Fresh living

Thursday I picked up baby rainbow chard, collards, butter lettuce and the best avocados ever- grown with love by my friend in her Little Beach Homestead. Saturday my family and I lovingly prepared rosemary skewers and I delivered them to the Garden Angels Cooperative, where a team of volunteers sorted out the produce 9 others had brought and we came back a few hours later to a bag with a couple grapefruit, a tangerine, a baggie of sage, some muffins (notice the empty bag), a bunch of kale, lots of green onions (ideas on what to do with those, anyone- I use them in scrambled eggs and on rice and that's about the extent of my experience...) and a generous bag of kumquats. I don't even know how to eat those.

For the past week we have had bone broth in the crock-pot constantly going - I added a sprig of rosemary to one batch. Yum.

Now I have 9 jars, 3 trays of frozen cubes- plus I made

• egg drop soup one morning, 
• sauteed chard & avocado in bone broth another, 
• tortilla soup for lunch one day, 
• just a mug of broth with apple/avocado/almond salad, 
• and then... classic vegetable soup last night (so easy- few handfuls out of the huge bag of frozen, organic mixed veggies from Costco, a jar of tomato sauce, 2 cloves garlic and a can of potatoes that someone gave me for some reason- just 'cause I wanted to use it up; threw it all in the last of the strained bone broth and let it simmer in the crockpot for an hour, sooooo good!) 

And all this from the bones of the 2 Rotisserie Chickens we served at May's 1st birthday last week (oh and of course, some Apple Cider Vinegar, carrots, celery and onion).

My middles are excited and involved and practicing cutting and G is learning about proper food storage and safety as Shawn and I discuss it, she has chimed in with questions and gone and looked stuff up, even!!

We also made 4 batches of orange oil cleaner from the peels the kids have carefully saved each time they eat a cutie- and that is frequent. And we have been saving other scraps for the worm bin and compost pile.

It feels so good to be connected to the foods we eat, to be using as much as possible from each source to be sharing with others, and supporting small local growers.

However- lest you think I am some sort of paleo, hippie, homeschool mama- I will quickly end this post as I share that my husband is pulling in the driveway with Carl's Jr...