Chickpea Miso Seafood Soup
14 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in Essay On Health, Recipes Tags: candida diet, carrots, health coach, health food, inner quest, Inner Quest Intensive, institute for integrative nutrition, kombu, Kripalu, leeks, lemon, miso, Naturopath, seafood, soup, sugar free, wellness group, yoga center
This winter has been one of major changes for me. I presented 4 workshops in January and feel that I am officially over (it’s so last year) my fear of talking in front of groups. I started a women’s wellness group and we are having so much fun and learning a lot as well! Now I’m planning for more groups, for men and women, families and teens. I’m looking forward to my presentation at Miss Halls School Health Fair at the end of February. I will get to talk about what a health coach does, offer the students scholarships to The Institute for Integrative Nutrition, and invite them to join me for my upcoming class series!
I have also done a lot of work on myself this past month. In preparation for the Inner Quest Intensive at Kripalu I met in Great Barrington with Naturopath (and all around AMAZING lady) Pam Youngquist weekly for 4 weeks. We did some talk therapy; some energy work and she gave me some thought provoking topics to journal on as well as some new techniques to help me heal on an emotional level from the Candida. No matter what illness or imbalance you are trying to recover from, be it weight loss or chronic fatigue, you have to look at everything, from food to negative thought patterns, in order to really move forward.
Kripalu Yoga Center and grounds in Lenox MA
And after my weekend long Inner Quest Intensive I feel like I moved forward in my life, at about 90. The IQI as described to me by others who have been through the program is that it’s like ‘several years of therapy in one weekend.’ There’s a lot to this program but that sums it up nicely. It was a tough weekend and yes, it was totally worth it. If you are interested in getting involved with Kripalu and live in the Berkshires, check out The Berkshire Kripalu Community! You can apply for a membership which allows you to take Kriplau yoga at a discount as well as apply for scholarships to Kripalu programs. You can also apply directly to Kriplau, a non-profit educational organization, for a scholarship to any one of their programs, which is how I was able to afford the Inner Quest Intensive. Thank you generous Kriplau sponsors!!
During the IQI program we ate very simple, light foods. There was usually miso or vegetable broth at each meal. I was easing back into my normal diet (basically Kripalu food plus spices and garlic and hot sauce!) and so Dana made us miso soup with seafood for dinner. Perfect. This is the recipe he used as a guide for his soup. Dana, of course, didn’t measure anything which means you’ve got a lot of leeway here with the amounts, use what you’ve got, improv the rest!
Someone took a nice picture of their version of Seafood Miso Soup, looks good enough to eat!
Seafood Miso Soup
- 4 quarter-size pieces fresh ginger
- 1 strip kombu kelp*, about 1/4 oz.
- 1/2 cup loosely packed bonito flakes (katsuobushi)
- 1 large leek, white and pale green parts only, sliced and rinsed well
- 2 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 2-in. matchsticks
- 1 1/2 pounds black cod or Pacific halibut, cut into 1 1/2-in. pieces
- 3/4 pound medium sea scallops (15 to 16 per lb.)
- 3/4 pound medium shrimp (26 to 30 per lb.), peeled, tails left on if you like
- 1/2 cup shiro (sweet white) miso (we used chickpea miso)
- 1/2 cup lager (preferably Longboard, optional, Dana left the beer out for ours)
- Lemon zest/wedges (optional, but highly recommended!)
- Thinly sliced shiso leaf (optional)
You can find kombu, a large seaweed sold dried, and bonito flakes with the Asian ingredients at well-stocked supermarkets and at natural-foods or Japanese markets. Find shiso, an aromatic herb, at Japanese markets and some farmers’ markets.
Preparation
- Bring 4 cups water, the ginger, and kombu to a boil in a large, wide pot. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, 4 minutes. Turn off heat, sprinkle in bonito flakes, and let sit 3 minutes (flakes will sink)
- Add leek and carrots. Bring to a simmer and cook 2 minutes. Add black cod and scallops; simmer 1 minute. Add shrimp and cook 2 minutes more.
- Whisk miso with lager or water in a small bowl. Remove stew from heat and carefully stir in miso mixture. Serve with lemon zest/wedges and shiso for topping if you like.
Sunset
OCTOBER 2011
Osso Bucco with Carrots, Cabbage and Onion
02 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in Recipes Tags: cabbage, candida, candida cookbook, candida diet, carrots, cast iron pan, cast iron skillet, cumin, easy meal, health coach, homemade stock, onions, osso bucco, pork shank, The Meat Market
Pork and cabbage, how much more New England can dinner get?
This was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be when I asked James about the pork shanks in the case at The Meat Market. I had not planned on making osso bucco for dinner (it sounds a bit intimidating, right?!) but accidentally defrosted this instead of the pork chops I’d bought at the same time! As with many of my culinary discoveries, I was hungry and had to work with what was on hand. I’m glad I did, osso bucco made with pork shanks is amazingly delicious and easy, it just takes some time.
At 5:30 in the evening I heated up my smaller cast iron skillet, lightly oiled and browned each side of the pork shank for a minute or two. Then I added a couple frozen cubs of homemade stock (from our Thanksgiving turkey, still giving!) and a healthy 1/2 cup of red wine along with some carrots and onion slices. I put the top from our creuset (any oven safe lid will do) and put the whole thing in the oven. I set the oven to 300 and the timer for an hour.
At one hour the meat was thoroughly cooked but not falling apart. Another hour and it was perfect, the sauce had reduced, the veggies were cooked and the meat was super tender, no knives necessary.
About 10 minutes before the skillet came out of the oven I chopped a bit of onion and sautéed it in butter with cumin and salt. Added some shredded cabbage and cook it til it was wilted.
Next time, we'll definitely need one for each of us!
The cooked cabbage went into the cast iron pan with the reduced stock/wine/pork juices after we served the osso bucco and the veggies. It wasn’t a ‘quick meal’ but it really didn’t take much time or effort in the kitchen. And it was super flavorful, a great meal to make if you want to impress and a have a few hours before you want to eat!
Green Beans with Bacon and Cider Vinegar
31 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: bacon, body mind spirit, candida, candida cookbook, candida diet, environmental protection, factory farming, food stamps, green beans, green vegetable, happy animals, health coach, healthy animal foods, hobby farmer, onion, pesticides herbicides, quick meal, raw apple cider vinegar, side dish
For the past few days I have been wondering if I would ever be able to access this blog again! Wordpress is great but they seem to have very strange policy’s when it comes to account access. Anyway, my friend Lizzy helped me out and, we’re back! I found this recipe in ‘Hobby Farmer’ magazine which started showing up at my house for some reason. A well intentioned but forgotten Christmas gift perhaps?
A word about bacon, and meat in general: When I was 16 I stopped eating meat and was a vegetarian for 12 years. I was horrified by the animal cruelty I knew was going on behind the highly guarded doors of factory farms and slaughterhouses across our country. I knew the one thing I could do was to not participate in this disgusting, immoral, environmentally devastating and completely unhealthy system. Today I am lucky to live in what the New York Times calls the epicenter of the local food movement. I’m far from wealthy, in fact just two years ago I was relying on food stamps to buy my organic, local foods. Meat in the grocery store, really any animal product that is not from a sustainable, certified organic, free range, healthy farm, is, I guarantee you, from a sick and abused animal. It’s full of antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides: chemicals that will only make you and our planet more and more unhealthy. If you have 10 bucks to buy meat, consider eating it only once or twice a week instead of buying the cheap stuff. There is nothing more costly than cheap food. And animal products from eggs to bacon to cheese from healthy, happy animals are really good for you and taste much better, you know, like actual food! So enjoy your bacon, knowing you are doing the right thing by supporting organic, ethical farmers and their healthy animals. Stop buying into the myth that cheaper is better and that the meat on sale is anything but poison for your body, mind, spirit and OUR environment.
Ingredients:
1 pound fresh green beans
1 cup water
4-6 slices of thick cut bacon, diced – The Meat Market, Berkshire Organics, Holiday Farm are a few of many places in the Berkshires to get high quality, healthy animal foods.
2/3 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
salt, pepper and a dash of stevia or honey, to taste
Procedure:
In a medium sized sauce pan over medium heat, cook the beans in water until they are tender. Drain the beans and reserve about 3/4 cup on the cooking liquid.
In a large, heavy bottom skillet over medium high heat, saute bacon and onion until the onion is lightly browned. Add reserved bean liquid and cook until it has reduced to 1/4 cup. Add vinegar and sweetner and stir well to combine.
Add the cooked beans and heat through. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Original recipe from page 77 of the January/February issue of “Hobby Farmer”
A Few Must Read Books
10 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in Essay On Health Tags: Eckhart Tolle, intuition, meditation, sixth sense, Sonia Choquette, spiritual, spiritual practice, sugar, sugar addiction, Sugar Blues, The Power of Now, The Psychic Pathway, William Duffy
Here are three books that I recommend to my health coaching clients and that I find myself coming back to again and again. The first book looks like a cheesy drug store diet book but it’s full of fascinating information about the dangerous effects of consuming too much sugar. Tired? Bloated? Always hungry and can’t seem to kick those sugar cravings? Got achy joints, depression and blotchy skin prone to breakouts? 
You need to read ‘Sugar Blues’ by William Duffy. It is currently selling from 35 cents on Amazon and it’s totally worth the investment. A quote from one of my clients who I helped to finally kick her sugar habit for good, “Sugar is like rust in your body, now that I don’t eat it I can’t see how I would ever put such a damaging substance in my body again.” Well said!
My next recommendation is called “The Psychic Pathway: Reawakening the Voice of Your Soul” by Sonia Choquette, Phd. Don’t let the title scare you, I think many of us have an off reaction to the word ‘psychic’ calling up images of mysterious women and their crystal balls. Instead, think about your gut instinct, your intuition or anytime you’ve ever heard that voice of wisdom in your head and thankfully followed it. You know you’ve got the same brain cells in your gut that you’ve got in your head, right?! This book is a meditation guide and a guide to getting back in touch with and receptive to, your inner voice. You know what’s best for you, better than anyone else ever will. So why not deepen your self awareness? 
And my last book recommendation for today is called “The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment”by Eckhart Tolle. An important part of a healthy and balanced life is a fulfilling spiritual practice and this book can help you to start or deepen whatever spiritual path you have chosen. This is a practical guide that you can begin to use immediately. I read this for the first time when I was feeling very stuck and frustrated by what seemed like an all consuming illness. It really helped me to gain new insights and perspectives and significantly helped to reduce my feelings of frustration. The information in this book perfectly compliments Sonia Choquette’s workbook and is something I have returned to many times.
The time is always NOW!
Happy reading! And, if you want to reward yourself for books well read, check out the movie (also a book of the same title) “What The Bleep Do We Know?!” It’s a mind bender of the best kind!
Winter Survival Tips and a Workshop Invitation
07 Jan 2012 2 Comments
in Essay On Health Tags: candida, candida cookbook, candida diet, Exercise, free workshop, health coach, Holistic health, personal growth, primary foods, radiance yoga, seva, supplements for winter health, vitamin d, winter wellness, Women's Wellness Series, workshop
So many exciting things are happening this month, I don’t even have time to get into any kind of winter induced funk! Well, that and as this is my third winter (is this really winter?) back in the Berkshires, I’ve gotten pretty good at combating the things that usually drag me down. Here are some things I’ve found useful in avoiding seasonal depression, weight gain and generally funkiness (not the good kind!)….
Winter running can be fun and funny looking!
1. Get outside and get your heart rate up! Exercise is so important but especially during the cold winter months when we really need the mood and immune boost we get from exercising. We also need time in the sun shine, everyday. Some kind of vigorous exercise (even if it’s just you, dancing like crazy to your favorite music!) will warm you up and keep your metabolisim going strong. The best way to get all these health benifits at once is to go out daily for a brisk walk, a run, snow shoe or x country ski, you know, on all that snow we have. Daily outdoor exercise is a mjor ingredient in winter health.
2. Get up earlier and go to bed earlier for maximum daylight. With the sun coming up early in the day it can be helpful to keep your shades open so you can wake up with the sun, your all natural source of much needed vitamin d! We are past the shortest day of the year, the hours of daylight will only get longer from here.
3. Use supplements for extra support. If you work inside most of the day and get your exercise inside at a gym, you may need to supplement with Vitamin D, here’s a link to healthy foods that offer lots of this all important winter vitamin. If you feel yourself getting depressed there are some herbal and natural supplements you can try like St John’s Wort, SAMe and 5-HTP.
4. Eat plenty of immune boosting foods. Everything from raw garlic to broths made from healthy animal bones will help you stay strong against cold weather and whatever is going around. You can also drink your daily dose or two of Fire Cider. Fire Cider has been helping me avoid my usual winter colds and flu and is now available in 16 oz bottles at some of our fine retail locations because more is more!
5. Socialize and stay connected. It can be hard to leave the warmth and comfort of your home, especially when it’s dark so early but staying connected (and away from your computer!) by making time for social activities can help you to stay positive during the winter.
If you want to meet new people and learn more about your own health and what you need to live your life in balance, please joing me for my free workshops on Primary Foods. This is a new concept in holistic health nutrition that looks at the whole human being, mind, body and soul and sees that everything is food. During this workshop you will have the chance to examine various areas of your life; relationships, career, creative outlets and discover how primary food can truly nourish you and make your life extraordinary! Participants will be asked to do writing exercises and share their insights and observations. When primary food is balanced and satiating your life feeds you!
This Sunday from 2-3:30 pm at Radiance Yoga on North St. all are welcome to attend this free Primary Food’s workshop, part of an on going seva series at Radience!
On Tuesday January 10th at 6:30 pm I will be presenting Primary Foods as a free introduction to my 12 week Women’s Wellness Series. A great way to stay healthy and keep working on your goals is to become part of a supportive community that fosters personal growth and development. I hope you will join me!
To get all the details and to sign up for my 12 week series, please visit my Events page!
Sweet or Savory Coconut Flour Pancakes
02 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in Recipes Tags: candida, candida cookbook, candida diet, candida diet pancakes, coconut flour, coconut milk, coconut oil, eggs, health coach, herbs, savory, spices, sweet
Pancake breakfast made possible with coconut flour and happy, local eggs!
This recipe was recommend to me by my friend Alexx who is also eating for Candida balance. At the time I was experimenting with a batter recipe I have, turning it into savory dinner pancakes. That recipe is a bit more complicated so lets start with this basic recipe for light and fluffy pancakes! You can make it sweet with stevia, vanilla (or another extract you like) or maybe some orange zest and cinnamon. Or savory with the addition of dried herbs, fresh chives and pepper. Savory pancakes would go well with a bit of fresh goat cheese or fried eggs and the sweet version could be topped with yogurt or eaten plain.
This recipe makes a lot of pancakes, I cut it in half and got about 9-10 pancakes. If you want to experiment with flavors and additions, make up the whole recipe, divide it into two bowls and then add different flavorings to each batch. The batter will keep for a few days in the fridge or on the counter top. I made my breakfast batter up the night before and left it out on the counter, covered with a cloth, to let the fermentation process start. This is a great short video on fermenting foods and their health benefits!
Ingredients
- 4 eggs, room temperature
- 1 cup milk (raw cow’s or coconut)
- 1/2 cup coconut flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
- coconut oil or butter for frying
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- a pinch of stevia
- cinnamon & nutmeg
- dried herbs
- ground pepper like chipotle
- your favorite Indian spice or curry blend
Directions
- Pre-heat griddle over medium-low heat. In a small bowl beat eggs until frothy, about two minutes. Mix in milk, vanilla, and stevia OR herbs and spices.
- In a medium-sized bowl combine coconut flour, baking soda, and sea salt and whisk together. Stir wet mixture into dry until coconut flour is incorporated. The batter will be thicker than regular pancake batter. You can cook the pancakes now or leave the batter out, covered with a cloth, overnight to begin the fermentation process which will aid digestion.
- Grease pan with butter or coconut oil. Ladle a few tablespoons of batter into pan for each pancake. Spread out slightly with the back of a spoon. The pancakes should be 2-3 inches in diameter and fairly thick. Cook for a few minutes on each side, until the tops dry out slightly, bubbles form and pop on the surface and the bottoms start to brown. Flip and cook an additional 2-3 minutes.
Monday morning pancake breakfast!
Original recipe is here.
Free Workshop and New Women’s Wellness Series Starts January 10!
29 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in Essay On Health Tags: Amy Huebner health coach, free workshop, group coaching, health coaching, primary foods, primary nourishment, women's wellness, workshop
If you want to learn how putting your health first can create more time and energy in your life…
If you want the support of a healthy community in the Berkshires…
If you are interested in learning about how to connect more fully to your true self…
If you want to learn about self care instead of health care…
If you want to make changes but don’t know where to start….this is the meeting for you!
On January 10th at 6:30 pm in the Social Hall at the Unitarian Church in Pittsfield I invite you to join me for a free workshop on ‘Primary Foods’. This evening will be an interactive exploration of the question: What truly feeds us? Learn what you need to nourish your whole self; mind, body and spirit. This holistic and transformative approach to wellness is the foundation of my health coaching practice and the starting point for my new wellness series for women….
12 Weeks To A More Vibrant You!
Bi-Monthly Workshop/Group Health Coaching Series for Women
Starts January 17th
Sign up on January 10th after the Free Primary Foods Workshop
The focus of this series will be on self care and empowering yourself healthy! This is a lower cost alternative to one on one coaching with the benefit of having the support of other group members.
Support and guidance are the main ingredients in successfully creating the healthy lifestyle of your dreams! If you want to be part of a healthy community in the Berkshires, this is the group for you! We will meet twice a month for a little over an hour. Each meeting we will support one another in setting small goals that will add up to BIG changes. There will be cooking demos, healthy snacks, recipes, lots of handouts and information, access to my lending library and much more! You can sign up on my website for a 10% discount and please join me on January 10th, 6:30 pm, in the Social Hall at the Unitarian Church in Pittsfield to learn about Primary Foods. The 12 week program cost is $45 per month and includes all handouts, giveaways, guest teachers and supplies.
Women’s Wellness Weekend at Becket Chimney Corners
January 20-22
I will be presenting at this amazing weekend for my third year in a row! I will be doing 2 workshops, one on Primary Foods and the second on Hormone Health for Women. Interested in participating? Register here:
Hot Chocolate Cookies
22 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in Recipes Tags: cakes, candida, candida cookbook, candida desserts, candida diet, cookies, dark chocolate, dessert, eggs, espresso powder, health coach, walnuts
Some of you have been asking me if I have any new holiday cookie recipes and thanks to the Farmer’s Almanac, the answer is YES! On page 40 of the 2012 Almanac is a recipe for ‘Dark Chocolate Chili Balls’. I have taken the advice of my celebrity chef friend, that is, he’s my friend and he cooks for a lot of celebrities, not something I personally have the stomach for after my experience working as a nanny for certain 1%-ers, but his advice was this: refrain from using the word ‘balls’ when naming a food. So we’ll call them cookies, you can shape them however you like and make any inappropriate jokes you deem necessary for this time of the year. These spicy, rich chocolate cookies are mostly a mix of 85% dark chocolate and unsweetened chocolate with some walnuts and hot pepper of your choosing. The original recipe was easy to adapt since it only called for a 1/4 of wheat flour, and I substituted with a tablespoon of coconut flour.
I made these last weekend and they were a hit at our Sunday night family dinner. At the end of this post I’ve linked to my other cookies and sweet treats in case you want to make up a variety of holiday cookies for you and yours!
Chocolate cookies spiked with chipotle and walnuts.
Ingredients:
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped. I used Trader Joe’s brand ‘The Dark Chocolate Lover’s Bar’ which has 5 grams of fiber and only 8 grams of sugar per 40 gram serving (about 2/3 of the whole bar).
2 ounces Unsweetened chocolate, chopped
2 Tablespoons unsalted butter
1 Tablespoon coconut flour
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 to 2 teaspoons ground chiles, I used a shy 2 teaspoons of ground chipotle peppers and the cookies were spicy! I would use less spice next time. If you like hot, go for it, if not, 1/2 a teaspoon will do. You can use Ancho chiles for a more mild and smokey heat, Cayenne for a lot of heat and not much else or Chipotles for heat and smoke, yum!
2 large eggs
stevia to taste
1 Tablespoon espresso powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup of chopped walnut pieces
Procedure:
Preheat the oven to 350 and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Unsweetened Chocolate, butter and some 85% dark chocolate make the base of these rich cookies.
In a saucepan over low heat melt the two kinds of chocolate with the butter. Add stevia to taste, a bit sweeter than you’d like and the flavor will balance out when you add in the rest of the ingredients. After it’s melted, set it aside to cool a bit.
In a bowl mix together the coconut flour, baking powder, salt and hot pepper.
In another bowl beat the eggs, espresso powder and vanilla at high speed for 2 minutes.
Cowboy coffee for the modern foodie: whipped organic farm eggs, espresso powder and vanilla extract.
This last part should be done quickly so have your baking sheet ready and your oven up to temperature.
Add the melted chocolate to your egg mixture and beat well to blend.
Add the flour mixture and stir until combined. Stir in the walnuts.
The chocolate will begin to solidify so immediately begin to shape spoonfuls of dough into rounds and place about 2 inches apart on the cookie sheet.
Bake for 10-12 minutes until the cookies have a shiny skin and are slightly firm. Let them cool on the cookie sheet for several minutes before transferring them to a rack to cool completely. Makes 24-36 cookies depending on size!
Some of my other dessert recipes:
5 Star Dessert
13 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in Essay On Health, Recipes Tags: avocado, candida, candida cookbook, candida diet, chocolate, chocolate pudding, cocoa powder, coconut cream, dessert, easy recipe, health coach, heavy cream, pudding, stevia
Chocolate Avocado Pudding with Cocao Nibs
One of my clients recently went to Thanksgiving dinner hosted by a chef whose day job is at a 5 star restaurant in San Francisco, lucky her! She was worried, of course, that there would be only a few things that she would be able to eat since she is on the Candida diet. And rightly so, it’s usually difficult to get someone who doesn’t have any idea what Candida is to understand this diet. I recently had the pleasure of eating a meal at Eat in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. They usually serve a small, set menu based around what’s local and fresh, my kind of place! And the set menu on Saturday night was not looking very Amy-friendly. The chef, surprisingly, wanted to accommodate my diet and asked me, what can I eat? We went through a list of the usual suspects and he seemed to understand. What came out of his kitchen was absolutely delightful, lots of greens, some smoked fish, a little cheese, more fresh green herbs in an olive oil and apple cider vinegar dressing. I was impressed. And so thankful that he was willing to be flexible and to listen.
Avocados: creamy, rich, healthy and versatile.
Listen To Your Gut: A Cake Baking Lesson
08 Dec 2011 3 Comments
in Essay On Health Tags: birthday, cake, candida, candida cookbook, candida diet, food pictures, health coach, inner voice, intuition
I have been busy working on my recipe book, due out sometime in 2012, and on my upcoming workshop series for women. Maybe that’s why I feel a bit burned out on recipes. It’s less like writing and more like editing with recipes. And yes, I know, there’s a lot of editing to do in order to convert my blog into a downloadable, printable, orderable through amazon.com real paper cookbook. Perhaps there will be pictures; it’s not really a cookbook without some close ups of roasted veggies and slices of cake. My favorite food pictures are from my grandmothers 1950’s cookbooks like Good Housekeeping…
Peach Spam Loaf, anyone?
Looks like birthday cake, tastes like sandwich loaf, whatever that is.
A few weeks ago we celebrated my brother’s 29thbirthday. Brian has been working hard to get Fire Cider in stores all over the Berkshires and since we can’t pay him, or ourselves for that matter, I wanted to make him a really awesome cake. Certainly cake cannot make up for thousands owed in back pay and expenses, or could it?! That Sunday I started baking the cake around 11 am. Last year, you may remember the turkey cake he off-handedly, kinda jokingly, slightly sarcastically asked for….
Elise pretends to take the turkey cake out of the oven...
It really was awesome.
What we really did was bake several layer cakes, stick the pieces together with peanut butter frosting into the shape of a turkey, covered the whole thing in meringue and then Dana torched it to a golden brown.
Dana and Elise and I were quite pleased with ourselves.
This year I was going to make sticks of dynamite since my brother had requested a black bomb like the kind in old cartoons. I thought about that and then decided that was a lot of fondant and who wants to eat fondant? How about dynamite bundles like they threw around in the loony toons cartoons?
At least the batter looked pretty....
Things started out well but by 4 pm the cake was still rolled in a towel looking a bit overdone and too thick, much too thick. And then the first frosting recipe failed. And by failed I mean all the oil separated out and I thought I had ruined 5 ounces of our best chocolate. Almost, but not quite.
Next, I made fluffy white frosting, added the chocolate that was neatly separated from the other ingredients and then attempted to make three rolls of red velvet sponge cake filled with raspberry and chocolate frosting look like…..
As severed arm? Intestines, like a cross section? Do you remember the woman who cut off her breasts and served them on a platter? No but yes, now I will, forever, thank you Katharine! I resisted as long as I could but I had to laugh; there was nothing else I could do. I had spent all day, and it had been a lovely day until I realized I was working on what was now clearly, without a doubt, the least appetizing cake I had ever seen. Yes, well, I could also cry about it a little bit too. And sigh and breathe heavily. So I did, I laughed while I cried and Dana and Katharine nearly fell over each other laughing at my hilarious cake disaster.
Here’s the thing. It had been a lovely day, literally, sunny and in the sixties, ridiculous weather for 3 days after thanksgiving. I even went for a run while the cake cooled. And then, at some point, things were no longer going smoothly. For one thing I had at least once, if not twice, completely ignored my intuition. And then when things were really going poorly I wanted to blame Dana for it. Hmmm, that sounds like a bad plan. Ignore one’s own intuition. Suffer the consequences and while suffering, try and put it on someone else. Ok, so the first lesson here, one which I have learned countless times already, but perhaps this will help me remember…
LISTEN TO YOUR INTUITION! YOUR GUT, YOUR INNER VOICE!! HELLO, ARE YOU LISTENING?
Had I listened, I would have made the cake differently and chosen my own frosting recipe. And the second lesson is to remember that blame will not get anyone, anywhere. Accept what is and act thoughtfully. Truly, we make all of our own decisions and we are where we are in our lives because of the choices we make or avoid making. And my gut told me to slice the cake into something that more resembled food and less like a dismembered leg. And as I did I started to feel better and was able to let go of my frustration. Instead of hanging on tightly to wanting things to go my way, I looked at what was and worked with it. Much better. Everyone has an inner voice that has much wisdom for us if only we can be open to hearing it.
I arranged the whirled red cake slices on a big platter and we served each piece with raspberry red wine reduction and whipped cream. So it worked out in the end that happy birthday was sung at least three times and the last time, for sure, we all certainly meant it!
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