Meatloaf

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It’s been a while since I last wrote a post, not that I did not write…I am constantly writing in my head. It is the discipline of putting it on paper that I must work on.

I had bought the meat to make meatloaf last night and remembered I did not have a meatloaf pan. I went to the baking pan aisle and stood with the pan in my hand, one part of my head thinking “I need it” and the other one saying “you have other pans, just use one of those”.

After a few minutes I put the pan down. At another store today I went by the baking pans and noticed a meatloaf pan and remembered I still needed to come home and make the meatloaf.

Driving home I was listening to a new artist named Rodriguez. He was just re-introduced to us in a recently released documentary named Searching for Sugar Man.

In his song Like Janis he was saying “…and you measure your wealth by the things you can hold…” that was the battle going on in my head when I stood in the grocery store aisle wondering whether to buy the pan or not.

We have so much stuff…cake pans, muffin pans, cupcake pans, baking pans, pizza pans and meatloaf pans.

In moving from a four bedroom house to a one bedroom house this past spring I had allot of sorting to do. One of the pans I kept was the pan I use to make my favorite cake…carrot, zucchini, pineapple and walnut cake…I could not let go of that pan because to me it would be saying I was never going to make that cake again. I am not ready to say that.

I am ready to say that I can and will learn to live without some of the other pans. I used my cake pan to make the meatloaf…pretty, isn’t it?

It feels so good to write…till next time.

Liz

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Knowing

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I know what I will be having for my next meal. I planned what it was going to be as I was fixing myself the meal I just ate.

I felt a smile on my lips and a deep contentment as I realized this fact. I Know

Wow…the ability to know…without any doubt.

Is this the first time I have thought and planned my next meal as I was preparing my present meal? No, but it was the first time in a long, long time I sensed and was aware  that I knew for sure what it was going to be.

What a glorious sensation!

For a long while now, it has been…I might have this, it might be that or questioning and wondering what it is I am going to have.

I am waking up, finding my footing and planting my feet firmly on the ground because I know there is ground below my feet.

Hope you come back…Liz

 

 

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Sunday Dinner

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We have a scheduled weekly dinner out, my son and I.

For now it is on Sunday. The day of the week changes as our schedules change. I like Sundays because it is at the end of the week or to some the beginning of the week, either way it is a recap of the past week and going over the one coming up.

Having a structured schedule is of utmost importance to someone within the Asperger spectrum. There have been times when “but that was not on my schedule” or “you didn’t tell me that was today” has come up.

My son actually looks forward to our dinners out even though he lives with me and we sometimes eat together at home. It is a time when I have his full attention and he has mine.

I usually have a list of subjects to cover over dinner. When prompted, as with a “what do you think” or “have you heard” or “what does _____ mean” he is a river of conversation but  if left for him to begin the conversation he is mute.

Excessive talking and voice volume are two other Asperger traits. I’ve had to warn people that have just met my son to think about how much time they have before asking him a question about a subject he is familiar with ( and there are many) because the answer could be lengthy.

This particular week he choose Japanese food.

I started the conversation with “did you hear about the little girl being held in jail after being accused of burning pages of the Koran?” He had not but wanted to hear the story, so I related what I had read about it. “What do you think drives mobs of people to want to put someone to death?” I asked. He replied it was fear, I suggested it was hate and we continued discussing the matter back and forth, not arguing of course because one could sense sadness in both our voices.

We moved on to a lighter subject…computers. I’m fairly new to computers so I save up some of my computer questions for our dinner out. I even take notes of his answers. This is a subject my son is very familiar with and can expound on it for hours so I have to not only redirect the conversation back to the original question but also have to do my hand signal of “lower your voice sweetie”.

I have an ulterior motive for keeping the converstion flowing because as soon as he is done eating he wants to go home even though I might not be done, so I always have another question ready just in case I need more time to finish my meal.

Till next time…Liz

 

 

 

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Spirits

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I have a couple of old bottles of wine in my wine rack. They had been purchased about eighteen years ago during a wine tasting tour of Napa Valley. All I knew of the bottles was that one was red and the other white. The winery had recommended them as a good vintage to save for years later.

As I drove down the freeway I found myself thinking about going ahead and opening one of the bottles. I sensed I should go ahead and open it that evening. No arguing, considering or debating in my head…just an “ok, I’ll pop it open tonite”. I smiled at the thought. “Should I invite someone over?” did pop into my head but the quick reply was “no, just you”.

I settled in for the evening and went to open my wine, I picked the red. The cork fell apart into sand like particles. I poured the wine through a sieve into my glass and raised the glass to my nose. It smelled like freshly squeezed grapes.

I took a sip and the wine melted on my tongue.

Something urged me to go through a file of old letters. I had recently found them during my  move. I had been surprised to find letters from my first husband. I took them out to read as I sipped  my wine.

I could hear his voice as I read through them, in them were words of encouragement as I picked up the pieces of our failed marriage. He had continued to care about me and my well being for years afterwards. He was great about writing letters and sending cards.

In 2006 the letters and cards stopped, his body had succumbed to cancer.

In one of the letters he wrote the lyrics to Crowed House’s Love You ’till the Day I Die not knowing he still could even afterwards.

When I went to the kitchen the next morning I looked at the wine label. The vintage year was 1983…that was the year we had married.

Thank you for stopping by.

 

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Mojito Salmon

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I have a very sensitive nose. One of the first things I do when I open my front door is to put my nose in the air and take a deep whiff of my place. I was probably a dog in my former life because sometimes you might find me sniffing around the house looking for the funny smell.

Which brings me to fish. I do not like to cook fish on the stove because of the smell even though I have followed all the guidelines on how to purchase the freshest fish. For some reason when I bake it in the oven, it does not smell up the house as much. With this heat the oven is out of the question.

I’m also not very good at cooking fish. The only fish I remember as a child was the fish sticks that were served at the school cafeteria. So I have had to learn to enjoy fish and one of the best ways is to find a good recipe.

Sorry, I don’t have a good recipe…but Trader Joe’s does. Gracias a Dios. I found Mojito Salmon about 5 years ago when I started on my weight loss program. I fell in love with it and have enjoyed it many many times. I have tried their other prepared fish dishes and I keep coming back to their Mojito Salmon.

My son eats it as well and that is the only fish I can get him to eat…he wont even eat fish sticks.

Trader Joe’s Mojito Salmon is wild caught Pacific salmon with a sauce that combines the wonderful flavors of citrus, ginger, spearmint, cilantro, Anaheim chilies, sweet red peppers, scallions and tomatillos. It is a one of a kind entree and your kitchen will smell wonderful.

I’ve topped a variety of foods with the Mojito Salmon. Here I’ve topped baby spinach. I’ve topped arugula, romaine lettuce, spaghetti squash and brown rice…if it’s for lunch. When I serve it to my son I top it on rice or mashed potatoes and yes I add something green. The package says there are two servings but you could get three. I do make it two servings though since I am adding it to a non-carb food. 

If you are counting points there are 8 per serving. There is enough sauce to serve as salad dressing. I also squeeze some fresh lime and sprinkle crushed red pepper flakes on my portion.

Oh, and while you are at Trader Joe’s pick up some of their Wasabi  Roasted Seaweed snack…it’s also wonderful.

Enjoy!

 

 

 

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She Said He Said

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I thought I would share some of the things I heard, read and were told to me this past week. I’m thinking if I write about them there might be some quite in my head.

On NPR’s Marketplace the show was about the drought several states are experiencing.  I found it interesting that there is a town in Texas that actually ran out of water a few decades ago. A town by the name of Happy Texas.

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/reporters-notebook/unhappy-texas-where-water-ran-out

The host then mentioned the book Unquenchable by Robert Glennon where he writes that water used for agriculture is free not just in Texas, not just in the Western States, but anywhere in the country and the world.

On another NPR show the Forum, the host went over a newly released report by The California State Assembly on the Status of Boys and Men of Color that had a statistic I found interesting. According to the 2010 census more then 70 percent of California males under the age of 19 identify themselves as people of color.

Another figure I found interesting was from a representative of the CDC http://www.cdc.gov/ who said that 60 percent of firearm deaths in the United States were suicides. The number of deaths by firearms in 2010 was 31,347.

I read in Latina that according to Experian, 46 percent of Latina’s are self-employed.

At the gym, one of the trainers was telling us more interesting numbers. She said that doctors and scientists say that a good weight is five pounds for every inch of your height.  That would mean I should weigh 300 pounds.

I think I heard that number wrong.

Liz

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On Weight Watchers

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I have a relationship with them, not in love but an off and on relationship.

When I embarked on my weight loss journey back in the summer of 2007 I wanted it to be for good so I set about trying out the various popular diets and taking notes about what I liked and disliked about them. One of the first things I liked about Weight Watchers was the little labels they put on your membership card. It was like a note from the teacher with a visual about where you stood.

Was I thrilled when I got a little trinket after losing 10% of my starting weight. I was going to make sure I won every little trinket they had to hand out. They didn’t need to know I was not being faithful and trying out other diets on the side. The trinkets came because of what the label printed out at your weigh-in.

Of course I was serious about trying out the program so I faithfully tracked what I ate and faithfully figured out the point values of the foods I ate…until some other interesting diet promised me better results.

At the beginning of the new year some of the program changed. One of the changes was the little food tracking book…I guess they wanted us to eat less since it was a much smaller book. I didn’t ask or complain for that matter. I stopped tracking on their materials. I made my own. Not only did I like writing what I ate but the brand name or restaurant. If I had used a cookbook I’d note the page of the recipe.

Of course when I reached my weight goal I was there for my little label. That wasn’t until May of 2009 at which time I was made a Lifetime Member. A Lifetime Member can attend the meetings without having to pay as long as they are within two pounds either way of their weight goal.

I’d actually been able to maintain without much effort until this past February. As I wrote before it was then that I began menopause and experienced a personal life crisis. I had gained every month since then. In early July I stood up and took charge of the situation. One of the first things I did was to return to the lifetime members monthly meetings. I had to pay and I had to pay again this past weekend at the August meeting weigh-in.

I’m okay about it though, I’m feeling allot better emotionally and the meeting, full of new faces welcomed me. I’m back to writing what I eat on my own little paper and with a new personal trainer. I didn’t flinch when she wrote all over my paper today, which means my nerves are calming down.

I also have a new mantra. I started to see a Spiritual Director back in February and she suggested I find one as I began learning the practice of Centering Prayer. It is the second part of a verse from Isaiah 50:4 “…morning by morning, waken my ear to listen as one being taught”.

Read more about what a Spiritual Director is here  http://www.sdiworld.org/

Thanks so much for stopping by to visit…Liz

 

 

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Anger Management

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The phrase is clear…anger management…managing ones anger.

I wouldn’t say I am an expert on anger management but I will say that I have been dealing with the issue long enough to be aware that I needed to go into anger management mode  this morning.

My morning had been humming right along. I popped my head into my sons room to remind him he had a music lesson at 3 o’clock.

“What!?, I didn’t know!”, he yelled angerly.

“I told you yesterday” I said.

“No you didn’t!”, he yelled back with furor in his eyes.

His reaction to my reminder was out of proportion. I felt anger rising within me. I got my bag and keys and left the house with out saying a word, trying to put my brain into anger management mode but it was having difficulty.

You go through a series of emotions, feeling sorry for yourself, then feeling guilty that your pitying yourself, then apologizing for feeling angry and pitting yourself. I actually was on my way to meet with my personal trainer.

I knew that I would have a different outlook after my workout. I remembered how weight training was one of the things that helped calm me. While I was at the gym I would focus on my routine because I knew that if I was going to deal with the issue waiting for me at home I needed to calm myself first.

As I have mentioned before my son struggled with anger issues since a small child. Oppositional Defiance Disorder the clinician defined it for us years later. That was one of the first behaviors they started working on. As they worked with my son and us I became  aware that my reaction to this behaviour was something I needed to work on myself. It took many years of behavior modification along with my faith but it worked. There are several chapters here.

But your son exploded this morning…

Yes, but it was so much easier recognizing what was happening and knowing how to manage it. The explosions are few and far between now, and he is now able to recognize that it was/is inappropriate. After his music class hours later, he hopped into the car laughing about something and I knew it was the right moment to bring up his inappropriate behavior from this morning. “I’m sorry mom he said as he reached over to give me a hug”. That reminded me about another behaviour he had learned in his young teens…to give a hug. More chapters here as well.

Santa Cruz California

Up and down you ride the wave of life…you learn to surf.

Thank you…Liz

 

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Daddy…

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…he does not call as often now and when we do speak there is a thread of confusion.

One of my first memories of him is him tending to a rather large sore I had on my calf. My brother and I were new to his family. For several days Daddy would take a long needle and put it in the stove fire, let it cool then very gently lance the sore. I don’t remember it hurting but I do remember watching the needle go in and out, eventually the sore healed.

How I was selected to be Daddy’s helper I don’t know but I remember sitting there waiting for him to ask me to hand him a particular tool. I looked forward to our trips to the hardware store, his favorite one was a good twelve fifteen miles away. One Saturday we went to the hardware store and I roamed the store as Daddy visited with Mr Munoz, the owner.

Later in the day Daddy saw me playing with some shiny disks, he asked where I had gotten them and I told him the hardware store. Back to the store we went and I had to go tell Mr. Munoz I had taken the disks earlier and returned them to him.

Daddy was a Baptist minister to a small congregation in South Texas, people would ask him for help in all sorts of areas. One of the ones I found most interesting was our church jail ministry. “Jesus tells us to visit those in jail tita’s” he would tell us often as we groaned about having to go with him every Sunday afternoon.

One of the areas Daddy was called upon to help was when the sheriff had picked up yet another young Caucasian man roaming our neck of the desert. I don’t know if it was the sheriff or the young man who asked that his parents be contacted and told their son was in jail. Daddy would call from our house phone and give the parents the details to their sons predicament. When we returned to the jail the next Sunday the young man would usually be gone.

One young man was not so lucky, I remember him being there for several weeks maybe months. Daddy called his family several times. To this day I wonder why Johnathan was made to wait. Was his family poor or were they trying to teach him a lesson? Of course Daddy tried to convert every last one of them. One day a Volkswagen Beetle drove up to our house and a tall Caucasian man bounced up to our front door. Daddy greeted him and the young man said he was there to thank Daddy for helping him out when he was in our jail.

Daddy will be turning 90 years old in a couple of weeks and some would dicribe him as not much of a talker. We knew he had served in the Navy and had traveled the world as a merchant marine. It was not until a couple of years ago when I was in Texas visiting that as we sat having lunch at a diner he mentioned causally that as a young man he was not allowed to eat in the front of a diner. “That’s the way things were in those days tita’s” was his answer to our protests.

Yes, not much of a talker but the lessons he taught us didn’t require many words.

Liz

 

 

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A Trip To The Japanese Market

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In my never ending quest to cook and eat healthier… I am making our own Japanese meal tonight. Some may say that Japanese food is healthy and I would agree except that besides a sushi bar being a bit pricey the sushi is made with white rice.

It just so happens there is a new Japanese food market in our neighborhood. I had been there one other time but had only gone to the produce section looking for something in particular, I don’t remember what. I noticed they had papaya from Mexico and it was cut and sold in halves which I liked.

When I went in again last week to pick up some more papaya I was not in a hurry so I took a tour of the store. I was surprised that there was salmon sashimi, ahi tuna and shrimp ready to make into nigiri, one our favorite sushi.

So I went back today and did some shopping. I had discovered dried seaweed (they look like square chips) at Trader Joe’s but there were all kinds here so I picked the hot’n spicy one. They were so good.

 

 

I also picked up some green tea, a jar of toasted sesame and nori (it is just crushed seaweed and sesame seeds) you sprinkle it on rice or other dishes. A jar of rice seasoning which is seaweed and sesame seeds as well but it does have salt and sugar. And some Sake to wash it all down, I choose a sake you serve chilled.

The salmon and shrimp nigiri were simple and easy to put together.This video shows you how simple it is. http://www.videojug.com/film/making-mixed-seafood-nigiri-sushi I used brown rice. You take a spoonful of rice and shape it into an oblong ball, then top it with the salmon and or shrimp. Place it on some OHBA leaves, which is a Japanese herb. Our side dish was seaweed salad which according to several references http://www.livestrong.com/article/399180-is-seaweed-salad-healthy/ is quite nutritious but it is an acquired taste. This is the finished product…so pretty.

For dessert there was Mochi…basically balls of ice cream. They come in different flavors.Mochi

I will be returning soon since I saw some other interesting foods I want to play with.

Thank you once again,

Liz

 

 

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