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The Creativity Cure

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On Thanksgiving day, I had the good fortune to go to the studio of friend and ceramic artist, Margaret Lawerence, and be the first to purchase a set of dishes from her new collection. Readers may know Margaret as Marge, my guide on raw food and colon cleansing, in my previous post from over a year ago: http://www.yinyangvision.blogspot.com/2011/10/just-ask-marge.html

Now it’s not raw food Marge is revealing to me, but instead her raw creativity, finely honed and brillantly contained in modern dishware. She will be showing her work at Seward Park Clay Studio’s annual holiday sale which starts tonight (November 30th) at 6:30 and continues until December 24th.

Color, clay, creativity has always been a favorite way to remedy my life, and I’m so inspired by how my friends find their own artistic antidotes for what ails them.

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Welcome Aronia

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Don, a neighbor and fellow urban gardener, dropped by the other day bearing gifts from his own garden, a pint of the most delicious honey from his beehive and an Aronia  (chokeberry) plant. Aronia seems like a fine addition to my outdoor pharmacy because it is disease and pest resistant.  And that’s exactly the quality I want in every thing I ingest because I want to be disease and pest resistant too.    I’m sad to say my white currant bush does not have this quality so Aronia will probably replace it.

Aronia is also productive. One plant can potentially produce up to forty pounds of berries.  Not just any berries, either.  Aronia Melanocarpa fruit contains more antioxidants than most other berries, more antioxidants than blueberries, cranberries, elderberries and even pomegranates. I’m not surprised that this superfruit has shown promising results in research studies on cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and cancer because all you have to do is look at its color to know it’s good for you. In Chinese medicine, we view all the dark purple-pigmented fruit, which are high in phenolic substances, as the most potent blood builders.  Don says it’s very easy to pick the berries off the stems too so the combination of being highly productive, medicinally potent and easy to pick makes this plant very attractive to me.

I might have to convince myself that I like the taste however.  It sounds like it has a dry, sour, astringent taste so I probably won’t be gorging on them raw like I do cherries, grapes, blackberries and red raspberries.   Probably they’ll be better cooked but I’m imagining they will mix well with other fruits for juicing or desserts.  We usually freeze over twenty gallons of blackberries which we use in smoothies throughout the winter. Hopefully by this same time next year, we’ll be throwing in a handful of Aronia berries into our Vita-Mix blender too.

Aronia, I like you already.

 

Parsley Farm Berry Smoothie

(creamy and satisfying)

¾ cup frozen berries (any kind)

½ -1 frozen banana (chopped)

1 cup milk (rice, coconut or almond milk)

1/4 cup cashews

1 -3 dates

Adjust the amounts of banana and dates depending on the sweetness you prefer

 

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Music Cure

There’s nothing that cures rainy day blues except by having my neighborhood pal, Claudia, come over and play music while I make hot & sour miso soup.  She’s playing old Indian Bob’s 12 string guitar, a curmudgeonly Ventura, which rebels against staying tuned but she coaxes it into harmony with her beautiful voice .

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An F is Not a Zero

Hi, everyone, I’m Alexandra. Since my good friend Joyce is inviting health-minded people to participate in her blog, I will gladly take up the challenge. I am a big fan of Joyce and her garden and her positive, life-affirming spirit. AND her very original, wonderful self.

Instead of talking about food today, I would like to share a little bit about my thoughts on exercise. I am big on walking. I have a pedometer and have a monthly goal of walking 10,000 steps a day (approximately 4.8 miles, or so Mr. Ipod Nano tells me), or 310,000 steps a month. Sometimes I exceed that, sometimes I don’t. But there’s something that nags at me, body and soul, if I don’t push myself to get out and get moving. I feel kind of sick, honestly.

 

If you aren’t a longtime walker, you probably won’t want to start with such a time consuming goal. And if you don’t have a pedometer, you can also choose a certain amount of minutes you want to walk, broken up any way you want. Say, if you want to walk 20 minutes a day, you can walk 10 minutes around the block in the morning and 10 minutes around the afternoon. Then you’re done!

But what about those days when you don’t meet your goals? Here’s my thought: Instead of despairing, think of the goals as a number rather than as a grade. For example, rather than giving in entirely, just do the best you can.

Because I have a precious little angel with ADHD, the phenomenon of the paper-turned-in-so-late-it-can-only-get-an-F is well known to me. It used to frustrate me to tears. Why bother turning in the stupid thing if you’re still going to get an F? But my teacher husband explained to me why it’s still worthwhile.

Remember, an F is better than a 0. You may think you’re a complete loser in school if you get a 59. But in terms of your whole average, a 59 is very close to a 65 (that’s what my high school called a D, anyway). When it’s mixed with your other grades, it will not be as much of a disaster as a zero is. The zero will pull everything way down. That also works with walking goals. If your goal is 310,000 steps a month, you’ll be a lot better off with a day that you walked 5,000 steps than a day where you walked 1,000 steps. The 5,000 steps you walked that day make you 4000 steps closer to your goal than you would have been. You’re a winner! So, persevere. Do what you can. And keep moving!!

(crossposted at my own blog, 135 Journals and Counting).

135journals.blogspot.com

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On Making Sauerkraut

tumblr_mdrtfiZ9EZ1ra92m5I always have containers of bubbling fermenting vegetables around so I can get my live food hit all year. In my kitchen, you’ll see glass jars of cabbage, turnips and tomatoes, crocks of cucumbers and chickpea miso, and plastic buckets with rice sake, all breaking down into highly digestible delectables. Fermentation not only is an excellent way to preserve vegetables, it also increases nutritional content, removes toxins and generates enzymes in the process.  Eating fermented food introduces lactobacillus bacteria (probiotics) into your digestive system. When it comes to health and strong immunity, lactobacillus bacteria is your best friend-the one who will watch your gut.

I love dipping into these containers for a quick snack or for an already prepared tangy side dish, which is sure to brighten every meal.

If you always wanted to know how to make sauerkraut, here are instructions from my favorite fomenter of fermentation, Sandor Ellis Katz:

http://www.wildfermentation.com/making-sauerkraut-2/

Here’s a video demonstration:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i77hU3zR-fQ

IExperiment. Befriend Bacteria. Don’t fear mold.

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Crunchi Mungchi Sprout Salad Recipe

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During the winter, I like to have light, raw foods available beyond the kale, turnips and root vegetables still in my garden. Sprouts contain vitamin A, C, B1 and B6, and are rich in minerals, protein and enzymes.  They are easy to digest, high in fiber but low in calories and cost so they are the perfect food to keep you light during the winter.

For sprouting, I use the Easy Sprout Spouters from www.sproutpeople.com because I get good crop of sprouts every time I use them; I like its design and ease for completely draining water from the sprouts.  I would recommend buying two or three Sprouters so you could be sprouting different kinds of seeds, legumes or grains at any one time.

Parsley Farm’s

Crunchi Mungchi Sprout Salad Recipe

This delicious crunchy clean tasting salad has a strong bite from the radish additions.  It will clear your nostrils and satisfy your palate at the same time. See last blog post for more on the benefits and hazards of horseradish.

4 cups sprouted mung beans (1/2 cup dried mung beans)

1 cup green cabbage (thinly sliced)

1/3 cup red onion (thinly diced)

1 small daikon radish (thinly diced)

1 green pepper (thinly diced)

1-2 tsp horseradish sauce

1/3 cup mayonnaise

water to thin sauce

½ squeezed lemon

1 tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

In a medium bowl, mix mung bean sprouts and thinly sliced cabbage, green pepper, onion and daikon radish.  In a small separate bowl mix mayonnaise, lemon, horseradish sauce, salt and pepper and enough water to make a thin consistency.  Add more horseradish sauce if you want it spicier. Mix in sauce with mung bean sprout mixture.

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Killer Cure or Revenge of the Radish

DSC05824 Here I am innocently scraping the outerlayer off the horseradish root I just dug out of the garden. I’m thinking about my next steps in making horseradish sauce where I will chop the root into small pieces and then, along with salt, add white vinegar, a little water, before mixing them up in the Cuisinart.  It’s all very straightforward, ordinary kitchen crafting.  My intent is to use the horseradish in my raw salads because I like its bite.

I begin to believe in horseradish’s potency as the pungent fumes from the horseradish root make their way to my nostrils.  I start seeing the root as a sword because it has a cutting, toxin-purging effect in the body; it can battle viruses, mucous, urinary tract infections and even cancer.

Then I get an idea: a killer idea.You see, my husband, Craig, who is in his mid-fifties, has begun snoring this past year.  Although I am passionate about this man and want to sleep next to him every night, I despise the sound of wet phlegm flapping through his respiratory system. As I think about the snoring, and how it has disturbed my sleep, that precious restorative time, I start feeling more hateful, more evil, and more determined to kill the phlegm.

I think to myself, what he needs is a big whiff of this stuff and that will give me a good night sleep – sleep deprived people think distorted thoughts. So when my root slurry is all mixed up, I take the top off the cuisinart, call him over and say, “Put your nose in this stuff; it will cure your snoring.”  My husband trust me so he lowers his nose into the mixture and takes a full inhalation, the deep kind we all take on a fresh spring morning. The next thing I see is Craig, on his knees, coughing and gasping for breath.

When he can speak again he says with heat in his voice, “Are you trying to kill me?”  I examine his face, which is beet red.  Uh oh! So, believing he is being perhaps a bit overdramatic. I lower my own nose into the mixture, albeit with a touch of caution, snort once and experience the same noxious fumes.  Instantly my eyes sear and a spasmodic coughing fit follows.

Horseradish, that sword-bearing root, took us both down.

After Craig recovered, his nostril passages did, in fact, clear up. That night, I can report  the snoring situation was improved but not completely resolved.  What to try next? Will he sniff my concoctions one more time?

Here’s a traditional remedy for clearing phlegm from the sinuses:

Take ½ teaspoon of grated horseradish sauce without dilution morning and afternoon.  Don’t drink anything for ten minutes and feel your breathing passages open up.

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Foraging For a Cure

tumblr_mdjyoa93Am1ra92m5Pacific Northwest’s Reishi – Ganaderma Orgonense

In early November, when I tromped through an old growth forest on the Olympic Peninsula in search of wild chanterelle and hedgehog mushrooms, I was delighted when my companion and guide, Liz the Griz, pointed to polypore mushrooms sitting at the base of two hemlock trees. These four to six inch kidney shaped, shiny brown, soft, fresh specimens were Pacific Northwest’s Reishi, Ganaderma Orgonense.  They were perfect for the picking so we gently tore them off and stored them away in our backpacks.

Even though the rest of that drizzly day did not yield much in the way of edible mushrooms, I was satiated by the beauty of yellow maple leaves twittering in the air against the verdant velvet backdrop of the forest.  I also was secretly glorifying in the fact that I only needed to be willing to venture out on a typically wet Northwest fall day with boots and rain jacket to find my cure, I didn’t need billions of research dollars.

In Asian traditional medicine, Reishi has long been venerated as an immunity and longetivity tonic, but research has shown that it has no side effects and many other benefits as well. It has anti-tumor and anti-viral properties, regulates blood sugar, lowers choresterol and blood pressure, and supports the cardiovascular system.  My own experiential investigation into this medicinal mushroom verified its boosting qualities as I felt invigorated by coming into contact with it in its native landscape.  Good enough for me.

When I returned home from my foraging adventure, I sliced and dehydrated my two Reishi conks, storing them in glass jars for later use.  Today, I made a tea by putting a few slices into boiling water, and let it simmer for a few hours before drinking its slightly bitter woody cure.