Tapping and Feeling Empowered; PUFA-Experiment Update

Feeling Good: Thanks, Tapping World Summit!
We are such moving targets: we adjust one thing and something else changes too. Sometimes change spreads like a stain, from the focal point outward; other times, it's more like a domino effect, and everything changes in a cascade.

A snapshot only catches a glimpse of our perpetual motion.

I am so excited by having the feeling of being able to make things better. I'm so excited that I've woken up the past couple days feeling really energized and confident! I have been working on the Tapping, having listened along this past week or so, and am amazed at how it has been affecting my energy and general outlook. With any method of self-help and self-improvement--or anything novel, for that matter, I worry about the trajectory where an initial burst of enthusiasm then gradually peters out and moves into disenchantment. However, the Tapping is having such an immediate and positive effect, internalizing the Law of Attraction into my physical meridians, that I'm finding myself motivated to continue with it. They suggest committing to 40 days of Tapping post-summit, clearing one blockage each day. Now, I'm thinking that many of my 'blockages' will take more than a single day to clear, but I'll take the empowerment of group energy and the optimism of commitment!

Any suggestions, shared stories, ideas for further reading would be much appreciated.

Further thoughts on PUFAs (and how to avoid/reduce them) and an Update on My Experiment

Self-Experimentation

Speaking of being moving targets, and of the impossibility of changing one thing without changing others... Of course I haven't been 'perfect,' haven't completely eliminated all PUFAs, not even all omega-6's. But I have dramatically reduced them in my diet the last month or two, and on the few occasions that there's been something more omega-6-heavy around, like that peanut-butter-mousse brownie (yes, my fault!) I've added back some flax or chia into my morning smoothies to balance it out.

Here's a post by Dr Weil that Mindy shared in a recent comment that explains in straightforward terms why it's so important to keep the omega-3 to -6 ratio from getting overly high to the -6, to rebalance if you have something high in the -6.

Well, a couple of observations on this. I hadn't realized until I put flax/chia back in my smoothies that the post-breakfast nausea I'd had for ages had gone away. It came back when I put them back in! Whaddaya know? And I don't think it was a case of higher overall fat content: I think I'd upped the coconut oil in my smoothies to compensate. So that's an unexpected downside of flax or chia for me (I hadn't noticed any correlation with nausea at times other than breakfast, though).

Otherwise, I haven't noticed any instant alarm signals like memory loss, neurons not firing, intense depression, or any of the EFA deficiency classic signs. One the other hand, I haven't noticed that my metabolism is roaring quick all of a sudden without the metabolism-dragging PUFAs (although my digestion transit seems to have improved, as I mentioned earlier, but that seemed to be more to do with increasing starch consumption).

One negative thing that I have noticed, or more accurately, that Phil has noticed, is that my skin is not as clear and smooth as it had been since I started coconut oil and a generally higher-fat diet. It seems that my back is broken out and that generally my skin is a little rougher. Again, I don't know whether to ascribe this to absence of PUFAs, to reduced fat intake overall, to increased starch, or to my excursions into cacao and more sugar than normal for me (mostly by way of fruit).

For other reasons, which I'll discuss more soon, I'm nixing the cacao and sugar excursions and suspect, just from how my body works, that I should replace them with more fat, i.e. coconut, in my diet. Hopefully that will smooth my skin out, but if it takes flax and chia seeds and a few nuts to make that happen, it would be some interesting data for sure!

PUFAs and How to Avoid Them

Unless you're of the 80-10-10 persuasion (as I was for years) and avoid all fats like the plague, it might sound like a pretty tall order to be a mostly raw-foodie who eats good amounts of fat and to avoid all heavy PUFA sources. In fact, it's really pretty easy. When I started out, I wasn't even eating avocado or olive oil on my salads for a bit, and was still enjoying satisfying and delicious salads as a staple. (Lately, perhaps for sanity's sake, and partly because my ND specifically asked me to eat avocados, I've eased up on that restriction: both olive oil and avocado have much more Monounsaturated fat (or MUFA) than they do PUFA.)

This is a 'slaw that is pretty much what you can see: napa cabbage, purple cabbage, carrots, sprouts. The dressing was made of appropriate spices, apple cider vinegar and coconut oil! Kind of Asian-tasting and really good and refreshing.

Since macadamia nuts have virtually no PUFAs in them, you can team them up with coconut to make all kinds of creamy dressings and dips. By the way, here's another instance of a case where the 'cooked' version of something might be healthier than the raw. At the moment, I feel better about eating real black beans than a raw mock refried beans dip made mostly of sunflower seeds (although it's true that legumes contain more omega-6 than omega-3 also, like most seeds of any kind, flax and chia being the magic exceptions, legumes have far less of either than nuts and seeds do). Ditto for nut-based hummuses.

For the wiggle room, since I'm not crying off them altogether and forever, there are ways to reduce overall PUFA content in your creation. I think the best long term strategy is to use mostly coconut and macadamia (sure makes me miss Hawaii--why are mac nuts so expensive when the farmers there can't sell their crops?) and otherwise use flax and chia so that the PUFA ratio favors the omega-3's.

But for the excursion times, I already showed in my peanut-butter-mousse-brownie recipe how easy it was to reduce the PUFAs by using mostly peanut flour instead of peanut butter.

Thankfully for us, cashews and filberts are relatively low in overall PUFA (around 2g per ounce), so they'll work for the odd cheesecake and crust...(though I love a mac/coco crust).

Another trick: remember those Congo Bars I made all the way back before Christmas (wow, have I been playing with reduced PUFA that long??

Well, the base involves a whole bunch of walnuts and pecans (i.e. a boatload of PUFAs), that you pulse first and then add a bunch of other ingredients. I processed them a little far, and the cold ambient temperature and the warmth of the processor provoked the nuts to release their oils, and they separated from my dough. Rather than try to mix it back in, I poured it off!

It was a slow process: you can see the oil still pooling at the parchment paper under the batter to the left of the pic. I probably got about a half cup of oil from those two cups of nuts! So that was a half cup of PUFA that no one had to eat (although it may end up on Phil's popcorn one day)!

Conclusion: I feel good about continuing my moderate exclusion (as opposed to exclusive exclusion!) of PUFAs. I still think that the most important thing is to avoid much omega-6, however, and I wouldn't be shocked if long-term, flax and chia regained their status as staples in my diet. More changes coming soon!

What do you think about omega-6's? Do you think I'm over-thinking this whole thing or is it interesting? What's your latest great experiment on your body? (And what about that Tapping?)

My Birthday Party--and Pushing Myself

Happy March with rainbow sunsets and spring in the air!

There are so many thoughts, concepts, ideas and threads that I want to share on here, and then 'real life' has its own rhythms and events, and so this blog becomes a 'backlog!' To wit, yesterday was my birthday, and so my PUFA follow-up must wait until I've shared some delicious aftermaths of our little party yesterday and some thoughts and intentions that I'm working on for this 'new year' of mine.

Pushing Myself
I'm feeling the need to 'push myself' a bit, in a loving way: to move outside of my comfort zone at times and to show myself what I can do.  At one end of things, that means that today, I spent the whole morning "de-cluttering," accepting that even with the limitations of two fairly messy people living in a tiny cabin, clutter can be a sign of stuck energy and that attending to it might feel good. On a different note, remember that very tall (60ft) dead spruce tree we have, where the eagles like to perch, that's featured on here a few times?

Phil climbed and sat on top (right where that eagle is) around sunset a couple nights ago, and I decided that it was time I climbed it again: it's been ages since I did. So, I climbed most of the way up (didn't feel the need to dislodge Phil from the top), I stayed up there and watched the sunset, I got cold, I climbed back down again. But the rest of the story is that I was SCARED! I was aghast at how afraid I was, and a bit ashamed too: by the time I got back to the ground, my legs were shaking. It didn't help that I was cold and it didn't help that a half hour earlier I'd fallen on my butt hard on the ice, but sheesh--I used to climb coconut trees! I used to zip up this tree with no problem. What happened to me? On the other hand, I'm glad that I did it anyway: interesting how we can train ourselves out of fears, but when out of practice, they can resurface.

Other 'de-cluttering' and 'loving upheavals' include updating my resume, a writing class later this week, and more audio learning: I've been listening in to the Tapping World Summit these past days. I knew very little about Tapping before but I can tell that if I stick with it, it has the potential to be a very powerful transformational tool.

Party with 'Ela-Friendly Foods' Focus!
Our lovely friends and family suggested that the potluck theme for my party should be a plethora of 'Ela-friendly' foods! I was a little apprehensive at first, as I didn't want anyone to feel alienated (even vegetarianism is 'way out' here, let alone my further parameters) and so I was glad that there was a big pot of chilli with cheese and sour cream for those who need that kind of thing--but I didn't manage to take a picture of it!

Here's what we had:
a delightful Thai-spiced vegetable soup--it was so good...

...a beautiful green salad with lentils that were just delectable (I realized just last year that lentils may be my version of 'comfort food,' being what I was raised on, etc)...

Something I put together: wild rice soaked overnight, lightly cooked, tossed with a little coconut oil, peas, carrots, olives, fennel, lime juice and a little salt...

...a quinoa salad...

...two kinds of cornbread, one gluten free, one not (I was so spoiled for choice, I just had a crumb of the gluten free one, and it was good!)...

...and of course, I brought one of my green salads: this time with grapefruit, mung bean sprouts, avocado...

But best of all, of course, was dessert!

Mint-chip cheesecake from Sweet Gratitude. I had so much fun making this earlier in the day! I made it pretty much per the recipe, unusually for me, except that I used coconut nectar instead of agave, and added a little peppermint extract because I was using spearmint leaves and think peppermint is a better 'dessert' flavor. Oh, and I used mac nuts in place of almonds in the crust. That's really as close as I ever get to following a recipe!
My thriftstore cake pan is a little warped, and whaddaya know? I was gifted a set of three springform pans! I have some observant friends...I was also given an icing bag, and look forward to playing with that soon. And speaking of observant friends, I often bring a crockpot full of goodies to potlucks, and have arrived splattered with the contents after driving bumpy roads--well, I was given a 'portable crockpot' with a gasketed top and a special closing mechanism, so that it will be both more energy-efficient and portable without mishaps! Much gratitude...
Back to dessert, I finished the cheesecake with cacao nibs around the sides...

This piece was cut in half after the photograph was taken--everyone was already full! There were seven of us and we barely ate a third of the cake! Come over anytime...

Sweet Gratitude was an appropriate source and energy: I felt so sweetly grateful that everyone was so willing to accept and enjoy my arena of food choices, felt accepted, appreciated, loved and 'seen.' Thank you, everyone! I also want to thank my Mum for being my Mum: for my birthday last year, I wrote a post specifically thanking my Mum and acknowledging what an inspiration she is, and that's just as true this time around.

Some Further Thoughts on Raw and Cooked; Step by Step Kim Chee Recipe

Happy weekend, everyone! The sun is shining here and it is so good to be home. Yesterday was a catch-up day and was also a south-westerly wind storm day. The wind was blowing so hard that I had difficulty applying toilet paper in the outhouse, and then the paper wouldn't drop down the hole--the wind blew it back up!! So, of course, Phil and I went for a beach hike in the crazy wind.

When it blows like this, you can see why erosion happens on our bluff. Here is the southeast corner of our homestead viewed from below--there were several mini-avalanches just while we were there, and the cliff face looks like a sculpture being carved out. I hope that the carving leaves our home up there! Look at the rocks calving out at the bottom.

It's hard to provide a visual for these intense winds, but here is the sand being blown into whorls and traceries--that hit you like bullets if you're downwind...

I was getting ready to talk more about my experiments with and thoughts on PUFAs, especially in aftermath of the Great Health Debate, but there were so many interesting comments on my first post, as well as follow-up thoughts that occurred to me, (things I forgot to mention!) that a revisit seems in order. Also, having recently mentioned kim-chee making, I'm going to share the recipe, step by step.

Raw Food Feel-Good and Appetite Reset
As Mindy and Raederle pointed out, eating mostly raw foods can provide a 'glow' and general sense of well-being for many people. Gena also pointed out that too many people don't eat enough fresh foods. Those people especially could benefit from more fresh plant foods and experiencing the 'glow.' Of course, it's also true that if you have a bunch of heavy food in your system and then eat a bunch of fruit on top of it, the resulting fermentation can make you feel very uncomfortable and not at all glowing. And then there's the whole 'detox' can of worms that can allow people to feel worse before they feel better as they improve their diets. I don't want to get too much farther into that right now.

I'm completely in agreement about the feel-good from fresh plant foods: what I have been wanting to suggest is that this feel-good is negated when it becomes an obsession and you start to view every other form of food as somehow poisonous. Per finding #7 in my 'this much I have learned' post, if you ram home a certain belief that demonizes a certain food or food group, your body is going to manifest symptoms to confirm it. I've noticed that strict raw-foodists (including myself for many years) are much more likely to manifest such symptoms around something of which they feel suspicious, or which is obviously 'cooked,' than around something ambiguous like coconut water (from a can or from a coconut?)

And of course, I'm appealing for openness to compromise. For example, this was my splurge from the Natural Pantry in Anchorage this time:

Powdered coconut water! Now there's no way in a million years I'd have been tempted to buy that when I lived in HI and could harvest my own nuts--or even when I lived in CA and could buy young coconuts for less than a dollar apiece. But it's a good way to get some of the goodness of young coconuts up here where they are so much less available. Similarly, I used to be afraid of eating frozen foods, thinking they were little better than cooked. Now, I'm not too interested in frozen berries when we have tons of raspberries outside in the fall, but the rest of the time, yes please! Freezing reduces some nutrients, but with long, hard winters up here, it's a very acceptable compromise.

The other point that I wanted to address was Lori's comment about resetting taste-buds and appetite. This is a really good point about the value of raw and otherwise minimally-processed foods and it brings us back to the whole 'Pleasure Trap' discussion. Eating lots of raw, fresh, fiber and water-rich plant foods ratchets down our tolerance for intense, artificially enhanced flavors and changes our relationship to foods so that even if we do indulge in 'junk' occasionally, it won't be quite so compelling. It doesn't happen overnight, but it sure is worth holding out for.

Cold Fats and Cooked Crucifers?
One thing that I didn't emphasize in the last post, although I'm sure I've said it before, is that one kind of food that it really is worth keeping raw is Unsaturated Fats. I'm less worried about coconut oil and other saturated fats, since they are less prone to oxidation and more heat tolerant. But as neutral as I try to remain about nutritional information, the oxidation and 'trans-ification' of unsaturated fats when exposed to heat, and the ways that they can affect our bodies in that condition, really do scare me. Please don't cook with vegetable oils! Even olive oil, mostly monounsaturated and therefore somewhat more heat tolerant, has enough PUFA in it to really benefit from being kept at low temperatures.

I also mentioned that the goitrogens in crucifers are not neutralized by making kraut--but other anti-nutrients are, and the krauting process itself improves the vitamin-C profile, provides beneficial bacteria and is otherwise delicious and good. And of course, the funny thing about goitrogens themselves is that there is some evidence that when they're not messing your thyroid up, they might be protective against thyroid cancer! Isn't nature funny?

Bitt asked for a link for the research showing that goitrogens are not neutralized by krauting: I dug around and found this one. It's from the Weston Price Foundation. Whatever you think about their espousal of animal products, they are really interested in traditional food preparation methods like fermentation, and this seems to be a carefully researched article.

There is mention that the goitrogens are most fully neutralized after long boiling--so, Raederle, there's more vindication for your boiled broccoli as beneficial!

Step by Step Kim Chee
I'm open to eating crucifers cooked, and this research helps me to go with my current (idiosyncratic) preference for them that way. But I still love my krauted veggies, and since Lori asked so nicely, I made kim chee again and took pictures! Here it is, step by step.

You need:
A big napa cabbage--pull off the outer leaves and set aside
A couple of carrots (or one very big one)
Scallions (to taste)
Ginger (to taste)
A tablespoon of good quality salt

Start by shredding up the napa cabbage with your chef knife as fine as you can. I like to cut in half lengthwise, then cut each half several more times lengthwise, then chop crosswise.

Then pound it down with something heavy (it's good to use a steel or enamel bowl for this, so it won't bust). My 'something heavy' is simply my upended chef knife--live dangerously, right?

Chop up everything else, and grate in ginger. Yes, for me 'to taste' is a lot! Can also add some crushed chilis. Sprinkle on the salt.

Then, get your hands in there and work the salt in and generally crush and smush everything up. In the above picture, the veggies are overflowing the bowl. In the below picture, they're below the surface.

Now, weight the whole lot down with a plate with something even heavier than your chef knife on top, and leave it to sit...

...until the liquid is up over the surface of the plate. And yes, in the meantime it got dark here. It's amazing how long the days are now--I started that project at about 6pm!

When it's nice and wet like that, stuff the whole lot into a mason jar or similar. Cover the veggies with the reserved outer cabbage leaves. Make sure the liquid is all the way up there and the veggies well tamped down. Weight down with something that fits--this very elegant wine bottle worked perfectly.

Leave out of direct sunlight for a few days and watch out for bubbles!
Enjoy!
Much love...

What is it About Raw Foods Anyway?

Happy Wednesday, everyone! It doesn't feel like 'hump day' or midweek especially: we're in Anchorage,  with good news on Phil's eyes again: his pressure is continuing to hold steady!

So he's off skiing right now and will continue to revel in many dimensions of the beautiful outdoors. We went for a beautiful hike this morning, too, with our friend Terry:

It was -8F (-20C) this morning in Anchorage, but by the time we were walking it was a bit warmer. Cold enough to make your nostrils crinkle!


The other major weather event the past few days has been wind. It has been blowing! We tried to hike along the beach in Homer for a little bit a couple days ago and the wind was spraying the waves up over the road! We had to walk backwards for some of it, and it was one of or shorter hikes, you'd better believe it.

When the snow has started to melt from the trees and then the chilly wind comes in again, it can freeze that dripping water into charming shapes. Look at this wishbone dangling from one of our spruces!

OK--moving to the ostensible subject of this post: What is it about Raw Foods Anyway?

For disclosure of my biases: I used to eat 100% raw very strictly, and worrying about percentage raw even at raw food potlucks was a serious ruling parameter in my life. Nowadays, I eat mostly raw food but I eat cooked food every day too, and I don't put a lot of energy on worrying about the percentage.

There are topics in food and nutrition that I've felt some confusion around as a result of all the recent discussion, but I bring up this topic because I feel that one thing that was clear in The Great Health Debate was that for most people, outside of the serious health crisis situation, the experts (perhaps excepting Robert Young) generally did not claim enormous additional benefits to accrue from a 100% raw foods diet compared to a diet containing some nutritious cooked foods. Even Gabriel Cousens, who is definitely a live foods practitioner, talked about 'protein types' eating cooked beans to obtain purines.

I mentioned at the time that I was impressed by Joel Fuhrman's take: that he didn't think that people gained anything by removing cooked beans and root veggies from their diets. In other words, there are foods that we can eat cooked beneficially.

It seems like a good time to revisit this subject, in the wake of the Great Health Debate, to reinforce the validity of both raw and cooked forms of nutrition and to feel grateful for them. There have been some good discussions of this topic out there quite recently, like Gena's clear and penetrating analysis in response to another blogger's rejection of raw food based on a short-term cleanse, also passionately written and researched. Bitt also has some insightful discussions of the balance between raw and cooked food, including this one. In continued and belated celebration of this little blog's own anniversary, there are also my own posts, written almost a year ago now, analysing and responding to Richard Wrangham's Catching Fire.  I wrote five posts about it in total: an initial overview, a summary, and a three-part analysis of the implications of the book for raw-foodists--part 1, part 2 and part 3. I noticed that during the Great Health Debate, both Dr Goldhamer and Frederic Patenaude mentioned Catching Fire, explicitly to point out that one of the major implications of the claim for cooking's antiquity is that it allowed an increased usage of starchy foods (not edible raw) that drove some great steps forward in human evolution: i.e. it was cooked plants, not raw--or cooked--meat, that made us what we are.

I think that it's important to note, as I did in part 3 of my analysis, that Wrangham's book can actually be interpreted as speaking in favor of eating more raw foods in this day and age of superabundance and super-refined and easily absorbed foods: or at least of more raw and otherwise minimally processed foods.

There is a semantic trap around raw foods too: raw implies "unadulterated," "unmanipulated," "not tampered with," and then much more charged and emotional judgments such as "pure," "clean," (morally) "good."... Of course, nowadays raw foods can be the most decadent, processed, worked concoctions, recipients of great artistry and creativity. When I got into raw foods eight years ago, agave and cacao weren't on the table yet, let alone flours. Things were chunkier back then. 

But even back then, we would sometimes philosophically agree, at our raw food potlucks, we raw food fanatics, that it could be argued that some steamed broccoli might be more nutritious/healthier than a raw pie with tons of nuts and dates. Outside of the sheltered world of the raw potluck, there may be times when the 'raw versus cooked' choice is even less clear-cut.

Travel and Social

As someone who has traveled a lot, I'd be the first to say that it's easy to do so as a raw-foodist. But then I'd have to backtrack a little and to admit that there were times when my refusal to consider cooked food probably left me less well-nourished for my hiking along than I could have been. Off the road, when options dwindle, if all you're willing to eat is fresh fruit and veg, you may wind up with nothing but some tired bananas, whereas a little more flexibility could find some steamed veggies or baked roots. In airports, salads can be exiguous and exorbitant (not to mention covered in cheese, meat and gluten), but if you're not in a panic about whether the guacamole and salsa might contain cooked ingredients, you can get those and be fairly well satisfied.

And then there's the whole world of socializing and accepting hospitality. I accept that it's not good to pull ourselves down to the lowest common denominator, but being willing to share lovingly prepared food that you're not compelled by allergy to avoid is a practice that I have found to strengthen my immune system and open my heart. It's been a long road: initially my internal resistance to and judgments of the foods prevented my enjoyment on this level.

Better Raw, Better Cooked?

I don't subscribe to the 'enzyme theory' of raw foods' superiority. The 'enzyme theory' claims that raw foods spare our own enzymes by bringing their own with them, which have not been denatured by the application of heat. I don't subscribe to this for two reasons. First, I think that any enzymes left on raw foods are denatured in the stomach before the breakdown of the foods actually commences. And second, I believe that it's highly unlikely that there are many enzymes left even in raw foods unless they are literally freshly picked (which may be why microgreens and sprouts are such good food: peak of freshness). It's not just heat that depletes enzymes: many other experiences that each food item undergoes on its increasingly long journey to the table do so too. Roots are not repositories of enzymes to enable growth, but of starch. Seeds contain enzyme inhibitors to keep them dormant and prevent them from rotting (which is part of why sprouting them to remove this is recommended: but the improved hydration is another key).

Without going into too much more detail, I should say that very few raw-foodists that I know personally 'do it for the enzymes.' There are plenty of other good reasons. Interest in raw foods tends to correlate with interest in freshness and quality of the food, which always equates with better flavor and nutritional profile. Raw foods tend to have a higher moisture content--and the water contained in there is some of the best quality, structured water that you can obtain. This structure can improve the availability of the vitamins and minerals contained in fruits and vegetables. Vitamins, of course, are heat sensitive and are generally better available in raw than in cooked foods.

On the other hand, despite the fact that I've put some energy into eating broccoli and cauliflower raw, and have written about it, e.g. in this article, I have to confess that at this time, I'm enjoying them more cooked than I am raw! And of course, they contain goitrogens, which can be a problem for someone like myself with hypothyroid. I recently heard David Wolfe speculating that these goitrogens may be deactivated by juicing but I think that since they are not deactivated by krauting, that may be unlikely. And personally, I'd far rather eat my broccoli than juice it!

Similarly, onions are full of wonderful compounds, some of them not even fully understood--like quercitin, crucial for mitochondrial health, and important sulphur compounds. Well, aside from the fact that I can't stand raw onions, they make me feel sick! So, should I just never eat them? That's what I used to think. Now, going along with Dr Fuhrman's words, I feel good about eating some onions, cooked. If you cook them into a sauce, the huge amounts of vitamin C that they contain may be retained, dissolved in the liquid, so long as you don't boil it for too long!

Another piece of releasing from the black-and-white: I love that raw food techniques can be used with semi-raw preparations, like my peanut butter mousse brownie. Never mind that in retrospect, I think it would have been even better with a raw base...!

A recipe coming soon: this is delicious and part-raw. Peas, barely-blanched cauliflower, coconut oil-sauteed onions in a coconut curry sauce.

Do you think that raw foods are beneficial for everyone? Do you think that this benefit is lost if other kinds of food are included?
Love and balance!

Away from Black-and-White; Amazing Wildlife Sighting; Break in Scheduled Programming

"Forty-seven sea otters hauled out on the beach: who's ever seen that before?"

I had a post (almost) all ready to share about raw versus cooked and other food musings, as part of celebrating the anniversary of this blog and its expressed purpose of moving away from black and white thinking. However, our morning adventure provided a wildlife sighting that was so spectacular that it merited a break in scheduled programming.

Of course, this, itself, is part of a move away from 'black and white.' I don't just talk about food and nothing else. I don't just eat raw food and no other. I don't only write poetry, e-mails and translations/editing! I don't just eat plants (I eat fungi too!) (although I do fear that my vegan friends might not be my friends anymore if I ate an egg one day, even though I have no plans to do so)--and I don't always eat super-low-glycemic. There's so much more to love than just one face of the moon...

So, this morning we took advantage of the huge full-moon low tide and resulting huge expanse of land that is normally underwater to drive for twelve miles up our beach and back again. Some very special scenery gets unveiled at these times.

Here is our cabin as seen from far out on the beach (would usually be underwater)--now you can see how close to the edge we live!

We dropped off some crab pots to use as gabions (cages for rocks) to support the eroding bluff as part of our 'sea-bastion' on the beach below the cabin.

Sometimes, it was very treacherous driving: thank goodness for 'low-4-wheel gear:' it was like a trump card that we pulled out occasionally to get ourselves over some big boulders. Bumpity bumpity...

When we'd gone about five miles further than I've ever been on the beach except on foot or by boat, and were just thinking of turning back, we came upon all these sea otters hauled out on land, probably close to fifty...

...and making ungainly tracks for the beach as soon as we approached. I felt bad for having disturbed them in that way: it was as if we'd interrupted them at church or something!

Sea otters spend the vast majority of their time in the water and we've seen this many of them out in open water before. They are so playful out there, flipping and rolling and tumbling. On the very rare occasions that we've come across one on land, it usually seems to be old or sick. So finding a whole flock of them on land was extremely surprising. They were accompanied and escorted by ravens, who hovered attentively over them: I couldn't tell what that was about. Phil suggested that the ravens were eating the otters' poop (which, upon inspection, looked extremely unappetizing!) but they were following the otters that headed seaward, not guarding their deposits, so I'm not sure about that.

Sea otters have the most incredible pelts--a million hairs per square inch, quite the warm coat for spending most of your life in subarctic waters. They are so graceful in the water, but really ungainly on land--waddling splayfooted with their back humped, they look a bit like inchworms...

Despite the feeling of transgression, of having disturbed something intimate, private and even spiritual, I am grateful to have seen them. Of course we saw dozens of eagles busy on the beach too, and like the ravens, the eagles are starting to pair up and get ready to nest. The mating behavior of the ravens is another whole spectacular story.

We also saw some coyote tracks...

Part of why we came out was for Phil to go shopping. His favorite place to shop is the beach after big tides...

Our raised beds were built from timbers he salvaged from the beach after big storms.

Today, we rescued a bunch of junk and a buoy with a good line on it, but the only timber he brought home was a limb of this gorgeous fallen birch.

This photo scarcely does justice to the beauty of the wood.

Can you believe that the next full moon will be the equinox?

Valentine's Day Recap and Peanut-Butter Mousse Brownies; Questioning Purpose, Sprouts and Kraut

Happy Friday to everyone! The snow got rained on and is now refreezing, so I'll be extra careful when I head out for a walk in just a few minutes: it's like hiking on an inclined rink!

I'll get to the peanut-butter mousse brownie in a moment...

...we had a week off from driving up to Anchorage this week but we're off again for another round on Monday. I tried to used this week to recombobulate and reconnect with my sense of purpose. I also got caught on the wave of The Great Health Debate and shared several posts of analysis of the event. Was that wave part of my true purpose or another wave of discombobulation? I know that it plowed through

my resolution to schedule my time less haphazardly. I also know that nutrition research is something that I have always done and have some passion for.

Things that I missed with the weekly dislocations and enjoyed this week included making kraut...

...and sprouts! Both of these keep me so happy in the wintertime, especially the fresh-fresh-local sprouts.

Several nights this week, my dinner has been some sprouts mixed with kraut, with something spicy like harissa sprinkled liberally over the top, with a baked yam on the side. Virtuous and probably laudable by many of the Great Health Debate experts with whom I resonated most, but not entirely satisfying beyond the conceptual pat on the back. Some coconut oil on the yam helps! I will share some of my personal confusions aroused by the Debate soon as promised...

The other thing that suffered with the dislocation was my poetry writing practice. This is also being impinged upon by the fact that it's the season to apply for financial aid, invoking a slew (and a slough) of paperwork for which I do not have the talent (or much patience)! It's definitely the case that when we're traveling a lot, it's hard for me to get down to my writing practice, and I realized this week that that is partly because of the inextricable link between my spiritual sense/practice and my writing: it's too easy to get knocked off center when we're on the road half the time and to fall down the rabbit-hole of busy-work. And then I even begrudge my blogging and food-creating, because it seems like it falls more under the 'busy work' rubric because I can dive into it and get something done. The truth? Blogging and food-creating are also better and more satisfying when I'm working from a centered place.

I also realize that even though the pervasive cold tends to discourage me from joining Phil spending all hours outside, it's really important to get out and moving, breathing the fresh air, every day. Although that's also a time commitment, it helps with centering, focusing, finding the spiritual point (spirit, after all, is breath).

That's the approach I'm creating for myself right now: it's much better than self-flagellation, don't you think?

Peanut Butter Mousse Brownies

We had a party Tuesday night to welcome home various family and friends who had been gone, celebrate Valentine's day and a birthday. I knew that there was going to be a pile of stunning cupcakes on offer, but I really wanted to make something gluten/dairy free and low sugar too.

We have many peanut butter/chocolate aficionados in the crowd, and I was attracted by this Fudge Brownies with Peanut Butter Mousse from VegNews. I made the brownie more or less as they suggested (subbed gluten free flour with some xanthan gum, erythritol/xylitol instead of sugar, and used nut milk instead of soy milk) and similarly just used chocolate and nut milk for the ganache, but there was no way in heck that I was making the peanut butter mousse with cool whip! (That stuff seriously scares me.)

So, I decided I'd make my own version! I perused a few Sweet Gratitude cheesecake recipes, put my thinking cap on, and here's what I came up with:

1 1/2 cups nut milk

1 cup soaked cashews

1 1/2 cups peanut flour (I used this instead of peanut butter to reduce PUFAs, of course!)

1/2 cup _very dense_ irish moss gel

1/2 cup erythritol (a sugar alcohol with no glycemic index that is naturally found in many foods and doesn't hurt people's tummies)

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

2 tablespoons vanilla extract

2 tablespoons lemon juice

Blend all these together very well and add:

2 tablespoons lecithin

3/4 cup melted coconut oil

1/4 cup organic peanut butter

Blend again until everything is very smooth, and pour over your brownie base. At the 'adding oil and lecithin' stage, I also taste-tested and added a dash of white stevia.

I have to say, the peanut butter mousse was by far the best portion of the dessert! The brownie was nice and fluffy, but the flavor was a little disappointing to me (this could have been the fault of the flour mix I used). For the ganache topping, I used dark chocolate chips and nut milk because that's what I had, whereas ordinarily I'll use 100% dark chocolate plus nut milk and then sweeten if necessary. I think most people prefer the dark chips, but for me, they are _way_ too sweet, and too much sugar. A small piece of the cake with that topping took me a day to recover from.

I used my 100% dark chocolate/nut milk technique to make the mint truffles pictured below. They were too dark for most everyone but I think they're to-die-for. There are some hazelnut chocolate balls on the plate too, and peanut butter-chocolate bars that I made specifically for butter-sugar-lovers with no substitutions.

Someone said I should go into business with my allergy-friendly treats. It was a wonderful compliment, but also even more confusing with my current struggle to recombobulate and reorient.

How do you decide what is the most important thing you should be doing in any moment?

Have a beautiful weekend--I'm going to get out and hike that ice and slush!