2011 Retrospective

What an auspicious last day of the year! I've put in almost six hours on a very complex editing deadline, made a raw ginger spice cake on a total whim,

 worked out hard, shared some love vocally and over the internet, and I still have time to think back on this year, in blogging and otherwise, before we head up the hill to a New Year's celebration!

The biggest thing about this year for me has been the process of continuing to put my writing front and center in my life. I started my MFA at the Rainier Writing Workshop at PLU. I met some wonderful people there with whom I hope to be friends for life, and am working with a great mentor. I went to the Writers' Conference here in town again and met Rita Dove, Nickole Brown and other wonderful poets.
That link also tells the story of my participating in a poetry reading, starting out with the inadvertent slapstick of falling down the stairs!

Five of us here in town formed a poetry group. We meet twice a month, once to critique one another's poems, once to discuss a book we've read. It's an absolute lifeline.

I've written poems and cut them up into strips and put them back together in funky orders.

I acquired a tiny netbook on which to write and work wherever I go, and covered a notebook with inspirational quotations from teabag tags (that notebook is now long filled up).

I remind myself to ask the important questions...

...and I use my writing to make my gifts seem more familiar.

I've also repeatedly used my blog as a sounding board and a refuge to help me be a better version of myself. It provides accountability, feedback and visibility, as well as an impressive sweep of freedom.

Two very recent writerly things: I'm starting to submit my work! Which means I can start the process of receiving slews of rejections that will finally lead to acceptances!

And second, I mentioned yesterday this idea for a book that I've been obsessed with recently but too busy to implement, and I received more negative, skeptical or concerned comments than I ever have before for a creative endeavor. My sincerest thanks to you all for your care and consideration: I hear you. I don't quite know what to do with it yet, since I have so much energy behind the idea and have practically half written it already in my head, but the unanimity of the response makes me sit up and take notice.

A year ago, Phil had his eye surgery and we drove up to Anchorage every week for a month or two. We're not sorry to be skipping that this year, but we sure enjoyed the beauty of the drives.

We continue to hike in all weathers, and to appreciate the beauty both on the beach nearby...

...and right outside our cabin.

We disturbed wildlife in remote places not far from where we live. The sea otters seemed like they were 'in church' when we showed up.

And whereas last year, a gray whale washed up on our beach, this year we found a salmon shark.

We grew a big garden again. More than my weight in potatoes...

Some other beautiful roots...

And I added a dehydrator to my toolset and made lots of homegrown kale chips, although we agreed eventually that chard and beet green chips are much more delicious! 

Our horseradish came back gigantic from last year, and I made some amazing condiments with it. 

The dandelion wine I made two years ago matured to be smooth enough for prime time. Oh, and I had my first ever night as a blonde!

I continued my "witchly" ways, making tinctures and syrups...

...putting nettles in my smoothies...

Another thing I made during this gifting season was hops pillows. Hand-sewn (I don't even know how to use a sewing machine) and filled with hops blossoms and buckwheat groats.

I made eight of them for eight lovely ladies. I was surprised by how many of these recipients immediately reacted that it was a 'microwavable neck pillow,' when I thought of it as an eye pillow and think microwaves are the devil's work! I think that microwaving would volatilize the hops and take away their goodness, but people should enjoy their gifts however they would like.

We went to Arizona and helped David and Heather paint their ceilings, and enjoyed some gorgeous cactus hikes.

We went to Oregon for Phil's niece's wedding...

...hosted Phil's son and grandkids up here...

...and saw Phil's daughter Amy get married!

We got a decent-sized refrigerator...

...which precipitated our transformation of our little side room into a kitchen.

This was also the miraculous year that saw running--or at least walking--water come out of a faucet in our cabin! The pipe's only frozen twice so far, and we're impressed with how well our thousand-gallon tank is lasting us.

I'm so happy that I traveled all the way to Israel, renewed connections with all my lovely relatives, played in the kitchen with my grandmother...

...and hung out with my sweet mum!

 On the goodies front, my cashew-based cheesecakes were a hit. Especially the white chocolate-blueberry swirl...

 ...the chocolate-peanut butter one (requested many times)...

...the mint chocolate one (my birthday cake)...

...the coconut-lime (commissioned twice)...

...although my reduced-fat crustless version replacing cashews with cooked parsnip might have seemed strange to some!

My carrot-cardamom cookies are probably my personal favorite from this year.

And the holidays were a great opportunity to make some delightful experiments.

Healthwise, this has been an interesting year.

I got done with chelating and candida cleansing. My adrenals recovered to the point that around May, I began to be able to exercise intensely again. It's been such a pleasure to be able to enjoy moving my body, and to feel better about it as a result of (albeit agonizingly slow) improvements in body composition.

After a lifetime of shying away from any kind of medical oversight, I've continued to work with a Naturopath and a Therapist, working on supporting my deranged endocrine system and other things using mostly bioidentical hormones and herbs.

Although there have been definite improvements, several dosages have had to be increased this year. I don't know how much of that is just fluctuation and how much is a result of my continuing fluctuations in diet and stress levels.

Another thing that came to light this year was a diagnosis, or a label, for the rollercoaster experience of which I've so often described my life as consisting, and the challenge of accepting/rejecting/coming to terms with the label and the lifestyle behaviors and medications recommended to control it. It might even explain why I had an eating disorder for so long and why full recovery continues to be elusive.
Overall, these must all be good things: opportunities for growth, certainly.

I'm so grateful to this guy for being my anchor on the wild ride!

 And now this post is so long, probably no one is reading anymore!

Happy New Year to everyone! I'll be back either tomorrow or the next day with some thoughts and intentions for 2012.

Carrot Slaw for Breakfast? A Year of Dietary Fluctuations and How Light Can One Go?

The rapid turnover from Christmas/Solstice to New Year always catches me by surprise, especially living in such a 'far back' timezone. Some places, it's already New Year's Eve!

I don't set great store by New Year's, because I have always believed that any moment can be a beginning. I remember as a kid saying incredulously "but every minute, a new year starts." Perhaps it was easier for me to recognize this, with Jewish New Year--and school year, for that matter--both falling in September, and then everyone's birthday is their own new year's beginning.

All that said, it's a useful time to take stock and reflect, to align with the collective energy, to join the chorus. I'll be back tomorrow with some more general reflections about the year as a whole, but today, perhaps prompted by a bizarre comment I left on Gena's blog, saying that I was going to have carrot 'slaw for breakfast the next day, I'll start with that oddity, and go back over a year of odd breakfasts. I really like to have the same thing for breakfast every day, mostly for convenience, but over the course of the year, that "same thing" has shifted often. It may be that I'd be better off varying my breakfasts throughout a given week: it seems I'm prone to feeling nauseous after breakfast, and something can work for a while and then suddenly "not work."

I did, in fact, have carrot 'slaw for breakfast the morning after that comment. It may not be surprising, given my obsession with carrots, that I thought of them when feeling out of sorts with my regular breakfast and generally a little under the weather.

Carrot Breakfast 'Slaw for 1

1 large grated carrot

1 tablespoon melted coconut butter

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

squeeze of lemon juice

Mix all these together and let sit overnight.

Top with a teaspoon of ground flax meal, a teaspoon of lecithin, and a tablespoon or two of goji berries and raisins. Can also add some spirulina for protein.

I also had a kiwi and half an orange to round this breakfast out. It may not sound like a lot, but it sure was delicious.

In the early part of the year, I was having a smoothie with a bazillion different superfoods and vegetables and no fruit or sugar.

Then, that stopped working, or I stopped being willing to have it "not work," and I was eating leftover salads and carrots for breakfast. For a while, I was eating only yams, carrots, nettles and some coconut kefir, so the first three of those were my breakfasts.

Then, I went back to all-fruit, and a big hunk of watermelon...

...or other fruit medley was my breakfast.

Then, I got back into smoothies, but felt like I didn't have time to make them at breakfast, and needed something quicker. Sometimes, I had berries, fruit and coconut kefir with spirulina.

Then, for months, my breakfast was quinoa/amaranth/millet very-watery-porridge with berries, banana, turmeric and occasionally flax meal and protein powder.

At some point in there, I stopped eating bananas again because they're not digesting well for me. And for some of that time, I substituted adzuki beans for the millet and quinoa.

Lately, my breakfast has been chia pudding made from one tablespoon of chia seeds soaked overnight in water or herbal tea, sometimes adding some thawed acai juice, with some protein powder, lecithin and tocotrienols added in the morning and some fruit on the side.
It's amazing to me how filling that breakfast is for so few calories! You'd also think (I also thought) that with so few calories, there'd be no way I'd get nauseous.
Wrong! Just the past couple weeks, after a month or so of chia pudding for breakfast every morning, I've been nauseous until lunchtime after eating it.

Hence the carrot 'slaw, and very occasionally, if something like this is marked down at the store...

 ...I'll have it for breakfast with a little flax meal and lecithin, and a few berries.

Maybe I'll go back to chia pudding tomorrow, or perhaps I'll just have to have carrot 'slaw again!

It seems like I've come in a full circle from minimal sugar and low calories but lots of 'superfood' type stuff, through just fruit with no protein at all, through starchy porridge, porridge with added protein powder, and back to minimal sugar and low calories with 'superfood'-type stuff, albeit in a simpler version. Perhaps it's natural to go more fruity in the summer, even up here. But if anything, I'm eating a higher percentage of raw foods now than I was in the summer, when I was eating quite a bit of cooked starch.

My inner minimalist is definitely in the ascendant right now, both for frugality and for the simple, academic interest of seeing how little food I actually "need." That's an area in which I can claim to some expertise, actually, and in the new year I'm going to start sharing some tips for "going lightly." When I have time, I'll write a whole book about it!

Would you be interested in a book on "going lightly," or are you more interested in the "rev your metabolism and eat all you want" approach (which I don't have the expertise to offer!)?

Is there any breakfast I haven't tried and should try?