Dr. Lisa's Bountiful Life

Both Hands

If you wish to embrace the bounty of the Universe, your arms best be open wide.

Which means both hands must be free.

In other words, let go.

Don't cling, even with one hand...

even with one pinkie...

to that which you believe may offer you a finger-hold of security.

Because it won't. 

All you will be doing is limiting your ability to embrace bounty. And the Universe is, truly, bountiful.

I have spent the past several years exploring the nature of bounty.  I have experienced the bounty of food.  I have experienced the bounty of the world in which I live.

I have experienced the bounty of love and relationships.

Through this bounty, I have known healing.  And about this bounty, I have written.

Thus this blog remains the "Bountiful Blog," and a version of this same "Bountiful Blog" will be featured shortly on the Spirituality & Health website.

I have had to let go, with all of my fingers, to a life that was no longer mine, to fully experience the bounty.

But I have been rewarded, many times over. A new blog connection. An expanded radio presence this fall. A recently redesigned office space. Fiercely loyal patients, colleagues, friends and family.

I merely needed to open my arms to the abundance.

I shared the open arms idea with a new friend I met last night at dinner. It was an idea I had heard from a patient of mine several months ago--when I was still clinging to a vestige of my former life.

Shortly after the conversation with my patient, I let go.  And have felt myself catapulting downward into the abyss of an unknown existence. Wracked, at times, with fear I have been.

But simultaneously experienced the sweet updraft of hope. Buoyancy, I have known.

Arms wide open, I have embraced the light streaming from above.

Fear. Hope. Desperation. Buoyancy.

Love.

Life, lived.

I am here to tell you this:

Let go, my friends. Open your arms.

Today.

light, streaming

Falmouth Town Landing, 2010

Are you living life with arms open? Leave a comment below, or send an email to lisa@drlisabelisle.com.Your feedback is most welcome and appreciated.

Ready to let go? We can help. Give our office a call to set up a consult: 207 847 9393.

 

 

 

Bitterly Green

I am a greens-eater.  No doubt about it.  I love beautiful veggies of (almost) every sort, but greens really resonate with me.  So this is an exciting time of year.  After a long winter of California chard and our stalwart friend, kale (one of macrobiotic author Meg Wolff's favorites), I'm ready for nature's next act.  In Maine, this means greens. 

Following the suggestion of Cordelia, our farmshare goddess, lately I've been trying different ways to prepare dandelion greens. I've now had them sauteed, boiled, and raw.  I've eaten both green and red varieties. Ironically, the (organic) greens I have ready access to (ie those sold at Whole Foods) are actually from California. And they are large, which makes them fibrous and fairly bitter.

Yes, I do have dandelions on my lawn, but as I've mentioned, I worry about possible pesticide contamination.  We moved into our house less than a year ago, and I don't know whether past homeowners have sprayed.  I do know that 'pesticides: beware!' flags (much to my chagrin) have recently started decorating many of our neighborhood yards.  I've seen these flags all over town, and know that they will likely soon appear on our municipal fields (I can't even tell you how scary that is, given the number of children who play on said fields).  I've looked at local farmers' markets, and even contacted the Frugal Kitchen blogger, who is an avid gardener, to see if she had any recommendations for pesticide-free local dandelion green sources.  No luck.

So I'm still in search of sweet(er), tender dandelion greens. Thus, I can't share any good dandelion recipes yet.  Mine have been edible, but not fabulous.  Yes, I have been affording my liver the spring-cleaning that apparently dandelions are famous for, but I can't say I've enjoyed myself terribly in the process.  Maybe bitterness is just an acquired taste.

I have learned some ways to lessen the bitterness in greens and other vegetables.  These come from Healing With Whole Foods:

• rinse several times with boiling water; discard the water
• bring cooking water to a boil before adding vegetables to the pot (cold water sets the bitter taste)
• mix with mild-tasting vegetables and miso to neutralize flavors

In addition, Healing With Whole Foods suggests soaking greens and other produce that may be consumed raw in water diluted with apple cider vinegar (1 tablespoon per gallon or 1/4 cup for a sinkful) for fifteen minutes.  Apparently this takes care of any unfortunate critters that may have made their way onto one's produce.  Given my past experience with critters, I may be trying this out.  (Though I'm not sure my friend the broccoli  worm would have been particularly concerned about dilute apple cider vinegar. He was still hanging in there even after being boiled.)

I will also be trying out my new festive spring/summer plates (as mentioned in yesterday's fiddlehead blog).  We bought them on sale at Maxwell's Pottery Outlet in Portland this past weekend. I love that store: talk about colors! The girls and I had a great deal of fun selecting matching $1 closeout placemats and napkins, while Kevin stood patiently by.  I'm posting a plate picture, to prove that even greens look better when well presented.  As we are often reminded, food needs to appeal to as many of our senses as possible.

Of course it would be nice if I could find some tender local dandelions to place atop my festive plates. Veggies that are too bitter to appeal to our sense of taste are kind of hard to swallow. Even for an avowed greens-eater.

 

Festive Fiddleheads and the Fiddle Fest

Last night we celebrated the spring with a delicious batch of fiddleheads. I have had several good batches fiddleheads recently.  I bought my first bunch at the Rosemont Market in Yarmouth, and my second bunch at Whole Foods.  I know that the Portland Farmers' Market and several area organic food stores carry them as well. According to the Commune Tested, City Approved blog, fiddleheads are also available at the Public Market House in Portland.

Our most recent bunch of fiddleheads was the best so far.  We prepared them last night after dinner, and savored them standing up around the kitchen island, forks in hand. I should note that Kevin was skeptical about fiddleheads at first, as he was concerned about the odd consistency created by the baby fern fronds.  After a few bites of these, he became a believer.

Here is my husband's recipe:

Festive Fiddleheads with White Wine and Ginger

• 1/2 lb fiddleheads
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon of fresh ginger, minced
• 1/4-1/2 cup white wine (we used chardonnay; feel free to substitute something drier)
• freshly ground salt and pepper, to taste

Soak fiddleheads and remove any extraneous debris.  Remove lower stems.  Warm olive oil in stainless steel pan over medium heat. Add fiddleheads and cover with a sprinkle of salt.  Sautee for 1-2 minutes.  Add ginger and garlic.  Sautee an additional 1-2 minutes, before adding white wine.  Sautee until tender.  Don't allow to stick to the pan--add white wine as needed.  Season with salt and pepper.  Arrange on a festive plate and serve while still warm.

I'm posting a picture of our fiddleheads here, so that those of you who are fiddlehead-innocent can see what they look like. It's not a great photo, so don't decide against making them based on this image. (Also, this is not my definition of a festive plate.  Not bad, but we've got better.)

Speaking of Fiddleheads, according to Taste of the Seacoast (which is technically a New Hampshire website),

"Slow Food Portland will host its fourth annual Fiddle Fest: A Celebration of Spring Food on June 1 from 4 p.m. To 7 p.m. At Southern Maine Community College's dining hall in South Portland, Maine. Foods will include ramps, mushrooms, rhubarb, baby greens, and Maine's famous fiddlehead ferns.
Local chefs will celebrate the best of seasonal produce and a selection or organic ales and hand-picked wines will be offered. Entertainment will be provided.  For more info, visit their website, or call (207) 523-0106."

I tried to get more information on the 2008 Fiddle Fest from their website, but nothing is posted yet. Cythia Finnemore Simonds (creator of the Chili-Lime Shrimp Salad) wrote about last year's Fiddle Fest on her blog.  It sounds like it is worth a visit. Some of our favorite local restaurants, including Vignola, Cinque Terre and Duckfat, were in attendance at the 2007 event.

Restauranteur and school garden advocate Alice Waters is a well-known Slow Food advocate.  In case you're not familiar with this concept/group, Slow Food is

a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people's dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.

I'm definitely buying the ideas that the Slow Food folks are selling. 

I'm also going to keep buying local fiddleheads--and I may even get out to the Fiddle Fest.

Water Bottle Woes and Wins: Taking Small Steps

As I mentioned in a recent blog about plastics, one of the ways in which I am trying to transition away from this ubiquitous potentially health-impacting substance (UPHIS) is to replace our family's plastic water bottles. The children play multiple sports, and my husband and I work out daily, so we really need a portable way to get water into our bodies. What we don't need are the chemicals that have been shown to leach into the water from these bottles, including Perfluorooctanoic Acid (PFOA), Bisphenol A (BPA) and Bisphenol B (B). 

BPA in particular has had a lot of bad press lately, as it is a suspected hormone disruptor and has been proven to lead to chromosome changes in the eggs of female mice.