Real Life, Blogging, and Balancing Acts

My lenten break from blogging officially ended on Easter Sunday, a week ago.

I had hoped that on Easter Monday, I'd be back with a vengeance. But my break was so thorough that I didn't write any posts for all of lent (except for MAK and MAM), so I had nothing to publish. I didn't work at all on the new domain. I didn't work at all on Good Bites, my upcoming free eBook of easy, healthy, bite-sized snacks. So what was I doing?

I was being a mom of two kids, one of whom is having a tough time with potty training and the other of whom is having a tough time with sleep. I was being a wife to a stressed out seminarian. I was being an artist: a good friend and I have been re-creating a piece of choreography and had a performance last week.

All those things take precedence over this blog.

And yet, I had some important affirmations during my blogging break. Several friends told me they appreciated my blog. Why? Because I don't judge. My vision is to inspire people to make positive changes for better health, without making them feel like failures because they aren't perfect. Eating real food is a journey! Some people have a radical conversion, but most people make one change at a time. I want to be here to encourage you, one little change at a time.

So where am I at? I'm still not quite sure. I know I want to keep blogging. I'm not sure if now is the season for me to be serious about it. There are a lot of things standing in my way: the stress of grad school, interrupted sleep, wanting to be present to my kids, and a computer that's on the fritz.

I'm seeking balance. I feel sort of like this is the start of a new year, and I'm making resolutions. It seems fitting, in a way, to start fresh after Easter. We just celebrated the most mind-blowing event of our faith. Christ was dead, but now he is alive! This knowledge changes everything, so why not start fresh?

My Easter Resolutions

Find time for prayer and scripture. I want to bask in the light of His presence, morning, noon and night. A three-year-old who wants to be with me constantly, an early rising baby, and a never-ending to-do list get in my way. Any moms out there want to share their secrets?

Prioritize sleep. Remember that series I was going to start, Get More Sleep in 2013? Instead of writing about it, I'm going to do it. I'm working on going to bed earlier, keeping my daughter on a good rhythm so she doesn't get overtired, and taking naps when possible. I want to wake up rested again. Someday, I want to get up an hour before the kids and write. But today is not that day.

Practice Sabbath, even in the kitchen. We have failed over and over at keeping a Sabbath. We know we need it. We know it pleases God. But we have so much going against us: my husbands schedule with classes during the week plus working at a church on Saturday and Sunday leaves us no free day. We try to find time here and there, even if it's not a full day, but the stress of no real rest is wearing on us. We hope that in a couple short months (when things slow down for the summer), that will change. A large part of the rest for me needs to be from all-things-kitchen. It's easy to never really stop in a real food kitchen: there are always ongoing projects. Always something to soak or bake or thaw or ferment. I need to learn how to pause. To plan ahead, and to let go. You may see some posts about this popping up in the next few months as I work on it.

What does this mean for Plus Other Good Stuff?

I think I'm going to try blogging once a week. No pressure to be the best real food blog out there with multiple posts every week and video tutorials and eBooks and all that jazz. Someday those things will come. But for now, it's just me, writing to you, about real food.  No judging, no guilt trips, just simple, delicious, nourishing goodness.

What Do You Want?

Since my posting will be limited, I'd love to know what you want to learn about and prioritize that! What are your biggest challenges in the kitchen? What are you unsure about? What processed food are you having trouble finding alternatives for? Share in the comments so this blog can bless you.



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Real Life Confession: Meal Planning Failures

If you want to learn more about delicious, nourishing, real food without the guilt trip for everything you're not doing right, hit that "like" button on the right, and subscribe to my posts by e-mail or reader feed so you don't miss anything. Thanks for stopping by!

Here's a confession for you: I never follow my own meal plans.

That's not to say that I don't make any of the meals written on my meal plans, but that I never follow them exactly for a whole week straight.

Life happens. And that is a good thing.

Some days (most days, lately) the baby doesn't nap well so I don't have a chance to get those beans started early enough in the day.

Some days, right when I'm about to start cooking, we get a last minute dinner invitation. Or mid-week, I get a call from my mom who wants to visit in a couple days. Or I forget that there's a seminary event with food.

Four Good Reasons For My Blogging Break

Can you guess which member of our family made this mess?
This is pretty indicative of the state of our lives for the last few months.

I haven't blogged since September 7. But now I'm back! I hope that's good news to someone. :) It's good news to me, because I love sharing what's going on in my kitchen with people, and helping them learn to cook healthy food for their families. It's one of my favorite things!

But here's why I've been strangely silent for almost two months:

Four Good Reasons For My Blogging Break (which just ended)

1. No internet. Yeah, that'll do it. Ok, I sort of had internet, if you count a very weak signal from the neighboring college campus. But using it involved clicking "turn airport off" and "turn airport on" countless times, and then reading unhappy messages like "searching for wireless networks" and "invalid password" (even though it wasn't) and "connection timeout." Totally not worth it for anything more than checking email once in awhile. But after 10 weeks of waiting for AT&T to get their act together, we have working internet again!

2. Husband taking the laptop to class.  It's difficult to blog when your husband has the computer most of the day on most days, even if the mysterious Spirits of the Internet are being kind for once. We do have a desktop, but the toddler likes to climb on my lap while I use it and push buttons. No Go.

3. General Busyness. Between having a husband in seminary, raising a toddler, teaching dance three nights a week, and cooking for our CSA pick-ups, I have barely have time to cook dinner, let alone blog about it. But that perhaps could have been overcome, had it not been for number 4....

4. I'm pregnant! Yay! We are certainly excited, but that doesn't mean I'm bouncing off the walls. I'm beginning my second trimester and I've just. been. so. tired. I think the nausea is mostly behind me, but I'm still can't-get-off-the-couch-tired many days. So I've had to simplify. I haven't been baking everything from scratch like I usually do, or soaking nuts, or soaking grains much of the time, or even planning meals.  For many weeks, meal planning made me nauseous. Until last week or so, I'd been relying on a day-by-day sort of living in which I ask myself that morning, "What sounds good to eat today?" Usually it's only one thing, like cheesy rice with broccoli, or fried eggs with toast, or indian butter chicken. So that's what we go with. And such last-minute meal-making is not very conducive to blogging, especially when I'm running off to teach and I can't find the camera and it's too dark to take a good picture...you get the idea. It wasn't working.

But I'm hoping several things will help me get this blog back into some kind of groove:

--having working internet again (woohoo!)

--my CSA cooking commitment ending for the season

--the end of the first trimester and a hope of renewed energy

--the toddler suddenly taking awesome afternoon naps most days (he has never been a "good sleeper").

That sounds promising to me. I'm hopeful. :)

Here are some things that are in the works for the coming weeks:

--real food snacks for toddlers (and pregnant mothers of toddlers!)

--my pregnancy food diary (including supplements)

--balancing real life with real food, including some thoughts on a Sabbath for your kitchen (and therefore a Sabbath for you!)

--delicious, seasonal, real food recipes using things like squash, greens, and everybody's favorite...root vegetables! (I'm partial to the rutabaga, myself.)
--informative posts about why we eat the way we do, and why you should too! :)

I have no idea what frequency of posts is gonna look like. We're gonna play it by ear and stay balanced. It will help if I start seeing less of that picture at the top of the post, and more of this (did I mention that dirty dishes have been the cause of several meltdowns so far this pregnancy?):

clean dishes!

more clean dishes!

I'm glad to be back!

Real Life Confession: I can't do it all.

I have a cold. I have a high-need toddler. I have a small kitchen. I do not have a dishwasher that works. I have a limited budget. I'm overwhelmed.

I light of these circumstances and a foreseeably very busy fall, Steven and I have made a decision: This school year, we will be eating one "convenient" meal per week, and eating out once a week.

That may not be a shock to you. You may be thinking "well gees, we eat out a lot more than that!" or "only one convenient meal!?" But please understand: I'm an idealist. I don't want to let any processed convenience foods into our home. Our budget is tight and unpredictable, which means high-end "healthy" processed food is off limits. Right now we almost never eat out unless absolutely desperate, or if parents are visiting.

But something's gotta give. I dream of the day that I have a child old enough to really help in the kitchen, or an older child who can entertain a younger child while I cook. But almost-two is a hard age to have your mom cooking real food meals all the time.

Steven suggested we have one "convenience meal" a week. And I said, how about one "convenient meal." The difference? Convenience meal makes me think of lean cuisine and ready-made lasagna. Convenient meal means something that is easy to prepare but not necessarily out of a box or full of junk.

So here's my list of healthy-ish convenient meals. If you have any suggestions, leave them in the comments! I know I may need to sacrifice my ideals once in awhile in this season of our lives. I just don't want to sacrifice them too much. ;)

Convenient Meals for a Busy Season

1. Spaghetti with meat sauce (brown some meat, throw in ready made sauce, cook pasta, done.)

2. Trader Joe's nitrate-free hot dogs with whole grain (store bought) buns.

3. Hamburgers with store bought buns (Does anyone know if frozen french fries have crap in them?)

4. Frozen pizza (ideally something without hydrogenated oils, MSG etc.)

5. Grilled cheese with store-bought (MSG-free) tomato soup

6. Quesadillas on corn tortillas with canned black beans

7. Nachos: tortilla chips, canned beans, taco meat if there's time, salsa, cheese, etc.

8. Sandwiches with (gasp!) nitrate-free lunchmeat

I would also love some slow-cooker recipes that involve only a few ingredients but minimal processed foods. Does that exist? Share in the comments!

As for going out once a week, we made a list of our favorite mid-range restaurants and we'll rotate between them. We will probably go for lunch since it can be a lot cheaper. We'll also save coupons for our favorite pizza place. :) And we'll pray that even though our food budget will expand slightly, God will provide for us, and make our home a peaceful place.

What tips do you have for eating well during a busy season, or for keeping a toddler entertained while you cook?

Real Life Confession: bad freezer habits

I am a real person. I don't have this real food thing down yet.

Today, after a meltdown that occurred as a result of too many things to do and too little time to do them, I started cleaning out the freezer. I was sick of things falling out every time I opened it! As I sifted through bags and containers of mysterious foodstuffs, I realized that I have a bad habit to confess.

Sometimes I cook something that isn't that great, or was okay the first time we had it but leftovers don't sound appealing. Since we don't want to eat any more of this thing at the moment, I will put it in the freezer, usually labeled, for future eating.

But if I don't want to eat it in the first place, I am not going to want to eat it after a few months in the freezer! Which is why I found some containers of food that had been in the freezer for longer than just a few months...now completely freezer-burned and even grosser than they started out. Yuck.

I'm going to try to do better. From now on, if something is not that great, I'm either going to force myself to eat it, or throw it away. I hate to waste food. But now I know it's either waste it now or waste it later. I don't want food taking up space in my freezer if I'm never going to eat it!

And that's my real life confession for today. :)