Friday-Night Pizza Recipe

Crushed tomatoes and mozzarella/romano

I’ve had some requests for my Friday-night pizza recipe. Simple family rituals like Friday-night pizza night help keep us centered when the ride of life gets wild. And, when we do something we enjoy with regular routine we start to cultivate a sense of time and place. We prepare our body to take cues from our environment and condition ourselves to receive the good stuff.

This is a base recipe to start playing with. It’s a beautiful starter for learning about bread-making and building a confident understanding. It’s very forgiving. I also sometimes use a sourdough starter or use other flours. This basic recipe is meant to be easy. You can whip up the dough in the morning and have it ready for dinner. But if friends invite you over, throw the dough in the fridge covered with a wet towel- it will be just fine tomorrow. 

4 cups of flour

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp yeast

1 1/2-2 cups of water (the water depends on the humidity and the season) 

Combine and knead all ingredients. The dough should be soft and tender but not at all tacky or wet. 

Let rise.

Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees. Divide dough in two and gently stretch into disks. Dock all over with a fork. 

Par bake the disks on a pizza stone ( I also LOVE my cast iron pizza pan) 

You just want them about 1/2 baked. Remove from oven and spread a clove of minced garlic and one spoon of mayo all over with a pastry brush ( each). Yep, sounds crazy but I learned it from a friend about 15 years ago and it’s so important! You can use olive oil, it creates a slightly different texture. 

Apply sauce, herbs, and topping of your choice. I like pepper jelly, cilantro and mozzarella with sautéed shiitakes.  Or crushed tomatoes and mozzarella. Use a hard mozzarella and just cover the sauce with a thin layer of cheese. Then finish with Romano from a micro plane. 

Bake in the oven until the cheese is bubbly and starting to brown. Enjoy, with loved ones, on a regular basis.

Beltane invitation

The Earth is just so pleased and in love with herself. And so in love with the sun. When you step outside and stand on Earth and feel the Sun’s warmth on your skin, you are just a little more in love with it all too. The birds and insects and spring peepers make a little love song. Water babbles or ripples or waves, and when the wind blows it is full of fragrance. It is all a romance. Everything is looking for union, full of excitement and expectation. 

The fires of Beltane used to be a time of play and exploration of your own sensuality, sexuality, and intimacy. Whether alone, or in trusted partnership, this trio of sensuality, sexuality, and intimacy provides an opportunity to practice deep level lower chakra work. Modern humans have very little space to explore the gift of their sexuality or the ways physical pleasure is related to health and spirit. As children come of age we give them long talks about the dangers of sex, and no discussion about its benefits, no discussion about its sacred gifts. Your sexuality and its expression, your fullness and understanding of it are a cornerstone in the foundation of your health and wellness- yet even alternative health practitioners rarely ask their patients about their sex life. 

Vibrancy is a result of optimal wellness. It is a result of all chakras being open and interconnected, the chakras are interdependent. We cannot do chakra work, spiritual work, or wellness work without doing the deeply personal work of investigating what sexuality, sensuality and intimacy mean to us. When my clients do this work they suddenly find new doors open on their journey, new tools available in all areas of life. 

We expect women to stand up for themselves at work and in public arenas when so many still aren’t comfortable asking the person they love and trust most in the world for what they want in bed. Lower chakra practice is essential to strength, confidence, and creativity. As a result of all our conditioning we keep our deepest selves from ourselves and from each other. The conditioning of men, of women, and our relationships with each other has complicated our desires. Imagine how much magic can happen when we practice removing these conditions and the hearts are even closer than the bodies.  This is about much more than intimate partnerships, healthy intimate partnerships just provide a safe place to practice. When you are intimate with your sensuality and your lower chakras, you are free to connect more deeply with everyone and everything you encounter. 

Today the sun will kiss your skin and the breeze will blow your hair. Its an invitation. 

Go play, its May. 

What is inner-peace? And how do we find it?

What is inner-peace?

A sense of peace is brought about by a sense of connection. This sense of connection is determined by our deepest values and is different for everyone. It even changes and evolves for each of us. We can feel a sense of connection to each other, to nature, to our work, to family and friends, or to the divine. We can feel a sense of connection to ourselves. This feeling of connection is what we call alignment, because it feels “right”. It feels great because it brings about a neurological response, which leads to the parasympathetic response. This feels good and right because it is what human bodies are intended to do after thousands of years of evolution. We are meant to be connected, to each other, ourselves, and the divine. It shows in our brains and our brain chemistry. Even if you don’t believe in any divinity, your brain responds to feelings of connection and peace in the same positive way.  

Practices such as mindfulness, yoga, and meditation ( along with dozens of religious practices all around the world) are helpful in creating this feeling within us. Once we are able to activate this sense of alignment we can use it to help us “feel better”. When we experience stress, say from sitting in traffic, we can use our mindfulness practice to help keep us calm. This is powerful. When we practice activating this sense of connection often, we feel less confusion and turmoil on a daily basis. This allows us to be more creative and solve complicated problems.

Once you learn to activate your sense of peace, connection, and alignment you have a choice. You can stay there, at peace, or you can move beyond it. 

There is something beyond your sense of peace and connection. Your sense of peace and connection is priming you with the ability to move through the deeper and murkier subconscious. This ability to activate your parasympathetic nervous system is a tool, it is not the prize. 

Beyond the comfort our parasympathetic response provides, there is so much rich reward. But, it is scary. There is fear and the unknown. It does require courage to look inward from a place of non-judgment, there is no where to hide. Diving into this shadow space has awesome potential not just for ourselves but for our work as humankind. We can connect even more intimately to each other when we have faced our shadows and come out the other side. Again, and again. This work is never done. It is a practice and using beginners mind and the acceptance of how un-expert we are helps to open new doors each time we look. Enlightenment is a path, after all, not a destination. 

We need to learn as much as we can about what helps us hold that sense of comfort, peace, and connection because it is the only way forward. It is the place we return again and again when we need to center ourselves. All that is required to move deeper is to remember there is peace beyond comfort. There is peace and connection in turmoil, grief, and pain as well. If we want to learn to wield our magic in the dark- we must have the confidence to step past calm, comfort, and control. 

Objective over Plan, Navigating life with confidence

Objective over Plan 

This theme came up many times during a friend’s stay this wee. We were balancing the needs/wants of 7 people and there was a lot of daily plan shifting. This reminded us of the bigger plans of our lives, and our children’s lives, and running households and fulfilling dreams and callings. Always, objective over plan. Plans are imaginary. They are an awesome tool for visualizing an outcome- but, the power of a plan evaporates as soon as something unexpected happens. 

A business plan is flexible. It changes based on new information in order to meet a goal or objective. This, is a much more functional version of planning than the kinds of rigid life plans we normally make. 

In order to follow a flexible plan, we need to be running on high levels of self-confidence and intuition. We need to clearly understand our deepest values and clearly understand our goals, big and small. 

Sound like a lot of work? It’s not. It’s not nearly as much work as stressing when things don’t go according to plan ( then you have no map!). Mindfulness and attunement are not hard work. Removing the self-doubt, cultural conditioning, and self-imposed barriers is uncomfortable sometimes. 

Recognize that your plans are a false sense of security. How can you navigate without them?