Revolution

(Warning: I'm about to get on my high horse and cliched, so be warned. Read at your own risk, dear reader.)

I read The Omnivore's Dilemma and I am duly horrified. Objectively, I knew much of the book's content. I've heard of docking chicken beaks and the cruelty of slaughtering beef on a slaughter line. I've always teetered on the edge of becoming a vegetarian because of my love for animals. (Ironic, of course, because I actually slaughtered my own chickens in Kenya.) But there is something about eating animals that I've always had a difficult time dealing with.

But there were plenty of things in the book that I didn't know. For example, it takes about 87 calories of energy to transport 1 calorie of food. I mean, that's crazy.

So The Doctor and I are attempting to revolutionize how we eat and drink in our small house in the desert. We're trying to buy local as best we can in Arizona. Farmer's markets, local stores, grass-fed, free range meats. I'm considering this my revolution, my food anarchy.

Styleless

Last night, I went to a coworker's home to see some photos from her recent trip to Asia (Hong Kong, China, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, in case you were interested). She made some appetizers consisting mostly of cheese (delish!) and uncorked a few bottles of wine. The photos were fantastic. I really enjoyed seeing and hearing her stories about rices paddies and buffalo shit.

But what I loved most of all was her condo. Her sense of interior design and style wowed me. Everything from the paint colors and placement to the wall hangings to the knick-knacks to the pillows and throws just complemented each other. It was bright, cheery, modern, bohemian, gorgeous. The style of the home was eclectic (e.g. NOT Pottery Barn, etc.), but it looked fantastic. So pulled together and lived in and I loved it.

For whatever reason, my sense of home design and style is terrible. (To be honest, my sense of personal style is kind of lacking, too. Clothes I can do, but accessories? Forget it.) It's not a family gene becauase Golden Brother has a fabulous sense of style (especially for a straight man) and his little studio apartment looks a thousand times better in shades of orange and green and modern art and contemporary furniture. Granted, Golden Brother studied art and architecture at university, so maybe it's a learned gene.

Whatever I lack, I lack in a big way. My house has prints hung up throughout, but they all look a little mismatched and oddly out of place. My furniture is a hodge-podge of stuff (and stained with child crap like food and paint and crayons).

I wish I had an innate sense of style. But for my house to look like anything other than thrown together and mishmashed, then I'll have to hire someone to come and pick out colors, furniture and wall hangings.

At least I can cook.

H-O-T Hot

This is the time of the year I despise living in Arizona. Everywhere else, it's the winding down of summer, the beginning of fall, the anticipation of school and a fresh start. A change of seasons.

Except in Arizona. Right now, it's only the middle of the summer; the heat will continue the sizzle for another few months as the air conditioner drones on outside my window, providing an incessant hum as backdrop to my nights.

I love the fall. I love the cooler mornings, the crispness in the air, the slow but steady change of the leaves from deep summer green to crackly orange and reds. I love apple picking and cider, pumpkin-picking and looking at new pink erasers.

I miss the change of seasons right now.

Rerouted

Clearly, I've quit doing a photo a day. My life has had a few speed bumps pop up over the last few weeks, the last of which ended up with me in the ER in VA Beach the day of my grandfather's funeral. Despite my smugness, apparently gallbladder problems do run in my family and hit all women right around the age of 30. I'm close enough to 30 for it to count and had a laparoscopic cholecystectomy (that would be a gallbladder removal surgery) on Friday.

So I'm home for a few days relaxing and healing. CEWG is at nursery school, the Doctor is sleeping off his night shift work and I'm watching bad reruns of afternoon television and generally enjoying being home.

8:11

Study in Clouds

8:10

8:9

8:8

RADM Edward W. Carter III

8:7

8:6

8:5

8:4

8:3

A Favorite

8:2

Bits and Pieces

8:1

after the rain

Balance

Over the last few years, I feel like my life has lacked balance in many ways. In general, maybe, my personality lacks balance. I tend embrace life's extremes (hopefully not in a bipolar-kind-of-way, but in an exuberant-kind-of-way). The last five years of my life have been extreme. Graduated, married, moved, job changes, baby, motherhood, moved again.

I'm finally feeling settled. For the first time in my life, I'm living in a place with no end in sight. Up until now, my life has been divided into stages: university, Peace Corps, grad school, the Doctor's residency. Each stage had a finite life-span, a time when it was definitively over and it was time to move on.

But now, here I am. And I feel settled. I feel like I am sliding into my life, sinking in. The knowledge that I could live here for ever (or not) is comforting. This isn't a stage, this isn't a phase, there is no end in sight. It just is. This is my life.

And I am filling my life with bounty. I have a job that excites me, a child who inspires me to be better and stronger, even as she becomes her own person. I have the time to both work and cook, to do and create. I am enjoying summer and food and monsoons and rest. I am balancing my family, my work, my passions and my loves.

For the first time, I really understand how life is about the journey and not the destination.

Home Again, Home Again

We're back from a lovely vacation armed with Virginia peanuts (but no ham). I always feel so sad when I leave my family behind to head back out West, but simultaneously, it's always somewhat of a relief to be back in my own home. We sunned, surfed, spent time with beloved friends and family members, ate and drank and ate and drank and ate some more. My mother's brothers are both "foodies" in the best sense and family get-togethers inevitably result in massive piles of shaved parmesan, giant boxes of pasta, links of sausage and a hot grill. Oh yes, and lots of bottles of wine. There is nothing like beautiful, messy, lovely family to make a holiday trip feel blessed.

After getting home, we went shopping. I love having a fridge full of fresh foods. The colors of summer are so vibrant on my counters.

Discouraged

Tonight I feel discouraged. This week hasn't been particularly overwhelming (or underwhelming), so I'm not really sure where this maudlin feeling has come from tonight (maybe that second glass of white?).

We have had some client losses these last few weeks. It's been sad. I don't like telling women they are no longer pregnant. They hear the initial news from the doctor, but inevitably, they come to me for reassurance, for understanding, for asking "is it true?" It is so hard holding a woman's hand while she cries in a language that I don't speak. Grief is universal, but there is still a chasm between us for reasons I can't explain. I am not fluent in the specific language of miscarriage loss and I know the grief of any pregnancy loss is so personal and different for each woman and each experience.

I know there are reasons for loss, all loss. I believe there is a place for us all to meet again, to see those we have lost, known or unknown, again or for the first time.

In a few short days, I am headed back to the sticky summer heat and green of Virginia. I am looking forward to taking a break from work, seeing my beloved family and having my tired, dried-out soul renewed from the ocean's salty breeze.

Stoned Fruit

I used the term "stone fruit" the other day (as in, "Please pick up some stone fruit at the store") and The Doctor looked at me like I'd lost my mind. Though I didn't ask, I suspect an image of eating rocks flashed in his mind. Clearly "stone fruit" isn't a term that is as commonly used as I thought.

Stone Fruit: In botany, is a fruit in which an outer fleshy part (exocarp, or skin; and mesocarp, or flesh) surrounds a shell (the pit or stone) of hardened endocarp with a seed inside. These fruits develop from a single carpel, and mostly from flowers with superior ovaries. The definitive characteristic of a drupe is that the hard, lignified stone (or pit) is derived from the ovary wall of the flower.

Stoned fruit salad is a delicious summer treat. Cut up a variety of stone fruits into chunks (peaches, plums, nectarines). Add a handful of berries (your choice, but I'm partial to raspberries or blackberries, myself). Add 2 Tbsp of sugar (or to taste, depending on your sweet tooth). Squeeze the juice of one lime (or equivalent amount of refrigerated juice from concentrate if you swing that way). If you have a zester, zest away (but I don't, so I don't). Tear up a nice-sized handful of fresh mint and mix well. Let sit at room temp for 30 minutes to let the flavors absorb. Refrigerator or eat. Also amazing when paired with Dutch babies (as in the pancakes, not actual babies).

Cherish the Heirloom

Tomatoes are my favorite part of the summer. We always had tomato plants growing on our deck during the summers; they never yielded much bounty, but plucking tomatoes right off the vine and eating them on the deck, juice running down our chins was most certainly the best part of the summer (besides the smell of chlorine and no school).

I can eat a tomato like an apple. Heirloom tomatoes are my favorite. Often, they are so thick with flesh on the inside that I have to slice them and eat them like a steak, sprinkled with salt and drizzled with some balsamic vinegar and chunks of mozzarella.

I haven't been successful at tomato-growing, here in the dry and dusty southwest (but let's face it, I haven't been very successful at making anything grow--even weeds). Thank heavens for stores and farmer markets. There is a lovely place, just down the street, called the Fruit Barn which always sells delicious and fresh tomatoes a short walk away.

In honor of summer, here is my new favorite summer tomato recipe (so easy, I can actually make it after work):

Tomato and Goat Cheese Tart
Two sheets of puff pastry dough, thawed according to package directions. Slice one sheet into four equal squares. Cut the second sheet into strips about 1" thick. Lay the strips along the outside of each of the squares (goal is a tart with raised sides).

Bake at 400 for 20-25 minutes on a cookie sheet.

While the tarts are baking, different varieties of baby heirloom cherry tomatoes in half (yellow, orange, red, etc.). Set aside. Take 2 oz of goat cheese (or more) and mix with sizable pinches of rosemary, thyme and oregano. Add two or so Tbsp of milk and mix it with the cheese so it becomes thinner and more spreadable.

When the pastry is finished baking, spread the goat cheese mixture on each of the tarts equally, top with cherry tomatoes, a pinch of salt and pepper to taste and put back in the oven for another five minutes.

Top with torn fresh basil and serve warm (or room temperature).