Approaching Connectedness; Approaching Gratitude

Of course, I left out a lot of important things from my previous post. I need to reassure everyone who leaped up and contacted me in alarm that I haven't gone back to carrots and lettuce already--that was a misleading suggestion. I also left out some of why it's all even worth it. But rather than go back and edit, here's a whole new post.

What's missing from my previous post--so much more beyond the surface tension of my illness.

There are so many things going on outside of myself. There are so many things going on inside of myself that I need to offer to other people. Even the times I've been in extremis with these health conditions, I've always been able to recognize that what I've lost has been connection to a larger reality. At this point, connection to that reality is melting in, slowly.

I had a hair-raising, horrendous drive home with the non-functioning car heater, ice, dark, anxiety...perhaps I'll tell the rest of that story next time. At home the water pipe had frozen where weasels or squirrels had damaged the insulation. Frozen and burst, so that a thousand gallons from our newly filled tank ran out, right under our cabin, eighteen feet from an erosive bluff. Phil is an incredible one-man-band, but crawling under the house when it's close to zero, popping up again to pour water into a suspected leak...you really need more than one set of eyes and hands for that.
 What about in Anchorage? I was there all weekend, at the gracious hospitality of wonderful friends who care, as a verb, and whose own lives are so rich, broad, deep, giving and receptive both. Just to notice these friends and how they are; to hear what they've been doing with their lives, what they've been observing, brings me to a broadened awareness, which contains hope.

I got to see our friend Tom at the viewing of his and Jeanie's film, a starred offering at the Anchorage International Film Festival. It's the first time I've seen their film since Lucas died, which lent some special poignancy to the experience. Tom's graciousness and poise was beautiful to see. Some people had come up from Homer specially to see the film, including people with whom I'd been acquainted but didn't yet have names for. Meeting them in Anchorage in support of beloved Tom and Jeanie, and having the "I've seen you around everywhere, we were both in such and such...but what is your name?" conversation revealed long tendrils of connectedness.

Getting to meet online acquaintances is another special delight. By a wonderful serendipity, I got to spend time with Cinthia, together with Lynn, with whose friendship I've been blessed a few years now.

 Cinthia felt like a kindred spirit right off the bat, from love of the outdoors to averseness to cold (I know, what are we doing up here?) to intensity about writing; even to food preferences (helps me to think through my return to posting recipes on here again).

Lynn, of course... what can I say? Her blend of tenderness and passion, her unmatched observantness... 
Oh, and we laughed a lot, all three of us together. Always a good sign.

Meanwhile back home...the two of us and Fido the camera on the right...

I don't feel proud to have driven him nuts over the past...year? two years? more?--to have justified the Cockney Rhyming Slang appellation of "trouble and strife" for "wife."
There's still a lot of work to figure out how to get done all my work, and write, and do things with Phil--from chores around our small but high-maintenance homestead to more recreational activities. But now at least we can have the conversations.



I've been so scared. I've been protecting myself (to death, some would say). Having propelled myself out of the tailspin--with help, ultimately, from the distasteful ultimatum--I'm less protected. I feel a lot that terrifies me into my guts. I also see a lot of joy and hope; a lot to look forward to. I begin to feel connected outside of myself, to be able to send those huge and convoluted webs inside me into the wider world.

Avocado Pie: Raw, Low-Sugar, Vegan

It's Monday, so it should be a "Fifty First Weeks" post again. That little theme fell by the wayside during April, as so many of my series seem to. What is this a "first week" of? On the down side, it feels like first week of "crash." But it could also be first week of preparing bucket list for life after semester. Here we go a-grading...


As promised yesterday, here is the Avocado Pie recipe, rawified and created without reliance on a high-powered blender, and with an attempt to give options that don't depend too much on hard-to-find ingredients. I also promised some thoughts soon about increasing calories: in this post, there will be many examples of how to reduce calories while keeping nutrient levels high. I'll start with the original recipe, then explain what I did, step-by-step, and finally give a summary of the whole thing (below the picture of Leslie).

Here's Lynn's original recipe for Avocado Pie:

Crust:
1 1/2 cups finely chopped pecans
1/2 cup shredded dried coconut (sweetened or not)
1/4 cup melted butter
Mix with fingers and press into (9in) pie pan. Bake at 375 until edges are slightly brown. Cool.


Filling:
2 large ripe avocados
2 cans sweetened condensed milk
Juice of 2 lemons
Mix in Cuisinart until smooth. Pour into (cooled) crust. Freeze.


Topping:
Whip 1 cup whipping cream and flavor with vanilla. Spread on top of filling and sprinkle with grated pecans. Freeze until firm.

What I needed to do to adapt this

Since this pie has an unbaked filling and a nut-based crust, it was quite straightforward to "rawify." Most raw pie crusts are nut-based anyway. For this particular occasion, I chose to bake the crust lightly, to preserve that browned look. I used the same proportions of pecans and shredded coconut, but used palm shortening instead of butter. Coconut oil or coconut butter would have worked fine too. 

To make the crust completely raw: Simply don't put it in the oven and leave raw! Or, if you want that toasted flavor, put it in a dehydrator on 115 for several hours; in your oven at its lowest temperature if you don't have a dehydrator. One more tip: if you want that toasted flavor without toasting it, add a little good quality salt to the crust mix.

Most raw pie fillings are based on a combination of soaked cashews, almond milk, coconut oil, sweetener (often agave nectar (which I will never use)), lecithin, and fruits or other flavorings. I will give directions for a cashew-based adaptation of this pie as well, but hey, avocados are plenty calorie dense all by themselves! I wanted to make a filling that was less calorie dense than pureed avocado, not more so! Therefore, I used irish moss and unsweetened almond milk to make a raw, vegan version of sweetened condensed milk. I used low-and no-glycemic sweeteners, since an avocado-based pie would be ideal for those avoiding sugar. 

Avocados are wonderfully nutrient dense, but if they're combined with a whole bunch of nuts, coconut oil and sugars, even if said nuts, coconut oil and sugars are nutrient dense in their own right, I feel you end up with too many calories per bite and are more likely to feel uncomfortable after enjoying. So I think it's a blessing that I can make a delicious pie filling based on avocado without having to add a whole lot of extra fat and sugar calories to make it delicious.

I'm so impressed: my immersion blender was capable of making irish moss gel too! I kind of suspected that was a Vita-mix task. I did chop the soaked irish moss up before blending, to help it out.

Sub-recipe: raw vegan sweetened condensed milk  (low-fat, low sugar, with substitution options)

1 cup unsweetened almond milk (if you use homemade, it'll likely be creamier and higher-fat)(here are some homemade nut milk recipes)

1/3 cup prepared irish moss gel (see below)

1/4 cup erythritol

1/4 cup coconut sugar (gives it that yellowish sweetened condensed milk color)

1 tablespoon lecithin

1 teaspoon xanthan gum

1/2 teapoon white stevia powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Blend all together until smooth

To make the irish moss gel, soak a handful of irish moss seaweed in several changes of water until the seaweed expands in size and the water thickens up a little.

Roughly chop the moss, and blend it with as little of the soak water as possible, adding a quarter teaspoon of vanilla powder and a third cup of erythritol.

Here's how it looks:

Note: if you don't need it sugar free, use agave nectar, coconut nectar, maple syrup, raw honey, evaporated cane juice, or whatever sweetener you prefer instead of the erythritol. On the other hand, if you want the "sweetened condensed milk" completely sugar free, omit the coconut sugar and use more erythritol or stevia, or yacon syrup, to taste.

Here's the "sweetened condensed milk"--a nice, thick texture as you'd need for a pie filling, with no extra fat from cashews or coconut oil!

If you want a fattier version, instead of the irish moss gel, blend the almond milk with a third cup soaked cashews (or a quarter cup cashew butter) and two tablespoons coconut oil.

If you want a lower fat version but don't have irish moss, you could either double the amount of xanthan gum, or use two tablespoons ground psyllium husks (probably not the best option), or you could gently heat the almond milk and blend in a tablespoon of agar powder, which should thicken it similarly to the irish moss.

With the sweetened condensed milk substitute all made, blending in two avocados and the juice of two lemons was easy raw synergy!

I had to use a saucepan to blend all the filling--the beaker in which I made the sweetened condensed milk substitute was too small!


I poured the filling into the cooled, aromatic crust, and put it in the freezer for a couple hours.


Meanwhile, I pulled out of the freezer some leftover "lemon cashew cream cheese" frosting from our anniversary cake (the recipe is about two-thirds down the page), and just before we left for the party, I decorated the pie with the frosting.


My decoration skills weren't great, and with the sun shining in my photography skills were worse, but hopefully you get the idea.

I was a little concerned about showing up to the party with an unasked-for dessert, but as it turned out, the party was missing a dessert to be Leslie's birthday cake, so everything worked out perfectly! I love it when that happens.

So, in Summary--Avocado Pie Another Way!

Crust:

1 1/2 cup pecans, finely chopped

1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

1/4 cup palm shortening (or coconut oil, or coconut butter)

1/2 teaspoon good quality salt

1 tablespoon water if necessary

Mix all together with fingers; press into a 9-in pie pan. Bake at 375 for 20 mins, or dehydrate for several hours, or leave as is.

Set aside to chill.

Filling:

2 ripe avocados

Juice of two lemons

1 1/2 cups homemade raw sweetened condensed milk:

Raw sweetened condensed milk:

1 cup almond milk

1/3 cup irish moss gel (made with vanilla and erythritol)

1/4 cup erythritol

1/4 cup coconut sugar

1 tablespoon lecithin

1 teaspoon xanthan gum

1/2 teaspoon white stevia powder

1/2 teaspoon good quality salt

Blend all together until smooth. Pour into cooled pie crust. Freeze until firm.

Raw Whipped Topping: Recipe is here.

You could either cover the whole pie with the topping, or blob it on as I did (I'm sure anyone else could do that more elegantly!) --I think it's nice to have some of that beautiful green showing.

Please let me know if anything isn't clear--there were a lot of steps in that process and lots of thoughts along the way, but the outcome is really quite simple!

Nutrient density and caloric density in desserts--your thoughts?

Chocolate and Other Adventures; Funny Faces

Happy Holidays to everyone! We had fresh snow for Christmas day, and lovely times with family and friends. After a late night last night, this morning was the first morning in a while that I didn't leap up and start making chocolate of some sort, or other goodie-prep, and funnily enough my appetite is better today. I didn't make the de-stress connection at all - my clever husband had to point it out!

Here's some of what I was up to:
-spread out to chill atop our freezer out on the stoop: the good thing about how cold it is here is that chocolate firms up fast. That's also the bad thing, because it's hard to make the initial chocolate without getting congealed cacao butter _everywhere_!

 The above picture became these nut-seed bars: so delicious, so beautiful, Phil's daughter's new favorite breakfast!...

...and these ginger ganache truffles.

I also made white chocolate-blueberry truffles...

...more hazelnut-amaretto-cherry truffles...

...chocolate-dipped mint bars (in process here)...

...and still had some congo bars from earlier.

The mint bars were based on the recipe in Living Raw Food by Sarma Melngailis; the truffles and bars were somewhat based on recipes in Sweet Gratitude. That's why I NEED to own that book--I could barely restrain myself from making everything in it!

Did I mention--my major adaptation was to make everything very low sugar. I used, variously, stevia, xylitol, erythritol, glycerine, coconut nectar and a special syrup I'll tell more about in a moment.

Taking a break from chocolate--first thing Christmas morning I peeled six pomegranates for cheesecake!

That's a lot of pomegranate!

And the juice (ready to go with cashews etc in the blender here) is just so beautiful!

 Boy, were my hands sticky at the end of that process! And then imagine, with this chocolate-and-cheesecake factory, and no running water, how mess can build up and cleanup can be tricky!

 Don't even think about washing that mesh bag from the pomegranate juice... Yes, that blue jug only holds six gallons of water, and it goes fast when you're prepping up a storm...

My Special No-Sugar Sweetener--OK, it's not mine, it turns out. But as I was running out of coconut nectar and loath to spend another $10 for less than 2c of it, I wondered about making a xylitol syrup. And I googled around and discovered that it could be done! I followed the suggestions on this link and got me a syrup that isn't raw at all but is very low-glycemic and neutrally flavored.

I boiled the syrup a little too long, evidently, because apart from what I used that morning and blended very well, the rest crystallized. Beautiful crystals, though:

I didn't manage to take pics of everything I made, and I forgot to picture the coconut whisky I made using the xylitol syrup, and the to-die-for colada mix to go with it. Raw pina colada with coconut whisky because Phil's daughter doesn't do well with rum and it was as well to make it sugar-free too!

Update 12/27--Managed to snag pics of the pina colada at Phil's daughter's last night!

Take a break to watch this rooster pheasant high in the tree enjoying some frozen mountain ash berries. They are big birds to be so high in the trees. Take a break while Phil goes skiing, and I'll pass over the big cleanup and frantic gift-wrapping operation I undertook, and the moment when I almost set the cabin on fire through a mishap with parchment paper in the oven when I had run out of water...

 ...and here we are at our friends' house, dressed up and party-moded, putting stuff together...I didn't get a good picture of the mango salad I made from Raw Food Real World per request,but you can sort of see it below... I love playing in David's kitchen!

 ...together with a tantalizing choccie pic. And here's a slightly better one together with my usual green salad. You can always use and enjoy a green salad--or I can!

 I love the texture of the julienned mango, and was really impressed that I managed to peel four mangoes and julienne three of them in about 15 minutes flat!

I also made a thai-flavored stew with eggplant, yam, onion and napa and purple cabbages, simmered in lemongrass, ginger, turmeric and coconut milk...

 Back to the chocolates - all together now!

Yummies...

And here is the pomegranate cheesecake--double yum! I'm so glad that I asked our hosts to look through the books and make requests: it helped me to focus somewhat.

Well-enjoyed just as is...

...or with pina colada the next day.

Again--all of these sweets and desserts were low-glycemic (sweetened with coconut nectar/xylitol syrup/glycerine/xylitol/erythritol/stevia) and dairy/gluten free, with the exception of a batch of licorice caramels I made 'regular' because Phil loves them so.

Now to some pictures of People!
One of the games we played among ourselves and our extended family elsewhere was to find unusual/unintended uses for gifts and post pictures of those. Phil has a great flair for that, and for making faces!

This hilariously over-felted hat will be perfect if Phil ever goes to Israel with me to meet my family!

This was a joke-hat, but the dangly thing is like a piece of bait for him...

I got him long underwear and he decided to ditch the yarmulka and go for an Arafat look! That face just cracks me up every time I see it!

Our neighbors...

...with the innovative wrapping-paper hat... gave everyone these beautiful star-lanterns that you put a lightbulb inside to light up the night. We decided that those would make great hats too.

So first off: Miss Vaa-Vaa-Voom, Phil's gorgeous daughter!

...and our lovely hostess, Miss O...

My turn!

Happy Holidays to you all--much love, peace and joy.

The View from Here; Final England Recap

It feels so strange to still be so behind! I have one more post about our England trip and one about Anchorage, and one product review due from before we even left for England! So, in the spirit of getting back into the present, here are some views from here. I promise I'll explain the Phil banana picture from the last post in due course!

Hiking on the beach today:

Amazing how blue the sky can be when it's 22 degrees F!
Yesterday's sunset:

Well, and back in England, of course, the highlights were the people. Phil met my dad...

...and my bigger brother and his family and gorgeous baby (they don't want their pics up here)... and hung out with my youngest brother again...

... and reconnected with his stepson...

...and of course we spent time with my lovely mom!

...and I got to catch up with so many dear old friends, too few of whom I got photos of. It was great to introduce Phil to that part of my life, and it was even more precious for me to get to experience the warmth and wonder of these friends that I get to see so seldom.

Of course, we also got many impressions of the place too.
We found London to be very crowded: more so than ever...

...but also very multicultural, multilingual, meltingpot, patricians shoulder-to-shoulder with hoi polloi on the Underground: a certain 'live and let live' kind of integration.

I noticed that the environment-friendliness had continued to improve in the years since I used to live there. The recycling options are easy and enviable. Public restrooms, which are generally cleaner and easier to find (where they used to be few, far between and gross as the floor of a college bar after homecoming night), very often have something like this:

two flushes: a heavy flush and a light flush. Many private toilets have the same thing too. Although you still have to ask them not to bag your groceries at the store, reuse and recycling seems to be pretty ubiquitous and well-understood and recognized.

Last time I was over there, the 'raw food scene' was limited to just a few people. Now, there are packaged goodies...

...and places where you can get beautiful raw foods... - Vantra

and Saf

 We appreciated beautiful buildings... - the Royal Albert Hall under perpetual renovation (when we were back in Anchorage staying with friends, we watched 'Dancing with the Stars' and it was a kick to point out to Phil that that there was the Royal Albert Hall!)...

...the Royal College of Music right opposite, where I used to go for music lessons back in my serious musician days...

..and trees within London. Fig trees around the National Gallery...

...gorgeous old willow...

...and the Pelicans in St James' Park!

The pelicans were pretty hilarious specimens of 'tamelife,' as Phil put it. We loved the suspended animation of the Natural History Museum also, where Phil got the direct line to the elephants...

The funniest shopping moment: thank God I have a camera, or otherwise I would have had to buy one of these for its sheer ridiculousness:

It's a 'banana guard.' Complete with little air holes so your banana can breathe in your briefcase and not get all squishy.

But what if your banana isn't the same shape as the guard? And what if you're a '30 bananas a day' person? Not going to help you quite so much then. I imagine it would get quite sweaty in there too. But if one banana's all you're carrying around, this guard is just five pounds: about the price of maybe one bunch.

As often, I loved the opportunity to prepare food and share it with all kinds of other people. I prepared fancy no-sugar raw food...

...and some cooked things too...

...but, most unusually for me, the 'food find' that excited me most of all in my time there was a mainstream cooked item. And alas, riffling through, I don't even have a picture of it! I'll just have to paint it with words. Three words. Caramelized Onion Hummus. Apparently it's relatively mainstream over there: all the supermarket chains had their own version. Obviously as a good middle-eastern girl, I love my hummus, but prefer to make my own rather than eat store-bought. And I've never been much of an allium aficionada. But creamy hummus with sweet, pungent caramelized onions blended in (one batch even had little discrete chunks of onion too) was a new form of deliciousness. I tend to be creative with flavors to put it mildly, so when I come upon a combination that's really remarkable that I didn't think up myself, I'm all the more impressed! I've been brainstorming to myself off and on since coming home about making a raw version. Amber, this one's obviously for you too!

It was a wonderful trip, all in all. Once again, it was the people part that really was precious and remains precious in my heart.

And now, it's good to be home...

love to all!