Red Lentil Soup

Red Lentil Soup

Very easy to make and very tasty! :-) :-) :-) 

2 ¼ cups red lentils

9 cups water

½ cup short grain brown rice, uncooked

5 carrots, chopped

2 large stalks celery, chopped

1 large yellow onion, chopped

6 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp dried ground fennel

Salt to taste

Throw everything except the salt in a big soup pot. Bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer for about 40 minutes or until the lentils and rice are tender. Add salt to taste. This is a very yummy soup!

Miley Cyrus The Climb

MILEY CYRUS LYRICS

The Climb

I can almost see it.
That dream I'm dreaming, but
There's a voice inside my head saying
You'll never reach it 

• Seems like the song starts out pretty clear i guess i just imagine Martin Luther King saying he has a dream he's dreaming and it feels better to me than if i have a dream of being a rock star of something

Every step I'm takin'
Every move I make
Feels lost with no direction,
My faith is shakin' 

• OK no problem here

But I, I gotta keep tryin'
Gotta keep my head held high

• The part about trying seems to be sort of plaintive and not particularly effective -- as I understand God, all i need to do is remember to ask him what to do/say/think whenever i am feeling lost (which for me is constantly) and he always offers guidance and direction it's just a question of learning to hear

There's always gonna be another mountain
I'm always gonna wanna make it move

• OK

Always gonna be an uphill battle
Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose

• My experience is that the more time i spend focusing on what the Lord would have me do, say, or think, the less everything seems like an uphill battle. 

Ain't about how fast I get there
Ain't about what's waitin' on the other side

• Now THIS i agree with.

It's the climb

The struggles I'm facing
The chances I'm taking
Sometimes might knock me down, but
No I'm not breaking

I may not know it, but
These are the moments that
I'm gonna remember most, yeah

Just gotta keep goin',
And I, I gotta be strong
Just keep pushing on, 'cause

These are the lines that feel the least grounded to me out of this whole song.  I go nuts when i hear people talking about how they've had to be strong.   I feel like it sets up a victim/hero scenario inside their heads and also inside the heads of anybody who believes their story.   For me, listening for the voice of God in order to follow the movement of Spirit (aka Go With The Flow) sometimes involves doing something that feels like standing up for myself.  However, i do not necessarily associate this kind of action with being strong but rather with focusing clearly and standing my ground within my focus and my grounding is in God.  

 

There's always gonna be another mountain

I'm always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be an uphill battle
Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose
Ain't about how fast I get there
Ain't about what's waitin' on the other side
It's the climb
Yeaht
There's always gonna be another mountain
I'm always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be an uphill battle
Somebody's gonna have to lose
Ain't about how fast I get there
Ain't about what's waitin' on the other side
It's the climb
Yeah, yeah yeah
Keep on movin'
Keep climbin'
Keep the faith baby
It's all about, it's all about the climb
Keep the faith, keep your faith, whoa, whoa, oh. 

 

This is fine i mean it's great to keep faith the only thing is the whole rest of this song is so confused about what faith exactly is that trying to follow it seems like it leads to being more lost than before hearing the song.  I have a problem with a lot of pop songs like this -- the chorus or hook is good but then when i listen to the rest of the song i end up thinking "wait, is this person advocating violence as a solution to life's problems or maybe suggesting that blaming some guy for treating her like garbage is a tolerable mindstate to get stuck in or suggesting that it's ok to abuse himself now for not bringing some chick flowers last year etc etc etc"

Spicy Nachos with Goat Cheese

Spicy nachos minus the avocado

Spicy Nachos with Goat Cheese

Serves 1

Ingredients

A couple handfuls of spicy tortilla chips 
     – i like Garden of Eatin spicy Red Hot Blues tortilla chips

A 1 1/2 x 2 inch chunk of hard goat cheese, chopped into little bits – gouda is a favorite 
     but any hard cheese such as cheddar or monterey jack is good

1/3 of a can of canned beans 
     – kidney beans, black bleans, pinto beans are favorite choices

3 medium lettuce leaves, chopped

5 cherry tomatoes

1/2 an avocado, scooped out and cut into rough bite-sized chunks

A  very small handful cilantro leaves, chopped

1/2 of a medium-thick onion slice, chopped

1 tsp olive oil

1-2 tsp apple cider vinegar 
A pinch of celtic sea salt (i just use this cause it still has minerals in it)

1/2 – 1 teaspoon nutritional yeast

All of these measurements are approximate i just threw it together

Instructions

Put the tortilla chips into an 8" x 8" baking dish. Spread the beans over them, then sprinkle the cheese over everything. Broil at 500 degrees for a few minutes until the cheese is melted – the edge chips might be a bit burnt but that's ok. Keep on eye on this, don't want anything to get too burnt! When the cheese is melted, take the baking dish out of the broiler.

To make the salad:

Put the lettuce, tomatoes, avocado, cilantro, and onion in a medium bowl. Add the oil, vinegar, salt, and nutritional yeast. Mix until the salad is coated.

Now put the whole thing together:

Use a spatula to transfer all the cheesy beansy tortilla chips to a dinner plate. Pour the whole salad over it, serve, and enjoy YUM

Blue Cookie Bar Blob

Blue Cookie Bar-Blob

Grape juice concentrate is what makes these delicious vegan and refined-sugar-free cookes blue!  Also, mashed banana is what holds them together it works pretty good.

The reason this is a bar-blob is because the finished product really has to set but it is really yummy so i didn't worry about it :-)

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups almond flour

1 cup oats (you can substitute 1 more cup almond flour instead of oats

                  to make this recipe entirely gluten free)

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 very large banana or 1 1/2 medium bananas

1/2 cup coconut oil

2 tablespoons ground decaf coffee

1/2 cup water

6 tablespoons grape juice concentrate

1/2 cup grain sweetened carob chips

1/2 cup raisins

Instructions

Boil the 1/2 cup of water and then dump the coffee into it and let it sit for a couple of minutes. Then either pour it all into a coffee filter in a single-cup plastic coffee thingy over a mug or else just use use a teeny little strainer over a mug like i did to make the finished cofee. Whisk the flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a big bowl. In another bowl, mash the banana using a potato masher or if you don't have one then a fork. Add the mashed bananas, coconut oil, 2 tablespoons of the finished coffee, and the grape juice concentrate to the dry ingredients and mix until blended. Add the carob chips and the raisins and mix until blended. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Put a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Smush the mixture on to the cookie sheet, make a big blob about the thickness of a cookie. Bake for 13-15 minutes – they probably will still be quite gooey on top but as long as they get brown underneath that's fine, don't leave them in more than 16 minutes MAX. Take the out and let them cool. Actually the finished product seems to be best when refrigerated but if you don't mind if they tend to fall apart at room temperature, have them that way. :-) Cut into bars and serve. Yum!!!! :-) :-) :-)

God and Racism

http://overbear.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/i-killed-trayvon-martin/

This is very interesting to me because the guy is saying that although he does not wanting to be a racist he still is, meaning that when he sees a black guy in a dark alley he still has all the same emotions he has always had except now he stifles them and forces himself to smile.
 

The thing about fear and negative emotions is that i have never been able to just wish them away through the force of my own will.  (Similarly have never been able to lose weight using that method).  The only way that my fear or any negative emotion has ever been removed is by me saying, "Dear Lord, this person/situation looks just horrible to me and i want to see it how you see it" and then instead of simply substituting what I think is a "better" thought or emotion for the one i abhorred in myself, to be COMPLETELY OPEN to the Lord's way of looking at the person or situation.  This means not blaming myself for how i see it AND not blaming the other person for how they appear to me, which i have acknowledged to myself is is not the truth of who they are.  That is because the body's eyes see in duality ("it's either him or me") while the eyes of Spirit see only unity :-)

With this kind of practice, for me the only way to proceed has always been to start with the person in front of me.  If i have an obnoxious teenage girl standing in front of me and my buttons are being pushed, after years of practice i can see how ultimately working on this will at some point lead to being able to pass by a figure in a dark alley in a space of love. Do not know if i can do it today, but definitely see how the practice of focusing on love does not hurt!!! Anger is anger and fear is fear.  The more you practice seeing all things as not separate and equal in the eyes of the Lord, the more you will be able to relate to whoever is in front of you whether it is a just a dangerous-looking guy in the dark or a really dangerous-looking guy wearing a uniform with a gun.  Don't know if i would be at perfect peace with any of these situations today, but i do know i am more at peace with everybody i meet or know than i was 5, 10 or 20 years ago and that is enough motivation for me to keep going with the practice of seeing only love :-) :-) :-)

nuff said thanks for reading. :-)

Holistic Medicine

here is my stream of thought about this today
if you are going to try to step into the middle of a harrowing situation such as fleas and try to heal it holistically, forget it because as i heard secondhand from this holistic doctor who was associated with Kripalu, if you have hurt yourself using aleopathic means then you need to heal yourself using an aleopathic method.  Hence the neutron bomb. It seems to me that the best use of holistic methods is to strengthen health, not to try to defend against disease or pestilence or parasites.  Therefore it is infinitely preferable to build up a healthy system through nutrition taking into account maybe that certain things protect against fleas such as nutritional yeast and maybe garlic, without attempting to begin such a program in the middle of an onslaught of fleas or whatever else.

the other thing about the holistic approach is that in its mildest form it is not about killing fleas,  but simply about making it unpleasant for them to hang around.

one more el flako thing
another thing is that if my cat was a spiritual master and a flea went anywhere near her it would be blessed and probably leave immediately, or kill her and then she would resurrect herself.  Unfortunately she is not a master today however at some point she may well be.

A Course In Miracles, Text, Chapter 1, Section II, Paragraph 3-4

     "Awe should be reserved only for revelation, to which it is perfectly and correctly applicable.  It is not appropriate for miracles because a state of awe is worshipful, implying that one of a lesser order stands before his Creator.  You are a perfect creation, and should experience awe only in the presence of the Creator of perfection. The miracle is therefore a sign of love among equals.  Equals should not be in awe of one another because awe implies inequality.  It is therefore an inappropriate reaction to me.  An elder brother is entitled to respect for his greater experience, and obedience for his greater wisdom.  He is also entitled to love because he is a brother, and to devotion if he is devoted.  It is only my devotion that entitles me to yours.  There is nothing about me that you cannot attain.  I have nothing that does not come from God.  The difference between us now is that I have nothing else.  This leaves me in a state which is only potential in you.
     "No man cometh unto the Father but by me" does not mean that I am in any way separate or different from you except in time, and time does not really exist.  The statement is more meaningful in terms of a vertical rather than a horizontal axis.  You stand below me and I stand below God.  In the process of "rising up", I am higher because without me the distance between God and man would be too great for you to encompass.  I bridge the distance as an elder brother to you on the one hand, and as a Son of God on the other. My devotion to my brothers has placed me in charge of the Sonship, which I render complete because I share it.  This may appear to contradict the statement "I and my Father are one," but there are two parts to the statement in recognition that the Father is greater."