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Making Raw Candy

Posted on February 22, 2010 | 1 comment

Typically I will write about food shopping on Mondays. However, I didn’t do the grocery shopping this week; my husband did. This is not a typical scenario. He hates grocery shopping (we split household chores based on who likes to do what. Luckily, there’s not a lot of overlap!). Anyhow, I suppose that I could just write about his shopping experience. But I really think that if I got a pass this week, I should just take it! Besides, this post is still food-related!

Dave and I attended a candy-making class at the Traditional Food Warehouse on the Thursday before Valentine’s day (yep, I’m a little behind on posting about this!). The class was taught by Dave’s sister Sheri, who, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, is the goddess of mind-blowing healthy desserts. It was framed around creating a gift for one’s valentine. Of course, I was there with my valentine, so he and I just made our candy to our own liking (how romantical, right?! This is what starts to happen after 7 years of togetherness!). It made for a fun date night, regardless, as we listened to music, sampled different flavor combinations with cacao, and drank wine while learning about, and learning to make, raw fudge.

I’m not going to go into great detail regarding the content of the class, as I recommend that anyone interested should check out one of Sheri’s classes in person. I will say that the basic premise of the class is that raw cacao (uncooked ground cocoa beans), and the other ingredients in the fudge, are health foods. This fudge contains no oil and no sugar; raw honey is the only sweetener.

Pasture butter is used instead of oil or corn syrup:

Here’s some of the class pounding the clumps out of their raw cacao (that’s Dave in the foreground, of course, and the guy next to him is my uncle Pete!).

Here’s my brother-in-law and his girlfriend creaming the butter:

Raw Cacao is a controversial amongst health-foodies. Some nutritionists list it as a superfood. When uncooked our bodies are able to derive a buffet of nutrients from the cacao, including much-needed enzymes and anti-oxidants. However, some still argue that cacao is toxic. Toxicity is doubtless when cacao is added to sugar or corn syrup and hydrogenated oils to make the candy bars found in standard grocery stores. I tend to doubt that raw cacao sweetened with honey is anything but good for us (in moderation, of course!) – especially since it has been used medicinally since ancient times! Here’s the raw powder :

We could choose from a variety of spices to add (Sheri measured them out for us – I chose cinnamon!):

When we were done mixing up all the ingredients, we spooned them into these heart shaped candy molds (I also added walnuts to mine):

The two pieces of candy above may not look big, but in terms of how rich this fudge is, they are enormous! Between Dave and I we had four, and there are still 2 1/4 sitting in our fridge. They are so good, but not in the addictive, crack-y way a Hershey bar is good. The raw fudge, unlike commercial chocolate, tastes really good. You eat one bite, and are satisfied. It doesn’t impart what Dave and I call the “shovel reflex.” Anyone who has ever eaten half a bag of Hershey’s kisses without realizing it knows what that means! It’s the impulse to keep eating that sugar signals.

Sherri has started a product line of raw cacao ice cream toppings called “Rock-a-Cow” (get it? raw cacao = rock a cow!):

If you are interested in trying some of this delicious dessert topping, or in taking one of Sheri’s healthy dessert classes, she can be reached at sherimiller.miller@gmail.com!

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Do Clothes Matter? More Adventures with Body Dismorphia

Posted on February 8, 2010 | 3 comments

My husband got a job! Woohoo! (this will be the supplement to his own massage practice). He had a bunch of interviews last week, which means that we had to go shopping on Monday night to get him an interview outfit. It ended up being more of a shopping extravaganza than we expected. My husband very, very rarely shops for clothes. He would like to do it more often, but when it comes down to spending money on clothing or on other things, he will always choose other things. This means that he often lets clothing disintegrate way too much before replacing it. Hence, he was, until Monday night, at a place where almost everything he owned was completely worn and tattered. We ended up getting him 3 shirts, a hoodie, a pair of shoes, and a wool coat. He walked out of the store like he had a new lease on life. After his first interview he told me that for once when he walked into an office, everyone there seemed to respect him. He felt that it had a lot to do with being dressed nicely (I suspect it also had to do with him being a professional in the field that is practiced in that particular office!).

We both need further wardrobe infusion; and we have set aside a bit of our tax return for that purpose. Despite the fact that this runs counter to our attitude throughout our 20’s; at this point in time Dave and I are both convinced that clothing does matter. Both of us have observed enough at this point to have noticed the difference in people’s attitudes towards us when we are dressed nicely. Is it shallow that human beings base so much on physical presentation? Probably. It shouldn’t matter. Can we help our snap judgments based on personal presentation?  Maybe. But I’m leaning towards “no.” Not without some consciousness training. Our brains are wired to pick out traits that denote health and social dominance. In our society, those traits aren’t always inherent to our bodies or minds. They are  often purely ornamental.

I spent most of my 20’s stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that “business casual” is an acceptable requirement for work. My attitude was based on 2 things: 1. clothes don’t actually hold any bearing over a person’s performance of their job, 2. business clothes are expensive, and few people make enough money in their 20’s to afford work clothes AND casual clothes. I still think that both items are true. However, I now know how it can hold a person back in their career to show up to work looking less-than-polished. People will judge you; whether they mean to or not.

The paradoxical thing about my attitude at the time is that I did actually really like clothes. I had a personal style, it was just much more casual than what was appropriate for work. So, I did actually care about my appearance. Just not at the office. I like clothes because of personal expression. Dressing oneself can be a pretty creative act. It can be a lot of fun, and can have a  profound effect on they way we see ourselves. I still love looking at clothes…on other people, that is. I fear that I have lost any zeal for actually dressing myself.

Sometime around the age of 23 I recall having a conversation with a friend that included the phrase: “please don’t ever let me go out in public wearing sweats.” Fast forward 7 years, to my frequent uniform: yoga pants and a tee-shirt. This decade’s sweats equivalent. Furthermore, most of my work clothes are ill-fitting and/or really old. Most of my casual outfits consist of jeans, a tee-shirt, a hoodie, and tennis shoes. When I have to go out for social events I panic about what I’m going to wear. I know that I would feel a lot better about myself if I liked what I was wearing. Sadly, I have realized that I have lost most of the sense of personal style that I once had.

Shopping now is kind of a wilderness experience for me. I feel lost. I feel uninspired. I feel frustrated. I have had very little luck during recent shopping trips. I just haven’t been able to find anything that I like that also looks decent on me. Part of me feels like the problem is that I have never adjusted my personal style to the change in my body size. I still like clothing that really only looks good on women who are smaller than I am. This could be somewhat true. There are some things that are exclusively for the size 8 and under. However, I often see outfits on women who are my size, or larger, that look really cute, and would totally fit under the category of “things I like.” This leads me to suspect that part of the problem is that, once again, I am not seeing what is really there when I look in the mirror.

So, what do I do? I guess that I’m just going to have to take what I know intellectually about shapes and colors that flatter me (the “shapes” bit is mostly stuff that I’ve picked up from What Not to Wear. Hey, it’s instructional!). And buy things based on actual fit instead of on what I see. This could be kind of tricky! But I’m going to have to go for it.

What do you have a personal philosophy on clothing? Do you think it matters?

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Creating a Life

Posted on January 29, 2010 | Leave a comment

Lately I’ve been focusing a lot on food and health on this blog, but that is not the only fish I’ve got to fry! What of my art goals for 2010? Well, I have not resumed The Artist’s Way. I have not joined a writer’s group, and I have not started guitar lessons (yet). However, I don’t feel like I’m suffering for lack of creative outlets.

I haven’t started doing the creative endeavors that I set out to do this year because I’ve been pretty busy. I’ve been busy in a good way. For one thing, I have been doing a lot of editing lately. As David has been working on getting marketing materials together for his massage practice, and cover letters together for job applications, I’ve been busy helping him to craft messages that are good representations of him and what he believes in. I’ve also been asked to look at several cover letters for friends recently, which is fun for me. Editing is something that I’m good at, and it feels good to use something I’m good at to help people out. Many people may not realize that editing is actually quite creative. It’s a real creative challenge to take something that somebody else has written and tweak it to suit his or her audience while still retaining his or her “voice.”

Editing aside, I have also been learning HTML. The main reason that I set out to learn it is for career development. Many writing positions are now web-based. Even though I already know how to use several web editors, most web-based positions require at least a basic HTML knowledge. The second reason for learning it is that I am slowly but surely building a (very basic) website for David’s practice. I know that there are a lot of cheap services that we could use to create a website for him; we may still use one of them to build something fancier. But right now it’s good for me to have a specific project as I’m learning. It helps reinforce the knowledge. I have been finding the project very inspiring.

I haven’t put a whole lot of action into creating a career path for myself recently. At least not directly (above and beyond HTML!). But I have been working on it; at the very least I’ve been working on it at an emotional and intellectual level. This kind of thing takes a lot of thought; a lot of working through issues that I didn’t know I had. It takes up a lot of head space.

Another piece of the puzzle is trying to whip my body back into shape. I won’t hover on this topic very much right now, since I already do a lot of that on this blog, but attempting to re-create one’s body is actually very creative. So much creativity and interest goes into pouring over recipes, making food choices, designing meal plans, choosing exercise routines, and cooking. It’s much more artistic than I have ever thought it could be.

Finally, though it hasn’t been reflected much yet in the consistency of my posts, this blog has also been enormously inspiring for me. For one thing, it has brought me back to the page. It has got me writing (in public – yikes!) after a long absense of the will to write. It has me feeling exploratory, and really thinking about what it is that I want to write. There are trillions of topics to pursue, and just simply writing about my own journey through “getting my act together” has really been helping me to figure out what my secondary passions (after words) are.

I feel fulfilled right now, with the creative end of my life. It’s a new revelation that simply creating my life can fulfill that creative urge within me. Therefore, I’m not going to come down too hard on myself for not hitting the specific goals that I set out for myself a month ago. I am excited to move on to learning new things, and creating new things. But right now my life seems pretty full!

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Inner Guidance

Posted on January 22, 2010 | 6 comments

Yesterday was an emotionally challenging day for me. The cause was nothing really specific. It was just a combination of a bunch of things: my alarm didn’t go off, and I overslept. It was rainy and gray outside. I paid my bills (never fun), and realized that the new outfit I was hoping to buy for going out this weekend (more on that later) wasn’t going to happen. People keep asking me questions about a transition that is happening in my job; I don’t know the answers, and I feel anxious about it. David is looking for a job, which is gnarly business for anyone, but particularly for someone like him who has never really had to learn how to look for one. It stresses me out, too. And the walls are starting to really close in on us at home. Five adults and two large dogs make for a pretty crowded house. I felt bummed out for all of yesterday afternoon, and into the evening. I almost didn’t work out. But then I did. And I felt better.

I didn’t get enough sleep last night, and I woke up feeling bummed out again this morning. I drove to the bus depot feeling bummed out. On the bus, I wasn’t going to read because I didn’t feel like it. But then I did. And I felt better. I was reading a passage in Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul by Deepak Chopra. It was about the inner guidance that we humans have. Intuition, instinct, or soul – whatever you want to call it; I think it exists. I’ve seen many examples of it in my life. The funny thing about this inner guidance is that life is so much easier when you follow it, but people so rarely do. I’m no exception. The less you listen to it, the quieter it gets. The more you listen to it, the more it seeps out into the physical world and starts giving you direct signs of which paths you should be taking.

I think that the main thing that makes it so hard to follow intuition is how deeply rational society has become. I mean, doesn’t what I described above sound a little like schizophrenia? Listening to your “inner voice”? Looking for “signs”? All of us are a little afraid of losing our minds. So we hold on to them like a vice; allowing nothing to come in that doesn’t seem rational. Unfortunately, that vice also keeps positive things, like creativity, from going out. But isn’t it our minds that drive us crazy in the first place? Would we really be so depressed if we could stop thinking about all of the negatives? If we weren’t thinking of all the negatives, would we be spending that energy on doing the positive?  Maybe losing a little bit of our minds isn’t such a bad thing.

So, letting go of a bit of my mind, being irrational, I’ve been reflecting this morning on the times in my life when everything just fell into place. When I chose my college. When I met my husband. When I quit a bad job. When we were planning our wedding. I’ve also been thinking of the times when my intuition, and all the signs, pointed to one thing; but I did the rational thing instead, and ended up losing. When I stopped writing. When I went to school for Arts Admin. It doesn’t always have to be a major decision. Your intuition could point you to turn left instead of right, and it could end up making a huge difference in your life.

In the last year, I have made some rational decisions that also felt intuitively correct. Encouraging David to quit his job at his family business and follow his intuition to be a healer. Moving back in with my family. These are not decisions of the variety where everything falls easily into place. These are decisions of the variety that take patience. But there have been signposts along the way that have told me that I did the right thing. If I can keep my awareness open for more, and not get dragged down by negative thoughts, it’s going to get easier. The more open I am to positive change, the more opportunities I’m going to see for it.

When was the last time that everything just fell into place for you? Was it obvious? Were you open to it? Or did it seem crazy?

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Food Philosophy Vs. Practice

Posted on January 6, 2010 | 3 comments

In this post I wrote about how eating healthy is not that complicated. The overall point being that if a person eats actual food, and doesn’t eat an enormous amount of it, it’s pretty likely that he or she will be healthy. I am insanely tired of my own diet/food schizophrenia. I’m tired of thinking so hard about what I should or shouldn’t eat. I’m tired of all that thought being in vain when it becomes clear that whatever diet I’m on isn’t working, or when it conflicts with whatever the most recent nutritional science says. I’m tired of constantly starting new food routines. I just want to eat and be nourished and healthy. Period. Therefore, as part of my resolution to treat my body more respectfully, I intend to actually adopt the logical philosophy of Michael Pollan, “eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”

I sincerely hope that this will be my final change in food routine. Ever. This final change-up entails the following:

  1. More shopping and more cooking. I will be looking for the most “whole” food possible. If sustainably farmed animal products are not available, or if I don’t know where they came from, I will not be eating them. In that sense, I guess that I will still be primarily vegan (since good stuff is hard to find!). But, since I will eat any animal products under the right circumstances, I will not call myself vegan or vegetarian. I heard a new term last week that probably describes my eating habits better: “flexitarian.” Or, perhaps I just won’t term myself anything but “eater”! Anyhoo, veggies and grains will be organic and as local as possible (acknowledging, of course, that it is the dead of winter in MN right now!). As little as possible will be processed. If I want a particular dish, I’m going to try to make it entirely from scratch (it’s an adventure!).
  2. 3 squares per day, nothing between. I want to eat well-rounded meals 3 times/day, not in front of the T.V., ideally in the company of at least one other person. Acknowledging that breakfast and lunch will still most likely be consumed while sitting at my desk (I would still rather be able to go home earlier each day than take a break to eat!).

So, really, those 2 things – eat food, not too much – are kind of a lot of work in the context of the current American societal structure. When I said that eating healthy isn’t complicated, what I really meant is that it is not difficult to comprehend logically. I didn’t mean that it is easy in practice! I am personally curious about how much time this will take each week; how much work will it actually be? Also, is all the work really worth it? Therefore, I am going to add a new weekly feature to this blog. I’m going to call it “Weekly ‘Eat Food’ Wrap-up.” Here is what I plan to include in the feature:

  1. What I ate over the last week.
  2. How many hours I spent shopping.
  3. How many hours I spent cooking.
  4. Times that I went off the plan (used stuff that doesn’t technically fit).
  5. Results: Weight loss (I will also note how much I exercised as an added barometer for this), noticeable health improvements, any stuff I learn in the process about new sustainable products/where to buy them, etc.

I’m not saying that I plan to be “perfect”. In fact, I will straight up say that when it comes to eating with others at restaurants or in their homes, I will eat whatever’s put in front of me (minus the meat, in most cases) without complaint. I’m a pretty average girl, and I want to see how this goes for the average person. I know that this is kind of an exhibitionist thing to do, but I feel like it will add some motivation for me to keep on track with stated values, and it might help others who are curious about how hard it is to do this and are trying to decide whether or not it’s worth it!Anyhow, I’m going to try it and see how it goes.

What do you think?

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Working it Out: Gym Hatred and Other Exercise Dramas

Posted on November 18, 2009 | 1 comment

I have reached my first little weight loss plateau already. It came sooner than I expected; but once again, I am not 23 anymore, and can’t expect my metabolism to be the same as it was then! I’m doing pretty well on the vegan diet now, so I think it is time pump up the exercise.

I have mentioned here before that I was not a very active child growing up. In fact, exercise was connected to some of my worst childhood traumas. Ah yes, the classic childhood trauma of being the last picked for teams! As you might imagine, being terribly shy, overweight, and not particularly interested in sports did not make me a popular choice in gym class. To make matters worse, my gym teacher throughout all of grade-school (age 5-12) literally bullied me. She would do things like make me stay after class and keep hitting the goddamned volley ball over the net after everyone else had gone to change. She was constantly yelling at me (really yelling – private school teachers were still allowed to be abusive to a certain extent), calling me out and humiliating me in front of classmates – as if I really needed any more humiliation than I already got. She was not being supportive or pushing me to achieve, she was just a straight up evil bitch; and hypocritical too, considering that she had to be well over 200 lbs herself. I recently saw her walking into a restaurant in Savage (yes, she still teaches at the catholic grade school there, and if I heard correctly, might be the principal now. That ASTOUNDS me). This might be kind of extreme, but I told Dave that we were going somewhere else, because, now that I have some balls, I couldn’t be responsible for what I would say to her. My heart was racing, and I could feel the rage waiting to come out. Something along the lines of “Thanks for the bulimia, bitch. It truly hurts my heart that you are still allowed to influence children.” Sometimes its amazing how much people from your childhood can haunt you, and when you see them, it feels like your negative association with that person just happened yesterday.

Ahem, moving on. In short, I didn’t have very good beginnings when it came to exercise. I thought that I sucked at everything physical, which fed into my vicious cycle of unhealthiness. I didn’t exercise because I wasn’t aware that just because I happened to suck at team sports didn’t mean that I sucked at all physical activity. As I got older, I slowly began to discover independent physical activities that I love: hiking, skating, biking, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, dance,Yoga, etc. I am actually really good at a lot of those things. Right now the problem is that many of those things are outdoor activities, and it gets dark out before I get home from work each day. I’m just not as fearless (read: stupid) as I was in my younger years, and can’t bring myself to get out on the trails, alone, in the dark. It just isn’t safe. Perhaps with my dog and a can of bear mace…

If I’m not going to work out outdoors in the winter, I will obviously have to workout indoors. I’ve got Yoga, but I need some kind of cardio as well. In the past I have taken care of this requirement by going to gyms. I always start out as a good gym member – going at least 4 times per week. But then, my ambition slowly peters out. The main explanation for my flagging motivation is that I HATE gyms. Really, I do. They’re so boring to me! I don’t lift weights. I don’t do aerobics (I don’t like being confined to the class schedules). I’m a bad swimmer (10 years of lessons as a kid, and my skill level is still at “I won’t drown if you throw me in water”). That leaves the cardio machines. Treadmills don’t make sense to me – I could just take a walk during my lunch break. Stairclimbers hurt my knees (also, I work on the 9th floor of a skyscraper – I regularly take the stairs for free). I do like the stationary bike. But my favorite is the elliptical machine. I adore the elliptical. However, one, maybe two, machines does not a gym member make. Two machines doesn’t make the membership fee worthwhile, and they certainly don’t make showing up at the gym worthwhile! So, no. I will not be a gym member any longer.

Instead, I turn to the poor-man’s elliptical. Instead, I present to you, the GAZELLE!:

It essentially does the same job as the elliptical; it’s just a lot more rickety. So far, what I like most about it is that it gives me an excuse to watch TV guilt free (well, the shows that I watch are still worthy of guilt. But at least I’m not sitting on the couch!)! Apparently bad TV creates motivation where wasting money on a gym membership could not!

If you live in a cold climate, what do you do for exercise during the winter? Do you like the gym? Or do you find alternative methods?

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The Connection

Posted on November 16, 2009 | 2 comments
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Abby, Shannon, and me at the Gala, 11/2009

Over the last week I have been thinking a lot about how connected all of my big goals are with each other. Good health, strong spirituality, wealth, and a satisfying career are nodes on the same loop.

Good health is biggie. We’ve all heard the phrase “you haven’t got anything if you haven’t got your health.” This is true on so many levels. The first level is obvious: if you are sick in any way, you are not able to function to your highest potential. If you are tired, can’t breathe, are in pain, can’t move properly, etc., it is going to make it all the harder to reach any goal you set out for yourself. Obviously, people overcome all kinds of physical obstacles to achieve their dreams; but at this point in time I feel like if I have any control over the obstacles, it’s best to just remove them. I have enough “issues” to get over without adding physical problems to the pile! The more energy I have, the more I can devote to spirituality, career development, and wealth.

The second level is that physical issues feed into the psychological issues. If you don’t feel good, it affects your brain chemistry and how you perceive the world; which then affects your behaviors, which affect how others perceive you. The perception of others can affect a lot of things – from your personal relationships to your career. It’s all a self-fulfilling loop. Feeling bad begets feeling bad.

The next level is that your health affects your appearance, which also affects the perception of others. Let’s face it, as much as we all want to say appearance doesn’t matter, it absolutely does. Despite our advanced self-awareness and cognitive ability, it’s my opinion (based on some stuff that I have read that I am too lazy to go find for reference!) that humans still have some holdovers from “survival of the fittest.” Above and beyond obvious conscious biases (ie., if you look like a supermodel or an olympic athlete, chances are that people might be “drawn” to you!), if you’re not healthy, there are a million little subconscious ways that other people are going to know it and be subconsciously biased towards you. I think that is some of the basis for “gut feelings” about people. If you have the opportunity to remove biases that others might have towards you, it is only going to be helpful in developing the relationships that a person needs for a successful career, etc. In other words, I think that health touches every part of our lives.

The next part of the “loop” is money. I don’t think that a lot of money is necessary for good health. But I do see where the more money a person has, the more they can afford to spend on maintaining their health, and they will definitely be less stressed out without debt nagging at them. Furthermore, there’s the old adage, “it takes money to make money,” you need to spend money on education and/or on other resources and supplies in order to gain a successful career that will earn more money. More money can also mean more free time- which can lead to more time for spiritual practice.

Next we have career development. Having a fulfilling career leads to a better sense of confidence and well-being, which contributes to good health in all kinds of ways – higher levels of endorphins, lower levels of stress, etc. People tend to be more successful at things they are passionate about. Success leads to wealth. I also believe that having a vocation, or doing what you are “supposed” to do for a living, can be part of a spiritual path.

Finally, there is spirituality. Like health, I feel that spirituality touches every single part of our lives. Part of it is that I believe that we are each active participants in creating our own realities. Every thought that we have has the potential to be a “prayer”- we are constantly asking the universe, or God, or whatever your preferred title, for what we want via our thoughts and intentions. If you think negatively about your health, money, or career, your experience is going to be negative. If you think positively your experience will be positive. I believe in this both psychologically and physically (I put weight on the whole theory that thoughts have physical bearing). The more energy I can devote to training myself to live with intention, and gratitude for the life that I have at any given moment, the better off I feel that I will be.

So really, the main point that I am trying to make is that having a lot of goals doesn’t need to be overwhelming, because if you are working hard on one of them, it is also going to make a gain in the others. Everything is a big web, and when you make positive changes in one area of life, all areas will be positively affected. Personally, I feel really good about focusing most of my energy on good health right now. It seems like a strong cornerstone. But it’s been a nice side-effect of that focus to begin noticing other, seemingly unrelated changes!

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“Plenty”: Good Writers Writing About Things That Matter

Posted on October 28, 2009 | 3 comments

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I finished reading Plenty:One man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally on Saturday. You may have heard of “the 100-mile diet.” Well, authors Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon played a huge role in  popularizing this way of local eating. The book covers the couple’s one year commitment to only eat foods that were sourced from within 100 miles of their Vancouver home, their purpose being to reduce the negative environmental impact created from shipping food across thousands of miles. The point is that a lot of fossil fuel is burned unnecessarily while bringing food from across the country, or across the planet, when most of us can live just fine on food found near our homes. Not to mention that we might actually know exactly what we’re eating, since eating locally doesn’t include eating anything processed (most processed food is made from ingredients that were sourced from god-knows-where)!

It was interesting to me to read about the trials and tribulations of Alisa and James as they scrabbled together a healthy diet in the cool and rainy pacific northwest. It made me feel grateful that, if I ever do decide to start the 100-mile diet, I live in central Minnesota. It seems like there are not a whole lot of food staples that don’t grow within 100 miles of Minneapolis; notably, we have a lot of grains here, which was a problem for Alisa and James. Though this was interesting, what really fascinated me about this book was the thoughtfulness and the skill with which the authors lay down the story of their year.

The chapters of the book are each named for a month, and Alisa and James (I know that it is not proper journalistic method to refer to authors by their first names, but I’m a blogger, not a journalist, and I almost feel like I know them after reading this book!) take turns writing about each month. Each chapter is preceded by a recipe and a pertinent quote.  Both of the authors are professional journalists, so they know how to write in a way that is technically excellent. Being a description of a particular experiment, the book could have been a lot more dry than it was – trust me, I’ve read many a dry non-fiction. However, Plenty is filled with personal stories from the lives of James and Alissa. The stories and observations of the couple dovetail beautifully with the nuts and bolts of the diet to create a picture of how emotionally and spiritually connected humanity is with what we eat; and how far we have strayed from that connection. The trials and tribulations are interesting and, at times, instructive, but it is the amount of imagery and emotion in the book that makes it a pleasure to read.

November in Minnesota doesn’t seem like the right time to completely dive in to a local foods lifestyle, but someday I hope to live this way, and I’m taking baby steps all the time. It will be extra challenging with my allergy-induced diet restrictions! In the meantime, Plenty is an inspiration for anyone that wants to feel closer to the earth, and to gain a better sense of how lucky we all are to be here.

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Letting Go

Posted on October 23, 2009 | Leave a comment
Colors

©2007, Chaos to Clarity

I have been stuck on Week 3 in the Artist’s Way for two months. Sad, but true. I have still been intermittently writing my pages and going on Artist Dates; but I haven’t really been sticking with the program; doing the exercises, etc. The biggest reason that people give for falling out of the Artist’s Way is that it is so time consuming. This is true. It does take quite a bit of time; at least an hour per day. I think that the other reason that people fall out of it is that it requires you to dig in and touch places that you might not want to touch. In fact, it requires you to poke those places especially hard, because they could be the places that are most likely keeping you blocked. It feels easier to walk away from the path that you know you should be on than it does to to face the things that are keeping you off from it. However, it doesn’t make much sense to embrace a lifetime of anxiety because you aren’t doing what you are meant to do in favor of temporary relief.

The first three weeks of the program have a lot to do with letting go of impediments, whether it is letting go of your inner critic/editor, or letting go of toxic relationships with other people. I made it through the first two chapters with flying colors, and took the major step of going public with this blog. I did that even though I was terrified to show my writing to anyone. The way I look at the world has changed a lot from just those two weeks. However, Week 3 is something that I clearly have a problem with. It is called “Recovering a Sense of Power.”

The hard thing about chapter 3 is that to recover a sense of power, you also need to take responsibility. You need to look at what you are doing that robs you of a sense of control over your own destiny, and at what other people in your life are doing to do the same. I think that the reason that I have been stuck here is that I have a problem with letting go. Of anything. I am a pack-rat, both physically and emotionally. I am a big fan of shrouds and safety blankets. I like, to a certain extent, security. This means that I have trouble letting go of anything that I once hid behind, particularly images. This is what makes it hard for me to completely let go of smoking. I have trouble letting go of anything that can be an excuse; like being fat, or being too “busy,” for example. I have trouble letting go of anything that has been in my life for a long time; like toxic relationships. All of these years I have thought that I have no will power. No strength. The truth is that I have extreme tenacity and an unusually strong will, but that I have been using those character attributes against myself rather than for myself. I already have the tools, I just need to work on transforming them.

My guiding question right now is, in the words of a famous hash-smoking caterpillar, “whoooooo are yooou?” I feel like at this point in time I have a pretty good grasp on who I am at my core.  The exercises in Chapter 3 have helped me find that person even more. Now I  need to work on becoming that person outwardly, and to do that I need to hold on to her, and let go of the other things that are trying to destroy her. When I can do that, I will know that my sense of power is recovered. The thought of feeling really in control of my own destiny has been creeping in for me, and is really exciting, rather than terrifying as it has been in the past. I plan to finish my Chapter 3 exercises and do my artist date tonight and tomorrow. It will feel good to finally charge forward again!

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The Doors of Perception

Posted on October 19, 2009 | Leave a comment

Lately I have been pondering perception. I’ve been wondering how much misery is created in this world by our perceptions of situations, rather than by the facts. It has caused me to look back on my life and wonder how many of the situations that have been painful for me were at least half in my head. I’m thinking specifically of situations in which I felt victimized by other people.

One of the things that got me thinking about this was, oddly enough, an episode of 30 Rock. I tried to find some clips from the episode, but was unsuccessful. I will try to just sum it up: in the episode Jack talks Liz into attending her high school reunion. Liz doesn’t want to go because in her mind she was tortured and ostracized by her classmates. There is a flashback scene that shows her defending herself against the cruel teasing of her classmates. When she gets to the reunion, she discovers that her classmates viewed her as the cruel one, always being defensively mean in response to their friendly advances. The same flashback is shown from the perspective of her classmates, in which Liz, rather than defending herself from their cruel teasing, is cruelly lashing out at them. I remember seeing that episode and wondering; “huh, I wonder how much of that was true for me”?

As I’ve mentioned before, I was extremely shy for most of my childhood/early adulthood. I spent a lot of that time bemoaning the fact that the only attention that people seemed to pay me was to make fun of me. In hindsight I wonder if I didn’t kind of invite that. The problem with being shy is that people often perceive you as being stuck up – they think you don’t talk much because you think you’re superior somehow, when it is really the opposite. I know that I spent most of my time frowning and looking unapproachable (which is so strange to me now, because for years now people have told me the exact opposite – that it’s my smile that makes me seem so approachable!). Also, in hindsight, I responded defensively to pretty much everything. I was so convinced that most people were out to hurt me that I’m pretty sure I was inappropriately rude to people sometimes.  I spent a lot of time hiding behind my hair rather than engaging with people. I lived in a constant state of embarrassment and defensiveness.

I’m not saying that there aren’t some people who are just cruel for no reason. What I am saying is that when you feel like you are being victimized, it might do some good to check yourself. Perception in human relationships can be a big viscous cycle. First off, sometimes you can’t control how others perceive you. What you can control is how you perceive them. For example, if there is someone that drives you crazy; ask yourself why. Is it because that person is really trying to piss you off, or is it because of that person’s own set of issues, exacerbated by the fact that they sense that you are perceiving them in a negative manner? A little compassion can go a long way. If a person perceives that you are not responding negatively to them, they are less likely to continue negative behaviors, so on and so forth into infinity. In other words, the best way to influence the perception of others is to temper your perception of them. If you try to be understanding of others, it opens a doorway for them to be more receptive and understanding of you.

I still have a little bit of a problem with feeling like people are judging me, and being overly defensive about it. It’s just some of the remnants of a long perception of victimization. The idea of feeling compassion towards people that seem to take jabs at me is another useful life lesson for me (and is, duh, a basic tenet of many of the religions I’ve looked into!). It is something for me to keep in mind while trying to invite patience and positive experiences into my life! It will only make my own experience, and that of people I encounter, better.

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