Tag Archives: Juliette

Next on My Table…

Screen Shot 2017-04-27 at 8.48.06 AM Last year when I drove my daughter to Zoo Camp, she seemed distraught, her eyebrows lowered and I asked how she was feeling. Bittersweet, she said as she looked wistfully out the window of the skyscrapers flashing by.

I smiled back, nodding my understanding to her in the rearview mirror, while tasting what the word meant:
Excited.
Nervous.
Happy.
Uncertain.

My then 6-year old had selected a word that encapsulates all that I have felt recently as I have made big changes in my business.

Before my daughter was even a wee embryo, I dreamed and schemed up a plan to change the way the world experiences food by teaching others how to eat with the seasons by creating a new seasonal meal plan every week.

I found an incredible developer who was excited about my plan. I learned the basics of taking food photos. I fell more deeply into writing: free form, recipes, meal plan intros, copywriting.

My daughter was born. We moved to Arizona. We settled into an inspired community of local food lovers. We moved back to Colorado. I gave birth to my son.

Every week, despite the roller coaster of my life with little ones, without fail, I wrote a meal plan. To you. To whomever was reading.

In many ways, I probably sat back a bit too much without real intention, hoping to just be ‘discovered’, dreaming of someone simply taking over the marketing so my gamble of business would actually sustain my family rather than strain it. There were glimmers of that possibility: a write up on oprah.com, a quote on bonappetit.com.

Honestly, some weeks, I didn’t want to write the meal plan, while some weeks it was the perfect refuge from sticky fingers and a house stubbornly refusing to clean itself. (Seriously, when will it learn how to do that!?)

Getting out from under the question: Am I stay-at-home with a business or a business woman who stays home was tricky, elusive. I am neither, I am both.

Nearly two years ago, my daughter had a seizure that in retrospect shook me awake and everything shifted, especially my own lens of life. Through endless therapy: journaling, reading, dancing, sweating, talking, listening, waiting, meditating, crying, reckoning, my perspective switch made me realize that motherhood and a struggling business, had not fully swallowed me up. Somehow, my creative self was still in there, longing for the next leaves to pop out so I may embrace even more goodness.

With this changed awareness and feeling a bit more alive to my original desires to change the way we all experience food, I realized I need to be my own agent of that change.

It is not simple enough to hand the world a meal plan every week and say:
your turn now GO:
Shop.
Cook.
You’ve got this.
I gave you the meal plan… so, you can do it yourself!

Personally, I craved living deeply with the seasons, closely connected to the earth and as locally as possible. We all come to the table with different needs, and I realized I needed to tap deeper into my own in order to have a clue how to share what I know with others. Because whatever was happening with Lilly’s Table wasn’t fully working. A new meal plan every week wasn’t enough.

Talking to my husband and then our children about my craving, they signed up without delay to our year of eating locally, as close to our Colorado food system as possible.

Taking on this challenge, continued to tug on my heart that Lilly’s Table and my relationship to it, needed to change as well. A few months ago, I made a decision and it has been unraveling ever since.

When I spoke to my savvy web Developer Grant Blakeman, we discussed the options:

1. Shut it down, delete it from the internet. Poof. Gone. It would no longer exist.
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3. Open it up and make it free.

My logical side said without a doubt, door number two, lowering the payment point is the way to go. Makes sense, right? We discussed the logistics, but he encouraged me to think it over before making a final decision.

As soon as Grant and I got off our call, my heart shouted loudly to me, nearly ringing in my ears: Open. It. Up.

Taken a back by the difference between my mind and my heart, I decided to go for a run and with the mile high sunshine bright on me, I started to hear louder truths:

It is time for Lilly’s Table to be a gift to the world. Give it away. Please be a part of it and sign up for all of what I have created in the last seven years.

While I put as much as possible into it the last seven years, it’s release will make room for something more. Something better. Something I have no clue about. Yet.

Navigating the journey to open up continues to not disappoint. Weeks later an irresistible opportunity arose. A dream gig for me. I found myself following its lead, which brought with it two fabulous women who share my desires for a beautiful change in our local food world.

We daydreamed together, we worked actively and quickly to follow the roller coaster of a path that would feed our desires through a corporate structure that made us all feel legitimate. Validated. Then in one phone call the plan seemed to implode. Poof.

Momentarily crushed, over a bottle of wine, fresh sourdough and plenty of butter we realized that our collaboration was the best part of this bumpy road we had forged together.

We bandaged up our dreams, sifted through our motivations, and composted it all as we planted seeds of something new.

With the opening of Lilly’s Table recently, by allowing it to receive a bit less of my attention, I want to introduce you to my newest garden.

To start, if you want to support my effort to leave Lilly’s Table available as a free gift to the world, I still have to fund it’s existence. I am eager to explore various new ways to bring in revenue and to start I created another eCookbook: The Spring Meal Plan. Your purchase of this eBook means everything for my creative efforts and pursuits. Lilly’s Table will continue to tug on my wallet and with your support, you allow me to keep this gift of the meal planning service alive.

LSM2017

Next, I am thrilled to introduce you to my newest partner and kindred spirit, Lee Stiffler-Meyer. Her heart-lead interviews, thoughts on life and inspired eye through her photos can all be found at her online space, Let the Light In Studio. Pull up a cup of tea and get cozy with this appetizer of my dear friend and collaborator’s work.

Lee is daring to daydream with me and together we have been busy bees creating a project called The Reimagined Table. To highlight the photos we love to take, recipes we want to create, stories we hope to tell and the gardens of life that we want to build, you can find us on Instagram. We are forging a journey together and as this path lays before us, like a wild garden, we are uncertain of how exactly it will take shape.
Honestly, that is the most exciting part about it.

In this new collaboration, Lee and I decided our shared obsession with Podcasts needed to be revealed through our own voices. The Reimagined Table Podcast is now available! In weekly episodes we chat about our shared love of creativity, local food, community, culture, society, spirituality, motherhood, gardening, and more. While we will chat together often, we will also share interviews with our favorite visionaries who are changing the way we all live on this planet. We hope to see you gather around this new table of ours.

There are many places to follow our collaboration. Please sign up now for your favorite way to experience the internet:

Receive a Weekly Email updating you about the podcast including a recipe and archived meal plan from Lilly’s Table
Instagram — This is the space to see all our pretty pics of our creative, local food and community projects. As well as photos of our guests.
The Reimagined Table Facebook Group — Want to talk about all of our favorite topics with us? This is the place to do it.
iTunes — please subscribe on iTunes and include us in your weekly rotation of podcasts!

Finally, thank you for being a part of this adventure, whether you are just starting with me or you have been following me for years. My desires to leave the world a bit brighter and more beautiful than it is today can only happen through community and all of us gathering around to lift up this possibility! I am humble with gratitude that all of this goodness is happening.

With Love,

Lilly

Back-to-School, Back-to-Love

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Morning routine drawn, happy pictures taken and my bright, beautiful 5-year old headed off for her first day of Kindergarten. As my husband said on repeat as we drove him to work immediately following “That was big. Whatever just happened was really big”. And he is right in bigger ways than either of us could have expressed on that short drive.

You have a baby and in those moments when you are at a loss, when they are inconsolable and you are beyond sleep deprived in some other orbit from the rest of the world, you find yourself longing for the first day of school when someone, anyone other than you, will be in their attendance for 8 hours at a time.

In many ways, I knew she wouldn’t cry or fuss on the first day. She was too darn excited. Four days earlier she actually had a meltdown because school had not started yet. Other than a ‘shy moment’ when we introduced ourselves to the school principal, she slid onto that blue kindergarten carpet without issue. Just a few feet away I was using all my effort to hold back the water in my eyes and kept wishing to drop my sunglasses on my face so as to not distract her with my own flooding emotions.

A lot has happened since she graduated from preschool a few months ago and the result has left her relatively unaware while I am still in recovery. It started when she had a seizure in May that lead to an ER visit. “Febrile seizures” they said, followed by: “Chances are she may never have another. Just make sure to reduce her fever when she is sick.”

We went home and life continued almost entirely unaltered other than a story to tell about the horror of watching your child go from simply sick to seizing followed by a hysterical ambulance ride and how touched we were by the supportive community that rose up to help us. We told the story from a place of relief– chances are she may never have one again. That phrase helped me sleep at night with her blissfully in the other room.

But, that phrase was not for our family. Within a few weeks, she had another seizure. This time it was without a fever although that arrived a few hours later. Basically, instead of a fever indicating she may get a seizure, the seizure was the warning of a nasty bug that lasted over a week. Then she had another seizure in the middle of the night a few hours after we returned from the ER. That was how our summer began.

I was undone. Suddenly, my semi-lax parenting style that I felt allowed her plenty of space to grow and my lack of concern when she got sick hey- it helps build her immune system, right!? were tossed out the window. I felt hyper-aware of everything, completely on top of her and uncomfortable with myself much less our relationship.

The following weeks of summer followed suit as I spent more time with my children, yet in a state of anxiety and fear. Attempting to do whatever next thing I could think of to keep her from another seizure or to distract myself from the awful feeling inside. While she didn’t have another one during the summer, it was hardly because of my worry and stress.

Then we went on a trip. A big one for us. Two and a half weeks that involved flying across the country to drive up and down the East Coast. In the first eight days, we drove for six. Typically about 2-3 hours per day that we attempted to overlap with our toddler’s nap, but we started learning the hard lesson that small children aren’t nearly as motivated to sit blissfully looking out at scenery listening to self-help books on tape as we were. Our love of road-tripping that shaped our 20’s and early 30’s was vanishing fast.

Did I mention, throughout it I was an emotional mess? Everything felt big and wrong and icky. Tantrums from either child felt larger than I could bear. And every transition from car to house to car to hotel was more dramatic than it needed to be. I attempted to relax on the days that were ‘relaxing’ but threats to my children seemed all around. Watching my daughter in the pool, with her new love of putting her head underwater had me sitting on standby with eyes locked on her every twitch, ready to rescue her. I had never felt this way and suddenly my empathy for the helicopter parenting style soared. I was torturing myself.

At the end of our time in the Poconos, we planned one more trip around the lake on Great Grandpop’s Golf Cart that my children were obsessed with. My daughter ran into the cabin where I had been packing and said “Mama- we want YOU to drive the Golf Cart”. Half teasing, I said “Oh, I have never driven a Golf Cart before. Should I be nervous?”

Her wide eyes looked up at me and with a slight giggle she said:

“Mama, YOU can feel anyway you want.”

photo 2 (1) At that moment, I was no longer looking at my child, but rather an angel with a specific message. YOU CAN FEEL ANYWAY YOU WANT. I knew I wasn’t nervous about driving a Golf Cart, I was nervous something would happen to this sweet girl in front of me who was walking around with a piece of my heart inside of hers. Her words shot through my entire being and I suddenly felt willing to heal from our summer. Willing to feel something other than fear. I craved feeling the joy she clearly held and I finally let her love infect me.

That was the first step, opening up to feeling differently, feeling better. Then a couple of days later my husband and I had one of those ‘serious’ should we invest a chunk of change in my business or not conversations and somewhere in there it came out that I was blaming myself for our daughter’s seizures. That I couldn’t control them. That I failed to keep her safe.

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As the words poured out, I didn’t realize the truth they had held deep within me. My husband grabbed me and said “It was not your fault.” over and over until I was a puddled of tears letting all the self-blame come spilling over.

The logical side of me knew that I didn’t cause her to be sick, much less cause her to seize. In the moment of each seizure I had risen to the occasion in the best way I could, pulled together and present for her shaking yet stiff body as I frantically whispered to her I am with you and please come back to me. Eventually, her body would crumble into my arms both of us defeated. Meanwhile, that ego-based creature deep within gnawing at my soul that wants to control everything, told me something false: I had failed my child. With my husband’s words, I felt the next step. I was starting to let go. It was not my fault.

Playing + building sandcastles

Soon after our ‘big trip’ finally became a vacation as we found ourselves with toes deep in the sand, the sun drenching us as we played in the ocean or pool together. We experienced a place we never knew existed with inviting warm water, blindingly white beaches and the perfect balance of breeze. The rawness was slowly washing away and I found myself a layer deeper, somehow exfoliated by emotions that had spent the summer overwhelming me.

Returning home to the back-to-school countdown, I finally felt refreshed and ready to deal with whatever the new year has in store.

Will my daughter have a seizure again? Maybe. Maybe not.

Will she be in a school that will take care of her and will do their best for her if she has a seizure? Yes.

Will she get sick? Probably.

Will I blame myself? I hope not, because that will mean I once again am trying to control the uncontrollable.

Letting the sun warm my sweet toddler and I as we sailed around.

Dropping my daughter at school that first day was very different than I anticipated just a few months ago. Our summer brought lessons of letting go, releasing self-blame and allowing love to win. I hope to remember these lessons throughout the next 13 years of her education, because as my sweet angel told me I can feel anyway I want.

With Love,

Lilly

What a Mama really wants + Strawberry Almond Lentils

Strawberry Lentil Salad

1 cup dry lentils, french, green or beluga
1 cup almonds, raw + whole
1 1/2 cups strawberries
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon honey, optional or your favorite sweetener
5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 stalks celery, (or chard stalks, or carrots or sweet peppers)
4 green onions, finely minced

Rinse and pick through the lentils. Bring the lentils up to a boil with at least three times the amount of water. Depending on the size of the lentil (tiny red are faster than the larger brown, green or french variety) boil for 15-45 minutes. When the lentil is tender to the bite it is done. Try not to over cook since this is essentially a salad and you don’t want it to be mushy.

Whisk together the vinegar, honey, salt & pepper. Slowly whisk in the olive oil to emulsify. Add the lentils to the dressing as soon as possible to marinate slightly.

Roughly chop the whole almonds into bits and pieces. Spread on a baking sheet and toast at 375 for about 5-10 minutes. Watch them carefully and stir periodically. They can go from raw to burnt very quickly.

Next, wash the strawberries and chop into small pieces. Mince the celery or any other veggies such as carrots or chard stalks.

Gently toss the lentils with the minced almonds, strawberries, celery and green onions.

Serve warm or cooled as a salad.

Lilly’s Table turns Four!

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Juliette is holding up four fingers celebrating four years!

Midnight September 5th, 2010, our four-month old daughter was thankfully asleep as my husband and I poured small glasses of champagne to toast the first live meal plan of Lilly’s Table. The journey to get to that point was an eye-opening experience and since then there have been many more crazy adventures. I just took a peak at that first weekly meal plan and tried not to cringe, instead I forgave myself for all that I did not know and for everything that was still undone.

The First Week of Lilly’s Table!

For those of you who have not been with me since that exciting day, let me give you a quick sum up of all that has happened since. My husband graduated with a PhD in Physics, accepted a job at the University of Arizona, we moved to Tucson, my daughter and I began to meet wonderful neighbors and then I discovered the national Food Day. Next thing I knew, I signed up to coordinate Food Day there, which included a three course progressive dinner along the Santa Cruz River (which by the way only flows occasionally during monsoon season).

After the excitement of that first Food Day, I started teaching cooking classes to daycare providers through the Tucson Community Food Bank’s Farm-to-Child program and then signed up to do another year of Food Day. For our second year, the incredible Food Day community decided one event on one day wasn’t enough and so we developed Tucson Food Week which included festivals, classes, and a pop-up picnic.

I am on the mic, chatting to our first Tucson Food Day crowd as they eat dessert.

Then I became pregnant. I appeared on local TV to talk about the 2012 Tucson Food Week while doing my best to hide morning sickness… which doesn’t feel terribly different from being nervous in front of a camera apparently. 😉 I also followed up with a spot on the local Radio station KXCI, where I spoke not only about Food Week, but Lilly’s Table. It was awesome.

With the end of 2012 came news of another move, fortunately back to Colorado. I had fallen madly in love with Tucson, but was blissful to come back to the open arms of friends with plenty of kids just about the same age as ours. In an unexpected turn, we bought a home in a tiny town and a few week’s later welcomed our baby boy.

I have been close to my children and my computer since that move well over a year ago. I try not to feel exhausted just writing about all of this. Rather, I want to feel excited knowing that midnight toast with my husband, that tiny sip of champagne was the first of so many possibilities. The meal planning service hasn’t quite grown into it’s full potential. Although, I am tempted to argue I was a bit distracted: community events and babies clearly need a bit of assistance. But, what I put in to my children and the community of Tucson I receive exponentially back in love, appreciation and my own growth.

Regardless of whether Lilly’s Table has grown, I am incredibly grateful for every single member. And throughout all of the drama and distractions I remained ever faithful to the weekly meal plan and I have never missed a week. I cannot say the same about this blog and my supposed-to-be weekly newsletter, but it is my hope to add more to the schedule that resonates even deeper with you as a reader.

Which means…. I want to talk to YOU!

One of my greatest lessons from Tucson Food Day was discovering that community and celebration are essential. There are so many food organizations, farms, restaurants and more doing amazing work. Our mission during Food Day was to bring them altogether to celebrate. To high five and celebrate how we are the change we wish to see in the food world.

It is my mission to continue that. It is my mission to empower the celebration of food. I am now on the hunt, exploring ways to bring joy and good food to every table.

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Because here is the deal, even with four years under my belt as an ‘Executive Meal Planner’ and an ‘Executive Mama’, I typically feel I have no idea what the hell I am doing. Not because I am failing miserable, but because there are constant surprises, changes, growth, struggles and most of all… POSSIBILITIES.

That last word has been breathing in and out of me almost daily since moving back to Colorado. Life is brimming over with possibilities… most of which I do not know or understand yet.

So, back to today. Please be a part of the next four years of Lilly’s Table. My heart is exploding with all that could happen, but I need to hear from you. What do you want from me?

More stories?
More recipes?
More tasting parties?
More supper clubs?
Mama focused meal plans?
Kid’s lunch plans?
So. Many. Possibilities!

How can I best EMPOWER you, your family, your friends, your school to CELEBRATE FOOD?

Tell me what you hope to see unfold and I will do my best to deliver. All we have left friends are possibilities and love. Always love.

Cook seasonally. Eat consciously. Celebrate food,

Chef Lilly

PS- As of LT’s fourth anniversary I have decided to change my tagline from “Live well” to “Celebrate food”. Let me know what you think!?

Last night, I decided to challenge myself to something, anything for 50 days that I could write about. But, everything I thought of seemed impossible to my postpartum, infant in my arms, toddler at my side self. If I did anything for any number of days, it had to already somehow exist in my life.

Then I thought, the one thing I consistently do everyday is eat. Not just cook. (Unique, I know.) Although, I am hoping this challenge will ensure at least a little bit everyday is homemade, since that is pretty much what I preach. I will leave further ramblings about why I am doing this for the coming days.

Without further delay, here is what we ate today:

I am a huge fan of that first sip of coffee in the day. Somehow I can’t remember today’s, but I do remember subsequent tastes. My three year old daughter, asked for milk with granola. She got it. Meanwhile, I prepared myself an Egg in Hole. Juliette then assisted me in eating my breakfast, so I proclaimed we would share another. She agreed.

For lunch, we sat down to leftovers which included a lovely Baba Ganoush that I started over the weekend when we had the smoker out for a big piece of pork that we had slowly smoked and pulled with a homemade barbeque sauce- basically lots of smoked vegetables pureed with molasses, mustard and a few other additions. The pork was made to be shared with friends who had a daughter a month after our son Zedekiah was born. I am amazed at how their two-week old sweetheart, makes our tiny dude look so big.

Anyways, back to that Baba Ganoush, after we took the pork off I threw on a couple of big eggplants, smoked them for about an hour and then let them sit in the smoker as it cooled. The day after we dined with friends, we peeled and pureed the eggplant with a generous amount of tahini and it became deliciousness to be spread on a fabulous loaf of sour dough we bought when we drove through Lyons this weekend. The spread was joined with crackers and cheese. Juliette also dined on a huge pile of cherry tomatoes.

We finished up leftovers of a chunky salad as well that we had for dinner the night before. It included every other vegetable coming out of my garden including basil, tomatoes, zucchini, lettuce and avocado in a balsamic dressing with bulgur. It had this everything-but-the-kitchen-sink grain salad feel to it.

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When we got home, I had planned to grill dinner, but a thunder storm made that seem a silly idea. I looked around and spotted three ready to eat avocados. With their inspiration I whipped up some enchiladas using as many random containers of leftovers I could find in the fridge. To make the sauce, I charred an anaheim pepper and tomatoes on the open flame. Then added a splash of apple cider vinegar, slightly cooked onions and toasted sunflower seeds all in the blender. I then had Juliette come over to taste it. She was skeptical, but after I asked ‘does it need more salt?’, she figured her mother clearly needed assistance. We decided it needed raisins, more salt and pepper. The sauce was seriously delicious after several tiny additions, blending sessions and samples on tiny spoons. She was so proud of her sauce. I envision developing this recipe further to share on Lilly’s Table.

The filling was a crazy combination of leftovers including split mung beans (I have an addiction to these), a chopped up beet that I smoked alongside the eggplant (just to see what would happen- BTW: delicious), onions, zucchini and a medley of other leftover cooked vegetables that had previously been part of another dinner. Remember those avocados that inspired the meal… they were each brown all the way through and still sort of hard? WTH! These Vegan Enchiladas tasted great, but were even better with a dollop of Greek Yogurt. Avocados would have been better but, I will try not to get hung up on that frustration.

Especially since the evening ended with a Salted Caramel Ice Cream Bar coated in delightful dark chocolate. I can’t remember the company because I bought them on sale and then asked my husband to hide the evidence from the toddler.

Whew- I had more to write on this first day then I even realized.

Good night and sweet food dreams to you!