Blueberry Lychee Pie Goodness!

I'm intuitively a better cook than a baker. Cooking welcomes creativity and flexibility. Baking requires scientific precision. My mother drastically alters baking ingredients without thoroughly recognizing how it impacts the overall recipe chemistry. I inherited this trait, yet luckily my baking adventures result in delicious success sometimes.

Like my blueberry-lychee pie experiment. 

Inspiration #1: I love lychees.

My go-to way to enjoy lychees is to blend them in a simple smoothie = one can of peaches including juices + one can of lychees including juices. [Did you get that bonus recipe?] Once I requested a lychee-peach blend at the best bubble tea place in Vancouver. I laughed when the woman obliged, but only after a stern disclaimer, "We don't guarantee it will taste good." I bet the regular Asian clientele doesn't usually order off the proven menu.

The accidental discovery of the fabulous marriage of lychees and blueberries: During one spontaneous visit, I offered my guest a smoothie. I had a can of lychees, but no peaches. What about trying the frozen blueberries? What a delicious surprise!

Lychees are fragrant, but subtle enough to complement other foods, even savoury ones. One Thai restaurant cooks lychees in their tasty ostrich curry!

Inspiration #2: Beyond Savoury, to Sweet Dumplings

Once my neighbour celebrated her birthday with Chinese dumpling wrapping (and gorging) party. We wrapped, pan fried, and ate Chinese savoury dumplings to our hearts' content.

For dessert, at the lead of a non-Asian guest, we filled the leftover dumpling wraps with a sweet filling of fruit. Apparently it's a European dessert. We pan fried them and they were delish!

This year for Chinese New Year, we received a last minute invitation to another neighbour's dumpling party. Desiring to bring food, but too lazy to go shopping, I searched my kitchen. Lychees and blueberries! We wrapped blueberry-lychee dumplings for dessert. We steamed them, but they didn't quite taste right. Pan fried worked better!

So with the leftover blueberry-lychee filling, and knowing deliciousness comes with fried, greasy goodness, I experimented with it as a pie filling.

Guidelines for Blueberry Lychee pie (Use as a starting point, not a precise recipe. I can't part from my fluid artsy ways ;)

Pie crust recipe is found here (thanks to Dilys for pointing me there!)

Filling Ingredients (with possible substitutions)

• 2 cans of lychees, drained and loosely cut into pieces, to your desired chunkiness
• 2 cups of blueberries (fresh or frozen)
• 1/3 cup of liquid (any kind of juice, left from the lychee can; the remaining juices from the can make a refreshing cocktail with a punch of lychee liquer!)
• 2 tablespoons of tapioca starch (or corn starch, any thickening agent)

Sweeten to taste with sugar (or alternative sweeter, like Stevia or agave). I didn't add any sweetener, because the canned lychees contain enough sugar. You could use fresh lychees if you're trying to go sugar free.

If you're gluten free, try a crumble topping, with quinoa or millet flour instead of a wheat pie crust.

The substitutions are endless! Try other fruits, like peaches to go with the lychees. As long as you have about 4 cups of fruit you could change up the ratios and put more lychees, if you want to experiment with stronger lychee flavour.

The Method:

1. Heat the fruit filling ingredients in a pot over medium heat. Slowly stir in corn starch until thickened.
2. Fill pie crust with filling. Cover the pie with a top crust, being careful to seal the edges. Poke the top crust with a few holes using a fork.
3. Bake at 350 degrees until golden brown. Cool to let set. Then Enjoy!

See how un-precise I am? I can't even give you a time to bake, based on your pie format. This recipe made me 10-12 little pie crusts, the size of individual muffins, which I baked for 20 minutes in my convection oven (I pressed the pie dough into silicon muffin liners). But the pie crust recipe is enough for a 9 inch pie. Bake longer for one large pie. That's why I stick with the "golden brown" rule.

Have fun and let me know how it goes!

Let There Be Light (and Life) Again

It's been quite the ride finding my way again -- some things are so long gone and behind me, and other things are coming back to me that I wasn't sure would ever come back.

There is one thing that came back that I am so grateful for -- the return of my creativity. Seriously, in many of my moments of deadness and lack of creative energy in the last couple of years of wasteland, I wondered if I would ever see it again; I wondered if it wasn't to be a part of my new landscape.

As often how Jesus speaks and whispers to me, it came to me in the normal course of life. (Often I think he'll only speak to me in lightning bolt revelations when I pull away for a weekend retreat, which he still can do, but so often I see how God appears to people in the course of daily life with major words and directions.) All in one week, three design projects came to me. My friend asked me to design a Christmas flyer for her. I designed a wedding programme for a dear friend. And the kicker -- a sweet little old lady from Orilla, Ontario contacted me through my website and asked to order some of my ooooold Christmas card designs from 2005 (I mean, only one person has contacted me from that site ever, and I'm not marketing it at all. It's got to be page 100 or something if you googled it!). I felt the creative part of my soul coming alive again.

If these had happened as isolated opportunities, I probably wouldn't have noticed. Because I really am that dense.

Slowly, but surely since then, I've been getting my creative mojo back. It helps to that my sister comes into my room for impromptu brainstorming sessions on what we can do with our respective creative skills and interests.

In January I went a little overboard actually. In the course of one weekend, I finished several major projects. Some were new projects for the year, but most of them were projects that had been waylayed 3.5 years ago when the burnout truck hit me. I seriously didn't know if I would ever finish some of them.

With the new light, there is new life, and new fruitfulness.

Bear for my friend's baby in Japan: I started this one 3.5 years ago and didn't think it would ever be complete. But thanks to my friend's Facebook "home made pay it forward challenge" I had new motivation. This bear was quite the work in process -- it's the same one that my friends winced at because the incomplete look of his face appeared scary to them. He turned out alright in the end I think!

Home Hankerchiefs: In an effort to reduce my carbon footprint, save money (you would be amazed how much it cost to pay someone else for a simple square piece of cloth), and re-learn/revive my sewing skills, I embarked on the quest to sew my own hankerchiefs. The empty envelope box from my Christmas mailing was the perfect object-of-otherwise-waste to be reclaimed and reused as my "kleenex box". I may decide to make it prettier one day, but for now it's good enough for my at-home-only-use.

Cushion covers: to update and tie my new couches and cotton throws together. Man were these a breeze and treat to sew after the grueling hankerchief project!

Whew! I admit it was a little excessive. I am acutely aware of my old tendencies of productivity-addiction peeking through here. I want to be careful to not get hooked again on getting things done just for the sake of getting them done, even if they are fun and creative.

But for now, it's just good to feel the creative juices running again.

I'm back...

Well, it's been a long time, but I'm back. A lot has changed since my last post 3.5 years ago. It's difficult to articulate it all as I'm still processing the major changes that have happened deep within me -- changes which are still incrementally working their way out into my outer habits and behaviours.

Suffice it to say that in the last 3.5 years, Jesus brought me through a complete system reboot. I'm still going through the process of deciding what needs to be installed on the new system -- some good old programs and systems need to be reinstalled, but there are far more that need to be left behind for good. I'm still figuring out how to run within the new operating system, learning lots as I go on in learning new ways.

The reboot and "comeback" was long overdue. It was three years ago I came to a point of total give-up surrender. I had just completed working on the final project for a counselling course which involved letting Jesus walk you through your own "stuff" (the premise being if you don't know personally to have Jesus rescue you through your own messy wounds and issues, it's difficult to help anyone else through their own baggage).

For that assignment I decided to be brave and work on my addiction to work and productivity. Literally at the start of the project I felt like I had to "work" on it myself and muster up enough effort to overcome my life-long problem of letting my identity be chained to my career or what I was able to produce or do.

Well by the time I was ushered through the process of understanding the entangled roots of my problem, my eyes were necessarily opened to how I was in way over my head. I was overcome by my sense of helplessness and powerlessness to change anything -- especially matters of the heart which all my external actions flow out of.

And so I gave up -- "Jesus! Understanding my problems and knowing what the right thing to do from here on, does not give me the actual power to do anything differently. I need you to do it. Because I just can't."

And that was the simple, yet difficult, point of turning my way of being into a new direction. I was experiencing the counterintuitive, yet powerful truths of AA's first 3 steps:

1. We admitted we were powerless over (our addictions), that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.

It's counterintuitive that giving up my own self-effort will help me move forward. I'm realizing more and more how Jesus' ways of governing are so entirely opposite of human wisdom. In my mind it doesn't make sense that dying to myself would be the way to finding new life. But that's exactly how I found my way back to myself -- or rather, to my new self.

Shortly after I waved the white flag of surrender, every area of my life (professional, personal family, relationships, spiritual, emotional) surfaced multiple crises that ran me over like several trucks. I crashed.

My old house was demolished. The foundation was brought to the ground. Only then was there possibility for a new foundation to be laid.

With my work addiction slain, I didn't define myself anymore by what I could do. I actually swung to the other extreme where I was repulsed by questions of, "so, what do you do?" or comments of, "wow, you did such a great job on..."

In the demolishing, I had lost all my passions, drives, and dreams -- both good and bad ones. I felt like the North point of my compass was removed completely. And I had little clue as to what my new North should be or look like.

During the time I was a bit befuddled about who I was anymore, I had the amazing opportunity to go visit my friend and her husband who were doctors in Sudan at the time. The town where they lived had only one paved road. The rest were a muddy mess of jeeps, motorbikes, bicycles, pedestrians, and corrupt soldiers and police fining foreigners willy nilly. My friend's husband was helping the government form a primary health care system. It was eye opening to see how much we take for granted in our civilized existence.

The image was loud and clear to me -- it's messy to create a new society. Really messy. It's messy to learn a new way of life. Really messy.

Since then, I've been journeying along to discover the new ways of being, thinking and doing that I feel called to. Some days I'm taking steps forward. Other days I stumble and fall and lose my way, finding myself trying to live by the old ways in the new land.

But I'm back. I may be walking in a different land, but I am slowly learning to walk differently.

i finally caved in...

... after all my ranting about Facebook, I finally caved in. That partly explains the lack of action on the blog now (the rest can be explained by my addiction to being busy with work and travels). Sorry. I can't keep up with all the inboxes nowadays (voice mail, email, snail mail, Facebook mail, blog comments...) so I'll be mainly on Facebook. My main hope and purpose of the blog was to stay in touch with people, and it seems Facebook is a better way to do that (even better than email for some Crack-book addicts!)

racing to read

Ahhh! I'm swimming in all kinds of fun stuff to read right now... I received two shipments from Amazon this week (a total of five new books), my friend who is writing a book e-mailed me some new chapters, and I picked up two books I put on hold (and five magazines) at the library.

I saw a deal where you get a free subscription to a Canadian magazine if you buy two other Canadian subscriptions... For a minute I entertained the idea, but realized quickly I can barely keep up with what I already have from the library and books and old magazines that are already on my shelves.

I'm thankful that I've been given the gift and ability to read, but I can't help but wish I could read faster! It always made reading in school painfully slow. I'm only recently rediscovering reading for pleasure since I've been out of university. Part of it is that I never learned very well how to approach different kinds of reading (newspapers vs. fiction vs. research studies, etc.) Good thing one of my new Amazon books is the classic How to Read a Book. But I am quite glad to be returning to a bout of reading while I'm at the gym and on public transit (which equals about 8-10 hours every week!).

I love how reading opens up new worlds, knowledge, perspectives, understanding, ideas, possibilities and dreams.

a tale of two scarves

Random short post:

• Yay! I found the scarf my mom made me that I thought was lost!
• Yay! I finished my scarf on the weekend. Thanks Dilys for showing me how to cast off!

Hmmm... now I have to think of what I'm going to do for our arts and crafts night as I thought I'd be still working on my scarf then... Maybe I'll make my own version of the Daring Dice of Transformation that I've been wanting to create for some time now. Or begin one of my off-the-wall sample wedding invitation ideas.

art as procrastination

So yesterday I had a full day ahead of me with potential to... get lots of work done! But no... creative procrastination got the better of me.

It all started with a quick consultation in the morning with Rock on his business cards (who has done a fabulous job of designing his own!). After he left, I was just revving up creatively and Dilys was in the living room making greeting cards... so I decided to give myself permission to not work (I'll be making it up shortly with 20 hour work days in March, or so my conscience tells me).

Just as I was beginning to get a taste of not being stuck on the productivity treadmill, I discovered that you can be addicted to productivity even in artistic endeavours (I thought, and was hoping, that art would help slow me down!) But still, I couldn't help but get a buzz from all the tick marks on my creative to-do list that I got done all in a day!

• Finished up the letterhead set for Lubna, the final step after logo development and business card designs we started over half a year ago...Patient woman and gracious friend for the unacceptably long wait!
• Drafted some initial wedding invitation ideas for Andrew and Maggie.
• Knit a few rows on my scarf while talking to my friend on the phone.
• Finished a calligraphy piece I've been thinking about for a month on the theme of "finding home" just in time for the Arts in the City, Arts in the Sanctuary call for submissions. There's nothing quite like a deadline to get me moving! Now there's art on demand for ya...

All in all, (putting procrastination and productivity-addiction issues aside), it was just a great spontaneous day of wrapping up, beginning and making progress on random creative projects.
My new book Living Out Loud had a good point in it about how creative people surround themselves with other creative people as one of many ways they foster creativity in their lives. I can see the truth of that, even in yesterday's inspiration being instigated by Rock and Dilys... It should be great to get together with other creative folk next week for our arts and crafts night at our place.

diving in again

The year has just begun and I'm craving a beach holiday, already.

After coming back to my apartment with the goal of some serious hibernation time to recharge my mental, emotional and spiritual batteries, I procrastinated for two days by cleaning house. Plus I consistently haven't been sleeping well since I've been back... barely enough energy to make it through my greeting duties at church on Sunday and then through the New Year's Eve party. A little drink helped with enough energy to ring in the new year.

Enough procrastination already. January 1 and 2 finally settled down in spirit enough to have some chill time with God to try starting the year off right. The day was pensive and somewhat sobering as I reflected on 2006 and looked ahead to 2007.

Last year was an amazing year by all kinds of standards. According to my productivity standard (which often is out of whack and unreasonably high), a lot was accomplished -- both work wise and personally speaking. My task-driven side should be satisfied, yet all these big giant tick marks on my to-do list left me profoundly dissatisfied. But I am thankful, because I think my productivity-work idol is finally showing its true colours and leaving me dry enough that I actually want to give it up. I've always known in my head that relationships are the important thing in life, but I think this new year I actually believe that in my heart and want to make relationships a bigger priority than my task projects this year.

January 3. The calls and emails start coming. I'm overwhelmed already. I want to hide on a beach somewhere before the avalanche of a year starts. I look at the waves and start to sink. I need to fix my gaze on Jesus. There is promise to do the impossible as I follow in his steps. I hope it's a year of walking on water. Hold on tight -- it's going to be a wild ride.

to home and back again

Christmas in Saskatchewan was kind of meh. On the positive:

• The weather was a steady and mild -10 the whole time.


• The cousins are still cute (but they're growing quickly! Nicholas' voice started changing last month and he'll be taller than me next time I see him!).


• I successfully learned to cast on and started knitting again after a 22 year hiatus... I finished one scarf and a half, but need to learn how to cast off and finish it!


• The boxing day shopping was good.


• The trip to see my great grandfather's laundry shop preserved at the Western Museum of development was cool.

What was difficult or weird:

• My sister was not able to come and join us.


• My expectations for hibernation and cave holiday time flew out the window early on and let's just say, the quiet didn't happen.


• While my body rested well and I slept lots, my mind and spirit were restless. I think it's just been such a snowball-down-the-hill paced year that I didn't know how to just be still.


• My trip ended on a sour note with some relational conflict that took me some recovery time to move on.

After all that and some cramped full flights all the way back, it was really good to come back to Vancouver and realize that this is home now. For the first time since I left my parents' home 12 years ago, I think I'm finally sinking some roots down and not wanting to run away somewhere new. That realization alone is a gift I am thankful for.

another successful bash

Well, we did it! We survived our Christmas party. Last year we had 40 people, arriving in two major waves of 20-25 people each. This year, we had 40 people again, but this time, they were in our tiny apartment essentially all at the same time. It was a bit of an experiment, as I wasn't sure how many would show up, where they would all fit, and how loud it would get... This isn't the best photo of the night, but it gives an idea of how every inch of our space was used well! :)

This year I really wanted to be present (as some of my more contemplative friends would say), rather than running around all over the place not having a proper visit with any one person. I was determined this year to really catch up with people and listen well (as well as possible with the loud din of 30 some odd people chattering in the background). So we stripped down all the prep work and bought mostly ready-to-serve foods. But the deeper issue in "being present" is having the right heart and attentive spirit in connecting with people. I'm thankful I received a spirit of prayer throughout the week before.

While I know I am biased, there was a great food (appy potluck style), great people and great conversation. It was the best mix of people I've yet seen, from different circles of life in the city. Mingling is a tough thing -- most naturally people stick with the people they know all night. But I was quite pleased that this was the most mingling I've seen at any of our parties. I love it when different spheres of my life collide and integrate and one of those ways is seeing people I know from different circles mingling.

Earlier this year I went to a marketplace conference at Regent that shed some light on the busyness of modern life. Back in earlier days and centuries, you interfaced with a finite number of people who represented different roles and spheres in your life. For example, your siblings would also be your friends and co-workers in the family business perhaps. Another person in your life might be your butcher, friend and fellow church member.

Now, in contrast, we have a far greater number of spheres of people to juggle. In the Christmas season, for example, at typical family might have multiple Christmas parties to attend -- the husband's work party, the wife's company party, the kids' portions of work parties in addition to their own school parties, the church Christmas celebration, family friends' parties, etc. And all these parties would conceivably involve all different people. Logistically it gets busier and more difficult to manage the time to maintain all these relationships and arenas of life.

Since then I've been thinking a little more about wanting to deliberately integrate my life spheres more. Having these mingling parties is a simple start I hope. After all, I've never been one to not want different kinds of food on my plate touch each other and eat only one section on my plate at a time, so why be so firm about keeping my social lines distinct? Hopefully I can grow in integrity in being consistent in who I am, and not put on different faces for different friends as much.