: Monday : Nourishment :

I would say the highlight this week was when we went to our friend's house and gathered duck and chicken eggs to take home. We made a vegetable bacon quiche that night and a superb breakfast for the next 2 days to come.

Additionally, Jared and I attempted to make cherry jelly with lemon juice as a thickener, but it came out more like a syrup. So, instead, we are utilizing it for an ice cream topping and next time we will use pectin when making fruit preserves. Either way, the kids report that it is delicious.

We have continued baking bread every Sunday, which lasts through out the week, and for some reason, I still have this obsession with using oatmeal and oat flour in everything that I make. I have not yet used my rice flour. Maybe I will this week.

There have been many improvised meals this last week, like Indian Dal, Spicy red beans and rice, vege casseroles, and so forth. I love to make my own concoctions based on what I already know about cooking and several types of dishes.

This week, all of my dinners will come from Everybody's Natural Foods Cookbook. It is a wonderful hippie dippie cook book from 1983. Books like this written in the 1970s and 1980s are the best! It ended up making for a pretty thrifty shopping trip at the grocery store, as well.

Now, I must begin my week, so I will leave you with a quote: One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating. ~Luciano Pavarotti and William Wright ..... Which is why it is so important to fill our mouths and bellies with delicious, healthy foods that are cooked with love. Slow down and truly enjoy your life-nourishing food. Get creative and try new things. Cooking and baking are like an art, an art that has been lost in today's fast-paced society where convenience and quickness prevail. Slow down and enjoy the process and the final result, even if it doesn't turn out as planned. Have a tasty week!