Pistachio Shells

Since Jack was born, Andy and I have been working on eating better.  As he eats more solids, we have become more and more serious about it.  I am trying to cut out as much packaged, processed foods as possible, as well as reducing our sodium, carbohydrate, and fat intake.  I was cooking only vegetarian meals for the past few months; however, we have decided to keep cooking some meat since the best sources of complete protein are meat, eggs, dairy and nuts and seeds.  And all of those are restricted from his diet at this time and can't be introduced yet, except for meat.  The referenced article can be found here:

 http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/meat-vegetarian-protein-baby-food.htm

We have agreed to make sure that the meat we do use is: local, free-range, grass-fed, non-GMO, and antibiotic and growth hormone free.  Or at least as many of those criteria as possible.    We stopped at a butcher in Monroe and selected all of our meats while the butcher was in another room.  We didn't get to ask him all the questions we should have and found out while paying, that the meat was from Iowa.  Better than Mexico or Canada, but still.  Needless to say, that will be our only purchase from his establishment.  Thank god for the internet, though, because with some research I found this gem, the future farm of our patronage:

Jordandal Farm out of Argyle, WI.  We haven't been there yet, but an appointment to go check out the place and talk to the owners is in the very near future.   
http://www.jordandalfarm.com/index.php

And we will be participating in a CSA share with either:

Tipi Produce out of Evansille.  The photo above is one week's bounty during 2010. Yummy!!
http://www.localharvest.org/tipi-produce-M4077

or

Scotch Hill Farm out of Brodhead.  Andy went to school with the owner's children and is pulling for this one because of knowing the family.  Their CSA only runs 20 weeks, though, and the other runs 26 weeks.  Decisions, decisions. 
http://www.scotchhillfarm.com/

Anyways, the last time we went shopping, we picked up a lot of fruits and vegetables to make for Jack and I got a lot of healthy snacks for us: nuts, rice cakes, dried fruit, garbanzo beans to roast, etc.  I bought a bag of pistachio nuts in the shell and strangely enough, I stumbled across an Etsy site, ReLoved Designs, the same night and became inspired to save my seeds to do something similar.

Here is another one of her creations:

Now if I could only eat them faster.  I was doing well until I had a streak of bad nuts and now I'm a little nervous.  Anyways, check out more of her beautiful stuff on her Etsy site
http://www.etsy.com/shop/reloveddesigns?ref=pr_shop_more
or her site at http://www.reloveddesigns.com/