A week in pictures

Nathan fenced in our garden areas.  He built pretty wood gates for our tomato/squash/bean area.

And for our lettuce beds.  

Sadly, Lucy loves digging in our lettuce beds, and chicken wire doesn't keep her out.  

After weekends of work, Nathan will need to fortify this flimsy fence, still.  Lucy pops the staples out, pushes down the chicken wire, and jumps/climbs right in.  So there is more work to do before our kale and spinach are safe.  The master plan involves more/larger wood for a less temporary fence, but we didn't have time this year.  Pretty gates though, huh?

A constant in our lives are power/energy bars.  Their main ingredients include a dried fruit (usually prunes, sometimes dates), oats, nuts, dark chocolate, peanut butter, coconut oil, honey...

Run the fruit and oats through a food processor to make a gooey "doughy" substance.  Melt the chocolate and other meltable things in a pot on the stove.  Mix the gooey, melty, and dry ingredients, push them into a wax paper lined pan and refrigerate.  Lola and I make something along these lines once a week and they help with our cookie cravings.  But these babies are healthy.  I never measure these things.  I think you can pretty much eye-ball and feel your way through it.

Other healthy business in my life these days is Jillian Michaels detox drink.  I'm not sure if it actually detoxes, but if I make a pitcher of it in the morning, I'm more likely to drink lots of water that day.  You're supposed to do a week on and a week off.  The recipe is
2 to 2 1/2 quarts of water
One mug of strongly brewed dandelion root tea (I just use one tea bag, but you could use two)
A few tablespoons of 100%, no sugar added cranberry juice.  Drink 'er down, unless you're nursing.  I think you're supposed to "ask your doctor", as my tea box instructed.

Tonight we're having Green Enchilada Chicken Bake Casserole  I just love green enchilada sauce.  I also recently fell in love with sweet potatoes in my Mexican dishes.  So when I saw that this recipe called for butternut squash in the casserole, I thought surely it would be just as awesome as my Sweet Potato lime and honey Quinoa.  I'll let you know how enchilada sauce pairs with butternuts.

 Our entry used to be dark red.  Now it's a gray "silver".  Nathan thinks it's too light, so when I get my painting energy back, I may be changing it to the darker, "tornado watch" that's in the dining room.  Or maybe I should just paint that white mirror an awesome color.  What do you think?