HJ Waxing Moon

If I'd known about this as a kid, my whole world would have been a lot different. You can put oatmeal in jars, add boiling water, and BOOM. BREAKFAST.   "Oh but Heather you need quick oats"/"It only works with some oats"/"You can't use other kinds of hot cereal." That's what they told me too, but they're wrong. I've tried it. I probably wouldn't use wheat berries, but any somewhat processed grain should do. Here's my recipe, you may need to tweak to your tastes. 1 pint jar 1/2 c oats 1/2 c toppings Dry sweetener if you're using it Pinch of salt Store at room temperature.  To eat: add boiling water to just below the fill line--I leave about 1/2 inch. Stir and rest for 5 minutes. Add liquid sweetener, butter, milk/cream to taste.  Cream of wheat/Farina plumps so much more than oats. I use 1/3c and no toppings.  What kind of toppings? Dried fruit like cranberries are easy & cheap Chopped or shaved nuts are great S...

Being pregnant has been a roller coaster. I've been sparing you details, hence the radio silence. One thing I struggled with early on, especially so early in recovery for a restrictive eating disorder, was eating "junk" food. It made me keenly aware how ableist and toxic our modern discussions are about food and food-health connections. I had been struggling already to follow my doctors' orders about eating whatever sounds good, however much of it feels good, whenever I want and need to. After a decade of self-imposed eating restrictions, it was a difficult adjustment. But one I needed to start before I got pregnant. Because I was already getting better at it when I was suddenly thrust into "morning" sickness and all my careful food choices became impossible to manage. I knew my OB was the right one for me when she said, and this IS a direct quote, "I don't care if you live on mashed potatoes and Sprite until the day the baby is born, just eat...

In 2012, I did a 31 Days of Dinner blogging challenge where you pick a topic and write about it for 31 days. I enjoyed the idea, and while the original challenger isn't doing it this year, I'm going to do it again! With this Candida Cleanse, I spent a lot of time looking for recipes. So. MANY. of the recipes labeled anti-candida-diet-friendly on Pinterest are decidedly NOT (seriously, orange-maple candied carrots anyone? Every single ingredient was banned). And as a result I've struggled to find menu ideas that are both appealing and on this cleanse. I'll also be linking to these posts on Pinterest so hopefully it can infuse some helpfulness into those search results. --------------------- Day One: This cleanse is killing my counter space. But it makes me smile to see so many fresh veggies waiting to be used! Avocados, tomatoes, rutabagas, bell peppers, and a couple green apples sitting there too. Green apples are a quibbling point on this diet; some versions ...

After our big food prep day, we just couldn't bring ourselves to set everything back where it had been. SOMETHING needed to be done to get some more functional pantry space and get my huge, honking microwave off the counter! I searched online for some microwave carts to replace one of our pantry shelving units, and didn't like what I saw. Baker's racks, however, might give us the depth I was searching for to get the microwave off the counter, and at a MUCH better price. But sometimes you just get that feeling, and you know what you've got to do. Out the door on a whim to hit the thrift stores. There's one right nearby, but the furniture section is usually a little lackluster. We enjoy going over to a nicer side of town with two major thrift stores, and besides, I just had the feeling that we shouldn't stop nearby first. We found something we thought we could jerry-rig to work, and went to the next one. Still nothing quite right, and we'd managed to tal...

We didn't make some kind of massive turn-around on the Eat the Larder challenge this week, but that's no surprise. I took some time to review what we have stores of that we need to be using, and reflect on why we aren't using it. Some of it is because I have a tendency to hoard food that goes way deeper than we'll ever get on this blog. Though I feel like I've touched on some of the reasoning before. Some of it though is because we stocked up on some things when we were working with a MUCH more expansive kitchen at Mr. Moon's parents' house, right before we moved away from it. And of course it's been a whirlwind since then that we're only pulling out of now to take some deep breaths and focus on shaping our lives going forward the way we want them. I'd like to be starting some more/better routines, so we are more practiced at them when the next whirlwind hits us, whatever that may be. Though, on the topic of better routines, I must say that we,...

I like having a coffee & tea station. Everything in one place when we need it. That in mind, we also have a soda maker station, which doubles as cocktailing station, but also has the flavor syrups that go for both soda and coffee. And then of course there's the liquor cabinet... I'd better show you. Here's our bar with soda maker and cocktailing supplies. The bottom shelf has soda & coffee syrups, and a rack of bitters (because my preferred beverage is plain soda water with a dash of bitters). So of course it makes sense to have those accessible. The middle shelf is canned soda, because I found a great deal and it's like a year's worth of soda--but at that drinking rate, I don't need them that accessible. So I want to put those elsewhere, and we'll get back to that. Top shelf is spare syrups, and that seahakws tin needs something in it so it's useful. It's also getting the flask collection, I just forgot to put that up before I took pictu...

The Challenge: Northwest Edible Life has a yearly Eat from the Larder challenge in April. I only read about it on April 1, but it had been a half-assed goal of ours anyway so I jumped onboard. Their rules are a ZERO dollar food budget and no intentional stocking up ahead. Of course without any forewarning I couldn't possibly have intentionally stocked up ahead, but I'm not interested in a $0 grocery budget--just cleaning out some of our excess pantry storage and being a little creative. We're having an issue with our freezer & fridge that requires us to minimize our perishable food stock before fixing it, besides the excessive collection of condiments and pickles in there. Our Rules: No purchasing non-perishable food items.  Minimal purchase of perishable items.  No opening of new condiments if they can be avoided (until after the fridge is fixed, whether that's in two weeks or May).  Be creative!  Keep it simple, right? Bonus goals: Use ever...

I went paper-towel free, officially, about 4 years ago. I'd been weaning off them for years, but living with my Gran meant I didn't have the authority to make that decision for the house. At the time, we purchased a 25-pack of bar towels and a bunch of cloth napkins. White, not-quite-square, durable terrycloth; and a bunch of mismatch cloth napkins ranging from "brought home some bread wrapped in a napkin from the restaurant in my purse" to "I found these 12 hand-stitched cotton napkins for a dollar and they match my kitchen." Spoiler alert, I love those matching cotton ones the best, not least because they are so clearly made with love, but also because they're so immediately absorbent so when you have greasy food on your hands it cleans right up--unlike the weird shiny ones from the restaurants that just sort of smear food around and water beads up on instead of absorbing. We also around this time bought a pack of washcloths for cleaning to get rid...

Sometimes I look at things people post online and I marvel at how many people seem to have more money than sense. Multi-layered, snap-together to make a roll, "unpaper towels" are the impetus for this particular rant. They seem to be an expansion of the cloth menstrual pads stores, more than anything, and presumably therefore made to appeal to the same demographic. But, there are better ways to accomplish a lot of goals sometimes, and this is one of those times. I love that people want to reduce their paper usage and their contribution to landfills. That's great! The ones I'm seeing about typically use a single-sided terrycloth on one side, and quilting cotton on the other. I've seen a few with interfacing or batting in the middle to increase absorbency. They have snaps on each corner so that you can snap them together in a row and roll them up to be stored on the paper towel holder. Presumably, this is to help the household adjust to the new method, because t...

A family-of-friends on Facebook posted that one of them had brought forth a family recipe and it was amazing. This family recipe such as it was came with some vague instructions (not unlike my own "recipes"), and I added it to my mental list of Things To Try At Some Point. Of course, being me, I didn't need much more than the vague instructions to fly off in my own direction. And thus, this casserole was born. (I'm adjusting directions for better flavor than what I did, don't be alarmed that the layers are in a different order than the pics; you still get the idea.) Ingredients: 3/4 lb or more ground beef 1 onion, diced seasonings to taste 1/2 lb mushrooms, quartered (optional) 1/2 green pepper, diced (unpictured, optional) Pickle chips, or relish ketchup mustard Cheese of your choice, separated (pictured: muenster sliced, cheddar shredded) Raw biscuit dough, enough to feed 2 biscuits to everyone (canned is fine, as is Jiffy mix) garlic bread ...

After we moved, my health took a sharp downward turn. There were a lot of changes that happened all at once, and so it was difficult to pinpoint any one particular cause. I thought most of it was just pushing myself too hard in the moving process, or maybe the fact that we had been in survival mode for so long and now I was allowed to give myself some more time for self-care. But that wasn't it. Shortly after we moved into our apartment, we noticed that a couple of our food items were freeze burned. We put it down to the old freezer which was not well-maintained, or some abuse during moving, and ignored it. Then we discovered brand-new food items were getting freezer burned. We checked to see if a vent was getting blocked, and checked for excess ice crystals. I checked the seal on the gasket on the door. We adjusted the temperature gauge with no change in temps or results. As time went on, I started noticing a metallic, almost anti-freeze flavor going on in our food. Everything b...

The Living Room - 0% done -  View from the door View from that hallway doorway  Damage on the door from previous tenant. :( Damage in the carpet from previous tenant :( The nice thing about this living room is that it is BIG. South-facing windows let in a lot of natural light, but also a lot of heat. I will be surprised if we ever have to turn the heat on in here or the kitchen. That doorway you can see on the left of the top picture is the hall that leads to the bedroom and bathroom and closets. The doorway at the right of the bottom picture is toward the kitchen and dining room. To Do: EVERYTHING--This room has all the boxes, and most of the furniture. It will be the last thing finished. But that's OK! The Kitchen/Dining room - 60% done -   Dining room   Kitchen with gross-orange-wood cabinets.  Aren't these liners just to DIE for?   At least the cabinets don't waste any space. All the headsp...