The View From Here/Up For This Week

The View From Here

Happy Memorial Day, everybody!

Our first dull, overcast day for a while: it's been gloriously sunny 60 for the past three days. The holiday season is definitely getting into its swing up here in seasonally-migrated Homer.  

One of the fun things of living in a small town is that you constantly see the same people. I used to think it was weird, growing up in a large city, that every day I would see many, many faces that I would never see again. Every day! I've avoided big cities since then: I feel more comfortable feeling the earth beneath my feet and a population size that I can actually comprehend.

What about other folks? Are you more comfortable in a big city or in a smaller community?

I feel a little threatened, maybe, this time of year when all the big RVs show up and the population suddenly swells - suddenly there's just so much more traffic, it's harder to cross the street, for the moose as well as for me! But hey, it's only my second full summer here, so I guess I'm just getting used to yet another radical seasonal change.

Phil and I had comically contrasting reactions to the profusion of chickweed that greeted us when we uncovered one of our raised beds today. I was 'harvesting,' he was definitely 'weeding!' As was I, to some extent - I didn't want the chickweed choking out my baby maca plants - but there's some pretty good salad right there!

Up For This Week

We're going to Anchorage for medical appointments next Monday, and are talking about going up early, toward the end of this week, for some camping and hiking. I'm a little nervous of my stamina, though. We had guests over the weekend, which was fun, and I skipped the long hike yesterday and finally got some downtime, which I had been sorely lacking since we went across the bay last week.

I'm not even quite sure what all I'm going to be writing about this week, so we'll just see what flows. 

Is anybody else in some sort of a transition? That's what this current time feels like, but it's an internal transition rather than and external one like going traveling or moving house. It's as though I'm moving from treading water/borderline hopelessness toward finding some sort of a direction. I might talk about that some more this week - I'd like to share more but am not yet quite sure how much is shareable! 

love to all.

'Theme and Variations' 3: Energy Bars/Bliss Balls

I guess I'm picking an easy one this week, because I'm still so behind on everything having been gone camping and then up to my elbows in processing afterwards. I'm still not caught up energetically either, and Phil is feeling a little sick too, so catching up on chores is taking longer than we'd expected.

'Energy bars/bliss balls' is an 'easy' 'theme and variations' for me because I've already done a whole series of posts about energy bars here! I might as well link them all in here so that we're consolidated up to this point. But another good reason for picking up on these again is that I have a good modification to the basic recipe technique that I figured out this past week. So then, here's the first recipe and conceptual background, and here's the post where I explain 'chia sweet,' and here's where I explain about 'pressing.'

For me at the moment, 'no sugar'/'low glycemic' is taken as read (although I am open to seeing how goji berries can be worked in and perhaps yacon slices too, as in Shannonmarie's suggestion).

This means that whereas the standard energy bar 'theme' is nuts/seeds blended with dried fruit plus whatever superfoods and spices, for me, 'chia-sweet,' or chia gel, or flax meal whipped with water or tea, are going to replace the dried fruit, and stevia (or occasionally xylitol) is going to replace dried fruit and any honey or agave as the sweetener. Cinnamon, vanilla and other spices that have a sweetening effect are also used a lot.

I wrote before about my technique of mixing all the nuts and dry ingredients together, and adding the coconut oil and chia-sweet last. But this week I discovered that mixing the coconut oil and chia-sweet together first and then stirring in the dry ingredients works much better overall. I'll give the full recipe that I winged up in a moment in the 'variations' section.

Variations

Obvious variations are the whole slew of 'lara bar' flavors (or: 'bitt bars?!'. Just by varying which nuts are used, the flavor can be changed a lot. I've posted before about how much I enjoy super-spicy mixes, with everything from cinnamon and ginger to lemon peel and cayenne pepper all together, but variations involving just cinnamon and ginger, or just cardamom and cinnamon, or just lemon and poppy seed, or just vanilla, are wonderful also. 

And I seem to have lots of good company on this one: my all-time favorite combination, mint and chocolate! 

My new recipe was for mint-chocolate balls. 

I started by mixing together 1/2c coconut oil (melted) and about a cup of 'chia sweet,' which was chia gel made in strong stevia-sweetened peppermint tea with some peppermint oil added. Added a little shake of salt.

Next, I stirred in about a cup of shredded coconut. Then, about 3/4c cacao nibs. And then, I simply added coconut flour until it all held together. To make it last better, I left it out on a tray in a warm spot with lots of airflow (the air is dry up here and as I've said before, on sunny days our cabin is an oven).

These 'balls' (it made 20-some) are almost too yummy to me! It scares me when I like something that much. 

What's your favorite energy bar flavor? What's the weirdest one you've ever tried? Mine would have to be my own spirulina/cayenne/lemon zest/cinnamon/sesame bars! Can we say 'Ela-bar-ate?!'

In Lieu of Photos

Since I don't have a camera… I'm going to transcribe the thoughts from my notebook that I was writing right at the time that Phil came upon and shot the bear. Of course, these were notes from times prior to those moments, but they give a flavor of the wilderness across the bay here.

When you come home with a bear in bags, the work is not done. Of course, that's true of any trip that involves outdoor gear, camping equipment, etc, that need unloading, unpacking from drybags, airing, washing, etc. But having that volume of meat to be preserved, having to deal with the bones, guts, etc, is more than a day's work! The sausage grinder and extra electric burner's being barely functional make things drag out even more. 

So of course, I haven't been acknowledging my body's exhaustion as much as I should have been and am feeling myself fading, and am barely prepared for writer's group this afternoon. The hostess today lives up in the back of beyond, and up here, in late May, in full-blown summer, there is still some snow on the ground!

From my notebook

Now for the words I offer in lieu of photos. I'm inspired to include this, in part at least, by Bitt's beautiful photos of her walks in nature.

"Sitting beside Humpy Creek, at the foundations of the wreck of a bridge, spruce logs with dimensional lumber nailed to them, all torn up and torqued, laying splayed at odd, injured angles.

We saw a thrust dart out onto the pebbles, dip a toe and then flutteringly wash herself in the water, which must be about 37 digs, flowing fast, clear snow melt. A few stories above her, a yellow warbler exalted in the budding alders.

A drake merganser sailed down midstream, so stately and ornate, that pincer-prow of a pink beak seeming to connote singleminded directness, leading him as straight as the path of an arrow.

A spider's web caught and played with the light, looping languorously 15ft above the river and parallel with it for about 6ft, tangled in a leaning alder from one side and a jutting spruce from the other. How did the spider walk that airbridge?

A butterfly sucked on a dandelion flower, folding itself into a two-dimensional rudder against the rippling breeze: the petal of its wing not quite a triangle, paneled black-framed with off-white infill in the intricate not-quite symmetry of an art deco piece. (Just heard a resounding shot! Presumably Phil just got a bear!)…..

Went Bearhunting! The Story, and Thoughts about Hunting

No 'View from Here' post this week nor a peep out of me otherwise! That's because Phil was going bearhunting again Monday and Tuesday and since I didn't have any urgent work deadlines or other places I needed to be, I went with him!

It might be suggested that I wasn't in shape to do so yet, given the hours of bouncing on choppy seas in a tiny inflatable boat, all the heavy hauling to load and unload said boat, and then all the hiking and packing and, if we got a bear, butchering it. Yes, but: Phil did virtually all the heavy hauling, I barely helped at all. And yes, but: I thought that it was time for me to get out there too, in the wilderness where no one lives, and see how it felt to me this time around. And yes, but: this is the sweetness and the marrow of Phil's existence, and whilst he loves going by himself, every time he's left me behind, his potential sorrow at us growing apart and not doing stuff together has increased. I couldn't say no.

And we were so blessed with the weather! It's true, you get cold in the boat: the ocean is about 35 degrees and you're sitting flush with it, moving in the wind, but other than that, I really wasn't cold much. (Of course, I was bundled up in multiple layers at all times, but it did get warm enough whilst hiking that I could take off my hat and scarf and unzip my jacket!) We had bright sunshine both days, clear blue skies. This early in the season too, there are scarcely any mosquitoes, which can be real spoilers later on. And as it turned out, Phil did shoot a bear, and even that turned out perfectly. I had said that I needed a rest, and had sat down to write; he went off a ways, found the bear (middle aged male), one shot and that was it. It did mean that I ended up hiking more than my body needed to and working hard on the skinning/butchering also - but I was able to carry on even past my 'pooping out' feeling. For various reasons, Phil had been anxious to get a bear before Memorial Day, so this was just what he needed. We left all of it sunk in the creek overnight, and came to retrieve it on our way home the next afternoon. The downside of gorgeous weather, in this glaciated mountainous bay system, is that the wind comes up in the afternoon and the sea gets rougher! We couldn't leave before afternoon because of the tide, and so the 10 mile trip home took over two hours of bouncing and slamming up and down over the backs and into the troughs of the waves. We lost an oar, but otherwise got back in one piece, if wet and sore.

Before all that, we spent some precious moments sitting in the sun on the bank of the creek, and saw so many beautiful things. I may make another post and just transcribe what I wrote in my notebook, describing what we saw out there.

About Hunting

But for now, I feel like I need to say something about the whole hunting issue: I'm afraid that some may feel uncomfortable about it and I want to say how it seems to me.

I was a vegan for most of my life and am currently not choosing to eat meat. However, at 61 Phil is mightier, stronger, possessed of better stamina than any health-food enthusiast I have known and he has always eaten a lot of meat. I see that it does him good and I support him in that. And then, I'd far rather prepare wild harvested meat whose provenance we know and that we had to work for, than buy some packaged stuff at the store that's been treated who knows how. At this time of year, the bears are gorging on greens, so their meat is going to be much richer in omega-3s, which is always a good thing.

Additionally, having been a vegan most of my life it was striking to me how much more spiritually connected I felt when I experimented with eating meat (and simultaneously with getting involved in the whole hunting/butchering process): I received a clarity of gratitude, a sensation of connectedness with millennia of human behavior, and a strong message that with gratitude we were converting the animal into a different form of life.

Furthermore, black bears are out of balance in the wilderness across the bay: there are 'way too many of them,' to the point that the Fish and Game service has increased the limit on how many each person can hunt - 'have at,' they say. Male black bears also prey on bear cubs, which is perhaps a less desirable form of population control. Phil is a fantastic shot, and has been since he was about five years old, and his single shot deals an almost instant death, which is the best way for it to go.

It's probably clear from all this that I have some ambivalence about the whole issue, but nothing is black and white, right? That's what the whole 'ulterior harmony' thing is supposed to be about, and sometimes it can be inscrutable to me.

Wordstalks 8: 'Exercise' vs. 'Gymnastics,' ND Visit, Spring Growth, Court

There's so much I want to talk about today! I just hope that I can organize it coherently. Although this is a wordstalk post, it's also definitely subject matter that would benefit from some pictures. I'm working on manifesting a camera!

Spring Growth, Court

And that might be the best place to start: on Thursday I went to court in Kenai (70-some miles away) to contest the citation that the trooper had issued me with following the crash in the blizzard. It was a freak blizzard on a notorious stretch of road, I was going slow, and really did not believe that I'd been driving without due care and attention. And the judge accepted that there was a 'reasonable doubt' that I was at fault, and acquitted me! If I chose to think about it that way, I could say that saving the cost of the citation would afford buying a decent camera. Any recommendations on a good kind?

It was a fun road trip for Phil and me into the bargain: up in Kenai and neighboring Soldotna, there are stores where you can get things unavailable here, or regular groceries but fresher and much cheaper (Homer is at the end of the road  and you pay for it at the store both in price and quality!) But besides the stuff to be bought with money, there was the delight of seeing the road in the new season. Phil often 'harvests' young volunteer trees (especially birches) that are going to be mown off anyway and transplants them to our homestead. Considering that there were blizzards a month ago, it is incredible how rapidly the green colonizes everything. This time, the birches were leafing out, adding an iridescent pale linden green to the deeper, shinier spruce green and the dusty, gray-green of the alder and willow leaves. And we saw the first moose calf of the year, with its mother, chowing down by the road side! It was so small - about the size of a large dog.

Kenai is so flat, a strange change from Homer, which straggles up the bluff and mountains. The buildings all seem kind of squat and flat too, sprawly and mall-like compared to Homer's log cabin quaintness. But we found 'quaint:' the most incredible thrift shop I've ever seen. You had to go down some stairs to get in, and from the front it looked like a small, unprepossessing store with large amounts of china ornaments prominently displayed. But appearances were deceptive. That first room led to some steps up, opening into a broader chamber with three more smaller rooms off to the side, each stuffed with different secondhand items - kitchen tools in two of them, luggage in the third. Storage cubbies spilled over with semi-used or unopened medical supplies, stationery, kitchenware, more ornaments. Up another flight of stairs, military surplus gear (it was kind of stinky up there!) Back down the stairs, in the broad room, an exit stage right into another little corridor, lined with books, that opened into a concrete-floored enormous cavern, with tools all down the front wall and the rest of the space just stuffed with clothes, rows and rows of rails packed with clothes on hangers. And this cavern had two more rooms opening from it! By the time we got there, I was completely overwhelmed and a little dizzy - certainly not a store that I could just hit at random and browse. I was so impressed, though - I've never seen anything quite like that. It was like some immense organically evolved system of caves. Would you have been able to shop in a place like that on your first visit?

ND Visit

My energy has been somewhat better this past week, and at the ND's yesterday that was explained by my bloodwork coming back showing that the new thyroid supplements are working, which is great. The labs also suggested that the root of the problem isn't in the thyroid but rather the pituitary. Apparently pituitary dysfunction is very common in eating disorder cases. But it's great to know that the thyroid situation isn't autoimmune and can be brought back into balance. There was a lot more that I learned there, that I can share if there's interest, and a little more that I talk about below.

The upshot of this extra energy is that I've been exercising a little every day this week, for the first time in a while. I have 'crashed' energetically a few times as a result, but nothing like the crashes of a few weeks ago. I've been hiking, and rowing on the rowing machine, which we now have placed outside, right on the edge of the bluff, so that you can row whilst looking down at the ocean, out over the bay, watching the eagles fly by. 

Wordstalk

Which brings me to my 'wordstalk:' the act of exercising got me to thinking about the word 'exercise' and its etymology, and the contrast with its Greek counterpart, 'gymnastics.' 'Exercise' comes from a Latin verb meaning 'exercise, train,' which etymologizes further, and quite transparently, into meaning 'ward off,' 'make efforts to avoid.' The Latin noun derived from that verb means 'army.' In contrast, the Greek 'gymnastics' comes from a verb that means simply 'engage in physical activity whilst naked,' and is itself derived from the adjective meaning 'naked.' So, the Latin concept of exercise is about arming yourself up and taking action to avoid something, and accrued even a military connotation, whereas the Greek concept is about getting naked (as vulnerable as you can be, presumably) and training like that! It seems like the Latin concept, which is the one that we have really incorporated in our own thinking (since for us, the word 'gymnastics' has evolved a highly specific meaning as opposed to denoting all kinds of physical training) is much more goal-oriented, and a negative, preventative goal at that. 

I know that I have tended to view exercise as an aversive, compulsive, preventative thing, a desperate measure to burn calories. The naturopath was explaining to me yesterday how counterproductive this can be in an adrenal exhaustion situation: the lactic acid built up from intense exercise feeds straight into cortisol production, which raises blood sugar and insulin and leads to fat deposits around the midriff. And the bit of fat that I have at the top of my buttocks incenses and upsets me so much when I notice it that it drives me to exercise more intensely! Talk about a vicious circle. Maybe I should start to give my exercise a Greek etymology rather than a Latin one!

Is your exercise a means to an end, a way to prevent something from happening, or a totally vulnerable 'strip everything off and be physical?'

'Theme and Variations' 2: Nut Milks

Happy Friday everyone! This week seems to have shot by alarmingly fleet(ing)ly. We have some beautiful weather up here in Alaska these last two days: it's actually gotten up to 60 degrees! So funny to think that that used to be the bottom of my range, and now I'm thrilled with it. Yesterday was an interesting day - I went to court! I'll talk more about that maybe tomorrow, but for today, I'll carry on with the recipe series 'theme and variations.'

Last week I started a new series of posts based on the observation that staple recipes usually consist of a 'theme' with endless 'variations.' Last week I talked about 'barks'/'fudges' - still looking for a good name for those, by the way.

This week, it's nut milks. When I first learned about these, about twelve years ago, I was amazed that they weren't in more common use, since they're so simple and so very good. It turns out that they used to be much more commonly used - look at any highbrow European recipe from the Middle Ages and it's highly likely to feature 'milk of almonds.'

As simple and delicious as they are, they are also almost infinitely variable. The fibrous, lower fat seeds like flax and chia don't have the requisite creaminess, but any other nut or seed commonly available can be used for making nut milk. And you can also use a combination of two or more - and flax and chia do work in combination with others, which is a handy way to correct the omega-3 to -6 ratio, since besides hemp seeds and walnuts, all other nuts and seeds are overbalanced in favor of omega-6. (More on this in my article for this month's 'Eighty Percent Raw' magazine.)

The basic method is to soak the nuts, rinse (discarding the soak water) and then blend with fresh water until thoroughly pulverized. Then strain through a cheesecloth or mesh bag, blend again with more water if you like, and that's it.  If you have a high-powered blender (vitamix, blendtec), sometimes you don't even need to strain it. I just have a little hand blender and have managed to blend even small seeds into milk, provided that they've been well soaked and that I add the liquid just a little at at time. And I am ready for a high-powered blender, o universe!

However, besides the plethora of potential permutations simply by varying the nuts and seeds used, there are so many other variables. Some people love to add sweetener, which can be dates, honey, agave, stevia, xylitol. Some people also love to add a pinch of sea or rock salt. Vanilla is a popular flavoring, or one can go beyond the simple 'milk' and add a chai spice flavoring, or cacao powder, mint leaves or essence. Or use herbal tea or other flavored liquid instead of water. Another permutation is the ratio of nuts/seeds to liquid. Looking around, the general recommended ratio is 1 part nuts/seeds to 3 or 4 parts water, so 1/3 or 1/4cup of nuts/seeds per cup of water; a quart of milk would use a cup of nuts or so. I have to be aware that it's part of my stinginess with myself that my milks use a far smaller amount - around a half cup of nuts/seeds per quart - and then I always dilute the milk again with tea!

Another question is the homogenization issue. I like to add a tablespoon of lecithin to the recipe to ensure that the milk doesn't separate. However, I've noticed - but don't know the reason - that some milks are more 'separation prone' than others. For example, I forgot to put the lecithin in a batch of milk that was mostly sunflower seeds with a  few filberts, and it separated. But I recently forgot it in a batch of mostly walnut milk with a few brazil nuts and hempseeds, and it stayed pretty much homogenized. I did add some lecithin in by hand afterwards and shake it, but it didn't blend in and just settled to the bottom, so it's not clear that it was much help. It's possible that the walnut/hemp mix was fattier, and therefore homogenized better. But sunflower seeds are a natural source of lecithin, so one might have thought that they'd be good at homogenizing too!

My current recipe is: 

'Theme' 

~1/2c nuts/seeds, 

2 T xylitol (a sugar alcohol derived from birch trees that has antifungal properties)

1 T lecithin

pinch salt

1 quart water

Variations:

Sometimes a pinch of ground vanilla bean or a shake of cinnamon

I have made: almond milk, filbert milk, brazil nut milk, walnut milk, pecan milk,coconut milk (using shredded coconut), sunflower seed milk, sesame milk, hemp milk, pumpkin seed milk, and many combinations of these. Generally, I think that pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds have a rather savory flavor on their own, but taste great when combined with nuts, especially brazil nuts and filberts.

Some favorite combinations:

coconut-sesame

sesame-hemp

filbert-brazil

filbert-brazil-sunflower

My current favorite: walnut-brazil-hemp - since I've been so depressed lately I'm trying to make sure I get in more omega-3's, as well as the selenium that the brazil nuts provide. Walnuts are probably my favorite nut at the moment anyway (although I can hardly eat them unless they've been soaked, that tannin hurts a girl's mouth! - but I'm fine to soak them).

Why haven't I made it from macadamia nuts or cashews or pine nuts? These are the three most commonly used nuts in rich gourmet recipes. They are the nuts that are creamy enough and low-fiber enough that if you have a high-powered blender you could probably get away without even having to strain the milk. Well, I'm not eating cashews at the moment because they're generally cautioned against if you're cleansing yeast - ditto for pistachios and peanuts. I've made pine nut milk before and it's delicious but very strong. - would be better in combination with something else. And pine nuts are unbelievably expensive here so I just haven't been buying them. Mac nuts: we're hopefully getting a load of them soon from a small farm in Hawaii owned by some friends of ours. But Phil loves them so much that I'd rather just keep them for him to eat.

What's your favorite nut milk? Do you use lecithin or another emulsifier?

Varieties of Cinnamon and Interview with Courtney Pool

Just a quick thought, and an announcement.

I just got my hands on some 'Ceylon Cinnamon.' The cinnamon that is usually sold is called 'Saigon Cinnamon' or 'Cassia Cinnamon,' where the 'cassia' is not to be confused with the legume tree that sheds pods of cassia (all over the main drag in Hilo town on the Big Island of Hawaii, for example). The latter is senna, an intense purgative - if you eat a few of the resinous, fairly pleasant-tasting pulp pieces, you will poop _a lot_ - but probably have a lot of cramping too. Cassia Cinnamon is the stereotypical American cinnamon roll cinnamon, and has more of the volatile cinnamaldehyde in it than 'Ceylon Cinnamon,' also known as 'true cinnamon.' I got some of the Ceylon variety because Phil, and his daughter Amy, love cinnamon but claim that it gives them a stomach ache, but that the 'real' kind does not. When I opened the pouch, the aroma triggered the blissfully nostalgic recognition that this was the cinnamon that I had grown up with, both in England and Israel! Whereas the Cassia/Saigon variety is 'cut to the chase/in your face CINNAMON writ large,' the other kind is a broader spectrum of aromas, more subtle, just delightful. I'm looking forward to enjoying using both of them!

I'm curious as to whether one or other variety is richer in the chromium and other compounds that recommend cinnamon for blood sugar support and insulin control. Anyone know?

Now for my announcement: please check out the 'Eighty Percent Raw' magazine blog for my interview with Courtney Pool. She very graciously agreed to give me an interview on her experiences with Liver Flushing, since that was the subject of my article for the April edition of the magazine. Enjoy!

The View From Here/Up For This Week

The View From Here

After so many barren months, it is such a treat to be able to eat fresh food from the ground! I've been pulling dandelion leaves (aiming to leave enough to enable flowering = bee food) and putting them in salads or just nibbling on them this whole past week, as well as 'twisted stalk,' a wild perennial with a cucumber taste that produces 'watermelon berries' in the late summer (very juicy, not very sweet, succulent berries, slightly reminiscent of watermelon, continuing the cucurbit-mimic theme).  Little update: I've just seen our first flowering dandelion (there have been others around town, but this is the first at our place - right outside the outhouse!)

And what about the nettles? This time last year, nettles were literally my staple food. I ate steamed nettles and not a whole lot else for that whole month or so of peak nettle time. 'This time this year,' I've been eating them raw. I made a nettle-cilantro pesto that is pretty good, and for lunch today I had some spinach/avocado/spirulina and several whole stalks of raw nettles! If you handle them with care, you needn't get stung whilst eating them. I broke off each leaf and rolled it up carefully - rubbing the stingy spines out of harm's way. Of course, there were a few times that I wasn't careful enough, and I have a few stung spots in my mouth now.

All the trees are budding out, the ocean is calm and ferocious by turns, the mountains across the bay are ponderously black and white, reflecting sunlight on their north-facing slopes. 

Up For This Week

This week, with no mercury removal to do, I'm hoping to get outside more. I'm also really looking for answers to the question of how to change longstanding, entrenched, self-destructive habits. Part of the depression stems from the self-destructive behaviors, but a larger part of it comes from the sense of being helpless to change, incapable of improving, incorrigibility. If I could believe that I can change for the better, that would be a beginning worth reaching for.

Some little inklings: the naturopath pointing out that the very fact that I'm seeing him is indicative of self-care. And my wonderful friend Stacy called, and during our phone conversation, she pointed out that a thought is just a thought: you don't have to act on it, you don't have to judge yourself for it, you don't have to believe that it makes you a bad or incorrigible person just because it came to mind. That was so helpful, I feel that it's a good thing to share.

Last week I started a new recipe 'theme and variation' series in here, and I'm looking forward to continuing it this week. I also finally got a 'wordstalk' in: will aim to do so again this week.

Wordstalks 7: 'Intrusive Liquids'

I remember when I was at Stanford, Ivan Sag told us about a dialect of American English that had an 'intrusive 'l' and cited a couplet from a country-and-western song that had 'rilver' rhyming with 'silver.' I was a little incredulous about this - egregiously wacky poetic license not worthy of the name, I thought - couldn't be part of someone's dialect?! 

Then, a year or two later I started going to raw food potlucks and seeing 'alvocado' on people's ingredients lists. Not once, but often. Like 'definitely,' it seems that 'avocado' is a word that many people have trouble spelling - aside from the oft-noticed 'alvocado,' I saw 'alvacodo,' 'avocado,' 'avacada,' 'alvocadoe,' etc…

When I got to thinking about it, that whole 'rilver' thing shouldn't have surprised me at all: I noticed 'intrusive 'l's' when I was a kid listening to East London dialects. I remember hearing a woman saying she was 'divoulced' and spelling it out to myself in my head, imagining how you'd need to spell it to have that pronunciation, when I was about 6 or 7. And when I went for horseback riding lessons, aged around 12 or 13, there was a girl who would always talk about 'riding an oulse.' I found this one very funny indeed, because by then I knew enough French to know that 'bear' was 'ours' and enough about language in general to know the lability of 'r's and 'l's, and I would amuse myself by picturing her horse as a bear!

But another 'intrusive liquid' phenomenon that keeps me giggling (and that does not seem to include any 'r'/'l'transgression is the pronunciation, apparently common in rural dialects all over the US, of 'wash' as 'warsh,' 'Warshington,' squarsh,' etc. Considering how much British English speakers get teased for ''r' insertion' intervocalically (e.g. they would say 'Elarand I,') (and considering how much that phenomenon sticks out to me when I hear British accents nowadays, as much as the conspicuous absence of the 'r' on the end of words like 'car,' 'number,' 'center,') there's something especially amusing about this kind of 'r' insertion, where there's no vowel to be orphaned by the lack of it and no etymological motivation for it either!

New Recipe Series - Themes and Variations Intro and #1

New Recipe Series - Theme and Variations

Time for some food talk!

I realized that there are several categories of recipe that I make over and over again, with constant variations on a consistent theme. I thought it would be fun to share these 'themes' and list some 'variations' too. It will be a helpful thing for me to do now, to remind myself that yumminess and using up ingredients are ok and good things, and might turn out to be a helpful collection also.

So, here goes! Today, I'll make my list of 'themes' and talk about just one of them, and then every week I'll talk about another. I'll link everything back, so that eventually it'll all be interconnected. Like life? 

Themes/Food Categories

Coconut Oil/Stevia 'Barks'/Fudges (still not quite sure what to call them but they're my staple atm)

Nut Milks

Salads

Crackers

Smoothies

Puddings and quick-snack-mini-puddings

Variations: (1)  'Barks'/'Fudges'

I might as well start with these, since they are the one thing that I really do seem to be making and eating at the moment, and since I have posted a couple of recipes for them fairly recently.

But what should I call them? I really don't know, and would much appreciate suggestions. 'Fudge?' 'Bark?' 'Nuggets?'...

The basic Theme for this Variation is:

1 c coconut oil, with 1 t white stevia powder, a shake of sea salt and spices and/or essential oils added as desired;

Then, gradually mix in dry ingredients until it holds together, spread out in a flat container (baking sheet or similar) and refrigerate or freeze until firm, then cut into pieces and keep cool. These will melt if they get warm, so I carry them in a small mason jar. They're still really good even if they aren't solid pieces.

Dry ingredients consist of superfoods, ground nuts, protein powder, and often I also include some nut pulp from making nut milk just to extend them. 

Superfoods include: maca, bee pollen, cacao nibs, spirulina, chlorella, glutamine powder, lysine powder (anti-viral), reishi mushroom powder, lecithin.

Ground nuts (presoaked and dehydrated): almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, brazil nuts, sesame seeds, hemp seeds are what I have mostly used. I also always include some flax or hemp, to ensure a goodly omega-3 to -6 ratio. I talk about the importance of this in my article for the 'Eighty Percent Raw Magazine' for this month.

Hemp protein/fiber powder is a good addition also, although it always seems to make the overall product blander, so more spicing is necessary. I also use pea protein powder sometimes.

Variations that I have made so far:

I have posted the recipes for my original maca-bee pollen variation and for my green mint-chocolate variation. Last time I made the mint-chocolate version, I added some reishi mushroom powder. It was a great flavor addition.

I have also made:

a Mediterranean almond/sesame/cardamom variation,

a lemon/ginger/poppyseed variation

a cardamom/clove variation

a hemp/bee pollen variation

But the two for which I've already posted the recipe have been by far the most commonly made, especially the mint choc! That's partly because I love getting the algae in: I'll have to think of another 'green' variation besides mint choc.

Another variable with this recipe is how much 'dry' ingredients to add. If you really saturate the oil with dry ingredients, especially if you add a lot of something gelling, like flax or chia, or something very fine, like pea protein powder, you can end up with a taller, chunkier nugget; it's moldable when you pour it out on your sheet, whereas if you leave it a little looser, it'll spread all over the sheet and set up into something thinner and crispier. Both ways are really good.

I'm going to try using a little lavender essential oil and make a lavender variation. Any suggestions for other variations?

And if someone can help me come up with a name for these little treats, I'd be so glad!

Enjoy…

Some More Poems to Glance At

I just posted two more poem drafts (for which the same considerations hold as the previous ones) to Nicelle Davis' blog.

The original post with the poems is here but as with last time, I'll paste it in here too:

Hello again!

I have two more poems to share, representing ‘imagination’ and ‘music.’ Truth be told, I found it harder to produce poems that represented just one of these features: in fact, both of these poem drafts could probably fall under either ‘imagination’ or ‘music.’


[Edit: of course, I had them the wrong way round! The two poems below are 'Imagination' first and then 'Music.']

Well, here’s ‘MusicImagination:’ ironically, it’s the only one of the four I’m posting that doesn’t have a set rhyme/rhythm scheme.

Water

When the snow melts, all is familiar and yet strange:
tools, posts and barrels emerge from the white unchanged,
each in its place, though grass and metal are revealed
with sorry tale: underneath all that whiteness, it was dark!

The yin-yang of the harlequin’s painted face haunts me,
relearning our topography minus its frosting:
the black underside of the searing white snow
is rust and death to blades of steel and grass.

The snow melts, revealing what we knew was there -
top-heavy weight of awkward liquid on a friable tilth:
a thirsty land that follows snow’s runoff down the bluff
in chunks – real estate sledding headlong toward ocean.

The smile on the harlequin’s painted face haunts me,
harbinger of melting of more than just water;
as the white shades to black, I hear ironic laughter,
black earth gives chase, the white water departs.

Snow’s leaving leaves a strange spring, a cyclic returning,
seeds hidden like Persephone in the black womb of snow’s blanketing;
snow leaves, and takes some earth with it, and spring is dry
wind buffeting the sunseekers in new round of sprouting.

Black and white harlequin, where is the reason
for your swift departure from our growing season?
You lay on the ground drying air when you’re freezing
but when the seeds are sprouting is when you’re a-leaving.

And here is ‘ImaginationMusic:’

Crazy-Tired

Will there be
a true sound
in the clang
of my insanity?

Will a phoenix’
egg be found
in the holocaust
of my exhaustion?

Will I find
fertile ground
in the standstill
of my debility?

Can the thread
be unwound
through the maze
of my craziness?

Mercury is Out of My Mouth!

Yes! My final mercury removal was yesterday! Between the actual dental work and the vitamin C IV afterwards, it's been taking up most of a day out of each week for the past several weeks. What a relief to have that taken care of.

My mind is still boggled that the situation exists, that so many people end up with their mouths full of such a toxic substance, that this has been allowed to happen in the name of healthcare.

Here are a few observations about the process:
1) In general, top-row teeth were more painful during the procedure (even with anesthetic), whereas bottom-row teeth were more painful afterwards.
2) Conversely, being numb on the upper jaw interfered with speech more, but chewing was ok after the numbness wore off, whereas being numb on the bottom jaw didn't interfere with speech distinctiveness but when I'd had the bottom jaw worked on (which was most of them) I had to stick to liquids the whole day.
3) Having your mouth wide wide open for so long leaves a sore jaw for up to a couple days afterwards!
4) Despite all the precautionary measures - the dam, the mask over my nose, the vacuum exhausting all fumes away, the IV, this is a debilitating procedure.  Generally, I have felt pretty smacked for the next day at least, as well as the day itself. I don't know how much of this is the anesthetic and how much of it is mercury mobilizing.
5) As I went on with removals, the tendency to be constipated the day after the removal increased. This is the last thing you want, as mercury's main exit route is through the bowel and if it gets stuck, it could be reabsorbed! Last week I had to take an enema; yesterday, I loaded up on cleansers to keep things moving today. It's strange to me that this was not a problem at all for the first couple removals but became a problem later.

One final point: I know that this is just the beginning of a multi-step process of getting out bad crap that ended up in here when good stuff wasn't available to my body, and presumably, of putting good stuff in. In other words, arduous as this process has been, I'm not expecting to feel like a new person and be bouncing off the walls overnight. I know that some people swear that it solved all their health problems at a stroke, and I'm delighted for people for whom it works like this. But then I also know of people who don't feel instant success, and of people who have heard stories lacking the 'instant success' component, who then dismiss the whole process. It's important to me to say that I feel quite sure that this is going to be a lot of help to me but that instant transformation can't be expected, with all the yeast, lead and other extraneouses in this body. Apparently, the temple cannot be destroyed and rebuilt in three days!

Please bear with me.

The View From Here/Up For This Week

The View From Here

It is ironic, when there are still several feet of snow on the ground in the higher parts of town, that this is such a dry place. The whole of last week was glorious sunshine, daytime temperatures in the 40s (getting to be too hot for Phil, beginning to approach my comfort zone, which is above 60). And the ground was drying out fast, as fast as we could plant it! We've used up almost all of our (admittedly meager) rainwater catchment. Today is the first overcast day for a week, and we're hoping that we'll get some rain on those little seedlings. 

That little moose that hung around our cabin throughout the big blizzard in March has been back daily, has eaten the tops off of all our currant bushes (damn!) and, small though she is, is more than a match for our tiny garden plants that are already pitting themselves in a race against the short season here. We may need to resort to more robust fencing than the stakelines designed to keep our friends' and neighbors' dogs from trampling everything…

Looking out from inside of me, the view from here is confused and low: looking outside of myself really is what I have to keep on doing, just keeping busy, so as not to sink back into despair. I have at least moved out of the intense death wish that possessed me for a week or two, but trying to ask myself what I want instead merely yields great confusion, so 'looking out' seems like a good idea, and keeping as busy as my energy allows.

Up For This Week

And so, looking out and keeping busy, up for this week is also some 'manifestation.' I swept the floor in the cabin this morning, which I hadn't done for way too long, and am ready to manifest a vacuum cleaner that is bag-less, quiet and functional. We have a big old deafeningly loud one that neither one of us can stand, and last I tried it wouldn't even turn on. Phil is convinced that he can fix it, but it's always going to be a low priority and I'd rather have a small, quiet one that actually fits in our corners anyway! So, for months, I've been sweeping with dustpan and brush, which is probably how I've cleaned for at least half my life anyway, but with the amount of dust and dirt here it's not very effective.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a bag-less, quiet vacuum cleaner? Do you like to clean? Do you use it as 'distraction/therapy' when feeling down? Or do you loathe it and avoid at all costs?

I'm also ready to manifest a camera that actually works. I wish I could have taken some pictures of the little moose again, and that baby rhubarb that I showed sprouting up a couple weeks ago now has chubby little stalks on it! An ironic thing, when I've been feeling like 'checking out,' that I seem to be finding 'things' to want that will bolster my feeling of participation.

I'm still, I guess, trying to find my own answers to my question of last week - 'why do we go on?'

One last little thought: last Friday the naturopath decided I needed an IV, and he prefers the veins in my left arm, which leaves me stuck in more than one way, since I'm left-handed! This time, I had to fill out some insurance forms for a couple blood draws and did so, rather messily, with my right hand whilst having the IV. As I went on with it, slowly, slowly, it forcibly struck me that my right-handed writing is so very inept purely through lack of practice. And I wondered what sorts of corners of my brain were getting stimulated by the unaccustomed use. I may have more to say about that later.

Last week I barely talked about food at all. Maybe this week I will some. 

Last week I posted some of my poems but no wordstalk: this week there will be one.

'Apples and Appetite,' 'Never be Afraid of your Hunger,' and High-Grading versus Slippery Slopes

'Apples and Appetite'

That is the koan the naturopath left me with yesterday. He's asked me to eat an apple a day for a little while, because in his opinion all the yeast cleansing I've been doing so far isn't going to deal with the yeast imbalance until I've gotten the last of the mercury out (which will be next week, yay!) This means that after almost three months of strict no-sugar eating, I'll have another three months of the same to look forward to when we start tackling the yeast post-mercury. 

Meanwhile, he says that a few apples aren't going to impact the yeast situation, and when I protested that I prefer not to eat apples because they tend to make me hungrier, he said that that should be a good reason to eat them! While we try to address the emotional components of my food restriction and lack of appetite, there's a major physical component too (deficiencies in certain things lead to loss of appetite, which then leads to further deficiency…) and he wants me to connect to my appetite as a good thing, not a fearsome thing, a sign of good health.

'Never be Afraid of Your Hunger'

Has anyone read 'Olive Kitteridge' by Elizabeth Strout? A beautifully written and enjoyable read, with exquisitely loving attention to the minutiae of life of the denizens of a small Maine village, centered around the redoubtable Olive. There are a couple chapters featuring a girl with an eating disorder, though, and I thought those were very poorly done: they were extremely triggering and yet far-fetched (ruined my day and night when I read them, for sure). But leaving that aside, in one of the storylines, the only role that Olive plays is to be quoted by a teenager, whose Math teacher she is, as having said, 'Never be afraid of your hunger. Otherwise, you'll just end up like all the other idiots.' 

That really stuck in my head. Occasionally I use it as a stick to beat myself: I am pathologically afraid of my hunger, so I must have ended up 'like all the other idiots;' more usefully, I use it metaphorically, as a measure of the far reaches of my curiosity (which are far indeed). And often it is just striking to me how very afraid I am of my literal hunger and how fearless in the more metaphorical realms.

How does that advice resonate for you?

'High-Grading' versus Slippery Slopes

When I first gravitated back toward eating just raw foods and cut out all sugars, Phil was concerned that it was yet more restrictive behavior and self-deprivation, and I insisted that to the contrary, I was 'high-grading.' At this point, there's an integrity gap. It's true that having that accident knocked the stuffing out of me and made things worse, but it's also true that I'd gradually been eating less and less before that. This week I detachedly realized that I'd been buying produce and making coconut kefir (both of which are mostly 'my' foods although he does eat them too) on the same schedule as usual, but hadn't been eating them. 

Part of 'high-grading' was giving myself permission to buy avocados. Well, this week we had a whole pile of uneaten ripe avocados! (I blended up a bunch of them with mint, 'chia-sweet,' cacao, maca, protein powder, coconut oil, and froze). And the coconut kefir is piling up too.

The last three days we have been planting our garden in the mornings and today Phil needed my help transplanting a 10ft tall spruce tree. The kind of thing he does all the time, and we did it lots last year. But it's so heavy and exhausting, and underscores how much weaker I am now. He's feeling upset with me for allowing myself to get that way, and bear-hunting, hiking and all the springtime activities are calling louder and louder. And he feels like I've betrayed his trust - which I can understand, thinking back to the whole 'high-grading' discussion. 

It's going to be difficult, there's a huge self-sabotage demon in here and not much motivation to eat more when doing so makes one feel sick. But the ND has given me some supplements to help support my crashed adrenals and I'm going through all kinds of motions toward trying to feel better, so I need to keep looking at this little issue of integrity.

Why do we go on? Especially when I'm at rock bottom, or having a resurgence of old anorexia demons that I thought I'd wrested my life free of and feeling hopeless and incorrigible, I cannot answer that question to my satisfaction. I'd love to hear some other answers.

Some Poems to Glance At

Apart from my spoofy poem in photos last week, I haven't talked much about my own poetic predilections on here, being unsure of levels of interest, etc.

However, I just posted two of my newest poems (and please understand that they are in draft form and unpolished) in response to my blogger-friend Nicelle Davis' 'April Poetry Challenge,' based on an analytical essay in Gregory Orr's masterful book 'Richer Entanglements' which distinguished four main 'temperaments' in poetry writing, namely 'story,' 'structure,' 'music' and 'imagination.' Nicelle invited people to write four poems, one of them to emphasize each of these temperaments. Whilst this is the opposite strain from Orr's advice that each poet should aim to identify their own strongest 'temperament' and build up all four so that their poems contain them all, it's a useful exercise for sure. This was supposed to be in honor of April's National Poetry Month, so I'm rather late!

Today, I posted poems highlighting 'story' and 'structure.' I'll be working on the other two.

You can see Nicelle's original post and my poems in response here - but I'll paste them in here too. Please respect my intellectual integrity and property, and please also know that they are unpolished drafts!

Temperament: ‘Story’
‘Spencer Allen Nearly Loses His Truck in the Tide’

Just a regular guy in an old ford truck,
trying to turn an honest buck…

To drive the beach of Homer is a risky proposition
but the equinoctial low tides make for easier decision
a vast exposed expanse of sands don’t need so much precision,
and just a few miles north of town you barely see a soul –
you own the beach! – you and the birds – a beach bestrewn with coal!

Just a regular guy in an old ford truck,
trying to turn an easy and honest buck
with his jacket of tatters and two shaggy mutts
he gives his own orders and takes his own pride
when you don’t expect much then you stay satisfied
summer sea, winter land, always the tide.

He’s gathered quite a load of coal but wants that last big slab
(the mutts have chased a poodle and been banished to the cab)
tide’s moving in, he’s almost done, but thinks he’ll take a stab.
That hunk of coal, though close to shore, is in a deeper region:
as soon as he pulls up his truck, he rues his rash decision –
his vehicle sinking in the sands dooms this and every mission.

Just a regular guy in an old ford truck
trying to turn a simple and honest buck
it doesn’t look so simple now that his rig is stuck
He digs in the quicksand to no avail
all hopes of driving away curtailed;
he gives it up for lost, gets ready to bail.

Ground giving, sinking, fluid, it’s acting just like water
well, normally it’s under sea, so water’s been its tutor
the sea’s an endless gaping maw, it gives no mead nor quarter;
it wants his truck! He knows this, drags his tools above the tideline
his tools, his dogs, himself – relegated to the sideline
a wretched, truckless future stretching clear within his mind’s eye.

We found the guy with his sinking truck
ruing his rashness and cursing his luck:
we swore we’d get him out of the muck.
We’d put down boards for the spinny wheels to tread
jack it up in front to lift up its head
but first, for goodness sakes, let’s unload the bed!

So certain had he been of the ocean’s claiming all
that salvage of his mobile goods had been his only goal
and so his sinking truck was packed with hundredweights of coal!
So we helped him shed his load and bring the tools where we could use them,
our optimistic flurry seeming merely to confuse him
but jacked and treaded, towed, there’s just no way his truck was losing!

So our regular guy in his rescued truck
made haste for home as soon as he’d gotten unstuck
with a new respect for intertidal muck.

Temperament: ‘Structure’ (Villanelle)
Journey’s Mirror

If I’m alive, it must be meant to be
there must be some end point to all my journeying
my end, my death, is all that calls to me.

So many charts and plans are sent to me
adventures’ invitations, constant learning
if I’m alive, it must be meant to be.

But yet a constant shadow pulls on me
participation’s liveliness deterring
my death, my end, is all that calls to me

Life’s chartless plan promotes its liberty,
its winters hint at signs of joy returning
if I’m alive, it must be meant to be.

These plays of life flick by like shoals at sea,
mere ripples on the ocean of my yearning
my death, my end, is all that calls to me.

Mind’s mirror must distort reality
and keep the whirlpool of my vision churning:
if I’m alive, must it be meant to be?
my death, my end, is all that calls to me.