Welcome, friends!
Today I’m kicking off the Nourishment section of this newsletter, which I introduced in this post. I’m thinking it’ll be a monthly series… but we shall see. I may enjoy it too much and up the frequency.
I’m excited to chat and share the simple joys of my kitchen and life. I spend many hours in the kitchen daily, not because I have to, but because I love it. Cooking and baking are art forms to me, giving me a way to express my creativity in my daily life. I’ve recently been reading Create Anyway: The Joy of Pursuing Creativity in the Margins of Motherhood by
and it has further solidified in my heart and mind that to be healthy and peaceful as mothers, we need to be using our natural creativity in a way that brings us true joy. She writes that motherhood inspires creativity which in turn inspires holy motherhood. For me, cooking is one source of creativity that inspires me to be a better mom.Part of it is just the excitement I get from finally being in a place mentally where food doesn’t stress me out. Since I was a pre-teen, I’ve had a rocky relationship with food and eating, which led me to be unable to truly enter into the joy of nourishing my body. If you’re interested in more of that story, you can read about my healing journey here and here. I am in a season of freedom right now and want to enter into it as fully as I can.
harvest thoughts and random recipe ratings
Here in Manitoba, it is harvest time. I’ve usually said that summer is my favorite season, but I’m taking that back. Harvest usually falls from late August to early October around here and it just feels magical. We live in a very agricultural area, which means that my fridge is full of produce from local farms. When you drive down the highway, you will see sweet corn stands and large carts of pumpkins.
As for my garden, I have four lowly raised bed boxes. This year was my first year dipping my toes into gardening, with mixed results. I have bumper crops of cherry tomatoes and hot, red chile peppers. Honestly, I do not remember why I decided to plant chile peppers. I can’t eat spicy food when I’m pregnant and my husband isn’t a fan. So what do I do with over a hundred of them? My internet search history is littered with searches such as “how to preserve chile peppers” and “how to make red pepper jelly.”
My pumpkins sadly got some kind of illness, so there will be no homegrown pumpkin pie for us. We had five or six zucchini, and carrots are small but plentiful.
However, around here, zucchini kind of becomes an issue this time of year. I thought I had managed to stave off the overwhelming offers of free summer squash…. until my innocent husband accepted a bag of four enormous ones. Please send ideas - so far zucchini loaf, zucchini chocolate cake and zucchini-crusted pizza are on the menu for the foreseeable future.
Anyway, I’ve been trying to use what is in season around here and not buy produce from the grocery store. Our fruit options have been apples… and chokecherries. Not the most diverse, but soon enough we will be in -30 C weather with no local options at all. I remind my toddler of this when he wishes for bananas but he doesn’t seem overly convinced.
My sister visited for ten days last week, and I can’t put into words how lovely it was to have her presence. We are a mere fourteen months apart and over the years have become intellectual soul-mates. She came armed with a few recipes that she wanted to try so we wove those into our days together.
I’ll rate a few of the ones we made:
Tik-Tok Baked Feta Pasta: 6/10. It looked really pretty, but it was very acidic. Possibly we need to use sweeter tomatoes, but overall we were underwhelmed.
Pickle Pepperoni Chips: 3/10. These were solidly disappointing. They basically tasted like cheap pepperoni pizza and didn’t cook very nicely.
Mango Cheesecake: 100/10. This was the best cheesecake that I have ever tasted. Most people at the party we brought it to agreed. Simple, attractive and not overly sweet.
I’m already looking forward to when she comes back in my postpartum era. Of course, she’ll be doing the cooking for me at that point, right Jenny?
what we eat in a day
And now, onto the main attraction. Here is a simply documented day from this week, in food. I do try to make most things from scratch, but without being obsessive about it.
Breakfast: Breakfast wraps made with sourdough tortillas, local eggs and local bacon, with a drizzle of siracha mayo. Recipe for tortillas can be found here.
Lunch: We were gifted some leftovers from a wedding, so lunch was mashed potatoes, meatballs and corn. Honestly, not the best. But I supplemented it with a homemade granola bar (the recipe is still being developed by yours truly.) This is also when I finished my Zevia energy drink of the day. This is a relatively new habit, brought on by the fact that I can’t drink coffee in my third trimester due to heartburn and I ran out of matcha. So yeah, I’m not proud of it, but these organic energy drinks are keeping me going.
Snacks: I didn’t take pictures of the many snacks that I ate in the afternoon, but they included a sourdough english muffin with tahini and raw, local honey, a handful of raisins and pumpkin seeds, and a few carrots from the garden.
Supper: A stir-fry of carrots, yellow zucchini (duh), and pork with vermicelli rice noodles and a lovely garlic-ginger sauce based roughly on this recipe from Ambitious Kitchen. T’was well-received by the whole family.
Final snack: Zucchini loaf and a glass of raw milk. Recipe goes as follows (I heavily modified a recipe from an old church cookbook that I have.) I will note that it is a rather moist loaf, due to my trying to use as much zucchini as possible in it.
And thus ends the day of food in our household. Thanks for following along!
I’m curious what kind of food-related topics you would be interested in exploring in upcoming editions of Nourishment. Some that I am pondering include how to source local (and cheap!) food options, what ancestral eating is, using cooking to heal our relationship with food, and more.
Please leave a comment or reply to this email to share your thoughts!
I pray you have a peaceful week,
Hannah Chartier
Hannah thank you so much for sharing my book! ❤️
Cheers to “innocent husbands”!😊