(BTW: this pic has nothing to do with my post, but I just loved the colors- music to my eyes, perhaps)
Hey all,
Sometimes the sound of my own voice in my head is the music I need to hear. Man, is that self-talk powerful stuff!! Its been an amazing (read: hard as hell) week, with so much insight, cooking, and personal growth. I’ve been looking at the power of my inner voice, especially as it plays into food and my relationship to choosing foods and why i choose them. Matt’s transition to Davis really pulled the carpet out from underneath me. My M.O. is totally to go into a victim mentality, or a fear of “what is next”, and then put my self-care on hold. Because I am prone to anxiety, I find myself wanting to back to my reliable tool of food (read: sugar) to calm the anxiety and mask the feelings.
This time around I’m a little more aware of that and have had lots of growth opportunities and ways to express myself instead of going into the food, or staying in the food when I dabble in the white stuff (because I do – hey, I’m human)
One of the growth opportunities comes in the form of learning how to podcast. I’m so excited to play with media sources for sharing Off-White Living. Its really healing to me to express myself verbally, and hear others express themselves too. I also attended an awesome yoga workshop at Flow yoga in Hood River, OR, which serendipitously gave me fabulous insight.
So, today I present to you my first podcast, which is a 5 minute insight on my relationship with my body and how yoga principles awakened in me a deeper love of self. Enjoy.
I didn’t realize how much I see food (preparing food, that is) as an expression of love until this weekend. So, here I sit, after my first FULL week away from Matt totally in love and nowhere to put it….so I put it into my cooking.
Fast forward to Sunday evening and over the course of 2 days I have made the following:
5 types of tomato-based pasta sauce (w and w/o meat)
1 curry sauce
1 eggplant pesto (DELICIOUS, recipe to follow)
1 batch of roasted plums with lavendar oil
1 rice pasta dinner w/red sauce + goat cheese for my neighbor (nice, 80 yr old man)
1 omelet with fresh basil and sundried tomatoes
2 off-white videos (to follow)
As I got to thinking, all around me there were examples of how we use food to express love. Even my weekend of culinary experimentation was part of a chain of events surrounding love. Here’s how:
I recieved the bounty of amazing produce (tomatoes, eggplant, plums, and more) from our friend’s M. and B. at Wellspring. They loaded up my hatchback and topped it off with two bottles of wine prepared from their grapes harvested a couple years prior. The wine was a gift (of love) from M’s brother who also farms and shares of his ‘wealth’ with those around him.
When I got home, immediately I gave a box of amazing heirloom tomatoes to my neighbors, a family with 3 thriving young kids and big appetites. They loved them.
Now to the cooking…..Inspired and needing to get these tomatoes off my table and into something good I called upon a few of my creative mentors (Deborah Madison especially), and brewed up a ton of sauces to share with MY LOVE, Matt, when he comes home in 1 month.
THe plums were cooked in a lavendar oil gifted to us by our friend A. last year from her homemade stash.
I ran into my neighbor, a clever old man with a 200 lb Mastiff. They bring me the newspaper every morning at 8 am sharp. He lives alone (wife died some yrs ago) and rarely gets a home made meal. His eyes lit up when I knocked on his door bearing a tupperware container full of pasta with homemade sauce, goat cheese and freshly chopped parsley.
So I realized that sometimes its okay for food to be an expression of love, especially when it is shared. There is lots of talk about how we as a culture substitute food as love, hence our food and sugar addiction. This way of being closes our hearts and isolates us (believe me, I’ve been in that place and boy is it lonely). I would agree with that 100% and I also agree that there is something powerful, magical and deep about breaking bread with your neighbor, or making something special that you know somebody will love. In those instances, food is a reflection of love, not a substitute, and the heart remains more open. I got just a little bit closer to all the people involved in this process this weekend, even my husband who was 500 miles away. Dare I say I even wrote him a poem on Saturday. Do you know the last time I wrote poetry??? Me neither. It must have been all the fumes from the pasta sauces going to my romantic head 🙂
So, below are just a few ideas on how you can share some love w/ two creative recipes + 2 videos on pasta sauce and herbs.
Enjoy
Eggplant pesto:
2 cups fresh basil
1/2 cups + 2 tbsp EVOO
1/2 cup Parmersean or Romano cheese
1/3 cup walnuts
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 large or two small eggplants, sliced lengthwise
Salt and pepper, to taste
Heat an oven to 400. Place the eggplant on a cookie sheet and coat with the 2 tbsp EVOO. Bake for about 30 minutes or until flesh is soft. In the meantime, blend or put in a food processor the nuts, garlic, and cheese, making a paste. Add the basil, salt/pepper and oil. Blend. Scrape the flesh of the eggplant out and add to the basil/oil mix. Blend or mix until smooth. Makes about 2-2.5 cup and is DELICIOUS!!
Baked plums
1 lb small plums (not sure what kind I had, they were sweet and often used for prunes??)
2 tbsp lavendar oil (you can buy this or make on your own). If you don’t have that, use a light oil like safflower or regular oilve oil and you can sprinkle w/ a little lavendar
2 tsp cinnamon
Halve and pit the plums. Coat the baking sheet w/oil and line up the plums. Take a brush and add a topcoat of oil + the cinnamon. Bake for about 25 minutes. Some may stick to the pan, so be careful. They are somewhat gooey and SUPER SWEET. Great topping for oatmeal, to put into a crumble, or to eat as they are. Yum!!
Masterpiece! 4 months at an attempt to foster a garden, and look at the bounty I received….one luscious tomato! Clearly I should just stick to cooking foods already harvested because my thumb is not green. Nonetheless, what to cook with my precious morsel?
Since I’m going to be gone a lot this week (3 nights away from home: housesitting, visiting a friend at Skamania lodge (yay!!)), I had to plan ahead for 3-4 breakfasts, lunches and dinners. I know myself and the temptation to purchase food becomes very strong if I’ve not planned well. Now that Matt is in schoolnd the budget for eating out is quite different than it used to be, batch cooking for busy weeks is going to be a Sunday mainstay. Plus, the choices I sometimes make when my stomach and my appetite call the shots aren’t always the best and I end up regretting them later. Especially in lovely Woodburn, OR where there aren’t many good places to eat. Sometimes I eat at the Bistro at work, but mostly I prefer to just BYOL and call it good.
Off to the kitchen I went with my one lovely tomato and an idea. Here is what I prepared for the week ahead:
1 batch of chicken ‘n’ veggies (see recipe below)
5 hardboiled eggs (for breakfast or to put into a salad)
1 large tupperware of salad as a base for lunch a couple of days
1 HUGE yam, cut into 3 pieces to accompany my meals
Plus I added into my every so large lunch bag: a container of hummus, yogurt, organic black beans, 4 slices of Ezekiel bread, and about 6 carrots and 6 pieces of fruit. Vioala, I am set for the upcoming week’s needs. Yes, I will be rather sick of chicken and salads by Wednesday, but that’s okay because I’m banking on having left over barley risotto from my cooking class! It pays to be the cook sometimes.
Here’s my ‘on a whim’ chicken ‘n’ veggie recipe, complete with warming spices to balance the chilly Salem weather:
4 large free range chicken breasts
2 tbsp EVOO
Sea salt, to taste
3 tsp turmeric
1 tsp cumin
1/3 yellow onion, finely chopped
1 beautiful, home grown tomoato, chopped
1 can of chopped tomatoes to offset my pathetic garden yield
1 zucchini, chopped into small pieces
Coat the bottom of a pyrex dish with EVOO. Add chicken and coat with the rest of the EVOO. Dust with spices and salt. Spread seasonings with a brush.
Add the tomatoes, onion and zucchini.
Sprinkle with a little salt.
Cook at 400 covered for about 40 minutes, and then uncovered for 10 minutes.
TIP: I just learned from The Professional Chef book (a good reference for anybody wanting to learn about cooking without paying for culinary school) that when cooking in glass you can reduce the temp by 25 degrees for the same amount of time, which is why I chose 400.
Now that Matt isn’t I have a lot more time on my hands. Sometimes good things can come from free time, like inspiration. Today I enjoyed some inspiration from a beautiful view of Wine Country near Dundee Oregon while attending a going away party for a dear friend, and off-white supporter, Sandy.
I know for a fact that I enjoyed the party and could feast my eyes on the view and feast my heart on the good company because I made good off-white choices. Parties can be really hard for me because I suddenly want what I didn’t even know existed 5 minutes ago when I see a buffet table of food. I’m so grateful for my choices tonight.
The inspiration continued on the way home as I enjoyed the fleeting moments of sunset and chatted with my husband, who was also enjoying the fleeting moments of sunset 500 miles away….aah, the sweet feeling of missing a person I love….
finally, check this out: New Thought Radio – her voice, her words and her message are all very loving and exactly what I was looking for tonight.
This has been a fun week. I’ve been hanging out in Davis, CA with Matt getting to know his new ‘digs’ at school and being a pseudo student.
So part of that entailed the Grad school BBQ at the Rec Pool lodge. We had no idea what to expect, but apparently grad students flock to free food and they get there early. Showing up ‘fashionably late’ meant waiting in a god-awful line for some crappy bbq dogs and burgers. I suppose as a student one gets used to waiting in life for things, because everybody else seemed more than happy to take their place in a line that literally did not move for about 10 minutes. Round the corner we could smell the faint scent of grilling meats, but at this point the certainty of getting our meal was unclear.
Maybe it was the thought of waiting in line for 1 hour for crappy food, or the fact that I secretly like making something out of nothing, but I took my own course: headed straight for the ‘fixins’ table (which apparently was in a totally separate location and not governed by a line that wrapped around the building. What happened to all the happy students once they got their grilled fare, I’m not sure because the fixin’s table was dead empty) and made myself two lovely sandwiches with the following:
The Grad School BBQ meatless and breadless sandwich
2 large pieces of lettuce (Iceberg please! – Just kidding, but that is what I had to work with)
5 slices of tomato
2 thick slices of onion
2 slices of cheese (American please! – I think it was at least Tillamok, so I’ll just tell myself that)
TONS of mustard
Assemble the goods amongst the two lovely large lettuce leaves. Accompany with a bottle of water and a few Kettle potato chips as a splurge. Eat gratefully because at least you got something, right? this meal also serves as a low-cost alternative to a real bbq, which is a consideration for those on a grad school budget.
all in all…not a bad gig. I left laughing and satisfied, and it certainly made for a good memory….if only I had my camera with me 🙂
I just want to take a moment and thank a faithful blog reader (yay, there is at least 1 of you!!) and friend of mine – we’ll just call her ‘yoga girl‘. You can visit the link and find out all about her. She’s a compadre of mine on many levels, including the level of saving my tukis by subbing my yoga classes at Wellspring when I am gone.
But the reason I sing her praises today are because she is a faithful reader and commenter – thank you yoga girl! If If was smart enough to figure out how to comment on your blog, I totally would. One tech-savvy step at time for this blogger….
I just about died today. I’m happily watching a little TV on the Discovery Channel and I see this blasphemy:
OH MY GOD!!!! Gee, I wonder who funded it ….oh, the corn growers association…hmm….big shocker. Their big angle – “its just corn”……OH MY GOD x 2!!!!!!! No, it is NOT just corn, and even if it WAS, the way its modified so much that it stresses the liver, increases blood sugar, and is more likely to contribute to carb addiction and the odd maladies that go with food sensitivities (headaches, constipation, bloating, inflammation). It is NOT a food. And just because it only has the same calories as regular does NOT MAKE IT OKAY!!! This totally negates the notion that we really ought not to promote eating sugar. Moderation will come when we focus on filling our diets with abundant wholesome foods. Most of us don’t need to hear messages about eating sugar in moderation, as we get enough options to do so on a regular basis.
The other part that baffles me is why this commercial landed itself on the Discovery Health channel. What kinds of values does this channel embody if they allow such rubbish to be broadcasted. How much money does it take to be willing to propagate a lie.
My hope is that none of you Off-white readers will take this commercial seriously. Of course you won’t – you are all much too smart for that!! 🙂 Please tell your friends and family there is more to the story than these two lovely people sharing a popsicle in the park. Its not innocent. It’s deceptive. It’s wrong. Now more than ever we need to continue educating through example and experience the benefits of eating real, wholesome foods. Our children and our friends are looking to us to be models.
just wanted to share my exciting news. Just recently I purchased what might be the greatest gadget since the KitchenAid: a flip camera from Flip Video.
So, what a better way to debut, than to discuss Olive Oil…right??? Yeah, random topic but I was at Pike’s Place market in Seattle recently and decided to take the camera on its maiden Off-White voyage. It was a mix of what was available to me and what wouldn’t get me kicked out of any shops or harrassed by other tourists.
So, with pleasure, I give you Olive Oil 101. enjoy!
People overwhelm me. In a good way. Like this shirt – a gift to my husband from a client who always wore a shirt with this saying to his 6 am fitness class. Now he is leaving, and we are simply feeling the immense gratitude and love that has been surrounding us both for the past 2 yrs in Oregon.
This is a picture of all the cards and well wishes we recieved in the past week from colleagues, clients, members of our center, and friends. What was so incredible about all of this, is that many of the cards shared the same theme: “thank you for helping me change my life”.
Both my husband and I advocate the off-white way of being at work. Sometimes its through a class, sometimes just a passing comment to somebody who asks a question. I’m so deeply touched by how many people have been deeply touched and forever changed by this work. One person mentioned how her husband no longer takes blood pressure meds because of the exercise and off-white cooking classes she has taken. Wow. Big.
I want to take a moment to express is the most public way I can right now how much I enjoy the community we are creating through wellness. Off-white is not just about recipes or good food ideas, but about people coming together to celebrate their lives with one another in a wholesome, sustainable way.
There were many tears shed (of joy and sadness for good-byes) in the last 48 hrs, and it feels good. What may have started as just education has moved into relationships, and we are now in a place to speak from the heart with many of the people who have crossed our paths.
I’m lucky: in 10 days, when I return from California, I know I’ll get to see the same amazing faces and glean more and more inspiration from THEIR inspiration. My clients are my biggest teachers and my biggest motivators. Tonight’s card reading ceremony was a huge reminder to me of how important it is that I stay the course and continue to fuel my own passion for Off-White Living. There are just too many darn good people to connect with for me to even consider otherwise.
Thank you Oregon for taking us in and making us family.
today I was playing a little game in my brain. I thought about the notion of coming up with 10 treat-esque foods or common dessert ingredients that don’t have sugar. Could I do it? Hmm…..as my mind wandered down the grocery aisles of my imagination, here is a list I came up with. Granted, I’m not saying all of these are fat free or dairy free, but they are sugar free. I even upped the antey and gave an example of how you could use it to make a treat:
#1: real whipping cream. Here’s a thought: whip it up with cinnamon and stevia. Place 1-2 tbsp over berries and you have a really low sugar dessert with NO sugar in the topping.
#2: cocoa powder. I LOVE cocoa powder. I’m talking about Chatsfield’s, Wonderslim, or other high quality baking cocoas. Mix with No sugar almond milk and you have low sugar hot cocoa.
#3: Almonds – they are naturally sweet in essence. I like them lightly toasted and sprinkled with a little cinnamon, cardamom and nutmeg. Yum!
#4: Greek yogurt. This type of yogurt doesn’t have any sugar grams at all, but watch the fat, as it can be really dense. There are low fat versions, which I think are the best. You can mix some cocoa powder and almonds into your yogurt for a really low-sugar treat. Sweeten with stevia and you are still at ZERO sugar grams
#5: Coconut – the milk and the flesh are sugar free. You can blend coconut milk with ice for a smoothie, or even just eat the flesh as is and enjoy a natural sweetness.
#6: Egg whites: no, not normally a dessert, but whipped up with a little orange zest and cream of tartare (what is that exactly – check here for the answer), they make a nice meringue topping. I like the taste of meringue by itself, even without a pie. Just like whipping cream, you can put it on berries for a really low sugar dessert option
#7: Buckwheat pancakes: Okay, this one has 2grams of sugar, but that is nearly nothing. I prefer Bob’s Redmill Brand because I only need to add water, an egg, and some oil or butter. You can add vanilla, cocoa, or spices for added flavor and still stand at just 2 g of sugar, plus you are getting a boatload of fiber in.
#8: Good Earth tea: this can seriously satisfy, especially on a chilly night. It really doesn’t even need any sweetener, and this is coming from a girl who ALWAYS loves to sweeten her tea. 9
So, I would just love to come up with a couple more options that don’t have sugar. Any ideas, folks? Even items that have just a few grams of sugar would be beneficial.
I will leave you with this chocolate pudding recipe to inspire your creativity!!
Happy Off-White eating,
Rebecca
Chocolate Pudding
2 cups fresh coconut meat (young coconut if available
¾ cup coconut water; at room temperature.
(Use the water from the inside of the coconut. *Coconut water is now available at most natural foods stores too.)
1/3 cup agave nectar
½ cup cocoa powder
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon sea salt
In a high speed- blender or food processor, puree all ingredients until completely smooth; stopping to scrape the sides as necessary. Transfer to a bowl and chill for firmer pudding, or eat straightaway. Try this with raspberries and fresh mint, or chopped nuts.
Off White Living 