Christmas Dinner
My Christmas dinner for my family (three days cooking):
Appetizers:
- Creamy crab salad spread
- Wild mushroom and goat cheese spread
- Crackers
- Sliced pears
Drinks:
- Sparkling fruit drinks
- Merlot and Pinos Grigio
- Tea and coffee
Dinner:
- Pork tenderloin with cranberry Dijon sauce
- Green beans and sweet onions in a light vinaigrette
- Yukon gold mashed potato gratin
Dessert:
(having many different cookies with ice cream is a family Christmas tradition)
- Prize cookies (shortbread crust, date filling, citrus icing)
- Macadamia butter cranberry cookies
- Mexican chocolate cookies (bittersweet chocolate with cinnamon and chipotle)
- Lime-mint shortbread
- Ice cream
Yum! Good thing it can almost all be done in advance :)
Christmas Eve Headlines
Here’s an interesting juxtaposition of front page Christmas Eve headlines from the Tacoma News Tribune:
- Faith and tradition burn bright
- Huge wave of credit card debt
- 10 Steps to eggnog nirvana
Not sure they meant that second one to get in there and spoil the Christmas pudding, but I think it’s an interesting commentary…
Solstice Musings 2007 – The coming year
I’m looking out at one of those winter skies – part crisp and blue, part greyish-white, showing through bare black winter trees. This is a time of year when I try to consciously reflect on the year that has been and the year that is coming. Last year I met some of my goals – financial improvements, starting a mediation business and getting real work from it, and feeling more emotionally stable. Those are all good things. Health and recreation really suffered, due to too much work.
So this year, here are my goals. By the end of 2008, I hope to:
- Have a healthier lifestyle. Walk, walk, both near and far. Learn to Kayak. I did join the Mountaineers, which should help with these goals. Eat right, which I am well on my way toward doing already.
- Have a better balance between work and social life. Take some weekends and evenings (and vacations) off without that nagging constant sense that I need to fit in some work. Spend more time with a certain someone and continue to build that relationship, and stay in touch better with my friends than I was able to do last year.
- Finish some major projects in my technical consulting that I have been working on for 5-10 years. Both of these are due for completion in the June-September timeframe, and if successful, will make a major contribution to giving agencies tools to improve the environment in the Pacific Northwest. Completing these projects will also contribute greatly to my peace of mind and ability to free my time for other things.
- Travel, go birdwatching, enjoy my condo in Puerto Vallarta. I’m very excited about my trip to Guatemala in January – I’ll be all on my own, which for one thing means I can birdwatch to my heart’s content ;)
- Continue building my mediation business and do a couple of really good environmental mediation projects.
- Continue improving my financial situation (but at a slower pace than last year).
- Be open to opportunities to greatly reduce my living cost and footprint, possibly by moving into a smaller, more affordable place.
Solstice Musings 2007 Retrospective
Tonight the northern world lies dormant and the year turns. I won’t be sorry to see the old year go and the new one arrive. This has to rank among the strangest years in my recent life, but in many ways the new one has great promise. There were a few bright spots and a lot of stress, and what feels like one long time of transition.
The Good
The man of my heart moved near me from another state, and even though I was horrendously busy working, it was lovely to have a real relationship. That chance has been a long time coming, and probably the best thing about the past year.
Even though the timing was terrible, the universe has finally granted me work in a field I have been trying to break into for years – mediation and facilitation. I started a new business – Mediation Solutions – and have been getting real work from it. All those years of preparation are finally paying off :)
I’m ending the year with far more money than I started with, even though there have been some crazy ups and downs in the financial department. I should have a lot more choices and flexibility next year.
I bought a condo in Puerto Vallarta, and already have it paid off. I hope for many years of enjoyment and relaxation there.
The Bad
My poor grandparents are really reaching a time when their health has caused serious problems. They are both nearing 90 and this year, we had to move them out of their home of 65 years. A series of added health complications are resulting in a new move to assisted living just after Christmas. We’ve done our very best to find them the best home we can, but it’s still a hard blow for them.
I’m still struggling with what to do with my life. I so want this transitional period to be over and just have a sense for what I’m doing and where I’m going to live. But I have this feeling it’s going to be a couple of years yet. In the meantime you can see my agonizing in excruciating detail on these pages ;)
I don’t have time to exercise and my diet has suffered with all this work and travelling. Room for improvement next year!
The Ugly
Work, work, and more work – and lack of it. Six months without work and almost going broke, thanks to Congress not authorizing the budgets of my funding agencies. Then six months to do a year’s worth of work and starting a business in the middle of it – crazy one might say, but when the opportunity comes you have to take it. I’m still backlogged and tired of working. And tired of having an expensive mortgage that requires me to work this much, on stressful projects.
Giving myself permission
I’ve been dreaming a lot of dreams lately – about where I might live someday, what kind of work I might do, how to re-balance my life. None of it is really all that easy to do with my current lifestyle, most of which is fueled by the mortgage and related bills. It’s a beautiful house I live in, and I’ve been going on the theory that when you work at home, your house and surroundings are really important. On the other hand – then you’re working at home and can’t afford to do much else.
Part of the problem has been too many alternatives – it’s easy to think of all the possibilities, harder to choose among them and actually do something. I do a lot of looking around online and daydreaming, reading magazines of other people living out their dreams, checking out real estate in other countries and locally. One thought has been to downsize – whether near or far – live in a place that costs a lot less money or which I might even be able to buy outright, now or within a few years.
That would provide a lot of flexibility to make any of these alternatives happen. I’d have a place to be and put my things, but one that I could also leave and rent while I’m gone. A place that is nice and cozy, but not so big that it holds me to a particular job or income level. One where I couldn’t possibly have so much stuff that it would hold me back or tie me down (not like I have a lot of stuff now, even).
So I’ve been out on theMLSonline.com looking at houses, cottages, cabins near here. I even saved a few to my favorites list – but that’s all. What holds me back, I finally realized, is equal parts guilt and pride. I’ve put a lot into this house since I moved here – had a beautiful tri-level deck built with a hot tub, landscaping including a rocky stream and pond, painted every room in the house with my own custom colors… There’s a lot more I would do if I were sure I’d stay here, but now am always in the mode of “maybe I better not.” I’m not committed to it, nor committed to moving – just in limbo.
The guilt comes from spending all that money, and an entire summer of my step-father’s time, on all the improvements. The pride comes from how great it looks and truly enjoyable it is to be here, which is reinforced when people come over and comment on it. On the other hand, it’s expensive to maintain, especially for a single person – and I don’t use all the space. The place has one extra family room, one extra bedroom, and one more bathroom than I need. I wasn’t sure how much space I’d need with my home office when I moved in – but now I know almost exactly how much I need -around 1100 square feet would be ideal. 700 less than my current place. Being further from my neighbors (and their barking dog) would be nice too.
So the other day, I gave myself permission. Permission to at least explore the possibilities. I asked for a showing of a little cabin above that had been on my favorites list a long time, and had not sold yet. Synchronistically, (or maybe not, if she was paying attention) I got the realtor who sold me my house :) We went out and looked at it. It was cute, but just a little too small (800 sq ft) and the lot was not very private and WAY further out in the sticks than the map showed. Still, I looked. It feels good to take the first step toward actually doing something!
Random carbon-reducing thought
Someday I’m going to collect all of these somewhere… This one goes back to our food again, a continuing theme this year. We’ve talked about all kinds of ways to reduce the carbon footprint from food consumption, including eating low on the food chain, eating local foods, using cloth grocery bags, and limiting bottled water consumption. Here’s an even simpler one:
Don’t waste food.
That’s all – simple to say, simple in concept, harder to do. Every bit of food and drink that we buy costs energy to grow, process, package, ship, and sell. Even if we eat a steak, at least we’ve eaten it – and gotten some value for that energy that’s been used. When we don’t even eat it or drink it, all that energy is wasted and garbage is created for nothing at all. Only in this western world of over-consumption could such a thing really even be possible, not to mention done every day without a second thought.
When you’re not starving or lacking for money to buy food, and there is a massive abundance of food all around you, there is a tendency to forget how important this is or to take the extra time to make sure that whatever you buy will be used. Example – at a recent staff meeting that would go through lunch, most of us brought our own lunches. One group showed up with donuts and pastries to share – a nice gesture, right? But we all eat pretty healthy and a lot of them didn’t get eaten, and no-one wanted to take them home because we all knew we’d eat them if we did. They were thrown out, since the meeting room had to be clean when we left. It probably would have been better not to bring them and to let staff buy their own in the cafeteria if they wanted them.
Our busy schedules contribute also. I don’t know how often I’ve bought groceries that I didn’t get around to using, and had to throw out because they went bad. This is especially true since I started buying more vegetables. It’s harder for single people to use up all that comes in a package (a loaf of bread for example). My horribly busy work schedule has resulted in a lot of food getting thrown out, which is really sad and wasteful. So now I am really focusing on learning how to freeze things (yes, if you’ve never done it you have to learn what works and what doesn’t). In this situation it is really important to be careful what and how much you buy in the first place. Which takes recipe planning and careful shopping, which takes time. Knowing that it’s contributing to global warming to throw stuff out may actually give me an incentive to work on this more.
Make it a challenge to look around your kitchen and see what odds and ends of things can be used up. You know all those sauce bottles in your refrigerator door? How many of those stay there forever and then get thrown out because when you want to use it, you’re not certain it’s still good? A little bit of planning might help there too. Each of those little bottles takes a lot of energy to create.
So as your parents always said – “clean your plate” and don’t put too much on it to start with :) Learn to make casseroles with odd bits and ends, freeze leftovers and portions of raw foods before they spoil, buy in smaller quantities that you will actually use, plan your meals, and if you really have to throw something out – compost it!
Small victories of the environmental kind
If you’d like to read some good news for a change :) check out the Environmental Defense Fund’s list of Twelve Environmental Victories in 2007. We all need a little reminder of the things we’re working for, and hope that we can make a difference now and then.
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