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Recipe of the Week

A favorite from the archives:

Beat the heat with these Beet-Cherry Creamsicles. Gluten-free, sugar-free, vegan, and totally delish.

SOS Kitchen Challenge

This month's SOS Kitchen Challenge ingredient is APPLES! What are you going to make? 

Popular Recipes
Wednesday
Sep082010

Apple, Turnip & Cabbage Hash (gluten-free, vegan, ACD) and an unrelated crafty announcement

sweet, savory, sour, and so so so good 

This month's SOS Kitchen Challenge features none other than the trusty apple, a harbinger of autumn.  For my first apple recipe of the month, I wanted to make something that walked the line between sweet and savory.  I decided on a mix of apples, turnips, and cabbage, spiked with onion and caraway seeds. It is very much inspired by Scandanavian and German food; what can I say, I'm influenced by my cultural heritage.  It is aromatic and full of flavor, and I am convinced that caraway, apples, and cabbage were absolutely made for each other. Despite the fact that this combination makes vegetables almost sinfully delicious, you needn't worry - no sinning here.

If you want to participate in this month's SOS Kitchen Challenge, it's easy! Just check out the kick-off post for all the rules, and submit your apple recipe to the Linky at the bottom of this post. You can submit recipes until the end of the month, when Ricki (my challenge co-host) and I will post a round-up highlighting our favorites. Awesome.

Apple, Turnip & Cabbage Hash

yield 4 side servings

2 organic apples, cored and diced
2 large turnips, peeled and diced
1 medium sweet onion, diced
2 cups finely chopped purple cabbage 
2 Tbsp olive oil, coconut oil, ghee, or butter
2 tsp caraway seeds 
pinch allspice
umeboshi plum vinegar, to taste

Heat oil in a large saute pan over medium heat, then add onion and stir. Saute 2-3 minutes, then add turnips, stir to coat with oil, and saute for for 5-8 minutes, until turnips just start to turn slightly golden. Then add apple, cabbage, allspice, and caraway seeds. Saute until apple and cabbage are softened, stirring often. Then crank up the heat and saute for about 5 minutes to give everything a nice little brown edge. Season to taste with umeboshi plum vinegar, and serve.

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Oh, hey, wait a minute!  I have an unrelated announcement!

I'm excited to present you with My Little Ideas, my very own shop on Etsy! Etsy is a an amazing site that provides virtual storefronts to artisans and crafters, and is the source of amazingly unique handmade goods on the internet. I've been meaning to start a site for years to sell the various things I make - embroidered items, jewelry, crocheted and knitted items, the list goes on. However, my recent crocheting solution to a problem finally kicked me into gear. I use mason jars for everything, and generally have one bouncing around in my purse to use as an eating or drinking vessel. After one too many broken jars, I finally decided to start crocheting jar cozies, and it turned into nothing short of an obsession! So, I now present you with my very own shop, my place to sell whatever I make, including my beloved cozies. 

My Little Ideas

one of my handmade mason jar cozies, available on Etsy

Click to read more ...

Tuesday
Sep072010

September SOS Kitchen Challenge Reveal 

Happy September! This month brings a hint of autumn in the air, as well as another SOS Kitchen Challenge, the monthly recipe event hosted by Ricki of Diet, Dessert, and Dogs and me. Up here in the north, mornings are getting cooler, the leaves are starting to look slightly more golden, and the gardens are delivering all their bounty, urging us to preserve food for winter.  Soon it will be time for warm stews and soups.  But before we pull out our winter gear, we have the golden days of autumn ahead of us.

This month's SOS Kitchen Challenge is featuring one of the tastiest foods of early autumn, a fruit that is delicious, nutritious, and has appeared prominently throughout history. According to the Bible, Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree that bore these fruits, resulting in God banishing them from the garden and punishing all of mankind by cursing women with painful labor and childbirth (um, aren't you glad that doesn't really happen when we have a fruit craving?).  Some millennia later, William Tell was challenged to shoot an arrow through one of these fruits on top his son's head, in exchange for his freedom from some pesky Austrian emporers.  Not so long after that, Isaac Newton formulated that whole notion of gravity by watching one fall off a tree.  And most recently, one of these little beauties put the legendary Snow White to sleep.

That's right friends, we are featuring none other than the humble apple this month.

apples

Click to read more ...

Sunday
Sep052010

Honey-Sweetened Plum & Blueberry Jam (gluten-free, sugar-free)

IMG_3953

My evening activities of late are no longer a secret, that's for sure.  Yes friends, I've been jamming up a storm. First it was Vanilla Plum Jam. Then it was Spicy Raspberry Lime Jam. Then I made this delicious Plum & Blueberry Jam, using leftover plums and some frozen blueberries (a mix of homegrown and Wyman's frozen wild blueberries).  Then I followed it up shortly thereafter with an Herbed Apple Jelly, which I will share with you if it actually set up correctly and I like it.  I now have 26 jars of preserves, and I doubt I'll end there!

This jam rocks. The flavor is a nice balance of blueberry and plum, and it has a nice thick consistency.  But I think my favorite thing about this jam is the color. Seriously, look at that! That amazing purple blue color yells, "Eat me! Now!"  Just think of all the antioxidants. Wow.

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Saturday
Sep042010

August SOS Kitchen Challenge Round Up: Mint

Last month's SOS Kitchen Challenge, hosted by Ricki from Diet, Dessert, and Dogs and me, featured none other than everyone's favorite invasive herb: mint! We received so many wonderful sweet and savory contributions from bloggers all around the world. I found myself drooling regularly whenever I'd check the Linky for updates.

We saw everything from dips to salad dressings to bean dishes using mint, as well as wide assortment of delicious desserts.  As a devoted chocolate lover, I must confess that my favorite way to use mint is in combination with chocolate. Our readers certainly did not disappoint me and provided many delicious ways to combine two of my favorite ingredients: Mint-Chip Ice Cream, Maca Mint Blondies, Frozen Mint Mojito Avocado Truffles, Not-So-Faux After Eights, and Coconut Milk Mint Chip Ice Cream.  Amazing!

Check out the Linky below for a listing of all the recipe submissions for last month's challenge. You may discover a new blogger and find your new favorite recipe, and that's what this challenge is all about.  Thanks to everyone who participated, and we hope you'll join us for this month's challenge, which will be announced on Tuesday. Any guesses on what September's ingredient will be?

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Friday
Sep032010

Honey-Sweetened Spicy Raspberry Lime Jam (gluten-free, sugar-free)

IMG_3941

I've been on a jam making kick lately, using honey instead of sugar.  My first batch of jam was an absolutely delicious Vanilla Plum Jam using Italian prune plums from Michigan and freshly scraped vanilla bean seeds. It was a beautiful shade of purple, and had a marvelously sweet, aromatic, alluring flavor that tempted me to lick off nearly every spoon, bowl, spatula, and pot it came in contact with.

I have a mountain of homegrown raspberries and black raspberries  in my freezer, so I naturally gravitated to the idea of making raspberry jam.  But instead of your standard plain jam, I kicked it up with some lime juice, lime zest, and cayenne pepper. It's darn good.  Grounded by the warm flavor of honey, the jam starts off sweet and tart, the freshness of berries and the brightness of lime shining through, then finishes with a subtle heat that slowly warms your mouth from back to front. I saved a little bit to chill in the fridge and eat later, and as soon as it set (which it did very well, thank you very much), I ate it plain with a spoon.  Yum.

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