Food for the Body

Thoughts about eating well to feed your body and spirit.

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    Thanksgiving Schedule and Greetings (Web Version of E-Letter)

    ByElizabeth

    Dear Friends ,

    This weekend I will be celebrating our local Anusara community at the weekend workshops in College Park, Maryland with John Friend.  I look forward to seeing many of you there.  My good friend Jane, who in honor of Thanksgiving donated the sub fee to S.O.M.E (So Others Might Eat)., will be covering my gentle/therapeutics this Saturday at Willow Street.  It’s sure to be full of gentleness and nurture, so check it out if you’re in town and won’t be at the weekend workshops.

    On Thursday, I will be leading my ninth annual Thanksgiving Day yoga class for the benefit of Oxfam.  It will be at Willow Street’s Takoma Park studio from 10-11:30am.  The more the merrier, so bring yourselves, your family, and your friends.  For those of you who remember the days when you brought a check and I mailed them in, my matching donation of up to $200 still applies even with the convenience of being able to register and pay on line at Willow Street.  Registration in advance is appreciated as it helps us get ready for you, but drop-ins are most welcome, too.

    I’ll be teaching all of my regular classes next week and not only celebrating Thanksgiving, but also sharing the abundance of energy from the weekend with John Friend and all of our wonderful Anusara community.  Stop by on Tuesday night to set your intention for the holiday or complete it with gentle/therapeutics at noon on Saturday at Willow Street.  As always, friends and family are welcome to drop in.

    I hope to see many of you for some of this outrageously abundant yoga feast.  If you will be traveling, may it be safe and joyous.

    Peace and light,

    Elizabeth

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    Sculptures Around Town

    ByElizabeth

    I love the tree sculptures by Roxy Paine. This one is in the Sculpture Garden on the National Mall. They are exquisitely beautiful and beautifully crafted. In addition to just appreciating their form, though, they make me think of the perils of society preferring the shiny, the seemingly permanent and indestructible, and the constructed over the breathing, shading, nourishing, life-sharing presence of real trees.

    Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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    Today In and From the Garden

    ByElizabeth

    It is time to pay attention to the garden, to watch closely whether it will be a warmer fall or whether there will be an early frost.  Yesterday, there was a chance of temperatures in the mid-30’s F in the next few days.  Now, the first day below 38F (which is when I bring in the hardiest of the tropicals–they like to get nights in the 40s F, but not the 30’s F) is toward the end of the 15-day forecast.  I gambled that temperatures would stay warm enough until the next time I would be able to spend the hour and  a half moving plants inside.  It is best when I can do it on a weekend, but in a pinch I have done it first thing in the morning instead of my  regular practice before starting the work day.  I wait until the last minute because the plants are so much happier outside.  They don’t mind four months inside, they are ok with five, and they start really suffering at six months.  This means I watch closely danger of first and last frost to keep the plants outside as long as possible.

    Some things, such as the impatiens and begonias that I was taught  by my paternal grandmother to bring inside as cuttings to root in winter and then replant in spring start struggling outside when lows are steadily in the 40’sF, which is why I did the cuttings today.  The tomatoes are still producing, so I have not yet switched the raised beds from tomatoes to hardy greens, but the seeds I planted when I pulled up the peppers and the eggplant are starting to come up.

    Today’s harvest included:  Cherokee purple, roma, and cherry tomatoes, green beans, baby butternut squash, thai hot chili peper, white and orange carrots to eat now; sweet herbs to dry for infusions–stevia, licorice mint, lemon balm, lemon verbena, spearmint.  Coming up:  spinach, chard, turnip greens.

     

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    Prasad (and Opening to Grace)

    ByElizabeth

    During one of the sessions at the workshop last weekend in New Jersey, John Friend made a passing reference to the difference between receiving and taking.  He did not go into any detail because it was not central to the theme of the class, but it led me to contemplate on my own about the difference between taking and giving in the context of yoga practice.  In so doing, I thought about the concept of prasad — which is food that has been blessed and is offered to those who have participated in worship (puja).

    When offered prasad, one does not take it.  Instead, the cupped palm is turned up to receive the prasad.  The recipient does not get to pick through the basket and choose which sweet looks the biggest or the tastiest, but simply receives with gratitude the sweet or fruit that is infused with the intention of spirit.  The active part is the showing up with openness and receptivity to the offering, the blessing, the nourishment being offered.

    Coming to yoga class or doing our own practice (asana or meditation) should be, I think, like preparing to receive prasad.  What is primary in the practice of Anusara yoga is being open to grace, but we can no more force openings or enlightenment (grace and insight always elude grasping),  than forcing any particular physical posture or goal really yoga practice.  The point of effort in yoga to improve and expand alignment and knowledge is to enable the practitioner to receive more fully all the potential gifts and grace of practice, and then in turn make fuller and more complete offerings to others.

    Below:  offerings at the Chelsea Farmers’ Market

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    Letter from FCNL on How You Can Help Shape the Budget

    ByElizabeth

    I just received this letter and wanted to pass it on to those who have senators and members of Congress (those of us in DC still do not):

    Dear Elizabeth Goodman,One of our lobbyists just reported to me that some members of the supercommittee are telling us they are open to cutting Pentagon spending. “We need to hear what the folks back home in our state have to say about this,” we heard.The most important voice in this budget debate is your voices as constituents. As they make their decision, your members of Congress need to hear your side of this story. They need to hear about the consequences in your communities when money isn’t invested in schools, roads, jobs, and other local priorities.Today, will you write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper? Refer to your members of Congress by name and point out the needs in your local community.Communities around the country are being squeezed. More people are relying on food banks; local governments are copying with both the neighborhood and family stress of foreclosure; schools are increasing class sizes and shortening the school year; and critical maintenance on bridges and roadways. Police and firefighters are losing their jobs.  Yet, the Pentagon budget continues to grow.Congress will take action to reduce the deficit, which means budget cuts. But if Congress doesn’t act to cut at Pentagon spending by a significant amount — FCNL and others believe that number is $1 trillion over the next ten years — then the cuts to other programs will be much deeper. Cutting the Pentagon budget and potentially making more funds available to meet the needs of state and local communities.  There is an opportunity to make this change.Thank you for your action.Sincerely,Diane RandallExecutive Secretary  P.S. If you want to know more about how much Pentagon spending is slated to rise, or more on FCNL’s views on the debt, deficit and supercommittee, visit our website. 

    Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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    Health Care Crisis in Progress

    ByElizabeth

    At “Taste of DC” here come (not in any particular order):

    1.  Respiratory diseases from air pollution resulting from cooking methods, factory farmed meat, manufacture of packaging, and food transportation.

    2.  Antibiotic resistance from factory farmed meat.

    3.  Diabetes from refined sugar and carbohydrates.

    4.  Cancer from food additives, food cooking methods, manufacture of plastic food packaging, and air pollution.

    5.  Heart disease from fatty and high cholesterol foods.

    5.  Foot, ankle, knee, and back problems from ill-fitting high heels with a narrow toe box.

    6.  Tooth decay from refined sugars and carbohydrates and later gum disease and heart conditions from poor dental hygiene.

    6.  Waterborne diseases from air and water pollution secondary to food manufacturing and packaging and attendant waste and unnecessary medication, surgeries, and other medical treatments for illnesses resulting from food and clothing choices.

    And don’t forget lost productivity for sick time.  I do not think anyone needs to be rigidly any kind of diet all the time (not raw, not Ayurvedic, not vegetarian, not vegan, not local, not slow), but wouldn’t it be nicer to eat well most of the time (and if you have even the most modest of kitchens, healthy meals are in fact cheaper than packaged junk food–assuming one knows how to cook, which I know is a big assumption), wear comfortable clothing, and have more time, strength and money  for creative and loving pursuits?

     

     

     

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    Harvesting and Replanting

    ByElizabeth

    This weekend’s work in the garden continues on removing summer plants that are no longer productive to make way for cold weather planting (various greens and root vegetables).

    The cherry tomatoes and a couple of the hot peppers are still flowering in addition to fruiting. Those I will leave in place as long as they are producing or until a frost, whichever comes first.

    I ruthlessly pulled up all of the other pepper plants, gleaning the last of that cycle of the harvest (some years there are lots of peppers to pickle and roast and enjoy into winter, but not with this summer’s weeks of blasting, arid heat followed by the flooding storms).

    With the limited space in my tiny garden, frittering away time or space from sentimentality, attachment, neglect, or lack of knowledge, has a significant impact on the possibility of flourishing. Sometimes I relish my ability to be ruthless in the garden–to tear things up that do not serve, let them go, and invite in new and more nourishing and productive things.

    When thought about in relationship to the vastness of possibility, my life is not unlike a tiny and limited garden, the limits being space and time and the particular and peculiar collection of quirks, challenges, and talents that came in this incarnation. Oh to be as ruthless in discarding what does not serve in this life as I can be in the garden.

    Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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    What Are You Going to Do With It?

    ByElizabeth

    We all have one of these. The question is whether we can learn to use, repurpose, refine, release, and dissolve to best serve ourselves and our environment.

    Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.