Right now, I’m feeling pretty fantastic.  How are you doing?  What do you feel like as you move through today?  Are you rested?  Happy?  Satiated?  All of the above?  None of the above?

I was super lucky this morning as my parents took the kids out for a long boat ride, giving me some time to myself.  I look a yoga mat, phone, laptop, planner, and some water up to my most favourite spot in the whole world, with the intention of finally laying out some concrete plans for the fall.

The yoga mat was so I could do a short yoga practice (via Yoga Download) to help clear my mind, and the rest of my accessories were there to help me with my planning project.  As I looked at calendars and commitments, and thought about how to structure our lives this fall, all I could think about was how I wanted to feel through this next season.  Yes, Danielle LaPorte has been popping up a lot lately, which may explain why I keep being drawn to how things feel.

But I digress.  Over the past few days, in the in the past few posts, I’ve talked about how, for me, having little sugar and alcohol helps me to feel physically better, how I want to listen to my gut more, even if that means going against popular convention, and how having down time / quiet time helps me centre myself and allow my to hear what my gut has to say.  When these three things happen . . . well, I feel fantastic.  Sort of like how I’m feeling now.

So the planning continues . . . how to schedule things to allow for all of the above, but still allow for some spontaneous fun.

Sadly, this was pretty much as far as I got in my planning process today – the kids came back from the boat ride, lunch needed to be made . . . and from there, some chores, some dinner preparations, and of course, my new dessert.

As this is the last long weekend of the summer, we’re in a race to use up as much food as we can so we don’t have to take much back to the city with us.  With all the gorgeous peaches we have, and a giant bowl of blueberries that was just about to pass its prime, all I could think about was a fruit crisp.

My aforementioned desire to consume little in the way of sugar meant that my traditional favorite crisp recipes were out.  So I started a search of the internet.  Was there a crisp that was going to taste good that didn’t include sugar or gluten?  I’m sure there are some somewhere, but I didn’t find them.  Sure, there are tons of recipes like this, but the majority of them consist of some fruit baked with almond flour mixed with a little melted coconut oil on top.  A crisp this does NOT make.  A crisp to me is a bottom layer of juicy, sweet fruit, topped with a crispy, buttery oat topping.

So I returned to my favourite recipe.  Was there a way to make it sugar and gluten free?  Armed with maple syrup and tapioca flour, I gave it a go.  And the results were surprisingly good.  (*note that this is based on the Strawberry & Rhubarb Crisp recipe that appears in the Gourmet cookbook.  If you have never made this on an early summer’s day when the strawberries have just come in and the rhubarb is on it’s way out . . . you MUST do so, sugar and gluten and all.  It is DIVINE!).  This recipe keeps the oats and the butter, but does away with the flour and all the sugar!

And once that was done . . . it was off to to get in some fun by the water before dinner!