It might be blaspheme, but my favorite ice cream at the moment is vegan

If anyone read my post last week, I was bemoaning a number of things having to do with women, our bodies and why we hate on them. I'm not one who likes to feel helpless, so I changed to a "summer menu." I incorporated a lot of raw veggies, fruits, grains and nuts and then when I feel so moved, I eat whatever is making its way towards my mouth. Not particularly scientific, but I'm liking it.

But unless you're in a serious Sunshine State, April and early May aren't great for produce. It's too hot for the winter veggies and berry season hasn't quite started. So perusing out local grocery stores, I was struck by piles of beautiful bananas. This is how I've been eating them. You can serve it as a dessert or eat it as a meal. Practically any dessert I can reasonably eat as a meal makes me very happy.

Pictured left to right, Gingered Banapracotnut: Apricot, Ginger and hazlenuts; Nutty ChocoCherry: Cocoa Nibs, Dried  Cherries, Hazlenuts; Coco Covered Blueberry Cobbler: Dried blueberries, coco nibs, almonds

Charity's Banana Revelation

Serves one for a meal or four for dessert. Makes about 2 cups.

2 medium sized frozen bananas

3 large ice cubes

3 tbsp nuts

1 cup almond milk, regular milk, water 

or liquid you want to eat with bananas

Add ins, totaling an 8th to a 1/4 cup, depending on your tastes. 

Prepare add ins by chopping into smaller pieces. Place bananas in blender. Add ice cubes, 3 tbsp. nuts and whatever milky thing you want. Blend til smooth and creamy. Serve a spoon full at a time, placing mix ins in between layers of banana cream mixture. Eat immediately.

In addition to the add ins pictured above, here are some other's to try: 

ChocoNanaNut: Peanuts, Cocoa nibs

Tropical: Dried coconut, pineapple, macadamia nuts

Ferrero Roche: Coco Nibs and Hazlenuts

What's your favorite kind of ice cream or your favorite add in?

On poetry and kids who don't stay small forever...

Masons, when they start upon a building,

Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that planks won't slip at busy points,

Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints. 

And yet all this comes down when the job's done,

Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seems to be

Old bridges breaking between you and me,

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall,

Confident that we have built our wall.

SCAFFOLDING, by Seamus Heaney

Hettie and Phineas and a very old wall...

******

I like to discuss poetry with Hettie. Explaining it to a four-year-old liberates me to revel in oft-simplistic analysis -- which is my favorite way to read poetry anyway. I love seeing her love of language flourish, and am grateful for the excuse to bask, guilt-free, in the warm, shallow waters on the surface of my favorite verses. It's perfect. 

Sometimes, I sit with my girl and read poem after poem, and have what I think are real and meaningful conversations about what they say. Today, as we cuddled on the sofa and came across this gem, I was really moved. We celebrated a couple birthdays in the last month -- Dave officially entered his "mid-Thirties," Willa turned one(!), and Phinny just turned three. I read this poem and thought about how I've labored over these relationships, how we've each grown, how as we grow we change, and as we change some things inevitably fall away... and I'm trying to explain all this to Hettie, how the whole purpose of the life we share right now is to help her become a strong person who can do anything she wants to, and how one day she's going to leave me, and that's okay, and I'm starting to get pretty emotional and as I'm blinking back tears I see poor Hettie is just confused by the whole conversation. "Mom. I already told you. When I grow up, you can live in my basement. No big deal."

Gosh I love these kids. 

Expectation vs Reality

I think I'm a good person. I try to make honest decisions, be courteous to the people I meet, and put a dollar in the tip jar when I'm able. I don't use my smartphone in the bathroom during exams (partly because I don't have a smartphone) and I always hold the door open for people behind me. This winter, I gave a blanket to a homeless man named David. I haven't seen him since, but he seemed to appreciate it at the time. Sometimes,  I pick up litter. This piteous attempt to catalogue my alright deeds isn't totally aimless. Well, maybe a little bit, but I do have a point to make. I want to think I'm the type of person who does the right thing when given a choice. I imagine that I'm the type of person who does the right thing, even when it isn't altogether pleasant or convenient to do so.

I literally imagine it.

Sometimes before I go to bed I think about courageously intervening in a vicious playground pile-on -- "How dare you! He's not a Fatty-McGordo! And even if he is a little chubby, you're rotten for bothering him about it. Stop it right now you horrible rascals. Yeah, you better run!. . . Kid, can I get you an ice cream cone?". . . or maybe I find an injured bird on the side of a busy street and nurse it back to health or completely incapacitate a heavily-armed maniac and save dozens of lives or something . . . . you get the picture.

Today I realized that's not quite the case.

I saw a very pregnant woman smoking a cigarette, and I did nothing.

Well, that's not quite true. I turned my head to gawk in judgmental astonishment as I passed her. I told myself she wasn't pregnant -- that this otherwise thin woman just had incredibly baby-gestating-like (but still non-baby-gestating) stomach-girth accumulation patterns. Then I assured myself that she was an actor wearing a strap-on belly, and there were hidden cameras from What Would You Do? with John Quinones stationed behind the bushes. Then I hoped that she was an actor wearing a strap-on belly and there were hidden cameras from What Would You Do? with John Quinones stationed behind the bushes -- because I would rather be shamed for my failure to act on a popular hidden-camera TV show than that failure doom an unborn child to extra-small emphysema. Finally, I told myself that even if I should've said something, I was already two blocks away and rushing to a final. I simply did not have the time to go back and intervene.

That was the moment I had to acknowledge that I'm not as good as I imagine myself to be. I had failed all of my brilliantly virtuous hypotheticals. I don't know what would have been the best way to deal with Ms. Prego Puffer, but I know that walking quickly past her wasn't it. I didn't do The Right Thing -- not because I couldn't have, but because The Right Thing would have been awkward and seemed totally overbearing and may have made me late for my final.

I don't mean to overblow this -- this little fault by omission. I do worse stuff all the time. But the incident made me appreciate that I can't just presume that I'll do the good, hard thing -- I have to actually do it. I have to work to be the person I think I am. This is one of the blessed few areas where I have the power to make my reality align a bit more closely with my high expectations, and I'm a fool if I pass up that opportunity. So here's hoping that I never again see a pregnant lady smoking (but if I do, I stop and say "excuse me m'am, but I really don't think you should be doing that in your condition" in a super judgmental tone of voice).

★★★★★

An assortment of our favorite, five-star posts over the years, in no order in particular.

Math & other indoor sports

^^^^^I always feel this way about math, but right now I feel this way about...well, everything.^^^^^
 #Finalssuck

Happiness and a cup of tea

Premal and I spent a few days in the highest village in India south of the himalayas. The area is famous for the lush green patchwork of tea gardens that blanket the hillsides. The plantations look like something out of a fairytale. They're too green, and the fog is too perfect, and the crisp mountain air is too welcome a retreat from the oppressive heat of the cities to be real. The town consisted of a clump of rainbow colored shacks, each hung with an immaculately carved door and a sari or two drying out on the line. Children and goats rambled about the ragged road with equally impressive dexterity, and girls walked to their one-room school house with books in their arms and jasmin blossoms in their hair. 

And yet, I kept my camera down. Because as stunning as my surroundings were, I couldn't shake the feelings of guilt the welled up in me every time our jeep rolled through town. When grown men and kids alike would come and peer into our windows at the tourists from the big city. I became acutely aware of what I had, and what they lacked, and all of the small things I could have done to brighten their world. I started a running list of small items I might bring to give to strangers on our next trip: chewing gum, chocolates, glow-bracelets...

 But it did little to ease my mind. 

One night, as we sat by the fire in our little cottage, we decided to watch a TED talk Premal had downloaded before we left. The subject of the talk was happiness, and I felt like it was written especially for me in that moment. I know I won't do the talk justice here, so I really encourage you to watch it for yourself. But essentially what Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert says is that human beings like being happy. In fact, we're engineered to be happy, especially when there's nothing we can do about it. So, don't pity people, and don't feel guilty, because that doesn't help you and it certainly doesn't help the objects of your emotional patronage. 

The next morning we went out for a hike, armed with a new resolve to see the best in my surroundings through my camera. We took an absurd number of pictures of the hills, and ourselves, but when we came upon a group of plantation workers I put my lens down. Soon they all started to point at me and my camera, clicking their tongues and yelling at our guide in a language neither Premal nor I was familiar with. Like a bolt of lightning the guilt was back, and I felt my face flush hot with shame over being "that insensitive tourist." Premal asked our guide something in Hindi, then looked at me and laughed. "They want you to take their pictures" he said. So I slowly lifted my camera, and as I did, these women of the field stood up proud and strong and smiled. And my guilt washed away, and I'll be damned if it didn't leave a solid dose of happiness is its wake.

Since the beginning of our relationship, chai--or "cha" as they say in Gujarati--has inhabited a special place in my heart. On weekends, Premal will brew us big mugs of the spiced tea, and we'll sip it and pretend that there's nowhere else we have to be. I used to be completely terrified at the notion of making cha from scratch, but like lots of the best things in life, it's best if you don't complicate matters.

Simple Cha:

• 2/3 C water
• 2 t loose black tea
• 2 T fresh ginger (grated) OR 1 sprig fresh mint OR 3 pods green cardamom
• 1/3 C GOOD FATTY milk
• sugar to taste

add the tea and spice to your water and bring to a boil for a couple minutes. Add milk and bring back to desired temperature. Strain. Sweeten. Be happy!

Notes on sugar: In India they drink their cha so sweet your teeth will sting. About 2-3 tablespoons of sugar and you'll be authentic. I tend to use slightly less than a teaspoon in mine.

The Fat on Skinny

Size 0, Size 6, Size 12. Lasting satisfaction certainly doesn't come with a dress size.

For two and a half decades of life, I always had a little more padding than I would have liked. It seemed like women were supposed to be these fatless, breastless creatures that roamed the earth, satisfied with lettuce and the fulfillment being skinny brings. While part of me wished I experienced this zen-like state of nothingness, I obviously wanted real food even more (look at a few weeks worth of blog posts and you'll understand). I always dreamed of being one of those people who just doesn't like to eat. And one day, the magic fairy of skinniness came down and gave me the gift of hating food.

Organ failure is a funny thing and with it, the pounds started falling off.  Before I knew what was happening, I had one of those impossibly thin figures model scouts long for. And it. Was. Awful. Nothing fit me properly. It wasn't like my body was perfect --  I wasn't happy with my body: I still had the same slightly larger-than-I would-like waist and the enormous ribcage that helps me to sing. People were always pestering me because I was too thin. I went from a D to an A cup. The worst part was I really hated to eat. My day was a collection of hours between horrible feeding times. Everything tasted bad. But of course, I was literally dying, so who would expect me to enjoy the life of the super-skinny?

Once I was out of the hospital, it wasn't much easier. I still didn't enjoy eating much. I was at constant threat of heart failure because our bodies can't process potassium properly when we're too thin. But I'm a good soldier. My new full-time job was gorging myself. The almond breeze in my fridge was replaced by full fat milk and cream. No more olive oil. It was olive oil+butter. Cookies, tortillas with cheddar and cream cheese, full-fat Liberte Yogurt, butter on everything. In the beginning I didn't enjoy it at all. But by the time I did, it was too late. I had left my "ideal weight" behind and formed new, bad eating habits that put me on a steady upward march on the scale. Now it's not like anything is out of control... yet. But this week I'm changing to a summer menu of sorts. I refuse to use the word "diet" since it begins with "Die." I'm at a totally healthy weight, well within BMI standards. But I'd just like to be sure the needle on my scale stays put instead of continuing making... errr... progress. My question is super skinny, normal or overweight, why is it so hard for to be happy with our bodies? Why is food either a chore or a forbidden fruit? How can we reach a happy medium and is there a happy medium to be reached? I would love any insights you might be willing to share.