THE best chocolate truffles ever - and, guess what, they're good for you!

Well, I wasn’t going to write about food today but then I popped on Facebook and saw that Amy Levin had posted up the recipe for the absolutely beyond awesome truffles that she made on The Deep Pause and so I thought, right…let’s talk about food.

Now, you know me…I went from punishing myself with food (eating myself nearly to death) to punishing myself without food (nearly passing out doing 80mph on the outside lane of the M5 cos I’d been fasting for over a week – no, not that intermittent nonsense; full-off eating nada fasting) to just not really bothering about food at all. 

Nourishment.  That’s what I’d forgotten.  I’d been eating to live.  Cooking as a chore, eating as a bore.  And, yes, I was feeling dried up, desiccated, like coconut that’s been left in the jar and forgotten at the back of the cupboard for years; dried up like old raisins and sultanas turned chewy and mank. 

Amy’s food at The Deep Pause was juicy…it had a touch of decadence, of abundance, of generosity, of power.  Now, don’t get the wrong idea – it was also mega-healthy, the kind of food that makes your cells sing; the kind of food that is just so full of life and passion that it makes you want to do mad things like Crossfit (well, for about four seconds).  No gluten; no sugar; no meat – just total deliciousness. 

When I arrived the table was a cornucopia, piled with fruit, home-made biscuits and energy bars, two types of roasted almonds – one spicy and punchy; the other lazy and sweet (but with a tangy kick).  Oh. My. God.  Could I ever eat enough of those bastard almonds?  And bonbons, bloody bonbons.  And truffles.  But healthy bloody truffles and bonbons for bonbons’ sake!  They tasted like the thickest darkest pure chocolate but were made of …  

‘Go on,’ said Amy, ‘Guess!’  

We tried…thought of everything but… 

‘Nah, you won’t get it,’ she said in triumph.  ‘Black beans!’  Who’da thought?  And she poured out glasses of something that looked like a witch’s potion – dark berry-red and dangerous.  Hibiscus, rose and schizandra infusion, mixed with sparkling spring water and sweetened with a few nectarish drops of vanilla-flavoured stevia.  We sipped, then we slurped and kept passing the jug. 

‘It’s a heart opener,’ she said.  Did it work?  Yeah, it did. 

Amy is a kitchen superhero – part ninja, part alchemist.  Every tenth word is ‘fuck’ but the way she says it makes it sound just plain sweet.  And she sings as she cooks – James Taylor mainly, in the kind of voice that pierces through all bullshit and takes you to the heart/art of sound.  And I’ve always been a bit sniffy about James Taylor but, you know what, I’m mellowing.

Anyhow, enough already.  I ate.  I ate more and more as each day went by.  It was food made with love and mindfulness and every mouthful tasted like bliss.  And, no, I didn’t put on weight, not an ounce.  I just put on a dose of juiciness and came home determined to be a bit more nourishing to myself – on all levels.

If you live in or around London, check out her raw chocolate workshops and wotnot.

If you don’t, check out her website and blog which is jam-packed with recipes and insights and general Amy-ness. 

What?  You want the recipe?  Of course you do.  I'll share this one (thanks, Amy!) but you'll have to go over to the website to catch the rest.

Top Secret Chocolate Truffles

Ingredients

1 tin of black beans
50g xylitol or coconut sugar
1 dropper full sweetleaf stevia
1/2 cup or 50g coconut oil, melted or same amount of cacao butter, melted
50g-70g cacao or cocoa powder
1 tsp tamari
2 tsp vanilla powder or 1 tsp extract

Method

• Open the black beans and pour the contents into a small pan and warm them through
• Sieve the liquid from the beans and transfer the food processor or high speed blender
• Add remaining ingredients and process until smooth and creamy. If you have a low quality food processor, then you will have a slightly inconsistent texture, but it’ll still be epic
• Taste the mix and see if you want to add more cacao powder (or cocoa powder) or sweetener… everyone is different so you may want them darker or sweeter than me
• Transfer to a bowl and pop in the fridge to set, about 30 minutes or so
• Once set, roll into balls in the palm of your hand (if the mix is rather firm, it’ll loosen when you begin to roll them)and then into a small bowl of cacao or cocoa powder to coat
• Pop back in the fridge to set and that’s all!

Note:  Xylitol sounds like a chemical shitstorm but, truly, it isn't.  It's a natural sweetener that is actually a fine anti-fungal too (so ideal if you're trying to cut out sugar because of candida problems).  Stevia is also okay, providing you get the sweetleaf variety (think health food shops, rather than supermarkets).

True Love, primal yurts and the people who're airbrushed out of fairy tale books

While I was at The Pause I read Call Off The Search by Anna (Pasternak) and Andrew Wallas.  Why? Because Danielle suggested I might find it interesting.  She runs courses with Andrew Wallas and says he’s a good guy.  So I did.  It wasn’t as if I had anything else I was burning to read: I haven’t read anything lately that has rocked my boat, that has really made me think or feel. 

It seemed a bit familiar and then I remembered that I’d read an extract from it in a supplement when it first came out.  It had annoyed the hell out of me.  So I guess that’s one very good reason to read it, huh?  What annoyed me?  Well, the book is all about how you shouldn’t ever give up on a relationship; that you have to work through the fights and the anguish and the tough times.  That love relationships can easily call up your ‘core wounding’ – that early first pattern of hurt and disappointment we suck in with our mother’s milk – and offer a wonderful opportunity to heal at a deep, primal level.  Which is all very stoic and good except that…Andrew Wallas left his relationship.  He told Anna Pasternak she was a posh spoilt insecure bitch, got her sobbing in his yurt and then had this sudden ‘ka-boom!’ realisation that she was his One True Love.  So, what did he do?  He left his wife.  Just like that.   All very amicable apparently but still…

Marriage neatly dissolved, the whole book is all about how he and new ‘True Love’ Anna work out their stuff.  It's about how they fight and bicker and nearly break up all the time, how they love each other but also sometimes hate each other; and how that can all change in a heartbeat.  Bottom line, they just slog it out with brutal honesty.  Which is great.  I mean, good for them…but, but, but… all the way through I was left wondering ‘And what about his ex-wife?’ 

The relationship, he says, was ‘emotionally empty’.  So then, it’s okay to walk out of a relationship if it’s ‘emotionally empty’?  I dunno, it just seemed all a bit too convenient somehow.  How do you know if your relationship is ‘emotionally empty’?  Maybe emotionally empty is a manifestation of core wounding?  Bottom line, how do you know if it’s doomed, terminal, that it’s time to pack up your yurt and move on, or whether you should stay, drive in your yurt pegs a bit deeper and sledgehammer away at it?  A&A just don’t answer that question.  So I was left pondering it myself. 

Maybe it’s about a ‘charge’?  If a relationship still has ‘juice’?  As the saying goes it’s a thin line between love and hate but both are positive emotions, right?  As in emotions that have a positive charge, that are powerful, punchy, full-on.  I’ve always felt that the true opposite of love isn’t hate but apathy.  If a relationship has become apathetic, if the parties involved are just going through the motions, presumably that is what A&A are calling time on?  Can you give apathy an adrenalin shot?  Can you juice it up?  Or should you just sigh and move on?  What if your core wounding has left you unable to love?  

I don’t know. I really don’t.  All I know is that, all through the book, I kept wondering when we were going to hear about his first marriage.  I wanted to know what happened to his ex-wife.  Did she find ‘True Love’ as well, or is she sitting somewhere reading the book and shoving her fingers down her throat over each gushing paragraph?  How did she feel when he told her it was all over?  Was she gutted or secretly relieved?  Did she punch the air and go, ‘Yessss!  I always hated that fucking yurt!’ 

I guess I wanted to hear about how one lives when the projections of falling in love fall away.  That, to me, is the more interesting question.  A&A are clearly still madly passionately in love.  Will they still feel the same way in twenty years? Is that True Love?  What is? 

I wasn’t intending to write this blog post.  There was a bit in the book, a concept that intrigued me and I was going to blog about that but this came out instead.  But, hey, it is what it is.  What do you think? 

Dreaming on the starlit hill

So, there was a hill at The Deep Pause.  A gentle slope hill, not a hard slog hill.   At the top stretched a small stone circle with a fire-pit in the centre - a mini mandala.  A line of trees protected its exposed flank, dappling shadow-shapes onto the green green, grass-green grass.

The first night most of our group crashed early to bed but Danielle, Lynn and I sat around the fire and had one of those conversations that smack you sideways because you simply aren’t expecting them.  And it was all good.  Very good. 

Stretching out on the ground felt good too, and looking up as the stars stretched themselves out felt good, and listening to the myriad little sounds of the night felt good.  So good, in fact, that when the others went in, I didn’t want to follow.  I wanted to stay right there, in that sweet sweet spot, in the soft not-so-darkness and spend the night out under the sky, wandering/wondering through star semaphore.  So I curled up in my blanket (my snugly heart throw) and did just that.

Vague thoughts of vision quests arose, of confronting fears and wotnot but, really, that was daft because there was nothing out there to confront – the scary monsters and super freaks are all inside me, not rustling in the hedgerows.  My animal medicine was yet to come. 

It got darker and darker but it was a silky blue darkness, like rubbing your face in velvet. It felt so safe up there, so held, just me and the fire and the stars; the cool breeze on my face and the crackle and warmth of the fire on my back and the rough and tumble of the earth against my side, grazing shoulder and hip and head. 

It struck me again how insane it all is.  There I was, this little ant stuck to this little planet like a fridge-magnet, whizzing through space, roller-coastering through time.  Isn’t it crazy?  You'd think that, at some point, the earth would go 'Oh, just sod it' and let go and you'd just ping off out there, like a stone from a child's catapult.  For now at least, it doesn't but, while the body stays behind, the mind can go...anywhere, anywhen.  Can't it?  

I put another log on the fire and turned over to stare at the stars and dream and dream and dream. 

'Proper' report coming soon on Queen of Retreats.

Waterloo Farm is pretty magical - if you're planning a trip to Cornwall, maybe check out their website?