$50 off How to Make Real Food eCourse

I was hoping to get this posted last week, but alas, schooling, basic homemaking, and constant nausea kept me from it.  Hooray for the second trimester beginning tomorrow!  Maybe I'll be almost like a real person sometime soon.

Back to this eCourse.
You guys.
This is so much more than just a class.  Jenny over at Nourished Kitchen has invested countless hours imparting her hands-on, tried and true wisdom in this course, helping us turn our kitchens into a haven of real food goodness, imparting scrumptious scents, gorgeous colors, and rich and nutritious flavors to all who visit them.  This class includes 100 recipes, 45 interactive videos, and tools to create super helpful lists, like kitchen inventories, shopping lists, and menu plans.  Watch Jenny describe her offerings in this video here:

What do I love about this class?  Well, I've been preparing foods the "real" way (soaking, souring, fermenting, etc.) for several years, but outside of reading Nourishing Traditions, I've taught myself everything I know (which can be scary).  Jenny's class:

• helps fill in any of my know-how gaps and provides really helpful tips and tricks to aid speeding up some steps and getting my end result to taste even better.
• shares only in-season recipes, which is a huge help for those who grow their own produce, are subscribed to a CSA, or just wants to enjoy the countless health benefits of eating foods when harvested.  How lovely to find nutrient-dense recipes for all those veggies to go straight into!
• keeps it cheap and simple.  Ever tried making real food?  Then you know as well as I do how it can destroy your grocery budget.  Jenny guides you through the process of transforming your working space into a real, working kitchen, stocked full of goodness without braking the bank.  Hallelu.
• provides kid-friendly recipes, without compromising health or taste.  Jenny is a mother and is in no way a stranger to preparing real food dishes children will also enjoy.  I could use a few more of those recipes in my life...
• shares new, delicious recipes that aren't found in Nourishing Traditions, like 

Fresh Fig Tarts

Orange Creamsicles

and Sourdough Foccacia

I think this course would make a wonderful home ec. class for home schooled families, as well.  How fun would it be to go in on a class with a couple other families and learn together, co-op style?!  Not only would we save money and learn with our children, but we would apply what we learn by preparing the next meal of the day!

Also, if you purchase your membership for this class before September 15th, you can get $50 off.  Bonus!

I hope you find this a helpful resource.  I only share on this blog what we personally use and appreciate here on our homestead, after much research and scrutinization.  Enjoy browsing Jenny's offerings!

GIVEAWAY! $25 Gift Card to Savvy Teas & Herbs

A few months ago, I stumbled upon an herb and tea company that caught my attention.  Intrigued, I signed up for their newsletter to receive coupons and especially their free e-book on how to use herbs.  After devouring the book, I decided I wanted to open an apothecary shoppe (you have to spell "shop" the old way when you're talking about apothecaries, you know).  The world of herbs is fascinating, and really much simpler than imagined. It just makes sense that there would be certain plants and flowers that were created to aid our health, you know?  After being so inspired to delve into the wonderful world of herbs and teas with real, health-promoting benefits, I'm excited to share with you an opportunity to give it a try for free!

Not only does this family-owned and run company carry nutritionally potent herbs and pre-mixed teas of all kinds, they offer a wide variety of culture starters if you'd like to start making your own kefir, yogurt, or kombucha.  They also carry a wide variety of sprouting kits & seeds,  herbal healing salves, handmade soaps, lip balm, and accessories for making tea and your own herbal capsules.  You better believe I'm thinking about Christmas this time of year, and I plan to buy several Christmas presents for the tea lovers and natural health kindreds in my life.

Why order specialty teas from Savvy Teas & Herbs?  Because you are guaranteed to receive herbs and teas that still hold their potent, health-promoting properties, unlike most teas and herbs that have been sitting on the grocery store shelves for too long and have not only lost their rich flavor, but their healing properties.  If I'm going to invest our carefully budgeted money on something like this, I want it to count.

 Savvy Teas & Herbs has graciously offered to give one of my readers a $25 gift card to their amazing shop(pe)!  There are several ways to enter, but first, the mandatory one:

Visit Savvy Teas & Herbs and come back to leave a comment telling me what you'd get with your $25 gift card, should you win.  This might be hard, there are so many fun choices!

For extra entries, choose to do one or more of the following:

• "Like" Savvy Teas & Herbs on Facebook. (1 entry)  Come back here and leave a comment saying you did so to get your entry.
• Sign up for Savvy Teas and Herbs Newsletter.  Don't forget to download your free copy of their e-book on how to use herbs! It's a goodie.  (1 entry)  Remember to leave a comment here saying you did so.
• Subscribe to Riddlelove (1 entry) and leave a separate comment saying you did so.
• "Like" Riddlelove on Facebook (1 entry) and come back here to leave a comment.
• Follow Riddlelove on Twitter (1 entry) and leave a comment here.
• Share a link to this giveaway on Facebook (1 entry) and come back to leave a separate comment saying you did so.
• Tweet this: "#Giveaway! $25 gift card for quality #teas & #Herbs! @riddlelove http://tinyurl.com/3c3tpnk" (1 entry).  Leave another comment here saying you tweeted.

Entries can be left here, as individual comments, until Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 4:00 PST.  I will announce the winner here on Riddlelove Saturday night.  This giveaway is limited to US residents only, please.

Enjoy!

Summer, Paint and Rest

Well hello there.  Has it really been a month since we last chatted?  My, my.  Besides sleeping, eating, feeling nauseous, and sleeping some more, here's what's happened in our neck of the woods since we last spoke:

Summer.

Honestly, I am only a fan when I have a vegetable garden, something missing from our lives this year.  I feel it's absence oh so much.  Around here, August is the hottest month of the year.  We're talkin' many, many triple-digit days.  I am most certainly not a hot weather person.  It's a dry heat, mind you.  But it's difficult to console one's self when you see so many digits in the daily forecast.  So we visited our local mountain top.  There was lots of glorious snow.  Even a frozen lake with brilliant blue tones.

Oh, how it felt good to feel the cold, icy ground this time of year!  I decided we need to live there every July and August until I get my veggie garden.

As the summer ended (at least the vacation part; the air is hotter than ever), I joined my fellow homeschooling mamas, endulged in curriculum resource websites, and chizled out our school year from the myriad of choices.  More on that later, but I had to share a new favorite schooltime motto discovered on Pinterest (also a great recourse for fun homeschool ideas):

An update on the home front:  Our little blue cabin, not painted since 1960, has been transformed into what we are endearingly calling the Christmas Cabin, thanks to Jeremy's hard, sweaty work.  The barns are next, which will be painted the color of the shutters (appropriately called "barn red").  Then we will be all sealed and painted, ready for the much-anticipated rainy season.

And me?  Well, when I'm not making snow angels in August, building a school year for three grades, sleeping, sleeping, and sleeping some more, I work hard on my physique.  No, I'm not 28 weeks pregnant.  I was 11 weeks when I took this (note to self: when taking a self-portrait using a mirror, look at the phone/camera, not my eyes, unless I want to go for the distant, what-is-she-staring-at look).  Folks. This is real life baby number five.  Your body is all too familiar with the process and allows you to enjoy the baby bump pretty much from day one.  There will most likely not be any 40 week belly shots shared.  I don't want to traumatize the children with my orca likeness.

Have a lovely week, folks.  The second trimester is just around the corner and I look forward to being more blog-concistent.  Also, there is an herbal giveaway coming ASAP.  It's going to be a good one, I tell you!