Category: Popular

  • Raw Avocado Lemon Pie

    Raw Avocado Lemon Pie

    Alive
    Last week i found myself dancing, swimming and chilling out in Portugal, at the bi-annual Boom Festival. It was like a fairy tale, a soothing and hope inspiring experience of what life on earth will be like if we all just respect and love each other and find our space to play and relax into the wonder and abundance of nature’s gifts.

    I felt so alive, brimming with energy and joyful jumpiness while all my senses were heightened – pure natural bliss induced by this environment that brings out the best in people.

    It’s in this place that i had the avocado lemon pie. It was so delicious. I got another piece and shared it with friends. Next day, i got yet another piece to share again. Everybody must know how good this tastes.

    Raw pie
    I loooooove raw pies. Although they’re just as packed with calories as the oven baked butter-flour cakes i grew up with, raw pies also carry an amazing taste and feeling of nutrient-rich freshness. Now, usually, i don’t let any opportunity pass to add copious amounts of raw cacao powder, but this time… i’m giving space to the taste of summer pleasures featuring fruits and flowers!

    This pie holds fresh coconut*, slices of peach, avocado and lemon, and is kept in shape using coconut fat, which is solid at room temperature.

    * not the super-young fresh green coconut but the type that we find in western stores, where you need to break the brown fibery shell open with a hammer or axe to find the 1-2 cm thick white coconut coating inside.

    Back home
    Yesterday i had a go at creating my own version of this tangy, creamy, crispy pie. It turned out blissfully tasty, especially if you’re like me and you like the combo of sweet, sour and a hint of salt combined with all kinds of fruity tones. I had kept the avocado-lemon filling quite zesty, so it could use some extra honey dripped on top just before serving or, as my half-indonesian brother-in-law suggested, some gula jawa (palm sugar) flakes – and indeed this goes perfectly with the coconut that is also inside!

    Recipe for Raw (Vegan) Avocado Lemon Pie

    Don’t worry if you don’t have a cake form; a soup bowl will work just as well. These measurements are for a cake of about 12 cm wide and 6 cm high and serve 8.

    Crust

    • 1 handful of coconut (semi-fresh is best, bust desiccated will also work)
    • 1 handful of unsalted cashews
    • 2 tablespoons of coconut oil (liquid so gently heat to just above room temperature)
    • 2 soft dates or figs, or use one tablespoon of marmelade
    • pinch of salt
    • pinch of vanilla or some drops of vanilla essence

    Soak a handful of raw, unsalted cashews in water.
    Open the coconut (here’s how – for Dutchies), take out some flesh and cut in small pieces until you have a handful. I left the brown skin on, it was fine like that but for a more delicate/pure taste you could peel the coconut pieces until purely white.

    In a food processor, combine the cashews and coconut and chop until fine and crumbly. Now add coconut oil, vanilla, salt and dates or marmelade and combine into a dough.

    Spread it out in the middle of a plate into a cake bottom layer. Make sure the soup bowl (if using) fits tightly around it. Put in fridge to cool and harden.

    Fruit layer & filling

    • 1 peach or other fruit
    • 1.5 large avocado
    • 1.5-2 lemons, juice and rind (use grater to grate yellow lemon rind)
    • 0.5 cup of extra virgin coconut oil (not the unscented kind)
    • 0.5 cup honey or agave syrup
    • tiny pinch of salt

    In a clean food processor or blender, combine the avocado, lemon juice and rind, honey or agave syrup, coconut oil and pinch of salt until smooth. Taste and adjust the ingredients to taste. Make it just a bit sweeter than you might feel like as cooling will make the sweetness less prominent.

    Take crust from the fridge, add a single layer of fruit slices and spoon all the avocado mixture on top. Cover with the soup bowl again and put back in the fridge for an hour or two or longer if you want.

    Decoration

    Take the pie from the fridge, gently lift the soup bowl and top the pie and plate with fresh fruit slices, chocolate flakes or (as shown in picture) colorful dried and/or fresh flower buds. I used lavender and dried calendula (marigold). Drip with honey, agave syrup or gula jawa (palm sugar) flakes for added sweetness.

    And… enjoy <3

  • A wonderful year

    A wonderful year

    The past year has been wonderful – literally full of wonders.

    Until the summer, i struggled a lot with work, often feeling behind schedule and not living up to my own standards. Still, inside, i could feel this brimming of energy and creativity, ideas forming about how to live more open and fully. My beloved Marco said it just right: “It’s time to fly”.

    During the summer holiday we were at SUN Festival with many lovely friends from all over the world and i worked my ass off in a falafel place and felt so fulfilled (dancing, frying balls, cutting onions tearing up and joking around). Marco and i hitchhiked from Budapest to Milan and from there… things just turned around. I started living the life i envisioned for myself and amazingly… everything started falling into place. I created a new website for my business (http://in1dagonline.nl/), sharing knowledge for free and empowering entrepreneurs even before selling my own services. And within a few weeks, new jobs came flowing in. I found partners to work with and in the meantime, started ‘planning’ my own first trip to India.

    Sometimes, my mind still takes the upper hand and i worry and create tension. It’s a pattern i’ve lived in for years and it takes loving effort to turn it around. When i worry, hard things happen. When i relax and trust, magical things happen. At times it has seemed hard to find the ‘relax button’, but there’s one training i did which really helps me to deal with anything in my life: Persoonlijk Leiderschap by Amethist Developing People (http://amethisttrainingcoaching.nl/particulieren/trainingen/persoonlijk-leiderschap/). It’s in Dutch and until now i know of no English equivalent, unfortunately. If you speak Dutch, be sure to check it out.

    This next year will (hopefully) be as much about freedom, travel, wisdom, surprise and loving relationships as the past few months. First there’s India, then my sister has a little baby coming (yaaaay! i’ll be an aunt!) and.. well, let’s see what comes next. I hope to share all these beautiful life adventures with Marco, my beloved rock & bouncing ball and with all of YOU. You truly enrich my life. Thank you for your support, encouragement, your likes and jokes and honest criticism every now and then.

  • Heavenly chocolate

    Heavenly chocolate

    This chocolate just makes me want to shout THANK YOU to the whole universe.

    Recipe for 6-12 portions of heavenly chocolate

    6 if it’s just the chocolate. 12 if you’re dipping or joining with fresh fruits, cakes etc.).

    Combine

    • 2 ripe avocado’s
    • 1 cup honey or more
    • 1 cup liquid coconut oil or more
    • 80-100 gr raw cocoa
    • a few pinches of salt
    • 1 ts vanilla
    • grated rind of 1 lemon

    in a blender. Don’t hesitate to add more of anything :).

    All ingredients are essential, don’t skip any. The consistency should be creamy while in the blender. When cooled in the fridge, it will be fudgy.

    I absolutely love this chocolate goddess goodness flavor magic <3. Go have some, it’ll make your day.

  • Heartbreaking Poem

    Read this poem by Debra Nystrom. The dynamic she describes is as ordinary as it is heartbreaking.

    Ordinary Heartbreak

    She climbs easily on the box
    That seats her above the swivel chair
    At adult height, crosses her legs, left ankle over right,
    Smoothes the plastic apron over her lap
    While the beautician lifts her ponytail and laughs,
    “This is coarse as a horse’s tail.”
    And then as if that’s all there is to say,
    The woman at once whacks off and tosses
    its foot and a half into the trash.

    And the little girl who didn’t want her hair cut,
    But long ago learned successfully how not to say
    What it is she wants,
    Who, even at this minute cannot quite grasp
    her shock and grief,
    Is getting her hair cut. “For convenience,” her mother put it.
    The long waves gone that had been evidence at night,
    When loosened from their clasp,
    She might secretly be a princess.

    Rather than cry out, she grips her own wrist
    And looks to her mother in the mirror.
    But her mother is too polite, or too reserved,
    So the girl herself takes up indifference,
    While pain follows a hidden channel to a deep place
    Almost unknown in her,
    Convinced as she is, that her own emotions are not the ones
    her life depends on,
    She shifts her gaze from her mother’s face
    Back to the haircut now,
    So steadily as if this short-haired child were someone else.

    Debra Nystrom

    This poem touches me deeply as i recognize the young girl’s fearful dissociation from her own feelings. She wants to cry out but instead grips her own wrist, searching eye contact with her mother, who -undoubtedly burdened by her own experiences- is sadly unavailable to support the girl in her shock and grief.

    Much of what i share and find inspirational, is about not being preoccupied or identified with our own feelings so much and seeing them for what they are: movements in the energetic constellations that we perceive to be ‘me’.

    However to move away from our emotions, to toughen up like the girl in the poem and to clench your wrist rather than to cry out in tears to your mom how much you wanted to keep your hair and for her to protect you instead of keeping up appearances… that is to not be honest with what is there in this moment, because it is too painful or too frightening, and the pain and fear lead us to untruthfulness.

    The poem shows a lineage of hurt and misguided defense mechanisms, passed on from generation to generation. The girl learns to hide her feelings, mirroring her mother, building lie upon lie already in this early stage of her life, when she still needs a box to hop on the beautician’s chair.

    Of course, especially as grownups, we can decide to deal with a certain feeling at a later time, when it’s more appropriate. But do it consciously, acknowledging and embracing whatever is there. Because to reject our own emotions in any moment, is to die a little inside. It is to withhold ourselves from the world and to deprive ourselves from love. It is deeply saddening. Let’s send this girl (and the child inside ourselves) some love and tell him or her it’s safe to cry out.

    I previously misattributed this poem to someone else. With apologies to the real author: Debra Nystrom, and with thanks to the attentive reader Angie, this has now been corrected in the text above.