On the Way Home from Tuesday Night Yoga Practice at William Penn House
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Blossoms Around Town
I highly recommend, amidst all that is going on, pausing to recognize at least a bit of beauty.
Found Exhortation and Affirmation
At lunchtime, I walked out to go to the bank and to pick up some pre-ordered kitchen supplies. Every time I go out, things have changed.
- Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Gardening | Meditation | Photos
Signs Around Town (Excerpt)
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Vegan Lace Cookies (for the Holiday Party I’m Attending Tonight)
1. Melt 1/2 cup organic vegetable shortening.2. Stir in 1 cup sucanat (evaporated cane syrup).
3. Then stir in equivalent of one egg of prepared egg replacer (potato starch-based) and one tsp vanilla.
4. Combine 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour, dash salt, one tsp baking powder, and 1/4 cup flax seed meal; stir into shortening/sugar mixture.
5. Mix in 1/2 cup dried, shredded coconut.
6. Stir in 1/2 cup vegan, fair trade chocolate chips or chopped dried fruit. (I have not tried it with fruit, but I am sure it would work. Chopped nuts also would be good, but with all the allergies around, I’ve pretty much stopped bringing nutty things to parties unless I have made non-nut things also.)
7. Chill dough for about 1/2 hour.
8. Put slightly rounded teaspoonfuls of dough with lots of space in between (these spread out a lot) onto very well greased baking sheet. Bake at 350-375 (depending on how hot is your oven and whether it is convection) for 12-15 minutes until bubbling and almost caramelized.
9. After removing from oven, allow to set briefly (3-4 minutes, but not longer or they will stick to pan; if they do stick, put back in heated oven for a couple of minutes). Use a metal, rather than plastic spatula to remove cookies from sheet to help prevent breakage. Finish cooling on wire racks.
These are super crunchy and delicious (due to their high fat and sugar content–just because something is vegan doesn’t mean it is “healthy”), but a little bit more fragile than completely desirable. If anyone has suggestions on how to make less fragile, but still keep the lace quality and be vegan, your sharing would be welcome by all, I am sure. Switching from egg replacer to egg if you are not vegan would likely be the easiest fix. One of these days, when I have the time and inclination, I will try another version and change the quantities to see what happens.
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Furlough Week Two — Sutras
First too hot, now cool.
It wasn’t until the weather cooled and the reality of a second week of work not being done that needs to be done to meet deadlines that the impulse arose to make the first batch of homemade granola of the season. This batch could be called maple nut granola with raisins.
Harvested last of the sweet banana peppers and a fire engine red cayenne pepper. Also picked as a baby one last eggplant before pulling the plant to make way for tat soi.
Most of the tomatoes I found on the ground still unripe. With a generous portion of red wine and nice herbs, and the traditional way of cooking them for hours and then running through a food mill, and then reducing until reaching the desired thickness, it won’t matter that the tomatoes ripened on the counter.
Assorted apples from the farmer’s market. Dried fruit is different when it goes into the dehydrator within a couple of days of having been picked and early in the season when the apples are best. An upside of being required to stay around home is that I have been able to experiment with the dehydrator that was a most generous birthday gift.
There’s a bunch of difficult stuff going on, but there is no need to write about it anywhere except possibly in my journal, for much of it. And as for the shutdown and its impact on real people around the globe (and all that interconnectedness stuff), I prefer today to write about granola and stuff from the garden.
Anyway, I’m thinking I would just be preaching to the choir if I wrote another blog post about the importance of trying to keep up and understand as much as possible, speaking with others to shape your understanding and your voice, being in contact with your elected officials and signing petitions, and reaching out to friends and family open to such discussions to invite them to be engaged.
It is times like these when I think of Patanjali’s sutra: heyam duhkham anagatam (the pain that has yet to come can be avoided.) I have contemplated this sutra much over a long period. It is a good one for when I am reaching into the yoga teachings for insight into how I might respond more optimally under the circumstances at hand, especially that which is entirely out of my control.
