April 23, 2007

I can’t even keep malt-sweetened, non-dairy chocolate chips in the house. I bought some last week to make strawberries dipped in chocolate (for a date), but after all 6 of the possibly-edible berries were plucked form the box (yes, it’s April, but THEY’RE FROM CALIFORNIA!!) and dipped in chocolate ganache*, I had a ton of gooey stuff leftover and more than a few actual chips. ARGH. But let’s be honest, that was exactly my intention when deciding on the recipe. I even remember the moment, turning the corner on the baking aisle at Whole Foods thinking ‘if I get chocolate chips, I’ll have a bunch left over!” and my nervous system’s double-jointed reaction after that: a simultaneous ‘AWESOME’ and ‘UH OH’.

Anyway, that leads me to plug a book I have been reading called Breaking the Food Seduction by Dr. Neal Barnard. Not only is this guy the real deal–a doc–but he’s a hardcore vegan, gives really funny lectures, and has conducted, like, five million studies. Okay. Good thing I’m not a scientist trying to stick to the facts. But he is. He is also the founder of the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine. Check him out. If you have issues with chocolate, sugar, dairy or meat, Breaking the Food Seduction helps to clarify the exact chemical reasons for our food lusts and gives very practical tips on how to break the dependencies. In fact, anything by Dr. Neal is worth reading.

*(heat chips in double boiler over simmering water, adding some unsweetened soymilk until you get a lovely glossy consistency. Dip berry and refrigerate on parchment or waxed paper)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 12:20 pm and is filed under My Life, Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

April 18th, 2007.

So, I’ve been thinking… I want to make this forum helpful to people, so I am considering it my homework, from now on, to cook interesting things on a regular basis and report them to you. That way, I can pass on the cooking inspiration and WE CAN SAVE THE WORLD.

Speaking of the world, the whole Virginia Tech thing went down this week. No words can even get close to the horror of it, and yet, the universe has made it so that we are each housed within our personal shells, and so “tragedy” is only ever felt one person at a time. In this circumstance, many, many individuals are feeling excruciating pain, but it actually never more than one person doing the feeling. The media, because of the numbers, is using this drama to create a hugeness, to lance a boil, that doesn’t actually exist. Just as love can be felt only on an individual basis, so can grief. One is much more pleasant than the other, and requires less support, but all perceptions are essentially subjective. I wonder if the movie we are creating on TV right now is not TEN THOUSAND TIMES more dramatic–and violent–than what is actually happening to the individuals whose lives have been touched.

I am not suggesting that we have no compassion for the suffering–that is natural. And saying prayers or raising our vibrations to send support to them is good. But to engage in the orgy of the media is another thing all together–it is a mass hypnosis that leads to… God only knows… mass confusion? Rage? Paranoia?

But perhaps there’s actually a deeper reason for it. In my lifetime, we have gone from three major channels on the TV (yang–contracted, focused, fewer in number) to hundreds (yin–multiple, expanded, unfocused). We record, rent and download our personal media worlds from our laptops. Instead of three anchormen doing the hypnosis (and creating collective minds), thanks to the internet, there are now billions and billions of options, like a spray of fiber optics, splitting information into bits and pieces that we each, subjectively, grasp to create what we call “the world”.

I saw a Time Warner ad the other day that said “The world revolves around you” and I found that frightening. Yes, we create our own reality. Yes, we are watching our own inner “movies” all day, created by our own subconscious minds. But to have the actual external world actually bend and craft itself around the individual to suit that person’s subjectivity seems like the death of the collective–the death of any group-think at all. And group think–although it sometimes gets a bad rap–is not always bad. Groups do things like march on Washington against policies they collectively agree are destructive. They strike. And they vote. But most of all, in a group, all those subjectivities are actually made stronger, creating an entity larger than any small self. They hypnotize each other, and their energy grows through their collection. Think of the civil rights movement. The suffragettes. Hippies. Yes, there were Nazis too, so group think is not inherently good, but we’ve never gone a generation without it. Until now. I don’t really feel any group think anymore. Do you?

So maybe we milk the Virginia Techs not only because they are awful, and therefore bypass the the monotony of our conscious minds, but because they are our opportunity to come together–if only in horror–and experience something collectively. There is a real need for any entity, whether it’s an individual, a family, a nation or a planet, to experience its wholeness, its oneness, its larger self. We have split our consciousness into so many shards that we don’t get to feel that wholeness much anymore; instead, we are supposed to be comforted by the unique and fabulous “worlds” that the media are allowing us to fashion for ourselves. It is only when an unhappy self, bent on busting out of his isolation, sprays bullets into strangers, that we bother to look up from our ipods.

Eat whole grains.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 12:16 pm and is filed under Spiritual Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

April 15th, 2007.

I made a macro dinner for my family last night: Barley salad, arame w/onions, tempeh and pine nuts, carrot nishime, blanched bok choy and strawberry kanten with tofu cream. Oh yeah, lentil-leek soup as well. My brothers-in-law brought steak and sausage, to keep them happy, but the rest of the food seemed to round out their meals admirably.

Leek-Lentil Soup:

Perfect for spring, even though it’s incredibly cold here right now!
1 cup lentils
8 cups water, plus about 8 more later
About a tablespoon of dried wakame
2 large leeks, washed carefully and sliced thinly
Pinch of sea salt
Mellow white miso to taste
Fresh lemon juice
Parsley for garnish

First, I cooked the lentils in the 8 cups of water, with the wakame. They cooked for about 45 minutes, while I did all the other stuff for the meal. Then I sliced the leeks and water sauteed them with a pinch of salt until they were sweaty and limp. Add water to the leeks and let them come to a boil. Add lentils and miso. I then whizzed the whole concoction with my handheld blender (referred to as a “food dildo” by my friend Ginger). Finally, a big squeeze of lemon juice to add a nice light, springy touch. Ladle into bowls and garnish. Voila! Should serve at least ten. My family loved it.

Since writing this entry, I have also made a leek/cauliflower/dill/lemon soup which is really great: Just boil up a head of cauliflower (in florets), with two leeks, cleaned and sliced. Add an inch of kombu. Add water to cover. Let is come to a boil and simmer about half an hour. Remove kombu. Whizz with food dildo. Add white miso to taste, a big squeeze of lemon and about 1 tablespoon of chopped dill. You can serve this hot or chilled–I prefer chilled.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 11:51 am and is filed under My Life, Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

April 14th, 2007

I moved. Well, an ox named Brett moved me, to be precise. Thank God for bloody beef and the people who eat it; Brett is the strongest person I have ever met and his ability to swing boxes and haul armchairs literally amazes me. I watch like an anemic fifth-grader as he transports my… life. When we go out for dinner, after a long day of shifting gross matter, Brett digs into a rack of ribs with gusto. Yin and yang, baby.

So I’m living in the town where I grew up–well, city actually. Megacity, if I’m honest. I moved from Portland, Maine, population 65,000, to Toronto, population four and half million. And that requires an expansion of spirit, on my part.

The first few days were heady with domestic chores. Getting the cable hooked up. Unloading the kitchen (I am happy and fortunate to report that the kitchen of my rented apartment has, at this writing, more cupboard space than I know what to do with–the ultimate luxury), buying sheets. And of course, what’s really happening is that I am marking my territory–just like my cats are–sending my unique vibes out into the environment. Staking my claim. Setting the tone. Living space is very important to me–I think it’s a reflection of the psyche. That last sentence might make you belive that I am a neat freak, which I am most definitely NOT. But I do believe that a living space must be comfortable, energetically warm and loving–a “soft place to land” as my favorite balding, multimillionaire TV psychotherapist would say. I want a home that, when I am exhausted on the subway, I think of it and I feel better. I want a home that exists at the end of every adventure as a peaceful refuge. I want a home that’s filled with love.

Excuse me? Did I just write that Hallmark sentence? What exactly do I mean be “love”? In very practical terms, I mean the following: I need to cook good quality food in a home before it’s a home. And I need to meditate there a few times. You see, the food raises the vibration–literally. It clarifies and organizes a confused space. The natural lifeforce of whole foods bash on into the kitchen and begin to run the joint. Likewise, when I meditate, letting go of the neurotic, dualistic chatter of my mind (or at least getting above it) I begin to send out a unified signal, a strong pulse. That’s when the Self moves in, and that’s when it’s home.

Please remind me to re-read the above paragraph every day!!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 11:47 am and is filed under My Life, Spiritual Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

April 9, 2007

I’m sitting on the floor of my apartment, boxes, pens, old photographs, and other various bits of life detritus strewn about me. My cat sits, purring, next to me, looking for direction. She has the most intense stare and I often wonder what she’s thinking about. To her, a bomb has gone off in her life–favorite hiding places demolished, fur-covered pillows removed. We are moving to Toronto and she will become a Canadian cat. I wonder if her “meow” will change.

Moving is an exceptional experience, for many reasons; first, there’s no getting around the “moving” of moving. Everything must move. Physical things on the actual material plane. And there are no shortcuts. It makes me see, that in my normal daily life, if I tweak my attitude, or change a thought, my whole day can change; be nice to someone at the DMV, and the service I receive is quite different from that I receive if I shout and bang plate glass. Likewise, if I just alter a decision, like “maybe I’ll go to that dinner thing tonight”, all sorts of material-world things shift in accordance with the decision. But with moving, I can’t charm my way out of packing a box. No decision in my head will have that tchotchke leap into the bubble wrap. I must actually DO it. Every single ounce of moving is moving. One thing at a time. Very yang. It reveals to me the charm or bullshit margin that exists in life.

Funny how there are some careers that rely upon big shifts in the vibrational world–like the world of finance. I have always found in confounding that there are people who earn a slice of whatever money pie they are transferring. Like Paypal. It doesn’t even exist in the physical world, and yet, every time someone makes a transaction through its system, Paypal takes its slice. And although that slice (in terms of percentage) remains consistent, the more expensive the pie, the bigger Paypal’s slice. One transaction, without anybody, technically, lifting a finger. A very yin way of earning, and representative of an entirely different mentality vis a vis the world.

My book is the same. I delivered it to the publisher on December 15th, 2003 and after 6 months of editing, my work was over. And yet it not only continues to sell, it continues to do its work–in many different locations simultaneously–as crazy black scratches on a page, without my even remembering what I wrote. The yin world of ideas and multiplicity and space BLOW MY MIND.

And then there’s moving; a couch is a couch is a couch and it weighs 200 pounds. And somebody’s gotta freakin’ lift it! No airy-fairy yin approach to that.

Moving has also brought humility; I thought I would be ready by a certain date, but was about, oh, 10 days off my projection. I had to wrestle with my ego–the demanding, arrogant tyrant–and surrender to reality. I also had the brilliant idea of renting a trailer so I could drag all my belongings, plus my car, and my cats, all in one go. I thought I’d save time and money that way. But the day before the big move, when the fifth (male) friend mentioned that maybe I should check how much my car could safely tow for 600 miles before damaging the transmission, I finally surrendered again. With the trailer sitting, half-packed, in my driveway, I sat in my car, on the phone with a friend in New York. With him there to pick up my psychic pieces, I thumbed through the owner’s manual (so that’s what those are for!) and discovered that my car could safely tow a trailer weighing no more than 1,000 lbs., including its contents. Thanks to the magic of Google (talk about multiple, vibrational and not existing in the material world!!), my buddy in New York discovered that my very real trailer–empty–weighs 900 lbs. Well, if I wanted to transport a box of dishes and a lamp, I was good to go!

This gets back to the material (yang) world. The car can take one thousand pounds. Beyond that, the transmission gets taxed, and the brakes are strained. Period. With a trailer filled to capacity (as it would have been) I’d be pulling at least double the recommended limit, over 600 miles. Even with the sweetest smile, the greatest joke, or even a desperate flash of my breast, my Honda Civic can’t get around those odds. MOVING IS ABOUT MOVING and it’s subject to laws of the universe. Not personality. ARRRRRRRRRRRGHH!!!!!!!
So I’ve rented a truck ($$$), am having a friend drive my car, and I’m a few more days off my schedule. It’s all gonna get done, without bloodshed, and Brett’s gonna see Toronto for the first time. Maybe that’s what this whole thing is about. Who knows? I surrender.

Finally, I have lost about a ton of weight this week–literally. With trips to the dump and half-assed recycling (AL GORE WOULD KILL ME) I have dropped more stuff than I ever considered imaginable. Am I the only one who holds onto magazines, hoping I will find the time to read that article? And still, I have stored boxes of things I can’t let go of; I am a sucker for mementos–knowing, that when I’m eighty, I will really love going through those boxes, looking at photos and reading letters that trigger the old and crusty neural pathways in my brain which will hold–so tenderly–this life.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 11:46 am and is filed under My Life, Spiritual Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Okay, Okay, I’m blogging.

Ugh. I hate that word. Sounds like schlogging through something, or barfing, all wound up in a long “blahhhhhhh”.

Resistance. I face resistance every day in my macrobiotic practice. On my best days, I cook a full meal, from soup to dessert, complete with pickle and condiment, and on my not-so-good days I eat rice, beans and guacamole in an airport. Like today.

I am on my way to Toronto, which is where I was born. In the last 23 years, I have visited there many times, and with each visit, my resistance to returning (permanently) has waned. In the last five years, in fact, each time I leave, I haul with me a heavy heart and a new understanding of the word “homesick”. Like summer camp times ten.

Everything eventually becomes its opposite. Whereas I once ran, FAST, away from this city–and my family within it–I am now pulled with the exact same, beyond-my-control force to dive back in the soup of my past (holding my breath), by moving to the big T.O.

But this should be an interesting experiment, letting the past meet the present, braiding a future. For a number of years now, I have felt that the inner core of my being–the stuff that was formed as a child and adolescent–has been clamoring for attention. When I moved to Los Angeles for a winter recently, I instructed all my friends to “introduce me to Canadians–I wanna hang out with Canucks!”

I think some of it comes from being macro. My inner self is very much alive and kicking, having been fed vegetable-based foods for such a long time–my core, and all the rings of my personal tree–are awake and sensitive and looking for some mirroring. And maybe it’s just time I confront an adolescence that was painful and dark, shedding some light on it like feeding a doomed blossom fertilizer. I dunno yet.

So there. I blogged.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 11:21 am and is filed under My Life, Spiritual Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.