yes, romaine wraps can be a dessert

i know this is not going to sound like a yummy treat, but trust me, you just have to try it. its not something i thought i would enjoy, but one bite was all it took for me to be hooked! these romaine wraps are not only super simple, but they also provide an undeniably sweet, crunchy taste. enjoy!

ingredients:
whole romaine leaves
almond butter
raw (unpasturized) honey (sometimes called 'creamy honey')

spread about 1 tbsp of each the almond butter and raw honey (more or less, depending on individual taste) down the center of the romaine leaf and then roll up like a burrito.

green

i have always loved the outdoors...i love to lay in the grass and look at the stars (i was always looking for a shooting star- finally saw my FIRST when we were in africa in february- saw 3 in a row!) and admire the mountains. i love the sound of the sea and the way the sun reflects on the waves. i suppose i come by it honestly. my mom relaxes at night, when all the kids have finally gone to sleep, by sitting in the hot tub praying under the stars.

the family vacation i remember the most took place the summer after i graduated from high school. the whole fam (as it existed at that time; we've added two since then) flew to utah where we rented a van and spent the next 3 weeks driving across to california and then up the coast all the way into canada and then back down through montana and idaho and back into utah. we saw yellowstone national park, the giant sequioas, the amazing pacific coastline, banff national park, glacier national park, and the gorgeous albeit lesser known bear lake. besides the list of inside family jokes, what i remember most is the mountains... just days and days of driving through them. the city of angels soundtrack was the only music we had available in the car and since you don't get many great radio stations in the mountains, we listened to it over and over again. i still hear sarah mclachlin airily singing "in the arms of the angels" when i see the mountains.

i love nature.

and yet i grew up in a church culture that said that environmentalists were 'tree huggers' and 'liberals' (God forbid) and 'democrats' (even worse). stewardship was talked about in terms of tithing...and your time (if the preacher was being brave). but the idea of stewardship in terms of creation and how you spend your money and whether or not you had bought into the consumerism mindset was pretty much...well, never mentioned.

i was raised by great parents who lived a simple life and who didn't feel the need to keep up with the jones. we shared a lot, wore hand-me-downs, carpooled like it was our jobs, and did without a lot of things we could. i never felt deprived. i didn't care about the old cars. i didn't mind old clothes (it was so in to wear thrift store digs back in the day!) i remember the first tiime i spent $100 in one place. i was moving into my first apartment and i spent the money on things i needed, but i still called my mom crying on the phone, overwhelmed with the purchase.

when shawn and i got married, all the sudden i was no longer one of 7 people in a household and i was no longer a poor college student and i wasn't even a poor road manager. it was just the two of us with a decent income in an expensive city. somewhere along the line, $100 went from being something i cried over to something i spent without a second thought. when i wanted something, i bought it. i bought things i didn't need. sometimes i went to target just because shawn was gone and i was alone and bored. i told myself it was no big deal because i never bought expensive things. but at some point, i ended up with tons of cheap make up (i barely wear make up) and eight different kinds of shampoo all sitting half full in the shower.

i didn't really think about it much until i got pregnant. i started reading everything about babies and infant care and development. when you have nine long months to wait to meet this little person growing inside you, you get a little anxious. i coped with my impatience by reading. somwhere in all my reading, i found out just how awful disposable diapers are for the environment. not only do they take 500+ years to break down, but they are the majority of what is in landfills today. i started looking into cloth diapers and i started thinking a lot more about the way i was living,

i felt very convicted about the consumerism mindset i had adopted in recent years. i heard