Enchantment Learning & Living Blog

Welcome to Enchantment Learning & Living, the inspirational space where I write about the simple pleasures, radical self-care, and everyday magic that make life delicious.

On Dreaming Deeply

April 10, 2014

You are craving it: that deep sleep that makes you forget where and who you are, and yet brings you closer to yourself.

You welcome it with the arms of a lover as you crawl into bed, already claiming it as yours before the lamp light is out. You wait for it to take you, however impatiently, knowing full well that it will take the time it wants to take--at first courting you slowly and then upon you all at once, pulling you deeper into a realm beyond your own.

It is not the sleeping you love, so much as the dreaming. You long for the stories that unfold behind your eyelids and the parts of yourself to awaken that are too often submerged in a hazy half-sleep throughout the day.

Deeper still you go, to places with no names and languages beyond your scope in the here and now, but that are yours nonetheless--yours always, when you sneak beneath your covers and let sleep take you.

Yes, it is the dreaming you look forward to, so much so that it is a wonder your waking life is not its own dream meant to pass the hours, the minutes until you can once again be claimed by that other place, that other embrace.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

On Chamomile

April 9, 2014

It is the soft yellow heads you see first, then thin white petals dried into healing slivers. You smell ripe apples and rich earth next, the sweet graininess of the little flower a soothing potion when steeped in hot water.

Gingerly, you gather a small handful of these fragile little flowers and funnel them into your tea strainer which you then nestle into the arms of your favorite fat tea mug.

You pour hot water, freshly boiled, into your mug, enjoying the sweet steam that rises to kiss your face; it is the perfume of sweet grass and sun-warmed fruit that laps over your skin.

You watch the flowers bloom anew in your mug, the white petals unfurling and then dissolving into the warm liquid.

When it it is time, you remove the strainer from your mug, leaving behind only a thick healing concoction the color of yellow straw--your own liquid sun cupped between your hands.

You take a sip, letting it wash your throat and course through your body, at once attracting abundance and repelling unwanted energies--if lore is to be believed.

Just one sip of the brew from this apple-scented flower and you are convinced. Inside and out, it has cocooned your body in its warmth, sheltered you from that which you don't need and saving you for that which you do.

She Works Hard for the Money Power Muffins

April 8, 2014

During a busy teaching day, I like to stay fueled with these power muffins--they're tasty, easy to make, and so packed with vitamins and nutrients that they can hold me for a long time. This is especially important for the days I'm teaching back-to-back classes and don't get to my lunch until later in the afternoon. If you, too, find you need a healthy snack between meals, whip up a batch of these She Works Hard for the Money Power Muffins!

Ingredients:

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup pepitas (pumpkin seeds)

2 tablespoons almond meal

2 tablespoons flaxseed meal

3 tablespoons chia seeds

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon ginger

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/3 cup vegetable oil or coconut oil

1/3 cup coconut milk

2 eggs

1 shredded granny smith apple

2 shredded carrots

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350F degrees.

Oil muffin tins. Combine all dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, mix all wet ingredients. Slowly combine dry ingredients with wet ingredients. Fill greased muffin tins about two-thirds full with batter. Bake until lightly browned, about 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean. Let cool for 15 minutes. Enjoy!

On Cooking an Onion

April 7, 2014

Ah yes, dinner.

You don't know what you feel like and, at the end of the day, are incapable of making any real decisions. But you know, just as well, that you must eat. So you turn to a kitchen ritual so old you don't remember who you learned it from--your mother, most likely, or perhaps your Florentine sister teaching you yet another Italian custom. In any case, you know what must be done.

You need to cook an onion.

This onion is your culinary oracle. Once gently simmering in your pan it will divine the future of your kitchen table, wake up your palate and reveal that which you most desire--for tonight.

So you deftly move through you conjuring ritual with the ease of someone who has done it often. You pull a sweet onion from your cupboard and lovingly chop it up on your cutting board. You heat up oil and slide your offering into the pan--a gift to the culinary gods.

There is nothing left to do but let that humble kitchen staple begin to caramelize and wait for that moment of inspiration. You feel the pungent scent of these bulbs drift through your home, conjuring up memories of comforting meals like rich soups and ratatouille and roasted root vegetables. But it is dhal you finally settle on--yes dhal, cooked to perfection only once the onions are added to the lentils, along with garlic and cumin. Yes, dhal.

The oracle has spoken.

On Long Naps

April 6, 2014

You hadn't meant to sleep that long, not really.

You just closed your eyes--but only for a moment. You were already comfortably lounging on your bed, a soft knitted blanket wrapped loosely around you. A paperback in your hands. Your eyelids had grown heavy between reading one chapter and the next. Just for a moment, you thought. You'll close your eyes and practice your meditation, focusing on your breathing. Yes, that's exactly what you'll do.

Before you know it, your book had slipped from your hands just as you have slipped from this world. A part of you is vaguely aware of the knitted blanket pressed against you, its little folds and ridges conforming to your body, your head relaxed against your pillow.

And then you go deeper.

Images flit past your mind--the backyard you grew up in, your now kitchen, and other places. Places you've only seen in your dreams but know well--and deeper still you go. Narrative after narrative unfolds, your dreams like layers of an onion, each one peeling back to reveal another.

And as you sleep you feel your body mending, your soul filling up in another world, your mind recharging as your real world concerns melt away, float off like clouds, somehow less important when drifting in another realm.

When you wake, hours later, it is slowly, gently. You are disoriented, not sure of the day or time or where, frankly, you are. Then you feel your knitted blanket around you, see the bubbles and shadows of the popcorn wall above you. You see it now. You are home, in your bed, having slept the afternoon away. You close your eyes again, not quite ready to leave your sanctuary. For now, it is enough to linger in your bed, halfway between sleeping and waking.

On Baking

April 5, 2014

Outside it is a calm, cool, almost cloudy spring day. You woke up feeling relaxed, deliciously unfocused. Your body is pleasantly sore from a week of strengthening and healing. It is the kitchen that eventually calls to you between nursing your last cup of coffee and tinkering with words at your writing desk. You want the pure comfort of baking.

You put on the kettle for tea. Your rummage through recipes--both in the books stacked against one wall of your kitchen and in the files of your mind--until you land on another idea entirely: time to play, toy with a new muffin recipe.

Slowly, you gather your supplies. Two kinds of flour and too many seeds to keep track of, shredded carrots and apples, your favorite spices, cinnamon, and ginger. You whisk together eggs and milk, flour and spices. When your mix is ready, you spoon it into your muffin tins, already anticipating the warm treat that awaits you soon, so soon.

You pop your muffin batter into the oven and set the timer. While you putter around the house--washing your baking dishes and flipping through your bookshelf--the rich scent of cinnamon and brown sugar waft through the oven, perfuming your home with a sense of comfort and well being.

It isn't until you pull the muffins out from the oven and bite into the still-too-hot treats that you feel the warmth in your belly, the cozy tingling in your spine that tells you all is well with the world.

You are at peace. You are at home.

On Watching the Robin Build Its Nest

April 4, 2014

It is far too cold out today for it to really feel like spring, certainly too cold to muster the energy for the potted gardening plans you had been only too eager to work on when it was warmer. Your breath streams out in thick white clouds before you as your venture out onto your patio. You feel winter's fingers hugging the earth for one last time, before letting it go--wistfully almost, as if winter knows that as soon as it's gone, nature will turn to another lover, spring, where it will happily settle into the new season's warm embrace.

The robin in the tree, however, feels none of this. For this bird, winter is already good as gone. And so it flits from tree to tree, gathering brittle leaves and other ephemera to build its nest. Spring is here. There is much to do.

You watch this robin swoop down to the ground, gathering dried grass in its beak, hopping over the empty fountain, in search of stray bits of thread and fluff for its new home. In the cold that is almost too much for you to bear, even snuggled in your plush robe, you can't take your eyes off this bird as it takes its treasure. What others might see as debris and nature's castoffs, this bird uses to build itself a shelter nestled in the crook of two gnarled branches high up in the tree outside your window.

This robin builds its home tenderly, tucking dried grass here and there into the folds of its perfectly round nest, fussing over the sticks and leaves that make up the plush foundation of its home. Busy, busy. The home must be built for soon it will be time to settle in and lay those eggs, to care and nurture that new life.

Finally, the cold has got the best of you, and you make your way inside, but not before you cast a glance at your potting soil and seeds in the corner of your patio. Soon, soon, you will tend your home too. You will flit here and there, gathering supplies for your garden. You will fuss over the seeds and the arrangement of pots. You will even leave out bits of dried plants and thin strips of bark for the robin.

On Healing as Art

April 3, 2014

You must take comfort in the journey--the grace and the flow of listening to your body day by day, allowing yourself to truly embrace the task of understanding the pieces that make up who you are. It is its own art form, a daily expression of self-care, devotion to wholeness of mind, body, spirit.

The tightness in the shoulder, the twinge in the hip, the loud mind flitting from one thing to the next--these things are gifts from the natural you that is buried under the debris of the day. Gifts, yes, gifts. They are your body's way of making you pay attention, tune in, listen to your deepest self and nourish that voice to fulfillment. They are the simple melody you can't shake, the one that pulses through your veins, dances in your blood until you're left with a song, if only you pause long enough to listen to that first tentative beat, that first pang of rhythm.

One moment your are on the mend, the song of your essence thrumming deep inside you, filling you up and giving you wings; then just as suddenly you forget to listen to that simple melody, that quiet beat of your body as louder noises, bigger demands call to you--distractions from your art. It is then that your body must get louder, then that it cries out, feeling neglected, for you have tuned out the rhythm, the song of your body.

Healing is the poetry of the self, every tendon mended is a loving word inscribe on your body. It is a continuous journey, the deepest expression of self--a ritualized performance art that you cannot stop doing, or the very fabric of your essence unravels like a thread from a sweater until you are nothing but a pile of string, no form, no shape, no essence, no song.

You must be the healing art to live, to thrive, to sing.

On Getting Sh** Done

April 2, 2014

You feel like a boss.

Your week started with more than you knew how to handle, carry-overs from last week: tasks put off in order to deal with unexpected bumps in the road, piles of essays to grade taller than yourself--even in heels. Procrastination was not in your vocabulary. It was, in truth, the stuff of anxiety dreams. You knew there would be no relaxation until that mountain of work was reduced to a small speck of dust. No evening glass of wine enjoyed, no yoga fully given over to.

There was only one thing to do: get shit done.

The hours before you unrolled like one long 80s montage dubbed to a Spanish pop soundtrack: clipping through papers and answering emails and cranking out those lesson plans. Onward! Watch as the pile of ungraded essays is reduced to one final late paper. Bob your head to the beat of Belanova as you see the last of that online training.

Between one day and the next, you found yourself with a to-do list whose entries had been crossed through one after another, until you were left with nothing but horizontal black lines, proof of your progress.

This, this is getting shit done. And the post-yoga glass of wine? That's enjoying your boss status.

Coconut Water-Kiwi-Lime Cocktail

April 1, 2014

That's right, I said it. All us hippies can feel free to have our coconut water and drink it too--in cocktail form! It makes drinking cocktails feel almost healthy, because, hey, there are tons of good-for-you vitamins and electrolytes in your glass, thanks to the coconut water. If you're feeling extra virtuous or pregnant, feel free to leave out the vodka--the drink is equally delicious sans alcohol.

Ingredients:

1.5 oz vodka (1 shot)

3 oz coconut water (2 shots)

1 squeeze of lime (about half a teaspoon)

One skinned chopped kiwi

Ice

Pour vodka, lime, and kiwi in a glass and muddle ingredients until kiwi mixes with liquids. Add ice. Top with coconut water. Stir. Enjoy! Makes one serving (so you should probably double it and share with a friend).