making space for creativity
For me chopping up onions and celery for paleo stuffing feels like one of the first moments of the holidays. While this is certainly not a recipe from my childhood (I’m pretty sure that we often had boxed stuffing for our Thanksgivings. Not that I’m complaining, I loved boxed stuffing. It’s magic and delicious…
I’m nearing the end of my second trimester now, but during my first trimester, in a very unscientific survey (in which I googled “paleo” and “pregnancy”), I found two common themes. Number One, the paleo pregnancy panacea, in which said woman felt awesome all the way through her pregnancy via eating paleo, no morning…
When Evan and I went Paleo over two and half years ago it was sort of by accident. We didn’t read any books about the philosophy, or tips about how to transition. We did a hard-core, slightly sketchy medical elimination diet. It worked, and when we added things back in, what made me sick…
Eating well while traveling is a delicate dance between being flexible and proactive. On the one hand traveling is often hard on your body. You are sleeping in strange places, at strange times, and often not well or long enough. You’re exposed to different (and usually more) germs as you go through crowded airports…
Seven years ago yesterday, we got married. I was too excited to sleep. I woke up at 3:30 am, convinced that no one was going to remember to get communion bread. So I tried to sleep for another hour. I couldn’t believe that I had actually made it to that day, through the 9…
Since the birth of my sweet niece, we’ve been camping out at the family lake house. It’s a beautiful place to watch the trees unfurl their leaves and the sun come up earlier and earlier on the water of Lower Genesee Lake. We’ve also gotten to share this space, hosting a few weekend events…
Today’s a shorty post since I’m recovering from the stomach flu, meaning that the last three days all I’ve done is watch the first season of Veronica Mars (recommended by Anne @ Modern Mrs. Darcy) and stay within a 10 second trip to the bathroom (recommended by my stomach). Hospitality is a…
Tea, like Lent, was something that I knew about before college, but was brewed a bit weak, and I was a little unimpressed. High school, around the year 2000, introduced me to fancy coffee drinks and youth group Christian subculture—often together, as my high school youth group met in my church’s coffee shop. I…
After re-imagining breakfast without cereal, the next step in your day is lunch. How do you do quick and easy lunches without sandwiches? One solution that a lot of people use is leftovers: just put whatever you had for dinner into a Pyrex container and skip off to work. But what if you ate…
As the back to school catalogs are pouring into my little steel mailbox, the cable sweaters and matching notebooks tell me that Fall is just around the corner. This Fall is my first fall as a teacher’s spouse with Evan starting student teaching in only 12(!) days. It’s also been a full ten years…
Elimination diets first became popular within the medical community in 1941 when physician Albert Rowe published Elimination Diets and the Patient’s Allergies. They have declined in popularity as blood tests have become available because blood tests require considerably less patient effort. But as our understanding of the complexity food intolerances and allergies has increased, blood…
Today is the second half of the two-part series on the image of the rooted tree as a metaphor for how we grow and face challenges. In the first part, we talked about the use of garden and tree imagery in the book of Colossians. Tree roots take up nourishment for the tree, help…
Sleep is one of those things that you don’t think about much until it’s gone. But when a big event is looming, a stressful season strikes, or sickness robs you of your z’s, suddenly sleep becomes an important riddle to unravel. But, like they told you in high school psychology, sleep truly is still…
Here’s the recipe for the flourless chocolate cake I mentioned making before the 4th of July. It’s my go-to cake to celebrate. It’s made an appearance for my goddaughter’s first birthday and celebrating the beauty of a regular Saturday night visiting best friends. I love really good chocolate, and this recipe is all about…
When I was little, Fourth of July celebrations were marked with red and blue frosted cupcakes, little plastic flags in the lawn near the lake, potato salad and wet towels, before mosquito bites and 9:30 fireworks. It was easy to smell that mix of slightly burned hotdogs, sunscreen, and lake water and celebrate. …