debating

Whether or not to continue this blog. Thinking it might be time to purge my Internet identity.... received some not nice comments about my baby. My baby for goodness sake. Who would bother going to such lengths to put out that sort of negativity? Which has left me feeling vulnerable for putting myself and family out there. Here. In what I suppose is not really a safe enough space. Feel ridiculous that I ever thought it was.

Going to mull it over while I am away, but I have really enjoyed doing this, it has been therapeutic and I feel I have made lovely friends. Until now.

Be well, all who read this.

just the two of us

The boys are away for a week with my mum. So it just The Beauty and I. It's very quiet here.


......she was doing an opera style song here...

Despite missing them like crazy I have been determined not to mope and thus miss the most of a potentially special week (isn't every week special? :) ) So we have been chilling out and relaxing around the garden. I have been taking long rests lying down beside Esmé as she naps, reading.

Lots of lovely new books this week; my compulsive reading habit is both expensive and exciting and of epidemic proportions, I have about 8 books on the go at once, my favourite today is Evie's Kitchen, I LOVE it! I imagined it to be very 'anti' in that if you were not a raw food vegan then you would not get much out of it. I was wrong about that, I have. I also wrongly assumed Shazzie would not have read Weston Price, so it was fab to see that she encompasses so much nutritional knowledge and does not stick to the regular vegan dogma. One interesting bit was where she talked about how as her nutritional knowledge increases it empowers so that she can make more informed choices. Like learning about vitamin K2, which no one really talks about in the vegan world and yet which is so vital to health (Weston Price talks about it as the 'X factor') and which is only bio-available in animal foods - or supplementation (and utterly necessary for skeletal health and formation, amongst other things). And so her raw food daughter now eats eggs. It is so exciting and comforting to read that someone so celebrity like in her status as a raw foodist expands to take in more and doesn't just stick to what she imagined was absolute, but takes research further to bring periphery knowledge closer to the majority. I admire that immensely.

About half of the recipes in the book use a dehydrator. More than half have some sort of ecstatic, superfood included (vital she thinks to one's health if you are relying upon plant foods only). Photos are lovely. Chapters split into easy slices: breakfasts, snacks, main savoury dishes..... and such. Plus sample menus for different ages and little snippets of her life with her daughter in her kitchen. I now have some buckwheat sprouting for the first time ever (no relation to wheat and gluten free) to dehydrate into 'buckwheaties' which my sister informs me are lovely and can be used in lots of recipes, her dd also enjoys them.

So yeah, I am glad again and again lately at finding more recipe and food books to expand upon what my family eat and upon my own nutritional knowledge. Bit by bit the jigsaw completes it's self (or grows bigger and more wonderfully colourful I suppose). It's a lovely journey to take, I am glad I stepped out along this path. And so today I eat omelette's from my chickens for breakfasts, feast upon huge raw salads with superfood dressings and seaweed wraps for lunch and dine using bone broths to make soups filled with my garden produce... snack-y nut milk superfood super green smoothies and raw chocolates, fruit dipped in coconut cream.... Esmé is a food Goddess. She sits and watches and stirs and eats *anything* I give her. Is there anything as delightful as seeing your child eat nutritious food? Isn't that every Mama's dream - worldwide, from day dot - to provide and fill her babe's belly? It makes my heart swell to the size of the moon. It's crazy, but true. And lovely.

Resting, dreaming and thinking happening here also, in all of this wide-open quiet that has become normal with the lovely noisy boys away and my dh at work. I have been house cleaning, lying on the trampoline and letting this girl bounce around me giggling and of course trying out new recipes.

Not that you can tell - it's just a new salad dressing :)



And knitting! Oh yes, the socks fit, I like them.



she likes them...


the cat likes us both quite a bit.... especially when I am sharing the worlds best milk... :)


Also we have been blackberry picking. Esmé really is the initiator. I am super smug that she is such a eco-forager. She simply will not let us walk even one step if there are blackberries to pick, it's hilarious. So our nightly walks are often painfully slow. Or could be. I am vastly amused by it and remind my dh that we have no where else to be, there is no rush. Which is just as well, there is no way Esmé can be rushed.



And here she is fitting herself into the smallest shoe box on earth, it's a tiny child shoe box, no idea how she crammed herself in but she did and was extremely pleased with herself for doing so :)



I had my London Dr's appointment to this week. Not sure what I thought about it all.... I need to to absorb it for a while before finding the words and emotions that came up. If the holistic energetics testing is valid then I am 'fixable'. If you know what I mean. More things to cut out of my diet (yeasts - so vinegars and such) and I have some great Apex Energetics supplements to support my stressed thyroid and help fix my leaky gut symptoms. Natural iron and some lymphatic drainage herbal drops.... on top of my regular stuff. The major diet changes of the past few months and these supplements feel like the only way to go for my health. On that I am certain. A very very long day out for my dh, dd and I though (thank heavens the boys were otherwise engaged or it would have been nightmarish), a very tired Baby Boo who liked one thing only about London - the pigeons. I was so glad to return home, the next day was a blessing, pure blessing. Waking quietly, eating breakfast so peacefully by the stream, letting Esmé be naked and splash about. Actually being able to hear birds, see our dear dove grey heron flutter into the sky, it's legs stretched. Being still. No greasy London light, buildings and dirt blocking out the weather. Who knows what sort of weather it was that day, we simply couldn't tell. It was dry. Oppressive and humid. Home was like a paradise of green afterwards to which I breathed deeply and said my worshipful prayers and hoped I would not have to venture to a city again for a long while.

Off to Scotland for a few weeks next week, picking the boys up on the way. Am terribly excited to be going back to our regular old holiday spot after a couple of years break. My dh seems so tired to me, he works such long hours I will be so glad to see him rest. No idea if I will be able to blog or not, I think it's only dial up at the family house there, in any case I am sure I'll be wanting to milk the time and rest lots with my lovely boys, girl and man :)

kale crispies and finger puppets

I am not sure which boy of mine calls crisps 'crispies' or where it came from but they both do. With all of my salad and green munching I feel very lacking in crunchy foods.

And I hate feeling deprived, I refuse to actually. And really I don't. I am boringly (ecstaticly) happy with my diet and my food right now, I shift the way I think to accommodate my foods, so when others are eating cake or crispies or some such thing I don't have I actually just feel like smiling: I *know* what these foods taste like. I don't need to eat them right now to know all over again. I don't want these foods in my body, I am happy these folk here are enjoying them though.... something like that goes my thought process. At first it was a forced thing but now I just do feel that way. Pretty cool.

So I made these. It's not the first time but I had forgotten about them and it's been a couple of years since. A dehydrator is called for really. But I don't have one. So I use the cool oven on the AGA with the door ajar.



Kale Crispies

Cut the thicker stems from your kale, and then shred the rest into inch pieces. Toss in a big bowl with olive oil, lemon juice and lots of seasoning. Spread on greaseproof paper in a very very cool/warm over or dehydrator and let them turn yummy and totally cripsy. It took about 5 hours for mine to do so. They are SO like crisps! Unreal. Very tasty sprinkled over soups and salads as seasoning too.



The finger puppets the boys made for Esmé on the occasion of her first birthday are very loved and well used still. BUT they do tend to fall of her tiny fingers, so mainly it is I singing Two Little Dicky Birds for the millionth time and making birds peck, while she struggles to keep them on her tiny fingers..... so this morning I made this : her very own teeny tiny bird puppet.



I lay them, the little trio, next to her so that when she woke from her nap she'd see them. She did and we had another few rounds of our birdie song as she popped upright to see me :)





Storing them in a little case Felix adorned with stickers for her.

Free Food Friday

Oh yes. Although I have not forgotten about this, I seem to have been distracted or busy or otherwise engaged and without excess time to give to foraging and creating blog posts about my findings. And even this post is a bit of a cheat.

Skin Food.

Sun Infused Calendula Oil.



I make this every year, and every year it turns out differently. I grow calendula specifically for this purpose (between the carrots). Chamomile grows wildy at the sides of every field I enter so I don't bother growing that. Lavender I added this year just beacsue I had a bunch drying near me at the time.

Easy: fill a jar with your picked and dried flowers (dry spread out on a piece of muslin for a couple of days in a warmish place out of direct sunlight). Add cold pressed organic oils of your choice. This year I used sweet almond and jojoba and then added a dash of olive oil to fill the jar right to the top. Place on a sunny windowsill, turning often for a couple of weeks, or until you remember about it. The longer you leave it the darker and more scented it becomes.

Decant into little vials or samller pretty glass bottles.



This is my favourite oil for massaging my wee ones. Something I do as often as I can. From a few weeks old, daily pretty much, until they no longer let me. This is one of my favourite massgae books. And OMG, look at those pictures! How come my baby was so small and suprised looking and now she is such a beautifully big determind toddler?

This post has reminded me to offer my big boys a massage tonight. I think more than ever bigger children need touch. Even if it's just a hand and arm or foot massgae, a whole body one isn't often wanted. I have this theory that once kids get past a certain age, say 8-10, they seem to get so much less physical contact, hugs kisses, hand holding, arms around shoulders. And humans just *need* physical touch. I really believe that. They get big and not so cute/soft/baby-like and we forget.

So what do they do? When do they get to be touched? Do they really have to wait until their teen years and then the only touch available is of a sexual nature? I think teenagers must be SO touch-deprived. Maybe one reson why they are sexually active earlier than ever; they just want physical loving touch and don't know where or what else is available. Sad really, but likely yeah?

I am going to keep trying to tempt my boys into massage for as long as possible, even if it means they just have some laughs massaging each other. I can't think of a time when they have refused though, it's just too nice :) They don't need tempting at all just yet. And as for my little Beauty, she is happy to be touched, carried massaged - all day long :)

Food for Free this Friday: skin food and soul food.

My favourite place to buy oils, body butters and other skin treats, a Welsh company, Akamui.

wordless wednesday, garden day

zen and the art of finding a comfy chair (and knitting in it)

I had a morning at the hospital. Again. With a fibre-optic camera thing up my nose and down my throat. Not an emergency, just an appointment scheduled from a while ago (everything looked fine :) )

So yeah, not exactly a free and easy happy morning. But this afternoon it improved :)
~A mega veggie/bolognaise sauce omelette lunch (once the anaesthetic wore off enough for me to swallow)
~A nap with the Boo Boo girl.
~Stories with the boys (look what we found in Lidl for 99p each!)
~Then, finally, after setting the soup-dinner away, clearing up dressing up clothes, and laughing at the way Esmé pushed Felix from his chair so she could sit there next to Isaac and eat pancakes - I finally got to sit in my cosy chair with my knitting (sock number two).









Knitting is one of those things that totally chills me out. Like meditation. I get into the groove of what I am doing and it's kind of trance like. I don't talk, I just sit. And knit. I can watch what else is going on without having to be a part of it, baby comes and goes, busy, active, boys bustle, sway, chatter, and I am still in my zone. An afternoon like that (or even just a slice of the afternoon, OK, more like a slither) makes up for the hyper stressed morning.

But required is a comfy chair. It's a must.

Add in a handful of knitting and it's worth waiting for.

her favourite, more book sharing

This is the hands down, clear winner when it comes to the book both my dh and I read most often, constantly, without pause, day after day to Esmé. Her choice. She has a sound effect for each page; the 'wooo! wooo!' of the seven doges chasing one another, the 'pffff! pffff!' (think panting out of breathe) of the six joggers jogging, the 'slurp slurp' with signs to match the lucky two big girls licking ice creams. I think no matter how tired we get of reading this book, my dh and I read it yet again as it is placed (thrust) in to our hands. Because. Because it's her favourite book. She gets so much pleasure from it. A strange, huge amount for such a short, small story book. Again and again. And again and again. Sigh. :)



I wonder if she will remember this book. I wonder if she remembers her joy at being read to over and over. It reminds of one of my brothers, he had this book, Jeremy Mouse was hungry (greedy mouse, leans too far to gather more balckberries and falls in to the river - see! Even I remember it and I wasn't even doing the reading, I was somewhere in the background) and even though he couldn't read he knew that story word for word (er, we all did I think). Just like this one. I hear the boys repeating the text to each other in sing-song voices while they do other things, absorbed, unaware that they are even speaking. It's amazing how books permeate a family so. So that you smile and shake your head and read it yet again for the 12th time that day and actually don't mind. Can even summon funny voices. It's a sort of pleasure. Like having and itch and itching it, over and over, even though it gets sore.



Shirley Hughes, you've created an itch of a book.



We pretty much like the other Shirley Hughes books I found here and there, upstairs, down, in one pile, in another.... I had no idea we had so many until I collected them together.



Treasure. Of many sorts.

knitting book, another

I bought this book just for me. Not to stereotype but a book featuring a girl who likes to knit - well I didn't think my boys would find it as thrilling as me. They didn't. But they really did kinda like it. I read it to them twice today (and once just to me). I have far too many knitting books, but this one is a different sort, a book about a girl who knits. So that's OK then.







Eventually after misunderstanding Nell and her knitting (and even making fun of it) her friends come to see it as special and worthwhile. So they join her.

Simple story, a love of knitting and lots of knitting pictures. Very sweet.

One day maybe a girl of mine might like it too. I can't imagine her not knitting even a tiny bit when I do it so often.... but well, funnier things have happened. In any case, I am happy to have it on my shelf :)

My knitting up there, the teal blue and purple? Socks for the girlie who only has one pair to her name. One pair! Soon to change, soon to change..... I seem to find these rhythmic knitting patterns; where I knit as the nights draw in and in the darker months of the year and it' started already. The earth has swung her arcing pendulum full tilt and now everything is swinging back to dark. Even if I never looked at a calender I'd know the feeling of change by my urge to knit :)

~ the yarn is Rowan Pure Wool, and the pattern is the dk sock pattern from Web of Wool ~