Show & Tell: Purple Gorilla

This week's Show and Tell will be a little different. I came upon this poem from Beautiful Mess. She posted about it awhile ago, but I never really appreciated her blog until I read her post about her blogoversary. She wrote about how she never expected her blog to be about grief and her mom dying, but that's what ended up happening. I wanted to skip over my blogoversary, which was last Sunday, because I didn't want to dwell on how much pain and grief I had written about over the last year. When I read Beautiful Mess' post, I was glad that someone else was writing about grief too. I didn't feel so alone. I, too, never thought I would write so much about trauma and grief this last year. Heck, I didn't even really know what trauma was, and I never really had to face grief the way I've faced it in the last year and last couple of months.

Beautiful Mess e-mailed me this poem, so I'd like to share it with you too. I cried when I read this.


Grief
by Matthew Dickman May 5, 2008

When grief comes to you as a purple gorilla

you must count yourself lucky.

You must offer her what’s left

of your dinner, the book you were trying to finish

you must put aside,

and make her a place to sit at the foot of your bed,

her eyes moving from the clock

to the television and back again.

I am not afraid. She has been here before

and now I can recognize her gait

as she approaches the house.

Some nights, when I know she’s coming,

I unlock the door, lie down on my back,

and count her steps

from the street to the porch.

Tonight she brings a pencil and a ream of paper,

tells me to write down

everyone I have ever known,

and we separate them between the living and the dead

so she can pick each name at random.

I play her favorite Willie Nelson album

because she misses Texas

but I don’t ask why.

She hums a little,

the way my brother does when he gardens.

We sit for an hour

while she tells me how unreasonable I’ve been,

crying in the checkout line,

refusing to eat, refusing to shower,

all the smoking and all the drinking.

Eventually she puts one of her heavy

purple arms around me, leans

her head against mine,

and all of a sudden things are feeling romantic.

So I tell her,

things are feeling romantic.

She pulls another name, this time

from the dead,

and turns to me in that way that parents do

so you feel embarrassed or ashamed of something.

Romantic? she says,

reading the name out loud, slowly,

so I am aware of each syllable, each vowel

wrapping around the bones like new muscle,

the sound of that person’s body

and how reckless it is,

how careless that his name is in one pile and not the other.


My purple gorilla came to me again Friday night. I was thinking about all the physical things I am doing to get ready for another "mission impossible" IVF cycle. The one thing I haven't been doing is communicating with my spirit baby. I haven't talked here lately about it, because I cry everytime I think about it. I don't want to talk to my spirit baby, because I am afraid. I am afraid of being heartbroken again. The truth is, I'm so sad she didn't come. It's not a guilt trip on her or anything. It's how I feel. I fell in love with her. It's like she died.

When I went to the "Gifts of Grief" movie a couple of weeks ago, I talked about how I didn't think there was anything good about grief. The moviemaker asked me, "who died?" I was dumbstruck. How do you talk about someone dying who never existed? I just said, "it's complicated." I didn't think the moviemaker, or anyone else in the audience, would understand. She experienced the grief of losing her father whom she was very close to. I didn't understand my grief at losing someone I didn't even know. I found that part of me was embarrassed and ashamed.

I checked out a book from my library about grief. Although I had heard this before, it really stuck me when I read the words on the page:

"...love and grief are inextricably intertwined - to love is always to open oneself to the grief of loss"

I loved my spirit baby. She may still be around, but I don't know. I know she has been with me a long time. Years, I think. I've been too afraid to reach out to her. If she's really gone, well, I can't really go there right now. A part of me hopes, but the grief, it still comes like the purple gorilla.

Show & Tell: The Ring

Resourcing

Part of working with trauma is to find resources. These are resources that you find supportive and help you when you are feeling a trauma response. One of my resources is this ring:

The ring has two purposes. This is my great-grandmother's, but I more associate it with my maternal grandmother. The ring reminds me of all the nurturing that my Italian grandmother gave to me as a child. The ring and how it got here has an interesting story. My great-grandmother, who also was from Italy, came to this country with her husband. She sent her husband back to Italy to sell some land she owned and to bring the money back. He ended up bringing back this stunning diamond and sapphire ring instead. She was very angry with him because, as she said, "I can't eat that ring!" They ended up getting divorced.

My great-grandmother lived with her daughter-in-law, my grandmother who also immigrated from Italy. My grandfather, who was 1st generation Italian-American, whisked my grandmother away from Italy after knowing her for three weeks and not speaking any Italian. My grandmother did not speak English and did not learn English until my mother went to school. My grandfather was known as "the American" to the Italians, and he was my grandmother's ticket out of poverty in Italy to a better life in America. She got the ring from her mother-in-law, she gave it to my mother, and my mother gave it to me when she got too fat to wear it. As the youngest in a family of six who usually gets worn out hand-me-downs, this is one I cherish.

Coming into the Present

The second purpose of the ring is to serve as a distraction. When you are experiencing trauma, you are not present. You focus on the trauma as if it was happening now. The ring and other things that catch my eye serve to bring me back into the present. When you experience trauma, you get extremely focused. You focus only on the trauma. The point of looking around is to see the bigger picture and to focus on other things. It also helps me realize that I am not actually experiencing the trauma right now, though that is what my brain keeps replaying.

I have been struggling with re-living the trauma of my past pregnancy and loss as I get closer to our FET transfer. Some days are better than others when I am not identified with the trauma. Other days, something sets me off and I'm stuck in this doom-n-gloom feeling. The "Dream Team" that I posted about previously are part of my pool of resources. The ring reminds me of my other guardian angel, my grandmother.

Angels sponsored by Mel's Show and Tell.

Show & Tell: Car Shop

Today's Show & Tell is titled Car Shop, a spoof off my favorite car radio show Car_Talk. After a fender bender in December that ended up totaling my 2000 Toyota RAV4, I was in the market for another car. I asked readers in a poll which car they think I should buy:

1) Same car as I'd had, 2000 Toyota RAV4
2) Toyota RAV4, Newer Model
3) Subaru Outback
4) Subaru Forester

Before you scroll down to the bottom and see what kind of car I ended up buying, read through this entire post. You might learn something about car safety!

I loved my old car, so my inclination was to purchase the same thing. Nobody voted for this one, which was a good idea. I decided to think like a mommy and check out what mother's recommended for safe vehicles. I found this website called MotherProof that has all kinds of car reviews. This website doesn't have any reviews of cars older than 2006, so it didn't really help me there in the used car market I was looking at. It did educate me on car safety by watching this video on crash-testing. The video was produced by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). I perused their safety ratings for my 2000 Toyota RAV4, and basically learned that it was a death trap. Had I been in a serious car accident, I could have been injured for life! I also learned by comparing ratings that the government organization that does crash tests, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, doesn't have nearly as comprehensive testing or ratings for car safety. Lesson learned, if you want to check a car you are considering to purchase for safety ratings, go to the IIHS.

No one voted on my poll for the Subaru Outback, which was also a good idea. While the Subaru Outback and Forester have the best safety ratings out of all the compact SUVs I was looking at, I just plain didn't like driving the Outback. The Subaru Forester got second in my poll. It was OK, but I didn't like some of the features it had compared to the RAV4. I did like the 2009 Subaru Foresters, though out of my price range, probably because Toyota bought Subaru a few years ago. Foresters are lookin' a lot like RAV4s these days!

Then, there was another compact SUV that I did not put on the poll, the Honda CRV. I wanted to love the Honda CRV, really I did! The 2005-2006 models I was looking at were nicely updated with lots of storage room and I could find it in a manual transmission. I no longer felt like I was driving a bus, as I did with the 2000 Honda CRV. It made perfect sense to buy this car as it was larger than my old RAV4, but still small enough to feel like a compact car. The problem was the seats. After test driving a couple of different ones, I'd always have a backache or buttache afterward.

The RAV4 won out in the end. I bought a 2005 Toyota RAV4. This was the last year of the older model before the RAV4s got bigger in 2006 and got rid of the manual transmission. I found one with a stick shift and low miles. The engine is upgraded from my old RAV4 from 2.0 liter 122 horsepower to 2.4 liter 144 horsepower. For a 4-cylinder engine, this car has pep and is much more fun to drive than my old RAV4. Upgraded safety features for this RAV4 include antilock brakes and side curtain airbags. To compare the IIHS safety ratings of my old versus new RAV4s (more detail can be found on their website):

2000 Toyota RAV4
Frontal Crash Test: Marginal
Side Impact: Poor

2005 Toyota RAV4
Frontal Crash Test: Good
Side Impact: Good

Reader's Choice wins! "Toyota RAV4, Newer Model" got the most votes. The view of my new/used 2005 Toyota RAV4 from my driveway:


See what the rest of the class is showing off this week at Mel's Show and Tell.

Show & Tell: Gluten Free Fridays

On last week's Gluten Free Fridays, I featured squash in the New Mexican Stew recipe. I also shared a story about my squash purchasing adventures this past fall. Here's what's left of the 70 pounds of squash I bought. From left to right, we have butternut squash, a mixture of carnival and sweet dumpling squash, acorn squash, and one large banana squash that I have yet to figure out what I am going to do with. I've heard it tastes like pumpkin. Is that like weird meats that people say taste like chicken? In the front from left to right is the remaining pie pumpkin, a quickly shriveling buttercup squash, and one more acorn squash. Since I don't have a proper root cellar, all the green on the acorn and carnival squashes have turned orange. I've already eaten all the spaghetti squash, so they are not pictured here. Spaghetti squash is a great substitute for pasta!

It's a good thing I hauled out all the squash from the basement to photograph. A couple of these are past their prime and need to be eaten immediately. I found one pie pumpkin squash that had disintegrated into a moldy puddle. Lesson learned: the pie pumpkins do not keep and really should be eaten at Thanksgiving. That was my intention, of course. The butternut squash is holding up the best so far, as well as the acorn squash. The spaghetti squash seem to keep forever. I had one I bought in the fall of 2007 that I ate last fall, and it was fine. I'm trying to keep up on the carnival and sweet dumplings, that look exactly alike, but I bought so many of them, it's hard. These two squashes are like delicata squash, but moister, hence the reason I bought them and not the delicatas. I could not find my favorite squash this year, amber cup. It does not grow well in my state. If you ever find it, get it. It's like buttercup squash, but it's orange and tastes like pumpkin pie. Yum!

This Show and Tell is really supposed to be a shameless plug for Gluten Free Fridays. Gluten, including wheat, is often one diet item that many women are told not to eat if they want to improve their fertility. Infertility can be linked to undiagnosed celiac disease or gluten intolerance. I have the latter. My intention for Gluten Free Fridays is to offer some educational information on why gluten can be problematic for fertility and other health reasons, and to feature a gluten free recipe as well. It can be overwhelming to exclude gluten or wheat from your diet, but I'm here to tell you it's possible and you won't miss it! It took me a long time to say that, but I seriously do not miss eating gluten foods. OK, well maybe pizza, but I can't eat the cheese that goes on it anyways. My recipes are also dairy free, with options for cheese toppings. I also try to include vegetarian variations as well.

Any guesses on how many pounds of squash are left, as pictured above? I was a little surprised at the answer myself. I will reveal the answer tomorrow, so take your guesses in the comments!

Answer: And the winning number is...40 pounds!! The banana squash alone weights 10 pounds, so if you subtract that from the original 70 pounds, I've basically eaten half the squash. I've had this stash for 3 months and I still have half to go?! Oh my! I loved the commenter who guessed 75 pounds! They are multiplying like tribbles!!

Don't be scared away by Mel's Show and Tell title this week. It's really quite tasteful and touching, with a dash of humor thrown in!

S&T: Spare a Comment?

Apparently, I missed delurking day, whenever that was. But then there was National Delurking Week, the second week of January. Oh, I missed that too. But I had fun trying to figure out when it was and looking at all the captions created for it. I'm officially extending National Delurking Day/Week to today, tomorrow, yesterday, the week after, whenever!! Do I hear a National Delurking Month for us procrastinators out there? You haven't missed your chance, if you still want to. Everybody's doing it, you know.

But seriously, I'd love to know who my readers are. We're having a party here at ToP and you're all invited!

Please don't be shy. Vote for your favorite delurking decal and say hi!


























Who else is exposing themselves at Mel's Show & Tell?

Show & Tell: Gastronomic Olympics

Ravioli pin with homemade Christmas ravioli

Christmas to me is synonymous with homemade Italian cooking. Our tradition growing up was either to have homemade lasagna or homemade ravioli on Christmas day. My Grandma Cookie's lasagna recipe is to die for. As with all Italian cooking, every recipe is very specific to the town and family that makes it. My grandmother Guiseppina's lasagna takes two days at a minimum to make, with three days being more comfortable, hence the reason it is only made at Christmas. I have made it several times on my own, and everyone who has had it has never had anything as wonderful like it.

When I made the decision two years ago to go completely gluten-free and dairy-free for the sake of my health and fertility, I though my Italian traditions were dead. Last year, there was no Italian homemade lasagna or ravioli for Christmas. My SIL made Christmas dinner, but I brought lavish homemade appetizers as I missed my Christmas tradition of spending two days in the kitchen cooking. We stuffed ourselves so much with appetizers that we could have skipped the Christmas meal entirely!

A couple of months ago, my supervisor told me about a book signing her neighbor was having for her new book, The Gluten-Free Italian Cookbook. I went to the author's house and got a demonstration on how to make gluten-free pasta. I think I had three helpings of homemade gluten-free fettucini, it was so good! Mary, her sister and I swapped stories of our families and their recipes, and they were remarkably similar. The pictures in Mary's cookbook of her Italian relatives cooking looked just like my relatives! I felt like I was at home.

Visiting my parents a couple of weeks ago was the perfect opportunity to try out these recipes. I packed all my odd arrangement of flours in my suitcase, hoping they wouldn't be confiscated by airport security. My Mom watched and told stories while my Dad and I played with the unfamiliar gluten-free dough. Surprisingly, my Dad had never made ravioli before, so he was learning as I was. We sat down to a dinner of our beginner's ravioli, and my Mom and Dad gave their "pretty-good" seal of approval, proving the experiment as a success! The menu for Christmas dinner was set.

As for dairy, the only cheese I allow myself to eat now is from sheep's milk. I discovered that sheep cheese is the oldest type of cheese in Italy and probably what my genetics are adapted to digesting the best. I grew up with big jars full of grated pecorino romano to season our Italian meals, so it works out pretty good for my traditional Italian recipes. I carted home 3 pounds of pecorino romano in my suitcase from Florida because it was so cheap there compared to here. The things I will do in the name of Italian cooking!

Christmas Eve morning found me searching for ravioli recipes on the internet. I wasn't quite satisfied with the recipe my Dad had given me and I needed an additional vegetable ravioli filling for the less carnivorous of our guests. I found a reference to this book, The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken, which isn't so much of a cookbook as a quest to find the authentic family ravioli recipe. By noon, I had a copy of the book and a newly bought ravioli pin in hand, which is shown in the picture above. The first roll of the ravioli pin and it's perfectly pressed squares of ravioli brought shouts of, "that's so cool!" from me, my stepson who was the designated pasta machine cranker, and Magic. To watch Laura Schenone, author of The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken, use a ravioli pin to make ravioli, click here to watch her YouTube video. I'm more partial to the gigantic round ravioli that fills you up after eating about four of them, but you eat double that because they are so good.

In my last post, my friend at Geeks in Rome suggested I order gluten-free pizza and skip the two day cooking extravaganza that is required of the traditional homemade Italian Christmas dinner. Christmas without Italian just isn't quite right to me, and no, store bought pizza will not do. Spending two days or more in the kitchen to make Christmas dinner for me is akin to salmon swimming upstream to spawn and geese flying south for the winter. It's a behavior that is deeply imprinted in my genes. I knew waking up Christmas day that I wasn't going to have time to change into my holiday attire, let alone put on makeup, but no one seemed to care. Once I started rolling out the steaming ravioli to the dinner table, it was all about the food. I also made the best meatballs and braciole in my life. Everyone had fun saying their new Italian word braciole, pronounced bra-zjole (like hole, but with a z as in Zsa Zsa Gabor), which is basically a meat roll stewed to perfect tenderness in the tomato sauce for two days.

The tradition of Italian holiday home cooking yanked me out of my holiday funk. During my two days of gastronomic olympics, I listened and sang to the Messiah so many times that I'm happy if I don't sing another Hallelujah chorus for another year! My back was so sore the day after Christmas from all the cleaning, cooking, rolling of dough, and cleaning dishes that I truly felt like I had been through some kind of athletic event! Many of my relatives have given up this tradition because it's too time consuming. Would I do it again? Heck yeah, it was worth it (but not for another year)!

And what Jewish-Italian-Christmas would not be complete without the traditional Hanukkah bush?



Mel's Show & Tell

Show & Tell: Fluffernutter Sandwich

To make a Fluffernutter sandwich, first you need a Fluffernutter. Fluffernutter is my long haired, seal point Himalayan, slightly neurotic, 19 year old cat. For the first, oh, 12 years of her life, Fluffernutter was a scaredy cat who would run away when you tried to pet her. Once I came into Magic's life, we changed her diet, and she had a personality change for the better. She still only occasionally slept with us. In the last couple of months, she has had yet another personality change that has coincided with her cessation of nocturnal yowling. We do not know what instigated this, but we've been enjoying Fluffernutter sandwiches ever since. For this Show & Tell, you have to visualize this one as I can't take pictures of it. Click here to see pictures from the last Show & Tell of Fluffernutter.

First, Fluffernutter will get in position when it gets close to bed time. She will stalk the end of the bed or levitate on top of it in anticipation of the Fluffernutter sandwich. Once Magic and I get in bed, Fluff will make her move under the sheets between us. Magic and I used to spoon together, snuggled up, but Fluffernutter has decided she wants a piece of the action. Once we have turned Fluff around so her butt is not in my face, Magic and I will squeeze Fluffernutter between us and make the Fluffernutter sandwich. She seems to love this, being squished between us as Magic and I cuddle together.

Magic is kinda miffed that Fluff has interrupted our sacred snuggling time, but I don't mind. I keep saying to him that she won't live forever and we should enjoy it while we can. After Fluff was peeing all over the house recently, we discovered that her kidney values have doubled, which means that her kidneys are getting worse. We already knew they were bad. We were giving her subcutaneous fluids every other day, but now we have to give her fluids everyday. Giving a cat subcutaneous fluids is nothing like giving yourself a subcutaneous shot. We use a 22 gauge needle that we put under her skin by piercing it, and then inject 100 ml of an electrolyte solution.

<- Fluff (patiently getting fluids) and fluids ->.

Fluff won't die tomorrow, but her days are more numbered than usual.

Join the rest of the class at this week's Mel's Show & Tell.

Show & Tell: Fall Sunsets from the "Backyard"

We took these pictures today with Magic's i.Phone after a hike in our "backyard", a lovely trail just down the road from my house.



Doesn't it look like the sky is on fire? This is one of the things I am truly thankful for in my life, to be living so close to nature.

Don't forget to visit the cross-pollination post from earlier this evening below!!

Show & Tell: Palin vs. Phoebe

I really enjoyed the laughs at work I got out of my Halloween costume this year. The scary thing was that I didn't have to tell anyone who I was. I made one co-worker ill. I even wore female torture devices, called pumps, all day and night, something I never do and hope I won't be crippled permanently in the name of a little fun. I recouped some of my costume costs by winning a $25 gift certificate to REI for the "most transformed", though others wanted to nominate me for the "scariest" category.

Move over Sarah. I'm going to be the next hottie in the White House!

Join the rest of the class at Mel's Show & Tell.

Show & Tell: Puttin' Up Pesto

Two weeks ago, I was questioning my decision earlier in the summer to plant more basil plants. Cold weather was moving in and frost was imminent. I had a daunting amount of basil to put up, so I played hookie from work on a Friday to beat the frost. I had already spent four hours the week before putting up two and a half large basil plants. I had seven and a half plants left to go. I thought maybe I had over done basil-mania this year. Luckily, some of the plants hadn't grown to bush size. Still, it took me another seven hours to put up all my basil. I was so sick of basil after that, I didn't think I would want to eat it for months, but I am appreciating it now.

I freeze all my basil. Dried basil just does not do justice to it's wonderful flavor. Either I make pesto or I grind up basil in just olive oil. I like to do the latter in ice cube trays, so if a recipe calls for basil, I pop a cube in from the freezer and get the same wonderful fresh summer basil taste in the middle of winter.

To do this is pretty easy. Fill a food processor with fresh basil leaves that do not have any moisture on them. Grind them up. Then add olive oil and finish blending. Sometimes I will add salt and garlic to the basil cubes.

Basil in ice cube trays prior to freezing

After the basil cubes have frozen, I like to add a little more olive oil on the top to seal the basil in. After the top layer of olive oil has frozen, take the ice cube trays out, run a little bit of hot water on the bottom to release the cubes, taking care not to get water on your basil cubes, and pop them out. If you wait for them to thaw, they do not come out of the ice cube trays as neatly, so use the hot water method while everything is frozen. Bag them up quickly to put back in the freezer, as the olive oil melts fast.

Final result. Note yellow on top of cubes is frozen olive oil.

I made a total of four ice cube trays worth of basil and pesto, plus three pint sized containers of pesto. Last year, I ran out of basil in January. I'm hoping to go a little longer this year.

If you want some instruction on how to cook pasta to go with that pesto, the Italian way, my buddy over at Geeks in Rome will give you the low-down in her post "You can call me Al...Dente". Look for future posts from me on homemade gluten-free pasta!

Join the rest of the class at Mel's Show & Tell

Show & Tell: We Are The Ones

Why?

Because I like it.
Because I want change.
Because I'm insired.

Because I don't want to be Sarah Palin for Halloween for the next four years. Yes, I'm plannin' on being Sarah Palin this year for Halloween. I'm practicing droppin' my Gs at the end of words, gosh darn it.

Zoe Kravit sings on this video, "We Are The Ones"



Mel's Show & Tell

Show & Tell: Everything's Peachy

These are not ordinary peaches. These are Colorado peaches. I never liked peaches until I'd had these. Peaches growing up were from the supermarket, hard or mealy and flavorless. Colorado peaches are sweet and dribble down your chin juicy.

This year, the peach season is still going strong at the end of September. I've never seen the peach season go this late. This 20 pound box of peaches lasted our family of four two weeks. I was eating two to four peaches a day. Magic bought another 20 pound box of imperfect peaches today (is it really September 27?!), and they are AMAZING! Normally by now, the peaches are long gone at the Farmer's Market. You have not lived until you have had a Colorado peach!

Show and Tell: Tomatoes Comin' On!

It's my favorite time of the year, fall. The nights are getting cooler, the hummingbirds are getting sparser, and the bounty in the garden and farmer's market is plentiful.

Where I live, the nights get too cool, even in the summer, to get an abundant tomato harvest. I've planted tomatoes in other places I have lived in the state, but I've never bothered here since we get a lot of cool nights in the summer. Warm nights are crucial to tomato fruiting. But what the heck, I gave it a go this summer, and I did actually get some tomatoes.

I planted two San Marzano tomato plants. Normally, I'd go for the Romas for plum tomatoes, but the Master Gardener at the plant sale convinced me I'd like these more than the Roma variety. The other tomato variety I planted, the Thessalonika, was excellent in flavor, but I got a disappointing harvest. I'm getting a decent harvest on the San Marzanos, but I don't think I am going to have enough to can. So what's a gardener to do?

It's a cool, rainy morning today, so it's a perfect morning to make a leisurely breakfast that includes San Marzano tomatoes! I'd like to share one of my favorite recipes with you, courtesy of Suzanne Somers. Yeah, the girl can cook! If you are bored of cooking eggs the same old way, this is a refreshing new way to start your day.

Eggs in Tomatoes and Red Peppers

1/8 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium-size red onion, sliced
1 red bell pepper, seeded and thinly sliced
about 10 fresh San Marzano plum tomatoes from the garden, or one 28-oz can of plum tomatoes, drained and chopped (this is what the recipe actually calls for, but I usually put in one 14.5-oz can of diced tomatoes)
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
4 eggs
1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese (optional)

Heat a 10-inch saute pan on medium heat. Add the olive oil and the red onion and cook for about 5 minutes. Add the bell pepper and cook for another 7 minutes. Add the tomatoes, salt and pepper. If using fresh plum tomatoes, you can remove the skins first, if you like. To do that, boil a pot of water. Put the plum tomatoes in the boiling water. Remove them with a slotted spoon when the skins split. Cool a little, and pull off the skins.

Reduce the heat and simmer for 30-40 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Prepare for the next step by breaking each egg into a separate custard cup or small bowl. This is important so that you can put all the eggs in the pan at the same time for even cooking. You will be basically poaching the eggs in the tomato mixture you just created. Increase the heat to medium-low before cooking the eggs. Make four small wells in the tomato mixture (see picture above). Pour each egg into a well. Cover with the lid and cook until the whites have set but yolks are still runny. I've timed it to exactly 3 minutes. If the tops are still runny, you can put the pan under a broiler for 1 minute, but you need to have it ready ahead of time. Timing the eggs is crucial if you like runny yolks, like I do. Remove the eggs from the pan immediately after cooking to prevent the yolks from cooking anymore.

Since I don't eat dairy, I skip the feta cheese part, but you can sprinkle the feta over everything and serve immediately. Yum!!

Show & Tell: My Garden

This is my sanctuary, my garden. The kale you see on the far right, lower part of the garden was planted while I was pregnant. This is the best garden I've had since moving in with Magic five years ago. The first year, I completely dug up the garden that had been neglected since Magic's divorce five years earlier. My stepson, who was eight at the time, helped me remove a gigantic rock that probably weighed close to 100 pounds out of the garden. Two of those years, I didn't have a garden. One year was because of how busy I was with planning my wedding and the next year I didn't have a garden because of my fibroid surgery. I have an interesting story to tell about my garden and my fibroids.

My babyquest started in earnest after I was married in the summer of 2005. The first RE visit was the revelation of my "huge" fibroids and my (failed) attempts at getting rid of them naturally. Although I ended up having surgery, I learned a lot in the process. Shortly after my first devastating RE visit, I was fortunate to be able to attend a workshop in my home town by Rosita Arvigo to learn about Maya abdominal massage. The workshop really wasn't so much about Maya abdominal massage, as it was a fascinating anatomy lesson about the uterus and all the ligaments that hold it in place, and it's health. All the women in the workshop were midwives except for myself and another woman who had been dealing with infertility for five years. I asked Rosita about why she thought fibroids formed. She answered that fibroids are basically confused creative energy manifesting in the uterus. The uterus is an organ of creation, and not just for babies. One of her examples was of a gardener who doesn't garden. This hit home for me as I did not have a garden that year because of all my wedding and other summer activity planning, and my exhaustion afterwards. At some point during the workshop, I came home for lunch, and I saw my patronus sitting in my backyard. That was the first time I'd ever seen that happen. I knew that it was a good sign and I was on the right track. Unfortunately, the next year I was not able to work on my garden either because of my surgery to remove my fibroids and the complications I had afterwards. Ever since then, I have tried to express my creative energy, the garden being one of them.

I've always had some flowers in the vegetable garden. Usually, it's been marigolds, but I got bored with them this year and these flowers were on sale. I bought the "Lady in Red" salvia and the Black and Blue salvia for the hummingbirds, and they do love them! I was working in the garden yesterday, and had a hummingbird about two feet from my face, hovering above these flowers and checking me out. I look out my window in the morning to watch the hummingbirds feed on these flowers and chase each other. I love going out to my garden everyday to see what's new. There is always an interesting variety of insects visiting my plants.

What's growing in your garden?

S & T: Life is too short for bad olive oil

or how to make killer pesto

summer basil harvest means pesto-a-plenty!

In my house, two things will cause a riot: running out of garlic or olive oil or both. Milk we can live without for a day. If there are no eggs, then it's oatmeal for breakfast. But no olive oil?! There really isn't anything you can substitute for it. The same goes for garlic. I grew up with good home Italian cooking. My parents bought olive oil by the gallon. I think olive oil is necessary to keep my motor running properly. I've even converted my Jewish Eastern European descent husband to crave olive oil and garlic.

I am constantly trying different brands of extra virgin olive oil to find the best one at the cheapest price. Some people look at the color and appreciate the taste of a fine wine. I do the same with olive oil. The bottle of olive oil I recently bought on sale was so bitter, I stopped making dinner and went out to buy a fresh bottle. Life is just too short to eat bad olive oil. It's so bad, I'm going to return it.

The reason I taste olive oils is that a fine olive oil is critical to good tasting pesto. It's pesto harvest season in my garden. If the olive oil is too bitter, it will ruin your pesto. Some extra virgin olive oils do have a bitter aftertaste. I usually save those for sautéing. Choose the smoother tasting olive oils for your pesto. Lean in closer while I tell you how to make the finest pesto that money can't buy.

First, you need to grow your own basil, unless you have wads of cash lying around that need to be spent. You'll burn through a small fortune buying fresh basil at the farmer's market or grocery store if you make pesto the way I do, with LOTS of basil!

It's hard to believe that I'm a die hard basil lover now. My mom always grew basil, along with flat leaved parsley, for her Italian cooking. My brothers, knowing that I didn't like the smell of basil as a child, used to chase me around the yard, trying to shove basil up my nose. I managed to survive that trauma to grow up as a gardener of basil. In fact, I realized in horror the weekend before last, that I was not going to be able to freeze enough basil to get me through the winter on the eight plants I had already planted. I only had enough frozen basil and pesto to get me through January last year on six plants. Luckily, the farmer's market had lots of basil plants on sale this weekend, so I bought two more.

Ingredients for Pesto:
lots of basil
1-2 cloves of garlic
pine nuts, about 1/4 to 1/3 cup
romano cheese (optional), about 1/4 to 1/3 cup or to taste
salt, about 1/4 to 1/2 tsp
olive oil

In order to become a good Italian cook, or a good cook in general, you have to give up the need to have exact quantities. The first time I asked my mom for a recipe for pasta fagioli, the conversation went something like this:

Me: "Can you give me your recipe for pasta fagioli?"
Mom: "Well, you need tomato sauce, cannellini beans, some celery with leaves, ditalini, garlic, some olive oil, and salt and pepper."
Me: "How much do I need of each?"
Mom: "Oh, I don't know. I don't measure quantities. I just sort of wing it."
Me: "But I have no clue what I'm doing!!"

My mom never had the patience to teach me how to cook as a kid. I did manage to inherit the family cooking gene, and now I'm able to use my intuition when I cook. I'm doing the same thing she does, adding ingredients based on experience, intuition, and taste-as-you-add. I'll at least try to give you relative quantities, though every time I make pesto, it's a little bit different. A lot of making pesto is relative to how much you like of each ingredient. I like a lot of basil, and you'll never find that in store bought pesto.

The How to of Pesto Making
I make pesto in a food processor. A blender will work if you don't have a food processor. First, fill the food processor with basil leaves. Grind them down. Put more basil leaves in if you like a lot of basil in your pesto.

Next, add a clove or two of garlic. I don't like a lot of fresh garlic in my pesto, even though it would seem that you can't have enough garlic. A little fresh garlic goes a long way. There are many different types of garlic too, but that's a whole 'nother discussion that I'm not really qualified to get into. I like a mild garlic, which is usually the standard grocery store type.

Then, add the pine nuts and romano. I have never found a good substitute for pine nuts. You just have to bite the bullet and spend the money on them. You can use walnuts, but I think they are too bitter. Process the pine nuts enough that it chops up the nuts, but not enough to make pine nut butter. Pulse the processor if you have to. When it's starts to stick together, stop processing! Ideally, you would want to stop before it starts to stick together, because that's when it tastes like pine nut butter. You'll know what I mean once you've made this mistake. I've done it more often than I'd like to admit.

For cheese, I prefer romano to parmesan. Again, it's what I grew up with. We always had a jar of fresh grated romano cheese in the frig for sprinkling on all our Italian dishes. Romano has more flavor than parmesan, in my opinion, but use what you prefer. For a long time, I could not eat dairy, so you can leave the cheese out and the pesto will taste just fine.

Lastly, add the olive oil and a little bit of salt to taste. Try adding the salt in at 1/4 tsp at a time and taste it as you go. The romano will make the pesto salty tasting, but I like more salt than that. I don't measure the olive oil. I just keep adding it until I get it to a consistency I like. You can pulse or run the food processor each time you add the olive oil. My husband likes his pesto creamier, so he usually puts in the olive oil in first with the basil. You can experiment with which technique you like best.

In the winter time, we often make pesto the same way but with arugula. The taste is different, but it all looks the same in the end:


Ahhh, heaven!

Show & Tell: Fluffernutter

She's fluffy and she's nuttier than a fruit cake, hence the name "Fluffernutter". She's a seal point Himalayan cat. That's her younger, half brother in the lower part of the picture, the late, great, Mister B.

Hey, what are two doing in that closet?!

She outlived him by three years, so far. She'll be nineteen on Monday.

When I first met Fluffernutter, Magic's cat, she was one of those neurotic, pure bred cats who would meow, asking to be petted, and then run away as soon as you reached out to stroke her.

Watch Fluffernutter Run. Run Fluff, run!

Magic used to leave dried food out for his cats 24/7. I told him that this wasn't good for them, but he didn't want to "deny" them. Mister B ate so much that the bed would shake when he jumped up on it, that is, when he could get his fat ass up there. Mister B got diabetes with the constant supply of crappy food.

Eventually, I convinced Magic to put both Mister B and Fluffernutter on a raw food diet to help with Mister B's newly diagnosed diabetes. We got Mr. B's diabetes under control, with the improved diet and daily insulin shots, and he lived for another 4 1/2 years. Flutternutter, in the meanwhile, had a personality change. She sounded like a Hoover vacuum when she sucked down new food. She soon became a friendly cat who no longer hid under the bed when you approached her.

Now that she is older, she doesn't like the raw food diet anymore. I finally stopped fighting with her, and now just give her high quality canned food. Fluffernutter has her own geriatric medical problems. We have to give her subcutaneous fluids every other day to offset her failing kidneys. You thought subcutaneous shots were bad? Try having a 22 gauge needle under your skin for 15 minutes while you have 100cc of fluid injected in. We have an IV bag set up in the living room for her. Without it, Fluffernutter would have been dead a long time ago.


While Fluff looks ferocious in this picture, she is actually demonstrating how she drives us crazy in the dead of night, yowling at nothing in particular. We were told that this was a symptom of hyperthyroidism, a common problem in senior cats. We treated her thyroid, which helped for a bit, but she continues to wake us from a sound sleep with her yowling.

This is how Fluffernutter spends most of her time during the day when she doesn't yowl:

Happy Birthday Fluff!

Show & Tell: A Bear of a Week

I thought I'd post more cool pictures from work that were taken this week. These bears were caught on "candid camera". We have motion sensitive cameras that take candid pictures of wildlife as they pass by. Sometimes bait, like road kill, is set out to see what kind of wildlife shows up. This black bear is getting a manicure.

This brown bear must have been on the move, perhaps checking out the camera since it's looking right at it. Bears are curious, and they tend to want to investigate the flash from the camera. We've had some funny close up pictures of bears from the remote cameras. It's interesting that such massive wildlife can be so close to urban areas.

On the theme of bears, it's been a bear of a week for me, and it's not going to let up for awhile. Between work work and personal work, I've got a lot to do before Magic's surgery. At least the work work stuff is fun this time of year.

Show and Tell: Out Standing in My Field

Today, I'm continuing with my theme of burning. In my last post, The Phoenix Process, I talked about how I feel like I'm still in the process of burning. Here, you can see, I'm not afraid of a little fire.

This is one of my favorite photos of myself at work. We were doing a prescribed burn to improve the native ecosystem. What am I doing here? I'm watching the flames. I'm not just doing this because I am a pyromaniac or I am obsessed with fire, though I do enjoy lighting up. I don't smoke, but after working on a prescribed fire or wildfire, I do feel like I've smoked a couple of packs of cigarettes. What I mean is that I like to ignite prescribed fires. I gave up working on fires when I was trying to get pregnant. I figured that sucking in all that smoke wasn't healthy. By then, I was also over the novelty of working with fire.

In this photo, I am watching how the fire burns the plants so I can understand later how the plants regrow. Then, I will know for next time what kind of fire is best to get the kind of response we want. Yes, there are different kinds of fire and different ways to burn. Hmmm, I wonder if there is some kind of analogy here to The Phoenix Process? I'm sure there is.

Show & Tell: Fifty Years!!

This week's Show and Tell is along the same theme of anniversaries from two weeks ago, except that now it's my parent's anniversary. My parent's anniversary is three days after ours. Two weeks ago, my parents had their 50th Wedding Anniversary. FIFTY YEARS. The BIG 5-0. They have been married longer than I have been on the planet. I have a hard time comprehending that, having only been married three years. The picture above is from their wedding. My older sister now looks almost exactly as my Mom did in this picture.

In celebration, we had a family reunion with all their six children and almost all of the 15 grandchildren. Four of those grandchildren are stepchildren, two of those are mine. Yes, I have stepchildren, for which I am grateful. Being a stepparent is complicated, but I do get to express some of my mothering qualities with them. Although having stepchildren is not the same as having your own children, I treat them as my own when I am allowed and when I allow myself to. Part of treating them as my own was to bring them to the family reunion.

One of my brothers had the audacity to assume that we would not be bringing Magic's kids, my stepsons, to the reunion. He assumed that they didn't want to come. To me, that would be like saying that his children would not be coming if they did not want to. You drag your kids along if you have to, knowing that once they get there, they will be glad you did it. My other brother with the two stepdaughters understood how I felt about this, because he treats his stepdaughters as his own too. Originally, he told me that his two teenage stepdaughters would not be coming to the family reunion because they were busy with other things. I was pleasantly surprised to see them there this weekend. I can't help but think that my bringing my stepsons had something to do with it.

I felt sad at the reunion, seeing my brothers' and sisters' children and feeling pangs of longing for having a family of my own. Yesterday, my older stepson said to me, "I think your family is cool." I felt so good when he said that! He made a connection with my family and me. My Dad even made a point of saying how he had gotten to know my stepsons at the reunion. The circle had widened. I do have a family, even though it's not in the traditional sense of the word.

Show & Tell: Hay Fever

Making Hay While the Sun Shines

It's hay cutting season around these parts, and that also means that the pollen if flying fast and furious. I've got hay fever bad, and that doesn't mean I'm bellying up to a bale right now. Inspired by Lori's view from her backyard, I thought I'd Show and Tell the view from my office window. Can you name that peak in the background?


This is my favorite part of hay. Red clover has always reminded me of the uterus. Not only do cows like it, red clover is an herb that is good for both boy and girl reproductive organs. When I make my own "fertility tea", I include red clover, usually ones I've collected myself as it's hard to buy high quality red clover flowers. In the Doctrine of Signatures, they say that the shape of the herb mimics the organ it treats. Can you see the uterus in this picture?

A farmer reminded me recently of the saying "Making hay while the sun shines". I think this is a good metaphor for life. I'd like to live by that saying and try to enjoy life while I'm still here on this planet. I've realized that the whole baby making thing has occupied so much of my thoughts, efforts, energy, and finances for the better part of the last three years that it's hard to remember that I enjoyed other things in life. One thing that I really love is my job. This is just one of the great vistas I get to see on a daily basis at work. I work up in them there hills too!

I have felt grateful that my career gave me exactly the kind of job I wanted. If you had told me twenty years ago that I'd be doing this for a living, I probably would have not believed it. I didn't expect my career to move in the direction it did, but it all ended up working out perfectly. The whole baby making thing hasn't worked out as I expected either, and I'm hoping I can roll with the same ease in this part of my life as I did with the change in my career direction.