Kindred spirits connecting by sharing their wisdom through essays, recipes, storytelling, poetry and visual art. Communities form around food and fellowship. We welcome your contribution.
It’s a celebratory day and I have to share with you a world class dinner salad Nancy whipped up: a yummy healthy mix of raw foods and seared eggplant with a tangy buttermilk dressing.
Dressing: whisk 2 TB buttermilk, 2 TB white wine vinegar, 1 tsp Dijon mustard, and 1 tsp honey with fresh ground pepper and a pinch of salt. Add 1/2 charred shallot (or sweet onion) and 3 TB olive oil and mix well.
2 small Japanese eggplants: Slice on diagonal and pan sear with olive oil. If you don’t find the smaller Japanese eggplants, you can use the larger type. I would recommend coating slices with olive oil and roasting in the oven rather than pan searing.
Arrange seared eggplant on a bed of lettuce with cubes of seedless cucumber, cubes of avocado, chopped cilantro or parsley. Add some micro-greens if you have them. Sprinkle with lemon zest and chopped chives and drizzle with dressing. We added some red quinoa on the side and some fresh fruit.
Easy and delicious way to get your 5 servings of fruits and veg and healthy fats!
Or would you rather go to Mars? The Perseverance Rover will be landing on Mars in 30 days (Feb. 18, 2021).
Interested in sending your name on a Mars’ mission? Want a fun educational activity to interest the young ones in space, the stars, life beyond earth? Go to https://mars.nasa.gov/participate send-your-name/ Since I dreamily gaze at the stars wondering what is out there, I have had my boarding ticket for more than a year.
After bacon and eggs for breakfast and baked eggplant with mozzarella for lunch, we were happy to have a salad for dinner. Not just any salad, a salad Nancy style with pears and blood oranges and bits of aged Gouda along with avocado, radishes, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, romaine. and radish micro-greens. If left to her own devices, she would have added more fruits and probably some nuts. To compensate for the measly 9 ingredient salad, she baked the best muffins ever, Banana Walnut with a dense brownie like texture. I recommend these low glycemic, gluten free wonders. You could change out the sour cream with vegan cream cheese to make dairy free. You can also bake them in an 8×8 pan and cut into squares.
Nancy’s Banana Brownie Muffins
Ingredients:
2 eggs, 3 mashed bananas, 1 1/2 cups coconut sugar, 1 cup sour cream, 1/2 cup butter, softened ( if use unsalted butter, add 3/4 tsp salt), 2 tsp vanilla extract, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp cornstarch or arrowroot, 1 1/2 cup of Bob’s Red Mill gluten free flour, 1/4 cup almond flour, 1/4 cup coconut flour, 1 tbs maple syrup or 2 tbs honey, 1 cup of chopped walnuts I used a mixture of rice, tapioca, coconut and almond as a 1 to 1 substitute for regular all purpose flour. Bob’s Mill was used because it seems to be the best substitute for regular flour. Almond flower makes grainy crumbly baked goods but adds a nice flavor. I added a small amount of honey and maple for flavor and substituted coconut sugar 1 for 1 for regular sugar And I added the arrowroot to add smoothness, but not necessary Have eggs and butter at room temp with butter soft. Preheat oven to 375F. Medium size muffin will take 20 to 25 minutes. Very small muffins take 10 to 15 minutes. Directions:
1. Cream sugar and butter using a mixer.
2. Add bananas, eggs, sour cream, vanilla, honey, maple syrup. Mix until even consistency.
3. Add flour, baking soda, baking powder, arrowroot (and salt. -if desired). Mix well, making certain everything is blended.
4. Stir in walnuts by hand mixing.
5. Place mixture in 8×8 baking pan or muffin tins and bake at 375F until inserted toothpick comes out clean . Cook time will vary from 10 minutes to 30 minutes depending on baking container.
Chicken Francese is an easy, quick weeknight meal-Prepare 4 chicken cutlets, pound with meat tenderizer until 1/4 inch thick, pat dry and season with salt and pepper. Beat 2 eggs with 2 TB milk and dredge cutlets first in cornstarch to coat and then in the egg mixture.
Place skillet on medium high heat and brown the cutlets in unsalted butter, turning after 2-3 minutes. Place on baking rack and keep warm in 200 degree oven. Add 2 TB capers and 1 clove garlic, minced to skillet and then a mixture of 1 cup chicken broth, 1/2 cup dry white wine, 1 tsp cornstarch and pinch of salt. Cook about 5 minutes until reduced by half. Take off heat and stir in 2 TB butter and 2 TB lemon juice.
Pour over chicken cutlets and garnish with parsley and a wedge of lemon. We served it with a small purple potato, zucchini noodles, a little bit of fresh spinach, sauteed with garlic and olive oil and some raw micro-greens. We had some fresh fruit for dessert. Lots of colors mean lots of vitamins and don’t worry about the butter and oil, your brain needs fat to process.
The potential prize for the multi-state lottery is close to a trillion dollars, an unimaginable sum for most of us. Does it inspire your imagination? Do you feel compelled to try your luck now, when you didn’t think about it when it was a measly 1 or 2 million?
The question is not whether you have a good shot at winning, but what would you do if you did win. What would you buy, what would you do, who would you help?What is your long deferred dream? Some of us are quite happy with what we have and wouldn’t change much. Many of us have almost forgotten those dreams that seemed out of reach.
I like to think I would be a good steward of a large amount of money. Of course, I first consider who in my circle really needs a windfall. I would hope for more than 2 million, because it would take that much to settle those obligations. A farm for my daughter, a comfortable retirement for my brother, my son, special friends, it could go on and on.
My partner and I have so many dreams we haven’t settled on just one. The top two are to travel, take pictures and write stories about the people we meet and/or buy a big house and have a combination bed and breakfast, retreat, wellness center. Both would provide lots of opportunities to meet interesting people and to contribute to society. We both like the idea of sharing our experience and knowledge and developing a network of other venerable ones.
This blog is one way we can all share our thoughts, ideas, dreams. I look forward to hearing from you. Let me know if you win the lottery, but if you don’t, I encourage you to do whatever it is you would do anyway.
I had other plans for my Saturday evening and Sunday morning, but I’m obsessed with understanding how I have a $3000 charge on my Paypal account that I helped a scammer create. In my initial excitement, I had signed up for a trial of Linkedin premium account thinking that it would be helpful in launching this blog. A month went by and I had almost forgotten I did it and was shocked to see a year’s subscription of $684 deducted from my checking account. I was panicked and desperate to clear this charge. I called what I thought was Paypal support, 530 792-9935 (don’t trust this number). I was routed a few times until I was instructed to allow them to VNC onto my phone so that they could create a credit account to refund the unauthorized purchase. Never let anyone VNC onto your phone! I don’t know what I was thinking, clearly not thinking. A few days later, I was informed by Paypal that my claim was denied since I had actually authorized it with Linkedin by accepted the free trial. So now I have a Paypal credit account with a line of credit of $3500. I used it for a couple of small purchases to test if it was active and when I went in to make a payment a week later, I find a charge of $3000 with an invoice by Paxt Shoot for Linkedin recovery. I have reported this fraud to a validated Paypal customer service agent and have hope that this will be resolved, but feel extremely stupid for falling into this trap.
I woke up with the song Coal Miner’s Daughter in my head. I’m actually a coal miner’s granddaughter from southeastern Ohio. My coal miner was actually from Kentucky which helps me to understand the migration described in Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance.
I’ve had a pleasant week sifting through my mother’s dusty treasures in preparation for a yard sale. I found matching baby t-shirts printed with my name and my brother’s name above a map of Ohio. I soaked them for three days in an oxygen whitener. My brothers came out pretty good; mine is still yellowed and stained. Story of my life. My question to my mother, “who took us to the Ohio State Fair?” Since she didn’t remember that anyone would be crazy enough to take a 1 year old and a 2 year old to the Ohio State Fair, we decided that the shirts were a gift from my paternal grandparents, which included the aforementioned coal miner. They loved fairs and festivals, especially if there was country music. I remember seeing Flat and Scruggs at a county fair one summer. I think I was 8 or 9. I spent at least two weeks each summer going wherever my grandparents were going and doing whatever they were doing. This was in the days before the time that kids became the center of the universe. I happily tagged after them and learned about their lives. My grandmother and I crocheted afghans, wallpapered the living room, cleaned and canned corn and tomatoes and green beans. She helped me make my entire 7th grade wardrobe, including one dress that I patched from scraps of leftover fabric and feedsacks. My grandfather thought it was important that we learn to shoot a gun and snap a chicken’s neck.
There was always something interesting going on. When I’d had enough excitement, I’d go back to my maternal grandmother’s house, up the hill on the same street where everything was calm and orderly. We would walk around her flower garden while she gently pinched the coleus tops, and taught me the names of her other favorites, snapdragon, dahlia, geranium, begonia.
Her wisdom was captured in two wooden plaques hung in the dining room which read: “We have one two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak” and “We get too soon old and too late smart”.
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