Chocolate Coconut Haystacks

This is Day Three of my Five Day Detox with my coach, Brien Shamp.  I find it amazing this incredibly yummy recipe is actually legal during this detox. I just made them and I'm in HEAVEN.

Chocolate Coconut Haystacks

1/2 cup Coconut Oil melted
1/2 cup raw cocoa powder (UNSWEETENED)
1/3-1/2 cup agave nectar (honestly these are so good you don't need this)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cups shredded unsweetened coconut
1 cup of ground flaxseeds
2 tbsp. of sunflower butter
dash of cayenne pepper

Mix everything together in a bowl and shape into balls. Place on a tray lined with parchment or waxed paper and pop in the fridge to harden. They will last 6-12 months in the freezer. You can add or reduce ingredients as you like or need. Try adding goji berries or cacao nibs. Try it with almond butter or cacao with chili pepper.

ENJOY!

Detox and Rest

I've been steadily changing my diet since January. I did the Whole Living three week detox and LOVED it. The food was great and I lost nearly 12 pounds! But of course, my lousy eating habits returned and I let things go, eating too many carbs and too much sugar for my personal needs.

Then three weeks ago I started going to boot camp four mornings a week at 6 am. I am seeing results in terms of toned arms and some lessening in inches but the scale still has not moved.

So yesterday I began a five day detox with my coach. It's a protein and veggie based detox really just designed to eliminate foods for a while that are known to cause inflammation.

No sugar, no grains of any kind and the only fruit allowed, apples and pears.

So far so good. I'm most of the way through day two. I was really hungry yesterday but today less so.

I was a little worried about still having enough energy for boot camp and that's been no problem so far, and I guess that's no surprise with all the protein I'm getting.

I've been thinking about what comes next, after day five. I think I'd like to keep everything the same (it's how I feel best honestly) but add back in banana and other fruits. I miss my banana in my morning protein shake.

Speaking of shakes and smoothies, check out this great article at All Things G & D for a great recipe and idea for green smoothies. I'm going to try it once I can have bananas again!

A friend asked if I could publish a meal I made the other night which is so easy and yummy.

So here it is.

Coconut Chicken and Veggies

1 cup cooked chicken (I use either chicken I shred from a rotisserie chicken or I quickly cook up a frozen chicken breast)
1 -2 tbsp coconut oil
1 cup asparagus chopped
1 cup sliced crimini mushrooms
1/2 c chopped red, orange and or yellow bell pepper
1/2 c sliced zucchini
salt and pepper to taste.

If you have a rotisserie chicken just shred off about a cup. If you need to cook your chicken, use 1 tbsp of coconut oil to do so in a pan over medium heat. Season with salt and pepper on both sides.

Once chicken is cooked, remove from pan and cut into bite sized pieces.

Add more coconut oil if needed to the pan then add your veggies. Salt a bit to sweat the veggies.

Stir frequently to prevent browning too much on the bottom. Towards the end of the cooking time, I like mine al dente, add the chicken back in to reheat.

Dish it up and enjoy!

I've also added 1/4 c of tomato sauce, or 1 can of canned tomatoes. You can also add crushed red pepper flakes if you like. Or change up your veggies. Or use garlic and or onion. It's all super easy to customize.

I make this for lunch sometimes as well and you can even add two or three eggs to make a scramble in the morning if you like. Just whisk the eggs in a bowl and then pour over the veggies in the pan. Cook till the eggs are done.

Have fun experimenting!

Stagnation Nation

Well things have gotten slow around here. Not slow in terms of all the usual crap I have to do, but slow in terms of writing, promoting the shop and creating. I have so much fiber I want to spin. I have bags of alpaca I'm working on processing. I have new product ideas for the beauty line I need to work on testing.

But there's also baseball for both kids, homework, cub scouts, PTA end of the year to do's, and of course the usual grocery shopping every two days, loads and loads of laundry, cleaning and trying avoid avoiding bills.

I am finishing week three of boot camp where I've been going four mornings a week at 6 am. I'm really enjoying it but it's not really giving me more energy yet. In fact, by 3 pm I'm wiped. I'm hoping this will change as my body settles into this new calorie burning regime.

Summer is coming and that's a really good thing. It will be a change of pace. It will break me out of this stagnation I've been in recently. There will be a few summer camps where both kids are occupied nearly all day! That will mean long stretches which I can dedicate to dyeing yarn, product testing and marketing. There will also be lots of time where the kids are completely unoccupied and I'll need to arrange a lot of play dates.

What are your summer plans? Do you find the changing of the seasons brings a fresh start for you?

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Rethinking Slick Tubs

So yesterday I made three sets of bath melts. It's the first time I've made them and they only had a few ingredients:
Coco butter
Sweet Almond Oil
Shea Butter
Essential Oil
Coloring

The color was the first problem. I forgot my colors are water based. What happens when you put drops of water in a pool of oils? Pretty little globules. So I put some oil and the color in a bottle and shook hard to make an emulsion. That worked so I poured it into my molds. I made Lavender, Sandalwood Vanilla and unscented and uncolored. I sprinkled little lavender buds on top of the lavender melts.

I put them in the fridge to chill faster. They popped out all pretty except the dye had settled to the bottom of the melts.

My kids didn't care. They wanted to test the product in the tub. The bathroom smelled heavenly and the boys loved watching them melt in hot water.

But this morning I nearly cracked open my skull as I stepped into an EXTREMELY slick tub. So considering the dye issue, my current product line and the fact that I don't want someone in my house to end up in the ER because they slipped in the tub, I think I'm going to turn that recipe with some tweaks, into solid lotion bars instead. SO much safer.

Adventures in Fiber Processing

I'm about to embark and a crazy adventure in processing LOTS, and I mean LOTS of fiber.

My friend Santha was lucky enough to go help shear alpaca on a farm last week. In return they gave her five huge garbage bags full of fiber!

I volunteered to process it for her and she's going to give me a bunch so I'm super psyched. But WOW it's a lot of fiber. I'll be posting the process as I go along. This week I've just been turning it around while in the bag to ensure some of the moisture is released. I'll start the actually scouring this weekend probably.

I'm not yet sure where I'm going to set up these scouring stations and drying stations. I'm sure I'll sort it out.

In the meantime, I got my two sheep future samples in the mail. Both are unprocessed and will need a lot of scouring to remove the dirt and much of the lanolin. Here are some pics of the first sample from a lovely little sheep called Godiva, a sweet little Navajo Churro.

As you can see, the locks are really pretty and so far as I can tell, I'll only have to snip off the bottom ends a little. The colors are really pretty and I'll be looking forward to spinning these up if I buy more.

Here are the samples from Nestor, a cutie pie and a lovely Navajo Churro sheep.

My main problem at this point is deciding whether or not I should order actual poundage of these fibers. Not because they aren't great but because it will be quite a while before I will have time to process them. They'll probably be sitting unwashed for weeks! And I'm not sure that's such a good idea. So time to do some research. I have to let her know in a few days whether or not I want a pound of each because they go fast.

I'm happy to hear any comments or suggestions from you folks out there!

Line Dried

There's something about line dried clothes that makes me happy. I love the process of hanging them. I love the smell the fresh air gives them. I love watching laundry flapping in the breeze. I love the lower energy bills.

My mom line dried most of our laundry on a square set up in our backyard. It was a permanent pole in the ground with a large square frame above it, parallel to the ground, with a series of lines running in smaller and smaller squares to the center. I loved sitting under it while my mom hung the laundry and I loved playing in between the sheets as they flapped on the lines.

Don't get me wrong, I use my dryer, A LOT. And I really don't enjoy the scratchy stiff feel of line dried towels, BUT, I do like line drying and have been doing it more and more on warm days. I originally set up the line to dry my dyed yarn fibers. It's very makeshift, just a line tied between our saucer magnolia tree and the back fence. But it serves just fine.

When I worked in Belize we line dried everything. We hand washed most things as well. Yes they came off the line stiff but with a bit of hand fluffing they were just fine. The sun and the wind just imparted such a great natural scent. And apparently I'm not the only one who thinks this.

Check out this article from Organic Gardening Magazine. More and more folks, celebrities included, are moving to line drying; at least some of the time.

It's a great way to reduce your carbon footprint and bring a little old fashioned homesteading manual labor back into your life. It makes laundry a little more fun for me. Maybe you'll find the same.

Gifts from a Run

I consider myself a runner. But I'm a LAZY runner. I have run three half marathons and a handful of 5Ks and 10Ks. I like what running does for me but often my body doesn't like running. Like many runners I have a history of chronic and sometimes extreme injuries.

I have a hard time getting motivated to go out and I'm slow so it takes a long time to run a decent 6 or 7 miles. I took a VERY long break over the winter and now I'm slowly getting back out there. I have registered for the Diva 5K in May. It's a race I did last year in the midst of half marathon training and it was super easy. But since I've not run in months, now even a mile is hard. 

So this morning I went out for my second run since my time off. The first was on Tuesday and didn't leave me too sore so I was ready. I'm in the usual run/walk ramp up period which I hate. I like being able to sustain my runs without walk breaks but I'm not there yet.

In any case, I really enjoyed the non running parts of my run this morning. It rained all day yesterday and so the scent of the spring flowers this morning was very fresh. I could smell jasmine, orange blossom, cherry blossom and plenty of others I couldn't identify as I ran by. The trees have suddenly leafed out. I love how that happens. One day you see buds and then suddenly, BOOM the leaves have unfurled. This early in the process they are so bright green. Our streets are now shady again and it's lovely.

I saw a pair of raccoons make their way back into the sewer after an undoubtedly debaucherous night. You know those raccoons, such party animals.

Running through the park on the final leg I saw birds busy at work gathering building stuffs for their nests, squirrels running around crazy burying things here and there, and the odd neighborhood cat squeezing under a fence.

When I got to our driveway to stretch I put my hands on one of the sycamore trees out front for balance. Then I noticed the best gift ever. Ladybug larvae! Everywhere on the tree! They are so cute. To me they've always made me think of tiny lion dragons. They look nothing at all like ladybug. 

I saw this as a reminder from God, the Goddess, Mother Nature, whatever your beliefs may be, that life goes on. There are beautiful things happening around us all the time, we just need to open our eyes and our hearts to see them. 

So my physically challenging two miles this morning was very much worth it. I was given a lot of gifts on the way.