*Originally published on Body Banter here* ---- It is an age-old question: if there is a God, why does he let bad things happen to us? Or, to put it in secular terms, why does bad exist? During the lock-down, I have been reading one chapter each morning from Shubha Vilas’s Open Eyed Meditations, and I recently found an answer to the aforementioned question. In a chapter entitled “Scratching the Bad Side of People,” he says, “...only in the right environment do humans prefer exposing their good side. It’s only a very rare soul that can behave with equanimity in any season. Most humans tend to reserve their good for the good and exhibit their bad more freely.” Good people do bad things when confronted with challenging situations they feel they do not deserve. Only when they have admitted their responsibility to maturely respond to those situations and, frequently, to their own guilt in creating them, do good people do good things in challenging situations. Only then can they identify their ethical obligations, diagnose their mistakes and shortcomings, and grow from them. But as it is, we tend to believe that the onus is on the situation to “deserve” us, rather than on us to work towards deserving a better situation. We see ourselves as the troubled victims of already published stories, rather than the authors of up-and-coming novels. Situations in themselves are neither good nor bad. It is our reactions and perspectives on them that make them such. Great people see challenging situations normally deemed “bad” as the best opportunities for growth. They admit their role in determining the positive or negative potential of a situation via their mindset, and sometimes they even admit their role in creating the situation in the first place. Such an admission is easier said than done; while we are often quick to attribute another’s misfortune to bad karma, when it comes to ourselves, we tend to discount karma as bogus, hippie-dippie propaganda. But alas, what is right is rarely easy in the beginning. COVID-19 is certainly presenting us with a challenging situation, and in doing so, it is also presenting us with the opportunity to either choose to be victims (making it a bad situation) or to contribute to our communities (making it a good situation). Currently, reactions and perspectives are distinguishing those who are suffering during this lock-down from those who are thriving. We can choose to take out our frustrations on our ever-present family members, or we can put the reins on our emotions and spend rare quality time with them instead. We can choose to indulge our desperation and fear by stockpiling stacks of hand sanitizer and toilet paper, or we can exhibit generosity and grace by sewing masks for medical workers. And after the lock-down ends, we can choose to resume our normal gas-guzzling habits, or we can sustain a more conservative lifestyle that has minimized pollution around the globe. You might be wondering what this has to do with the objectives of Body Banter. So here it is: How we treat our relationships with our bodies directly mirrors how we treat every other challenge in life. If we can practice exhibiting our good qualities no matter what the external COVID-19 situation looks like, then we can do the same with our bodies. The appearance of your body -- be it “too thin,” “too fat,” or anywhere in between -- will have no impact on your potential for physical and/or emotional recovery. Nor will it matter if you are in a judgemental environment in which others are constantly commenting on your weight or using trigger words. Once you accept responsibility for your own frame of mind, you will always have the ability to maintain a positive body image in challenging situations, and you will therefore always have the ability to improve. Conversely, if you continue to blame your troubled mindset and past traumas on others, you will only succumb to a negative body image when the going gets tough, and you will never improve. Furthermore, we have the gift of this extended time at home to do good things for our bodies. Maybe this means practicing more gentle, mindful exercise, like yoga. Maybe it means meditating every morning. Maybe it means using this month as a landmark to signal when you started feeding yourself enough food again, or as the point in time when you stopped counting calories. Let this time of social stagnation be one of spiritual inflation. Let this be the time that you finally accept responsibility and commit to change. As much as I am a John Mayer fangirl and shamelessly cry to his lyrics on road trips, I cannot get behind him when he says that he and his friends are just “waiting on the world to change.” For in reality, our world is waiting on us to change. And when we do, bad will cease to exist.
0 Comments
For most people, the “self-help” in self-help literature has become a noun rather than a verb. We love to read (and, for that matter, be seen reading) books such as Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*** and Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now. But when it comes to actually putting the authors’ suggestions into practice, we tend to wedge these books back on their shelves somewhere between the yellow pages and the dictionary we just keep for show. I have heard a few explanations for why this is the case, most common among them being over-saturation of the market. Have you ever noticed how the “Self-Help” section of Barnes & Noble is several bookshelves longer than, say, the “Spirituality” section? Indeed, a quick search on Barnes & Noble’s website unturns roughly three times as many results for the former than for the latter (44,824 versus 15,981). Many people believe that the average person has heard so many tips for how to live a better life, from both well-wishers and exploitive advertisements looking to turn a profit, that their brain has simply shut the doors to any new information. But this does not explain why we still buy self-help books, despite the dozens already on our shelves. There are more basic and individual reasons for why we so fervidly read self-help literature and with equal fervor refuse to put their suggestions to use. Self-help books function like placebos in a clinical trial that don’t actually work. We consume them, believing them to be the magical drug that will instantly solve all our ailments, but a week later, we are just as sick as we were before we so eagerly ingested their words. Meanwhile, the experimental group that has taken the bona fide treatment, the therapy that addresses the roots of their problems and changes the chemical composition of their very beings, truly heals. The word “therapy” implies action, and this is certainly the case with our experimental group. You cannot expect a broken ankle to heal simply by visiting the doctor and listening to their advice. You must also follow their advice by resting the injury and slowly, intentionally re-introducing movement to the area. This sounds so obvious when discussing physical ailments. So why is it so hard when we’re talking about mental ailments?
Here are a few reasons I have identified in my own experience and observations:
Self-help books are what you make of them. In reading them, you become a more knowledgeable person and increase the arsenal of possibilities at your command. Wisdom, however, is not the same as knowledge. Wisdom is expressed as applied knowledge. Why stop at being knowledgeable when you can also be wise? As you move forward in your day and into the future, let the advice in this post be more than just advice. Read the word “self-help” as a verb, and actually do something to help yourself. Lately, I've been eating a ton of granola. Seriously. It's half my diet. But the costs are adding up; a bag of my favorite granola (Purely Elizabeth) costs $5-$6 on average and only lasts me a week at most. Plus, I've been wanting a granola with less (or no) added sugar. So I did what we used to do when I was kid and we never even bought granola in the first place- I made my own. Making your own granola is simple and quick, and the hardest part is making sure it doesn't burn in the oven. But this means that you have control! You can make it as crispy, as chunky, as spicy as you want. Heating coconut oil, maple syrup, and pumpkin puree over the stove and then pouring it over the oats and spices enables you to create as large of granola chunks as you desire. For chunkier granola, don't stir halfway through its baking time; simply rotate the pans. I recently received the suggestion to try practicing the guidelines Ayurveda lays out on seasonal eating to deal with my food anxieties. The ideology behind this practice rests on the concept that there are three seasons with which the doshas (biological energies) correspond: Vata--late fall to early winter; Kapha--late winter to early spring, and Pitta--late spring to early fall. Our cravings naturally conform to these seasons; we crave light salads in the summer, heavy stews in the winter, and spices in the fall. You don't even have to prescribe to Ayurvedic ideology to admit this is true...how often do you want watermelon when it is twenty degrees outside or butternut squash soup when it is ninety? The temperatures, the taste profiles, and the heaviness of our diets change with the seasons. Want science? This landmark study demonstrates how cooler temperatures stimulate brown fat production. It is highly possible that our cravings adjust accordingly. Read this article for the layman's interpretation of the study. As we are entering Vata season, warmer, heavier, spicier, and more grounding foods are on our mind. They are also seasonal; pumpkins patches are overflowing, warm drinks offer comfort from the cold, and we would traditionally begin to cook dried beans at this time of year as our gardens and farms go relatively bare. Eating heavier foods can be difficult and anxiety-inducing for those who struggle with disordered eating, but resisting them can be dangerous. Our bodies' cravings can indicate important deficiencies or needs for nutrients, and (for the most part) it is important to listen! This is an awesome guide to implementing specific dietary and lifestyle practices during Vata season. Back to the granola! I made this recipe for a vegan bake sale yesterday benefiting Hope Animal Rescue in Durham. Collectively, we raised over $1600, which is pretty awesome! I used Minimalist Baker's recipe, which you can find here, simply omitting the sugar. If you're up for the challenge or are trying to use seasonal and minimally processed ingredients, ditch the canned pumpkin and follow my guide for producing fresh pumpkin puree instead.
Enjoy! xx Our Food Studies Immerse program spent two weeks at the Duke Campus Farm in early to mid September learning about organic and sustainable agriculture. Along with a bit of manual labor, our instructor and the director of the Farm, Saskia Cornes, guided us through the basics of tilling, pest management, seed propagation, and more. Field Manager, Leslie Wolverton, and Assistant Program Director, Emily McGinty, also spent a fair amount of time teaching us practical knowledge. You can read more about the Campus Farm here. Each morning at the farm, we spent fifteen minutes journaling. I used to journal every morning and every night, and my mental health soared. I fell off the wagon when I arrived at college, and this field notes experience taught me once more the value of putting words to the hurricane of thoughts that runs through my mind. The fifteen-minute journaling sessions allowed me to find the eyes of these metaphorical storms. It was OK if I had overslept that morning and had to rush to the farm. It was OK if I had a million things to do that afternoon. For those fifteen minutes, everything was still. And yet, nothing was still. I repeatedly watched Saskia lugging wheelbarrows around the farm and the crew pulling eggplants from the vines. I watched birds hopping on the tarp beside the hay and cars rushing down the road. I felt the breeze run across my face. Not even the light was still; not only had it travelled millions of miles from the sun, but it ebbed and flowed as clouds drifted across the sky. It was this stillness in a constant interchange of energy that allowed me to understand my own storm of thoughts. I learned many lessons from the plants and wildlife. As far as I can tell, the following are true for most organisms I observed on the farm. They aren’t self-conscious; they just follow their instincts. They don’t think about calories; they just eat. They don’t sweat over to-do lists; they just get them done. They don’t resent the rain and flooding; they just adjust their behaviors to move forward in the best way possible. As much as we may want to emulate these observed tendencies, we also must recognize that we are human and that we must forgive ourselves for being self-conscious, calorie-counting, stressing over lists, and feeling resentment. What’s more, maybe our humanity reveals that there is nothing to forgive; what we view as faults are simply indicators of the human condition, an ever-present consciousness that should be appreciated despite its occasional drawbacks. In just a short time, I developed a connection with the beds we tilled and the vines from which we picked flowers, grapes, and edamame. For the first time, I understood what Duke’s favorite catchphrase, “embodied learning,” means. Because I picked grapes myself, I more fully understand the effort and technique of harvesting them than I do of harvesting other plants I have merely eaten from the farm, like peppers and melons. Thus, I feel more connected to, and appreciative of, the grapevines. It is not enough to study topics in a classroom and claim an understanding of them; we must go into the field, pick up our shovels, dig in, and get our hands a little dirty. So what did we actually do on the farm? We learned how to save seeds from harvests and propagate seeds in the new propagation house. We chopped down cover crops (plants that help regulate soil composition and attract favorable insects) and layered them with hay to make hot compost piles. We tilled soil using a variety of tools. We learned about organic practices in integrated pest and disease management, as well as how certain crops return more nitrogen to the soil than others and can be more beneficial to the farming system than others. We brainstormed ways to prevent soil runoff during Hurricane Florence, ultimately choosing to move haybales to the ends of beds to catch soil. There was a lot of practical knowledge that would take hours to explain; after all, we were there three hours a day for two weeks.
When I was considering universities my senior year of high school, one of the programs that brought me over to the dark side from UNC to Duke was DukeImmerse: a semester-long undergraduate seminar experience where all four classes center around one subject, field components are mandatory, and everyone voluntarily enrolls to explore a theme about which they are passionate. Each year, Duke offers a handful of Immerse programs, and, luckily for me, they offered a Food Studies program this fall. I am linking to the description here. The Food Studies Immerse (also dubbed "The Future of Food") has mainly brought together people from environmental science backgrounds and cultural anthropology backgrounds. The courses satisfy a wide variety of requirements, and they are introducing some of us to disciplines we would never otherwise explore. Our classes analyze plant growth and yield; how food and farming are presented in literature; the food supply chain and Environmental Life Cycle Assessments; and the social, political, and cultural implications of food. We are spending two weeks working on the Duke Campus Farm, will spend one week travelling around farms near San Francisco, and will visit several farms in North Carolina (both sustainable and otherwise). I wouldn’t call my course material and textbooks “work.” I wouldn’t call the hours I sit at my desk “studying.” I am in complete bliss learning about this subject. I want to use this post to pose a few questions and thoughts the first week elicited. 1. Is being a “locavore” always more eco-friendly? There is a huge emphasis on reducing food miles right now, but the relative eco-friendliness of local food must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Consider this:
Wine A is produced on a farm down the street from me that has 200 units of environmental impact. Wine B is produced a thousand miles away from me on a farm that has 100 units of environmental impact, and shipping it adds only 50 units. In this case, it would be more eco-friendly to buy Wine B than the local Wine A. Remember that “local” does not necessarily mean “better”; sometimes different climates are more suited to producing certain crops and sometimes foreign farms are just equipped with better technology and farming methods. 2. What is “authentic” cuisine? Why is a burrito found in a hole-in-the-wall Latin American restaurant considered more authentic and delicious than an expensive burrito prepared by a white chef at a five-star restaurant? When it comes to culinary tourism, perhaps “authenticity” simply equates to “expectations.” Obviously, taste is more than just a function of ingredients; taste relies upon atmosphere and memory as well. There inevitably lays reverse snobbery and covert prestige (having the know-how when it does not fit the expectations of your class/gender/race/etc.) in taking your friends to that hole-in-the-wall burrito joint. Need more evidence? Next time you are at a romantic restaurant, note how the dim lighting, intimate tables, carpeted floors, and the timing of the meal are suggestive of the bedroom. 3. The potential of feeding the world in 2050 does not rest upon population growth alone. Consider that with more people entering the middle class, there will be more demand for meat. Decreasing crop yields and limited land, accompanied by a predicted slow growth/adoption of technology, will drive food prices up significantly and impact the urban poor and landless rural communities most significantly. 4. How does farmwork instill agency in those tending the land, and how can this play out in gender dynamics? Farming allows people to provide for their communities, and their communities therefore give them respect. As agribusiness continues to replace small-scale farms run by women in places like Africa, how will this affect their rights and means of expression? I don’t know the answers to all these questions, and in an ever-evolving world, nobody truly does. That does not diminish the significance of considering them; mitigation of present and future harm is still available, as is the promotion of present and future benefits. Breakfast. For me, it really is the most important meal of the day because it sets the mood. I started waking up earlier to cook breakfast for myself every morning in December of 2015, and I haven't looked back since. I'm not a fan of sweet things in the morning; sugary pastries just make me feel gross and crave sugar the rest of the day (for this reason, I usually reserve dessert solely for my last meal). But I would eat these oats for dessert any night without hesitation. They are just that good. You can tell the difference between artificially sweet and naturally sweet and these oats are almost entirely naturally sweet. I use steel cut oats in this recipe for a nuttier flavor and chewier texture. You can, of course, use old fashioned oats (and probably instant oats for that matter), but I really think steel cut oats make a world of difference. As for the granola, you can choose your favorite variety (I love Purely Elizabeth granolas because they are chock-full of wholesome seeds and grains, low in sugar, and come in perfect clumps). Same goes for the nut butter; you can have this same oatmeal every day of the week, but each nut butter combination will produce a completely new experience. Enjoy! Nutty Cocoa Berry Overnight Oats
Ingredients: Base:
Instructions:
I’ve stressed a lot recently that presentation impacts taste by leaps and bounds. That’s why fancy restaurants serve small portions of perfectly curated food with tasteful drizzles of sauce, why cafés dress up smoothie bowls with fun patterns and bright colors, and why I and so many others like to eat out of upcycled coconut bowls. People even make careers out of just taking pictures of food! So far this summer, I’ve spent all my time in the Appalachians of North Carolina and Kentucky. Don’t get me wrong, I love the mountains for all the backpacking opportunities and beautiful vistas, but I miss the beach. I miss listening to Jimmy Buffett and falling asleep under the hot sun. I miss swimming in the ocean with friends, SCUBA diving on coral reefs, and taking long walks and runs on the shoreline. I miss going out at night, having the entire beach to myself, and listening to the waves crashing down while stargazing (what a meditative experience that is). The closest I can come to visiting the beach right now, though, is making a beach-themed meal and listening to a lot of Jimmy Buffett and the Zac Brown Band. So, at the grocery store earlier this week, I bought a pineapple and two coconuts on a whim. Thus, a pineapple boat was born. This recipe combines some of my favorite ingredients (raisins, peanuts, pineapple, and tempeh) for a healthy dish with the perfect combination of salty and sweet. I love how it brings together whole grains, fruit, proteins, and vegetables for a well-rounded meal that leaves nothing for the wanting. It’s easy to make adjustments to this recipe; I was originally going to lightly fry some rice with turmeric, but decided to work with what we had in the pantry instead (quinoa). Cashews are also a tasty substitution for the peanuts, and carrots are a good addition to up the veggie content of the dish. When I initially made this, I did not marinate the tempeh or soak the raisins. While you can absolutely skip these steps and still get good results, I find that the marination virtually doubles the tempeh’s savory taste and that soaking the raisins to expand them highlights their flavor and adds some juicy texture to the dish. Enjoy! Pineapple Quinoa Boats
Serves 4 Active Time: 30 minutes Total Time: 2 ½ hours Ingredients: For the marinated tempeh:
Instructions:
Back in November, my mom was driving me home from a wild, 12.4 mile Spartan race that I did not train nearly enough for, but thoroughly enjoyed. I had about overcome my eating disorder, and the race reminded me how much I missed a regular, rigorous exercise routine. Sitting in the passenger seat, I browsed through Duke’s club sports on my phone. Clicking through the Duke Triathlon pages, I found their exercise schedule and was delighted to see that there was a training plan for every single day of the week and that they even had a few highly experienced coaches (i.e. world class athletes). I was hooked. Later that night, I discovered that their dream trip (a mostly funded trip Duke Club Sports puts on for each division every 3-4 years) was to compete in a half Ironman in the Patagonian region of Argentina in March! OK, so I was more than hooked. I was readily offering myself up for sacrifice and showed up at practice two days later. Originally, I wasn’t supposed to come on the dream trip. All of the spots had already been filled by members who had been practicing since September. About a month into training, I realized how counterintuitive it was to train for a half Ironman and not even compete in one, so I offered to pay my way. Then, about a week before the trip, someone dropped out and I got grant money anyways. The world works in strange and serendipitous ways, but it teaches you to take those leaps of faith. Flying into Bariloche was stunning. The browns and greens and imposing mountains were not like anything you get in the U.S. And our Airbnb? We lived in a huge, old house built in the 1940s (most likely by Nazi refugees, no joke; Bariloche was a mecca for them) that had a view of the mountains and forest, and a short walk down the drive led us to a lake, a short walk up the drive led us to a hiking trail. After the race, we took full advantage of the town and landscape around us. The Food OK, let’s start this section off with a disclaimer. I was vegan on this trip, except for when it came to dessert. Due to its Swiss and German influences, Bariloche is the chocolate capital of Argentina, and there was so much to try. Ironman even gave us chocolate finishers’ medals produced by the local chocolate company RapaNui in addition to our metal hardware. My favorite treats were Havanna’s Havannets, cookies topped with cones of dulce de leche and dipped in chocolate. They’re sinful. I liked them better than their traditional South American cousins, alfajores, which are sandwich cookies held together by dulce de leche and dipped in chocolate. And then I also had chocolate fondue in the finishers’ tent after the race and dulce de leche ice cream on top of Belgian waffles at Rapanui...Was there more chocolate involved? Probably. There was just so much, I can’t keep track of it all. I also had (possibly my first?) empanadas after a group “recovery” ride we did later in the week. It was too long to really be considered recovery, and we were all quite hungry, so we stopped at a small shop on the side of the road and filled up on these tasty hand pies. Argentina is famous for its beef and steak, but obviously I had none of that. It’s also famous for mate, which I have had and loved in the past but did not have a chance to drink on this trip. Mate is a kind of tea that is even more integral to Argentine culture than sweet tea is to the South. It is typically drunk from small gourds (yes, gourds) through silver straws. Families and friends pass mate around while enjoying conversation and relaxing. It can be consumed hot or cold, so is good for any time of the year. On our boat tour, we saw many, many families carrying bags full of mate thermoses on board. The Hiking We had planned on doing some overnight backpacking while we were in Patagonia, but the parks were closed due to unpredictable high winds. What a bummer; I mean, check out these hikes. We did, however, have the aforementioned trail by our house, and several of us drove to a longer day trail in the Nahuel Huapi National Park that afforded us views of a hanging glacier and waterfalls, not to mention several species of birds (beautiful woodpeckers!). The weather was crazy in March. It rained pretty much every day, and we saw so many rainbows that it was abnormal not to see at least two on any given day. On the longer day hike, we started off bundled up in jackets, stripped down as we sweated on an upward climb, bundled up again as it started to snow, and stripped down again on our way back. Honestly, what mood swings Mother Nature was having that day. The Boat Tour Probably my least favorite activity of the trip and not worth the money in my opinion. It involved a lot of sitting, and it was also pretty cloudy on the day we went. We did get to walk around the pretty forest of Victoria Island and explore the beaches and forests of Los Arrayanes National Park, and we learned a little history about the area on the boat, but I would have rather spent my time hiking. The Cycling And, of course, I would be remiss not to mention the cycling. The busy road connecting Bariloche to other coastal towns is NOT ideal for road cyclists, except for when it was closed for the race; the traffic is fast and heavy, and the fumes are hard to breathe. Many locals ride their bikes on the curbs, but there is virtually no shoulder for road bikes. We took some roads into the mountains on our recovery ride, where the traffic was far better and the scenery even more gorgeous. This was the most beautiful ride of my life, and that’s saying something because Vermont was pretty darn beautiful. The Swimming We were in Argentina at the beginning of their fall, and while the waters weren’t unbearable...they were pretty darn cold. As in, wear a wetsuit cold. But the lake by our house had crystal clear water, and the exhilaration of diving in for a chilly swim was not to miss. That's about it for now! Feel free to contact me if you are planning a trip to Argentina and want some tips...I highly recommend Bariloche as a destination, and I am so thankful I had the opportunity to visit.
We can learn so much by nourishing our mind-body connections. When we exercise, we're not simply reaping physical benefits, but we're also elevating ourselves mentally and learning life lessons in the process. Here are a few lessons that I have learned over the past few years that particularly stand out:
3. Practicing yoga has taught me that people really aren’t paying attention to you as much as you think they are. Even instructors with hundreds of hours of yoga under their belts occasionally fall out of poses. They have days when their bodies aren’t as flexible as they usually are, and they have days when they find it difficult to focus. My fellow yoga practitioners and I fall out of poses all the time. Through yoga, we have learned humility. We have learned how to not judge others when they fall, and we have learned how to not judge ourselves. We have also learned how to get back up again after we fall. These lessons in non-judgement and resilience extend to life outside of yoga as well; we judge less harshly the mistakes our peers make, recognizing that at any given moment, they are at a different place in life than we are. My favorite yoga instructor likes to remind us to “come from a place of power, not pride.” He emphasizes that we should not stretch into the full expressions of poses until we have their foundations fully developed. Even if everyone else is in full expression, we must have the power to release judgement and objectively assess where we are in our practice. Have the power to be confident in and satisfied with yourself, and do not stress over how people perceive you. 4. Find friends that challenge you, share your passions, and excite you. Before joining the Duke triathlon club in November, I didn’t have a group of athletic friends to hold me accountable, inspire me, and bond with me. When I began to train with them every day, laughter re-entered my life, and I felt like I had people who cared about me. My recovery from my eating disorder is 99% attributable to finding the tri club. We travelled together to Bariloche, Argentina, over spring break, where we competed in a half Ironman. I was astounded to learn how spontaneous the team was; I have met very few people in my life who would want to swim in a lake so cold that it takes your breath away for the fun of it, but lo and behold, that’s what six of us did the week after the race. As is natural for triathletes, we shared a common inflated ambition and drooled over cool races together. While we need to surround ourselves with a variety of personalities to ensure balance, it is integral to find a group with whom we can relate on a deep, spiritual level. This group doesn’t have to be athletic in nature, but it should be one that meets regularly and reliably, and it should be one that pushes you to your limits. Last Saturday was my first day working at the farmers market here in Whitesburg, Kentucky, and it was idyllic. Though it is still early in the season and produce is nowhere near peak production, the farmers filled their stalls with heaps of fresh fruits, veggies, baked goods, and specialty items. I was put to work bagging sweet potato slips (which we were giving away for free!) beside a couple who were selling huge, gorgeous stalks of rhubarb. Those stalks called to me for hours, and I ended up buying eight. I had no idea what I would do with them; I had never cooked with rhubarb before and hardly knew what it tastes like! It turns out that rhubarb is tart when raw (but apparently tastes great salted!) and sweeter when cooked with sugar or a sweet fruit like strawberry. You can use the entire stalk of rhubarb, even the green section, but do NOT eat the leaves; they are poisonous! I took my eight stalks of rhubarb, a bunch each of kale and bok choy, a bundle of green onions, a pound of potatoes, and a basket of peas home and haphazardly stuffed them all on a shelf in the fridge. The produce lasted me all week! As it was my first time cooking with rhubarb, I searched for a simple recipe in case I completely screwed up or hated the taste. A few days later, after flipping through my cookbooks and delving into the internet, I found two easy vegan rhubarb recipes: a strawberry rhubarb compote and strawberry rhubarb muffins. The compote has minimal added sugar and is perfect for topping pancakes, waffles, or a vegan french toast. It also paired very nicely with the muffins and functioned as a sweetener for a hearty bowl of oats. So versatile! What’s more, the sugar in the compote is unrefined (I used bourbon-infused honey for my second batch!). As for the muffins, they are awesome as they are, with a spread of jam or compote, and as an addition to oatmeal. With a low sugar content and a well-rounded set of ingredients that help balance blood sugar levels, these muffins are great snacks any time of the day. I modified this original recipe of Rachel Conners (the Bakerita). Enjoy! Strawberry Rhubarb Compote Serves 4 Ingredients:
Strawberry Rhubarb Muffins Makes 12 muffins Ingredients:
Instructions:
Strawberries from the farmers market made these muffins taste even more fresh and delectable! I love how strawberries and rhubarb, two spring produce items, pair so well! Additionally, the almonds added the perfect amount of texture and crunch to the muffins. I would slice your own almonds, as slivered almonds might be too soft to capture this texture! |
Archives
October 2018
Categories
All
|