Weekly Nutrition Spotlight: Tomato!

We eat so many tomatoes that I can’t even imagine how much consumed on a daily basis in the world! Here is a quick snapshot of the healthy facts about tomatoes!

Favorites Made Healthy!

I don’t know a single soul who doesn’t love pizza! Over the past 20 years, I have shaken up some old favorites and turned them into healthy favorites! Enjoy!

March's Garden

Spring is finally around the corner! And even though we are still having 30 degree mornings here in the Pacific Northwest, there are four main things to be doing in your garden areas now:

• Weeding while weeds are small and barely growing

• Start seedlings indoors and certain plants outdoors

• Clean up garden beds, flower beds and landscaping areas

• In February, you should have been pruning of roses, flowering shrubs, fruit trees and any tall grasses you may have. Do this right away if you didn’t do them last month.

March is when nature begins to bloom again and the days truly feel lighter. We see buds emerge on shrubs and trees. We see more birds come around and start their Spring business too. While the earth isn’t quite fully awake, March is the perfect time to weed your garden and flower bed areas. It’s so much easier to get rid of them while they are dormant and small. You might want to consider sending a sample of your soil into your local county extension so they can test it. This is the best, and only scientific, way to know for sure what your soil needs, if anything. And remember, different planting areas have different soil needs. Seasoned gardeners start to know what their soil needs as time goes on.

March is a good time to repair any damaged parts of your lawn. Perhaps you needs to de-thatch, rake or aerate. Thatching and liming should be done before you do any sort of Spring feeding should your lawn need it. This rainy and wet month is also the perfect time to pay attention to the parts of your garden, lawn or planting areas that are pooling water or not draining well. You can repair that by filling in low spots or creating channels for water to drain away. If you have evergreens, like we do, check under them to ensure they are getting enough moisture. Same goes for anything you have growing under a porch or awning around your home. Lastly, March is a good time to repair or build your arbors, fences or any trellis’ your might need for this year’s growing season.

We live on an acre and have a pretty good size garden, 32 x 32. There is only two of us but our goal is to grow 70% of what we eat. We do this because 1) we have a love for gardening 2) it’s a great way to save on your grocery bills throughout the year 3) it is simply the easiest and surest way to know that we have constant access to nutrient dense, organic foods all year long. We freeze some things and can other things. We have made applesauce, salsa, marinara sauce, pickles of all kinds, and kept chopped frozen veggies for year-round use in every recipe we know. I have four seed flats with seedlings already going. I started them about two weeks ago and there are green things beginning to pop through! We also have some big projects happening in the garden this week and I can’t wait to share that with everyone. Every Saturday I will post a garden update on how everything is growing and what is working well here at Keenan Gardens. Every year we change a fair amount of what we are growing so that as we fill our freezer and canning jars, we have a good rotation and variety of food year to year.

Here is the Master List of what we will be growing this year:
Vegetables & Legumes:
• Artichokes
• Okra
• Giant Sugar Peas
• Luffa
• Carrots
• Giant Cabbage
• Brussel Sprouts
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Small Red, Yellow and Orange Sweet Peppers
• Cucumbers
• Mixed Greens & Lettuces
• Walla Walla Onions
• Garlic
• Spinach
• Black Beans
• Cannellini Beans
• Cranberry Beans
• Sweet Potatoes
• Arugula
• Purple Cherokee Tomatoes

Fruits, although most are young and may not produce a lot of fruit yet:
• Blackberry
• Raspberry
• Marionberry
• Dwarf Cherry
• Gala, Granny Smith and Wealthy Apples
• Asian Pear
• Prunes
• Small Grapes
• Rhubarb
• Strawberries

Herbs:
• Lavender
• Rosemary
• Oregano
• English & Lemon Thyme
• Borage
• Lemon Balm
• Parsley
• Chives
• Basil
• French Tarragon
• Sage
• Stevia
• Chamomile
• Spearmint
• Peppermint
• Calendula

Flowers, from seed:
• Columbine
• Delphiniums
• Shasta Daisy
• Canterbury Bells
• Poppy
• Cat Grass
• Giant Sunflowers

All of the herbs and flowers above, minus the sunflowers, are perennials, which mean they will come back year after year. That’s why this year we are trying to start them indoors from seed so that we can fill out all of our landscape spaces with beautiful, blooming things for us to see but also for the bees to enjoy!

Stay tuned for weekly garden updates every Saturday. And tell us below what you are growing this year or ask any questions you might have! Gardening, in pots, containers or in the ground, is a great way to completely nourish the mind, body and spirit. It involves thought, exercise, patience and the reward of yummy, nutritious goodies!

Happy Growing!

Tiff

Beating the Winter Blues

Now that the holiday season has moved on, real winter truly begins to set in. And not everyone looks forward to the winter months. Some relish the colder days, darker nights and potential for snow while others cannot wait for summer and count down the days in earnest. If you find that you belong to the second group or feel down after the holidays, here are some things you can do to beat the winter blues. 

• Go to the movies 

• Participate in activities you enjoy 

• Get outside while there is light out 

• Take advantage of available natural light while inside 

• Spend time with friends or loved ones 

• Eat nutritious foods to keep your immune system happy 

• Avoid too much sugar 

• Dive into a new book series 

• Schedule a massage 

• Start a journal 

• Work out more frequently 

• Bundle up and go for a walk on the beach or in the woods, let your senses life your spirits 

• Laugh! Watch a comedy show or live performance 

• De-Clutter your home or favorite space 

• Wear vibrant colors 

• Listen to your favorite music, loudly 

• Go dancing 

• Try Zumba 

• Join a class and learn something new 

It’s normal to feel a little blue after the holiday season with family and friends gone. Many people have more serious mood changes that last through the fall and winter due to less sunlight. Try a few or try all the above and see if it doesn’t help you beat the Winter blues. In some cases, winter blues can become a serious depression. It called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) which can affect the person for almost half the year with frequent symptoms being social withdrawal, low energy, weight gain, being tired or sleeping too much during the day, craving carbohydrates or overeating. People with SAD may benefit from medication, light therapy, behavior therapy, or taking Vitamin D.

Definitely talk to your medical provider if you think you may have SAD.

Are We There Yet?

This morning I saw a friend I haven’t seen in three weeks. And like everyone this time of year, she excitedly asked, “Are you ready for the new year?” I chuckled and just said, “Honestly, I am not nearly as excited for the new year as I am that 2019 finally came to an end.”  Is it just me or did last year feel SUPER HARD? All year I felt like I was in a race I wasn't sure I signed up for. But the trick was that I had to run it in thigh-high mud. While it was snowing. While it was raining. While the sun then bore down on me and while picking up weights along the way. That may sound dramatic or embellished but if I broke down for you all the challenges I had to face last year, your eyes would glaze over with gratitude that your year had different challenges.  

I am proud of myself that I made it through Christmas Day. And then I slept, basically through the new year and up until this past Monday. I just needed to lay down. Ever feel that way? Where just laying flat is the answer to all of life’s problems? For me, what I really needed to do was stop the merry-go-round, sit the hell down, turn myself off and shut down until further notice. That’s a serious level of rebooting that not everyone does. Maybe we all should once in a while or maybe you all think I am crazy for ceasing all activity for a period of time. Because who the hell does that? Me, that’s who! A person who struggles with high-functioning anxiety dodging way to many curve balls in a small space of time, in this case a year. I know when to sit down. I know when I need to recharge on that deep level. And it isn’t often. But 2019 pushed me over the ledge of physical and emotional exhaustion into a place of tiredness I have never before felt in my life. 

I pride myself on being the Calm in the Storm. I have done it for so long that it is a pure super power at this stage of my life. I have spent 20 years ensuring that I use this power for good and not evil. That it helps me, not hinders me and my growth. It’s become a learned skill that endlessly educates and empowers me as a person, woman, friend, daughter, wife, sister, business owner, entrepreneur, and wielder of light. As I join the world again, I am going to openly talk about it and share the things I do to maintain my mental, emotional and physical health through all kinds of storms. I know I cannot be the only one who struggles to find their way through the daily challenges while still never giving up on being a positive influence and refusing to give in to the bad ones.  

In January, everyone is talking about New Year’s Resolutions. Instead I want to talk about New Year INTENTIONS. Resolve feels like doing something out of obligation whereas Intent feels like eagerness or willingness. Resolve feels like work where Intent feels like a natural part of ourselves. Like the questions, What would do if you couldn’t not fail? Or What would you do if every second of your day was free and yours? Intentions are our deeper inner yearnings for ourselves yet we like to talk ourselves out of them as if they are pipe dreams. They are not. They just haven’t b allowed to surface and so you don’t know they can. If I talked myself out of everything I have ever wanted I would never have been a performer, I would never have moved to new cities, I would never have learned a new language, or taken yoga, or said yes to my husband’s marriage proposal or gone back to school and began a business at 40 years of age. We get what we work for and what suits our natural self. The kicker being that if we don’t want it enough, we don’t make it happen. That’s the difference in Resolve and Intention.  

I hope you will indulge me as I dive back into my own Intentions and share them. Perhaps you wish to discover yours. I know that the path to my well-being is through positive, consistent, supportive actions that feed my emotional, mental and physical self with only good things to ensure that only good things come back out. So here I go…

Welcome to my own Holistic Living path. I invite you to walk with me and wish that you find encouragement for your own path along the way.

My Holistic Life Journey - Growing up with chaos

Let me introduce myself, my name is Tiffany. I am displaced southerner living in the Pacific Northwest, seeking calm, serenity and beauty around every corner. I haven’t always found it, mind you, but I have faith that it’s there and obtainable. I have so much faith that as I write this and look back to how I got here, it all makes perfectly, unusual sense with every step I took. Back then though, I wanted to rip my hair out, stop explaining myself, give up, walk away and never look back. 50 times over. And let’s be honest, we all probably have more of those moments than we want to admit. But I want to share with you what happens when you go through all those terrifying things and somehow the world doesn’t end…but your true self begins. I have lived a very big life and I couldn’t possible share it all at once. Today, I just want to ease you into the first part of my story about how growing up in chaos made creating calm my superpower.

As a kiddo, I was lucky health-wise. I was a bit of tomboy, happy to run and play outside all day and night. I knew when to stay quiet around adults, loved school and was mostly a pretty good kid. I never had any broken bones or major illness. I did have one heck of a battle with chicken pox though. It was in my ears, my nose and on the bottoms of my feet making it hard to walk. And once in 6th grade, I was showing off at the bus stop before school and sprained my ankle doing a cartwheel in my new wedge boots. I recall that I had to stay home for a couple days due to my ankle and happened to see the Challenger space shuttle disaster live during one of those days. I was alone watching it and all I could think was, “How awful that life can change just like that, in a literal flash.” It was the first time I was aware of the world on a large scale and how the unexpected affects us on a large scale. Big thoughts for a scrawny 10 year old experiencing her first visual, visceral shock. I wasn’t a kid who had to worry about anything except schoolwork and wasn’t prepared when there came a day I was made aware of a larger world again in the shape of my Mother’s health. So that’s where my health story begins, the day I saw my mother’s life, and mine, change in a moment and without warning.

In 6th grade, my Grandma Hazel lived with my mother and I. I remember her calling me out into the living room full of worry with the words, “Tiffany, I need you to come help me.” My mother was slumped in a chair, sort of mumbling with a grumpy looking expression on her face and moving as if she were asleep and having a nightmare. I asked, “What’s happening?” Grandma said, “I need you to get me a wooden spoon from the kitchen and wet cloth. Your mom is having a seizure.” I did what I was told. As she tended to Mom, she explained to me what she doing, how to best to do it and then, seemingly satisfied that the seizure was over, made sure Mom was comfortable and then sat down. I immediately asked, “What happened?” She replied matter of fact, “Your Mom has something called Epilepsy and has had seizures since she just a bit older that you.” And then took a sip of coffee like we were having everyday conversation.

I just stood there a few moments processing everything she had said. My next question was, “How often does this happen?” Because it was mostly just Mom and I, I wanted to understand why I didn’t know this before and how alert I needed to be. Alert is not something kids want to be by the way. It means being so minutely observant of what’s happening around you that your superpower becomes sensing or soothing a problem before there even is one. It also means becoming CPR Certified at age 11 in the free class offered by our church. I was the only kid taking the class and think my Grandma arranged it with the church employees who had to go through the class. I never really thought I would need those skills. But I was 11, and what did I know about anything. However, they did came in handy, too often, and I eventually found myself able to stay calm and know what to do whenever Mom had a seizure.

For those who do not know of Epilepsy, it is a neurological condition that causes episodes of excessive electrical activity in the brain resulting in seizures of various types. These seizures can be triggered by food, alcohol, lack of sleep, or forgetting to take medication. Epilepsy is often caused by a brain injury as it was in my mother’s case. At 13 years of age, she slipped on the wet bathroom floor and hit her head on the commode. It knocked her unconscious for an unknown amount of time and when she woke up, she told her parents then everyone went on about their day. Soon after the fall, she began having headaches which never went away and eventually became migraines. Over the following months, she found it increasingly difficult to study, to read or to pay attention in school. She became moody and irritable due to the pain. Within a year of the fall, she was having Grand Mal seizures which are very hard on the body due to their violent nature. My grandparents finally took her to a doctor who confirmed that Mom was having Epileptic seizures due to an untreated head injury and the concussion that followed. Mom was placed on two popular medicines of that year, 1963: Phenobarbitol and Dilantin. These two drugs are Barbituates, and for a young girl still in her formative years, these two drugs would have unknown and long-lasting side effects. I will get to that part of the story because Mom would remain on those same two drugs for almost 40 years.

During my early teen years and all through high school, my mother had many, many seizures. I went from a life of not knowing seizures were a thing to dealing with at least one a week. And they weren’t the small ones. They were called Grand Mal seizures which meant that when one began, it was violent and sometimes long. And they were very scary. I answered the phone one day after school and was told by a police officer that Mom had driven off the road and totaled her car because she had a seizure while driving. Luckily, no one was hurt, not even her really. Thank goodness. I learned to sleep very lightly so I could hear if Mom fell out of bed or knocked the lamp over. Once while doing homework, I heard a bunch of silverware drop in the kitchen and found Mom laying on the floor next to the entire silverware drawer. She had been putting dishes away and starting dinner. I would wake Mom up before school to make sure she took her medicine. I always asked about her midday medicine when I got home from school and reminded her again before I went to bed. I was also lucky that whenever an EMT had to come, they would teach me a little bit more of what I could do or look out for next time. I often saw the same EMTs and they were always incredibly friendly to me. They even would stay with me until a neighbor or family member could come over if Mom had to be taken to the hospital. Sometimes Mom woke up from a seizure fairly soon after one even if she wasn’t able to speak yet. Sometimes she wouldn’t come around soon enough or would hit her head and then they always sent her to ensure no complications of a concussion, which she had plenty of and too many to count. The worst was she never wanted to go to the hospital if awake and would beg me to not let them take her, that she would be fine…but I was only 12 or 13 and that level of understanding and reacting was daunting, physically and mentally. So if the EMT suggested she go then I took their word for its necessity.

I was always grateful for my Grandma, my uncle and all my neighbors who always appeared out of nowhere to check on me when needed, to feed me when needed and helped me try to keep up on schoolwork when I got behind. I was also deeply grateful for my middle and high school guidance counselors who gave me a safe place to go when overwhelmed, a place to cry, to vent, to ask questions, to seek help on my future plans, to ask forgiveness for late papers, to let me nap when I had been up all night with Mom but needed to show up anyway. I always did my best to at least show up. Epileptic seizures were the only health concerns my mother had at the time. She experienced several painful miscarriages in her life, struggled with depression and something that hadn’t been given a name yet: Bipolar Disorder. These days there are studies stating that Post-Partem Depression, if untreated for 10 years, can manifest into Bipolar Disorder. Living with someone struggling with big emotions, deep depression and something that didn’t have a name let alone a medicine yet changed how I viewed the world and everyone in it. It probably didn’t help that I was a teenager going through my own emotional growing pains, anger pains, and had acquired an intense anxiety that became my natural state. Years later, I would come to understand what living in a constant state of high crisis, or fight or flight, would do to my own physical and mental health.

In our house growing up, no matter where we lived, it was always loud. It was always full of people, a lot of laughter and almost always full of chaos. My mother’s temper was, and is still, legendary. There were times I was a good kid simply to not accidentally poke the bear. There were times that I was woken up at various times of the night being interrogated about a piece of mail or a missed phone call or some accusation of something I most certainly didn’t do but accepted punishment for so I could simply go back to bed. Life was exhausting, infuriating, and mind boggling and sometimes outright unexpected. And yet, my mother was my biggest cheerleader and motivator. She had high standards for me, for how I should behave and how hard I should work. She volunteered for every parent chaperone opportunity. She found a way to get me to cheer-leading camp (Thanks Uncle Danny!), new dresses for choir, glasses when I needed them (Thanks Grandma!), and prom dresses (Thanks Aunt Paulette!). Sometimes when Mom felt happy and adventurous we would take a road trip or spend a night in a hotel nearby so I could swim in the pool for an entire day. For all the madness, we were a pair. Knowing that we needed one another, we even became friends in spite of ourselves.

Money was always tight and I worked from the time I was in 10th grade. I took night school classes in Math so I could take more music classes during the day at school. Music was the place where I danced and sang it all out; where I made friends that I have to this day and experienced some of the funniest memories of my life. I graduated high school at 17 with an Advanced Studies Diploma having somehow managed to achieve more credits than I needed. I took that summer to sleep and figure out what I was going to do in the fall. I ended up taking on two jobs, one of which became my favorite memories of all time. These were early signs of a work ethic and determination that Mom taught me and has served me well. I decided to move out of my mother’s house and into my very own apartment downtown when I was 19. When the time came for me to move, I had been my mother’s keeper for a decade and I was ready to spread my wings. For Mom, it was the single most frustrating and depressing moment of my young adult life, and hers. I wish I could say she sent me off proudly with sage advice and good cheer. Instead she watched with a firm expression and oddly not a whole lot to say as my friends and I skipped down my new street in the rain laughing, singing and feeling free as the birds, without a care in the world.

And for a while, I didn’t have a care in the world. I worked hard, played hard and made up for never being a rebellious kid. I was my own person for the very first time and my life was changing all over again. But that’s a story for another day.

Until then…Be Healthy. Be Strong. Be Mindful. Be Well.

Tiffany