Uncategorized – Page 21

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

July 31, 2017

Shoes for the ladies, Knives for the gents.

That being said, we fight over the knife, the shoes swing both ways, and both are delightful present ideas. So, screw it, shoes for the dudes, knives for the babes.

Ok.

1. If you need another excuse to buy Tom’s …

Lace up your shoes, get in the trails, go for a run, and listen to this:

https://tim.blog/2017/06/28/blake-mycoskie/

2. If you just want to have fun, Oofos!

https://www.oofos.com/

3. If you cook, you must. If you cook mostly with plants (read if you spend 2 hours a day chopping), you absolutely must.

https://www.cartercutlery.com/7-68-muteki-1229-funayuki-by-alex/

July 31, 2017October 3, 2017

Hello, my name is Jenn and I like to get dusted.

Back from lake life!

Oh do I love me some summer; warmth, floating, sipping, lazying, reconnecting, slowing …..

Most summers this West Coast family returns back to their more Eastern roots and does an in-law tour so everyone can get a good dose of our children and vice-versa. When the kids were younger this could sometimes turn out to be less than totally relaxing as different time zones, different beds, different routines, etc. could sometimes over tax the parenting ability of this gal. However, as the years go on, as everyone gets used to bending and swaying and as I do more yoga and drink more tea, things get better and better. Generations get to laugh and learn together. I find myself overflowing with pride and gratitude. We have beautiful families and are very lucky.

But, it is an interesting experiment to all of a sudden try to parachute in and intertwine one family into others. The previously unconscious flow that you have to your day to day can all of a sudden stand in stark contradiction to what others might do. This year the experience was made all the more interesting as we are trying our best to be mostly plant-based, or shall I say the dreaded “V” word: VEGAN! There I said it, I aspire to be Vegan. (While we are at it you should also know I occasionally listen to and often fully enjoy country music and the Bachelor is set to tape on my PVR. My apologies, no one is perfect.) It’s been a 2 year evolution for our family that was motivated by ethical, environmental, and health reasons. It feels good and works for us in a big way. But it was interesting this year to see others respond to our new flow. There was a lot of curiosity, some attempts at trying it for themselves, but there was also some confusion, some worry, and even hurt feelings. Fascinating that food can be the source of all of this.

Imagine my mother’s surprise when her many “degree-d”, straight laced, physician daughter sidles up to the blender for breakfast and proceeds to dump in kale, beets, mango, almond butter, but then also tosses in some maca, cordyceps, spirulina, and schisandra berry, all the while sipping her lion’s mane coffee. Ha! That even makes me chuckle as I type! And let’s be clear, I don’t blame her. It is an everyday battle for me too. I have been educated in the evidenced based, highly scientific, first do no harm, and oft litigious world. So when someone asks me “so why do you put schisandra in your coffee?”, honestly, I stammer. I do it because I’ve noticed a trend in what many other highly educated and accomplished people do. Although I trust that they have done the research, I can’t say that I’ve done it for myself ( … yet). I do it because it feels good; I have more energy, I am happier, I feel joy, and my family is thriving. But I can’t show you the RCT on that. There are others out there who can show you some evidence, for example:

https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/

However, truthfully, what exists out there in terms of evidence is, unfortunately, not enough for me to be able to recommend most of what I do to others in my professional practice. But personally, it works for me; it seems to work for a whole tribe of others too. And this is a tribe of people doing amazing things:

http://www.richroll.com/

http://www.scottjurek.com/

https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/amanda-chantal-bacon-mbg-podcast

So, I dust. Yes my friends, I’m vegan, I can listen to country, in the past week I’ve watched the amazing documentary Given and also parts of the Bachelorette, and I dust as often as I can. Enter Moonjuice:

https://moonjuice.com

Moon Juice – Organic + Wildcrafted Edible Radiance (Beauty Dust, 1.5 oz)

Moon Juice – Organic + Wildcrafted Edible Attraction (1.5 oz)

Moon Juice – Organic + Wildcrafted Edible Joy (Spirit Dust, 1.5 oz)

Moon Juice – Organic + Wildcrafted Edible Strength (Power Dust, 1.5 oz)

I have no evidence to prove what their dusts purport to do. However, I’m down with anything that makes me feel joy, fuelled, sexy, and strong all at once. So, if you want, get a little dusted yourself. Start small. But don’t be surprised if, before you know it, you find yourself barefoot, singing, and scantily clothed while juicing and dusting on a sunny Sunday morning.

July 7, 2017

Quiet tunes on a summer night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD8fDhPRf_E

That is all.

July 5, 2017

Kitchen alchemy

I have a week at home alone before I join my family for cottage time. This means my personal chef has left the building, gasp!! The horror. Fortunately, I preemptively filled the freezer with leftovers of his mealtime masterpieces over the course of the week before they left. Phew.

I am also embracing the opportunity to have a week of ‘bachelor’ style eating. Somehow when the kids are around it seems inappropriate to just blend up a green shake and have that and leftover banana bread for dinner. It now occurs to me that this is ridiculous for several reasons: 1) it doesn’t escape me that this is hardly what most people think of when they think of ‘bachelor’ style eating unless we are talking cosmic, vegan, powerhouse bachelors (and, really, aren’t those the best kind?), 2) the kids never really eat dinner anyway so why do we really care, and 3) given number 2, maybe we should be rolling out the shakes and banana bread for dinner more often!!

Anyway, last night I rocked it. A homemade Moonjuice green shake + Yoso coconut yogurt with strawberries from the garden, a flax/chia/hemp seed blend and bee pollen to top it + a warmed up slice of this banana bread while watching the craziest documentary ever, MERU. Perfection.

Banana Bread – adapted from Best of Vegan

https://www.instagram.com/bestofvegan/?hl=en

Ingredients:

2tbsp ground flax in a bowl with 6tbsp of water – let sit for at least 10mins

2 cups of flour – I use 1 cup almond and 1 cup of chickpea. The almond flour makes things uber moist so you can adjust accordingly to your liking. The first time I made the recipe I used all almond and it required 2 hours of cooking and still was more like banana pudding in the end, which, I have to say was delicious and very much kid approved. I digress …

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup coconut oil – to be clear, I don’t care whether this week it is good or bad for you. It’s delicious and I can moisturize while cooking. So whatever.

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla

2 1/3 cups of mashed bananas – I’m curious if some of this could be substituted for avocado but haven’t tried … yet.

And if you want to get funky and feel like a free spirited kitchen alchemist, add any or all of the following:

1-2 tbsp of maca

2 ish tbsp of any combo of chia/flax/hemp seeds

3/4 cup ish of cocoa nibs and/or vegan chips

3/4 cup ish of chopped walnuts

Directions:

Preheat oven to about 350-365 F depending on how hot your oven runs. Grease a standard loaf pan with some of the coconut oil (about 9×5′).

Mix wet ingredients, mix dry ingredients, then mix wet and dry together. Add whatever potions you decide to use. Pour into pan. Top with cocoa nibs and whole walnuts if you like and pop ‘er in the oven. It will likely take between 60-75mins to cook. Use a toothpick to check starting at 60mins, I would aim to take it out when you think it is just slightly underdone. I also cover mine with aluminum foil for the first 45mins.

This is not your typical banana bread, not very sweet, but loaded with goodness for you in all sorts of areas 😉

July 2, 2017

What Blue

Ah, it’s what love looks like, in a world of reproach,
Completely absorbed in that too
Exciting over fair, always daily forward, always the power to choose

In your eyes, what love looks like, it’s still the longest thing that I do
In your eyes, the useless nights and all the dreary places, but what blue

Oh, I was always too uneasy, too for solitude,
Too into all the things you can do
To come into the open, to come into the light
Forward, daily forward for what blue

In your eyes, what our love looks like, it’s the longest thing that we do
In your eyes, all of our dark doors, our disenchanted paths, but what blue

I love you so much, it distorts my life,
What drove and drives you drove and drives me too
When I think I’m clear, I think I’m doing fine, completely absorbed in what blue

In your eyes, it’s what love looks like, it’s the longest thing that we do
In your eyes, all the useless nights and all the dreary places and what blue

~ Tragically Hip

Thank you boys.

July 2, 2017

Tea

I’ve always been a cup of tea in the afternoon sort of girl. For many, many years I held strong to my Canadian roots and that afternoon tea was usually a Timmy’s. There will always be a place in my heart for a Tim’s tea with a smile cookie, but, tea time has evolved.

My latest favourite is pu-erh tea. I love it. It is a fermented tea from China. It has a variety of subtypes depending on the length of time it has been aged such that it can brew anywhere from being like a green to black tea. I find it extremely earthy and grounding and I prefer to add nothing to it. I get mine from SilkRoad Tea in Victoria. My preferred is the white, pu-erh tea cake. It comes in a solid cake of tea leaves which you pull tiny bits off of every time you are ready for tea. I really love this tea but I do find it very activating which is amazing for creativity but can be less enjoyable when it comes time to sleep! To prevent sleeplessness remember you only need a teaspoon of leaves per cup, rinse your leaves in cold water before brewing, and pour off the first 30secs of brewing. (Of course, if you want to achieve rockstar flow and could care less about sleep then do none of the above and enjoy the magic!) I also use the smaller and much more portable “tuochas” to take with me to the office etc. You can do lots of reading on the proper way to pour and drink pu-erh. Traditionally there is quite a ceremony to it and the leaves are used multiple times through a series of pours and brews. The descriptions sound quite mystical and perhaps one day I’ll find myself somewhere where I can truly sip this tea how it is supposed to be sipped. However, I’m not there yet, but I definitely do keep leaves and do a few brews over the course of an afternoon as the mood suits.

Enjoy

June 25, 2017

It’s time. SWELL 1.

Today, well most days, but today in particular, I was inspired by my siblings.

It’s time to start what is the ultimate goal here – to effect change.

Today I donated to:

https://www.nrdc.org

Eventually I would love to find a way where we can all pool our donations and donate one lump sum but, I’m not savvy enough to figure that out …. yet!

I’m not sure who out there will see this, as we are still in blog infancy here. But if you do see, and you are inspired, leave a comment about your donation.

Thank you my kin!