Blueberry Agni Muffin

My friend Ross Kamens and I were taking a break on a huge Teton hike. He shared with me his bean muffins. We were talking about ditching flour in baking. Ross is a big time pro chef who has spent the last 2 years in his test kitchen playing with gluten-free alternatives. What has he discovered? Beans.

Ross doesn’t share all his recipes with me because they are his braintrust and what makes him super cutting-edge and valuable. Left to my own resources, I made this up and ate 3 right away. Yum.

Cooking Beans in Baking Muffins + Cakes

Cooked beans have a history in baking in Asian and South American cuisine. They are nothing new. But it’s new to me, so I’m assuming it may be new to you too. I have a huge love of pastries … but my lymph system is challenged by flours of all sorts.

Beans and baked goods are both tough on our digestive fire – or agni. When our agni is challenged it creates a host of issues for our immune system. To get away with eating baked goods- you can use beans instead of flour, use some flax to keep things moving down the line, and add plenty of spice to get the nutrients and protein out of the beans. No weird soy protein fillers or heavy fats in these babies. Just omega-3’s and lots of love.

Blueberry Agni Muffins

Recipe makes 18 small muffins or 12 big ones.

What you need:

• 1/2 cup flax seeds
• 2 cups cooked beans (garbanzo seeds or white beans)
• 1/2 cup cooked bean liquid
• 2 small apples or 1 big beans, cored and chopped into a few chunks.
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 1/3 cup date sugar
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 2 c. gluten-free oats
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• spices of your choice: lemon peel, cinnamon, cardamom, candied ginger, ginger root, or dried ginger, mace, nutmeg or vanilla beans. You might try 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1 tsp. grated ginger and 1 tbsp. candied ginger finely chopped. Or lemon peel from 1 lemon, 1 tsp. cardamom, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon and a dash of mace. Get creative.
• 2 c. blueberries

Preheat oven to 325, unless you are using a dehydrator.
Line your muffin tins for 18 muffins

In your blender:

• 1/2 c. flax seed (or flax seed powder)

Blend your flax seeds into a powder. Dump into a large bowl. Into the blender, add the cooked beans, the bean liquid and the apples. If using canned beans, rinse them well, and use up to 1/4 cup of water to blend the mixture. Dump mixture into the bowl.

Into the large bowl, add the remaining ingredients, except the blueberries. Mix well. Taste. Adjust spices as necessary.

If using a conventional oven, scoop into muffin tins. I fill mine to the top, but not over.

Baking Instructions:

Bake at 325 for 50 minutes. Check. If too moist, bake another 10 minutes.  Or:

Dehydrator Instructions

Dehydrate at 115′ for 8-12 hours. If using a dehydrator, you can still use muffin liner. Simply put the whole muffin tray into the dehydrator for 4 hours, then take the muffin liners out of the tray and set directly on the dehydrator screens

The Yogidetox is moving into full swing. I’ve belted between 20-25th seasonal detoxes. My body and mind are very accustomed to this process. If I were to to skip my seasonal inner refinement expedition, I’d have a cellular insurrection on my hands.

While I’m obviously a seasoned seasonal yogidetoxer there is something you should know:

I’m also a rebel.  Rebels are Cheaters during a detox. I’ve resisted authority since I can remember. Naturally, my mom was the first victim of my rebellious behavior. I was a stubborn kid with a know-it-all attitude.. and a sharp whippersnapper at that. I didn’t have a complacent bone in my body.

What does this have to do with detox?

When I decide to just juice for a week or two,or drink spicy lemonade exclusively for a week or two, or just eat fruit and vegetables for a month, or whatever detox I want to experiment with …. my rebel shows up in full swing…. and I cheat.

Meet my Inner Rebel

With EVERY detox, I’m sure to quickly encounter my inner rebel. My rebel is totally fine with the detox overall. But… she is totally not fine with the rules. She HAS to break the rules. And if she doesn’t… there will be an amazing backlash as she leashes war post-detox on the Inner Goodie Two-Shoes. There will be  hell to pay after the detox has ended and re-emergence begins. The Inner Goodie Two-Shoes will be laid to R.I.P. It’s really inefficient.

My experience with detoxing has led me away from rules and “right ways” of doing detox.  I’ve settled into the camp of guided inner exploration. Design your own. Figure it out as you go along.

How I deal with my Detox Rebel

After biannual wars I’ve made some peace with my inner rebel. Basically, I give into her. I had a major cognitive breakthrough on this front after hearing a talk this summer with Gretchen Rubin of the Happiness Project. She spoke at the World Domination Summit last July about her classification system of the 4 Types of People:

• The Upholder
• The Questioner
• The Rebel
• The Obliger

Me and my husband landed squarely in the Rebel category. That probably explains why my “Ayurvedic Yogidetoxes” made room for many other types of detoxing early on. He hated Ayurvedic kitchari detoxing…and would rebel by not eating. For days. It wasn’t fun. So I started having him juice i

nstead. One detox he did the Edgar Cayce Apple + Black coffee detox. He loved it… detoxing with Black Coffee. Typical Rebel.

Back to Gretchin’s system, I see a Questioner as a Rebel – and obviously not a rule-follower.  I associate the Upholder and the Obliger with Goodies Two-Shoes.  I  break the system into two camps: Rebels and Goodie Two Shoes. Duality is just easier in this case.

Are you a Rebel or a Goodie Two Shoes?

Goodie Two-Shoes love the structure of a detox. They want a menu schedule and a grocery list. They like checking off boxes and following the rules. They are going to do this detox right b

y hell or high water. These people can have a hard time settling into the Yogidetox with all of it’s deep instruction into your inner teacher and intuitive mind-body healing.

Rebels may be fine with the intuitive mind-body healing… but they’ll still find a way to lie, cheat or steal in the process. They’ll make rules just to break them. If they don’t break the rules… the repression will cause more damage down the line. Rudimentary… but true enough.

Why I let my Rebel cheat

I’ve found if I let me Rebel cheat a bit – especially at the beginning of a detox, a certain peace is made. I don’t suffer the war between the two during re-emergence. I’ll have a square or two of dark chocolate. I’ll have a handful of raisins. I’ll take a spoonful of raw honey. I’ll eat some of the beets in my veggie broth during a light liquids fast of juice and broth.. or have a bowl of miso soup during a Master Cleanse. How rebellious… I know.

These concessions will sound ridiculous to people who don’t detox and wh

o eat a Standard American Diet. But to a Master Cleanser or  a Juice Feaster-Faster who fall in the Goodie Two-Shoes category of duality personality typing… these concessions sound equally ridiculous for opposite reasons. Who does she think she is leading planet-wide yogidetoxes –  she can’t even follow the rules.

When a Goodie Two-Shoes Cheats

Gretchen Rubin’s theory is that when an Upholder (what I’m unfairly calling Goodie Two-Shoes) cheats… she goes hog wild. She won’t have a few squares of dark chocolate… the entire bar will disappear. Where the rebel just needs to break the rules… the Goodie Two-Shoes won’t stop there, but will go hog wild.

As rebellious as I’ve been, I’ve never eaten a whole chocolate bar (or whatever) while cleansing. Without fail, every yogidetox cycle brings a Goodie Two-Shoes out of the closet. The last one told me on Day 4 of the Master Cleanse she slunk off to the bar for a burger and a beer. Most rebels won’t go that far.

I find this hilarious. The Rebels are actually less rebellious that the Goodie Two-Shoes. Two-Shoes keeps herself on a short lease… because it works for her.

Know Thyself

The basic teaching of detoxing is to figure yourself out. You’ve got to have some rules that get you to make ashift. You need to sit your butt on the cushion. You need to limit caloric intake. You need to cut off from mindless media and the overwhelm of distraction.

And you’ve got to strip enough stuff away to stimulate your natural evolution. When you do this, inner universes are revealed. It’s freaking amazing. That’s why I do it seasonally. And in the process, we get to become besties with our subconscious tendencies. When that happens, we and the world are better off for it.

p.s.

Yes, you can still join us in the October Yogidetox. You get a 3 month Access Pass. Many won’t start their detox until November.