Hello lovely people!

These past days I've been having a lot of signs pointing me to - joy. Yes, joy. Not productivtiy, success or money, but joy.

I listened to a TED talk by Ingrid Fetell Lee about what things gave us joy, I heard Brendon Burchard (love him!) talk about how you should actually demand joy and I also heard Alexander Heyne, the author of Modern Halth Monk channel talk about manifesting and how things that got him excited (which is akin to joy) also got viral.

Ingrid Fetell Lee talked about how round objects, bright colors and multitude of things/abundance (things like baloons, bubbles, cherry blossoms, confetti) made people feel joyful. Do you agree, do these kind of thing give you joyful feelings?

Around that time I also made small pink pancakes and posted them to my Instagram. I realized they're round, brighly colored and there's a whole stack of them! oh joyful pink pancakes! They're also vegan!

So here is the recipe, in case you want to bring more joy to your table.

Vegan Pink Pancakes (without the famous pitaya powder)

350 ml plant milk of your choice⠀
60 g grated raw beet root⠀
2 tbsp maple syrup⠀
1 tbsp oil of your choice⠀
160 g flour (I used rice+all purpose)⠀
1,2 tsp baking powder⠀
1 tsp psillium husks⠀
pinch of salt⠀
pinch of vanilla powder⠀

to serve:

An 1-minute exercise right before bed that turned me into an optimist can change your life, too.

The best piece of advice I ever got was not from my mom (she gave some good advice, too, sure), not from a self-help book and not even from a friend. It came from a … comedian. Well, she is a comedian, but she also shares very touching, encouraging stories, so I’m not sure what to call her.

It was Kristina Kuzmic that gave the advice, and I seriously think that little talk changed my life. It was like an introduction into not a new chapter, but like a new book in a series (I see my life as a book series).

One day I looked at my Instagram and saw a celebrity blogger that I have followed for years on her blog, but not on Instagram, started following me! I thought to myself: “I must have really made it, huh?” But then I checked myself a little. Ah, she probably just randomly clicked on my blog in an e-mail I sent her, praising her latest post. But still, she wouldn’t follow me if she didn’t like my work, right?

A few days later she started heavily promoting her online course. Ok, so that was the real purpose of her following me. I get that. It’s legit.

But then I began following some Instagram guidelines that I found on a very popular blog. I followed my idols’ followers, uploaded photos on a daily basis, tagged every photo as if it was my job, and soon I followed so many people that I didn’t even want to scroll through my Instagram feed any more.

Instagramming felt like shit.

So I decided to follow another one of those holy Instagram guideliness: unfollowing people. I just unfollowed people who didn’t follow me back. And I started seeing that some people that followed me first, didn’t follow me anymore.

One of them was a girl I actually thought was my potential friend, and the other was this esteemed blogger I just told you about. She probably even has someone hired to manage her Instagram account, by the way, but it doesn’t really matter. I completely lost my respect for her. She’s a phony to me. No, not just because my pride is hurt, but because now I know she doesn’t practice what she preaches (like not caring about your vanity metrics and genuinely caring about people).

It felt like shit.

My mom has been baking bread for as long as I can remember. When I was little, she used whole grain wheat flour, but then a family friend started growing spelt on her organic farm, so my mom began buying spelt flour from said friend. That was very hippie then, nobody knew what spelt was and it was impossible to find it in the grocery store. But the bread was now even more delicious, and it came with a fun new feature - no kneading was needed. Kneading was in fact discouraged since the spelt gluten is supposed to be different from wheat gluten: it actually disintegrates or something like that if you knead it too much.

So there it was, wonderful, healthy bread you don't even have to knead. My mom usually tops it with sesame seeds which make it extra delicious in my opinion. Recently she began baking her bread with very little yeast - a slow rise bread.

Slow rise bread trend has been around for a decade or so (it started with Mark Bittman I believe); it seems the web re-discovered slow rise bread even before sourdough bread that seems to be all the rage now, at least where I live (we make our own, too - Michael Pollan made us do it! -  and sell it as well). But there's just something wonderfully low-key about slow rise baking that should convince even the laziest baker and all the people who fear that yeasty creature that is bread.

There's no sourdough starter to look after, there's no kneading, there's no multiple proofing, just mix the dough and let time do its job on it.

Slow rise spelt bread

4 cups whole grain spelt flour, preferably organic
about 2 cups lukewarm water
1 teaspoon sea salt
half teaspoon active dry yeast

rolled oats or sesame seeds (optional)

Prepare the loaf mold or dutch oven: lightly grease it with vegetable oil and dust with flour.

In a big bowl, combine all the ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon until thoroughly incorporated. Stir a little more, just so the dough starts forming: you'll know it is forming when it stops clinging to the bowl and starts forming a sort of a ball. Transfer the dough into prepared loaf mold or dutch oven, sprinkle with sesame seeds or dust with flour and cover with a clean tea towel.

Leave the dough to rise in a warm spot in your kitchen (some people even put it in a plastic container with a lid, which is not a bad idea at all). My mom usually places it on top of her refrigerator. That may last anywhere from 6 to 12 hours, depending on the warmth of the environment and quality of your flour. So I suggest you start making the bread in the morning on a day when you're at home and check on the dough after six hours to see if it has risen enough. You'll know it's proofed when, if poked with a wet finger, the dough comes back half way (if the hole doesn't fill at all, the bread is over proofed; if the hole fills back quickly, the bread is not yet ready to be baked). I learned that from my extremely talented and advanced baker friend Natasha, over at My daily sourdough bread (actually, my mother in law tried to explain this method to me some time ago, but I didn't quite get it).

Bake the bread on 350 °F (180 °C) for 1 hour.

So, would you give this super simple bread a try? If you're interested in slow rise breads, this book is an awesome resource.

I mean, it is a smoothie with superfood (or just really pretty) toppings, what's not to like? I urge you to try it if you haven't yet. My oldest daughter even "invented" her own super simple smoothie bowl that she calls smoothie ice cream with oats, not very fancy, I guess, but super delicious and - what makes this mama really happy - nutritious. She just tops her smoothie with rolled oats, that's it.

Smoothie bowl recipe