Princess Leia Pineapple Smoothie

“Can somebody get this big walking carpet out of my way?” – Princess Leia

This smoothie concoction was created after having drinks with my friend Ronn who suggested that women who have father issues may not ever be charmed by a man. Oh no! After having cared for my pa who was once the best dad in the whole world, and then descended into his dark side in old age like Princess Leia’s father as told in the Star Wars trilogy, I decided to step back into the warrior he once created me to be and simply believe that I deserve love. If Leia can do it, so can you, I told myself!

1 cup coconut water

1 cup sliced pineapple

1/4 cup avocado

1/4 cup cilantro

1 T lime juice

1/2 t maca (optional)

3 T hemp protein

Add to blender (vitamix preferred) and blend well! Enjoy with gusto!!!!

Vegan Breakfast

 

We had a blast in the third class in the Cook Your Way to Radiant Health series last night. The topic was Cacao Bliss! and just in time for Valentine’s day, a group of single and soulful foodies gathered to enjoy a delicious vegan meal while we demoed the creation of raw vegan snacks, truffles and spicy hot cacao. A question I commonly get asked  - and would love to be able to provide the perfect answer for so that your brain and energy feel stoked for your day – is, what proteins are good to eat for breakfast? Am I getting enough protein? How do I get enough protein? 

A couple mistakes I see people making are: 

*eating the same thing every day

*not getting enough protein

*not getting the right protein

*not emphasizing protein at breakfast

What this will cause: 

a dip in your energy later in the day, around 3-5pm and hunger to set in after supper. Not having enough protein early in the day is sneaky like that! 

So, another way to counteract if you think you are not eating enough protein early in the day is to have a snack mid-morning, that includes some protein (4-8 grams). 

Vegan protein ideas for the morning: 

• protein powder – vary it up! from hemp, to rice, to a blend of hemp, rice, chia (these are easiest to digest!) 
• tofu
• nuts or seeds – almonds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, sunflower seeds
• protein dense grains – such as quinoa or buckwheat, combined with nuts or seeds

What I had for breakfast this morning: 

amaranth porridge

• 1/4 cup diced onion
• 1 minced garlic clove 
• 1/2 cup cubed squash 
• 1 T olive oil
• 1 cup amaranth
• 3 cups water

Heat pan. Add oil and heat over medium for one minute. Add onion and garlic and sauté until fragrant and translucent. Add amaranth, squash and water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium low and simmer, covered for 20 minutes. Add a splash of sea salt. Yum. Top with rosemary roasted walnuts. 

Rosemary Roasted Walnuts

• 1/2 cup walnuts
• pinch of dried rosemary
• pinch of garlic powder 
• pinch of sea salt 
• 1 t oil (I love avocado oil) 

Preheat oven to 350˚. Add ingredients to baking dish. Mix well to cover walnuts. Bake for 13-15 minutes until toasted. Enjoy over a salad, grain dish or to top a soup. Yum! 

 

 

 

 

 

Create Space for You

Clearing, by Mark Aposic

Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose;

Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and

Wait there patiently, until the song that is your life falls into your own cupped hands and you recognize and greet it.

Only then will you know how to give yoruself to this world, so worthy of rescue.

This poem came from a dharma talk by Tara Brach, accessible on her website. As well, my response came through a question I woke up with: how to cherish yourself during difficult times? The holidays are stressful times, you may consider this a time of difficulty, and of immense joy. Or of moving between the mode of getting things done and being exhausted, yet just keeping up with the pace of how things are at the end of the year in the season to celebrate is a time when we consolidate our needs for others, yet at the expense of our bank accounts and wellbeing. When we are caught in the feeling of being stressed, what we value most – kindness, creativity, service, connection – becomes deficient as we do not have access to the dimensions of ourselves which are our full potential. The mode becomes a trance when our minds are narrowed and we forget a larger reality. Sound familiar? Have you found yourself entranced in getting things accomplished that you don’t realize how cutoff you may be from: your breath, your heart, your values, your kindness.

Does stress during the holidays really need to be just how it is? 

What are ways to relieve tension during the holidays, to stay in our power and freedom and reconnect with the moment?

Tara Brach calls it: tend and befriend. 

Step One: Pause

It takes a real commitment to have the wiser part of the brain say: just stop.

Step Two: Sense the difficulty

There is an underlying sense of loss that we all experience, which are sensations of dissatisfaction, longing, that which leads you to believe you are undeserving or deficient. Being with these feelings will free up the grip they have when they are not witnessed or heard.

Step Three: Be the Ocean

Having the courage to breathe into the heart space and question the parts of you that cause suffering, will bring a quality of embracing difficult times with all of you to adorn the illusion of separation with compassion.

Mudra: Prithivi Mudra

Increases energy, and fosters a sense of inner stability and self-assurance.

Affirmation: The earth is providing me with nourishment and happiness. I am safe and secure and balanced within my life.

To conclude, you have the power to live from a tender place that helps you love the one you’re with, starting with yourself knowing you are fully equipped to pause and remember to be with yourself in stressful times.

Find Ground When You Become Uprooted

Have you ever felt so lost and confused that you couldn’t find where you were in space? If you were to check in with your feet, they feel so far away that your heart could be in your town and your feet in outer space? I’ve questioned a lot lately what makes us become uprooted and even more vitally, how to continue digging in especially when the drama and chaos becomes overwhelming. Having recovered from an eating disorder and years of depression, everything that I do is a practice. It’s about staying committed to the practice to find freedom and self-esteem. By denying yourself the freedom to practice, a foot hold is lost and life slips through your fingers as if a felt sense of the present moment cannot be grasped. Things may help bring us back when we feel lost and confused, but what are ways to build up a tolerance against uprootedness through practice?

1. Nourishment. There are a million ways to become nourished. Through good food and friends, exercise, massage, taking a bath, reading a good book, doing the things that bring you limitless joy you may connect with that flow of bliss that exists within and sometimes needs reminding in order to envelop your body and mind. My favorite yoga mudra for nourishment is:

bring your right hand onto your lower abdomen. rest it there gently. bring your left hand out to the side, with your elbow bent in to your ribcage. have the palm resting up. breathe. imagining being nourished by your own vital energy, softening and loosening resistance to the flow of blissful energy that exists within every moment, within each breath.

2. Rituals and Routines. My morning routine is about 2 hours long and keeps my energy flowing gracefully throughout the day. Without it, I can lose that feeling of being upright and moving forward with the spine lengthening and inflating evenly. Routines are healthy for the brain. They inspire creativity by creating a cocoon of safety around the mind’s tendency to worry. They are like a net preventing the ball from going too far out of bounds; the mind as a ball stays focused on the aim and the net gently coerces you back into a setting that is familiar.

3. Mediation. Taking time out, even just a minute or two to check in. To feel your feet on the ground, sits bones rooting into the earth. Done against the warm support of mother earth offers even more of a harmonizing connection that will ground your cells beyond belief. It takes just a few minutes and my favorite grounding mudra is BHU:

sit in a comfortable cross-legged position. make peace signs with both hand and root your pointer finger and middle finger tips into the earth. rest there, feeling the energy of the earth, rising up into your bones, tissues, vertebral column and central nervous system, harmonizing you with a flow of vital energy that is enveloping your whole body and mind.

4. Protein. You may want to deprive yourself when the going gets tough. As if because you are confused and overwhelmed, that you do not deserve to feel good. Food can become confusing when our roots don’t feel settled. This can cause a tendency to overeat or become rigid (as in anorexia, in extreme cases) in order to create safety and the illusion of control. Eating protein at regular intervals can help enhance a connection to the earth as well as ground your energy for focused and present moment awareness.

5. Connection. Primary food. Getting a daily dose of primary food, spending time with friends who can hold your heart, not judge you but listen with an open heart and give you that lift that is felt in the bottom of your heart. Heartfelt connection leads to strength in the soul, a gateway to finding your place in the world is to reflect your authentic being into the world in which you are creating through your connections.

LOVE and BLISS,

Waller

 

 

 

Upon Waking…

Meditation first thing in the morning is a most delicious treat. I can wake up confused, overwhelmed, feeling a bit low and not clear about where I am heading. And then I sit, after practicing a Feel Good Energy Routine to cleanse chi, and feel so much better. If there was a book or guide on creating radiant health, meditation would be near the top as a priority for how to stay empowered, connected to your core and grounded in the river that is your life.

I practiced a mudra meditation this morning to balance the chakras, taught by one of my teachers through Integrative Yoga Therapy, Lillian LePage. You can access the mudra practice for balancing chakras through this link. The benefits of sitting in a mudra meditation are that the mudras elicit an energetic response in the body, which has an effect on specific systems of the body, as well as synchronizes the mind with the body to impact a healing response. When I wake up feeling funky, I love practicing mudras.

Today, I needed an extra detox, and so created a breakfast to stimulate detoxification and nourish the heart.

Detox Greens Soup

• 2 T onion
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 t chopped fresh ginger
• 1 t olive oil
• 1 cup broccoli
• 1 cup leafy greens (such as spinach, kale, dandelion greens)
• lemon juice and sea salt to taste

Heat oil in a pan. Add onions, garlic and ginger. Saute until fragrant for about three minutes.

Add broccoli and water to cover. Cook for 5 minutes. Add additional greens. Cook for 3-5 minutes. Blend well in Vitamix or high speed blender. Return to heat and add sea salt and lemon juice. Cook for 1-2 minutes.

Sweet Quinoa Breakfast

• 1 cup quinoa (I used red)
• 2 T coconut oil
• 1 t cinnamon
• 2 t vanilla extract
• 1 T palm sugar or 2 T maple syrup
• 1/2 t sea salt

Cook quinoa in 2 cups of water for 20 minutes.

Add rest of ingredients. Serve warm for a nourishing breakfast.

Pictured here with Bali buddies. =) 

Don’t wait for something big to occur. Start where you are, with what you have, and that will always lead you into something greater.  -Mary Manin Morrissey

Vitamixing

I need to be in the kitchen cooking. I don’t do relationships. I just do food. - Waller

On a day I really needed to cook, I tested out my new Vitamix in honor of crisp pre-Autumn air and a broken heart for a loved one in need. There is nothing better than cooking up possibilities beyond what is to taste true love in the mouth. Creating a whole new and delicious sensation is how I deal with what is sad, grief provoking and utterly overwhelming to try to process all at once. And so I cook, as if there is a way to create love in a heart that yearns for nourishment. Through food we can connect deeply with the moment, with the taste of what pleases us and share with our friends who appreciate our flavor of love. I thank God for good friends right now, especially the ones who don’t eat alone or misunderstand the needs of the heart.

I have always cooked for others, however recently learned through Ayurvedic philosophy that you can generate bad chi by cooking for oneself without sharing. Always cook with love in your heart and an awareness that you are never alone.

Creamy Guacamole

• 1 avocado
• 1/4 cup minced onion
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 T lemon juice
• 1/2 t sea salt

Blend until creamy in Vitamix.

Cinnamon Vanilla Sunflower Butter

• 1 cup sunflower seeds
• 2 T coconut oil
• 2 t vanilla
• 1/4 t sea salt
• 1.5 t cinnamon
• 1 t lemon zest

Blend well in Vitamix.

Rainy Day Pesto

I’ve run into a few friends lately who take into consideration a vegan diet and cringe. At the same time, I hear that being a mother requires a lot – of tending to the needs of multiple palates, varying schedules and unique personalities. Being a vegan is not unlike being a mother, however the kids are the parts of us who want the creamy pasta, cheesy pizza and the ease and comfort of eating what we want. Being a mother requires taking especially good care of oneself (and I hear so often, “who has the time?”), and food sometimes, well food always, is there, to take care of us when life is chaotic (and when is it not?).

I have the pleasure of cooking for my dad these days and taking care of a parent as a single girl running a business is not always the most glorified position, but I can say that doing so has broken my heart open. When I lived in New York, each night I would deliver leftover food to a homeless man in the park. I usually found my way to a new friend to feed each night, and it was a blessing for me to give. Nothing in return was asked for, and the gift was a smile in the heart for both the giver and the receiver.

So, I bring you today’s daily dish (cooked with love!):

Vegan, Gluten free (of course!) Artichoke Pesto Pasta

Combine ingredients:

• 1/2 cup artichokes
• 1/4 cup walnuts
• 3 T nutritional yeast
• 3 cloves garlic
• pinch of cayenne
• 1 bunch of basil
• Juice from half a lemon

Blend well. Add:

• 2 T olive oil
• sea salt or umeboshi vinegar, to taste

Voila! 

Serve over noodles, as a sauce for sandwiches or as a dressing for vegetables.

Pictured here on top of brown rice penne noodles. 

And served with sautéed dandelion greens. 

Yummylicious!

What are your thoughts on eating a vegan meal once in a while? I will say, I am not a full-on anything, but I love food and am highly sensitive to how it makes me feel. I have learned to not limit myself, and also to appreciate the value of whole food. While any food cooked with love is soothing, why not try heart healthy Artichoke Pesto which will detox your body and increase your radiance factor?

Om. Love. Beauty.

Waller