Hitched

Perhaps the title and the timing led you to believe this would be about getting married; it's not! i fooled you!

Actually, I'm referring to the idea from quote:

"Hitch your wagon to a star" - Emerson

As a teacher, when you teach the same classes year after year, you become extremely familiar with the books, the authors, and the lessons.  While the way you teach things may vary, the stories do not; Oedipus always kills his father and marries his mother, John Proctor always chooses getting hanged to save his good name, and Toni Morrison always makes the reader believe that people can fly.

There are certain topics we study that, depending on where I am in life, can greatly influence me; some years, reading Sylvia Plath, Alice Walker, and Edna St. Vincent Millay make me want to become a dark and twisty civil rights activist engaging in torrid love affairs.  Romanticism, (the literary movement) fell upon me much the same way this year.  There's something about the transcendentalist essays that get me high. take my breath away.  increase my pulse.

How does that NOT inspire you?  How does that NOT make you want to pack all your bags, jump in a car, a train, a whatever - and just go - eyes forward - rope poised for the wrangling.   i've had this itch lately (and maybe that's why this unit is the one that inspired me this year) to walk away from everything i know - start with a clean slate - and begin again.

Transcendentalists urge people to :






The yearning to just up and go isn't so much about leaving anything bad behind - I am quite content.  It's got more to do with an overwhelming need/desire to be among nature.  It's because I am content that I want to escape the city, the technology, the landscape of proprietors and businesses pulling at my wallet - it's because i'm content that now is the perfect time to soak up the intense beauty of the natural landscape.  My mind, the way it communicates and interprets what the eye sees, what the skin feels, what the air smells like - is exactly where it needs to be:

"Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of both. It is necessary to use these pleasures with great temperance. For, nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.  To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then, there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population." - Emerson

This statement should not be glossed over; I find so much truth in it.  Four years ago, at a very different point in my life, I escaped from Atlanta in search of something - some thing to make me feel whole again.  I traveled back to Ithaca, in upstate New York, to a place whose beauty and magnificence have never let me down.  Just to amplify the truth of the statement above, I have this picture.  This is the only version I have - I must have taken the picture in the normal setting/filter, but this is how I edited it, and this is all i have of it - this is how I must have been seeing it, feeling it - this is what I brought to the most beautiful location -- my mood, my sorrow, my uneasiness with myself.

All the hues are missing - the greens, the blues - and the water droplets that become color wheels as they fly past the sun - they're not in this picture.  The continuous sound the rocks make as the water crashes over and over again, like it's applauding the river's fierceness, begging for more, the mist that hits your face if you get too close - none of that is in this picture.  This picture is dreary; everything that makes this my personal icon of freedom and love - it's all missing.
And it's because my mind, too, was dreary.

But now, four years later and with much more hope, tenacity and growth,  I yearn for it again.  Not to save me, not because I want anything from it - but because I simply want to see, feel, hear, touch, and taste beautifulness.  I think this picture would like entirely different if I went back.   The harmony of both nature and woman.  The stars would align; my rope would go taut.

watercolor

While I was waiting for the doctor to come into my exam room today, I happened to glance up at a  painting.  It wasn't a terribly  good painting; offices and waiting  rooms tend to all have that same muted, inoffensive water color  scheme.   In any other situation,  I probably wouldn't have even given it a second look, but for  some reason I couldn't stop  staring at it. The water, the  cobblestone path with a ledge  looking out into the river, the sky - I just couldn't put my  finger  on why I was completely  fixated on this B-grade painting.  And then it hit me.

painting in doctor's office

View of the Delaware River at my grandparents

They really don't look that much  alike, I realize.  I don't even  know how I made the leap from the  painting to the memory --- My grandparents lived in a condominium community that sat right against the Delaware River.  We would walk over to this little jetty and stare at the way the sun drew lines all over the river. 

I hadn't pulled up this memory in probably decades.  

I am a firm believer in signs and things happening for a reason.  If you know me at all, you know this to be true.  And this painting, in this room, at that moment was exactly perfect.  Angles and protecting from above and all that watercolor stuff.

The thyme it takes

I don't just write blogs, I read other people's blogs, too.  I try to explore new topics from a diverse crowd, but when my good friends write blogs, I always read them.  My friend Christina is doing that whole30 thing, that nutritional program designed to change your life in 30 days. whole30 program.  She's blogging about her experience, and today she wrote something that really hit home for me.

From Christina's blog: "Something funny I thought about while cooking on Friday night: how if you are simply a reader of this blog and have never participated in any sort of food regimen such as this, you might not realize just HOW MUCH cooking & cleaning & mess is involved.

This statement resonated with me because:

The time it takes to plan, shop, prepare, cook, eat, and clean up after a healthy meal is overwhelmingly ridiculous.  This is why the rich and famous have killer bodies and personal chefs. They never have to think about it - the perfectly planned portions just show up on the table.   For the rest of us, we have to do it all ourselves.  This is why the average person who begins cooking in order to eat healthily and lose weight, inevitably gains the weight back and beings making poor eating choices.   And I can't blame them - the long hours - it's almost like having another job.   With this job, taxes eat away almost all of the profit; the skinnier, heart-healthy, happier you has no time to go out and actually show it off.   

It gets so tiring.  Coming home from a long day and going straight into what's for dinner is not relaxing.  Never mind when you realize you are out of something - then you have to get back in the car and go to the store, come home, and start the process again. Sometimes, I want to choose a nap over making dinner.  

Some people hit a breaking point; the planning and making of meals gradually decreases, and suddenly that Thai takeout looks really good. The sandwich shop near work sounds much easier than packing your lunch the night before, and who doesn't love a bag of chips, a pack of crackers, or some chocolate as a mid-day snack?  And while none of those are horrible choices, (I don't think people really go from making chicken and veggie stir fry to getting chicken and cheese quesadillas from Taco Bell), they are still overly processed, carb heavy, and the serving size is consumed x 10.   

This time commitment to cooking and eating well is something I struggle with every day, and I don't even have a family to feed!  I've been focused on healthy eating for almost two years now, and I've somehow managed not to fall back into the trap of eating what's easier and faster.  But I could.  And I know why people do.  And it's ok if we have weeks where we throw our Fradishes in the air and say, "screw it!"  

I dont really have a solution or a fix.   I just wanted to shed some light on what some people are going through.   Perhaps we could all stand to make a healthy meal for a friend one night.  I’ll even bring the coffee. 

A recipe from me, Ronald McRadish

you guys must be hungry!  I'm so used to being called "picky" and "kind of ridiculous" when it comes to food; i'll take the sudden change of heart!

Living alone makes cooking both hard and easy.  Most recipes, and food in general, are designed with more than one person in mind.  On the flip side, the only person whose tastes I must cater to are my own.  With that being said,  I will not be offended if you change, alter, add, or subtract anything from my recipes, and I encourage you to double or triple the recipes as needed.  

 I have an interesting relationship with food; in fact, a lot of what I write about in my blog stems from that relationship whether it's stated outright or not.  Most of the time, it's not.  But food and I have been destined down this path for quite some time, and finding a simpler, straight forward way to write about it is a nice change.  Recipe time!  These two dishes go together perfectly for a nice, healthy dinner.

Fraddishes: (name credits are not mine)These could be my few favorite veggie swap.  They honestly could be the worlds healthiest fries.  For 1 cup of radish slices (which is a lot!) it's 18 calories and 3.9 carbs!  Crazy, i know. 

Ingredients:

1 bag of radishes (I bought the kind that are de-stemmed and ready to go)

PAM or olive oil/coconut oil

Paprika

Salt (optional)

Garlic Powder

Directions:

After! Totally looks like sweet potato fries!
Tastes even better!

1. Preheat oven to 425.  For ease, you can use a food processor with the thinnest slicer blade OR you can just use a knife and cut the radishes into very thin slices.  I sliced about 10-15 radishes (they shrink down a lot in the oven, fyi)

Before - just plain old radishes

2. Spray a foil-lined pan with PAM or use olive oil and place radishes on sheet - sprinkle with paprika and some garlic (you can use salt or whatever else you like, too, but the paprika really makes it). 

3. Do another quick spray of PAM on top, or drizzle with olive oil and put on the bottom rack of the oven for 15-20 minutes. keep an eye out to make sure they don't get too burned!

4. Flip  the radishes over and put back in for 10 more minutes -  they should look crispy! 

5. Remove from oven and enjoy!  

Turkey Roll Ups

Ingredients

1 or 2 turkey cutlets (Trader Joe's, Kroger, Wallmart all sell them)

2 Mushrooms

2 Sage leaves

Handful of fresh spinach leaves

garlic

kitchen twine or toothpick

bread crumbs (i use half of a low carb wheat pita, toast it, and put it in my food processor) but you can use panko or regular breadcrumbs. 

egg wash or olive oil

Directions:

1. Pound one cutlet in between two pieces of Saran wrap until turkey is about 1/4 inch thick. 

2. Then, put sage leaves, garlic, mushrooms and spinach in the food processor to make a filling. 

Sautéed that for a few minutes in a pan with PAM or olive oil.  Just a few minutes.

3. With a spoon, put it on top of the turkey and spread it out, leaving about a half of an inch around the sides. 

4. Carefully rolled it up starting with the narrowest edge.

5. You can tie it with some kitchen twine or try to press it down firmly so that it doesn't come unrolled. Brush the turkey with Egg (egg beaters work, PAM works, olive oil works) and gently pushed it down into the bread crumbs.  Get both sides covered.   

6. Place turkey on foil-covered baking sheet with the seam side down.

7. Baked it at 375 for about 15 minutes on one side and 15 on the other.  Be careful when you flip it over, use a two spatulas to pick up and guide it back down. *Times may vary, but always make sure the meat is fully cooked!  

8. Cut it open to see how cool it looks inside and enjoy!

Weekend omelet breakfast: Easy as pie (or cupcake).

I've never written a cooking/baking blogpost before.  It's a little different than what I'm used to writing.  I have a running word-play list of food puns going through my head, but people say you shouldn't play with your food.  So.  I'll be straight forward, even though I'm sure the word-play would crack you up.

Egg omelet cupcakes and toast (and coffee, of course)
note: I tend to use lower-fat, lower-sugar. lower-carb products, but feel free to use the real ones.

Makes one serving
Preheat oven to 350 and grease (use PAM or cupcake liners) 4 muffin slots in a muffin tin

6 tablespoons of eggbeaters (or 2 eggs)
1/2 to 1 cup assorted cut up fresh veggies - i used spinach, mushrooms and tomatoes, but you can use asparagus, peppers, onions, etc... even add in some ground turkey, sausage, soysage, bacon, turkey bacon etc.
pinch of salt or pepper
pinch of garlic powder or fresh garlic

mix all ingredients together.
pour into muffin cups about 2/3 full
bake for about 16-18 minutes
take out of oven and use a sharp knife to go around the sides of each omelet cupcake if you didn't use cupcake liners.
remove omelet cupcakes and serve with toast and jelly OR put those omelet cupcakes right on top of your toast!  It's up to you - this is a very simple recipe with the freedom to add or use anything you like!   I don't eat cheese, but that's an obvious addition some of you may like!

Eat them hot or freeze them and eat them another day!  And pour some coffee!

3 cheers for the usual things!

If you're at all like me, you've walked through New Year’s Day applauding your efforts at everything, finding a resurgence of hope in things that may have appeared pretty much normal only a few days ago.  On my day off, I made breakfast and coffee, which I served to myself in bed, finished my progress reports for work, delved into the planning stages for the upcoming high school tennis team season, and watched the news - all before noon!  I reveled in my productivity.  As the day went on, my pedestal got higher and higher - I'm teaching a tennis lesson! I'm making a healthy dinner!  I'm reading articles that interest me!  I'm giving my dog her medicine and she's not spitting it out! I was phenomenal all day; 2015 was going to be the year I got my sh#$ together!  

And then I sat down to write and I realized that if you change the name and the date, I wasn't that far off from any other day.  

Balloon heart shriveling.  

But.  Why cant I be proud of myself for these things?  Why can't I let my self-esteem raise up a notch or two?  The thing is - I can.  We all can.   We will all go back to work tomorrow or the next day, and we will all gather under the canopy, put on our makeup, grab our unicycles, and begin our juggling routine across the tight rope.  It's what we do; new year or not, we all have a million responsibilities.  

My new theory is this:  instead of making new year's (insert word of choice i.e. resolution, goals, etc) with the intention of doing something bigger, better, and/or newer - literally out of no where, (ex: run a marathon, start a new hobby, eat healthier, be a better friend) make the choice to celebrate and honor the hard things we all do every single day, first.   By noticing and applauding what seems to be our monotonous routine efforts at being an adult, we can find out what we're actually good at doing and where our strengths lay.  Then, and only then, can we decide where to add on, where to push ourselves, and what new, exciting things can be fostered by our skill set - because it is a skill to sit down and plan out healthy meals for a week.  I do this just as a means to eat well and to nourish myself, but I could build onto those skills by taking a cooking class - thus exposing myself to a new hobby.   

I’m not saying that we shouldn't look for ways to improve on things we're not good at  - my bank account can attest to my need to improve on my budgeting and financial skills.  But it's such a leap to think all of a sudden I will just be great at dealing with my money.  What I am good at is making lists, reading, researching on the Internet, and being creative.  If I really want to learn how to be better with my money, I can try that 52 week money saving challenge I found online   (http://diycozyhome.com/52-week-money-saving-challenge-for-2015/) and creatively make some kind of pretty jar to help motivate me to put money inside of it.  I can use my advanced researching skills to find free online classes (oh hey, I’m good at school and learning!) to find ways to help me save money.  

The trick to all of this is simple:  by noticing and celebrating the things we do all the time that we don’t even bother to notice that we’re good at, we can find tiny bridges to guide us over unknown waters.  The confidence we bring with us from honoring those skills/qualities we already possess will only benefit us when we try something new.  It’s like an extra layer of armor, a bigger sword, or a mightier pen.

So continue seeking joy out of the things you're doing on the first day of the new year. Even if you've done them a million times before - give yourself credit.  Bathe in your boldness.  Take those things you do well and build your tiny bridges all over the place.  

2015: the year of light

New year's eve is a land mine of broken promises, regrets, to do lists, goals, and wishful thinking.   Much like it's neighbor Christmas, people use this holiday to make lists of the things they want and desire.   The biggest difference is that the New Year’s Eve list is written in a state of panic. I'm making my list the eve before the eve.  My list is more of a preemptive New Year’s Eve meltdown; I want to be purposeful with my decisions and actions in the New Year, instead of just responding to a few glittery hours of rehashing all that went wrong. 

Here in the south it's a tradition to eat black-eyed peas, collard greens, and cornbread to bring prosperity, wealth, and luck for the New Year.   Some people place a penny under their bowl of black-eyed peas to boost their luck potential.  While not a fan of black-eyed peas, (and not a true southerner) I am placing a good ol' shiny Lincoln under my keyboard so as to not only absorb the good luck, but to pass it on to all y'all who reads this. 

If not for the very tail end of this year shaking out the way it did, I'm not sure i'd even be doing this. Somehow over the last month or so, I've been acutely aware of everything.  Literally.  Everything that I encountered made me take pause.   It's within the walls of those pauses that I've been able to create somewhat of New Year's list.  They aren't resolutions.  Those inevitably fail.  They aren't goals.  Those inevitably don't get met. They are the facts of my life that I am shining a different light on; I aim to illuminate the full picture and to completely expose myself to myself.  Thirty-five years worth of partial sunlight has protected me and walled me and shielded me; perhaps it needed too.  I keep reading all these articles that say: you are where you need to be! Don’t worry about anything you've done in the past, you were meant to get here this way!  So as annoying as that sounds, perhaps I'll accept that premise and trust that for whatever reason, I am feeling like I need to step out of the shade this year.  This is the year that I will truly see myself.  

Last year I wrote a gratitude blog, and it helped me appreciate and pay attention to all of the small details we tend to overlook as we go about our busy lives.  This year, I am writing a blog armed with the flashlight apps and the strobe lights and the head lamps and the light bulbs and the sun light - all the things that can reveal my hiding spots and allow me to stand confident bathing in the exposure.