Self Love in Writing and Food

Happy Friday, everyone! A whole week since the end of reflections on self-love - time is flying!

I have kept the concept in mind, and have been realizing that there are two especially tricky areas for me. One is doing what I know I need to do, despite being busy or having resistance. The other is finding the balance between taking care of my body's special needs and satisfying my curiosity to try out new things, retry old things, or just feel like I'm joining in some food-related pleasure. The last is maybe the most fraught for me, since I feel some guilt around it too.

not all treats are sweet...

So, I want to talk about these tricky areas today - to show some pitfalls that I've had since I've been away from home, and how to fix them.

Writing


I know, and have said many times, that I feel like I'm actually living my life when I'm regularly working on my poetry, and when I'm not, I feel like I'm just marking time. So, why has it been hard for me to make time here in Oregon? Well, there are reasons. I have a lot of work to do, then there's the work on the farm and all the visiting... I'm often exhausted at the end of the day, which isn't the best state in which to get good writing done.

But I am also lacking a lot of my familiar inspirations. At home, I have probably a dozen books of poetry on the go at any one time - my reading practice is important for my writing practice.

So, to help me, I'm going to share a few of the things that are on my shelf at home:

This is wonderfully sensuous and really is about the heart.

I adore McGrath's use and extension of forms, his humor, his use of incantation, his cynicism.

Limpidly exquisite as always - the latest book of poems by someone I'm honored to call a mentor, who is also the new Alaska Writer Laureate.

An amazing set of poems...

A wonderful anthology about writing poems.

There are many more too, but I don't want to lose anyone! Will share more later. And you'd better believe I'm taking some poetry from online home on this computer when I leave town...

Food


I have a couple of stories of things that didn't work, and some ideas for things that will work better for me.

A few nights ago, Phil and I went out to dinner. We went to an Indian restaurant. I love Indian food, especially the spices, and the ease of finding gluten free and meatless choices. But I was nervous about the fact that they tend to cook in ghee. Although this is clarified butter, it's still a dairy product, and dairy affects my mood in such horrid ways that I'm afraid to eat it. But I want to be able to be flexible enough for the occasional outing - we eat out extremely seldom.

I ordered utthappam, which is basically a sourdough pancake made of rice and lentils with onions and chilis, with some sambar - lentil soup. These are South Indian dishes, where coconut predominates over dairy, so I was hoping that they might not be made with ghee.

Well, it was deliciously spicy, but I could detect an element of dairy in the aftertaste. I only ate half of it, so had some to experiment with the next day. I woke up mucusy, headachy, and in a really bad mood, and tried a bite or two of the leftovers mid-morning for an immediate return of those symptoms. Told me what I needed to know. I think some Indian restaurants nowadays use olive oil or coconut oil, to cater to vegans, so I guess I should look out for those or make my own. Another one for the 'watch' list.

The other 'food' problem area is temptation. I'm away from home, can't make my own treats (although I brought some with me), am often working long hours in town. At the farm, everyone eats tons of sugar and ice cream. In town, there are a few raw bars available that aren't around where I live.

So, I gave into temptation twice over the past week and tried out these new larabar flavors I hadn't had before:

Chocolate chip brownie and peanut butter chocolate chip. First ingredient: dates. Possible milk contamination in the chips. But I love chocolate chip anything and have it so seldom (not supposed to have chocolate either, remember). I didn't eat either of them in one go - they took a couple days each. And the pb one gave me a good idea for an alternative energy bar to make for Phil, but they're really not a good food for me.

It's another piece of the discussion about 'natural' versus 'what works for you.' Dates are more 'natural' and whole than the white stevia powder I use in my home made bars and barks. But when I eat my stevia-sweetened goodies, I feel good and stable. When I ate the larabars with dates, I felt jittery, unsatisfied, with a big increase in appetite and cravings. That's the worst thing to me about eating high-glycemic things: they make me hungrier!

So, what is going to work?

Well, I've shown before the whole bunch of no-sugar cookies I brought with me -

these are disappearing fast.

There's one batch that is _very low_ sugar instead of 'no sugar:' I made a batch of these cinnamon maca bars from Sunfood to bring with me to Oregon. The recipe calls for dates and two tablespoons of honey. I subbed goji berries for the dates, but I did use the two tablespoons of honey: I used some hoarded precious Christmasberry honey from my Hawaii days. Christmasberry honey is supposedly as potent a healer as Manuka honey. (Christmasberry is a noxious weed that is also a potent herb. Also known as Brazilian peppertree.)

It boggles my mind that the recipe says 'makes six bars:' I think I got 18 out of it! So, two tablespoons of healing honey and two tablespoons of (low sugar anyway) goji berries in a batch of 18 is pretty low-sugar for now. And again, these don't send my blood sugar for a loop like the larabars.

I also brought some bark:

I've shared many recipes for bark in the past. Earlier this year, when I was 'very depleted' and not digesting anything, these really were my major source of calories. More recently, I've backed off a lot on them, since I have so many more options and they really are dense. But, since they're so similar in composition to chocolate, especially when I use my dark chocolate flavor extract, they make a pretty good substitute/treat when chocolate is making the rounds.

One more thing I did was to make a chia mix - chia seeds, coconut flour, goji berries, ginger, bee pollen. Mix a couple spoonfuls with some nutmilk and stevia - and, here, some blackberries I gathered a couple days ago:

This is something I hadn't been doing at home, but everything else smack of the familiar.

Finally, if I absolutely have to have chocolate, I will occasionally buy a Lindt 90% bar.
Being 90% cocoa, it's very low sugar obviously, and I find one square (which has 55 calories) to be very satisfying, so long as I am mindful. So a single bar will last for weeks. I try not to do this, because of chocolate's effect on my adrenals, but when we're away from home, and considering that I am generally so very strict, I consider it an slight indulgence that works if I'm careful. On the side of self-love, not self-abuse.

And, not all food treats are sweet! I pictured jicama up top, always a great treat for me. And avocado is another wonderful treat.

What are some non-sweet treats for you?
How do you take care of your muse?