Growing up with a health nut of a mom, and a recently turned vegetarian, nutrition has always fascinated me. I find myself often in the kitchen, mixing spices with a little love to create the perfect recipe. When I discovered my love for cooking at a young age, I found myself quickly hunting down the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipes and creating masterpieces of dishes for family dinners. My most recent endeavor is my banana bread feat walnuts and flax seeds. 

Like I mentioned earlier, I recently became a vegetarian. (I still eat fish on occasion, which I guess makes me a pescatarian but do labels really matter?) My first seven and something months were tough. I was living on campus which meant a lot of baked potatoes, pizza, salads and the occasional vegetarian meal the school cafeteria could come up with. Breakfast was my favorite because it usually featured staples such as oatmeal or waffles with lots of toppings including yogurt, peanut butter, fruit, chia seeds, etc. I survived the dorms and the school food and I’ve managed to eat healthy (with the exception of a late night pizza). Here’s a few tips on eating healthy with a budget. 

1. Don’t buy more than you need too. (Usually $6-8 of vegetables will last me two weeks). This varies from cabbage, Brussel sprouts, kale, carrots, beets, sweet potatoes, etc. Depending on the season, and what sounds good I buy different things. My fridge contains cabbage and kale right now. 
2. Always buy in bulk, if possible. You may think you want that two pound bag of carrots now but if you are like me, who constantly changes her mind on what sounds good, a few carrots will go a long ways. 
3. Sales, sales, sales. We are trained to find clothes on budget, so why not do the same with food? Buying ingredients from scratch is an easy way to stay on a budget because it’s usually cheaper and ingredients will keep longer to allow you to experiment with different recipes. 

You don’t have to love kale to be healthy. Finding snacks you love, (like banana bread with flax seed) can be healthy, and easy to create on a budget. 

Healthy Banana Bread

        preheat oven to 350 fahrenheit. use large mixing bowl and wooden spoon. 

1 cup of unbleached white flour

1 cup of wheat flour

1 teaspoon of baking soda

pinch of sea salt

        mix flour, baking soda and salt together. create center with wooden spoon. 

½ cup butter, room temperature 

¾ brown sugar

        beat butter and sugar together in center of flour mixture

2 eggs 

2 overripe bananas 

½ cup of milled flax seed

½ cup chopped walnuts 

½ cup of coconut oil, melted 

        beat in eggs and bananas. stir in flax seed, walnuts and coconut oil. line pan with coconut oil and bake for 1 hour. 

Growing up in a small town, I learned there are three forms of entertainment.  Skiing, mountain drives with rock & roll, and getting high. My best friend, Henry, and I spent our days dreaming bigger than the big sky, jacked up on caffeine, our hearts beating to the rhythm of his little Toyota truck. Small town, going nowhere kids get wasted on last nights Bud Light as they beat the morning sun to their construction job. Age 18, I wake up on my best friend’s couch. His dad’s already awake, making us coffee. Henry stumbles from downstairs, passes me a pipe and mumbles something about a shower. The morning ritual. Forty five minutes later, we stuff ourselves into our winter coats and load my skis and his snowboard in the back of his RAV4. I run back inside because I forgot my water bottle and headphones, the necessary items for a day at Lost Trail. His mom already has NPR on and hands me two Broadway Bagels from the oven. She’s already buttered them. I tell her “I love you”  as I do double take, making sure Henry didn’t forget anything. She squeezes me, stuffing Henry’s phone into my pocket (were always forgetting something) and I dash back towards the car. As the clock reads 7:45am we speed down the highway going 85, watching mildly for cops, even though you almost never get pulled over. We stop in Hamilton at McDonald’s for a burger for Henry and another coffee for me. About 30 minutes away from Lost Trail Powder Mountain, otherwise known as weekend freedom, the radio cuts out and I whip out my speaker. Bob Marley starts playing as Henry curses under his breath at the car in front of him who is flying around the corner. “Damn kids, they’re gonna fly off the side of the road.” I cringe, knowing that we’ve both seen too many accidents on this highway. It may be two lane, but the road twists and turns that even Henry and I still take it slow around the corners. Suddenly we turn right into the parking lot of Lost Trail and the high kicks in; there’s fourteen new inches of powder, and Henry and I don’t need anything besides the wind and the mountains to give us that feeling of euphoria. As we stand on top of Popcorn Rocks, staring in awe at the powder heaven below us, we both smile, because we both know this is what keeps us alive.

My landscape changed who I was. I spent my summers driving up mountain roads, cranking rock & roll, always looking for the next adventure. I lived off of movement. Skiing was the best high, but I found my freedom in those mountain roads. Skipping class to pick wildflowers while Led Zeppelin played in the background, midnight ice cream trips and river trips. Growing up next to wild mountain ranges, I spent a lot of time exploring the roaring creek beds and burned landscapes. And when there was fire in my life, I was reminded that heat helps with restoration and growth. My favorite memory was on a very windy day, one summer, maybe two or three years ago. My best friend and I hiked to the top of Mill Point, my favorite peak in the Bitterroot Selway range. I just stared at the neverending valleys and mountain ranges. Finn pointed out ski lines and suddenly this huge gust of wind came roaring up the canyon. I had never been so high. I had never felt so damn alive. I just screamed back into the wind, letting the air soak into my bones. Days like that, days of freedom, are pieces I’m going to carry with me, when stress and anxiety cloud my thoughts, I think how the mountain speaks to my soul.  

We all have that desire to be wild. Not everyone tried to find their sense of place. Most everyone just got high, because that’s what makes them feel wild. In the Bitterroot, drugs are considered a daily habit for a lot of the kids I grew up with, especially marijuana. Most teenagers you talk to in any town in the Bitterroot have the same philosophy. You don’t go to the bars because there boring and sketchy; you can go to the park, but not after 9 pm or you’ll run into cops or meth smoking teenagers. I learned that you any party you get directions to is just a two hour drive up a dirt road to some bonfire, jacked up trucks playing country music and crushed Bud Light cans everywhere.. Bud Light and Luke Bryan is not my scene. I learned that this town is meant for families with small children or anyone over the age of 50. Not to say I didn’t have good memories of my hometown (like how the stars shine at night) but as soon as I could get out, I did.

We all have a sense of place. For me, it wasn’t the ice cream shop on 2nd or the library where I spent my childhood summers. It wasn’t the bridge where I kissed the boy who smelled like cigarettes or the late night dirt road drives. My sense of place is in the mountains. Mill and Blodgett felt more like a home then rhubarb crumble and NPR. Even the empty beer bottles, overgrown by arrowleaf balsamroot; and the empty packs of yellow spirits disintegrated by the rain we had back in June gives me that sense of place. I don’t find my wild in drugs. I find my wild in the mountains. Whether I’m behind the wheel, blasting rock and roll, staring at powder heaven or listening to Mill Creek roar down the canyon, I feel free. I feel safe and jubilant.  

I grew up beside the mountain, on the mountain and because of the mountain. I found my stability and peace from the mountain. I found my spirit and my wild. I found myself.