Crafty crafty

Here are a few fun ideas for those of you that like to craft it up for the holiday season!

Beautiful ruffled linen tree skirt

photo courtesy of the lovely Sharon Hines

A fabric Christmas tree inspired by this blog

photo courtesy of Sharon

DIY advent calendar

source

Yarn wreaths

source

12 days of Christmas onesies

source

Pork curry

I whipped up some amazing pork curry last night for dinner, super simple and so delicious! Based loosely on a recipe from Robb Wolf

Pork curry - serves 4
Ingredients:

• 1 lb ground pork (would work well with turkey, chicken, or lamb as well)
• 1 red onion sliced thin
• 3 cloves garlic roughly chopped
• 2 small yukon gold potatoes, diced
• 2 cups spinach ( or chard/kale)
• 1/2 can full fat coconut milk
• 2 1/2 Tbs curry powder
• salt to taste
• green beans/haricots verts to serve

Method:

Bring water to boil and cook potatoes until fork tender. Towards the end of the cooking time add green beans to the boiling water and let sit for 1 minute. Drain potatoes and beans, separate. 

Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy bottomed pot. Brown meat and add onions and garlic, saute until soft. Add in curry powder and potatoes and cook a few more minutes until fragrant and meat is cooked through. Pour in coconut milk and add spinach, stir to combine, and cook until spinach is wilted. Season with salt to taste ( I think I added a tsp or so). 

Serve over green beans, enjoy!

Arizona adventures

We went to Arizona  a few weeks ago to visit my parents and had many fun adventures! Our visit in pictures:

 

Meals for this week

Our meals have been a little different as of late, pretty much just protein and veggies most nights. Here are some of the meals we will be eating this week and some fun recipes I have been wanting to try!

Meals:

• Grilled salmon with steamed veggies and roasted beets&apples
• Tri tip steak with cauliflower mash and roasted zucchini&green beans
• Meatloaf  + veggies & sweet potatoes
• Burgers with greens and roasted acorn&kobocha squash

Yummy recipes:

• Turkey salad lettuce wraps
• Peanut butter cookies (SO delicious)
• Steak pizza
• Caribbean jerk salmon bowls
• Whole wheat applesauce loaf cake
• Chocolate zucchini cookies

Looking back: 2 weeks of grocery shopping+meal planning

Has it really been two weeks already? Shopping and planning for two weeks worth of meals was much easier than I thought it would be! I enjoy fun new challenges and I have a feeling that meal planning is one of those things that gets easier the more you do it. The only real downside of grocery shopping every two weeks, or once a month for that matter, is that you aren't able to consume fresh produce. Some people prep and freeze their veggies right after their grocery run but I'm just not that organized/don't have the energy/don't like frozen and thawed veggies. Towards the end of our two weeks I ended up making a run to Trader Joe's for some organic greens. I love eating fresh greens and veggies each week and we eat quite a bit so for us it was difficult to stretch our produce out over 14 days and still feel like we were getting enough nutrients. I think if I decide to shop this way in the future I might just try to do a big grocery shopping trip to last us 1.5-2 weeks meal wise and then pick up fresh produce when needed.

Monetarily speaking I don't think we saved much. In part because I'm still new to the whole planning meals for 14 days thing and partially because regardless of whether I shop once a week or once every two weeks the items I buy generally stay the same. We choose to spend a little more on some organic items rather than couponing and shopping the sales.

One thing I plan on doing more often as a result of this experience is having leftovers for dinner. It is so easy to make a big pot of soup and eat it for multiple dinners throughout the week.

Meals this week are simple because we are heading to Arizona on Tuesday for a little break from the clouds and gloom!

• Pizza- home made with bacon, prosciutto, mushrooms, cheese, tomatoes, and red onion
• chili - made Sunday for Sunday night and Monday night dinner. This chili is SO.GOOD. I will definitely be making it again soon!

Thanksgiving

Many spend the month of November meditating on their blessings and giving thanks for family and friends. Its hard to not feel melancholy at the thought of not being with family during the holiday season. It is easy to forget that there is beauty in being in a new place, in new faces, and in food we aren't quite used to. I just read an article by Michael Chabon in bon appetit that I thought was a great reflection on tradition and the meaning of Thanksgiving. 

He reflects on an especially memorable Thanksgiving he spent with friends and family at an old inn in California:

"Ten years have passed since that night at Manka's Inverness Lodge. The yoga gypsies broke up a while back. Mr. Robinson's daughter was killed by a terrible disease at the age of 18, and his wife has since fallen prey to another. And two days after Christmas in 2006, a massive tree fell onto the main building of Manka's, damaging a water heater, which started a fire and burned the old lodge to the ground. We can never go back, therefore, to the place as it was in its heyday, to the families we were in our prime, to the things that we had all taken for granted up until that day.

And that, to me, is the meaning of Thanksgiving. Of all the Thanksgivings before and since, the one spent at Manka's stands out for me as the truest, even though we were far from our places of origin. Nothing lasts; everything changes. People die, and marriages dissolve, and friendships fade, and families fall apart, whether or not we appreciate them; whether or not we give thanks every waking moment or one night a year. For the act of returning to the same table, to the same people and the same dishes-to the same traditions-can blind you to life's transience. It can lull you into believing that some things, at least, stay the same. And if that's what you believe, then what have you got to be grateful for? None of our Thanksgivings are ever coming back; we've lost them. They're gone. And so this year, let's go somewhere with strange customs and unfamiliar recipes and the latest collection of ill-assorted chairs, and give thanks-not for everything we have, but for everything, instead, that we have lost."

Rain rain go away

And just like that its winter here in Washington which means clouds, rain, and chilly temps. The lack of sunlight is definitely influencing my mood more than I thought it would. It is so difficult to get out of bed in the morning (still dark at 7:30!) and it is equally as hard to get out of the house with Lewis during the day when it is raining cats and dogs outside. I finally bought our first umbrella the other day so we will at least be able to go for walks in the rain

This tree reminds me of a pumpkin :)