Banana Bread Delights.

Sometimes the mood to bake comes on so strongly that all I can do is surrender, throw on an apron, and get busy mixing and measuring and chopping and rolling. Today's creation answered the question of how to handle the desire for solid food on long bike rides when GU gels just don't cut it. I know these will also be perfect for hikes, and will also satisfy you when those mid-day sweet snack cravings hit.

The best part? They are made with real food. No added sugar- not even maple syrup or coconut sugar. Just dates and bananas (and the non-dairy chocolate chips are optional).

INGREDIENTS:

2 large ripe bananas, peeled

1/2 cup packed pitted Medjool dates

1/4 cup extra virgin coconut oil

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp fine grain sea salt

2 cups gluten-free rolled oats, divided

3-4 Tbsp non-dairy chocolate chips (optional)

1/4 c. chopped walnuts (optional)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. Add the banana, dates, coconut oil, and vanilla into a food processor. Process until smooth.

3. Add cinnamon, baking powder, and salt and process again until combined.

4. Add in 1.5 cups of the rolled oats and process for only 4-5 seconds, just long enough to roughly chop the oats.

5. Remove the mixture from the food processor and stir in the remaining oats, along with the walnuts and chocolate chips.

6. Spoon 1 large heaping Tbsp onto the parchment paper. Do not press down the dough to flatten.

7. Bake cookies for 10 minutes, rotate the pan, and bake for another 7-9 minutes until golden brown on the bottom.

8. Immediately transfer onto a cooling rack for 10 minutes.

9. Enjoy!

P.S. Share these vegan, gluten-free, no-refined-sugar treats with your gluten and sugar-loving friends! I promise you that they'll love them, and it won't cost you your friendship.

Make Good Art.

Naure makes good art too...

I laugh at how the perfect words land in my lap seemingly out of nowhere, snuggle their way into my world and nestle themselves inside of my heart, right where I need them most. Today those words were from Neil Gaiman-

“Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do-

Make good art.

I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician?

Make good art.

Leg crushed and then eaten by a mutated boa constrictor?

Make good art.

IRS on your trail?

Make good art.

Cat exploded?

Make good art.

Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before?

Make good art.

Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn’t matter. Do what only you do best.

Make good art.

Make it on the good days, too.

The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you’re walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself. That’s the moment you may be starting to get it right.”

— Neil Gaiman

So this has become my manifesto. Whatever comes my way, I'm going to do one thing with it-

I'm going to make good art.

Deconstruction.

“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”

— Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

This concept of things falling apart feels so true in my life, especially recently. It's easy to float along, but when the big waves come crashing down and cause you to flounder and get water up your nose, it's harder to keep your perspective. I get hopeless and scared, too. I get fearful and obsessive and my mind runs off the rails like a runaway trail and I have to rein it in over and over from dwelling on the things that scare me down to my core.

Avocado, cucucumber, carrots, kamaboko, shiitake mushrooms and nori over a bed of black rice.

Tonight's dinner was metaphor for myself, really. A deconstructed sushi bowl to tangibly prove how life's discordant events can in fact, be beautiful. After I took this picture, I mixed everything up together. It was messy and delicious and colorful and reminded me of how grief and joy and loneliness and hope are all ingredients in life, and are not separate from each other. Life doesn't always present itself neatly, rolled up and sliced into perfect sushi rolls. Sometimes it falls apart, and you just have to be ok with experiencing it in a different form than what you initially expected.

I scribbled these words in my journal early this morning-

"I'm discovering now that writing is much more than transcribing words into a journal, in black and white, on a page. It's a lifesaving buoy, keeping us afloat, providing us with something tangible to grab onto- to rest our weary arms around as we make sense of our world and re-establish our voice and direction in the vast sea of life."

Even if things seem to be falling apart, I've found that making sense of things on the page can make life's obstacles more palatable, and I dare say, more delicious. Just like a deconstructed sushi bowl.

The War of Art.

“Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action.

Do or don’t do it.

It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.

You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God.

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it.

Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.”

— Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles

This has been added to my Top 5 books list.

This entire weekend I've been submersed in amazing musical and artistic talent.  After watching the incredible actors performing

Fiddler On the Roof

on Friday and the mesmerizing performance of Mona Golabek in

The Pianist of Willesden Lane,

it is clear that the world is more beautifully expressed when everyone follows their own creative call.

Right now I'm loving Pressfield's book…get yourself a copy and armor up.

I can't wait to see what you've got.

Beyond What I Know.

First hike up Castle Rock

Last night's beautiful sunset at Point Isabel

“I love going out of my way, beyond what I know, and finding my way back a few extra miles, by another trail, with a compass that argues with the map…nights alone in motels in remote western towns where I know no one and no one I know knows where I am, nights with strange paintings and floral spreads and cable television that furnish a reprieve from my own biography, when in Benjamin’s terms, I have lost myself though I know where I am. Moments when I say to myself as feet or car clear a crest or round a bend, I have never seen this place before. Times when some architectural detail or vista that has escaped me these many years says to me that I never did know where I was, even when I was home.”

— Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Decadently Delightful.

As much as I love words, some of the best art contains none of them.

Someone described this as "decadently delightful," and I couldn't agree more.

Colors.

I am sitting in my hairdresser's chair, hair freshly washed, and hold the book in my lap. I flip through it, examining the various colors and my split-second associations. So many colors, so many options. I settle for an in-between color that is both subtle enough for the workplace yet shines lighter in the sunshine. I'm happy with it.

I pull out my snack, and it is a glorious burgundy color. Just chewing it makes me feel love. If I was a fruit, I'd want to be this brilliant color. Its rich hue puts white bread and white pasta to shame.

Dried dragonfruit. Exotic. Colorful. Delicious.

I drive and notice the pastel colors of the sunset, and how it is both soft and magnificent at the same time- strong blues, subtle oranges and pinks spread across the sky. I realize how much of my world, my mood, my pleasures- are dictated by the colors that surround me. I've worn red when I've felt confident, as well as black when I've just wanted to blend in and not be seen. Guilty as charged.

And in thinking about this, it challenged me to ask myself, as well as you- In a world with no color, only black and white, how would you stand out?

Fresh Air.

“Sometimes, I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.”

— Mary Oliver

#aftertherain #poetryinmotion

Trailblazer.

“Here’s the truth that you have to wrestle with: the reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can’t tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there’d be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map. Don’t you hate that? I love that there’s no map.”

— Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

When I saw this at Point Reyes, I went the opposite way. #trailblazer

The Type-A part of me that secretly loves structure and to-do lists and schedules to follow is constantly at odds with the artist/creator side of myself that loves the words freedom and flow and feels stifled by timelines and objective goals.

It's all about balance, I suppose. I'm learning this on a daily basis- that there is always more than one way to approach a problem, to find another solution, to course-correct and overcome the inevitable obstacles that present themselves on the path. I'm learning to let go of what I've trusted (structure), and navigate without a map. 

It's hard. But here's the honest truth- I was never good at reading maps anyways.

Trudging Along.

“So when we write and begin with an empty page and a heart unsure, a famine of thoughts, a fear of no feeling- just begin from there, from that electricity. This kind of writing is uncontrolled, is not sure where the outcome is, and it begins in ignorance and darkness. But facing those things, writing from that place, will eventually break us and open us to the world as it is. Out of this tornado of fear will come a genuine writing voice.”

— Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

Spotted on the stairs of Berkeley Bowl West. Advice for both life and writing.

Arranging the Pieces.

“Arrange whatever pieces come your way.”

— Virginia Woolf

Diving into the steamy pool as the clock hits 6am means only one thing- my writing time (morning pages) and meditation have been shifted even earlier, to an ungodly hour that starts with a 4. But I've been consistently doing both of these long enough in the morning to understand their inherent value, and skipping any one of the two, or even both (gasp!) is unthinkable. I'm thankful I've developed them into my morning routine that they are now as habitual as brushing my teeth and lotioning up after a shower.

I'm listening, a lot. Propped up with my pillow behind my back, legs crossed, with sleepy eyes and the covers shrouding my open palms, I'll just breathe. In. Out. In. Out. I find it interesting how ideas will just drop into me, stay for awhile. And I'll notice them, tuck them away, and focus again on my breath. In. Out. In. Out.

From a bird's eye view of the past few months, I am fascinated how people, situations, and opportunities have emerged in the most exciting and creative of ways. Lots of pieces, different shapes and colors and textures, and here I am taking whatever it is that shows up in my life, and arranging it in such a way that best fulfills my dharma in this big and beautiful world.

It would be just as easy to take those same pieces and say, "It's impossible," or "I can't do that," or blame the economy, other people, or come up with a million different excuses to keep myself from fulfilling my destiny. But perhaps it's the inner artist in me that sees these independent pieces and wants to fit them together in a creative and meaningful way- one that will ultimately be of service to those around me.

This same approach applies in the kitchen. Yesterday I looked at the kabocha squash resting on the counter, noticed the kale in the fridge staring me straight in the eyes, the $3 organic red bell pepper begging me not to go to waste, and the forbidden black rice greeting me as I opened my top cupboard door. So I took those pieces and arranged them together in one of the most delicious meals.

Roasted kabocha squash stuffed with forbidden black rice, wild rice, kale, onions, red bell peppers and shiitake mushrooms.

How are you arranging the pieces in your life?