Gothic Granola

My dear cousin K8 ( @akateisakate ) forwarded me three Brene Brown TEDx talks today and they were probably the most valuable audio I heard all day.  Vulnerability  and  Critics  and  Shame .  Go, listen. I'll be here when you get back, with hankies.

"Start your two day life on a two day vacation" Fasting brings me back to the natural swing of things: fatigue, hunger, boredom, interest, what gives me joy and what causes me pain. It takes a chainsaw to the social, political, religious,  et aliis  reasons and justifications I build around certain behaviours.

Though it is now full-blown Lent, I’m sharing my Mardi Gras luncheon because there’s nothing about it that’s sinful or off-limits in the fasting and abstinence sense, as far as I know. I can and will go on at length about how food is not “sinful” and should not cause guilt. Food is neutral. We bring the guilt as a side dish or a sauce. We also have the ability not to partake, but instead to enjoy our treats or what-have-ye mindfully and in appropriate-to-ourselves amounts.

Lady Neona Tribute: Tahini Soup There's a branch on my spiritual family tree that this morning curled towards light coming from a different direction. The Lady Neona Alansyn of the Abbey at Kilbride Croft has left us mortals, passing away to--another round on the wheel of rebirth? Nirvana? Who's to say? All's there is to say is what's in front of us: that she is beyond the suffering she experienced in this lifetime as she bravely fought cancer to the end.

Part I of a three-part series about cheese, cheeze, cream cheeze, and cheeze curds. Greetings, Earthlings. It’s been done before: vegans rhapsodising about cheese, missing the taste, texture, ineffability of cultured dairy.  Let’s not do what other people have done before, not reinvent the wheel, as a lot of people say.

Wow!  Thank you to all who attended the “Desserts for the Often-Deserted” talk at the Lawrence Library.  Your willingness to share your stories and ask questions made the event more cozy and like a chat among friends, a dessert circle.

As it is midterms and high-stress thesis time, I’m trying to cut back on sugar (I brought the carrot cake to work, FYI).  I made these cookies/ biscuit /snack thingers for microlunch and other noshing purposes.

I used raisins in all three recipes I present to you below.  "Made to suffer:" I think that was a card title in some Star Wars card game I bought in the early 2000s.  This week at school, I thought of C-3PO saying to R2-D2, we were made to suffer.  I know, I know, before you even start hitting me in the knees with the bag of guilt bricks, I’ve got it covered—I really have nothing about which to complain, relatively speaking.  Besides midterms, thesis, and job search, a few weeks ago I ate some chips that I thought were GF, but they contained wheat, and I have not felt properly well since then.  Then last week I was served a cookie that wasn't GF, though I had asked for a GF one.  Yes, eating wheat really sets me back that badly.