09/09/09

Sometimes numbers seem a bit magical like today.

Happy 09/09/09!

RECIPE: Lime Cilantro Brown Rice

I made this for our Labor Day Mexican fiesta yesterday and it turned out surprisingly well. This is my take on my mom's recipe for lime cilantro rice. We were recreating Cafe Rio salads for our holiday family party and this was the impetus for the recipe. I don't want to forget a good thing so here goes:

1 cup uncooked brown rice (I used 7/8 cup short grain brown rice and 1/8 cup aromatic whole grain brown rice)

2 1/4 cups low-sodium chicken broth

1 large or 2 smaller cloves of garlic

2 limes, juiced

1/3 to 1/2 head of cilantro, chopped

salt to taste

Put rice and chicken broth in a medium pot on the stove and bring to a boil while adding garlic, lime juice, cilantro and a bit of salt. Once the mixture has come to a boil, cover with a lid and turn to low for 45 minutes. When the timer goes off, turn off burner and move pot to another burner. Leave covered and let sit for 20 minutes. Then uncover, salt to taste and serve.

Delicious served with lime chicken, black beans, chopped romaine lettuce, salsa and guacamole. Corn chips and hot, fresh tortillas are other possible options.

What's Cooking at Pear Tree Cottage

In my ideal world, menu plans always happen. In the real, nitty gritty of life they do not. Yet I'm learning for my survival and my sanity, they are becoming a must.

Usually when I go to the grocery store without a menu plan, I come home with key ingredients missing for certain recipes. Cooking then becomes a frustrating experience as I stand in front the fridge--often hungry and tired--wishing that something yummy would make an appearance if I just stand there long enough.

Early this year, when I started the allergy-free diet, the only way I survived those first weeks successfully was by setting up a six-week menu plan of dinners. It gave me some sense of relief that I could actually come up with meals that I could eat when it seemed like there were so many food items that caused me problems.

I guess after six weeks, I reverted to less planning and more intuition (or might I call it desperation?). This made for several weeks of hunger as a result of my poor planning and once again I was back in my routine of standing in front of the fridge and wishing something delicious would magically appear.

So, I'm back on the planning wagon again. I like to do a six-week menu planner of meals at once because then I only have to gather recipes and make decisions once every few weeks. Below I am listing the plan for this week.

Most of the recipes are linked and most of them come from some of my favorite food bloggers. Some of them are new and some are old favorites. The recipes are fast, healthy and delicious. Also, I have listed my modifications next to each recipe just for your information.

M-Veggie Tacos (modifications: brown rice tortillas, almond mozarella cheese, goat feta cheese)

T-Turkey and Macaroni (modifications: ground turkey instead of the hamburger, brown rice noodles)

W-Lentil Soup

Th-Honey Mustard Chicken Fingers (modifications: substitute part of the honey with agave nectar and bread the chicken with almond flour rather than crushed cornflakes; may also use an egg wash before breading the chicken)

F-Pan-Seared Salmon with Avocado Remoulade Sauce

S-Tuscan Baked Eggs (modifications: either goat cheese feta instead of parmesan cheese or shredded almond mozzarella)

I'd love to hear how you plan meals and prep your kitchen each week. I need all the insight I can get.

Planning My Life Away

via journalingarts.wordpress.com

I bought this planner a couple of weeks ago in an attempt to track my life. I used to be a Franklin fanatic but I found I was making too many modifications to the planner to make it work the way I wanted, so I quit using Franklin and moved everything online--calendars, to-do lists, etc. And that solution was very good for my work life where I sit at a desk all day, but it didn't work well for my home life where I am running errands and making shopping lists and adding to-do items on the go.

I don't want a planner that is big and cumbersome, just neat and small. I like to see a week at a glance so I can track appointments. I have a daily to-do list, shopping lists, meal plans, gift ideas and financial notes. I found that the digital world doesn't translate as well for my personal life because I am a notetaker and listmaker and I like to write. It helps me organize my brain to have my calendar and to-do lists laid out for me.

When I don't have a working planner, I still make copious notes and daily to-do lists and they end up strewn all over my house which causes me anxiety and wastes my time as I never seem to have all those to-do lists in one place.

I bought the Moleksine because it gave me a week-at-a-glance, was a nice compact size, and the pages are nice and thick and lovely to write on. And it seems for me like I am carrying a journal around rather than a planner. What amazes me is how utterly, completely happy I have been for the past several days since I purchased it. Its like a constant party in my pocketbook. I know where all invitations, appointments, to-do lists, goals, ideas, and future plans go! I think I open it about a hundred times a day and check my lists, write new items, plan future appointments, and essentially organize my head in blue ink right on the page in front of me.

It has brought calm and order and sanctuary to my life. And brings me no end of bliss and pleasure to boot. I would go so far as to say, I think I may have found a replacement for chocolate.

It is that good, my friends.

RECIPE: Mom's Corn Salsa

We had a little party at work the other day and I made up a batch of my mom's corn salsa to take to the party. It is such an easy, simple, yummy recipe that I thought I would share.

1 can shoepeg corn, drained

1 can black-eyed peas, drained

2-3 tomatoes, seeded and chopped

1-2 avocados, chunky

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

1 cup of Italian dressing

Prepare a few hours ahead to allow flavors to blend together. Refrigerate. Serve with big scoop Fritos or corn chips.

Making Meaning

When I first took my hiatus I was exhausted. Spent. Emotionally weak in the knees and ready for a break from life. What I wanted to do was spend some time hiking in the green gorgeousness that is my home state, float lazily in a mountaintop lake, clean my house, do some major reorganization in my storage room, and get on top of some paperwork.

Only some of that happened.

The hiking will take place next week. The floating--hmmmm---not sure when. (Anyone have a mountaintop lake they would like to suggest?) The organization and paperwork should be finished soon. And my house is clean.

What I jokingly also wanted was a complete personality transplant and a chance to entirely redo my life. Mostly I wanted to be refreshed and renewed. I do feel both of these things and for that I am so grateful. One feeling I have had strongly the last few days is that I have been given a beautiful life full of great riches like family and friends and education and opportunities and environment and talents. I feel thankful for so much goodness. It is nice to be reminded about all of this, especially on those days when I don't see them so clearly.

I missed writing and reading here. Several times the thought has occurred to me "I want to blog about that" only to remember that I said I was going to take a break and I better keep my word.

I've spent some time thinking about the direction of the blog, the stories I want to tell, the things I want to share. One of my passions has always been writing about people, our relationships, and the daily things that fill our lives with meaning and purpose. I hope to do more of that kind of writing in the future here.

I think I've always worried a bit that I'm not entertaining enough, witty enough or laugh-out-loud funny in my writing. My words bend to the thoughtful, reflective and introspective. I so enjoy teasing out the riddles, the issues, the details that I sometimes forget the sunshine and silliness. Luckily, I have great people surrounding me who remind me to come up for air once in a while and chortle through family dinner or giggle at some goofiness or titter at a funny tale. Which just reminds me that in all of my earnestness that laughter is a blessing to not leave behind.

So, here is to more writing, more blogging, my future semester and remembering to enjoy the ride. I love this quote by Mr. Thoreau, a rather thoughtful, introspective writer himself.

I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life . . . to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
~Henry David Thoreau, Walden

I'm back and ready to "live deep and suck out all the marrow of life." You too?

The Hiatus

To my gentle reader:

I am at a loss for words. Yes, I know a shock for many of you. Nevertheless a reality for now. Or maybe, more correctly, too many words seem to roll around in my head right now. Most of them tend to the melodramatic with a distinct hue of blue to their cast. Words that are probably meant more for the private musings of my journal rather than this forum.

For this reason and many others, I'm going to count August as a hiatus from my writing here. It is the final few weeks of summer, I'm on a break from school and I'm hoping to take this time to get a personality transplant and entirely redo my life. You know, small realistic goals like these have always been my forte.

If I don't attain either of those goals in the next few weeks, maybe it will be a time to sort, reflect and come back to the page refreshed and renewed.

Enjoy your August. I'll be doing the same.

Update: Goodness, I see that I didn't do such a spectacular job of reigning in the melodrama when I wrote this. Who wants to go quietly into the night when screaming your guts out is just . . . louder.

Despite this post's snarky attitude, I am looking forward to a few weeks break from my regular life and plan to come back in September reinvigorated and ready again to write and discuss with all of you. See you then!

Abnormalities

A few years ago I came back from a big meeting at work energized, excited and enthused. Most days work was a struggle for me to stay interested and on task. But every time I came back from a meeting and from working with other people and tossing around ideas and thinking up a plan, I was enthused and energized. That day I started to wonder if maybe there was a job out there where I could get paid to just sit and talk to people. Where instead of business being my business, people were my business.

I think that day was the day I started seriously contemplating changing my career track. What it brought me to was additional schooling and going into therapy. I've been a bit tentative about that decision for several reasons. I've asked myself over and over again "Is this really what you want do? Is this really what you see yourself doing?" I've already played the nonchalant game of just pick a major and see where it takes you. I know that despite some outward appearance of career-focus, in the back of my mind I didn't plan on working in a career for very long because . . . you know, other things would happen like getting married and having kids and being a stay at home mom.

Cough. Choke. Sputter. Except that's not where life went for me.

So, here I am, in my thirties and still wondering what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. And now, I'm immersed in classes and doing research and wishing most days that somehow I had figured this all out before. And that instead of just dipping my toe into the possibility of changing my life, I could jump in with both feet. Could this dream become a reality for me?

Which is where the mental hospital comes in. (And no, it's not what you are thinking, thank you very much.)

I'm volunteering at a mental hospital right now for a class. They don't let the volunteers do anything really serious--mostly we get to help in the library, put together dances and game night, and sometimes help the patients with physical therapy. That's about the extent of it.

The funny thing is: I love it.

Volunteering is part of my grade for this class and I assumed it was going to be a chunk of my life that I would never get back and all for a good grade. But the first day of volunteering my entire perspective changed.

I was helping in the library and the librarian was explaining where everything was, how to check out media items and how things were categorized. In short order we had completed every task and I was a bit antsy. What else should I be doing? How else was I supposed to help? So, I asked her what she else she wanted us to do and what other tasks needed to be completed. She stopped whatever she was doing, looked me straight in the eye and said,

"What I really want you to do is observe the people and talk to them."

Cough. Choke. Sputter. Really?

My first thought was "Honey, I do that in my sleep. Now tell me what you really want me to do." After looking at this woman and realizing she was not kidding, I got a little bit giddy. You mean, I can volunteer here every week and that is what you want me to do is just talk to people? Umm, okay. I think I can handle that.

And thus I entered nirvana. A entirely blissful state where it occurred to me that if I can continue on this current career track, I might actually get my wish:

Someday I might actually have a job where I get to sit and talk to people. All day. Every day. About things that really matter.

Suddenly, I don't feel tentative about this career change at all.

Hairy Stories

Another jaunt into the photo archives. I seem to not have much to say lately or maybe it's that I'm currently under such a big deadline at work that I don't have time to form coherent thoughts other than "Did I edit that page?" and "How many ways can you say paper or newspaper in three pages of text?" to "What's the code for an en dash again?"

This was yet another photo that made me smile. I'm so grateful that Rus took the time to scan all these photos last winter or my midnight cacklings would be few and far between this summer. Each photo seems to elicit more memories and stories and just pure delight at "the good old days" as the tint on my glasses turns rosier and rosier with each viewing.

We are standing in front of the fireplace in Grandmother and Granddad's front room on 1510 Conant Avenue. You can plainly see it is the eighties by the clothing--Dad's tie and Mom's bow. I'm guessing Mom is about 31 years old in this photo and Dad is about 34 (gasp! Really? Six kids and early thirties? What happened to my life? I still feel that I'm barely out of puberty.) That would make Ric 10, Rus 9, Adam 7, me 6, Matt 4, and Meggie--well, she was the baby. A cute one too with all this blonde, curly hair and chubby cheeks.

In fact, I was curling that blonde hair when she was about two or three years old with a very hot curling iron and I distinctly remember telling her to "hold very still" when I was curling a spot close to her scalp and she didn't listen (those two years olds!) and she turned her head and that curling iron burned a long stripe across one of her sweet baby cheeks. I think I was scarred forever by the experience--I'm just glad she wasn't. I remember the adults saying things like "You have to be more careful" and "She's just a baby!" and "You could have really hurt her." (which didn't give me a complex at all) and I'm thinking "Then why did you let a 7 year old curl a 2 year old's hair?" (See that? Neat little trick where I lay the blame directly at someone else's feet rather than my own--it assuages the guilt.)

Another thing about this photo that sent me down memory lane was my hair--the side curls, the red ribbon and "The Spider" which was parlance in my young life for the hair experience that I endured rather often where my mom would pull my hair up into a high ponytail and then divide it into six or eight sections and then she would dampen and curl each section around her finger into a big fat sausage curl and bobby pin it to my head with an unholy strength that made each bobby pin dig a deep trench into my scalp. I would wear The Spider for a day or two and the next day she would pull it out and my hair would have these springy bouncy curls or she would brush it out in to soft waves. I always liked the next day after The Spider. I felt pretty. It was the only reason I would endure the terror of the bobby pin torture that I succumbed to with each installment of The Spider on my head.

A better shot of The Spider along with a more relaxed shot of the family. Dad was behind the camera on this one.

The Spider was only inducted on high and holy days such as Sunday, picture day at school, Christmas, family pictures, a visit from cousins or grandparents who lived far away, or a trek out to Elba and Grape Creek and a visit with the second cousins at Nana's birthday party at the old rock church. Yes, just every major photo event in my life.

Which explains why nearly every photo I see of myself during this time period, my hair is piled high atop my head and I have a particular twinge around my eyes that reminds me of the bobby pin headaches that always accompanied the induction of The Spider. What sweet relief was experienced when that first bobby pin was taken out the following day. And then the next bobby pin and then the next and then the next. And then the heavy hair was freed from the tight ponytail and floated around my shoulders in a cascade of rippling curls. I tell you, I could have done a Head and Shoulders shampoo commercial each time my hair came out because I would sit and flip it for hours and shake my head and feel gorgeous and powerful and invincible with my tresses of undulating beauty.

That effect lasted until I climbed the feed pile in the grainery, squirmed through yet another fort my brother's built in the haystack or crawled army style under the fence to the Jensen's pasture to see if we could get a rise out of the bull who grazed there. Yes, it was a fleeting moment of grace and beauty in my life and I owe it all to a mother's infinite time, patience, motivation and insistence.

Thanks, Mom. I owe you one--yet again.

The Preschool Cowboy

After posting my little essay yesterday, I just happened across this photo of my brother Matt standing in front of the exact spot I was describing in my writing.

First of all though, get a load of Matty. What a cutie. He must have been all of four or five years old in this photo. Between the seriously pointy cowboy hat, the full holster of guns and the rockin' sunglasses, you can see he was ready to wow the world. He always was a delicious little kid with his rosy chubby cheeks, his ready smile and his bright yellow hair. He was like his own little sunbeam.

So, not only is this one of my favorite photos of him, it also cracked me up to see the spot I had been writing about in Pull the Plug. At Matt's left elbow is the rock we hid behind and the fence at the back of the garden. The huge pile of tree branches in the photo is lying directly over the what was normally the pumpkin patch. Adam and I hid behind that rock as the perfect vantage point as we scoured the garden for our mother. That garden was huge and stretched all the way to the road at the front of the house. I spent hours and hours each summer weeding that garden and daydreaming about inventing some kind of tool that would magically and effortlessly pull weeds for me. What I didn't know was that magical tool was called "kids" and my parents had enough of them to make sure that garden stayed weed-free.

Funny thing is now that I have a place of my own, one of the things I want the most is a little spot of earth to plant a few seeds and grow a garden of my own. I don't think now that I would mind so much pulling a few weeds each day. Especially not when they bring back such sweet memories.