Food

It seems my existence revolves around food.  Whether it’s eating it or preparing it for somebody else, it’s always in my forethoughts.  What shall we eat next?  What can I do to keep everybody eating their veggies?  How can I keep loosing weight?  What’s for dinner?  Jesus said not to worry about what we will eat or drink, but rather we should trust God, who knows we need these things.  I’ve been trying to take that approach and let my food prep be more spirit-led if you will.  I still make grocery lists and I still plan ahead (at least weekly) but I try to keep some things unplanned, so I can practice NOT worrying, instead I practice listening and letting the Holy Spirit inspire me.  It’s kind of fun, because surprisingly, He always gives me a good idea!  Always!

We joined a CSA this year.  That stands for Community Supported Agriculture.  Every week we get a gorgeous box full of organic, locally grown veggies and sometimes fruit.  It has been a tremendous blessing!  I don’t always know what to do with the bounty I get, but I’m learning!

Roasted CSA veggies with butter and seasonings.  Scrumptious!

I’ve got tomatoes coming out of my ears!  I find them in my CSA box, in my own garden and my neighbor brings them over!  So I decided to dehydrate some.  I read that I can pulverize them and use the powder to make tomato sauce and tomato paste.  They turned out so pretty that I might just keep them this way.

Besides tomatoes, I’ve been dehydrating apples, nectarines and pears.  I find dehydrating to be the easiest way (besides freezing) to preserve food.  No sugar is needed and I can just keep everything right in my big pantry.

I’ve also been freezing onions, peppers and berries.  Squash season is starting, my absolute favorite!

Bless the Lord , O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul and forget not all his benefits; who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies, who satisfies your mouth with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. Psalm 103: 1-5

He forgives, heals, redeems, crowns and feeds us! 

Bless the Lord, O my soul!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

Keeping my Treasures Warm

So every summer I go garage saling.  Every summer I find warm beautiful winter jackets.  Every summer I try to prepare for the coming winter and every summer, I get too many jackets!  I was over at a friend’s house who was going through clothing, she has a mega-sized family so it was a lot of clothes and I found a really nice jacket in her stuff for Bubble Gum and came home and realized she needed it but that Laffy Taffy had 3 jackets.  He doesn’t need that many.

And so the sorting began.  I started by going through  the house:  garage, front coat closet, back hallway, laundry room closet and totes and found all the coats or jackets that had been left out since early spring when it was still cold or stored away for the future.

Then I started hanging up jackets in birth order starting with me and working my way down to Marshmallow.  That hot pink coat near the wall is my winter jacket.  Next comes Chocolate, he has a winter coat, a fall/spring coat, a jean jacket, a leather coat and a pair of snow pants.  He’s set.  Everything in his size that I don’t need is going out of my house.  Next is Strawberry.  She has a winter coat, jean jacket, spring/fall jacket and snow pants.  She’s on the look out for a trench coat from a thrift store. Everything else in her size is leaving my house too.  And down it goes. 

To deal with the left over stuff, it went in one of four places.  Either here (my laundry room closet), these are coats that are VERY nice and someone will be able to wear in the next couple years, like Adrielle or Jonathan.  Or they went in the basket you can see with doll chairs sticking out, I’m taking those to Once Upon a Child because I don’t have friends with baby girls. 

Or into a bag for donating.

Or in this pile to take to the beach for my friends to dig through.  There are many coats in here, including nice coats that were mine but are too big now.  It’s so fun to be able to share our blessings with people!  I love seeing all the coats and jackets and snow pants lined up, knowing that my family will be warm this winter.  And now I don’t have to look for coats at garage sales anymore this summer!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

Psalm 36:5-10

Your mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens;

Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.

Your righteousness is like the great mountains;

Your judgments are a great deep;

O Lord, You preserve man and beast.

How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God!

Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Your wings.

They are abundantly satisfied with the fullness of Your house,

And you give them drink from the river of Your pleasures.

For with you is the fountain of life;

In Your light we see light.

Oh continue Your lovingkindness to those who know You,

and Your righteousness to the upright in heart.

AMEN!

Summer’s Close

Summer is wrapping up for us and with the end of summer came the end of our summer reading challenge.  I wasn’t as organized as I usually am about this year’s reading challenge.  I think I was being a little lazy actually and the library changed their program into something ridiculous so that sort of took the wind out my sails too. Thankfully I managed to think of something and it worked to get my kids reading this summer.  I bought them Sonlight’s summer readers.   Strawberry and Chocolate shared a pack, Bubble Gum and Blue-Raspberry got their own.  It worked out really well.  Sonlight packaged them up so nice, it was like they each got a present!

Anyway, the challenge was to get the books read before the end of July and in return I would take them to Nelson’s and buy them an ice-cream cone!  They all finished the challenge earlier then the date I set, so off we went! 

        

It was a magnificent day!  Warm, bright, not muggy!

         

I was a good girl, I didn’t have any ice-cream.  I was too busy wiping up spills and dolling out the wet wipes! 

Afterward, we decided to surprise the little people by taking them to the most adorable park ever created:  Teddy Bear Park.

I love it that my teens will still be in family photos, and go to the park with us.  lol

   

Isn’t that cool?  The whole park is like a squishy Astroturf, it’s really fun to walk on.

We ended our adventure at the Stillwater Farmer’s Market, which was quaint and delightful.  My husband spoke my love language and paid the big bucks for a gallon of pure maple syrup!  I am one blessed woman!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

Changes

If you follow me on Facebook you may have heard my recent rant about Google.  Annoying is all I can say.  They don’t like it that I don’t have a “real” name and I’m not popular enough to keep my pseudo name in their Google + environment.  Well, Google, guess what?  I’ve been blogging longer than Google + has been around…Anyway, I did appeal, they rejected me, so I have not other choice than to leave Blogger. 

Remember when I mentioned that Strawberry will be learning computer programing through Team Tree House?  One of the things she is learning is how to code a WordPress Blog.  It makes sense for me to move for a number of reasons, one being the aforementioned issue, the other being I’m going to have to start paying blogger because I’ve about used up all my picture storage and pictures are a huge part of blogging to me, but I DON’T want to pay to blog!! 

So in my very limited free time I have been working on a new blog, with a new name and a new design.  I think I may loose some readers during the switch, but that’s okay.  Follow along if you want, but please don’t feel like you have too!! 

I’ll give you lots of time to make the switch in whatever reader you are using.  I’m not quite ready to reveal the new title, but I love it.  And just like I feel like changes are happening in my own life the new blog will reflect the same changes.  It’s still just me though, blogging about things that make me happy, a new title, a new chapter, a new decade in the life of the Taffy’s!

Thanks for reading here, it blesses me to no end!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

More on Trim and Healthy Mama

I’ve been having fun with some of the different foods that are encouraged to eat on the Trim and Healthy Mama plan.  Each time something turns out yummy I want to share it because I’m such a visual person and there are no pictures of food in the book!

This is Slim Belly Jelly which sounds disgusting to me.  The belly jelly part, I have plenty of belly jelly excuse me, the point is to get RID of the belly jelly.  Ha! It’s not pretty like this jelly either and what I made is more like jam anyway.  lol  It’s basically fruit, water, stevia extract and glucomanan.  Simmered up and thickened and then stuck in a jar and put in the fridge.  EASY!  We like it on our Trim and Healthy Pancakes, stirred in our yogurt and on my new favorite love:  Chia Pudding!

I honestly didn’t know how I was going to feel about this.  It’s rather ugly and kind of lumpy, like tapioca (gag).  But I was willing to try since Chia is so nutritious and I just want to be healthy and keep up with all these little people!  I bought this particular Chia seed at Trader Joe’s and the recipe is:  1 cup milk (almond, coconut, whatever you like, I used almond) and 1/4 cup chia seeds.  Then you are supposed to add 1/4 cup honey but there’s NO way I’m going to do that so I added vanilla and stevia extra, like 8 drops and stirred it up.  You just stir it up and stick it in the fridge.  And a few hours later you have a yummy, creamy, slightly crunchy bed time snack!  This is how I served it:

Just added a plop of my blackberry sugar-free jam (aka slim belly jelly).  My husband says it has a little tapioca like texture, almost. The seeds are little crunchy, not so slimy.  He loved the flavor though!  I also bought some Chia seeds from Costco and the pudding I made from that looks even thicker.  The kids all want their own, how can I refuse them?

Strawberry and I hosted a luncheon for her blog writers and we made it an S luncheon (S for Satisfying or Fat).

Here’s what we had:

Cornbread Salad with Dill dressing

Maca-foni and Cheese

Lemon Coconut Cake

               

The cake was so much tastier than we expected, especially when it was chilled.  There was a lot of left over so Strawberry has been eating it for breakfast!  Amazing that eating cake for breakfast is approved for THM!

The is the “corn” bread.  I didn’t actually like it by itself, but mixed in the salad it was delicious.  I think whole wheat bread is so much prettier.  I only used half the loaf in the salad so I sliced up the leftovers and put them in the freezer, maybe it would make a good grilled turkey and cheese sandwich?!

And finally, I wanted to show you these weird low-carb “rolls.”  They are mostly made of eggs but are perfect for hamburger buns!!  Mr. Taffy really likes them!  I didn’t add cheese to these ones but the original recipe has cheese in them.  They go together VERY quickly.  I still think whole wheat rolls are more beautiful, but these will do for now. 

I gave him 2, with chicken burgers on them, a side of corn bread salad and watermelon.  Watermelon isn’t plan approved but it makes my husband happy and I’m not going to complicate his eating anymore than I already have!  lol  He’s lost almost 30 pounds in less than 6 weeks!

I’ve also got some pretty lofty fitness goals.  We cleared out our family room and sold all the furniture in it and turned it into a workout room.  The only thing that is in there is the TV and an X-box Kinect machine.  Mr. Taffy bought us a workout program for it and I’ve been working on getting stronger by punching blocks and kicking walls and jumping rope.  Jumping rope is so hard for me!  There are three levels and I’m determined to master each level.  Well, yesterday I met one of my personal goals and actually made it through the entire first level without 1) stopping.  2) peeing my pants!  I was so happy!  I’m going to keep at it, I’m think if I can make it all the way through the hardest level I’ll be ready for whatever Israel throws at me! 

The Battle is the Lord’s,

Mrs. Taffy

P.S.  I linked up the recipes in the pictures and text if you want to look at them!

Turkey Veggie Chili {THM-E}

I wish I would have added a little low-fat cheese to my chili before I took the photo, it would have been so much prettier!

Turkey Veggie Chili

1-2 pounds lean ground turkey

4-5 garlic cloves (minced)

1 large white onion (chopped)

1 medium bell pepper (chopped)

4 Large Carrots (sliced) (Carrots aren’t plan approved, but I eat them anyway because my body likes them and I personally don’t believe of all the things I’ve eat in my life that carrots are what made me fat!  lol )

2 Medium Zucchini's (sliced/chopped)

1-28 oz. diced tomatoes or 2-15 oz. cans of tomato sauce (my family doesn’t like the texture of tomatoes)

2 can of black beans

2 can of other beans (I used white kidney beans)

1-2 Tbsp. chili powder

2 tsp. garlic powder

1 Tbsp. Cumin

Sea Salt to taste

Fresh ground black pepper

1 tsp. xylitol or Truvia (opt.)

2 Tbsp. Olive Oil

1) Heat olive oil in soup pot. Sauté onions and garlic, being careful not to burn garlic.

2) Add chopped peppers and sauté a few more minutes.

3) Add ground turkey, brown the turkey in the onion mixture and add all the spices except the salt. 

4) Add carrots and zucchini once turkey is browned and mix together well.

5) Pour beans and tomatoes and add any water if chili needs thinning.

6) Salt to taste and allow to simmer for a couple hours.

The non-THMer’s in my house got some nice organic tortilla chips along with their chili.  I also served low-fat shredded cheese and fat-free sour cream.  This is an E because of the beans and the tomato sauce and probably the carrots too, but I ignore those.  (smile)

I liked this recipe for several reasons:  Tons of veggies, high-protein, good-carbs, went together quickly, Mr. Taffy had seconds and it was so tasty that even Marshmallow LOVED it! 

Less of me and more of HIM,

Mrs. Taffy