Tidy, and Pull Back Together

Starting the second week of the program's end, the new beginning.

Thinking about a loose menu plan for the week.

I have all kinds of things in the fridge and pantry, but have lost touch with what, exactly, is there.

I made a half batch of artichoke hummus and had that with dinner last night, along with some apple-chicken sausages I bought a few weeks ago. They are Whole30-compliant, so not a bad choice as far as lightly-touched processed foods go. Yesterday I also had a large little gems salad with artichokes and toasted pine nuts, a little oil and vinegar, roasted red pepper soup, some berries in the morning and a green smoothie. It tasted bitter to me, so I need to be careful with my eating. The palate tells. I may be having too many sweet-tasting things and some sugar may even have snuck in there, likely with the sushi I've had twice in the last few weeks.

I've set a theme this week to tidy and pull back together. Life gets busy and it's easy to fall out of mindful living. A weekly theme is helpful with planting a seed in the consciousness and with moving through the week with more awareness. It's similar to an intention. 

A few weeks ago I ordered a desk pad that enables me to organize my week with a theme, goals, and action steps in mind. There's a habit tracker. Have I done something today that moves me closer to my goals? That's consistent with the weekly theme and the intention I've set for myself?  I'm not really an uber-organized accomplishment girl, but a little bit of awareness goes a long way to help me get to where I'd like to be in life.

I took a quick look in the fridge.

There are some veg that would be good to roast sooner rather than later, the other half of the artichoke hummus batch to make and portion in separate containers, some nice chicken broth I made over the weekend, some greens, coconut yogurt, two avocados, two green peppers, celery, cucumber, and a pound of ground pork. I can have the roasted veg with some shrimp from the freezer, and I plan to adapt the recipe for the chorizo-spiced meatballs into chorizo-spiced stuffed green peppers. I have a few red onions that I'll pickle and a couple of sweet potatoes that can become sweet potato toast with almond butter and a few sprinkles of cinnamon. That should just about do it for most of the week, and I can think about the weekend later.

Oh, yes, and someone gave me a huge tomato and some Italian frying peppers from the garden yesterday. So, there's that.

The Green Wilderness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience. 

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.