To Foodie or Not to Foodie...

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and with that comes food. Lots of it. At this point in my life, I've embraced the idea that I'm going to eat on Thanksgiving and enjoy it. While there may be those of you out there who think it's fun to make a fat-free and heart-healthy meal every fourth Thursday in November, I'm not one of you. This year, I bought (count 'em) twelve sticks of butter for my various recipes, four of which alone are being used to coat the turkey, along with some rosemary, sage, and thyme. We aren't having anyone extra over for the meal, either- just the family of five- and yet I'm making enough food for twenty. But, isn't that how it is? A day to feel grateful for all we have, and a fantastic table spread to prove it.

Now, of course I don't eat like this every day. Most days, I'm sensible with fresh veggies and lean cuts of meat, healthy oils, and whole grains. I exercise four or five days a week, try to get enough sleep, and take some personal time for me each day. But, I've still come to a place in my life where I enjoy the flavors and nuances of good food much more than I enjoy the struggles of dieting the pounds away. I turned forty this year, and with that birthday came a realization that I am not twenty five anymore, nor have I been for, well, you do the math. When I got married, I fit nicely into a size eight dress, and I had literally worked my butt off for six months to do it. Now, I'm in a size twelve. Could I lose a few pounds? Sure. But, I can't have it all. I either get to enjoy being a foodie, savor the flavors of my meals and my life, or I get to be a dieter, weighing myself daily and eating small portions of ugly food.

You may argue that I am going to polar extremes here. Logicians would call this a logical dilemma and yell at me that there are other options than my either-or. And here is the option I'm working with. Love my body. Take care of it by exercising and eating well, but enjoying the flavor of a deliciously fatty and glorious food when my body craves it or when holiday traditions demand it. Embrace my curves. Watch the scale to make sure things aren't going downhill, but not stress about the numbers. Stare at paintings from the Renaissance, at the rolls and curves created by Rafael or Michelangelo. Tell myself I'm beautiful, even when I'm naked. Avoid punishing myself.

Perhaps I'm in denial. My health-obsessed friends would probably call me a quitter. But, the only thing I'm quitting is self loathing. Today, I embrace my body, and on Thanksgiving this Thursday, I plan to indulge.

Free To Be, You and Me

Having not the time to write something new, but desperately wanting to keep this blog active, I dig deep in the files to an essay I wrote about a year ago, when asked about my view on America...

America has been called the “land of the free” and the “home of the brave.” It is famous for its apple pie and baseball.  It is a leader in democracy and capitalistic growth, loved by many, feared by many, hated by many. I was born and raised in this beautiful country, but it was not until adulthood that I stopped to consider what that really meant. When I visited Nairobi, Kenya in the summer of 1998, studying abroad there for two months, I saw what America meant to others, and I was humbled. I recall walking through the markets there, constantly being offered some trinket to buy, a necklace with traditional beading or a soapstone carving. I remember saying to one vendor that I didn’t have the money to purchase an expensive item he wanted to sell me, which as a starving college student was essentially true. He muttered something in Swahili, which was translated for me by a local friend. He explained that the fact that I had managed to get on a plane from America to Kenya meant that I was more wealthy than most of the people I would see on my trip. It did not matter that I had taken out extra student loans to do so; in fact, the very fact that I had the luxury of taking out loans only added to their case against me.

America—the land of the free. We do indeed live a life of freedom enviable by so many others. This country, founded on political and religious freedom, gave its citizens at the outset the rights that were denied by other nations of the same day and age. What would Voltaire have thought of our First Amendment? Would Hobbes and Locke praise the democratic system that we have created in our Constitution? While constantly changing per Supreme Court interpretation, and certainly not perfect, our Constitution and inclusive Bill of Rights is indeed something we should be proud of. It was written with precision and designed specifically to create freedom—for the states from the federal government, and for the people from potentially corrupt leaders. It is a model for so many fledgling nations. It is beautiful.

As I have said to my students many times over, freedom comes with responsibility. It is in this responsibility that our nation becomes the “home of the brave,” for living up to one’s responsibilities can require the utmost in bravery. It is with this mindset that I became a teacher, for so many youth of this day and age demand their rights and their freedoms without fully understanding the responsibilities therein. High on my list of favorite rights, we have the right to an education, but accompanying it is the responsibility to go out there and learn, soaking knowledge like a sponge. It is with knowledge that we are truly free. Of this, I am certain, and I’m pretty sure my heroes Thomas Jefferson and James Madison would agree.

Hope in a Flash

As I was driving home from work a few days ago, I witnessed something horridly shocking. Two men on the side of the very busy, rush-hour filled freeway, cars parked. One was walking towards the other, I thought in efforts to help with a broken down car. I thought, that is, until I saw the first man gesturing a "you gonna mess with this?" gesture and the second ripping off his sweatshirt. It was only as I glanced in my rear view mirror that I saw the pounce- the two literally attacked each other on the side of the road, drawing traffic in that direction to a screeching halt as the drivers feared hitting these two rage filled demons.

It made me sick to my stomach. I hated seeing that. It was something out of a movie, and I cut out movies with such violence from my life years ago.

The only think I could think of to counteract such nonsense was to replace the visual with something positive. And so, I went to You Tube, and I typed in "flash mob."

Flash mobs, to me, are symbols of what good there is left in the world. A massive group of strangers, compiling themselves for a few hours to a few days, to learn, rehearse and perform a crazy song and dance, all for the totally free provision of joy to others. Can goodness get any more pure? It's so ludicrously simple, so purely delightful that it could only have popped out of a Charles Dickens novel. Only after, of course, the very evil villain that Dickens was so talented at creating was defeated in the last twenty pages. Flash mobs scream innocence- ice cream cones melting in your hands on a hot day, skipping like a kid, laughing until no sound comes out. Flash mobs are here to remind us that there is still good in the world.

So, I sat on You Tube for an hour or more, watching people dance to rave versions of Julie Andrews in Antwerp, people sing greetings to weary travelers in Heathrow airport, and even an impromptu rendition of Handel's Messiah in a shopping mall's food court. I smiled. I felt better knowing that there were people out there willing to make fools of themselves in the name of joy and happiness. I went to bed and rested well.

See the wonderful flash mob that started it all!

Life Is Your Experience

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues. 

Abraham Lincoln

While this blog was intended to be a daily glass of lemonade, I have found lately that I've had the time to write here closer to weekly, at best. This all boils down to a very simple fact-- I'm super busy. Who isn't, you ask? We all work hard, manage our lives and households through cooking, cleaning and organizing, sleep, and try to maybe relax for a minute or two. Where in there is the time for extracurricular stuff like pondering the meaning of life?

This got me thinking to my recent experiences in searching for a new job. Oh, job hunting is such an amazing experience. Nowhere in life do we have such an excuse to talk about ourselves with reckless abandon. Nowhere do we smile more or laugh at more bad jokes. We enter the interview room with hope and excitement, answer their questions the best we can, and leave, wondering if we answered the questions they way we should have. Job hunting is a roller coaster full of excited ups as we find the job that we just have to have and downs as we receive that letter telling us it has already been filled. Cramped fingers from typing up individualized cover letters, tired necks from holding the phone to our shoulders as we make follow up calls, achy feet as we wear those ludicrous high heels we never wear otherwise.

As I pieced my resume together for this journey, I thought about something my father once said. You're never as perfect as you are on your resume. I'm sure he did not make this quote up, but he reworded it well enough that I can't seem to find the original source. The closest I can find is Bo Bennett's definition of a resume: "Resume: a written exaggeration of only the good things a person has done in the past, as well as a wish list of the qualities a person would like to have."

Yes, the resume is where we put all of our wonderful achievements, hoping that future employers will look at this one or two page summary of our life and say, "I must hire this person. Now. And offer her a very large salary, to boot." Mason Cooley once said, "If you call failures experiments, you can put them in your resume and claim them as achievements." Yes, we put it all on, and then twist it, tweak it, and maneuver it so that it looks like we're amazing, perhaps even more amazing that we really are.

But we don't really have the chance to put everything on our resumes, do we? Employers don't really care about the experiences that we get from places other than school or work. Herein lies my big gripe. What about those hard working folk who stay home with their kids for years on end, and then enter the grueling job search with "nothing" on their resumes? What about the lessons we learned from the bullies on the playground (or, sadly, the bullies from our adult life)? What about our age, gender, religious background, sexual orientation, and other things that make us who we are and help to create our work ethic, but are too taboo to mention? What about the broken hearts, the things said that we wish we could take back, the feet placed in our mouths and crows eaten, all which makes us stronger, smarter, and more able to correctly make good decisions in the future?

My son, at his first skateboarding lesson, AFTER he fell, cried, and got back on again...

These are the things that make us who we are, and who we are is as important, if not more, than what we have done in life. Who we are is based not only on achievements but also on failures, the times that we fell off the proverbial horse and got back on. Our traditional resume would say, "Successfully rode horse," but our life's resume would add, "after hours of trying and failing and a significantly bruised gluteus maximus." It is how we handle our failures that make us truly successful; for lack of a more appropriate pun, it is how we make lemonade out of those lemons. Be proud of your failures in life, because it is the through those failures that you have reached your greatest achievements!

Cold Dishes

They say that revenge is a dish best served cold. I've been thinking about the concept of crime and punishment a lot lately, as I've run across some plain old mean folks in the last few months. That is a story to share for another day, but the aftermath, the "what do I do now?" remains to be pondered.

My grandmother was famous in our family for holding a grudge. She once refused to talk to my Aunt Jean for thirteen years- yes, YEARS- because of something Aunt Jean said that none of us can remember, not even my grandmother. She was a hot-blooded Italian woman who knew what made her mad, and she was not afraid to let it be known. Hot-blooded, according to Webster's dictionary, means passionate, and who has ever been faulted for a little passion now and then. But, the traditional meaning behind revenge as a "cold" dish implies cold-blooded action- heartless, mean spirited, even cruel. Cold-blooded revenge is that which we enact before we have the time to think it through, because most likely our judgment would take over and stop us. And we certainly couldn't let that happen.

Revenge is something as old as humankind, as far reaching as Cain and Abel. We have revenge as the basis for some of literature's most famous pieces of work- The Count of Monte Cristo, Moby Dick- and in some of film world's more famous outputs- think, Revenge of the Nerds or The Empire Strikes Back. The concept of avenging the death of a family member or some perceived wrong done, the famous gentleman's duels of history, all lead me to wonder if we all don't eat off of this icy platter once in a while.

As I think about the idea of revenge served cold, I think about dishes that are best served cold. Now, I'm not talking about dishes that MUST be served cold- who wants hot ice cream for example? I'm talking about where you have a choice, and the cold is the better option. Gazpacho... Salad... Ceviche... Sushi... All of these are good tasting, but in my humble opinion, aren't the most satisfying of dishes. I've never made a meal of just soup without raiding the fridge later on, and even with sushi, I end up eating way too much of it to give my stomach that comfy feeling a good meal should leave. While a cold dish is good as a side or a snack, I would argue that it's the warm dishes that truly leave us feeling good and cozy. When we think "comfort food", it's the mashed potatoes, the meat loaf, the bread and butter with gravy that come to mind.

So, I would argue that if it's best served cold, I'll leave it for another day. I would rather serve up something warm and satisfying, something that makes those I feed feel happy and comforted. And, by loving my enemy with kindness, I probably am exacting the best kind of revenge after all.

Warm and Comforting Pasta

1 bulb fennel, coarsely chopped
1 red onion, chopped
2 russet potatoes, peeled and diced into quarter inch cubes
1 lb orecchiette pasta
5 or 6 ounces of smoked Fontina cheese, shredded
olive oil
crushed red pepper
chopped garlic- as much as you like since garlic is so good

Heat oil until ready for the onion and garlic, then toss those in. Cook for a minute or two and then add the fennel and potatoes. Saute until soft and brown and crispy in some bits- yum! Add crushed pepper to taste (only a little if you're cooking for my husband). Cook a little longer til all the flavors mix and taste yummy when you sample it.

Meanwhile, cook paste til al dente. Drain and set aside in a big ol' bowl.

Add potato mixture to pasta and stir it up. Throw in the Fontina and stir again. Eat with Parmesan cheese and feel cozy.

Comfort Food Isn't Always Southern

My husband grew up on comfort food, though not the Southern cooking kind. His parents were British, and so he grew up on roasts and boiled veggies, casseroles, potatoes, and the like. If it could be boiled, it was. To this day, his mother's pork roast is something he asks for when we go to visit.

I had to do something about this.

One of the first things that I did when we got married was introduce him to proper Italian cooking, though again, not the Southern kind. My family is from a town about two hours east of Rome (albeit they left 103 years ago) and we are decidedly northern. I did not realize that pasta with a pesto sauce was not a traditional Thanksgiving dish until I was married and had my first Thanksgiving with my husband's family.

And so it is with pesto that I made my husband a "foodie." And it is with pride that I say that today, his birthday, when he could ask for anything in the world to eat, he specifically asked me to make Salmon Pesto Pasta.

Yes, pesto is the new comfort food. My grandmother made pesto by the bucket and would freeze it in ice cube trays, pulling out a cube or two when we would show up unexpectedly for dinner. If I could turn basil into a perfume, I would do so and wear it daily. The smell of the basil and garlic grinding together in my Cuisinart is one of the happiest smells I can think of. It is spring, summer, fall and winter. It is refreshing when hot, and comforting when cold. It is quite possibly the perfect food.

All ye naysayers, do not balk at me about the quantity of cheese and oil in a perfect pesto sauce. Let's not mention my grandmother's secret ingredient of cream. Moderation is the key to life, and a little pesto once in a while will not kill any one of us (except possibly those allergic to pine nuts). So, I am happily about to head to my kitchen to make my husband his special birthday dinner, so that he can find comfort in both my cooking and in me.

Just sittin' on the porch swing...

I have never considered myself a hot weather person, which is why my obsession with lemonade is so surprising. I've been to the South, in the summer even, and the combination of hot and humid just doesn't sit well with me. Curly hair goes to frizz, powdered face to shiny. While this look suits many women, in my mind, I'm not one of them.

And yet, whenever I go to the library or video store, I find myself migrating towards those stores of Southern comfort- To Kill a Mockingbird, Cold Sassy Tree, Steel Magnolias, Fried Green Tomatoes. The people of the South just seem so strong and able. The women don't take guff off of anyone, and I wish deep down to be that confident. I want Maya Angelou to be my next door neighbor, the Designing Women to decorate my home, and Emeril Lagasse to cook me dinner.

I began toying with lemonade recipes several years ago, and now it's become kind of an obsession. I've tried lavender, mint, chili peppers, and cinnamon. I've made it plain and with milk- yes, milk. I am always on the lookout for amazing lemonade recipes and delicious treats that go with a nice cold glass of it.

So, I sit here in the middle of May with my sweater on, because outside where I live it is blustery and cold despite the bright blue skies. I don't have a porch and I don't have a swing. I dream about those warm summer nights after a hot summer day, sitting on a porch swing with a glass of lemonade, and I write this, my first blog post ever.

Here is to all things cozy and relaxed and to a good glass of lemonade.