Maggie’s Green Mung Bean Seaweed Coconut Delight

Ingredients (makes 2-3 servings)

• 1 cup dry mung beans (mine were split)
• 3 cups of water
• 1-2 tablespoons coconut oil
• a few handfuls of dried seaweed (wakame is good)

Directions
Dump everything in a pan. Bring the water to a boil, then turn it down to a simmer. Cook, covered, until beans are done. Depending on the beans this could be 40 minutes or it could be an hour and a half. Just keep testing them.

It is AWESOME. I promise. Chockfull of (good) protein, vitamins, and minerals. It even has some healthy fats (coconut oil).

The trick about the oil is that it keeps the water from boiling over. You must use the (healthy) oil.

I’m back to work. What’s your favorite weekday breakfast? I think mine is oatmeal (which I had this morning).

I have had a really amazing 6 day streak of happiness. Ever since Wednesday night I’ve been over the moon. Since I’m in such a good mood I wanted to give an update about the thing that makes me the happiest girl in the world: getting married to Bobby, the most amazing man I have ever met! (The engagement post is here.) I am also excited about a product review that I’m going to do for a company that sells bar stools – stay tuned 🙂 Maybe I will get some bar stools for my wedding, hehe.

We have picked a place for the ceremony – the meetinghouse I grew up going to in Yardley, PA. Here is a nice picture (this is in the winter):

They are so sweet – when my dad told them I was getting married they blocked off every weekend in July for us (we still haven’t picked the exact date).

Now for the reception! We have a few options. We may be able to have it at the meetinghouse, if we can get them to let us have wine and beer (Quakers typically do not drink, myself included). If that doesn’t work out, we will likely have it at my parents’ house in New Jersey. My really sweet Auntie Jo and Uncle Morris (remember our gingerbread houses?) offered their house (in Flushing) for the reception as well – they have a great backyard. I think we will have a party there this summer anyway even if we don’t hold the reception there.

Speaking of Auntie Jo, we took a really awesome cooking class last week… I must update about that. Soon, I promise. It was called “Eat Local, Drink Global” and the focus was fish. The very talented Peter Berley was the teacher. I think Bobby is jealous of my celebrity crush on him.

Onto the food! Here are some yummy things I have eaten recently: frozen yogurt from Berrywild – The Art of Yogurt.

Berrywild has two kinds of yogurt – “berry smooth” and “kinda icy”. Bobby and I both got “kinda icy”. So good! I will definitely go back. Bobby always gets toppings but I am too cheap for them.

I like to switch up my morning breakfast grains (when I go for grains). This is grits with lots of cinnamon (that’s why it’s kind of brown and looks like oat bran). I topped it with agave nectar and coconut oil.

I don’t understand what the difference is between coconut oil and coconut butter. The oil is solid at room temperature, so it’s kind of buttery. The butter melts really easily just like the oil. Are they the same?

I went through a phase once where I did not eat much oil or any fats in general, and I was miserable. I couldn’t get full not matter how much I ate, I was cold, my skin was dry, and I was cranky as hell. Healthy fats can be revitalizing for your skin, hair, hormones, etc… Fats are so necessary in a healthy diet! I would even go so far as to say that eating more fat will help you lose weight, provided that you don’t overdo it. When I eat more carbs and less fats, I gain weight; when I do the opposite, I lose (or maintain, if I want to).

What’s your favorite healthy fat? I think mine is coconut oil or butter. Love them both.

This is an overview of the treatment for hormonal imbalance and treatment for stress. Acupuncture treatment can be very helpful for both. It’s an effective natural treatment for stress.

I’ve had a few people emailing me asking for recommendations that my acupuncturist told me. So I will just put them out here for you all to see. A lot of the mindfulness exercises can be good for anyone.

Acupuncture is great for: stress, digestion, hormonal problems, and more. I mainly went because of my digestion and a hormone thing!

Eating recommendations:

• Eat: lamb and bison, lightly spiced. (Cinnamon and chili are good.) (This is for the hormone thing.) (I made lamb here and here. Used spices here.)
• Eat: Eggs and bacon. Alternate between turkey and regular bacon so I don’t get bored. (Reasoning: animal fats are good for hormone regulation as long as they are from free-range/organic animals.) (Also for hormones.) (I made bacon here. Eggs and bacon breakfast here.)
• Eat: black beans with some coconut oil. (For hormones.) (Ate them here.) (Coconut oil here.)
• Eat: lemon rind/zest in cooking; oranges. Something about the rid of these citrus fruits is good for digestion.
• Eat: ginger and garlic. Good for digestion. Also very warming.
• Snack idea: rice cakes with coconut oil.

It is good to keep a balance – meat and carbs are acidic in nature, so to balance them out, we need alkaline green leafy veggies. Lots of them!

Other recommendations:

• Soak feet in hot water with lavender and epsom salts. Don’t let the water get cold! Do this for 20-30 minutes.
• Take a hot bath after dinner with lavender and epsom salts.

Meditations to try:

• Lie on your back (savasana). Breath in and out with your chest. Imagine your heart is expanding and making your chest rise. Keep focusing on the strength and power of your heart. (5-15 minutes.)
• Sitting or savasana. Focus on an area of your body that may feel neglected or needing love. Imagine a tiny light the size of a dime radiating from the center of that place. Now imagine it growing and radiating out from that body part until it is big enough to envelop your whole body. Now take all that energy and begin to compress it back into a smaller and smaller light. Eventually the light goes back to the size of a dime (still in the same location). Repeat if necessary. (5-10 minutes.) I got this one from an intenSati class with Lindsay.

Books:

• Feeling Good by David D. Burns. Cognitive therapy isn’t just for depression!

Have you tried acupuncture? What about other Traditional Chinese Medicine? (Coco has a good series on this stuff too.)

Look what I had for breakfast yesterday:

This was:

• 2 pieces of organic, free-range (pork) bacon (from Whole Paycheck)
• 2 organic, cage-free eggs (also from Whole Paycheck) cooked in bacon fat

This meal was inspired by both Heather’s manly breakfast and my acupuncturist. It seems that my new motto is “eat more animal fat“, and it is working for me. Some people seem to do fine without – my sister is a vegetarian/vegan and my brother is vegetarian and experimenting with adding in more raw foods. My mom was a vegetarian for most of her 20’s (including when she was pregnant with me!) and my dad follows the accidental vegetarian diet because he lives with so many vegetarians.

My dad actually ends up eating more meat than the rest of them (in the form of lunch-meat on sandwiches, the occasional meat chili, and sometimes some bacon on the weekends), and… well – I take after my dad. We look alike, we talk alike, we think alike, and when we hang out together we usually end up working on some project (reorganizing something, or nitpicking about the way something has been put together, or making a mess unintentionally as we try to fix something) and not talking that much – but that’s how we like it.

Anyway, this is not about what we do, but rather how our food needs might be similar as well. That side of my family has digestion troubles (to put it mildly!) and I seem to have inherited them. They flare up when I am not eating meat. (Last time my stomach felt good was when I was driving across the country – and eating meat at almost every meal.)

Anyway, onto another meal (dinner).

This was…

• organic ground lamb from Whole Foods (you actually can’t see it much, but I probably had 4-5 ounces)
• garlic + frozen veggies (broccoli and an Asian stir fry mix) cooked in coconut oil
• topped with cream cheese (this is full fat by the way)
• spices: pepper, ginger powder, cinnamon

This is an acupuncture-inspired meal. He said to try eating lamb, lightly spiced. Also garlic (good for digestion), ginger (warming and good for digestion), and cinnamon (just good – I don’t remember why). He also recommended coconut oil, so I threw that in there as well.

I made this beauty for lunch yesterday:

It was…

• veggies cooked in remaining bacon fat and coconut oil (frozen broccoli, fresh okra, green peas)
• cream cheese topping

Coconut oil is a great source of saturated fat (NOT always bad for you), great for the skin, doesn’t create harmful byproducts when heated, reduces stress, and aids in weight loss (these are just google results).

Speaking of weight loss… Did I mention I lost 2-3 of those pesky intenSati pounds? This happened in one week, and I didn’t eat fewer calories (if anything I ate more). What I did was eat more fat (and meat) and fewer carbs (but not no carbs! I still had lots of oatmeal and rice, and of course many many veggie carbs). Fat can be really good for you.

I am actually off to a blogger brunch that has been postponed for far too long… So I’ll update on that later.

What are you plans for Valentine’s day? We actually don’t know yet!!