The Power of an Eclipse (and other happenings)

I started writing this post a while ago but got distracted and never returned to it.  It's been a while since my last post too, and to be honest I just haven't been inspired to write.  It's the same thing with having taken off so many years writing stories... I see a blank page and I get so intimidated.  It used to be that I could sit down and channel the words through my fingers and on to the screen.  But for some reason that ability seems to have gone dormant.

As I mentioned in my welcoming post, part of the purpose for starting this blog was to share some of my spiritual journey with the anonymous reader, with the intention that another soul who may be on the same journey can find some solace.  I am feeling compelled to write, and the subject of this post will be some of the things that have happened to me in the last few months.

*****

Back in May part of the world was subject to one of the most awe-inspiring event we can witness.... a Solar Eclipse.  Solar Eclipses are so rare, that when we are blessed by the arrival of one, it is hard to not feel the power, the amazement, the chill - the ancient sentiment that came when our Sun's glorious might was covered by the shadow of the Moon.  That Sunday's eclipse was partial, and so the Moon's position was not quite close enough to completely block the Sun, an event that causes twilight in the middle of daylight, and I can only image how our ancient ancestors must have reacted when that happened....  But an annular eclipse is no less spectacular, creating a "ring of fire" around the Moon as it positions itself directly between the Sun and the Earth. 

Solar Eclipses are quite powerful, and in spiritual circles it is believed that their energy can be harnessed to help with one's personal goals.  I have always been prone to feeling energy shifts - when I was younger I always called it "feeling the history of a place" - and with this year marking a resurgence in my spiritual journey, I decided to take advantage of this momentous occasion, and made a list of Solar Eclipse Intentions that I focused on during the time when the energy was highest. 

One of the items on my list was to establish a routine in the morning.  I have never been a morning person, even though I love the energy of mornings.  I love my dreams, and in the mornings where I am snoozing between alarm clocks beeps, my dreams are always intensified and I'm able to remember them better.  It's hard to get out of bed when I can close my eyes and fly.

The morning after that eclipse the alarm clock on my phone started to go off.  I lazily reached over to turn it off, when I discovered it was not on the nightstand that I always put it.  In the foggy grog of sleepiness, I started feeling around on the floor, thinking it might have got knocked off.  I could not find the phone, and the shrill buzzing had started to get the best of me.  I sat up, turned on my light, and found the phone.  Five feet away.  On the ground.  Still attached to the charger.  Yet the charger was no longer attached to the outlet.  Some how, during the night, the charger on my phone became detached from the wall outlet, and my phone, while still connected to the cord, ended up five feet away from my nightstand.  Just far enough away to where I had to get out of bed to turn the alarm off.  I do not know how this happened, but that morning, I stared at the phone, my jaw dropped, and knew in my heart this was a sign.  I got out of bed, did a yoga routine, and had enough time to take my dog for a walk.

*****

For as long as I can remember I have been going to forest preserves to walk, hike, read, and sometimes just to sit.  I love nature; the smells, the sounds, the color, the energy.... If I could spend my whole day outside I would be happier for it.  It is especially therapeutic for me to get out into nature and re-energize when I spend 9 hours a day in an office for work, and so anytime I start a new job I always look for a place where I can go, and luckily I've always been able to find a place. 

Where I am at now I found a state park that was almost abandoned a few years ago due to lack of funding.  It remained open, but most of the areas are closed off and unmaintained.  This is perfect for me - the park is an absolute jewel in my eyes.  Not only can I go to a forest that is more wild for being untamed, but since so few ever go, I can usually go with the benefit of being alone. 

For the last few months I have been visiting one area in particular, which is close to the river and surrounded by towering oak, walnut and maple trees.  I go here to sit by rivers edge and breath in deep with my eyes closed.  If I am lucky there will be a soft breeze, so not only do I feel it across my face, but hear the wind through the trees, one of my favorite sounds. 

When I visited the spot yesterday, I realized that all my time coming to the river's edge, I'd never once seen a fish.  I love to spot fish in the water, and so this particular time I said "if Spirit is with my I'll see a fish."  Not even two minutes after saying that, a huge carp swam right up to the river's edge, right in front of me.  He swam around, looking for food on the rocks, the disappeared back in to the river depths.  And behind him?  Another carp, smaller this time.  I smiled, feeling the energy with me, knowing that I was connected to it all.  I breathed in a few more times, enjoying the moment.  When I opened my eyes again, I looked to the river, and again I saw fish.  This time there were four different little schools of tiny minnows, swimming close to the surface, feeding off bugs who were unfortunate enough to land near them.  It was incredible - after all this time of never seeing any fish, here I ask to see them as a sign that I was not alone, and there they were.

*****

When people start to open their mind and soul to the Universe around them (to God/religion/spirituality), very often phenomenons begin to happen which will have some people labeling "paranormal", and others to just ignore and pretend it didn't happen.  I have also been an open person, and throughout the years I seem to go through periods where things happen to me more often than not.  One of these happenings is hearing voices that are in my head - but outside of mind, if you can grasp that.  There was one period in time where this was happening so often I began to wonder if I had brought a spirit home with me on one of my paranormal investigations.  It has been a while since this has happened, but it just did Tuesday morning.  I was laying in bed, and had turned off my alarm, but kept my eyes closed, thinking I'd get up in a couple seconds.  I fell asleep.  I needed to get up early that morning because I had to be at work early.  The next thing I know, I heard a male voice seemingly yell right in to my ear "BECKY!!"  It was so loud that it scared me and set my heart racing.  I sat up straight and looked around, wondering if it was my husband.  But he was long gone, having already left for work.  I realized then that I'd fallen asleep with my alarm clock off, and dreaded looking at the time.  Only two minutes had gone by.

Through intuition, meditation, and spiritual readings I have discovered that one of my spirit guides (I have two) is male.  He is my main guide, the one whose presence I often feel.  I believe it was he who screamed in my ear to wake me up. 

On a side note, my other guide is female.  She is younger, childlike, and I believe it is her whose voice I always catch on my EVP records (I always have a young girl's voice on all my investigations - but that's another post, for another time).

*****

And finally for tonight's post, something that recently happened, that I didn't even really realize until I started writing this and had looked back at my Solar Eclipse Intentions List.  I had not looked at this list since I wrote it back in May.  The first thing on the it is Health.  I am a drinking smoker, and it's something I've always wanted to give up.  I've also always talked about exercising more, but aside from walking my dog every day, my workouts are very sporadic.  Earlier last month I had a scare with some weird head and vision issues.  I went to the doctor to find that my optic nerves are swollen.  I am still in the process of ruling things out and getting formal diagnosis, but right now my doctors believed that I have IIH (idiopathic intracranial hypertension).  While it is a relatively rare affliction and little is known about it, studies have shown that if weight is lost in those that are overweight, the pressure will abate and symptoms regress.  That was all I needed to hear.  Since then I have quit smoking, stopped drinking (only because drinking was starting to make me get instant headaches - plus when you're a drinking smoker, eliminating the catalyst is a good way to quit), and I've been working out every day.  Even though I am scared of what is going on, I am happy that Health has been brought to the forefront of my mind, and I'm using that energy to assist with my goals.

And this morning when I was laying in bed, trying to will myself to get out of bed, I looked at the clock and saw that it was 5:55am.  5-5-5 is an angelic number said to signify changes in your life.  I believe it was right on cue.

*****

For those that stuck with me to the end here, thank you for reading!  I hope that my sharing some of these experiences has helped you in some way.

Stormily Yours, With Love ~
B*

Wacky Hangers and a Shadow Man... the start of a Paranormal Investigator

I have always been fascinated by the paranormal.  The first books I can remember reading were always horror themed.  I grew up the youngest of four girls, and with that came a sister who would allow me to watch scary movies with her, with the stipulation that I must cover my eyes at the truly scary parts (nevermind that I could still hear what was going on...) and if I did not cover my eyes to her liking, she would add her hands to the coverage.

At some point in time I became convinced that the house we grew up in was haunted.  My parents built that house in 1979 or 1980 - just shortly before I graced the world with my presence.  It was a lake house built in the then vacation community of Lake Holiday, Somonauk, Illinois.  The land had at one time been inhabited by the Fox tribe of Native Americans.  We all know the fate of Native American's in our country, and over the years the land was taken over by farmers, and then by industrious investors who decided to carve out a lake between two creeks.  Back when I lived there Lake Holiday still had numerous plots of vacant land.  Trees were everywhere.  My nature loving parents refused to cut down the forest that surrounded our home, and we were fortunate enough to have a large house built on top of a steep embankment that sloped down to the lake.  The result was a gorgeous house set back from the road, encased by a thick crop off trees with a long... LONG wooden staircase hugging the slope down to the lake.

There is no gruesome history to my home.  It was built by my father on land that had stood vacant after being farmland for years.  One day my sister had come up to the house with a strange, very distinctly shaped rock she'd found down by the lake.  Upon examination by my family, they declared it an Indian arrowhead.  It was a prized position in my mind.  A few years later I had found that arrowhead again, tucked away among the treasures displayed in my Mother's China cabinet.  I set out to find an arrowhead of my own.  Having been in the midst of an obsession with archaeology, I decided to take my Mom's garden trowel and start digging around the house for arrowheads.  Much to my family's amazement, after several digs I actually did come across something.  It wasn't an arrowhead, but it was an oddly shaped rock, and when you put it in your hand it fit the palm perfectly, with an indentation for a thumb and a sharp, pointed tip.  I believe, along with my parents and even later a junior high school science teacher, that I'd found a tool that had been used to carve hide from animals.

Now, I am not going to say that the happenings in my house were from Native American spirits.  But anyone who has studied these wonderfully amazing peoples know that they were deeply connected to our Earth's spiritual realm, and I don't think that connection should be taken lightly.

When I was very young I had an "imaginary" friend.  Her name was Candy.  I never "saw" Candy, but I always "felt" her around.  I know that she was older, and I always had the impression that she had dark, curly hair.  Candy always felt very real to me, and despite the times that I would flush her down the toilet because she upset me, I along with my family and friends "acknowledged" her.  Maybe they, too, felt her presence, on a less intense level.

The real fun started around the time I was 8 years old.  By this time my oldest sister had moved out, and with her nest flying went my closest in age sister to her occupy her old room.  I was left with the biggest bedroom to myself.  We had two twin beds in there, and I would switch between the two to sleep in.  One day I was sitting on the one that was closest to the closet.  I was either reading or coloring, one of the two, when I heard a noise coming from the closet.  I was not a nervous child, and did not scare easily.  That was about to change.  When I opened the closet doors to investigate, I was met with the hangers - complete with clothes on them - whipping wildly back and forth.  It wasn't until I realized that they weren't stopping that I got scared.  I grabbed my pillow and blanket and since my parent's bedroom door was closed, I went to the next room available - the hallway bathroom that we girls all shared.  I was found in there the next morning by my sister, who went for my Mom.  No one believed my hanger story, of course, and my Mom attributed it to a nightmare.  And by the way - to this day I STILL find the most comforting room a bathroom.  Ask my husband... he will occasionally wake up to find me missing from the bed and asleep on the bathroom floor.

It took a bit for me to sleep comfortably in that room again, and I don't believe I slept in the bed next to the closet again for years.  Things were quiet in the house after that, until one night the footsteps started.  I heard them coming up and down the stairs, but they weren't the heavy footfalls of adults, and it wasn't the soft, inconsistent creaking of a settling house.  It was.. well, footsteps.  I had a friend over once when we heard them, and she - being more fearless than I at that point - whipped open the door to the bedroom to stare down the stairs.... nothing was there.  She closed the door, we turned on the lights and spent the hours playing Legos until finally passing out from exhaustion.

About this time my sister started having nightmares.  One night she woke up from a nightmare to claim that she'd seen a shadow pass through the walls towards her bed.  She has always been an artist - in fact, two of my sisters were gifted with the ability to draw, and my oldest and myself the love of written word - and she had drawn the image of what she'd seen.  It was a dark, featherlike mass with a face in the middle.  It was years later that I came across the image of a Celtic "tree man," and that is what it resembled.  After drawing it and us talking, she didn't ever see it again, and I believe that her nightmares ceased.

Aside from the crazy hangers and the footsteps, and my sister's shadow, not much happened after that, except for the occasional feeling of a presence around.  My parent's eventually divorced and we moved from my beloved lakefront home.  I moved in with my Mom and sister to a townhouse in Elburn. 

By this time I was a full fledged teenager, and my love of paranormal intensified.  I had purchased a "Psychic Circle" board from Spencer's Gifts one day, on a whim.  I bought it because I'd always wanted a spirit board, but did not like the negative connotations that a Ouija board brought.  My Psychic Circle board was wholly positive, complete with a guide book that insisted on protecting yourself and fellow users with the loving and protective energy of White light.  My sisters, my friends and I would bring out the board often to play, trying to use it as a medium to connect with beings that were not on our plane.  One day I connected with a male spirit who named himself David (let's just forget the fact that years later I met the man who became my husband, also named David).  This spirit would frequent our sessions often over the years.

After bringing the Psychic Circle into the home, things started happening.  I remember one day sitting on my beanbag chair in my room, reading, when I felt a distinct presence... something was staring at me.  I looked up and my closet door was cracked.  Thinking the feeling was coming from that, I got up and closed the door.  When I sat back down I could not shake the feeling, so I left the room and went downstairs to watch TV.

I was blessed to have a Mother who absolutely loved animals, and as such we've always had dogs and cats.  One such kitty that my oldest sister brought home, Peaches, completely bonded to me.  That cat was my heart, for years.  Anywhere I was, she was.  In the townhouse I started to notice that she would suddenly stare off at places, for reasons I could not specify.  My friends noted it too.  Even my husband, back when we were first dating, has a story of being at my house one night, when it was just the two of us home.  He was downstairs watching TV, Peaches on his lap, waiting for me to get out of the shower.  Peaches did one of her sudden head jerks and stared up the stairway at the landing.  Dave says he's never had such an unnerving feeling, like he was being watched.


Truly, the townhouse was where I had one of the most intense experiences in my life.  I had been sleeping in my room, when something woke me up.  I had left my computer on, and the soft glow of the monitor in the corner had thrown me off - I didn't know where I was.  I thought that I was in Dave's house, sleeping in his living room.  I closed my eyes and tried to fall back asleep, and as the fog began to clear I realized that I was in my own room, in my own bed.  The thought comforted me, and just as I was settling down again, I felt something.  Someone was watching me.  I opened my eyes to face a shadow man, standing at the side of my bed, staring down at me.  I have never been more shocked in my entire life.  I literally gasped out loud, and did the only thing I could think of - I was 20 years old at the time, but I grabbed my blanket and threw it over my head, squeezing my eyes tightly shut, thinking that if I can't see him, he can't see me.  I did this for a few seconds before I realized what I was doing.  I remembered that I was an adult, and that I was probably just imagining things, having been so disoriented from waking up moments before.  So, I pulled the covers back from my head.  The shadow man was still there.  I looked at him, and he looked at me, and I felt almost chagrin from him - almost like he was embarrassed to have startled me, and he began to fade away, back toward the mirror that had been on the wall, directly opposite from my bed.

After that I waited a bit, then ran downstairs to the kitchen where my cell phone had been charging.  I picked it up, thinking to call Dave, knowing that it was very late and that I'd likely wake his Dad up.  When I picked up the phone, I saw that there was a missed call and a voicemail.  It was Dave.  He'd called me  before going to bed, and left a voicemail telling me Good Night.  It was all I needed to hear, at the time.  I listened to his recorded voice, and willfully went back upstairs to sleep.  I never saw the shadow man again.

I took my Psychic Circle with me when I moved out of the townhouse and in with my Dad to attend college, but I only used it maybe a couple of times.  Dave actually hates the thing, and when we bought our own townhouse, he refused to even let me bring it in to the house.  It is somewhere in our garage now.  In the eight years that I moved out of my Dad's, the Psychic Circle was used once, at a friend's house, for a Halloween party.  We had a weird "coincidence" with some barking dogs, but that was it.

I have not had any paranormal happens like that since I moved out on my own.  Now my paranormal happenings occur on paranormal investigations.  In the mid-2000's my Dad decided to invest in his hobby, and started purchasing "ghost hunting" equipment.  Over the years he has collected quite the arsenal.  We have been on several investigations since then, and while I haven't ever experienced personally the "shadow man" since then, I certainly have had my share of incidents. And so, these are the happenings that helped shape the paranormal lover that I am today, and my theories on what I have experienced have evolved over the years, based on different experiences.

But that is another blog, for another day....

♥

My Peaches - love you forever, baby girl - see you again someday!

Recommended Veggie Dish: Mexican Lasagna

"Mexican" and "Lasagna".  When I first saw those two words forming a vegetarian recipe I thought I was seeing things.  Who ever would have thought that someone combined my two favorite things into a meatless entree?

I was skeptical at first.  I just didn't think that Mexican and Italian flavors could ever happily marry.  But, a couple weeks ago I was struggling to find a dinner to make and happened upon this one on my Pinterest board.  I casually brought it up one night to my husband, thinking he would side with me and immediately brush it off as crazy.  When he piped back that it not only sounded good but that the combination was intriguing, put my bandanna on and declared the challenge accepted.

I mean, really... when faced with this picture, how could you not?

Picture and Recipe from Annie's Eats blog - http://annies-eats.com

This was most definitely a successful dinner.  Tonight was actually the second time in a couple weeks that I've made it.  It's so easy to put together - for this nights rendezvous I seeded and diced up a jalapeno pepper and it took about 20min total to chop, dice, mix and layer.  I was singing while I put everything together and in between my mash up of Enya songs I accidentally put in too much cumin.  I stopped dead, suddenly remembering something I'd heard before about how too much cumin could kill a dish... but then I concluded that since I'd added the jalapeno it would counter the cumin.  I have no idea if that logic even makes sense, but the end result was most definitely not killed.

I put it in the oven for 40min, then another 5min with the foil removed, but you could probably get my with less time.  I didn't use a lot of cheese this time in it either and it was still very good.  Dave also had the idea to use some green salsa as a condiment with it and that added a flavorful touch.

So go on - try it, I dare you!  You'll be happily surprised!!  My other favorite aspect of this dish is its one that is even more delicious the next day, after the flavors have had a chance to meld together.

Now I just need to get the courage to try my recipe for Vegan Enchilada Casserole...  It's basically the same concept, yet the farfalle pasta instead of lasagna noodles is really throwing me for a loop...

♥

Let It Go

Let it go.

Three words.  Such a simple phrase.  To the point, easy to understand the direct implication.  Let it go.....

Yet in action, it can be rather difficult to do.  Why?  Why is it hard to let go of the things that no longer serve us, that torment us, that weigh us down in sadness?  Why do we hold on to these things so fiercely, like badges of toxic praise?

I consider myself a generally happy person.  Throughout the years I have learned to dismiss certain feelings, to accept certain truths, and to learn from mistakes.  I am much more at peace now than I was two, three, five years ago.  But yet, I still have moments of sadness.  I still have days where all I want to do is stay curled up in bed with the blankets around me, not acknowledging anything except my dreams that take me away to far off places.  My life is not perfect, by any means.  But I am here.  I am alive.  I have a home to shelter me, a husband who loves me, family and friends I adore, and animals that are my soul's companions.  I am healthy and whole.  And yet still, these moments come, and I feel powerless to stop them.

Until now.

A few days ago life brought me back to Gina, the Angel communicator I'd worked with before.  I decided to have an Angel reading done on myself.  One of the main themes of this reading was letting things go that no longer serve, emotionally speaking.  My angels and guides were letting me know that they are there, always, to help with this task.  My first thought when this was brought up was that I wasn't sure what it meant.... I AM happy, I have nothing I'm holding on to.  But the immediate thought after that was  Oh really?  Miss Grudge Queen?  Miss Never Forget?  Ah, yes.  There they are.  There are those little nuggets of the past.  After that it was as if a flood gate opened.  I started remembering things I had not thought of in years.  This also brought me back to when I had energy work done in the fall of last year.  It was the first time I'd ever done anything like it.  During the session Deirdre would say more than once, "you need to let that go... why are you holding on to that?  just let it go...".  I have to admit at the time I had no idea what she was talking about.  Now I do.

I believe that my issues are two-fold.  Not only am I holding on to these toxic emotional bombs,  but I am also very sensitive to others energy.  If I am around people who are negative, I feel emotionally drained, fatigued, and sometimes I will even start to feel the symptoms of a panic attack.  When this first started happening I had no idea what was going on.  When I started to understand, I never really looked into it, and as a result I never knew how to protect myself from it.  I always thought it was just something that was a part of me and that I had to live with.  Only recently have I started looking more in to the world of energy, and only just recently I started learning how to shield myself - by way of it popping up over and over again in various things I've been reading.

Throughout the Angel reading the phrase let it go, let it go, let it go kept reverberating in the back of my mind.  Since then it has almost been beating me over the head.  In random conversations with people, news reports, on the radio, even on Facebook and Pinterest.  I've been seeing and hearing LET IT GO everywhere.  

I do not believe in coincidence; I believe that everything happens for a reason.  When we start to notice things over and over, they are being brought to our attention for a purpose.  If we don't listen to them, the forces that be will take more drastic approaches, such as what has recently happened to me.  Even tonight, I started to write this entry, and then had second thoughts.  I flipped to Facebook - the page started scrolling through the Newsfeed and landed on this post:  "Pssst.... Hey you.  Yeah I mean you.  The angels have seen you struggling with something.  The angels say it's over..."  (I actually re-posted that one, since it so totally hit the spot for me).

And so, you win Universe, I hear you... I'm paying attention.  I will start to let it go.  I will start to shield myself from others energy and remember that life is about balance.  I only ask for your help, guidance, and Love.

♥


*** This is a very personal entry for me... I had debated on publishing it.  But in the end, I felt compelled to do so.  I hope that it helps another. ***

Recommended Veggie Dish: Quinoa & Black Beans Stuffed Peppers

I have this strange obsession with quinoa (keen-wah).  I'm not quite sure why it's developed the way that it has, considering I've only had it three times in my life.  But early last year when I was researching protein options for a low-carb lifestyle, I ran across this strangely named, ancient seed-grain-whatevertheheck.

Quinoa is packed with protein, and a complex carbohydrate.  It's so versatile - I've seen recipes for it's use in breakfast dishes (replacing oatmeal), pilafs, and salads.  It starts off this tiny little seed-like grain, and after cooking (boiling like rice), it sprouts this little curl that I have read is the germ.  You can also eat quinoa raw (replacement cornmeal in recipes) or you can encourage the sprout by just soaking in cold water for a few hours.  Quinoa.... healthy, protein packed, and cute!

Tonight was actually the first night that I cooked quinoa.  I've had a bag of it in the pantry for a little while, trying to gear up the nerve to cook it.  It's not hard at all, but you have to rinse it first and that's what was intimidating me.  It's so tiny that I knew it would be disastrous if I tried using any of my strainers - including the wire mesh ones I own.  Then I came across someone's suggestion of using an oil-splatter guard... GENIUS!!!

I have so many recipes involving quinoa.  This week I'm feeling Mexican-cuisine inspired, my absolute favorite before turning veg, and so I decided to pull up some Mexican flavored veggie dishes.  I chose to use this one from Emily and Micheal's "One Lovely Blog" (they are just the cutest, by the way), with this picture serving as the catalyst:

Photo from http://www.onelovelylife.com/?p=4854

I don't have a picture of them, but I also served a Southwestern-inspired side of Zucchini "fries" that turned out to be absolutely fantastic; I was very pleased!

For the stuffed peppers, I followed Emily's recipe of cooking the quinoa with a rough diced onion.  Once that was cooked I followed her method of throwing it in a bowl, with a can of drained and rinsed black beans, a can of diced tomatoes with green chilis (along with the liquid), and about a third of a can of a tomato & green chili sauce.  I forgot to add salt, and I never cook with black pepper because I don't like it.  I actually had cilantro, but forgot that as well (darn memory).  I poured the rest of the sauce into a baking dish, put in the pepper halves - I loved halving them instead of just cutting off the tops, by the way, great idea - then spooned in the quinoa mix and topped with a little freshly shredded Monterrey/Colby and Sharp Cheddar cheese.  I lightly covered the dish with aluminum foil, then put them in a 375 degree oven with the timer set for 30min.

Meanwhile, I started my Zucchini fries.  I cut a medium-sized zucchini into spears and put them into a medium sized bowl, then tossed in a little canola oil (enough to coat), some seasoned salt, chili pepper, and ground coriander.  Mixed that all together so it was coated and layered on to a baking sheet, covering with a little Monterrey/Colby cheese.  When the timer for the peppers hit 20min I popped the zucchini in.

The smells coming from my kitchen were amazing.  I had a really good feeling about this one.

When the timer beeped zero I checked the zucchini and deemed it needing just a few more minutes, took the foil off the peppers and then left everything in the oven for another 5min.  After letting everything cool off a little bit, I plated dishes for both my husband and I, and took the first intrepid bite...

DELICIOUS.

Quinoa has such an interesting texture - it's like grainy yet tender all at the same time.  The spice from the chilies in the sauce and the chilies themselves added just the right amount of heat.  The flavor was just spot on Mexican, so comforting for me.  The peppers were a definitely win.  But the zucchini fries.... they were a knocked-outta-da-park HOME RUN! 

Even better, the meal - which really was a culinary stretch for my husband - was a keeper in his eyes as well.  When the man asks if there's more zucchini and goes for seconds on the peppers, that's a meal well cooked.

**Note - this meal as stated in the recipe made A TON.  I've got about half of the quinoa mixture left over, so I threw it in a ziplock baggie and froze it.  Hoping that it holds well for next use.**

***Next time I'm going to try my hand at my own enchilada-style sauce, and since fresh is always better than canned, I'll chop up my own tomatoes and chilies.  Can't wait!***