Buddha Bowls with a Side of Renewal and a Dash of Self-Doubt

It's October.

Can you feel the shift in the air?

The renewal.

The charged energy of change.

Maybe it's just me, but I've always viewed October as the month of new-beginnings. January 1st means nothing more to me than a date on the calendar, but the shift into fall that occurs around the beginning of October signals to me that things need to change and will change.

Truth: I have been holding myself back.

There are so many conflicts in my mind about finishing my schooling and starting to practice as a Registered Holistic Nutritionist and trying to do best by the tiny creatures in my house who look to me for love and fun that the only word to sum up how I've been feeling is "crippled."

I have a "Type 1" or a "Type A" personality-- things need to be perfect, and rigid, and structured, and while I thrive under pressure and want to do accomplish so much, I buckle under the thought of failing. This want to succeed and be great at everything has led me to be terrible at everything over the last few months. I had been struggling as a mother, a wife, a friend, and as myself. The recognition of this struggle caused more problems because nothing was being addressed. And things were getting pretty dark.

Stress begets stress begets anxiety begets burnout.

Want to hear the inner workings of my brain? Like it or not, here you go:

Will my grades be good enough to graduate?
Do I know enough to even get good grades?
Will my children, furry and non, feel neglected if I start my papers seriously again?
What if I fail my papers?
What if I can't pass my exam?
Am I good enough to actually help people?
Who am I to think I can assist someone else when I'm so unsure about things?
What if I anger clients and create a negative name for myself?
What if someone gets hurt because of my advice?
Am I terrible mother for doing something other than crafting or reading with my child?
How can I reason away compromising my child's childhood for my want of something?

Motherhood, self-identity, career, all swirling to a fever pitch in my mind culminating in:
What. If. I. Fail?
At everything.

But I've been working on it. Truly. I've removed most of my stresses, I've pulled back on my ambitions for the time being (I've postponed my graduation even though I'm so close to finishing), and I've been actively creating a change in the way I think through CBT techniques and conquering small goals. I'm getting a grasp on those thoughts and controlling them. Like releasing the talons of a predator, I've been lessening their crushing stranglehold on me, one by one.

It's October. It's time for rebirth, bitches.

This blog itself is a positive step for me on the road to just doing the things I want to do, voices in my head be damned. This very blog, with all it's flaws and lack of structure and rambling nonsense is perfect to me. It's for me. For me to share with whomever may be interested. For me to share a part of my heart that I thought I had lost when I became a raging stress-monster over months past.

And those voices, they're wrong, by the way. I know that, as much as you know that. But sometimes they yell loudly and I don't have the mental fortitude to fight and those are bad days. They happen. But other days, like today, I smile and that silences them. My smiles are becoming more frequent again.

And I'm doing all the things. And getting excited about all my old passions again.

Which feels FANTASTIC.

So here we are, leaving stagnation behind and getting things done. There have been lines stuck in my head lately that capture how I've been feeling with this shift in the season and mindset:

"It's funny how some distance makes everything seem small,
And the fears that once controlled me, can't get to me at all,
It's time to see what I can do,
To test the limits and break through,
No right, no wrong, no rules for me
I'm free."

It's amazing the insight Queen Elsa has for when fears hold us back from doing what we want.
Let's sing the chorus together, shall we?

"Let it go, let it go,
I am one with the wind and sky,
Let it go, let it go,
You'll never see me cry,
Here I stand and here I stay,
Let the storm rage on"

Can't you just hear him belting it out?

Now that the Disney singalong portion of this post has concluded, let's talk about an experiment I forced a dear friend to undertake with me last week: A Buddha bowl party. Kind of like a salad jar party, but with roasted veg meant to be eaten warm when you finally get to it.

As an aside, salad jar parties are actually really fun. An afternoon with friends and your lunches are prepped for the week? Yes, please.

But who wants a cold salad on a dreary, rainy day? Not I, good sir, not I.

This endeavour actually stemmed from a conversation with another friend about her friend ("it happened to a friend of a friend of mine" 😉 ) mentioning that she had wanted to a host a Buddha bowl party and it got me thinking if that would actually work. So we did it in the spirit of trying new things and not worrying about failing. In essence, it is like meal prepping for the week, but by pairing up with another person (or in the case of an entire party, many friends), then there's less work for each person to be done and more variety of toppings to add to each bowl. Following so far?

We spent three and some hours of a Sunday cutting up and roasting all our veg for our "bowls." That in itself was a lot of fun. And our children played like angels so that was a huge added bonus to it all. We each contributed half the ingredients, making our bowls full of every colour possible and as hearty as can be.

Are you ready for this list?
Millet
Quinoa
Maple-Spiced Tofu (recipe below)
Spiced chickpeas
Carrots
Bell peppers
Green beans
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Beets
Sweet Potato
Zucchini
Plus two sauce options: Carrot-top pesto and ginger-tahini (I'll include those recipes below).

Both of us were leery of a full week's meal prep (Monday through Thursday's lunches), but it worked out pretty well. I have to admit, by the time Thursday's jar came around, it was a hard go for me to eat it. I kind of picked at it. Then had leftover dinner from the night before. It was just too mushy by that point in the week. My friend, however, faired much better and enjoyed hers the whole week through. She was a smart-cookie and heated her meals in a convection oven, rather than a microwave like me, so her veggies crisped up before eating every day. To be fair, her microwave kicked the bucket a while back and she had no choice. But as the saying goes, "necessity is the mother of invention," and the oven proved to be the superior appliance for this job. I'll have to follow her lead next time.

I added marinated and roasted tofu to mine. My friend, never having eaten tofu, tried it and, in her words, summed it up as "it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be" and added it to one of her meals, with the plan of adding chicken to the rest of them at home. I'll call it a win.

Recipe for the tofu

1 block of firm, organic tofu, pressed*
1 tbsp. maple syrup
1 tbsp. soy sauce or replacement
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. liquid smoke
1/2 tsp sriracha
1/2 tsp garlic powder

1. Cut the tofu into bite sized cubes
2. Mix all the marinade ingredients together and add the tofu
3. Let sit for at least an hour, if not longer, stirring often
4. Roast at 375 F for thirty minutes or until slightly crispy

*Pressing the tofu releases all the water from it, making it better able to absorb all the yummy flavours of whatever you're dressing it in. Wrap the whole block of tofu in a few layers of paper towel and sandwich it between two plates, then add heavy things on top to press it down. Fancy people own tofu presses. I do not. You can frequently find precariously stacked kitchen items sitting on top of blocks of tofu in my kitchen. Pro tip: Prop it against a wall for safety. I tell you this from the other side of three broken plates. Let it sit for at least twenty minutes.

Also, these things are huge. I think if I do this again, I'll half the amount of the ingredients of each jar. I'm a big-lunch eater (I eat the majority of my day's calories at breakfast and lunch and only have a light dinner) and this was too big even for me.

The dressings were a mixed vote. I loved the pesto, it's my go-to for everything (need a quick meal? carrot-top pesto and red lentil pasta. it's a solid win in this house), however, it's super garlicky and not your best bet if you're dealing with a lot of people as she was that week. Her favourite was the ginger-tahini sauce. You could make both and decide your favourite and let me know!

Recipe for the Carrot-top Pesto (makes 4 servings)

1/3 cup pecans
2 cloves of garlic
2 cups or so of carrot tops*
20 basil leaves
7 tbsp. of extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper

1. Pulse all the ingredients except the oil in a food processor until finely crushed, then slowly add in the oil until a paste is formed with a consistency to your liking. You may not need all the oil.

*Why carrot tops? I love them. They taste like mild parsley with a carroty undertone. I order from an organic home-delivery grocer (spoiled much? I know) and as they always keep the tops on the local carrots, I decided something needed to be done with them all, so this pesto was created in a pinch. We eat so much of it that we started ordering the carrots just to get the tops. It's that good.

Recipe for the Ginger-Tahini Sauce (makes 4 servings)

1 inch nub of ginger
2-3 tbsps. of tahini, depending on your love of the stuff (I love it, my husband does not)
Juice of one lemon
1 tsp coconut aminos, or soy sauce
1 tsp maple syrup
Salt and pepper

1. Blend it all in a high-powered blender until smooth. Add a splash of water to thin it, if needed.
And voila.

When putting together a Buddha bowl, there are no rules. It's a grain, a protein, a bunch of veg, a sauce, maybe some small seeds and other bits to make it interesting. I frequently make them for a clean-the-fridge-out dinner. Weird odds and ends of produce lend themselves well to bowls. I'm still learning how to make better sauces but it's okay to not know everything and to make things that taste terrible and to force my loved ones to eat it (case in point: sweet potato soup. I'm sure my husband is cringing reading those words. There's a story for another day there). They'll live (he clearly did) and I'll learn something new.

Stress less, love more. Breathe and renew.
It's October.
And I'm learning to just let it all go.
Let it go, let it gooooo.