Today is my birthday, and in honor of that I am posting this lovely, gluten-free cake (just the picture), baked for me by my particular friend’s daughter, unexpectedly.
You will notice that there is a divot in the top right corner. Yes, I ate some. Two forkfuls, to be precise, and they were large and delicious.
My friend Bonnie, the superhero, also made me a birthday dinner Saturday night, the first party thrown in my birthday honor since I was ten or eleven, I guess. A small gathering with delicious food and people I love.
As I enter my 46th year on the planet, it seems to me that the most important things have become distilled and clear in my mind.
Connection.
Gratitude.
Love.
Compassion.
As we are all still works in progress, there are things with which I still struggle, bonds I am in the process of strengthening, and those which are being carefully dissolved.
But I am grateful this early, early birthday morning for the wonderful people who have stayed with me through my life, and those who have recently become so important. For me, they are the only gift worth receiving.
So to the wonderful people who make up my small, beautiful, determined tribe, thank you so much for being the light and love in my life. My only hope is to be as good a friend to you all as you have been to me. I appreciate you more than you know, and I hope to share this appreciation of you in various ways this year.
“Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
As I emerge, blinking, into the March sun from the deepest recesses of the hell that is February and look around, I realize that my house is decidedly not in order.
It happens this way, sometimes.
When the earth begins its long march away from the sun, starting in June but accelerating in earnest as we move through November, I can feel myself retreating, hibernating. I may join humanity for a holiday party or three, but fuck it.
Bears don’t clean.
So the house gets a basic wipedown to prevent it from looking like a truckstop and to keep us in clean clothes and toilets – a whore’s bath of housecleaning, if you will – but other than that the baseboards grow furry, as do the underneath parts of nearly every surface in the house.
I was gifted a year’s worth of cleaning lady for Mother’s Day one year, and after the lady’s first visit she remarked, “It looked good until I started cleaning.”
This is nearly every winter of my life.
But the other side of this is that I cannot function well in a house that is filled with dirt. Metaphorical or otherwise.
Everywhere I look there is grime.
#BadFengShui
I feel like Punxatawney Phil (the only groundhog. #FuckOffGeneralLee). Of course he is going to see his shadow. They wake him up at the crack of dawn and shine lights on him, and all he can think about is whether or not he has crumbs on his chest from lying on his ass all winter, binge-watching Nurse Jackie while eating dry chocolate Chex because milk is superfluous and they are GLUTEN FREE now. He just wants to waddle back to his hole and go back to bed for six more weeks until someone comes in and cleans his house for him.
Or maybe it’s just me.
So here we are, early March.
It’s time to clean up our act. My act.
Whatever.
I feel a massive wave of cleaning energy coming on. It’s slow, to be sure, but I have finally thrown out the Galentine’s Day flowers and the Christmas tree is near the back fence, ready for a kindly neighbor who may or may not be heading to the dump sometime soon (#TrueStory).
I have changed my sheets and located new ones so they can be changed more frequently.
I bought glass shower cleaner and two rolls of paper towels.
I am getting ready to take various books to the Little Free Libraries located around Hampden, and I am ready to give away and reorganize many of the various things we have accumulated over the less-than-one-year we have been in this house.
It’s time to go top-to-bottom, left-to-right on this bitch.
Usually when I clean like this, I leave directly afterwards so I have the wonderful experience of walking into a house that looks and smells good.
But sometimes people suck and I just don’t feel like venturing out into the world beyond a long walk in the woods, where food is to be found but not easily and not in quantity.
I can’t order pizza in, and although my gluten-free variety is easy, still too much effort after a day collecting ALL THE DOG HAIR IN THE WORLD.
Enter salad.
What the fuck, you say. Or WTF if you are a millennial and #JustCantEven.
Not just any salad.
This time of year the farmer’s marker basket is overrrun with hearty greens: arugula, kale, spinach et al. You can’t juice them fast enough. You can’t put them in soups fast enough. Your kids hate them sauteed, no matter how much you talk about Popeye who’s strong to the finish ’cause he eats his spinach.
Side note: My brother and I used to stuff wads of spinach in our cheeks, call them chew, and spit the juice out on the patio for hours after dinner was over, finally divesting out distended cheeks of the desiccated spinach remains when the novelty wore off. Maybe my mom thought we were absorbing nutrients through our cheeks, or maybe she was overrun with greens herself and didn’t give a rat’s ass at that point.
But back to salad.
This salad is delicious, easy, filling, and versatile as hell. The basics are there, waiting to be supplemented by what you have. Chickpeas leftover? Toss them in. Grilled chicken or steak? Yup. Other types of fruit? Have at it.
After hours of scrubbing walls, baseboards, and stainless steel, this salad makes very few dishes; I tend to eat it with my fingers out of the bowl I made it in.
Kale/Arugula Salad With Apple Cider Vinaigrette
Ingredients
Kale or arugula or whateverthefuck greens you have (but no iceberg. #KeepinItReal)
One small bulb of fennel, sliced (optional)
One crisp apple, sliced thin (optional)
One handful of blueberries (optional)
One handful of strawberries, sliced (optional. Are you sensing a trend? Do what you like)
Squeeze of lemon, if using apples
1/2 cup toasted pecans (or any other nut you like, or no nuts if they make you swell up)
1/2 cup apple cider
2 T apple cider vinegar
4 T olive oil (or other oil, whatever you have)
1 tsp. honey
grind of black pepper
squeeze of Dijon mustard (optional, but it helps the other ingredients emulsify and gives the dressing some heft)
pinch of salt
Method
Place greens and other additions (apple, fennel, nuts, etc) in a large stainless steel bowl.
In a Mason jar, combine cider, vinegar, oil, mustard, salt, and pepper.
Shake like hell.
Wait until you are ready to eat, then shake the dressing and pour it on the salad. Eat it all up.
And hey…don’t wait all winter to clean your house.
I suppose the same could be said for many of us. One moment we are sunshine, light, and warmth…the next we are woe-is-meing and at the bottom of the very darkest well.
And by “we” I mean “me,” and sometimes just that quickly.
Not five hours after the last blog post in which I expounded on deep places of stillness and grace, I discovered I actually owe the IRS about five grand, received a $52 parking ticket when I went to go pick up a useless, destroyed purse of mine that was stolen six weeks ago, and found out that there is a distinct possibility that my mobile phone company (who shall hereafter be referred to as “Fucking T-Mobile”) will not cover the cost of a new phone, even though A) I have insurance, and B) the old phone is well and truly broken through no fault of my own.
Well played, Universe.
It’s like a test.
I am pretty sure I failed it just a little bit when I stormed into the house, railing against bills and screaming at The Teenager to clean up her mess and you left a towel in my bathroom and for chrissakes I am sick of cleaning up dog shit so clean up the backyard.
It’s a bit much to take, all at once.
And then, in a brief moment of clarity, I remembered this:
Should someone else owe taxes instead of me? Get a ticket? Have a 15-year-old?
It’s not a test. It’s just life. One day after another, one trauma and triumph and minor insult and lovely moment at a time.
The test is not in the events. The test is in what you do with them. Much of this is mindset, meeting what happens as it happens.
I have not been good at this in the past, this being in the moment, calm acceptance type of person. I think if maybe these woe-ful events were carefully spaced, then perhaps I might be better at it, but turns out the universe and its attendant whims is not necessarily a Day-Timer kind of entity.
In these times, and in all times, actually, because once a quote speaks to me and I interact with it in my brain it is forever burned there, and I will use it over and over, the Department of Redundancy Department, I am reminded of the distinction between anxiety and depression:
Anxiety looks to the future.
Depression looks to the past.
Present is always exceptionally hard for me because in addition to death and taxes and dogs and teenagers there are a myriad other things to worry about and reflect upon. Things that pull me out of what is now.
Things that may happen soon or have already happened but are not the reality of this moment.
Present, for me, requires a nudge. Something to tether me to what is in currently in my face. Something that will help me turn my phone face down, leave the ringer off, or just “forget” that I left it on the counter at home.
Present today? Well, present at my house today makes muffins. Gluten-free, sweet, barely-considered-breakfast muffins with fat blueberries taking up most of the cake.
Present at my house wants these muffins right now, dammit, so this recipe takes 30 minutes, from the first scoop of flour to taking fresh, hot muffins out of the oven and shoving them in your face.
I’d say that’s a pretty good way to live in the moment.
Blueberry Muffins
Double-plus bonus: These are so simple that you could actually make them while your first cup of coffee is brewing. Seriously. Regular AP flour works here, too. #InstantLove
2 large eggs
1/2 cup canola oil
3/4 cup whole milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups blueberries
Crumb topping:
1 cup gluten-free all-purpose flour
3 T light brown sugar
2 T sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
Pinch of salt
6 T melted butter
Method
Preheat oven to 375 degrees and grease a muffin tin (butter, oil, or cooking spray. #ItsNotRocketScience#PlusYouAreSleepy)
In a large-ish bowl whisk together dry ingredients.
In a smaller bowl, whisk together wet ingredients (I used a 2-cup measuring cup, adding the eggs last and beating them in).
In an even smaller bowl, whisk together crumb topping ingredients while you melt the butter.
Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Add blueberries and stir to combine.
Fill muffin cups about 3/4 of the way full.
Use a fork to add crumble ingredients to melted butter and mix to combine. It should be somewhat clumpy, which is what you want. Spoon/pour/use your hands to distribute crumble on top of your muffins.
Bake for 15-20 minutes or until the tops are golden brown and a toothpick comes out fairly clean or with maybe a crumb or two clinging to it.
Eat many of the muffins and go about your day.
Voila. The present moment, only with fresh, hot muffins. #Om
My particular friend sent me a love poem the other day.
I had seen it before; this poem has made the rounds of self-help books and memes for many several years, usually as a call to nature.
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
– Wendell Berry –
I don’t know why, but on this rainy day this poem, sent by my particular friend, takes me to a place of deep, abiding stillness.
That place where nothing really matters, not in a melancholy way but in the way of knowing what it means to be truly content with what simply is.
That place that has no boundaries except the sides of the universe that stretch infinitely.
That place where nothing is unforgiven, no fault is laid, there is no rush, pressure, or blame.
That place that might be called Grace in its most passive form: free and unmerited favor. Bestowal of blessings.
Obvi not a place that exists in the real world, except maybe on those rare occasions when you truly have nothing to do, all day to do it, and a particular friend of your own with whom to do it. Then time slides through and around you like water slipping over a mossy rock.
The peace of wild things lives here, in this place.
There are other ways I can get to this place of grace…in the peaceful company of wild things.
Yoga, sometimes, when I am not beating myself up. Trikonasana, heart to the sky. Ardha chandrasana, open and balanced.
Sex, if I am being honest (which I always try to be), particularly the satisfying kind, tangled in the bedsheets afterwards, on the sleepy precipice, cells bathed in their own lovely wash of delight.
And cooking. Food.
Cooking takes me there, to grace. Even as my mind is racing through possibilities or running down a list of ingredients there is a meditative calm and stillness at the center of this work that isn’t work.
To describe myself in such terms – calm, meditative, still – is a rare and precious thing.
And yet.
When I come to the kitchen, there it is. And if it’s not there I can surely find it at the bottom of the bowl.
That place that is so quiet and still that I can hear my own voice, strong and steady in my throat and heart.
That undemanding timespace that somehow knits back together the very best parts of myself.
It doesn’t quite matter what I make.
It’s the act. The art.
Everyday Crackers
Crackers may seem an odd choice, but if it’s good enough for Jesus (grace and all), it’s good enough for me. Plus, these are easy and delicious and very nearly impossible to screw up. Very forgiving. #Grace
Ingredients
3 cups gluten free all-purpose flour blend
1 ½ tsp. salt
2 tsp. sugar
4 T. olive oil
4 T. butter, frozen and grated
1 cup water
Add-ins: 1 ½ tsp. fennel, 1 ½ tsp. sesame seeds, ½ t. salt, ¼ t. cracked black pepper, combined, toasted, and cooled
Method
Preheat oven to 400⁰. In the bowl of a food processor, combine dry ingredients (including add-ins). Pulse to mix. Add olive oil and butter, then pulse to mix (the mixture will resemble cornmeal). Add water and mix until dough comes together. The dough will be sticky.
Lightly flour two cookie sheets. Working the dough as little as possible, pinch a bit of dough out of the food processor (approximately 1” balls). Place on the cookie sheet. Pinches of dough should be an inch apart. When you have filled the cookie sheet, lightly flour the flat bottom of a glass (or a measuring cup, or anything flat), and press each pinch of dough to 1/8” thick. The thickness is not as important as evenly pressing the dough is; uneven crackers will brown on one edge and not the other. Poke each crackers three times with a toothpick (this is important!).
Place cookie sheets in the oven and bake for a total of 12 minutes, rotating the crackers halfway through for even browning. Remove immediately from cookie sheets and cool on a wire rack. These crackers will stay fresh in an airtight container for three days, but you can pop them in a hot oven for a couple minutes to re-crisp if necessary.
Recipe notes
Oven temperatures vary and can greatly affect your outcome. Keep a close eye on your crackers, especially towards the end, to see if modifications to the bake need to be made.
These crackers can also be rolled out and cut into rectangles or squares with a pizza cutter.
Between batches, place the dough in the refrigerator.
Use all olive oil instead of butter to make these vegan. They may be slightly tougher.
Topping options are nearly unlimited, and you can also add fresh herbs into the dough when you add the water.
For a most delicious variation, add the zest of two lemons, ½ cup of dried blueberries (no sugar added), and 1 T of chopped thyme. Makes a beautiful, subtle, purple cracker. Serve with soft cheese.
These crackers can be made in a large bowl without a food processor. Work the dough as quickly as you can, and make sure all ingredients are incorporated.
For easier clean up, these can also be baked on parchment paper.
Store crackers in an airtight container. I have had them for as long as a week with no loss of texture, but I ate them all before I could experiment further.
Monday, February 22, 2016 is National Margarita Day. I am giving you a full week to prepare.
In my neck of the woods, where the handlebar mustaches are still in season and a full beard is properly oiled and trimmed, mezcal is the next big thing.
It’s not National Mezcal Day, though (which is October 21st, so proclaimed by a Tennessee country singer named Toby Keith in a bit of shameless self-promotion for his new branded mezcal. Because as we all know, there is a ton of mezcal in Tennessee. #ThatsAboutTenTonsOfBullshit).
Let’s be honest, though. Unless you are still in college and paying for booze with student loans, it’s time to grow up and drink better than that. Sure, you can make margarita with some sour mix and rail tequila, but as a thinking, rational adult, why the hell would you?
Do not fuck around.
Fresh lime, Cointreau (orange liqueur), and high-quality tequila.
That’s it. Three ingredients, so they all have to be spot-on.
But not precious. It is, after all, a margarita.
And for fuck’s sake, please don’t drink it frozen. It’s not a goddamn Slurpee.
You get a free pass if you are on an island, in a swim-up bar, or that’s what someone makes at a party and puts in your hand. #BeGraciousSayThankYou
It is this blog’s not so measured opinion that margaritas should be consumed on the rocks with a heavy salt rim, no straw.
Give it a try. You have your assignment.
The Only Margarita Recipe You Need #Trust
Ingredients
2 oz. high quality tequila (if you wouldn’t sip it neat, don’t use it)
1 oz. Cointreau
1 oz. fresh lime juice (back away from the plastic fucking lime. Jesus.)
Coarse salt, lime wedge
Method
Rub the rim of a rocks glass with a lime wedge. Dip rim in coarse salt. Fill glass with fresh ice. Set aside.
Throw all liquid ingredients in a cocktail shaker and shake until it is icy cold and frothy as hell.
