thoughts on stress

Most things I worry about never happen anyway.

This is my mantra, courtesy of Tom Petty. Sometimes it works-- sometimes it reminds me when I start to worry that most likely my fears are unfounded, most likely whatever it is that has my brain perched on the edge of a cliff over an unknown will not come to pass, and everything will be fine.

In reality, nothing bad has happened to me in several years. I would call the last "bad thing" losing my grandfather in his battle with cancer. My husband lost both his grandmothers last year, but those were his personal tragedies, not mine, and though I shared in his grief it obviously isn't the same. I've lost and left a couple jobs in that time span. I also lost out on purchasing my dream store at the last minute, and while that took me a few months to move past, now that I look back I know that it was for the best. Most things seem so small in comparison to the truly stress worthy.

So I'm trying very hard not to sweat the small stuff. My father does, boy does he ever. Last time we went to the beach together, the air conditioner in our condo broke, and while yes it was July in Florida and steamy hot like the inside of a baked potato, you would have thought someone just kicked his dog. I'm used to his outbursts, but it took my husband by surprise. My brothers are the same way, once chasing each other around the outside of the house in circles trying to punch each other on Easter Sunday. Neither can tell you now what started the brawl. You're all picturing little boys with angry, tear-stained faces pantingly trying to get the last lick, but no, they were 23 and 17 at the time.

My mother is a natural born hand-wringer-- she's never been able to put a worried thought out of her mind until she gets a resolution to a problem, and since my father sees everything as a problem, she's always had something about which to worry. She tried hard to pass this on to me. I tripped her up at the last minute, though, by marrying the most relaxed and worry free man on earth. He might as well be Jimmy Buffett, only without the parrots and faded cargo shorts. He keeps my worrying side in check, reminding me when he sees my mother start to appear inside me that everything's going to work out just fine, even singing that particular Petty song to me when I really need it. He keeps me together when life starts to fray at the edges.

Work can be particularly stressful. I think what makes it so much worse now, as work stresses in the past were something I was able to leave behind at 5 pm,is that I think of this job more as a career than just a job. I plan on working here for a long time, so when something here causes me stress, I'm more likely to worry about it since it might be around long-term. I actually care about this place and these people and our success here.

But the stress and worries that work causes me is nothing in relation to the stress real problems cause, and I must remember this. I got a reminder this morning in the form of an email from my husband's aunt. While I was panicking over a requirement my boss just asked me to fulfill, wanting to move up a deadline to a irrational and illogical date, I happened to check my personal email and read her message in order to get my mind off work for a second. It worked. My husband's cousin spouse, who has been battling brain tumors as long as even his cousin has known him, is finally being sent home to die.

Sent home to die. I remember that phrase, I remember the way that feels, helpless and angry and spiteful. How do you accept that, how do you come to terms with "nothing left to be done?" After years of remission to have it resurface, stronger this time, now after having a son as well, a son who will grow up without his father, without the larger than life man with the bosterous laugh, to never know him. The doctors told his wife to take him home, that in two weeks he won't recognize anyone anymore so gather the family quickly, and shortly after he will be gone.

I feel stupid for needing something like this to put my insignificant worries to rest this morning. I wish I could be the kind of person who always has perspective, who instantly calms a brewing storm the way my husband can.

catch up

What the heck happened to this week? I missed Wednesday and Thursday both somehow. I can't believe it's Friday already, but I'm sure not going to argue over it.

Time to play catch up.

Today is going to be a rare fish recipe, although you could really use this marinade on tofu as well, mixed with some egg or glass noodles and Asian vegetables it would be amazing. Hmm, new idea there.

Mustard Maple Salmon, by Scarlethue

4 boneless salmon fillets, about 6 oz each
2-3 tablespoons Dijon mustard (to taste)
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup canola/vegetable oil
few splashes of soy sauce (about 1-2 teaspoons to taste)
splash of either white wine vinegar or lemon juice for acidity
pepper to taste

Mix all together, pour 2/3rds over salmon and let marinade in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. An hour is better. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Place the fish on a baking sheet, and bake for 15 minutes, checking for easy flaking and pink flesh after 10 minutes. After plating, pour reserved 1/3 marinade (the stuff that never touched the raw fish!) over cooked fish for extra flavor.

The sweet and peppery flavor here is really good on mild salmon. It might work on chicken too. I usually make either couscous, rice, or a baked potato and a mixed salad with it. I did this recipe once with about 1/4 cup of brown sugar added which made it closer to a dry rub than a marinade. It was good, but if I did it again I'd cut down just a tad on the maple syrup and up the Dijon to balance the sweetness, plus you should crisp the brown sugar crust under the broiler for a couple minutes as well. Keep a close eye on it if you do this.

1) This week is nearly over!!

2) My charitable company. Instead of buying our clients gift baskets that never get used or other silly corporate gifts, this year we "adopted" children off the Salvation Army angel tree. We will be buying presents for these kids in our clients' names and then sending the clients photos of everything we were able to buy in a Christmas card. As soon as our controller gives us the go-ahead, we're going shopping for eight girls between the ages of 9 and 12 all at once. We picked the older ones because they always get forgotten. It will be fun!

3) Cold weather. I was feeling rather bah, humbug, about Christmas, but the 44 degree high today is kick-starting my holiday spirit. I do, unfortunately, need to go shopping soon, very soon. I hate fighting the crowds. But at least I now have everyone's lists.

So there's two days' posts wrapped up into a very quick one. Tomorrow I'm probably going to a friend's child's birthday party, for which I also need to buy a present, but I have no plans for Sunday, thank goodness. I hopefully will be able to catch up on some blog reading then.

three silver linings

1) My older brother is coming to visit, unexpectedly.

I already knew my little brother was coming, with his girlfriend, for a pre-Christmas visit as it's so expensive to fly around Christmas itself. He'll be staying with my parents for a few days, taking his girlfriend down to New Orleans, introducing her to Southern food and his wild friends, then he'll head up my way and stay with me a couple nights before moving on to her family's home for the remainder of their vacation. I was looking forward to a couple days with him-- I haven't seen him since last Christmas, and I'd like to get to know this girl who seems to have stolen my loner little brother's heart.

Now, the older is thrown into the mix. Broken up with his finance who just took her stuff and moved out yesterday, he's more despondent and pathetic than usual. I have a hard enough time staying sane on a twenty minute phone conversation with him, much less actual person-to-person interaction. He won't be staying in my house though, thankfully, but because he has no job and because she took the majority of the furniture and accessories in his apartment, he has no reason to return any time soon. My mom thinks he'll go back when little brother goes back, but who knows. A condition of his returning home was that he sees a local doctor and gets an antidepressant prescription  for the depression he's tried to "handle" on his own his whole life (until now he had been adamant that he would not medicate himself) so hopefully that's the silver lining I'm trying so hard to see here.

2) I had to fire someone yesterday.

I hired him about six weeks ago to be our flash animator and work from home, and in that time he's promised a ton of work and delivered very little. At first we chalked it up to his creative, artistic personality, that he just needed to be coddled and stroked a bit and then his genius would prove itself. After a while we started to realize that not much of his work was being done, and what was done wasn't on time, so we assigned a manager to watch him and his work as closely as he could. It didn't help, and it drove the manager crazy trying to find him all the time. Both Monday and Tuesday this week we called and called, trying to get him on the phone, but finally last night I had to send an email. I suppose I had it easy that way, since there was no face to face meeting, but it was still terrible. He emailed me right back saying he understood. It's like he wanted us to fire him.

That was my first firing and hopefully will be my only one for a long, long time. I guess he made it easy on me, so there's my slightly tarnished silver lining.

3) A coworker nearly got scammed by a fake homeowner.

She's been looking for a home to rent for herself and her three little girls. She's going through a divorce, so she needs to move quickly and stay in the county school district. It hasn't been an easy search. There was the cute little cabin next to a field of run down trailers, a nice house but right on the highway with no yard and no place for the 4 year old to play, and now this.

It's a beautiful house in a friendly neighborhood-- they even have a community pool. The advertiser told my coworker that he was a pastor on a mission trip to West Africa, and he needed someone to watch his house and yard while he was gone. He wanted someone he could trust, so he sent her a homemade application with strange questions like "Do you promise to take care of the yard," and "Have you ever been in trouble with the police," all written with poor grammar and spelling. Her second clue was that he kept putting off her specific questions, especially when she asked about getting access to the house (she had already peeked through the dark windows) and about a lease to sign.

Finally, last night when he asked her to wire money through Western Union to Africa before she had even seen a lease or the inside of the house, she knew something was up. To trip him up, she asked him through email if the red electrical box on the front of the house controlled an invisible fence, knowing from experience that invisible fence boxes are always placed inside the house and are usually black, not to mention there was no red box on the front of the house. When he said, "yes," she had him. Today she called the police and the neighborhood homeowners association who told her that someone lives in that house, and they already knew about the scam. They thanked her for forwarding her emails from him and the original ad.

We live in a very small and trusting town. Everyone knows just about everyone, or at least they know each others' faces. Things like this just don't happen in places like this, or at least they didn't used to.

She's out right now looking at two more houses, one pretty far away but owned by a nice old lady, and the other in a picturesque neighborhood of large condos practically within walking distance of the office. Hopefully one of those options will work, and she'll find her little silver lining as well, shining bright in all the darkness she's had to combat in the past few weeks.

say cheese

Last night as I was laying in bed, waiting for sleep to fall as heavily over me as my thick blue quilt had, I was considering life without photography.

Big deal, right? Of what do I ever take pictures that matters, that really matters... not those half eaten pieces of pie at the end of a fancy meal, not interesting ceilings in accidentally visited houses or random birds visiting my porch, not even candid moments or impromptu get-togethers with friends whose faces I see every day. Those pictures, once taken, are never looked at again. Not really, anyway, unless a particularly special person or moment is captured. The problem is that you don't know when you're taking the photos which will turn out to be treasured and which will just go in a file on the desktop under the name "random photos."

I have a picture of my grandfather that I cherish. I don't have the negative, so you can bet if my house caught on fire, I'd have Bub under one arm and that picture frame in the other. (My husband can handle the cat.) I was five, it was my fifth birthday party, and he's reaching over me, bending down and grabbing my knees to tickle me. He used to tickle me all the time, chase me, and grab at my knees, calling it "how a mule eats corn." When I got older, it turned into a poke in the ribs. He was so tall, 6'4" at least, and you can tell in this picture. You can still see some youth in his face, his already balding head still brown-black and not yet gray, his arms and hands strong and muscular, like those of a man who did everything for himself.

My memory is spotty, as I've said before, so this photo of him means the world to me. There are others of him, of course, but this is the two of us together doing something that only the two of us did. The casual laugh on his face and the squeal of both delight and terror on mine embody everything we were to each other-- he adored me, and I revered him.

What would life have been like before photography? You'd never know what you looked like as a child. If you were like me and forget faces, you wouldn't remember your loved ones faces after they'd gone, and you wouldn't remember the faces of your children after they'd grown. When you met your future spouse, you wouldn't know what they were like as a child and hence what your children could possibly look like, like the white-blond toddler hair of my brunette husband. I didn't believe him until he showed me the photo. There would be no record of your face after you were gone, and probably very little record of your life. Yes, there were paintings, but only the rich had those, and they're usually a poor imitation of reality. All sense of the past would be fleeting and changeable, moldable like wet clay under time's hands. You'd have no record of past events, all you'd have is your memory, and for those of us who rely so heavily on pictures now (all of us), we'd find that very difficult.

In the early days of photography, when you got one, maybe two, pictures of yourself total in your lifetime-- can you imagine that pressure? Blink or smirk when that powder ignites and you're blinking or smirking for eternity. No one would ever remember you looked any different.

My grandmother had a little sister die of cholera, I believe, at a very young age. The only photo they have of her is after she's already passed, being held up by my grandmother and her little brother. My great-grandmother had a large version, a foot tall at least, of this photo hanging in her hall, but I didn't know until I was 15 or so that my great-aunt was dead in it. Terrible-- I can't imagine being my great-grandmother and walking past this every day knowing this was the only way I'd see my child for the rest of my life. These days, by age three there's so many photos of most children you'd think they're all celebrities. I get emails and facebook updates daily with new photos of my friends and their kids, even videos from France and snapshots from London and Vienna.

All this was going through my mind as I tried to find sleep last night, leading me into dreams I can no longer remember. Maybe one day they'll make some sort of an internal mind camera. Then I could record everything I see, in front of or behind my eyes. You never know-- it was just a hundred and fifty or so years ago that modern photography began.

birthdays and holidays...

My husband's mother usually wakes us up at 7:13 a.m. on his birthday, as he happened to pop out into the world at that moment 32 years ago this past Wednesday. But this year, for some reason, she let us sleep. She didn't call until nearly dinner time. He was hoping that maybe she had forgotten so that he could tease her (and hold it against her) for the rest of her life, but no such luck. They have an odd relationship. His parents divorced when he was three after she cheated on his dad, and he didn't know the truth until he was 18, after he lived about 4 of his middle to high school years with her in her new home in Illinois so she didn't have to move alone. He felt betrayed. He claims to be over it now, but I know from our first year of dating when he was 25 that he had trust issues with women even then. I think our strong relationship has pushed him past most of it, but there still is and always will be an undercurrent of tension between the two of them. They don't speak about it, they love each other, and they're pleasant with each other, but she will never be the type of mother that he calls for no reason or hugs for longer than 3 seconds.

Family dynamics vary so greatly from household to household. Everyone has a different story; even people who grew up in the same house with the same family can have different versions of what happened, didn't happen, and why. My brothers and I are a good example of this, as I've laid out before (mostly here last January, but also here in April and here in May about my older brother specifically). Raised by the same parents, only six years between the oldest and the youngest, it amazes me how disparate we are from each other and how our stories vary as well.

My husband's family, or families I should say, are completely different from each other and completely different from mine. Thanksgiving is spent with his immediate family-- dad, step-mom, sister and brother-in-law, and little brother-- but also his step-mom's family including her sister, her sister's adult children, their kids and various girlfriends and/or friends. I remarked to my husband how sad I thought it was that this would be my fifth Thanksgiving at that house and I only half-way knew some of their names. He replied that he didn't know them either. They sit at one end of the table, us at the other. We see his sister so rarely that we tend to talk just to her, their little brother, and their parents. And his step-mother's family is... well... we'll put it this way: this year we were greeted with one of his step-mom's nephews, his new (pregnant by him) girlfriend, and her two-year-old daughter (by someone else), all of whom are now living with his grandmother (my husband's step-mom's sister).

This never would have happened in my house. Not that this is uncommon for the South, or for America in general, to have barely legal kids getting each other pregnant. But in my house, holidays were formal. You didn't bring extraneous guests, like the two high-school boys who brought their girlfriends unannounced, both of whom sat tight-lipped, talking only to their beaus, picking at their turkey like if they ate it they would A) blow up like a 300-pound balloon or B) show some kind of interest in something other than rubbing up against the boy when the parents weren't looking. You definitely didn't show up in camo straight from the deer camp, and you definitely didn't announce to the table that your girlfriend was pregnant. And to get the reaction that he got-- "congratulations" to a 20-year-old who's not married and living with his mom?

We ate quickly, thanked his step-mom profusely, grabbed his sister, brother-in-law, and brother, and left for our house. His brother brought Rock Band over and we played for hours, drinking beer and blowing off steam.

It was nice to have two days off in a row like that with my husband. His birthday, Wednesday, was all his. I told him we'd do whatever he wanted, whether that was drive to Memphis and go shopping or to Beale Street all day, or sit on the couch and nap. He picked something in the middle-- we started with donuts for breakfast, then walked around our town square, window shopping and greeting friends who work nearby. We then ate at an awesome plate-lunch place on the square. Afterwards we came home so he could nap off his macaroni and cheese and zucchinin onion stew. For dinner we went to a fine dining place so he could get a steak, then we met his brother at our favorite bar and laughed and tasted odd beers all night. I had some fun playing with my camera taking pictures of the bar. He seemed very happy with the day, done his way, and with the couple shirts and argyle socks I got him as well.

Having all these days off has really messed up my schedule. I hardly know if it's Thursday or Sunday. Going back to work on Monday is going to be hard.

Grateful Thanksgiving Thursday

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you're all having a warm, comfortable, and content day with family, friends, and other loved ones around a table of yummy food.

I went ahead and wrote this earlier this week to automatically post today as I'm busy with cooking and my family. I'll regale you with stories of my husband's birthday celebration and my crazy in-laws tomorrow.

As I said yesterday, since I do a "grateful" post every Thursday, Thanksgiving seems like it comes every week for me (except for all the carbo-loading I'm about to do). I believe that counting my blessings has made a huge difference in my attitude about life-- now when "bad" things happen, I laugh, I see that silver lining first, popping out at me like it's glinting in the sun, and I'm able to flip the bad around on itself much easier now because I know that in spite of any negatives, I live a very blessed and happy life.

So here's my list for this first Grateful Thanksgiving Thursday:

1) Living in a country where we take a day to count our blessings. Although there are many of us here who don't fully appreciate the spirit of this day, I think the majority do take at least a minute to look around the table and think about how much each person means to them, about the food in front of them and the hard work it took both to provide and cook that food, about the roof over their heads and the clothes on their back, and feel grateful for it all. There are a lot of countries that are not so fortunate as ours, and there are a lot of people in the world who will never know the bounty that we all experience not just on Thanksgiving but on every day of our lives.

2) My parents. I'm not spending today with my family-- my parents have gone north to visit my dad's mom and sister since my grandmother can no longer drive, so I'm missing them today. As usual, though, I feel so grateful and blessed to have such wonderful parents. They continue to take wonderful care of me, and I'm happy to count them as true friends as well.

3) Stability. Despite the economy, despite what life tries to throw at me, my husband and I have a rock solid foundation, and we remain financially secure as well. I do not take this for granted, not now or ever.

4) Fall leaves. There's all kinds of orange, maroon, red, yellow, and even purple outside my window. Although Spring is my favorite season, Fall comes in as a close second. The crisp chill in the air feels rejuvenating.

5) A few days off. I took Wednesday off for my husband's birthday, plus Thursday and Friday are paid holidays, leading nicely into a weekend, giving me five days off in a row. The industry in which I work pretty much goes to sleep between Thanksgiving and the beginning of January as well, so I've got a good month here to catch up on internal work.

6) A good night with my husband's sister, her husband, and my husband's little brother. Although his little brother lives here and we spend a lot of time with him (he's just now 21, I've known him since he was 15) I hardly ever get to spend time with his sister. They're spending the night with us since they now live too far away to make this a day trip, and we'll be playing our Wii, digging out some board games, and drinking a couple bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau. I'm looking forward to getting to know her without parents around.

Our world can be such a bitter, sarcastic place. I'm happy to have an outlet for my positivity here on my blog. Even though I try to be joyful in everything I do, it's hard not to get bogged down in the mundane details of life. But instead of stumbling and crawling unhappily through the mud, I'm going to chose every day to run, jumping from puddle to puddle, laughing and splashing. Life may be messy, but I'm going to enjoy every bit of the mess.

Veggie Kitchen Wednesday

Ah, Thanksgiving. Considering I spend a lot of my time, especially here on my blog, counting my many blessings, Thanksgiving seems like every Thursday to me and like a natural reason for a holiday. I'm looking forward to all that good food tomorrow and am planning on eating myself silly, courtesy of my step-mother-in-law, one of the best Southern comfort food chefs around.

In honor of that and of my husband's birthday today, I present to you one of his favorite foods, a Thanksgiving tradition here in the deep South, and a dish I could eat every day if it weren't so darned bad for you.

Scarlethue's Momma's Sweet Potato Casserole
serves 4-10 (4 if you're like me and could eat this for a meal by itself. But it's usually more like 8-10 servings)

5 or so large sweet potatoes
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsps ground cinnamon
1/4 cup butter, melted
2 eggs, beaten
1 10 oz. bag mini marshmallows (vegetarian ones, as in no gelatin, usually in the organic section)
2 tablespoons orange juice (optional. some people like it and some don't. gives it a citrus kick)
1/4 to 1/2 cup milk (optional. this makes it creamier, like creamed potatoes instead of just mashed. I would do either the orange juice or milk, but not both)

Peel and cut up the sweet potatoes. Boil them until tender, then drain. Mash the potatoes until there are no lumps, then add the melted butter, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, and orange juice or milk if you want those. Spread the potato mixture evenly in a casserole dish, and dump the marshmallows fairly evenly over the top (the more, the merrier). Bake at 350 degrees until the marshmallows are bubbly and just beginning to brown.

Some people do a maple pecan topping on their casserole, but I love the creamy sweetness of the potatoes with the gooey sweetness of the marshmallows. No crunch needed here.

This along with dressing, made with vegetable broth, brocolli rice casserole, creamed corn, cranberry sauce (from a can, got to have the ridges, and yes you can find this without gelatin too), and some buttery rolls make for one mean vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner. I never miss the (usually dry, coma-inducing) turkey.

Plus the chocolate pie and pumpkin pie and pecan pie (pronounced pe-CAHN, not PE-can, thank you and welcome to the South), and my husband's birthday red velvet cake for dessert?

I am ready to eat!

two cents' worth

I love to read the "Dear Prudence" columns on Slate (you can see the most recent ones here and here), written by Emily Yoffe. Occasionally the questions are sad, heart-wrenching, the kind of family or personal drama that no one wants to find themselves in, dealing with death or violence or other terrible situations. Occasionally the questions are thought-provoking, the sort of spots we all find ourselves in now or then, with elaborate or delicate etiquette implications.

And occasionally they're just funny. A minister who doesn't like his parishioners' dogs, a boyfriend who doesn't brush his teeth, a fiancee who doesn't want to sit in her future-in-laws' family Christmas card portrait because she wants her own tradition, a woman with so much plastic surgery she thinks she's too perfect... who couldn't see the humor here? What's better is Prudence's biting humor, often poking fun at or even completely deriding the letter writer. She, for instance, informed the fiancee that after refusing to strike a pose, her new family "will be filled with seasonal joy that you'll be around for the holidays for the rest of their lives." And she told the would-be Barbie that after being "cut and sucked and stuffed head to toe" she can't possibly look natural anymore and should stop worrying and find a therapist.

But among her hilarious puns and one-liners, she gives fantastic advice. Really logical, thought-out, and correct instructions for people in all kinds of situations, from an abusive spouse to a dog that won't quit peeing on the wall. This is really why I read her column; the humor is just an added bonus.

I wish I could give advice like that. I've got the sarcasm and amused snorts down for those with the weird or silly problems, but I'd love to have the ability to produce concise and accurate advice for those with more serious problems. I think I just like to help, to be of some use.

I can't think of a time when someone really wowed me with advice given to me. Or is it that I'm so stuck in my ways I wouldn't recognize it even if it reached out and slapped me in the face and said, "hey, I'm good advice, take me!" I did have a friend tell me once that I was dating the wrong guy, and she was right, but it was probably pretty obvious to anyone who knew both of us. And fellow bloggers often point out things I hadn't yet considered, but the blog world is different as I'm much more open here. I think I'm probably just one of those people that hides my insecurities and puts on such a steely facade that no one thinks I need advice. Or at least I hope so?

Anyway, what's the last great advice you've given, received, or heard?

Grateful Thursday

1) Busy days at work. They make the day go by so much faster, and I feel like I'm getting good work done lately. I had no time today to post and now that I'm home, with a full belly, in front of the tv in my pajamas with my husband on one side and my dog on the other, I'm too zoned out to make too much sense out of this post.
2) A full belly, being finally in front of the tv in my pajamas with my husband on one side and my dog on the other.
3) Bub had his vet appointment today to see why he's been yelping lately. The verdict? Gas. Yep, gas. We thought  maybe it was his knee again (his patella was shifting and he's had surgery once already) or arthritis setting in, but the vet played with both his back legs and his hips and they're fine. He jumped when he massaged his stomach, though, so they did an x-ray that showed nothing other than he's gassy. So they told me no more human food and to give him a spoonful of plain yogurt every day for a couple weeks. Apparently older doggies can't eat what young doggies can, just like humans.
4) A good weekend ahead. We've got a party tomorrow night (I'm taking brownies, that would be 4.5), a game to go to on Saturday with lots of old friends in town, and a baby shower on Sunday for a good friend with a quiet afternoon afterwards.
5) Vacation! I'm only working Monday and Tuesday next week, and since the boss is on vacation as well, it should be pretty quiet and I'll be able to catch up on things plus get a head start on planning our Christmas party. Then Wednesday is my husband's birthday and Thursday I'm going to eat myself silly.

Veggie Kitchen Wednesday

I've been thinking a while about doing this, creating another "day," this one dedicated to recipes and vegetarian cooking (although there will probably be some fish thrown in every now and then). This is as much for me as for anyone else as I tend to forget recipes-- it doesn't help that I never write them down.

As a cook, I dedicate any creativity or spunk I have in the kitchen to both my great-grandmother and my father. My great-grandmother, who lived to be nearly 98, was an inspired cook. On special days she would whip up a roast, biscuits from scratch, creamed corn (that she grew), lima beans (ditto), stewed tomatoes, and at least two or three cakes and pies including fresh strawberry cake, caramel cake, lemon pie, and chocolate pie, all from scratch. Keep in mind she was doing this in my lifetime, and she was already 82 when I was born. She never measured a thing, not even when baking, pouring and seasoning just by memory and instinct.

My father's cooking style is very creative. He picked up that no-measuring thing from his grandmother, having watched her cook for the 50 years he had her in his life. But nothing scares him-- his philosophy is that if it ends up not tasting good, there's a pizza place down the street. And he never apologizes for his mistakes in the kitchen, something he says he learned from Julia Child. Unfortunately he can't seem to ever make the same thing twice, but that just forces you to remember to savor each bite of something wonderful as if it was your last.

Since it's finally cold here, at a chilly 52 outside today, I decided I'd start this off with my potato chowder recipe. I, like my father and his grandmother before him, don't measure. I guesstimate. I've never made a recipe exactly as it's stated-- I take it and twist it up, substitute, strip it down to its bare bones and redress. Recipes are just inspiration for me; at the most they are vague guidelines. This original recipe started out with boxed potato flakes and no other vegetables, but I've turned it into a combination of potato soup and corn chowder. I encourage you to take this as inspiration and make it your own!


Scarlethue's Potato Chowder
serves 4 as a meal, 6-8 as a side/appetizer (I always make too much so I have leftovers)

5-6 good size yukon gold potatoes (if you get big ones, go for 5, otherwise 6 is better. can't really have too much), chopped small
1/2 cup frozen yellow corn kernels
1/3 cup shredded carrot
1/2 white or yellow onion, chopped finely
1/3 cup finely chopped celery (sometimes I add this, sometimes I don't)
10.5 ounces of vegetable broth (use the best stuff you can find, organic is better to skip the MSG)
1.5 cups water
1/4 to 1/3 cup half and half (based on preference. You could use cream)

Put the potatoes, corn, carrots, celery, and onion in a large saucepan, and pour over the broth and water so that the veggies are just covered (add more broth/water mix if you went overboard on potatoes). Cover the pot and simmer on medium for about 35-45 minutes until the potatoes are soft. Get out your potato masher and start smooshing up the potatoes right in the same pot. This is what makes it more like chowder and less like chunky soup, but hey if you like chunks, leave this step out. Once you've got it significantly mashed, pour in the half and half, stir and heat through another 5 minutes. Serve with crusty bread or biscuits. It's very filling!

While writing this I just thought about adding leeks instead of celery.... Let your veggie imagination run wild!