KTC Jacksonville

(At Doi Suthep, a Buddhist temple in Thailand. I didn't dress very well in Thailand...I had a lot of weird thoughts about visiting a developing country, first time out of the US)

I'm always looking for new experiences, so of course exploring various religions interests me. I have a vague knowledge of Judaism, Islam, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism and even Baha'i Faith (after I found out Rainn Wilson, aka, Dwight Shrute from The Office was Baha'i, I realized I had never even heard of that!) I was raised as a Christian but I've never been particularly religious. I feel that each religion has very important things to teach us and I agree with something I read that the Dalai Lama said about religion being like medicine...different medicines work for different ailments and people...Christianity works for some, while Islam works for others.

So it was with this mindset that I decided to visit Karma Thegsum Choling (KTC) in Jacksonville for their Saturday meditation and teaching. Taken from their website: "KTC Jacksonville is a Tibetan Buddhist Practice Center of the Karma Kagyu Lineage of Tibetan Buddha Dharma. The Kagyu lineage is one of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism & is often called "The Whispered Lineage" because its highest teachings are still passed in an unbroken line from teacher to student since the days of the Buddha."

I was not the only new visitor; one girl was there as part of a class she was taking at UNF (local university) and she had brought her two sisters with her. The man who was in charge (not sure what to call him, similar to a pastor?) was so kind and welcoming and took about 10 minutes to give us a brief introduction to Buddhism and an overview of their temple and the service we were about to participate in. We were offered tea or water and were asked to remove our shoes before being shown into the shrine room. I visited several Buddhist temples when I was in Thailand, but my role was only as a tourist. I knew to take my shoes off and I was instructed to wear conservative clothing so as not to offend anyone, but other than that, my only job was to stare in awe at the gorgeous statues and temples with my jaw dropped open.

For the service, we each had books with various prayers written in Tibetan (in the Tibetan alphabet and the English alphabet) and the translation in English. Each prayer was sung as a group in Tibetan, similar to a Catholic mass I once attended where the priest and congregation would sometimes sing together various prayers The "pastor" said that we could say the prayers in English, but we would have been way off if we hadn't used the Tibetan words! I tried to read the English translations while we sang and they mostly were about giving thanks and about the gloriousness of various figures (sorry that's vague, my memory is the worst!)

Most of the service was singing these prayers, probably about an hour total. I felt like I was transported back to my childhood, squirming in my seat and longing for church to be over. In the shrine room, you may sit at the back in a chair but really you're supposed to sit on a cushion on the floor. I was trying to get the full experience, so I chose the floor. I immediately regretted this decision. I wish I were more Zen and didn't have so many complaints, after all, these people were so hospitable and all I could think was, "This is taking SO LONG. My ankles hurt from sitting Indian style. I'm pretty sure my joints are suffering irreparable damage. Would I really be the rudest person of all time if I just got up and left?" I'm very aware that none of these thoughts make me look like a good person, but I really tried, I promise. And, I made it through the whole thing! I have a sneaking suspicion that he hurried it up for us newcomers because the website said that it went until noon, and we finished by 11:30 am. There were only 5 people in the shrine besides the 4 of us who were visiting, but I felt like we ruined their Buddhist service with our anxious energy!

I am glad that I joined KTC Jacksonville for their service and I feel a bit closer to Buddhists after taking part. I don't think I'd be a very good Buddhist, I'm too antsy, but I really appreciate their views on acceptance, non-judgment and loving kindness. If you're interested in finding out more about Buddhism or KTC Jax, you can visit their website at www.ktcjax.org. I'm thinking my next exploration into religion will be a Jewish temple, I'll keep ya posted! :)

Has anyone else explored various religions? What were your experiences? Please be respectful and kind and let me know in the comments!

The Clean Program, Year 2, Week 3

Day 15

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!!! Although, I'm starting to wish that I wasn't blogging about this experience. Ryan told me that our last day of the cleanse was this upcoming Saturday BUT because of my diligent documentation, I have to report that our last day isn't until Sunday! We can both taste the pizza, coffee and doughnuts, that's the problem. I'm going to try to at least make us a healthy pizza and do a better job this year of maintaining a lot of the healthy habits from the cleanse. We don't drink milk but we do eat a LOT of cheese...first thing to reduce! Less gluten, we both feel better without it (Ryan more so than me). Waaay more veggies and fruit. More homecooked meals. You get the picture!

Breakfast: Smoothie, Ryan added cocoa powder, yum

Snack: Chocolate and Almond Scone/Cookie

Lunch: Chicken, veggie and rice soup made yesterday

Dinner: I had some roasted chickpeas and a chocolate and almond cookie....not liquid but at least it was clean! Ryan made a smoothie and gave me a look of pity mixed with disdain.

Day 16

Breakfast: I made us a kale/pineapple smoothie but I think the kale had started going bad (it was in the freezer). Ryan didn't mind but I gagged when I tasted it. I skipped breakfast.

Snack: Quinoa flakes with frozen blueberries. Note: Did not taste nearly as good as when I added chocolate chips, raspberries and walnuts. In fact, it was pretty gross but I was hungry because I skipped breakfast so I choked it down.

Lunch: Chicken, veggie and rice soup

Snacks: Nectarine and chocolate/almond cookie, okay 2. They are not lasting nearly as long as I hoped they would! Oh yeah and an energy ball. I don't think I packed enough soup for lunch...was really hungry in the afternoon.

Dinner: Smoothie made with almond milk, almond butter, frozen peaches, dates, and flax meal...like a milkshake!

Day 17

Breakfast: Juice made from bok choy, celery, and carrot

Lunch: Chicken and rice soup

Snacks: Nectarine and kiwi (I cut them in half and eat them with a spoon, best snack ever)

Dinner: Garbanzo bean flatbread


(Blondies)

Day 18

Breakfast: Smoothie

Lunch: Chicken and rice soup

Snacks: Nectarine, kiwi and garbanzo bean blondies! Instead of using sugar though, I combined this recipe with her recipe for sugar free garbanzo beach cookie dough. So, I used dates instead of sugar to make these blondies sugar free. They turned out pretty good but I had to cook them longer because of the extra water from the dates. Also, if I make these again, I would run the beans through the juicer to homogenize them instead of in the food processor. They were too chunky in the food processor but this could be because we have a small one.

Dinner: Roasted chickpeas for dinner! I had bowling this night, so I didn't have time to make a smoothie and this was a good replacement for the cheese fries I really wanted :)

Day 19

Breakfast: Smoothie

Lunch: Chicken, onion, baby bellas, cucumber, spinach and arugula salad with olive oil and red wine vinegar (prob not supposed to use red wine but we didn't have balsamic)

Dinner: Smoothie

Day 20

Breakfast: Smoothie

Lunch: Clean chicken fried rice, pictured at the top of this post. Adapted from this recipe. I used brown rice made the night before, skipped the butter, used gluten-free tamari, left out the egg and added baby bellas. Really good! Immediately after making this, I made a double batch to use for lunch the next day!

***WARNING, NOT CLEAN FRIENDLY!! Avert your eyes if your willpower is waning!!!***

Dinner: Sorry Dr. Junger, ended the Clean Program early....and with a bang! Started off with a few glasses of wine with a cheese, nut, fruit and baguette plate around 4 pm at The Grotto in San Marco. Then, on to bb's to split their amazing white truffle oil flatbread (no prosciutto on my side) and a slice of black forest cake and coffee! We ended the night at the San Marco Theatre and watched the new Mission Impossible with Pinot Grigio for me, a glass of Duke's for Ryan (local beer) and a small popcorn for both of us :) This all sounds well and good, but we felt terrible when we went to bed that night! Too much, too fast.



Day 21

Breakfast: These doughnuts made from buttermilk biscuit dough. Very simple, very delicious! We didn't use butter though, we put them immediately into the sugar/cinnamon mixture from the pan. For a few we dipped them into coconut oil before putting them in the sugar mixture but those ones got too much sugar on them! We had french pressed, fair trade coffee to go with our doughnut masterpiece and humane-certified bacon, made the Martha way. It turned out very crispy, but make sure you don't forget about it! We were pretty close to burned bacon!


Lunch: Clean chicken fried rice....this makes me feel a little bit better that we ended early :)

Dinner: Homemade pizza...not Clean friendly, but delicious!

As with last year, we felt a whole lot better eating the "Clean" foods than we did after eating the junk food. I don't think that would really surprise anyone! This cleanse has been an excellent reminder though to keep junk food as a rare treat instead of a constant diet staple. I think that making the junk food at home probably is slightly better for you too than buying it ready made and already processed. This means: if I want chicken nuggets, go buy some humane certified chicken...then bread and fry it or bake it myself! Much healthier and my conscience feels a bit better too! (For those of you who don't know, if I can make a choice, I either choose humane certified meat or I eat vegetarian. I have decided from here on out that if someone cooks for me, I will eat it, no matter what it is! But, if they have a buffet set up and I can skip the meat, I usually will)

Garbanzo Flour Pizza Crust

Okay, I couldn't wait until the end of Week 3 to write about this flatbread I tried last night, it was that good!!

Using the recipe found here, I made a pizza/flatbread crust out of garbanzo bean flour, water, sea salt and olive oil! So easy and I was surprised at just how delicious it was. Instead of the toppings she used, I decided to make this flatbread completely "Clean friendly". Note: If you're on the Clean Program cleanse, you're not supposed to have solids in the evening, but I couldn't wait to try this out...sorry!

While the flour and water was sitting (needs to for 30 minutes), I carmelized some onions with olive oil and a little sea salt in our cast iron pan. I removed the onions from the pan and, since I had been cooking on it, I was able to skip the "heat the pan in the oven for 10 minutes" thing. I then added some more olive oil to the pan and poured in the flour mixture. I placed the carmelized onions and baby bellas on top of the batter and cooked it at 500 degrees for 15 minutes. Here is where I made a mistake: I added the arugula at this point because the recipe said it should only take 15 minutes...THEN, when I had to put the whole thing back in the oven because it wasn't quite done, the arugula kinda crisped up :( Still tasted good but not the same! My suggestion: if you try to cut the flat bread and it's all mushy, throw her back in! It will come up pretty easily when it's finished and I think you'd rather have it be on the crispy side. The onions gave it such a delicious flavor and the baby bellas! I was delightfully surprised. Now, on the other hand, the sugar free garbanzo bean blondies that I made? You'll just have to wait and see in the Week 3 post!

The Clean Program, Year 2, Week 2

The first week of the Clean Program is very deceiving. "I can do this, piece of cake"...that's what you think because you've surrounded yourself with "clean" foods and probably haven't scheduled any restaurant dates or put yourself around 50 Dominoe's pizzas. THEN Week 2 comes around and your guard is down...BAM you have 2 hours to kill and your favorite time to kill spot, Panera, is conveniently located next to your meeting while your house is 30 minutes away. What to do, what to do? I know! I'll just go in and have a nice cup of caffeine-free tea! Oh, darn! They're out of caffeine free tea. Guess I'll just have a hazelnut coffee with half and half, sugar in the raw, and of course, a chocolate chipper cookie to go with it! Tricky, tricky. A few days later, you're at another meeting, only this time, they're running late but don't worry, they've provided 50 Dominoe's pizzas to keep you busy. There is nothing more tempting than the smell of 50 pizzas. That time I narrowly escaped cheating but the Panera trip had already scarred my week! Learn from my mistakes, dear reader, keep your guard up and your snacks handy.


(Clean tuna salad)

Day 8

Breakfast: Smoothie (frozen fruit, chia, flax meal, psyllium husks, almond milk, usually some sort of nut or seed. They are starting to run together at this point)

Lunch: A delightful concoction, my take on "Clean" tuna salad! 1 can of sustainably caught tuna from Whole Foods (I say this to make you aware of it's existence, not to be snooty), 1 can of chickpeas, dill, freshly squeezed lemon juice, some lemon zest because I can, 1 chopped apple, 1 thinly sliced celery stalk, 1 chopped carrot, 1 chopped zucchini, sea salt. Delicious :)

Snacks: Energy balls (dates, nuts, seeds, chocolate chips and water in the food processor. Roll into balls and coat with unsweetened coconut. Healthy, easy, delicious), carrot sticks, nectarine.

Dinner: Carrot, celery and apple juice

Day 9

Breakfast: Smoothie

Lunch: Broccoli, tahini, brown rice, chickpeas, and dark red kidney beans (I added that because we didn't have 2 cans of chickpeas). I also doubled the tahini lemon sauce. See original recipe here from Chefuality.blogspot.com

Snacks: Energy balls, nectarine, carrots

Dinner: Smoothie

Day 10

Breakfast: Carrot, celery, spinach and apple juice

Lunch: Same as yesterday

Snacks: Same as yesterday, oh and the cheating at Panera :) Coffee and cookie!

Dinner: Smoothie

Day 11

Breakfast: Smoothie

Lunch: Same as yesterday, this stuff make 3 lunches for me and Ryan!

Snacks: Energy balls, carrot, kiwi

Dinner: Smoothie

Day 12

Breakfast: Smoothie

Lunch: Tuna, black beans, zucchini, sea salt and red pepper powder...wasn't so sure about this, but it turned out okay

Snacks: Energy ball, kiwi

Dinner: Smoothie


(Scones before being cooked)

Day 13

Breakfast: Smoothie

Lunch: The best fish tacos EVER! Used the flounder that Ryan caught, again, probably not supposed to eat this type of fish but it was free so it won (See last week for recipe)

Snack: Chocolate and almond scones, the closest thing to chocolate chip cookies...so delicious! They turned out a little different this year because I used brown rice flour instead of gluten free all purpose flour...still good but the all purpose was better! You can find recipe here

Dinner: Smoothie



Day 14

Breakfast: Smoothie

Snack: Vegan pancakes with frozen peaches and an apple cider vinegar reduction. Recipe for pancakes here. Made vinegar reduction by boiling apple cider vinegar with peaches, vanilla and cinnamon until syrupy. VERY tangy and "pungent"....will make your nose run but it's pretty good. The pancakes were delicious.......once we figured out how to get them to NOT stick to the pan. Just got stainless steel pans and they were not working...oiled up an already seasoned cast iron pan and it finally worked. Failure pictured above, success pictured at the beginning of this post.

Lunch: Baked fish with lemon juice and dill served with asparagus sauteed with gluten-free tamari.

Dinner: Broth from the chicken soup I made, recipe below



Brandy's Friday-Sunday Chicken and Rice Soup

Friday evening:

-1 whole chicken, humane certified if possible
-Coconut oil
-Olive oil
-Carrots
-Garlic, onion, and red pepper powder, sea salt and ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Rinse and pat dry whole chicken and set in a large roasting pan (I use glass). Mix together dry seasoning, I like the combination above. I just sort of guesstimate with the seasoning but it's mostly sea salt. Rub chicken completely with this seasoning. Then, I take a few chunks of hardened coconut oil and stuff them under the skin, sometimes with a few cloves of garlic. I use melted coconut oil to rub down the rest of the bird completely. When you've finished, the chicken should be sitting in the roasting pan with the wings on top. I cut up a few carrots and sometimes celery to stuff in the chicken's cavity, this is for moisture and flavor. I usually add about a cup of filtered water to the bottom of the pan as well and keep adding as needed. The oil and chicken fat will mix with the water as it cooks and can be used to baste the chicken if you desire. Sometimes I will use the olive oil in my Misto to spray down the chicken while it's cooking too. I think most of these basting steps are unnecessary but I get bored while I'm cooking chicken and this makes me feel important.

Place the pan, uncovered, into the preheated oven and cook for 45 minutes-1 hour, depending on the size of the chicken and your oven. I check frequently around 30-45 minutes to make sure it is completely cooked. If you do not have a meat thermometer and you don't mind ugly-fying your chicken, you can cut the breast open to see if it is cooked. (My meat thermometer met a tragic end earlier this year and we haven't replaced it yet, so this is what I do!)

After chicken has cooked completely, I let it cool and then cover the entire pan with cling wrap or aluminum foil and let sit overnight in the fridge or, until the coconut oil/fat has hardened in the pan.

Saturday

-Carrots
-Celery
-Garlic
-Onion (optional)
-Bay leaves

The next day, I take out the pan and remove the hardened oil/fat. Sometimes I'll reuse this for cooking something savory but you don't have it, I'm just trying to be thrifty! I remove all of the chicken I'd like to eat like the breasts and white meat. Then I take the entire contents of the pan and put them in a stock pot (thanks MIL for the new stock pot for Christmas, worked great!!) and cover the bird entirely with filtered water. I then add carrots, celery (even the leaves), whole cloves of garlic (I add about 5, we love garlic), 2 bay leaves, ground black pepper, onion. After the veggies have been added, I pour in enough filtered water to nearly fill the stock pot but leave room for boiling.

This mixture should be brought to a boil and then turned to low to simmer for 6-8 hours then let it cool until it can be put into the fridge.

Sunday

-Carrots
-Celery
-Onion
-Garlic
-Zucchini
-Bok Choy
-3 cups prepared brown rice

Take the stock pot out of the fridge and using a large mixing bowl and strainer, strain the contents into the large bowl. If Ryan is not home to help me with this heavy pot, I will usually just ladle the stock into the strainer until I feel it is light enough for me to handle. From the strained contents, pick out any edible chicken and toss them into the stock. Put the remaining contents into the trash or, if you have a compost heap, put the veggies in the compost and the chicken bones in the trash. You could eat the veggies if you'd like, but I prefer to use new ones for the soup since I'm fairly confident the nutrients from the cooked veggies are now in my stock. I may have read this somewhere or I may have completely fabricated it in my mind...either way, I don't feel like fact checking this on Google, so let's run with it.

If you want to make a gigantic pot o' soup, like we did because it is our lunch for the week, you can use all of the stock and add the remaining ingredients. Or, you could just use enough of the stock to make whatever size soup you'd like. The remaining soup can be put in mason jars and used to cook brown rice! Not entirely sure how long it'd last but I'd probably want to use it within the week.

For giganto pot o' soup: add chopped veggies (I used the ones above, you can use whatever sounds good) to stock, bring to a boil and then bring to low to simmer. Add prepared brown rice, any additional chicken from yesterday and sea salt and pepper to taste. Let simmer until veggies are nice and soft and voila, chicken and rice soup!

The Clean Program-Year 2, Week 1

(Scroll to bottom of post for Fish Taco recipe)

New Year, same cleanse! I'm ready to feel better and live healthier :) To read more about the Clean Program, you can visit their website here.


If you want to read about our experience with the Clean Program last year, you can visit the tab above that says "The Clean Program".

Day 1

Breakfast- Smoothie made with raspberries, blueberries, cherries, unsweetened almond milk, and unsweetened, dairy-free chocolate chips

Lunch- a Brandy original! 3 cups of cooked brown rice, 1 shredded humanely raised chicken breast sauteed with onion and garlic, dark red kidney beans, black beans, 1 bay leaf and some more onion and garlic for good measure!

Dinner- Juice made from carrot, spinach, kale and celery for Ryan, just carrot and celery for me.

Day 2

Breakfast-Smoothie made with raspberries, cherries, blueberries, blackberries, unsweetened almond milk, unsweetened, dairy-free chocolate chips, chia, flax meal, psyllium husks and walnuts.

Lunch- Same as Day 1

Snacks: Organic apple, 1 energy ball(dates, 4 kinds of nuts/seeds, chocolate chips, coconut oil and water put in the blender, rolled into balls and coated in coconut, so good!), carrot sticks and sliced cucumber.

Dinner- Juice made from carrot and celery



Day 3

Breakfast- Smoothie made with same ingredients as Day 2

Lunch- Same as Days 1 & 2

Snacks: Organic pear and apple, 2 energy balls, roasted parsnips, pictured above, recipe found at The Clean Program website.

Dinner- Smoothie, similar to breakfast

Day 4

Breakfast-Pretty much the same smooth as yesterday :)

Lunch- Quinoa, broccoli, spinach, asparagus, gluten-free tamari (type of soy sauce), chicken, onion and garlic....yum

Snacks: Nectarine, energy balls

Dinner- Soup I made up: frozen green peas, 3 carrots, 2 green onions, 1/2 onion, 3 cloves garlic and sea salt all thrown into the food processor. Then heated on the stove until warm but not boiling (wanted to keep it as close to raw as possible). I also threw in a bay leaf and a little garlic, onion and chile powder.

Day 5

Breakfast- They're always the same!!

Lunch- Same as yesterday

Snacks- Apple, energy balls, and these delightful crackers Ryan made out of brown rice flour, olive oil, sea salt and chia. So good! You can find the recipe on the Clean Program website

Dinner- Same as yesterday



Day 6

Breakfast- I slept through breakfast b/c it's Saturday! I'm a bum on Saturdays. Ryan had a smoothie though.

Lunch- Quinoa flakes with raspberries, walnuts, coconut oil, and a few chocolate chips, pictured above. Best thing ever.

Dinner- Mahi mahi marinated in gluten-free tamari and garlic (You're not supposed to have mahi mahi because warm water fish may have more toxins like mercury. I didn't have the shopping list with me when I went to Whole Foods, my bad) served on a bed of bok choy, asparagus, zucchini, garlic, onion, carrots, and celery, lightly sauteed.
Day 6 was a bit screwy because Ryan was fishing all day, so I waited to cook our "lunch" until he got home, around 5:30 pm. So instead of a liquid dinner, we had a solid dinner....and it was mahi, sue me.

Day 7

Breakfast- Slept through again, because I'm a slacker. Ryan had carrot, celery and apple juice.

Lunch- THE BEST FISH TACOS WE'VE EVER EATEN. Seriously. Again, we had to use up mahi mahi, so that's a no-no. We also pan fried the mahi mahi, which is probably not good for cleansing but at least we used a gluten-free breading! Ryan made tortillas--FROM SCRATCH--with brown rice flour and we sauteed some veggies to serve with the fish. We also had a simple avocado and lemon juice spread on the tortilla. Could not believe how delicious this was! Will make again for sure.


The Best Fish Tacos Of All Time
(Gluten-free)

Need:
Brown Rice Flour
Stevia
Ground black pepper
Gluten-free tamari
Garlic
White fish (if you're on the Clean program, don't use mahi mahi like we did!)
Milled flax seed
Avocado
Lemons
Olive oil
Zucchini, spinach, onion, any veggies you like sauteed


Soak fish in tamari and sliced garlic overnight in fridge. We love garlic so we used 3 cloves.

To make tortillas

Mix 2 cups of brown rice flour, 1.5 tsp of milled flax seed, 1 individual packet of Stevia in the Raw (1/4 tsp about), and 1 cup of water. Break off little balls and roll them out as thin as you can, use flour on rolling pin and surface to help. Then, with a small amount of olive oil in a pan, cook the tortillas until browned on both sides (like pancakes).
Next, sautee your veggies. We used zucchini, spinach, garlic, onion and sesame seeds.
In a separate bowl, mash together 1 avocado and the juice of one lemon.
Bread the marinated fish in a mixture of brown rice flour and black pepper and pan fry in olive oil until crispy.

Spread the avocado mixture on your homemade tortilla, add fish and veggies and enjoy: THE BEST FISH TACOS YOU'VE EVER EATEN. :)