Sunday SELF - C. 🍯 A. 🍩 R. 👼 E. 🌄

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Sunday SELF - C. 🍯 A. 🍩 R. 👼 E. 🌄

Below are last months faves for Cooking, Art, Reading, and Enthusiasm/ what’s bringing me joy lately.

🍯 Cooking: in all honesty, I’ve not really been cooking as much this month. 

But don’t worry, obviously you already know that doesn’t mean that I’ve folded and started eating out or ordering food. (food delivery doesn’t even make it to our house which I love)

I just haven’t really been cooking anything new. 

Of course, I made homemade pasta and my new fave pasta recipe is:

• 2 ½ cups OO flour from farm2flour

• 4 eggs

• Pinch of salt 

After about 30 minutes of rest, cut the dough into tagliatelle. Then mix up a little sauce with butter, pasta water, garlic, lemon, Parmesan, and some fresh herbs. 

But also I’ve been loving a no dinner moment this summer. 

Maybe it’s just because I miss soup season… but I feel uninterested in dinner this past month. 

I’ve more so been sticking to some type of egg and veggies from the garden mixture for breakfast (like my go-to zucchini and potato skillet is on repeat). Then a summer sandwich, smoothie, or cucumber dip and crackers for lunch. So by dinner, a simple liquid moment feels most satisfying. 

This is not at all to return to my old toxic eating habits based on restriction, but genuinely because of how much nutrient density I receive from sipping broth, hot chocolate, or milk and honey. 

In the evening, it feels so right to soak in these liquid benefits and not stuff myself with a heavy meal. 

Here’s why these are the perfect evening drinks to satisfy hunger and support sleep:

🥛🍯 Milk and honey: The classic luxury from ancient times.

When sourced properly, both have powerful immune benefits and are densely packed with gut loving nutrients.

I pour a glass of raw milk from my local regenerative farm and get a big spoonful of raw, local honey. With every sip of milk, I lick a tiny taste of honey. Trust, it’s the most iconic paring for a reason.

I wouldn’t be afraid of the sugar content of honey either because studies show that a spoonful of raw honey before bed actually stabilizes blood sugar.

🍖 Broth: Sipping on a warm broth in the evening is so satisfying and it’s full of gorgeous collagen, protein, and glycine.

Once a week I love to make a big pot roast or cook a whole chicken in a big pot of water.

This gives me multiple nourishing meals plus a ton of broth.

I’ll usually eat the meat and veggies in broth for lunch and then for dinner, just spoon a mug full of broth from the pot to sip on while I wind down for the evening.

☕️🍫 Hot chocolate (add gelatin or bone broth): An ancient beauty ritual.

Raw cocoa has insane antioxidant powers and is an instant mood booster. (Happy thoughts in the evening can lead to powerful visions and dreams)

I make it plain by frothing cocoa powder with raw milk and honey (plus I almost always add cinnamon and marshmallow root powder) (plus plus: for the girlies taking a prenatal… The Needed vanilla prenatal powder is so good mixed in this too)

Or, for some added protein, I’ll froth in some grass fed gelatin on high speed to try to avoid chunks.

Or, 😍 make it a bone broth hot chocolate.

As someone who has struggled with disordered eating patterns, I know this type of “liquid dinner” messaging can bring up negative thoughts, so I want to be clear:

Since my schedule allows me to be home all day, this means I can eat whenever I want. So I choose to focus on bigger, gorgeous meals for breakfast and lunch which makes me not feel hungry for another big meal at dinner. 

This may not make sense for you if you have a different schedule that makes it challenging to eat full sized meals earlier in the day.

So for people who are out and about all day and not eating much, I’m not saying you should also do this. It’s just what’s feeling great for my schedule right now. 

And maybe if you sometimes skips breakfast or lunch due to busyness, you can add in some of these liquid moments during those times for easy nutrition.

🍩 Art: Homemade Skincare

As you’ve seen with my egg white sheet mask and caffeinated eye jellies, I’ve been really into homemade skincare from real food ingredients.

But it’s been mostly just for little beauty boosts and occasional self-care moments.

If you listened to The Complete Guide to Nontoxic Living episode of Cheers to Growth then you already know that for my daily products, I buy from brands that use only real ingredients like tallow, beeswax, and flowers.

Primally Pure is my absolute favorite for face moisturizer. The baby balm, antioxidant balm, and soothing cream are my daily use products. But I just ran out of all three of them at the exact same time and… I just am not in the mood to restock because every time I make a purchase from them, I lose all my inhibitions and think, “Well, while I’m here I should also try this and that and restock this…” and I end up spending somewhere around $300 every. single. time.

And while I love their products… I just feel like spending $300 on other things right now, you know?

So I read the ingredient list on the back of the baby balm jar and realized that I pretty much have most of the ingredients already either in my kitchen or in my garden.

And just like with food, I will always trust my own garden or the high quality ingredients I stock my kitchen with over any packaged ingredient list.

So I made my own moisturizer and…

It completely exceeded my expectations.

I filled up 5 of my old face moisturizer jars that usually cost around $50 EACH, for basically free because I didn’t have to buy a single ingredient that I didn’t already have at home.

And I’ve been using this all over my face and neck for weeks now and it feels exactly like the baby balm! Just a simple, silky, gorgeous moisturizer.

We also use this tallow balm for cuts and burns.

Levi got a nasty gash on his hand at work and after a couple days he showed me because it had swollen up and he was scared it was getting infected.

I told him to just hurry up and heal himself (joking… but also dead serious 🙃)

Then to be a bit more helpful, I told him to put the homemade tallow balm on it. Literally the very next morning it was scabbed over and completely healing.

So now I realized that this little potion even more powerful than I originally thought!

Tallow Face Balm

Ingredients:

• Grass Fed Tallow (I just used the one I had at home this time — the brand: Epic, but next time I’ll for sure make my own tallow with beef fat from my local farm)

• High Quality Olive Oil (I used this insane Laudemio from Italy! Try to find a small family source.)

• Dried Calendula Petals and Lavender From the Garden

• (Optional) Marshmallow Root (From the garden is best, but I still have some powdered from Mountain Rose Herbs so I used that for this batch)

Directions:

1. Drizzle about ¼ cup of olive oil into a nontoxic pan. Stir in Calendula petals, dried lavender and marshmallow root. Warm and stir continuously over medium heat to infuse the flowers into the oil. Do not boil or overheat.

2. Strain out the flowers and save the infused oil in a separate bowl and set aside.

3. Add ½ cup of tallow to the pan and melt completely.

4. Add infused oil in with the melted tallow. Stir until combined. Then set aside to cool.

5. Wait until the ingredients have hardened back to a solid (30-60 minutes left alone at room temp.)

6. Once hardened, use an electric whisk to whip up the face balm.

7. Once it’s light and fluffy, add to jars and store! It’s fine to leave out at room temperature, but I kept the extra jars that I’m not using every day yet in the fridge until I need them.

👼 Reading: Portal by Yolande Norris-Clark

Anyone who’s looked into birth recently — beyond what your doctor tells you, will likely know of this author. And if you know of this author… you will likely have very strong opinions.

I don’t really feel the need to get into all of the controversy because I have no personal experience with birthing babies, however, I’m the type of person who wants to learn and hear different experiences before I feel out what makes sense for my life before I ever even enter that stage of life.

So this is the book I’m reading this month and I love it 🤷‍♀️

All the controversy aside, at the core of this book is the power of mindset.

And I live my life in the understanding that we all have the power to create and experience all outcomes and all scenarios. It’s just a matter of choosing.

I always come back to this quote from Think and Grow Rich:

So yeah, if you believe giving birth is a terrifying medical emergency that you will need doctors to save you from… you will live that out with many intervention and lots and lots of drama.

It’s not a bad thing to live that out.

A lot of times people create drama in their lives because it helps them feel closer and more connected to the people they love. Often unconsciously, but still choosing to be wrapped up and involved with the people and places and thought patterns that lead down that very clear road.

The point is that it’s your choice to experience drama or it’s your choice to become conscious of your thoughts and learn a new way of connecting with people that is not surrounding pain and suffering.

I don’t actually think the book is all that extreme, but that’s also because I’ve been listening to people share honestly, whether if offends or challenges the mainstream ideology, for a few years now and I think it’s great.

If you’re triggered, explore that. If you’re completely lost and confused as to how someone could possibly come to the conclusion they have on a topic. Explore that.

All the craziness in the world comes from people being so wrapped up in their own life that they can’t see how normal it is for someone else to see things differently.

🌄 Enthusiasm: Evening Walk Around the Property

Okay so for the past like 6ish weeks, and especially since we got the sheep, my husband and I have started this cute new evening ritual where we walk the property and check in on and say goodnight to all the little beings on our land. 

Doing this together is so fun because since we both individually check in on everything throughout the day, when we do it together at sunset we’ll be in the garden like:

“Look! Did you notice this cucumber growing?!”

And

“Did you see how this new flower bloomed today?!”

We toss the chickens worms and get them locked in their area for the night, we get the sheep into their shed, and we throw sticks to the dogs and watch them run. 

It’s such a beautiful moment and brings us together no matter how the day went. 

We also spend this time to visualize our future together because as we walk around, it’s so easy to point out to each other things like:

“Look, this area right here is where I want to put the bee boxes when we get them.”

And

“At this time next year this whole area will be filled with flowers.”

And 

“Think about 7 years from now how we'll be doing this same thing, but on hundreds of acres riding around in a side-by-side to get to everything all around the property.”

It’s a powerful and beautiful daily practice and I love that we’ve started having this time together to end the day on such a high. 

What are you highlights from the past month? Reply and share with me 🫶

🤍 Jaclyn