There is just something so wonderful about having everything I need right at my fingertips…and yet not cluttering up the kitchen. It’s inspiring to see them all on display and  it makes assembling recipes so easy!

And so…we have been baking up a storm…in the snow storms We love baking something warm and delicious inside while the snow is falling outside.

Bella is an excellent helper and always offers to help with any baking task…we’ve been learning a lot about numbers and measuring through this.

I like to call this beauty “My Precious“. I LOVE having a full size oven again. Love love love. And it’s gas. Which makes me insanely happy. I think I would rather cook over a fire than an electric stove!

Our muffins must always be eaten with hot tea! I recently re-stocked my favorite tea, Rishi’s Citron Oolong…so I’m a happy girl. The muffin that we tend to make the most around here is the Delightful Banana Nut Muffins from The Garden of Vegan. It’s one of my most requested recipes from from friends and family…so I thought I would post it here!

Delightful Banana Nut Muffins
Cookbook: The Garden of Vegan
By Sarah Kramer and Tanya Barnard

1 1/3 cups whole wheat flour
½ cup dry sweetener (I like rapadura or turbinado)
1 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
½ t salt
¾ cup ground flax seed
½ cup chopped walnuts (optional)
2 bananas, mashed
1/3 cup olive oil
1 t vanilla extract
2/3 cup soy, rice, or almond milk

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, sweetener, baking powder, baking soda, salt, flax, and walnuts. In a small bowl, combine the bananas, oil, vanilla and soy milk. Pour the liquid ingredients with the dry and mix together gently until “just mixed”. Spoon into a lightly oiled muffin pan and bake for 15-20 minutes. Makes 12 muffins.

On the day of our big snow, Bella decided that we simply must have a muffin picnic in front of the fire, and so we did! Such sweet memories I have with my girls.

And lastly, my friend Ellen gave me a yummy recipe for Sunflower Seed Cookies…and of course we made them right away! They were SO GOOD. Although, I think it had something to do with the copious amount of sugar in them You can always cut back or add alternative sweeteners if you’re so inclined. They can also easily be made vegan.

Sunflower Seed Cookies
Serves/Makes:   4 dozen

Ingredients:
Cream together:
1 cup butter or Earth Balance
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs or egg substitute
1 teaspoon vanilla

Blend in:
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
3 cups oatmeal
1 cup sunflower seeds

Directions:
Mix together well. Drop onto greased baking sheet. Bake at 350 F for 8-9 minutes.

For more yummy muffin recipes, check out my food blog, Happy Foody, under the muffin category. If you’re a fellow muffin lover, be sure to check out this great article on “How To Make the Best Muffins Ever“. It’s a goody.

Next I’d like to get into baking homemade bread. I’ve done it before…but I would especially like to make sourdough and english muffins, along with some crusty, hearty soup breads.

If you have a tried and true recipe…please share it below! Also, please share your all-time favorite muffin recipe so I can stop making the same one over and over

When I think of Portland, I get all mushy lovey-dovey feelings inside. Mostly because of those amazing food carts. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that they are mobile? You know I love little traveling pods!

Well, Longmont isn’t quite Portland yet…but we’re getting there! We were SO excited to see food carts in Prospect last weekend…and hope to see them there again soon. After talking to the owners, it seems like they might be there every Monday. I would LOVE to see this entire park packed with people and food carts and love. Yes!

Pico and Quesadillas from Comida

Top of The Hill Grill — A new fave!

BBQ Tempeh wrap with coleslaw and goat feta. Yes please.

Cupcake!

Hey people! Where is my cupcake?!

*I fell in love with Prospect the first time I laid eyes on those funky & sweet homes. Wanna know more? Check out this great Dwell magazine article from 2002.

The Women’s International Summit for Health…I am SUPER excited for this event! There are so many people speaking that I respect and admire…and I love that there is a little something for everybody. Food, relationships, money, attitude, beauty…and more. The last event like this that I listened to was so inspiring. I walked away from it feeling renewed and excited about life and my health. Even if you don’t fully agree with everything a speaker is proposing, you can take away many little nuggets of wisdom from each one. Even if you can just catch a couple of the interviews, it’s SO worth it.

Sign up for free before March 8. I hope that you’ll be able to listen in!

For those of you who don’t read actively over at Happy Foody, I wanted to make sure you knew about our One Week Raw Challenge…with prizes! I have also just begun to offer “Raw Life Coaching” for those foodies wanting to take it up to the next level…there are so many exciting things happening over there. Be sure to check it out!

Food Lovers Unite! I have changed my food blog to WordPress now…you can find it here: Happy Foody.

I’ve added lots of YUMMY new recipes, including one of my all-time favorites, Peanut Love Sauce and a new one that I can’t get enough of, Avocado Feta Salsa. I added a “Most Requested” category as well so you can find the best recipes easily. None of the recipes are of my own creation…so I’ve given credit to the original chef if I knew who it was. I’ve also re-categorized everything for easier navigation. Some of the entries are from my old MySpace blog, so they aren’t all formatted the same, and not all will have photos…but it will still be fun

I will be updating this more often now…so check back for goodies. As always, I love to hear your feedback on the recipes! Cook Cook Cook!

I just cannot wrap my brain around the fact that we as a nation throw away and waste so much food every day…and yet there are people who go to bed hungry. Why on earth would a restaurant or grocery store taint food it throws out for the sole purpose of keeping people from eating it? They threw it out…it’s trash in their eyes. Why not let someone else make use of it? I just don’t get it. I can understand why they would be upset if someone was taking food from their dumpster and making a mess around the area, but one of the generally known rules of dumpster diving is to leave the area cleaner than you found it.

I have never gotten food from a dumpster (although I have found other lovely household items like this!), but I am certainly not opposed to it…and have been quite fascinated by it for awhile. What a brilliant form of activism…the ultimate in anti-consumerism. Freegan.info describes the activism side of it like this:

“Freeganism is a total boycott of an economic system where the profit motive has eclipsed ethical considerations and where massively complex systems of productions ensure that all the products we buy will have detrimental impacts most of which we may never even consider. Thus, instead of avoiding the purchase of products from one bad company only to support another, we avoid buying anything to the greatest degree we are able.”

I think this might be why people are so opposed to letting their trash go to whoever wants it. Food, trash, possessions….they are all highly political. The choices you make about these things reflect your values. And when you get your food from a dumpster, it makes others uncomfortable…like you are judging them for NOT getting their food from the dumpster. They don’t understand it, so they fight against it. They can’t imagine themselves doing it, so in their mind…it’s wrong/weird for anyone to do it. There seems to be feeling of “if I have to work hard for this…then you do too!”.

In the book Evasion, the anonymous author brings up the absurdity of it all:

“There is the odd paradox — the casualness with which they will throw something into the dumpster, and the lengths they go to protect it once it’s there. How an innocent and harmless act — dumpster diving — will be confronted by greedy shopkeepers, store managers, and employees with scathing words, rage, and violence. “

What would Jesus say about dumpster diving? I think he would hold weekly dumpster diving parties. He would be right there inside the dumpster with everyone else…exclaiming words of joy when he finds a sealed box of bread or a bright shining apple. He would take the food and feed those in the neighborhood…and then go fight for better processes when it comes to food waste!

I think one of the biggest reasons for people throwing things away, wasting food, etc. is pure laziness. I am just as guilty as anyone else of this….although I am much more mindful about my choices now. Household items that you could Freecyle get put in the trash because you’re in a hurry. Restaurants throw out food because it takes too much work in their mind to partner with a food bank or homeless shelter. There needs to be a greater network of people who are willing to be the liason and fill the gap. How about a restaurant with only dumpstered food? A health inspector’s worst nightmare, I’m sure…but what a wonderful thing for a community. And Jesus would be the general manager

More resources:
Everything you ever wanted to know about “freegans” and dumpster diving at Freegan.info
A friend of mine on MySpace documents her loot here.
How to Dumpster Dive

Photo credit: Flickr/toddmundt

Luckily for me, Montana and the surrounding states have a huge number of organic farms. AND, if it’s not organic, it’s local. BUT SARA! Aren’t we always supposed to eat organic so we don’t die a horrible pesticide-induced death? Well…yes. However, buying local has many, many advantages. I love going to the farmer’s market and meeting the farmer’s face to face. When I eat that delicious, red, tomato…I know who picked it. If the farm is not certified organic, I am able to just ask the farmer what they use on their produce. There were several vendors in Iowa at the Farmer’s Market who were not certified, but did not use pesticides. You just have to ask. However, it’s harder to call up the corporate farm in California what they used on their crops.

I started thinking more about buying local foods when I found the 100-mile diet site. It’s radical and wonderful. I love my avocados and bananas a little too much to do it, but I love the concept. Last summer when we had a share in our local CSA, I experienced a little of what it might be like to eat 100% local and 100% in season. When the tomatoes were done, they were done. You better savor it now, because pretty soon, they won’t grow anymore! Boo hoo! But it made me appreciate the food so much more. Someday, I would love to grow all of our food…canning and preserving along the way to sustain us through the winter. Oh, and I want to live in a sweet yurt. But that’s another blog.

On my most recent trip to the coop, I was looking at salsa and I was disappointed because almost all of them were made by “big organics” (companies who are owned by a larger, nastier corporation…i.e. Boca, which is owned by Phillip Morris! Oh the horrors!). So I turned around and in the cooler, I found a yummy, bright red salsa made just a few miles north of town! It was not organic, but in that case, I would much rather support my local grower than Muir Glen…which is owned by General Mills. It also tasted so much better than the jarred variety.

I walked over to the bread section and I made sure to grab 2 loaves made locally by Wheat Montana instead of the Rudy’s, which I used to buy. They aren’t organic, but they have the ingredients I look for and no added sugars…except honey. AND, they are made right here. We also have a delicious bakery just a few blocks from our house called On the Rise…and I buy yummy crusty bread from them.

If I can’t find something completely local, I go for the next best thing…the surrounding states. I will choose Oregon, North Dakota, Washington, and Wisconsin over other states. Be sure to READ your labels! Every mile your food travels (a.k.a. food miles) to get to you is gasoline being burned and resources being used up. Most sources say that the average piece of produce travels about 1,200 miles to get to your plate. Yuck! I just don’t like the thought of all my food traveling in a truck to get to me. I especially don’t like thinking about buying food from other countries. How do I know that those organic grapes from Chile are truly organic…and who knows what kind of residues are on them from the trip. Call me paranoid. Just another reason to buy close to home or grow your own.

When we are thinking about going out to eat…we try to always think about where the restaurant is getting their food as well. We have a great Farm to Restaurant program here…and most of the places we support buy locally, and some are organic too. We have so many amazing local restaurants here…the food is so fresh and perfectly prepared. Living in a tourist town has it’s perks.

To sum it up…buying local is tastier, better for your local economy, and great for your body. If you can find something that is local AND organic, life is good. KNOW your food. KNOW your farms. Where you put your grocery money is as important as your vote! Be informed about your food choices.

Getting my coffee on Saturday mornings is one ritual in my life that brings me happiness. My tea ritual, my bedtime rituals…they are all part of who I am. I believe that rituals are so important…to bring order, to bring comfort, to bring expectant joy. Rituals are especially important for children, and we strive to have them in our family. Family dinners, reading familiar books, having nightly rituals. At the same time, we enjoy being free-spirited and take part in spur-of-the-moment activities. Ritual does not mean a loss of spontaneity in your life. Ritual is life!

My most recent find was cloth produce bags. Instead of using all of those flimsy plastic bags in the produce aisle, you can use these great organic bags.

My favorite places to get bags:
Reusable Bags
Ecobags

I prefer the bags with long handles. I think they are easier to carry…you can put them over your shoulder, or tie the handles in a knot and carry them like a traditional plastic bag. These bags stretch and can hold an amazing amount of food. They won’t break. Of course, you don’t have to get fancy string bags. Cloth tote bags from the thrift store work perfectly fine too! There are so many bags with company logos, event logos, etc. on them…you can snatch them up at any Goodwill.

Go cloth!