It’s been awhile since I posted a recipe – I assure you I still love to cook! And, we still have food sensitivities in our house.

I thought I had created a brand new recipe, but people have been comparing this one to Panna Cotta, so I guess I’m channeling something from a past life in Italy. I’ve never eaten Panna Cotta, and barely heard of it before. There you go. This one is dairy and sugar-free, so most of us can eat it. I made it with bananas for my eldest who is sensitive to berries of all kinds, and he gave it the thumbs up.

Blueberry-Coconut Panna Cotta

For a true Panna Cotta you could gel the coconut cream alone and top it with the fruit afterward, but I would recommend using fresh berries then. And, truly, the huge benefit of making this the way I have it outlined is how quick it is. Pouring the warm coconut-gelatin mixture over frozen blueberries is shear genius – the gelatin sets up in minutes! Quick, delicious and healthy.

Enjoy.

Blueberry-Coconut Panna Cotta

Directions
Sprinkle the gelatin over the room temperature coconut cream or milk and let sit till it “blooms” – meaning it absorbs enough liquid for it all to look wet. It will expand a bit.

Heat the coconut cream or milk and gelatin until almost bubbling.

Mix the hot coconut cream mixture, stevia and sea salt and stir until smooth.

Pour into blueberry filled ramekins until full. Refrigerate until set. Which, if you use frozen bluebs, won’t take long at all.

Great for a quick dessert – and if you make a few extra ramekins they’re a delicious breakfast, too!

People sometimes ask me what kind of training I have to do the counseling work that I do. That question always makes me want to laugh and cry.

Yes, I have training in multiple spiritual, psychological and coaching modalities. Personal healing and spiritual awakening has been a central focus in my life since my late 20s. But, I didn’t embark on this path to heal others. I was crawling through the muck of my personal story, and was sick and tired of suffering.

It has not been a straight line, this healing path. There’s a saying that we travel in spirals as we heal, revisiting similar issues cyclically. Each time you find yourself seemingly going over the same ground, check in and see what’s shifted since the last time you were here. Are you catching the patterns faster? Do you have more awareness about the process you are in? Is there are part of you that is not quite as caught up in the story as it plays out? This is progress. We heal, sometimes slowly, and sometimes more quickly. But, movement is happening. Can you give yourself credit for that?

Out of Purgatory, acrylic on paper

My family attended a Beltane festival yesterday, an ancient Celtic celebration of springtime and fertility. We celebrated the outgoing May Queen (curtsy) and King, and welcomed a new May royalty who will hold and embody in sacred trust the ability of the earth and all its inhabitants to bring forth new life.

Flower and herb crown for new life!

That may be literal or metaphoric children. We birth our ideas, we birth our creative endeavors, we birth our changes in our work-in-the-world. We all wrote down what we wanted to bring into life in the coming year on a ribbon and tied it to the Maypole – the sky god’s very own phallus resting in the earth mother’s yoni. We danced and sang and wrapped that phallus with our sincere wishes for prosperity and love and health and world peace. (In true Beltane fashion there were a few wishes expressed for really good sex, too.)
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Today is Easter. We may know the tragic story of Jesus (Yeshua) on the cross, the betrayal of Judas, the anguish of the Mother – we may have been taught that he died for our “sins”. This is the externalized view of Easter.

Then there’s the story that Christianity appropriated the pagan worship of the new life of spring, that fertility was sanitized into a spiritual rebirth. Because, fertility means sex, and you can’t have any of that – or, if you do, at least don’t admit you enjoy it. Let it be whitewashed into bunnies and baby chicks, both sweet representations of “fruitfulness”.

There’s a different path into this story.

You are Yeshua. You are the human who doubts and loves and wonders if it’s all worth it. Who wonders if there’s a way to escape your destiny, or escape your past. Everything you have done, with all your best intentions, with whatever tools you had at your disposal at the time, all of it has led you here.
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I didn’t go into Lent with high spiritual ideals. It was a mindfulness exercise. But, perhaps unrelated, I’m more in touch with some mysterious thread, or, more appropriately, a thread of mystery. Was it uncovered because I’m more rested from consuming less caffeine and getting more sleep? Perhaps. It may be a combination of that and being hit by the hardest virus I’ve contracted in many years. Fever is harder on me than I remember it being in my youth. Being brought to my knees seems a particularly Lenten activity. The part of me that knows there are no accidents tunes into this.

I’m simplifying somewhat. This thread has actually been growing and strengthening for many years. It’s the core of my work. The core of my life. But, there’s a confidence in what is known that has reached a new threshold.

What is known is:

A wild woman herbalist in me who likes to sniff and boil and steep and sip.

A shaman dropping into liminal space and moving toxins out of this body system. I’ve seen Lyme literally dropping out of my body. A spirit teacher ripping a length of DNA that had developed from ancestral trauma and habit, and knit my building blocks back together without them.
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My Lenten commitments are: refraining from all forms of caffeine except cocoa or chocolate, shutting down the computer by 10, and being in bed by 10:30.

Lenten Contemplation

I’m so glad I don’t suffer as much as I used to from perfectionist critic attacks. Sometimes I feel like the skills I’ve developed in this area are the most useful and foundational of all the consciousness work I’ve done over the years. Knowing that progress counts for a lot is incredibly affirming. I remember a time when not hitting a mark perfectly, a mark that I had created, would send me into a tail spin of self flagellation for days.

I have successfully refrained from the caffeine. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my chocolate, and have definitely used it as a stimulant on a few tired days.
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