Chickpea Flour Crepes with Seared Tuna, Smoked Black Bean Hummus and Mustard Greens, and Breathwork to Balance

 I've committed to leaving all grains behind for a month to see how I feel, after listening to a lecture by  Dr. William Davis on the undigestible protein called gliadin found in the gluten chain that act like opiates in the brain and overtime creates leaky gut in the intestines as well as a whole host of other issues. Our grains have  been genetically modified to grow bigger, and be more resilient to pesticides and this alone has caused secondary issues in our bodies, and further and worse, foods labeled gluten free are often simply filled with more grain just different, rice flour and teff, amaranth, and ultimately the processing adds harmful ingredients and the sugar content is through the roof just to make them taste better . So even if you are not celiac, which I am not, but am gluten sensitive, it is still a grim story Dr. Davis tells us of the negative impact of grains in our bodies. 

I am curious enough to see how I will feel with no grains to try it for a month. It's been relatively easy, though I will admit I do miss my sushi rice and corn tortillas. I have begun to find substitutes, konjac flour based "miracle noodles or miracle rice" isn't awful but making "tortillas" from chickpea flour has definitely been my new favorite go to. I am all about whole foods and clean eating but I need varying textures and this does the trick, crunchy on the edges and thin, a little salty and perfect for holding a myriad of things. Today it was a pistachio coated seared ahi tuna, smoked black bean hummus and avocado-d  mustard greens.  

I'm making this while listening to Alan Watts speaking on spirituality and competition in spiritual practice, his voice was sampled for an album and I can't help but laugh, when I think of our drive towards enlightenment, our incessant posting through social media and think, he's right, "spiritual one upmanship" is a real thing and the ego wants in on it anyway it can, I catch myself thinking I need to do more, offer more, learn more and often have to put myself back in place by stepping back and going to my breath.

Nadhi Shodhana is a breath work that balances the hemispheres in the brain, that balances yin and yang in the body and activates the parasympathetic nervous system allowing the body to find rest internally. The stress response of the sympathetic nervous system cannot co exist with an activated parasympathetic nervous system which is quite an amazing thing, to put it simply, you cannot be serene and calm if you are being chased by a bear. The sympathetic nervous system is our "fight and flight" response, it is the body's reaction to stress, only the body and brain think the stress say of every day life is actually a bear chasing us and so it begins to muster the energy and resilience to escape from the bear. This is great, only our "bear" was probably just us watching the news about how many more cases of the virus are in our area, or our children yelling behind us, or even as simple a thing as thinking too much about the past or future. These everyday stressors happen one after the other everyday, makes the body and mind think there is always a bear chasing us and doesn't allow for the body and mind to rest and repair, heal, digest well. So understanding that we may not be able to eliminate all the stressors in life, that that isn't even the goal but instead it is to balance our reactions, create the ever illusive inner calm and grace in the face of all stressors, we turn to activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Biologically, the parasympathetic nervous system reduces cortisol levels, restores adrenal function depleted by the sympathetic nervous system, alters brainwaves back into calm mode, signals the body it can refocus on healing and repairing itself, like growing lustrous hair, sleeping, digesting well, slowing the heart rate, brightening the skin, and balancing the emotional responses. No amount of kale smoothies or supplements  alone will assist the body in these rebalancing functions if the body is constantly in the sympathetic nervous system.  Getting into the parasympathetic therefore to make our diets work for us is critical. Read that again.  

Getting the body into the parasympathetic happens in many ways, cold water therapy does it, hot baths do it, journaling happy thoughts do it, taking a walk in nature or a slow moving practice such as tai chi or qi gong and of course yoga does it. But even more basic at putting us back into "rest and digest" mode is breathing. So let's get to the how.  Nadhi Shodhana is quite a simple technique, find a comfy seat where you aware of your spine, sit upright and take your hand to your face, see below:

Begin by inhaling and exhaling through the left nostril while holding the right nostril closed with the ring finger. After three breaths switch using the thumb to close off the left nostril.  Use the the index and middle finger to rest on the 6th chakra, the point between the two eyebrows, your third eye. Visualize the breath as radiant light, begin to alternate sides, inhale right, exhale left, inhale left, exhale right. See the breath as light, inhale it to the third eye and exhale it down the opposite nostril and out. You can keep this simple visualization or you can see the breath rise up one side of the spine and down the other, or up the back body and through the third eye and down the front body. Create a lasso of light pull in breath, life force, qi and exhale all that doesn't serve you. 

You will see that with some practice this breathing technique soothes and calms both body and mind. Give it time. There are various breathing techniques or pranayama, this is just one and each has specific calming effects on the body. Nadhi Shodhana is the balancing breath.

Chickpea Flour Crepes with Seared Tuna, Smoked Black Bean Hummus and Mustard Greens

feeds 3-4

Chickpea flour batter

3/4 cup garbanzo bean flour 

1/2 cup water

1/4 cup Parmigiano cheese grated

salt and pepper

1 tbsp chopped cilantro or parsley ( if you don't love cilantro)

2 Ahi Tuna steaks 

ground pistachios

1/2 ripe avocado

a bunch of Mustard greens

juice of 1/2 lemon

1/2 tsp chili powder

1/2 tsp smoked paprika

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil. 

salt and pepper

Smoked Black Bean Hummus

1 can or organic black beans ( or make your own)

1 clove garlic

juice of 1/2 a lemon

3 tbsp tahini paste

4 dashes liquid smoke

extra virgin olive oil to amalgamate about 4 tbsp

salt

Make your chickpea batter and set aside. pat dry your tuna steaks and lightly oil and press into ground pistachios, set aside. Wash, dry and chop the Mustard greens and avocado, set aside. Put all ingredients for the hummus in a blender and blend until smooth, adjust for salt. 

Heat a small nonstick pan with 3 tbsp olive oil and when hot, pour as if you were making crepes, thin rounds of chickpea batter, when air bubbles form its time to flip them over. Make all your "tortillas" and place in a warm oven. Sear the tuna in the same pan with the same oil. 

Cook to your desired temperature. 

Put mustard greens, avocado, oil, lemon and spices in a bowl and literally squish the avocado into the greens with your hands.

Great! Now compose your "ahi tuna tacos" anyway you'd like,  I mound the greens on top of the hummus and the tuna on top  and sprinkle a little chili, pistachios and smoked paprika on top! 

And for your listening pleasure:

Alan Watts for Blond:ish 

Alkaline Breakfast Shakshouka and The Discipline It Takes To Let The Happiness Flow

I have always been a sensual creature, needing to feel my way through life, taste, smell, visually experience and touch through the world to digest it fully. It's no mistake I pay such close attention to detail. "Life is lived in the details", is almost my motto.

So when I am described as "tigger" or as "born under a lucky star" or even as a "unicorn who must fart rainbows" I laugh a great belly laugh of acknowledgment to myself that my discipline of happiness is actually being transmitted and felt by others. The last year has challenged everyone at every corner of the earth to reassess their lives and shift their perspectives at the very least. For some it has meant financial devastation, utter isolation and a total reimagining of the person they once were pre covid. And all this can also be seen as a gift, a gift to committing to a truly authentic life, one without the masks of acceptance we wear in the face of familial and societal expectations, because all of that has been turned on it's head, businesses closed for almost a year, wellness venues shuttered deemed unessential, pleas to the public to self isolate even from loved ones, a form of a dystopian novel that could not have been written to make more of a blockbuster psychologically depressing film. And yet, here we are, so now what? 

So now reinvent, start over, sit quietly and sow seeds of love, let the seeds of expectation, fear, ego wither and die under a less fertile soil. Fertilize the seeds of love, joy and compassion.

On my writing desk sits a very small quote on brown kraft paper typed in times new roman font. 

It's Proust, born in the time of Cholera in Paris, as a small maybe not so insignificant side note to his revelatory quote, 

he says:

"The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." 

The source of this citation is  'In Search of Lost Time' À la recherche du temps perdu - perhaps the most celebrated work by Marcel Proust. To quote more fully from the original citation source: 

“A pair of wings, a different respiratory system, which enabled us to travel through space, would in no way help us, for if we visited Mars or Venus while keeping the same senses, they would clothe everything we could see in the same aspect as the things of the Earth. The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is; and this we do, with great artists; with artists like these we do really fly from star to star.”

I'm not sure how much of this time for us is unprecedented, historically, it seems that at the turn of the century one could argue Proust was experiencing a similar revelation about the origin of true happiness. How we choose to see, touch, feel, taste life is really up to us. Suffering in it's innumerable forms has always existed as happiness's bedside companion and the way through suffering is not in attempting to avoid or alleviate it, to remove or escape from it in life but is instead to view it as a great teacher, an opportunity to deeply experience compassion, it is suffering that is the fertile soil that enables the seeds of joy and love to germinate. 

Maybe read that again. Let it sink in. 

In Hindu and buddhist traditions Avidya is what Proust is acknowledging. It is our ignorance before awakening. Our darkness is not in the daily suffering we endure but rather in the way we view the world around and within us through the veils of ignorance, ego, attachment and avoidance that creates suffering.

We choose how to experience our life. How to digest our lives. When we look deeply, sit quietly we can choose complete presence to this moment.  How sunlight catches the tips of undulating current at the oceanside and sparkles like fairy dust, or how the pink sunrise reflects off the monolithic silver skyscrapers of a great city casting it's warm hue upon every face and street and object it can reach. We could also choose to see the danger in the ocean, or have irritation about the temperature in the air instead Or rather than seeing the morning light reflecting off of the buildings in the city we could be wholly unaware of this choosing instead to be irritated by traffic or feeling a sense of entitlement or egoic satisfaction in where we are in life and what we have accomplished, we could be in essence ruminating on past and projecting into future instead of being present to the experience of our feet on the ground. 

The great discipline is this, to find the beauty in all things, and there are a million ways we have been given to do just this. Find your way, make it a discipline, use the tools that work for you to shake off the avidya, this incorrect way of seeing to make room for the joy of now. 

Shakshouka is one of those dishes that has been a simple one pan meal that satisfied and nourished from middle eastern and north African diets and centuries past. I've given it a twist. If it is one thing I struggle with it is dishes, I look deeply into the zen of soaping up a dish as a way to romance myself into doing this and enjoying the sensation, this is my practice that I am still working on, I laugh to myself in joy therefore when I find a one pan meal that satisfies, which is rare.

It is traditionally a reduced tomato based sauce heavy with aromatic herbs of turmeric, cumin, paprika, coriander, and goat, or lamb, peppers and poached eggs, it's quintessential element making it a breakfast food for the ravenous.

I eat meat maybe twice a week but still need the protein at the beginning of my day and so I have chosen a vegetarian version that calls more out to it's South American neighboring dish huevos rancheros with it's use of black beans and cilantro. 

In any case it's simple and in these winter months it begins the day with a warm belly.

Shakshouka 

serves 2

8" cast iron pan (almost necessary)

1 -2tbsp Extra virgin olive oil

1 tbsp organic tomato paste

1 garlic clove minced

1/2 tsp smoked paprika

1/2 tsp turmeric

a dash cayenne

3 cherry tomatoes quartered

1/2 cup black beans

4 free range organic eggs

handful chopped fresh cilantro

tortillas, chickpea flour crepes (recipe coming soon), naan, or fresh crusty bread to eat this with

Saute' garlic in olive oil in a small 8" cast iron pan , add spices and let heat to perfume the room, add tomato paste and cherry tomatoes on medium heat stirring to amalgamate flavors and possibly add a little splash of water if your tomatoes don't suffice to make a soft sauce, not soupy but thick. Add drained black beans, salt and pepper and crack in the four eggs gently and spaced evenly, you have just a moment or so to shift the beans and sauce a little around the eggs before taking off the heat and placing under the broiler of your oven until the tops of the eggs have just turned milky ensuring the yolk is still soft.

remove and sprinkle fresh cilantro and maybe a dash or two of hot sauce!! Add your favorite carb and dig in.