"50 First Weeks:" The Unmilked Cow and Simple Soup

It continues to snow here....

I was reflecting, as I hiked home from our writers' group tonight, that this is our fifth month of snowfall. It's the biggest snow year since the early '90s, apparently. I greatly appreciate the beauty of the snow-pack--so much more pristinely beautiful than periods of thaw when the snow-bleached stalks of last year's annuals tumble and languish under the grit from plow trucks...However, with the mercilessly returning light, lighter every morning, daylight savings already springing forward earlier than spring next weekend, I'm feeling some disturbance in the force.

Part of this off-kilter feeling comes from within my own mercurial self. I've been too busy, not writing enough poetry, and to pull out my own cliche, I'm feeling like an unmilked cow. If I was alone, I'd be staying up nights, which would take care of the need to write but escalate some other aspects of the craziness. So I'm grudgingly grateful to Phil for insisting I come to bed.

Before I sign off here and go do some writing already, I want to share a super-simple and super-light recipe.
I've mentioned before that I've been eating lighter and lighter dinners and feeling better for it; also that my tummy's been somewhat fussy lately. So I've been putting slippery elm powder in practically everything. It's a wonderful demulcent--relaxes the intestinal lining and coats it--lots of soluble fiber and mucilaginous polysaccharides. And to me, it tastes really good--subtle, almost a little sweet. I was raised with slippery elm as a tummy soother, so perhaps it's that lifelong association that makes it taste good to me. It has very little caloric value but is somehow nutritious nonetheless: people in starvation situations have lived off of slippery elm "porridge" at times.

So, I've been saving the ends of carrots and onions and all that kind of stuff, and making veggie broth. Half a cup of warm veggie broth,
with a teaspoon of slippery elm stirred in,
with maybe a quarter cup of thawed peas,
and a few chopped pieces of thawed okra,
maybe a splash of nut milk of some kind
and a sprinkle of nutritional yeast over the top...

...with a carrot on the side, there's dinner--and tummy soothing too. If you want it thicker, you could add some psyllium as well, or flax meal. If you want it creamier, a little extra virgin coconut oil, or coconut cream powder, or nut cream, would be delicious I'm sure.

Have you tried slippery elm?
Off to write...