Awe-some Blossoms
AND! Season Two of my TV show "The Nosh" is out NOW!
I’ve been on a cherry blossom bender.
These perfect, pink, poofy, petal puffballs (creative writing minor, party of one) are fleeting, and I’ll do anything to get my daily fix. If you see a lady on a bike waving at a cherry tree and yelling, “Hi! I love you!” just keep driving. If we’re on a walk, and you think I’m not going to interrupt your story by pointing and yelling “GOR-GEOUS!!!” you are delusional. I’M JUST TRYING TO LIVE MY JOY!
Do you feel a strong connection to a particular plant? Because I feel physical love in my body when I see a cherry tree absolutely bursting with spring blossoms. Like a teenage romance, I could stare into their cute little petal faces forever.
I recently realized the emotion I am feeling is awe.
In his book, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life, Dr. Dacher Keltner writes that awe is critical to our well-being — just like joy, contentment and love. His research suggests it has tremendous health benefits that include calming down our nervous system and triggering the release of oxytocin, the “love” hormone that promotes trust and bonding.
Aha! So I really AM feeling love!
New research shows that our bodies respond differently when we are experiencing awe than when we are feeling joy, contentment or fear. We make a different sound, show a different facial expression. Awe slows our heart rate, relieves digestion and deepens breathing.
Psychologically, awe seems to quiet negative self-talk and quiets our inner critic. Awe is “the absence of self-preoccupation.”
Lucky for me, I’ve got a prescription for awe on my very own street — a long row of snow white cherry blossoms that look exactly like big, poofy popcorn balls.
As a card carrying Snack Monster™, I try not to keep a lot of ready-to-eat sweets in the house. I either have to be motivated enough to bake something from scratch (I always have the ingredients to make chocolate chip cookies) or be out in the world to buy a sweet treat. But my strategy is flawed and dumb and leads to a lot of unsatisfying sugar fixes (cut to me squeezing honey directly into my mouth at 10:28pm.).
Earlier this week, in dessert desperation, I foraged the following from my fridge & pantry: sour cream, brown sugar and the last six fresh raspberries. Turns out, this is pretty damn GOOD! If you squint your taste buds, it tastes like raspberry cheesecake on a spoon.
It reminded me that I used to bring a nearly identical, do-it-yourself dessert to summer barbecues in my mid-20s: strawberries swiped through a bowl of sour cream and lightly dipped in brown sugar. Graham cracker crumbs are also good!
What is your desperation dessert when your pastry pantry is bare? (Jeez, I really can’t stop with the alliteration today!)
Season Two of The Nosh, my food and drink storytelling TV show, premiered on Thursday and you can watch Episode One right now!
The first two episodes center around Zero Waste in the cooking and kitchen space!
In Episode One, I’m joined by Seattle’s Joel Gamoran, one of the country’s most well-known sustainable chefs, host of PBS’ Homemade Live and author of the cookbook Cooking Scrappy. I love Joel!
Joel rifles through my (embarrassingly messy) fridge (seriously, why didn’t I clean it out before he came over??), searching for scraps, stems and peels that would normally get tossed into the compost, and shows me how to transform them into a meal that could easily be served at a restaurant.
You can catch new episodes of The Nosh every Thursday! If you’re in Washington state, watch live on Cascade PBS Thursday nights at 8:50p, or watch anytime on the Cascade PBS app or here:
If you haven’t heard, I’m launching The Nosh Newsletter with Cascade PBS focused on Seattle-area food and restaurants — the content will be completely different from what you read here!
If you sign up between now and April 8th, you’ll be automatically entered to win a copy of my cookbook Open Sesame, and a jar of Soom tahini (one of my favorites!).
Have a great weekend!
XO
Rachel Belle
I am in awe of your awe. ☺️ I am so much the same, but I couldn’t think of one thing that puts me in awe, unless I can just say “forests“. My eyes always go to all the little small things, especially in the spring when every plant is developing buds, baby leaves and all the tiny little creatures, oh and big creatures. Every worry or concerned or sad thought or self thought even goes away. So I guess that is the absence of self-preoccupation. 💜
From a restaurant in Sedona I learned to put brown sugar in the bottom of a bowl (usually thicker than I should), put strawberries on top of it and pour Ripple half-and-half (plant based 😉) and enjoy. I think the restaurant used cream. Sour cream is just as good though.
As usual I’m late to the reading table, playing catch up in the Atlanta airport, where I calmed my sweet craving with dark chocolate turtle for 3:50, was thinking yogurt but a small cup no toppping 5:50 and this party of Carmel, pecans and chocolate was oh so good. My night time go to is honey and PB (homemade) or maple syrup, the real stuff and homemade yogurts so tangy sweet goodness.