Little dabble in astrology, reset week and kiddo time.

This week has been a reset. It's been an odd week. Tackling a lot of inner feelings/emotions/re-assessing my life. All crammed into a few days. Today is a New Moon. Mars went retrograde last week in Aries. My moon rests in Aries. Depend on 2 charts I follow the first chart has it in my 2nd house of money/personal resources and the other it's in 3rd house of education/neighborhood/siblings (this one makes sense).

 Eitherway Our moon represents our inner world in a nutshell. Whatever your moon sign is this will often be the inner world your navigating that you don't always show the outside world. It's the workings of your mind/visions/way of thinking/perceiving the world. Our sun signs represent who we are in the outer world, what our outward representation of ourselves is.

 With Mars Retrograde in Aries any aspects in your chart pertaining to Aries may be feeling in kind of a funk right now. It's kind of creating a resistive pause, lack of movement, lack of direction, lack of knowing what the hell to do and no real motivation to make any progress right now.

(you can draw up your chart here: https://www.astro.com/horoscope?nhor=432608. 

Maya did a video in how to navigate this site and create your chart. She goes by Whole Sign house but the default mapping is Placidus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWXmyNhfU1Y&list=PL26dMraUeLWEFV4Q-HKimOvm6-xUstqV3&index=10

I bounce between sometimes. Whole house generally seems to be more accurate for me). 

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My finger is still tender at times and with certain usage. I should be cleared tomorrow to return to work sunday. I'm going to stay hopefully that it doesn't get re-injured like that again. It's my livelihood right now haha. 

I've had a little push again to devote more time to studying for the Mblex. I need to be committed to this and to passing it before I move to WI. Even if I don't plan to massaging full time or for main income I don't want to quit it completely. I'm also hoping to expand more on Craniosacral therapy in WI. This is ultimately an area I really prefer over Massage. But I think to practice Craniosacral therapy there I will need a massage license. To get my certification with my Teacher I also need to invest time to preforming it here. I have to get 20 logged cases, 15 cases with other practitioners and then i think 5 session with the teacher herself and read so many books to get an official certification with her. I have little certificates for the each class i've taken with her. But having a nice certificate through her would go an extra leg in my qualifications. Plus all the time spent practicing on people just ensures my strength in the field. 

I had a binder that I had created when I signed up for the Angel Studies course. 3 months in I realized that I didn't have the time nor interest to studying Tarot cards or specifics Archangels lol. Could have spent that money on better things but at the time I was really excited and invested in it. Then I had a sudden wake up one day that spending my time on that stuff was not my true calling and then I had a sudden urge to get rid of all my tarot stuff. 

So I was left with a binder that I had set up all nicely with dividers and so on. It felt wasted until I got the push to sit down and narrow in on what I need to study per the mblex guide. So I wrote out all the area i need to study and then divided those into the binder dividers. Just general organization for studying. I have this text book one of my teachers recommended years ago that she feels (still feels) is a great base resource for Massage Therapists. I'm going to be reading it through and using it as my main study reference. I got rid of all my books from massage school because I hated the organization of the books. The school created their own books and i felt they were lacking. 

So between this studying and using the ABMP test prep program i'm hoping by December i'll be able to test already. But I won't set up the test until I feel confident with it. One of my big things is The anatomy...specifically the specific origin/insertion points and then the biology stuff. Those are so detailed and not something i ever really got down. I know from a pictorial view where they are but by point names I don't. But I will.  

With this time off i've had all week with kiddo. We've been playing some games, mostly Uno and watching movies and shows like Mr. Bean. I've gotten the wave to decrease his computer time. He spends 4+ on the computer for school then was wasting the rest of the time on Youtube and Roblox. He was cranky, not moving much, and not playing at all with his toys. So now he only gets those on the weekends and for very limited time periods. The rest of the time he can watch PBS kids, netflix, play on his game systems or play with his toys or read books. So far it's going smoothly. This is how we lived (minus netflix) prior to Covid. Things changed once we got Internet at the house then it was just a slippery slope that i've been trying to rebound from. 

Parks finally reopened here. We have this park a few blocks from our house. They put new equipment in just before or around the time of the closures. It's been pretty hot here (90's-100's) so we haven't been outside much all summer/early fall but we popped over briefly yesterday after ice cream outing. He only made it  30 mins then we ran out of water and he got to hot. We were the only one's there yesterday. 

 

Freezing potatoes, Another Trip of MoM and brief farmers market stop.

This morning has been busy so far. I stopped at another round of Market On the Move. Below the potato photo's is my photo's of the weeks round up. Wasn't quite as much as other trips but I think they've been coming up short in their hunt for produce as of recently so what they get divides to smaller portions. We still get the 60lbs of goodies though, I just think in previous weeks they've had a surplus and have been able to give a little more. This weeks amount is certainly enough to get us through the month. 

After that we hit up a farmers market I used to go to for eggs. I was pretty surprised at how small it was. No vendors of produce/breads/coffees/or prepared foods. Was mostly just plants and then crafted goods. I did hit up the local honey vendor and then across from him was a mid eastern vendor with dates and spices. I bought some dates and a jar of spice she formulated for rice foods. She gave me a little bottle of meat spice for my purchase. I'm looking forward to both. They smell very smilar to garam masala but not with that cinammon sweetness. I"m excited to test them out. She also gave a good tip for cooking rice. Add Salt and oil when cooking the rice. I used to just cook bland with water or toss some chicken boullion in. I will now try adding salt and oil. Yummy. 

Now we are about to head out for an acupuncture/shiatsu session for Mannix. He enjoys getting it so I'm going to start booking him monthly appointments again. 

To the end the busy day we will hit up the grocery for some lunch snacks and some staples we are out of. 

I had to do something with the potatoes the MoM trip weeks ago. I realized how much I like having the onions diced, frozen and ready to grab from the freezer on busy nights so I decided to do the same with the potatoes. 

They have to be blanched prior to freezing, this also allows them cook up quicker. Especially the russet potatoes. Those take forever to cook through. 

Then I put them on a cookie sheet and flash froze them. This was round 2. I had a big gallon freezer bag plus half another in the end. Once the flash freezing is done you scrape them off the sheet and put them in a baggy. This allows for loose potatoes to grab from the bag for a meal. I kinda overcooked these so I will only add them to a dish that is mostly finished as they will soften to much otherwise. 

My freezer is getting so full. I have shredded zucchini, diced broccoli, diced oions, diced celecry, diced potatoes and then some fresh corn a friend gave me from a big corn haul they did. 

The goodies form MoM this week. 

The juice I put into Popsicle molds for my son to enjoy on hot days. I'm excited about the yogurts because after the antibiotics I had to be on i've been ensuring i'm getting probiotics in my tummy again. The red potatoes i diced up right away and made a potato/onion/veggie hash with eggs on the side for breakfast this morning. 

Yummy local honey. Dates and mid east spices. 

 

Moving on

 

This full moon brought about a big push. Waves of inspiration for moving on. 

I've been feeling the pull for the past 2 years to move back to Wisconsin to be around family. And the last few weeks the pull has been very strong. I've had some moments of fear and some moments of anticipiation. So it's definitely been a roller coaster of feelings, thoughts, emotions and so on. 

The last week or 2 it has been exceptionally strong. And then my ex threw out there asking if I was still going to keep with my idea of moving home. For him it would be easier traveling to get Mannix for summer vacation now that him and his wife have a child. Part of me wants to be like 'fuck you, you chose to move all the way across the state, why should I make this move to make things easier for you'. But in reality my decision to move back has never had anything to do with my ex so him throwing out the question is just coincidental. But i'm sure my ex being my ex he will view it as something i'm doing for him. 

Anywho, I've been getting waves of recollections from my childhood in Wisconsin. Waves of remembering and feelings. While I understand things will be much different than I remember there, because its been 16 years, i'm being flooded with memories of the lake energy, visible changes and experiences of the seasons. The inspiration that place gave me and the joy I felt there with a much friendly nature. 

I have not been able to keep my center here. The energy of this place at times Rubs me raw. The energy of this city, the sun here, the heat here, the extra effort to enjoy the nature here. I noticed it when I first moved here March of 2012 but over time I slowly started seeing some life in the nature. It wasn't until the Mansoon rains that I felt alive. The second the season would end my inspiration would fade too. I understand that the fall and winters in WI may not be the most appealing to me anymore since i've moved away but they play a vital role for me internally. It gives me a true sense of the cycles of seasons. I get waves of it here with feelings but most often I have a hard time SEEING it. Sure it can be forced by people decorating externally for each season/holiday but it does not reflect what my soul requires for true congruence. 

It's hard for me to verbalize that concept but thats the best way I can put it. 

I'm scared shitless. I have no idea what the future holds for me. Especially starting over again in another state. I"m not certain I want to keep doing Massage. I'm so sensitive to energy that i'm feeling so taxed working on people. Part of it may be because i'm doing it full time (up to 4-5 clients a day 5 days a week). And it's exceptionally taxing when I get clients that truly challenge my own energy field (another reason i'm looking at my caffeine addiction again. I started back up again but i'm realizing it takes about 2-3 months sometimes for me realize just how fucking horrible it is for my empathic side. And also my diet).

So i've made the firm decision to go ahead and begin planning for a move back to Wisconsin. I am estimating to do the trip around april next year but part of me has had heavy nudging to leave as soon as November. That scares me haha. Figuring out how to move last minute like that. I have anxiety worrying about who will drive with me from here to WI. I'd drive my car and whoever comes out will Drive the Uhaul back. Long trips give me so much anxiety. I'm used to traveling with the military in that they do all the work for you. They pack/haul/ship. We would just drive to the next location or fly to the next location, wait for our stuff and then bam life started new in the new location. I might be over-complicating this trip but it's a huge first for me and to be back home again will be an adjustment for Mannix and I. 

I would live with my mom for a few months until I get settled in a Job there. I will probably go back to working in the general work arena. Get a job with benefits and retirement plan. I just cant fathom continuing with massage when it affects me so much emotionally, energetically etc. And my heart is just not invested in it as much as I was earlier in my career. I truly have no idea what the next chapter holds for me but I need to trust this pull to move back to WI. 

Dehydrating weekend

 This weekend I dehydrated onions and carrots. I was going to go to Market on the Move again today but didn't sleep well last night so I changed my mind. These are onions and carrots from the last 2 rounds that I did go. I didn't want them to go to waste. Only one onion had to get tossed from going bad. 

For both the onions and carrots I blanched them (probably longer than necessary). Blanching helps them dehydrate better. I heard one lady say that onions have a thick layer in their skins that that opens up during blanching allowing them to dehydrate faster than if you tried with them raw. 

The carrots heated up the fastest. Some of the onions are still going and it's been 14hrs in the dehydrator. Some finished but some are still drying out. I may not have cut them all evenly. 

The photo accidently deleted of the onions diced. That bowl was full  of onions by the time I was done. 

Dehydrating really shrinks them up. Above is 3lbs of carrots and below are them all dried up in the jar. 

I didnt put the onions and carrots together. There were only 4 of those mesh guards that i used for the onion sheets but the carrots fell through when I was trying to take them off the trays lol

These will be good in cooking and baking. The carrots can go in cakes or breads and the onions can go into soups or whatever. Some people blend up the dehydrated veggies into powders to also add to baked goods or as thickeners for dishes. 

I'm debating cutting and blanching up potatoes the rest of the day but not sure if they will be done in enough time before i have to leave for the work in the morning so those may need to wait until next weekend. 

Then yesterday I was doing laundry and found this heart rock calling out to me. So I snagged it. 

All the zucchiniiiii

 

So the last round of Market on the Move we got a bunch of zucchini. 3 I had throw away because they were from the last round and they were forgotten about and went bad. I had plan so of doing this last weekend but I just ran out of time and during the week I don't have spare time to do much in the kitchen besides a quick dinner. 

So today I cleaned and shredded all the zucchini for putting into Zucchini bread. In the end I got about 9 cups of shredded zucchini. The recipe I use makes 2 loaves and calls for 2 cups. I don't have freezer space for bread so I decided to only make one round of breads and freeze the rest of zucchini flat for future batches. 

This is the recipe I use: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/6698/moms-zucchini-bread/

Some of the zucchini was getting close to it's end. But I was able to shred it all.

9 cups of shredded zucchini

The zucchini was very moist because it was very ripe but it helped add moisture to the dough

They turned out yummy. My son has already eaten almost half of one. I was afraid 2 loaves were going to be to much for us. He said he favors zucchini bread over banana bread so I may need to keep ripe banana's to just banana pancakes. 

I didn't attend the MoM this weekend. I don't have anymore space for more food. I still have to dice up and freeze the rest of the onions before they begin to ripen to much. 

I've been browsing way's to cook up potatos and came across this website. https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/russet-potato-recipes/

Lots of tasty ideas/recipes in there. I plan to try some soon. Hash browns, french fries, and the latkis.   

The next thing on my list is to try making bread in the dutch oven. https://tasty.co/recipe/homemade-dutch-oven-bread

Really I just want to learn to make a basic loaf of bread in general. I was gifted some yeast so I may have to try it out the next weekend i'm free. 

Another day of produce

 I went again today to the food salvage drive. I had enough space again for another round of stuff. 

These two boxes contain the same things in each. Everyone got 2 of these boxes and then the box below. The can below is mystery beans haha. 

The bag of espresso is massive. Espresso is usually really strong for me so I may have to just use a very a low bean to high water ratio for my coffee on that. We got more onions, a cantaloupe, a few beans, a bag of bread and a pack of blueberries. Then lots of zucchini, broccoli, potatoes, corn, apples, lettuce and red onions. We got double of everything listed from the big boxes. 

I gave away one cantaloupe, a bag of potatoes (we're still getting through our first bag), and a bag of red onions to a neighbor as I don't cook with red onions much so one bag will last a long time. I usually just cook with white or yellow.

With all the broccoli I decided it best to just blanch and freeze the florets. I hate eating the stems so I usually cut them off but i've always cringed at tossing a perfectly good part of the plant just because I never knew what to do with it. The stem as has just as much nutrients as the florets. As a child I despised the bags of frozen veggies my mom would make because she bought the value one's that added the stems as fillers and I fucking hated the consistency of them. 

So I saved the stems this time and decided to look up ways I could use them. I originally came across this post: http://tastingnotesnyc.com/2012/04/18/dont-toss-the-stems-broccoli-stem-puree/

I almost made that tonight for dinner but then it hit me; we have so many potatoes and I bet I could dice up the stems and add them to the potatoes and make a potato/broccoli mash.

 It turned out pretty good. I used the immersion blender to puree but the broccoli didn't really break up. My son enjoyed them and was thrilled there were veggies in the mix because he's been begging to go vegetarian (we eat mostly vegetarian anyways). I will certainly be using the stems for things in the future. I bet the stems would be great in a broccoli cheese soup. 

There will be more blanching and freezing going on today. I also have so much zucchini that I will make zucchini bread but I may need to shred and freeze some of it for later bread usage. 

The way that my schedule is going these days fresh produce isn't getting used as quickly in our house. It's quicker to just throw a pot on the stove and toss in frozen veggies and go from there. Typically I favor roasted vegetables for dinner but I don't have enough time in the evenings for that except for weekends. To ensure the food actually gets eaten and used frozen produce is just the best for our situation right now. Fresh is always best but life... lol

Tomorrow i'm going to chop up and freeze the onions and slice the lettuce and put in a bag with some shredded carrot for a quick diner salad. My sons been diggin' having iceberg salads. We usually eat spinach based salads. 

Till the next Market On the Move....

Take Care,
Krista

Bountiful food day!

Oh man. Blogger just changed it's layout for creating and monitoring posts. I miss the old style they had. Hopefully it won't get to much more weird haha.

So in today's post i'm going to get frugal and giddy. I sometimes participate in a food salvage program we have in my town. You pay $10 for 60lbs of produce/goods. Sometimes this is bountiful and amazing and sometimes it's a bust if the produce is on it's last leg or stuff we just don't eat. This round was bountiful! I decided to go this this round because they posted a photo of this weeks variety on their FB page and it seemed like a hit full of stuff that are common staples in our house. 

I was so glad I went this round, am so appreciative and grateful this program exists here. I think what made this weeks bounty so amazing was that some companies have donated goods to them recently vs when they just salvage. So this weeks goodies wound up being enough goods that I will not have to go grocery shopping for the month of August, aside from perhaps some staples like eggs. Remember all this was just for $10!! 

They started bright and early this morning @6:30 so we got up early and headed over right on the dot. They changed their normal walk through to prepackaged drive through style due to Covid. So you have to form a line via cars. I wasn't expecting it to be so busy! We arrived right on the dot and we were already a block ro 2 away in line. I've never seen it so busy before. When we've gone in the past there wasn't to much of a wait. But i'm sure because a lot of people are still out of work and on unemployment they are making this work. My work has been slow and my income depends on the number of massage clients I get. Next paycheck may be small so I decided to go this round to help stretch the grocery bill. I would also like to use the Foodbank again but they decreased their hours to only 2 days a week from their 4-5 days a week and they too changed to drive through style. Unfortunately the days they are operating from are days i'm at work. They usually have staples like pasta, pasta sauce, rice, cereal, canned beans/veggies and so on. 

On to the goodies of this trip:

This box had a bag of organic apples, bag of oranges, 2 baby carrots, one head of celery, 3 ears of corn, one bag of white onions, a 5lb bag of potato, 3 zucchinis and 2 bags of salad. 

There was a box of a gallon cows milk, 2 processed packs of cheese slices, half and half, sour cream, cottage cheese and a pound of butter. Normally we don't drink cow's milk but sometimes Mannix if we get take out and they have milk as a drink option. He will drink most of that over the month. The processed cheese slices I don't normally buy but I will make grilled cheese with them. 

We also got 6 honey dew melons, a big bushel mushrooms and 2 packs of grapes. In the end I only kept 1 melon for us as my so doesn't really eat these kinds of melons. I gave away 3 and 2 were just to over ripe so they got tossed. 

A bag of burger buns, a bag of chips, An organic head of celery, gallon of cranbery juice, handful of radishes, more white onions and a head of romaine. There was also a poweraid but my son took that right away lol. 

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I chopped up the Romaine lettuce and added it to the salad lettuce packs. The rest of my morning was spent cleaning the produce and freezing some of it for later cooking. 

The mushrooms needed a good cleaning. After that I chopped them up and cooked them (some vegetables need to be blanched or cooked for them to freeze well, mushrooms are one of those). After cooking I laid them out on a baking sheet and flash froze them then put them in a freezer bag. Doing it this way helps keep them from freezing into one big block of mushrooms. Overtime they may eventually blob together as the freezer opens and closes but as long as I cook with them all month that shouldn't be an issue. 

I diced and flash froze a chunk of the onions and celery, these don't need to be blanched/cooked to freeze. I already had onions before this trip and on top of the amount I got in this run I had way to many onions. So some I left for fresh use and the rest I chopped and froze. I saved a few stalks of celery for my son to immediately munch on but I know we won't eat them this way normally so I diced the majority and froze them as well. 

I had to keep my kiddo occupied with all the kitchen time. I made him a fort with our loft bed. During some of my chopping he put on music and had a personal dance party. 

Today was loaded for me. I'm not used to such a productive day off. This just made my heart happy. These are the kinds of days I thrive on and feel most gratitude for. I am also so thrilled with the abundance of quality food we got this round and with some meal prepping based on things we already have in stock I will be able to save majority of this months grocery budget. We have a bunch of chicken in the freezer that needs to be used up and plenty of legume and beans in the pantry. We could easily get through the month with just this $10 bounty. 

There is a you-tuber/blogger that I recently found on you tube. She talks on Frugal living and homesteading. Of course the week I came across her was the week she officially announced she was retiring her YouTube channel. Such a bummer! But she will keep it up as there are 3 years worth of frugal/homestead living vlogs. She will, however, keep going with her blog. I share a similar view on her spiritual perspective, which she doesn't talk to much about on YouTube but she does have a few video's and from what i've heard her speak is that we are pretty similar there and this makes me happy. If only she was my neighbor lol 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCocnOOOqmDAk1qBGn5AZd-g

https://katesinghsite.com/