best granola and my morning routine- dedicated to ada

September 6, 2017

Mornings are my favorite time of the day. Partially because it is a new day, and I have a chance for something very exciting to happen. But before I start my invigorating day I do my ordinary, boring things to make me feel safe, and grounded.

I love to ask people about their morning routines. It’s a source of endless fascination for me. I’ve been asked that question so many times: what’s your morning routine? They seem to be expecting an inspiring answer. I hate to disappoint.

My morning routine is pretty boring. Every day the same, getting up, exercising, shower, quick walk with my dog and bike ride to work. I break that boring routine once in a while with a short visit at a local coffee shop, usually combine with a friendly chat with neighbors, yes even New Yorkers have a sense of community and they are friendly sometimes, half sleeping, waiting for their first sip of coffee. Oftentimes the first thing I do in the morning is checking my email on my phone before I even sit up. I do this to calm my anxiety. Or to create enough anxiety that I’m not sleepy anymore. I’m not sure which. It’s a terrible habit. I don’t have time to eat at home, I hit the ground running & get straight to work with my hair in a messy bun because I chose exercising over hairdo and makeup.

One of my routines is the choice of menu…. Fruit with yogurt and home made granola… Night owls rejoice! Now you can add some bee pollen, goji berries, seeds, coconut flakes, and superfood-, add some yogurt and have a legitimate, protein rich breakfast without doing anything more than waking up. This is particularly handy for not just night owls but for:

a) people who want to eat well in the morning (everyone, yes?)

b) people with children who even if they’re far better than I at mornings get pounced on with more needs than one woman can juggle

c) people on the go that need something they can take with them.

So here’s to mornings, whether your idea of morning is burying a head under your pillow because you were up in the ambient glow of a screen as your brain buzzed all evening or if you’re a veritable bird from a Disney movie in the morning.

My best granola

1 bag rolled oat

1/2 cup of coconut oil

· 5 tablespoons of honey or date paste (just mashed up dates)

· 1 teaspoon of flaky salt

· 1 cup of xylitol

· FOR GARNISH

· bee pollen

· fresh fruit

· honey

· toasted coconut flakes

goji berries

· hemp seeds (or other seeds & nuts)

Mix all the ingredients together, spread out on a baking sheet and bake for 1 hour in 275 F turn it occasionally so the oats don’t burn.

Mother's Day

May 21, 2017

My mom is an amazing mother who dedicated her life to her two kids. She is selfless yet strong - and the most beautiful woman I know. She survived the death of her son and although she has never gotten rid of the pain, she learned how to show me her unconditional love and devotion and never made me feel -even for a second- that I am less important or less loved or appreciated because I am still alive and he is not.

Although my parents never made differences between us kids, it was always unspoken knowledge that my little brother was mama’s boy and I was daddy's little girl. Regardless of our alliances, I remember as a child walking 2 miles each way to the forest to collect Lilies of the Valley for my mom’s special bouquet. This was our thing. A small bunch of beautiful, to-die-for smelling white, tiny bells. I have kept this tradition to this day, sending my mom at least one dried stem in her Mother’s day card.

This year during my morning run – every day the same path - exactly on Mother’s Day I came across a patch of my favorite Mother’s Day flowers. They were peeking at me asking to be seen. Coincidence? A sign the universe is trying to tell me something? I ran the same path the day before and I did not see them. Pretty damn amazing.

Last Sunday although I wasn’t celebrating Mother’s Day (in my country we celebrate it on May 26th), I was thinking about all the mothers everywhere. The crazy religious mothers, who protect a purified piece of emotional land that they feed to their children at the detriment of their lives. The lost mothers, who follow their children’s paths, becoming whatever their children are, who look younger than their daughters, who will never be able to be a beacon of aging, of mothering, of acceptance. The mothers who cook and clean and make their own peach mush for infants, the mothers who never cook and never clean and leave their infants alone with pedophile relatives. All mothers everywhere, who have grown babies or adopted them, especially adopted, for they are the ones who waited in vain, who were not ‘chosen’ and still insisted on their right to the job of motherhood. They watch their children with a melancholy fear, what will it be? Did I buy a killer? Can I teach my child well on the right to the job of motherhood?

When we have kids we know better. We know that the living child matters more than anything in the world. That is why it is nature’s prime directive. Reproduce, like a rose through the cement, like grass breaking apart rocks.

Apologies to all my friends who sent me Mother’s Day wishes. Although I am not really sure why – I am not their mother – I never reply or send anything back. Please don’t take this personally, it’s not you, it’s me. Weirdo, who doesn’t like meaningless words and gestures. Who has her own strong opinions about things and goes a bit against the grain.

I will be thinking of my mom on May 26th, the day when we celebrate Mother’s Day back home, the same way I think of her every single day of the year. A day doesn’t go by without some kind of a connection, sometimes we don’t say anything for a moment both hoping and wondering if next year will see us both alive. That day I might even make her favorite pancakes and serve them to my child to celebrate motherhood the way I understand it.

Recipe

Scant 1 ¼ cup mashed bananas (about 3 small bananas)

2 tablespoons coconut oil or butter, melted

1 tablespoon lemon juice (about 1 small lemon, juiced)

1 teaspoon honey or maple syrup

2 eggs

1 cup quick oats

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

blueberries

In a small mixing bowl, stir together the mashed bananas, coconut oil (or butter), lemon juice and honey (or maple syrup).

Beat in the eggs. (If your coconut oil goes back to its solid state like mine did at this point, just warm the mixture for short 20 second bursts in the microwave, stirring between each, until it is melted again.)

In a medium bowl, whisk together the quick oats., salt and spices.

Form a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the wet ingredients. With a big spoon, stir just until the dry ingredients are thoroughly moistened. Do not overmix! Add blueberries.

Let the batter sit for 10 minutes. You may want to thin out the batter a bit with a touch of milk or water.

Heat a heavy cast iron skillet/non-stick pan over medium-low heat, or heat an electric griddle to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Lightly oil the surface with coconut oil, butter or cooking spray. (If you’re using a non-stick electric griddle, you might not need any oil at all.)

Once the surface of the pan is hot enough that a drop of water sizzles on it, pour ¼ cup of batter onto the pan. Let the pancake cook for about 3 minutes, until bubbles begin to form around the edges of the cake.

Once the underside of the pancake is lightly golden, flip it with a spatula and cook for another 90 seconds or so, until golden brown on both sides. You may need to adjust the heat up or down at this point.

Serve the pancakes immediately or keep warm in a 200 degree Fahrenheit oven.

Bloody guilt trip

January 17, 2017

Definition of guilt by some online dictionary - "a feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong, etc., whether real or imagined". Guilt will never make the grade as an A-list emotion. No one has ever written a song or a poem about how they haven’t called their mother in over a week and their expensive-bought online exercise machine is being used to dry their underwear. Yet somehow, this crabby little C-lister manages to punch way below the belt.

Guilt is such a powerful feeling we do almost anything to avoid it, I know I do. It is our driver of internal system of actions and balances. The annoying little voice stopping us from eating the whole chocolate bar at once or telling our friend that the story about her daughter new project wasn’t interesting the first time.

We need guilt that runs the engine of morality, in order for society to function. Without its ghostly appearance, we would turn into sociopaths, or politicians. My guilt is my inner police force, but given it too much power I am turning into a police state. Mine is a sturdy guilt drawn from two totally different but yet very powerful religions. On my mom’s side I am born with original catholic guilt (thanks Adam and Eve), which brings me to another guilt of a higher power watching every step I take and listening to all my inappropriate conversations and actions. On my paternal side I got the complaining, overthinking, neurotic Jewish variety. Ask my two best friends, they are tired of me analyzing every move I take and scrutinize for weeks and months if anything goes wrong, , (it usually does). The once mild mannered voice of my conscience is turning nasty with passing years. Like many women, I have the capacity to feel guilty about pretty much everything. Here is the basic glossy magazine guilt – the easy looking skin care regimens, and complicated man-pleasing instructions, the ideal bodies, and never to be cooked recipes. These make a great background for failure.

But it gets deeper. I feel guilt for hurting my friend on the phone the other day for telling her “that thing”. I feel guilt for taking too long to respond to my best friend’s supportive email, writing this post during my work hours. I feel guilty for taking a drink invitation from men I have no desire to go to bed with, and also that my son’s first few words were “mommy’s wine”. And most of all, I feel guilty that I am wasting my time worrying about any of this nonsense, when right now there are children starving in Africa.

My guilt muscle can be very flexible. It could be trigger by exactly the same situation in two opposite directions. I can spend the whole weekend interacting with my son, watching movies, cooking meals, filling guilt that I have not taken a single picture for my blog, that I am not working to perfect my skills and I wasted a couple of grand on equipment and props. And yet when I spend a whole day cooking and taking pictures,, my guilt bubbles up for the fact that I didn’t see my child all day and I am missing the opportunity to spend with him the last, preciouses moments before he tells me he prefers to spend them with his friends or his girlfriend.

But my main overwhelming guilt comes from the fact that a few years ago I have moved overseas, taking my baby boy with me, meaning I have ripped the only grandchild from his grandma to chase my selfish dreams thousands miles away.

When you live far away, no matter how often you call or come to visit, it’s never often enough. My mom never said a word to make me feel this way, she doesn’t need to. She doesn’t need to do anything to make me feel guilty about my life choices. My mom would probably hate the idea that talking to her makes me feel this way. This feeling bonds us together sometimes more than a family dinner table. My mom makes me feel guilty because her mother made her feel guilty. And as much as I would like to spare my son the burden in theory, I would be laying if I said that I don’t want to throw a little guilt his way, at least enough to making him choose a nice nursing home for me, the one with bar and games rather than the one with urine smell and bible studies.

Guilt is usually pretty ineffective over all. Instead of making a conscious choice and standing by the consequences, I behave as I am please and then cash in my moral credits by feeling bad about it afterward. As long as I have guilt as a comfortable fallback position, I fail to take full responsibility for my choices and actions. My friend once told me that she takes no responsibility for her life choices, in her opinion guilt is reserved for true wrongdoing and she wastes no time dwelling over her lifestyle or failure to live up to impossible ideas. I would love to get to that level of emotional sanity one day. Amen.

Today’s recipe is a total guilt trip between being lazy, having time for myself, and doing something creative and not wasting time binging on “ Mr. Robot”. Simple –no time at all- toast with goat feta and baked blood oranges. Still very tasty and guilt free.

Recipe Few slices of nice rustic bread

2 blood oranges

goat feta

coconut nectar

toasted pumpkin seeds

Preheat oven to 400F, slice oranges, and place them on a baking sheet spray with olive oil and bake until they get a little brown. Toast the bread, smear with goat feta, top with slices of oranges, and coat with coconut nectar, sprinkle with roasted pumpkin seeds.