The Birds and the Trees

A couple of years ago, I rescued a nestling from one of my cats. Miette (i.e., the Abyssinian Ninja Assassin) has this habit of coming to the kitchen window with something in her mouth, sometimes alive but usually not. I’ve seen it all: mice, voles, huge insects, and small birds barely contained in her small mouth. She likes chasing dogs, and her battle cry sounds like a banshee wail whenever another cat enters her territory. She has food sensitivities like I do, but whenever she brings something alive home I do what I can to rescue them from an otherwise dreary fate. It's not like she eats them, anyway...

I appreciate the birds that roost in our trees, especially as they sing their songs in the morning when spring comes around. In my opinion, it's a pleasant alternative to a beeping alarm clock scaring you awake.

This nestling seemed to be learning how to fly and hadn’t quite gotten the hang of it when Miette chased it into one of our yucca plants. I get a rush saving other things from the feline authoritarian regime that runs our house. After I put Miette inside, mad that I ruined her fun, the bird sat on my knee, trusting me enough to close its eyes after such an ordeal. And finally, as I had an amazing summer day ahead of me, I put it on a branch and wished it well.

I still look back on that memory fondly. Not the killer Abyssinian part, mind you, but the part about watching the bird’s inactivity and savoring the calmness of the moment shared.

Two Fridays ago I fell and bruised my tailbone (a nicer way of saying I fell on my butt) so badly my entire spine was affected. The initial bruise a few inches below the inflamed tailbone was black, and sitting upright and lying down hurt like no physical pain I’ve ever encountered. The funny thing about back injuries is how unaware until that moment how much you use your back, and how much energy it takes healing such an injury. The initial shock left me feeling fragile and vulnerable, and for one brief moment I could relate to the terror of a nestling that fell from its nest… or a tree that had been uprooted without care. Such trauma brings out pain from other places, and what is a tree without a sturdy trunk but sticks and leaves and not much else.

When I hurt my back, I was uprooted and had to reconsider so much about myself. Why do I have to be overactive and stressed out to feel like I’m actually doing something useful? Why do I not savor the breaks in the day and enjoy inaction as it was intended? For what it seemed like an eternity since the last time I relaxed, I slept and ate and dealt with my insecurities in quiet contemplation without distraction. And I don’t know if anyone else has experienced this, but as my stress levels went down, so too my tolerance of it.

Sentience is too fragile and vulnerable to be in a constant state of stress, and regardless whether or not my injury was a divine intervention or a “sh*t happens” occurrence, I received the message loud and clear. My body is not impervious to injury, and thriving on stress can only take you so far. But there is strength in being uprooted, because it gave me the mindset to evaluate all the traumas and dramas I had experienced up until this point. It sucks, royally and painfully so, but it is necessary and liberating to not hold onto them anymore. Luckily, despite being uprooted (or having fallen from the nest), I’m healing quite nicely and actually have the energy to make recipes happen.

With all this talk of birds and trees, I felt it was appropriate to share my version of peanut butter Easter nests. These were my only favorite Easter sweet besides the solid chocolate rabbit as a kid (I had an aversion to Peeps). I loved the confection’s combination of sweet and savory, creamy and crunchy, peanut butter and chocolate, and I wanted to recreate a healthier version of the treat to indulge when a craving struck. They turned out so well, I brought them to one of my graduate classes along with my Early Grey shortbread for my colleagues to enjoy. Not only did they enjoy them, they wanted the recipes for both!

It’s the little things that make bloggers happy.

No-Bake Bird Nest Cookies

68 g Puffed rice cereal
252 g Honey (or maple syrup)
192 g Creamy peanut butter (salted)
15 g Hulled hemp seeds
15 g Cacao nibs
15 g Toasted whole flaxseeds
25 g Unsweetened shredded coconut
15 g Sesame seeds
Thompson raisins, optional

Place the dry ingredients in a large bowl and set aside.
Combine the honey and peanut butter in a small saucepan, and cook over low heat until melted and the edges begin to bubble slightly, stirring until smooth.
Pour mixture over the dry ingredients and thoroughly coat using a silicone spatula or a wooden spoon.
Using a tablespoon (you can guesstimate with your hands too, but I felt this was a less stickier alternative), form mixture into tight balls using 1 heaping tablespoon of mixture per ball.
Make an indention in center of each ball to resemble a bird’s nest, and place them on parchment paper to cool and set completely.
Place two or three raisins or other egg-shaped candies into each nest.
For storage, stack them in an airtight container in layers with parchment paper in between to prevent sticking and staling.

Makes up to 30 cookies.

Getting 2013 Started

It’s a quiet Sunday. The holiday craziness and frivolity is finally winding down, and loved ones are back at their respected states and countries. The New Year is being written down in a brand new planner, with classes, studying, work, climbing, friends, family, appointments, new hobbies and a blog to fill my time avidly.
 
I made such wonderful connections with people over winter break; fantastic food was made, with and without recipes, and none of it was photographed. Even the wonderful dinners with family weren’t documented, either because I wasn’t in MWM mode or I had something else to occupy my interests. 

It’s weird, not having food (the making of and posting of, anyway) be the focal point of my life anymore. Where does the food blogger go from here?

Apparently, the food blogger is publishing her 200th blog post...

Personally, I’m looking forward to actually gardening this year, and am really contemplating urban agriculture and the sustainable food/energy revolution as a career. For Christmas, Mama Dazz gifted me with books (among other awesome things) such as Katz’s (2006) The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America’s Underground Food Movements, Cockrall-King’s (2012) Food and the City: Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution, Despommier’s (2010) The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century, Ladner’s (2011) The Urban Food Revolution: Changing the Way We Feed Families. I will also be more focused in my “going homemade” endeavors with even more fermentation and sausage making (can we say blood sausage and chorizo?). There’s also the remote control and new lens for my Nikon to help me with this endeavor (thanks, Daddy-O!), because I love sharing with all of you and hearing what you have to say.

Chicken and Vegetables in Peanut-Ginger Sauce

340 g Fresh haricot verts
2 Bell Peppers (Red, in this case), thinly sliced vertically
2 Medium-sized onions, thinly sliced horizontally
2 Carrots, julienned vertically with a peeler
1 Garlic clove, coarsely chopped
4 Boneless chicken thighs, thinly sliced into long strips

For the Peanut-Ginger Sauce:
100 g Smooth peanut butter
45 ml Coconut vinegar (rice vinegar would work here too)
10 ml Coconut aminos
1 tsp. Powdered ginger
1/8 tsp. Garlic powder
60 ml Filtered water
Sea salt, to taste (I used 1/4 tsp.)

On medium heat, bring your choice of cooking oil (mine was olive oil) to smoking point in a large wok and sauté the vegetables for five minutes.
Lower the heat to medium-low and add the chicken to cook for fifteen minutes covered with a fitted lid until the chicken is cooked completely and the vegetables have softened.
Prepare the sauce by combining all of the ingredients in a medium bowl.
Place the heat on low and pour the sauce into the wok.
Make sure the chicken and vegetables are thoroughly coated and allow the sauce to reduce to your desired thickness.
Serve hot.

Makes 4 servings. 

Living to Eat Lemon Poppy Cupcakes

Sometimes I find myself in the middle of a holiday and am completely unaware of it passing me by. Mardi Gras is the perfect example of this, also known as Shrove Tuesday, or National Pancake Day, because I've missed it every year. I love food holidays, even if my birthday falls on National Fast Food Day. (Yeah... I'm going to fix that.) I also love Awareness Weeks and Months about food, because they can make creating recipes all the more special.

This recipe is special for a few reasons. With my Peanut Butter Poppy Sandwich Bread being so popular, particularly with those who eat a low-carb diet, one lamented to me how much they missed lemon poppy cupcakes with a buttercream frosting. I can happily say the recipe was a success, but this is only one of the reasons why it’s so special. The other, and the one I feel is slightly more significant, is to celebrate and honor Love Your Body Week (as known at GMU), also more commonly known as National Eating Disorders Awareness Week. 

(source)

Disordered eating is something that affects a large range of people: the super model and the all-star athlete, the average skinny Joe and the voluptuous Jane. Like all of us, disordered eating comes in all shapes and sizes. If we let it, it will consume us, starve us, hurt us, and make us feel in control even though we’re falling deeper into our own personal chaos. It will isolate us, shame us, and make us feel the opposite of what we expected to feel.

I bring up this rather dark subject because this is an extremely real situation that affects a lot of people. There are neighbors, family members, lovers, and friends of ours who are dealing with this every day. It’s not a joke, and telling them they could use a few more (or less) pounds or telling them they should eat more (or less) can be more hurtful than you realize. I should know; I’ve been there.

As a person who was rather plump as a kid, I decided to get healthy and in shape for the wrong reasons. It was to prove to another person, perhaps all of society, that I was worth something and that I was strong. After going gluten free, I became obsessed with what was healthy and what was not, literally having panic attacks after eating what I viewed as detrimental to my well-being. My well-being was synonymous with how much I weighed and what I saw in the mirror, and my minor case of something similar to Body Dysmorphic Disorder didn’t help things either.  I felt that if one bite of non-Morri friendly food entered my mouth, time would turn itself backward and I would go back to being that awkward girl who disliked the way she looked.

Cassie of Back to Her Roots wrote an amazing article titled “Don’t Call Me Skinny,” and why she feels “like size-based compliments aren’t doing our hard work justice.” It’s as true to her as it is to me when I feel there is nothing complimentary about the sentences, “Goodness, you’re tiny!” or “You could stand to gain a few pounds.”

To quote this amazingly strong, hazel-eyed brunette:

“It’s almost as if all the hard work I put into being strong and fit doesn’t matter. Because if skinny is the ultimate goal, I can get slimmer a lot quicker with a lot less work in other ways. I refuse to believe that just becoming smaller is the ultimate goal for anyone. So why should our compliments indicate that it is?”

Being thought of as “skinny” used to be my ultimate goal, and that’s why I was so miserable. I was getting fitter, yes, but I wasn’t dropping dress sizes left and right. I went from a size 12 to a size 8-10 in high school, and from a size 8 in pants to almost a size 0 in my first semester in college. During that time, I worked out by calorie loss and limited calorie intake. It progressed to calorie counting and food restriction, and then to Orthorexia. Thankfully, I met Cheryl before it went any further. After a year of seeing a nutritionist that focuses on holistic and gluten free living, I’m significantly better off than I was. I not only like myself… I LOVE myself, and it has nothing to do with my weight but everything to do with who I am as a person and how I live my life.

Also, I realize and honor the people compliment me on how I appear to them, and I am working at accepting their compliments graciously. If they see a compassionate, green-eyed, and petite warrior woman that cooks gluten free, loves to rock climb, and enjoys the little things, that’s awesome. There’s more to a person than the size of their waist or their weight on a scale.

So stay beautiful, my friends, both inside and out.

Bite-sized Lemon Poppy Cupcakes & Poppy Dream Frosting

For the cupcakes:
28 g Coconut flour
60 ml Coconut milk (high fat and quality) 
64 g Smooth peanut or almond butter
3 Large eggs
1 1/2 tsp. Bourbon vanilla extract
5 g Poppy seeds
Zest of 1 Lemon (preferably organic)
3 tsp. Fresh lemon juice
1/4 tsp. Baking soda
Stevia, to taste

Coconut oil, for greasing

Thoroughly combine the ingredients, sans the baking soda, in a medium-sized mixing bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed (or in a food processor).
Cover the mixture and let it chill for an hour or overnight in the fridge.
Preheat the oven to 350ºF.
Remove the batter from the fridge, add the baking soda, and let sit on the counter for a few minutes (until the oven is ready).
Grease the mini muffin pan with coconut oil at room temperature or cooking spray and set aside.
Spoon the batter into the tins, three-quarters of the way or up to the top, and place in the center of the oven to bake for 18 – 20 minutes.
When done, remove the cupcakes from the pan and place on a cooling rack until room temperature.

Makes 12 mini cupcakes. Serve with frosting.

Poppy Dream Frosting

30g Whipped cream cheese
30 ml Coconut milk, chilled into a thickened cream
10 ml Coconut oil
1/4 tsp. Bourbon vanilla extract
2 g Poppy seeds
Pinch of Sea salt

Mix together the ingredients until fully integrated.
Chill in the fridge for at least 10 minutes until ready to use.

Peanut Butter Coco-nana Slurp

Before blogging and all of its wonder, I couldn’t wait to eat the plate of deliciousness in front of me. Typically I had to have my meals so hot that it was still bubbling as I put a spoonful into my mouth or so cold that even penguins would get brain-freezes. I was more concerned with eating the food at the right temperature that I would scarf up my meals so quickly you thought I had to be somewhere.

Remember to stop and smell the roses... or photograph dandelions. That works too. :)

Until now.

I realized why the Armour Thyroid wasn’t helping me at much in the mornings. I was eating breakfast too soon after that it was absorbed into the food and not into my body. Since that realization, my morning routine has taken a pleasantly different persona, and I am relishing the art of the time put into my meals, both in preparation and consumption.

With the Armour Thyroid to consider, I have to wait anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour before eating, though drinking my morning cup of Joe doesn’t seem to affect the hormone. I usually wait for that warming, tingling sensation I feel in my hands before I get to work on breakfast. That is when I know it’s in play.

So what do I do for those precious minutes that I can’t eat? I drink coffee, read, blog, and contemplate the wonders of the Universe. You know, typical Morri stuff. Yet this difference in time management has helped me take my time with food throughout the day, and all the things food had to be isn’t as important.

Taking photos and the artful placement of ingredients of my recipes has also helped me elongate the dining experience. Whereas before it was more about the touch (or the temperature on my tongue) and the taste of the dish, it has become a symphony of the sensory escapade: I acknowledge the look of the dish, both behind the camera and not, taking the time to analyze the colors and textures I see; I smell the aroma it gives off in the kitchen, tantalizing my nose with specific scents each ingredient provides; If I can, I touch the meal with my fingers and relish the textures on my fingertips; I feel the temperature as it enters my mouth and admire how that alone can warm you or refresh you to the very core; I hear the food “talking” as it is prepared on the kitchen counter, as it boils on the stovetop, as it chills in the freezer, as it visibly releases steam on every spoonful; I taste more than I ever have with the acknowledgement of the previous senses.

And finally, at the heart and soul of it all, my spirit shines and enlightenment results. My spirit is fulfilled with all the senses considered and treasured. I am fuller, exceptionally content at every meal, and feel significantly more rewarded when I contemplate the time and effort and love I put into something that will nourish my body.

Mind you, I do get excited with every recipe that I tend to get impatient and have a taste before I know it’s done. The result is a Morri hopping around the kitchen doing the “Hot! Hot! Hot!” dance, or sighing knowing full well it isn’t ready yet. Typically it’s the latter, but sometimes I am the Lord of Dance incarnate.

This recipe called for such patience, though I was looking for something refreshing and cool over something heavy and sizzling. It’s a lighter variation of Aubree Cherie’s Peanut Butter and Banana Mash Pudding from Living Free. I really like her concept, and her blog in general, but felt it would be too rich and heavy for what I was looking for. I used more lemon than it needed, so I suggest using juice from 1/4 of a lemon at maximum. I did like, however, how filling yet revitalizing it was. Since I tend towards acidic foods, this alkaline-rich recipe is nice to have on hand. Plus, it can be served as a drink, a breakfast, a lunch, a snack, and a dessert.

Peanut Butter Coco-nana Slurp

1 Banana
1 tbsp. Peanut butter
1 c. So Delicious unsweetened coconut milk (or less, if you want it thicker)
Juice of 1/2 a lemon (or, to taste)
1 tbsp. Chia seeds

Mash the banana until lump free, then mix in the peanut butter.
Slowly add the coconut milk and stir until thoroughly combined.
Add the desired amount of lemon juice and the chia seeds.
Put in the freezer to chill for fifteen to twenty minutes, more if you want a creamy “milkshake” concoction. (You can also eat it as is.)
When chilled to the desired temperature, pull of the freezer and be immediately refreshed.

Serves 1.