Okay, it’s not free of berries or seeds. Or coconut. But, it will work for a LOT of us.

The berries were in the freezer from summer, a welcome burst of sunshine flavor. I used the same crust I made for the Pumpkin Pie I posted the recipe for on Thanksgiving. I’ve taken out the baking soda that was in it originally – I don’t think it adds any real leavening, and I think it interacts with the berries in this recipe to make a little fizz on your tongue. It’s not unpleasant, but my son commented, “Mom, it tastes fermented!”

Only my son would identify a fizzy flavor as fermented. Heh.
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Self care is a dance. I wish it were straightforward, a prescription the doctor could write and we could fill at the pharmacy, take once a day, and be done with. That would be simple, wouldn’t it?

But, especially when you have chronic health challenges, it’s often a dance whose steps seem to be changing every day. Sometimes because the way an ailment expresses itself goes through a transition, sometimes because you start a new treatment or supplement regimen, sometimes because the season has changed, or perhaps your hormones are changing due to aging. You may decide to remove a food from your diet to see if it makes a difference in your digestion or energy level and an entirely different set of symptoms you weren’t even consciously aware of disappears.

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Okay, almost everything-free. Pretty darned close. No gluten, grains, nuts, eggs, dairy, or added starches. No added sugars if you choose the stevia option.

Yes, I know this is too late for you to make for Thanksgiving, but I only just made it myself today, so I couldn’t post it earlier. Hey, I haven’t posted since September, so I figure I’m doing pretty well!

Truth is, this is just food, folks. A little high in carbs if you’re really trying to keep those low. But, you could make it for breakfast. Pie for breakfast. That sounds just fine. Think I will.

By the way, this is a kabocha squash. In case you wonder when you read the recipe. Sometimes it’s called a Japanese pumpkin, and is what is in Thai pumpkin curry dishes.

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I’ve been feeling done lately. Just done. I don’t want to cook, I don’t even really want to eat much.

Some of it’s the heat (which is thankfully starting to abate). It’s definitely the humidity, which is continuing even as the temperature is dropping. It’s the busyness of getting in the last events of the summer while preparing for the school year’s beginning. Then there’s trying to keep up with a hyper fertile, crazy huge pear tree that came with the house we bought three years ago. I’m starting to wonder if maybe we could just sell the tree.

But, I just can’t let the pears rot, so I’ve been chopping, cooking, drying, leathering, juicing and reducing batch after batch of windfall pears. And I don’t even eat the things. Can you tell I’m a little over it?

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More than halfway through the summer. I’m loving the lazy heat of it. The late to bed and not so early to rise. How can I go to bed when it’s still light and hot? Or make the kids go?

We went camping last week. My youngest is going back on the GAPS/SCD diet with some herbal antibiotics to finally take care of some lingering bugs in his gut, so I needed to think through the food a little more carefully than usual. And, I didn’t have a lot of energy to do extra shopping, so I hunted around in the pantry to see what I could use – and there they were.

White beans. Shhh… don’t tell. I don’t usually eat beans, but white beans are GAPS/SCD legal. So, into a jar they went, covered in water. Then sprouted for a day. So sweet, with little sprouty tails just appearing. Red onion, mint and Italian parsley from the garden, a little balsamic, lemon, olive oil and salt. So simple, and really, really good. I remembered at the last minute to take a photo, after most of it was eaten.

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Haven’t written much in the past year. Not much at all.

Sometimes things have to die so that they can come back to life in a true way.

Starting from a young age I wanted to be an actress. I loved being on stage. My first real acting classes, I realized later, were my first formal spiritual training. The reality that I could take on different states of mind and emotions at will showed me I was not the personality that I knew as “me”. If that wasn’t “me”, what was?

I explored more as I became an adult. I became fascinated with creativity of many types – writing and film making, primarily. I was cooking for a living, until I could become “an artist”.

In my early thirties I shared the idea that I was waiting to “become an artist” with a group of teachers on a meditation retreat. One of the teachers said, “But, Durga, you ARE an artist. There’s no becoming. It doesn’t matter if you’re not making money at it. Being an artist is a way of being in the world. It’s a view.”
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