no name dinners

“What’s for dinner tonight?” Oftentimes the answer in my house in the early evening is, “I don’t know yet.”  Once I’ll take stock of fridge and pantry, and if I’m really desperate also the freezer, I’ll see what’s there and decide what I can make of it.  Often what I cook and put together doesn’t have a name, such as eggplant or chicken parm,  stuffed zucchini, or perhaps salmon on a bed of leeks.  As a matter of fact, what I mostly make is no-name dishes, something you can’t look up in a cookbook because I just made it up from what I had.

You see, I usually work backwards.  Instead of making a list of dishes for the week ahead and shopping for the ingredients, I shop for what’s in season, on sale, available, fresh, or what tickles my fancy and inspiration, then fill my fridge, pantry and freezer with possibilities.  

Last night I was in a pickle working late and having to put dinner on the table fast.  My trick is always to have meal building blocks at the ready.  I had a portion size baggie of cooked and thawed sorghum, some leftover sautéed red and yellow peppers from the previous night’s dinner, and a wedge of a Mexican fresh cheese they called Mexican Parmesan (ahem – not the same, more like Feta cheese without the sheep’s zing) to play with.  Thinking quinoa salad, which you can really make with just about anything, I made a sorghum/cubed cheese/sautéed peppers/diced shallots meal salad with a simple vinaigrette.  No name, made up on the spot, very healthy, very nourishing and satisfying.  With a few basic building blocks, a few basic techniques, and the dare to throw some things together, you’re on your way to making no-name dinners in a jiffy.  Add some fruit for dessert, add a piece of fish, some sautéed tofu or a piece of meat if you like, and you have full meal. Some no-name dinners will be better than others, but hey, they’re fun, fun, fun and so easy to make - and you won’t have to buy take-out.

sacred sleep therapy

My husband was quite unhappy with our daughter’s explanation that her teenage biorhythms prevented her from being able to sleep before midnight, resulting in about 6 hours of sleep on school nights.  I need my 8 hours of sleep, or something close to it.  I simply don’t function well with much less, while my husband does ok when he works late a few nights in a row.  

We all have different sleep needs and different biorhythms our culture suffers from sleep deprivation in general.  Due to cultural pressures and false role models we simply try to stuff too much into a 24 hour day, and our mental and physical wellbeing suffer.  Sleep is not a waste of time even though it consumes about a third of your life.  Sleep is actually productive even though passive. Sleep is therapy, physical and mental. Physically, it is during sleep that our cells heal and regenerate.  Mentally, we digest in our subconscious what we experienced during the day.  

Arianna Huffington, founder and editor of the Huffington Post, researched and wrote theThe Sleep Revolution “after collapsing from exhaustion” a few years ago. Huffington writes: “Sleep is a time of intense neurological activity—a rich time of renewal, memory consolidation, brain and neurochemical cleansing, and cognitive maintenance. Properly appraised, our sleeping time is as valuable a commodity as the time we are awake. In fact, getting the right amount of sleep enhances the quality of every minute we spend with our eyes open. Here are links to her sleep-quality questionnaire, and to her 12 tips for better sleep.  How do you fare?  

Sleep is restoration time, make it sacred.  Make your bedroom your sanctuary that feels peaceful and protected, quiet and calm.  No TVs and tablets, but rather tisane and fresh air, a good book, and a mechanical alarm clock so you can leave your phone outside.

how to bring awareness

Keeping a detailed written record for a few weeks is a great tool for gaining clarity in a particular area. 

One example of the usefulness of this method is in monitoring your spending - to understand how you spend your money, see your highest spending categories (you spend the most on what you value the most - see a previous post on voting with your $), or simply to budget better. I have kept detailed financial records for decades, now in Quickbooks, but in the beginning (and before there was Excel) in a handwritten spreadsheet. Checks and credit card expenses are easy to track, but to track those elusive cash expenses I keep small pieces of scrap paper in my car and note one for each cash expense until I log it.  At the end of the year my Quickbooks records are  also a terrific tax tool.  But that is not where I was going with this.  We think we know where and how we spend our money.  But do we really?  In our household we spend no money at all on sports events (no interest), and relatively little on clothing (a lot of 2nd hand shop shopping).  After the mortgage our highest spending categories are healthcare,  groceries, and for the time being college expenses (#1 just finished, #2 is starting). Hence, after a roof over my head my health and wellbeing come first, and next is our children’s education.

Many years ago, when I took a course in non-violent communication during my graduate studies, I kept a journal of undesirable dialogues, which I used for analyzing what went wrong and how I could have handled the conversation the non-violent way instead.

Another application of this method is keeping journal of what you eat and drink to understand better what you put into your body and recognize its effects – how you feel in your stomach, your mental clarity, your energy level, how your skin looks, or perhaps your weight.  After a while patterns come into awareness, such as feeling sleepy after certain foods, or feeling light in your stomach after others. For a while I drank a green smoothie every day and noticed how my skin noticeably cleared up after about a month.

Bringing awareness to something that we often do on auto-pilot, whether eating, spending money, talking, or something else (you could monitor how you spend your time to know how much goes into household chores, commuting, spending time with friends, what have you) opens the door to implement changes for the better.

on the incoming Aquarian energy

The Age of Aquarius entered our awareness with a big flower children/hippie/Woodstock bang in the late 1960s together with the invitation to make love instead of war.  The New Age movement, as it was called later, was mildly derided during the 1980s, but this emerging energy is back in full force although it looks a bit different now.  

Between the #metoo movement, women entering politics in unprecedent numbers, and gaining a better education in many parts of the world, female power is rising. It’s the women who are carrying the shift away from our patriarchal cultural models of the past several thousand years.  However, something more is happening.  Indigenous leader and elder, visionary, author, and scholar Barbara Hand Clow wrote in 2001 that “the Aquarian energy is so androgynous that it will tend to balance male and female powers.”

The LGBTQ movement is vocal and visible like never before (here a somewhat related post on changing family structures), and many are openly questioning gender as a binary choice.  Some male to female, and female to male transitions are playing out in bright daylight, such as William Bruce Jenner’s transition to becoming Caitlyn Jenner.  Public figures like actor Billy Porter and Jonathan Van Ness of Queer Eye’s Fab5 are questioning what it means to be male with their wardrobe choices. 

In confirmation of the incoming androgynous Aquarian energy, The NYTimes Magazine’s recent article Neither/Nor presented us with people who are not transitioning from male to female, or vice versa, but instead cannot truly define their gender according to the binary model.  Thus, transitioning from one to the other is not a choice and they feel caught somewhere else. They don’t feel female, nor do they feel male. Gender fluidity is not necessary something new on earth, as many other cultures have acknowledged a third gender (see a previous post on that).   Whether Porter or Van Ness, or the less publicly visible people who are caught in the middle, they are on the forefront of an emergent energy that will balance the strong female/male polarity we have been taking for granted for so long in the Western world. Thank you to all those pioneers who are showing us a different way.

entertaining is energizing

Having people over, or more formally entertaining, is energizing, nurturing, exhilarating, fun and thrilling.  As a host you put on a small production when you have people over. it all can be more or less elaborate, more or less involved, depending on your personality, experience and adventure spirit.  None of us are Martha Stewart,  but as the host you create an opportunity for people to meet, connect, talk and enjoy life while eating and drinking.  Nothing more simple and satisfying than that.

Entertaining is both an art and a science.  The science lies in the planning process, the art lies in the perfect people combination, food selection and setting.  While it can seem a bit intimidating to be responsible for a bunch of people’s good time, people are very forgiving, and always grateful for the initiative.  We all crave real face-to-face connection beyond screen connection!   My parents entertained often, both for pleasure and business (restaurant entertaining wasn’t a thing then).  When my sister and I were not invited, which was actually quite rare, we had a sixth sense for when the guests left, and got up in the middle of the night (for us) to find the dessert leftovers in the messy kitchen and have a delectable midnight snack.  Regardless of whether we were invited or not, we learned the art by watching and participating in the menu planning, meal preparation, table and atmosphere setting – music was always in the background.  

Nowadays much of home entertaining has become quite casual and easy to put together, especially since, at least where I live, it’s very common for guests to offer to contribute to the meal even if it‘s not outright called a potluck.  You only provide one or two dishes and the setting - easy.  Bonds are forged over food and drink.  Meals are a great way to cement business too, because you get to know people on a personal level. The format doesn’t matter, whatever the season and your enthusiasm inspire you to do is good.  People love being invited, people love to connect – the other night we spontaneously invited friends over for a glass of wine after an outdoor concert – and stuck around until 2am.

Just this morning we decided spontaneously, as we often do these days, to drum a few friends together for a picnic and campfire in our backyard. Check out a recent article in the Times Herald Record on how to throw a successful summer BBQ together with some easy and simple recipes.  And candles, lanterns, twinkle lights, votives with tealights, or a fire make it magical. It’s not complicated, it simply takes initiative and a bit of effort, but it’s soooooo worth it.