About Annie

Welcome to the Curious Mind Garden. My name is Annie, and this is my little patch of cyberspace. I post about things that interest me, and I find a lot of things interesting. :)

Delicious Food!

Posted on 09.07.2013 by Annie

I have a small announcement. We’re moving to Washington State!

Yes, after two years of relentless searching, we found the place for us.

As a rather obvious result, we are spending our summer organizing and packing. I also have one pantry, two freezers, some fairly productive fruit trees and a short-term CSA box subscription to liquidate.

Bottom line, with a bit of creativity, we are eating well these days!

This is a quick mix of diced turkey bacon, Swiss chard, minced garlic, diced tomatoes, red onion, diced mushrooms, and leftover rotisserie chicken. I mixed this with two pounds of black beans and served on whole grain tortillas with guacamole and shredded cheese.

This breakfast scramble has three eggs, one cup of egg whites, a good handful of jack cheese, diced bell peppers, diced mushrooms, and diced potatoes fried with garlic and a little olive oil. Fantastic!

This fruit salad has organic peaches, plums, apples, grapes, nectarines and grown-right-on-our-own-tree apricots. I dressed with organic vanilla yogurt. A fabulous dessert!

We got a nice bunch of kale and green onions in our CSA box, so I sauteed the onions and some mushrooms in olive oil, white wine, and minced garlic and wilted the kale on top. Yum!

I’m sure the move will have its rough moments, but food wont be one.

Recipe: Food & Wine’s Garlicky White Bean Soup with Chicken and Chard

Posted on 11.06.2013 by Annie

My good friend, Cyber Momma at Homegrown Minds brought Food & Wine’s Garlicky White Bean Soup with Chicken and Chard recipe to my attention a couple of weeks ago, and I decided to give it a try tonight. I followed the recipe exactly with two exceptions: I added portobello mushrooms and a little white wine. Per the recipe’s suggestion, I paired the soup with a fresh loaf of Dutch Crust and a green salad. It turned out to be a delicious meal about which I could feel good.

Resource: Super Summer Challenge at Back to Her Roots

Posted on 09.06.2013 by Annie

This is just a quick post, mainly so I have a reminder of a really neat summer challenge by Cassie at Back to Her Roots. Basically, you make a list of activities for mind and body and give each one point values that make sense for you. Then, you try to earn 10,000 points by the end of summer. Cassie not only provides a nice set of example activities and point values, but some nifty .pdf’s to get you started.

Enjoy!

Of Waiting and Exercising

Posted on 14.05.2013 by Annie

I haven’t been here for a while, primarily because being creative has been far from my mind of late. You see, we are in some sort of surreal waiting game here. After two years of looking, we have been in the process of purchasing a home in Washington since late April. If it happens, our whole lives will be turned over by a move across three states. And yet, we really don’t know if we will get the house. Each day seems to bring some new issue. So, we wait.

In the meantime, one our kitties developed a dry cough. An x-ray shows something in one lung. We are trying two weeks of antibiotics. If he gets better, it was a mild case of pneumonia. If not, we may be facing a lung tumor. And so we wait to see the effects of the medicine, each day looking for signs of improvement.

Finally, I have a medical test re-check at the end of the month. Logically speaking, the chances are that the test will be fine. However, I am not a purely logical creature, and I can’t help but working through “what-ifs.” And so I wait, impatiently.

As a result, I haven’t been feeling particularly creative. I can’t even remain focused on reading. Fortunately, I have found a wonderful new coping mechanism. I’ve been taking yoga classes, rediscovering the joy of lap swimming at our local indoor pool, walking our dogs, and, when all else fails, putting in long workouts on my thumping elliptical. The workouts bring a wonderful exhaustion that lets me sleep.

Although I suspect I may not like some of the results when we do finally know the answers, I can’t help but think some certainty will be easier than the waiting. Either way, I’ll be in great shape to handle whatever comes our way. :/