Mindful Plate

When the idea of this blog was first conceived, the focus was to be local and seasonal eating.  As we thought and talked more about it we realized that the idea of eating locally is part of a bigger philosophy of choosing our food with intent.  We live in the Pacific Northwest (Yamhill County, OR to be exact) and have local access to a variety of fruits and vegetables nearly year round and also to meat, eggs and dairy products, but we don’t have many grains, spices, oils and other pantry staples growing around here, so when we choose to use non-local ingredients, we are mindful of where we get them, how they are grown, how we purchase them, and perhaps choose not to purchase some things regularly.

This blog was Sheila’s idea and she asked Lisa to join her and here we are.  We hope to offer something for the inexperienced cook as well as the more seasoned cook who is trying to adopt a more local diet.

Food is at the heart of our health, our family, and in our minds, our security.  We eat and cook with love and the products we use are chosen with intention to better nourishing us and to bettering our community.  Enjoy what we have to share!

Lisa – My good friend Sheila approached me about the idea of starting a local eating blog and I jumped at the chance.  When I first started eating seasonally and locally, it was a huge shift in the way I approached meal planning and cooking.  I’m ready to share what I’ve learned so far and hopefully it will be helpful to others.

I’d like to say that I prepare foods in the traditional way (Weston A. Price, Nourishing Traditions, etc.), but sadly I don’t achieve that goal as often as I would like.  I do soak all beans before cooking, buy sprouted bread and soak our breakfast cereal as well as consume raw milk and cheese.  Mostly, we eat home cooked meals made from whole foods and avoid processed foods.  We aren’t vegetarians, but we also don’t eat meat in every meal.

My life out of the kitchen includes a great husband and three lively daughters.  I help my husband run our welding and fabrication business and I home school our girls.  I have a vegetable and herbal garden, make soap and try to live pretty simply, in general.

You can find out more about the rest of my life at my personal blog, The Tardy Homemaker.

Sheila-My husband Andre and our three children moved to our farm and began a small farm business that is centered around a CSA style farm member program.  For 10 months out of the year we harvest vegetables every week, grown seasonally rather than with extended use of greenhouses and such, and therefore offer a wide range of vegetables.   Each week we include a newsletter with farm musings (posted here GrowingWildFarm), vegetable descriptions, and lots of cooking ideas and recipes.

The thing about this was that we are not recipe cooks, especially in the summer when we are busy, busy.  We are comfortable with taking the ingredients at hand and making a dish that tastes great and nourishes our bodies and our sense of aesthetics and taste.  These dishes don’t always have names, are often simple rather than elaborate, and yet stay varied enough to not seem stale or old.  We still look around for recipes to share, but what I wanted from this blog was a place to share what we do with all of this beautiful, seasonal produce…to help others become confident and comfortable with preparing good food with vegetables and other nourishing ingredients.

We are also heavily influenced by traditional cooking as Lisa is, are not vegetarian but were for over a decade so I like to include vegetarian dishes for those who are so inclined, and have children who are basically gluten and dairy free, and although we just tend to favor vegetables in our meals with some quality meat and fat, we occasionally do some nourishing traditions and/or gluten free baking with some success.