Finding a Rhythm at the Wobbly Point, Comfort Zone Communication

As the week gallops by, the days are lengthening, and we have a big full moon hanging up there, casting shadows even at night.

I'm already harkening ahead to the dizzy solstice days when there's almost never any darkness to hide behind, no excuse of darkness not to be busy and out there--and it's not even the equinox yet, although the clocks going forward so soon brings it closer (grumble). (On the other hand, Phil also points out that during those summer days, light riots in such luxurious abundance that it's easy to postpone projects because it'll still be light all the way to midnight.)

On a happier note, I've spent significant time the past two days writing poetry, reading poetry, and writing a critical essay. In this awkward, cuspy time of year, as snow lingers and light lengthens and shadows shift and everything feels a bit off, I cannot quantify how much better I'm feeling in myself as a result of this. The cow's being milked and oh, it feels good.

I'm going to keep this brief tonight, as there's still some work to do, but speaking of work, I wanted to share some thoughts about an odd kind of "comfort zone communication" I've been experiencing recently. I don't know whether to call this a "problem" or just a "phenomenon." What I'm noticing is that for many people, myself included, it's more comfortable to open up, be chatty and conversational, remotely, than it is to interact face to face with actual people, body language, and all the rest of it.

Last week, with all the haywire technology around my course's midterm, I spent an inordinate amount of time on the phone with the technological folks and with the distance education services co-ordinators. And some of the tech guys in particular, not otherwise noted for being socially outgoing, were positively chatty! While we tried to chase down the bugs in my course shell, their conversations ranged over a variety of topics, they were inquisitive about my course and the languages referred to therein, etc, etc. I'm grateful for this in a way, as it's the closest thing I get to collegiality much of the time, as a distance-education faculty. On the other hand, with my writing time so precious and so threatened, I worry about the ease with which I can end up, essentially, chit-chatting while we try to fix broken software. Then, I see myself chatting on facebook, or writing lengthy and socially appropriate emails, at times when I'm not together enough to talk "in real life" to anybody in a remotely civil or socially appropriate way.

How is it that we can adapt to conversation without any of the cues and immediacy that make it meaningful and relevant? Isn't it backwards that I find interacting with someone I can't see less stressful than I find interacting with someone naturally, with their sight, smell, sound, affect and their presence right there with me?

Interesting that I'm posing the question on my blog, another asynchronous and not-in-person communication medium. I just hope that hiding behind a screen isn't eroding my ability to communicate in person.

Any thoughts?

"50 First Weeks:" The Unmilked Cow and Simple Soup

It continues to snow here....

I was reflecting, as I hiked home from our writers' group tonight, that this is our fifth month of snowfall. It's the biggest snow year since the early '90s, apparently. I greatly appreciate the beauty of the snow-pack--so much more pristinely beautiful than periods of thaw when the snow-bleached stalks of last year's annuals tumble and languish under the grit from plow trucks...However, with the mercilessly returning light, lighter every morning, daylight savings already springing forward earlier than spring next weekend, I'm feeling some disturbance in the force.

Part of this off-kilter feeling comes from within my own mercurial self. I've been too busy, not writing enough poetry, and to pull out my own cliche, I'm feeling like an unmilked cow. If I was alone, I'd be staying up nights, which would take care of the need to write but escalate some other aspects of the craziness. So I'm grudgingly grateful to Phil for insisting I come to bed.

Before I sign off here and go do some writing already, I want to share a super-simple and super-light recipe.
I've mentioned before that I've been eating lighter and lighter dinners and feeling better for it; also that my tummy's been somewhat fussy lately. So I've been putting slippery elm powder in practically everything. It's a wonderful demulcent--relaxes the intestinal lining and coats it--lots of soluble fiber and mucilaginous polysaccharides. And to me, it tastes really good--subtle, almost a little sweet. I was raised with slippery elm as a tummy soother, so perhaps it's that lifelong association that makes it taste good to me. It has very little caloric value but is somehow nutritious nonetheless: people in starvation situations have lived off of slippery elm "porridge" at times.

So, I've been saving the ends of carrots and onions and all that kind of stuff, and making veggie broth. Half a cup of warm veggie broth,
with a teaspoon of slippery elm stirred in,
with maybe a quarter cup of thawed peas,
and a few chopped pieces of thawed okra,
maybe a splash of nut milk of some kind
and a sprinkle of nutritional yeast over the top...

...with a carrot on the side, there's dinner--and tummy soothing too. If you want it thicker, you could add some psyllium as well, or flax meal. If you want it creamier, a little extra virgin coconut oil, or coconut cream powder, or nut cream, would be delicious I'm sure.

Have you tried slippery elm?
Off to write...

No-Sugar Maca Mojo Bark (aka White Chocolate Take 2) and New Finds

I mentioned on Monday that a good friend had nudged me to share a recipe that turned out really well. I'm really grateful for the prod (thanks, Terry!) because I threw this together in a blur in the midst of grading, and if I don't post it, I'll forget what I did. It's already been almost two weeks, so let's see how I do.

That "blur" of work seems to be a fairly consistent state at the moment. It's midterm week, and there have been various technical bugs all along--I've spent hours on the phone with the technical support folks, which has eaten into lecture-writing time. Today was one of those gorgeous bright-sun-in-the-eyes days that's why Phil got me this billed cap for my birthday, together with the happy green top and some long underwear under my jeans. I feel so lucky--and not just because I can keep working with the sun right in my eyes!

Yes, the little computer nook in the background of the next picture isn't so much sun-in-the-eyes, but most of my work for this course is on the "window workstation" computer.

So, about this second go at white chocolate/bark. You might remember my "not quite white" chocolate for the holidays. That used quite a bit of coconut cream powder, which some people find undesirable for various reasons, including the 1% casinate (dairy derivative) in it. I wanted to make another version that didn't use that--and this resultant attempt uses quite a few "unusual" or not-right-there-in-the-supermarket ingredients. But it also features the embedded fig and goji pieces that I so enjoyed last time. If you omit those, it's sugar free and candida friendly. Given the recherche ingredient list, let me share this "easy to find" tip: this stuff--creamed coconut--is basically the same stuff as coconut butter! It's incredibly cheaply available in Europe, and you can even find it in Anchorage. Just make sure to get the organic kind: some of the conventional brands have sulphates or other preservatives added. This package is 7oz, which is just under a cup. I used a whole block for this recipe.

No-Sugar Maca Mojo Bark (no dairy either!)
1 cup coconut butter, melted (or use one package of "creamed coconut")
1/2 cup cacao butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla powder

1 teaspoon white stevia powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

7/8 cup lucuma powder 

1 tablespoon maca
3/4 cup inulin (oligosaccharide, feeds good bacteria, naturally sweet-tasting)
1/4 cup yacon powder

3 dried figs, chopped
1 tablespoon goji berries, chopped

Mix together the coconut and cacao butters. Stir in the stevia, vanilla and salt.
Gradually add in the rest of the dry ingredients--lucuma, maca, inulin and yacon powder, and stir gently until everything is fully incorporated and there are no powdery pockets! Once everything is smooth, add in the finely chopped figs and berries.
You can pour it onto a tray, or into bar molds.
Refrigerate to set.

 This is not very sweet, very rich, but in a tummy-comforting, not a stomach-turning, way, and I was taken by surprise by how maca-ish it is! It really has a predominating malty flavor--which goes well with the figs and gojis. And actually, maca and coconut is an incredible flavor combination--it's like they're made for each other--so having the chocolate base contain more coconut than cacao butter worked well for this combination.

What do you think? Do you think you'll make this, or is the list of unusual ingredients offputting? Lucuma is getting easier and easier to find, as are inulin and maca.

Recent Discovery--Flax Milk!


I'm probably not a pioneer with this, as Homer, Alaska, is often the last place on the planet to see new health foods, it seems, but I found this "Flax milk" at the store today, and had to try it out. I was puzzled and curious, because flax is not a creamy seed at all--you wouldn't get a "milk" if you blended flax seeds and water like you would with hemp seeds.  It turns out that it's blended with flax oil, not seeds, and contains a fair amount of tapioca starch and gums as well (as do most store-bought nut milks--I'm ok with it).

Only 25 calories in a cup! Lots of calcium, and obviously lots of omega-3's, with fewer omega-6's than hemp milk.

 It's also unsweetened, which I really like, but it has the consistency and color of regular milk.

It doesn't have a distinctive "flax" taste at all. It actually tastes very good to me. I go back and forth on the economics of buying something with so few calories per serving--if I buy something with 100 calories in a cup, I'll take a quarter or eighth of a cup and water it down, thus getting more bang for my buck. Sure, I can do that with this too, but it'll end up pretty watery real quick (which doesn't mean I don't do it anyway!) Nonetheless--definitely worth a try, and a great new addition to the growing array of non-dairy milks!

I hope you enjoy the maca bark/white choc! Have you tried flax milk? Would you?

Carrot Cardamom Birthday Cake (Allergy-Free); Gratitude, and a Bonus Recipe

What a birthday I had yesterday (the 28th)! I feel so blessed. So many dear friends from all over the world and all over my life history contacted me on Facebook, and I was so glad to have the opportunity to think of each and every one. We had a poetry group meeting, which is always a highlight of the week in which it falls, and our hostess this time made her gorgeous living space so festive and party-like for the occasion. In the evening, our wonderful friends and hosts extraordinaires, David and Olga, hosted a limerick party for my birthday! Everyone had to bring an original limerick--that was the "admission ticket." I loved that idea: a way to honor my love of poetry so that absolutely everyone could participate.

When I came home from my poetry group to get ready to leave for the limerick party, there was a message on the phone telling me that a poem of mine won second place in the Statewide Poetry Contest! What lovely news to get on my birthday!

Now that I've exceeded my monthly allocation of exclamation points, let me share some food cheer. That up there is my birthday cake: a carrot cardamom cream cake--that's what the carrot juice in my last post was for.

I made it up as I went along, but it was a real winner, so I'm going to share before I forget what I did!
This makes one ten-inch cake, but it's not a super-tall one--which I like: the slices aren't so overwhelmingly big.

Carrot Cardamom Cream Cake (gluten and dairy free, vegan, low sugar)

Crust:
1 cup pecans
1/2 cup golden flax meal
1/2 cup carrot pulp (from making carrot juice)
~3/4 cup chopped dates
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon vanilla powder

In a food processor, pulse the pecans into crumbs, then add the flax meal and carrot pulp and pulse a few times to combine. Then, with the processor running, gradually add the dates until everything starts to come together. Press into a ten-inch springform pan.

Filling:
1 cup carrot juice
1 1/2 soaked pili nuts, drained
1/2 cup young coconut pulp (I used frozen pulp)
1 cup thick irish moss gel
3/4 cup erythritol
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 inch fresh ginger
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground cardamom
pinch ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon stevia
1/2 cup coconut oil, melted
2 tablespoons lecithin granules

In a Vitamix or other high-powered blender, blend all but the last two ingredients until smooth. Check the taste and add more cardamom or sweetener if it seems necessary. Add the coconut oil and lecithin and blend again until very smooth.
Pour over the crust and freeze for a couple hours until set.

Here's the crust...

 And the filling ready to rock'n'roll...

 And you can see here that it's not awfully tall up the side of the pan.

 I decorated it with some leftover frosting from our anniversary cake (a different kind of carrot cake!)

There's not much left, so it was thoroughly enjoyed! I love how the irish moss and the young coconut make it not quite so 'heavy,' but it's still delightfully smooth and rich.

Bonus recipe: Sweet Potato Puree with Roasted Garlic

We had an "orange" theme going in the food for the limerick party--also my influence. This is super-simple and extremely delicious; another off-the-cuff concoction.
I roasted several heads of garlic--350 degrees for about an hour in the oven.
I boiled up 4 medium sized sweet potatoes, took the peels off and drained the liquid.
I added about 2 teaspoons of coconut oil, and a whole head of roasted garlic cloves, and pureed with a hand-held blender.
It was delicious, and almost shockingly sweet--roasted garlic is darn sweet too!

The rest of the carrot pulp went into these brownie bites--perhaps I'll share the recipe for those next time.

Abundant gratitude and love to everyone--thank you.

"50 First Weeks:" Gratitude, Daylight, and a Whole New Year

Another Monday, and as I predicted, it's definitely a day to retarget some good intentions. Like getting out for a hike (which we did again) and giving of myself to my husband rather than being buried in work all the time--and, best of all, writing and reading poetry! I did! I feel a lot more like myself already.

We're getting some incredible sunsets--this is right outside our cabin at bluff's edge. It's a frightful pic of me (was super-windy--check out those whitecaps--and I had no hat on), but I'm including it because of the incredible lightplay.

 Aside from the fact that I was going off track so much with too much work and too little writing (and too little anything else) last week, tomorrow is my birthday. I'm sure I've mentioned here before that in some ways, I think a person's birthday is more important than New Year's day as an opportunity to evaluate, set intentions, and generally take stock. I'll be doing more of that tomorrow, but on my "50 first weeks" Monday, I'm feeling such a sense of gratitude and validation. Writer friends have contacted me with good wishes, poems, and spot-on writerly advice. Another friend nudged me for the recipe for something I made in a crazed between-grading dash that really is worth sharing--here too. And I feel flattered that Phil wants my company, too.

Since Phil was out for breakfast with a friend this morning, instead of fixing breakfast I did some pre-prep for "tomorrow" goodies. This little hand-crank wheatgrass juicer is all the juicer I have, which might explain why this is the first time I've used it in over two years.

Now, I eat a lot a lot of carrots, but the amount of carrots it took to produce that scant cup of carrot juice is about as many as I eat in three or four days--and they're a significant part of my intake. Scary. Also, not the most efficient juicer.

Last time I pulled the juicer out, two years ago, was for the carrot pulp, to make these:

I loved them so much, I thought I should never make them again. This time, I cut them really small! This time, I also need the juice for another creation I'm planning. More on both in my next post! Some nostalgia for Hawaii, too--I got the juicer from a dear friend in HI whom I miss, and I used it regularly to make coconut cream. Of course, I always made goodies (including carrot cake sometimes!) with the pulp from the coconut cream making. At that stage of my life, there was always coconut cream and ginger juice in the fridge, courtesy of that little juicer.

A few minutes after the picture at the top of the post... Thanks, everyone!

Sunday's on the Phone to Friday and Nettle-Fig "Instant" Bars

I bought Phil new binoculars and several bird-feeders for his birthday back in November. We've been enjoying the visitors: a recent favorite is this plucky little woodpecker.

He doesn't let the bully-boy magpies chase him off!

So, what happened to my regular Friday post? Well, I guess this is it! Nonlinear time strikes again, and both Friday and Saturday managed to pass in the recently typical 18-hour-workday-haze. I want to address that current situation today, and I also want to share a recipe--another "instant energy bar" recipe.

On Friday, at least, I "busted loose" for a hike with Phil. It wasn't a huge long hike, but it was enough for me to reconnect with the ocean and the outside, and to remind myself of how essential that is, even if I was wearing four pairs of pants and even more layers on my top half against the cold, and two hats. It had been so long since I'd even taken a short walk. This pic is from the end of the hike, by which time we were well warmed up, with unzipped jackets.

But there wasn't time to make a blog post and take a hike! When there wasn't time for either one yesterday (because we were having dinner with our beloved friends), I had a moment of truth. I realized I'd done almost no creative writing or reading in the past week. I realized I've been working 12-19 hour days, seven days a week, for the past two months. I realized that although I'm learning a lot through teaching this course, and hopefully teaching some students Linguistics too, that's not my main goal in life--becoming a better writer is. Similarly, although I love editing, the editing deadlines last week ate up even more of my time. Similarly, the extra course I'm taking these next two weeks, which is a training in the rubrics for teaching online courses, is great as an enhancement to my teaching abilities and sense, but is not in line with my main goals. Similarly, I don't have time to have a conversation with my husband.

The fear clawed at my heart and chills ran down my back--what if I don't put the most into my MFA--what if I "coast," like I always did academically, when my heart is so totally in the MFA--wouldn't that be a criminal waste?

Then, several hours of today that I didn't have to spare have been spent talking with Phil, who is feeling the loss of me to my work, and feeling the same concern that the bulk of my time is going into something that's not my passion. All is not quite in balance here. Tomorrow's "50 First Weeks" renewal should address that yesterday, and here I am.

And here's the recipe!
This one is similar to my "instant apricot power bars." Another wonderful dried fruit is figs--so rich in calcium, soluble fiber, and other benefits. When I lived in CA, I almost never ate dried figs because we had seasons of fresh figs, which are quite something else and really almost divine. Up here, though...well, I paid about $5 for a small basket of fresh figs last summer, perfectly ripe. It was money well spent.

My one problem with traditional fruit-nut bars is that they don't always have enough minerals (and possibly protein) to give a sense of satiation, so that I can eat one (or half of one) and be done. So, in addition to the mineral rich figs and hempseeds, I added some dried nettles to this bar! You can't even taste them, but they definitely help with the satiation factor, even though I made them much smaller than traditional lara bars.

"Instant" Nettle-Fig Power Bars
1/2 cup dried nettles
1 cup dried figs, chopped (I used black mission, but calimyrna are delightful too)
1/2 cup hemp seeds
1/4 cup flax seed meal
4 dried apricots (chopped)

Whiz the nettles in a food processor until they're powdery. Add the figs, hemp seeds, flax meal, and process until the mixture starts to form a ball. You may need to add the apricots to facilitate this, depending on how dry your figs are (mine were quite dry, and I needed the apricots).

Roll into small logs--I got about a dozen.
Again, these are not super-sweet, but there's a real "heartiness" to them, and they are delicious.
Enjoy.

Big Mr Moose was back again--Phil's been busy putting up more fencing, and felt brave enough to chase Mr Moose off from the other side of the fence. His trick? See the wheelbarrow next to him? He raised it above his head to make himself look very tall, which stopped the moose in his tracks. Then, he banged it down on the ground--and as you can see, the moose decided he'd rather be somewhere quieter!

I'm sharing this post and recipe here: http://wholenewmom.com/traditional-tuesday/allergy-free-wednesday/

"Writing" in my Head, "Reading" from Memory; the "Golden Nugget"

We're back from Anchorage--and the days are getting longer! Phil had a moment of genius and grabbed these very snazzy shades at the ophthalmologists'--turned out I really needed them to see to drive us home! As the evenings get longer, if the sun is out at all, it's right in your eyes and low in the sky for a significant part of the route home.

Having spent most of today preparing a practice midterm for my course (fighting the technology every step--it only forced me to redo about three of the longest questions two or three times apiece), having gotten through Valentines, Mardi Gras, two editing deadlines, and our Anchorage trip--oh, and two poetry performances over the weekend, I feel like I'm coming up for air this evening--knowing that I have the "real" midterm to prepare, as well as grading, preparing lectures, and more. Working a couple hours translating Greek dictionary entries has been a balm.

Within an overstretched week exacerbated by some poor self-management that caused the usual swings in my mercurial pendulum, I learned something to do with poetry, performing poetry, and its importance to me. This is the golden nugget that could be the salvation of my spun psyche and the justification for the quicksilveriness. And maybe the lithium, which simply means "made of rock," is the touchstone that will transform mercury to gold if I actually keep taking it!

In the midst of overwork, how have writerly and culinary creativity fared? The Valentine's day candies happened sort of betwixt and between as a "body" break (brain still engaged), as did a platter of beautiful goodies I made for our friends' son's Memorial on Sunday and didn't even remember to photograph! So much for the food creations--I'm still making them, but feeling little enthusiasm except for their reception.

What about my writing? I've been "writing" furiously in my head at all moments, but I haven't sat down to write as I need to for several days, especially with the disruption of the town trip. As I like to say, I begin to feel like an unmilked cow. This needs to change.

What an irony, too, that I say "I'm writing in my head," which isn't really writing at all, but is an allied cognitive/creative process, when so many people said how much they enjoyed my "reading" at the show on Saturday and at the Memorial on Sunday, when I wasn't actually "reading" at all: I performed from memory on both occasions!

"Out of the Woodwork" was a great show all round with so many rousing performances. It was a flashback to a past life for me, being surrounded by musician types, remembering the days when I'd be in rehearsals at least three or four nights every week. I felt honored to be part of the company. Also honored to share one other poem as well as the poem I wrote for our friends Tom and Jeanie on their son's death.

The experience, together with the response I received in feedback, was a reminder of how much I love to perform, and how important I think "poetry out loud" is as part of life. I'm a little wary of "thinking something's important" and then growing a sense of obligation toward it that stifles some of the sparkiness, but I also feel I'm at a stage in my life where "what's important" is what I need to focus on. I love to write. I love to make connections that are not always clear, and to do so in the most beautiful juxtapositions of words available to me. Despite--or perhaps because of--my nowhere girl accent, people like to hear me perform poetry. I love to perform and share words juxtaposed.

This is all true. Which means that truly, life is pretty good.

Turnagain Arm on the way home yesterday--this was before the shades came out!

What's your "golden nugget" this week?