I told my friends that a solar eclipse is like a National Homeschoolers holiday. Homeschoolers LOVE things like this…natural events that students can see and participate in and study from so many angles. When the last one in our area happened in 2017, we OF COURSE got glasses and watched it, but we also made a pinhole camera and studied astronomy and read historical accounts and did art and creative writing and celebrated the occasion in many other ways.

I’m no longer officially a homeschooler now that my son is in college. But you can take the girl out of homeschooling but you can’t take the homeschooling out of the girl. So I was super into yesterday’s solar eclipse.

I’m in the Research Triangle of North Carolina, which unfortunately was not on the path of totality. So that picture of the sun in a dark sky above? It’s from one of my homeschooling parent friends who was in Indiana on a business trip. The best pictures I got was from the “no glasses” trick of seeing the eclipse through a colander:

I tried taking pictures of the sun directly, but that didn’t work. However, this colander technique was cool to see in real life. Since I had solar glasses, mostly I watched with those.

I was also texting with my son, whose college was having an event (which is where the first two pictures came from), and my husband, who was down in our house in New Bern, and my friends near and far. So while I experienced this solar eclipse by myself, I also felt like I was experiencing it with friends all over. In addition to my friend in Indiana, one of my brothers traveled to totality site Canton, Ohio with his wife and dogs (note: dogs did not like the total eclipse). But my brother? His description was “Magnificent.” Still, lots of us here in NC were texting comments and photos between ourselves. In between, I was watching the NASA live feed that showed pictures from cities in totality as well as research flights above the ground.

But after we had peak eclipse here (we had about an 80% coverage by the moon, which is significant but obviously not as dramatic as total), I stopped texting and taking photos and watching NASA. I kind of got into a meditative state and was looking for spiritual messages from the experience. And what you look for, you find. So I got some helpful spiritual insight from the eclipse, for which I am grateful.

I always like to celebrate occasions with food…but as I’ve mentioned, I’m on this detox food diet this month. Most of the recipes I saw were along the lines of the unhealthy food alliance we didn’t need…a Krispy Kreme doughnut with a chocolate Oreo with white sprinkles on its center. So those were out.

My first thought was pizza….like a circle with orange cheddar cheese and pepperoni circles cut into the arc of the moon. But no, that’s not what we are eating on this body reset diet.

I went back to my blog post from the 2017 eclipse, which is: https://blissfullu.com/2017/08/21/solar-eclipse-food-solar-eclipse-soup/

There I made a creamy cauliflower soup for the sun, and a spicy lentil soup for the moon. So that would fit within our guidelines, but then…been there, done that. SOOO last decade!

What I decided to do was to make some cornbread for the sun and some refried black beans for the moon. I used a cornbread recipe from a cookbook my vegan brother who lived in New Mexico for many years gaveq me for Christmas on vegan Native American cooking:

I typically make refried black beans with onions, garlic, chile peppers, tomatoes, bell peppers, and cheese…but the last two aren’t part of our body reset diet. So I skipped those, and it still turned out all right, although I do prefer the cheese and bell pepper version. But this detox plan isn’t forever.

So this is what I had for dinner! As opposed to 2017, I didn’t make it a totality picture. This one isn’t accurate either, because it is the sun that showed up as an arc, not the moon. But that was what I was feeling when I made it. It seemed more visually dramatic this way, even if that’s not how things looked through my solar glasses.

To make up for the lack of peppers, which add vegetable vitamins to a somewhat carb-heavy dish, I served it with super-nutritional micro greens.

And it was good! I had never made this cornbread before, and to be honest, in the future I would probably add the 1/4 cup of sugar the recipe suggested. But it was not bad at all without it. I happily ate it without noticing the lack of cheese, bell peppers, and sugar…much.

But I think this was a total WIN because I could still create a special meal for a special day within the confines of our program. And making a traditional Native American cornbread made me feel connected with the ancestors that worshipped such events more than we tend to do. That made it a perfect ending to a special day.