So lucky.  It turned out the we got the tickets at cost plus the StubHub handling fee.  I think they might have been tickets that became available through the Phillies organization at the last minute.  The boy is happy, the weather forecast is fantastic, we are stoked for this trip!

: :    : :    : :

Off to help the kids begin photocopying their comic book creations for the Craft and Bake Sale (next Monday), blend up some smoothies and meet up with friends for Ultimate.  Then those sliders and sweet potato fries which did not get made last night, folding laundry, packing, planning and preparing road food, and putting the finishing touches on the weekend's itinerary.

Vacuuming would be good, too.

Peace and love.

Whoosh

*Blink*  Where has the day gone?

A solo food shopping trip bled into breakfast which bled into homeschooling (new goal: multiplication by Summer!) which bled into lunch which hemorrhaged into researching our upcoming Philly trip.

Philly = excitement...as in I am stoked.

I spent a long time clicking through and reading GF menus of restaurants in the area.  Gluten-Free Philly is an incredible resource.  I am so thankful.

We will be limited only by our time.  There is so much to frikkin' do in Philly!  And so much good food!  And plenty of suburban sprawl on the Jersey side to provide amenities like a Whole Foods ten minutes from our Garden State hotel (deluxe "business" model with pool and fridge/microwave/WIFI in the room).

I am brimming with notions.  Flush with possibility.

Off to bring our friend Erik home and pick up Cap at work.  Then the comic book shop.  (Philly has three comic book stores!)  Then grass-fed beef sliders and sweet potato fries.  Then back to mapping and planning and putting this trip together.  (We leave Friday.)

Peace and love.

Connecting elsewhere on the 'net

You may have noticed I've been adding badges to the sidebar of the blog.  If you're active on any of the sites and would like to connect, look for me.  My username at Twitter is @musing_manatee.  I'm "musing manatee" at Goodreads, "musingmanatee" at Ravelry and "shirlemagne" at Flickr.

Peace.

How he makes me laugh

Today's funny awesome.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

What's digesting

Next Monday I'm starting a Dragon's Way practice.  I am quietly gearing up and looking forward to it.  In the meantime, I am "being" in the process of finishing up/letting go of dairy and meat consumption.

cheddar cheese eggs and "Japanese" pork.

The "Japanese" pork is Berkshire pork kiriotoshi from Mitsuwa.  Kiriotoshi literally means "cut and dropped".  These are the pieces left over from portioning/slicing off larger cuts of this tasty meat.  It's still $14/lb, but a 1/2 lb of these delectable and thin slices cooks up in a breeze and is enough to feed the kids and me ($2.50/serving).  (I just sauté in olive oil and season with salt and pepper.)

I have some lamb in the freezer that I may stew this week before going off meat for six weeks.  I plan on savoring my milky teas this week.  I will peruse my paper and digital files for recipes and plan out a week or two of veg and fruit heavy dishes.

My efforts in planning and preparing gluten-free and Paleo/Primal meals for our weekend in Massachusetts really paid off.  Two coolers and two sacks for two nights and three days.  Oh, yes.

We went out to dinner Friday night with Jake and Evie (Cap's dad and his companion).  Gem chose the restaurant, a Japanese-Chinese restaurant he likes (here he is at the restaurant's original location in 2003...we took him out to lunch after his very first day at preschool). 

 for a kick, compare this pic with the shot of him yesterday titled "flow"!

hint: here is studying a mini-poster of his then passion, Thomas and friends.

I had tuna tataki and an avocado and "crab" salad.  The crabstick is made with wheat.  I knew that it did and decided to order it anyway.

I also had one of Jay's latkes later that night with a dollop of sour cream.  I knew it was going to satisfy and I figured I'd already had some wheat anyway.  The rest of the weekend I ate what I had brought up with me, except for the Easter ham and homemade au gratin potatoes.

And I felt great.  Gem, too.

Sleeping away from home generally means less quality sleep.  And sitting in the car for five hours in each direction...  It all adds up, but I have been feeling good.  I was very present all weekend and took delight in so much.  Back home, I haven't been plagued by the usual lethargy post-trip.  (The marathon tv-watching tiredness was a separate issue.)

Vinny noted today how responsive my body/system is (I like to think "springy" or "bouncy").  The chaotic transition time seems to be making way for some good Spring rebirth.

Peace and love.

 

Sighs

...of exhaustion...

I stayed up way too late getting in the Sunday night tv line up.  Amazing Race started nearly an hour late due to some exciting golf doings over at Augusta.  After that, the kids were tucked in and I watched Mad Men, Game of Thrones and The Killing.  (Note to self: next time push The Killing to another night...the show continues to hang by a thread and is not worth staying up too late for.)

 latte therapy.

...of satisfaction...

My main chore for the day was to get the checks written for the feds, the state and the accountant.  Done, done and done.  The recent turn on this particular path of our financial journey makes me really happy.

I've been quietly pleased that our immersion blender has been turning out great GFCF fruit-fat-protein smoothies (Gem is the target, but Sag and I have been enjoying them, too).  Not only has the terrific cost of the (no doubt terrific) Vita Mix been avoided thus far, but the size of the immersion blender has been perfect for our needs.  Clean up has been a breeze.

...of sweet feeling...

We've been building in time of physical activity to balance out screen time (particularly of the gaming kind).  The kids have a Qigong practice (which, another sigh, has not translated into inspiring me to ramp up my own consistency of practicing) and recently they have started walking (on their own in the apartment or outside with parents).

This afternoon, Sag went out back, by himself, to swing.  Then, he came back in to grab the basketball and shot hoops, solo, for about twenty minutes.  My heart was in my throat as I watched him from the kitchen window.  He is growing up.  Developing comfortable and health-sustaining ways to spend time with and by himself.

...of connection...

flow.

The bowl and mug are from a set Wendy and her family gave us some Christmases ago.  They are not often used as a set and so this caught my eye and heart.  Gem snacking on his sembei and Chinese tea wearing his Minecraft t-shirt looking at his Skylanders poster.  Flow.

...of flow...

Speaking of flow...  My brain loves whatever the chemical make up of flow is.

Sag waited a week before purchasing Portal.  He researched it and thought about it and last night went ahead and bought it.  It's a "big boy" game in many ways.  So far, he's finding the challenge exhilarating.  I can't watch him play...instant motion sickness sets in.

flow.

...of elemental wonder...

boys in trees.

All four of us love trees.  The three boys love being in them.  I'm not as into the climbing, but I love being amongst trees, and hugging them, very much.  I could stare at these photos all day, sighing.

...of  echoes...

On yet another windy day (April, not March, has come in like a Lion this year...), this old cover, of an even older song, embodies the intersection of Mother Nature with art, mood and the magic of describing the indescribable.

Eastertime

As you can see, it was a lovely time full of activity and quiet...lots of fun.

One of the interesting things about "seeing" a time through photographs is something like this: I don't have a single photo of Jay.  How did that happen when she was ever present?  Mystery or vagary?

Wished we lived just a wee bit closer.  The ride up and down went better than the last.  Sag only had a very brief wave of motion sickness that passed without actual vomiting.  The ride home was faster, but he had a harder time with it, possibly because it was the second time in three days he was stuck in the car for five hours.

When he opened his eyes Sunday morning...

Sag: Are we leaving today?

Me: Yes.

Sag: That's a pity.  I wish we could stay longer.

As we were driving away later...

Sag: When are we coming back?

Me: In three weeks.

Sag: I regret (meaning "I take back") what I said earlier, I don't want to come back again so soon.

The boy does not like these long drives.

: :    : :    : :

Off to throw some lunch together.  Maybe more later.

Peace and love.

Home

The car is unpacked, but the apartment is a hot mess.  I am pooped!  We had a great weekend away and I have photos to share...tomorrow.

For now, a glimpse of my revel.  My sweetheart brought me irises.  All is good here right now.

(Is it just me or did that sauna last night do wonders for my skin?!)

Peace and love.

Phew (and still going)

 zucchini egg bake.

 nimono.

 poppyseed-almond crackers.

 tamari almonds.

 meatballs.

banana muffins.

The coconut macaroon "batter" is in the fridge.  I will bake those before we go to common meal.  Cap is making a tuna pasta salad and salmon patty cakes tonight while I pack.  We leave tomorrow after breakfast.

Phew.

Home before leaving

My fifth Spring in the Garden State, my first bout with Spring allergies.  It's not too bad, but it is something.

Have gone to bed "early" the past two nights, slept soundly and am still waking beat up.

Opted out of car shopping this morning.  Stuff was spilling off my plate.

The kids and I have started The Game of Silence and it is a heart wrencher.  Only those who have known me for a very long time know that there was a time when I was passionate about American Indian/Native American life in the United States.  I felt a strong connection and came close to pursuing a Master's in public health in order to go onto a reservation to work with women and children, in particular.

Reading these books by Louise Erdrich (one of my favorite authors and an enrolled member of the Ojibwe/Chippewa tribe) brings me right back to the painful and poignant and passionate sense of injustice done to the native tribes...the so often forgotten touchstone of original American tragedy.

I am heading back into the kitchen.  Today I make some dishes to contribute to our Easter dinner (gluten-free, casein-free, Paleo and Paleo-ish that travel well), as well as food for the car and food to have on hand while we're away.  Yep, I'll be cooking all day.

Today's Tiny Desk Concert lifted my spirits.  I love love love Kathleen Edwards.  Enjoy.

Wending wednesday

Breakfast with a friend this morning.  Lovely and connective.  (The woman in the photo is a random person.  I like what her fingers are doing.)

Drove Cap up to work and ran a couple of errands on the drive back home.  Cedar blocks for the closets and floss sticks for the kids.

Played a Lego game and then deep cleaned the bathroom with the kids.

Fixed lunches and noshed.

Touched base with Jamie about seeing her this weekend while we're in MA.

Sighed as the phone continued to cut in and out.  Our delicate phone lines do not like these blustery winds.

Head is filling slowly but surely with congestion of the season.

Dreamed of blood and violence...on a small scale, but personalized.  Rare bad dream.  (But happy to be dreaming again.)

Sad thinking I won't be seeing Lana and her other friends in Brooklyn tomorrow night.

Poking at the pastured ground beef to see if it has defrosted enough to make sliders with.

Off to make a cup of milky tea and go through recipes to see what I want to make for our Easter dinner (Saturday in Plympton).

Peace and love.

Milestone

If you have been reading this blog for awhile you will know what this photo means to me:

Perhaps I should explain...

First off, I love the way our big table looks in the lamplight when it is dark outside.  (I like lamplight in general.)

After our late dinner, the kids were settling into bed to draw.  I was doing an evening putter straightening the sofa cushions, getting Gem to come back out to hang up his sweatshirt and put away his books, sorting through the mail...

I literally almost tossed the large, thick envelope bordered in a dark blue triangle pattern that looked so generically "official" that I thought it was an advertisement.

In time, I realized the packet contained the tax documents generated by our extremely capable accountant, who we had met with over the weekend.

Yes, our new accountant!

Thanks to Kelly (who also introduced me to Vinny), we have a new accountant.  Thank you!

I have wanted to forge a relationship with a financial professional for a long time.  But, it was critical to receive a recommendation I could trust.  It was also important, as it turned out, to get to a certain level of financial literacy and competency myself, in order to truly be ready.

As I gazed at the neatly organized forms and envelopes, happy tears sprang to my eyes.  I was so grateful...and proud.  I've gotten us to a good looking and solid stepping stone.  I am invigorated to continue on and see where our next leaps take us.

(In the meantime, thanks to our new accountant, we are paying less tax this year than last because of deductions we can take that we didn't know about.  He's paid for himself and then some.)