The View From Here; Water Drainage and Water Saving

Happy full-moontide! For me, as my jury-rigged hormones figure it out, it's that raspberry-leaf and licorice time of the month. (Seriously, it works great - try it!) I'm grateful that we still have viable raspberry leaves on the canes, but their colors are turning and the energy is clearly revortexing groundwards for the winter, so I'm also grateful that I dried so many earlier this year.

One rainy day recently, I climbed up on the roof of our 'bunker' (construction project, eventually to be storage shed and water-tank shed), braving the slick roof for the sweet view of our cabin. This is our dwelling-place:

- a rainy day, so you can't quite see the breathtaking view across the bay -

- and here is the 'bunker,' from the roof of which I took that photo:

Yes, we adore that robin-egg blue too!

Phil worked his tail off yesterday - trying to get all the dirtwork done before the ground freezes.

I took that photo standing on our counter - in that small place between the cabin and the bluff, he was trying to get a waterline to drain, so that we can actually run water down the sink! He dug pretty deep (and it was muddy, wet and rainy, so that was some perilous going yesterday, especially as the outhouse is on the other side of the trench!) and he's also putting down styrofoam as extra insulation, to lessen the risk that water in the pipe would freeze.

However, even though we now theoretically can run water down the sink (hurray!!), I'm only going to do so part of the time, and part of the time do what we've always done and pour the sink water out on the garden.

The reason for this? Our bluff is a major erosion zone - the Pacific Ocean, even mitigated by coming into the bay, is strong and mighty. Especially around equinoxes and solstices, we get enormous tides, and the edge of the bluff is a little closer to our cabin each year. Further up the bay, I've seen houses that have just slid down the cliff. So, the less water we have running down the face of the bluff, the less we'll be contributing to erosion.

Hiking the beach below: considering that rainfall is not high around here, it's astonishing how much water is cascading down the bluff in so many places. I promise pictures in the wintertime, when all these gushing streams have frozen: it's quite beautiful.

Phil has done a ton of work at the toe of the bluff, trying to shore it up, and is planning to do yet more this week...

Can you see his daughter's little dog investigating what we call our 'Sea-bastion?' Buddy the dog turns out to be quite the climber!

My camera wasn't quite up to it, but I always love trying to get photos of the eagles perched on the rocks. They are as patient as the rocks themselves, perching, waiting...

Conserving water is very often a good idea. When I lived in HI, most folks were on catchment and sometimes there'd be a drought, so you really had to watch your consumption. I became adept at the 60-second shower and at showing newcomers how to wash dishes without pouring away gallons of water. Here, we catch water for our garden, and mostly haul our water from town. The less we use, the less we have to heft heavy jugs, but also the less erosion potential.

While I'm ecstatic about having a Vita-Mix now, the difficulty of washing the pitcher was one of the many arguments I used to deny myself getting one for the longest time. Especially with our sink setup...

Sometimes, I heat up water to wash dishes. Almost always, I have herbal tea on the go when I'm using my Vita-Mix. So what I tend to do now is to rinse out the pitcher with some warm herbal tea in it - run the motor (yes, uses a little more power, but definitely saves water) with warm tea. And then I have a much easier-to-clean pitcher, and a warm, watery version of my smoothie or pudding, which I could think of as a chaser, but probably better as an aperitif to be drunk first.

You can see the tea in the pitcher, all foamed up, withe the green smoothie in the pint mason jar and the herbal tea in the quart jar. Oh, and my best friend my pen just off to the right!

A couple more water-saving tips: although I love loose-leaf teas above all, I do use some tea bags. And I save those bags as pan-scrubbers and other cleaners. I use fruit peels in a similar way. In the morning, when I make Phil's sourdough banana pancakes, I save the banana peel and use it to wipe the fork I used to mix up the batter, and then he can use the fork to eat with.

I keep the same mug/mason jar going over and over for tea. I often don't wash the skillet in between cooking food for Phil (seasoning, you know!) Sometimes, especially when it's very cold or we're low on water, I just accept that not everything's going to look immaculate. And then I'll boil some water in the tea-kettle and do a more thorough wash later to make up for it.

Have you ever had to think about where your water's coming from and going to?

Our Next Trip, A Freudian Slip, Herb-Talk and Another Shout-out for Weeds!

Happy Friday! A sunny Friday here, and the sun is low in the southern sky now. We've been home just about a week now, and in just over a week, we're taking off again. We're going to England! We're going to see my parents and brothers (and Phil hasn't yet met my dad or one of my brothers), but most especially, we're going to meet this precious little lady.

Bad planning, maybe, to have two trips so close together, but that was just the way it turned out. We'll put on our stoutest traveling shoes...

And, whilst looking at things under magnification of detail,

make sure to stay with the bigger picture! It's been years since I've been to London and I'm excited to see some old friends and have some new experiences. Any recommendations?

Traveling is more stressful for me these days than it used to be, and today I'm going to talk about some of the herbs that help me to stay a little more balanced, as well as some that have an adverse effect. This is, in part, a story of why it's important to be so careful about broad-spectrum recommendations of superherbs to play with: to remember that plants are incredibly potent medicine, even when they come out of a bag or bottle, that we must always be very clear about our intentions in using them, and tune in very carefully to how they're affecting us.

Do you get everything right first time? I don't. Even though I often have blog posts, recipes, poems, etc, largely written up in my head, I'll often wake up in the night - or later that day - and remember that I left something out.  Or sometimes wrote something quite incorrect! In my post on Monday, I mentioned my morning herbal tea blend - rhodiola/fo-ti/reishi. Later in the day, I came back convinced that I'd left out the reishi, and discovered that I'd written 'ginseng' instead! Of course, I fixed it, but that was a Freudian slip, alerting me that it's time to talk about herbs and when they are not appropriate.

Rhodiola has been a wonderful helper to me recently. It is the ground up root of a golden-colored flower that grows in the far north (I am going to investigate growing it here), and it is, amongst other things, an adrenal tonic. Since I started drinking the tea, I've generally been less anxious and my energy has also improved. However, about six weeks ago I started adding ashwagandha and ginseng to the rhodiola. Come to find out, these two are usually considered 'male' tonics, but they are definitely supposed to help support (or perhaps, stimulate) energy. And they are two of the herbs that the superfoodists and others dedicated to doing our best often and strongly recommend.

I was excited about the idea of having more energy without having to eat more, so perhaps my motivations were suspect. I mentioned that I was using these to the Naturopath, and he said fine to the Rhodiola but said be careful with the other two: he said that if I felt like I'd had caffeine, or just generally anxious or overstimulated, I should stop them. I'm so grateful we'd had that conversation, as not long afterwards, just before our Oregon trip, I was crawling out of my skin, just crazed with anxiety, and thought that I was just over-reacting to the upcoming trip.

But then, I quit the ashwagandha and ginseng, and guess what? By the end of that day, I'd scraped myself off the ceiling and was able to feel more objective. To me, that's a real magic with the herbs, though, that they evidently hadn't built up in my system - that it just took a day of not using them to have the overstimulating effect removed. So, ashwagandha and ginseng may be great, but if you're a woman with thyroid/adrenal/other hormonal issues, like myself, it might not make you feel so good. (Note: I wasn't using a large amount by any means: just a little in my morning tea/smoothie).

On the other side, when we went down to Oregon, I packed some rhodiola powder, but didn't manage to put it in my tea for the first three or four days. I started feeling very off-balance and panicky, added the rhodiola back in and felt better almost straight away. I don't like the idea of being 'dependent' on herbs, any more than on pharmaceuticals, but when I see the difference in effect on me of rhodiola versus the other two, I'm able to consider it as a friend and helper to me, a supportive being.

Herbs are strong medicine: this isn't just 'making a cup of tea,' folks! (Although real tea, camellia sinensis, would have me sleepless and climbing walls too, for that matter...)

With that in mind, here is another of my recently arrived goodies from the Raw Food World:

Gynostemma leaves. Another prized and much-touted 'longevity tonic' tea. A small bag is not at all cheap, but it turns out a little goes a long way.

Those leaves unfurl in the cup and become quite large.

A perfect application for the tea-straw!

It is a slightly sweet tea, but quite tannic, with a smoky note also. Reminds me just a little bit of oolong tea, without the palpitations. I've been enjoying it with nettles that I gathered and dried this spring. I know that this is a 'female tonic' tea because of the 'gyno' in its name. However, I am still using caution with it, and will re-evaluate whether it is a good medicine for me after about a week. I only added the nettles after three steepings of the same gynostemma leaves, so I'm not going crazy making combinations just yet, until I know how we work together!


What are superherbs? A lot of them are weeds, really - plants that are adept at sucking the minerals out of the most spare, barren soils, in the most adverse climates, and flourishing where few others can. As our garden, and green things in general, dwindle all around here with the onset of winter, I am savoring every meal that I can make of freshly picked greens. And what's interesting is that I find myself picking just as much from outside the raised beds, if not more, as I do from inside!

Chickweed flourished early and late; nettles did the same. Those little baby plants that we nursed so tenderly indoors and then put out in raised beds were outstripped by orders of magnitude of growth by the nettles, dandelions, chickweed, and other, bigger weeds that had had no such mollycoddling. I really loved my garden this year, as has probably been clear from all my writing about it, but when I'm making a meal just for me, I go so often to the weeds - fresh herbs!

I have to confess that the Vita-Mix has greatly facilitated this.

Here she is, churning away my concoction of cooled gynostemma/nettle tea, chickweed, fresh mint, avocado, chlorella, flax, chia and a drop of stevia.

Do you have a special relationship to herbs and weeds, or any adverse stories?

Have a beautiful weekend.

How Do We Do It Without Running Water? And One More Teaphernalia Piece, Final Forbidden Foods (One Bar); Joy of Being Less Rigid

Happy Wednesday/Hump Day/whatever you call it! Thanks for all the kind comments about my previous post. Today, I'm going to share one more 'teaphernalia' item and also attempt to answer the question of how we manage without the running water. And I keep talking about how I'm not going to have the foods I'm not supposed to have, now that we're back home, and there keep seeming to be 'one last thing!' I'm going to share the last (honest!) of those.

Teaphernalia: we call this one 'the rhino condom' - that's what I thought it looked like when I first got hold of it!

Put leaves/powder in, and set in the jar/mug. It hangs down lower than the copco one that I mentioned last time, and works pretty well, apart from its propensity to fall in the jar and spill out the contents! It also doesn't arrive this teastained color: it earns that through many loving brews...

Before I start sharing the 'forbidden foods,' I have to acknowledge how good it feels to be out of the grips of rigidity. For my first several years as a rawfoodist, I wouldn't have eaten steamed broccoli, as I sometimes do now, let alone steamed carrots. I wouldn't have eaten a larabar or other raw food bar in case the nuts weren't 'really raw.' My friends and I worried about what temperature things like cinnamon and ginger were ground at. It feels so good to embrace less of a black-and-white outlook. I used to prowl the aisles of natural food stores picking up raw or gluten/dairy free bars, reading the ingredients, putting them back down... Actually, I still do that to some degree. A lot of them have things that I can't eat, and for the foreseeable future at least, I should probably accept that I can't have cacao or 'sugar' (dates, agave, etc).

I would certainly never have bought this to try in my old ideology. But it was marked down to 96 cents and I wanted to encourage that grocery store to carry things like that (it's a new item and I'm afraid it wasn't selling well), so I picked up two, one for me and one for Phil's daughter.

It does have sugar added, and it's a creamer: the listed 'serving size' is a tablespoon. I mentioned before having the experience of sugar-added foods tasting alcoholic: I kid you not: to me, this stuff tastes eerily like Baileys Irish Cream! Seriously! You should try it and let me know if I'm deluded (obviously it's been years since I've had the real Baileys).

The other 'indulgence' arrived with my recent order from The Raw Food World, the rest of which is much more 'virtuous' and I'll talk about soon.

This is 'the one' chocolate bar. It contains cacao - butter and powder, mesquite, maca, agave, sea salt.

So, it does contain agave, but fairly far down the ingredients list, and it also contains some of my favorite superfoods. I think that maca in particular helps to balance the cacao. I've eaten about half of it over the past two days (it's a small bar - just 28.5 grams, so 1oz).

It is delicious, and quite satisfying in that small quantity. With the added powders, the texture is slightly more 'munchy' than 'melt in your mouth,' but I like that sometimes. Calls itself 'the only chocolate bar you'll need,' and (allowing for the fact that (a) I'm not supposed to have chocolate at all and (b) I always prefer to make my own), I'm actually inclined to agree.

I should also mention that the price was good enough to make me decide to try it, since so many raw cacao bars are exorbitantly priced. And, it's made by Gabrielle Brick, another rawfood superhero whose path I've crossed before - when I was cheffing at Raw Spirit 1997, I think. Gosh, I miss that world!

So, how do we do without running water?
These two big 6-gallon jugs on our porch (took this photo at 8am, still dark up here) are part of how - the two trashier jugs off of the porch are the rest.

We take them down to the Safeway, where there is a public spigot (lots of homes around here have no running water, but most such folks don't spend winters here), and fill them up. I remember one time last winter when the spigot was frozen and we were out of water - wasn't much fun. Soon, we'll have to bring those jugs indoors - they're right on the verge of freezing outside now.

We have another jug, with a little faucet on it, that we heave up to our little sink area (usually I let Phil do this: it's heavy and high)! As you can see, it's a tiny sink (which also doesn't drain - we carry out the dishwater) - hard for washing a Vita-Mix pitcher!

Next to that is our cooking area - toaster oven, two-burner propane stove, little fridge (too little)

And, as dawn breaks, there is the tea kettle and Vita-Mix station at the other end of the counter! That spot in front of the Vita is also where I often sit to work. So lots of mess potential there! You can see our full-spectrum 'Sad' light there too: we're using it in the mornings to help protect against SAD.

For 'other end' plumbing needs... This is an old and weird picture (I was sick at the time and it's super-unflattering) from snow-bound March, but if you look out of the window and ignore me, you can see our outhouse.

When you need to go 'real bad' and it's snowing outside, you still have to make the time to put on a heavy coat, etc. And that is one mighty cold toilet seat! Honestly, we have old gallon jugs with lids on inside for '#1' needs (hope that's not tmi).

To finish - we found a beautiful sculpture on the beach, hiking the other day. We hauled it home! Phil might equalize the length of the 'legs,' which will make it rather more x-rated, but we might just leave it as is.

The View From Here - Paradoxical Me - Teaphernalia and other Product Reviews

The view from here, back home - looking north up the beach: our cabin is on the edge of the cliff a couple miles up.

Returning home and returning to our own rhythms gave me the opportunity to reflect a little on what those rhythms say about me, and what they give to me to say. (I'm still pondering and going back and forth about how to participate in/shed light on the whole current controversy over raw/veganism.)

After getting up, doing the 5 Tibetans and drinking my MSM/vitamin C/stevia drink, and writing my morning pages, I fix my rhodiola/fo-ti/reishi tea with warming spices, and fix coffee for Phil. I fix nut milk (sesame-brazil nut this time), then make my nut milk/blueberry/flax/pea protein/superfoods smoothie, and I fix bacon, egg and pancakes for Phil. Right after breakfast our first morning back, I got straight onto making bread for Phil (I still haven't gotten into the habit of wearing a mask for doing that, and I really should).

No, I don't approve of coffee. In my body, it's a terrible havoc-maker. I don't feel altogether comfortable with Phil's love of being permanently 'buzzed' either. And no, I don't feel completely good about the nitrates in the bacon, or meat in general necessarily, or all the gluten (although I do make the pancakes with a sourdough culture I started, which I think is the best way to do that).

And so it goes, three meals a day and all the other food: this dichotomy in my life. I have these very specific - recherche, perhaps, foods that I eat and herbs that I make into teas. All my meals are green at least in part, with herbs, spices and very little-to-no sugar. I very seldom eat anything cooked or processed other than by me in the Vita-Mix. I eat no animal products (except for 1% caseinate in one product I'll blog about soon, that might even be synthetic). And I'm surrounded by gluten, dairy, meat, sugar, and I play in it all the time, because that's what the people around me eat!

Am I a hypocrite, living in this paradox? What I want to say today is that it comes down to love, for me. Phil is 30 years older than me, in rude good health, more energetic than almost anyone I know, so I don't presume to think that I can 'improve' him with all my research and nutritional knowhow. Much of the meat and fish I fix for him has been wild-harvested from sustainable/renewable places, and I make sure to use the whole of the animal, out of respect. I relate to the 'cruelty' argument, but I also cannot refute the increase in spiritual connection and even compassion toward animals that I experienced for myself during my time living with chickens and goats and using their products a few years ago, and even during my brief experimentation with eating meat and fish.

So, 'ulterior harmony' - what is the underlying harmony in this picture? Today, I think it's love. But I don't claim to have the answers on the food dilemma, although I'm interested in discussing it more, sharing my perspectives, experiences and insights.

I have to go in just a minute, but I want to share some new 'teaphernalia' for corralling all those herbs that I'm always brewing up!

I picked these up before we left Oregon. On the left, a tea-straw a-la-South American mate drinking. On the right is a copco 'lily pad infuser.' The silicon mat stops liquids from draining out when you take the infuser out of the tea, and when you set it on the cup or jar...

...you can flip it over to form a seal. Great concept, but I'm not super-thrilled with it. You obviously have to have the water all the way up to the top in order for infusion to happen. I even thought it might work for Phil's coffee (we don't have a press or coffeemaker, just make it in a quart jar) but it didn't infuse at all.

As for the tea-straw, I love it! It's so well-designed - the holes are covered by a spring, which enables you to lift up the straw and released clogged material, whilst at the same time preventing anything much from getting clogged.

I used it for the first time with some rhodiola powder and a blend of lavender, chamomile, rose hips and oat straw, so it had a mixture of powders and leaves and flowers to work with. You're not in danger of burning your mouth, because the straw is too hot to touch with your hand when the water is too hot!

And the tea was excellent in taste and texture. Aside from the difficulties washing the mug out, with our lack of running water, I like having the leaves/powders circulating loosely in the tea.

What's your favorite teaphernalia?

Now that I'm home, there's no more natural food stores and no more raw treats to try out. But I did try two more in Oregon, even though my larabar experience told me that they're too much sugar for me.

I tried a 'raw revolution' bar and an 'i am strong' mini 100 calorie bar. The pictured piece is half the bar - 50 calories - it really isn't a lot of volume with those little treats!

I was tickled to see that the 'I am strong' bar was made by the 'Everything Raw' folks: I met their founder when I was cheffing in Costa Rica - he was a kitchen angel, I got to boss him around! And then I met him again when I lived in Hawaii! I loved that the first ingredient was walnuts - best omega 3-6 ratio nut, second highest in antioxidants after pecans. I didn't love that the second ingredient was agave, but I understand why. I love that it had merlin's roots elixir in it - that's quite germane to my superfoods energy bars, although of course mine are no-sugar. It tastes good, roots-y, earthy, not too sweet despite the agave.

The 'raw revolution' bar was better for me than the larabars, in terms of how my body felt with it, even though it has both agave and dates in it. Maybe the addition of flax is a good help. Delicious and good texture too.

I'm chelating, hopefully for the last time, and have to go steam.

Much love to all - and please tell me what you want to hear about!

Back Home - To Winter! TSA Pet Peeve, And Finding My Voice on Blog World Controversies...

We are home! It's good to be back, after a stressful day of packing and then a long journey. Some beautiful mountains in the distance ushered us back toward Alaska-land

Just before we landed...

Sun on the ocean - Anchorage is another of those airports like San Francisco where it looks like you're going to land in the ocean before you finally hit the runway...

It was 27 degrees when we got there! There's something about it when things get below freezing - bracing, or involuting: I'm not quite sure which. Bracing for Phil, for sure, but I generally feel the need to make like the tortoise.

The overall impression when we arrived was of impassive, impressive mountains that care not a whit about our small humanity, and of brown. Green when we left, now brown with powderings of snow. I was struck once again by the sheer improbability that I should be living here.

It was actually snowing as we drove up into the Kenai mountains - lots of fresh, powdery, beautifully chasing and tracing snow on the hills.

And then some blue sky and even a little late sun when we got home. But it's definitely time for winter precautions - long underwear top and bottom, and don't leave the door open when you step out! The 'solar oven' effect meant that the cabin was pretty warm when we got in, but by the time we'd gone in and out ferrying stuff from the truck, leaving the door open, the inside temperature dropped by 10 degrees in the space of about as many minutes.

Many of the garden plants were looking sadly frost-nipped, but many others seemed to be quite resilient. It was fun to find some good carrots -

Oh, and the larch, or tamarack, trees look just glorious. They are the only conifer that turns color in the fall:

Raspberry canes underneath them, and we actually found a surprising number of delicious, ripe raspberries still hanging on!

That was a sweet welcome home. I found the whole packing and leaving portion especially stressful, because when I first left Hawaii with Phil, the plan was to move to Oregon with the in-laws, and it didn't work out. There were still several pieces of my life (like 5 boxes of books) at the farm, and I had to deal with them again. It'll be exciting to have them here, but we have nowhere to put anything else, and it made me feel like a homeless waif with no place for my books. Again.

Despite the cold, despite the lack of running water (I was so spoiled in Oregon with warm showers every day and being able to wash dishes easily), this is home - it is our place in which we can create our lives to our best. I love being reunited with my Vita-Mix! And having the internet at home is pretty awesome too.

I'm looking forward to re-combobulating here - more on that tomorrow, but I've been feeling out of my rhythm just lately...

After cruising the garden and fixing an impromptu dinner, having Phil's daughter over and catching up with her, we started to unpack. And the TSA had left us a nice little calling card...

You can just begin to see what an awful mess they made... And I had a packet of sprouting seeds that they spilled all over everywhere, having made everything wet, so effectively ruining them...

This has to be a pet peeve of mine - if they have to go into your baggage and inspect it, they should at least leave it in the condition they found it. I have so many annoying stories of having things damaged because they generally manhandled them carelessly and didn't put things back as they were. The worst story being when I was taking some seal oil from Phil to give to someone, and they repacked everything carelessly, and the jar busted all over everyone's baggage, not just mine. That stuff smells so bad, everything that had been near it stunk irrevocably even after five washings! Grrr.

Do you have any TSA horror stories? Or advice (short of 'never pack anything unusual,' which is hard for people like us)? It just makes me feel so helpless, violated and disrespected. Thankfully, going through security was straightforward and missing the 'degrading' quality it sometimes exhibits.

A final comment, and I plan to post more on this soon: I've been catching up on some of the recent controversy surrounding raw vegans quitting the diet and going 'traditional'/'primal', etc. My head has been spinning with the information and I feel like I need to write about it, but don't even know if it's a worthwhile commitment. I feel that I have a fairly unusual perspective, having lived in Hawaii, where there were many raw-foodists, and an uncountable number of 'former vegans,' and now in Alaska, where subsistence hunting and fishing is still very common, and having been/being a raw vegan in both places. It's also unusual, maybe, that I took an excursion into experimenting with animal foods and found myself abandoning them again after about a year.  And then, the whole eating disorder challenge piece that has been so big in my life offers me some insight into and compassion for the obsessive traps that people get into when making diet into dogma. More disquieting is that some of the 'ex-vegans' cite thyroid and adrenal issues as reasons for their departure - as I've often discussed here, those are some of the issues that I'm working through too. (Phil thinks it's coincidental, but my impression is that my symptoms were at their worst when I was eating more animal products.) My current suspicion is that it's more about the sugar and cacao than about a lack of animal products, especially having dabbled in more sugar and cacao during my trip and feeling somewhat sicker again.

What would any of you like me to talk about in this?

love and kindness

A New Tasty Snack - Dried Tomatillos! Wrapping Things Up in Oregon - Some Impressions

Hey everyone! Our time in Oregon is drawing toward its end (tomorrow is our last full day and we leave very early Friday) - and as always when staying at the farm, we're starting to feel overwhelmed by all the things that still need doing.

Of course, I've been drying some of those wonderful tomatoes (even though it seems like I can't eat them at the moment)

But I discovered a wonderful new snack too. There are so many tomatillos from the garden, a whole bucket of them was sitting on the porch waiting to be processed. So I put some of them in the dehydrator too -

and it turns out they are just delicious - sweet-and-sour, crunchy, a little crumbly - so good! Phil says he likes them better dried than fresh!

I seem to have been hearing a lot of people say they'd never had tomatillos before. Have you ever had one? Let alone a dried one?

We went for a walk all around the farm a few days ago when it was pouring with rain, wearing oversized rain-gear. There were so many little frogs everywhere - the ground was hopping!

We also found a 'horn worm' - a big green caterpillar with a horn -

And here's what Phil has to do when he finds something like that:

too funny...

We also found a discarded robin's nest -

- perhaps you can see how the inside of it is lined with clay. Incredible what those birds can do with no fingers, just claws and beak.

They know exactly what to do. I've been pondering that question for myself, spurred partly by some very deep and searching questions that some of my good blog friends have been asking - 'who were you meant to be?' asks Lori; and Tina asks, 'in what ways are you inspiring?'

I don't have the answer to either of these, but I know I need to keep asking those questions - the more I focus on the question, the more I'm reminded to be my best all the time and to seek to fulfill my true purpose.

What do you use to keep on track with these things?

love to all

Restaurant Review - Blossoming Lotus in Portland; Gourmet Foods and Sensitive Tummies: What's the Culprit?

We went to visit Phil's brother and sister-in-law in Portland this weekend. They are vegetarian. I mentioned that I wanted to visit Blossoming Lotus and they were happy to try something new.

Before we left, we played with their adorable labradoodle dog

- hard to get a good picture of her, because she's always in motion. She has the most winsome, huge eyes.

...And after we finally got home, their big bruiser of a cat showed us how to relax

On to the food porn in just a moment!

Restaurant Review

We showed up to the restaurant at around 6.15 and immediately saw that it was packed. We were told it would be about a 25 minute wait, but we finally sat down after 7! I kept watching the list, and was frustrated because many parties of two who came in long after us were seated ahead of us: our in-laws just said 'welcome to Portland!' Of course, we took it as a good sign that it was so busy. I was excited that a vegan restaurant with raw options should be doing so well. We people-watched while we waited, and my cohorts insisted that I got something so that I didn't keel over from low blood sugar! I got an apple-lemon-ginger-kale juice, which was delicious. It was a very good idea.

Once we were seated, we didn't have to wait too long for our food, which was a relief! The servers were friendly, enthusiastic and knowledgeable, even on an evening when they were so very busy (and it was a Saturday night, after all).

Food photos courtesy of my sister-in-law's iPhone - I couldn't get the flash to work on my camera for some reason, and her iPhone took some gorgeous pics.

After all that mushroom hunting, I had to order the live wild mushroom pizza, which was the day's special:

- three kinds of mushrooms, marinaded with bell peppers and onions, with a tahini pesto, on a dried tomato-walnut crust, with a side salad.

I really can't do bell peppers, so I picked them out. I was a little concerned about the dried tomatoes in the crust given recent experience, but didn't seem to have any immediate trouble.

This was delicious - the marinaded mushrooms were delectable, and even though the peppers themselves make me sick, I enjoyed the slight taste infusion from their presence alongside. The crust was delicious and I'm impressed that they use a lot of walnuts rather than any other nut (that's what it seems like): walnuts have the best omega-3 to 6 ratio and one of the highest antioxidant levels of all nuts. (Is this bad of me to be thinking in those terms in a gourmet dining experience?)

My sister-in-law had the seasonal stir-fry - we'd watched another diner eating this while we were waiting and it was immediately obvious to my s-i-l that that was what she wanted, no matter what else might be available!

She had it with soba noodles and extra broccoli. She said that the tofu was so meaty, it almost worried her, and then she realized that it had been rolled in nutritional yeast, for extra yumminess. Considering that it was love at first sight for her, she didn't seem disappointed!

Phil had the lasagna, which had semolina noodle layers, lots of veggies, a tofu ricotta and sesame parmesan, with cashew sour cream on top -

- sumptuously beautiful presentation, and he said it was pretty good. Considering that he's not generally very impressed by 'alternative versions' or substitutions, this was pretty high praise. He also had the house-made chai with coconut milk, served over ice. It was an eclectic spice blend - strong ginger note, cinnamon, cardamom and clove more subtle, but the nutmeg really pronounced. I liked it a lot - but I am just a chai fiend!

Our brother-in-law had the salud salad (cool name)!

- salad with tomatoes, avocado, cashew sour cream, black beans and quinoa. He has recently quit eating dairy and felt so much better as a result, so they were intrigued by the cashew sour cream, especially when I told them how easy it is to make.

And of course, we had to try dessert! I was excited to eat a raw dessert (and just make an exception with the sugar and cacao) and to see what everyone else thought of them too. The main raw choices were the german chocolate cake and the cheesecake of the day, which was a chocolate turtle swirl. We got one of each between the four of us.

The german chocolate cake was a cacao-walnut-date crust, a creamy layer that tasted like walnuts, almonds (or maybe almond extract), agave, shredded coconut, maybe some coconut oil, a fudgy cacao-nut-coconut layer, another walnut/almond layer and a fudgy cacao-agave topping.

The cheesecake had a cacao-walnut-date crust, and the filling was a typical cashew-coconut oil-agave-type cheesecake mix with a cacao swirl. Cacao nibs and dried pecans on top - yummy crumbles.

I was glad that I'd only eaten just over half my pizza and left room: these were just delectable. A chorus of 'yums' from around the table. It was weird to me to be eating 'regular' gourmet raw desserts after over a year of only making non-sugar treats (these are way richer even than the couple of lara bars I tried last week). Especially the cheesecake, with the smooth, creamy, dense middle - it tasted almost alcoholic!  Even with four of us working on them, we had leftovers of both of them that I had for lunch with my leftover pizza yesterday. But I definitely ate more than I needed of them that night. In a way, I preferred the german chocolate cake with its dense nutty layers: it was more up-front about what it was, so it was easier to stop eating it. Somehow, the cheesecake was more deceptive and beguiling - 'eat more of me!' More on that in a moment.

Overall verdict: our brother and sister-in-law were excited to be introduced to this place and the whole concept, and plan to go back with their daughter (who was at a sleepover that night) as soon as possible. Phil was a little taken aback by how pricey it was, but was glad to be shown some of what juices me. I was excited to go to a restaurant with so much more of the menu accessible to me, although I've long learned that even at raw restaurants I can't just stick a pin in the menu - there are so many things like bell peppers, and now maybe tomatoes, that are a problem. And the rest of my response to the experience is much more complicated - that's what I'll turn to now.

Gourmet Foods and Sensitive Tummies - What's the Culprit?


That 'almost alcoholic' comment above should have been a clue. Although I didn't eat my whole pizza or a whole serving of the dessert, I felt kind of hungover first thing yesterday. I had a green drink in the morning and then, at brunch with lots of family - brother and sister-in-law, sister and brother-in-law and her sons - I ate kelp noodles and sauerkraut that I'd picked up at the co-op, and some apple slices, so super-light.

Early afternoon, on the way home, I ate my leftovers - bit of live pizza and bits of the two desserts. And I should have remembered from earlier raw restaurant experiences that eating any of that kind of food on consecutive days doesn't work well for me. It threw me right back into a strong nauseous-hangover feeling that lasted the rest of the day! This was partly because I accidentally ate a bell pepper piece on the pizza - in the car and not being careful enough picking through, and it's really a bad idea for me. We ended up going out to town for dinner with Phil's mom and her sister (eating out three nights in a row? I don't think I've ever done that in my life before!) to a beautiful riverside restaurant recently reopened as a Vietnamese and sushi place. I ate super-light there too - a bit of lettuce from inside a summer roll, a little cup of miso soup (picking around the tofu) and a veggie roll -

I picked all the rice off, so it was just a bit of asparagus, cucumber and avocado with a bit of nori. And I actually ate that entire leaf of wasabi, with a little help from Phil, just about straight up! Had a few eye-watering moments that contributed to a hilarious evening, which began with the waiter spilling ice-water all over Phil's mom! We laughed all evening - it was sweet.

Now today, the food hangover is gone, I'm back to work, and I'm ravenous! I've been hungry all day! And this is the phenomenon that I've noticed before with gourmet raw food - I feel hungover the next day and can't eat, and then the day after, I'm starving! If the 'hungover' feeling was due to sheer excessive calories, you'd think that by the third day I'd be back to normal, not ravenous.

So, What is the Culprit?


Back in the days when I lived in the Bay Area and went to Cafe Gratitude occasionally, I was firmly in the 'high fruit/fat-phobic' camp, so of course I was sure that the feeling came from having eaten more fat than I'd eaten in a month. Nowadays, I eat almost no sugar and quite a lot of fat, so must I conclude that the hungover feeling comes from all the sugar? After all, alcohol, that causes hangovers, is a sugary thing...

I'm actually going to have to say that I think it's the combination. I also think that I was on to something when I mentioned that the chocolate cake, with the ground nuts, was more forthcoming with the 'you've had enough' signal than the creamy coconut oil/cashew creme cheesecake, which was more beguiling and 'eat more of me.' The ground nuts are closer to whole foods, I guess. I'd also add that back when I was fat-phobic, yes I ate a lot of high glycemic food, but it was all fruit - bananas and dates, not bottles of agave. I think it's the combination of rarefied, refined sweeteners, and a very lot of fat put together, that makes it borderline intoxicating to my system.

Well, shucks! Look in any honest book about treat-making and it'll tell you that lots of sweet, lots of fat, and a little salt to bring out the flavor, is the key to a wonderful dessert. Am I just going to have to accept that I'll need to keep it to a tiny taste of these treats, or not eat them at all? Actually, there's a part of me that has my gander up and really wants to pursue the making of delectable no-sugar treats. I've never had a problem with the fat by itself: without the sugar to stimulate the appetite, I simply can't eat enough of it to bother me. With all the sweet-tooths I live among, I'll have some exacting taste-testers - who will probably also not see the point, since this kind of food doesn't make them feel bad even if they eat the whole pie!

Should I pursue my no-sugar treat endeavors? Will anybody care? How do you feel after super-gourmet food?

with love...