So by now, I bet you're wondering: How's that healthy eating not-resolution going? I mean, it is January 23, with only one more week in that thirty-days-at-a-time challenge. Surely, danablue has resorted back to the time-saving convenience of powdered cheddar cheese and boxed corn bread mix by now, right?
Actually, I've been doing pretty well, overall. I will admit to baking a couple of sheets of pre-made cookie dough -- but in my defense, I had bought them in December and really couldn't let them go to waste, now could I? Anyway, I feel quite virtuous because, having finally used up the cookie log, I busted out the Fannie Farmer cookbook and made spiced molasses cookies. They weren't pretty (I think I learned that shortening and butter are not, in fact interchangeable), but they were yummy.
What about those old-fashioned, money saving, cooked-from-scratch family dinners? Well, you already know about my slow-cooked, lovingly-made turkey soup. Did I mention that I added homemade crunchy croutons made from bagels snagged off of the day-old bakery rack? Even Doodle and Scooby, who hate soup, wolfed that down and asked for more. I'm also putting in the Win column a batch of chicken curry that tasted like downtown Mumbai on a sunny day.
Then there's the filling fruit muesli that I've been bringing to work with me most mornings. Take five handfuls of five-minute oats, half as much crushed bran flakes, sliced almonds, sunflower seeds, and assorted dried fruits (cranberries, blueberries, raisins, dates, cherries). Store it in an airtight container. Measure out about 1/2 cup. Soak it with milk, add half a banana. I like to warm it up for a minute after my long, cold commute to work. I eat this at ten, I'm not hungry until two.
Right, so now you're thinking, Hey, anybody can make soup, stew, or cereal. What about real dinners?
I'm glad you asked.
How about nicely seasoned pan fried flounder with a side of pearl barley mushroom "risotto" and roasted asparagus? Pretty enough to be on Top Chef, I'll tell you what. (Not a big fan of flounder, though, I have to say -- kind of a mushy texture. I'll stick to halibut, I think.)
Or baked sweet potato french fries, healthy with a hint of cinnamon, and a very friendly food for The Rev's new diet, paired with green onion turkey burgers and steamed broccoli.
The fact is, I'm finding it super easy, and a little bit thrilling, to put good, healthy, homemade food on the table. Even if it's just a cheese omelet with toast for a lazy, can't-be-bothered-tonight dinner, I'm learning that easy and convenient doesn't have to be unhealthy. But when The Rev takes seconds of asparagus (!!) and the little kids request more pearl barley "risotto," even though it contains visible mushrooms and onions, you know you're on the right track.
Now it's on to the next culinary challenge: figuring out how to make delicious brussels sprouts.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Turkey Soup and Intimacy
Today's a soup-making day. It's a federal holiday -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day -- and everyone's home. There's no sale to rush off to, no church service to attend. The TV programming execs have no marathons planned, unlike on New Years' Eve, when The Three Stooges and The Twilight Zone face off every year. We haven't spent days planning and buying and cooking some special commemorative meal to be served on the wedding china. There are no dinner guests expected, arriving, or calling to tell us they'll be late.
There's just me and The Rev and my pot of turkey and vegetable soup. I don't use a recipe, only a kit from the supermarket containing root vegetables, some celery, and some fresh herbs I can't identify because I have very little sense of smell. I think about the flavor profile I'm going for, and add a dash of this, a pinch of that. I am a very good cook and a terrible baker. Cooking, for me, is intuition. Baking is chemistry, and I decisively flunked chemistry a quarter century ago.
As I cut and chop and season the boiling turkey meat, left over from Christmas dinner, I have an actual conversation with my husband.
It's hard to explain how extraordinary that is. You see, we have three children, whom I shall identify as Boy, Doodle, and Scooby. (That's what we really do call them, and I promise I will expand on that topic some other time.) They, like children everywhere, are little black holes of attention. Every moment is, for them, an opportunity to be front and center in the minds of their parents -- except at those times when we are superfluous and unwanted. They are bundles of self-absorption: I want you to be there when I want you, and when I don't, to go away.
But this Monday morning at half past eleven, the two younger ones, Doodle and Scooby, are engrossed downstairs in some video game, the goal of which I cannot understand no matter how many times they try to enlighten me, and Boy, who is fourteen, is, of course, still sleeping.
And I realize as I chop vegetables that I cannot remember the last time The Rev and I were able to have a grown up conversation that was not (1) under cover of darkness in the middle of the night, or (2) simultaneously costing us ten dollars an hour in babysitting fees.
I add carrots and parsnips and turnips to the pot, and watch as they bump against the onions and celery in the boiling water. I mentally calculate the nutritional value of each ingredient, and in deference to The Rev's new eating plan, try to figure out how many Weight Watchers points this would translate to. I concentrate on the sound of my husband's voice, the deep bass, reveling in the uninterruptedness of it. It wraps around me, warm as the steam coming off of the bubbling soup.
This is intimacy. The quiet conversation of spouses, about things both important and mundane. Little moments of his day, stored up in that mental box marked, Things To Tell My Wife, If I Get A Chance, received by me with interest, and transferred to a basket I've labeled, Stuff That Is Important To My Husband. On a busier day, he might not have a chance to share some passing anecdote to make me laugh, or I might be too involved in the thousand logistical details of making the house run to pay more than superficial attention to the story. Just about any other day, our conversation would be punctuated by the semi-colons and ellipses of other voices, tears, arguments, or demands for attention, and the narrative, half-told, would eventually drift off into the silence of incompletion, with a hand wave and a muttered, "Never mind, it wasn't important."
But right now, today, we have the luxury of cooking hearty soup from scratch in our kitchen and letting our conversation meander where it will go. Nothing we speak about this morning is earth-shattering; we are not deciding the fate of nations, or even of the family. No, we are simply sharing a moment -- unstressed, unpressed -- as two people who used to take these moments for granted, before we were two plus three.
Soon enough, though, perhaps inevitably, a howl of frustration rises from the basement. The animated foe has won one too many rounds. We glance, startled, at the clock and realize we've had an entire hour of nothing but our own adult voices, uninterrupted. It's time to wake up Boy, time to get some housework done, time to let the soup simmer.
It's a quiet intimacy, a middle of the day, talk about stuff that's on your mind but really nothing important, I remember who you are and why I love you kind of intimacy. It warms me just as thoroughly as a bowl of homemade turkey and vegetable soup on a cold January day.
There's just me and The Rev and my pot of turkey and vegetable soup. I don't use a recipe, only a kit from the supermarket containing root vegetables, some celery, and some fresh herbs I can't identify because I have very little sense of smell. I think about the flavor profile I'm going for, and add a dash of this, a pinch of that. I am a very good cook and a terrible baker. Cooking, for me, is intuition. Baking is chemistry, and I decisively flunked chemistry a quarter century ago.
As I cut and chop and season the boiling turkey meat, left over from Christmas dinner, I have an actual conversation with my husband.
It's hard to explain how extraordinary that is. You see, we have three children, whom I shall identify as Boy, Doodle, and Scooby. (That's what we really do call them, and I promise I will expand on that topic some other time.) They, like children everywhere, are little black holes of attention. Every moment is, for them, an opportunity to be front and center in the minds of their parents -- except at those times when we are superfluous and unwanted. They are bundles of self-absorption: I want you to be there when I want you, and when I don't, to go away.
But this Monday morning at half past eleven, the two younger ones, Doodle and Scooby, are engrossed downstairs in some video game, the goal of which I cannot understand no matter how many times they try to enlighten me, and Boy, who is fourteen, is, of course, still sleeping.
And I realize as I chop vegetables that I cannot remember the last time The Rev and I were able to have a grown up conversation that was not (1) under cover of darkness in the middle of the night, or (2) simultaneously costing us ten dollars an hour in babysitting fees.
I add carrots and parsnips and turnips to the pot, and watch as they bump against the onions and celery in the boiling water. I mentally calculate the nutritional value of each ingredient, and in deference to The Rev's new eating plan, try to figure out how many Weight Watchers points this would translate to. I concentrate on the sound of my husband's voice, the deep bass, reveling in the uninterruptedness of it. It wraps around me, warm as the steam coming off of the bubbling soup.
This is intimacy. The quiet conversation of spouses, about things both important and mundane. Little moments of his day, stored up in that mental box marked, Things To Tell My Wife, If I Get A Chance, received by me with interest, and transferred to a basket I've labeled, Stuff That Is Important To My Husband. On a busier day, he might not have a chance to share some passing anecdote to make me laugh, or I might be too involved in the thousand logistical details of making the house run to pay more than superficial attention to the story. Just about any other day, our conversation would be punctuated by the semi-colons and ellipses of other voices, tears, arguments, or demands for attention, and the narrative, half-told, would eventually drift off into the silence of incompletion, with a hand wave and a muttered, "Never mind, it wasn't important."
But right now, today, we have the luxury of cooking hearty soup from scratch in our kitchen and letting our conversation meander where it will go. Nothing we speak about this morning is earth-shattering; we are not deciding the fate of nations, or even of the family. No, we are simply sharing a moment -- unstressed, unpressed -- as two people who used to take these moments for granted, before we were two plus three.
Soon enough, though, perhaps inevitably, a howl of frustration rises from the basement. The animated foe has won one too many rounds. We glance, startled, at the clock and realize we've had an entire hour of nothing but our own adult voices, uninterrupted. It's time to wake up Boy, time to get some housework done, time to let the soup simmer.
It's a quiet intimacy, a middle of the day, talk about stuff that's on your mind but really nothing important, I remember who you are and why I love you kind of intimacy. It warms me just as thoroughly as a bowl of homemade turkey and vegetable soup on a cold January day.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
The Un-Civil War
Yesterday, January 8, 2011, a United States Congresswoman from Arizona was shot in the head while meeting with her constituents. At this moment, she is still fighting for her life, but several other people were killed. Bystanders caught the 22-year old gunman, who, as information continues to come in, is apparently quite crazy.
Representative Gabrielle Giffords was doing her job, having just been sworn in to the most recent session of Congress. I've no doubt that there were people who didn't vote for her, who don't agree with her positions, and who would rather someone else had taken the oath of office last week. Rep. Giffords supported health care reform, for example, a position with which many Americans, although likely not the "vast majority" claimed by the law's opponents, don't agree. In fact, nobody agrees one hundred percent with any elected official -- any more than we always agree with our colleagues at work or our spouses. And when the stakes are high, and the subject is important, disagreements can get heated and stressful.
But we don't pick up guns and try to assassinate each other over our differences of opinion. As car advertisers often say, our mileages may vary.
So now everyone is rising up in righteous indignation, and issuing statements, sending their "thoughts and prayers" to the Congresswoman and her family, to the families of the victims, to the other injured. Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle have been falling all over themselves on TV, radio, and Twitter to distance themselves from this act of violence, rushing to the nearest live microphone to disavow any connection, actual or philosophical, with this crime.
It's all theatre.
These same members, Democrat and Republican alike, were the very ones treating this new legislative session as if it were a land war. Before they were even sworn in, they had already drawn sides, circulated strategy maps, and made plans to annihilate the policies of the other side. They long ago put aside any pretense of actually governing, and let their battle flags fly.
And now they have the nerve to act surprised that some unhinged person, who takes them at their word, fires actual real bullets at the person he sees -- as demented as he apparently is -- as the enemy. Not Representative, not legislator, but enemy, someone to be violently removed and cleared out of the way.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, you did this. You set this tragedy in motion months and months ago.
Every political debate causes your needle to fly to ten, into the red. You don't just disagree with a statement from the other side; you vilify them for having a different point of view, as if an opposite opinion is a personal attack on all that is good and sacred and right and patriotic. And the response from the other side is just as extreme. You can't wait to get in front of the cameras, as long as they lead to your favorite sympathetic news outlet, to blast the other side's ideas, whatever they may turn out to be. You don't listen, and you don't care. Frankly, you don't even govern. You just shout and blame and point fingers and try to make the other side look like the enemy.
And we know what to do with the enemy, don't we?
I can't speak for Rep. Giffords or her family, or any of the other victims of this tragedy. I can only speak for myself, a disgusted voter in this democracy.
Shut up. Keep your thoughts to yourself. They are poison. Keep your prayers, too. Because if you were in touch with anybody worth praying to, you would neither engage in nor tolerate the invective that has dominated the airwaves up until yesterday.
Next week this time, political focus will have turned to the battle over repealing the health care reform act. Rep. Giffords will be an afterthought. And Capitol Hill will ring again with charged rhetoric and war imagery as each side tries to crush the enemy like Sherman marching to the sea.
Someone needs to remind our legislators that there really is no such thing as "civil" war.
Representative Gabrielle Giffords was doing her job, having just been sworn in to the most recent session of Congress. I've no doubt that there were people who didn't vote for her, who don't agree with her positions, and who would rather someone else had taken the oath of office last week. Rep. Giffords supported health care reform, for example, a position with which many Americans, although likely not the "vast majority" claimed by the law's opponents, don't agree. In fact, nobody agrees one hundred percent with any elected official -- any more than we always agree with our colleagues at work or our spouses. And when the stakes are high, and the subject is important, disagreements can get heated and stressful.
But we don't pick up guns and try to assassinate each other over our differences of opinion. As car advertisers often say, our mileages may vary.
So now everyone is rising up in righteous indignation, and issuing statements, sending their "thoughts and prayers" to the Congresswoman and her family, to the families of the victims, to the other injured. Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle have been falling all over themselves on TV, radio, and Twitter to distance themselves from this act of violence, rushing to the nearest live microphone to disavow any connection, actual or philosophical, with this crime.
It's all theatre.
These same members, Democrat and Republican alike, were the very ones treating this new legislative session as if it were a land war. Before they were even sworn in, they had already drawn sides, circulated strategy maps, and made plans to annihilate the policies of the other side. They long ago put aside any pretense of actually governing, and let their battle flags fly.
And now they have the nerve to act surprised that some unhinged person, who takes them at their word, fires actual real bullets at the person he sees -- as demented as he apparently is -- as the enemy. Not Representative, not legislator, but enemy, someone to be violently removed and cleared out of the way.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, you did this. You set this tragedy in motion months and months ago.
Every political debate causes your needle to fly to ten, into the red. You don't just disagree with a statement from the other side; you vilify them for having a different point of view, as if an opposite opinion is a personal attack on all that is good and sacred and right and patriotic. And the response from the other side is just as extreme. You can't wait to get in front of the cameras, as long as they lead to your favorite sympathetic news outlet, to blast the other side's ideas, whatever they may turn out to be. You don't listen, and you don't care. Frankly, you don't even govern. You just shout and blame and point fingers and try to make the other side look like the enemy.
And we know what to do with the enemy, don't we?
I can't speak for Rep. Giffords or her family, or any of the other victims of this tragedy. I can only speak for myself, a disgusted voter in this democracy.
Shut up. Keep your thoughts to yourself. They are poison. Keep your prayers, too. Because if you were in touch with anybody worth praying to, you would neither engage in nor tolerate the invective that has dominated the airwaves up until yesterday.
Next week this time, political focus will have turned to the battle over repealing the health care reform act. Rep. Giffords will be an afterthought. And Capitol Hill will ring again with charged rhetoric and war imagery as each side tries to crush the enemy like Sherman marching to the sea.
Someone needs to remind our legislators that there really is no such thing as "civil" war.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
These Are Not New Year’s Resolutions (or, I can do anything for thirty days)
Let me first put it out there that, to me, New Year’s Resolutions are inherently unworkable. These are promises that you make to yourself while drunk, or worse, hungover, and that you immediately regret as soon as you sober up. If you haven’t told anyone about them, you just pretend they never happened. If you advertised your good intentions, you do just enough to look like you’re trying, and wait for everyone else’s attention to wander off. These are goals you haven’t even been able to consistently try to reach during the prior 364 days of the old year. These are the things you think are going to make you a better person, conceived in the warm, fuzzy afterglow of the Christmas season, inspired by the greatest gift ever given to mankind.
Seriously – when we remind ourselves that the Son of God willingly agreed to come to earth as a baby, to experience diaper rash and teething in order to save mankind from itself, we respond with fervent promises of weight loss and more diligent work habits. We try to be worth that sacrifice by resolving to get up at half past dark and go for a run in the frigid morning air. And when our initial attempts are not, in fact, greeted with a multitude of the heavenly host in the eastern sky, we gradually sputter back into old habits and inertia.
Or maybe that’s just me. I think New Year’s Resolutions are corny, and only end up as seeds in my already overgrown garden of personal disappointment. Sure, I can give up swearing, smoking, eating chocolate or mainlining caffeine for a month at a time, forty days if I’m feeling particularly New Testament. But forever? Way too open-ended.
So these are not New Year’s Resolutions. These are New Month goals. Little thirty-day endurance tests, 5Ks rather than marathons (oh, right, “complete a marathon” – that was a 2007 resolution, wasn’t it . . .?) . Baby steps, people. I can do anything for thirty days.
1. Start a blog. See? That wasn’t hard, was it? I love to write, I have a lot of opinions about a lot of things, and I’m oh, so very tired of bumper-sticker conversations. Some thoughts require more than a tweet – actually most thoughts do. (“Eight am, standing in line at Starbucks waiting for my dbl latte, think I saw Leo DiCaprio, global warming’s bad and so are Republicans” – really, that’s the best we can do?) And in order to have an intelligent point of view, I’ve got to read well-reasoned stuff, talk to thoughtful people about things that matter, and sift through it all to find what makes sense to me. I want to take the time to think about the big things and the little things. I want to be part of the on-going global conversation. Who knows what I might have to offer?
2. Cook the way my grandmother used to cook. Put aside the boxes of processed high fructose corn syrup and the packets of powdered cheese, and pick up a vegetable. Explore some grains besides white rice and elbow macaroni. Figure out what actual spices taste like, and use them to make food taste fantastic, instead of relying on fatty, cholesterol-raising sauces. If my grandmother would have to ask what exactly an ingredient on the side of the box is (I’m looking at you, monosodium glutamate and Red No. 40), I don’t have to put it in my mouth. When I find something particularly wonderful, I’ll be sure to share it with you.
3. Treat myself well. I know that sounds selfish, but you don’t know me yet. My friend Lolo actually wrote me a letter a couple of years ago begging – begging – me to stop dressing like a bag lady. 2011 is the year I make good on that deal. As Patti LaBelle once sang, “I’ve got a new attitude!” Okay, so for a while after that song came out, I was sure she was proclaiming, “I’ve got a new pair of shoes!” Which is handy, because I’ve discovered a new, and apparently long buried, fascination for four-inch platform stilettos. It’s all part of a fiendish plot to make my minister hubby lose his train of thought in the middle of his sermon some Sunday morning. But I digress. For thirty days, I think I can work on exercising my mind, feeding my body good healthy food, and making sure I walk out the door looking sharp.
And if it shortens that sermon by a minute or ten, that’s cool, too.
Warmly,
danablue
Warmly,
danablue
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