Monthly Archives: June 2020

The Discomfort Zone

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Filed under How-to, Self love

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Have you looked in the mirror lately and thought about how much you’ve aged in the past year? Past 4? I watched Wanda Sykes’ Stand-Up special, “Not Normal” on @netflix the other night (highly recommend!), and she recounted a discernible observation—the major stress of the job as POTUS clearly has shown its effects on past presidents: Obama went full-on gray within 2 years as POTUS. George W. shrunk a few inches & Clinton grew a weird thing on his nose. She says in her act. Then she mentioned Trump, who has not aged at all. Why? “He’s on executive time. Trump hasn’t aged.” And then she said something even more profound—“But WE have. He is fucking us up. Everybody’s looking older. My God. HE IS FUCKING US UP.”

Damn. Ain’t that the truth? How many of you feel like you’ve aged a decade in this administration? Hell, the past 6 months? Stress has its obvious affects on us, whether it’s biting nails, teeth grinding, losing sleep, not eating, overeating —to more deeply rooted effects like depression, anxiety, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes. The list goes on and on. Like a disease, stress takes over our bodies and all its systems. Our Immune system (making us more susceptible to getting sick); our Musculoskeletal system (giving us headaches and migraines); the Respiratory system (heavy breathing, shortness of breath); Cardiovascular (the increase in heart rate and blood pressure, which in the long-term can increase the risk for strokes, heart attacks & hypertension). When the Endocrine system is affected it increases its production of glucocorticoids, including cortisol production of steroid “Stress hormones.” The overproduction of these hormones is directly linked to obesity & diabetes, among other diseases. The Gastrointestinal system and its moving parts are all affected from difficulty swallowing, heartburn-like symptoms, to nausea & vomiting and our bowels. The Nervous system (the pilot of our bodies) is central to all of this because it regulates the autonomic nervous system and interprets potential threats, signaling the other systems to react.

Stress is not good for any of us. And it’s hard to say, “don’t stress” while we’re in a global pandemic, a civil rights movement, a recession, and people are dying because of it. What I will say is this: love and hug your loved ones if you can, when you can. Express gratitude, spread kindness and love, meditate, smoke a bowl, make passionate love, eat healthy foods, watch movies with puppies and kittens, practice safe social distancing & fight the good fight—do what you gotta do to keep your body strong and in good health. We’ve got a lot more work to do, and we can’t really “work” if we’re sick.

Source material: http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/stress-body

Remembering Hollywoodland

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Filed under Breakfast Club, Comfort Foods, Dairy free recipes, Filipino food, Flipped, Vegan, vegan recipes

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These past few weeks I’ve reflected on my personal past traumas and the traumas of my parents and ancestors. On my mom’s side, my grandfather’s two older brothers were the first to put down roots in the United States when they immigrated to Los Angeles in the 1940s after serving in the military helping the U.S. during World War II.

My grandmother (I never met my grandfather as he died before I was born) doesn’t talk about the bad things, like the segregation, prejudice and other challenges and hardships that they faced, but I would sometimes overhear some of those sad stories in whispers when I was a little girl (most of which I was too young to understand). The stories that they did share with us as kids were the good ones—like how my grandfather’s brother worked as a limousine driver in Hollywood and drove around many of its stars. My grandmother (who is turning 99 this year!) to this day still reminds us of her brother-in-law’s numerous stories of driving around Clark Gable to star-studded events and what a “classy and nice guy” he was to my granduncle. It seemed this acceptance and friendship he received from a big star like Mr. Clark Gable (which is how he would retell the story she says. It was always “Mr.” and not just “Clark”) are some of the happier moments he chose to share.

In keeping with part of my heritage, I hopped on the pancake cereal fad but turnt them up a bit and made ube pancakes instead. I used coconut milk and coconut oil to complement the ube flavors, but dang it I really wish I had some macapuno (young coconut) on hand!

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Processed With Darkroom

Ube Pancake Cereal
Serves 2

INGREDIENTS
1 3/4 cup flour (GF blend works if you’re gluten-free)
1/2 cup grated, mashed cooked ube
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2T agave or date syrup
1T flaxseed + 2.5T water put together to make a flax egg
1t coconut oil, melted (plus more for the pan)
1 1/2 cups of coconut milk
1/2t baking soda

For serving:
Coconut milk
Vegan butter
Maple syrup

METHOD
Mix together dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, mix together the wet ingredients. Pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients bowl. Mix till completely incorporated. Carefully place batter into a squeeze bottle with the tip large enough to easily squeeze out the thick batter.

Turn your largest skillet on medium-high heat. Add in up some oil. Squeeze the batter into half-dollar sized pancakes all over the pan but leaving enough room between them (about a half-inch). Cook for about 2-4 minutes then flip per side.

Repeat till all batter is used. Serve in a bowl with a bit of melted vegan butter and maple syrup and/or non-dairy milk.