Getting Ready To Go! No-Sugar Halvah Bar; Reflections on Self-Love - Body Parts #4

We're leaving here after lunch tomorrow to start our journey! And I was on the road all day yesterday. Had company for breakfast, having company for dinner, I'm trying to get everything packed and figure out all the food I'm taking - it's going to be a hectic couple of days after this. I hope I'll get to blog, on self-love at least, tomorrow and Monday, but it may not be possible.

I went back and added the photos to yesterday's post - not spectacular but maybe they add a bit, at least.

Phil's daughter is coming to dinner, and she's avoiding sugar at the moment, so I whipped this up for her (I get to have a bit of dessert too when she's on her diet!)

It's a halvah bar (guess I connected with my Mediterranean roots). The base is: 

1/3 cup sesame seeds, 

1/3 cup shredded coconut

1/3 cup golden flax meal

4 tablespoons xylitol,

2 tablespoons coconut oil,

pinch salt

couple drops water

processed until crumbing up, then pressed into loaf pan.

Topping is:

1/2 cup soaked sesame seeds,

1/2 cup water

2 tablespoons lime juice

4 tablespoons xylitol

pinch of salt

piece of vanilla bean

good dash of ceylon cinnamon

blended in Vita-Mix until smooth; then add:

1 tablespoon cacao butter

3 tablespoons coconut oil.

This was completely  off the top of my head, made within minutes of hearing that she's coming to dinner.

I hope she'll like it. Does it sound good to you?

Reflections on self-love: it's come around again! Time to reflect with gratitude and love on four more body parts. Tina asks, "What are you thankful for from your body today? Try and think of something different." I'm embarrassed that this is so hard for me - feel like I'm being a little drama queen.

I actually asked Phil for some help with choosing some loved body parts.

One suggestion of his that I liked (and wasn't x-rated!) was the little notch between my two collarbones, above my sternum, where he can sometimes see my pulse. What a great spot to pick. It is like a keystone of an arch - so many things meet there. It's also right at my throat chakra, to do with vocalization and self-expression. It's close to my thyroid, which has had such a hard time and so much mistreatment, and which is just about hanging in there with all the help and supplementation that it's getting.

OK - where else? Well, I should give my adrenals a little shoutout - they are troopers. It's probably remarkable that they work at all! As we're about to go into the stress of a long journey and being away from home, I need to make sure that I'm especially nice to them and not get tempted to push myself too hard. A good moment to remember gratitude to them.

And finally...um.... well, actually, maybe this is corny, since I've featured my eyes in an earlier 'body parts' post, but I've always liked my eyebrows! They are dark, full and straight, and give good definition to my eyesockets. At their inner tips (nearer my nose), the hairs stand up straight, and then grow horizontally for the rest. I used to enjoy looking at those vertical hairs when I was a little kid, wondering how they did it! I've never plucked them in my life. I like how they are so long and straight, whereas many people have half-moon-shaped eyebrows (which looks just fine on them).

(It was so cold this morning but then the sun came out - Phil took this at lunchtime: the sun is in my eyes and you can see my slight green smoothie mustache!)

Fall Coming! Reflections on Self-Love - Rest; and Old Blogging Locations

I'm in town - the Big Town, Anchorage - got rides to and from my appointment thanks to Craigslist.

I'm at the Anchorage Barnes and Noble - which is, incidentally, a member of the list of places at which I'd blogged before getting internet at home. The connection is slow and I'm not sure when my ride is coming, so I'm going to just write now and add pix later so I'm not caught waiting.

First - I mentioned the herbs I was drying and apologized for no photo - silly me, I had taken photos! Here they are!

Clockwise from top left - raspberry leaves, jalapenos (bargain produce, not from garden!) yarrow flowers, and lovage leaves and seeds. Lovage is a kind of wild celery that grows on the beach - herbal, intense and aromatic.

And here are arugula seed-pods

We have been so lucky so far this fall here in AK: thus far, we've had beautiful fall colors and no windstorms. Here's the hillside of Homer with some fall colors maybe discernible :)

And you can see golden birch leaves behind Phil here:

 Last year, just about the very day the colors turned, a couple huge windstorms blew all the leaves down in a day or two!

But after a glassy-calm day yesterday, last night the wind came in. Phil and I got up at 5am - way earlier than even my early start on the road required - because the wind was howling and wuthering and thumping. It's not just blowing down leaves - whole branches too! Walking around in Anchorage after my appointment, I was literally almost blown over several times! Must have looked like a comedy act, trying to walk along...

I was trying to get a picture of all the leaves and berries being blown down...

Reflections on Self-Love - ah, rest - so important! Tina reminds us that both our minds and bodies need rest - that in order to have the well full, we need to have empty time too. She asks, "How will you rest today?" I love this invitation to commit to that. It's so easy to think that any second that's not accounted for can be filled with more activity. Only recently and slowly have I begun to learn that I need slots of time every day with nothing in them. Especially with my recent body image worries, I've been pushing myself to exercise more, and didn't sleep well last night due to muscle soreness. It's also getting cold here - didn't reach 40 degrees F until well after 9am, and I think I'm more tense when I'm cold.

So, I'm not putting the photos up here yet, and might not even manage to do so until tomorrow. And when I've written this, soon after, I'll go get myself a hot herbal tea and warm myself from inside. And if I can snag one of the comfy armchairs here, I'll lay back in one for a while. Even if I can't, I will sit back and 'rest my eyes' some.

Hope you are having a restful Friday!

Garden Drawing to a Close; Reflections on Self-Love: Out of the Comfort Zone

Almost the end of the week, almost time for us to fly away! And I'm going to Anchorage and back tomorrow, so busy busy… I'm so glad that people are liking the look of my no-sugar energy bars with 'chia-sweet.' If you search for that tag, I've actually done a ton of posts on them, gradually developing it. I'm glad that it's something that seems to work well for me, and hope that it might help someone else too.

Tina asks, "What challenges have you overcome? What goals have you achieved? Let them empower you today!"

Comfort Zone? Trust me, they're all relative! I'm married to a guy who likes to tackle some of the world's roughest seas in a patched-up rubber boat!

And to carry it overland when the sea runs out. And I join him sometimes.

I live in a cold northerly clime with no running water and I don't like to be cold. I used to live in Hawaii, sometimes with no running water or electricity, sometimes with no bug-screen, surrounded by voracious mosquitoes and centipedes, and nigh-lethal nematode-carrying slugs. You get used to it. I've worked bees with no protective equipment at all, and then I've worked bees so aggressive that I was stung all over even through protective clothing.

Humans are so supremely adaptable!

But I have to refer back to my post about persistence and setting goals from last week, in which I told my story about coconut tree climbing, and how it wasn't really an appropriate goal for me. I also think that for me at least, a lot of the 'living rough' that I've done has bordered on disrespectful of my body. Starvation's an obvious example, but so is living in a situation where you can't get cleaned up easily, or have an ant's nest under your bed, or don't have any light to read or write after dark.

My biggest lesson, though, has been that being around people who are not uplifting or kind or willing to work on themselves is not a good kind of 'out of your comfort zone' to be. No matter how kindhearted and well-meaning you are, perseverating in a situation where you are not valued and appreciated is not a recipe for progress nor happiness nor self-love!

I feel so grateful that now I am living with so much love around me, with a small number of friends whom I love and who appreciate me in return.

A smaller challenge that I feel some pride in overcoming today: remember my confession that sometimes I don't take best care of all my fermentation and harvesting projects? Well, today I tidied up all the yarrow flowers, lovage flowers and seeds and raspberry leaves that I had drying, before they lose their potency.(Sorry there's no photo of those.) And then this afternoon, I checked my kraut concoctions and got them covered and refrigerated. It's exciting to be able to think that I'll be eating from the garden even after the ground is all frozen. Proud of myself that I respected myself enough to take care of these concoctions, rather than letting them slide.

Cauliflower kraut-

- and chard and kale krauts in the back there!

Lol for the butter in the foreground - the food that I probably have the strongest aversion to of any food in existence, but I buy it for all the baking I do for Phil and our friends…

What's in the basket today? 

Well, the bottom of it's full of more raspberry leaves to dry - you can't see those. There's a whole bunch of chives, some of which I'll dry, some we'll eat fresh and some will go in kraut or pesto. There's a few sweet little broccoli florets. Back right, a bunch of curly parsley. Front right, stinging nettles to go in my smoothies for my journey tomorrow. Front left, a whole lot of arugula to be made into pesto with the parsley and chives. And a couple little lettuces outside the basket too. Ahhh - enjoy it while we can!

Reflections on Self-Love - Forgiving Oneself; No-Sugar Cookies

Ahhh, self-forgiveness - what a crucial element of self-love! Busy again today (run-up to going out of town, lots to finish up, lots to prepare) but I wanted to just check in with a few words in response to this.

I think it has to tie in with my recent observations about needing to let go of the past and future and be in the present, which is the only place that anything can be accomplished. It's a horrible habit, to dredge up every error and shortcoming that is in the past and hold it up in the present like a glaring piece of ugliness, when it isn't even real anymore! I also know, having been a teacher, that it would be a pretty terrible teaching style if you want someone to make progress - why focus on the failures?

Tina asks, "Is there anything you have trouble letting go? Are there any ways you try to "punish" yourself?" Heck, yes. Aside from the whole behavioral element of feeding oneself right, and getting out of 'fat talk,' which I have to work on every single day, I punish myself for needing special foods! I mentioned that I had at one point tried to make one meal-plan work for both Phil and me. Instead of just dismissing it as a bad idea when it didn't work out, I beat up on myself for having these extra needs, as if his needs were 'right' and mine were 'wrong!' Needs don't have a right and wrong - they just are. Sure, it would be more convenient if I could just 'fit in' with whatever meat and bread and potatoes when we go to the farm, but I'm choosing to feel glad that I can make better choices for myself and hopefully not offend or interfere with anyone else.

I also love to be very careful in my speech, but sometimes I get so enthusiastic that my tongue carries me away and I say something that wasn't meant or that comes out wrong. It seems like I am always far more traumatized by that than anyone else is, even the person to whom I said the inappropriate thing - it dogs me and haunts me.  I'm excited to be putting this out there to let go of it, to live in the present instead!

So, making these no-sugar energy bar-type things to take to Oregon is part of acknowledging my own needs; part of self-love.

This one, just made this morning, was a cup of chia-sweet made from warm water, 2 teaspoons white stevia, 1 teaspoon lemon extract and 7 tablespoons chia seeds. Mixed together with about a cup of shredded coconut, 3-4 tablespoons coconut oil and 4-5 tablespoons flax meal. Just a  little bit of coconut flour at the end to hold it all together.

And this one, which is all dried now, was a cup of chia-sweet made with warm water, 2 teaspoons stevia, 4 drops chocolate flavor extract. Mixed with about a cup of very fine-shredded coconut, 2 tablespoons (soaked and dried) sesame seeds, a sprinkling of poppy seeds.

What is self-forgiveness about for you?

Reflections on Self-Love - Purpose; Two Outings, Two Dinners - Homer Events

We had guests over tonight - a lot of fun - but now it's past 9pm here, which means it's way late everywhere else. I was doing my work and fixing the dinner all day but had my photos uploaded and ready to go, and have been percolating this post in my head, so hopefully I'll keep it brief but have it make sense.

Today's reflection on self-love is about a sense of purpose - recognizing our own uniqueness and connecting with our role in the world. Tina asks, "In what ways does your life have purpose?"

I'll come back to this at the end of the post, but it's been a very perplexing question for me at times. I have struggled with the lack of clarity over whether I'm at liberty to create/recognize my own life purpose, or if my purpose emerges as I'm tugged along by events. Today, I felt like working on my translating job and preparing a dinner for guests were parts of my purpose, but Phil had invited the guests, whom I didn't know very well, and my translating job is translating a dictionary, so parameters are tight!

Be that as it may, while I gave up trying to fix 'compromise' foods that would work for both of us a long time ago, and now fix wholesome but regular omnivore food for Phil and any guests, always with a big salad with  good dressing on it, I know that part of my purpose is to feed myself so that I'm at my most functional.

Here's part of the experiment: I actually went out both Saturday night and Sunday night. Neither time did we get home that late, but two evenings out in a row is a lot for me - I'm not much good come evening. I had two very different dinners those two nights and there were definite results and consequences.

On Saturday night, I went to hear Corrina Delgado, a performance poet from Anchorage. I love going to poetry events and hearing what other people are doing. I loved that she performed everything from memory and used rhyme and rhythm to make it a very oral (and aural) medium. A fascinating meld of hip-hop-type rhythm, intense confessional and mythological comparisons.

I kind of wanted a smoothie beforehand but couldn't be bothered to make it (tired already), so had this instead;

It's soaked wakame, pickled beets, peeled and chopped-up broccoli stalks, broccoli flowers, cilantro, some coconut kefir whey, curry powder, bit of avocado. With some romaine lettuce on the left and some coconut kefir (which I promise I'll explain soon) on the right.

Then, on Sunday night, I had this for dinner

(smoothie with nettles, mint, cilantro, kefir whey, herbal tea, flax, chia gel, slice of avocado, spirulina, chlorella) (oh yeah, and the end of the spoon in my hand when I was taking the photo! No photoshopping here, lol)

before we went out to be part of the basket-burning party.

Above is how it was the day before...

On the evening itself, there were a couple hundred people there, and it was festooned and garlanded. It is an 'impermanent art exhibit' - a monster basket built/woven from local materials. People were invited to add notes saying what they wanted to release.

The sun came out for the only time that day, just in order to set, which was the signal to set the basket on fire! There was lots of drumming and dancing.

And as it got darker, the flames of the basket mounted higher!

It was magical - very social and community-feeling but also intimate. There were folks spinning poi, some of them very good (couldn't get decent pictures in the dark). And then there were these amazing fire-lanterns - like a parachute in reverse, or a miniature hot-air balloon. They were lit and released, and they went up and up and up until you could no longer see them. So cool...

And the verdict on the two dinners? Well, beautiful though the first one was, I was definitely 'aware' of it in an uncomfortable kind of way while listening to the poetry performance. Whereas on Sunday night, I felt lightly but well-nourished. I was wiped out at the end, because we had a hike to get to the gathering and then stood for a long time, but my guts were no problem at all.

So much gratitude for the Vita-Mix! I talked myself out of smoothies with all kinds of rationalizations for ages - blenders are expensive, they pull too much power, have to wash them, etc... And then, when I was trying to make the same food for both Phil and me, he abhors the texture of smoothies and blended food - he'd rather have something to crunch on. Good enough for him, good enough for me, I thought. Well, that was foolish. Phil has an extremely strong digestion, and I have the opposite. There's probably a reason why I'm drawn to smoothies and love them: I tend to feel better afterwards. Now, when I start up inner talk about 'shouldn't use the blender,' I remind myself that making smoothies is being loving to myself.

Is smoothie or salad more self-loving to you?

Back to self-love and a sense of purpose: I mentioned above the dichotomy between the feeling of choosing and connecting to life's purpose and that of having it emerge as you're tugged along by all the different things that bump up against you. For me, I feel that perhaps both are valid. My purpose in any given moment or situation may be somewhat governed by the situation: but I will have a special role and response that won't be just like anyone else's. Furthermore, as I'm bumped around by all these events, I am compelled to write about them. I feel that my poetry writing is my truest life purpose and that part of what I need to do is to fulfill my given role in a situation to the best of my (not anyone else's) ability, and then I need to go do my writing!

How does sense of purpose relate to self-love for you?

Heading to the Farm - The View From Here/Up For This Week - Communication and Preconceptions - Reflections on Self-Love: One Life

The View From Here

We love our beach hikes! I've shared before Phil's avid harvesting of seaweeds as fertilizer for our garden beds - 

- and today I picked up some dulse from the tideline, hoping to dry and eat it.

Something that makes us sad when we hike on the beach is seeing the stuff that gets dumped there. Anything that my Herculean husband can lift, we haul out…

… but this gutted-out ATM machine was just too darn heavy!

It's getting quite cold here now, and we have less than a week left before we go down to Oregon to stay on the family farm, visit Phil's mom and family, help out with harvest, firewood, etc. 

I'm worried absolutely sick.

When I first went to the farm with Phil, I'd been living on communal farms in Hawaii for several years, where the ability to see what needed doing and get on and do it was prized, and where things were generally quite rough and ready. That was the preconception from which I came, and the way that I understood things. Unfortunately, that did not equip me to hear subtly phrased comments like 'that's not how we do this here.' In my Hawaii background, that would mean 'let's have a conversation, how do you do it?' But almost everywhere else, it means that you're not doing it the way it's supposed to be done in someone else's place. So, although I was trying to listen well, I wasn't able to hear what I needed to hear.  

Have you ever been in a situation where you think you're understanding what someone says, but actually what they're implying is completely different? Or have you tried to tell someone something and been frustrated that they simply don't get it?

I've learned better over the last couple of years, but have still not gotten it right.  I am periodically eaten up with remorse, guilt, shame, grief for the offense caused by my misunderstanding, and by fear that I'll somehow make too much mess or do something wrong this next time. I feel like I can't trust myself. I also feel anxiety over my very real need to control my own food in a place where I don't have kitchen access. 

So, how does this fit in with today's reflection on self-love? Tina talks about how we have to seize the day - there's no point in wasting our life on the small things. In order to live life to the full, we have to love ourselves. She says, "if we want to live the most fulfilling and satisfied lives as possible we need to love ourselves. We can waste our lives away with worry, regret, doubt, and negativity. We can spend too much time concerned with trivial matters of what size pants we wear or what other people think of our hopes and dreams." Tina asks, "What can you focus on today so that you end your day knowing you cultivated your best life? What should you ignore that tries to rob you of joy?"

Well, wow. I think I have the answer to that question. I'm preventing myself from focusing on enjoying the gorgeous colors and objects around us, as well as the people around me, by worrying over something in the past, and something else in the future. 

I worried myself crazy over my Fairbanks trip in July and had a wonderful time. Things are often not as bad as I think they will be. I used to work so hard at the farm that I didn't have the energy to pay extra attention to people's subtle communications or clean up fast enough. This time, I can resolve to treat myself with more respect so that I'm not running myself into the ground and unable to be attentive. I can resolve to keep smiling, keep listening, keep paying attention, and be constantly respectful and sensitive. I know that I know how to do that! I can prepare as much food for myself in advance of the trip, take my little hand-blender to make smoothies in our bedroom if need be, and just relax. I can put this whole pain of anxiety aside and go into the situation determined that things will go well.

Up For This Week

I'm going to continue to make kraut and pesto, and other things to use up the last of the garden goodness. It's supposed to get close to freezing here this week, and will be pretty thoroughly frozen by the time we get back in October!

I'm going to keep on sharing the message of self-love. Yes, I've been in a funk the last few days, but I think it's still lifted me above where I might have been with it.

I'll write whatever else I can make time for in here, about gardening, adventures, words, etc.

love to all.

Confession of the Week - Sauerkraut - Reflections on Self-Love: Fat Talk

Hope everyone's having a great weekend! Today's reflection on self-love was an extremely powerful one for me: not only did Tina raise the ugly demon of 'fat talk:' she also gave a striking example of how she had countered it and talked herself out of it. What a lifeline of an idea this is, that we don't have to be stuck with berating our bodies: that we can consciously choose better ways to talk to ourselves.

I'll come back to that with some reflections on my own in a bit. First, though, my confession of the week. My confession is this: I love to have so many projects going on, especially growing/culturing/fermenting projects, and I don't always stay on top of them. And the worst thing about it is, sometimes I haven't just plain forgotten: it's in the back of my mind that something needs doing but I just don't get around to it. This makes me sad. Sometimes I have kombucha, kefir, sauerkraut, sourdough culture, sprouts I'm growing, mead wine…all on the go at once! And more often than I'd like, I don't take the best care of everything for it to be its best possible. I've just been using yeast to make Phil's bread lately but recently started a sourdough, and then didn't take sufficiently regular care of it, and it went bad. Sourdough culture gone bad is a variety of stench that you're really not missing if you can avoid ever smelling it!

One thing that helps me not to mess up like this, and also keeps my anxiety down in general, is to make a to-do list. Somehow, if it's on the list, it'll get checked off! Even if it doesn't make it that day, it'll go on the next days list and eventually get done. I've noticed I'm less anxious if I make a list every day. Otherwise, it's easy to think I've done nothing because I discount all the myriad little things that I do.

OK, so with our garden season coming to its end, I'm pleased to be able to report that my first batch of beet kraut came out great, and that the past couple of days I've put on two more batches of kraut and am determined to pay them good attention.

Back in August, our cauliflowers were the best I've ever had…

…and then the slugs came. What a difference a month makes! It's not just that they're not as pretty (the purple on this one is because I had beet on my hand lol) - they get embittered by the predation of the slugs. So, I chopped the cauliflower up fine, ensuring that there were no slugs still lurking in there ;<), added some of my batch of cabbage-jalapeno kraut to get things started, and about a tablespoon of rock salt, and ensured that the kraut is submerged in liquid.

Today I did the same with chard. I'm going to keep them as warm as possible given how chilly it's getting here, and within a couple of days they should be fermenting nicely. 

OK - back to today's reflection on self-love. Tina calls it "that inner dialogue of self-doubt that puts down our image and denies us our true beauty. I actually like to think of it as 'self doubt talk,' because I believe it plays in more than physical appearance." I am so strongly in agreement with this. I have never been a person who read the 'fashion icon' magazines, dressed fashionably, or even paid much attention to all of that side of things, and yet 'fat talk' has dogged me pretty much forever. And it's all to do with a feeling of unworthiness, a feeling of taking up too much space, a sense that nothing you can do could ever be good enough. 

What if we are enough? What if doing our best is plenty, even if the level of it varies from one day to another?

I am so profoundly grateful for Tina's story about how she has learned to stop that kind of self-talk in its tracks. And along these lines, here is a bonus confession for the day: I am aware that this talk has been such an integral part of my inner voice for so long that there is some ambivalence about stopping it in its tracks. There is some comfort in familiarity. But it makes me ashamed to say that evidently there is a part of me that wants to beat up on myself like that: surely, this runs counter to my goal of doing my best; to my recognition that to love others authentically, I must love myself, with love being a comprehensive, pro-active state of being and doing?

So, how about stopping it in its tracks? Going back to the gifts of the body, when I get down on my thighs and butt (like I did when I saw the above photo), I can remind myself that I'm able to hike every day now - maybe not so far some days, but a few months ago I'd have to rest for several days after one not very long hike. I could point out to myself that they are long and shapely, even if I see some cellulite when I put them in certain angles. I could remember to feel gratitude that they carry me so far and work so tirelessly. I know that I eat very healthily and not too much, and that I can't give my body the message of starvation because it's being trained not to have that message all the time. In the same way, why not train my body to believe that it is beautiful, lean, proportioned just how I want it to be, so that it reflects externally my inner beauty rather than my inner frustration with myself?