Blueberry & Chia Seed Muffins: How good can you get?

We all might as well admit it, we like eating baked goodies.
How we can make this better, however, is instead of buying muffins, cakes and cookies made in stores with packaging and needless ingredients, we can make our own.

At work I always end up craving sweet things, so I figured to stop myself from continuing to buy sweet things from the vending machine in the staff room, I would make some muffins to freeze and take to work as I need them.

Here's the recipe I adjusted to make my Blueberry & Chia Seed Muffins.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup melted Butter
1 cup of raw Organic Sugar (From Trade Aid)
2 Free Range Eggs (Organic if possible)
1 tsp natural Vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups of Organic Flour, grown as locally as possible! (Yes, fellow kiwis, we do grow organic flour in New Zealand! Just gotta find a shop that stocks it or buy it online)
1 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 cup raw Chia Seeds (I think they sell Chia seeds in Supermarkets now as they became quite popular... Otherwise, your local organic health food store should sell 'em)
2 cups Organic Oob Blueberries (from Omaha)
1/2 cup Organic Milk

Combine the melted butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl, then add the eggs and the vanilla extract and stir.
Add the flour, baking powder, blueberries and Chia seeds and fold in ingredients until just combined.
(Note: it is easier to make it with frozen blueberries because they don't fall apart in the batter.)
Then gently fold in the milk and you're done!
Spoon into muffin papers or straight into a muffin pan, and bake for about 20-25 minutes at around 180.

And BAM!

You have these babies. Healthy and local and 100% natural.

  

FRESH

It is brilliant when just a trailer can motivate you. Thank you to Ooooby for sharing this on your Facebook page!

For those who don't know what Ooooby is, Ooooby is an organisation/community network here in New Zealand based on spreading knowledge and connecting home-growers. They encourage eating locally, growing as much of your own food as possible, seed saving/swapping and environmentally friendly gardening methods as well.

This little trailer has inspired me. As we slip into spring, I have already started sowing seeds and soon we will be preparing the gardens. I'm looking forward to the coming summer of gardening!

My partner has decided to leave his job (due to health reasons) so we'll have even more time together on my "weekends" to garden and get the plants producing nicely.

What a good mental boost for the day before I head off to my mass-consumerism-encouraging workplace.

My Days Little Project

I have been very busy lately between work and a new course I am doing, which has resulted in not a lot of blogging time or free creativity time. However, today I have had a whole day of free relaxing time and since I couldn't get to the fabric store to start my organic clothing sewing project, I thought I would sow some seeds.
I am so glad it is September and spring has officially started! I sowed some zucchinis, squash, tomatoes, peas and lettuce and while sitting on the sheltered porch, I couldn't help but think that even with the 3 walls surrounding the little seed pots, that the harsh cold winds were still getting in. I pondered perhaps finding a piece of glass to place just above the pots, to help hold in warmth. But then I got the idea of constructing my own little plastic house from items I already had around the house... and here it is.

I constructed it out of old bamboo stakes from last summer, left over plastic bags (cut into sheets), ties made from strips of old stockings and twistie ties. It might not be perfect, but I hope it will at least be better than nothing, and it saved me the $50 it would've cost me to buy a mini seedling plastic house!

Need to be cheered up by the sweeter things in life?

Rarely does anything top a brownie. Soft, fudgey, chocolatey, sugary goodness.
But an organic raspberry and walnut brownie? with organic ice cream? Oh my lordie.



Organic Raspberry and Walnut Brownies:

1 1/4 cups whole wheat Organic New Zealand Grown flour (From Harvest Wholefoods or Huckleberry Farms)
1/4 cup dark unsweetened Organic Fair Trade cocoa powder (From Trade Aid)
200g dark Organic Fair Trade chocolate (60 to 72%), coarsely chopped (From Trade Aid or your local supermarket)
1 cup unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes
2 cups raw, organic fair trade sugar (From Trade Aid)
5 large Organic Free-Range eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup chopped Organic New Zealand Grown walnuts
1 cup frozen raspberries

(Oob Organic Ice Cream to serve)

Start off by sifting your flour and cocoa into a bowl. If you use whole wheat flour, this is probably a good idea. The organic whole wheat flour I have has some pretty big strands left from the wheat plants, so it's best to sift it.
Next, place a bowl over a simmering/soft boiling pot of water (making sure the bowl is quite a bit bigger than the pot) and pop the butter and chocolate into the bowl and let it melt.
Once melted, take off the heat and stir in the sugar. Next add 3 of the eggs and mix, before adding the last two and the vanilla extract and mixing again.
Once all combined, add the flour, walnuts and raspberries and fold gently until it is combined. Don't mix it too much as it will become "cakey". So once all the dry ingredients are mixed in, stop.
Pop into a lined 9 x 13 inch baking pan and pop into the oven at 190c for about 30 minutes.
Wait until they are cool before cutting into them, as they may crumble a bit when warm.

I freeze these in a container in the fridge and take them to work whenever I feel like I might need a little pick-me-up cheer up session with a brownie later in my work shift. Saves me from spending money at the vending machine and it stops me from buying a product filled with unfair ingredients!

Hope you all have a great day.

Be kind with your words, be kind with your hands and be kind with your minds.

Welcome to Spring and welcome to a new idea

I've had this idea for awhile, and it's not exactly a project of the physical variety. It isn't something one can just create with their hands and be done. It is a life long decision. It is a way of life, a way of looking at the world.
The idea, this magical idea, is -

Being kind because it is right.

In most religions, it is taught to fear being anything but kind. If you are not kind, the devil gets your soul for all of eternity. You will live a life of eternal discomfort in the after-world, or maybe you'll come back as some unpleasant, unfortunate creature.
In most religions, you are threatened into being kind or making kind decisions.
In my mind, this seems strange. After all, are you really a kind person if you are only doing kind acts out of fear or greed?
The whole idea of being kind just to get "good karma" in a way seems to render it pointless as you are doing your kind acts with selfish intentions. By being kind for the simple reason that it is right removes the need to threaten your children, your friends, your family or your neighbours with silly things such as the devil.
See also:
Gods wrath.
Eternal Damnation.
Being sent back to earth as a loathed bug.

It is scaremongering and doesn't encourage good feelings.
Now being kind isn't always easy, I certainly still have difficulty with it.
Sometimes it is as if some people aren't even people, thus don't deserve kindness.
See also:
Your cruel boss.
Your nasty co-worker.
Your soulless in-law.
The unpleasant stranger that acted unkindly towards you.
The person in your life you know who continues to do mean things to you.

But reminding yourself (Verbally - out loud or in your mind) that they are human as well, does help.
Remind yourself that the unpleasant things they do are just reactions to things happening in their life.
The whole "Every action has a reaction" kind of comes in here. The good old butterfly effect, working at it's best. Every person in the worlds actions are reactions.
To you, it might seem like they are out to get you, when in reality they are just venting their anger and frustration. When you understand this, it is a lot easier to deal with them.
Instead of taking on their anger and becoming angry yourself (bound to then share your fresh new anger with someone, spreading it like an H1N1 virus), acknowledge their anger and put it aside. DO NOT TAKE IT ON. This is not your battle, it is not your problem. Step back, be kind with your words and once the person has moved on, move on too.
You can stop the cycle, this virus, this chain of anger. Just remember, everyone is human, reacting to actions that were reactions to actions.

I'm still learning and practising as well. This is a life long journey. I might not be able to reach the top of my destination over night, but I can at least take small steps towards it.



Be kind with your words, be kind with your hands and be kind with your minds.

I just wanted to share...

"We are shaped and fashioned by what we love".
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

Is it not beautiful?

Amongst The Cold Snap: Blossoming Signs of Spring

I just wanted to share... Some beauties arrived in my front yard today.
Not only are the beautifully amazing and daring bulbs, bushes and trees in my front yard flowering, but I also got a delivery in the mail. A delivery that arrived in a Greenpac envelop made from recycled paper, which was 100% recyclable. Inside this green envelope was threads made from organic, fair-trade cotton. Beautiful, soft, organic cotton T-shirts and an organic cotton hoodie. My little shopping spree at the Kowtow website while they had their winter end-of-season sale, has finally arrived. And I only had to wait a few days. Something that satisfied the impatient side of me.
(Just to point out the sign was separate, a friend of mine at Epic Engraving (Auckland) made it for me since I'm sick of religious doomsday-preachers knocking on my door and upsetting my dogs)
I can't really express my gratitude and adoration for the Kowtow brand. The work that they do is amazing. Their designs are beautiful and the fabric is so lovely to the touch.
I am greatly looking forward to seeing their new season designs and I will undoubtedly blog about it when I do.
The T-shirts are gorgeous, and I particularly like the "Eat& Work& Sleep& Consume" Tee.
The hoodie is unfortunately a tad bit tight under the arms and I now wish I'd ordered a 14 but oh well, you learn these things. It is unfortunately the downside of buying online.
Organic/fair-trade clothing and recycled/second hand clothing is how I want to shop this summer, and probably for the rest of my life.

I love spring and it's little deliveries and changes. I'm looking forward to change, to sunshine and to cheerful fashion like summer dresses in soft pastel tones and floral scarves.
As the days get longer, even if they are colder right now during our current cold snap here in New Zealand, I can feel it giving new inspiration and energy to my mind. I have so many new projects that I want to dive right into. I want to renovate the house me and my partner live in. I want to go visit  Global Fabrics and check out their organic cotton fabric range. I want to find some beautiful summer dress designs so that I can make some of my own organic clothing for summer. I want to learn to make crochet lace so that I can incorporate some into these dresses somehow, since I adore crochet lace. I even want to give Cloth toilet paper a go... Because I am becoming that much of a hippy.
I am starting a course at the local Unitec, to learn how to study so that I can move onto a foundation course in Psychology next year and move on from my retail job.

(Sigh) Spring is on its way and I feel like my soul is waking up again after hibernating for the grey, dark months of winter. I can't wait for summer and sunshine.