Please Remove Shoes & Negative Attitudes
I painted this door sign years ago. I have glued and removed it from a couple of front doors. I was inspired to create it because of a bumper sticker: "Mean People Suck." I also related that sentiment to negative people and their energy.
This past Saturday I watched the documentary film Symphony of the Soil. I was reminded of the beautiful method of how soil rebuilds itself when we care for it in natural ways, recreating nature's gardening methods.
Another message that was clear to me: how farming with chemical fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides is much like fraternizing with negative people - soil / soul sucking!
These chemical means of farming literally suck the life out of the soil. Chemicals slowly and insidiously kill off the soil microbes, fungi, earth worms, and various other life forms that are essential to healthy soil and life on this planet. Chemically farmed soil becomes dry, pale, lifeless, and infertile. Food grown in this soil is nutrient deficient like the very soil it was grown in.
Negative people and negative energy (i.e. watching, listening, or reading the news) do the same to us. These things slowly and insidiously suck the life from our body, mind, and soul. Negative energy in our life is a real force that leeches the nutrients from our every body cell just as chemical farming leeches nutrients from the soil.
Chemical farming is a stress to the soil, to all biological life, and to this planet. (All are one and the same.)
Negative people and negative energy stress our physical body, our emotional/mental being, and our soul. Negative energy activates the stress response. This response eats up nutrients from our body cells. This is one reason why stressed people get sickly looking (pale like the stressed soil), age faster, and contract more acute illnesses (colds, the flu, etc.) and go on to develop more chronic lifestyle diseases than relaxed, peaceful people.
Touch each other's lives, and your own, gently! Northern Sun T-Shirt!
POSITIVE Action to take:
Surround yourself with warm, loving, positive energetic people
AND
Be a warm, loving, positive energy person!
See and inspire the good in everyone, including you!
Whole food RECIPE: Tourlou Greek Mix-Mix (made with local ingredients!)
This is positively delicious!
- 5-6 medium ripe tomatoes (Richard Paolillo's & Vanessa Bittner's Old Market Farm)
- 1 medium eggplant (Kent Family Growers)
- 2 medium red potatoes (Keim Amish Farmer)
- 1 large red pepper (Keim)
- 1 large red onion (Birdsfoot Farm)
- 4-5 good size cloves of garlic (Birdsfoot Farm)
- 2 bay leaves
- 1/2 cup olive oil (I used 1/4 cup olive oil and 1/4 cup of Kriemhild Dairy's pasture raised butter)
- dash of nutmeg and thyme, I am a heavy handed dasher! I would say a good full tsp. of thyme and slightly less than a tsp. of nutmeg
- unrefined sea salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste after cooking
The finished Tourlou, Mix-Mix, with chickpeas.
- Cut veggies into bite size chunks and mix together well (except garlic)
- Spread out in the bottom of two 8 x 13 baking pans
- add oil, butter, bay leaves, nutmeg, and thyme and mix together
- Bake at 350 F for 1 hour, set timer for every 20 minutes and mix-mix away adding water to not "fry" the veggies! This makes for a juicy creamy mix-mix!
- If veggies not tender enough after 1 hour, give them a few minutes more
- When finished cooking add the garlic via garlic pressing into the mix of veggies
- Serve and add salt / pepper to taste
- Serve with chick peas added to the mix or chunks of chicken
- A side of whole grain pita bread, warm of course, is nice
- Perhaps a 'lil Greek goat's milk feta too!
Hints:
- This dish can be eaten hot or cooled. Traditional Greek serving is when cooled allowing the flavors to meld.
- I have used zucchini, yellow squash, buttercup & butternut squash, sweet potatoes... The eggplant, tomatoes, and onion are required... after that, add veggies to your delight. The more you make, meaning the fuller the baking dishes are, use more tomatoes to add to the creamy goodness.
- Another serving suggestion: To get a raw veggie salad in with this yummy dish serve with a Fall cabbage-root veggie slaw OR sauerkraut.
Enjoy!
Cooking and Eating at Home IS the Life for ME!!
Try to sing that title to the tune of: "Farm Living is the Life for Me....!"
I confess, I do not like to eat out. The idea of eating out is fabulous: someone else doing the shopping, cooking, and washing the dishes AND I get someone to serve up the food to me!
Who can say no to that?
This writing idea came to me as I was driving my kids to school. It started off as 4 simple reasons to eat at home. And then... my mind wandered...
11 Reasons Why I Prefer to Cook and Eat at Home:
1. I truly love to cook, to stretch my kitchen artist's muscles and create fun and tasty food with what I have on hand.
Ethiopian carrots and Brussels Sprouts: First cook up a pot of red lentils (keep them firm, not mushy), then saute' up some onions, carrot coins, and Brussels sprouts in butter. Add in some mild curry powder to the veggies, mix in the cooked lentils, and toss with some cashews. Yummy, easy, seasonal dinner! Serve with a side of whole grain pita bread, warmed and slathered with butter, and a dish of local yogurt.
2. I like knowing my body cells, and my kid's body cells, are being nourished with real food. I like knowing my food is being made with high quality ingredients.
3. The vegetables and fruits I cook with... I know:
- who grew them: the Martins, the Kents, Dulli and her crew at Birdsfoot Farm, John Dewar (the local Doc gone veggie farmer)... and so many more chemical free, northern NY growers,
- where the farmer lives and grows food (no, I do not stalk my famers!) but I like to see the land, know the soil my food was grown in... that kind of picky stuff,
- how they grow the food (chemical free).
4. The animal products I use I like to know:
- see the above farmer information and
- that the meat, eggs, milk, and dairy products came from animals that are pasture raised... out there eating grass and all the plant life that they like to eat and is their natural diet.
OK, so these goats ARE wandering in the snow... but, they are free wandering, pasture raised goats when the snow melts!
5. Whole grains: when I cook at home I know the bread, pasta, noodles, pie crust, cake, cookies or any food made out of flour is 100% whole grains. Whole foods nourish our body cells for health and healing. Refined foods deplete our body cells and set our bodies up for chronic, degenerative diseases. I have yet to find a restaurant that serves 100% whole grain foods with pasta dishes, bread for sandwiches, buns for burgers and such, bread that is served at the beginning of a meal, etc.
6. The minimal amount of sugar being used in my kitchen is not refined, white, cell destroying sugar. I cook with the highest quality of cell nourishing ingredients in all my food prep and cooking.
7. I know my food is not being nuked in a microwave. Microwave cooking is best avoided in a whole health lifestyle. To learn more about microwave's impact on your food and health, click here.
8. I know my food is seasonal and local allowing my body to follow the natural rhythms of the seasons and nature. My food is living and growing in the same climate I live in and that is just good vibrational energy!
9. I use oils that contribute to my vibrant health and avoid cheap vegetable oils such as soy and canola. I use high quality olive oil for making salad dressing. Most food establishments do not invest in high quality oils.
10. I do not have to go anywhere. Home is where the heart is and my heart is happy at home!
11. I can dress up, or down, in any clothes I want. PJs at the dinner table? Sure, why not!
Reminds me of an early morning breakfast when I was 20 at McDonald's in Canton. (Yes, I had a rocky start to independent, whole food eating lifestyle. My Mom did not bring me up on McDonald's food!) A high school girl friend and I went to breakfast in our long, flannel night gowns. Made sense to us, it was breakfast and we were in our PJs. Apparently the manager was not on board with our logic! We were asked to leave and not so politely either!
Love yourself and everyone you feed with real food!
Like my blog posts? Share with like minded family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, people you pass on the streets... The healthier and happier we are, the better world we will have!
My boys baking at home. We prefer home made, whole food birthday cakes over bakery made, refined food cakes!
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