The Difficult, and Small Bites Recipes (The Easy)

 

Today I will share the recipes for the "small bites" I featured in my previous post. They're all really easy--they're basic put these ingredients in the food processor with the S-blade and process into a dough, chill a little, cut or break into pieces, done-type recipes.

But I will also share a bit more of the difficult time I'm having lately, which I hinted at in Monday's post without really going into detail. The HAWMC experience throughout April was very beneficial for me in encouraging me to write more about the hard, personal stuff. I've backed away from that a little since then because I haven't wanted to worry people. But it's been a process and a story since, and stories are always good.

"Exploring Options"--what I really meant

That's what I said we were doing on Monday. That was a euphemism for this: my Naturopath, my therapist, another doctor I started seeing, and my bloodwork all say I need to go away to a treatment center. I don't want to go. There are none in Alaska. It feels like I've spent this whole week on the phone exploring options, having doors closed. Getting myself into a space to accept one disruptive plan, only to be told that won't work, contemplating another, with the same result. 

Our insurance won't cover "residential" treatment; only inpatient or outpatient. The program my therapist thinks is ideal has residential and outpatient only--great, so we explore outpatient and I get to keep some autonomy. My Naturopath (he who's had the most experience having me come into his office unslept/unmedicated/psychotic/crying/furious/otherwise noncompliant and crazed) thinks I shouldn't go outpatient, need to be in a more full-time, structured environment.

Add to that my gluten and dairy and soy allergies and non-meat-eating habitude, and many treatment centers won't even look at me. And what is up with that? A treatment center with a focus, among other things, on food issues, won't cater to patients with food allergies?

My Naturopath says treatment centers make it hard to get into them intentionally, so that the patient has to prove she wants to come in. Phil suggested it was just that they're inundated with people trying to get in, so they rule out whomever they can to narrow down the numbers. Since I don't want to come in, it's going to be tough for me to convince them that I do. Meanwhile, I continue not to believe that I'm in any physical danger, to push for agreement that I can stay here. And I continue not to get that.

But my Naturopath said something today that scared me. He warned me that this could start to affect my cognitive functioning and my writing. I already have some short-term memory lapses, which are not me at all, and I have to make sure to take my algae oil DHA capsules (disgusting though they taste) or my brain doesn't work. I have chest pain sometimes, and disorientating tinnitus, but both those can be chalked up to anxiety.

A friend was in the emergency room yesterday afternoon. Two other friends have had serious health scares recently. I was able to help out my friend in the ER, bring her necessities, take her home, take care of her, etc--does it sound like I'm a person in serious trouble? I don't think so. These people are having serious medical emergency issues, and folks are worried about me just because I lost a bit more weight than I intended to? I feel stupid and ashamed and self-indulgent and like I should have known better, like my damaged thyroid and other organs should have been a warning to know when to stop. 

I still can't stop.

Small Bites--The Easy! 

On a more cheerful note, I will share the recipe for the apricot kernel bites, with the strong suggestion not to use the apricot kernels but almonds instead!

Almondy Apricot Bites
Ingredients:
8 Apricot kernels (these made me sick--if you think they might make you sick, please use almonds instead!)
Scant half cup (33g) shredded coconut
Scant cup (270g) unsulphured dried apricots
1/4 cup (50g) carob powder
1/8 cup (25g) chia meal (chia seeds ground in coffee grinder or Vitamix)
1 tablespoon spirulina 
1/3 cup (60g) dry dates
1 teaspoon almond extract


Process all into a dough. I processed the apricot kernels on their own, then added the apricots, then everything else.


If you cut into 30 pieces, they're 31 calories each.
I don't know what I'm going to do with these! How ironic that the first time I make myself some treats, they make me sick! And everything else in there is so good--spirulina/chia/carob is a wonderful combination. I'm afraid to give them to anyone else in case they have the same reaction as I do. But it might be just me.


Since I love dried apricots so much, I made another apricot-based 'bite' that might be even better. This one has protein from the hemp, mojo-boost from the maca, and a couple purple surprises.

Scant cup (110g) unsulphured dried apricots
1/4 cup (30g) hemp protein and fiber powder
scant 1/2 cup (33g) shredded coconut
1 T maca
1/3 cup (60g) dry dates
small handful hibiscus flowers, ground in a Vitamix or coffee grinder
small handful dulse, snipped into pieces


Process into a dough. 
If you cut into 30 pieces, they're 24 calories each.


The slight hint of saltiness from the dulse and the tart almost citrusy flavor of the hibiscus are so special in here. You can't really see the little flecks of purple in the photo, but they make it very visually appealing too. I'm almost sorry I haven't given these a post of their own--they're quite special!


Finally, my take on Nicole's Fudgy Chocolate Chews 

I didn't tweak Nicole's recipe much, as raisins and chocolate are a wonderful thing and I wanted to start simple. Here's what I did:
1 cup raisins
2 T chia meal
1 T carob
1 T cacao nibs
1 t spirulina
1 t coconut butter


In the food processor unto dough! This one's much wetter than the other two, so I spread the whole thing out flat and froze it for a bit, but ended up rolling into balls rather than cutting into pieces.


If you make 30 pieces out of it, they're 18 calories each.


And now, I need to go--a phone call from another treatment center, and I've almost effectively skipped lunch, so should do something about that...(And why am I making and taking all these calls when I so don't want to go?)

Receding Snow, Snow Smoothies

I've never been much for ice in my drinks. So typical of my timing, then, that I should acquire a penchant for "snow smoothies/ice cream" just as our epic snow streak starts to dwindle. Especially at the edge of the bluff, the snow is receding fast...

...although we still have a snow field back from the bluff. Last night I don't think it even froze here.

A glass of snow blended with spirulina and other ingredients makes a wonderful soft-serve type lunch, as I shared in my last post, or just mix the snow with water and chosen flavor (as in this rosewater cordial) for a refreshing mid-afternoon lift. Unfortunately, snow drinks tend to make me chilled as well, but I'm enjoying the taste and texture so much right now that it seems worth it!


So far this week, I've stayed off the caffeine pills and caffeinated tea, and I've stayed off the cacao, and I've slept at least more than I had been, and gobbled down meds like a good girl. But I still wanted my snowy spirulina lunch, and I discovered that it could be just as delicious without the cacao!

This one was: 
1/3 cup nut milk (I used unsweetened Almond Breeze)--just enough to spin the blades
1 cup fresh local snow (I'm going to have to start thinking of alternatives)
1 spoonful spirulina
1 teaspoon lucuma
1/2-1 teaspoon mint extract
stevia and xylitol to taste
1 pinch lecithin granules and/or 1/2 teaspoon xanthan or guar gum


Blend until smooth in a high speed blender.
Mint ice cream! OK, maybe not quite, as there's no fat in there. You don't miss it, though. Definitely mint sorbet--refreshing, a little sweet, delightful.


NB I know that this is very light on calories. However, it's also very easy to make into a more substantial offering. You could use full-fat coconut cream instead of unsweetened almond breeze. You could add some melted coconut oil, which would make it more ice-cream-like and creamy in general, and would add good nutrition too. You could triple the amount of lucuma, and add some tocotrienols, which are also creamy. You could even add some flax seeds, although you should make sure to blend very well so that they're not gritty. Carob powder? Carob goes beautifully with mint. Protein powder? Sure. I feel spirulina offers a good dose of protein, but doubling up would be good too. And you could substitute some of the snow with frozen nut milk. 


One of the things I love about smoothie-type recipes is how infinitely elastic and versatile they are--so easy to make your own. 


On a very different note, RIP Adrienne Rich, role model and inspiration for poets, especially women poets, for over half a century.

...And Then I Got Hungry! Coping With Increased Exercise and Some Dehydrator Goodies

Ordinarily, I have a pretty small appetite. And although my digestion is much-improved now, thanks to all the work I've been doing with the ND over the past year, I tend not to feel good if I eat a large amount at once. I'm also identified with these beliefs about myself.

And so, when I start to exercise a whole lot more and find myself HUNGRY when I think I 'shouldn't' be, or think that I've had enough already, I freak myself out. Dry, dense things that are not usually very appealing to me suddenly go down by the handful. Like kale chips. (More on those in a moment.)

Worse yet, remember that chocolate chip hummus transmogrified into cookies I mentioned earlier? Even though it didn't taste particularly good, I found myself eating one, then two at a time, then picking the chocolate chips out of the third and discarding the rest. After which, I didn't feel so good at all. So unusual for me, not the me I want to be, icky and repulsive to me: I must remind myself, so human--whom am I calling names? (Can I believe I'm confessing to this?)

Freaking out over increased hunger due to increased exercise has been the downfall of many previous fitness endeavors in my life: this time, I intend to do better. Both yesterday and today, I rode my bike hard to town and back, rowed on the rowing machine twenty minutes, and went for a twenty-minute run, plus crunches, planks, pushups, etc. I'd been mixed about running: it has harsh connotations for me, but it may be the only form of cardio available to me at my residency that starts so soon, so I need to get in the groove.

So, to do better with all this, I powered up my remaining hummus-dressed potato salad to make a hearty lunch today. I culled a gorgeous mix of lettuces from our garden, chopped in some remarkably sweet cherry tomatoes and a quarter of an avocado (I hadn't been eating them, and had forgotten how delicious they are!), poured in some homemade kim chee, sprinkled on some spirulina, nutritional yeast, kelp powder...

 It was hearty and good, and I didn't mind eating an orange and some blueberries too.

Speaking of kale chips, I've made some more (pictured above) and discovered that I may even prefer them with a simple lemon juice or vinegar and olive oil massage, rather than a creamy dressing. I did straight apple-cider vinegar and olive oil with a dash of salt, and I also did lime-ginger chips--the juice of half a lime and about an inch of ginger, freshly grated. For that batch, I used just the minimum of olive oil (still being fat-phobic, apparently) and discovered that it really works best if all the kale is massaged with some oil: without that coating, it gets dry without the real crispiness.

Also in the dehydrator:

They're not very pretty, but they're very yummy! It's my first attempt at a banana cookie.
3 tablespoons coconut butter
2 tablespoons coconut sugar
1 mashed banana
3 tablespoons flaxseed meal
4 tablespoons lucuma powder
2 tablespoons mesquite powder
~1/2 cup water
mixed all together, then add a handful of raisins.
Even when pretty well-dried, they have a lovely, moist texture and a lingering, but not overpowering, sweetness.

This last trip to Anchorage also afforded me my first opportunity (i.e. leftover rice from a Thai restaurant) to make Phil's rice crackers in the dehydrator rather than our toaster oven!

When the sun shines in through the kitchen window, it can be almost impossible to take a photo in there!

I was able to get them super-thin and crunchy, just how Phil enjoys them most.

And they're so much lighter in color than the oven-baked version--lower temperatures, I guess.

Well, I'm getting ready to go on my first MFA residency and have my world shaken, or possibly turned upside down! I'm just starting to realize how 'different' things are going to be for this brief two-week period fast-approaching. Obviously, the "living-breathing-speaking writing and literature" part will be awesome and I can't wait for it. The social dynamics and also the food part cause me some trepidation. I'll talk about that more as I prepare to leave, and will also endeavor to post my first "make someone else's pleasurable recipe challenge before I head out.

How do you handle increased appetite, for exercise or other reasons?
What are you looking forward to in August?

Recipes For Poets: Nettle Pesto and Thoughts on Versatility and Peacemaking

The last two days have been throat-clearing and pump-priming, but today I'm determined to get back to poetry writing, sweep finally through the clutter and inertia caused by our trip. It always seems to take me eight or nine days to get back to it, and I promise myself that I'm going to build and find ways to keep writing on the road.

Versatility and peacemaking: these are two features that are dear to me both in food creation and in poetry writing. Part of my 'pump priming' process in getting back into writing has been to ask myself, seriously: "What do I really love--to eat, to write, to do, to share as a message?" As a person who spent too many years in the anorexic universe, this is a very trenchant question (I don't know what I want): at times, the aporia it generates is astonishing. It's something I'd like to bring to light and to talk about more here in future, but versatility: the flexibility to fit with many environments and contexts--and peacemaking: filling a context that allows for agreement, of themes, people, flavors, viewpoints--are two qualities that came to mind that I aspire to.

So, without further pump-priming, a good recipe for this poet is one that admits of poetic license--variation of ingredients, proportions and specifics. It is delicious. Ideally, it speaks of the environment whence it comes. It can be used in a variety of ways and marries well with many flavors, brings parties together.

 This is nettle-parsley-basil pesto: fresh nettles, pioneers from the explosion of green that the 'Rite of Spring' produces here, married with more familiar, aromatic herbs (grown in pots indoors), with nuts, olive oil, garlic and lemon.

It took me barely seven minutes to make in the cuisinart, and can then be used as a base for many other quick and delicious recipes.

Note that I rarely measure when I create, so these ingredient amounts are approximate and reflect both poetic license and respect for a formal proportion that 'works.'

You need: a cuisinart (7-cup works well) with the S-blade fitted
Ingredients:
1 cup nuts or seeds of choice (I used half pumpkin seeds: zinc powerhouse, and half walnut: represents the brain in the 'doctrine of signatures') (Pine nuts, mac nuts, hemp seeds, sunflower seeds or a combination would all be good too)
3 cups fresh nettles (I harvest with scissors into a picking basket: I seldom get stung. I chop them roughly with the scissors once they're picked)
Half a cup each basil and parsley
2 cloves garlic (or more, or less!)
Juice of half a lemon (use two tablespoons apple cider vinegar if you don't have lemons)
Good quality salt to taste
Quarter cup olive oil (or more)
Ascorbic acid/vitamin C

How-to: Start by grinding the nuts/seeds finely in the food processor. Add the garlic and greens, and spin until well broken down. Leave the motor running and slowly add the lemon juice, salt, ascorbic acid and olive oil through the hole in the lid. You may need to stop once or twice and scrape down the sides. Watch as you add the olive oil: at some point, the whole paste should become homogenized and integral.
Ascorbic acid: despite the lemon juice, I always add this to pestos and guacamoles because it's the only thing I've found to prevent browning so that the food is still beautiful later. I keep vitamin C powder, but you can just open one or two vitamin C capsules and pour the powder in.

So, now you have the pesto and seriously, it takes less than ten minutes. You can make it the centerpiece of a meal in various simple or more complex ways.
Simply dip carrots and jicama in it, or crackers if you like (and have them handy).
Use it to stuff bell peppers, or layer with sliced tomatoes and sprinkle with poppy seeds
Use it to dress your preferred spaghetti, whether that's kelp noodles, durum wheat pasta, rice noodles or spiralized zucchini.
Thin it with more lemon juice and some water to make a delicious dressing for greens and tomatoes.

This is what I did for Phil last night: not gluten free, not vegan, but good for Phil and took fifteen minutes:
A cup of pasta takes about eight minutes to cook al dente.
Meanwhile, I sauteed half an onion and a cup of chopped clams

 ...then added two cloves of garlic, half a cup of pesto and a little water.
Drained and salted the pasta, stirred in the clam-pesto mix, garnished with sliced tomato.

 I could imagine an even more delicious version with kelp noodles and mushrooms instead of pasta and clams...

Meanwhile, my own dinner was squarely within my current tweak: not a mono diet, but maybe a 'tetra diet.' More on that in my next post!

Have you had nettle pesto before? If you don't have nettles where you are, you can make this with any other herbs, but if you can, do try nettle pesto: it's so earthy and delicious. I haven't seen anyone that doesn't like it.

"Recipes for Poets" and Two Book Reviews

I hope everyone's having a beautiful day. No more charging moose up here today, but I did bike past a mother and two calves yesterday afternoon: they'd unashamedly taken possession of a neighbor's front lawn, despite her three horses and two dogs close by. Been a long winter and frozen alder twigs offer meager sustenance: they must be so excited for the grass!

When we left for our trip three weeks ago, I was perplexed by an identity crisis of sorts, hinging on whether it's ok to talk about food so much when it's poetry that holds my life together. Thanks to a post from Erin, my attention was drawn to the 32 poems blog and the invitation there to participate in a round-up of recipes for poets. Most poets have other work that distracts attention from their art, you see, so time management is of the essence. Especially when you've just been on a trip and are discombobulated and finding it hard to get back down to any kind of work; when checking Paris Review or reading blogs seems terribly urgent, even if far less important than the real work. I've spent much of today translating Greek lemmata and am feeling better.

So, on May 20th--two days away--I'll be posting a twenty minute recipe that would provide a healthy meal to a poet, or anyone else, without much time-donation. I was supposed to say so by May 15th, but I hope they'll have me anyway. I'm excited to connect with other poets who also love to write about food: a sense of camaraderie will eclipse any anxieties about not fitting neatly under one specific label. I'll stick with something spring-like and delicious. Maybe the next day, I'll share some specifics of my latest diet tweak plus exercise ramp-up that I mentioned.

There are several book clubs in Homer. I'm in two of them and both happen to meet on the same day, which was yesterday. So, I read two very different books in quick succession: one non-fiction, one fiction, both 'first books,' both written by women around my own age (yes, I felt envy!). Book club reminds me of seminars in grad school in certain ways, although I have to be careful not to think of it like that too much. But there's the same sense of stimulation from hearing others' thoughts, the same imperative to walk the tightrope of diplomacy and forcefulness when delivering my own observations.

In the first book club, we read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. This is the story of the woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951, but whose cervical cancer cells had been cultured before her death and continue to live and divide to this day. It is also the story of her family, indigent, black, uneducated, who were not informed of any of this until much later, and their attempts to understand and also simply to survive in the world.

It's an impressive and informative read: I appreciated the refresher in basic biology and was fascinated and appalled by turns to read of the sociohistoric and medical ethics aspect of the story. And the thoroughness of the research both of the scientific facts and of the human connections, the actual people involved in the story, was magnificent and truly respectful to those involved. I kept imagining the writing process of this book: the reader is allowed to feel very close to that process.

Everyone in the book club was similarly impressed. It provoked some interesting discussion among us over medical ethics and whether a person owns their discarded body parts.

In the second book club, there was unanimity also, and this time there were more misgivings in it. We read Michelle Hoover's The Quickening: a novel set in Depression-era agricultural Iowa and told through the alternating perspectives of two very different farm women, neighbors.

It is a bleak story, as befits the era and place perhaps. In terms of the 'show, don't tell' dictum, there is very little 'telling' as such and the 'showing' is effected through the taciturn diction of the time and place. This means that so many things are implied or half-said, one has to read between the lines a lot. I 'got' the various implications and felt inveigled into a world of closed doors and mouths, where one might understand weighty events only dimly, be ostracized for little reason, go into labor before realizing one was pregnant. However, several other people didn't 'get' them and felt both confused and annoyed with the author for not being clear. If she wants us to know what happened in the story, the argument went, what does she gain by sort-of half-showing it and then bringing it up in full much later?

I find these kinds of criticisms very instructive, and apply them to my own writing, since (as an avowed Heraclitus-lover) I have an affinity for riddles and obscurity. If several people don't 'get' something I've written when I share it at writers' group, I usually revise it. It's a judgment call we all have to make: touching the mystery without obfuscating. (Did I just obfuscate by my choice of word there?)