Jan. 4, 2013

 It was my daughter's 17th birthday yesterday and her party went late. I'm catching up this morning on yesterday's post.

Owen is one of four children and I am one of five, so when there's a birthday party it's big and long. We love family parties!! Lots of cousins and friends. I think there were about 30 people here last night. That's a small party for us. I was a lazy hostess this time. I only served cake and ice cream, but we've been partying a lot this season so I chose K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple Sister! Sometimes less is best.

Yesterday I served breakfast. I made hot, brown rice grits with raisins and nuts. I sweetened with a touch of maple syrup, but Owen was good with just the raisins as sweetener. I also served the two of us a 6oz. antioxidant drink. It's called Emerald Balance and is a green powder that you mix with water. It has greens and antioxidants and enzymes and vitamins in it. Online this supplement would be over thirty dollars a tub. I purchased it for $12.00.

 I found it at our local Grocery Outlet. We are fortunate here in the Walla Walla Valley that there are a lot of 7th Day Adventists. Adventists are good eaters so it's easy to find organic and whole foods even at an outlet store. I get my organic brown rice noodles, olive oil, coconut oil, organic canned goods, etc. from the outlet store. I  even found a 10 pound bag of organic potatoes there for $1.99. I'm not sure that this lifestyle would be possible if it weren't for the outlet store and Andy's, an Adventist owned market.  I know in some places it's close to impossible to find organic foods and the ones that are found are expensive.

I made a homemade chicken noodle soup for lunch and we had goose, potatoes, and steamed veggies for dinner. My husband is a hunter. One of the perks about living where we do is that we have permission to hunt hundred of acres of land. All of it is just out our back door. We couldn't be more blessed! Meats harvested from nature are about as good as you can get. We eat a lot of duck and goose in the winter. Phil Robertson would be proud.

 I made boxed cakes for the party since most of my guests would not understand eating whole wheat raisin cake for a birthday party, but I hope to master a yummy chocolate cake using whole wheat flour and organic ingredients so next time I can serve a cake that I can be proud of.

I'm really in to reduce, reuse, recycle. I hate it when food is wasted. That's part of the reason that we got a pig last spring. All table scraps or old food had a place to go that was useful. Now that the pig is in the freezer I feed scraps to "Nicki", our black lab and the two roaming chickens "Red" and "Mud". It's comical to watch the three of them eat out of the same dish. I think a Lab is a part of a healthy lifestyle. Everyone ought to get themselves a good black Lab.

Until next time...