lyme in the coconut

TL/DR: down below you’ll find a recipe for chocolate truffles and the absolute revelation that if you heat the bowl before you make ganache, you will suddenly love making ganache. All that stress about WILL THIS TINY AMOUNT OF HOT CREAM MELT ALL THAT CHOCOLATE??? That will be a thing of the past. You are welcome.

Want to read about unappetizing stuff first? I’ve got you.

The first thing I drink in the morning should be lemon water. But I should take my thyroid medication an hour before food, with a full glass of water, and despite what you may have heard about me and lemons (passionate), I don’t keep a lemon in the bedroom; I’m lucky if I remember to bring a glass of water up when I go to sleep. I should take B12 on an empty stomach but at least two hours away from taking the thyroid medication or it interrupts its function. I should eat plenty of fruit (fiber and vitamins!), but not too much (sugar!) and I should only eat fruit on its own, separate from other foods because they digest at different rates, and ideally first thing in the morning but breakfast should be rich in protein and whole grains. I should always leave 2-3 hours of idle time between snacks or meals for my digestion to function without inputs, so I should limit snacking but also it’s important to maintain blood sugar and stay consistently nourished. Meat is murder, but I should avoid foods known to be inflammatory to my system (nuts, legumes, seeds, eggs, dairy) and get plenty of protein, the building block of healing. I’m likely to thrive if I just try keto, paleo, low-FODMAP, bi-phasic, Whole30, vegan, Mediterranean (but my daughter sent a realllllly disturbing video about parasites in fish), intermittent fasting or intuitive eating. Best to eat healthy fats in abundance (but they shut my system down), restore my flora balance with a plethora of probiotics (which turn me into a parade float) and above all else stay relaxed around food because tension leads to indigestion. A healthy gut begins with a healthy mind! A healthy mind begins with a healthy gut! The gut-brain axis! The biome, the biome!

All this to say, I’ve had a heck of a time. I had to take a heavy round of antibiotics for a gut infection two years ago and mama ain’t been right since. What a ride!

I’ve done elimination diets and restricted diets and the ultimate restriction of eliminating my diet—a liquid nutrition phase I warmly discourage anyone from trying unless they absolutely MUST, and which led to one of my more impassioned letters demanding a refund. The gist was basically, “technology exists to make a jellybean taste like buttered popcorn but this substance for a pre-nauseated population tastes like fermented cheese garbage? HAVE YOU EVEN TASTED YOUR OWN PRODUCT, GOOD SIRS?” I got the money, honey.

All of this was super fun in the context of writing and thinking about food, especially as a food writer specifically concerned with my sub-specialty, nourishing foods for healing. I literally wrote a book about intuitive feeding. Ha ha, said the universe.  INTUIT THIS.

An over-share of this type might elicit a lot of suggestions; saying it out loud usually does. They are always well-meaning, the suggestions. And utterly bewildering, taken together.  Please, if you have a suggestion, ponder it in your heart but perhaps do not send.

I started out acquiring lots of data about everything in me that could be tested, and gathering information on best-practice guidelines for all the things that lit up. Maybe it’s how my gut brain is affecting my head brain but I can’t parse it all, especially when it conflicts, as it often does.

All the protocols that I have been told would help me have either done nothing or made me feel worse, even ones I have seen work for people I know. I have a body that prefers a medication’s side effects to its effect proper, for one thing. 

I also found that the more focused and fussy my attention to what I ate and how I felt as a result, the more any innate sense of what might actually be good for me seemed to recede.

I called a pause on all the things a little while ago. Among other nuisances, I have a fairly entrenched chronic Lyme situation, and if you want to find yourself at the nexus of 357 contradictory recommendations then a chronic Lyme diagnosis is your express ticket. Just getting the diagnosis in the first place is a gymnastic exercise, to say nothing of the forest of trees to bark up that you get spit out into once you get over the gate.

Again, thank you but I have all the things to research that I can handle. I have reached critical link saturation.

I’m also not here to say well what do you know but tincture of Crimean staghorn gooseberry root and a program of intense trimolecular third rib remanipulation saved me, and they can save you, too.

There is a lot of that out there. Testimonials from people who spent years getting nowhere recommending the Thing That Finally Got Them Somewhere is what the interwebs excel at. Find out more about my one-step program right after this ad!

Not serving that, though to be sure there can be tremendous value in learning from genuine people what worked for them.

I did find recently that I liked the sound of an adaptogen. Aside from the melodic cadence of the word, the idea of gentle redirection and building on the body’s native abilities appeals to me a great deal.

I already knew that I liked chocolate, and it turns out that adaptogens—for our purposes today, these are mainly members of the mushroom family—like it, too. They play very nicely with hot cocoa, which is great news for people living in February in New England. Speaking of that which abounds on the web, there are a lot of adaptogenic cocoa mixes being blended up out there, and you can get quite happy with any number of them.

Here is a mere sampling:

You can also make it yourself, and put in just what you feel attracted to. That’s what I did (in addition to sampling other people’s). The mix I’m using at the moment is described in a “recipe” below. You should chuck that right out the window and mix up that which calls to you, of course. You might consider adding any of the warming spices (cinnamon, ginger, etc) or some rose powder, for example. Rose powder almost always calls to me.

I have a nice little habit of drinking it once a day, now. I use my electric milk whizzer to froth some oat milk which I definitely do not make myself, and either honey or maple syrup or date syrup to sweeten it into a treat, and drink it from a beautiful cup made by a friend of my daughter’s. Is it the same cup that held the golden milk in the last post? Yes it is. This is basically a hot milk account now. Don’t forget to smash that subscribe button!

Once you make (or buy) the adaptogenic cocoa, you can also make stuff with it, and below the un-recipe is a “recipe” for some chocolate truffles, during the making of which I finally learned to HEAT THE BOWL when I make ganache. Talk about the one hot tip that can change your life.

BELOW ALL THAT—this really is an infomercial after all!—if you’ve read this far, please know that I’m going to give some cocoa away to a lucky person who feels attracted to what mushroom cocoa can do in their lives. Just leave a comment if you think that person could be you, or visit the Instagram post with the cocoa here, and leave a comment. Both methods work to enter.

adaptogenic cocoa

• 1/3 cup cocoa powder

• 2 tablespoons maca powder (digestion, mood, metabolism + fiber, minerals, iron and potassium)

• 1 tablespoon chaga mushroom powder (“the king of mushrooms”—immunity, antioxidants, benefits to hair, nails & skin)

• 1 tablespoon slippery elm powder (anti-inflammatory, supportive nutrition, calcium)

• 1 teaspoon reishi mushroom powder (“the queen of mushrooms”—sleep regulator, stress relief, immunity)

• 1 teaspoon dandelion root powder (superbly nutritious anti-inflammatory prebiotic full of vitamins & minerals)

In a strainer set over a small bowl, combine all of these ingredients and sift to combine (maca in particular tends to clump, so sifting helps with the blending). Store in an airtight jar.

To consume it straight, put 1-2 teaspoons in a mug along with sweetener (such as honey, maple syrup, coconut sugar or date syrup) to taste and whisk about 3/4 cup of very hot water into it. Top with frothed or straight milk of any type.

truffles

makes about six aggie-size truffles

• 2 ounces dark chocolate (I used this HU bar and I cannot say enough nice things about it)

• 2 teaspoons adaptogenic cocoa mix

• 3 tablespoons coconut cream (the solid-ish top layer of a can of full-fat coconut milk) or heavy cream

• 2 teaspoons maple syrup

• 1 teaspoon ghee or coconut oil

• Additional 2-3 teaspoons adaptogenic cocoa mix, to roll the truffles

Put a kettle of water on to boil, and pour the hot water into a medium-sized bowl and let that stand while you fuss with the other stuff.

Chop the chocolate as fine as you can. Dump the hot water out of the bowl and wipe it absolutely dry with a clean towel. Place the chocolate in the warm bowl along with the 2 teaspoons of cocoa mix.

Heat the cream, maple syrup and ghee in a small pan until bubbles appear at the edges. Pour over the chocolate and cover the bowl. Leave it alone for five minutes, then stir the mixture just until smoothly combined. Leave the bowl uncovered until the mixture is absolutely cool, then use a whisk or rotary beater to aerate the ganache. Refrigerate for about 20 minutes, until firm. Using a small spring-loaded scoop or spoon, form rough balls of the mixture and briefly roll them in your palms until smoothly round. Toss them with the additional cocoa mix to coat.

Would you like some cocoa? Leave a comment below, and in a week or so I will pick a winner to send some cocoa to.