Zen & The Art of Chocolate Cake

I’ve been practising a lot of mindfulness activities recently.

It’s the latest ball I’ve thrown in the ring to seek some modicum of balance in my life. In the past I’ve flirted with mindfulness a fair bit, but more like a one night stand than a serious commitment.

So more recently I’ve been trying to commit. I’ve been hanging out with my mate mindfulness a lot more. Mindfulness for me is not all tofu and mung beans. It’s not all ommm meditation. Tonight it involved exiting a worn out work head and entering a more present and comfortable home head. And so I baked.

Not just the throw it in the oven hope it doesn’t burn bake. A REALLY get present, get right back in your body bake. I lit a candle. I cleaned my kitchen in readiness. I pulled out a great new recipe. I lovingly lined up all the ingredients. I measured thoughtfully. I smelled things as I added them. Cocoa, cinnamon, the pungency of the grated Parsnip. Well it might be pungency or it might just be Parsnip juice which currently defies my powers of description.

The cake has just come out of the oven, and it looks perfect in every way. I feel humbled and present.

I will also feel present when I ice it and EVEN more so when I eat it. Hail the Chocolate, Parsnip & Cinnamon Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting.

Chocolate Blessings. (and photos later….)

The Great Big Enormous Parsnip

How do you cook a one metre long parsnip in a thirty centimetre oven without cutting it up… and how do you empty a lake, polish the bottom and put the water back?

I love the kooky space of my night sleeps. While they appear a bit random and ridiculous, night thinks are most informative.

These two dreams from this week seem like great parables to me. Feeling refreshed when you have a toddler and a teenager, how to juggle work life balance, how to find a house that meets our needs that we can actually afford and want to live in… They all seem a bit impossible, like the princess in Rumpelstiltskin being asked to spin straw into gold overnight.

These are the great sorting dreams. Sorting this from that, and working out what’s yours and what belongs to other people.

I have no answers today, but love the way my unconscious state is continuing to problem solve for me and work out some next steps to my modern-day dilemmas. If not I will put out there for a morning waking answer from my fairy godmother… or, she who knows.

Any ideas on cooking that parsnip?

Green Blessings.

Feed your inner bear today…

When a bears’ intuition tells them it is time for a long, long nap they go out looking for somewhere to sleep. Having spent most of the summer on an extended eating-fest designed to ‘chunk up’ before winter, they are all ready to go. Bears don’t really think about it that much. They just get into their inner Pooh.

Image from newtech.aurum3.com/ images/polar-bear.jpg

The Inuits gormandize on a range of fatty delights such as whale, walrus, seal, caribou, polar bear, muskoxen, birds, fish and eggs. Their diet keeps them warm all year round. They probably don’t worry about whether it’s saturated fat or not.

data2.archives.ca/ e/e317/e007914483-v6.jpg

Humans, well we aren’t always that intuitive or instinctive about our food and habits. Mostly we just go on eating the same old, same old for lunch everyday because it tastes good, or we think its low in kilo-joules. How many of us really think about preparing for the big chill? Is sushi and low-fat yoghurt what our bodies really need to get us through the long Winter months? Doubtful.

About this time of the year my clever body alerts me to a need to change things. Even if I slavishly ignore my body it persistently whispers to in my ear. If I don’t listen it pummels me repeatedly. My inner polar bear wants some caribou. No more iced water. I want a herbal brew. I’ve put my elderberry syrup up for the season to ward off sniffles. I start thinking broth and kichadis and congees. I start combing recipe books for immune stimulating recipes. I go out and get astragalus to throw in my soup. I start baking pears and quinces and apples.

Really I’m just setting in my stocks before I go into hibernation.

So listen to your inner bear today and make sure your ready for the big chill.

Green Blessings

Fridge Central

Is your refrigerator the nerve centre in your Universe?

Is your fridge a reflection of your world order?

If mine is I’m in trouble! In fact I’m really, really in trouble….

It's an Electrolux

Earlier this year I purchased a lovely new fridge following an unusual over frosting incident that shall not be mentioned. (Not even the bit about the defrosting placenta within).

I was determined. I was resolved even. I was going Zen fridge door. I was going the Full Monty of fridge doors. I was NOT having seventeen precious bits of child’s art work. I was definitely not having shopping coupons. AND I was not having fridge magnets that seem to breed into rare hybrids when you turn away at night.

I have caved in. Horribly.

There is…
My running schedule (preparation for a 10 Km run later this year)
Notice of the agents impending house inspection
A spectacular list of pies for my up and coming Pie Palooza Birthday on Sunday.
A ticket for BABBA.
A local historical society brochure for the Button Exhibition.
Yoga timetable.
Free gym personal training session (For up and coming birthday)
Homework list (Not mine)
50th Wedding Anniversary Invitation (Rather Fancy Nancy)
Story timetable for the library
Birthday List (Definitely mine)
Hopeful brochure for local nurturing, massage, pamper place. (Wish it was mine)
List of things to do to prepare for Pie Palooza (Yes, that’s mine too)
When you can water schedule
When you can put your garbage out schedule
And… the list of my god kids activities (Which are substantial)
Phew, and that’s not withstanding a host of fridge magnets, photos and a Day Care Calendar!

How did this happen? I know not.

Do I have the courage to remove absolutely everything…I doubt it. Some of it. Yes.

My fridge is my new temple. Ommm Fisher Pakel.

Green Blessings.

The Hump Year

I’m Feelin’ kind of reflective today. It’s Wednesday, fondly known as Hump day by some, as the middle point of the week. I wonder whether at 45 in a few days time whether I am approaching Hump Year. A mid way point in a life that so far is getting better as I age like a great gorgonzola.

Hanging out in the hump

I don’t feel a great need to look back and wish I did it differently. Everything that went before has informed my now so that’s okay.

I don’t feel a great need to look ahead. I seem pretty happy just hanging about in the Right This Very Minute and stirring my soup, sprinkling my glitter, or whatever else takes my fancy.

This is unfamiliar terrain for me as a previously desperate and sometimes disparate seeker of stuff about stuff. So I stopped going to one thousand and one sessions to heal my being. I stopped reading about it to. I got rid of a whole book-case of self help tomes that when I weighed them up, just ate cash and made me feel a perennial sense of hopelessness. I did recently indulge in a recommended guide to saving whales, emo’s and other things that would make me feel better. But its gathering dust by the bed. I was too busy making Pie!

So here I am hanging about in the middle. Not everything has gone to plan. Not everything is shiny. But the Middle does seem absolutely, positively okay. And that’s okay.

Green Blessings

The Cheers Toast Moment

As I handed Alice the toddler her cheese toast VERY early this morning, and announced its name “Cheese Toast” she clinked it to mine… as in “Cheers”… Toast. Very funny.

"Cheers"

A Cheers Toast Moment (C.T.M) is the perfect antidote for all matter of ills. These unscripted and unconscious acts are just the thing to get you through your daily groove thang.

Not fatigue, not illness, not wardrobe malfunction or the dreaded burnt pot disaster can better the C.T.M.

The CTM lets in the light, the joy and the absurdity of any persistent negative thinking. CTM is like liquid gold for the soul. Look out for and celebrate your next CTM.

CHEERS!

Green Blessings.

Being Caroline

Today I am Caroline. Just as it is, no embellishments, no fuss and that is okay with me.

I enjoyed a grand, long train ride the other day and was reflective (As I often am while traveling) and thought about how okay I was with myself at that particular moment. Being Caroline felt just fine.

I had quite a lot of nicknames when I was younger… most of them unpleasant, and they seem like a chronicle of the life and times of me.

Fuzzy/Curly-Wurly: Primary school taunt on account of …. well curly- wurly hair. (Taken to heart in a devastating way and made me feel very sad)

Static: Early high school mocking jibe (Similar to above) with more advanced language content. Made me feel horribly rejected and friendless. (I was)

Koos: Mid high school extra nasty poke and prod meaning Sook spelt backwards. I was a sook on account of early taunting and multiple hair references. This didn’t help. Lots of time crying at school.

Jelly: Early teen years developing breast reference. At least I felt noticed! Awkward when your father calls you this nick-name.

Strange lack of names for later high school years. We grew up and started studying.

Caro: Post university. Trying out a new sense of self. Caro at the time seemed fresh and unencumbered. Later it felt try-hard and inauthentic. It remains persistent and is unappreciated.

CAROLINE: It is my name and I like it. I must have grown into myself somewhere along the line.

No trimmings, no makeup, bare essential me.

Welcome to me.

Green Blessings.

Small magic deposits…

Some days are for super BIG magic. Some days feel totally magic free. (Boo Hoo!) And some are filled with the wonder of constant small miracles for which I am most grateful.

Work often rushes at me like a tsunami of overwhelm. I need to be strong and hold the space well to cope.

I am fortunate enough to have the best window view in the organisation. (photo on the way) Every time I look out at the secret garden just a few steps a way I feel some instant replenishment.

I had a visitor at work yesterday. She came with a joyous bag of tricks and a lovely disposition. Magic between people feels great too. My visitor flew in on her broom and said that she’d met me before, my old wise self in a dream space. She revealed parts of myself that I hide from others. You gotta be happy with that. I love it when time transcends reality and your psychic space gets a good sweeping. And meeting someone who makes your head happy with possibility.

And then I wandered off to my community garden plot. Despite last years drought, locusts, snails, thefts, poor planting technique and other vagaries of nature I picked my families dinner. Beetroot, fresh basil , corn, tomatoes and some parsley. One hour from pluck to pesto and I felt like I had a big jolt of nature’s vitamins packing it in to my bowl.

And while the pumpkin’s haven’t really set that well…. they have the most amazing flowers. Joy rising up like a phoenix from the compost.

So many rainbow blessings in every day.

There’s Gnome Place Like Home.

Earl the gnome has been with me for about ten years. He looks more wizened than that, old soul that he is. He’s in his third home since we met, and while he is obliging he is yearning for a place to stay for the next couple of hundred years, or so.

While I don’t expect to accompany Earl for that long in the earthly realm, I certainly share his desire for a patch of our own. There’s gnome place like home.

For as long as I can remember Gardens have been my default dreaming option. I’ve planted many metaphorically speaking, some thriving, some with a few too many aphids. These days my gardens are doing much better, and they are starting to make their mark in my earthly world.

I do some small time gardening at my rental property. A few potted herbs, a few lettuces (well-tended by Earl), and the oaks that have been travelling me for the last three years. I also dabble in a one year old community garden plot that is starting to emerge. I lose myself there when I go trowel in hand.

But more recently I seem to have quietly become the custodian of a very Secret and very special garden. Without realising it, I had stumbled across the very garden that has been in my dream space for at least ten years.

When I first met this garden, I kinda liked it, but wasn’t that quick to recognise its beckoning call. The garden was knocking on my subconscious door for a few months before I answered.

And then a sow thistle asked to be removed…

The last few months have been a whirlwind as I have claimed this space as a welcome respite from my busy world. I have weeded, and pruned, and dug and manured, and removed debris and swept and sat and listened. It is starting to tell me what to do. I am truly with joy.

A heart garden is not always what and where you expect it.

But a heart garden will always meet your greatest inner needs.

Green blessings.

The juicy nashi miracle

Today I went to a secret garden. No one knows about it because it’s secret.

Someone had dug up some tomatoes and corn from their mean landlords house and put it in the fertile soil of the garden. Instant bounty.

I picked a nashi, and took a sneaky bite. WOW, juicealishious. I haven’t had a moment so transformative since the great tinned spaghetti healing. The nectar of that juice made me remember all the joy and all the wonder of digging in that garden. And all the possibilities that come when we dig, and toil and snip and weed, and prune, and sprinkle and compost and love and laugh and talk to the earthworms and flowers.

And the awful stuff was all gone, and there are more nashis to come.

Green Blessings.