Michael O'Halloran - Book 33

On a whim, I decided to read another Gene Stratton Porter novel.  I've read her Girl of the Limberlost which I loved and last year I read her novel Laddie which I enjoyed as well.  So I downloaded Michael O'Halloran on my kindle and prepared to have a cozy read.  Alas, that did not happen.  This book struck me as bizarre in so many ways.

Set in the city of 'Multiopolis' which is supposed to represent any Midwestern city during the WWI era, Porter tries to to be allegorical, I think.  We follow the lives of 4 couples:  Mickey, the nickname for the title character, and the little lame girl he rescues, Lily Peaches.  Mickey is a 10 year old orphan surviving on the streets of the city by selling papers.  He's a newsie.  Then there's Douglas Bruce and his lady love, Leslie, whose father is an important man in the city but who is unspoiled by her wealth  because she gets ecstatic going out into NATURE and listening to birdsong, mostly the tamarack swamp.  Then there's James Minturn and his rich, society wife who through slavery to her high society role has neglected her children to the point of death of their youngest daughter and thereby has alienated her husband.  And finally there is noble farmer Peter and his wife Nancy who come to Mickey and Peaches' rescue by taking them from the city to the country.

Mickey is supposed to be 10 but he teaches everyone how to be better people because he is a symbol of what the author thinks would fix the world.  I found his long speeches and all the slang and colloquialisms that were supposed to make him cuter, really cloying.  The book was just too didactic and forced for me to buy into it or to feel attached to any of the characters much.  It was, though, a neat glimpse into city life around that era.  I kept picturing Charlie Chaplin's The Kid while reading it.  I noticed that several times the author talked about the evils of immigrants coming in and taking jobs from real Americans.  This era was the height of anti-immigration and isolationism (in reaction to involvement in the first world war).

While there were some charming elements to the novel, it just didn't win me over and I struggled to finish it.  I even agree with the premise that we need more appreciation for the beauty of nature and music in our lives and city living alienates from that.  But the rather heavy-handed, sentimental presentation of these ideas turned me off.

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

For more book reviews go to 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Looking Back on 2017

This seemed like a hard year, you know with Trump in office with all the political ugliness and strain that unleashed.  Then, on a more personal note, Becky getting Hashimoto's has been a real struggle because of her depression and other symptoms.  And another thing happened that I don't feel I can divulge here but which really gave me sorrow.  These things cast a pall over the year.

But good things happened too.  I decided to become more environmentally and politically active.  I stepped out of my usual safe bubble and helped get signatures for a candidate.  I joined the environmental group at my church.  I started a zero waste facebook group for Catholics, I got more involved with helping the homeless in our area.

We didn't take a big family vacation this year, but Rick and I went on a nice long weekend to Staunton for our anniversary, and then we had a surprise trip to Boston while W was getting his kidney out.  Oh and I almost forgot, on inauguration day last January, we took a weekend trip to St. Michael as well.  So that was 3 weekends away this year with Rick.  I really enjoyed those trips.  I mean, the one to Boston had a lot of anxiety and just sitting around hospital rooms, but we also got to eat out one night at a nice restaurant and we visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum one afternoon.  So in spite of W's surgery, we still had some fun. We've decided it's time for us to travel more.  Rick even got me a calendar as a little Christmas gift:  a 2018 Let's Travel calendar.

Some first for 2017:

I met Leonie Westenberg, a long time on line friend from Australia!  That was cool.

I made yogurt for the first time.

I saw Man of La Mancha for the first time.  B was in that production and it was very well done.

What else happened?

Dylan turned two this year..  He loves to dance to Barbara Ann and Surfin USA both of which he can request by name.  We broke out the old Signing Time dvds and we are all learning or relearning sign language along with him.  And he's getting potty trained!  His mom is still trying to find her way, but she's such a help to me in terms of housework and now she's driving.  Oh yeah!  We got another car this year.

Sean became my 4th graduate from home school high school.  He attended the Berklee 5 week in the summer, but decided not to audition to the school after all.  He's teaching himself code and has been designing games as a hobby recently.  He's getting really good at playing the harmonica.  He got a job at Chipotle.

Joshua finally got around to taking an accounting class and discovered he liked it.  Something Rick and I had been saying for years.

I started watching lots of homesteading videos and I find them engaging and relaxing.  I love the whole subculture.

I got more involved with actually being a guardian to my sister Eileen.  I found us a new lawyer for her and we even went to court to change our guardianship arrangement.

On more of a downer note, our cat Milky passed away this year.  And when I went camping with the AHG troop at the end of September, I hurt my knee so badly that pretty much all of October hurt!  We are still trying to get B stabilized with her Hashimoto's.  That's an ongoing thing.  Trying to be gluten free and zero waste is an up hill battle due to the fact that I am so crazy busy and not at all naturally inclined to do lots of home cooking. But I'm trying to change things.  I honestly can't wait until I am no longer teaching at the co-op.  It just doesn't fit with me anymore.

Granddad has terrible balance and keeps falling.  He was just in the ER last week.  Now he and Peggy are thinking of moving into a retirement home and thankfully they are looking at ones much closer to us.  Granddad would get upset that we didn't visit him often but to drive to north of Baltimore and back in this area's traffic meant that pretty much the whole day was shot.  Now if they move closer we really can visit more.  So that is a good, late in the year development.

2018 will be my last year of homeschooling (well, 2018-19).  And it will be the year of my 30th wedding anniversary, God willing! (I had to say that just in case I jinx things and we wind up in a car accident or get cancer or something. . . .oops maybe saying that jinxed things!)  Anyway, Rick and I are thinking about taking a grand trip somewhere next fall.  That will be fun to plan.

And we are going to concentrate on fixing up our yard this year.  That is a worthy project that I am looking forward to as well. 

I am ready to ring out the old year and ring in the new!  I plan to roast chestnuts and drink sparkling apple cider and be in bed by 11:00 p.m. 

To Do List

Christmas Day is over.  Today is the feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr.  So a blessed day to you all!  I am typing this on my new laptop.  I'm having the usual problems getting used to it.  This Dell seems to require a lot more passwords to things.  Also, I can't figure out how to download my photos from Christmas.  I also got a new phone, but the phone is an Apple.  So basically I switched from Apple to non-Apple for my laptop and from Android to Apple on my phone.  And I am very confused now!

The day after Christmas is always a relief to me.  It was a lovely day and if I knew how, I'd load a little video of Dylan playing with his favorite new toy, a noisy little train that runs around a track.  He was completely entranced by it!  Hannah and Peter were here all day.  This is the first Christmas we've spent with them in 5 years.  So that was nice.  Hannah did much of the cooking which was great because I was feeling fairly flustered about it all.

Sean got a new harmonica, Becky got a banjo ukulele, Sean also got a steel drum.  Lots of music which is always fun. 

It was a rough couple of weeks before Christmas.  Becky and Josh both got the flu really badly.  They are slowly recovering.  Will has been recovering from his surgery, but that is also slow going.

Today:
Clean kitchen (not quite clean from yesterday)
Breakfast for folks
Buy pet food
Envelope stuffing for Family PASS
Call vet to get cat medicine
Read a lot
Clean something else in the house
Research reverse osmosis water filters
Contact subs about getting my books back
Dinner?
Does S work tonight?

I'm sure I'm missing something!

Reading Challenge 2018

By the time 2017 ends, I'll have read 34 books.  I'm finishing up a book by Gene Stratton Porter right now.  I'm finding it kind of bizarre so I'm struggling to finish it.  And also I still, if you can believe it, have about 50 pages to go in City of God by St. Augustine.  I HAVE to finish reading that by the end of the year.  I just gotta.  I'll be so depressed if I don't.  I began the year doing an on line group read of that book and I stalled out in the middle of it and have been trying to finish it ever since.  This year has not been an especially good one for reading.  I spend way too much time on line.  So one of my New Year's resolutions is to curtail the time on line and spend more time reading.  Also, I think 2018 will get easier for reading because I am planning to not continue teaching at the co-op next fall.  So beginning in May this year, I'll have more free time.  And hopefully my 19 year old will finally get his driver's license this Christmas break and eventually my 16 year old will also get her license this year.  This will free me from lots and lots of driving I've been doing.  The older I get, the more draining I find driving to be.

Anyway, Simpler Pastimes alerted me to this 2018 book challenge.  I still plan to try for the 52 Books challenge as well.  I tried to do the bingo challenge hosted there and I do believe I failed in that.  The problem was an awful lot of the categories were fantasty/sci fi related and I just am not a fan of either of those.

1.  A 19th Century Classic - I still have one more book to read by Nathaniel Hawthorne and then I'll have read them all.  So The Marble Faun for this category.

2.  A 20 Century Classic (must have been published at least 50 years ago) - no clue yet.

3.  A Classic by a woman author - perhaps The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.  I think that might be the only Bronte novel I haven't read?

4.  A Classic in Translation - I think I am going to tackle Dostoyevski this year.  I am thinking of trying to listen to the Brothers Karamozov on audio this winter.

5.  A Children's Classic - my son who is recuperating from surgery mentioned that one of his friends came over and read Rootabaga Stories by Carl Sandburg out loud to him while he convalesced.  I thought that was pretty charming!!!  So maybe I'll read Rootabaga Stories for this category.

6.  A Classic Crime Story - no clue yet  (ha ha - no clue!  Get it???)

7.  A Classic Travel or Journey - no idea but I am excited about this one!

8.  A Classic with a Single Word Title - Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell

9.  A Classic with a color in the title - I've never read The Red and the Black by Stendhal, so perhaps.

10.  A Classic by an author who is new to me - ????

11.  A Classic that scares you - Long poetry tends to scare me.  What if I tried to read Ovid's Metamorphoses?

12.  Reread a Classic - leaving this one open.

I'm Becoming a Rabbi Sacks Groupie

When the crazy toxic culture we are living in gets me down, I do two things.  1)  Try to find something that gives me comfort and distraction.  Lately it has been watching homesteading youtube channels.  Fouch Family Off Grid, Off Grid with Doug and Stacy, Out of Goshen, Swedish Homestead and Darci Isabella are my current favorites with Justin Rhodes (he's taking a break right now) and Big Family Homestead as close runner ups.  

But 2) I also look for wise leaders who can rise above the noise and give a hopeful perspective while cutting through the chaos and pinpointing just what's wrong.  I like Pope Francis and Bishop Barron for this.  But in the last week or so I've become a groupie of Rabbi Sacks.  I had seen or read things by him occasionally, but during Chanukah I started to really focus on him.  He's wonderful.  

Here he is on how the breakdown of marriage puts children at risk.

Here's his TEDx talk on How We Can Face the Future.

Here's a wonderful series he did on prayer.

No Surrender; A Tale of the Rising of La Vendee - Book 32

My reading has slowed way, way down.  It's depressing me.  Anyway, No Surrender; a Tale of the Rising of La Vendee is by G. A. Henty, the English writer of children's historical novels in the late 1800s and around the turn of the last century.  This one was published in 1900, in fact.  According to Wikipedia he wrote 122 books of this sort.

The books are intelligent in that they really delve deep into the historical context they are set in.  However, Henty has a way of using long, stilted, laborious dialogue as a tool for exposition.  It makes for very clunky writing.  The heroes are all brave and noble and everybody sounds exactly alike.   But when you finish reading them, you really feel you've learned the history Henty was presenting.

During the French Revolution, the Republican government made law the Civil Constitution of the Clergy which tried to undermine the power of the Roman Catholic Church by only allowing priests who swore their allegiance to the state to say Mass.  Many priests refused and many were imprisoned and eventually guillotined.  The western area of France near the Atlantic just below Brittany was a very Catholic and traditional area.  They were angered at the attack on the clergy and gave refuge to the nonjuror priests.  When the government tried to draft the peasants into the Republican army, they went into full fledge rebellion.  This book traces the events from the first acts of rebellion through the eventual defeat of the Vendean peasants.

Patsey is from England and has married her French merchant sailor, Jean Martin, whose father runs a successful shipping company.  She brings her favorite younger brother to live with her when she moves to France to be with her new husband.  They live at first in Nantes, but when trouble begins, Jean decides it is safer to move to his country estate in the Bocage, the forests of La Vendee.  Leigh the younger brother moves with them.  The struggle begins and both Jean and Leigh are passionate about fighting on the side of the peasants.  Leigh turns out to be quite a military strategist, even though he is young.

The plot has four or five storylines that move chronologically.  The first is about the exciting beginnings of the revolt and the great peasant general, Cathelineau, who dies in battle and how Leigh shows such courage and precocious military genius.  The second is when Patsey and Jean Martin's father are taken prisoners in Nantes and Jean and Leigh must rescue them.  Then is the long sequence of battle after battle as the peasant army becomes more and more depleted and battle weary until they are being hunted cat and mouse style all over their beloved Vendee.  Then in the wake of the final defeat, Jean is separated from the two others;  Leigh and Patsey must smuggle themselves out of France.  This was quite a difficult feat as the Reign of Terror was at its highest peak.  And finally, they are reunited with Jean Martin and learn how he too made his escape to England.

Chateau d'Angers - I was here almost 40 years ago!

It was an entertaining book.  I've been teaching about the French Revolution to my co-op class and this book made it come alive for me.  Since I've been poring over maps of France, all the geographical references (and there are many) made sense to me.  Way back when I was 18, I actually spent a month in Angers and I don't think I even knew anything about the Vendean Revolt there.  This is a chapter in the French Revolution that doesn't get much attention, except in Catholic history circles.

For more book reviews, go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Update!

Gee, I have really lost my blogging groove.  I haven't even thought about it.  Time really is flying by at an incredible rate! 

Anyway, the big news around here is that my oldest son is donating a kidney for a colleague at work.  Actually though, his kidney isn't a good match for hers, so he's putting his kidney into the kidney pool, which means she gets one that matches out of the pool.  This is supposed to take place on Tuesday.  The woman was actually going to get her kidney this past Wednesday and then Will would donate one of his on Tuesday, but they briefly called everything off for a day because the kidney they had designated turned out not to be a good match.  But everything is on again now.  Let's pray it stays that way. 

No one ever told me motherhood was going to include worrying about one's heroically generous son giving away a kidney.  I am basically freaked out about it.  Kind of numb really, when I don't feel a horrible sense of anxiety.  Now and again I think, wow!!!

Rick and I are going up on Monday evening and staying until Thursday we think.  If he isn't doing well, we might stay longer.  But he is 25 and he's made plans to stay at his girlfriend's to recuperate for a couple of days after he is released from the hospital on Friday.  Then hopefully he'll be fit enough to fly home.  I really want someone to fly with him though, even though I hope he'll be well on the mend and it is not a long flight.  But you never know around the holidays with weather and flights backing up and being overbooked and such.  I think he needs someone with him.  We'll see what we can arrange once we get up there.

It's supposed to snow tonight!  Winter is really here.  I noticed today that the leaves really are all off the trees.  I kind of like seeing the lacy bare branches.  And noticing all the birds' and squirrels' nests.

Well, must run.  So that's the update.  Please pray for my son, his surgeons and medical team, the recipients of the kidneys in his little circle of kidney donations, and all people who are suffering from kidney disease. 

Things Have Gotten Busy!

We had a great Thanksgiving.  I forgot to take photos of people! 

First pumpkin pie I've made in ages.  Usually we just buy them.  This had a gluten free crust which was ok.  But I didn't care for the filling!  So I am going to try again, maybe next Sunday.

Will/Eli was home and made things so much fun.  He is so kind and generous to everyone.  And he fills the house with music and laughter.  Well, Sean and Becky do that too, but they do their own separate thing music wise, and they still have a tendency to bicker.  With Will everybody plays together and he has an anti-bickering magic about him.

I've gotten busy again with the American Solidarity Party.  I've also have started getting busy with working with two different organizations for the homeless.  Tomorrow morning I've got to really get rolling with making phone calls and drafting stuff for them, etc.

On top of this I finally wrote my quarterly reports for my students.  I hate that sort of thing.  Dread it, really.  I am so glad I've decided this is my last year teaching at co-op.  Next year will be my last year homeschooling and I'm going to cut out a lot of extra stuff and just concentrate on that.  Speaking of which I also need to take over literature with B.  She was taking an on line class but had fallen so behind on everything because of her rough start due to her health that we decided to cut our losses and just do it ourselves.  So we gotta get that up and going tomorrow.  I do think B is on the mend though.  I see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Will, whipping up a gluten free, vegetarian dinner with flare.  He just bought that dinner jacket at a thrift store this weekend.

So life has been rich and interesting and slightly stressful and just so busy.  Time is moving at breakneck speed!  But I am savoring some things.  This evening Eli and I made dinner while listening to Chopin.  It was fun (and delicious!).

Rick built the first fire of the season tonight.

Sharpe's Triumph - Book 31

Sharpe's Triumph is by Bernard Cornwell.  I know I've read at least one other Sharpe novel, Sharpe's Rifles but this is actually a very long series of historical novels about Richard Sharpe and all his military escapades in the British army mostly during the Napoleonic wars.  Sean Bean starred in a popular British TV series based on the novels.  He's pretty perfect for the role!

Anyway, I've also read a history on Waterloo by Cornell.  He is a very good writer.  He really seems to know his history and he is great at creating plots and keeping you on the edge of your seat to see what happens to likable but rather disturbingly violent Richard Sharpe.

I picked this book up at the library as I wanted a light, absorbing read and I was in the mood for something historical.  This particular book is set pre-Napoleon when Sharpe is younger and just cutting his warrior teeth in India.  I know next to nothing of the British wars in India, so I thought it looked interesting.

The book started out great.  It is an interesting and engaging tale.  Basically Sharpe is working with a Col. McCandless who is out to find a British Lieutenant who defected to the other side and is fighting with the Mahratta army.  But in the meanwhile, there's an evil crazy sergeant who hates Sharpe and is working to frame him for murder.  So while McCandless and Sharpe go hunting for one bad guy, another bad guy is hunting for them.  All of this is going on while the British army, partly lead by Arthur Wellesley (who later becomes the Duke of Wellington) is about to go to battle against the native army.  It gets quite complicated with lots of interesting characters.

Of course this is about armies at war, but honestly the last part of the book where the battle actually takes place is just page after page of description of gruesome death.  After a while I just started flipping through to get back to the narrative.  I can only take so much death and destruction.

The annoying thing about this book is that it makes no sense in terms of continuity.  Sharpe's Rifles has Sharpe saving General Wellesley's life later on during the Napoleonic war.  Wellesley doesn't know who Sharpe is but he promotes him to Lieutenant as a reward.  Since Sharpe came up from poverty and isn't wealthy enough to buy a commission as officer the whole plot of that novel was how he struggled to get respect from fellow officers.  But in Sharpe's Triumph Sharpe saves Wellesley life in a most spectacular way where he literally slays like 15 enemy soldiers trying to get to the General.  How is Wellesley not going to know who Sharpe is after that?  It doesn't make sense.  And the fact that Sharpe is like a superhero killing so many men with one blow or stab and only getting a tiny bit hurt is, well, I mean it almost had me laughing out loud.  Except the whole battle scene is so vicious and gory that I couldn't really laugh.  More like I was rolling my eyes.

Oh and earlier in the book lady lover Sharpe manages to bed the abandoned wife of a French officer fighting with the Mahratta.  But right before the seduction, which is inferred rather than described, (which I prefer when dealing with such plot developments, so thank you very much Mr. Cornwell. I wish you could be a little more circumspect about the beheadings and horrible death scenes as well!)  But right before this, the author goes on about how neither party had bathed in quite a while.  So when the seduction scene was implied, my first response was  Guhrossss!

And the ending leaves Sharpe the victor but even so, he's so brutal, I couldn't quite cheer.

So it was an enjoyable read but a bit over the top for my tastes.   There is something addictive about this series though.  Sharpe is an intriguing and somehow sympathetic character.  I told my brother in law about these books after I'd read Sharpe's Rifles and he went on to read the whole series!

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

This week has flown!

Wow!  I can not believe a whole week has gone by.  Just think, at this time last Friday I was fighting a migraine and trying to finish packing for a weekend get away.  We did have a lovely, lovely time.  It was not long enough.  I could have stayed a couple more days quite happily.

This young man keeps us busy too!

This week has been super busy.  The good news is my knee only went out on me twice and my back only twinges a bit when I pick up something heavy.  My neck continues to be a bother though.  Still, with the subsiding of major pain, I got my groove back, sorta.  I even cleaned my bathroom, dusted and vacuumed my room this week!

Today is H's 27th birthday.  Her husband's birthday was yesterday.  Hopefully, we'll see them on Sunday evening for dinner to celebrate. 

Poor B is exhausted and overwhelmed from everything and tonight is opening night for Man of La Mancha.  She came home from their full dress rehearsal late last night actually feeling pretty good about it.  So that's hopeful.  I think I will go see it tonight.  Maybe R and others can see it Saturday night.  Not sure about the Sunday matinee.

S has started his job at Chipotle yesterday.   He got to work at 4 and didn't get home until 12:30 a.m.  He took an Uber home.  He is exhausted and overwhelmed too.  R and I keep telling him he has to advocate for himself.  He said he wanted to work 3 or 4 days a week.  He's going to school full time and he can't work full time too.  But they scheduled him for 37 hours this week.  He had to work the cash register all night.  Everyone else there speaks Spanish but him so he felt kind of awkward.  And then he said it took him 2 hours to clean up.  He had to sweep and then mop the 'lobby,' wipe down all the tables and chairs, clean the soda machine area and take out the trash.  He said the other workers were all in the kitchen and it took them 2 hours to clean the whole thing as well.  I think they'll probably get faster and more efficient as they get accustomed to it.  It's a brand new restaurant and I think everybody but the manager is brand new.  And six people they hired quit during the training session.  I think they are understaffed right now.  So hopefully, S will get things ironed out about how much work they schedule him for.  Also he needs to register for next semester at the CC. 

Alright, my thoughts are just rambling.  Time to move away from the keyboard and do something!

Anniversary Weekend!

You can't really tell but the candle was still burning inside the jack o lantern All Saints morning!

Well, Halloween has come and gone.  All Saints Day too.  Today is All Souls Day and I usually go visit my family's graves on this day, but I had to work and then didn't have quite enough time before I had to get B to rehearsal to really go there and back.  It's only about 25-30 minutes away, but in rush hour traffic. . . . I am always sad on this day though because this was my Mom's birthday.  I still miss her every single day.  My head was full of memories of her as I drove to work this morning.  And then as I got out of the car I heard a train whistle and a train rumbling by.  Those are sounds of my very young childhood.  When I was six or so the trains stopped running and they eventually became a bike path.  But when I was very young the train went by my house (a half block away) and we'd run down and ask the engineer to blow the whistle for us.  And he would!  It was loud!  My little 4 year old knees would tremble but I loved it too!

Tomorrow Rick and I go away for the weekend!  This Sunday we'll have been married 29 years.  I think we need a weekend away.  I feel like we are on autopilot lately when it comes to our marriage.  I always like traveling with him though.  He's the perfect travel companion.  We just get into sync and relax so easily when we travel for some reason.    Not that we are traveling much but just going to a town a couple hours away to stay at a bed and breakfast.  We are going to see the Blackfriars players do Much Ado About Nothing.  I want to visit Polyface Farm, the Frontier Culture Museum and Rick, who has coincidentally been reading a book about Woodrow Wilson would like to see his home and library.

Update:  We've delayed leaving because I have a stupid migraine.  But it's mostly gone now, so here we go!

On The Roof

Communing with autumn

After many days spent on my computer in my room working on a paper, B decided to take a break by climbing through the window and hanging out on the roof of our screen porch.  The weather was lovely and being up high and in a different spot exhilarating.  I am glad it made her happy.  She's been so unhappy lately.

Halloween Scrooge

My street; where I won't be popular.

I love Autumn:  leaves of gorgeous golds and burgundies, crisp cool weather, sweaters, apples and pumpkins!  However,  I kind of hate Halloween.  Hate is too strong a word.  I don't mind the spooky stories and haunted houses and people getting really into their costumes.  That's fun!  But I hate the commercial aspect of it, the way it feeds children's greed for junkie sugary stuff.  We've got juvenile diabetes and cancer on the rise, folks.  There might be a reason for that!  Halloween seems to start earlier and earlier each year.  I heard one young mother bemoaning the fact that her kids had to miss the trick or treat at the local shopping mall due to a conflict.  Their other seasonal festivities included the Halloween party at their school, the trunk or treat at their church, as well as neighborhood Halloween party and yes, trick or treating on the actual night.  This is going overboard in my opinion. We are poisoning ourselves to death with candy.  We get sick and the corporations who own chocolate (I think there are 3 or 4 huge multinationals that basically control the chocolate in the world) get richer.

I hate to be a party pooper but honestly we are lemmings, we are like the Roman citizens who don't mind being treated like slaves as long as we get our bread and circuses.

I live with someone from Cote D'Ivoire.  I don't have time to cite various reports right now on this blog, but these huge cocoa companies are responsible for deforestation and child slavery in that country.  It is exploitative colonialism all over again.  But it's ok because we are addicted to chocolate and our own pleasure and screw the rest the world!  Leave me alone in my little bubble please!!!  I don't wanna disappoint my spoiled rotten kids who have come to expect to be showered in junk candy from October through January (a little reprieve and then on to Valentine's Day!!!).  And that's why it's ok to let little children be kidnapped and forced to work 12 hour days doing the dangerous work of growing chocolate for us.  Let them be beaten and half starved to death.  And they never eat the chocolate themselves.  Never!

I tried to order Equal Exchange chocolate last month but for some reason the order didn't properly go through and I never followed up.  I've done a little research and it looks like Lindt Chocolate, a Swiss company is more conscientious than say Hershey and Nestle.  Lindt only buys cocoa from South America (or maybe Central America?) where there is far less child slavery.  They do source some cocoa from Ghana but they don't buy on the commodities market, but source from specific farms where they know the working conditions.

So I am going to get some Lindt chocolates.  To cut on down on the plastic wrapper waste (a whole other ball of wax - how much trash gets generated by Halloween??) I plan to mix in some things like pencils or some other fun little things I can find that aren't plastic or junky and might have some real use.  I did see someone's pinterest idea of coloring little jack o lantern faces on clementines.  I might do that.  Assuming parents will let their kids eat the clementines.  I won't be the most popular house on the block.  But I don't care, frankly!

Grabbing Hygge Where I Can

It has been a very rough week.  My back has been giving me lots of pain, along with my knee and my neck.  I do think things are on the mend, but it is slow.  All week I felt like I was drowning.  And extra things kept coming up to add to the overwhelming feeling.  We are still trying to deal with the affects of Hashimoto's on my 16 year old. She's really been struggling with depression and that is a total emotional drain on everybody.  Plus this week we had to watch our houseguest's toddler much more than we usually do, due to her variable work schedule.  So many forms and checks etc were due this week.  I just couldn't keep up.  And this morning I and my sister are going to a court hearing on changing guardianship for our youngest sister who has Downs.  She's due here at 8 and the hearing is at 9.  And I'm not even telling you everything that is going on right now.  Whew.

But I know many people have it way worse than I do.  I have so many blessings.  Life has its little overwhelming periods.  Pain makes it hard to function though.

My escape has been my youtube videos.  One of my favorite channels A Baltic Homestead made a couple new videos.  I just love getting a glimpse into people's lives in such exotic locations (at least to me!).  I'm trying to promote this guy's channel because he just started it and he needs more subscribers. 

Oops!  My sister is here early.  Gotta make her a cup of coffee and hit the road!

Anybody Can Do Anything - Book 30

Anybody Can Do Anything is my fourth Betty MacDonald book in a row.  According to Wikipedia, I had the order of the books wrong.  First she wrote The Egg and I, then The Plague and I, then Anybody Can Do Anything and then Onions in the Stew. 

Anybody Can Do Anything was a really delightful read.  I found it fascinating to get a first person account of what working life was like during the Depression for a woman.  Betty left her husband on the chicken farm and came home with her two, very young children in tow.  The Depression has hit and everybody lives back at home with their mother.  Her intrepid and hysterically funny older sister, Mary, thinks anybody can do anything and she is quite good at getting jobs for both herself and Betty (though not quite so good at keeping the jobs).  Thus begins Betty MacDonald's adventures as a working girl.  She goes from one crazy situation to another until finally after years of this, she winds up working for the government and actually gets to rise to a position of authority, though she never feels quite qualified.  (Who would, if you had to be Mary's younger sister?  Betty's inferiority complex mirrors her sister's superiority one!).

Though she does mention her two daughters from time to time, I get the impression during this period, her mother was really raising them.  She goes from job to job, office party to office party, madcap mishap to madcap mishap while perpetually going to night school to try (and fail again and again) to learn shorthand.

An extremely entertaining book that gives you a slice of life right out of history.  Two thumbs up!

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

This Week's Meal Plan

I am just going to whine a little bit here.  My knee is still bothering me, my neck is still bothering me and now my back is killing me!  So I get up in the morning thinking I'm feeling pretty good and by about 2 or so I am completely done!  Today I got up and made pancakes, drove S to his music lesson and back, grocery shopped and then it was 1:40 and I was done.  I had to lay down for a few hours. I really, really, really, really want to feel better.

Ok.  All done whining.

Here are my ambitious plans for the week.  Things got really bad towards the end of this week.  I hit an all time low when I gave B a quinoa chocolate bar and an aluminum can of cherry flavored sparkling water for lunch on Friday.  Hey, quinoa has protein!

I am still trying to keep zero waste goals in mind while I weather the misery of trying to get everyone to eat half way healthfully, gluten free, and keep up with my obligations and activities even though I am next to zero in terms of energy.

My zero waste code: c - compostable, r - recyclable,  bob (bring own bag), boc (bring own container), cp (compostable packaging), rp (recyclable packaging), lfw (landfill waste) pf (packaging free - this excludes things like wire ties, rubber bands and little stickers on fruit and veggies).  My meat is pastured, grass fed from local farms and usually wrapped in plastic except when I get it at Whole Foods where they wrap it in compostable butcher paper.

Saturday

B:  Banana pancakes (eggs, bananas - c) and syrup (rp)

L:  turkey Cobb salad (deli turkey and cheese - boc + pf produce)

D:  Shepherd's pie made with leftover lamb (this didn't happen - the lamb was freezer burned and anyway 5 out of 7 people decided to go to a big corn maze out in the country.  I think they are doing IHOP for dinner.)  Anyway, I am not up for cooking.

Sunday

Brunch:  egg (c), sausage (lfw - locally sourced but wrapped in plastic), sweet potato casserole

Dinner:  grilled steak (lfw), corn (c or r), whatever veggies from CSA

Monday:

B: Scrambled eggs and fruit

L:  turkey Cobb salad reprise

D:  Spaghetti (corn/quinoa - r), ground beef (lfw), tomato sauce (r), veggies

Tuesday:

B:  Cream of rice (r or c) w/ nuts (boc) and fruit (bob)

L:  gluten free mac and cheese (r and lfw - Annie's brand), veggies

D:  Chicken (lfw plastic wrapper), potatoes, veggies

Wednesday:

B:  bacon (c) and egg cup

L:  Eat at chipotle

D:  Leftovers - will probably have leftover chicken combined somehow with veggies and other leftovers. 

Thursday (I work on Thursdays):

B:  scrambled eggs and fruit 

L:  out at 5 Guys (lettuce wrapped burgers!)

D:  Gluten free pizza 

Friday:

B:  peanut butter and fruit

L:  salmon salad (canned salmon (r), onion, celery 

D:  shrimp fried rice (shrimp in c packaging from WF), bulk rice, veggies

Saturday:
B:  banana pancakes again!  

It's Fall!

Evidence of Fall on the front stoop.

Woke up this morning to a chilly house.  I think it might have frosted last night!  Feels delicious to me!  Fall is here!!!

I cleaned out another shelf in the fridge door and I got to the curb for Purple Heart pick up, a box and a big lawn and leaf bag of various old towels and sheets that has been sitting in my room for an embarrassingly long period of time.  Hooray!  Little by little. 

It was quite chilly went I took my giveaways to the street.  But could I find my fall jacket?  Oh no, I could not.  So that's another thing to go on the to do list today.  Where could I have put it???

The backyard.  Soon our privacy screen of trees will be denuded of leaves and we will be forced to stare at the ugly backsides of the McMansion development behind our house.

Fall Clutter Control

I resolve to declutter my kitchen/family room, mud room, garage and master bedroom between now and Thanksgiving!  I'm going to chip away at it bit by bit.

• I decluttered one fridge door shelf that had been really bugging me already this morning.
• This week I focus on the fridge and freezer.
• Next week I'll focus on cabinets.
• Today I am going to try to collect some stuff to have out for Purple Heart to pick up (by 7 a.m. tomorrow morning)
• I've already told everyone next Saturday afternoon, no matter the weather, we are going to tackle at least some portion of the garage.  I'm focused mostly on all the cardboard recycling and some of the junk that has gotten piled in there over the last year.
• Also next Saturday we are going to declutter our souls by going to confession.  Haven't been for a while.

Onions in the Stew - Book 29

I am on a Betty MacDonald jag.  I've read The Egg and I, The Plague and I (both of which I'd read before) and now Onions in the Stew which I had not read before.  This is her third book chronologically.  In this book she meets and marries Don MacDonald who works at Boeing which got such a boost during World War II.  Due to the housing shortage they wind up moving out to Vashon Island to a house right on the beach.  MacDonald loves being close to the beach but this is the Pacific Northwest, so while there are lots of beautiful things, there's lots and lots of rain and quirky neighbors too!  This book basically covers how she raised her children with her new husband; a successful marriage, though there were certainly some tensions.

My absolute favorite part of this book was the author's recounting of raising adolescent girls.  I howled in recognition of the absolute insanity, absurdity and out of the blue tension that happens when trying to parent teens.  MacDonald says it so well, so to the point, so exactly right! 

Highly, highly enjoyable memoir!

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Teaching Hygge?

On Thursdays I teach Latin 1 and Modern European History at an Aquinas Learning Center.  I've been teaching at Aquinas off and on for 7 or so years.  Last year I only taught Latin 1; the year before Latin 1 and 2.  And before that I taught Latin 1 and Literature and Composition, or Lit/Comp as it gets called. 

Anyway a couple days ago the lit/comp teacher emailed me asking if I could take over her class while she went to a writing conference.  I said yes.  Then late last night I got an email saying that the teacher for another lit/comp class and the U. S. History class was down with a fever, could I sub for her?

Oh man, I thought.  I am going to be so stressed out and exhausted!  And my legs hurts so much too!  I was having trouble getting around.  With my own two classes but three others I would be teaching from 9 to 3, with a lunch break, except I had told a student I would tutor him over lunch.  Well, I did it and it was fun!  The day shot past!  Even though I didn't quite know what I was doing in the three other classes I was subbing for, I think I knew enough that they at least weren't a complete waste of time. 

9:00 - 10:00
Lit/comp - the book the kids just finished reading was Amos Fortune.  The composition was IEW dress ups like ly words, strong verbs, quality adjectives, who/which clauses and www.asia.b  Dimly, in the back of my mind I remembered all this stuff from when I taught it years ago as a sub myself when a teacher had to be out for a few months.  And also B did IEW when she was in Aquinas.

10:00 - 11:00
U.S. History - we did a Lost Tools of Writing style of debate on Columbus Day vs. Indigenous Peoples Day; then we discussed early interaction of Native Americans with French explorers as well as first hand accounts of encounters in Maryland.

11:00 - 12:00
My Latin 1 class - quiz on 3rd declension, parsed some sentences, did some Certamen prep in Roman history.

12:00 - 12:20 tutored student struggling with memorization of paradigms.

12:20 - 1:00 lunch

1:00-2:00 Another Lit/Comp class - these were older students who'd just finished reading the Aeneid. Did a Lost Tools of Writing essay on: Should Aeneas have stayed in Carthage with Dido?

2:00 - 3:00 My Modern European History class - Reviewed Chapter on 7 Years War, etc; picked out person to do presentation on next week; read aloud to them about Voltaire from George Washington's World by Genevieve Foster.   My MEH kids had also done a presentation on the new foods introduced to Europe from other countries during the age of Enlightenment.  It was on display in the lunch room but I don't think many people noticed it, so I'm going to put it up again next week.

Now I am home and planning to have a cup of tea and rest my leg.  And I have no idea what to have for dinner tonight!

Gluten Free Meal Planning

I feel like I repeat myself all the time.  In fact, I am sure I do.  I have come across stuff I wrote a decade ago and it sounds like I wrote it yesterday or am just about to write it again!  I'm forever spinning my wheels trying to get a good system going but never quite getting there. 

So here I go again!

So this is a gluten free, focus on probiotics, omega 3's, iron for anemia, and limit sugar general meal plan. 

Breakfast:

2x a week - cream of rice (iron!), grits or non gluten oatmeal, with nuts, seeds, honey or maple syrup and fruit.

2x a week - some kind of yogurt based breakfast:  smoothies, parfait made with fruit and granola (probiotics in yogurt!)  Yogurt has been an issue with me because I feel I should be making it instead of buying it to be more zero waste.  However, this means we simply never have it because I never get around to making it.   So I am just going with the yogurt that comes in a jar (plastic seal) because we really do need probiotics in our diet and that is the one I know everyone will happily eat.

3x a week - eggs in some shape or form:  banana pancakes, egg and bacon cup (so easy and delicious!), plain old scrambled eggs or fried/poached eggs over hash or potatoes or omelets. (pastured eggs are high in omega 3s)

NB:  breakfast is always served with fruit and/or incorporates some kind of veggie as well (in omelet or hash or mixed in with scrambled eggs.)  Also trying to eat more nuts and seeds with hot cereal, granola and yogurt.

Lunches:

Lunches are hard because we run around so much in the middle of the day.

1x or 2x a week - good old Annie's gluten free mac and cheese.  My teens like these.  Must eat this with fruit or veggies.

1x a week - lunch at Chipotle (black beans have iron!)

1x a week - lettuce wrap burger at Five Guys (NB limit of one meal with fries each week).

1x a week - leftovers or Cobb salad with turkey and cheese

1x a week - salmon or tuna salad (omega 3s)

1x a week - leftovers/soup

Snacks:

granola
trail mix
peanuts
popcorn
fruit
fruit with peanut butter
veggies
veggies with hummus
yogurt/smoothie


Dinners must always be served with salad and veggie or two veggies.  Salads should include a dusting of either chia or flax seed (omega 3s!).  The more leafy greens and nutritous root vegetables the better!  I need to find a fermented veggie that people will eat.  They hate sauerkraut so that's out.  But I've seen carrots and green beans that are supposedly fermented.  Maybe if I toss them into a salad, people will eat them.

2x - roast chicken and then something made with leftovers from chicken.

1x beef (iron!)

1x vegetarian

1x seafood (omega 3s)

2x other (soup/stew, ham, pork, lamb, another seafood, etc)

Going gluten free:
Since we had given up crackers and I'd only been buying bread when it was fresh from the bakery and put into my own cloth bag or brown paper bag (because I am trying to be zero waste and don't want plastic packaging), this had actually primed us for eating less wheat.  We'd have a couple days a week where there was no bread/crackers in the house.  Not that the kids didn't complain about this!  But not having bread doesn't feel THAT different (at least to me).  Swapping out pasta for gluten free pasta is pretty easy.  We already ate rice a couple times a week, now it's more like 3x at least.  And I've been buying more corn.  We've also been eating more sweet potatoes.  And we still eat baking/red/gold potatoes - a couple times a week.  This transition hasn't been as hard as I thought it would be.

Limiting sugar to:

Fruit
maple syrup
honey
Homemade or farmer's market jams and fruit butters
Kombucha (going to try to serve this with a meal a couple times a week.  I just discovered I can buy this from a tap every week at my new CSA!  I actually have 2 CSA's now.

Exceptions:
Allowed 1 soda a week
Dessert on Sundays - ice cream and Tate's gluten free chocolate chip cookies - delicious!

I also want to get the family to take some elderberry juice daily.  Beefs up the immune system!

Weekend Hygge

The weather has been strangely warm and humid.  It doesn't feel like October right now.  And it's been raining all morning as well.  However, in spite of, or maybe because of this, my flowers are still blooming like crazy!

One of the last of the glorious hydrangeas!

The azalea's last stand.

Our Lady of Guadalupe with rose petals.

The rose bush has grown so tall!

A dash of yellow 

Soon the weather will change, the flowers will all drop their petals, the leaves with color and die, the air will turn crisp and chill!  So I am appreciating the last of the summer flowers!

Two other hygge-y things.  Both dealing with annoying aches and pains.  This first one is ridiculous.  Over a year ago we had our bathroom redone.  I love my new bathroom!  But I identity as chiefly a shower person.  I hardly ever take baths.  However, when we were choosing the new tub for our master bathroom, we picked out a soaker tub.  The other bathrooms are too small for anything other than one of those standard, too small really for a comfortable bathtub so kind of a glorified shower space tub.  But we had the room in our master bathroom so we got a big soaker tub.  Nice and deep.  Well, I had never taken a bath in it!  Other members of the family had, but not me.  I had been meaning for months and months to take an epsom salt bath for my plantar fasciitis feet, but I'd only gotten as far as buying a carton of the salts from the drug store.  There it sat unopened on my counter for months.  But yesterday my stupid knee was aching so, I decided to take the plunge.  I had to clean the tub out first, which wasn't too bad.  Then I ran the water and put in a couple of cups of epsom salts.

It was heavenly.

Sheer bliss.

I could feel myself relaxing.  My aches and pains all went away and I just floated in the warm water utterly at peace.

Note to self:  soak in epsom salt bath at least once a week!

The other thing I did because my neck has been really bothering me lately was go to Bed, Bath and Beyond and buy a new pillow.  For years and years I slept on the same old pillows.   Then I hurt my neck and had to get physical therapy.  The therapist said to buy a special foam pillow to support my  neck, so I did.  It was ok but kind of too firm for comfort.  I slept on it for a couple of years but my neck started to get really creaky (literally making creaking sounds when I'd go to turn it!) and I'd wake up with headaches that were not migraines yet but threatened to blossom into migraines.  They definitely were emanating from my neck.  So this past Memorial Day weekend while at our local town's annual fair where they have lots of booths of various merchants selling things, I bought a bamboo pillow.  The guy swore up and down that it was the answer to my problem.  So I bought it and. . . . too thick and the bamboo filling that was supposed to be so malleable always wound up in a big clump that was very uncomfortable.  The last couple of weeks my neck has been super bothering me.  So yesterday I tried again in my quest for the perfect pillow.  I examined all the pillows Bed, Bath and Beyond had to offer and selected the Dr. Maas pillow for back and side sleepers (conveniently on sale).  This morning I woke up neck pain free!!!!!  I felt so refreshed!

Now if only my knee would stop hurting.

Somebody turned 2 Yesterday!

Dylan dressed in his Cote D'ivoire outfit.

Happy Birthday!

Yesterday was my husband's 55th birthday!  Just before we started dating, I surprised him with a birthday cake in the lobby of the law school we attended.  That was 30 years ago!  My, time flies!

I bought a gluten free cake from a bakery in a nearby town.  It was pricey but it did taste pretty good.  The cake itself tasted a bit more like a sweet bread than a regular cake.  We got the vanilla on vanilla flavor, since I can't do too much chocolate or I get a migraine.

Pretty, pricey and pretty good tasting as well.

Hump Day Hygge! (More food)

Puerto Rico.  Las Vegas massacre.   Then, my darn knee is still hurting, making me limp around while I do my errands.  And suddenly I am trying to go gluten free.  I know the last two aren't any comparison to the first two, but all of it has made life seem very heavy lately.

So I seem to be retreating into cooking a lot, enjoying the cool early fall weather, and reading.

I made a delicious salmon chowder last night.  Wasn't difficult to make at all.  We eat canned salmon about once a week, but getting the wild caught frozen fillets or steaks is super expensive.  So salmon chowder is a good way to stretch one package of filleted salmon. 

Here's the recipe:  Salmon Chowder  I pretty much followed the recipe exactly.  I trimmed the skin off the salmon though.  It doesn't say whether you are supposed to or not, but I personally can't stand oily fishy tastes.  So I cut/scrapped off as much salmon as I could and then I fed the skin to my dog and cats, which they loved.

I also used the light coconut milk.  I think I've only cooked with coconut milk once before.  It was really delicious!  Made the chowder very delicate and tasty.  We did add more salt and pepper at the table, but once we did that the soup was just scrumptious.

I also made sweet potato fries to go as a side because usually we have bread or crackers with soup so I felt we needed something. 

I took this simple recipe from the Hashimoto's 4-Week Plan book again.  I think these recipes are nice and simple and well done.  I chopped up two big sweet potatoes into matchstick thin sticks.  This took awhile.  Then I melted 2 tablespoons or maybe a bit more of coconut oil in a pain, poured that over my sweet potato french fries then add some salt and 1/4 tsp of tumeric, per the recipe in the book.  I mixed and tossed those thoroughly, then put on a big cookie sheet and into a hot oven at 450 degrees.  Took about 30 minutes.  Some fries were crispy, some were not, but everybody enjoyed them a lot!

Half way through eating my soup last night, I realized I needed to take a picture.  The sweet potato fries on the little plate.

Another win was trying out Cream of Rice cereal.  I was looking for gluten free, non-GMO oats at the store.  I didn't find those but my eye lit on another hot cereal proudly endorsed by the Celiac.org group. 

It's very easy to make, a nice hot cereal you should eat while piping hot from the pot.  I garnished it with raisins, pumpkin seeds and a drizzle of maple syrup and it was quite satisfying.  Apparently, it has lots of iron in it?  70% of your daily recommended amount.  And since I'm feeding someone struggling with anemia, that's a very good thing!

I think this will make a regular appearance at our breakfast table this winter.

Banana Pancakes - Zero Waste and Gluten Free!

What is that saying?  Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.  Just when I announce to the world we are going on the Mediterranean Diet for various health reasons, I decide to go gluten free.  Long story short:  4 out of 7 family members have been diagnosed with Hashimoto Thyroiditis in the last couple of years.  The most recent being my just turned 16 year old at the beginning of August.  She has been grappling with depression, anxiety attacks, fatigue, lethargy, PMS and very heavy periods, feeling cold but then getting hot flashes, dizzy spells, the beginnings of hair loss (her hair is her crowning glory, thick, wavy, down to her waist dark chestnut hair), all sorts of skin allergic reactions, headaches, mysterious aches and pains, weird forgetfulness that isn't normal, brain fog (inability to think clearly or concentrate) and anemia.   The things that used to energize her and give her motivation now all overwhelm her.  She got on synthroid and her numbers got better in terms of TSH but she is still grappling with all these other emotional/focus type issues.  The response of the doctor is just to put her on anti-depressants.  I really don't want to do that if it isn't necessary.  We are wanting to get another family member off anti-depressants and it is a hard and rather scary process.  It turns out that many Hashimoto patients don't feel well and/or struggle with depression even though their lab numbers are supposedly fine.  There is a booming industry out there because of this.

Conventional medicine doesn't seem to focus on why autoimmune diseases are becoming so prevalent.  They do tell you that if you have one you are more likely to develop another.   I'd like to see if we can fix the auto-immune system. Conventional medicine doesn't seem very keen on trying alternatives to medication.  Enter functional medicine.  I am really skeptical about this kind of stuff.  While acupuncture has been found to help with pain, which makes sense when you think in terms of nerves, I don't see how it helps reduce nodules in your thyroid for example. And I don't get how chiropractors can actually fix thyroid issues.  I think the only true thing chiropractors do falls under the realm of physical therapy.  In fact that is how they bill for insurance companies.  But when they get into fixing things like autism, etc, I just don't see how that works.  Same with essential oils.  I am sure some essential oils have enough concentrated chemicals in them that they help some conditions, but I don't believe there is an essential oil out there for every condition! 

But I have been hearing a lot about gluten free helping with auto-immune stuff, especially Hashimoto's, so we are going to give it a try.  My 16 yo is kicking and screaming about it all.  But emotionally she is locked into resisting everything upon first exposure to it.  Anyway, yesterday was our first day and the very first thing I made was a hit!  And I realized it is zero waste too!

I got this recipe from Hashimoto's 4-Week Diet by Karen Frazier.  It's an elimination diet.

This recipe is so simple and it turned out really well!  These things look and taste like pancakes!  It only take 4 ingredients, all of which I had on hand.  (Zero waste notes are in the parentheses).

This recipe is supposedly for 4 servings.

2 bananas, mashed (compost banana peels; stupid sticker is trash)
4 eggs, beaten(compost egg shells; recyclable cardboard egg cartons)
1/2 tsp cinnamon (glass jar with tin lid)
some coconut oil for the pancake pan (glass jar with tin lid)

Mix the first 3 ingredients together to get a 'batter.'  Melt the coconut oil to coat the pan well.  Make sure the pan is hot.  Then pour in scant 1/4 cup of batter for each pancake, and cook for about 3 minutes or until you see bubbles forming and the edges getting firm.  Flip and cook for another minute or two on the other side.

The recipe called for serving with fresh raspberries, but I didn't have any, so I topped with some homemade blackberry jam.

Delicious and so easy!!!  A definite keeper!  I might make these every Saturday morning instead of our usual bagel run (which is very hard to give up, especially for my husband).

For dinner I made spaghetti with meat sauce (I keep forgetting about Meatless Monday - it seems I tend to want to be meatless on Tuesdays instead!). 

Spaghetti:
Non GMO corn pasta by De Boles (small plastic window in cardboard box)
Brown rice pasta by De Boles (same)
Jar of marinara sauce (glass jar with metal lid)
ground beef - (local, grass fed, but wrapped in plastic)
topped with a little parmesan cheese (glass jar, metal lid)

The Plague and I - Book 28

I am on a Betty MacDonald kick.  Right after I finished The Egg and I, I started on The Plague and I which I remember really enjoying when I first read it many years ago.  I enjoyed it again!  I confess I find the peek into a TB sanatorium before World War II fascinating.  MacDonald describes the atmosphere, the people, her emotions and experiences in such a way that the whole book was a pleasure.  It wasn't as funny (or trying to be as funny) as The Egg and I but since I found the humor a little forced when I reread The Egg and I, I kind of liked that aspect of it.  I think her writing was just better in this book.   It flowed better to me.  And I wasn't cringing at her characterizations of Native Americans and such.  In fact, her dearest friend from the sanatorium turned out to be a young Japanese girl with a wicked, dry sense of humor.

Definite two thumbs up!

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Michaelmas Hygge!

Blackberries are traditionally eaten on Michaelmas, so here's my salute to the archangels, Michael, Gabriel and Raphael whose feast day it is today.

Someone gave me some homemade blackberry jam.  I saved it until today and made cream biscuits to serve it over.

Finished Product

Dinner last night was a resounding success!

I was too lazy to take nice photos.

So I didn't consult any recipe, I just threw it together and it came out delicious.

Filling:
Chopped up half a large onion
1 large clove of garlic smashed and chopped
Soften up both of these in some olive oil.
Threw in a lb of ground beef and cooked it up
Seasoned with Mrs. Dash (I know, but my husband is on a low salt diet).  I did add a bit of Himalayan salt and some black pepper too.

In the meantime I put a cup of rice in with two cups of chicken broth into my rice cooker.  The broth still had a some fat in it (I hadn't skimmed it off yet) so I didn't add anything else to the rice.

When the rice was done I stirred it into the ground beef mixture.

In the meantime, I put the oven on at 350 degrees, washed and cut in half my peppers, cleaned out the seeds and such from the insides.  Then I brushed them with a bit of olive oil and baked them by themselves for about 10 minutes.

Then I stuffed the peppers with the beef and rice mixture.  I topped each one with a bit of parmesan cheese and baked them all for another 20 minutes or so.

The peppers tasted really good.  Not too mushy, but not underdone either.

Can you even tell what this is?  

Fried green tomatoes:

I didn't have any bread crumbs, so I stole half of a small baguette and toasted it, then chopped it up into coarse crumbs in my blender.  I added a lot of Mrs. Dash.  I know, but I really like Mrs. Dash, ok???

Then I beat one egg in a dish and then dumped all the bread crumbs in and mushed it around till the breadcrumbs were damp.

I washed and sliced up all the green tomatoes.

I heated some olive oil in a pan and placed the sliced tomatoes in and then spread the bread crumbs on top.  At this point I think I added some garlic salt.

I covered it all and let the bread crumbs get really crispy and some of the tomatoes were browning.  Then I flipped everything over and did the same on the other side.  Then because I had the jar of parmesan still out, I sprinkled the rest of the cheese that was left (maybe 2 tablespoons?) on the tomatoes.

So delicious!

And tonight we are having the leftover peppers along with the leftover kale and potatoes from the night before with a couple of boxes of Annie's Mac and Cheese.  Gotta have a leftover night once a week!