New Year, New Post, Fluff and Accountability

Posted on by Jo Anne
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Happy New Year!

As is common this time of year, blog posts abound where wannabe bloggers such as myself write a post that indicates that said blogger will be more prolific in the new year, write more, do more, whatever goals they may have.  Every year, I try not to write a post like this because they seem so, well, cliche.

Then I was listening to an interview.  The topic was brought up, and the interviewee (I can’t remember who it was) mentioned that it was done more for accountability.  This struck me as quite eye-opening.  People use blogs as journals, or diaries of sorts.

So, for accountability’s sake, let me tell you what the new year brings for me.

My Pampered Chef business.  I am on the verge of reaching a sales milestone – and hopefully I will reach it this month.  So, as much for accountability as for sales, if you’d like to be a part of this, let me know if there is anything you are interested in learning more about, or if you’d like to host a party, or, better yet, if you’d like to join my team.  One of the goals I have for this business is to build a strong team this year.

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Bullet journaling.  Have you heard of this?  I had heard of it randomly, and then over Christmas, my daughter mentioned it.  She picked up an Apple Pencil to use with her iPad, and created her own digital bullet journal.  I’d love to do that as well, but since I had all these tools on hand to have a hard copy journal, I felt that saving a little money would be to my benefit.  If I am lucky, I will be documenting my experience with bullet journaling here on my blog.

Getting healthy.  Last year, I joined a gym.  I was inconsistent in my attendance, at best.  I do hope to be more consistent this year.  The coaches at my gym are awesome!

As part of my “get healthy” plan, I am taking on a 30 day nutrition challenge with my middle daughter.  We will be eating healthier, and cleansing ourselves of all sorts of bad things.  This is more of a plan to learn to eat healthier (very similar to the Whole30 I did a few years ago) and less of a weight loss regimen.  Assuming I maintain consistency at the gym, and learn healthier eating habits, a little bit of weight loss should come with the territory.  I won’t complain about that.

It’s pretty cold outside – a perfect reason for Chili!

Posted on by Jo Anne
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I have never been a fan of chili.  I have worked at companies that have annual chili cook-offs.  I have friends who get that faraway look of dreaminess and the promise of comfort food when they say, “Nah, I made chili today!”

I have never wanted to eat it.  I wasn’t afraid of the spice.  I wasn’t afraid of the heat.  But everyone I know makes their chili with BEANS.  I don’t know why, but I am not a fan of beans.  They have an odd texture when you eat them, a little too mealy or something.  It took me a long time to get used to the idea of refried beans.  I went out to eat and they served the refried beans in a tortilla cup and I ate them like a dip with the free tortilla chips.  But I digress.

I don’t like beans.

But about 2 days ago, when I was anticipating a blizzard, I had this brainstorm of an idea to make chili.  But what goes into chili?  I had to find a great recipe – that didn’t require beans.  And then I panicked.  I like to try to be authentic.  If chili without beans is not authentic, I did not want any part of it.  But all I could think about was scoops of beef surrounded by some delicious sort of gooey, drippy, sauce or gravy that tasted nothing like tomato sauce, or barbecue sauce.  What was I to do?

Well, I know I’m not the first person to know that Google is your friend with quandaries such as this.  A simple search of “Does an authentic chili recipe require beans?” yielded several resources that all quoted the same source.  And here, I am writing another post that will quote the same source.  The International Chili Society.  Their official rules state, and I quote,

“Traditional Red Chili is any kind of meat/combination of meats cooked with red chili peppers/powders, various
spices and other ingredients. Any non-meat fillers are not allowed, including beans. Preference is not given to
either cut meat or ground meat. “

So I was totally thrilled and super excited!!! The next step was to find a recipe.  First I tried trusty Google.  However, my Google-fu is not as strong as that of my friends.  So I turned to my trusty Epicurious.com.  I settled on this Beef Chili recipe from Claire Saffitz in Bon Appetit in February of 2018.  Sadly, this recipe did not involve ground beef, but boneless beef chuck.  It also involved 3 types of chilis: Ancho, Guajillo and Pasilla.  The local grocery store chain here does not really carry dried peppers of any kind.  I purchased fresh poblanos.  Then I went back to my trusty Google.  I looked for alternates for the others.  Well, I was able to find guajillos at another store, but not pasallas.  Mulato chilis were given as an acceptable substitute.  Buuuut, since I didn’t write that down, when I got to the store, I found dried Moritas and purchased them.  It wasn’t until I got home and reread, that I realized I didn’t have the same peppers.

It didn’t matter.  Apparently, if a recipe calls for dried peppers, you should never substitute with fresh.  The flavor profile is completely different.  Since the kids would be eating said chili, I decided that was ok, as the fresh poblanos would soften the heat.  And let me tell you, that the flavor of this chili was A-MAY-ZING!!!

I have one regret.  I didn’t take any pictures.  I didn’t take pictures while I cooked it.  I didn’t take pictures while I ate it.  I didn’t take pictures of the leftovers.

I will make it again, for sure.

My Love Affair with Coffee, Part 2

Posted on by Jo Anne
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Or, how I began drinking my coffee black.

This time last year, I started thinking about doing my first Whole30.  It was a daunting thought, really.  No added sugar.  No grains.  No dairy.  No legumes.  That’s a lot of no’s.  And the really surprising no, was the legumes.  Because really, haven’t we always been told that beans are good for you?  Good source of protein in the absence of meat; filling, tasty.  But boy did that cut things out…peanuts, soy anything, hummus.  And how many of you are not used to reading labels?  Did you ever realize how many things have some sort of soy product in its recipe???  But what was really worrying was coffee.

As previously mentioned, I was hooked on Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.  My regular order was Medium Coffee, Milk, 2 Sugar.  Let’s face it.  2 Sugar at Dunks is almost equivalent to a quarter-cup.  I mean, it’s usually a heaping spoonful, with a dripping trail of sugar.  If the person putting together your coffee can swing it, that trail lands in your cup too!  How on earth was I going to cut milk and sugar from my coffee?  The thought had crossed my mind to just give up coffee for the month of April.  I’d giving it up for longer periods of time during Lent.  Surely I could do it for 30 days.  The question was, did I want to?  At the same time, I purchased a Yeti.  I was tired of paying $2.39 for a 14oz cup of coffee.  And I managed to save a TON of money by making my own coffee.

During the month of February, I decided that I would have to prep myself to drink black coffee.  Each morning, I’d wake up, and before I got out of bed, I thought, today’s the day I try to drink black coffee.  I’d make my way to the coffee maker, and then I’d put 2 spoons of raw sugar and a splash of milk in my cup.

Sigh.

Sometime around Winter Break, I caught a cold.  A nasty one.  Colds are usually when I stop consuming dairy; cheese, butter, milk, ice cream.  So I resorted to tea – delicious Earl Grey.  Delicious and fragrant, it is something I drink with no modifiers…no milk, no sugar, no honey…so tea it is.  Then I flew to Seattle.

Working in my sister’s house, I had great coffee available, and I started by putting about an inch of black coffee into a mug.  I managed to finish that.  It wasn’t terrible.  So then I added more warm to the mug – I doubled the first amount.  And so on.  This is how I learned to love black coffee.

I guess there *could* be a part 3 to this saga.  We’ll see.  Check back in about 8 months. HA!

Where did it all come from?

Posted on by Jo Anne
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It’s really interesting to me to see where things go and from where they came.

I have another sleepy blog called Food Loves Company and I accidentally stumbled on it the other day.  It was a joint collaboration and I reached out to my friend Angela who thought it might be a good idea, or at least kind of fun, if we revived it.

But in all of that, I discovered a number of other blogs, including a self-hosted blog that seems to be a little troublesome at the moment.  These include The Beatnik Neatnik, where I had hoped to rediscover myself as a truly organized being.  (That’s comedy gold right there!).  It also included Coffee Is My Kryptonite – my latest blogging venture which has been hibernating since April – when I was almost done with my first ever Whole30.  And of course, the self-hosted Thinkin’ Guruvee – which simply had some thoughts and musings from various times when I felt inspired to write.  It also included this lovely spot – noms ‘n’ knits.

Now you may be wondering why I didn’t create links to all of these – and I’ll tell you.  It’s because I actually combined them all to this one blog.  You’ll notice that there are a ton of posts now.  Including three pages that could serve as “about me” pages.  (If you’re a writer, or feeling generous with your time, let me know if you’re interested in helping me condense all those thoughts into one “about” page – with a clever title.  I like clever.)

Anyway, I am hoping to actually DO something with this blog.  I have big plans for my crafting…and my cooking.  And the bulk of my crafting will come from knitting.

That is all.

For now.

Interesting things I noticed

Posted on by Jo Anne

So while I spent the last two days shopping in preparation for beginning Whole30 today, I discovered just how many products contain sugar or soy additives. Ok, ok. I get it. Maple Bacon is going to have sugar in it. I would be stupid to think otherwise. But Smokehouse Almonds has soy? Why???

Jerky. Turkey, beef, bacon…much of it contains sugar, but again…soy??? I’ve never been known to have any aversion to soy…as a matter of fact, as a kid, I used to love soy nuts. Now? Well, now i just want to know why it is added at all. Is it a preservative? What is the point?

Also, as I filled the kids Easter baskets last night, I figured I would have one Reese’s egg before I kicked off. I don’t know if it is the result of eliminating sugar from my coffee for the last month, or what, but I couldn’t eat the whole thing. It was way too sweet.

But I found some recipes for chicken salad, mayo, some egg-free breakfast hash…we will see how it goes.

The Journey Begins

Posted on by Jo Anne

On Easter Sunday, April 1, 2018, I will embark on a journey of food love.  Whole30 always seemed way out of reach for me.  But the more I read about it, the more intrigued I became.

There were a lot of good reasons to attempt Whole30.  And a lot of excuses not to.  But in the long run, , well, I just want to be healthy.  It’s no fun being the mom who can’t walk around the block without getting winded.

And the reasons to DO Whole30 far outweigh the reasons not to.  For a long time, the reasons not to rose to the top:  I love the taste of fried food – I don’t want to give that up!  I love milk and sugar in my coffee, there is NO WAY I will ever drink it black.  I can’t not eat bread.  I can’t eat eggs.  (This last is not an allergy, but a 47 year old choice).

The reasons to do Whole30 come down to 4 words.  Matt, Cam, Morgan, Keira.  That’s it.  There doesn’t need to be any other reason.  Oh.  Maybe just one.  ME.  Like anything you try to do, or try to quit, ultimately, you have to do it for yourself.  When I say my family are the reasons, I guess inspiration is the better term.  I don’t want to MISS anything because I make the choice to unhealthily eat my way into a stupor.  I don’t want them to miss me because I make a stupid choice to eat myself into a really unhealthy place.

So here I am.  Coffee is my Kryptonite.  It has always been the biggest single blocker to attempting a detox like this.  Mostly because I, up until about a month ago, always drank it with milk and sugar.  Now I don’t.  But that’s a post for tomorrow and my preparations.

Maybe by the end, I’ll learn to like eggs after all these years.

 

All the things I want to do

Posted on by Jo Anne

Seasons Greetings From BostonWhat do I want to do this year?

  • I want to read at least 14 new books (this would include books I’ve started in the past, but was never able to finish).
  • I want to eat a little healthier
  • I want to get out of debt (I won’t count the mortgage and the car payments as part of this because they are a cost of living, but if I can get out of credit card debt?  woohoo!)
  • I want to see friends more, worry about chores less
  • I want to stop saying, “I think I can…” and start saying, “I know I can!”
  • I want to finish at least 3 knitting/sewing projects (two are already under way)

I share this information, not so much for accountability, but for a record that at one point this year, I was feeling quite optimistic.

Just before the Christmas Holiday, I was able to go into the city to meet with some Sisters I haven’t seen in a while.  (Yeah!  I’m talkin’ about you LG!!) When I say “a while” I’m talking like, 20 or more years.  (ok, ok, so we saw each other at the 20th anniversary of our chapter’s founding…and sure, I saw Heather just a few months ago!) Anyway, it was so much fun to catch up, and share what we’ve been doing with our lives.  Upon learning about my culinary experiences, LG asked what I was serving over the holidays – because, well, food is fun.  Fish are friends, not food.

This was the food plan.

Christmas Eve

  • Lasagna – for all
  • Lobster Tails – for 4
  • Steak – for 3
  • Green beans with shallots and bacon
  • Caesar Salad with fresh baked croutons

Christmas Day

  • Brown-sugar Ham (I went with brown sugar over honey because the flavor, I think, is so much richer.
  • Maple-glazed carrots
  • Scalloped potatoes
  • Broccoli with Parmesan
  • Cranberry Salad with Mixed Greens, Walnuts and Goat Cheese – with a Balsamic Vinaigrette

I had additionally planned over the course of the two days to serve the following

  • Baked brie en croute with apricot preserves
  • Spinach and artichoke dip
  • Cheese and Crackers
  • Shrimp Cocktail

There would be a total of 7 of us for Christmas Eve, and those same 7 plus 1 would be dining on Christmas Day.

Lauren, I apologize that I don’t have pictures to share of meals.  The only things I didn’t serve are all of my appetizers.  I did make some Asian Meatballs, however, and I used Glutino gluten-free bread crumbs (because my niece eats gluten free!).  I never would have guessed that they were made with gluten-free bread crumbs.  They were delish.  However, my niece still couldn’t eat them, because they were made with soy sauce, which apparently has wheat in it.  Does anyone know if there is a decent gluten-free soy sauce out there?

I Propose a Toast

Posted on by Jo Anne

On the heels of some very belated and very sad news about our dear sister LP, another dear sister, Grover, has posted a wonderful article on Facebook about distance between friends and loved cheersones.  From this opening, maybe you can see that there are two very different but related topics that I will be writing about.

The first is that life is short.  Upon reading the obit for Lisa, four months late – and thank you, NU Magazine for keeping us posted on these things – I was brought back about five years, when I found my former roommate, Melissa, had also passed – three years prior.  It also brings me back to 2001, when I learned Katie McGarry from SHA was in the towers.  All three of these women, women I genuinely cherished as friends, as family, were women I allowed myself to lose touch with.  They were women who “should know” I was thinking of them, even if I didn’t write letters, send emails, make phone calls.  Big mistake.  My heart breaks for each and every one.  And truly, I hope they know that they really do come to mind, more often than they don’t.

The second related topic is about the article posted.  The article discussed a request to friends far away, to share their daily lives.  I see a lot of complaints on the book from people who don’t care to know what others had for lunch, or when their kid took their first step.  I see people who detest the mundane.  It made me think about them: the people who complain about it.  Maybe they don’t have friends spread far and wide.  Maybe they only have a small little world that exists for them – which is why they don’t care, and do complain. I feel for them.

And how is this all related? Well, as I said, life is short.  We should make efforts to reach out more, talk more, catch up more.  Even those mundane micro-posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, they cast glimpses into the every day that many of us formerly thrived on.  We lived together in small communities of women, several apartments each housing one or two or six of us.  And we all shared each others lives, every day.  We laughed, loved, cried, prayed, and survived together.

Here is my call to action:  The next time  you feel the urge to complain about the mundane post you see, think about the people that poster is connected to.  Maybe they are far away and just want to let people know about their every day, people who used to share their every day and now do not.

And to my Sigma Sisters, I propose a toast.  Let’s pick a day or ten; the same date every year.  Wherever we are, whoever we’re with, raise a glass, or a mug, filled with the beverage of your choice, and toast each other; the Sisterhood.  For fun, those of us who blog, tweet, Facebook, Instagram…we can post a little anecdote of where we were, who we were with, what memory of Sigma came to mind as we toasted.  Or not.  If we can’t be together, we can toast together, have a moment in time when we know we are thinking of each other; committed to the memories of our founding and of years past.

Who’s with me?

How can you tell where you’re going, if you have no idea where you’ve been?

Posted on by Jo Anne

So every day I think of new lists, and creative ways to organize and clean.  Let me tell you something.  Each and every single one has merit.  And each and every single one is pure crap.

Growing up, my room was always neat and tidy.  This is because I had a mother who wouldn’t let me go hang out with my friends, until it was neat and tidy.  If that meant I didn’t go to the mall with my friends, it meant I didn’t go to the mall with my friends.  It wasn’t a “grounding” or a punishment of any kind.  It is just how life was.  And if there were other chores that needed doing, they were done before going off to find my friends as well.

The other thing that was different about back than – and we’re talking over 30 years ago – is that when I finished cleaning my room, or doing my chores, I could jump on my bike and ride to meet up with my friends wherever they were – as long as they weren’t at the movies or the mall.  And it was always easy.  Because we did things like pickup games of softball or soccer.  We played games like tag, or kick the can.  Or we went to hang out at the pizza parlor (yes, I called it a pizza parlor where I grew up, what’s it to ya?)  and then shop at the sticker store, or the candy store.

Today, I am so busy getting my kids to dance, gymnastics, soccer, and school, not to mention being involved in parent organizations related to these activities – plus not being able to say “no” to organizations the kids are no longer active in, that when I come home, the last thing I want to do is clean and tidy my home.  It certainly doesn’t mean I don’t want to have a clean and tidy home, it just means I am really, really tired.  And in the mornings, while I’d love to have the kids “do their chores” before going anywhere, they are so scheduled that it is impossible to enforce.  I’m driving one to an activity while the other is home.  I get home and I have to take the other some place.  There really is no rest for the weary.  

But I am determined.  I live in a small house…under 1100 square feet.  I have a husband, an almost 15-year old, a 13-year old and a 9-year old.  Those three are all girls.  We have a 13 -year old cat, and a 6-year old dog.  She is part husky, part golden, so she’s pretty big.  Oh, and did I mention, we have ONE bathroom?

So I have been reading “the life-changing magic of tidying up: the Japanese art of decluttering and organizing” by Marie Kondo.  This book was originally recommended by my mother, who would have purchased it for me, but didn’t want to offend me.  I ended up buying it myself.  I’m still reading it.

The way I know that I have it in my to be clean and tidied and yes, organized, is that I was.  Years ago.  It’s like gaining and losing weight.  Neither happens overnight, so the reverse cannot possibly happen overnight.  The same is true for being oranized and tidy.  It won’t happen overnight.  It is a process.  And everything you do is related.

Time.  Space.  Work. Life. You hear a lot about work-life balance.  I am in the process of finding and keeping it.  Right now, for me, work is making my home liveable; learning to manage my time and space.  I started with a planner.  About a year ago.  I’ll write more about that tomorrow.

What is a beatnik, and what does it have to do with being a neatnik?

Posted on by Jo Anne

According to definition 2 on Dictionary.com, a beatnik is someone who rejects or avoids conventional dress, behavior, etc.  I consider myself a beatnik only in the sense of organization and tidiness.

I have spent years trying to manage my time, and my spaces – I have multiple spaces.  I’ve purchased planners, and systems, and all sorts of tricks to get myself in order.  I was recently inspired by my friend AZ (I might have to call her Arizona from here on out since her initials represent the state), and have taken to using my Plum Paper Planner again.  I’m determined to make it work.

Additionally, I am in the process of getting all aspects of my life in order.  I am bettering myself in the hopes of finding work, and I am hoping that this blog will serve to help me do that.  Join me on this journey.  It’s going to be a bumpy ride!!!

In other words, I am anxious to be a neatnik.  But I am getting there in an unconventional way.