Category Archives: home

#inthegarden

wildflowers

 

The past few weeks I’ve been fairly contemplative about where I am in my life.  I passed a milestone birthday and I marked the anniversary of my cancer diagnosis (or rather, I didn’t mark it at all this year, which felt alright).  Also, I visited with a few old friends recently where we discussed all that’s happened in the past few decades.

And after all that, I suspect that I just might jinx myself if I say that things are pretty positive right now.  But it also seems worth noting that while there are still some hard days and some things that I hope to change about my circumstances, for the most part it’s just really good:  my days are filled with interesting activities that are mostly of my own choosing, I enjoy my work colleagues very much, there is little friction in my family life, I have few health complaints, my home/garden are well-worth returning to each evening, and I average about 7.5 hours of sleep at night (and every once in awhile, I even take a nap).

(photo taken in my garden this weekend)

for the big ones

I’ve had a few zucchini piled up on the counter that I haven’t been sure what to do with.  They aren’t the young tender ones that taste great in zucchini carpaccio (which, btw, I make sans goat cheese and it is still super-yum) and I’m not in the mood for baking zucchini bread or zucchini cake.

So, this recipe from the gals at 3191 was just what I needed.  I adapted it by using soymilk instead of coconut milk and I put a dollop of rich plain yogurt in the center and swirled it around into the soup.  Also, I wanted to note that I made this with some BIG zucchini (you know, those ones that are lurking under the leaves that you don’t find until they are as big as your arm).  I feared that the big zukes would turn out woody or flavorless, but that was not the case at all.  And I didn’t even clean out the seeds–I just blended it all together in my Vitamix until it was creamy:

Curried Zucchini Soup with Coconut Milk
adapted from Great Food Fast

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons curry powder
1 1/2 pounds zucchini (I used 3 medium-sized), sliced thick
1 baking potato, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
4 cups stock (the original recipe just calls for water)
2/3 cup coconut soy milk

1. Heat oil in large pot over medium heat. Add onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft, 4-5 minutes. Add garlic and curry powder and continue to cook, stirring constantly until fragrant (another minute).

2. Add the zucchini, potato and stock. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer until vegetables are tender (15-20 minutes).

3. Add coconut milk. Puree with immersion blender or in batches in blender until very smooth and velvety. Taste and season with salt and pepper. Seasoning depends on stock and potency and freshness of curry powder (my soup needed very little seasoning).

 

returning

A view of the veggies #inthegarden #theresnoplacelikehome

A photo posted by @janaremy on

It seems a season of returns, for me.  I just barely returned to work after having to take off three weeks due to an urgent medical issue.  I am about to return to the classroom, after a summer away from teaching responsibilities.  Earlier this season I returned to vegetable gardening, a hobby that’s been on hold for about five years.  And perhaps most largely, I feel as though I am returning to being myself again, after several months (years, even) of struggling with health challenges that left me drained of my typical vim.

I have intentions of other returns, soon.  As soon as my doctor gives me the thumbs-up, I will return to outrigger canoeing and to daily yoga and to evening neighborhood walks and to globe-trotting.  I expect that not to be far away(!).

It seems that I also have the inclination to return to writing.  For so many (many) months I simply lost interest.  It felt like anything I wanted to say had already been said.  Or that I simply wanted to read long novels and putter in the soil and giggle with friends and watch BBC comedies, instead of throwing out my thoughts at a keyboard.

But those writing feelings are coming back again.  I don’t know if they’ll stick or if they’ll get subsumed in the other stuff that’s keeping me busy these days.

We shall see.

 

confessions of a sort-of-organized-minimalist

my vintage lingerie, folded and organized into my drawer

my vintage lingerie, folded and organized into my drawer

At a recent work party I had to offer one detail about my life that none of my coworkers already knew.  My “secret” was that I have moved my household 14 times in the past 20 years.  Ugh.  And have I mentioned just how much I hate moving? (maybe once or twice)

One of my coping mechanisms for having relocated so many times is to live a fairly bare-bones existence.  Just about every time I am tempted to buy something I imagine myself exhausted and packing boxes and ask myself if that new widget is really worth the effort that it will take to relocate it when the time comes (as it inevitably will).  Though I’m no Miss Minimalist, I’m not too far off from that end of the extreme, either.

Despite the fact that I’ve already internalized a fairly simple lifestyle, when a friend recommended The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering & Organizing, I downloaded a copy of the book despite an earlier decision to avoid decluttering self-help books.  I found that it affirmed a few of the habits that I’ve already incorporated into my life.  For example, I only keep things that I love (or as Kondo says, “items that bring delight”).  So if an item has a bad memory associated with it, or if it brings up negative feelings rather than pleasure, then off it goes to the Goodwill.  Ditto for items that are redundant or broken or threadbare.  Then for those delightful items that make the cut and stay in my home, I find a permanent place for them so I can put them away and keep the house tidy.

One element of Kondo’s book that rang especially true for me is that she recommends folding one’s clothing and linens into tidy squares and stowing it upright, in drawers.  A favorite time of the week is Sunday afternoon when I’m doing laundry and I take the warm clothes out of the dryer and fold them into tidy piles based on who they belong to and/or where they are stored in the house.  I have particular folding patterns for cloth napkins and bathowels and tshirts and sweaters and skivvies.  For me there’s a lot of comfort in the ritual of folding the same dishtowels and tank tops and pajamas every week, and I especially love how the fabrics of such things become softer with age (and as I touch each item, in my mind I rehearse the story of how I acquired it–that crazy pair of socks from Portland or that blouse from Brussels or the tidy stack of matching washcloths that I bought to mark my move from my student apartment to my first real house).

The satisfaction that I feel from folding my laundry is certainly heightened by the fact that such rituals are how I have made “home” in so many places so quickly over the years.  Because home has not been a precise location, but a set of comfortable behaviors that I brought along with all of those packing boxes, to each new space.