Some Assembly Required

Sometimes eating well doesn’t mean cooking as much as assembling really nice foods. At the grocery store, I bought walnuts, blue cheese, apples, arugula (spicy lettuce that makes your mouth zing), avocado and sliced ham. Over the next few days, using different combinations of those ingredients, I made a salad, a sandwich, pasta, and an omelette (okay, scrambled eggs). No cooking! Not much anyway, just boiling noodles, making toast, and whipping up eggs. Yum! (I love fruit in salads and sandwiches. My husband thinks it’s a crime and calls me a fruit-murderer.)

There are a few “assembly-only” recipes in Easy Breakfasts from Around the World. Keilbasa and Toast from Poland, Brown Bread with Honey-Molasses Butter from Turkey, and La Boillie (rice with peanut butter) from Chad, Africa. Next time you don’t know what to eat for breakfast, don’t think “What can I cook?” think “What can I assemble?”

Merry Halloween

Kids trick-or-treated in our neighborhood yesterday from 1:00-3:00. It started raining at 2:00, which dampened the fun (ha ha) but we still had a steady stream of draculas, fairies, princesses, Batmans, Supermans, Buzz-Lightyears, peanuts, frogs, bums, and gorillas visiting our house. Our neighbor’s dog decided to be a squirrel for Halloween. One kid just wore her regular clothes, said she was a dance instructor, and her little sister was her student. Good one, I thought. Smart kid.

The Grim Raker

Then there was this guy in our yard, raking leaves like a fiend. Our neighbor asked, “What’s he supposed to be?” I said, he’s the Grim Raker! (aka my beloved husband).

That question “What’s he supposed to be?” got me remembering the Halloween when I was 13 and did not know what to be. I bought a mask of a plain woman at Ben Franklin. I put on one of my mom’s old dresses and carried a purse. It seemed lame but, oh, well, I tromped around with a bunch of friends. One homeowner looked at us and said, “Oh look, it’s a cowboy, a ghost, a vampire, the Bionic Man …and …and …and a … a … a lady!”

Yup. That was me. A generic lady. Not Marilyn Monroe, or a witch, or Wonder Woman. Just a nobody, clutching her empty purse. It seemed like a flaw, not to have a specific Halloween costume and I was bummed for the rest of the night. What if I grew up to be a nobody? If that generic neighbor (I didn’t know who she was) had merely said “Happy Halloween, kids, here’s your candy,” I never even would have remembered dressing up as a “woman” for Halloween. But because she pointed it out, faltering when she couldn’t define or recognize me, I have never forgotten it. Not that it was her fault, but it was my Charlie Brown moment.

When I taught, I drove my students crazy asking them to dredge up old memories and then, horrors!, analyze them. It’s one of my favorite things to do (analyze past events, not torment innocent students).

And Halloween is a perfect topic, a mysterious day when everybody dresses up as somebody else. What will you be for Halloween?? What costumes did you wear in Halloweens past? What is your best or worst Halloween story? Any Charlie Brown moments?

Falafel

Have you ever eaten falafel? They are chickpea balls (the size of donut holes), usually eaten in pita with tomato, lettuce, and a creamy dressing or yogurt sauce. Yum! When you eat them, you might think they would be hard to make, but they’re not! They’re so easy to make.

You can check out page 44 of Easy Vegetarian Foods From Around the World to see a recipe. Or look one up online.

A friend of mine tried the recipe. She didn’t have pita, so she put the falafel on a cucumber salad with garlic yogurt dressing. She and her family loved them! “I could eat these every day,” her son said. “They’re better than cookies.”

To learn more online, click here. This recipe says to boil the dough. Remember, you can do what you want — fry, bake, or boil.

But no matter how you cook it, you still get to eat falafel!

The Perks of this Work

In the past two weeks, I’ve been caught in the stop-and-go pace of freelance writing. Two weeks ago, I wrote full-speed ahead. Suddenly, a project I worked on was cancelled. No problem. Two more projects were ready to start. No, wait. One was on hold. Be ready for a meeting about the other soon. Wait, wait, wait … fidget, fidget, fidget. Meeting scheduled. Meeting cancelled. Scheduled, cancelled, and, finally, held! Project won’t start until next week, though. Last week, suddenly, both writing projects started at once on the same day! (Minor panic attack.) This week, I am full-speed ahead again, happily writing at my desk at home, in my PJs, with my dog, Casey, begging me to take her for a walk.

Believe it or not, I find this schedule one of the perks of the business. (Did you know the word perk comes from “perquisite” which means benefit or bonus?) I love when a challenge becomes a perk. The schedule can be stressful, because you don’t really know when your days off will be. But in the down times, I get a lot of other stuff done around the house (I’ll spare you details about the laundry and the state of our kitchen floor, etc.). Casey likes the down times too. She gets longer walks.

What are the perks of your work? Do you face challenges that turn out to be perks?

I better get back to work. Happy October!

Old Letters

Nobody writes letters anymore. It’s too bad. When you open the mailbox to find a stamped envelope with your name in ink in a friend’s handwriting, it makes your heart pound. You drop everything and curl up on the couch to read and reread the words. Sometimes the letter traveled from far away, or you’ll find treasures folded in with the pages, like pictures or stickers or funny cartoons. The joy of a letter felt more special than an email … (not to bash email, which is also fun to get from friends). You can tuck a letter into a book or under your pillow.

For a long time, I saved letters written to me. Recently I’ve been going through the boxes, sorting the envelopes, and giving the letters back to senders. When they reread them, they go back in time, into their personal histories. The notes reveal funny things. My sister started almost every one of her letters with an apology. “I’m sorry it took me so long to write back. Sorry I haven’t written in such a long time.”

Well, I’ve been feeling sorry I have not written on this blog for so long. It’s just that I’m still trying to figure out how to use a blog.

Do you write letters? Do you like getting them in the mail? Do you save them? How are letters different from email? (Hey, don’t knock compare / contrast! How would we make choices without it??)