My Grown-up PBJ
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It's Marionberry season, and the bounty has arrived. Marionberry fills our freezers and rides high in breakfast cereal. She dots our oatmeal with popping tart-sweet. And now, a summer co-creation with her abundance is nearly putting me over the edge: a grown-up PBJ.
Here's why: I'm eating 3 tablespoons of hemp seeds and 2 tablespoons of flaxmeal every morning to boost magnesium and and more. I add pumpkin seeds usually, or other nuts on the side.
Today, I see that I can mix the flax and hemp into peanut butter and spread it thickly across naturally fermented sourdough. Oh. My. Gosh. The Marionberries are claiming that sticky wonder as their throne. How can I refuse?
Here's the funny thing: I hated PBJs (Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches) as a kid. They were too sweet with full sugar jam, mashed onto wishy-washy-white bread. At the end of the school day, my mom's best attempt to keep me fed lay flattened at the bottom of my lunch bag.
Full disclosure: I slipped them into the trash most days. Unless I was starving. Isn't that sad?
But now I'm a grown up, and I get to do things my way.
Homemade (and homegrown!) strawberry jam with a seedy peanut butter spread studded with fresh Marionberries is where it's at ... oo la la! First, toast that sourdough and swipe it with a smidge of butter. Mmmm. Now that's a breakfast. Add a cuppa' and bring it all to the garden for dining—I'm in.
What I love about life is how we often get to "do over" the parts we had no control over, the parts that didn't go so well as a kid.
I get to parent myself now and take care of my body, mind, and heart in ways that feel amazing. I listen to my cravings for delicious, colorful food. I make time to co-create dishes in partnership with the merry plot I live on. Can't eat much more local than that.
With me in charge as a loving parent, there are fewer empty calories on my plate and so much to be appreciated—beauty, flavor, meaning, and more.
Taking care of ourselves can be an art rather than a chore.
What's on the menu for you today, friend? How do you parent yourself in ways you love?
*My heavy dose of seeds in the recipe above comes from an intention to care for my bones. I'll be running around with them for another several decades, after all. :)