Termination Dust and Eggplant-Chickpea Stew

I can't believe it's already the end of Wednesday! We had to go to Anchorage for a couple days and as often, my whole schedule, creativity and productivity is spinning off somewhere in another universe. Thank you for all the kind support and loving responses to my last post. I felt sorry to be mia right after sharing something so 'heavy,' but here I am now.

This is about the best time of year for Fall colors here and I have some amazing pictures to share (probably tomorrow, mostly)! We stopped and harvested some lingonberries, aka low-bush cranberries. They are tart and probably full of antioxidants. The picking wasn't wonderful but we're not going to eat bushels of them either! I'll probably make jam for Phil.

 "Termination dust"--fresh snow on the mountains...

More pictures of the world up here soon...

But I promised that I would share some food-makings that involve deliciousness and planning and eschew the 'too busy' excuse and cold potatoes.

When Phil was visiting with his guy friends for a couple nights, I decided to indulge a craving for eggplant, middle eastern style: a taste of home. Forward planning also came in handy: I had a pint jar of cooked chickpeas in the freezer from all the way back in July when I made so much hummus for the wedding. Thaw those out, and with plenty of garlic and spice and some onions, chard and parsley from the garden, it was quite a treat.

Ingredients:
1 medium eggplant, cut into 1-inch cubes, salted, rinsed and drained
2 cups cooked chickpeas (like a 16oz can)
1 medium-sized onion, chopped
2 teaspoons coconut oil
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/4 cup sundried tomatoes
3-4 cups water
1 teaspoon paprika
salt, black pepper
3 cups chopped chard

2 tablespoons minced parsley

In a large, heavy-bottomed pan, heat the oil and saute the onion and eggplant in the oil until the eggplant is soft and the onions translucent. (If necessary, do this in batches.)
Add the garlic, seasonings, sundried tomatoes, water and chickpeas and bring to a boil.
Cover and cook for about ten minutes.
Stir in the chard and check the seasonings, adjust if necessary.
Turn off the heat and stir in the parsley.

It would be great served with rice--I ate it just straight with some greenery and carrots on the side and some coconut kefir on top--got three meals out of it.
I love how eggplant absorbs flavors within its own subtle flavor and has that light but dense texture: a special kind of deliciousness. The chickpeas add protein and 'oomph' to the dish as a whole and the parsley stirred in right at the end is just magical.

Is it Fall where you are yet? What does 'termination dust' suggest to you?

When Medication Enables Meditation...

When meditation isn't enough and you have to turn to medication...
I am so humbled by the storm that's been taking place in my body and the recognition of my own mismanagement that contributed to it.

I mentioned gratitude for my ND on Friday. And recently I also mentioned that my ND had prescribed meditation for parasympathetic support. I don't know of many 'regular doctors' who would prescribe meditation. But as it turns out, it took 'pills' to enable me to meditate. Scary to even confess that I couldn't get there on my own.

Other differences entailed by seeing a Naturopath rather than a regular doctor: --Naturopaths believe in the wisdom of the human body and the experience of thousands of years of observation of the body at least as much as they do in scientific theory.
--You might have a harder time getting insurance coverage (but I still think it's worth it).
--Naturopaths are both more amenable to using diet as a tool for healing and willing to think outside the box in terms of what is 'healthy.'
--When Naturopaths do prescribe chemical interventions, they will usually be materials 'closer to their natural state.' (I love this: I get to use my motley 'herb' collection (soon to be moved to better-organized quarters!)

BUT--this is where there's an important similarity between seeing a Naturopath and seeing a regular doctor: -- if you're using some chemical alteration, it's important to check in before changing what you're doing. In both cases, they are overseeing your health journey, and therefore you have some responsibility toward them.

I love that there is so much 'alternative information' out there and that the internet and books empower us to do so much of our own research. However, when research contradicts what the professional who is interacting with me suggests, I get into a mental/emotional conflict. I desire to take control, perhaps to defy their authority. I insist to myself that I can make 'this' work for my body, that perhaps my ND hasn't read 'that' particular piece of research, perhaps he has certain biases...But what about my own biases?

A couple months ago, I decided to stop taking my 5htp, and neglected to mention this to my ND until crisis-time this week. I decided that I was feeling so much better and was probably making enough of my own not to need to take it. It turns out that this particular neurotransmitter support is not something you can just quit taking 'like that:' a body that needs the support also gets used to having the support. That was also the same time period that I went from 'eating slightly less fat to accommodate more carbs' to pretty much cutting out fat (and protein) altogether. Both these willful decisions were directly counter to my ND's advice and were based on stuff that I'd read (plus my own desperation over body image). Well, you can't make neurotransmitters without amino acids and cholesterol, neither of which a body like mine is any good at storing, so you need to eat them! 

I think I finally get it. I confess that honestly, the only recent 'tweak' that I've done as a result of my own research that actually garnered positive results was increasing starch, which my ND had been encouraging me to do anyway!

This is humbling to acknowledge. Also humbling: I already take more pills than I'm comfortable acknowledging just to enable basic functioning. When it comes to mental/emotional balance, I intend to do my best and be my best:

so many of my posts on here are about that. Since I try so hard for that, why couldn't I do it? Why did I continue to be angry, vicious toward myself, impossible to be around?... Obviously, it was all my fault, I reasoned, and continued to feel more hopeless.

So, it was humbling to take a mega-dose of 5htp as well as a dose of elemental lithium and within a few hours, to find myself transformed, able to think of things I could do to support 'being my best,' of meditating, rediscovering Tapping, which helped so much earlier this year... Some hope comes in. Humbling that it took yet more pills to get to that point. I surround myself with material about helping myself: ironic that it took some 'assistance' to get into a space to use them.

But with the humbling comes hope also (and some sleep to integrate it all). Yes, I'm very busy, but I can't keep eating cold potatoes and undressed salad and insist that that's all I have time to prepare. I'm an expert in making good food fast, for goodness' sake! And now I can remember that.

I'll be back over the next couple days with some good examples of good, quick food that isn't entirely exclusive of fat and protein!

Do you trust your healthcare provider? Have you had any recent humbling experience?

Gratitude on Friday, Health Research Pitfalls, and Kale Bounty: Freeze or Dehydrate?

It's time to harvest those colors and appreciate the glimmerings of sun, as the days shorten here...

I want to talk soon (not today) about the pitfalls of doing one's own health/medical research and experimentation when dealing with one's self. Yes, we each know our own body best, in theory--but sometimes our demons bias our research capacities and sometimes we don't know the whole internal picture of a problem. When we take matters into our own hands, we can cause more harm than good.

It's been a scary few days. Today, I simply want to express gratitude. For the beautiful view pictured above. For my Naturopath, who saw the state I was in this morning and made time for a full consultation, rather than the adjustment I was scheduled for, and sent me home with some things that should help rein in the crazy chemistry. For the month of writing preceding yesterday that allowed me to send in my "First Packet" of the year's MFA program work. For the creative thoughts that have me excited to work on my "Second Packet" starting today.

For the abundance of the garden and the beauty of the harvest...

We definitely raised far more kale than we can eat immediately (even giving bunches of it away to appreciative friends). Some dear friends of ours who spend their summers in the Far North also put in a huge kale patch before they left.

So, I harvested a bushel of their kale and tried to preserve it for their return. I tried freezing some...

 ...and dehydrating some into kale chips: just simple lemon/olive oil/sea salt chips that they can eat straight or put in their winter soups.

Making kale chips is a somewhat time-consuming process, between shredding up the kale, massaging it, spreading it on the dehydrator trays... But freezing kale was a crazed, manic process (and not just because of the state of the girl who was doing it).

You get the kettle boiling with the steamer in it for blanching the kale. You destem and chop a mountain of kale, more waiting in the fridge. You have the ice-bath ready in the sink. You blanch the chopped kale for precisely two minutes, plunge it into the ice-bath.

You plunge the steamer back into the boiling water (not too fast, or you'll splash boiling water into your eye (don't ask me how I know)). You dump in more kale, then chop chop chop madly for two minutes to have more ready when you've dumped that load in the ice-bath. Ice-bath's getting warm: did you make enough more ice?

You dance over to the freezer, pull out the just-barely ice, dump it in the tepid ice-bath. Water's still boiling furiously on the stove, have you chopped enough kale to throw in the steamer? Repeat da capo.

Meanwhile, poor Phil has agreed to take the blanched kale and vacuum-seal it. Thankfully, at this point you're still dog-sitting up at that beautiful house, so you're not trying to do the fire-bath and ice-bath dance and vacuum-sealing all on one four-foot counter.

You almost chop through your fingernail, you burn your thumb. You spill water and kale everywhere.
When the flurry finally passes, you shake, shake, shake the kale in the steamer and discover that maybe Phil didn't shake so much, as you follow the water trail to the vacuum sealer.

He's thumping and cursing: not as easy as it looked. It's taking at least eight tries to seal each small bag. The vacuum sucks, and all the liquid comes up into the sealing area. A wet vacuum seal is like a unicorn: in your dreams. You relieve Phil and assume the frustration for yourself.

And once you've blanched kale, a lot of the good stuff is in the liquid! So, if it's not going to seal for the freezer without having the last drop of liquid removed, is it really any good at that point or is it just green decoration?

No, I haven't repeated the performance, although it definitely deserved an audience. For me, the dehydrator wins hands-down. Easier to store the finished product also.

Would you prefer your kale harvest dehydrated or frozen for storage?
Have you ever had your 'health research' and self-experimentation backfire on you?
What are you glad for this Friday?

"Go go go" versus the Still Center; Getting House in Order

Well, a few days have slipped by since I last posted! Thanks for the compassion about getting our little space tidy and about finding some tranquil space within oneself. The balance between 'go-go-go' and the still center that allows the wheel to spin is exactly the 'ulterior harmony' that inspired this blog's name: I try to put reminders of it in prominent places in my life to undercut my forgetting.

But  still, I forget--I've been busy! My first 'packet' of original creative work and three critical essays is due to be sent to my Mentor this coming Thursday, so it's getting close. I'm loving the process of creating the work, although of course it all feels way too 'raw' to send for scrutiny.

I've also been busy getting our house in order. Remember this tall cabinet, the shell of which I put together probably two months ago?

Well, it's now a five-drawer unit!

 All ready to get filled up with things that otherwise dangle around on countertops.

And then this mess...

 Has been transformed into this:

I just need Phil's help to fit it under the counter (and first the counter needs to be level...) 

I'm grateful to have had the impetus to get this done. The worst book piles are also sorted; now I just need to wade through the paperwork backlog! It feels good to create the foundations of an uncluttered place.

Meanwhile, back to the 'ulterior harmony:' I take seriously my ND's 'prescription' to spend some alone time every day, even if it's only five minutes, doing something to support my 'parasympathetic' system. All the busy-ness and craziness is mirrored in the crazy soup of my body; I'm having to increase rather than reduce some of my supps/meds, and the constant imperative to supply cortisol for the craziness means that even less of the other necessary things gets produced. 

There have been days when less work gets done because my self is going crazy, spinning wheels in overdrive, getting nowhere except to self-denigrating places from which I should stay away. Some days, my 'alone time for parasympathetic support' has been head-under-covers hiding out. Others, I can enjoy the blessing that we are having a few raspberries ripening...

 ...much later than usual and far fewer than usual, due to the ravages of the snowshoe hares last winter. Some of our carrots are getting big too, and they are so delicious.

But see how the bottom left is rodent-gnawed? If we want to eat our carrots, we may have to harvest most of them before they fill out all the way to their points. Raising a garden is definitely a competitive sport up here!

Now, I'd better get back to my writing.
How do you keep yourself reminded of what 'the demon' wants you to forget?

House-sit Lesson: Clear My Own House! Blackcurrant Smoothie

I'm home! Since last night, I'm relieved of dog-watching duty and the dogs are relieved of me and delighted to have their mom and dad back. Phil's off on a lad's weekend, so I have some delicious quiet time and best of all, it has been a gorgeous day! This post is coming lateish because I spent as much time outside as I could. This is the time when fall colors brighten to press on your eyes, to be stored for a monochrome winter drawing ever closer--sunshine is a bonus, get it while you can!

Of course, I'm moving back in with fresh eyes. I'm going to be very honest here and show just how terribly messy my little space is.

 

Pretty disgraceful, right? (But you can see the blue ocean outside too!) Piles of papers, some of them past due to be dealt with, current stuff surfing on top. It's especially shameful when compared with this beautiful space I was just staying in, with all surfaces expansive and uncluttered.

The problem: piles of notebooks, books and paperwork, some of it getting buried before it's dealt with. The further problem: our bookshelves (we have two more besides this one) look like this!

I recognize that apathy is playing its part in this persistent mess and that some serious butt-booting will have to take place to make changes. But I think it'll be worth it! I hope to show a far less cluttered space in the very near future.

On this gorgeous day, I got in from a morning of errands with no leftovers in the fridge and realized that whereas last year I was often having smoothies three times a day, I've only had one smoothie since I got back from the residency three weeks ago. This is partly because it's been so cold and wet, and my smoothies tend to feature quite a lot of frozen fruit because quality and quantity of available fruit is so variable here, so it's been a chilling prospect.

Frankly, I've also been begrudging the couple of minutes it takes even to throw a smoothie together! I've been eating a lot of cold boiled potatoes, undressed salad greens and carrots. I haven't been wanting to stop for anything, so it was good to talk with my ND today and have it driven home confirmed that slowing down before I crash would be smart.

With the sun shining and no cold potatoes as an excuse not to play with the Vitamix, I grabbed two big handfuls of spinach from the garden, and added several handfuls of various kinds of fruit, including some frozen grapes and watermelon and some of these blackcurrants.

These currants grow wild across the bay and are really unique. They're sweet and tart as blackcurrants should be, but they also earn their nickname of 'stinkberries' with a slight overtone that tastes kind of like, well, skunk odor!

I also added about a teaspoon of pea protein powder and a teaspoon of Amazing Grass powder.

A lovely lunch for a belated summer day: it was sweet and juicy with just a hint of tartness from the berries and a tiny overtone of that wild skunkiness. Sweet to fix the colors in my soul before they leave through the taste route also.

How do you talk yourself down when you get overanxious/frenetic?
Have you enjoyed any wild or unusual fruits lately?

Shopping on the Beach with Phil (Amazing Fossils); Mushroom Risotto

I hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend! My apologies to everyone left in suspense about Phil missing across the Bay from my last post: he got home soaked but safe and well Saturday night.

We go walking on the beach a lot: Phil, especially, can't keep himself away. The truth is, he's shopping! Almost every time he hikes the beach, he finds something that he would love to have. Usually, it's logs of Western Red Cedar, washed up after a thousands-of-miles journey. Taking possession of such a log involves levers, winches and ingenuity, and sometimes most of a day. A morning beach hike will often determine how he spends the rest of the day.

With a huge storm forecast but an unexpectedly sunny (blustery!) afternoon, we hiked Mud Bay, a beach in town that is almost always deserted. And for once, I was the one who found something that I had to have! I've mentioned more than once before that I tend to prefer small, hand-sized rocks. Not this time!
It's a flat rock, about two feet long by one foot wide...

...and it's covered in alder leaf fossils! Hard to see them in that bigger picture, so here are a couple close-ups:

...Some bits of reed or branch in there with the vein too.

And it's like that all over the slab! I couldn't get over it. Thankfully, it was only about 30lbs (although that's plenty heavy when you have a couple miles to hike). Phil and I took turns carrying it.

In a way, it feels odd to me to remove something from its resting place. On the other hand, resting places on our beaches are always temporary. This is such a beautiful work of art, I feel it needs to be seen.

Back in my A is for "Amaranth" post, I mentioned that I'd been having a hankering for risotto. I'm loving the amaranth, and that wild mushroom-amaranth dish worked great. But I have finally made some bona fide risotto too and want to share it!

The occasion was simply that I got some marked-down Arborio rice at the grocery store and had some cheap white wine for cooking available. It's probably a decade since I made risotto, back in college, not using fancy Arborio but probably the cheap broken-grain Basmati I used to get in big bags at the Indian grocery store.

I pretty much made it up as I went along, and was pleased with the result!

The measuring cup in the picture above is full of dried porcini mushrooms reconstituting in hot water, to be used as broth. I dropped a piece of ginger in there accidentally and forgot to fish it out: guess what was in Phil's very first bite of the risotto? Otherwise, he liked it a lot too, which means a huge amount to me, considering how different our tastes are.

Served with a pretty salad and some grapes, and some more substantial things for Phil (not pictured).

It looks pretty, even as something relatively monochrome, and it was just the right balance of creamy and chewy.

Here's how:
Mushroom Risotto (Vegan)
Ingredients:
1 cup Arborio rice
1/4 cup dried porcini mushrooms soaked in 2 1/2 cups boiling water*
1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 small onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup mushrooms (unusually, I used a can: there were no decent fresh mushrooms at the store)
1 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
salt and pepper to taste

*Soak the mushrooms in the boiling water at least 30 minutes before you make this. I only had 1/8 cup dried porcinis, so that's what I used and it was fine, but more would have been good too.

In a three-quart heavy-bottomed saucepan, melt the coconut oil.
Add the onions and cook until they start to turn transparent; then add the rice and mushrooms.
Stir until the rice is transparent, then add the wine and the garlic.
When the wine has reduced so that there are dry troughs when you stir, start adding the porcini 'broth' a quarter cup at a time. Fish out the porcinis and add them to the pot when you add the first quarter-cup.
Add the broth gradually like this, stirring regularly.
Right at the end, add the nutritional yeast and salt and pepper.
Grind fresh black pepper atop each serving when plated.

4-6 servings (we've already gotten five servings out of it, but we go small, it seems), and it only took 30 minutes or so. Easy, delicious, not too many ingredients!

Do you collect treasures when you go to the beach?
Any unusual places where you go 'shopping?'

The Art of Losing--The Art of Finding

I mentioned in my last post that my self's been a little tweakish lately. Losing and forgetting are not normally part of the program. Well, last night I lost the keys!

That dreaming cone center-shot is Mt Augustine. Sometimes it smokes.

I was out on Bishops Beach in the evening, as the light seeped away (it's dark by 10pm now). They also were not the keys to our beater car: they were the keys to Phil's daughter's very nice SUV, with probably all our friends' house keys on there too!

What makes everything more complicated is that I'm dog-and-house-sitting right now, watching Phil's daughter's and her mom's pupsters, staying at Phil's daughter's mom's Leslie's house, which is up the hill and a long way from the beach.

To make it even more complicated, Phil is gone, across the bay with our neighbor, supposed to be gone one night, we're on the third now.

So, there I am alone in the dusk with no keys and two tired, confused dogs, so baffled by the absence of keys that I forget to beat up on myself much, (although I just don't do 'losing!') I'm so grateful to have been shown that I was not alone, that Losing is an Art, and so is Finding. A kind couple, Bonnie and Mike, first helped me hunt the keys, then gave me a ride to our home so I could drive the dogs up the hill in the 'warthog.' I called the police to tell them I'd left this precious vehicle at the beach and they were interested and not dismissive.

By the next morning, I had directions to find a spare key for Amy's car, had picked up said key, and the dogs and I headed out for a beach hike and key hunt.

I didn't find the key. I knew I wouldn't somehow, but was still incredulous that it could be 'vanished.' The overnight high tide wasn't as high as the previous afternoon's, so it seemed unlikely that it had washed away. Besides, my strong intuition was that I'd lost it in the parking area, in the initial flurry of excited dogs, leashes, bag of treats. I stayed with that intuition, paid attention to what I could let go of during that hike, what I could find. I found this shelter someone had built from alder branches, driftwood logs and an old tarp...

...the dogs were impressed by it.

On this beach where the bluff is always slipping toward ocean, I found a sleeping bag buried by a landslide! Luckily, no one was occupying it.

 For perspective, here's the bluff with the buried bag at bottom.

 By the time we were back at the parking area, I had also gathered quite a collection of debris that had no business perseverating on the shore, and a juvenile bird with a broken neck. There was also a very dead small sea otter that the dogs peed on, that was being 'reclaimed.'

 The dogs enjoyed chasing crows until the sky wheeled with them.

I drove the dogs to our cabin, rode my bike back to the beach, threw it in the warthog and drove that back to the cabin. If Phil gets in tonight, he won't know anything happened!

And the outcome is: nothing did happen! When I called the police to let them know I'd moved the car, they said someone had turned in a keychain with a Honda key they'd found at the beach. Of course, this wasn't a coincidence! The incredulous part of me that wanted to understand what happened is quite satisfied. The part of me that wished to take this as an opportunity to accept loss and pay attention to my intuition felt like something magic had happened. The part that is horrified at my current 'tweakiness' was unutterably relieved.

Staying at Leslie's house, with this wonderful kitchen, is such a pleasure.

 It's pleasant to have space, to have variety selection of comfortable chairs, a kitchen with many counters. The tidiness and spaciousness is instructive for me also: this isn't just a large space, it's a picked-up space with a spot for every item. The harmonious feeling this brings me is inspiring me to see if I can do a better job of planning storage for our place. Of course, our cabin's barely bigger than the kitchen here, but that doesn't mean we can't do better than just moving things from one pile to another!

Since I still haven't fixed my rebounder or found a better one, these stairs are another wonderful luxury, from the exercise perspective!

My muscles have been sore generally recently, part of the 'tweakiness,' and generally, it hasn't felt good. But the soreness in my calves after running up and down these stairs thirty times or so has a deliciousness to it.

I haven't been taking advantage of the kitchen as I ought--too busy writing or hunting for keys. But this plate of steamed vegetables from our garden (rutabaga, broccoli, onion, chard) with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and a drop of olive oil, is good beyond its simpleness.

Do you ever lose things? Does the situation usually resolve harmoniously?
How do you keep your place picked up?