Finding Our Feet.

We are settling in.

Some of us not quite settled yet. A whole new world to get used to.

Getting to know the light in this new place.

I love it very much.

Follow it from room to room.

Loving the hill behind our house.
Our new playground.

Loving this new urban life that allows us to not have to give up the sea.
Loving so many friends on our doorstep.
Loving walking everywhere!

Loving that spring is rushing towards summer.
Happiness runs.

A Brief Sojourn Before Uprooting Ourselves.

Not so long ago, we took the winding road south, down through the belly of this island of ours, through damp, mizzling hills that rolled under us and away to the glowering east. The rain ran down the foggy windows, the grey and the green flew past us in a rush as we sped towards the Atlantic coast on the southern rim of Ireland.

We spent the weekend with new friends, the warmest, loveliest of people, we took our time, we savoured every minute, we reminded ourselves of how much we love this place, memories returning of distant weekend visits to my sister when she lived here, so many years ago.

We passed through the wet, through the green, as though flying like ghosts, through virescent memories that clung to our hair, our skin, in the very drops of rain that hung in the air about us.
A heady combination of the newness of friendships lately found, and the deep hum of history stirring under our feet, all bound by the verdant magic of where we found ourselves.

A briefest of sojourns before we returned home, to the mammoth undertaking of uprooting our little family, of deconstructing all we had spent our parenting years building. Our Home.
An exciting, daunting endeavour, that caught us up in it's momentum and carried us onwards, of which there will be more, anon.

Returned to this, a most splendid of evenings that held a promise of spring. An evening that gave me perhaps my most favourite image of this view, in all my years photographing it.


A view that will always be there, behind my eyelids, when I close them against the sun.

Wordless Wednesday.

Sorrow and Joy, And This Business Of Life.

You know those times when your feet don't touch the ground, when Life is too big and too fast for you to even draw breath, and everything whirls past in a flurry until whatever song it is dancing to finally runs out and you slow down to a gentle sway for a while, and so you can begin to absorb all that has just gone by.

We have been busy, with Splendid Adventures (which I will post about here soon), and crazy weather, and only a week left before we get the key to our new house, so Chaos Reigns.

And in the midst of it all, we lost a little friend. Our little furry friend, India, who was born here not even two years ago. 

Little hearts are broken.

We think it was poison, though we cannot be sure, but an awful end it was. One I am glad the children did not witness, but which I will never forget.  

This image at our bedroom window is a familiar one. I'm sure any pet owners among you know that look: 'Hey, can you let me in....so I can go back out?'
His favourite was to stand on his hind legs and pound the window, at four am, while yowling in a voice that can only be described as akin to Marge Simpson. Honestly, I actually kind of miss that!

He was the best cat. Just sweet and cuddly and friendly and chilled out, and so handsome and so fluffy you just couldn't help but love him.
And even though he drove her mad, and she loved when he went off a-wandering and she had us all to herself, his mama, Sparrow, is a little bit lost without him.

So, we are just coming out of the what if's and maybes phase, of wondering would he still be alive if we had done anything differently. But the truth of it is, sadly, I don't think so.

But let me finish this post with the Joy part of this title.

This week, Our Smallest turned six! And although I find myself looking back at pictures like the one below, of my baby, and my heart squeezes painfully with that Loss, I marvel, too, at how this little flower of ours has taken his time to reveal himself to us, and how enthralled I am by it.

For so very long it seemed as though some part of him stayed, or strayed, in some Other World, some dreamy place that he had come from. A Very New Person. A tender, sweet presence, and one we all cannot help but love, and love to be around. One who cries when trees are felled, and who asks why we are here, and the How of things, and wonders about God and volcanos and love, and dreams of dinosaurs and dragons.

And now, as the first of his baby teeth have fallen, and his feet are more on the ground than ever, I am savouring what is left to me of these days. Days of magic and wonder and yes, mischief. Days of small boys and the joy they bring. Days that, as I look at our eldest, now a young man of almost seventeen, seem to have a number, and I want to hold onto with all my heart.

The only things that you should keep in rowsAre your perfect teeth and the rest you knowIts own sweet way will always go

Add your footsteps to the wearFor a tiny dent in every stairWill let them know that you've been there

And I am put in mind of the above song by Vashti Bunyan, called 'Lately', a song about this very thing, and it is a comfort to know that most of you reading this have known, or will know, this exact feeling. 

The comfort is, that this Business Of Life is just that, and we are all in it together. 

The sorrow and the joy. The loving and the letting go. 

We can reach out a hand, and it will, at once, find another that understands.

What's Cooking In The Milkmoon Kitchen.

After years of struggling with food intolerances, I finally feel like I have something of a handle on it, albeit no closer to finding a 'solution', if such thing exists. But over the years, my interest in the topic of food, and how it behaves in our bodies, has led me down many a rabbit hole of intrigue on the subject, and I have come across many fascinating people, articles, books, and films, which I immediately want to share with the world. I have written here before about the many different hats I wear, and I have struggled to find a way to fit all these together here on Milkmoon, and I must admit, it's just not working for me. Milkmoon is more about photographs, musings, stitchery, and all those little things that take place in the regular workings of my life, and I've come to realise that the food element is just too big to incorporate into it. It would change Milkmoon too much, and I don't want that to happen, and so I haven't been blogging about it here, as I had intended. I like this dreamy place as it is, and once I get onto the topic of food, a whole devil of reality rears it's head, and sometimes it's not that pretty! But mostly, it's delicious and inspiring and wholesome, but in a very different realm to this.

Our week in pictures.
In between this....

So what to do?

I have gone from being a prolific blogger, with four or five blogs on the go at once, to struggling to keep one afloat, let lone two, and so, even though I have a burning desire to share all that I have found, I am now wary of undertaking another blog. So I have decided to try another tactic; a Facebook Page, which I reckon will tie in with the usual Facebooking that goes on, on a daily basis.

....and this,

For the first time in what seems like a lifetime, after almost seventeen years of coasting happily along through Mother-land, in this magic place that we were so blessed to find ourselves land in as new parents, my life is now veering off into a vast, unknown territory, and boy am I ready for it!
By this time next year, I doubt I will recognise my life. So many things are falling ever so neatly into lines of such Serendipitous-ness, that I can barely catch my breath.

we had this!
Bizarre weather, altogether.

For one, we have found a house. A Stepping Stone House, if you get my meaning, and as this is what happened the last time we moved house, it seems this is how we do things here. It ticks a lot of boxes, and it doesn't ticks some others, but the ones it does ticks are wonderful and exciting, and we just won't know ourselves! And so we will make the most of it, and when the time is right The Place We Are Seeking will present itself. I promise to have photos just as soon as we actually move.

My mantra of the season has been:
I Am Open To The Abundance of the Universe.
And once again it has provided.

So if Facebook is your thing, and you feel so inclined, do please come and peep in the door of the Milkmoon Kitchen, and stay for a chat. There will be recipes, and I have great hopes for threads of conversation that inspire and inform and bring together our wealth of experience and knowledge on the subject of health and vittles and sustenance.

And together we will change the world, one meal at a time.

Learning From The Trees.

We had a lovely week off school, and even though for a lot of it the clouds sat low over the mountains, a mizzling rain pressing up against the windows, keeping us mostly indoors, we really didn't mind at all. We had lots of pyjama days, with plenty of baking and cooking going on, and just as cabin fever began to set in, the days began with blue skies and there was that little whisper of spring in the air.

There, in the stretch of light in the morning sky, or stirred into the tenacious sting of the winter wind, a hint of warmth that was not there before, just a momentary tenderness against our skin, and all of a sudden there is a new softness, a slackening off, in the physical tension of winter, and our bodies somehow fathom, in some deep place, that instinct of the trees to begin to let go of that green they have held onto during the dark months, to allow it to begin to unfurl.

Our hunt for a new home continues apace.
We have all been dreaming strange, house-related dreams. Uncomfortable, insecure kind of dreams that leave us unsettled. We have never undertaken anything like this before, as a family, and while it really is unsettling, I think it may be no bad thing. Sometimes we need to shake things up, to force ourselves out of our comfort zone, in order to unfurl and reach for the sky and warm air, in order to grow.

And so, we wait patiently for Something Wonderful to come our way, and I am grateful for the time of year, for that sense of the rising sap, and I know that, like the trees, if we trust our instincts, we will know just what to do when the time comes.

These Friends Of Mine.

Well, this week has seen us struck down with an 'aul dose' as we say, four of us are at various stages of a stinker of a cold, and my ears pricked this morning as The Smallest headed out to school with a suspicious sniffling. It seems he will be the next to fall.
But next week is mid-term, thankfully, so I anticipate lots of lazy pyjama days, slow breakfasts, and maybe a walk or two, once we are all well. Though there has been a flurry of snow, and more to come, they say, so we shall see.

babaá - no.7 - Flame

Regular readers here know I love the seasons, I love weather of all kinds, and although, unusually for me, I am finding this winter particularly long, let me just ignore that and talk about something I love about winter, which is Winter Woolies! One of my great loves in life; all things knitted. It's the first thing I look for when browsing in shops.
With four children, we have gone through a lot of clothes, throughout their growing years especially, and I have found that it is often the hand knitted goodness that I fold away affectionately, into the box of Keepsakes, like tender memories I am afraid will disappear. And there they wait for the next child who will wear it, who will add their memories to it, as though knitted into the very fabric of it.
How many of you are lucky enough to have had items from your childhood to put on your own children, when the time came?
I love this weave of threads through our lives, the continuity, if we allow it.

babaá - shop

And so, this brings me to Something Lovely. Something new and lovely, and I hope, regular, here on Milkmoon. As I said in my last post, I am bringing back an old Milkmoon model of regular, themed posts, that somehow fell by the wayside over the last couple of years, but with a new spin on it.
To start, I have a lot of very talented family members, and friends, and I just can't help myself, I want to share their goodness and creativity with you. So, introducing a new tag, to sit side by side with my Something Lovely tag: These Friends Of Mine.

babaá - shop

Given the wintery weather we are having, I would like to begin with someone who, while is not officially my sister, is like a sister to me, whom I first met when she was the same age my daughter is now. She was 14, and I was 22, and unusually, in spite of the age difference, we became instant friends. And have remained so to this day.

Ciara and Marta
Dublin - 1993

Marta is now living back in her native Madrid, and has recently launched her children's knitwear label; babaá, and yes, you can immediately see one reason why we get on so well! These are definitely Keepsakes. Timeless, but quirky, with just the perfect balance of functionality. (Is there anything more wonderful than someone you love creating something, and it turns out that you genuinely love it?) You can read here what babaá is all about, and you will see exactly why this gorgeous knitwear is destined to become family heirlooms. And while you are there, take a peek in her shop, (there is a sale on) especially if you have any small people in your life who are growing up before your eyes, and you long to hold onto a little longer, and items like these are perfect memory making additions to your Keepsake Box.
And all these babaá photographs are by the exceptionally talented Clíona O'Flaherty, my lovely sister-in-law, who will also be featured here over the next while.

babaá - jumper no.4 - Coral

I am making my order for one for my Smallest, as we speak, because almost all his keepsakes already have a history to them, and I want to have one that begins with him.

In Which The Milkmooners Go On An Adventure.

Has it really been more than two months since I peeked in here? Well, it's not like life has been uneventful, probably too eventful really, and therefore, where do I start? I won't recap, as it would not do justice to all the wonderful things that have been and gone, but instead I will just have to see which ones emerge over the next few posts here, as I actually have a number of marvelous things to share with you, in the style of The Early Days of Milkmoon, because that is where I have woken up on this side of the New Year, in a place of Blogging Rediscovery, which is quite exciting for me.

So, with photos from my archives (as I am still without a camera), of corners of our home, I will start with what is most currant for us here in the Milkmoon household: you may recall this post about our looming Leave-Taking.
But I have questions. For example, how does one begin to pack up a house? Accumulated belongings of more than sixteen years, times six people.... Let's just say I am somewhat overwhelmed by it.
Where does one start? Is there a system to it? We've never had to do it before. The last time we moved, we had a two roomed apartment, no furniture, and just ourselves and a four month old baby to pack up. It all fit into the back of a car.

We have become extremely adept at finding excuses to not do it. It's not that we don't want to move, although there is a reluctance to leave this beautiful place, of course, but it's more just the sheer enormity of this mountain we have to climb to get ourselves to the other side of it.
We are hoarders, of sorts, the waste-not-want-not kind of hoarders, the rainy-day kind, and while Jay would deny he is one in any way, I admit I am the worst of them. For example, what constitutes my 'studio' is a haphazard mountain of shoe-boxes, jars, bags, curvers, baskets, all stuffed with bits of fabric, ribbons, buttons, threads, haberdashery of all kinds, as well as postcards, photos, magazine cuttings, letters, and teetering piles of books... you get the picture. And four children means an accumulation of toys, partly because I have a penchant for antique/old-school toys, which are impossible to get rid of, right?

And books, oh my, the books. One of the things I valued most, growing up, was my Dad's extensive library, which I truly discovered in my late teens, early twenties, when I read as many classics as were there, poetry, plays, biographies, you name it. It truly was a significant part of my education, one which had a bigger impact on the adult I was to become than any other singular element. And so, without being conscious of it, I have since spent my adult years building a Library Of Significance for my own children. Add to that the fact that when we moved into this house the bookshelves were already full, full I tell you, of someone else's, very long, life's collection! I cannot begin to estimate just how many books we have, but I can say it runs to the thousands, with bags and bags of them stuffed into cupboards too. So you can imagine, can't you, the task in that department alone. Clearly I can't bring them all, so there will have to be a culling, won't there, something I am dreading.

I also love teacups, and saucers, and teapots, and jugs, and I adore antique furniture, the bigger the better, I hold on to clothes that one lad grows out of, so the next lad can wear them, even though there is three - five years age difference between them, baskets and cupboards full of every kind of art and craft materials for the children, oh I could go on...the list is random and endless.
Now don't get me wrong, I am actually really looking forward to a new, simplified,  pared (a bit, anyway) back, beginning in our new house, which no, we have not found yet, but are now wholeheartedly looking for.

However, first we have to get through the dismantling, sorting, packing, moving, bit. And that's after making a decision on whether or not to go after a house that ticks some very important boxes, but does not tick other very important ones. Is it possible to get everything you want when house hunting? We did last time. Literally. To such fine detail it would give you goosebumps and instant Faith In The Universe. And I want with all my heart to believe we can do it again, because to us our home is not just bricks and mortar, it is a beloved part of the family, and therefore must be something we can love. Oh! the responsibility! the expectations! the enormity! of it all. Plus the fact that there are now six of us, all with different needs and desires and hopes.
It's a very fine juggling act we are now involved in, and I hope we get it right.

What Happens When You Forget To Breathe.

You know sometimes how magic happens right there where you are? When the world takes you gently by the chin and tilts your head at just the right moment, and you find yourself suspended in something of such heart-stopping beauty that you are transported somewhere else, for just those few seconds.
And always just when you need it.

There we were, on our daily commute through this most beautiful valley, that has held on to autumn for weeks now, the colours singing from the trees, 'the rainbow trees' as The Smallest calls them. The morning had been a bit fraught already, with just too many things to fit in, and tempers frayed from early on, and the sense of rushing just permeating everything. This part of our journey always provides a little bit of solace in our daily run anyway, but this time there was something else.

Inexplicably, at this point on the road, for two minutes, the traffic all but stopped, slowed to a crawl, and out of nowhere suddenly the air was filled with golden leaves that danced over the cars, that stayed in the air, dancing like snowflakes as the sun hit the mountain, and we stared in awe, our hearts filled, overflowing.

The Wildness of Things.

I began this post a week or so back, a post about the arrival of autumn, of the sudden profusion of posts online about leaves and rain and weather of all sorts, of lighting fires and digging out ones winter woolies, and the pleasure of it all. But now, in the midst of Sandy, that part of what I wanted to say all seems so irrelevant. Of course we have not been affected by it here, but I am put in mind of the times we do experience the Wildness of Things, and how it shakes us to our bones, reduces us to the tiny things we are in the grander scale of bigger things, and just how vulnerable we truly are when nature rages and heaves itself up out of its bed, and towers over us so terrifyingly.
Here in this little temperate island of ours, storms on the scale of what the US is experiencing right now are extremely rare, but living practically on the beach, and with our house at sea level, it is something I think about on a regular basis during winter months, when we lie awake in bed, our little house rocked by howling winds as the sea booms and thunders outside the windows.

As I sat up stitching, into the small hours last night, I was thinking about my sister in Virginia, and all those people out there who are being affected by the storm.
Times like this, things have a way of slipping neatly into perspective, don't they?
At the moment Jay is away again, this time he is down under in Sydney, and as per usual there has been the usual litany of minor 'disasters'.
Car trouble, check, internet gone, check, people sick, check, cold snap and no fuel brought in, check.
But as I said, everything is in perspective, and my inner Pollyanna is well and healthy.
And so, in the midst of all this stress and mayhem I sit and stitch, and count my blessings as I do, forever grateful for this moderate, nonextreme country I have found myself in.

And here is what I have been working on while Holding The Fort (I do like that expression!)
Inspired by the looming winter months filled with nights I have just described, this little piece has, as usual, taken forever to finish.
I have this notion that if I ever actually take to making things on my machine then I'll get loads done, but that is not likely to happen any time soon, and anyway, is likely to be a complete fallacy. I hand make my small things because usually, my studio is my car, or my kitchen table, in between a myriad of other appointments and tasks throughout my day. They are made, literally a stitch at a time, and at times it feels like a meditation, at others like a muse, with ideas flowing through my head as I work, stories unfolding in a dreamlike manner, hints and voices and realisations, all tumble together into a tangled weave of something with potential.

So I stitch and sew in the dark hours, and I send heartfelt thoughts and wishes to all and any of you who have been affected by the weather these last few days.
May whatever help you need come your way on swiftly wings, and with it the return of things to As They Should Be.

This Moment.

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. 

If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.
Inspired by Soulemama. 

Of Snow And Ice And The Frozen Lands.

I love when something drifts into your ether, and for some reason, on this particular occasion, buries itself deep inside you, and takes hold of your Interest with tenacious hands, and soon you begin to notice all kinds of Things of Interest relating to it positively popping up in front of you.
For months now I have been filling my head and heart with all things of the far, distant North, and farthest South too. Increasingly, as the weeks go by, I have been dwelling, in my mind, in places of ice and water, reading of explorers of a frozen world few of us have seen, watching this drama about Ernest Shackleton, trying unsuccessfully, to see this exhibition about his journey, (although it will be on for two years, so I'm not worried about missing it!), being unexpectedly inspired by a talk I attended by a wonderful geologist-turned-textile-artist called Ann Fleeton, at this months Irish Guild of Embroiderers meeting, gathering books and images and inspiration.

Dark Ice by Camille Seaman.

But it all started with the happy coincidence of two things coming my way within days of each other, which settled onto the already lingering taste of two books I had read in the last year. The first book was The Stillpoint, by Amy Sackville, which I have to say is one of the finest written books I have read in many a year. It contains one of the most heartbreakingly romantic love stories, as well as descriptive writing that will make you swoon, and read and reread countless paragraphs again and again.
The other book is less to do with snow and ice, and more to do with the kind of desolate places that some of the characters of The Stillpoint find themselves. The book is by Judith Schalansky, and is called 'Atlas of Remote Islands, Fifty Islands I have not visited and never will.' Incredibly beautiful and thought-provoking, and in fact, winner of the German Arts Foundation prize for The Most Beautiful Book of the Year. It is a book I keep by my bedside and dip into continuously.

The Last Iceberg Series by Camille Seaman.

So, the two things. First, these incredible photographs by Camille Seaman, which are just majestic and beautiful and completely enthralling to me. (She also photographs clouds like no one I have seen before.)
And then this most wondrous thing that I found via the lovely Nancy, of The b In Subtle, which I now have my heart set on and will go on some day! A ship, The Noorderlicht, a century-old Dutch schooner, which carries a boatload of artists and scientists into waters around Norway's archipelago, who's mission is 'to seek out and foster areas of collaboration to engage in the central issues of our time'. In other words, to 'discuss' global warming and related issues, and to make art about it. The project is called The Arctic Circle , and well worth checking out. As I write this, Irish artist Ruth Le Gear  is there now, collecting arctic water in tiny bottles.
I am...jealous.
I have not stopped thinking about it since first coming across it.
I would give anything to be there right now,  in this magical place who's time is limited, and who's face is changing by the year. To record something of it in my own small way.

The Last Iceberg Series by Camille Seaman.

In all of this, my light relief has been rereading Philip Pullman's Northern Lights. So today, when I saw it, I could not help but purchase, and immediately immerse myself in, a very beautiful, small book by him called Once Upon Time In The North, a sort of precursor to Northern Lights. It was the small size of it, and the cover, that did it, a cloth-bound thing of beauty that had on it an engraving by John Lawrence. Indeed it is filled with such engravings, beautifully rendered, on almost every page.

So I sat in the hairdressers for a little over an hour, while the best kind of misty, autumnal rain quietly closed in around this seaside town of ours, a haze of silver and grey outside the window, and lost myself in a grim, desolate icebound island, where sour, suspicious people live alongside panserborne, or polar bears, a once proud, great culture, and now seen as nothing but drunkards, vagrants, who skulk the bleak streets of the dismal town.
When my time was up, I put away my book, and took a winding road up into the rain clouds, between two mountains, surprised at the lack of icebergs in the grey sea below, through the silent silver haze, listening, as I do most days, to music from the north lands, this time Sigur Rós, (Iceland is about as far north as my music taste goes, for I am well and truly stuck there, without hope, or desire, to be unstuck!), my head filled with snow and ice and frozen lands.
When I arrived at school, it was too wet to stand around chatting, so as I waited in my car I opened facebook on my phone, and the first thing I saw was a post from Charlie and Caroline Gladstone, a video called A Homeless Polar Bear in London. I had to take a look.

As I said, I love how these things all just come together like a beautiful dance that is perfectly choreographed, and suddenly your day just seems like a story, or a dream, with all things dovetailing beautifully.
This time a dream of expansive snowy landscapes, vast tundras of ice, blue icebergs and polar bears, and crowds of white sea birds relentlessly thronging the bitter air.

Vittles And Sustenance.

or How Pinterest Saved The Day.

If you did not grow up in Dublin in the 70's and 80's, then it is impossible really to explain just what it meant to have a mother who knew how to cook, and cook beyond what she had been taught by her own mother, or in school! We were encouraged to cook too, all five of us, and all things were endured, no matter how unusual or challenging, through our various fads and fancies, including my announcement at 11 that I had decided to become a vegetarian.
To this day, my absolute, hands down, favourite thing in the world is our family gatherings, when we all converge in the kitchen of my parents house, and proceed to put together a Meal of Excellence, overseen, of course, by our own Maitre d', our Mum. Like any good meal, there are many layers to it, and that goes for the preparation too. One person is an excellent saucier, another likes to be given the role of tournant, filling in wherever needed, another is definitely the patissier, and there will always be a number of sous-chefs, happy to interchange with one another, depending on how busy, or enthusiastic they are on the day. And of course, there is the one or two who are happy to act as stewards, a fine Meal of Excellence in return for clean up duties, a fair exchange, in their book. All of these roles happily transposing between us all.

Goat's cheese stuffed butternut squash.

Over the years, my own interest in food and nutrition has been a constant, initially, as a young teenager, due to my choice to not eat meat in a country that thrived on the meat-and-two-veg variety of meals, but there was also the influence by my inheritance of books from a great aunt that really helped to set me off on a path of bettering things. I didn't really pay much heed to books like 'How to Levitate', but it was the old home remedies ones that really got me. Two in particular, Folk Medicine, A Vermont Doctor's Guide To Good Health by D. C. Jarvis, and Folk Remedies by Lelord Kordel. I'd like to say thank you to my Mum for her patience with me in my explorations in this as a young teenager!
I'm not sure if I somehow knew I would need this knowledge and dedication in later life, but it turns out I did. As I have mentioned occasionally here, for years now I haven't eaten gluten or sugar, and at this point in my life I find, while I am not a vegan, per se, I do eat a largely plant based diet, with little or no dairy, or animal protein.

Rice noodles with crispy tofu.

This has been a long and gradual journey, with many bumps and rocky bits, and I can tell you it is by no means over. It is not easy. I have gone through so many different phases, diets, versions of diets, it'd make your head spin. However, it is quite amazing to look around now and see just how common it is, this whole food exclusion thing.
I am aware that there are lots of people out there who 'don't believe' it all, that think it's a fad or fashion, but I don't believe it is, not given the very real symptoms I, and many others I know, are living with daily. I also have my own theory about why we find ourselves increasingly unable to digest, or process, a growing list of very ordinary, and common, foods.

Lentil cakes with homemade pesto, wilted greens, and lemon thyme courgette fries.

So here it is.
In the last twenty years, for the first time in the history of the world, humans in the western world can eat whatever they want, whenever they want.
All year round.
And that is the problem. We eat what we like.
All year round.
Our bodies have reached saturation point.
If we were eating locally and seasonally, as our not so distant ancestors did, then we would be rotating food, and our bodies would get a break from things throughout the year. Let's take wheat, for example, probably the most common food intolerance going. Think about it, your average person eats wheat literally for every meal. Every day.
All year round.
It's no wonder our bodies reach a point of 'WAIT! I've had enough, I don't NEED any more right now!' But we continue to eat it, because, sure what else would we eat? And we like it. The same could be said of dairy, another extremely common intolerance.
We simply eat too much, too often, of too many things.

Butternut squash gnocchi with sage butter.

Now this, of course is my inexpert, and non professional, tuppence worth about the whole thing, but it makes sense to me.
But it is so hard to eat any other way, isn't it? Eating habits are extremely hard to break, or change. I know, I've been doing it for many years now. And it's been an incredible journey, and I've learned a few things about myself along the way which have surprised me. The main one being that I have willpower and can actually do something difficult that I really don't want to do! I always thought I couldn't.
So, in the process of all this discovery, food has become quite a focus for me. From the time I finally gave up all the things I couldn't eat, I spent about four years in a bit of a downer when it came to food. Eating held no pleasure for me any more, everything was such an effort and with such little reward, because it rarely tasted anyway remotely delicious, and always like a sad excuse for food. It was dreadful.

Red lentil and hazelnut patties.

So, about six months ago I decided I'd had enough, and I set about finding food that I could not only eat, but that I could relish, and also confidently serve to 'normal' dinner guests. All I can say is, thanks be for the internet! Thanks to Pinterest, and through it the discovery of incredible food blogs out there, I now have a growing menu of delicious recipes and food ideas that are beyond anything I've eaten before, and over the next while, mixed in just the right proportion, I hope, I'd like to share some of these recipes with you. I promise you don't need to be intolerant to anything, in fact, you don't need to be anything other than interested in Good Clean Food. I promise you won't be disappointed!
These photos are to whet your appetite, so to speak, and I hope they do!

But I am curious, do any of you find you can't, or choose not to, eat certain things? Or if not, do you have someone in your life who does? I'd love to know what your experience has been, and I welcome all questions and comments!

The New Improved Milkmoon Manifesto (of sorts).

My dearest friends, readers, and fellow bloggers,

I wear many hats, and even though some days I even wear two or more at the same time, I like to try and make them compliment each other. There are some days I feel overwhelmed by having so many, but loving each of them equally, I cannot give any up.
Now, I am not, of course, talking about real hats, though this household has an impressive collection, rather, I am referring to metaphorical hats.
I blame my mother.
I have written before about growing up in the home I did, and how music was a huge factor for us, the effects of which are, to this day, a major influence.
I could write five different posts on the vast variety of other influences provided without effort by my parents. Honestly, I do not exaggerate when I say my mother is a SuperWoman: Seamstress, potter, wood turner, furniture maker, painter, glass artist, gardener, cook. A walk around my parents home and I would say my mother has made more than half of it! The quilt you tuck round your sleeping child, the lamp you switch on, the dress you wear, the table you sit at, the bread, the salad you eat, the bowl you eat out of, the cup you drink out of, the painting you gaze at, all made by my mother.
I like to say she is a hard act to follow, but also an amazing role model and inspiration.

And did I mention that my Dad writes? And aside from being the best practical joker in Dun laoghaire, he is a splendid cartoonist, as my children will shout to the rooftops about.
And so between them both, they have made me (and my four siblings) a very busy bee indeed.

So I like to write, and take photos, and draw pictures, and stitch little things, and cook, and listen to and share music, and I've also added my own things to this list, such as my yoga practice, and my interest in diet and nutrition as a result of my own inability to eat quite a list of things.
While everything on the first part of this list is generally what makes up Milkmoon, it's the latter things that are somewhat missing. Now don't worry, I won't be posting pictures of yoga poses, more, it's the influence that practicing yoga has on my life, that I want to share. A mindfulness, (not a word I like, but  I'm sure you understand what I mean by it), a compassion that influences everything from how I strive to  parent my children, to how I endeavour to conduct myself day to day, and it's influence on how I 'tread on this earth'. And I would also like to share this journey I am on with regards to cooking and eating, something that has a profound effect on my day to day living.

Some of these things might seem like strange bedfellows on one blog, but all I can say is, they are all my hats, and together they make up something quite well rounded and, well, me! They work for me, and so I hope that translates into a blog of diverse and interesting topics, but ones that sit comfortably together, and I hope that those of you who come to see photos, or read my flights of fancy on the weather, or the seasons, or whatnot, will also pop by to maybe find a recipe, or muse over something I've discovered, or shared.

This blog of mine will be five years old next week! And so, over the next week or two I'll be launching a new-look Milkmoon, posting a number of wordy posts like this explaining just what is coming on the new and improved Milkmoon, and hosting a Giveaway of Splendidness!

So, for any of you that read this with dismay, please don't. I think apart from the new look, the other changes will be subtle. I am feeling newfound enthusiasm for blogging again, and my previous doubts about continuing to blog are nowhere to be found. For the first time in years, I have several draft posts lined up, awaiting rewriting, editing etc.

Over the last couple of years so many of my favourite blogs of old have sadly fallen by the wayside. I know it is very difficult to keep up enthusiasm for it, and I was on the point of giving up myself, so many times. But the reality of it is, now I have a growing number of new pots on the boil, so to speak, and I want to share it with all of you.
I hope you'll stay, and please do bring a friend!

Love Ciara xxx

One Of Those Days.

Are you like me?
If so, then you know how it is.
You wake up in fine form, but by the time you have nagged, cajoled and hustled everyone to where they need to be you are in decidedly bad form.
What you ate for breakfast you know you shouldn't have, but you were too disorganised, or too busy, over the weekend, to plan better, and you drank too much coffee.
And on top of that it is raining, and the washing that was dry but you never brought in, is now soaked through and lying on the soggy grass.
And the traffic was hell, so you were late for school.

It happens more often than I care to admit.
Usually I do have a tendency to be a bit of a Pollyanna, but this is something I have consciously become, and at one point in one of my rants this morning I found myself telling my children that school, the rain, life, is so much easier if viewed from the perspective of such sages as Billy Connolly, or Reinhold Niebhur,  that there are some things we cannot change, so we might as well accept them, and just get on with it. It makes for a far happier and easier life. Yes, it's raining, so we better bring a raincoat!
Believe me, the irony of my own grumpiness in the midst of this was not lost on me.

But none of this is nothing that a good shoulder stand, followed by a cup of Lady Grey tea cannot sort out, so I take myself off to an hour and a half of yoga, and now I am back to 'normal', enjoying my tea as I look out the window at the rain that blows across the marsh, listening to something soothing. And I know this is just one of those days when the daily grind takes a sneaky little dig at me when I am unprepared. There will be more, some other time, and yes, they tend to follow a period of blissful contentment and happiness, but they truly are just one of the knottier threads in my weave.
They are there and I'll just have to admire the texture they give my days.