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Sunday SELF - C. 🐔 A. 👴 R. 🧲 E. 🧖♀️
🎂 27 is making the cleanest birthday cake
Jaclyn Kirby
April 06, 2025
27 is making the cleanest birthday cake and now understanding how Europeans can eat cake for breakfast and still be healthy, fit, and live long.
Every single ingredient I used was stunning. It left me feeling so incredible that I literally had dreams of roses that night! 🌹🩷
💚 Pistachio Lemon Matcha Olive Oil Cake 💛
I originally set out to make a cake that simply looks pretty because I’m not much a dessert eater BUT then I tasted this and was transformed.
I literally had a slice every single day the week after my birthday and felt amazing. It forced me to release old beliefs that I must resist or throw it away after eating one small serving like I used to have to with other desserts.
I thought about how this cake has not one single ingredient that I feel any level of question or concern about, so why would eating these foods that I already consume daily, in cake form, make it unhealthy?
It doesn’t.
🫒 To prepare for this cake, I went olive oil tasting at a local farm that I’d been dying to try and it was stunning! I wish I took pictures but I got so caught up talking to the owner about their careful and intentional production process.
Then two new things I did for this cake was:
Make homemade cream cheese
& make my own beeswax candle
🥯 For the cream cheese, I just heated raw milk then squeezed the juice from a lemon to get it to curdle just like I’ve explained doing when I make ricotta cheese for ravioli!
The only difference between ricotta and cream cheese is that once you strain the cheese away from the liquid, you add it to a blender and incorporate small amounts of the liquid back as you blend it into a cream cheese consistency.
I whipped this cream cheese with heavy cream and honey to make frosting 🧁
🕯️For my birthday candle, I had saved a bunch of plain beeswax candles where the wick ran out but a lot of beeswax was leftover.
So I melted down the beeswax in a sauce pan and then let it cool enough that I can mold it. I massaged some dried lavender in and rolled the wax to surround a 100% cotton wick that I bought on Amazon.
Now let’s get into this jam-packed Sunday SELF - C. 🐔 A. 👴 R. 🧲 E. 🧖♀️
🐔 Cooking: Buy a whole chicken and be nourished for weeks
After I listening to this podcast (just watch from 34-36 minutes to see what I’m talking about), I never bought chicken again unless it was a whole chicken from my trusted local farm.
It’s incredibly inefficient to buy only specific parts of a chicken and having it all split up makes it that much harder to know whether the quality is right.
When I receive a whole chicken from my farm pickup, I know exactly how that chicken lived and it is much easier to connect with it to express gratitude for all the ways it will nourish me throughout the week.
With one whole chicken, this is what I made throughout the week:
Chicken piccata with gnocchi
Chicken and rice with leftover piccata sauce – OMG amazing!
Chicken stock
Bone broth
For this weeks prep:
- I started by slicing the breast meat off the chicken and flaring it out into thin cuts. Save these for the chicken piccata.
- Then I remove the organs if they’re still in there and set them back into the fridge or freezer for future use.
- Then plop what’s left of the chicken into a big pot that I’ve sautéed garlic and onion in butter.
- Cover the chicken entirely with water.
- Cook on low with the lid on for about an hour.
- Remove chicken from stock and pull all the meat off the bones.
- Store the bones with the organs if you have them, and set aside for future bone broth making.
- Store the cooked chicken for the chicken and rice leftover dinner.
Chicken Piccata and Gnocchi:
Ingredients:
- Your prepared thin chicken breasts
- 2 cups of your prepared homemade chicken stock
- 1 lemon
- 5 garlic cloves
- ½ stick unsalted butter
- ½ cup heavy cream
- ½ cup dry white wine (Frey Sauvignon Blanc is organic and completely additive-free, perfect for this recipe.)
- 2 tbsp capers
- Salt, pepper, & parsley
Ingredients for gnocchi:
- 2 large potatoes
- 2 eggs
- Flour (as much as it takes to turn potato and egg mixture into dough)
Directions:
Make gnocchi first by:
1. Wash potatoes thoroughly.
2. Poke holes in the potatoes with a fork.
3. Slather with melted butter.
4. Place on a baking sheet and bake at 425 degrees for 45-60 minutes.
5. Let cool.
6. Scoop potato out from its skin.
7. Mix in eggs with the potatoes.
8. Knead, adding flour bit by bit until it turns to dough.
9. Cut dough into 4 chunks. Roll out each one and cut gnocchi to size. Set aside raw gnocchi on a cookie sheet.
10. Cook chicken in a cast iron with butter, garlic, lemon rounds, S + P
11. Once cooked fully, remove chicken and use the same pan to make your sauce.
12. Melt butter. Sauté garlic. Add in broth and bring to a simmer.
13. Add heavy cream. Then wine. Bring back to simmer.
14. Add lemon juice. Then add capers, salt, and pepper.
15. Add chicken back in and top with parsley.
16. While that simmers, boil a pot of water for the gnocchi. Once boiling, drop in gnocchi.
17. Wait for each gnocchi piece to float to the top of the pot and then scoop it out onto the cookie sheet.
18. Once all the gnocchi has floated and been removed from the water, add it all to the chicken and sauce.
19. Stir together. Then serve!
Chicken and Rice Leftovers
ingredients:
- Your stored leftover cooked chicken that you pulled off the bones
- Your leftover chicken stock
- Your leftover piccata sauce
- 1 cup white jasmine rice
- 1 tbsp ghee
Directions:
1. Wash rice, then cook in chicken stock.
2. Warm up piccata sauce in a pan.
3. Once rice is cooked, stir in ghee and fluff up.
4. Add chicken into the sauce to warm it up.
5. Serve a big spoonful of rice, topped with chicken and sauce.
5+ If you’re like me and you love your dinner saucy and extra nourishing, add a big spoonful of warmed chicken stock to your bowl.
Bone Broth:
- Throw bones, organs, onions cut into large chunks, cracked garlic, carrots, celery, sea salt, pepper, parsley, thyme, and any other herbs you want into a crock pot.
- Fill the pot ¾ of the way full with water.
- Cook on high for 1-2 hours. Then cook on low for 20 hours.
- Strain liquid out and discard the rest.
Right now I’m obsessed with bone broth in everything. So healing. So nourishing.
I put it in my coffee and matcha for a little boost of nutrients. And of course, I use it to cook rice, make soups, and bone broth hot chocolate.
The amount of bone broth this makes on its own costs more than the price of the entire chicken… So why would you choose suspect, store-bought bone broth from who knows how many different chickens, living questionable lifestyles, VERSES a whole pot of stock and a whole pot of bone broth that’ll nourish you for multiple meals.
Not to mention getting a minimum of 4 meals worth of chicken meat.
I don’t know why it seemed scary to manage a whole chicken before I started… It’s actually embarrassing that we’ve become so far removed from our food that it’s rare for people to see their food as anything but the finished product.
Once you start living this way, it all makes sense and becomes completely normal and natural.
If you don’t have a great local farm for chicken, you can order from Polyface Farms or Pasturebird.
👴 Art: Memoir
In 2023 I became fascinated with studying the art of memoir.
I believe the quote, “to be human is to have a story,” and when we share our stories honestly, we connect to each other on deeply profound levels.
Right when I started thinking I wanted to try to get into ghostwriting memoir, I was handed the perfect opportunity to learn on the job.
My grandpa told me that he wished he could write a book to share his story, but he didn’t think it was possible because he hates reading and writing.
So over a year ago I started interviewing my grandpa and organizing his stories into a book.
Interviewing someone you’ve known your whole life with a fresh lens is incredibly eye-opening.
We often assume we know people so well that we don’t push ourselves to go any deeper. But people like your parents and grandparents have lived entire lives before you were even born.
I learned things that I never would’ve known about my family and now we all have this family archive that will live on forever.
🧲 Reading: My Constant Go-To Books
“Love makes you more attractive. That means you attract, like a magnet. You don’t just attract people; you attract various circumstances that reflect back to you the power of your devotion. Your personal power is not something that is going to reveal itself at some later date. Your power is a result of your decision to reveal it. You are powerful in whatever moment you choose to be. The choice to be used as an instrument of love, right here, right now, is a choice for personal empowerment.”
I have A Return to Love by Marrianne Williamson and You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay sitting out on my desk at all times.
Whenever I feel like I’ve been staring at a screen for too long or I have a moment in the day where my instinct is to scroll on my phone purposelessly, I’ll pick up one of these books and read a few paragraphs.
Even though I’ve already read these all the way through years ago, these are the two that I always come back to and they always deliver me the perfect message, just when I need it most.
Do you have any books that you’re getting constant use out of?
🧖♀️ Enthusiasm: Homemade Undereye Mask
I used to love the feeling of these undereye masks but I thought it was just one of those many products that I’d never see again after learning about how toxic the ingredients are.
Then I was inspired to make my own after seeing this tutorial that looked so easy to recreate.
And it was! I love them 💆♀️
Homemade Eye Masks:
- 2 tbsp grass-fed beef gelatin
- 1 tsp matcha
- 1 tbsp aloe vera gel
I also added in 1 tsp of noni powder because I fell in love with this superfood after hearing Miranda Kerr talk about it.
I get my matcha and noni at Mountain Rose Herbs.
1. Boil water.
2. Mix all ingredients in a small bowl.
3. Pour about ¼ cup of boiling water and mix it altogether.
4. Pour into molds.
5. Refrigerate for 3-4 hours.
One thing to note: These don’t last long in the fridge so you have to use them within 24 hours or they start to shrivel up and harden. But they feel amazing so just plan accordingly :)
Put these on after dinner and instantly feel your body relax into your nighttime, wind down routine.
Those are my March highlights! What brought you joy last month?
Reply and let me know 🫶
🤍 Jaclyn
📣 P.S. This Friday, my first ever children’s book, Captain and Kodiak: Grooming Day, is available for purchase!
It’ll be on Amazon just in time to fill Easter baskets with a book that the kids in your life will love! 🐶🫧