Teatime Today

Today we enjoyed fresh market strawberries and dark chocolate orange dreidels we made with silcone mold.  The chocolates had some issues popping out intact.  That's ok, things don't have to turn out perfectly. 

Apricot Gelt

Start with 3 cups of dark chocolate Enjoylife chips.

Swirl in 3/4 coconut milk, mandarin rind, cinnamon and pink salt

creamy chocolate mixture

flatten unsulphered dried apricots with mug

coating apricot in mixture (we added some almond butter after using this mixture to make chocolate dreidels right before

Gelt!

Maple Landmark blocks for tonight's present. Thank you, guys!

Outside in shorts playing in the dirt after playing dreidel and eating gelt

Playing dreidel with homemade gelt tonight along with the blocks

original recipe found in December Natural Awakenings

This Year's Hannukah Cookies

Making Cookies for school party

Little Brother blended his frosting: sunbutter, blacksrap molasses and coconut oil, blue Maggies Natural sprinkles for topping

 

Teatime Today

Stuffed dates with sunbutter, cinnamon, shredded coconut and an enjoylife chip on top. Raw sprouted almonds on the side.  Almonds!

Enjoying Our Mandarins

on our way to school holiday party with bag of freshly picked mandarins

reaching in

mandarin rind and rosemary foccacia

eating mandarins and stomping in crunchy leaves

Teatime Today

The weather has been all over the place the past two days: muggy 80's yesterday, high winds and rain last night with a a power outage and a cold 39 degrees today.  We have been in all day today shnuggling.  Big Brother is fighting some congestion and Little Brother has another cough.  That means it's time to enjoy the simple pleasures of playing in pj's, reading and listening to music.  All with eucalyptus diffusing in the background along with sunshine filling the room.  As 4:00 came around we decided that the perfect fit would be hot popcorn and cinnamon hot chocolate for teatime.

ingredients

it's such a sensory pleasure to shake the kernels in hot oil on the stovetop

simmering cinnamon hot chocolate with mixture of coconut and almond milk

mix-ins: golden milk mixture or lucuma powder :)

Butternut Squash Red Lentil Dahl

This is a family favorite meal.  Well, Little Brother doesn't always like as much as the rest of us.  This is so simple to make and satisfying to eat any night of the week.  If I want to pack for lunches the following day, I heat it up on the stovetop while making breakfast and then pour into our already warmed with boiling water Lunchbot and Hydroflask thermos. 

great warm lunch served with dino kale and turnip greens

What you need:
Loosley based on this recipe
 
1 medium-size onion, peeled and halved
a handful of cilantro stems
1 red pepper, de-seeded and quartered
1 large carrot rougly chopped
1 stalk of celery
1 cup organic red lentils, rinsed
a few handfuls of cubed fresh or frozen butternut squash
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground tumeric
1/2 tsp of fennel
1 teaspoon pink salt 
1 bay leaf
some fresh curry leaves
freshly ground pepper 
1 400 ml tin Jovial crushed tomato
1/2 Native Forest canned coconut milk 
lime and cilantro


What to do:
Chop onion, cilantro stems, red pepper, carrot, and celery, speed 5-7 for 5 seconds

Add lentils, tomatoes, spices, coconut milk and butternut squash, bay leaf and curry leaves

Cook for 25 minutes, 100 degrees speed 1-2

Serve with fresh lime juice and lots of chopped cilantro

Sometimes we serve with sprouted brown rice or freshly baked foccacia.  You can serve with a big bowl of greens or even add in some baby spinach to the hot dahl before serving

Teatime Today

Freshly picked, juicy mandarin oranges for snack.  It's divine.

Pumpkin Lucuma Ice Cream

Little Brother digging in

packing up in pint-sized containers

pumpkin bowls for Thanksgiving teatime

winter gift giving

Honeychild gave us some mini containers for individual servings.  If Big Brother wants ice cream at Famer's Market, then Little Brother can bring along "matching" safe ice cream for him

This ice cream is a family staple.  It's everything I love about lucuma in Chile, mixed with everything I love about warm, fall pumpkin flavors. This is such an easy pumpkin Thanksgiving Day treat without much preparation fuss. I simply blend the ingredients in my Thermomix and then the mixture goes into our ice cream maker. 

Thanksgiving Leftover Turkey Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

This is our favorite way to use up scraps of leftover turkey.  Today for lunch I started out sauteing scallions in some saved turkey fat, added in collard greens cut in lovely strips, added a splash of apple cider vinegar along with another splash of maple syrup, fresh ground black pepper and a dash of pink salt. There happened to be a leftover slice of turkey bacon in the fridge so I threw that in along with a handful of raisins to satisfy the little ones. We then top sweet potatoes with a heaping pile of this mixture.  And everything is better with a spoonful of homemade cranberry sauce.  This year, it was cranberries and fresh mandarin orange juice from our tree along with the tiniest spoonful of coconut sugar.  This makes for a very tart cranberry sauce.  No top allergens or garlic in this meal.

Happy Thanksgiving

Preschool class made allergy-safe cornbread muffins

Appetizer plate: includes our kale white bean dip and our pâté

buckwheat crackers

entertainment

As always, fresh heritage turkey from Tejas Farm

Papi always carves turkey

Boys always grab the legs

turkey centerpiece

delicious

morning out drawing and hiking at Arboretum

C.G. Hovercraft and Teal Mobile

pumpkin lucuma ice cream outside on a gorgeous day

cheetah cornucopia

                   

making a wish

                                   OUR FIRST THANKSGIVING IN OUR NEW HOME