What will your legacy be?

Before I get started with this week's post dear bleaders, I have a favor to ask of you. This is the 26th consecutive post, and it marks the halfway point in my 52 week blogging challenge. It has been a wonderful experiment/experience, and, though challenging, it has been well worth the effort! At this point, I'd like to ask each of you to forward this blog on to two or three people whom you think might enjoy reading it. I'd like to see if I can grow my readership a little. Obviously, this is totally up to your discretion, but if you know people who might be interested, I'd greatly appreciate the help!

Now on to legacies. Do you ever think about what you will leave behind when you end your time on earth? Do you think about your children,,,and your children's children...and your children's children's children? Do you think about a business you've built? Or a book you've written? Or a quilt you've sewn? Do you think about the countless number of lives you've touched through teaching, or preaching or nurturing or mentoring or advising? Do you think about food?
Yes, I know it is the week after Thanksgiving, and you may not want to think about food again for a very long while  but bear with me! My father's mother Reba was a native of Israel who immigrated to the US with her husband and raised her family here. Many of my memories of her involve food; ironically, most of the food she cooked was not very good. However, she took great care in making sure that each holiday, food was sent to us in Chicago (and later in Houston) from her home in Philadelphia. If she was coming to visit for the holiday, she would bring tins of food in her suitcase. Her cookies were always hard and dry. For Purim, she made hamentaschen (triangular shaped cookies) that crumbled as you tried to eat them. Still, I felt like I was eating love each time I bit into one of her treats. I can remember how each little cookie was hidden in crinkly Saran Wrap and aluminum foil, each morsel packaged like a gift.


One of her recipes was actually really good; that was her eggplant dip. I'm sure I've tweaked it a little (as I am wont to do) but it remains primarily hers, and when I make it, I remember Reba. It was the only request my sister Amy asked for as a birthday gift this year!

Ingredients:

6 whole eggplants

6 cloves garlic

1/2 bunch of parsley

salt/pepper

1 tablespoon sugar

5-6 lemons

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon sugar

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 425

Cut off tops of eggplants and poke  a few holes in the sides to vent

roast for 45-60 minutes or until they look shriveled and wrinkly

Let eggplants cool

Scoop out flesh (avoid getting the skin) and add to food processor

Add lemon juice and garlic cloves and parsley and sugar---Pulse

Then drizzle in the olive oil and mix.

Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve chilled with whole wheat crackers or pita crisps.

As you interact with family  and friends this week, as you make people at work laugh or you call someone a special nickname, or you cook dinner for a friend who is under the weather, or you write a poem, or send a card-- think about all the little ways that you are making a big impression on those around you...one lovely stale cookie at a time :)

Rachel

WHAT ARE YOU GRATEFUL FOR?

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, so what better use of this weekend's blog post than a discussion of gratitude.  For the purposes of this post, gratitude shall heretofore be referred to as the GRATITUDE DUDE or GD (not to be confused with the Jewish abbreviation for our deity--although, come to think of it, maybe they should be interchangeable...more on that later.)

Anyway, my friends, the Delagis, have a family tradition where they pass around a booklet at the Thanksgiving table and everyone has a chance to write down what they are grateful for. They keep those little handmade books and can look back on them years later to see where they each were on the gratitude index at that particular Thanksgiving day. Interesting idea! Theoretically, we might be grateful for something now that we barely even paid attention to on a previous year. For example, if you have been relatively healthy, you might take good health for granted and only feel grateful for it after having recovered from an illness. My point is that one common human blind spot is that we often do not feel grateful for something until we feel the pain of its absence.

Several of the recent self-help movements espouse the benefits of keeping a Gratitude Journal. Dear GD, one would write, today I am grateful for x,y, z and a bit of b. Have I tried it? Sort of. I devised my own variation in which I would find one thing to be grateful for for each of my fingers. Simple, right? Lying in bed at night, I will count off something that I am grateful for as I touch each of my fingers, and most nights, I am happy to report, I run out of fingers before I run out of points for GD. Of course, there are those blueish days, followed by darkish nights, when I struggle to reach ten. Do we all have those moments when the glass is half empty rather than half full? Let's assume that the liquid in the glass always remains exactly the same. Even knowing that, won't there be days when it looks as if it is completely empty? And other days when it looks like it is overflowing? Is the GD just a figment of our imagination? In other words, if gratitude is man-ufactured (or woman-ufactured), then don't we have the ability to feel grateful no matter what is in our glass?

So today, what are you grateful for? Here's my list (in no particular order):
*JOSH
*BEN
*EMILY
*MY AMAZING PARENTS
*MY SALLY,  MY JULIE,  MY BETH and all my other amazing friends.
*MY LOVING FAMILY (including a sister who could write the "How to be a Great Sister" handbook).
*MAX--my loyal Rescue Dog--whom Emily rescued and who now returns the favor by rescuing me from any momentary bouts of loneliness I might have.

*MY WORK & MY STUDENTS
*MY CREATIVE BRAIN
*MY LOVING HEART
*LAUGHTER
*CAPE COD--where I feel most at home.
*FOOD--cooking it, sharing it, eating it, thinking about it.
*MY PILATES REFORMER CLASSES--an exercise class that I actually look forward to :)
*BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS.
*FABRIC and YARN and all the ways I can create beautiful things out of them.
*TURKEY DAY--Love the food! Love the holiday! Love the reminder to thank GD!


So if one wants to move this conversation to a more spiritual plane--perhaps, GD and G-D are really the same. When we are grateful, we are acknowledging our appreciation to a higher power or the universe. We are really saying "Thank You. I see what you have done. I feel what you have given me. I am appreciative of this breath I am taking. I am aware that walking and talking and even pooping (yes, I've been told there is even a prayer for that) are gifts that I cannot take for granted."
Dear GD:
Let me live each moment in a state of gratitude with the understanding that G-D, like all of us, appreciates knowing that SHE is appreciated :)

By the way, I recently stumbled upon a tiny little book of sayings attributed to the Hassidic  scholar Rebbe Nachman of  Breslov(1772-1810). Rebbe Breslov wrote: "when asked how things are, don't whine and grumble about your hardships. If you answer, 'Lousy,' then G-d says, 'You call this bad? I'll show you what bad really is!' When asked how things are and, despite hardship or suffering, you answer 'Good,' then G-d says, 'You call this good? I'll show you what good really is!'"

So enjoy your turkey and your stuffing and don't forget to let GD know what you are thinking.
And know that I am VERY grateful for you--all of you bleaders (blog-readers). Your comments and feedback keep me motivated to continue this year-long experiment!!
Rachel

How do you procrastinate?

Long ago, I mastered the art of procrastination. I am not proud of this fact, but it is as much a part of me as my brown eyes or love of freshly baked bread. In part, it has to do with my goal juggling-- (maybe I'm actually a little ADD-ish); I always have several creative projects going at once. When I tire of one, I simply move on to the next. The obvious problem with this is that I constantly have a plethora of WIPs (works in progress). There is also a hierarchy to my procrastinating: the things at the top of the list are the things that I must do or someone else will notice. At the very bottom of the list (the things that get bumped often)are the things that only I care about: getting exercise/ writing my memoir/ cleaning the clutter in my closet. Tippy top of the list?

 *Work related chores like grading papers! I am very good about returning things quickly--but that means that grading often bumps lots of other things off the "Must Do Now" list.
*Cooking--because I love it AND eating is a necessity of life AND I can share food with the people I love. *Laundry--a person has to have clean clothes!!!
*Making my bed every morning--just makes me feel like my life is organized--even when it isn't!
*Paying bills--online banking has made it much less onerous and late fees need to be avoided!
*Things my kids need me to do--It must be a MOM thing!
*Things my parents ask me to do--It must be a DAUGHTER thing!


What do you do to procrastinate? Sadly, I have a long (and sometimes embarrassing) list:
*Games on my ipad: Solitaire, Hearts, Scrabble, Words w/Friends, W.e.l.d.e.r., Word Search etc.
*Almost any show on the Food Network; I may need to join Food Network Anonymous soon!
*Answering email--that is a total TIME SUCK!
*Baking something decadent.
*Browsing catalogs--or online stores.
*Making lists--Is this productive or a thinly veiled procrastination technique? The jury's still out.
*Watching sappy, romantic movies on Lifetime or the Hallmark channel--or.--this time of year--the endless parade of silly, sweet Christmas movies. (Yes, Jewish girls still love the hokey holiday hoopla).
*Looking through my vast collection of cookbooks and dreaming about taking a cooking class in Italy.
*Calling my kids, friends, parents just to check in.

Mary Todd Lincoln wrote: "My evil genius Procrastination has whispered me to tarry 'til a more convenient season." My evil genius has been known to scream rather than whisper, and he knows exactly how to get me off track. For example, if I plan on exercising after school but then feel too tired, he says, "You've worked hard today. You'll exercise tomorrow!" If I am trying to stick to a writing schedule, he says, "What's the point? Is anything really going to happen with this? Is this the best use of your time and energy? Don't you have laundry to do?"

Maybe I will name my "evil genius." Maybe I'll call him Pete. Maybe the next time he tries to woo me away from the thing that I know I need to do, I'll just say "Shut up, Pete. Leave me alone! The Food Network will only make me hungry. The ipad games will still be there when I finish. My friends, kids, parents will all understand if I don't call them right now. And I certainly don't need to bake and eat any more cupcakes!"

So, good luck to all of you procrastinators! I wish you the wonderful feeling of accomplishment that comes from slashing things off your "To Do" list and finishing more in a day than you thought humanly possible. However, don't forget to budget down time, too. Our minds need to be still and quiet in order for us to achieve the balance that life requires of us. I know that the world will probably not come to a screeching halt if some things are put off "'til a more convenient season."

How can you turn cooking chili into a creative art?

Hello again, folks! It has been a crazy week, and I am ditching the esoteric-ish post I'd planned and replacing it with my non-recipe recipe for chili. As a southerner by accident rather than birth, I did not receive a Texas chili recipe as part of my birthright. In fact, I don't remember ever eating chili as a child. Now, it is one of my go-to recipes, esp. when the weather begins to turn cool.
My approach to chili is sort of like my approach to cooking in general: Do what tastes good to you!

I usually start out by sauteing a variety of ingredients which always include chopped garlic and onions and may also include red or green (or any other color you like) peppers. Then I figure out which protein I feel like including. Tonight, I've sautéed some boneless chicken breast tenderloins that I had in the freezer. Often, I use turkey sausage, ground turkey or ground beef.
Next, I raid the pantry for canned goods to include. Tonight, I've used 2 cans of black beans (rinsed and drained), a can of dark red kidney beans and a can of pinto beans. Navy beans work well also, but I didn't have any on hand.
I also grabbed a can of chipotle chilies in adobo sauce (Is that a new one for you non-Texans?)--
and a can of chopped green chiles as well as a can of fire-roasted tomatoes. I also used a large container of chicken broth. Feel free to substitute vegetable or beef broth; either will be fine.
Next, I headed for the spice rack. This is where things really start to get creative!! I use a mixture of the following spices:
*Chili Powder
*Curry:
*Cumin
*Salt
 But there are tons of ready-made chili spice packets available at your local grocery stores.

A crock-pot is your best friend if you are cooking chili. After sautéing the onion/garlic mixture and the meat/poultry, I dump everything in the crock-pot and forget about it until dinner time. Well, you can't actually forget about it because the rich, spicy smell of chili starts to waft through the entire house. YUMM-O!!!

I need to figure out the art of making chili LOOK good in photos!

A few warnings: Use the chipotle chilies in adobo sauce sparingly or not at all. I only used a few, and they added substantial HEAT!!
Another optional and surprising chili ingredient is beer. I often add about 1/3 of a bottle and it does add a special something. An old boss of mine told me that he did that, and it is the most useful piece of  knowledge he ever gave me.
Finally, a discussion of chili could not be complete without talking about toppings. In our house, we like to top our chili with a dollop of sour cream, a little shredded cheddar cheese and (if we are feeling especially decadent) a few slices of avocado.
By the way, the perfect accompaniment to a steaming hot and spicy bowl of chili is a freshly baked cornbread muffin. I used the Honey-Cornbread recipe from the Neely's which can be easily printed out from the Food Network website.

In closing, even though I have absolutely no authority to say this, I think that if you do make homemade chili, you should be able to call yourself an "Honorary Texan"....at least until all the chili has been eaten.
Have fun experimenting and eating.
Rachel