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Avocado Grapefruit Salad

This salad, I made as a special meal for Christopher months ago. He was so impressed that he took a photo of it Hope you enjoy. I am inspired by food everyday as it keeps me feeling healthy and vibrant.

The salad’s ingredients are Avocado, grapefruit, orange, chia seeds, fennel, fennel fronds, and red wine vinegar to dress.

Rx for Balance: Be aware of how you body responds to food. From seeing, to smelling, to consuming, to digestion.  Instead of eating just for your taste buds, eat to benefit your stomach as well. Eat food that makes your your whole body happy

Lindsey

Thai Chili Quinoa Boats with Black Bean Dip

Recipe soon to come

Inspiring Architecture

I realize that a silo may seed an odd architectural structure to be inspired by. However, I have always found silos to be fascinating. It may have to do with my father growing up on a farm. Also, I grew up in central PA; which is full of scenic farms with meandering streams, rolling fields, and “fresh” air.

While on my way to school or practice or just a visit to another town, looking out the window, everything flowed by in a peaceful, graceful way.

Writing this post reminds me of the importance of feeling grounded in my life. There were so many moments in life of great beauty, that I have not noticed because of feeling scattered and all over the place from within. Therefore, those moments where I passed an entity of inherent integrity and grace, I would fail to recognize it for these qualities, because I was so distanced from feeling this way inside myself.

I am so thankful to feel grounded, to remember, to embrace myself fully.

Rx for Balance:

If you are first grounded from within, having an unwavering sense of and respect for yourself; then you will always be able to appreciate these same qualities in other entities. Also in the face of threatening external factors, you will be able to stand your own ground.

Peace to you,

Lindsey

Clinging onto nothing. Fear as a precurser to a Fabricated, False Logic.

Mental Health Thought of the Day

I woke up from a dream this morning feeling confused, satisfied, stressed and motivated to examine and to progress in some way shape or form.

In this dream I was grasping to a sheet of fabric which was holding me high in the air over a steep and rocky ski mountain. I was next to Christopher who seemed completely safe and calm, although I saw danger and was scared for him as well. As our fabric ski lift took us higher, through gusts of wind and snow, I become horribly stressed in my sleep. The top of chairlift, where we were to dismount was the worst. I closed my eyes because I was so petrified and clung to myself as if I was afraid that I would no longer exist. When I was temporarily safe, being off the lift, I then had to deal making it down the slope alive. This was the most treacherous cliff of a slope I had ever attempted to ski. However, I felt there was no way out. Once again, Christopher completed this task with ease, as if he was not even aware of the screaming danger of it all.  This process happened multiples again and again, until I got off the lift the last time; turned around and opened my eyes. Upon evaluating the situation, everything had changed for the better. All of a sudden, the snow was gone and warm colors of wood filled my visual scope. I saw and heard children who were running around, playing and laughing. The dismounting area was now high school bleachers…. I was safe.

I still felt as though I had a challenge ahead of me, but that I could handle it. Turns out that once I allowed myself to understand what was going on, I wasn’t scared anymore. I realized that I could cope, that I would be okay. I saw positivity and I wanted to keep this feeling, so I let the negative thoughts drift away and focused on solving the problem.

I did. I felt so much better and for one blissful, completely satisfying moment, everything was great.

I realized, that I prevented this from happened so often in my own life. That I could have so many more moments were life was just…great. Sure I have been superficially happy…or truthfully happy, but often this has come with an undercurrent of anxiety. Today I happy, period. *I have much positive energy focused inwards and flowing out of me right now *

I had been recently been contemplating the role of denial vs facing the truth. I made it a goal of mine to attack any stressing situation (mental or environmental) and to not let my fears interfere with regaining balance. Very quickly, your brain can take one negative feeling and run with it. All of a sudden that situation may seem nearly impossible to surmount. But if we remember that we are most afraid of what we do not understand; if we allow ourselves to see the truth, we’ll realize that this is hardest part of dealing with stress. Everything else we can cope with and then we can live more in the moment and be happier in the moments which follow. We can move on…or in my case, we can finally just wake up!

Rx for Balance:

So many people handle stress in a way that they end up stressing themselves even further in the process.

The world is full of negative and positive energies. If you want what is best for yourself consistently, you will not be cheating balance, you will be rewarded with it rather.

By making things harder on ourselves and being negative towards yourself, you are out of healthy balance. No one deserves to feel badly towards themselves. We have our life and this is it. We can be kind and respect ourselves so that we can turn around and contribute this outwards. Or we can hurt ourselves and depreciate our own quality of life, straining ourselves, feeling conflicted within ourselves, filling ourselves with stress and slowly ending our lives in the process.

If one is to be living in a state of balanced energy they would thrive.

Let go off the negativity you feel towards yourself. It is counterproductive and unnecessary. You can just focus on the problem and solution, rather than letting your mind wander down a dark path.

Embracing the truth of balance at first may be difficult and you may feel undeserving, but remember, if you are feeling this way, than you not only deserving, it is essential for you.

We all share energy in this life. We are not completely in control of all that occurs within our lives, but we do have much control over what happens to us. If we are fortunate enough to be able to choose to live in balance and embrace life and we can all see this for what it is actually worth, we would all unwavering choose to do so. We can choose to not just get by, but to actually thrive. I choose life, quality of life.

Peace to you,

Lindsey

GF Thins

I am soooo happy to have made thin, crunchy gluten free crackers. I contemplated having Christopher take a picture of me celebrating after these crackers came out the oven, but then I felt dorky and decided not too. However, I am over it and promise not to hold back in the future. I am accepting and embracing my dorkiness and quite happy with it. Also, I am happy with the fact that I tend to make up new words that are easily understood. But that is another story. On with the cracker….. do do do!(the opposite of da da daaaaa!)

Gluten Free Thins (Adapted from Gluten Free Goddess’s Multi Grain Cracker. Thank you, Lady GF.)

• Set the oven to 350
• In a big bowl whisk together:

1 1/2 cup Namaste All purpose flour

1/4 cup nutritional yeast

1/2 cup meal (I used rice/flax/chia seed meal)

3/4 Teaspoon baking soda

1 1/2 Teaspoons Celtic Sea Salt

1 Teaspoon garlic powder

Chopped Rosemary

• Stir in:

1 1/2 Teaspoons of Ener-G Egg Replacer whisked in 2 Tablespoons of warm water

1/4 cup melted Earthbalance

2 Tablespoons Grapeseed Oil

1/2 cup warm water (you can also use half water and half hemp milk)

Juice of half a lemon

• My next step was to knead the mixture into dough. If the dough is crumbling, add small amounts of water(a tablespoon) at a time. It was at this point for me when I added the 2 tablespoons of oil, rather than previously in the recipe. I found that even after adding some more water, the dough was still not easy to work with and the addition of oil, created more of a smooth dough that was much easier to work. This is why I recommended added the oil to the recipe, so that you hopefully will not be presented with stubborn dough.
• When the dough is nice and pliable, use whatever devices you may have to flatten it to your table. I used my hands and my pestle( I don’t have a rolling pin.)
• After you’ve rolled it as thin as you desire, cut the dough as you please, (I made squares, triangles and circles….because I am a dork, hehehehe )
• Oil a baking sheet and place the crackers individually onto the sheet. Bake until the crackers are slightly crisp. Approximately 15 minutes, but don’t take my word for it, just test and trust your intuition. They will become harder and more snappable as they cool.

These are the best gluten free crackers I have ever had. They are so satisfying and for me, they conjure up happy childhood memories. I love those happy memories that are tirggerd by smells and tastes…fascinating and pleasing : )

Good luck, have fun and think happy, simple thoughts while you sit back and crunch away.

Rx for Balance:

If you follow directions such as recipes to the T, you will be almost guaranteeing yourself some success with the finished product. However, using recipes as more of a template to learn about portions, staple ingredients and cooking temperature; then using your own instincts and preferences to make the dish your own can lead to a more satisfying all around foodie experience. Learning from mistakes and successes can be more satisfying when you’ve used some of your own creative energies in the process.

Lindsey

Gluten Free Biscotti!

It’s a beautiful winter day here. The first snow that Fort Collins received was yesterday and it made for some amazing fill light in this photograph.

Voila, a sunshine lit, almond orange biscotti dipped in melted dark chocolate

Yesterday’s snow also brought a new tradition

Roasted chestnuts will be prepared and enjoyed every year on the first snow. Christopher and I decided awhile back, that we love traditions, however, we will love even more creating our own to reflect our personalities and values.

So, in light of chestnut/snow day we decided to bake with chestnut flour for our first time. I am really excited about this feat. Most of my breads, being gluten, yeast and egg free,  just…don’t…rise…

One day, as I was flipping through a magazine, I saw biscotti…and quite frankly my bread has deemed more similar to those cookies than a true loaf of bread. So, why not toast it and make an Italian cookie instead? That is what Christopher and I set out to do yesterday.

Recipe: How did we make this?

haha..hahah er um. ya we improvised.

Chestnut flour turns out to be delicious when used as a part of the flour mix and after it has been baked. However, we decided to use it as a main flour and freaked out when we tried the batter to realize our cookies had a smokey flavor to them. Not knowing that the smokiness would subdue on its own, we almost frantically dwindled down our supply of GF flours. Based off the smell of the dough, instead of biscotti, I feared that we would end up with dog biscuits.

The other ingredients were:

buckwheat flour, white rice flour, sorghum flour, arrowroot starch, egg re-placer, baking soda, salt, agave nectar, vanilla, orange zest, almonds, and we ended up using a bit of water

I could fabricate measurements, but I am not the lying type, we really just improvised here. I will tell you how we started down this road. It was an adaption from Elanas Pantry and her lemon almond biscotti recipe.

Combine 1 and 1/4 cup flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon Celtic sea salt, 1 tablespoon arrowroot starch in a food processor.

Add 1/4 cup agave and one tablespoon zest and mix further into a dough

After removing, Christopher formed the dough into a ball with his hands. This is where we got nervous and started working in other flours and adding additional increments of the other ingredients to prevent the end result of dog treats. We wanted to enjoy them and we don’t have a dog…yet..so it only made sense.

During this process we added vanilla flavoring, a bit of water and worked in almonds.

Christopher formed the dough into one big log on parchment paper and we cooked at 350 for approximately 45 minutes. The next step was to take the sweet bread out of the oven and cut into strips. We lowered the temperate to 300 and toasted for over an hour until completely dry.

Our biscotti turned out crunchy, sweet and flavorful and to our surprise at the time, not at all smokey. The only problem is, that we are out of hemp milk…so I am off to the store here in a few minutes so I can enjoy one!

Have fun in the kitchen, taste your food very often, and love the process as much as the result.

Be balanced,

Lindsey