Soothing Tea Drops with Thieves – Giveaway 6/36

Posted by Carolyn on May 12, 2016 2 Comments

I sort of stumbled upon my new favorite way to drink tea with soothing tea drops with Thieves. This has been the worst winter with everyone in our family being sick over and over again. I started looking for recipes to make some natural cough drops when Alma had an especially bad cough. I found this recipe and made a batch of drops. I added in a few drops of Young Living’s Thieves Vitality oil to up the immune support that honey and coconut oil naturally provide.

Alma’s doctor suggested giving her a spoonful of honey to help her cough. In fact, it’s the only cough treatment that’s approved for the little ones. The honey coats and soothes their little throats, while coconut oil is shown to have antiviral and antibacterial properties. Thieves is also great at supporting our own immune systems as they fight off any bugs that might be getting us down.

I made a batch of the drops and put them in the fridge. A while later, I was thinking a cup of tea with honey sounded good. I’ve been adding a little bit of coconut oil to my coffee and tea, along with a drop of Thieves for a while. I remembered the little drops in the back of the fridge and realized that I could just drop one of them into my tea for an instant, ready made boost.

Here’s what I do:

Soothing Tea Drops with Thieves
(modified from The Coconut Mama’s homemade cough drop recipe)

1/2 cup organic, unrefined, cold-pressed , virgin coconut oil.
1/2 cup raw, organic, local honey.
5-10 drops Thieves Vitality oil.

Mix all ingredients together in a stand mixer, or with a hand mixer. Whip it all together until it’s smooth and well incorporated and fluffy.

Put a couple teaspoons into mini muffin tins. I’m sure there are molds that would make beautifully smooth drops, but I’m more about using what I have and what I have is a mini muffin tray. You could even just scoop onto a cookie sheet. Note: Since there are essential oils in here, you should use metal, glass, or silicone since oils and plastic don’t play well together.

Stick it in a freezer for about a half hour, just long enough for everything to solidify again. The drops should slide right out. Pop them in a jar and keep in the fridge for a long time.

When you’re ready to make the tea, start by steeping your favorite tea as you normally would. Add one soothing tea drop to your tea. Sometimes I add another drop of Thieves, just to enhance the flavor and immunity support.

Mix it all up. My favorite way to mix is with a few pulses with my immersion blender. It really gets it all blended together, and even makes it a little bit frothy.

For this giveaway, I’m going to give away this Mug Rug (or one like it). I’ve been working on a quilt for a while, and have lots of scraps left over. I’ve started making these fun, scrappy coasters and I’m planning on adding them to my Etsy shop later this month – along with some other oily accessories!

Head over to my Instagram account for a giveaway of a handmade, quilted mug rug! This is part six of my 36 Things for 36 Years project. I’m giving away 36 things this year, and this week will be a whole week of oily giveaways! Details on how to enter here!

Also, make sure you enter my other Essential Oil Giveaways this week! Essential Oil Sugar Scrub can be found here! Bath Bombs can be found here! Green Smoothie with a bottle of Citrus Fresh can be found here!

My Essential Green Smoothie – Giveaway 5/36

Posted by Carolyn on May 11, 2016 1 Comment

This week I’m giving away lots of fun ‘oily’ goodies. On Monday I posted a sugar scrub, on Tuesday, I posted bath bombs. Today you can enter to win a bottle of Citrus Fresh Vitality essential oil. Make sure you read the bottom of this post to find out how to enter (hint: entering is super easy!).

I love starting my day with an essential green smoothie. I figure that I start my day with something full of the good stuff, even if the rest of my day goes off the rails, at least I got some veggies and fruits and water in.

I’ve been having a smoothie a day for a long, long time, but I’ve recently begun adding essential oils and it’s really upped the smoothie game. Young Living has an incredible line of Vitality oils that are FDA approved for using in foods and drinks. I love adding a drop or two of these oils to my smoothies for a flavor boost, along with the support they provide!

I will share my basic smoothie recipe here, but know that you can do whatever you want. I have figured out what I like, and what works for me, but feel free to experiment or use another smoothie recipe you already love.

My Essential Green Smoothie

1 or two big handfuls of organic baby spinach. Spinach is incredible – high in niacin, zinc, protein, fiber, vitamins A, C, E and K, thiamin, vitamin B6, folate, calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, copper, and manganese. I buy a pound each week, and it lasts for the whole week.
1 organic banana. This is important for a few reasons. They are sweet, and adding sugar or another sweetener would negate all the good effects of having a smoothie for breakfast – add a banana to skip the added sugar. Bananas also have antioxidants, lots of potassium, and other vitamins and nutrients.
A handful or two of organic frozen fruit. If you want the beautiful green color in these photos, use frozen peaches or mangoes. I also love, love, love frozen cherries (this almost tastes like dessert, it’s so sweet and lovely). Frozen blueberries, strawberries, tropical fruit, whatever you love and have on hand.
1 or 2 tablespoons of nut butter. My favorite is almond butter, but peanut butter works. This adds a bit more protein, and the oils in the butter help the essential oils distribute into the smoothie. I feel like adding the nut butter helps this feel like a full breakfast; I don’t get hungry until lunchtime with this addition.
1-3 drops of essential oil. See below for some suggestions.

Throw the spinach, banana, frozen fruit, and nut butter into your blender. Add water to your preference. I like my smoothies to be on the thin side, so I put enough water in to almost reach the top of my other ingredients. I also use this as a way to make sure I’m drinking a full glass of water in the morning. Blend away!

Put 1-3 drops of essential oil in the bottom of a glass mason jar, or glass – remember that oils and plastic don’t get along well. Pour your smoothie into the glass and give it a good stir or shake (that’s why I love using a mason jar).

Enjoy!

Oils I love to add to my smoothies:

Peppermint is an uplifting oil that can support your mood and a healthy respiratory system.
Lemon tastes great and the scent is invigorating and energizing. It can also help with detoxifying.
Thieves is a blend of Clove, Lemon, Cinnamon, Eucalyptus Radiata, and Rosemary oils that has a lovely, spicy scent. It can be used to support your immune system and just tastes wonderful.
Citrus Fresh is one of my favorite oils to add to smoothies. It is a blend of Orange, Tangerine, Grapefruit, Lemon, and Mandarin oils with a hint of Spearmint. It is refreshing and happy.

I’m giving away a bottle of Citrus Fresh Vitality to someone on Instagram.

Head over to my Instagram account for a giveaway of Citrus Fresh Vitality Essential Oil! This is part four of my 36 Things for 36 Years project. I’m giving away 36 things this year, and this week will be a whole week of oily giveaways! Details on how to enter here!

Also, make sure you enter my other Essential Oil Giveaways this week! Essential Oil Sugar Scrub can be found here! Bath Bombs can be found here!

“A Good Food Day” by Marco Canora

Posted by Carolyn on January 27, 2015 1 Comment

I love a good cookbook. There are things that initially make me want to cook a new recipe- good ingredients, something that is new to me, a new take on a classic, and good photos. A Good Food Day by Marco Canora has all these things. Another thing that A Good Food Day has is fun, witty writing. Marco Canora presents his ideas for eating well in a creative, clever way. The English teacher in me loves the fact that the sentence “proper prior planning prevents piss-poor performance” is in the book. The breakfast lover in me loves the fact that the sentence “a slew of studies also show that eating breakfast increases mental clarity and the overall ability to get shit done” is also in the book.

Not only is this a book of recipes, but it also has sections describing various things. For example, there’s a section on pantry staples that everyone should have on hand. I love his list of 10 principles of a good food day.

Before every section of the book, Canora describes why certain foods are beneficial to our health. It’s wordy and wise.

The photographs by Michael Harlan Turkell are beautiful and inspiring. Photographs are very important to me when it comes to cooking a recipe. Food is inherently beautiful. It should be seen, smelled, felt, and finally tasted.

I’ve made three recipes out of this book, and all three have been excellent. The first were Oatmeal and Dark Chocolate Cookies. The recipe called for palm sugar (I’m actually a little wary about coconut palm sugar, because I’ve read that it isn’t sustainable, or good for the global environment…), and I just used granulated. I also used whole wheat pastry flour instead of spelt flower.

I had a helper. Alma is always motivated to help me in the kitchen – especially when cookies are the finished product.

The recipe is really unique and tasty – the molasses really adds something special, along with the coconut oil.

Here’s a tip: When you make cookies, save some of the dough. I know that we couldn’t (or shouldn’t) eat a whole batch of cookies at one time. We shape the remaining dough into a log on parchment paper, close it up, cover it with foil, and freeze it. Then, when you want cookies again, you can just slice off a few and bake them!

The next recipe I made was the meatloaf. We all love meatloaf, but we usually just throw things together, and it’s probably not very healthy. Just look at the ingredients that go into Canora’s recipe:

It’s colorful and fresh and tasty! The veggies kept the meatloaf moist and added some interesting flavors along with nutrition. The only complaint we had was it was a bit bitter, so I’d cut back on the lemon peel in the future.

I really loved this next recipe. It is pasta, cheese, and peas. Three of my favorites. Plus, it was quick and easy!

I need to say that I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review, but that the opinions, reviews, photos, messy kitchen, cute daughter are all mine.

Marinated Tomatoes with Chevre on Bread

Posted by Carolyn on September 24, 2014 2 Comments

We love to eat marinated tomatoes with chevre. It is such a great combination of flavors. We eat this so much this time of year. It’s so easy, you can’t even really call it a recipe. It’s just a great, tasty, simple way to use up all the tomatoes that are ripening, along with all the herbs in your garden.

Here’s how you do it:

Get a bunch of tomatoes, slice them into a bowl.
Grab whatever herbs you have – I love, love, love thyme in this. I also add some basil, rosemary, tarragon, chives, and a little sage. Whatever you have, and whatever you like! Chop them up, and throw them in the bowl.
Add some olive oil – I never measure this, but probably about a 1/4 cup. Just to give the herbs something to hold onto.
Crack some pepper on top.
Stir it all up and let it sit for about 1/2 hour or longer.
Take bread – thick, crusty bread is best. We found a bakery that has amazing sourdough, and have been using that.
Here’s where opinions can vary – Jesse likes to toast his bread first then add chevre, I like to spread the chevre on the bread then toast it (obviously this only works with a toaster oven, not a regular toaster). Either way, get some chevre on your bread.
Top with marinated tomatoes.
Eat with a glass of wine.
Yum.

Green Goddess Pasta

Posted by Carolyn on September 17, 2014 Leave a Comment

So far, we are doing really well with the monthly meal planning. It helps that we are trying out some new recipes (and still having some of our favorites!). This is one of the new recipes. It is inspired by a recipe I found on Pinterest – from Lauren’s food blog. We changed quite a few of the ingredients, so it’s almost something totally different.

My favorite color is green. Even in autumn, when I’m excited about all the new colors, green remains my favorite. I mean, come on:

This is pretty much just begging to be cooked into something delicious.

And delicious it was. And healthful (ahem, all the green). The avocado gives it a creaminess that Jesse described as “goopy and clumpy” – which I’m sure he meant well. The goopiness was quite lovely – almost cheesy. And if you wanted this to be vegan, I’m sure you could just make it without the yogurt and cheese and it would be fantastic!

Of course, we did add some Parmesan on top, because Parmesan.

So, here you go:

Green Goddess Pasta

1/2 package soba noodles
3 cups green beans, cut in 1 inch pieces
1 avocado
Juice of one lime
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1/8 cup taragon
1/4 cup chopped basil
3 garlic cloves
1/2 cup yogurt
1 Tbs olive oil
2 shallots, chopped
4 cups arugula
1 cup spinach
salt, pepper, and Parmesan to taste

Make the sauce. Put avocado, lime juice, herbs, and garlic in a food processor and blend until smooth. Add some olive oil if needed, to thin the sauce. It should be like a paste. Add yogurt and blend to combine.
Put green beans in boiling water. When about halfway cooked, add the soba noodles. Cook according to directions. Drain, and set aside.
In a large saucepan, heat oil and add shallots. Cook for about 5 minutes, until beginning to soften and carmelize. Add arugula and spinach and cook until wilted. Add pasta, beans, and sauce and stir to combine.
Serve hot, with Parmesan cheese grated on top. Don’t you love how when you cook arugula and spinach it basically disappears? It always seems like I’m adding way too much, and totally fill up the pan, then it reduces to nothing. It’s like magic.

Homemade Whole Foods Sloppy Joes

Posted by Carolyn on June 10, 2014 Leave a Comment

This is another favorite recipe in our house. We love to eat yummy food, and this recipe has the added benefit of having only whole foods in it.

Most sloppy joe recipes include lots of highly processed foods, like ketchup, brown sugar, mix packets, and barbeque sauce. I’ve taken a few recipes and tweaked them so it only has whole ingredients that we usually have around the house.

If you eat these on homemade whole wheat buns, they will still be whole foods – I will share my recipe for this soon! Of course, if you eat it with store-bought tater tots, it is no longer a whole foods meal. Oh well. It’s still easy, cheap, and incredibly yummy.

Ingredients

2 pounds ground beef
1 large onion, diced
1 large green pepper, diced
3 large garlic cloves chopped
6 oz can of tomato paste
1/3 cup honey
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup water
3 tsp chili powder
2 tsp mustard powder
OPTIONAL: a couple dashes of Worcestershire sauce (not necessarily a whole food)
salt and pepper

Brown the ground beef in a large sauce pan over medium high heat. I like to use my dutch oven since it’s heavy duty and deep. Drain the fat.

Add the onion, pepper, and garlic and cook until the veggies are getting soft.

Add the rest of the ingredients, stir well, and simmer on medium heat for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. If needed, add more water a little at a time. You don’t want it to be too runny.

Grilled Ginger Hoisin Chicken Sandwiches

Posted by Carolyn on June 3, 2014 3 Comments

These sandwiches are based on something we used to eat pretty often in the summers. They are quick, easy, and incredibly tasty. I will eat anything with hoisin sauce on it, so I jump at the chance to eat these.

Ingredients

2 chicken breast, cut into long, thin strips

1 tsp chopped, fresh ginger
3 Tbs soy sauce
3 Tbs hoisin sauce
1 Tbs sesame oil
salt and pepper to taste

Buns
Cabbage
Mayonaise
Hoisin Sauce

The directions are really simple. Marinate the chicken in the next 5 ingredients for about 20 minutes. Heat up your grill, and cook chicken when ready. I usually cook the strips for just a couple minutes per side. Since they are small, they will cook quickly. Toast the buns in the last couple minutes.

When the chicken is done, spread some mayo and more hoisin sauce on the top of the bun. Put cabbage and chicken on bottom bun. Put buns together and eat.

I love the fresh crunchiness of the cabbage with the sweet tang of the chicken.

Banana Blueberry Mini Muffins

Posted by Carolyn on May 27, 2014 2 Comments

I’m always on the lookout for good muffins. Instead of trying to find a good recipe, I figured I should try to make one of my own. I scoured the internet, and all my cookbooks to try to devise a simple, basic muffin recipe. I think this one is it.

I imagine you could add many other ingredients, but this time I just added bananas (and one blueberry on the top of each muffin, just for kicks).

Here’s the recipe:

INGREDIENTS

1 3/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour (it’s the only flour I use, ever)
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
2 Tbs melted butter
3/4 cup milk
2 mashed bananas

DIRECTIONS

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Prepare your mini muffin pan. I like to grease mine with coconut oil, and I like to be generous about it.

Mix dry ingredients together. Beat eggs, and add melted butter, milk, and bananas. Combine the dry and the wet ingredients and lightly mix using a wooden spoon. Only stir for about 10 seconds. It should be really lumpy and not pourable. This will make for the best muffins.

Spoon into pan, filling nearly to the top. This is when I added my blueberries. I just let Alma drop one berry onto each muffin, and lightly poke it in.

Bake for about 12 minutes, or until starting to turn golden brown on top.

These are great! We ate them right up. In fact, I left of them on the counter, and after Alma’s nap, I kept finding her with a muffin in each hand. Definitely toddler approved.

Baby Led Weaning: How To Do It and What You’ll Need

Posted by andthenthey on March 27, 2014 2 Comments

Oh, the exciting time when your baby is old enough to sit up, interact with you, smile, laugh, and eat! I’ll be honest with you. I’m not really a baby person. I like the little babies, sure, but I am always so excited for them to grow up a little and become more interactive and fun. Six months is an amazing age – they are doing such fun things, and becoming more of an active part of the family.

In our family, we love dinnertime. It is a time of day that we all gather and spend time together. I remember long, lingering dinners growing up. We sit at the table every night. We light candles every night. We use cloth place mats, and cloth napkins every night. These are important to me

It is also important to me that my kids eat what we eat. There are many reasons for this. It’s nutritious, it broadens their palates, and most importantly, it’s easy. I don’t need to cook three different dinners, and keep track of minute dietary details. This leads us to Baby Led Weaning.

First of all, I want to clear up a misconception. The term weaning in this sense isn’t how Americans typically understand it (as in the taking away of something, like nursing, or bottles). It means that you will start introducing foods to a baby’s diet, in addition to breast milk, or formula. The baby should still be getting the huge majority of their food and nutrition from breast milk.

If you start your baby on pureed foods, you need a huge number of things: food mill, food processor, jars, spoons, time, planning, processed baby food, money. If you make your own purees, it is time consuming, messy, expensive. If you buy pre-made baby food in jars, it’s also expensive, and you don’t really always know what’s in the jars. You also always need to carry pureed food with you.

If you do Baby Led Weaning you need three things:

A baby
Food
A sense of humor (and maybe a bib or two)

Seriously. that’s all you need. For real.

We did this with Alma, and she’s two now. She’s the best eater I know. She eats Thai food, Mexican food, vegetables, soups, and her favorite food is Sushi. So, we are doing it again with Harriet.

I like to start with sweet potatoes, or yams, cut into French-fry shaped sticks, and roasted. The shape is good for beginning eaters because it is easy to grasp and get to the mouth. It’s important to only try one kind of food at a kind, and wait a couple days before trying the next, to make sure your baby doesn’t have a reaction.

We’ve been doing it for about a month with Harriet and she loves it. Her favorite foods are roasted, then frozen cauliflower bites, blueberries, sweet potatoes, peas (so cute to see her pudgy little fingers pick up a pea and get it to her mouth), rice cakes, yogurt, applesauce, green beans, asparagus.

Another plus to BLW is that it really encourages independence and fine motor skills. Harriet can pick up a tiny pea, and get it to her mouth just fine. She’s also getting pretty good at using a spoon to get applesauce from a bowl to her mouth.

It’s pretty amazing to see a little baby feeding herself. She only has the beginnings of her two bottom teeth, but she can chew up all her food, work it around in her mouth, and swallow it, no problem. It is so natural and instinctual (not like purees, if you ask me).

One thing to be aware of is that babies will sometimes gag (this is the case in BLW, and with purees). It is really important to understand that gagging is very different than choking. Gagging is a sign that they are figuring it out, I see it as a sign of success when Harriet gags a little. It teaches her how to keep the food in the right part of her mouth until she’s ready to swallow it.

One of my favorite parts of BLW is that we get to eat dinner as a family. We each sit up at the table and eat. Jesse and I get to enjoy our meals. We’re not constantly focused on Harriet, trying to force feed her. Harriet eats until she doesn’t want to eat anymore.

I think it’s empowering. Harriet gets to choose what she eats from what’s in front of her. She gets to choose the pace in which she eats it. She gets to choose when she’s had enough.

She’s a happy eater, so we’re a happy family! Let me know if you have any fun baby feeding stories, or if you have any questions! Cheers!

Novruz 2014, Toddler Style

Posted by andthenthey on March 22, 2014 6 Comments

Happy Novruz, everyone! It’s spring! I love spring so much. The flowers, sunshine, the green. It’s my second favorite time of year, but every year at this time, it’s my favorite time of year.

This year we had our playgroup over for a Novruz celebration. We started by dyeing eggs, which was a wonderfully frantic (and surprisingly mess-free) dash. We had nine two-year-olds, and various aged babies along for the ride.

Jesse explained the meaning of Novruz – the toddlers listened very attentively – all the earth, wind, fire, water, rebirth, newness. Then, we went outside to jump over the fire!

I love this ritual of leaving all our troubles, and worries, and problems in the fire. I’m always one for a fresh, clean start – especially when spring is springing.

It was an amazingly beautiful day, so we all went to the backyard to play with all of Alma’s bikes, and her slide. It was perfect. I love how our kids are old enough to pretty much just play. We don’t have to hover and help like we did last year at this time. It gives us grown-ups time to chat and catch up.

We are so blessed to be a part of this great group of families. We all (pretty much) met through the Birth Center, where most of us had our first babies. After getting to know each other at the weekly Baby Clinics, the idea was born to have a monthly playgroup. Not only do we all have two-year-olds, but most of us are on the second round these days, too. It’s wonderful.

After playing for a while, we had to play the egg game. I think Alma’s friend Beatrix won this year.

We were also really lucky to have our authentic Azerbaijani friend, Elvin up for the celebration. It’s fun having him so close this year (he’s studying in Long Beach, California). He’s a great dost, and both our girls truly love him. So do we.

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