Food Mandalas by Shannon Sims

While attending Flora Bowley's Bloom True Art workshop last weekend, I was introduced to the nourishing genius of Shannon Sims - holistic health practitioner, nutrition guru and food mandala maker. Shannon provided workshop attendees with a delightful array of artfully arranged food throughout the weekend. I was so impressed with her plate creations that I hunted her down on Instagram to see more of her beautiful work. Here are some examples:

Shannon, thank you for taking such spectacular care of us. I immediately came home and made my own food mandalas for Thanksgiving. You're such an inspiration!

Dear readers, you can find Shannon at the links below:

Website

Instagram

Pinterest

As a side note: While I was browsing Shannon's gorgeous Instagram, I discovered an image from Stephen McCarty, whose food mandalas and plant based deserts are pretty mind blowing as well. You can find him HERE via Instagram. Here's a taste of his mesmerizing plant-based creations.

Dinner and Drinks | Gluten Free

Our new housemates have some specific dietary needs. One is gluten free and the other is a vegetarian. So I've been tweaking some of our meals lately. The other night, we had a particularly yummy adventure. I thought I'd share here!

The salad entree is a wilted spinach salad that I paired with a cauliflower, Portabello mushroom sauté. The second course was a bowl of Julia Child's garlic mashed potatoes, taken from her book Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I also served a rosemary lemon vodka tonic cocktail with dinner. It was a weird set of things that all went together beautifully! Yay for happy accidents.

Wilted Spinach Salad with Marinated Onions in Mustard Seed Dressing

Recipe from Ani's Raw Food Kitchen by Ani Phyo

Marinated Onions:

  1/2 yellow onion sliced thin

  1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar

  1 Tablespoon soy sauce (I used Bragg Liquid Aminos since we have a gluten free eater)

  Pinch ground black pepper

Mustard Seed Dressing

  1 Tablespoon maple syrup or honey

  3 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar

  1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

  1 teaspoon mustard seeds

  1/2 teaspoon salt

Salad

  8 cups spinach

  2 carrots julienned

  Pinch ground black pepper

To marinate the onions, combine onions with vinegar, Braggs Liquid Aminos and pepper. Set aside to marinate while you prepare the rest of the salad. (I let mine marinate for two hours).

To make the dressing, combine maple syrup or honey, vinegar, oil, mustard seeds and salt into a small bowl and mix well.

Toss dressing, marinated onions and salad mix together and let stand for 5-10 minutes to allow for wilting. This is a raw, vegan, gluten free salad and it is delicious!

Portabello Mushroom and Cauliflower Sauté

(I made this up on the spot)

1/2 head of cauliflower, chopped

2 large portabello mushrooms, chopped into bite sized pieces

2 cloves garlic, send through garlic press or finely chop

1 fresh sprig rosemary, stem removed and chopped

Pinch sea salt

Pinch ground pepper

Olive oil, 2-second pour

Heat oil in sauté pan over medium to high flame (I have a gas stove). Toss cauliflower into pan and sauté for a few minutes before tossing in the mushrooms. Add salt, pepper, garlic and rosemary. Either flip or stir ingredients in pan as they cook. I like to let my vegetables brown up a bit. After a few minutes, vegetables will soften. Serve when a desired consistency is reached. 

Apple Pie

During my holiday at my mother's farm in Eastern Oregon, Rob and Linda (organic orchardists from Eagle Creek Orchard) brought us two crates of late harvest apples. Forgive me for not remembering the variety. All I remember is the sweet taste.

I happily processed all of the apples with my Mom's hand-crank apple peeler and made two apple pies and multiple quarts of applesauce for my son, Charlie. It was such a pleasure to take beautiful whole organic fruit and create comfort food for my family. Thank you Rob and Linda for the Christmas bounty!

If you'd like to take a peek at their farm house in Eastern Oregon, check out my Houzz article HERE. Rob and Linda are tree whisperers and they've done incredible work on their orchard.

Also - don't forget to enter our Radical Homemakers giveaway!
Click HERE to enter to win 3 books by homesteader and author Shannon Hayes.

Enter HERE!

Homemade Pizza Dough

Hello dear readers and welcome to another installation of Radical Homemaking! I've decided to make this a weekly feature on the blog. It's become a big part of our home life and as always, my goal at La Maison Boheme is to reflect the real journey I'm taking with my family and our beloved bohemian home. I usually come back from the weekend with some kind of domestic morsel to share, so Monday seems like a natural day for my weekly feature.

For some of you, most of the changes I'm making will not seem radical in the slightest. But for me (a girl who grew up buying genetically modified food on credit) and my family, baking our own bread from scratch, gardening, composting, hang drying our clothes, fermenting our own yogurt and shifting our connection away from corporate America is totally new - radical even.

I've been experimenting in the kitchen this weekend. One of the unexpected gifts of living more simply is that my first reaction to almost everything is, "I bet I could make that". Last night my six-year-old wanted to order pizza. Since my husband and I are laser-focused on our budget - a plan to help us cut all ties to big corporate banks and their nasty credit cards - ordering pizza wasn't really doable. So, I rolled up my sleeves, poked through a few bread books and found a rustic whole wheat crust that would do just fine.

Now I just need to learn how to make my own wine to pair with the pizza!

What is your favorite pizza dough recipe?
Please share because I'm hooked.

Radical Homemaking | Homemade Food Staples

This weekend I've been experimenting in the kitchen, making food staples that my family consumes everyday. We spend a lot of money every month on yogurt and bread in this house. My son Charlie, as you may know, is a stroke survivor and has great difficulty swallowing food. And chewing? Forget about it. Needless to say he eats a lot of soft food - yogurt is his favorite. And my six-year-old seems to be on a fruit, peanut butter and bread diet. A loaf of bread can disappear in a day. So instead of relying on corporate food processing and packaging to fill this void in our diet, I am intervening.

BREAD

I used Amanda Soule's Everyday Oat Bread recipe from her book Rhythm of the Family. It was a lot messier and a lot easier than I had anticipated. The loaves turned out gorgeous and delicious and even my six-year-old is asking for more more more!

YOGURT

The yogurt was also messier and easier than I anticipated. I started with a gallon of whole milk ($3.50). After straining, I ended up with a little under a gallon of yogurt - about 14-15 cups. My son's store bought Chobani yogurt is $1.10 a cup and my homemade roughly comes to 25 cents (or less) a cup. I sure like that math! My kid eats 2 cups a day, so that adds up to huge weekly savings.

My yogurt turned out pretty runny, which sounds like a common first time situation, so I strained the whey using coffee filters. Next time I'll use cheese cloth like a sane person. I used a few online tutorials to help make this work. I found the following to be really helpful:

How to make yogurt in a mason jar

Soulemama - How we make yogurt

This was breakfast this morning!

SCONES

We drive through our local coffee shop at least twice a week and order a round of scones for the car. Cha-ching! So I've been making a round of scones at the beginning of the week for the past month. They're super simple and really good. The original recipe was from a friend, but I've added grated orange rind to these for flavor. You can add anything you like - blueberries, dried fruit, jam, chocolate chips, etc.

Scones

2 cups flour

1 Tablespoon Baking Powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup sugar

1 1/4 - 1 1/3 cup whipping cream

1/2 cup chocolate chips (optional)

Topping (sometimes I skip this):

2-3 Tablespoons melted butter

2 Tablespoons sugar

- Preheat oven to 425 F

- Stir and knead all ingredients together 

- Pull it apart into 8-9 even balls (or you can pat the dough into a circle and cut it into slices like a pie)

- Place pieces on ungreased pan

- Brush tops with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar (I use my fingers)

- Bake for 15 - 20 minutes (I tend to bake for 15-16 minutes)

________________________________________________________________________________

Why do you sometimes write about Radical Homemaking and what is that?

Radical Homemaking is a term I borrowed from Shannon Hayes's book, Radical Homemakers. Basically, I am in the process of transitioning our home life from one that is mostly centered around consuming (water, electricity, groceries, technology, services, etc.) to one that centers around creating and producing. I am inspired by the idea that we don’t have to rely on nameless, faceless corporations to feed, clothe, shelter and entertain us while they treat their employees poorly and poison the environment. So yes, less spending and more making. This involves, but is not limited to vegetable gardening, making our own food, composting, back yard chickens and DIY home improvement. We are doing this for economic, health and environmental reasons. Plus, it's just plain fun! I've written more specifically about this in the posts below:

Radical Homemaking | The Early Stages

Back Yard Plans

Back Yard Chickens
Seeds
Radical Homemaking Library
10 Steps to Becoming a Radical Homemaker

Texas Road Trip & Food Tour

This weekend, I went for a little business trip to cover some homes for Houzz.com. And since the timing was so close to my wedding anniversary, I grabbed Jack, my darling husband, and brought him along! We spent two days and one night eating our hearts out through San Antonio, Austin and Georgetown, TX. It was marvelous. And I was also able to visit two very cool homes, which I'll share later in the month via Houzz.com. Take notes - all three of the restaurants we visited are worth going back to.

City: Georgetown, TX

Location: cutest Old Town Square in Texas

Restaurant: Gumbo's

Lunch Menu:

Mimosa

Fireman's Four (great Texas beer)

Fried Catfish Po'Boy with mashed sweet potatoes

Grilled Tilapia with parmesan-crusted asparagus

strawberry cheesecake

Gumbo's had a great Louisiana style atmosphere and Motown music in the background. It was the perfect place to take refuge from the muggy day and enjoy a beer and some kicky food. My favorite thing was the mashed sweet potatoes that came with Jack's catfish Po'Boy. It was off the hook, made with some kind of pork fat or something heinous that I would never eat in another context. Take my word for it - just order the sweet potato stuff and don't ask what's in it.

Old town movie theater marquee.

The side of an old Georgetown public building.

Town square centerpiece.

Alley.

Gumbo's restaurant on the square.

City: Austin, TX

Location: South Lamar

Restaurant: Olivia

Dinner Menu:

Soup and Salad...

a glass each of Domaine de Fontsainte Rose

Broccolini salad - house lonzino, almond, truffle, red onion, fried egg, brioche

Corn Soup - craw fish toast, blue basil pesto, garden herbs

Shared wine and apetizers...

A bottle of Hecht & Bannier's Minevois '10 - a grenache, syrah mix

Mussels - leek, jalapeno, beer broth, smoked ham hock

Oxtail Risotto (I can't remember all the amazing stuff in this risotto)

Shared entree...

Petite Filet - parsnip, marscarpone, bacon, red chard, Malabar spinach, grilled fig, sherry veal demi

Shared desserts...

Creme Brulee - sea salt, fresh berries

Peaches and Cream - peach semifreddo and sorbet, malted milk candy, roasted white chocolate

Coffee with cream (jack) and champagne (me, because why not?)

We wanted to go someplace special for our anniversary dinner, so Jack found Olivia at Fearless Critic, one of our favorite restaurant finding sites. This meal was quite possibly the best food I've ever eaten. Seriously. It was beautiful to look at, extraordinary to taste and the whole evening was elevated in a way that made me feel like I was a part of something artful and transcendent. The food at Olivia is all locally sourced and some of it grown in their own vegetable garden, which eaters are welcome to browse at the back of the restaurant. They also have a dozen or more hens that lay fresh eggs for the kitchen. Service was warm and knowledgable and as our waiter said, "I could talk about this food all day long." I will definitely be going back as often as I can afford. The meal was pricey, but worth every penny. Oh and whatever you decide to eat - please please please someone order the Oxtail Risotto because its so good it will make you cry.

Broccolini Salad

That's right, my man drinks rose.

The menu.

Mussels. 

View from our North Austin hotel room.

City: San Antonio, TX

Location: Rover Walk

Restaurant: Boudro's

Lunch Menu:

Frozen Prickly Pear Margarita

Guacamole and tortilla chips for two made table-side

Pulled Pork Sandwich with picked slaw (Jack)

Blackened Ahi Tuna Salad (me)

Coconut Flan with Caramel Sauce

It's hard to find food on San Antonio's famous River Walk that isn't super touristy. Let's just say there's a lot of corporate food down there. Boudro's is a happy exception. This little Texas Bistro is tucked into a womb-like cave with a small river side patio and serves up delicious gumbo, Tex-mex, and soul food. The prickly pear margarita was awesome and I recommend you try it out. I know what you're thinking... frozen?  Yes. Frozen. Drink it and you'll see. The guacamole was fresh and made right at our table by our chatty, adorable, red-headed waitress. Everything about this place says 'sit down, enjoy yourself and take it easy'. It was a great way to spend a rainy afternoon.

My man on the river walk.

Prickly pear margarita.