Jim’s 28th Birthday

Jim’s birthday was April 1st. Yes, his birthday is April Fools Day. Poor guy. He may not have been made fun of for his name, but sharing your birthday with a holiday based on fooling people couldn’t have been great.

Jim told me that the day before he turned 28 he remembered that ever since we was a teenager he was sure he was going to die when he was 27. I mean both Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix died when they were 27, so it makes sense right?!

Anyway, since we had guests arriving Jim spent much of his birthday cleaning, but he was determined to surf, and I was determined to make a birthday dinner of his choosing. Well the surf sucked that day (and the next, but thankfully it was much better the following morning) and rather than mixing all my ingredients together for the vegan, refined sugar free, coconut lime ice cream before adding them to the ice cream maker I added them one at a time and it just didn’t work. (Thankfully I was able to salvage all the ingredients and do it again the following day.)

Alright, so as I mentioned I made Jim a dinner of his choosing. (This is a birthday tradition of my family’s.) He chose homemade pesto (with Parmesan, although he likes my vegan version too) over penne pasta with chopped tomatoes. I also made a small salad with my simple balsamic vinaigrette.

Jim’s favorite dessert is key lime pie. Well they don’t have key limes down here, but they do have his favorite tropical fruit, passion fruit. (They also don’t have graham crackers but coconut cookies made for an excellent crust.)

So, before I continue with photos and recipes and such, I need to share something. I’ve only been baking vegan, gluten free, refined sugar free food for over 6 months now, BUT this was an exception. It’s what Jim loves and it was important for me to be truly generous, rather than make him what I think he ought to have. (He also loves my raw lime tarts, so back in the US we’ll be doing more of that, and I may try a raw passion fruit tart, I just think the avocado and the passion fruit will make the filling an ugly color. Suppose I should just try though right? Plus I’m dying to work with Irish moss.) Lastly, I ate some. It may not be a big deal to some, but I want to be honest about what I’m consuming (more on that in another post) as I’m eating mostly vegan these days.

Alright, so here’s the pie and ice “cream”:

Passion Fruit Pie
Ingredients:
Crust:
1 bag coconut cookies, crushed (~2 cups crumbs)
3 tablespoons Sugar (I used brown)
1 cube (1/4 lb) Margarine or Butter, at room temp or slightly melted but not hot

Pie Filling:
5 large or extra large Egg Yolks
1 14 ounce can Sweetened Condensed Milk
3/4-1 cup fresh Passion Fruit Juice (3-4 passion fruit) Acquire juice by briefly zipping up the passion fruit seeds and pulp in a food processor, then strain, squeezing out any excess juice.

Directions:
Crust:
Mix the ingredients and press them into a 9″ pie plate.  Bake in a preheated 350F oven for 10 – 15 minutes until lightly browned. Place on a rack to cool.

Pie Filling:
Use an electric mixer and beat the Egg Yolks until they are thick and turn to a light yellow, don’t over mix. Turn the mixer off and add the Sweetened Condensed Milk. Turn speed to low and mix in half of the Passion Fruit Juice. Once the Juice is incorporated, add the other half of the Juice, continue to mix until blended (just a few seconds). Pour the mixture into the pie shell and bake at 350F for 12-20 minutes to set the Yolks and kill any salmonella in the eggs.

The pie was such a hit with Jim and our friends who helped us finish it off the following day that I made a second one (that was also eaten quickly) with part passion fruit juice, part lime juice.

What’s a Gravatar?

No, this isn’t a post about the movie Avatar (I haven’t even seen it).

This post is about how to add a picture/gravatar (globally recognized avatar) to your blog comments. Not sure if you’ve noticed when reading comments on a blog you love, but attached to each comment is either a randomly generated image or a picture of the person leaving the comment. When I first saw that I thought, “Hey, I want my photo next to my comments too! How do I do that?” When I learned they were called gravatars I must admit I rolled my eyes. I thought “comment picture” made more sense, but then again, what do I know.

If you’ve got 3 minutes you can set one up for yourself free here and then any time you leave a comment on anyone’s blog (including your own) you’re photo will go with it. Not only does this make the writer(s) for a blog cheerful to see the faces of their readers, but it’s also a way you can start becoming part of the blogging community. People will recognize you, and if you leave interesting comments, people will be more apt to check out what you’re working on by visiting your blog, Etsy shop, twitter account, etc.

Really?!

Yes, really. I saw these in a mall in Panama City and just about died. I’m sorry but in real life their backs would hurt or they wouldn’t be able to stand up. Do people really want boobs like these?! Do these mannequins really help sell clothing?

Stick To One Boat

“A marriage built on mutual understanding, good communication and sincere efforts to help each other has a much better chance of lasting. Mental communication is much better than physical.” – Lama Thubten Yeshe

I’ve been contemplating marriage and relationships a lot this week. Our friends Brad and Chandler who are here visiting us in Costa Rica are getting married today. Jim and I are the only two people in their ceremony (along with their son Owen and an officiant). To say that we are honored is an understatement. Our friends Jim and Lisa are also getting married today (technically tomorrow as they’re in Australia). I can’t help but reflect on my own relationship with my Jim. We are coming up on our 3 year anniversary, yet we’ve been together for a total of 7 1/2 years, and knew each other for a year before that.

I didn’t want to get married when I was younger. The idea of settling down seemed constricting. Commitment wasn’t my thing. I wanted to explore many different kinds of people and relationships. I wanted to be “free.” Maybe it was that I didn’t know the benefits of being fully vulnerable and generous. Maybe I just hadn’t found my match. Things changed a bit when Jim and I started dating. I could envision a future with him. He became my best friend. I know it sounds corny, but being around him has made me a better person. He continues to inspire me to be kinder and more generous. Being with him has allowed me to experience a more selfless kind of love.

Now in all honesty, I’m not the quickest at changing my behavioral patterns. I’ve made mistakes, big and small, but I always take the action to mend what I’ve done and strive to grow toward better things. I’ve had moments of, “maybe the grass is greener somewhere else, with someone else, or on my own.” What I’ve found is that when I have these thoughts it’s due to something I need to do to take care of myself better, or something I need to communicate with Jim. Once I do those things, I return to having a strong conviction that this relationship I have with Jim is one of the absolute best things in my life and I appreciate it as a vessel for personal growth.

I recently re-read Pema Chodron’s The Wisdom of No Escape. In one of the chapters she talks about the idea of people who are spiritual shoppers and how not sticking to one tradition leads to missing out on a lot of great things. I couldn’t help but apply it to relationships. She says, “When one sticks to one boat, whatever that boat may be, then one actually begins the warrior’s journey.” This journey she speaks of is one of personal growth. When we’re really committed to the journey of our choosing, everything speaks to us and educates us and we feel certain that this vehicle is the one meant for us.

Yes, we must search for our boat, but we’re uncommitted until we encounter one that rings true to our heart and we decide to get in it. This is important because without it, the minute we begin to hurt, we’ll just leave or look for something else. When we stop shopping and settle into our boat we can go deeply into the journey it holds. Continual dabbling is a way of avoiding going deeply by “trying to get comfortable, trying to get secure, whereas if you stick to one boat and really started working with it, it would definitely put you through all your changes. You would meet all your dragons; you would be continually pushed out of the nest. It would be one big initiation rite, and tremendous wisdom would come from that, tremendous heartfelt, genuine spiritual growth and development. One’s life would be well spent.”

I really love the six traditional components of the Bodhisattva Path, called the Paramitas. They compromise part of the Buddhist wedding vows. They are called transcendental virtues, for they are the way we overcome self-cherishing and go beyond ourselves in our relationships with others.

1. The first is the vow to practice generosity, symbolized by the food offering. With this vow we promise to give our body, speech and mind to others, specifically our mate, and to work with overcoming our own internal miserliness.
2. Next, we vow to practice discipline, symbolized by perfumed water, by giving up self-indulgence and insensitivity to the needs of others.
3. We then vow to practice patience, symbolized by incense, by taming our anger and irritation with obstacles, and instead to appreciate difficulties as ways to deepen our connection with other beings, especially our mate.
4. This is followed by the vow to practice exertion, symbolized by the flower offering. Here we promise to overcome laziness and depression by rousing ourselves to the everyday challenges of our lives.
5. Then we vow to practice meditation, symbolized by the candle flame, by overcoming our attachment to comfort, constant companionship, and pleasure, so that we can develop steady and sane minds.
6. Finally, we vow to practice penetrating insight, symbolized by the musical instrument, so that we can see things as they are without confusion or emotionalism.

If all of these are practiced, then we can manifest wisdom and compassion in our relationship with others, especially our partner.

A few things from our wedding ceremony (Created in partnership with our dear friend Greg, now know as Tashi Gonpo, who also officiated our ceremony):

• Love is wishing others happiness.
• Marriage is the equal commitment to grow in service.
• Our inner resilience and strength is developed through taking on challenges, not just through joy.
• We need people in order to practice compassion.
• Love embodies one of the beautiful seeming contradictions we’ve come to know on our spiritual paths. For instance, through love, the greatest transformation and change is possible. Yet, we ought not enter into love with the intention to change one another.
• Love is a perfect relationship to reality as it is, acceptance of the way things are as well as the desire to support growth and change. Zen Nun Cheri Huber expresses this most beautifully when she recommends that those in love embody the sentiment, “I accept you exactly as you are and I will help you to become anything you want to be”.
• The only way we get to experience growth is by being exposed to difficulties which allow us to try, bit by bit, to be bigger, more stable, mature, healthy and joyful in our reactions. To quote His Holiness the Dalai Lama, “For a person who cherishes compassion and love, the practice of tolerance is essential, and for that, an enemy is indispensable. So we should be grateful to our enemies, for it is they who can best help us to develop a tranquil mind.” Ok, I know that this seems to be asking a lot. However, why is this seemingly impossible ideal set? It’s not to be placating to the enemy, it’s because ultimately, it’s what’s best for OUR development, for OUR peace, for OUR sanity. This then, becomes the very basis for being a really great husband or wife. When we come from a place of working with our own neuroses, insecurities and directly connecting with our fears, rather than laying that trip on our spouses, we begin to naturally open and we create a fun, light, playful and loving space for our cherished one. We begin to experience Love, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity as the organic, visceral, practical consequence of touching our own fears and working with them.
• Vows are, by definition, publicly proclaimed intentions to live up to perfect ideals. As we aspire to these ideals, though we ourselves are riddled with our imperfections, our habits, our sheer humanity, we are further deepening our spiritual commitment.
• Recognizing that the external conditions in life will not always be smooth and that internally your own mind and emotions will sometimes get stuck in negativity, do you pledge to see all these circumstances as a challenge to help you grow, to open your hearts, to accept yourselves, and each other; and to generate compassion for others who are suffering? Do you pledge to avoid becoming narrow or closed, and to help each other to see various sides of situations? “We do.”

Jamie Oliver’s Food Flash Mob

Jamie Oliver taught 1000 people to cook a stir-fry dish in 5 days! This is only one of the ways he achieved it. I’ve been a mega-fan of Jamie’s for years and I’m so thrilled about his mission to help change the way people eat by teaching them how to cook.

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