Golden moment # 20 (For June 18th)

Fact:
I want a bathroom like this.

Fact:

This is my bathroom.

Fact:

If you lounge in any warm bath and add this magic ingredient

and read this book,

you can be just as relaxed and happy here,

as you would be here.

Fact:

Golden moments are as gold as we choose to believe they are.

Love,

The Domestic Diva

Golden Moment #19

Story-time with daddy,

Simple as that.

Golden moment #18 Home-made Mayonnaise.

People, I made mayonnaise, MAYONNAISE!

But there's a back story, a motivation if you will...You see, I like good, whole organic food-but if that food is processed anywhere but your kitchen, good taste can get pricey, even for mayonnaise. And I'm on a budget.

My brilliant husband and I have a savings plan. It's a beautiful plan, broken down month by month on a little chart for the next five years with an estimate of how much we can save each month. Along the way we have bench marks, every six months actually, so that we can adjust our savings course as needed so at the end of five years we have a nice chunk of money to live off of while Josh gets his MBA. (That's the plan at any rate) On that lovely chart, there is a little box for each month that I get to color in green if we save the estimated amount, and red if we miss the mark so we can make up for it the next month. But here's the part where hubby got smart, he told me that anything ABOVE our estimated amount, and any interest the money makes (We invest our savings) he will put toward a down payment on our first home. Ahhhhhh-he KNOWS how much I want to buy a house so this is a HUGE motivation to me. Anything above that big number at the end of five years is for the house baby!

Hence, the desire to do stuff like, make my own mayonnaise, since the organic brand I like best costs eight dollars a container, comes into full force. I mean really, I'm a home-maker, so when it comes right down to it, my ability to save more lies in the little stuff like grocery budgeting and personal spending, and I am determined, by golly, to get me a down payment. And I don't just make mayonnaise, oh no, I make my own deodorant, and face-wash too. I'm also very frugal when it comes to washing windows, there are ways beyond windex and paper towels you know....we'll talk later, for now, here's how I made my tasty good mayo. The success of my first try made me pretty happy, so it's going to be my golden moment today.

I didn't want to go shopping for more ingredients, so I just used what I had and watched a lot of You-Tube videos, then I sort of winged it. Here's what I used.

1.5 cups olive oil

4 eggs (Washed at room temp)

Salt

Cottage cheese? What!?-Yeah, I know I'll explain later. It's good though, trust me.

Turmeric powder

First I washed my eggs really well. Home-made mayo has raw egg in it, and that's okay if you make sure your eggs are fresh and organic and you clean them really well before you use them. Then I separated the yolk and white.

I put two yolks in a bowl and then I blended them with my electric mixer for a few seconds, then I started adding my olive oil, slowly very very  SLOOOOOOLY, I mean, about a drop at a time slowly to make sure it emulsified it with the egg. Basically, our goal is to have a cup of oil suspended in the egg yolk. I did this for a while and then got way bored and impatient, so I dumped all the oil in at once. The emulsion broke (of course) and then my mayo looked like egg drop soup. See.

Not quite the look I was going for. Being of a determined sort of nature, and keeping in mind my back up plan would be to use this as a fantastic hair mask. (Seriously-I do that too, with pretty much exactly the same ingredients) I decided to try again. So I poured my broken mixture into my measuring cup, started with two new egg yolks and SLOOOOOWLY added the broken mixture to my egg yolks. It emulsified beautifully, but because I used all olive oil (It's what I had on hand) the density of the oil made the viscosity (I love that word) of my mayonnaise rather gelatinous.

At this point, I'm sort of thinking to myself.."Hmmmm, what now?" I could use this as a hair mask and I'd have really soft strong hair....or I could try and salvage this by smoothing it out somehow, what is smooth...I figured sour cream might do it, but I LOVE sour cream and if it didn't work I'd be sad to just have to use it on my hair, plus the flavor isn't really what I wanted. Neither was yogurt, especially since I only have vanilla yogurt. Then I figured cottage cheese might do the trick if I blended it up nice and smooth, so I did until it looked like this.

I had to add a bit of milk to the mixture to smooth it out, but it looked like it would do the trick. I folded it into my mayo mixture and then it looked like this....

The consistency wasn't quite as thick as I would have liked it, but my imagination started turning, this would make fabulous dressing, or base for a cream sauce over chicken and veggies, or Alfredo! It would make tasty chicken salad, maybe even tuna...I tasted it, and it wasn't bad, a bit heavy on the olive oil flavor so I added some salt and turmeric to enhance the flavor a bit. Came out tasting very nice! Next time I make it though, I will buy a lighter oil, like grape-seed or safflower. I think both the flavor and viscosity will be even better with a lighter oil.

And that was my adventure in cooking. And I saved $8.00! Yay! That's gold to me!

What are your money saving tips in the kitchen?

-DD

Golden moment #17

Okay, so I'm a day behind on my golden moments...I think I was supposed to update yesterday with two, because the day before I skipped, so I updated one yesterday, for the day before but I didn't update for THAT day, and so now TODAY I owe two, one for today and one for yesterday. Phew. Okay. Yesterday was a really BLAH sort of day. I literally vegged out and watched movies. Well, okay, I also cleaned the house, did some laundry, visited with my sister and her new baby and also made her lunch, set up a sweet little trampoline/slide against the couch out of an air mattress, for the little munchkin which he thoroughly enjoyed.

Hubby got home late, but we had a fantastic evening together once the kiddo was asleep. I would have to say my evening with the Mr. was my golden moment for yesterday. But I guess that's sort of redundant, because golden moment 16 was about him too. Ahhh-who cares, married life is golden! I'm sure he'll be my golden moment many more times over the next 348 golden moments I share here, as this birthday year goes on.

So, because I love to have a picture relevant to my entries, here's one I love of Josh and I.

My dad took this picture of us when we all met for the after wedding lunch at the Bellevue club. We'd been married for just an hour or two at this point, and we were SO happy!

What was golden about your day today?

-Domestic Diva

Golden Moment # 16, laughing. Crying. Gold.

June 14th's golden moment.

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed yesterday.

I made the mistake of watching HGTV too much and started to see everything that I don't have and really NEED (want).  Like the fact that I need a yard for my toddler to run around in. (Yes, I actually do NEED this one) And I wanted to be one of the people on "House Hunters" or "My First Place" or "Property Virgins". I wanted to give Sandra Rinomato my list of requirements and have an endless budget to work with. 3,000,000 would pretty much get a person just about anything they want, it's not like I want to live in New York City. My list would look like this:

-Big fenced in backyard (Non negotiable)

-Updated kitchen with energy efficient appliances and granite counter tops.

-Big master suite

-Amazing master bath with fabulous tub big enough for me and my Mr.

-4 bedrooms, 2 baths plus a guest 1/2 bath

-A small guest house on the property

-Open floorplan

-Hardwood floors

-Lots of light

-Good location, nice school district

As I was mulling over how much I'd love to live in my dream house, feeling very acutely that I did not live in my dream house but in fact a little itty bitty apartment, my toddler was pretty much acting like a cooped up puppy who NEEDED to go outside. I won't even go into the messes he made while I was going to the bathroom, talking on the phone, rinsing some dishes, or stealing away in my room to just catch my breath. (Okay, okay, and watching HGTV.) Let's just say when Josh came home at the end of the day, I was determined to hide the fact that I'd been bawling on the couch about 15 minutes before he walked through the door, crying over stuff I didn't have, and a toddler who just wouldn't stop climbing on me, kicking me, pinching me, biting me, (In his defense, he was trying to get me to play, when I didn't want to) and he chose making messes galore to keep himself occupied since that's the next best thing to playing tag with mom.

*Not that I want to make any excuses for myself, but it's June and it's cold, gray and rainy outside, not the sort of weather mom wants to go play in. Also, Scotty didn't go to bed till 1:30 in the morning the night before, and kept kicking his bedroom walls and door which = very unhappy neighbors at midnight.

But as Josh walked through the front door, he surprised me with the happiest, most adorable mood. I think he was slap happy tired-(He'd had duty the night before and doesn't get much sleep when that happens). "I'm so happy to be HOME!!!" He said, scooping me up and spinning me around in the living room. Yes, in our teeny tiny space between the couch and the kitchen table he spun me, and my feet didn't hit ANYTHING! "Tell me about your day!" He smiled, no wait, let me GUESS! 

"Scotty made a zillion messes", he began, "but you cleaned them up because the house looks amazing! Giants attacked, but you shooed them all away because they are gone now, you burned dinner but the dog we don't have ate it, you were planning a surprise for me that got stolen by little elves, Scotty has been bugging you all day and you are tired but you are so happy because I AM HOME!" At this point, I'm just laughing happily-How he does this to me, I don't know, he just does. 

I felt like saying "Yes, all of the above! How did you know!" But I just kind of giggled. "I knew the minute I walked in you'd had a hard day"-he told me, "just give me a few minutes to regroup from work and we can talk about it, okay?" 

"Ummm, okay."

Wow. My marriage is gold.

Golden moment # 15, Butter.

I LOVE butter.

Oh, yes. I love butter. Real food is just a good thing, and butter is about as real as it gets. Julia Child once said "If you are afraid of butter, use cream." I love cream too. Without it we wouldn't have butter... But let's talk about how golden butter is, really-and not just butter, FAT. Yes, fat, wonderful delicious, energy giving, life sustaining, brain feeding, hormone producing fat.

Fat is one of the greatest foods God placed on this green earth. And somehow, like so many wonderful pure, perfect, flawless creations our great Lord gave us, we have warped and twisted it into something very unlike the Creator's grand design. We have hydrogenated oils, skim milk, low fat ice-cream (What!?) and non fat lean cuisine, we count calories and forget to eat food. We are afraid of fat.

I think part of it lies in the fact that our language does not give a positive connotation to fat. When people are obese, we call them fat. We see this as a negative, undesirable thing-then we roll butter fat, meat fat, fats from oils and nuts, or foods like coconut and avocado, all in the same word. The truth is, people are not obese because of fat, they are obese because there is an imbalance in their body, and usually toxic overload. They are simply not coping, and in many cases are not getting the nutrients they need to maintain a healthy weight for their body, or are incapable of assimilating the needed nutrients. The fact that they are overweight is actually a miracle of the body, diluting toxins, or storing needed energy in case of starvation. (Note, dieting puts you into starvation mode, as will strenuous exercise causing your body to store more fat in case a tiger comes after you again or famine strikes, a natural food storage system if you will, in case of emergency.) The body is AMAZING, it will do whatever it has to in order to keep you ALIVE.

Your body will create cysts, store fat tissue, form allergies or anything else it needs to. In fact any "dis-ease" the body creates is simply a coping mechanism to keep you alive. Once you give your body what it needs, the ease will return to your body. You can in fact, be a healthy weight, rid your body of cysts, clear all your allergies, and live in a healthy, thriving body! There is nothing your body can not cure itself of when given the proper nutrients to re-build healthy thriving cells. It's re-building and restoring everyday. Only when it doesn't have the tools to re-build and restore perfectly do we see disease, allergies, weight, and aging take hold. It's like a carpenter trying to build a house without all the proper tools and materials, it will not be a perfect house, it will have weaknesses.

But, I am not a nutritionist, and my goal is to keep these entries short and sweet little morsels of golden delight for you to read, and this entry is about how much I love good fat. And here is why.

I love how it tastes! I love how it makes me feel! And I love all of the research that has been done endorsing its vital importance to our health. I love all the places you can find fat, in dairy, in meat, in avocados...YUM, in nuts and in oils. I love that everyday there is a new article out there teaching us about essential fats, and how important they are to our overall health and well being. I love REAL food, and I love BUTTER! 

I also love my gallbladder, and bile is amazing, without them, I couldn't break down and properly assimilate all the wonderful fat that keeps me skinny! Our bodies are the most complex, awe inspiring, fascinating, creation. Go google  "Healthy fat" you will be reading all day.

After you have finished perusing all the great reads out there on healthy fat, butter yourself a piece of whole wheat toast and throw away everything in your cupboard that has hydrogenated oil, most especially that tub of "can't believe it's not real butter" believe it, it's NOT real butter.

 I'll meet up with you when we are 120 and we can keep talking about how awesome butter really is.

DD

What is your favorite REAL food!

Golden Moment # 14 My favorite color.

Sometimes, all I can see is pink.
Pink is the color of springtime
Pink is the blush of a first kiss
Pink is the flower that whispers
"I love you"
Pink is a night spent in the arms of my love
Pink is sweet on my lips
Pink is warm on my skin
Pink is lace
and chiffon
icing and perfume.
I suppose you could say,
I see the world through rose colored glasses.

You would be right
Come take a peek
at the world I see
in pink.

What is your favorite color?