Blogging for Connection

From time to time most bloggers ask themselves the question. 

"What question?" you ask.

That question. 

Why do we blog? 

If you are asking this question, pull up a seat and have a cold glass of peach infused ice tea. 

"Why this tea in particular?"you may well ask. "Why not plain? Why not coffee? "

Because this tea is the answer to your question. I hear your confusion. 
"Get to the point already, will you?" you say with a slight irritation in your voice. 

I will oblige you. 

I have never in the whole of my life had peach infused ice tea. Never given it a backwards glance. When the recipe was shared by Ricki Jill of Art@Home on her post for this year's Mad Tea Party I was intrigued. I had to try it. If you ask around, and I beg you don't, you may even learn that I became a bit obsessed with giving it a try. 

The ingredients I bought at a local farm. South Carolinan peaches were chosen over the white ones. Locally grown mint was procured. 


As we sat and sipped and proclaimed over the tea I mused upon the ties that bind us as bloggers. The richness of experience we are granted for the inspiration and kindness from each other, persons unknown to each other in our local, everyday lives. The tea was, and remains, delicious. Ricki was astute in mentioning that the recipe can last a while, but won't because it will be finished long before it's expiration date. For the record, I drank more than one glass. 















Blogging, instagram, and a variety of other ways of connecting are a blessing to those of those who stick with it, who engage and who share. It requires a certain level of engagement, however, and that connection does not come without effort. We blog to see and be seen, to inspire and be inspired, to express and find expressions that help us understand our own experience. We blog to send beauty into the world and to fill our lives with that beauty. 

These are all things I am thinking as I muse over the beauty of the connection we gain from blogging. There is so much more. I need not be complete in this post. 

Dear reader, thank you for being part of this blogging experience. Ricki Jill, thank you so much for this recipe. So delicious! 

Why do you blog? Why do you read blogs? What do you get out of the experience?

The Joys of Menu Planning and a Give Away - My Happy List Tuesday

It's been a couple of weeks since I participated in My Happy List Tuesday. 

Here's what's been making me happy these days. 

The school year is almost upon us. Last year, I spent much of the year lunch-less. I worked straight through the day and found myself ravenous once the last student had left my charge. This was good - I had a lot of work to do and it was easier to get it done without taking the time for lunch. I also spent more time with students. This was bad - I didn't eat as well as is good for me and I missed out on the bonding time with colleagues.

After school there is always a maze of appointments and things to do. Evening meals proved to also be a challenge.

This year I decided I would take the bull by the horns and do something I hadn't done in years - make weekly meal plans. There was a point when I was reading a lot of books about home organization and all of them recommended a weekly meal plan. My reasons for resisting trying this included the inability to take advantage of deals at the green grocer or fish market - a reason that never stood up to examination. Once tried, it was clear that weekly menu plans simplified life. Even the odd daily deal could be accommodated by pushing the plans back one day. It should have been a no brainer to continue this plan. Yet, it's been years since a weekly menu has been in residence here.

Enter Just Bento, a website dedicated to the art of packing lunch boxes, Japanese style. It's a wonderful site full of great resources. One of the personally most helpful parts of the website were the meal planning PDFs. These PDFs were what inspired me to get back on the horse with weekly meal planning. After looking at them, I made my own forms that addressed the needs of my family. The form includes a checklist for protein sources and one for color balance. It helps me to see visually that I am creating a varied menu. There is also a check list for items to be made the night before. The next step is shopping list.

A few weeks ago we took a trip to Ebisuya, a Japanese grocery store in Medford, MA. It's a wonderful store with a very wide range of Japanese foods. In the book section of the store was the Just Bento book! I snatched it up. Even though our stash of o-bentou making supplies is prodigious, some new tools ended up in the grocery cart.

I bought some boiled egg molds. You open the up, place the raw egg inside, snap closed and boil. Presto – a rabbit or bear shaped boiled egg! Cute, right?

Meanwhile, I have been trying out an app called Snap Recipes for tackling the large stack of loose recipes that has defied organization. The app allows you to take up to five photos of the clipped recipe and add information. Tagging the recipes make them searchable by type. The elimination of that stack of clipped recipes and the ease of mobile access to them makes this a real win. It has helped me to work on this project on the go.

Last week I did a trial run of week one menu plan. I hope to eliminate some of the kinks of my system and see where my problems lay. Eventually I hope to have at least four weeks of lunch plans to choose from.

And here’s the give away!

Tools for making your lunch special!

Cookie cutters you can use for cookies, sandwiches, omelets, carrots and more. There are even message stamps – it’s like scrapbooking your food!

Want to win one of these prizes? Subscribe to my blog and leave a comment below with your email. I will select the winners on September 15th. 

Sheep, You Are Safe from Me

Today I celebrate my 30 years as a vegetarian. The last carnivorous meal I had included lamb chops. My impetus for beginning was my health, not the welfare of animals. I began in a time when we all read Diet for a Healthy Planet and The Moosewood Cookbook was fresh off the presses. Growing your own sprouts was popular and I even bought mesh lids and gave it a try. Mostly, I forgot they were around until it was too late.

I have appreciated the reports that say the vegetarian diet will save fuel, is cleaner and makes for a safer and more equitable food supply. These are nice benefits to have for something I’m doing for my own reasons. Believe me when I say, I don’t deny the claims that vegetarians are better looking and look younger!

I have been macrobiotic, ovo, lacto, pesco or dietarily vegan at different times during the years. I remember going to Whole Earth Expo 1982 in New York City and coming in contact with many different philosophies I had never heard of before – Raw Foods, Sproutarians, and others. I remember how surprised I was at the sweet taste of sprouted bread.

Some trends in vegetarian food have come and gone. Some remain constant. I’m grateful that it is much easier to find vegetarian options and the improved labeling.

If I had never become a vegetarian I would not have trod the path I did. I would probably not have studied cooking at Lima Cooking School in Tokyo nor the Kushi Institute in Becket, Massachusetts. I wouldn’t have learned to cook from so many wonderful people including Wendy Esko, Sarah LaPenta, Avelyn Kushi, Lima Osawa or Noa Otomo. I would not have spent hours making Japanese sweets with my friend Atsuko Nagashima with the youmogi (mugwort) we picked on a mountain hike earlier in the day. I’d have missed the joy of growing food, buying from local farms and cooking fresh. In short, I became a better cook.

As a vegetarian I have been adventurous in going to new neighborhoods to find vegetarian friendly food. For a while, I wrote restaurant reviews for an English language newsletter that catered to the natural foods crowd in Tokyo. I never would have been asked to do this had my journey not begun.

I traded lamb chops for chick peas, a trade I have never regretted.

Today I had Chick Pea Salad, one of my favorite recipes from Madhur Jaffrey’s World of the East Vegetarian Cooking to celebrate 30 years of good, vegetarian eating.

Of Berets and Brussels Sprouts

Who would have thought that my poem for today would be about Brussels Sprouts? They certainly weren't on my radar when I got up this morning.


Last year during National Poetry Month I shared Flicker Flash by Joan Bransfield Graham with my classes. It is a great book of concrete poetry to share with young students. I was particularly enamored with a poem that has both brussels sprouts and chocolate cake in it. After all, I have always threatened my family with brussels sprouts. Turns out that one of my colleagues loves brussels sprouts and wasn't satisfied with merely extolling the virtues of the vegetable. She went home, cooked some and brought them to me as a testimony to their superiority. She sold me hook, line and sinker. 


Today she chased me around the building until she caught up with me after noon. She was holding a brown paper bag and had a big smile on her face. Little did I suspect the joy that was to be mine. More brussels sprouts! What could I do? The poems practically wrote themselves.


First the form I played with yesterday:


Small green heads
thick veins protruding
brussels sprouts




and then:




Mrs. Kendall's brussels sprouts
are lovely and delicious
Not only are they tasty
they are really quite nutritious
I cannot wait to skewer them
my fork waits by the bowl
sometimes I like to cut them
other times I eat them whole
she makes them so much better
than I ever could
If I could make them taste like that
You know I bet I would
Mine don't taste like hers
You know she has the touch
So my dear, dear Mrs. Kendall
I must thank you very much.

I'm Not Giving Up

There are many challenges in life. Some of them require strength and fortitude. Some of them require that we not do things we want to do. These times test our souls and the strength of our will. I must admit, I don't have much will power when it comes to passing by afternoon tea. 


The doughnuts in the picture above are gluten-free, made in my mini-doughnut maker for a darling girl who cannot have dairy or wheat. The frosting is raspberry flavored and topped with violet sugar. 


If you think you are "giving up" things, it makes you sound, and feel, defeated. If you abstain, you are in charge, in power and have made a choice. 


I choose to find solutions. I choose to take a potentially sad situation and find a way to find some joy in it. I choose to claim my power, my options and embrace my BoHo Mojo. 

New Year's Guest

Cleaning 

Sweeping

Vacuuming cleaning

Cooking

Chopping

Stir, no stopping

Sparkle

Glisten

Shiny new

This New Year Meal 

I made for you

I was too tired

To stay awake

to see the New Year in

But on January first

when you visit me

My New Year will begin.

(Day One - Month of Poetry. The photograph is of one of the three layers of osechi (traditional Japanese New Year's food) to share with our guests today. I am grateful to have started 2012 with such wonderful friends. )