We often talk about the nature of the mind and how we're always feeling our thinking. How our feelings don't come from what someone did or said, but what we make that mean about ourselves.
We can also look at how our thinking creates our feelings by looking at it through a metaphor of the heart.
Join us to hear more.
We all know what it feels like for our heart to open. We say things like, "My heart was so open when she said 'I love you' that I felt like I was floating on a cloud." And we also know what if feels like when our heart closes. We say things like, "When they did that, I felt my heart close and I never want to talk to them again."
As a metaphor we can talk about the heart being like an aperture in a camera. The part that opens and closes behind the lens to let in more or less light. Like the camera aperture, our heart opens and closes. When our heart is open, we feel love. When our heart is closed we don't.
The reason we talk about this is because one of the main drivers to reach for food when we aren't hungry is to feel better. When we're frustrated, angry, tired or feeling pressure, we often look to food for relief from our feelings. Yet we know this is not a real answer.
So, if we want to feel better in a way other than reaching for food, is there a way to open our hearts? We have both found that there is. When the heart is closed, the way it opens is we stop resisting what is. We stop pushing back against what is showing up in our lives and allow it to be as it is. But how do we do that?
We each find our own way, but what Connie and I find helpful at times is to ask a simple question, "What would love do?" Or "What wants to happen right now? These questions can help us stop and step back a bit from our experience and loosen the grip we have on the thoughts that are creating the negative emotions.
We all have our own way of dropping out of our peresonal thinking and into our hearts. It's a matter of finding that way for each of us, how we return to our hearts and the love that we are. This is the "feeling better" we're always looking, but when we don't understand this, we use food as a substitute.
So, when you go to reach for food and you aren't hungry, see if you can pause and drop into your heart to resolve the feelings you don't like, rather than using food for temporary relief.
The recipe this week is a Juicing Pulp Pizza. Ha! What in the world could that be? Well, we had a lot of pulp left from the week long juice cleanse we did and we froze it. Last week we took a lot of it out and made it into what we call "bread". In the past we've also used this pulp to make a pizza crust, and so we thought why not just take pieces of this "bread" and add the pizza sauce with all the toppings? And we did. It was delicious. And if you don't have pulp from juicing, you can often find some relatively healthy frozen pizza crusts at the health food store. Or you can make your own pizza crust.
To your Amazing Health,
Bill and Connie
Juicing Pulp Pizza (makes 2 crusts)
- 3 cups Pulp from juicing (see below if you don’t have pulp from juicing)
- 1 cup ground flax seed
- ½ cup pumpkin or sunflower seeds
- 1 ½ teaspoon Mrs. Dash Extra Spicy
- Black pepper to taste
- purified water
You can air fry, bake or dehydrate these crusts. The air fryer and oven are quicker, but bake them at a higher temp, so the live enzymes are lost.
Place all ingredients in a bowl except the water and mix well. Add enough water (not more than ¾ cup) to create a very thick pasty dough. If the juice that made the pulp was cucumber and apple, you may not need any additional water.
Let the mix stand for 10 minutes to stiffen up as the flax absorbs the water. Taste and add additional seasoning to suit your personal preference.
Roll or press the dough out onto parchment paper, a silicone baking mat or dehydrator sheets in 12 inch rounds, ¼ inch thick. The recipe above yields 2 pizza crusts.
Air Fry Method: Fry at 350 for 10 minutes, flip and fry 10 minutes.
Oven Method: Preheat the oven to 350º F. Bake for 10 minutes, flip and bake another 10 minutes.
Dehydrator Method: In a dehydrator, set temperature to 108º F. for 6-8 hours.
Pizza Sauce
- ¼ cup tomato paste
- 1 teaspoon Italian herbs mix
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
Add all ingredients to a small bowl and mix well.
Toppings
• diced mushrooms •olives • diced red or green peppers
• diced tomato • diced onion • vegan Parmesan (recipe below)
If you don’t have pulp from juicing, you can make these crusts by pulsing these veggies in a food processor to a small chunk size:
6 carrots
2 celery stalks
2 inch piece of ginger, unpeeled
½ bunch greens, e.g. kale, collards, spinach, parsley or cilantro
¾ teaspoon Mrs. Dash Extra Spicy
Black pepper to taste
Transfer the veggie mix into a mixing bowl and fold in:
1 ½ cups ground flax seed
½ to 1 cup pumpkin or sunflower seeds
Let rest for 10 minutes to stiffen and then press out or roll on parchment paper or silicone baking mat.
Vegan Parmesan Cheese
- ¼ cup sesame seeds
- ¼ cup cashews
- ½ cup nutritional yeast
- ¼ tsp caraway seeds
- ¼ tsp fennel seeds
Put all ingredients in a high-speed blender and blend until it has the chunkiness you like.
Note: if you’d like a little richer taste, you can roast the seeds and nuts in the oven for 10 minutes at 400º.