Pizza!

We love our pizza in this family. A good pizza place is the first thing we try and find when ever we move. Right now we are very lucky to live down the street from a great gourmet pizza place. Its nice to have something healthy and delicious so close when we just don't feel like cooking.

As good as there pizza is, our favorite it so make it at home. I have been working on making a good crust for about three years and now have it down pat. I started with a Jamie Oliver recipe and have cut out the sugar and made it with half whole wheat flour. It has gotten to the point that once i remind myself of the proportions i can make the dough by eye, without measuring.

It makes 3 medium sized pizzas:

1 3/4 cup Whole wheat flour

1 3/4 cup Hard bread flour

1/2 tbsp Salt

1/2 tbsp Bread yeast

1/2 tbsp Honey

2 tbsp Olive oil

1 1/2 cup warm Water

In a large bowl mix water, yeast, honey and olive oil. Let sit 10-15 min. Add whole wheat flour and salt. Mix and then slowly add the bread flour until it forms a nice dough. Turn out onto a floured counter and knead, adding more flour as needed, for about 5-10 min. Cover and let rise about an hour. Punch down and then roll out into 3 rounds. Top and bake for 12-15 min in a oven at full-wack. Enjoy!

This Moment

{This moment } - This moment - an end of week ritual, no words, just a special photo to remember, savour, enjoy. Inspired by the continued beauty and creativity of Soulemama's blog, where she encourages readers to post their own moments.

Preserved Lemons

I was flipping though Jamie Oliver magazine last month and came across a interesting recipe for preserving lemons. I buy organic lemons because I like to use the zest and the amount of chemicals that normal ones are sprayed with is not something I like putting in my body. Most of the time they are sold in bags of 6 and they sometimes end up sitting in the fridge going bad so the thought of saving them in brine sparked my interest.

What you will need:

4-6 Lemons, un-waxed, preferably organic

8-12 tbsp Sea salt, not table salt

Lemon juice

Wash lemons well. Cut four slices from one end to the other of the lemon being careful not to cut all the way through. You want to make a space for the salt but you want it to all stay in one piece. Pack the lemon slices with the salt, making sure to get at least 2 tbsp into each lemon. Pack the salted lemons into a sterilized jar, making sure to pack them in there tight so the juice starts to run out of them.

Let sit in a warm place for 2 day at which time fill the rest of the jar with lemon juice and store in the frigid for a month. Its a good idea to flip the jar over every day or so to make sure it all stays mixed up. You mostly want to eat the rind as the flesh with me mushy so just scrap the soft part out when you go to use it.

*Note: it is important that the lemons stay under the liquid. You can scrunch up a piece of parchment paper and stick it in the top of the jar to help keep the lemons submerged.

I hope you enjoy them. I used mine in a rub for a roast chicken and it turned out wonderful.

Plant a tree

I thought it might be nice to have a kind of tree for Liam to play with and to help teach him about the seasons, so i made him a tree.

I used heavy gauge wire and formed it into a skeleton and them rapped it in batting and tided it together with button hole thread.

Its about 3 feet tall, nice and flexible. So then begins the week long sawing project of hand sewing the "bark" on. I found a piece of heavy material that i think looks like bark. I cut strips of fabric, sewing and cutting them to fit as I went.

And Finally the finished tree.

I toped it off with small flowers I made with some craps I had and a birds nest with a crochet egg. I used gray wool felt and a tutorial from Rhythms of the home (thank you).

I plan to make different things with Liam to hang from the tree with the seasons and holidays, like red and yellow leafs out of felt in the fall and our family yule decorations in the winter (we don`t have the space or want for a traditional tree). I hope it will be a greatly anticipated tradition to change the tree and welcome the new seasons!

Laundry soap

Since our move into our condo I have been buying laundry soap. It was not high on my list of things to make myself as it is easy to get "green" cleaning products at our local heath food store. As we are settling in I felt that I had time to start making it again. There are hundreds of homemade laundry soap recipes on the net, both powder and liquid. Most are some variation of soap flakes, borax and washing soda. I made a powder laundry soap, but i'm going to make this liquid version next time to see how it goes.

What you will need:

2 cups of soap flakes, I bought soap flakes but I normally just grate a bar of soap.

1 cup of washing soda

1 cup of borax

10 drops of essential oil, I used peppermint but you can use whatever you like or none at all.

Put all but the oil in to a glass jar and give it a good shake (with the lid on, but you knew that). Add the oil on top of the powder and shake some more. As it sits the oil will spread though the jar and make it smell great. I use about a 1/4 cup per load.

New beginnings

This is our new beginning. Our Family of three has been though a lot in the past year: We moved into what we had hoped to be our Forever home, a old house on two and a half acres of land where Liam could grow up surrounded by nature on our homestead. A motorcycle accident that left my husband a paraplegic. Driving two plus hours a day to be at the hospital with him for almost a month. Making the heart breaking decision to leave our farm and move close to the hospital for the rest of his four month stay and then moving to a wheelchair friendly condo in a medium sized city where we have access to rehab and support.

We have been very lucky too find like minded people here and we are starting to find some rhythm in our new life. It was hard to find a new propose, moving from our homestead to a condo with no outdoor space.

I have found making a thoughtful move towards creativity very helpful. Things that i did not have time for before like sewing, reading and art have become renewed loves.

Our son is at an age now,(two this fall) that he is starting to be creative in his play and learning. Its wonderful to make toys and do soul enricher things together like making bread or planting our window garden. I have also found that I have to be much more creative with my parenting so to handle a little person with his own strong will. It had been great to have found other parents that follow a more Natural, Attachment style parenting. It has been a big inspiration.

.

This blog is for me to share this new chapter of my life and all the creativity i can bring into it.