An Imperfect Cookie - Bliss

Right now I am eating (another) an Oatmeal Raisin Cookie - it is so tasty, I am even overlooking the fact that it's a little crumbly. How are cookies supposed to be anyway - I mean what are we comparing them to? 

Perhaps our 'ideal' for nearly any foods these days is to compare it to something perfectly round, flat, held together and uniform in every other way from a factory machine. Of course along with that perfect cookie comes the extra ingredients that are put in to get the desired effect.

Nothing like that with homemade foods - this cookie I am munching on right now is not uniform in any way - each one looks different. They are slightly crumbly from the use of only oat flour and oats and I probably put in way too many raisins. 

I like them that way.

Of course, you can't compare a homemade anything with a factory made something else - because the energy of the food is so very different. Whenever someone asks me what my secret ingredient is for my lovely cakes and cookies - I always say it is butter and love. 

So, with that in mind here is my recipe for these Oatmeal Raisin Cookies (as it stands right now).

3/4 cup butter

1 duck egg

2 cups oat flour

1 1/2 cups oats

3/4 cup raisins

1/3 cup honey or Maple Syrup

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon or all spice

1/2 tsp baking powder

salt (pinch)

2/3 cup nuts (optional)

Place all dry ingredients into a deep bowl and sift together to mix well. In the meantime melt the butter over low heat in a small sauce pan, put the honey in with it and mix. Beat the egg into submission in a separate bowl.

Once the flour is mixed, add the butter and egg - keep mixing until well coated. Then add in raisins and nuts if desired. This mixture should be thick and not runny - because each flour absorbs liquid differently, adjust quantities if needed. 

Spoon out large spoonfuls of the dough onto a greased cookie sheet or parchment paper and bake at 175C for about 12-14 minutes or so. Don't leave too long as they will be too dry and don't take out too soon as they will be doughy in the middle. 

These are fabulous with a cup of dandelion coffee! And you will have made them yourself...bypassing the food processing, perfect cookie route to enjoy imperfection at it's finest!

April 

Oatmeal Raisin Cookie 

Now in 3rd Month - Processed Food Free!

Today I have been getting caught up with all my jars - I have loads of them by now (after all these years!) and keep all of our dry foods in them. I love this system because I can see at a glance what needs filling up and things to make. Stock taking is very easily done.

Yesterday I made some muesli to fill up the empty jars, today I have been busy with salted roasted cashews for the weekend, bread for tomorrow and topping up half empty jars with seeds, nuts and flour. It is a nice system when you keep up with it and make your own foods to fill the jars.

I like that each jar contains the raw ingredients to make the foods we love as well as some of the finished products - or the fruits of my labour! I find that managing such a system only takes minutes each week once it was set up.

Key to absolutely everything in life - achieving something worthwhile at least, is a good level of organization as well as commitment. Following a lifestyle where you are preparing and consuming non processed whole foods is an investment in health and longevity, for everyone in the family.

I have said it many times - eating and living this way is our health insurance, our life insurance and an absolute guarantee that whatever our bodies (and our lives) throw our way, it can and will be handled with relative ease.

We are now into the third month of completely processed-food free living, having removed the 8 or 9 products that stubbornly worked their way into our diets. And I am always looking at each of us, examining our life, for evidence of any changes or difference.

I seem to do this about once a month - a little stock taking (the same with my jars! LOL) - these past few days I have noticed my skin is even smoother and softer then it was before. I had another complement on my hair again today - it looks healthy, why don't I have any grey hair, and have I done something different. 

As well, I am finding it easier to know when I am full, I probably eat less and I feel less resistance to doing the things I need to do. I can feel the old processed foods working their way out of my system as my mind gains clarity!

Not a bad place to be, the effort is well worth it! 

Have a processed food free day...

April 

Moods, Disconnect and Cooking

Every day I give a lot of thought to food and nearly every aspect of eating. Lately my thoughts have been once again turing towards the nature of our spiritual connection with food and what has happened to it. 

For the most part, what I see from others and indeed for part of my life, has been more of a love/hate relationship with eating. Of course, this is mainly due to a lack of connection which originates from eating the wrong types of foods. 

This disconnect causes many of our modern day problems with disordered eating, obesity, choosing the wrong types of food and worst of all - disinterest in our bodies need for nourishment. This in itself, can cause various emotions and issues to rise up in us.

Sometimes I will have an over whelming feeling or sense of confusion around food, cooking and what to eat -almost as if I no longer care or can't quite see the point of paying attention. I have come to recognize this as energy influence not coming from me, because it is very easy to break through it. 

But, what does this feel like? Generally as if you are in a slight daze where eating and food is concerned. That's one part of it. The other more significant issue here is the negative thinking around eating, cooking, food - and what it might do to your body.

In many instances, food has become the enemy. All food, all eating, all meals and anything to do with concepts and subject around food have been demonized into a battle of weight, body image and fear.

The fear is a vicious circle because you are afraid to eat, afraid to gain weight, afraid to eat too much, afraid of losing control, afraid of each and every morsel that you might put into your mouth because --- of what?

Where on earth does these thoughts and this thinking come from? How have we become so distanced from our food, disconnected from the sanctity and ritual of preparing, cooking, eating and sharing meals together - it no longer has any spiritual relevance whatsoever.

Fear is the great separator, a divider of body, mind and soul. If the connection has been lost between nourishment and body, trust and faith in our physical needs, functions and desires has also been severed. If we cannot trust our bodies to gain from the foods we are eating as well as have clarity in mind and spirit - fear creeps in.

So where does this come from? 

There seems to be one main origin of this disconnect - processed and toxic food choices. Once we start on the road towards eating mindlessly, needlessly and without purpose from the array of dead foods on offer - what else can we expect, except that part of us gets pulled down to this low level?

Is it any wonder we have so many people with dark moods, feeling unhappy or depressed, uninterested and worse, all due to being stuck in the cycle of eating processed food (sugar, caffeine, rubbish), feeling awful, then eating more to try feeling better and slowly sinking down into this wasteland. 

Once you begin the process of digging yourself up and out of this hole, towards the light of better, more nourishing meals, you can re-build this bridge back to a healthy spiritual connection with your food. All your food, water and intake then becomes a joy and something worth celebrating - because your body feels loved, nourished and whole. 

Next time you feel as if you are mindlessly moving through your day, unsure of what to eat and unable to make a decision about your food - start with an apple. Clear your mind and recognize this energy for what it is - the result of poor food the day before.

Change your food - change your mind - find your soul

Have  a healthy day,

April

Dangers of Processed Foods

Not many people make the effort anymore to ensure that they have wholesome foods to eat - from my own experience this is not something that originated with our generation (although we are the ones paying the price) but appears to have come about after the last great war as a modern solution to slavery.

Perhaps in an effort to make things easier for more people to be out working for little wages, following someone else's blueprint of reality, an overall vision of creating a new world paradigm could be easily inserted over the old one. With everyone consumed with obtaining all the things that they did not need and that were placed just out of reach, there was little time left over to cook.

With no thought, planning and preparation going into making wholesome meals for the entire family - it is relatively easy to convince people of something so counterintuitive that it is mind boggling. A dry powered, dehydrated, factory made, highly altered substance contains all the vitamins and minerals that you could possibly need. 

And for the most part, we believed it!

Balanced meals in a box. How on earth have we come to think we could eat this stuff (all the time) and maintain any form of gut integrity? However, the most important point to be made here is that a non functioning gut means a non functioning body.

All systems go down when food does not contain the required vitamins and nutrients to sustain body processes.

This is pretty serious stuff - yet, when we go into any supermarket, the shelves are lined off with 'food' prepared and ready to eat or cook (just add some toxic tap water) and stir. During the last few years even more prepared foods are hitting the market, with the certain aim to replace any time that you might need to spend in your kitchen.

When you do a little research - it doesn't take much - links can be found between processed food items and a host of modern dysfunctions from diabetes and cancer to depression and hormone imbalance. What is worse is many of these 'diseases' are being treated with some of the most toxic chemicals on the planet.

Distinctions are also made between; 

processed foods (put through chemical processes with added stabilizers and preservatives e.g. low fat yogurt, sugary cereals) 

junk foods (contain little real food usually made from white flour, sugar and corn syrup e.g. drive through foods and fizzy drinks)  

fake foods (contain no real food, primarily made of fillers, gums, sugars e.g. salad dressings, dehydrated soups).

All of this can be reversed in a short period of time when a little energy and effort is put into using real ingredients such as vegetables and fruit, whole unprocessed beans, lentils, grains, locally sourced fish or meat and clean water. 

Feeding yourself well is worth the effort - for your mind, body and spirit. 

Have a lovely day,

April

Cover - Closing The Energy Leaks©

More About Herbs

Today I am fasting and not cooking meals, however I have a pile of fruit that needs to be made into jams and I hope to get to that later today. Right now I am enjoying this post feast feeling of quietness after a big weekend.

I am also sipping away on a herbal tea blend that I made up for myself last night in my clinic. When I was making up some teas, it got me thinking about how I go about using herbs, selecting them and just knowing which ones need to be used and when.

My own herbal tea blend

For me, as an intuitive, I just 'know' what is right, often without needing to know why - our bodies often choose the medicine but also sometimes the herbs choose us. My daughter talks to the herbs in our garden all the time (I have an extensive medicinal herb garden) and explains to me how to listen to them.

Of course, this is something that I have been doing for a long time - and it is refreshing to see and hear from a child's perspective, because it reminds me of many things that I now take for granted. These herbs are part of our legacy as humans, we have evolved and developed together with many plants whose medicine is the only language our cells speak.

Marigold in the garden

My approach to using and blending herbs is quite different to other people because of this fact - I remember them from lifetimes I have lived and worked using herbs. But, I also hear them, feel their vibration and understand something deeper about the way energy medicine is meant to be. To me this is their magic...

All things have a vibration (even if it's a stolen one like plastic) at least at the beginning of it's life and this is what we are working with when we ingest, digest and absorb properties such as vitamins, minerals and plant chemicals especially from the highly refined energies in herbs. 

It is this vibration that can be altered, changed, interfered with and in many ways broken (the same as our own energy fields) during processing, handling, shipping and yes, through negativity. The higher your own vibration raises through diet change, exercise, spiritual clearing and detox, the more sensitive you are to energetic frequency, especially from food and anything that you might ingest.

When using herbs as medicine, they will work far better when they are handled lovingly, gently and not processed by machines. The processing of our 'foods' has taken over everything but equally has far reaching consequences when it comes to the use of herbs. 

Well, off to make some more tea with gently handled herbs!

April

My packet of herbs with my own blend using gingko, elder flower, marigold, chamomile and dandelion

Back on the jam...

Yesterday was an interesting day - we had sunshine, so that was new and very nice for us all. I also got out into the garden and between planting, harvesting herbs, weeding as well as all the other little things, got very little time to make anything new.

I did get to make some jams late last night, mostly because the fruit was not going to last, it had to be cooked into jams or else! Once I got started with the chopping and setting up for the canning process, I realized a few important things.

First of all, the apple pectin I had made two days before which had sat in a bowl, had thickened up and looked like liquid pectin. This was promising as it was not made with the best type of apple, giving me hope that once I do find the perfect apples, the pectin will turn out even better.

Another thing about jam, cooking at home and making our own foods that I have to constantly remind myself of is that the final results will not taste, look or necessarily resemble something that comes from a shop. Homemade crackers are not the perfectly uniform shapes and thickness that you will find in a packet nor is home baked spelt bread neat and tidy in perfect little loaves. 

Of course, the best thing about all of this cooking and creating at home - is the fact that last night after my jam was made and I was waiting for the jars in the boiling water bath, I found myself eating spoonfuls of warm jam from the jar. 

Pot for boiling water bath

Never in my life do I remember eating spoonfuls of jam, but this was so fragrant and inviting for a nice piece of buttered spelt bread...

This first for me was all the proof that I needed, once again to show me that homemade is always the best way to go. Of course the jam looks, tastes and smells different from the shop bought kind - it is different, we have been reconditioned into thinking that food should 'look' a certain way and that simply is not the case. Food produced at home does not look as if it has been processed by a machine.

Jars of jams made last night

Finally, when you start talking with people about jams, cooking, food and the various ways that we all go about creating our home made goods, everyone has a different take on it and their own methods. People's preferences for their own foods are important and not in any way uniform or able to be re-created inside the walls of a factory. 

This alone gives us all hope!

April

Thick, thick, thick..

The words thick, thick, thick have been going around in my head over the past 24 hours or so as I try to figure out how to get my jams to be a little thicker. I am trying all the usual means - well, you know, that means that I am attempting to make pectin myself!

Strain the cooked apples into a bowl

Last night I followed all the directions carefully on a website that was explaining how to make your own pectin for jams and jellies. Of course, I probably did not have the exact right kind of apple, however, all apples are supposed to contain some pectin - I did manage to produce a thickish syrup from the apples, which seemed to slightly thicken the jam I was making. However, I would have liked it a little bit more jammy.

Today, it is back to the drawing board - I asked around at the market in Skibbereen this morning as well, looking for unripe tart apples. No luck so far. So, I will try my hand at this again tonight with another batch of jams that I want to make this time using a different kind of apple.

Yesterday I used up the last of my raspberries to make raspberry kiwi jam - for something that has no sweetener whatsoever, it does taste really good. I am just not that happy with the consistency of it, but the rest of the family loved it (they ate it without complaint!).

So, that was yesterday, more jam (the cupboards are filling up) and today we are home again from the market with more fruit ready to be made into jams and preserves. However, this time I am going to do some experimenting with carrageenan, agar flakes and the homemade pectin to see what I can come up with.

I keep telling myself that as long as it is homemade (no recipe found yet for agar flakes) and wholesome, our bodies will appreciate the effort being made to remove any kind of processed foods from our diets.

And eventually, I will be more adept at all of this with my own recipes down to a T!

Well, today there is sun, so I am harvesting and drying some herbs from my garden, the entire house smells divine - pictures tomorrow.

April

Raspberries, Kiwi and Apple ready to cook into jam 

Well, this will be a challenge!

I love a challenge and I also love to cook, eat, create new recipes, shop for food, grow vegetables in my garden and even the washing up after a meal. Anything to do with food and eating is a passion for me - however, I have come to appreciate good food, real meals made with fresh, whole, organic ingredients.

My goal here is simple - I want to find a way to replace the remaining foods that creep into our diets with homemade versions. This means that I have to source the raw ingredients, find or create recipes and then experiment with making these foods as well as storing them.

There are a few things that I have in mind and will write about them in the coming days and weeks. However, if you follow my other blogs or know me - (please check out The Pagan Diet© blog) - then you also know that I fast and do Master Cleanses regularly.

I have hesitated because I was thinking this is going to be a challenge - can I cook and create these foods when I cannot taste test them? Or do I only experiment with some new recipes on my food days? LOL Believe it or not, this was my biggest obstacle to starting another blog. 

Of course now I realize that I will carry on as I usually do - during my cleanses and fasting days I do the research and planning for my recipe experiments. Then on my food and feasting days - I get to play around in the kitchen and enjoy my creations. 

Hang around and visit often -- this is going to get interesting!

April