Recipe Fail; Eating My Mistakes

I'm not the sort of person who prefaces lots of remarks with 'I'm the sort of person who...'--I don't pretend to know that much! But I am not the sort of person who throws out failed food experiments: I'm pretty comfortable eating my mistakes. As an inveterate recipe-tweaker, I have experienced that many of my more intriguing creations come about through improvisation, sometimes in the interests of salvage.

In the juggling act of life, between work, play, homestead-work, internet time (is that a whole new category?) and culinary artistry, I'm very apt to succumb to the temptation to multitask. If I get the cuisinart out to make a cake crust, I'll probably do something else with it too. If I'm melting coconut oil or cacao butter for one thing, I'll melt extra and think of something else to do with the rest of it.

I did both these 'add-ons' this morning, when creating another cheesecake (or a pair of smaller ones): this time white chocolate-raspberry (from the recipe in Sweet Gratitude, as near as I ever follow a recipe...) and the potential for inattention and mistiming, and just lack of thinking through, provided me with perhaps the most spectacular 'recipe fail' I can remember making, thanks to those extra ground nuts and melted cacao butter!

Thankfully, the cheesecake was not a 'fail.' I know, because I had extra of everything and made a mini-cheesecake in a half-pint mason jar and served it to Phil. I think that might be a great marketing idea, if I ever take these to the farmer's market!

His verdict: "delicious."

I should have known to stick to familiar tracks when multitasking, but I couldn't resist trying a slightly different spin on the usual energy bars I make for Phil, using the nuts that I'd pulsed in the cuisinart before make the crust for the cheesecake. I left out the peanut butter I normally include, and used less protein powder than usual, creating a more diffuse, loose, potentially caramelly and crinkly mixture. And if I'd had my head on, I would have spread the mixture as thin as possible before baking, to encourage this diffuse tendency. But instead, I crammed it all into the two little pans that are all that fit in our tiny toaster oven, and even with careful stewarding in my 20-20 hindsight, I almost ended up with a big, crumbly mess.

I shaped things up as best I could, but nice, regular bars these are not. And who knows whether the texture will be palatable so glommed together? I eat my mistakes: Phil has higher standards (and these are not his mistakes, after all). Texture and appearance matter as much to him, if not more than, flavor. We'll just have to see (he hasn't yet tried them).

However, that wasn't the biggest fail of the day! Remember my white chocolate experiment? It was so delicious, and is now running low (I've been hoarding it), so I melted a little extra cacao butter to try another idea. Now, I only ended up with about two tablespoons of cacao butter, so what could possibly be so bad? Well, it's a matter of scale, and evidently I didn't scale down nearly enough!

I'd been thinking that white chocolate tends to be so sweet, and that I'd love to make a white chocolate that had some of the alluring bitterness of cacao. I was trying to think of a good superfood ingredient that would allow the chocolate to be white but impart some of that bitterness.  What I didn't remind myself was that the easiest way to completely ruin a recipe is to overemphasize the bitter flavor.

I added almost a tablespoon of MSM powder! For two tablespoons of cacao butter, I only needed about four tablespoons of solid ingredient. What on earth was I thinking? MSM is soooo bitter...

I had also added a little peppermint oil, coconut milk powder, stevia and vanilla. It's delicious, except for the overwhelming bitterness that coats all those good flavors. And it doesn't taste any more chocolatey for the added bitterness.

I'm still not going to throw it out, though, even though this may be one of the harder mistakes to eat straight (although my tolerance for bitter is pretty high). I can throw little chunks of it into my smoothies. For months...

Do you eat your mistakes?

I showed the view from our window in my last post: here it is again this morning--

Yep--snow again! I keep telling myself not to assume that winter's finished, but I was pretty much fooled after two weeks of daytime thawing. The ground definitely has the thawing habit now, though, so much of that beautiful gilding of snow is already gone.

Paradoxical Us, Good 'Stuff' but Not a 'Stuff' Person; Being One's Own Role Model

Does it seem crazy that we're planning on a significant remodel of our cabin, when it's this close to the edge of a highly erosive 300-foot bluff?

 Does it seem crazy that we live here, period? I feel that my overall lack of concern is a good attitude and not 'head in the sand:' my intention is that we are safe and secure. However, ice is melting and water is running, wanting to take ground with it: there was more real estate in front of the windows when Phil bought this place 14 years ago than there is now. Every year at this time, Phil gets concerned, and spends many hours hanging off the edge of the bluff, repairing cribbing (you can see some stakes poking up below the lip of the bluff), and at those times, I start to wonder whether I should move all my more precious books elsewhere, put all my writings on an external hard drive somewhere else... Although I'm not working on the erosive face as Phil is, and although it's an unfamiliar situation in an unfamiliar land, I am working on tuning in to my intuition and trusting that my gut will tell me when it's time to run for the hills. Considering how much time I have spent anxious over trivial things, surrendering and trusting in the case of such a 'big' thing seems like good role model behavior.

Meanwhile, organizing our cabin so that we make the most of the space and have the greatest potential for self-expression is another piece of good role modeling for ourselves: especially for me: acknowledging the importance of the physical world.

Another acknowledgment of the importance of the physical world that has felt very rewarding in the last few days is recognizing that, although 'stuff' is 'just stuff,' having the right kind of 'stuff' can make life more easeful.

I've shared on here before that I received a turtle as totem in a dream/vision, and that there were so many attributes of the turtle beneficial for me to foster. However, one turtle attribute that I lately realized was overdue to be let go was my habit of carrying practically my whole house on my back! My daypack brims with 13-in Macbook and power supply, several writer magazines, each part-read; notebook, phone charger, and all kinds of miscellaneous scribbled notes, stevia bottles, rocks from the beach, pens, dental floss... It is heavy!

Well, yesterday I went out in much better style. Here's my new little netbook, with my paper notebook overlapping for scale--

...and here it is open.

 It's 10 inches, with a claimed 13 hour battery life (I haven't tested it completely yet--or taken off the plastic, for that matter). It's an Asus eee. The screen is small for full-time use, but anything that encourages you to take breaks from the computer is a good idea. I've downloaded Google Chrome for browsing, and Open Office for word processing and editing (hoping that it'll be compatible with clients' work sent in Word), and I've upgraded to 2MB of RAM. It was so exciting to me that I was able to do that myself: I am in no way a techie!

I'm taking a Creative Writing class these next few Saturdays, and am able to go unplugged. This little guy has no CD-drive, and is generally sturdier and less delicate than my Macbook. Speaking of intuition, everyone who knows me knows that I had decided--and saved for--a netbook months ago and was inexplicably dragging my feet over buying it. Falling on the ice with the Macbook on my back a few weeks ago, damaging the CD drive so that it needed replacing (costing almost as much as a new netbook) persuaded me of the foolishness of my delaying. Sure, the price could go down, or a new, better model come out, but that's always going to be the case.

And to carry the netbook, I gave my new lumbar pack (birthday gift from Phil) its first outing.

Yes, the little guy fits in there just fine! And so much lighter and more comfortable--and less turtle-like altogether--than my rock-weighted daypack. It's true, I took a mini-cooler of lunch too (a whirled peas smoothie and some carrots, mostly)...

... because it can't fit days' worth of food in it--but it fits some, and I'm excited about the discipline that it's going to impose on me--to pack light!

Discipline, but also challenge: part of the reason that my daypack becomes such a repository is because there's nowhere to unload it! Carrying a much smaller pack around on my travels will mean that I'll need to become both more creative and more ruthless about setting things down or throwing them out.

On a side issue, as well as not being a 'stuff' person, I am emphatically not a 'logo' person. So what's up with the fact that the boots I wear day in and day out are 'North Face' boots...

...my jacket that I wore all winter and am just now considering relinquishing for something lighter is North Face...

...and now this wonderful lumbar pack is, too?

We are such bundles of paradox, are we not?

Are you a good role model for yourself?

The Freedom to Sway, Wilderness Trip, Cabin Remodel Plans!

I've mentioned a few different times on here that one of my flaws is a tendency to be, as Shakespeare puts it, 'a vane blown with all winds.' It's very easy for me to see others' points of view, and I haven't always had the conviction of my own path necessary to stick to it despite everything. Right now, though, I'm stretching into a delicious sense of freedom: a feeling that I can move with different winds and currents, but that I'm not obliged to do so.

Instead of feeling boggled with confusion about all my nutritional research, I'm feeling empowered to sanction all kinds of different choices, because there are so many choices that have something (or someone) to recommend them. When I'm through with this yeast cleanse, I can choose to enjoy fruit and higher glycemic veggies rather than demonizing them or feeling pinned to the glycemic mandate, since I've had such positive experiences with yams, fruit, etc, in my own body. I also recognize that stressing about it is more poisonous than any trans fat (really???) and that realization is helping me to feel more relaxed.

I can feel stressed and imperiled when rushing to catch the tide with Phil's perilous little boat, and often do--but I can explore other ways to feel too: exhilarated, curious, interested. And when it's way too cold out there in the wilderness? If I move around as much as I can, and focus on how beautiful it is and how pleasant without mosquitoes yet, then I needn't be miserably cold. And what about when we run up against a seemingly intractable problem of large objects in a small space?

Well, we've been doing some serious thinking since I reported our shock at the size of the new fridge. Change is in the air, and the current plan is to convert our little side room into a kitchen!

our side room in its current chaos

 This little room is how we coped with such a tiny fridge for so long: for most of the winter, we don't heat it and most of the produce is on the floor in there. It's the 'under the rug' room--if we have company or are trying to tidy up, all the mess tends to end up in there. Also, it's our clothes storage. So, making it into a kitchen will be a big change: we'll have to heat it instead of keeping it chilly, we'll have to move all our clothes out, move the fridge in (not a small endeavor!), put in a counter... There are pros and cons, of course, to having the food prep area divorced from the social area, and I had some misgivings about taking over the spare room so thoroughly--if it's going to be the kitchen, sorry Phil: it's going to be mine!

On the other hand, if I'm going to be commissioned to make more cakes, as I was this one for a 70th birthday party...

coconut-lime cheesecake, raw, no-sugar

...then having more of a kitchen space seems smart. And not having food in the main room (where the storage for it is quite awkward) will free up a lot of space and ultimately help with decluttering.

It's an upheaval, but it's an exciting one and I am looking forward to seeing how the energy moves.

There were big low tides this week after the huge full moon, and we went across to China Poot Bay in Phil's tiny zodiac.

 It is so beautiful over there. Cold, but you dress up well and bounce around. It must be an uncomfortable place in the winter: it's opposite the bay from us, which means that it's oriented to face north: there must be no sunlight there at all!

This is a beautiful carpet of sea veggies. My ND suggested that the best way to protect one's thyroid from radiation exposure is to harvest one's own kelp and eat it fresh. He says that since Chernobyl (and who knows how the Fukushima event has exacerbated this) all above-ground sources of iodine are radioactive, and that even iodine sourced from under-sea will become radioactive within three months. So, harvesting kelp that's washed up recently and eating it soon sounds like a fine idea.

 Phil gets clams and mussels: I'll be happy to get the greenery (and reddery)!

Have a beautiful weekend! Are you a vane blown with all winds, or can you choose whether to sway?

Whirled Peas, and Selling Ice to the Eskimos: Our New Fridge #2

Whirled peas, whirled peas... the vortex is supposed to be so good for you--restructuring your aura, blending down to tiny particles and huge surface areas...

...Seriously, though, I've been loving my smoothies with frozen peas to replace the blueberries during this lenten (unleavened?) yeast cleanse, and a little bee pollen sprinkled on top. And this is a calm, placid (post-whirling) shot before all the photos of cabin chaos to come!
Whirled peas smoothie:
1 cup coconut milk
piece of fresh ginger
good-sized hunk of irish moss gel
green powders, maca
protein powder (pea or hemp)
a small carrot or piece of cucumber (or both)
little piece of avocado
little chunk of coconut oil
1 cup frozen peas
sprinkle of stevia
blend in Vita, dust with pollen ad lib. Don't you love my precise quantities?

Now for the chaos.

 We took the old fridge out from its position right next to the propane stove _and_ the heater--a position that had always irked me from the energy efficiency perspective. It was quite clear that the new guy would not fit in that little slot.

 Would it even fit through the door?

 Just barely... But in order to have a place to put it inside, we took out the futon, which has always been the centerpiece of the cabin, taking up the breadth of it...Here's Phil mocking up where the futon used to be. Underneath it was great storage space too...

 And they all lived happily ever after? Or not. Here's Phil's beautiful daughter sporting her new haircut, with the fridge installed in the background, giving some idea of its size.

Although it's well-designed and enormously roomy, in hindsight we're feeling as though this decision was more a case of "look before you leap" than of "leap and the net will appear." It's much quieter than our old and busted fridge, but it isn't as quiet as we'd hoped, and it's bigger than we'd comprehended. Walking through the cabin without constantly having to circumnavigate the futon is pleasant, but now we have nowhere comfy to sit, nowhere convenient for Phil to nap. And the luxury of the space opened up makes deciding to get another, smaller couch something of a tussle--and what can we find that will fit anyway?

So far, the biggest 'win' is that we're sleeping on the futon mattress, and our backs were suffering from our former 'bed' of camping pads topped with a foam topper(!) For the rest, we'll need to employ some of that 20-20 hindsight and figure out what to do. I feel a little embarrassed and culpable, as I didn't participate much in the whole decision/purchase, but had been saying for a long time that I wanted a bigger and more energy-efficient refrigerator.

Off to ponder--I'll leave you with some wildlife. This young moose had found a sunny south-facing wall to rest beside, getting some warmth out of the pale sun.

 I saw several dogs pass close by but none of them went to disturb her.

And these snowshoe hares who are getting fat and legion killing all the trees they can get close to are just shameless! I snapped this one at twilight right on the edge of the highway, eating a fallen spruce, and there were four or five others with it! They didn't run away when I passed--just stood up and posed. They did skedaddle when the camera flashed, but returned almost immediately.

Have you ever made a large purchase without comprehending its full implications and then had second thoughts?

Breaking through the Chrysalis--or Having your Hike and Writing it Too

In the current version of my body, space and scheduling are precious and it's easy to get too much physical activity. I know that this is simply a 'current version,' and look forward to being able to hike plentifully this spring and summer. However, too much hiking means I'm brain-dead in the evening (and next day), and can't write. And if I don't write, I'm like the unmilked cow, all bloated and cranky, and my routine and schedule slip. But if I don't hike, I don't get to see beautiful back-country places like these.

Sometimes, days go by and what doesn't happen is my approaching the realization of my desires to be the highest and best expression of myself. In one sense, the universe is indifferent to this: it is large enough to absorb whole species of fallen sparrows and non-starters. But in another sense, since I am a part of the universe, my highest expression would enhance the universe too, and my hesitating on the threshold is depriving the universe as well as myself.

So, I say I'm ready, I feel the frustration and impatience of being ready to bloom but compressed in the bud or chrysalis, but I also sense layers of old habit and non-serving beliefs about not deserving, not being worthy as tight-folded carpels, chrysaline coats. It is always time to let these go. Now it is past time. I recognize that it's possible for them to disappear in a flash: simply to drop; I also recognize that it may take some vigilance to keep them gone. 

The week before last, I felt the readiness in action; I was Tapping, I was productive, I was excited. This past week, I saw the actions slip through the slipperiness of traveling and fatigue, and received an object lesson in the need for vigilance, that work is still to be done.

I want to be able to get out to places like this, to see the beautiful ice formations on water, with the creek flowing underneath, undisturbed, chilly.

This all seems to hark back to my questioning last year (almost exactly a year ago) of "what do I need my strength for?" In some ways, I'm still asking that question, but I feel that I have more pieces of the multifaceted answer.

How do I make sure I get to have my hike and write it too? There's a multi-frontal approach going on here. During the hike pictured above, I stopped when I was exhausted (and would still have to hike back--should probably have stopped sooner), invited my companions to drop their packs under my guardianship, and pulled out my notebook.

Additionally, while accepting that during the yeast cleanse I'm lower in energy and less movement feels good, there's a certain minimum of training that I won't let slide. Every morning, I'm still doing my Five Tibetans, eight times each, with extra spinning and crunches. It took so much work to build up to doing those eight times, especially the fifth one, which involves alternating upward and downward dog, so a push-up-type descent (the link above shows it). Last year, I had to lay on the ground catching my breath for several minutes between each iteration of that: my current ability to do eight of them consecutively was hard-won. And I know that hard as it was to 'win,' it will be much easier to lose. If I miss a single day, it's much harder the next day. So, no matter how late I feel like I'm running, if the sun has already risen, if I'm hungry, if we stayed in bed snuggling a bit too long, I do those first. And I know that keeping this baseline will allow huge gains in energy when my body isn't busy cleansing yeasties.

Do you get to hike and write it too? What's your minimum that you won't renege on?

Party-Time!

A happy weekend to everyone! The fridge-installation-saga continues here, and I have more bizarre photos to share soon. But I'm almost a week past a wonderful party that needs sharing. 

Phil's gorgeous, wonderful daughter is turning 40! So we celebrated in style.

Pictured here with her mom, another awesome person and the hostess of the party at her beautiful home way up the hill where the snow is deeper.

In my last post, I showed Phil digging into crab during the party--he and our neighbor went out for the last time this season. Here's Phil's daughter's fiance modeling the unusual tools that were on the table for crab-cracking:

Vice grips, wrenches... His t-shirt says 'I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.'

And here's Buddy, their dog, looking very pleased with himself.

We are so fortunate in our extended family/group of friends here. Parties are always sumptuous events, full of laughter and good stories. If it's someone's birthday, it's often even more fun because of the anticipation and picking out gifts ahead of time. For this reason, I think I prefer when it's not my birthday (which is most of the time, of course). I love to pick out gifts and also to create edibles that would be particularly enjoyed by the person celebrated.

This was a sumptuous party for sure. Other than the surprise appearance of crab, the main course was spaghetti, so in addition to my usual green salad, I brought along a raw lasagna!

Credit here must go to Bitt's recent lasagna post for the inspiration. Anyone who knows me knows that I may be congenitally incapable of following a recipe, but that I read recipes for inspiration like storybooks. The most intriguing part of Bitt's recipe to me was her use of fresh tomatoes instead of a sundried-tomato-based mairnara. I mandolined the best tomatoes I could find into paper-thin curls and together with the marinaded mushrooms, they provided great texture variety. Cashew cheese is always a good thing, and I made a very garlicky pesto to complement it. Everyone loved this! It should be said,  however, that not a few people had the instinct that the whole thing would be great spread on bread or crackers. For most people, zucchini doesn't seem to cut it as noodles (no pun intended). I think zucchini is an awesome vegetable: neutral flavored and with a great texture, so much potential for raw cuisine. Unfortunately, I really don't like it! I want to like it, I try to like it, I marinade, rinse and drain it before use, but I can never get away from this bitter aftertaste it has. I've never had raw zucchini to compare to the cooked nondairy-cream of zucchini soups I used to make years ago. It's disappointing to me, but not tragic: there are so many other good things!

Good things like dessert! I mentioned before that the peanut butter mousse brownie had been requested and that I'd made it with a more decadent brownie recipe, and used some of the extra filling to make a no-sugar and no-caffeine white chocolate version too. Well, here they are!

The tops are garnished with chopped almonds.

For the white one, I made a very thin and simple crust of mac nuts, shredded coconut, xylitol, cacao butter and vanilla. The peanut butter mousse part was the same recipe as for the chocolate one. And I made the topping from coconut milk (homemade), coconut cream powder and cacao butter. I didn't include enough cacao butter, so the topping fell down the sides at room temperature, but that looks pretty too.

Everyone who had had the brownie-cake the first time said that it was even better this time--all of it, not just the brownie. That was so validating: I followed the recipe that I'd posted here on the blog, and probably followed it more precisely than my first time through, when I was eyeballing and inventing. And I love the white choc version too. There's something so adorable about a 5-inch cake pan and the slices it yields. This was a wonderful opportunity to 'christen' my birthday gift of nesting springform pans--well, two out of three of them anyway. Now to find something for the 7-inch one too.

Look at Spring approaching so fast! Enjoy that wonderful full moon this weekend. We may go across the Bay here early next week, take advantage of the huge equinoctial tides. A beautiful weekend and lots of clean air to everyone!

Movers and Shakers--Home Again and New Fridge...

I'm so glad that I restrained myself from believing that spring was here! This was what things looked like this morning:

I've been talking so much about how Tapping has been helping me, but after three days on the road, I have to confess that it isn't bullet-proof. I have been totally off-kilter all day today, just trying to get back on track. And of course, part of feeling off-kilter is the sense of feeling waaaay behind, having been in such a good flow before we left for Anchorage, including on blog posts.

I have a party to catch up on...

At which Phil got seriously into the crab...

And I've got a beautiful trip into the backcountry around Anchorage to catch up on...

But before I do any of that, let me share our latest new member:

 Phil ordered us a Sunfrost refrigerator, to replace our tiny and non-sealing fridge. The new guy is very expensive efficient and quiet, and much more spacious. Was built to order, shipped up from California to the Kachemak Gear Shed, a great local business that helps local people with major shipping events, and then Phil drove it home on the back of our truck. And then we had to get it down from the cul-de-sac to the cabin! Quoted weight: 320lbs.

 We had two asymmetrical pairs of boards, and we got it off of the truck by sliding it down one pair, then pushed it down to the end of that pair, onto the next pair, moved the previous pair to the front, over and over... And this thing must not be tipped over, just to raise the stakes a little more...

 It was snowy, but not icy enough to make the sliding easy to do. I'm kind of glad that it wasn't--if we'd been slipping every which way too, that would have been even harder. We were still quite a long way from the cabin when I had to leave for my writers group and we'd done several changes of running boards!

We finished the job after dinner. Look how light it is outside at 8pm and how much of the snow had melted already!

So, we finally got it down to the cabin. Tomorrow, we'll have to figure out how to get it in there!

Now it's time to make up jokes about bringing refrigerators to Alaska...
I'm glad to be home. What do you have planned for this huge full moon weekend (one of the biggest full moons for years)?

"Anecdotal Evidence"

Anecdotal evidence for anything isn't generally given much weight: in fact, the very term has a dismissive flavor to it.

But when the anecdotes in question are about yourself, you feel a sense of 'wow, this is working! who else can it help?'

Since I've been mentioning how excited I am with the effectiveness of Tapping in all my recent posts, I thought I'd share three anecdotes of ways that it has been helping, besides all the intangible increase in energy, reduction in anxiety, increase in positivity...

1) Something that I've been 'tappping' on, while working through my body image issues, is the fear of going hungry, of starving. I knew already that my body has a hair-trigger fear of starvation, having experienced way too much of it. During tapping, I promised myself that I would never make myself go hungry. That very day, I rushed off to a meeting around mid-afternoon, right around when I would be getting hungry for a snack, and forgot to take anything with me. Self sabotage? I realized the omission right away and wondered about sabotage, but surprisingly, the promise that I'd made to myself felt more valid than the lack of snacks on hand. I was stopping at the grocery store on the way to my meeting anyway, so I bought a bag of carrots and a coconut, knowing that these would provide an easy quick snack and a less easy but more substantial snack if I really needed it. The anxiety was gone, and I was less hungry too: a couple of carrots was all I needed.

2) I tapped on not getting down to my poetry writing and feeling resistance and anxiety around it, even though it's the most important thing I have to do. I identified some underlying causes for the anxiety and resistance, and I have been writing lots all week!

3) (This one is a great example of how feeling so much better does not mean that one never encounters adversity, but that maybe one can handle it better.) A couple days ago, I'd been in our storage bunker refilling coconut oil jars, etc. When I was replacing the hatch, two big, heavy doors that were propped up on the other side fell on my head. Once I'd gotten them off of me and back up, without falling through the hole to the bunker(!), and gotten back to the cabin, I set the bag of jars down and it instantly fell, breaking one of the jars, and then I cut my finger clearing up the broken glass... Ordinarily, a sequence like that would have left me traumatized--probably tears, definitely a huge burst of adrenaline and huge crash soon after. This time, I went straight for the rescue remedy, which I know to help in 'shock' situations but often forget to take, and immediately resolved that I would take things easy for the rest of the day. Probably I'd have been forced to take things easy if I'd freaked out like I usually would have done, but somehow making the decision to take it easy up front felt so much more positive and powerful. I was able to laugh about the whole catastrophe much sooner too!

Bonus story: there's a very special birthday party this evening, and that Peanut Butter Mousse Brownie has been requested. Well, in addition to making it (with a richer brownie recipe because I wasn't pleased with the one I used last time), I made a miniature 'white chocolate' version with a raw, no sugar crust and a white chocolate fudge topping based on the white chocolate I shared last time, so that I can have some too without any compromise of the yeast cleanse or adverse dark chocolate effects. I even put flax seeds in the crust/brownie, to balance omega-6's in the peanut mousse! Self-care seems to be coming more naturally.

It really does look like spring here. Temperatures in the teens at night and early morning, but bright sunshine and temps just above freezing all day, solar oven in here, melting everywhere. We're remembering the huge blizzards at the end of March last year and trying not to be fooled, but it's very hard not to be fooled.
There are even seeds at the grocery store!

Have you tried Tapping?
How do you feel about anecdotal evidence? Does the fact that I'm sharing such a positive experience with it make you at all intrigued to try it yourself?
Have a beautiful weekend.

Investing in Tapping, Black and White Food Colors--White Chocolate!

Happy Friday, or 'tgif'--your choice, and sincerely! My thoughts are with Japan and Asia, and all the aftershocks and ripples of effect of that event. I am grateful for my own safety, living here on the edge, and that of my loved ones.

I'm glad that people enjoyed the "Seven things:" thanks to those who have already posted their own, and I look forward to reading more.

For any kind of self-help method or positive habit to 'stick,' it needs to deliver appreciable results quickly. There are so many exercise programs, meditation exercises, breathing techniques, that I've tried, been convinced would be 'good for me,' reminding myself '21 days makes a habit' and pushing myself in that direction, and haven't seemed to have been able to force myself to 'take that medicine.' But here I am to say that the Tapping World Summit and the awareness that it has been offering me has been a revelation. This past week since starting the yeast cleanse, my energy has been lower, as my ND warned that it would be, but I went into the cleanse feeling so positive, so optimistic, so much clearer in my energy that it hasn't knocked me off my stride. This enthused feeling, this general feeling of positivity and even self-acceptance, has persisted even with diminished energy. Since yesterday, to crown the 'cleansing lows,' it's my moontime too, and so far it's been the least uncomfortable of those for a long time, cleanse notwithstanding. Yes, getting the herbs (raspberry leaf, nettles, licorice, ginger) together to make my moon tea immediately helped (I'm not always that proactive) but perhaps I'm also allowing my body to perceive herself as someone healthier than a bunch of messed-up hormones...

So, I've gone ahead and committed to, invested in the Tapping thing--a great birthday present to myself--and will continue to share as it continues to help me develop.

I've been realizing these past few days that although I'm always saying on here that I'm learning not to think in 'black and white,' there are a lot of black and white foods that I've been loving lately.

I realized belatedly that what I'd made here was 'blackamole!'

When I cooked up the black beans to make that, I made extra, to make black bean brownie-type things for snacks. Since no one else is going to eat them, I could make it simple and non-visually-oriented.
This was just two cups cooked black beans, about a third cup coconut oil, half cup of carob, scant half cup of xylitol (and I could have used less), big sprinkle of cinnamon. Pure'ed the lot with the handheld blender, then mixed in about a half cup of coconut flour. Formed it on a parchment-lined sheet...

Availed myself of the solar-oven propensities of our southfacing windows to leave it dry in the sun all afternoon...

...then cut into little pieces in the evening and set to dry in front of the heater.  I love it when I can bring a preparation to fruition without using any extra energy! They're good little snacks--taste good, lots of fiber and protein...

And of course coconut is one of my most favorite foods and it's even whiter than black beans are black! I've just lately been discovering the wonderful potentials of coconut butter (aka coconut manna, coconut spread, coconut cream concentrate, creamed coconut) in no-sugar dessert-making: this delectable recall of Indian sweetmeats may be my new favorite thing...

But I also made white chocolate! I really did! Coconut butter (and all its synonyms) is actually a very promising place to start for making white chocolate: note that has a great deal in common with cacao mass before the cacao butter and solids are separated: like cacao mass, it's been conched, so that it's a whole food, fat, fiber and all, but the slow fine-grinding process has smoothed out all the fibers. You can melt coconut butter, flavor it and have a pretty nice treat.

However: coconut fat melts as soon as it's in your mouth. Much of the allure of chocolate is that high melting point, that slow, sensual rapprochement between mouth and treat. So, for 'real' white chocolate (without the ick of powdered dairy), I used vanilla-infused cacao butter, a bit of stevia and coconut cream powder (about one part cacao butter to two parts powder by volume).

Sorry for the photo--the sun was bright! And I should get some chocolate molds...

Considering that I love the deepest, darkest, bitterest chocolate (but don't love the instant adrenal jolt and subsequent skin irritations from it), I wasn't convinced I'd love this. Not enough bite? But the vanilla is a great touch and these are delectable. The cacao flavor comes through from the butter and there's that wonderful melt-in-the-mouth comfort. I have a feeling that Wilderness Family's coconut cream powder no longer has that 1% casinate, so maybe there's really nothing at all questionable about this wonderful treat. But that would be too black and white, wouldn't it?

Do you like white chocolate? Am I indulging in too much food talk or would there be interest in more on the coconut no-sugar desserts story?