Things I Loved in June

Things I Loved in JuneAside from the fact that it’s far too hot here, June was a good month for me. Here are a few things I loved at home and around the blogosphere over the last month.

Great Things at Home

Watching our garden grow and grow. We are consistently enjoying lettuce and basil and have started to get a few sugar snap peas. The tomatoes are growing by leaps and bounds, although it will be quite a while before any of those are ready to harvest. I really need to do another garden update post, because just about everything is humongous compared to what it looked like a month ago!

Making many batches of these coconut flour banana muffins. I find that I need lots of snacks these days, so it’s nice to have some more variety.

Getting a new chest freezer. Well, the actual “getting” part was not that fun–the old freezer died out of the blue, so we really had to scramble to get a new one ASAP–but having a new freezer is nice. It is 40% bigger than our old one, which is great because we were beginning to outgrow that one. And now we have plenty of space to (hopefully) freeze a lot of food so we’ll have some easy stuff to pull out during crazy newborn days.

Making a giant batch of Swedish meatballs for the first time in many months. These are awesome to have in the freezer for quick meals. Plus, now that we are eating potatoes again, we get to eat them the traditional way–with boiled potatoes and berry jam. So yum.

Perfecting recipes for the e-book that I’m working on. Orange chocolates, strawberry coconut delights, and strawberry chocolates are all big winners!

Enjoying plenty of local produce from our CSA share. And finding that I actually like spinach–which has been a total shock to me! Apparently balsamic vinegar has magical powers.

Nesting. 🙂 I’ve never been a particularly organized person (at least, not physically), but suddenly I’m measuring, rearranging furniture, and buying plenty of canvas bins to maximize and streamline our storage space. Hopefully this will all lead to a less messy home–which is something that we perpetually struggle with.

Links I Loved from Around the Real Food/Natural Health Blogosphere

We love our grass-fed butter here. If you’ve ever wondered what’s up with all the adoration over grass-fed butter, this post from Whole Green Love on the health benefits of grass-fed butter does a great job of explaining why you should include this superfood in your diet.

If you’re grain-free, this is a great list of grain-free bread recipes–both savory and sweet–from Healy Real Food Vegetarian.

I use a lot of vinegar for cleaning, so I liked reading Simple Clean Living’s post on how to make citrus infused vinegar. I don’t particularly mind the smell of vinegar, but using lemon- or orange-scented vinegar certainly sounds like it would be an extra pleasant cleaning experience.

Do you throw away a lot of lemon peels? This is a great post from Thank Your Body on 31 lemon peel uses, from cooking to cleaning to personal care.

We try to minimize throwaway products in our kitchen, so I really enjoyed reading this post on Whistle Pig Hollow’s paperless kitchen. This is definitely worth a read if you’re working on ditching paper towels and other disposables.

I’ve made liquid bug spray before, but I love Homemade Mommy’s idea of making non-toxic bug repellent lotion bars. You can just throw them in your purse or bag without having to worry about them spilling everywhere.

I really enjoyed this post from Empowered Sustenance on why she stopped using stevia. Jesse and I have been low-sugar through the use of stevia for a long time, but thanks to posts like this (plus others on why natural sugar really isn’t bad for you after all), I’ve been rethinking my position and now just use honey in my recipes rather than a mix of honey and stevia.

If you’re grain-free and missing noodles, this post on vegetable noodles from the Savory Lotus is really cool. I’ve really only dabbled in zucchini noodles, but the Savory Lotus also had success with cucumber, sweet potato, and carrots–and she urges you to experiment with a lot of other vegetables!

A couple of weeks ago I shared how I wash my face with honey. I take the super simple approach of just plain honey, but if you want to get slightly more fancy I love these options for raw honey facial masks from Living the Nourished Life. I really want to try the one with lemon juice, because although my skin is looking fantastic these days (thank you, pregnancy!) I still have quite a few scars and red marks from old breakouts.

We really enjoy our pastured, local pork, but I’ve always been a little bit troubled by the fact that pork is often viewed as a less-healthy meat, so I was happy to read Small Footprint Family tackling the question is pork bad for you. My takeaway: I’ll continue to enjoy our pastured pork without worry.

I have always had issues with my hormones, so I was really intrigued to read this post from Creative Simple Life on balancing hormones naturally with seed cycling. I will definitely be filing this away to try out later on if my hormonal issues resurface post-pregnancy.

What things did you love in June?

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2 Responses to Things I Loved in June

  1. Lauren Dalton says:
    Hey Meghan, I came across your blog a little while ago when I was looking into natural treatments for acne and I have also been doing the gaps diet to treat fructose malabsorption. I have also been following another blog called the love vitamin and she has some great info on how she treated her hormonal acne. I have followed her advice and have had great results. Tracey had quite a long battle with acne herself and tried all types of things including the gaps diet and has finally had some relief using a natural supplement called Dim estroblock. Personally my acne flared up when coming off the Pill so I have been using another natural herb called vitex. You can read all about her adventures on her blog but this article has the most concise info about what has worked. http://www.thelovevitamin.com/6855/treat-female-hormonal-acne/ I thought it might help you if your acne returns after your pregnancy.
    • Thank you for sharing, Lauren. I have read the Love Vitamin before--including her post on that particular supplement! Very interesting stuff. I will definitely be looking into it later if necessary--thanks for reminding me. :) I hope your GAPS experience is going well!

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