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Tag Archives: minimalism

Spring Eats and Finding Our Way to Less

01 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by jenniferkidoing in Blog

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

csa, feeding the whole family, le bus, mark bittman potato pizza, minimalism, simplicity parenting, strawberry salad, vge cafe

Strawberry Spinach Salad with Sweet Poppyseed Dressing*

Spring is here! The growing season has started and our first CSA pickup was today.  It’s a little earlier than last year due to our mild winter, and that makes me a happy girl.  Kids eating fresh greens, scallions and radishes directly from our CSA bag.  Fresh salads every night with tasty dressings.  All our dressings are homemade, really easy and so delicious that the kids eat two, three and four servings of salad each night.  The picture above shows a strawberry spinach salad with sweet poppyseed dressing that was inspired by a new restaurant in our area, Vge Cafe.

Vge Cafe is a vegetarian restaurant, with an environmentally-conscious message.  All the food is fresh (never frozen or canned) and the trash can be composted.  I am a little particular about my salads when eating out; the salad greens need to be fresh and not processed and bagged (to me there is an unpleasant sweet flavor on bagged lettuces).  The salad greens at Vge Cafe were definitely fresh.

We ate a nice lunch:  gluten free & vegan mac and cheese (a sophisticated version that was full of flavor), cream of tomato soup (using cashews as the creamy base), lentil veggie burger (on a beautiful Le Bus whole grain artisan roll), Caesar salad, and strawberry spinach salad with a balsamic vinaigrette.  After two little monkeys ate most of my spinach salad, I knew I had to remake my own version at home.

My salad (pictured above) was made with baby spinach, chopped strawberries, cucumbers, lightly roasted walnuts, and a sweet poppyseed dressing (from Feeding the Whole Family – a great cookbook for all ages).  The only thing I left out of the dressing recipe was the dill…because I really wanted to add fresh mint from my garden sprinkled on top! I just love strawberries and mint!

Speaking of our garden, I am sure I will post pictures soon, but we finally planted everything.  I’m sad it happened a little later than I wanted, but we’ve got a really nice amount of seeds in the ground:  beets, bush beans, carrots, kale, scallions, snap peas, snow peas.  And, we’ve already got strawberries, garlic, rosemary, mint, spinach and lettuce growing!

Peek into our first CSA share of the 2012 Season

For a while now, I’ve been purging.  Our living space is somewhat uncluttered, but the basement…that’s a whole other story.  It’s a holding cell for things we will need in the future, storage area for overflow of what we can’t fit in our kitchen, storage for almost every single outgrown child toy and children’s clothes from infancy, going back nearly seven years.  Sure, every family has needs and the more children the more acquired.  But, this is excess.

We have an extra washer and dryer. Yes, extra.  We added a laundry room on the first floor when we moved in this house and kept the old washer and dryer (which we still use on occasion to be uber productive with laundry).

We have a stand up freezer, a treadmill, a workbench, all our household paints, nostalgic items from our childhoods…

Maybe our basement space is not too different from yours?

For me, it’s a weight, though.  I walk into the basement and find piles and piles of things – some things are very neatly organized, but then there’s all the “stuff in transition”.  Stuff that needs to be fixed.  Stuff that needs to be opened and assembled.  Stuff that I’m saving for a friend, for goodwill, or stuff that I’m compiling for an upcoming yard sale.

We had plans to use the basement as a painting studio for the kids.  We also wanted it to be a place where they could use riding vehicles on stormy days.  We were on a great path organizing the space with shelving systems and bins, then fell off the wagon.

But, now I have a renewed sense of this mission to purge.  For the last couple years, I’ve been reading about minimalism.  Some of my favorite blogs include Becoming Minimalist, Be More with Less, Frugal Babe, Loving Simple Living, The Minimalist Mom, Miss Minimalist, and Zen Habits.

Potato, Rosemary and Olive Oil Pizza (inspired by Mark Bittman)*

For all of my life, I’ve been governed by things.

  • What things do I want to buy next?
  • Which is the best of those things?
  • I have some things that need to be fixed.

“Please don’t break my things.”  (to my three brothers and now my children)

While I will be the first to say that I value quality over quantity, the emphasis in my life on things has been damaging and stressful.  It’s time to make some changes.

Recently, I’ve had a challenging time with my children.  We are homeschooling and, therefore, home a lot of the time using toys, games, books, etc.  Staying on top of cleaning up can be tough.  So, after feeling a sense of defeat, I grabbed one of my all-time favorite parenting books, Simplicity Parenting, and reread the part about toys.  As a result, I removed about half of our toys/books/games.

Leftovers for the kids’ lunch – strawberry salad, quinoa, baked tofu and black plums

And, here’s the funny part.  The kids didn’t mind at all.  They actually handed me more things to take away.  And, they haven’t asked for them since they were removed.

They are playing better together.  They are more imaginative.

And, so my realization is that while games and toys can be fun, massive amounts of them (or even more than a few out at a time) are completely unnecessary.  (And, to me they are suffocating.)

Sure, things have a place in our lives.  They create convenience, delicious food, art, provide entertainment, teach us, etc.  But, what I’ve learned is that the emphasis should not be on the things, we need to have less of everything, and that my goal is to focus more on my relationships with people I love.

I’ve felt really inspired lately to share all of this with you.  If you stuck with me until the end, wow.  Thanks.  And, as always, please feel free to share your thoughts.

*If you get a chance, watch Mark Bittman’s video on making a potato pizza.  He shows how easily and quickly you can make homemade pizza dough.

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5 Small, Inexpensive Kitchen Gadgets That Help With Food Prep/Save Money

14 Wednesday Dec 2011

Posted by jenniferkidoing in Blog

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

aimee mann, bag dryer, crinkle cut, fish turner, glass dharma, kuhn rikon peeler, kyocera slicer, microplane grater, minimalism, sufjan stevens, thai mortar and pestle, the new fast food, vegan holiday kitchen, vegan slow cooker

(one of the two pairs of jeans I own with holes in the knees)

I love, love, love the idea of minimalism.

There are certain areas of my life where I might fall into the minimalist category:

shoes (I have maybe two or three pairs for winter and the same for summer)

clothes (my two pairs of jeans now have holes in the knees…do I need to replace them, or are they just “in style”?)

home decor (I don’t like things hanging out on the floor unless they are in bins)

The kitchen is NOT one of those categories.  While I have been culling my cooking gadgets and supplies for a while now (gone are three mixing bowls leaving me with five – huh?), I would never shun the perfect tool to make my life easier – or to support our goal of eating loads of veggies and fruits.  After all, the manual work to prep veggies and fruits takes more time than to open a bag so I want all the help I can get to make life easier, and food tastier (as well as save a buck or two on plastic baggies – you’ll see what I mean in a minute).

I present to you the five most revered small gadgets in my kitchen that I use regularly (daily?) – all under $25 each.

1.  Kyocera Adjustable Slicer – This tool is a gem.  It cuts fruits and veggies, almost effortlessly, in the most beautifully uniform way.  Sure, a knife works just as well, BUT I’d be hard pressed to find any home cook with average knife skills (i.e. me) who could cut fruits or veggies the same thickness so quickly.  This tool is a must for the dehydrator! The best part is that my kids love to eat veggies that are paper thin.  There is something fun about dipping discs of cukes, carrots, zucchini.

2.  Bag Dryer – In an effort to cut down, or eliminate, the purchase of any plastic and paper products in our house, I acquired this wooden bag dryer.  I’m not really a fan of plastic bags, but there are some circumstances that plastic bags just work better than anything else.  I store a LOT of produce in my fridge – more than the crisper can hold – so I use green produce bags to keep everything fresh (and, yes, they do work).  Not only can I dry my bags on this dryer, I can dry my Glass Dharma straws on it (the drinking hole is the perfect size to fit over the pegs) and also my portable stainless steel or glass drinking bottles.

3.  Mortar and Pestle* – We eat guacamole every day (seriously).  Although I have made guac using a bunch of ingredients (red onions, cilantro, etc) in my food processor (and I love this recipe), no method (that I have tried) can beat making it in a mortar and pestle (or molcajete).  The resulting texture of the guacamole, when made in the mortar and pestle, is so creamy and full of bright flavors.  I will post, soon, how we make guac in our mortar and pestle using just fresh garlic, sea salt, avocados and lime.  Truly divine.  This low-tech tool is something I wish I had added to my collection decades ago.  Next project – home made curry paste in the mortar and pestle!

4.  The Wide-Mouth Canning Funnel – I have learned to always cook extra for lunch the next day or to freeze for later meals on time-crunched days.  After getting messy one too many times trying to transfer my soups, granola and sauces into containers by pouring, I decided to grab one of these wide mouth canning funnels (I don’t even can – yet…).  This funnel saves time and messes.

5.  Crinkle Cut Knife – I know, another tool to chop veggies.  The beauty of this tool is that it’s a great way to involve your kids in kitchen tasks.  My daughter (age 6) uses this tool.  Not only does she have fun cutting the vegetables into the wavy pieces, but she is very excited to eat them!

Not listed here, but definitely on the list of small gadget favorites:  microplane grater, wooden citrus reamer, vegetable peeler, fish turner (perfect for pancakes or veggie burgers)…

Other things on my mind.  I hope everyone is loving this holiday season like we are.  We are listening to Aimee Mann and Sufjan Stevens every day, as well as the old Bing Crosby classics.

We made snowflakes this week (thanks Renee and family) and suspended them with some lights in our dining room.  So pretty and not so Christmas-like that we can’t leave them up the rest of the winter.  I prefer longevity in my decorations.  🙂

Oh, and for the cook in your life, I highly recommend The Vegan Slow Cooker Cookbook by Kathy Hester (for vegans and non-vegans).  This is the cookbook I have been looking for, for years.  Full of more contemporary flavorful recipes, I think I’m going to give my slow cooker a workout! I’m making the hot and sour soup tonight to go with our mu shu over udon noodles.  If any elves are reading, there are two other cookbooks on my wish list:  Vegan Holiday Kitchen by Nava Atlas and The New Fast Food by Jill Nussinow.

I’d love to hear from you:  what are your favorite small kitchen gadgets? How have they helped you save time and/or money?

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