Time to Pull My Head out of the Sand...

My new note to myself for the wall--

--I'm hoping that it will remind me to ask that all-important question, especially in those moments when the 'other side' is dragging me off the rails as if against any volition of my own. Perhaps I should have it tattooed on my retinas. Upside down.

One of the expanding blessings of commitment to writing, to making art of any kind, is the constant nudging impulsion to do my best--to see more, feel more, know more, share more--in the best, fullest way possible, in the most beautiful, poignant way I know how. I'm not speaking only for myself on that.

Speaking for myself, though, I've tended to have my head in the sand about the current events in the world around me. I've studied ancient languages and history in greater depth than the stuff of the here and now, I've lived in remote places, off the grid, far away from any obvious impacts from Washington or Kabul or anywhere further than the nearest volcano. Also, I've avoided taking radical stances on pretty much anything. I am caught in so many inconsistencies: even my marriage is a catalogue of them, straight down the line from age difference through spiritual perspectives to eating animal products (or not) and the use of chemicals (or not)--and more. There are so few things on which I've taken a stand, ever.

But the more I write, the more important it is for me to make what I care about relevant. If I have something to share, it needs to have passion, and it needs to be grounded in some commonly held objects, out on the table for people to roll around in their hands. Ok, I'll stop mixing metaphors right now! I've been talking about getting with it for a while now: it's time to stop talking and start acting. Yet one more piece of ammunition: Phil's daughter's bathroom reading tonight was an old issue of Ode Magazine (yes, it is very nice to visit a place that has a bathroom): on the back page was an explanation of why it's good for you to read 'bad news,' rather than trying to insulate and isolate from it. The basic message was that reading about bad news forces us to become problem solvers, to think about solutions. Each time we're exposed to a piece of bad news, we can learn from it by gauging our own reactions to it, understanding its etiology and asking what should be done differently if an analogous situation came up again.

I don't think it was an accident that I read that this evening. Part of 'being my best' is going to be pulling my head out of the sand! Watch this space...and send me links!

Meanwhile, here are the fruits of a quick foray to the kale patch...

 It's so beautiful... So luxuriant and happy. On the other hand, why oh why did I plant so much kale? Phil hates kale! He insists that it upsets his stomach, and mine too. And he may be right. Fortunately, I also planted a motherlode of chard, which does almost as well up here, and we've been enjoying that.

About half the kale ended up in the dehydrator...

...massaged in apple cider vinegar and a little olive oil, with a mesquite spice mix rubbed in--we'll see how it turns out.

Do you keep up with the goings-on of the world and take a stance on things? Or are you happy to compromise? (Is it ok to do both in different contexts?)

One More Lesson: What's For Breakfast?--Troubleshooting and Kale Chip Recipe

Traveling can be challenging because it disrupts routine and raises questions that I don't even have to consider, ordinarily. But this disruption also offers the opportunity to re-evaluate components of that routine and see whether they work as well as I assume they do.

This is the story of why we've been home for three days and I haven't yet made a smoothie (shocker). It's not just because we've been very busy.

Until we went on our trip, my breakfast was always a green smoothie.

It was a smoothie with a lot of ingredients and in my current yeast cleanse, the base was: 

thin (homemade) coconut milk, 

coconut kefir whey, 

a carrot (sometimes two), 

frozen peas (or lately I was using frozen beans because their omega3:6 ratio is better: minutiae, I know)

three or four heaping teaspoons of my superfood mix of chlorella, wheatgrass juice powder, ginger, cinnamon, maca, tocotrienols

a little pea protein powder (seem to have been using less and less lately)

a little piece of avocado

a little blob of coconut oil

drop of stevia

a handful of greens, either fresh, or dried nettles or peppermint

and then it would sometimes have irish moss, or a few flax seeds, and sometimes some extra spice like cardamom and cloves, or cooled peppermint tea, leaves and all; sometimes a drop or two of medicine flower flavor extracts.

Originally, that amount made my breakfast, but before we went on the trip I was diluting the same amount into two smoothies and having it for breakfast and lunch. I was doing so because (despite the fact that it's not very calorie dense as smoothies go) I was feeling too full from it, uncomfortably so! And even cutting it in half, I still always felt a little sick after drinking it, to the point that I was often going right through to lunchtime with no in-between snack.

I assumed that my body was to blame--yeast die-off, etc. 

But on our trip, with a little jar of superfood mix and some unsweetened store bought coconut milk and no blender, I never felt sick after breakfast! I often ate vegetables for breakfast, or leftover salad, sometimes with a little glass of coconut milk with a little bit of the superfood powder. And I often had carrots, frozen (thawed) peas or beans for breakfast too. So it wasn't the powder per se, or the veggies. 

What gives? It seems like it was something about the smoothie itself that was making me feel icky. Interesting that I persevered, had exactly the same thing day in and day out, and it never occurred to me that if I ate something different for breakfast, I might not feel sick!

Since we got home, I've eaten leftover salad and carrots, or thawed(ish) frozen peas and beans, and carrots--weird breakfast but it works.

At this stage, I'm really looking forward to being over the yeast cleanse (three more weeks!) and going back to more fruit, in my smoothies and otherwise. I'm over the fruit-phobia with which I was afflicted when I started this blog over a year ago, with which I had been afflicted for over a year before that. I've reconnected with the recognition that I felt great for many years eating a lot of fruit. Discovering cooked root veggies and how much better I feel with them has been a great stepping stone in that direction.

More on this soon. Any ideas on why that particular smoothie combination would be so stomach-churning?

It's delightful to see all the green growth here. Down in OR, of course, it was lush and green and many steps ahead of us. There was a big stand of kale in the garden at the farm, so I made kale chips (there are dehydrators at the farm).

I'd never made these before, and of course it was my typical Ela 'throw it all together' kind of recipe, but here it is approximately:

1/4 cup coconut butter

2-3 tablespoons tahini

2 tablespoons mustard

juice of half a lemon

dusting of stevia

chili powder

chipotle powder

2 tablespoons flax seeds

1/4 cup nooch

black pepper

I added warm water to all that until it was a thick sauce, then added torn kale into the bowl until all the sauce was coating kale. Dehydrated for about 6 hours at 115--I was impressed with how quick it was.

Everyone loved them except Phil, who thought they were just ok--which often happens when I make something new. But he loathes kale, doesn't like nooch or tahini, so what do I expect? He thinks it's uncanny that all my favorite tastes happen to be the 'few' things he doesn't like. Disappointing for me at times, given our huge dietary differences to begin with, but we love each other anyway and respect each others' gustatory differences! And I've written several poems about that very situation, so it can't be all bad.

What's your favorite breakfast?