Starch Hurrahs, New Exercise Equipment, Cherry-Almond Smoothie

I hope everyone's having a great weekend. We seem to be perpetually busy right now, and I can't blame the full moon! I can blame these Anchorage trips: we're getting ready to take off again and all the back-and-forth is unsettling. Hopefully after this week, we can start going less frequently.

I've been promising to share my experiences around trying out eating more starch and cutting out PUFAs. I'll talk about the latter next week, but am ready to talk about the starches! As I mentioned before, I felt that I had good reasons for being Carbophobic, between celiac/gluten allergy and the difficulties that I've experienced digesting starch on many occasions, as well as all the claims that equate starch with sugar in the body.

Although I still have to go through candida clearout when I finish with chelating, my sense is that I'm far less rife with yeastie-beasties than I was a year ago. Far fewer yeasty symptoms, and whereas last summer, even yams and beets would upset my stomach, lately they have been my great friends--yams and parsnips especially. And my ND says that I'll still be able to eat those even when cleansing candida.

 I'm not eating a huge amount of it, but am eating some every day, usually at dinner. I'd been tackling the mental portion of Carbophobia by reading a lot of research showing that starch (as opposed to sugar) is good for our bodies. This is per rule #5 in my conversation about ground rules for nutritional research: I'd sucked in a lot of why starch was bad, and come to find out, there was plenty of research showing the opposite was the case!

But here's the gold/paydirt: I just got through my 11th cycle of chelating, eating some starch every day, and had been eating some every day the week before, and I wasn't constipated at all! This was a hallelujah event (and I'm sorry if it's tmi). I'd had the ample experience of ten previous chelation cycles, and in every instance, constipation was one of several major discomforts. It is also one of long-term results of my 'bad and ugly' years of self-mistreatment, and I'd pretty much resigned myself to having to control it with high doses of Magnesium for the rest of my life. Can't take Magnesium during chelation, hence the problem. This last time, no problem at all! I was caught between wanting to sing hallelujah all day every day and not wanting to breathe a word and jinx it!

This feedback from my body is a wonderful gift in two ways at least:
1) It's the first sign I've had in years that my body knows what she's doing and can come back into balance. I've always believed in the self-healing and homeostatic powers of bodies, just not of my own body.
2) It feels so liberating to relax on demonized foods: to think of foods like yams and even bananas as 'good for me' rather than 'something I shouldn't be eating.'

And so, I share a smoothie that made me so happy, I've had to repeat it.

 It's: 1cup almond or coconut milk
        half a frozen banana
        half a cup of frozen cherries
        a handful of greens (this one had cilantro but I couldn't taste it)
        a couple tablespoons irish moss gel
       half a teaspoon sunflower lecithin (tastes gross by itself but is a great emulsifier)
       vanilla
       half a teaspoon almond extract
       spoonful of spirulina
       half a teaspoon of yacon syrup
       bit of coconut oil (it's solid up here, so I just put in a little chunk.)
       dusting of stevia powder
Perhaps it's since I made that marzipan, but the richly cyanided blend of almond and cherry flavors just melts me and delights me. So good! One time I made it with leftover baked yam in place of the banana--and then found that Lori had done something quite similar. I'm also seeing myself heading in a similar culinary direction to the wonderfully talented Pure2Raw ladies: nourishing and delectable combinations of cooked starches with lots of raw food all around.

Of course, per rule #4, I'm not making any long-term conclusions yet, but this feedback that my body can learn to function unassisted is just entrancing. If it can do that, maybe my metabolism can normalize too, and, and.... :)

Moving on to exercise equipment. I love to be outdoors but my work involves being indoors, and sometimes even stubborn old me is deterred by icy winds and sideways snow. I love rebounders and finally bought one recently. The challenge, even with a piece of equipment so small, is how to fit it in our little space!

Here's Phil figuring it out...

It hangs above our heads like a dorky sun-negative with little feet, when not in use. When I want to use it, I unclip the rope and down it comes (easy now!).

I bounce away. It's a blurred pic but you can see I'm smiling!

And yes, it's pretty cold in here, so I'm wearing my hat and heavy booties. Much of what I've been reading about exercise lately is suggesting that short, intense bursts of exercise are the way to go. Having those super-heavy feet is one way of ensuring that I'm gasping and panting and ready to stop after a short but fun bounce.

The pulley is strong enough to support my weight, so I can also hang onto the rope and work my upper body while bouncing. Super-tiring. Phil is a genius!

Do you like exercise that makes you feel like a kid?
What's the best validation you've had from your body recently?

Static and Momentous Fears, Changes and a Raw Pea Soup Recipe

When you're on a rollercoaster, you stay on and ride it out, even when it takes a sharp turn or a plunge that you wish wasn't there. You have no choice. Similarly, when you're driving icy roads in the black of an Alaskan winter night, no moon, no light except for occasional blinding oncoming headlights, and you can't see where the road goes, you simply trust to the motion and keep on going, riding the road, riding your momentum, riding your fear. And then, you get out on the practice arena and confront your fear, evoke that sick pit-of-stomach squirmishness and show yourself that this can be survived.

These are fears that take a grip as the situation is flying by out of control and at speed. The situation offers its own momentum that you can catch hold of and ride out. If you're simply letting the momentum take you, even a hike in foul weather, bitterly cold, sleeting/snowing horizontally into your face, is just another experience: you know you will be warm again (although I'm not quite warm yet, five hours later!)

But what about those fears that surround changes that are effected one deliberate decision at a time?
So, so scary to order a banana-peanut butter-spirulina smoothie with apple juice...

...because doing it once means it could happen again--it might become a regular part of life. And what other sugarific, PUFA'd-out places might that lead to? Ah, black and white is so comforting and reassuring. It saves taking that step that might become a slip that might pull you onto another rollercoaster... (Does that 1% sodium casinate in the coconut milk powder I use for my kefir mean I'm not a vegan? And what excesses could be unleashed if I let go that label? Or, for years, the relevant question was 'if I feed myself at all, I'm not a real anorexic: and then what's left and who am I?)

I am not a label. My name is a convenient handle to grab me by, but all the rest (poet, writer, vegan, eating-disordered, raw, bigger, thinner, lover, whatever) must be a pretty loose fit.

Those roasted veggies...

...and roasted veggie-legume dishes

...were daunting steps toward the rollercoaster: what if it becomes a habit? What if it changes who I am?

Next blog post, I'll expand more on what I hinted last time, that actually this may be a very positive and empowering--and healing--'coaster for me to step on.

If you try anything 'once,' you'll increase the likelihood that you'll do it again.

Shifting Topics a little...
If an eagle in our yard will let us get this close once... (this one's a juvenile, they're bigger than adults)...

...it's likely it will happen again.

Stunning.

And finally, some greenery and a contribution/tribute to the single-serving focus that seems to have been initiated by Amber.  I was thinking about the whole single-serving recipe idea, and how oftentimes, if I'm making something, I want to make a good big batch to last some time, but that I make 'single-serving'
smoothies all the time. Next thought: I've had pea soup on my mind (who knows?...) these past few days, and in the raw food arena, a soup often differs from a smoothie only in that it's savory, served in a bowl with a spoon and some toppings and textural garnishes. And some smoothies work pretty well that way too.

So, I present a single serving of Thai-flair Raw Pea Soup!

You'll need:
1 cup almond milk (I used mostly coconut kefir whey and a little almond milk)
4-inch strip (half-inch wide) of mature coconut meat (could use two tablespoons shredded coconut)
2 inches scallion (green part)
2 sprigs parsley
1 inch lemongrass
a big piece of ginger (half inch knob)
1 tablespoon white miso

2 tablespoons lemon juice or coconut vinegar

1 cup thawed frozen peas (if you're lucky enough to have access to fresh peas this time of year, by all means use them.

Blend everything except the peas on high until well-incorporated and smooth. Then add the peas and blend again.

Pour into a bowl and garnish with coconut kefir (any 'sour creme' would work well), a dusting of chlorella and a sprinkle of nutritional yeast. 

This is delicious! I would have liked it even more if I'd let the peas thaw thoroughly before making it: I was so chilled from our hike that something warmer would have been welcome. Otherwise, though, the coconut gives it more of a hearty, chewy texture, the Thai spices make it interesting and well-rounded and the peas themselves are sweet, flavorful and comforting. I'm sure it would lend itself to dunking crackers just wonderfully. 

Tomorrow I may try to make a cooked pea soup too, but I can't imagine doing that as just a single serving. I'll let you know.

What rollercoasters are you afraid to step on? What fears have elided by through sheer force of momentum?

much love

Nutritional Research: This Much I Have Learned

I've been mentioning several times recently that I've been avoiding polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), including omega-3's, and overcoming carbophobia to increase starch. I've promised to talk more about it and hope that in doing so I will start some interesting conversations, gain some insights myself, and also hold myself accountable to experiment on myself in a sane way and not as a back door to more restrictive behavior.

So, since rule number 1 in nutritional research is: For any assertion out there about the benefits or detriments of any individual food or macronutrient, there will be an equally vehement claim to the contrary (kind of like Newton's third law), I wanted to start by stating baldly what my research and personal experience has shown me so far. I'll be talking mostly about macronutrients.

Finding #1: All Proteins are not created equal. That's the one piece of information about macronutrients that everyone knows, and is responsible for that pesky 'where do you get your protein from?' question that plagues vegetarians. Proteins, with the extra Nitrogen and Sulphur molecules, are formed of a dizzying number of amino acids, not all of which we can synthesize ourselves, and therefore are obviously different.

Finding #2: Protein in whole food is almost always found together with either fat or carbohydrate. Protein isolates and concentrates take work to produce, and it's not always work in a lab or factory. Plant proteins from the greens, grains and legumes come with carbohydrate and from the seeds/nuts and some fruits, they come with fat. Animal proteins come with a lot of fat (eggs, meat) or both fat and carbohydrate (organ meats, milk/cheese) and if they don't have a lot of fat with them, it's because they've been skimmed or skinned, and are therefore not whole foods but 'isolates' or 'concentrates.'

I'm not hereby saying that there's anything wrong with isolates/concentrates: just pointing out that that can of tuna is not a counterargument to this statement that protein is not found all alone. Tuna is actually a fish (despite the illusion of the can) and contains plenty of fat.

Therefore,
Finding #3: Most tweaking of macronutrient ratios pivots on carbohydrate versus fat, with protein in the fulcrum. And I have to say, I have experimented with a high-protein (i.e. high-isolates/concentrates), low-carb, low-fat macronutrient balance, as well as high-fat and high-carb, and felt the worst, experienced the most physical problems and the least muscle response on it than on anything else. And that's aside from the fact that I hated eating meat/dairy. You need protein to build muscle, but on high-protein and low-everything else, my muscles (unimpressive to begin with) dissolved.

Finding #4: All fats are not created equal. I used to think that fat was fat and that was that, and the root of all evil to boot. Nowadays, I understand that the much-and-erroneously-maligned saturated fat is a whole different player in our bodies than are monounsaturated or polyunsaturated fats. I understand that the differently structured fat molecules fit differently in our bodies and have much different susceptibilities to rancidity and other damage. Different fat molecules are also more or less likely to be stored. And of course there's the scary trans fats that the body simply doesn't recognize and that wreak havoc.

Finding #5: All carbohydrates are not created equal. Well, at first glance, this seems almost as obvious as the variety among proteins. Middle school biology taught us about monosaccharides, disaccharides and polysaccharides, right? They're worked upon by different enzymes in different places. Sugar and starch, right? And not even all sugars are equal among themselves, nor all starches either. (I.e., some are better than others. But for a while, I swallowed the orthodoxy of the Low-carb movement, perhaps mostly influenced by my insufficiently critical reading of Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories, and believed that a spoonful of sugar, an apple or a sweet potato amounted to the same death-trap within the body. They all trigger massive insulin release, which drives fat into the cells and causes insulin resistance and a host of health problems. Lately, I've been learning, from wide reading but more impressively from my own experience, that this is not the case. Starch in the body doesn't feel or act the same as sugar. Of course, all starches are not created equal either. As a celiac, I don't do well with grains and have had periods of time when I haven't been able to handle any starch at all. But it seems like the ability to handle them is a sign of healing that brings good things with it.

Finding #6: Attempting to exclude completely either carbohydrate or fat will not yield good long-term results. I've done both. I used to be an ardent lipophobe. I swallowed everything that the 80-10-10/Natural Hygiene diet folks say about fat being the root of all evil. It would be quite comical sometimes, even as a 'believer,' to hear someone troubleshooting their diet with one of the 'gurus' of this movement, and the guru triumphantly condemning whatever infinitesimal gram of fat the person had eaten in the past month for whatever the problem was. I ate mostly fruit, some greens and occasional 'potluck' nuts/seeds/avo for years. I could never gain any muscle, ended up with pretty terrible candida, was extremely thin but also very accident prone and neurotic.

Then, more recently, I went to the other extreme. Fruit-only had clearly not sustained me or allowed me to thrive, and now I had candida into the bargain, and started reading all the research about insulin and carbohydrates, and so any kind of carb, even veggies, which I've always loved, became strictly limited and worried-over. At first I lost a lot of weight: too much, eventually, because my absorption and digestion got so bad and there were a few months where I hardly ate and didn't digest what I did eat. Then, not surprisingly, my metabolism got even slower. Over the past several months I've gradually been working more vegetables back in, and the more carbohydrate (not sugar, but including a little fruit) I eat, the more energy I seem to have, the more stable my mood, the better my digestion.

Finding #7: If you read a lot exclusively about how good/bad something is for you, you're likely to feel that way when you eat it. Bodies are so suggestible.

One last point: The only 'food group' that I've never made a staple, bizarre and perverse as it may sound, given the history of humanity, is STARCH! I've always avoided it, because of my misapprehension that all starches were equal. I supposed that since I can't digest gluten grains, I can't digest anything else either. Even when I was high-carb, it was fruit that I was eating. As a raw-foodist (but still anorexic), I was actually scared away from carrots by a self-proclaimed Natural Hygiene guru who told me that eating carrots (=starch) would make me gain weight but that I could eat all the sugar I wanted and stay skinny!

So, lately I've been loving yams and parsnips and really 'digging' the effects of them on my system. I'll talk about that more soon. And here's my reminder to myself--and to anyone else making such experiments--that even if I'm eating more starch, I need not to cut out fat completely: I already know that that doesn't take things in a good direction.

What are your most useful findings about food, nutritional research, and our minds' impacts on our bodies' experiences? Please share!
much love

Phil's Stairway To Heaven, Wildlife Sightings, and a Whole Different Approach to Dinner

Phil's Stairway
I hope everyone's having a great weekend. As the photos suggested, we have snow again here. Full moon-swollen tides and icy beaches thereafter: a whole new spin (or skid) on core strength-building.

It's been three and a half weeks since Phil's trabeculectomy...

...and today, his eye looks like this:

He's seeing out of it better too. He's been such a trooper, patiently waiting for things to get better, but for such a visual person, and a person who's been blessed his whole life with a body that does basically whatever extreme stuff he desires, it's been a testing time.

Having been given the all-clear to perform his usual level of physical exertion, he took advantage of the break in the wind and lesser amounts of sea ice yesterday to launch his boat...

...to go load up a staircase he'd seen washed up several miles up the beach. Man, that boat rides low in the water! Are you sure it can hold a staircase??

Well, he came home with it safe and sound, dry enough and quite pleased, and I failed to get a pic until we'd gotten it home and it had been snowed on. It may be just what we need for our storage 'bunker!'

Wildlife
Here is Phil's 'pet:' fire. Our burnables (paper packaging, old mail, etc): he loves tending fires. They're cheap to feed, you don't need a vet and it's easy to start another one.

And fire in snow looks special...

We saw this moose down close to the beach when I picked up Phil and the staircase. They are such incredibly hardy creatures: what a life!

 And earlier in the day, we got pretty close to this eagle. I love watching eagles, and although I'm not much of a photographer, I enjoy photographing them so much that I could probably devote a whole post to it at some point.

A Different Approach to Dinner
We had friends come to dinner last night. Although, as I've mentioned before, I'm loving the encouragement to make 'Ela-friendly' party foods, and that marzipan last week was one of the most wonderful things ever (I'm so sad the leftovers are all finished),

I'm also currently in a funk about food in general. And in addition, most things--like marzipan--that I really love, Phil doesn't care for. It makes me sad to make something that I think is special but that he doesn't appreciate. I'd rather make something he likes! So for last night, I decided that I'd go with salad, which is always my staple and always good...

...roasted veggies (parsnips, yams, brussels sprouts, leeks par-boiled, sprinkled with salt and roasted with a bit of coconut oil). Last summer I couldn't have digested these, and am grateful for the progress that's allowing me to enjoy them. They taste as sweet as dessert to me and as I overcome carbophobia (more on this soon), I can see them becoming a staple.

Sorry about the belated photo after they were almost all gone!

I also served a bear roast, garlic and ginger with a broth reduction with caramelized onions and cranberries (not pictured, but very well-liked), toasted home-made sourdough bread with a dip I made from roasted bell peppers (not for me, obviously!), scallions, kalamata olives, a dash of parsley and cheese (also not pictured, also very well-liked)...

...And, for dessert, I used someone else's recipe!

I made Evan the Wannabe Chef's banana-chocolate chip blondies with peanut butter frosting

Ordinarily, I don't enjoy making 'regular' desserts as much as raw desserts. I don't feel my creativity being in play so much, I hate getting butter anywhere near me, getting flour on me is a bad idea too. But these were fun, quick and easy, and worked just as Evan's recipes promised. And yes, I did pretty much follow the recipe, which I'm almost incapable of doing, normally. Thanks so much, Evan!

Best of all, unbeknownst to me, one of our guests was a huge peanut butter fan. And everyone really liked it. I just love it when I fix something that turns out to be someone's favorite without having known it ahead of time. As a food-preparer, it feels like a special blessing.

It didn't bother me at all not to have dessert: I had another piece of roasted yam. I don't know if I can make that my general m.o., never to have any treats. Much of my life, that's how I've done it, but that marzipan last week may compel me toward a more Dionysian mode...

What's a special blessing to you? And what wildlife do you see as you go around town?
much love

Transforming The Bad and The Ugly: Transforming Regret

The Bad and The Ugly

Most people spend their twenties exploring, pushing their boundaries, gaining life experience and qualifications, establishing themselves in careers and relationships, and perhaps starting families. I spent most of my twenties under 100lbs, including some significant time under 80. And while I did my share of exploring and experiencing, and am blessed to have made and kept some friends from those days, mostly I didn't bring things to completion, missed connections and opportunities, sold myself short and generally failed to establish myself in any way--except that I didn't die, which is surprising in itself. I spent long moments and years isolated and unable to function normally: it's still astonishing to me that I didn't get in a car wreck, and the bike that I persisted in riding barely stayed vertical from my pedaling.

my 'ugliest' recent photo

What I did achieve was my own (and any anorexic's) worst nightmare: a messed-up thyroid and adrenals and a stultifyingly slow metabolism so that now, at 33, I stay far less lean than I'd like to be on very little food: probably less than I was eating for some of my twenties. My functionality is jury-rigged with a dozen supplements and hormone helpers. 

Have you ever gotten on a rollercoaster and then, after it shot out the gate, realized that you really didn't want to be on it? Each sickening turn or dizzying plunge confirms your sense of dislocation and desire to be anywhere else. But you can't get off, and you can't turn back. That's what it feels like to be in my body. I can't turn back: if I eat any less than I regularly eat, or even if I try to skip a meal or snack, my blood sugar plummets and I can't control my mood or anything else. I can't overexercise either, or even exercise very much. And meanwhile, between huge fluctuations in fluid retained and other inscrutable things, I often seem to be getting fatter (not getting on the scale is an absolute rule, to preserve some vestige of sanity)... 



...despite meager diet and as much exercise as I can manage. Having been so very thin for so long, any fat on me at all feels and looks unbearable, and the self-directed rage that overtakes me at times is more painful than the all the physical issues. It's often followed by an inevitable upset stomach and restricting, and more of the rollercoaster: as my naturopath keeps impressing upon me, 'restricting food intake leads to more efficient fat storage.'



Then there's the intense obsession with what constitutes a healthy diet, and the faulty b.s.-meter that has allowed me to try pretty much every kind of restrictive diet out there and demonize everything, at one time or another, from fats-across-the-board to vegetables. Worst of all, from my present perspective, was allowing myself to be influenced, at a time of despair a few years ago, to try a diet program that involved deliberate and fairly hefty weight gain. Part of me insists on believing that had I not done that (and then relapsed into starvation and diet pill abuse afterwards), there wouldn't be as many fat cells lurking in my body to capitalize on the thyroid problems.

Regrets? This is my dirty secret. I don't talk to anyone about it here except for my long-suffering husband and my treatment team. It's not exaggerating to say that I was considered star potential (academically and musically) at the outset of my twenties, and to have perpetrated a major waste of the universe's resources. 

Yes, I'm ashamed. I blush at the idea that any of my friends, especially new friends, may read this, the 'bad and the ugly' of myself. But when I look at my life today, I refuse to regret my life (except for the 'condition of my physical body' part of it). I can't say that I'd have been happier as an academic or musician than I am now. I'm just getting into stride as a poet and writer, which is what I always wanted to be but somehow assumed that I had to fly high another way first. I'm meeting wonderful friends and deepening those connections, and my marriage to Phil is a blessing for which I'm daily grateful. Despite mistakes, squandering and messing up, I am grateful for where I am.



My Writing
What about my writing, then? Is it all a lie? What about all that brave joy sharing culinary artistry? What about the personal development away from control learned through driving on ice? What about taking naughty apron photos with Phil? Or the daily postings last September as part of Tina's 30 Days of Self Love? 

Actually, this is where my writing can save my life. This is where my writing, which I feel to be the best part of myself, is helping me to become a better person. I learn to conceptualize about letting go of control and to see this letting-go as a thing of beauty and an insight to be shared, so I share that. Culinary artistry and anorexia are pretty common bedfellows, but especially with the recent encouragement to create things that I enjoy too, I'm hoping that my enthusiasm for one side of the coin may spread to the other.

Also, as I mentioned in my guest post on Bitt of Raw, self-education in all sides of the nutritional story (rather than getting hung up behind the blinders of a single dogma) is something that I believe will be conducive to this kind of personal growth. That's why I keep exposing myself to writing like that of Matt Stone, who insists cogently that self-deprivation and excessive exercise ultimately lead to slowed metabolism and weight gain and that doing the reverse is what's needed for long-term leanness. I keep reading, even though he classes vegetarianism alongside all other 'restrictions' and I have absolutely no intention to start eating meat or dairy. Or gluten, obviously. Nonetheless, this is such an important message for anyone who's been caught up in a restriction mentality, maybe can't understand why it's harder to be lean nowadays, and ends up caught in an endless maze of leaps from one holy-grail diet to the next.

That's the other important part of writing saving my life: if I can share the benefit of my experience with others, and help even just one other person not to have to go through the hell of it, my gratitude will be compounded. So, I've been promising some posts on nutritional stuff for some time now, and I intend that those will be part of a process of sharpening my faulty b.s.-meter, sharing my unfortunately wide-ranging experiences on the front line of diet experimentation and metabolic damage, and an invitation to others to share their wisdom also.

Some people advise that it's better simply never to give 'the bad and the ugly' any attention at all. But sometimes, letting it out rather than holding it in can be tremendously liberating, and offers the opportunity for a locus of shame and regret to be transformed into something that helps others and is empowering and spiritual-growth-promoting.

from 'bad and ugly' to 'building an igloo?'

Do you think I can do it? Can the bad and the ugly be transformed into something integrated and broadly beneficial through creativity?

Guest Post on Bitt of Raw: Overcoming Restrictive Eating Patterns

Been on the road for a few days, so glad to be home! After days around 0 Fahrenheit, we're now in the middle of a snowstorm. More thoughts and pictures tomorrow, but I wanted to share my guest post published on Bitt of Raw today. Thanks again, Bitt: what an honor!

Overcoming Restrictive Eating Patterns 

Surrounded by abundance and choices in today's world, sticking to black and white rules for decision-making can seem very alluring (unless you have a strident inner rebel). However, especially in the bottomless rabbit-hole of nutritional research, it's hard to find a single statement that is uncontroversially, undeniably 'true' in all cases and for all people. The only two that I can think of are that trans fats and high fructose syrup both are harmful to health. And of course, when it comes to food, the nutritional bottom line is only a small part of the picture. There's no getting around the fact that we're wired, and raised, to appreciate particular flavors and textures, as well as the social aspect of eating. Paying attention only to the 'fuel mix' is likely to be at least somewhat stressful long term, which isn't good for us either.

To read the rest of this, please go to

 http://www.bittofraw.com/2011/01/guest-post-ela-on-overcoming.html

Tapas Party: Samosas, Socca(!), Marzipan and Fig Bread; Leftovers?

In my last post, I mentioned the tapas party that we enjoyed with dear friends and family. I have been so appreciating the encouragement to bring foods that I like to these kinds of events: until recently, I'd bring a salad just to make sure there'd be 'something' I could eat and put all my energies into making things I couldn't, of a more mass appeal.

The specific instruction was not to go 'over the top,' lots of little, simple dishes. So I thought four things was a reasonable cap: two mains and two desserts.

I made a version of raw samosas with banana tamarind dipping sauce, loosely based (as in, I don't have the book) on that in Raw Food Real World...

...and for the other 'main,' I finally got on the Socca bandwagon!

I made Pure2Raw's beautiful spinach socca, with a creamy spinach salad to top it!

As for desserts, I was so excited to make marzipan cookies--one of my favorite flavors--based on the recipe in Everyday Raw Desserts but replacing the agave with xylitol and stevia...

...and I made authentic Spanish-style fig-bread: pictured on the left of the white cake below.

Here it is again, chilling next to the rolled marzipans on our freezer.

This was a very simple two parts dried figs to one part soaked/dehydrated walnuts plus a little special honey, pinch of salt and drop of anise extract. It mimics the 'fig bread' by Matiz that can be found in gourmet stores for a high price but is delicious and simple to make.

Note the absence of chocolate in the desserts area? Good to change things up, and better for my body...

 I really didn't think I 'went over the top,' but there were definitely some busy spaces in our tiny cabin on Friday!

Here are the samosa filling (pulsed cauliflower and peas mellowing in a curry sauce), walnuts for the fig bread, raspberry jam filling for the marzipan, all 'dehydrating' on the floor in front of our heater...

Before I go into the other dishes in more detail, what do you do when you're fixing up a whole bunch of food and lunchtime rolls around? To me, it's a good sign when you can take a break to have a lunch, rather than just nibbling here and there. My 'large cauliflower' for samosas was too much for the curry sauce (fortunately I didn't throw it all in at once). So my lunch was a bunch of pulsed cauliflower and a handful of spinach leaves, sauced with a little piece of avocado, a little coconut kefir, and chlorella, curry powder and nutritional yeast. Oh, and some cilantro.

You don't think it looks pretty? Oh, me loves green so very much...

OK--after lunch, and after ice-driving practice, samosa-wrapping, now that the filling had had a good few hours to mellow and meld. I added a bunch of coarsely chopped cilantro to the filling.

For the wraps, I 'cheated.' I don't have a dehydrator (other than in front of the heater) and don't have access to quantities of young coconuts, so making wrappers out of dehydrated young coconut didn't seem sensible. I used rice-paper spring roll wrappers instead. Can you see the wrapper blotting on the towel?

I've never used these before and found the wrapping procedure to be really fun. Of course, it's a bit of a cultural stretch, putting samosa inside spring roll wrappers: but hey, this was a tapas (i.e. Spanish food) party, so I could just call it fusion.

The banana-tamarind dipping sauce was very spicy and delicious, and complemented the samosas well. I'd definitely make the samosa filling and the tamarind sauce again just separately, to enjoy. And the wraps definitely bear repeating too.

Socca! Years ago, long before I'd ever heard of socca, I used to make myself flatbreads out of chickpea flour. I've been reading about socca on other blogs for sometime but had never felt moved to try it, partly because of doing all-raw, partly being carbophobic, partly knowing that Phil, who dislikes chickpeas, wouldn't be a fan. But this recipe that Pure2Raw shared recently really called out to me and the Mediterranean setting of the evening was perfect.

Batter ready to go in the oven...

...came out crusty and hearty-looking... 

And I followed the socca part of the recipe to the letter! Me, who am congenitally incapable of following recipes. So, of course, I didn't follow the salad recipe to the letter...

I didn't have nutmeg or basil, but I did have fresh tarragon. Oh, and I replaced the hempseeds with walnuts. You know what? Tarragon and tahini is a wonderful flavor combination that I will definitely use again.

Yummy... Thanks so much, Pure2Raw ladies! Even the wheat-bread-lovers loved it.

Marzipan...intense almond flavor with a berry contrast. Based on coconut flour and cashews/mac nuts. Here I am following  tweaking a recipe again!

I used less xylitol syrup than the amount of agave called for, but still had to add quite a lot of extra coconut flour to make it a dough as opposed to liquidy.

I also probably didn't roll it out quite flat enough and when I rolled the pastry over the jam, I had to do some repair work. The substitutions may have affected the pliability also, although of course chilling is no problem here: just set it outside for a minute or two!

But bottom line: marzipan is something I adore, and will definitely try to make again and can tweak the different sweeteners and texturers: I have some more ideas. Even as a first attempt, this was so good! Intense almond flavor, sweet and rich, without being tooth-hurtingly sweet.

And of course, there were about two dozen other dishes on the table too!

Questions:
Are you more likely to eat something you 'shouldn't' at a gathering with huge selection of dishes?
I'm lucky, in that most things that make me feel sick I actually dislike. (And, Phil would add, there are lots of things that might be good for me that I also dislike!) Obviously, chocolate is an exception, but it doesn't make me sick to my stomach, just my adrenals. The only other exception for me is bell peppers. I never eat them raw because they make me sick right away. But when they're roasted, I can sometimes cope with a little, and I just love the taste. Somehow, the celebratory, diverse spirit of tapas encouraged me to eat several pieces of roasted bell pepper, and my tummy did not thank me for it! How silly, when there were so many other good options... But even so, I ate a fraction of the diversity that everyone else had, so I guess I was careful...

When you make a big batch of something, do you like it when there are leftovers?
If it's something Phil loves, I'm happy for there to be leftovers. If it's more my kind of food, I'm ambivalent about the leftovers thing. I love leftovers, especially as often the flavors meld over time. But if there are too many leftovers and they are perishable, I can feel overwhelmed, since there's nothing I hate more than waste. The day after a rich dinner, I usually want to keep things very simple food-wise. To be honest, I also know that everyone else can eat much richer food than I can regularly, and worry about calories, etc. However, I've been enjoying my leftovers this time! And of course, if it's something that freezes, the time pressure is off and you can just enjoy it when you wish.

Much love!