Getting Back into the Swing of Things

Our trip to Trillium Gathering was truly a success - it was very much a spiritual retreat as well as a whole lot of fun and laughter, and the various workshops and ritual work has still got my head so full of things to think about, take in and simply absorb that I haven't really felt fully like I'm back yet.

I spent some time yesterday doing some decluttering and organizing in the bedroom - mainly the dresser top, which becomes a catch up for all sorts of things with no thought given about where they actually belong.  I plan to do an hour or so of organizing and decluttering a day until the house is done... this was one of the things I came to realize while away -  that too much stuff has been trapping me and keeping me from actually enjoying most of what I have.  Living simply for a few days will do that - it was easy to see how much less stressful it was to live lightly.

I'm also slowly getting back into the groove of cooking - we've got a little grocery shopping to do tonight, but last night we put together a soup made of whatever we could scrounge up, and it was very satisfying and delicious.

I don't think I can even lay out a real recipe here - it was very much 'toss this in!' 'hey, how about some of that?!'  If I remember rightly, what we used was some stored homemade chicken broth, about 1/3 of a slow-cooked roasted chicken (deboned), along with whatever gelatin had encased the leftovers when they were put up.  Then we tossed in a diced onion, some minced garlic, sage, rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper and then we went hunting for vegetables.

A couple chopped sweet potatoes, a package of frozen spinach, the remains of opened bags of frozen peas and corn, a few carrots.  I'd have liked to have had some celery, but our celery was used up.

We ate two big bowls of the stuff, and found it a tasty, easy dinner for a tired wind-down Monday.

Before I forget, I also want to note that we used this recipe for Grain Free Banana Bread from Small Footprint Family as our contribution to the Trillium potluck (I was mystified at how one brings a potluck dish on a camping trip that starts Thursday, when the potluck isn't until Saturday, coldish weather aside).  I actually quadrupled the recipe and realized in the middle that I was 3 eggs short for what I'd need for a straight quadruple, so I tossed in a halfpint of homemade peach marmalade and hoped for the best.  It was still very banana-ey and moist, thought possibly slightly less bound than it would have been with eggs.  The quadrupled batter filled 2 regular sized loaf pans, and cooked fine all the way through.

It held up very well and was delicious to the end - we will be doing this again.

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