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Vietnamese Pork Meatballs with Fresh Asian Noodle Salad & Death.

Today I got an RSVP reminder in my inbox. It was for… wait for it… my 20 YEAR high school reunion. Gah. Go ahead, take a minute to digest that. 20 goddamn years?? I mean how old am I? You are never old enough to have been out of high school for 20 years, right? 20 years is like a full grown adult. 20 years is a bad prison sentence. 20 years is 2 decades. Multiple wars and even a little peace can take place in 20 years. 20 years feels like an eternity.

All of my friends who I went to high school with seem to be having the same reaction. It’s like having the wind knocked out of you and you can’t breath and you realize in that instant that you are human and you are going to die. Seeing ’20 Year Reunion’ feels like that. I’ve been jolted into my mortality on multiple occasions… some bad, some good, and while this is a jolt, it feels like a slow motion jolt, like a Paul Simon song, like nostalgia, like road trips, like sunburns and too many cigarettes. This body, this temple, it’s only our vessel for some time. Who knows for how long that time is? We often forget that this is all temporary… until we remember being 17 and realize how far away that is.

20 year reunions make you reflect on who you were then, who you are now, and whether you’ve followed your dreams. Who did you become? Where did you go? What battles did you overcome, what struggles continue? For some it’s overwhelming. For some it’s an ego trip. For some it’s just a fun time. For all it’s some form of a mirror. I mean shit, we’ve all gotten older. There is no preventing that. If we are having our 20 year reunion it means we are almost 40. When I was young I watched the show ’30 Something’ and thought the people on the show were sooooo old. And now I’ve almost surpassed them! How did it happen? Where did it go?

Some friends are anxious about the reunion, but the fact is – we are all struggling and we are all thriving, maybe at different times, but no one escapes being human. People have died, people have gotten married, people have gotten divorced, people have had children, people have lost children, people have found their dream careers, people have not been able to find work, people have traveled the world, people have stayed in our home town, people have grown to be better, people have grown to be worse, people have found what they are looking for, people are still seeking.

So why should anyone care? Why should a reunion cause any anxiety? We have this idea that we have to be the best or better than anyone could have imagined. It’s as if people think this might be their chance to clean the slate, to wipe away any poor memory people might have of them. Like a do-over. But why? What is there to prove? And to whom? Or are we really trying to prove something to ourselves?

What if we just showed up happy with who we are? What if we showed up as our full self with the scars and the victories? What if we did this every time life threw us that jolt and showed us how mortal we really are? If we could overcome the distracting insecurities that make the thought of getting old and dying so horribly scary, we might be able to shine brighter than we ever imagined. The truth is, death is right there. In any instant. As we get older we can either make peace with that fact, or keep running from it.

And let’s be honest, who the hell wants to be in high school again? I’d rather stick a fork in my eye, but instead I’ll grab some chopsticks and eat this. You should too because hey, life’s short and this is delish.

Vietnamese Pork Meatballs with Fresh Asian Noodle Salad (adapted from iamafoodblog):

For the Lemongrass Pork Meatballs:

Ingredients:

1 Pound ground organic pork
1/2 gluten free breadcrumbs
1 Egg
2 Tbs finely minced lemongrass
3-4 Cloves garlic, finely minced
1/4 onion, finely diced
1/2 Tbs fish sauce
1 Scant Tbs sugar
1/4 Cup sliced green onions
2 Tbs gluten free soy sauce
Fresh ground pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

2. Gently mix together all of your ingredients and shape into 1 inch meatballs.

3. Space out on a parchment lines baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes.

4. Turn the heat up to broil and broil for 5 minutes for some added color.

5. Remove from oven and add to your noodle bowl.

For the Fish Sauce Dressing:

Ingredients:

2 cloves garlic diced
1 Thai chili or Spanish chili sliced
2 – 2 1/2 Tbs sugar
Juice of 1/2 Lime
Generous 3/4 Cups water
2 Tbs fish sauce

Directions:

1. In a mortar and pestle, crush the garlic, chili, and sugar until a paste forms.

2. Add the garlic/chili mixture to the water.

3. Add the lime mix and then add the fish sauce.

4. Place the sauce in the fridge for a few hours or overnight for the flavors to intensify.

For the Noodle Bowl:

Ingredients:

2 Cups cooked glass noodles
1 cup shaved carrot
1 Small cucumber sliced
Cliantro
Mint
Sweet Thai basil

Directions:

1. Make your fish sauce dressing in the morning and put in the fridge to marinate.

2. Bake your meatballs.

3. Prep your veggies for the noodle bowl and cook the glass noodles while the meatballs are cooking. Rinse the noodles with cold water.

3. Assemble your bowls with all your ingredients and pour a few tablespoons of dressing on top. Mix and enjoy!

P.S. It’s day 4, or day 34 of our 30 Days of Yoga!! You are doing such great work! I am so excited about how many of you have joined us. Feel the strength from our collective energy. Love.

Cacao, Peanut Butter, and Oatmeal Breakfast Smoothie & Breakdancing.

When I was around 7 years old, my brother was a incredible breakdancer. He was featured on national television with his crew and frequently did festivals and street performance. My family made ‘break boards’ – cardboard board that folded up with a handle so you could carry your dance floor wherever you went. A few times my brother’s crew took me downtown to break with them. They would put out a hat for donations and set up the boom box and the break board. Then I would take stage and bust out the six step. Yeah, that happened. My brother took me to my first breakdance movies, Breakin’ and Beat Street and I was hooked.

When I do yoga, I’m often thinking about how similar it is to breakdancing. I look at yoga asana and see this slick dance. For years I have wanted to take hip hop or breakdancing. As you know from my other posts, I grew up with music and dance. I danced through my teens and 20’s. You could literally ‘find me in da club with a bottle full of bub’ for like 15 years straight. I killed it on the dance floor. I danced my way though the rave scene of the 90’s, I salsa, bachatta, and cumbia’ed my way through Central and South America. I busted out salsa during hip hop songs and I got low, got low, got low, got low. The later years were all about hip hop. My entire week would be a build up to a weekend of dancing. And it went on like that for a long time.

Dancing and drinking went hand in hand – a little too much, sometimes a lot too much. At some point I woke up with my last hangover, body sore form the dance floor, and a busted bike that I had ridden home drunk. The clubbing sort of stopped then. I realized in a very blunt way that I was dancing and drinking away the darkness of the world. I was experiencing secondary trauma from working on women’s human rights issues and the drinking was soothing the thousands of human rights horror stories that ran though my mind every night. I had to stop everything for a while.

I moved to Sweden and I stopped dancing.

That sentence kills me. Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you that I love to dance. Sure, I dance with the little dove in our living room at 11 a.m. and I love it. But, it’s not the same as a night dancing away to beats that move every part of your body and soul. In the dark with lights flashing, moving, moving, moving. Sure I knew that clubbing wasn’t really what I needed all the time, but then where does one dance? I kept telling myself over and over that I would take a dance class, but I never did. The confidence I had as a dancer faded and my intimidation grew.

But today, after drinking this power smoothie that I’ll tell you about below, I looked up ‘basic breakdancing’ on the internet. And just like that I was doing the six step again. Yeah, it was in my living room and during my yoga practice. Yeah it was slow and clumsy. But damn, it felt good. You see, sometimes it takes a long time to climb out of whatever well we’ve fallen into. My well was a deep hole where my career as a women’s human rights activist used to be, it was a hole where all my family and friends in the States were, it was a hole of everything I had known myself to be. Wells are damn hard to climb. The sides are curved, wet, slippery, and high. It takes everything we have to inch our way up. I think I slid down a million times in the last four years. Slowly I would build the strength to start climbing again. Then, one day you poke your head out and look around and you see the world with fresh eyes. You see that you can dance again. So you do.

Holy biscuits and gravy! This smoothie is like a dirty little secret that you think you can’t share. For shame! It is so good it must be bad. But guess what? It’s not! It’s packed with goodness: raw oats, dates, cacao, chia seeds, peanut butter, almond milk and banana. It’s like desert for breakfast, but it’s healthy and gives you energy. Say what? Make this now and then go do the six step out of that well! Then come back and tell me about it. Love!

Cacao, Peanut Butter, and Oatmeal Breakfast Smoothie:

Ingredients:

3-4 Ice cubes
1 organic banana
1/2 cup raw oats
2 Tbs Chia seeds
2 Tbs Peanut Butter
2 Tbs Cacao
1 to 1 1/2 cups almond milk or other non-dairy milk
5 soft dates

Directions:

1. Put everything in a blender and blend on high until smooth. I like the pour the almond milk in as the last ingredient as it helps prevent the cacao powder from poofing all over. Enjoy!

P.S. Here is a yoga video for inspiration. Day 27. You are brilliant.

Devilishly Dyed Eggs and Life Lessons.

I don’t know if it’s writer’s block or just life block, but I wrote this whole post and then deleted it. It felt empty somehow, like a waste of space. Don’t worry, it’s not like I’m in some dark hole, I’m just beat down. It’s been a helluva week here. I spent 7 whole days at home with the little dove sick sick sick and then I got sick sick sick (hats off to that one kid’s parents who sent her to daycare with an emphysema-like cough – we really appreciate your thoughtfulness).

Of course this isn’t the end of the world – everyone gets sick, but in the midst of the burning fever, snot, and coughing that made us both sound like Janis (we sang quite a few rounds of this and this), the little dove went into what we like to call her: developing space or the DS. The DS is something like The Exorcist meets Veruca Salt meets Woody Allen. Just think about that for a minute. Between the tantrums and complete disregard for anything Mr. Wonderful or I say, there is also the ‘my sock can’t touch that part of my leg’ or ‘there is one, ONE, drop of water on my arm and I am dying, wipe it OFF.’ So there’s that. Of course, at the end of a particularly tough day together, when I was ready to break down and start smoking and popping tranquilizers, the little dove came up to me, looked me dead in the eye and said: ‘I love you mamma, I really love you.’ She flung her little soft arms around my neck and big tears fell from my eyes into her messy hair. It’s kind of amazing that one small gesture can change something so quickly. Like a sword cutting through a thick fog. Magic.

Kids have the ability to be totally in the present moment (something we’ve talked about in my posts on yoga). It’s a gift that I feel we lose as we get older. They say how they feel, from their heart, with no filters. Sometimes they can say things that are hurtful or hard to hear, other times they say ‘I love you’ when you are ready to lose your mind. And just like that they help you bring it back. It’s a gift. So, in return for the indescribable sweetness that is the little dove saying those words, I decided to make some devilishly dyed eggs to brighten our day.

These freaking eggs are magical and are dyed naturally with beet juice. They definitely have the power to make someone smile or make your dish get noticed at a party (the ultimate goal I know). Something so simple, yet you look at them and BAM they are fuchsia! Hells bells! And why not eat fuchsia eggs? I’ll tell you why not, because we have lost our sense of imagination. Well dear ones, I’m here to help you get it back. I hope you saved that beet juice from the beets we boiled last week for smoothies because you’re going to dye over what comes next (*chuckles*).

I got this amazing idea off of one of my favorite foodie sites, thekitchn.com. I wasn’t super interested in doing the pickled beets thing, so I simplified their recipe and was pleasantly surprised when the eggs came out hot pink and didn’t taste strange. I mean it’s kind of weird to stick hard boiled eggs in beet juice right? Wrong. It’s probably the best thing that’s ever happened to an old party dish that needs a makeover. Just in time for your spring religious holidays or lunch. Enjoy!

Devilishly Dyed Eggs:

Ingredients:

6 hardboiled eggs, peeled and cooled
2 mason jars full of beet juice (recipe below)
1/4 cup to 1/2 cup mayonnaise or veganaise
2 Tsp dijon mustard
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Small basil leaves

For the beet juice:

Water leftover from boiling a bunch of beets
Splash of vinegar
A few shakes of salt

Directions:

1. Place your hardboiled eggs into the mason jars filled with beet juice (make sure your jars aren’t too full so that you have room for 3 eggs per jar). Let the eggs soak for a few hours or overnight (the amount of time determines how deep the color soaks in – the eggs pictured were done overnight.

2. Take your eggs out of the jars and slice in half. Scoop out the yolks and place in a bowl.

3. Add the mayonnaise, mustard, salt and pepper and mash until creamy. Adjust flavors as you go.

4. With a teaspoon fill the eggs with the yolk mixture. Place a small basil leaf in the center. Crack some fresh pepper on top and enjoy!

P.S. It’s day 5 of our 30 Days of Yoga. Let us know how it’s going for you!