Sesame Milk!

So I am re-starting this blog, quite a changed person from who I was when I was last active here.

I used to write *environmental*/DIY/recipes stuff here, from a very consumerist, ~*Whole Foods*~ perspective, which is funny to me now... considering how radical I was trying to be.

Anyways! I have freaking-fallen-in-love with sesame milk recently. Ingredients are super simple...

1/4 cup sesame seeds

1/4 cups dates

2 cups water

a pinch of cinnamon, clove, cardamom, any spice you want

Directions: Blend the sesame seeds and dates until they are grainy. Mine start piling up the sides of the blender and way from the blades- thats when I know it's ready for the next step. Add a bit of water, like an eighth of a cup, and blend further. Once it looks real creamy and blended in, add a bit more water, blend again. Repeat the last two steps until all the water is added. Adding the water slowly makes it easier for the blender to get all the little sesame grains.

Sprinkle with your spices and maybe a pinch of whole sesame seeds and some brown sugar or date sugar. Two cups is like 35% of your daily calcium or something like that. And so delish

be careful about refrigerating this. the one time i did, it tasted BITTER. also, when i tried soaking the seeds the night before, the milk was also undrinkably bitter. the fresh version has a slight bitter taste, but also sweet cause of the dates.

Aprovecho!!

Crafting philosophy, Part 1

This summer had been very crafty for me, and with all this extra time, I have applied another love to my craft- research. I came across Craftivism, DIY ethics, guerrilla crafting.. the connections between third wave feminism and the re-claiming of crafts, to name a few. I stay up late resewing a thrift store skirt and wake up early to rev up the sewing machine on a re-used fabric grocery bag, feeling a statement against wasteful culture flowing beneath my fingertips. On the bus, i knit a rubber band shaped scarf on bamboo chopsticks, holding the project up high and looped around my knees so people can't help but notice, reminding them that all things are made, and that the power to make complexity and beauty is in their hands too- reclaiming an ancient shunned art as a form of public transportation self empowerment.

I first picked up craft at the age of seven, when my aunt taught me to crochet a dolls sweater. Materials haven't left my hands since then, and more and more, my hands itch to move yarn and my mind analyzes any manufactured product to see if its making could be restored to human creators. I like the smooth movements and dexterities I have trained into my fingers flow from my grandparents and other ancestors, who fought their way through life with their hands, building their own homes, weaving their own blankets, sewing their own clothing, raising their own food. In our society, 'arts and crafts' brings up images of hokey homemade jewelry, or shrink wrapped craft kits that produce styrofoam raindeer or ugly cross stitch pillows- but for my family, arts and crafts were an important part of daily life.

I think its time to bring it back to that.

Blasted fuse

Sometimes its felt like being frozen in place, like frantic uncontrollable movement, in the same moment, like being trapped in a barrel that's crashing down a the tallest cliff in the world.

Sometimes its felt like drowning, or like the numbness of deep exhaustion, arrived at after days of swimming vast ocean waters, never once sighting land.

most of all, I have felt like the electricity caught behind a blasted fuse, where my longing and inability to flow through that burned connector and take part in the world make moments into millenia

love is my connection, and when the last stronghold of it broke, the world and I found ourselves at odds.


Its so strange to be in place with it now.

DIY mouthwash- no cancer-causing alcohols included

I read somewhere that the alcohol in regular mouthwash can cause cancer in the mouth tissues. Plus, Listerine is bright green because of 'D&C yellow no. 10' and 'FD&C green no.3'. And the active ingredients are eucalyptus extract, mint extracts, and thyme extract. Hm! Sounds like I could make it myself!

My recipe--

2 drops peppermint oil
2 drops tea tree oil
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 cup warm water

Mix in a cup and stir with a spoon to mix up oils and water. Enough for two uses. It is colorless and tastes more salty while in your mouth, but afterwards you feel the peppermint and tea tree tingly sensation.

ANDAND if you use this homemade mouth wash, you will protect the oceans from pollution. The two ounces of mouthwash you use everyday might seem like nothing in the grand scheme of things, but imagine the supermarket aisle of mouthwash- a whole wall of green chemical-laced alcohol. Each bottle will eventually get bought, swished, and spit out into a drain that leads into the ocean. Iono about you, but I'd rather be swimming in a little peppermint oil than alot of 'Poloxamer 407'.

I gots ladybug pupa on my guava tree!!!

Thanks to Kyle Meyer for tipping me off on what they are- I have a fear of anything with an exoskeleton (except for butterflies, dragonflies, ladybugs, and bees, to some extent) and probably would've allowed my parents to spray soapy water on them and wash 'em out. Here they are!


Well, thats only one of them, but multiply by two on one cute little leaf =) They will be ready to emerge in about a week!

We also have ladybug larvae in lots of different stages and ladybug eggs on a leaf or two. I'm really excited to watch the eggs hatch. How exciting! ... I'm getting excited over ladybugs. Typical =)

BUTBUTBUT some other insect has also chosen my guava tree to host its young. The eggs are everywhere! I'm scared that its some tree-destroying insect or a threatening species to Southern California. Can anyone help me identify?

omgosh this picture gives me the absolute heebie jeebies. that yellow egg looks alot like a lady bug egg, but those insects dont look anything like a ladybug larvae at any stage. seems like there is a larvae right in the midst of them, and seems like those little white things are eggs.. eggs that have been hatched out of?

I noticed one climbing over my hand after these pictures and stifled the 'scream and run' instinct to take a picture. My guava tree BETTER love me!



this one had lost one of its fake back *antenna*

HALP!!!

Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies! {featuring guest chef, Ms Elise Smith}

So, I have gone strict pescetarian, which means no milk, no meat, and no eggs. The only animal products I eat are fish and bee products. Its for environmental reasons, if you're interested, I will talk your ear off about it =)

But anyways. Most cookies, cakes, muffins are off limits for strict pescetarians + My main sweet tooth is for baked yumminess = Marilyn's face looking like :'(

so I crossed dietary lines and asked Elise to teach me her vegan cooking secrets

in case you're wondering.. there is only one because turned cookie monster on my batch before ever taking a decent photo

2 cups unbleached flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
cinnamon, however much you want
vegan chocolate chips (dark chocolate, fairtrade is delcious =) )
1 cup raw sugar
1/2 cup canola/veggie oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup water

1. Mix Dry ingredients
















2. Mix sugar and oil so that sugar absorbs oil (very important! or else you will end up with oily, thin, burned cookies! learned that the hard way..).

3. Mix in vanilla and water to sugar-oil.

4. Mix in wet ingredients to dry.

5. shape into cute little blobs on an ungreased baking pan.

6. Bake for 9 minutes in an oven at 350 degreees. You can flip them over at the halfway point, but mine were all squished and pointed and I wanted to keep them that way.


These cookies are of the drier, crispy kind- perfect for my cookie-dunking ritual involving soy or homemade almond milk. They taste like french toast plus chocolate when you dump in alot of cinnamon.


We began our sugar highs with driveway chalk art


and rode it out by teaching Elise how to ride my Arbor sustainably made longboard



fun day!

more breakfast: sweet and savory granola

i love me some quinoa, but when i'm running late in the morning the extra forty seconds it microwave it up could make me miss the bus. a bowl of over-processed raisin bran has to do =(

so i made granola =)

forgot to mix in the raisins.. whoops.

Sweet, Savory, and Nutritious Granola

1/2 cup shredded coconut (in bulk, whole foods)

4 cups rolled oats (organic, in bulk, whole foods)
1/2 cup toasted wheat germ (in bulk, whole foods)
1/4 cup flax seeds (okay you can basically get this while recipe in bulk at whole foods!)
1/4 cup sunflower seeds (^)
1 cup chopped almonds or walnuts (sunday farmers market)
3 tbsp sesame seeds (^)
1.5 tsp ground cinnamon
large pinch of sea salt
1/2 cup honey (farmers market vendors)
4 tbsp grapeseed (or canola) oil
2 cups dried fruit (whoops, forgot this part..)

This makes for a really nutritious granola. If you're looking for something that tastes less like health food, drop the flaxseed, sesame seed, seame seed, and substitute 6 tbsp butter for the oil. If you want to feel invincible, keep this recipe as is.

1. spread coconut on a baking pan, toast at 300 degrees till golden.
2. mix dry ingredients in big bowl, melt together wet ingredients in small bowl. The oil and honey stopped repelling each other after 40 seconds on high in the microwave.
3. Drizzle wet ingredients on top of dry ingredients, mixing as you go (or else half of your granola wil taste sweet and the other half will taste like oats with nuts in it).
4. Spread on two large baking pans and toast in the oven at 300 degrees until golden.
5. Mix in coconut and raisins. Serve yourself a bowl of it with some organic milk or rice milk, and feel the nutrient-driven buzz. Seriously. I feel like jumping rope and pumping some iron right now.