Zukay Products Review (Mailing Mishap) and Hewing to the Simple

When Zukay Foods contacted me to ask if I'd be interested in reviewing their products, I was enthusiastic. I love fermented foods, and with my current mission to restore gut flora, it seemed so timely. Unfortunately, the timing got kinda wrinkled from there on, which is why this review appears several weeks after first contact!

My package arrived in the middle of the Kachemak Bay Writers' Conference, so you know that my attention was all elsewhere! It had not been treated well by USPS: apparently fermented products, glass jars and USPS don't go well together. I know that Averie and the Pure2Raw ladies had this explosive experience too! 
The 'carrot ginger kvass' was missing entirely, and you can see that the salad dressing jar is mostly empty.

Funnily enough, it's my experience that the plastic lids are the vulnerable spot on these glass jars, and so it proved here: the lid on the salad dressing bottle was broken and all the liquid was all over everything. Since the dressing features turnip and onion, and fermentation, it was quite the aromatic package by the time poor Phil picked it up at the Post Office!

Kvass is another kind of probiotic rich fermented drink, originally from the Caucasus and typically made with beets. Fermentation plus beets sounds like all kinds of good--blood purifying, gallbladder-supporting, vitamin and mineral-rich, good bacteria...

I drank the beet-ginger kvass right away, and I really loved it. It's fairly thin in flavor, not full-bodied. Somewhat similar to pickle juice, but without the salt. It has just a hint of fizz, less so than kombucha, and neither the beet nor the ginger are overpowering at all. And with the slightly wide-mouthed glass bottle, it gives you a wonderful purple mustache!

And then we went to Oregon, and the rest, and the review, had to wait.

I was a little puzzled by the salad dressing's claim to be the 'best salad dressing ever' juxtaposed with the recommendation to add olive oil to make a vinaigrette. The 'best ever' claim implies that it's complete in itself. But, as Gena pointed out, and as the vinaigrette suggestion shows, it contains no fat. On the one hand, this is great; on the other, many people love to have some lubrication on their lettuce, and having some fat with salad is smart for helping absorption of fat-soluble vitamin K, in which green leafies are so rich.

So, I was planning to do something with the sweet, spicy, aromatic pulp left at the bottom of that salad dressing jar.

I'd bought a disappointing jicama: it was way starchy and dense. I adore crunchy, juicy jicama so much that I almost never make anything with it, preferring to eat it 'straight' (although that 'slaw I shared a while back was pretty good, I thought). This one wasn't edible 'straight.' Some kind of jicama 'slaw with a dressing salvaged from the Zukay bottle seemed in order.

But then Phil had a suggestion. He said: "Do you think that if you sliced up the jicama and soaked it in ice water, it would firm up?"

So we tried that, with a little squeeze of lemon, and it worked! Awesome tip, Phil (and he doesn't even like jicama).

In fact, it's quite uncanny how all the 'prepared' foods (whole fruit doesn't count under this) that I most enjoy are precisely foods that Phil does not like. I've pretty much given up trying to make something that'll work for both of us. Between preparing two meals each time and all the busyness of writing, editing, translating, gardening, kitchen-remodeling (which I haven't yet touched since we got back), very often, I forego elaborate recipes that brew in my head in favor of something simpler.

This is what ended happening with the jicama and Zukay dressing pulp: (excuse bad picture)

 Blob the pulp on to a jicama slice, eat and repeat ad lib. It was just fine! Spicy!

One thing I can do that suits both of us, especially now that I'm eating starch, is to cook up a bunch of potatoes and then fry Phil's or make regular potato salad with them, and do different things with mine. There are some really easy and yummy things...

...this was potatoes, thawed peas and sauerkraut in a sauce made from some of the potato water with a teaspoon of miso mixed in, some chopped chives from our garden, a couple tablespoons of coconut kefir and some curry powder. Kelp powder sprinkled on top. Lettuce and nori sheets on the side. Great dinner.

Do you find yourself with elaborate recipe ideas and no time to make them? Do you enjoy the 'simple' version anyway?

Back Home and Oregon Recap

We're home! We arrived in Anchorage on Friday evening, and in Homer on Saturday evening, and were heartened to see that our garden is unmolested by the snowshoe hares! (I have so much to catch up on: let this be merely a beginning.)

 This is just one garden plot with a fence around it, in which we put potatoes and onions as well as kale, lettuce, peas--more 'bunny-vulnerable' crops. The kale on the left is looking great, and the potatoes are flourishing. Of course, there are still plenty of horsetails--and this is a patch that we smothered with weedmat for two years! But even the unfenced beds are sporting spinach, chard, lettuce, peas--looking good. I wonder whether all the chives in the beds help keep the bunnies away.

Lessons of the homeward journey: although my energy is fantastic these days and my blood sugar way more stable, I'm not made out of steel. Especially when traveling and packing everything along, trying to rely on fruit can lead to serious undereating. After a couple days of that, I had my first emotional meltdown in months, of which, of course, Phil got the brunt. Just a couple days of that can trigger all kinds of old habits/patterns that favor starvation, that I've been working to rewire for years. That easy. Communication with another person is such a tender and delicate thing, and regardless of provocations, I respect myself so much more when I'm able to retain some poise, perspective and discernment in my words.

Now that we're home, I'm taking those antibiotics that I was agonizing over. I bought some very expensive and super-potent probiotics at the Natural Pantry in Anchorage that are specifically designed for critical situations like after antibiotic use, and I'm setting an intention to research 'repopulating gut flora' intently to ensure that these seven days are groundwork for better things. Sauerkraut? Miso? What about eating the kinds of starch that feed gut flora? "Feed them and they'll come" seems to make some sense.

Yesterday morning slipped by with gardening, planting and (manual) weed-whacking. The latter is something I wouldn't have had energy for last year, and so I never found out that the blade of the whacker is very loosely attached and comes flying off every time you get into a good whacking rhythm (usually landing in the stinging nettles)! All morning, the smaller birds were bickering away--the chickadee so upbeat, the robin pedantically trying to get his wording just right, but they could never get more than a couple sentences out without the flycatcher interjecting "Free beer!" which is all I ever hear him say.

Some Oregon Recaps:
After my long (10 plus miles with hills and a stiff headwind) bike ride that preceded my last post, I spent some time at the library and then biked through to the north end of town and hung out at the Co Op until it was time to meet with Phil's nephew and his girlfriend to go work on Phil's timberland. I figured that I could probably justify a treat!

 This was a mint flavored raw ice cream sandwich by Rawtatouille. There were several flavors but mint's a no-brainer for me. It was so small, and I think it was the perfect size for something nut-date-rich.

 I've never been a sandwich eater. Even if I'm given something 'Ela-friendly' and sandwich-like, like a nori roll or a tortilla, I tend to pick it apart. But I managed a few bites leaving the 'sandwich' intact before my 'pick apart' instinct took over--had to have it running down my fingers! It was delicious, and pretty simple. Nut-date-cacao 'cookie' and cashew ice cream filling with some brown rice in there somewhere and some spinach for color. I thought it was beautifully presented and I felt thoroughly 'treated.' It was a very strong mint flavor--might have been a little too much for someone who doesn't love mint like I do.

We joined Phil at his timberland by about 6pm or so, and worked past 9, until we could barely see.

 I mentioned the headwind? I was relieved that it was too windy to spray. I'll strap on a backpack sprayer and walk around with herbicide for Phil, but it's not something I feel at all at peace with myself doing. Another of these strange split-ethics that happens when you love and respect someone but have very different ideals from them.

I love that when Phil logged, five years ago, he left several tall trees rather than clear-cutting.

 But the 'woodland' approach, coupled with the fact that the entire 22 acres is a steep hill (up one side, down the other) means that there is no inch of easy hiking!

 Can you see the little cedar tree in the photo below? The deer keep pulling the protective coverings off them, eating the new growth, and some of them are starting to look seriously bonsai.

 Without the protective covers, they're harder for us to see too, and both Phil and I accidentally sprayed cedar when we were killing poison oak on a different day. We keep putting the covers back on, keep trying to devise ways to keep them on more securely. Unfortunately, if the cover's on securely and the deer is determined to remove it, she will strip the bark when shaking the cover off and possibly kill the tree! Thankless it seems. Who knew that Western Red Cedar was so surpassingly delicious to deer?

There are berries everywhere--wild strawberries, raspberries, thimbleberries, salal berries and, of course, the blackberries, which bear some of the brunt of the herbicide.

We spent our last night in Oregon with Phil's sister and brother-in-law. Phil's mom came too. Phil's brother-in-law, Larry, is a painter of murals and also a fantastic photographer, and Phil's sister is an artist and calligrapher: their house is full of beauty and art, including a full mural in their dining area that you can see below.

Phil's sister fixed sushi and it was beautiful--and entertaining, as we navigated chopsticks and rotated the lazy susan in the center of the table, knocking water glasses flying...

One final thought for today. Pick the Brain had a compendium of advice from Aristotle today. When I'm tempted to feel like a snobby Classicist over 'predigested' versions of the Classics like this, I only have to remind myself that 'epitomes,' 'digests,' 'compendia,' 'greatest hits' and other forms of 'anthology,' or its Latin equivalent, 'florilegia' (both mean 'collections of flowers') are an absolutely Classical way of engaging with texts. So, their Number 8 today was this:
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

Of course, I resist the equation of 'being' with 'doing,' and the concept of excellence as an 'act' seems odd. Of course I'd like to see the Greek original. But I get what's being said here. I get that all the times I don't do my best accumulate and lower my 'average performance.' All the times that I generously spend hours leaving comments on every blog I'm interested in and thus don't have time for my own writing make me more of a supportive commenter and less of a writer. All the times I say something in haste and under stress make me less of an even-keeled person. None of these in an ontological way, but they build an image and impression. So, despite my quibbles with the formulation of this advice, I take it to heart and intend to be more intentional in my choices of action and the habits I form. (And I'll still comment on blogs, but somehow do it at warp speed!)

Was this post too long? Too heavy? I'm looking forward to sharing more thoughts, and a product review. It's good to be back!

Surviving Ikea, and To Antibiotic or Not?

I mentioned that I was writing my previous post from Ikea. Today, I'm prewriting this on the grass in a park opposite the Corvallis Library, where I'll go to get online: much more my kind of scene! I biked the ten miles or so to town from the farm to get some work done, and will go with Phil to do some more work on his timberland later today.

lunch in the park

I'm pleased to say that not only did I survive Ikea: I actually think that I can see how to enjoy going there (this was my third visit). On the other hand, I did make at least one stupid mistake under the fluster of the situation, as I sometimes tend to. For me, it's very seldom 'retail therapy:' 'retail trauma,' more like! (Exception: I usually love shopping for produce.) Why is Ikea so particularly challenging? I really admire their philosophy, reasonable pricing, emphasis on simple beauty and functionality. And in theory at least, I like that the store is laid out in a way that appeals to lateral thinking rather than linear, gridlocked mind.

blurry photo, captures it just right!

However, this is probably where the trouble starts for me. There are just too many levels of complexity hovering over every showroom juxtaposition: impositions of ideas about lifestyle, values, budget, priorities, with all kinds of implications of character too. I feel like I'm walking through the set of a very bizarre novel, and am constantly trying to supply the script and imagine the characters in person, which is most distracting when you're trying to buy a kitchen cabinet! Add to that the mazelike winding of the showrooms and the low ceilings ominously piped, and it's no wonder that I've inwardly panicked "get me out of here!" whenever I've been there.
This time, I went slow. I allowed my imagination to get to know the characters inhabiting the scenes from the showrooms a little better, and felt less like an intruder in their lives and thus more entitled to browse. I left with a few other useful items beside the kitchen cabinet, but dealing with the latter was what showed that I'd still gotten flustered enough to make a stupid mistake. It came in many pieces...

...and I'd been planning to ship it up to AK via the barge, which involves getting it to Fife, WA. I mailed the two heaviest pieces to Fife (just 70 miles away) parcel post, and Phil pointed out when I got home that it would have cost the same to mail them all the way home by that route!

To Antibiotic or Not?
Time is flying. It's been two weeks since I saw my Naturopath for a report on my yeastie-bugs retest: high time for a health update here. The good news: I'm no longer playing host to a candida convention. The not-so-good: I still have a residual bacterial infection in my gut and am still not growing my own good bacteria. I also have a slight overgrowth of another, non-candida yeast called Geotychum (apparently easy to get rid of). This being the situation, my ND wants me to take a week's course of tetracycline, an antibiotic, and then follow up with another month of ketoconazole, the antifungal, to get rid of the Geotychum and ensure that the antibiotic doesn't precipitate another yeast invasion. He said I didn't need to change my diet, and shouldn't start any of it until we get back from our trip. This gives me some time to ponder the plan.
I guess it makes sense: there are no good bacteria to wipe out and this antibiotic is effective against the bad bacteria, while the possible herbal approaches are far less so. The ketoconazole right after will mitigate any bad yeasty consequences. And thereafter, take loads of probiotics, and he recommends sauerkraut and miso in particular for recolonizing the good bacteria. I should also read up on inulin and the other starches that supposedly feed good bacteria: you can keep putting them in your gut, but in order to have them stay and reproduce, you need to feed them, right? On the other hand, I haven't taken antibiotics since I was a teenager and am loath to do so: they likely contributed to this mess in the first place. That said, there's a time and a place for everything, and perhaps using the drugs to create a 'clean slate' will enable me to move on and rebuild a good gut colony.
Some of it boils down to trusting my doctor too. I do, but I'm also experiencing some cognitive dissonance at the moment. The way I see it, ever since I started eating starch a few months ago, the more carbohydrate and the less of the other macronutrients I ate, the better I felt, the better my digestion was, I started being able to exercise again and even enjoying it, my anxiety is enormously reduced, my stamina is improved and generally I feel happier and healthier. I told my ND this and he said quite firmly that I should not reduce my fat intake; that I should aim for about equal quantities of each macronutrient. He suggested that I'm feeling so much better because my guts are in so much better shape than they were. I'm aware, as I think he is, of my tendency toward extremism. Perhaps it would be just like me to swing from carbophobia back to being essentially a fruitarian. But the timeline is so clear to me (I was still chelating when my guts started to be noticeably easier after a few weeks of starch, way before the yeast and bacteria cleanse).
I should wrap this up! Do you love Ikea? Do you build stories about the lives depicted there? What do you think about antibiotics?

Note from Oregon--Wedding and Planting

Greetings from Oregon!

Phil's niece's wedding was a delightful occasion. I'm so glad that we got to meet her new husband more informally the night before, and to verify that he is a lovely man who is crazy about her--we think she is wonderful.

Much to catch up on here, and oddly discombobulated by the unfamiliar surroundings. I also still haven't figured out how to play with pictures in this little netbook, so all the upright pics I've taken are unrotated--guess I'll just take landscapes for a while. (Note later in the post--seems blogger rotated it automatically! Way to live and learn.)

I'm happy to be able to report that I've actually been writing during this trip! I've lamented on here many times before that traveling knocks me off my rhythm and then it takes time to find it again. This time, though, fresh from the Writers' Conference, while we were on the plane I applied several revision techniques we'd discussed to a poem I hadn't worked on for some time, and invented a couple more techniques myself. Since then, I've made all sorts of notes that can blossom into something more continuous with a little more time.

We've been putting plants out--a late, wet spring here in Oregon, and so a slow start. Lovely to have my hands in the soil, to be tucking plants into beds. Good visiting, good work, good time for reflection.

Eating mostly fruit, as I have been, has made being here so much more convenient. It's also a pleasant kind of 'sticker shock'--everything, especially produce, is much cheaper than in AK. I'm happy to find watermelon with seeds in it here. There have been some unscheduled treats too, though. Part of the wedding spread was a gorgeous array of fruit. There were trays and trays of cookies in lieu of a cake, including several trays of gluten free cookies! (Phil's niece's new mother in law is gluten free too.) Cautious as I usually am about eating something I haven't read the ingredients on, especially at the 'high reward' end of things, Phil's niece is such a sublime exponent of the cookie that I felt good about indulging in cookies at her wedding.

Phil's brother and sister-in-law and their gorgeous seven-year-old son (pictured with a snake we found on the farm and greatly enjoyed) are headed back East today.

I dropped them at the airport and am now at IKEA, hoping to get a few things for our kitchen project and that mailing them myself will go smoothly. Nice that they have wifi here too, but I'd better start shopping soon!

Still in the Eye of the Whirlwind/49 Writers Post/Last Delicious Thing

I'm here. The Conference ended yesterday, and I've been immersed in a welter of editing, gardening, packing, tying loose ends: we need to get out of here at about 6am tomorrow.

I have so much to say, about the Conference, about my latest physiological/nutritional events, plans, reflections. My head is bulging with ideas for things to write about and ways to revise writings. I look forward to having the time to say it again.

This morning, I did a recap of the Conference for 49 Writers, the Alaska literary blog for which I volunteer. Check it out:
http://49writers.blogspot.com/2011/06/ela-kachemak-bay-writers-conference.html

We had dinner with dear friends and with Phil's daughter tonight: I managed to throw together some deliciousness in addition to the standard yams and salad.

 It's raw, allergen-free, low-glycemic: coconut nectar is the main sweetener. It's a 'graham-esque' crust with a marzipan topping with peaches glazed with coconut nectar and lemon juice.

Paired with coconut kefir, slightly sweetened with peachy coconut nectar, sprinkled with lemon zest.

So, on the road we go again--I hope to be able to share from Oregon, and I'm packing my camera cable this time!
love to all.

Fall Girl--Recap of 'Poets in Full Meter and Note from the Heart of the Writers' Conference

Happy Sunday! Behind on sleep and bruised (more on that in a moment), I'm up early on the euphoria of the Writers' Conference. You might remember me gushing about last year's conference: it was surely the highlight of my year up to that point. This year, the keynote speaker is Rita Dove, a poet whom I admire and aspire to and see as a role model. In person, she reinforces all of those feelings: if anything, she's even more inspiring in person, as well as extremely kind and approachable, and I'm so grateful to get to be in her presence.

Phil is out bear-hunting (giardia notwithstanding: his level of activity that can count as 'resting' is always astounding) so I'll be biking out to the Conference venue in a little while here. I couldn't even have considered doing that this time last year, so I'm taking a moment to be glad of that: it makes our scheduling differences much more flexible.

Well, I'm holding out on you--I have to tell the story of the Poetry event on Thursday night: specifically, how I stole the show in the first set, but not through my poetry reading!

thanks to Terry for this phone shot

It was an awesome show: poetry, music, dance in various configurations and juxtapositions: crossing the genres and melding them together is such a dynamic and exciting space. As you can (maybe) see from the picture, we were performing in this beautiful studio, with a steep staircase overlooking the audience. Harder to see is that there is art everywhere in the studio, the dominant red-yellow color scheme everywhere; on every step of that staircase, on the wall side, there is a vase or other art object.

Why does this matter? Well, in the first set, very beginning of the show, there were five of us reading, and we made our entries from the top of the stairs, one at a time, until we were all standing there ranged on the stairs (the pic is from a different set). So, I started down the stairs as the second reader--and my foot slipped on the very first step, and down I went, and down, and down, and down, knocking the vases down like bowling pins or dominoes crash-crash-clatter. I had hold of the banister with my right hand and was trying to stop myself, but I had my butt kicked by ten steps before I finally came to a stop half way down, a cascade of vases rolling around the audience at the bottom.

And then I had to pick myself up, read my three poems and stand there for the rest of the set with a straight face! My one regret is that I didn't have a funny one-liner to defuse the tension of the moment when the crashing stopped--everyone looked so horrified, and I'm sure I did too: didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I'm just so glad that none of the artwork broke. As it was, I took a few deep breaths, and just went on and read as if nothing had happened.

I'm fine. My right biceps is super-sore from trying to catch myself all those moments and I have a giant bruise on my butt shaped exactly like the edge of a step. But I've still been doing pushups and working out with no trouble. And I'm still laughing about that fall--that night, after the show, Phil and I practically cried ourselves to sleep laughing about it together.

Before the open mic at the Writers' Conference yesterday, I had the opportunity to share that story with some other open mic participants under the general discussion of 'what's the worst that could happen?' A good share.

Do you ever think of a disaster or accident as a great story in the making? Are you good at coming up with a funny one-liner when something totally unexpected and apparently catastrophic just happened?

Whirlwind, Some Announcements

Some announcements:
Did you see who won the giveaway? Congrats again.
The June issue of Eighty Percent Raw Magazine is out, including an article by yours truly.

Phil's been gone, hiking in the Chugach around Anchorage, for the past three days and I'm just getting ready for the long drive up to Anchorage to participate in the Poetry Event tonight. Making sure I've taken care of everything in the home and garden, am wearing the right clothes, have my poems ready, have all the errands lined out...

It feels like at any given moment in the last three days, I've been doing at least three things at once, except when I've been nose to nose with an urgent and very complex editing job. Tomorrow is the start of the Kachemak Bay Writers Conference back here in Homer: this time last  year I had such a wonderful time (see this post, for example), so I'm prepared to be thoroughly excited, challenged, stimulated, bewildered, exhausted, exalted, every moment occupied. As soon as that finished, we're off to Oregon for a week.

In the midst of this whirlwind, my dehydrator arrived!

 I really am delighted: it's been so long-awaited, but in the midst of my multi-tasking, I've been too busy to really appreciate and acknowledge this gladness.

 I did get it filled up, during a twister-esque multitask moment, and am hoping that all the goodies in there will be ready to take up to Anchorage to share when I reunite with Phil and meet up with friends. I made three kinds of crackers, some candied nuts, and dehydrated the last of the 'slaw I posted here. I'm going to love being able to dehydrate leftovers and thus transform them!

That same day, an order came in from the Raw Food World. I've been wanting a glass straw for ages, and am looking forward to using this one in a smoothie on my drive today. I got some dried mulberries, which are delightful, and I got some maca extreme to try. Tried a bite of it straight up: it was like biting into a radish! Maca is definitely a brassica! Which creates some cognitive dissonance for me: it's supposed to support thyroid function, and yet it belongs to a family of known goitrogens. Anyone care to enlighten me?

 I also got some kelp noodles from them--they had a good offer on them. In another whirlwind of multitasking, I made this sauce for the kelp noodles last night: it definitely has potential, but needs some tweaking before I share up.

So, apologies if I'm not as present around the blog world as I like to be for the next few days.
Please let me know your favorite dehydrator recipes and uses: what must I make?

"Must Have Been Something I ate"--the Winner Is...

Well, it's Tuesday night, so it's time to announce the winner of the giveaway!

Using the random number generator at Random.org, I came up with number 14. The 14th comment:

Amanda - RunToTheFinish said...

i linked you in my sidebar #1

Congratulations, Amanda! Please email me (elamonster1 (at) gmail) with your physical address so that I can get your book in the mail!

Have a beautiful evening.

Poetry Performance and Bonus Review

Hi everyone! A beautiful day to all.

First, a quick announcement. This week, on Thursday evening, there's going to be a great Poetry show in Anchorage as part of the Spenard Jazz Festival. And I'm going to be participating! You can see my name in tiny print down toward the bottom left.

I'll be reading four of my poems. There are going to be seventeen poets, plus dancers and musicians, so I get the opportunity to be one among many and I'm looking forward to being inspired! It's at the Hugi Lewis Studio on Northern Lights, on the west side of town. I've never been there before. It will be an honor to perform side by side with the winners of the recent statewide poetry competition and others. And this will be just the day before the Kachemak Bay Writers' Conference starts. Rita Dove is coming to Homer! I'm so excited. Just wanted to share--if you're in Anchorage, come on over on Thursday night.

My giveaway ends tomorrow. Today, I have a bonus review to share. As I mentioned in my review of Must Have Been Something I Ate, the author talks about 'new' superfoods and supplements. I was curious about sacha inchi seeds, which she mentions a lot as a great omega 3 source, and Vega were kind enough to send me a few samples of the Saviseeds that she often uses in recipes.

I was a little surprised to see that they are lightly toasted, but some research showed that that is the traditional way that they have always been prepared in Peru, where they originate.

Since they are omega-3-rich seeds, I was expecting them to be tiny and mucilaginous, like chia and flax. Wrong! They are about the size of a small peanut, and taste remarkably similar to peanuts too.

I used my sample of 'oh natural' flavor (lightly sea salted) to make the pesto linguini recipe from the book. It was enough for a half-recipe.

 She suggests pairing the pesto with zucchini linguini, cooked pasta or quinoa, or kelp noodles. I like this kind of flexibility, and I chose instead to make a carrot-jicama 'slaw as the base, with some green beans and corn kernels.

The pesto consists of basil, sacha inchi seeds (salted and lightly toasted), hemp seeds, olive oil, salt. I was surprised that there was no lemon in the recipe, but tried it that way and it was good. I didn't have enough basil, so I used a little fresh parsley and oregano too.

The carrots and jicama were so beautiful that I was loath to spread a green sauce all over them...

 ...but they looked beautiful that way too, garnished with a sliced tomato and some flowers from our chives that successfully wintered over.

I found the added salt too much, given that the seeds were already salted, but the people I served it to liked it a lot (I tend to prefer less salt than most). I enjoyed the creaminess and crunch that the Saviseeds provided and am really intrigued by the peanutty quality of their flavor. A high omega-3 peanut?

Have you tried sacha inchi seeds?

Ending the Tetra Diet and Cardamom Rice Pudding Recipe

Happy Sunday, everyone! It's mid-afternoon here and the sun is making a belated appearance. We've only had about three sunny days so far this spring but I'm holding the intention that we're due a good summer, after last year's washout. I love how all colors are enhanced when the sun shines--when it's not shining, it's as though a whole dimension is lost from the spectrum.

Well, I did my yeast retest a week ahead of when I'd thought I would, but I still stuck out my 'Tetra Diet' for a full three weeks. I enjoyed the zen simplicity of it, but had definitely had enough. I confirmed that last night by having yams, nettles and carrots for dinner: carrots still taste great as ever, but the nettles are coming close to flowering and don't taste as good, and neither do the plain yams. My taste buds are telling me something. Part of me craves a routine so that I can eat on autopilot, and another part would love to get more in touch with my body and always be in tune with exactly what I want. I do think that this experiment helped me to consider and search myself on 'what I like' in more depth, especially with the "Treat Day."

Released from the yeast, this has been my breakfast the last five mornings:

So yummy, and feels so good! Sometimes it's lasted me all morning! My problems with blood sugar that I lamented on here last year are a thing of the past: I'll devote a post to that issue soon.

Otherwise, I've been enjoying green smoothies, salads, veggies, and a few more tastes of that cardamom rice pudding before putting the rest in the freezer.

I'm glad that rice doesn't seem to be bothering me anymore either. This is such a good 'comfort food,' and I'm happy to share how I made it today. I didn't actually use that much 'fat' (coconut cream) for the entire amount--long, slow cooking makes the rice itself pretty creamy--and it was interesting to observe that I could feel so 'treated' by eating this but with no feeling of heaviness afterwards.

Cardamom Rice Pudding (sometimes called Kheer, or Payasam)
Note: I used the crockpot that I was given for my birthday, which has a sealing gasket on the lid and is thus way more efficient than my thriftstore crockpot with a loose lid. Depending on your crockpot, timings might vary.
2 cups long grain white basmati rice, soaked overnight and rinsed
8-12 cups water
1 generous teaspoon cardamom seeds (if I'd had pods, I'd have put four or five whole pods: I think the husks have some flavor too). *Make sure you're using green cardamom: black cardamom has a very different taste.
About a cup of neutral-tasting sweetener (I used just under a cup of xylitol/erythritol combined and 2 tablespoons sugar).
2 cups coconut cream (or make thick coconut milk) (or one can)

Rinse the soaked rice and put in crockpot with 6 cups water and the cardamom seeds. Cook on High for two hours--your space will be filled with the divine aroma.
After those two hours, check that the rice is cooked and add two more cups of water. Stir everything around well so that the rice doesn't form hard clumps. If the rice is cooked but the grains are still discrete, turn the heat to Low. If it's not yet cooked, leave it on High for a bit.
Check back regularly and stir every 40-60 minutes for the next two hours (or more, depending on your crockpot), adding water if necessary. I added the coconut cream and sweetener on my first 'check' after turning it down to Low, so about three hours in.
The stirring helps to break down the rice grains and make the 'pudding' texture, without clumping or sticking to the sides. You may need to keep adding water to encourage this breakdown process. You'll know when it's 'done!'

I hope you enjoy this!
Is the sun adding colors to your world?
Have you entered my giveaway yet?

Although this might sound like a lot of 'minding' for a crockpot recipe, it was actually very easy. I was busy with other things and just waltzed through and checked up on it every so often.

Vega Book Review and Giveaway: "Must Have Been Something I Ate" by Peggy Kotsopoulos

When we returned from our trip a couple weeks ago, I was excited to find a box of goodies awaiting me!

Vega protein powders are always a delight, but I was even more excited to receive two copies of Holistic Nutritionist Peggy Kotsopoulos' new book, Must Have Been Something I Ate: The simple connection between what you eat and how you look and feel. Two copies, yes: I'm giving one of them away and I'll get to that shortly. First, here's my review of the book.

What's In the Book?
The first part of the book consists of twelve chapters, organized into four parts, on the connection between Food and Mood, Weight, Beauty and Health. The second part contains twenty-five recipes illustrating the principles laid out in the first part. There's a full listing of resources and references at the back.

Two Beautiful Things About This Book
I want everyone to know these two things about Must Have Been Something I Ate:
1) As part of commitment to human empowerment through educated choices, a portion of the proceeds from each sale of the book will be donated to the Because I am a Girl initiative, a global movement for social change that seeks to help eliminate global poverty and claim a brighter, safer future for girls globally.
2) Peggy Kotsopoulos dedicates this book to her parents, for thinking, amongst other things, that she's not 'totally nuts (more like a seed).' Wouldn't you love to be 'like a seed' rather than 'nuts?' 

What's the Pitch of the Book?
The meta-message from the way that the book is presented is that Peggy is your fun, empathic friend and aide. You may be far too busy to pay attention to food and diet, but Peggy can hold your hand, sympathize, explain what's going on in simple terms, and show you fun ways to make things better. The tone is familiar and colloquial, full of words like "BFF," "fave," "delish," "'Kay?"--and since I'm a collector of words, I have to mention that she's responsible for introducing me to the most hideous hybrid word I've seen or heard in a long time: "thuttocks" (horrors)!

The chosen layout and color/font scheme reinforces this friendly, unintimidating approach: the main font is the kind seen more frequently in a pamphlet than in a full-length book, always clear and easy to read. As an editor myself, I have to say that I wish there were fewer typos, since typos plus colloquial style can lower credibility in some eyes, but none of the typos are actually misleading and without an editor's eye, they may not be distracting.

Besides, this book won't only be interesting and useful to neophytes and busy business-women who have no idea about nutrition.

In More Detail
The coverage of health-and nutrition-related topics is quite impressive, and is more than initially meets the eye, given the cheeky-cheerful tone. Kotsopoulos explains the functions of hormones, neurotransmitters and digestive enzymes in detail, and covers topics as diverse as coping with stress (both through food and through other means), skin care and food combining. She gives specific recommendations for foods and supplements for specific requirements, with reinforcing sidebars of tips (like soaking legumes, eating vitamin C with iron) and notes from scientific studies. Even for an unrepentant nutrition geek like myself, there were details and specifics that were of interest. Her coverage is also very up-to-date and includes discussion of top 'new' superfoods like medicinal mushrooms and sacha inchi seeds, and supplements like relora (a magnolia extract that gently supports adrenal function: I've been taking it myself for about a year and it has definitely helped).

Food Orientation
Although this is a Vega book, it is not a vegan book per se. Seafood such as oysters, clams and halibut, as well as the super sea veggies, feature as recommended sources of certain nutrients. On the other hand, all the recipes are, or can be, vegan (one has optional feta cheese). There is a strong emphasis on plant-based nutrition but I'm guessing that the 'vegetarian/vegan' discussion is outside the scope of the book: perhaps Kotsopoulos doesn't want to alienate 'newbies' with that topic. She does talk about the downsides of eating a lot of meat and dairy in various places. It seems like she focuses on the positive, on what things are good to emphasize in the diet, and lets the rest of the message come through tacitly.

That said, I would like to know her thoughts on the whole animal products topic. She mentions 'bad saturated fats' at one point, but later extols the virtues of coconut oil. As many of us know, this is not an inconsistent position, but I would have liked some explanation of why coconut oil is so much better than beef tallow, for example!

Similarly, she seems to err in favor of low-glycemic eating, and talks about the problems with over-consumption of sugar. But in the recipe section, she has a delicious sounding 'mash' recipe involving parsnips and cauliflower (I would have made it to review here, but parsnips have been unavailable where I live for a few weeks!)--this would be a great place to explain why she uses those vegetables instead of the more traditional potatoes. And although she mentions caffeine consumption as implicated in poor sleep, in the recipe section she recommends a cacao-based smoothie as a good evening drink--not for me, that's for sure, delicious though the recipe is!

I don't think it's a bad thing that I'm left 'wanting more' in certain areas. For a short, very easy-reading book, Must Have Been Something I Ate contains a surprisingly large amount of information presented in a way that may, additionally, appeal to people who are not ordinarily 'into nutrition.'

What About the Recipes?
The twenty-five recipes include smoothies, salads, appetizers, soups, a couple of noodle (kelp and zucchini) dishes, a stuffed/baked peppers recipe and several desserts, some baked, some raw or semi-raw. All the recipes are simple and beautiful, and attractively photographed. Some contain several components that could be made separately or together. As I mentioned above, they're all basically vegan--optional feta cheese on one of the salads.

Some of the recipes use pre-made products: often Vega products. Sometimes they're used in innovative ways, like a dash of protein powder enlivening a salad dressing. A crostini recipe also starts with whole-grain bread, and maca-sure and vega-vibracy bars are crumbled for dessert crusts. For me, this is a downside: I always prefer to make things from scratch. Since part of the message of the book is to move away from processed foods, there is also a slight dissonance there. On the other hand, Kotsopoulos does note that companies producing healthful packaged foods are on the rise, and she's providing a service by showcasing these. There are plenty of recipes that are 'make from scratch,' and if part of her target audience is used to the 'open a box and heat up' style of cooking, these 'short-cut' recipes may be a boon.

I tried out a couple of her recipes. I made the chocolate mousse, based on pumpkin and sweetened with maple syrup.

For once in my life, I actually followed the recipe exactly--I went out and bought maple syrup for the first time in years!

She says simply to stir all together with a fork: I used the handheld blender...

...and concluded that a fork might actually have been better!

I served this to Phil, his daughter and her fiance.

Phil's daughter and her fiance, who are major chocolate-lovers and lovers of traditional comfort foods, both loved it, and were surprised by how much they loved it. Phil thought it was "just ok." There's a pattern here: so often, I make something 'alternative,' everyone loves it and Phil thinks it's "ok." In this case, he doesn't love maple syrup, and I should probably have called it something other than 'chocolate mousse,' because he was expecting 'ditto chocolate mousse!' Aside from that, some very mainstream eaters found it delicious. I was super-impressed by the way that the maple syrup enhanced the chocolate flavor: that's one for me to remember.

I also made her lentil soup.

This time, I confess, I didn't follow it precisely--because I didn't have the exact ingredients! I subbed a couple of veggies. As it stands, it's fairly bland--which is a great starting point, but I'll probably add some more spice to it. This is a great, easy recipe for a big, hearty batch of soup which, as she suggests, can be frozen in batches.

To Win Your Copy
Yes, finally--the Giveaway! I hope that you're intrigued to read the book for yourself. Here's how you can enter the Giveaway:

1) Become a follower of my blog--leave a comment to say that you have, or that you already are.

2) Like Vega on Facebook and leave a comment back here.

3) Follow me on Twitter (@Ela_HG) and leave a comment back here.

4) Follow Vega on Twitter and leave a comment back here.

5) Tweet about this giveaway: please include the link to this post and leave a comment back here.

6) Mention this giveaway on your blog--you can leave five 'entry' comments back here with the link.

Winner will be chosen at random on Tuesday June 7th.

'Home Comfort Foods' for Memorial Day

We had a 'Home Comfort Foods' celebration on Memorial Day. Everyone was to bring a favorite 'comfort' food. So of course, there was potato salad, 'goulash that no Hungarian would recognize,' Sicilian deep-dish pizza, Portuguese kale soup, green beans with bacon, cinnamon rolls, papas con chorizo...There was even a platter of McDonalds burgers and fries! And then, there were the jokers...

David said he was really looking for breast milk, but the banana baby food was actually quite good.

I wasn't sure how to feel about Phil trying to pass off the redback vole as comfort food, though...

 And yes, you're right--no 'Ela-friendly' food in the list so far (except for the baby food, lol)! So, what did I bring? I mentioned recently that I've been opening up to the exploration of 'what do I like?' I also wanted to bring something that we ate when I was a kid. The dessert part was a no-brainer for me, and I'll get to it in a moment. For the main course, though, I used the opportunity to explore Iraqi-Israeli recipes online and discovered that there are whole books devoted to it. I'm so looking forward to exploring more.

I made kitchri--Iraqi-Israeli rice and lentils, with the charred crust. Our cabin smelled like my grandmother's house and I smiled all day.

 I was so proud that I got the crust done! It's been forever since I made something like that.

 The dessert? I said it was a no-brainer: actually, mashed bananas and dates was a close contender and perfectly reflected by David's baby food, as it turned out. But when I was a kid--and a young adult, for that matter, I thought that if I couldn't live on fruit, I could live on cardamom rice pudding.

 It seems that every raw chef confesses to one food from the creamy-dairy world that they so missed and were so delighted to make in the raw. It never occurred to me until just recently that I had one too: that I would make cardamom rice pudding long after I'd given up dairy in any other form. Of course, traditional rice pudding is cooked in milk, then you add condensed milk too. And of course I wasn't going to do that this time! So I crockpotted the rice in lots of water and cardamom, added sweetener later, and added coconut milk for the creaminess. The crockpot was a wonderful tool for getting the rice super-soft and creamy. Oh, and the smell of cardamom infusing the air...Heaven.

Without the bad after-effects of the dairy now, if there weren't so many delicious raw foods that I prefer, I could still imagine wanting to live on this! Creamy, soft, smooth, sweet, cardamom, good either warm or chilled, topped with banana baby food or plain...

And, everyone else loved it too!
We always had a plate of carrot sticks at the dinner table when I was a kid, so I brought along carrot sticks too, and they were quite well-enjoyed, considering the vast spread of richer foods.

I also made sesame snaps. Boiled sugar and butter isn't my usual style, but Phil adores this stuff and it's definitely another middle-eastern item.

 Since there are now two semi-gluten-free folks in our circle besides myself, perhaps I shouldn't have been so surprised to find a gluten free chocolate chip cookie on my plate. But it's been many years indeed since I ate a chocolate chip cookie.

 It's raining and murky today, but Memorial Day was gorgeous--sunny and warm. After our 'home comforts' dinner, we sat outside around the firepit at our friends' home and admired their new greenhouse.

I hope your Memorial Day was as delicious as ours was!
Please stay tuned for a book review and giveaway.