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So I'm trying out some new contacts, and now it's more obvious that I need a haircut.  And apparently more sleep.  I'll stick with glasses, but the contacts will be handy for swimming.

In other news, I banged the hell out of my right knee this weekend.  It didn't bruise, but I must have done some kind of damage given how it aches.

It's over-bright in my cubicle, but then, I do have a HUGE south-facing window.

Also, cold; still wearing my coat.

Tieday... Weds?

Compassion becomes a bridge to the world outside. Trust and compassion for oneself bring inspiration to dance with life, to communicate with the energies of the world. Lacking this kind of inspiration and openness, the spiritual path becomes the samsaric path of desire. One remains trapped in the desire to improve oneself, the desire to achieve imagined goals.... Compassion automatically invites you to relate with people, because you no longer regard people as a drain on your energy. They recharge your energy, because in the process of relating with them, you acknowledge your wealth, your richness. So if you have difficult tasks to perform, such as dealing with people or life situations, you do not feel you are running out of resources. Each time you are faced with a difficult task, it presents itself as a delightful opportunity to demonstrate your richness, your wealth. There is no feeling of poverty at all in this approach to life.

from Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chogyam Trungpa

It's been a while.

Do I look 33?  I feel much older than that, today.

For my birthday, breast cancer cake (It was because we went, as a family, on a group Race for the Cure).

In the practice of meditation, the way to be daring, the way to leap, is to disown your thoughts, to step beyond your hope and fear, the ups and downs of your thinking process. You can just be, just let yourself be, without holding on to the constant reference points that mind manufactures. You do not have to get rid of your thoughts. They are a natural process; they are fine; let them be as well. but let yourself go out with the breath, let it dissolve. See what happens. When you let yourself go in that way, you develop trust in the strength of your being and trust in your ability to open and extend yourself to others. You realize that you are rich and resourceful enough to give selflessly to others, and as well, you find that you have tremendous willingness to do so.

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

It's term paper season, and so I've been experimenting in the kitchen between fits and spurts of writing.  It's one way to get the creativity flowing.

All-goodest of the All-good Cookies: (makes about 2 dozen large cookies)

• 1/2 cup butter
  
• 1/2 cup coconut oil
  
• 2 eggs
• 1 over-ripe banana, mashed
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
  
• 1 tsp ground cardamon seed
  
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup rice flour
• 1/2 cup besan (chickpea flour)
  
• 2 tbsp rum
• 1 cup shredded coconut (unsweetened)
  
• 1 cup goji berries (aka wolf berries or lycium berries)
• 2 1/2 to 3 cups rolled oats

1. Soak the goji berries in the rum.
2. Soften the butter and coconut oil and whisk together
3. Beat the eggs and the banana together
   
4. Mix the sugar into the butter
5. Whisk the sugar/butter and eggs/banana together
6. Mix the dry ingredients: flours, salt, baking powder, and cardamon
7. Mix the wet ingredients of #5 in with the dry ingredients of #6
8. Add the goji berries, rum and coconut to #7
9. Mix in the oats
10. Use spoons to make balls of the cookie dough, place on a cookie sheet with a sheet of parchment paper
11. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 10-15 minutes
12. Remove when edges are browned

Caveats: cookies with coconut oil tend to spread out a lot when baking.  After baking, cookies are relatively moist. If kept in a sealed container, they will keep their rum flavor. However, they will also be crumbly and fall apart easy. 

I attribute the crumbliness to the rice and besan flours, but what do I know? It could be the coconut oil. I think next time I'll try some flax seed meal instead of rice flour (since the rice flour contributed nothing in the way of nutritional value to the cookie).

Kept in a not-airtight container (a ceramic nabe pot which has a small hole in the lid), the cookies hold together well and are moist and chewy,

Questions: Why the rum?  When searching for a recipe to play with, I ran across a rum raisin oatmeal cookie. I transplated the idea and substituted goji berries. The berries were really dry, and I wanted them to be relatively soft in the cookie.

Aren't goji berries expensive to put in a cookie?  Not if you get them from Pacific Ocean Market.

Why coconut oil?  You know you're not cutting down on calories or saturated fats that way, right?  Right.  I had only one stick of butter and what I was making called for two. My other options were: greek olive oil or expired vegetable shortening.

Does it taste really banana-y? No, only mildly so. I added it because: I had it, and it was a coconut cookie, and there was rum involved, and so...well, let's just say that if I had dried pineapple and sugared lime, they would have been somehow added as well. Consider it to be a colada cookie.