Mixed Berry, Chocolate Blondies & Reflections on Food Freedom & Diet Culture
Mixed Berry Chocolate Chip Blondies with a Crispy Almond Crumble Topping & Some Reflections on Pleasure in relation to Food, the connection between Food & Sensuality, Diet Culture & the JOYS of Food Freedom
OKAY. OKAY. HOLD THE PHONE.
Hello blondies of my dreams. Where have you been all my life?
Today I woke up with a tangible hop in my step & that suprised me immensely due to the fact that I had a completely insomnic night and only fell ASLEEP AT 8AM (!!!) and woke up again at 9AM. Crazy. I know. It was partly due to the fact that it was Full Moon (when I wrote this hehe) because without fail every single full moon I have two insomnic nights. And partly due to the pretty much 24-hour on-demand puppy care that we’ve all been providing in the Praeg household. But alas, I woke up feeling energized and really excited to get creative in the kitchen. I wanted to create a MAGICAL recipe. Like something that would be really satisfying & delish & beautiful & celebratory of the growth and deep inner transformation that I am personally experiencing during this time of Lockdown. And yes, I am fully aware of how lucky and privileged I am to be in a position to say that considering so many people are facing such extreme suffering at the moment.
These blondies are really unique in that they aren’t as fudgy and dense as a regular brownie. They are more like; imagine the vanilla cake of your dreams had a baby with the yummiest blondie of your dreams and created a magical explosion of deliciousness that happily transported you to another realm of present-moment-enjoyment through the senses. NOT to mention that it is gluten-free, plant based & really easy to whip together.
PLEASURE & FOOD
Let’s talk for a second about pleasure & food. Food is pleasurable. Period. So, WHY do we live in a society that glorifies the capacity to deny ourselves of food pleasure? Like; if you are able to resist that second helping or resist the temptation of some chocolate after a meal you are seen as having profound skills of discipline and most people almost envy that ability to say no? Or, if you practise intermittent fasting or can function on a single green juice through the morning & deny the body of its’ basic needs (nevermind its’ basic desires!) it is seen as almost heroic. This, my friends, is diet culture. And it is insideous & it runs deep in the psyches of most people in our world today. It is seen in the marketing worlds, it is seen in the beauty & fashion industry, and it is even (and in fact, especially!) seen in the HEALTH AND WELLNESS industry - this is almost the most deceptive because it hides under the guise of “healthy living”. It is even present in more unassuming ways - it permeates all of our Western society: particularly obvious in the unrealistic and bizarre ideas that most of us have subconsciously bought into around our understandings and beliefs relating to beauty, bodies, food, fitness & health.
As you can see, Houdini agrees. Food is pleasure.
FOOD FREEDOM
My entire life changed when I decided to give myself unconditional permission to eat any and all foods at any and all times. My entire relationship to food and to myself shifted in that one moment of just saying, “NO.” I REFUSE TO CONTINUE DENYING MYSELF of 1) the freedom of having a healthy relationship to food 2) the pleasure of food, and 3) the freedom of just listening to the majestic intelligence of the body that extends beyond the mind.
WHY IT IS EASIER TO TRUST THE MIND OVER THE BODY & HOW WE CAN RE-LEARN TO TRUST THE BODY
WHY are we so quick to believe the mind when it suggests that it knows what’s best? I believe that we listen to the mind over our body for myriad of reasons, but one of the biggest ones being that for most of our lives it is our primary reference point to relative truth - we interpret daily reality constantly and from those interpretations we create our own lived experience through our minds, instead of through embodied present moment awareness. So, we come to understand that most things filtered through the perceptions of our minds must be true for us. However, this is not always the case & often our mental perceptions and ideas around those perceptions actually need to be deeply & authentically engaged with and challenged so that we open ourselves up to the possibility of growth, the grace of being open to change & the willingness to be wrong. Once you establish a very strong connection to the instinctual body and to the intelligence of the body, your intuition & spirit - and not only the mind - it then becomes easier to discern what is a mental-level truth and what is a spirit-level truth.
So, as long as we can remember to always inquire into the place of the original impulse or intention behind our actions and beliefs, we then open ourselves up to having a truly honest inner dialogue or conversation with ourselves which helps us to discern which place of truth this action or decision is coming from. This is empowering because it gives us the awareness to choose differently if that feels more true to our individual journey of coming to a state of alignment.
When I started to apply this process of inquiry to my food choices & my relationship/beliefs/ideas around food, health & fitness I started to notice that in fact many of my choices came from a place of deep seated, societally constructed mental truths instead of spirit-truths that would allow me to come to a fuller and more true expression of my own unique blueprint for health and vitality. And even if there is science to back a truth - such as the growing body of evidence that shows massive healing benefits to fasting, for instance. Does that mean that it is a blanket truth that will do good for anyone who tries it? Of course not. Because we, as human beings are not robots & it comes down to a person’s unique blend of mental, emotional & physical & spiritual experiences & historical associations, and current dispositions. It comes down to asking yourself: does this really support me on an emotional, mental, physical & spiritual level right now in my life? Is this truth truly true for me and where I am in my journey? If not, let it go. It might find you again at another point in your life, and it might not. But stay true for what will bring you the most healing & balance. (Disclaimer: I have absolutely nothing against fasting, but I just know that there is a particular place & time for everything - and that having a certain level of connection to ones intuition and a willingness to be ruthlessly honest & open with yourself to make a decision that is truly good for you will serve you greatly in establishing balance).
BEING HEALTH CONSCIOUS vs. DIET CULTURE
I now choose to refuse to feel any food-related guilt. Sure, there is a time and place for saying no to certain foods - like if you genuinely just don’t feel like having that right now or IF you have specific diet-related health issues and you are trying to narrow down particular foods that trigger unrelenting symptoms. But even so, one must be so mindful of where that narrow line between genuine health concern is and where it is being fueled by deeply subconscious diet culture & restrictive thought patterns that are often established through an unconscious buying into social norms and beliefs around food, health and beauty.
This is especially true if someone is coming from a history of disordered eating, it is HIGHLY beneficial to go through a phase of absolutely abolishing any and all food rules. You might surprise yourself and see that many health issues dissolve once the mental rigidity of internally enforced food rules and ideals dissipate. This was certainly the case with me: I had to learn how to eat normally (without disordered patterns or ANY RESTRICTIONS OF ANY KIND) before I could even consider moving back to a predominantly plant based diet. Because too much of my food choices were being driven by disordered thoughts & beliefs around food, around purity, about “clean eating”, and about obssesssing over eating only healthy foods to the exclusion & negation of eating for PLEASURE or simply just eating in a balanced way.
Sit with this: do you honestly let yourself eat for PLEASURE? Or do you just eat to put what your mind deems as the “correct” fuel into your tank (which is a very mechanistic way of approaching the process of nourishing yourself)?
PLEASURE & FOOD
PLEASURE relates to the second chakra. The centre of emotions and of sensuality. I think that often we don’t give ourselves permission to find pleasure in food because food & sensuality and/or emotions are in fact very related. So, if we have emotional or sexual baggage to work through internally, I have found that in my own journey and a few of my friends & clients, it leads to a blockage in ones’ ability to find deep nourishment & pleasure in food. Within the chakra system, balance in the lower chakras is what enables a steady and progressive journey upwards into balancing the chakras which come above the previous chakra. So, in this case, if you balance your root chakra, it frees you up to finding balance and harmony in the second chakra. If the second chakra is balanced, you can then more easily find harmony & balance in the third chakra and so on. That’s not to say that you can’t find balance at a higher chakra if the lowers ones aren’t balanced - but moving up from a strong & balanced foundation makes the journey towards balance in the ones above much smoother.
So, in order to more easily create harmony & balance at the second chakra it helps immensely to adequately satisfy the first chakra, which has everything to do with security, safety, grounding, stability & nourishment. So, in relation to food: to satisfy the second chakra, start by feeding yourself enough of the good nourishing foods to help facilitate the growth of a strong & loved physical form so that you can move out of survival mode & into creative, emotional, sensual, pleasure mode with greater ease & openness. Ask yourself this, if you struggle to find pleasure & enjoyment in food, do you also find it difficult to connect firmly, consistently & lovingly with your sensual self or your emotions? This was certainly the case for me. And when I started to 1) heal my relationship to food and eat enough to support my body-mind truly and 2) find more pleasure in my food, I then became a much more sensually-alive being.
Once you have connected to your strong sensual self, you are then more able to take the intimacy that you have experienced with yourself and others into the world through this deepened understanding of yourself through your identity, your power and your energetic output into the world (represented by the third chakra). And so on and so forth as you work up the chakra system.
For so long I was in survival mode that meal times felt more like a visit to panic station. A desperate scramble to get just enough food in to stave off the hunger and tie me over to the next meal but not quite enough so as to trigger the gnarly thoughts in my mind that would run rampant if I felt even vaguely satisfied or full. Nevermind the pleasure of a meal. And certainly nevermind to the idea of dessert after a meal or eating for the simple pleasure and not “need” of food. Eating was something I just had to do and get out of the way so that I could continue with my life - which didn’t really happen anyway because I had no energy to step into the fullness of my being because my mind was constantly occupied by food or the lack thereof, because on a basic, physiological level I was starving.
I used to think that pleasure was a bad thing. That desire was a bad thing and against the grain of a spiritual practice. And that having the “discipline & strength” to reject food & pleasure & basic needs & desires (& all the things that remind us that we are in fact occupying a physical form) made me more morally “good”. HOWEVER, a woman who completely changed my thinking in this regard was a woman named Anodea Judith and her work. As well as a woman named Tara Brach. I highly recommend reading & listening to their work. They made me acutely aware of the fact that in actuality, the strong foundation of a physical form is the strongest place to begin the journey of a spiritual path and that negating the needs & desires of the physical body in the quest for spiritual evolution and transcendence is not a very sustainable or stable way of moving forward on a spiritual journey. It’s about the unfolding of your spiritual evolution through embodied presence which includes all sensations, sensory input and all of the DELIGHT of what it means to be in a physical form.
I hope this gives a bit of insight or guidance to anyone who is currently in a space of trying to negotiate the balance between the existential meaning of desire and basic needs with a spiritual journey or practice. Or perhaps what I have shared is simply an invitation to open yourself to a deepening of appreciation for the physical body - instead of the commonly bought into misconception that one needs to altogether transcend and go beyond the physical form. Yes, we want to move into the realms of the subtle - the spaces beyond the identification with the physical form where we know ourselves only as our bodies - but not at the expense of caring or appreciating and nourishing our physical forms or finding deep refuge & healing in these forms, too. We come to liberation through our physicality which leads us, if we pay attention, into the depths of our inner life. Not by ignoring, starving or disregarding the value of our physical forms. After all, our bodies are magical vessels which enable us to truly EXPERIENCE more of life.
BUT now, speaking of food pleasure, without further a due … THE BLONDIES!
Ingredients:
For the Cake:
2 cups of gluten-free cake flour of your choice (or you can try another mixture of flours to add up to 2 cups)
1/3 cup of Jungle Oats (or regular quick cooking oats)
1 tablespoon of Maca powder
2 teaspoons of Baobab powder
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of cinnamon, ground
Big pinch of salt
1 tablespoon of chia seeds
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
1 teaspoon of almond extract (this is NB for the recipe!)
1 cup of soy milk
1 medium granny smith apple
1/4 cup of honey
1 tablespoon of coconut oil or another kind of oil
1 teaspoon of liquid stevia (also important for the correct sweetness!)
1/3 cup of tightly packed pitted medjool or another variety of fresh, sticky dates
For the Crumble
1/2 cup oats
10 raw almonds, sliced/chopped
1/4 cup of desiccated coconut
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 tablespoon of raw sugar or honey
2 tablespoons of medjool dates, chopped
1 tablespoon olive or coconut oil
1/4 cup of mixed fresh or frozen berries
6 blocks of high quality dark chocolate
30g (or more!) of chocolate macadamia nut butter from ButtNutters (or nut butter of choice)
Method:
Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celsius. Line a small-medium sized baking tray with parchment paper. Set aside.
In a blender blend your oats so that you make oat flour. Now add the oat flour into a bowl along with the gluten-free flour, the cinnamon, the baking powder, Maca, Baobab and the salt. Mix well.
Place the chia seeds, soy milk, vanilla & almond essence into a nutribullet or blender and let it sit for five minutes (this gives the chia seeds some time to get thick & gloopy allowing them to act as an egg replacement).
Now add the dates, honey, coconut oil & apple to the nutribullet (adding it to the soy milk mixture) and blend until you have an emulsified liquid mixture. Pour this over the dry ingredients. Mix well.
To make the crumble, place all of the crumble ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Pour the blondie batter into the lined baking tray and scatter the crumble mixture over the top of your batter. Top with berries & chopped chocolate & bake at 180 degrees celsius for 33-35 minutes.
Once out of the oven let it cool a bit in the tray & as it cools drizzle with your nut butter of choice.
Cut into desired sizes & TUCK IN!
These were my two little helpers for this particular day of baking: reminding me about the simple joys of letting go of how you think things should be and opening yourself to how they are emerging & unfolding. This was me mid-yoga practice. They bounded around & demanded my attention; thus pulling my attention away from my breath but teaching me to focus my attention on how to take the practice of yoga off the mat and into everyday life.