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 :)