Yoga and black bean fudge brownies? Yes please.

Favorite salad of late: chopped Swiss chard, topped with quinoa, orange slices, mushrooms, and homemade dressing
Ironically, I am writing this blog entry on wellness while battling a bit of a cold. Nevertheless, health and wellness are on my mind, and I've done some fun projects lately I feel like writing about here.

First of all: A little over a week ago, I hosted a "Wellness Wednesday" for a few friends. I invited them over early-ish in the day, and made green smoothies - pineapple, kiwi, mango, spinach, etc. - for all. Then we cleared the furniture out of my living room and rolled out yoga mats for a solid 45 minutes or so of gentle vinyasa yoga.

Back in Kansas City, I had a wonderful yoga teacher named Martha, who led yoga classes several mornings a week, for free (with a recommended $5 donation, but truly a no-obligation, contribute-when-you-can set up, most of which was donated to local charities anyway) in a neighborhood church. I think it was Lu who invited me the first time, and soon after, I brought my mom along, and Martha Yoga became tradition - 90 minutes, three times a week, of blissful stretching, muscle awakening, meditation, and fun, too.

Getting licensed to lead yoga classes costs upwards of $3500. Not in my budget for now, but I do feel pretty knowledgeable about yoga, pose modifications, proper form, and breathing techniques in general - enough to at least reasonably lead sessions for friends. I have always admired and envied what Martha was able to do for a community of people back in Kansas: grant us a space to come together with others, relax, reflect, and rejuvenate. She was able to give so much, and at so little cost. I aspire to do the same in my life...what more can we ask of ourselves but to share with others everything we have to offer?

Martha would always finish our sessions by having us gather in a circle, and by reading to us a passage from a book that had spoken to her that week - often some sort of meditation or anecdote intended to inspire self-reflection. Again, I always admired the effort that I knew she must put in every week to selecting meaningful passages to share with us. I knew I wanted to do the same for my trio of wellness-seekers last week, and I felt surprised the night before at what an incredible pleasure it was to comb through dusty books from my shelves...books on spirituality and wellness that I hadn't really looked at in a long time, but books, nevertheless, with the capacity to inspire truly transformative thoughts. Books are powerful.

I settled on a passage from Seyeon's favorite book, The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear - an excerpt from Mary Catherine Bateson's "Composing a Life Story." However, there was another passage that I came across in John Heider's "The Tao of Leadership" that I want especially to share here now on my blog. My mom gave me this book of 81 Taoist principles for my 18th birthday. #54 is The Ripple Effect.

Do you want to be a positive influence in the world? First, get your own life in order. Ground yourself in the single principle so that your behavior is wholesome and effective.
If your life works, you influence your family.
If your family works, your family influences the community.
If your community works, your community influences the nation.
If your nation works, your nation influences the world.
If your world works, the ripple effect spreads throughout the cosmos.
Remember that your influence begins with you and ripples outward. All growth spreads outward from a fertile and potent nucleus. You are a nucleus.

Amen. After yoga, we had tea, and I made a giant pot of quinoa porridge (recipe courtesy of Trail Runner magazine!) with diced apple, dried fruits, flax seed, almond milk, walnuts, and more yummy things. All vegan and gluten-free mouthwatering deliciousness.


I also made my favorite raw/vegan/gluten-free energy bar recipe ever, for my guests to take as to-go goodies:


So how, after all my greens and focus on wellness, did I wind up with this minor cold? A few things happened, I guess:
1. The virtual knock on wood must not have been good enough, when I wrote that blog entry on never calling in sick to work. The good thing about being friends with my coworkers, is that word gets out fast when you're sick, and friends come bring you pho at home. Friends are splendid.
2. I was on this pretty clean diet for awhile, but last weekend derailed me: the extravagant sushi and ice cream on Friday night, eating glutenous pasta Saturday night, rewarding myself post-half-marathon with a DQ Blizzard and more dairy over the course of a couple hours than I'd put in my body in the last month altogether, more ice cream (Molly Moon's salted caramel, yum!) after dinner with Ruth on Monday, and finally...late at night on Tuesday, baked deliciously scrumptious browned butter toasted coconut chocolate chip cookies, ala Joy the Baker, to bring to work the next day...


I halved Joy's recipe, and remembered to half everything except the butter. Whoops. Mine look nothing like hers, but an extra stick of butter, shockingly, didn't hurt the taste too much.
...but I popped a couple the night before and felt dizzingly drunk off the butter/sugar rush. Whew.
3. So when Seyeon came over Wednesday night with a bit of a cold, I think it just did me in. My poor immune system was down, from lack of the usual antioxidant-packed goods, and I woke up feeling not so hot.

Today, as I've been snacking away at home while trying to let my health make a recovery, I've been utilizing awesome recipes in my latest issue of Women's Running to pack in as many nutrients as possible. Below: homemade kale chips, a blueberry/chard/almond milk/flaxseed/pinapple smoothie, and an amaaazing fudge brownie made with black beans (!), Dutch cocoa powder, and sweetened purely with agave nectar. No refined sugar whatsoever. Incredible stuff.


Come on, body, work with me. I'd like to be able to run tomorrow.

The evolution of a health nut

Like my book blog entry, my food blog entry may need to be split into two (or three, or four, or five...) to keep it manageable.


Spaghetti with tomato/cashew sauce and fresh basil
Let's start with a little background, some of which you might be familiar with already: I did not grow up cooking. My dad didn't really cook. My mom did, and while she did involve me in some of the process when I was younger - helping her snap green beans in half to cook, or arranging potatoes in the bottom of a pan of water to boil - I have little memories of such involvement in cooking after such a point. As I grew up and got both pickier and nastier in my adolescence, I imagine some of the joy of cooking was lost in my mother. Our kitchen, to be honest, never really inspired happiness or excitement surrounding the preparation of food. I don't blame anyone; I wouldn't have enjoyed cooking for the 14-year-old me either. My preferred daily lunch at school that year was a slice of pepperoni pizza, a can of Welch's grape soda, and a greasy chocolate chip cookie the size of my face. I didn't appreciate my mom's lentil soup back then.

Joining Harkness co-op in college was my first real experience with cooking sans recipes, utilizing bulk foods and fresh produce and spices to prepare meals for others. I only stayed in the co-op for a semester, but it was enough to dissolve at least some of the fears I had surrounding the kitchen.


Massaged salad with Swiss chard, beets, sunflower seeds, and homemade dressing with fresh ginger
Nevertheless, the reality of my lack of even the most basic fundamentals of cooking was stark - and remained to be so up until about the last year. (Some of y'all remember the EasyMac incident(s). Oi vey.) Through a long series of experiments, recipe trials, triumphs and travesties, I finally am beginning to feel as though I've transcended omelettes and stir-fries, and can now claim some competence in the kitchen - and perhaps even a little bit of pride.

Kitchen appliances have, no doubt, played a big role in this newfound confidence. My Vitamix continues to be a dream - a gentle humming machine of beauty that seems capable of doing no wrong. I have made everything in it from blended kale smoothies to vegan tomato cashew pasta sauce to fresh hummus to butternut squash soup - and seemingly, no matter what ingredients I drop in, something magical comes out. There's no undercooking, no overcooking, no scorching, no drying out, no failure to rise, or any of the other host of maladies that can foil even the most valiant baking or cooking efforts. If your ingredient ratios are a little off, you just add a little more in and blend again. Magic.

But I've been cheating on my blender a little, I must admit. See, I also hauled an old food processor out to Seattle from my childhood home in Kansas. At the time, I couldn't imagine what I'd ever use such a thing for, but I thought, what the heck, why not, and threw it into the moving truck along with a handful of other found objects salvaged from the house in Kansas. Only last month did I finally locate all the component parts of the food processor, reassemble it, and delight in the fact that it's still operational. *Drool.* What a dreamy appliance it is when it goes to work.

My favorite processor creations so far have been (1) homemade pesto, and (2) raw energy bars. Which to begin with? The pesto was unbelievably easy: fresh basil, toasted almonds (pine nuts, I learned, do NOT toast well in the oven), garlic, and olive oil. Pulse. Heaven!


Rotini pasta with pesto


Brown rice pasta with pesto, baked tilapia and mixed veggies
For the raw energy bars...I have to remember where I even got this recipe. If anyone wants the specifics, I'll happily share, because these were hands down the most delicious energy bars, store-bought or homemade included, I've ever tasted. I take no credit for these, as it was pure recipe-heeding that introduced these to my tastebuds, but wow...Food Processor, let me count the ways I adore thee.


Adding honey to the nuts and dried fruits.


Added cranberries, shredded coconut, raisins, and Green Magma (powdered barley greens)


Tell me that doesn't look amazing
My small army of kitchen appliances has boosted my confidence enough that I've branched out in many ways in my life so far in Seattle that never even seemed within the realm of possibility before. I've made my own granola, baked bread, created my own salad dressings, learned how to cook steel cut oats, rolled my own quiche crust from teff flour, made soup from scratch, cooked steaks with a homemade marinade, tried tons of different dark leafy greens in dozens of homespun salad combinations, learned how to make perogies from scratch (a shared learning experience with Alan around Christmas last year), baked fish, made my own guacamole, baked homemade pita chips, and tried more new foods and ingredients than I previously knew existed. What a wonderful world food is!


Grass-fed steak with wild rice and green beans


Homemade toasted pita chips and curried lentil dip


Our perogies masterpiece

I've read a lot of books lately about diet, mostly in relation to holistic health, disease prevention, athletic endurance, and general longevity. Several of them include: Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food", Victoria Boutenko's "Green for Life" and "Raw Family: A True Story of Awakening", Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal Vegetable Miracle", Loren Cordain's "The Paleo Diet", and Erik Marcus' "Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating". All have been great, enlightening reads, and if you'll pardon the embarrassing pun, good food for thought. While there are a lot of different ideas out there - some of which are downright radical by our society's standards - the truth is that there are general overlaps amongst all of them. While the jury might still out on whether eating cows is a good idea, or if a food's glycemic index matters, or whether microwaving food introduces carcinogens, or if a cup of coffee a day is good or bad or you, etc etc...
Pretty much everyone across the board agrees:

1. Processed food bad.
2. Refined sugar bad.
3. Too much food bad.
4. Nuts and seeds good.
5. Fruits, vegetables, dark leafy greens really good.

That's not so hard, is it? Am I absolutely 100% avoiding any foods right now? Nope. I am generally trying to consume minimal: caffeine, processed foods, refined sugar, refined grains, gluten, cheese and alcohol, while trying to emphasize: greens, vegetables, fruits, healthy fats, lean protein, seafood, herbal teas, and nutritional superfoods in general. I'm going on several months now without coffee, even more months with a daily fresh green juice or smoothie, and a year and a half now without missing a single day of work due to being sick. *Knock on wood.* I like this being-healthy business. Food is medicine.

Anyone want to have a dinner party soon?

My first juice fast

From my blog entries here to the new kitchen appliances to my raw food musings and experiments to the dinner parties I've been sharing with many of you lately, it's clear that I've had food on my mind a lot lately! I've been cooking much more than ever before in my life, as the new blender and juicer have amped up my confidence to buy copious amounts of produce at the grocery store. If I can't find a way to prepare it (I've lost every single eggplant I've ever purchased this way...*sigh*), I can always just toss it in the blender!

My reading list has also been pretty heavy on the food and diet spectrum lately:


So, I've been toying a lot lately with the idea of doing a juice fast. I have, undoubtedly, a ridiculous sweet tooth, and I often eat beyond the point of satiated comfort. (Why do you think I run so much?) Incorporating green smoothies into my morning routine has already helped me cut out coffee completely and maintain steady energy levels, even without ample sleep. I recently talked with one of my coworkers who juice fasted for an entire month, and saw huge health and energy benefits because of it.

Well, I decided yesterday to stop toying with the fasting idea, and just go ahead and try it - just a 24-hour one. I had dinner around 5 p.m. last night, went to school, went to bed, woke up, made a big glass of my Unpalatable Chlorophyll Juice and several mason jars to go, went for a 5.5 mile run, drank some more juice, walked to work, drank more juice after my shift, walked to school, sat in class for 3.5 hours (which took me into the 25th hour of my fast and beyond!), then walked home. And...ta-da, I felt great! No real hunger bothers or rumbling stomach or anything. Some cravings, sure, but those happen even when my mouth is already full of food and chewing, so I can't blame it on the fasting. Being out of the house and away from food all day certainly made it easier. Overall, it was much less of a big deal than I thought it would be.


Unpalatable Chlorophyll Juice in action: the last swig in my mason jar.
My run was especially excellent. I'm sure running (and doing sprints at the end!) are not what you're supposed to do while fasting for the first time. It would up being about 29 hours total with food...honestly, probably the longest stretch of time I've ever gone without food in my whole life. Even fasting for Ramadan with my host family in Turkey was only a 16-hour fast or so...though there was no juice or water then. But you know what? I'll trust my body's intuition over someone else's opinions any day - and I've felt great all day long.

I considered briefly extending the fast through tomorrow since I felt so good...but ultimately decided against it, not wanting to get ahead of myself. Went grocery shopping instead - which is definitely a crazy idea when you haven't eaten all day long. I must have looked at least mildly ravenous, because in spite of my modest $53 grocery bill, the checkout guy who was scanning my food said, "Dang girl, you must have been hungry today!" Fresh apple slices with Trader Joe's Blue Stilton cheese was a most excellent way to ease out of my fast.

Postscript.
And now, because I failed to post this when it was timely...why you shouldn't try to drive your car in Seattle when it snows:

For the love of vegetables

I feel long overdue for a food blog entry. It's been about six months since my last food/cooking frenzy, and given that a lot of big things have been happening in my kitchen lately, I feel like it's time.


My grocery hauls have been really colorful lately!
Exactly two years ago, Seyeon and I took a fall break trip to Austin, Texas together. She was interested in scoping it out for grad school and future living, and I went along for the ride. Given that we were both wrapped up in our busy lives prior to the trip (I was in the final stretch before the 5K that I'd organized and stressed out of my mind about it), we had no time to plan anything, including where we'd stay once we got there. We found a decent hostel for the first couple nights, and from there, coordinated a couple homes to stay in after that via couchsurfing.com. FANTASTIC website.

Our first couchsurfing host was a guy named David Ansel, who'd started his own soup-making-and-delivery business in Austin, The Soup Peddler. Our next couchsurfing host was the self-proclaimed "Team Sprout" - three young, enthusiastic raw foodists who hosted us for a craft night and a board game night and made us delicious raw food and smoothies to take with us on our daily adventures around the city. The three of them - Kaye, Chris, and Kristy - have been in both Seyeon's and my mind since we visited Austin for the first time, and their introducing us to the raw foods lifestyle irreversibly piqued our interest.

A quick overview on raw foods: essentially, a 100% raw diet (though many raw foodists will only maintain a 70% or 80% raw diet) excludes anything that's been heated above 116 degrees Fahrenheit. The theory behind is it that heating foods above 116 changes the actual chemical structure of the food, introducing carcinogens, zapping nutrients, and essentially killing the life energy out of the food. There are countless stories of people reversing cancer, heart disease, Type 1 diabetes, and various otherwise life-threatening, degenerative diseases by switching to a raw foods diet. People report soaring energy levels, because their digestive system no longer requires huge amounts of energy to break down weighty, nutrient-depleted foods. It's like veganism on steroids; not only no meat or dairy, but no cooked grains (only sprouted ones) either. Even coffee and tea is technically not considered raw. ("Sun tea", in which herbs are left to steep in a cup of water in direct sunlight, is permissible.) No bread, no oatmeal, nothing pasteurized.

Of course, there's nothing practical about being raw in our modern society. Virtually nothing at restaurants fits the bill; you have to pack all your own food when you travel or go anywhere; our culture is truly built around cooked food and the sharing of it, and people will think you're crazy. Raw food is extreme, yes. But if you all could meet Kaye and Chris and Kristy in Austin, you'd want to give raw foods a try, too; you couldn't meet happier, kinder, more energetic souls in your life.

Don't worry; I haven't totally gone off the deep end with it yet. But I have been fascinated with raw foods over the past two years, and am trying to incorporate more raw foods into my daily diet. Finally having a powerful juicer and blender on my kitchen counter has made a huge difference. Already, just with incorporating juiced greens and green smoothies into my morning routine, I've entirely cut my dependency on or cravings for coffee. I switched to black tea for awhile, but now, I don't even need that. Some blended kale or spinach with fresh fruit really gets me going first thing in the morning.

A huge thanks to Alan for the juicer (birthday present!) that got me from just thinking and reading about raw foods to putting it into action in my daily life and seeing what happened. The 2-horsepower Vita Mix blender was a present to myself, with help from both Elodie and my mom, who contributed to my ongoing "blender fund" that's been pending since that trip to Austin. Amusingly, it was a sentence from Leo Babauta's "The Power of Less" that convinced me to get it - something about how if you think you really want something, to wait 30 days, and only if you still want it then, to go ahead and buy it. I realized I've been telling everybody in my life about how much I want a Vita Mix for two years now, so it was just time.

Here are a few of my raw food experiments so far:


Raw guacamole


Raw corn chowder (yup, cool soup...surprisingly good)


Green smoothie: Before.


Green smoothie: After.

So am I giving up on cooked food altogether just yet? Absolutely not. I just ordered a ton of yummy organic groceries from Spud.com, via a fantastic Groupon deal...so yesterday, when I got home from school, two giant bins of produce and loaves of bread and chocolate milk and fancy cheeses and hazelnut granola and locally made pumpkin cookie dough were awaiting me.




I've tried to do a few days of eating 100% raw, and my body wasn't happy about it. A lot of raw foodists would argue that my body sees cooked food as a drug, and trying to quit it cold turkey will elicit withdrawal symptoms...who knows? Otherwise, I can't imagine lots of fresh vegetables and fruit giving me headaches, but I have been especially headachey the past week or two.

Bottom line: I will continue to experiment, and probably write about my findings here. Last bit of awesome food-related news: My neighborhood just got hooked up with food and yard waste pick up! So now all my food scraps (of which there are many, especially with my juicer!) can get composted. Good news.