A key better experiences lies within how we respond. In this Feed Your Fire episode, we explore the transformative impact of these choices for our highest good. Join us as we prepare a delicious recipe, perfect for next week’s Super Bowl, as we feed positive avenues for growth.
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Episode Transcript:
Hello and welcome to Feed Your Fire. I'm Kim Baker, founder of Kim Baker Foods. Today we're going to speak about the power of response while we make these delicious, easy veggie fritters that just happen to be the perfect addition to any Super Bowl menu.
Go to any news source and you will be flooded with stories that are overwhelming and talk of the biggest game of the year. It's a pattern of things that will pull us together or pull us apart. There are so many things to potentially stir us that we need to be judicious about where we put our attention, not burying our heads in the sand, but being intentional about what we decide to feed, to nurture, to nourish and what we decide to starve. Those decisions affect the quality of our life everyday. It also perpetuates an energy in the world. I've been experiencing a heightened level of this this past week. Maybe you have too between world events and micro events in life? All of which create an instinctual prompt for response. The question is, will you take the bait? When you think of it that way, it becomes so clear how not responding creates empowerment in our life.
Now I realize that the Commanders did not win the playoff game, and so I hope that this episode is not triggering to any fans, but I think it's a good illustration of what we're talking about today. A few months back, my boyfriend, my son and I had gone to see the Commanders play. This was before their season was energized with Jayden Daniels performance. We had arrived at the stadium just moments before the game started, which derailed our tailgating plans and set things off with a scramble, leaving us with coolers and crock pots full of food. We had a lot of fun, though, and enjoyed being together. The Commanders were down and it was getting late, we had work and school the next day, so we popped out early to beat traffic and listened to the remainder of the game on our phones. But in those final moments of playing time, we missed the most historic play in NFL history. Yes, this was the Commanders versus the Bears, where there was a Hail Mary pass at zero seconds left in the game. Exactly.
This was not a big deal for me personally, but I was so disappointed for my son that we had gone to this game and he was right there, and we left just moments before he could have witnessed such an exciting moment. I was so struck by his maturity in his response. He was disappointed, but he didn't just sit in that. He was also able to recognize and appreciate the experience overall. And he made the choice what to focus on, whether he caved to frustration or he put it in perspective.
This week, a source of conflict arose in my own life that, though quite small was highly irritating. And I had to ask myself why something so small was getting to me, and it was only irritating because I was putting value on somebody else's why. And frankly, I had every right to be annoyed, but I realized it's not something I want to feed, Every time I breathed words of it, I was giving it oxygen, and this person's why has nothing to do with mine.
Being right is such a tempting human response, and yet it's a harmful distraction for us to live in our highest good at best. It's a Pyrrhic victory, and we lose out on what we could become with a different response. What are the things in your life that you no longer want to feed? And what are the things that you do?
With that, we have a delicious recipe that we're going to share today. It's inspired by Indian pakora, which is essentially vegetable fritters in a chickpea batter, but I've made them my own. So the first thing I'm going to do is blanch some fresh cauliflower, so cut it up into florets and drop it into salted boiling water and just let them get tender. While that's going we're going to make a flour mixture. We're going to use about a half a cup of chickpea flour, a half a cup of tapioca flour, a bunch of spices and some water.
Because these were inspired by pakora, we're going to use a little bit of cumin here. I use about an eighth of a teaspoon. Also going to add in some spices that are more traditional for me, including garlic powder, paprika, oregano. We're going to add in a little bit of heat with a pinch of cayenne pepper, and then we're going to season it with salt and pepper. I whisk in about a half a cup of cold water to make like a thick paste. Then take the cauliflower that you blanched and chop it up fine. It doesn't quite have to be riced, but you want small pieces. Then grab a small sweet potato, peel the skin, and with a box grater, create thick shreds. Then do the same with just a little bit of onion, add the veggies to the batter and combine it really well.
Then take a saute pan and put it over medium heat on the stove, add in enough oil so that it's about a half an inch deep. Let that get hot. You'll start to see the oil sort of become almost swirly. Then use a spoon and your hand form rounded mounds of the vegetable mixture. It's going to be sticky. And they don't need to be perfect. That's kind of the beauty of these pakora style fritters. You don't want them to be perfectly round. You want some scraggly edges that get crispy.
Pop them one by one into the hot oil. Now the key is to fry these over a medium temperature. You don't want the oil to be too hot, and that's because we need the center to cook through, otherwise you'll be left with a pasty mixture on the inside. So let them cook to become golden gradually, then remove them from the hot oil and put them on a paper towel lined plate. You can lightly sprinkle them with just a little bit of salt. I like to serve these with a little bit of yogurt as a dipping sauce.
This recipe is very fluid. I added some chopped cilantro and green onions to some of the batter and cooked that up to see how it tasted. You can use zucchini, you can use regular white potatoes. You can use broccoli. So feel free to get creative.
These fritters taste delicious, and they are great for a crowd, because you can make a lot of them quickly and it doesn't take that much effort. So if you're looking for something interesting for your Super Bowl menu, you may need to look no further.
One of the things I love about this food for today's episode is its imperfect nature, the variation, the fluidity of the process, as I've practiced, becoming more conscious about my responses. It's often one step forward and two steps back. Sometimes we're not even aware that there are alternatives to how we react. We're just sort of knee jerking our way through it.
The other day, I heard a phrase that I've heard before, but it just was really hitting me, and that's “what we don't change, we choose.” Most of the time, we can't change a circumstance. We can only change our response to it. So first, we have to become aware that we have choices, and then we have to have the discipline to act accordingly. The discipline to choose our highest good over an instinct to be right, over a narrow view of something that's much bigger and broader. And though this episode may not be able to influence the outcome of next week's game, it can at least set you up with a positive mindset and a delicious plate of food. Until our next episode, I say, so long.
Feed Your Fire, where food nourishes growth.