Farm to our table
This weekend was (simply) perfect. Riley and I were able to spend so much of our time together, and truly relax. Gosh that's a beautiful thing. My favorite part of the weekend was going to our local Farmer's market. I want to shop there every Saturday because here in California we are blessed with a year round market. Coming from Michigan this is a huge, and exciting perk!
I love wandering through, trying samples, talking to the farmers and learning. We spoke to a woman in a straw hat and overalls who was a wealth of knowledge about growing herbs. I wish I could just sit in her show and tell class all day. She told us about the process of making stevia extract at home for a natural sweetener. It sounds a little bit difficult but I would love to try it some day!!
We brought home some good finds, fruits and vegetables, a stevia plant, a free bar of essential oil infused soap (the guy said it was a sample but it's huge, and smells SO good), sausage and the best of all, a pork shoulder. I had a recipe I wanted to try from a "clean eating" magazine that I picked up at the grocery store and this was exactly what I needed for that.
Here are some pictures from the Farmer's Market and a few meals that we made from our findings.
Downtown Pleasanton, isn't it dreamy??
We used leftover sausage and vegetables from the Farmers Market in our eggs and the fruit to add to our green juice. We now use cast iron pans every day. We received one as a wedding present and fell in love, then added this smaller one which I use daily. They are the best!
The pork shoulder wins the award for best food from the farmer's market! This was a sweet taco, made with 100% organic ingredients and devoured by us in about 1/100th of the time it took to cook it ;) Riley makes the best salsa, he started on it early Saturday so that we could snack on it all day and use it on the tacos. Just another reason to love him <3
A few things that are completely random but that I don't want to forget about this sweet little weekend:
-How we went hot tubbing on a chilly day and just talked about our goals. Personal, work related, where we see ourselves in 5, 10, 20 years etc. I want to do this more often so that we can keep each other motivated!
-How, during my yoga class, an Asian man dressed head to toe in denim popped his head in the door and was watching us! Then he yelled out "that's badass" while the teacher was demonstrating a pose and took his shoes off, walked towards someone's mat and was going to randomly join our practice. It completely broke my concentration and even after the teacher (nicely) kicked him out I could not stop laughing.
-How Riley saw that I was falling asleep during a movie and he got up and did all of the last minute things I do as my routine before bed (dishwasher, get us two glasses of water, set the coffee maker, etc). He is seriously the sweetest!
I am so grateful for the weekend, for all of the quality time, and for the brainstorming we did. Without going anywhere, or doing anything "exciting" we made a lot of progress and personal growth towards our goals. Just buying from our local farmers is progress towards a goal. It's that easy!
I wish you wellness.