Unsexy/high impact self-care, spiritual sourdough, the best sautéed cabbage
and a polar vortex!
Hello everyone! We had our first snow! And now we’re in a polar vortex! The girls have been walking to school, as they always do, and yesterday I thought about how they could legitimately tell their kids one day that they had to walk almost a mile to school when it was five degrees with wind chill. I think it’s character building!
I’m actually enjoying the cold. I’m finding it invigorating and energizing, though there’s definitely a moment of anticipatory dread when I have to transition from our warm cozy apartment to the outside.
I feel like I write about being tired in every week’s newsletter, but yesterday I just felt tired to a different degree (maybe it was walking the girls home in the cold?) and so I went to bed at 7:30pm and woke up naturally at 6:30am, after 11 hours of sleep! I definitely haven’t had more than 7 hours of sleep in a night for a few weeks, and it was so pleasant to wake up without dragging. I always feel like sleep is the most boring self-care (especially because going to bed early means you can’t do fun self-care after the kids are in bed) but it always has the biggest impact. And somehow, I keep learning this fact over and over again. So if you’ve been feeling tired, I recommend you try going to sleep at 7:30pm! (And of course, I need to give a shout out to my husband Dan who was cool with me disappearing after dinner and leaving all the post-dinner clean up and bedtime stuff to him while the girls were alternating between fighting and dancing in the living room to very loud frantic music.)
Now on to the weekly sourdough update! Honestly, I feel like this sourdough starter continues to be such a metaphor for life. It’s now been over two weeks since we started it, and it’s still not expanding after feeding! I feel so divided over whether to keep going with this one (I’ve already invested so much time and money, in the form of organic flour) or whether I should give up and start over.
It really feels like a microcosm of that life situation where something’s not working, and you’re thinking about ending it, but you’ve already invested so much that it feels like a waste to end it. (Plus, it has a name! How could I kill “Powerglow Life”?) But continuing to do the thing that doesn’t work is the definition of insanity, right? There’s also this feeling that maybe it’ll start working in the next day or two, that I might be giving up right before it starts working. It’s kind of maddening!
I’ve been continuing with this starter, but trying different things—changing the ratio of starter to fresh flour, to water (trying what the King Arthur Flour website recommends), trying different types of flours, stirring with my fingers (which is supposed to be good for yeast development), and leaving it covered with a cloth instead of a top (it developed a dried out layer), but nothing is helping!
I found one recipe that calls for creating a yeast starter by first fermenting a mixture of water, raisins, honey and sugar and using that to begin a starter, so I’ve made that mixture and am waiting for it to ferment.
In the meantime, I’m continuing on with the current sourdough starter with the plan to add some of this liquid yeast starter when it’s done and to also start a new starter with the liquid yeast starter.
At a certain point, it occurred to me that I could actually “offer” this starter to the divine/universe/love and call in “divine order” for the right actions to be shown. This is the approach taught by spiritual teacher Tosha Silver, whose work I love, and one of things I love about it is that it’s so practical. You can “offer” anything. Including sourdough. So this starter has become my new spiritual practice—an opportunity to practice “offering” and letting go and then seeing where I’m guided. We shall see what happens!
What I’m Cooking
Along the lines of boring, yet impactful self-care, here is a decidedly unsexy recipe that’s actually very delicious and one I cook a lot. It’s a recipe for sautéed cabbage—it’s super fast and easy and makes a great winter side. It’s another recipe that’s barely a recipe. You basically sauté cabbage in butter. But the key here is to cook it on medium-high heat the whole time, stirring frequently, so that there are pieces that get caramelized and crispy, and it ends up tender, but not mushy. This is one vegetable dish that my younger daughter Vivian will actually eat. Plus, cabbage is cheap! Even organic cabbage. And it’s full of nutrition! It’s really a very underrated vegetable.
Cabbage Sautéed in Butter
Serves 4
Ingredients:
1/2 a head of cabbage (any color), shredded
2-3 tablespoons of butter
1/4-1/2 teaspoon of Redmond Real Salt
Directions:
Heat a large frying pan on medium high heat.
Add the 2-3 tablespoons of butter and melt.
Add the shredded cabbage and 1/4 teaspoon of Redmond Real Salt and sauté, stirring frequently, until the cabbage is tender and browned in spots, about ten minutes. Taste for salt, and add the additional 1/4 teaspoon salt, if desired.
I believe in you and your sourdough! I've been loving following along with the slow evolution of Powerglow Life 😍