proactivity

Plans for the Par-Tay

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Image by TheAndrasBarta from Pixabay

Tomorrow is the annual member picnic for the Cherry Creek Chorale, with about 75 people attending. I went to Costco this morning to pick up the food for the items I’m making, and I had the same experience that I’ve had many times before: going ahead and getting started on the preparations gave me a shot of adrenaline. I’d been going around in a state of low-level anxiety about this event, but now that the fridge is loaded up with the food and I have a plan for tomorrow I’m looking forward to it.

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The 400 Treats of a Fine August Wedding

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photo credit: Jim Simons

Hope you got the Dr. Seuss reference.

Anyway, we had a lovely, lovely wedding at our church Saturday. The colors were navy blue and yellow, the flowers were sunflowers and baby’s breath, and all in all it was truly charming. They even had little packets of sunflower seeds at each place setting, and while normally I think such things are a total waste, somehow this little gesture seemed quite fitting even though I have no plans to actually, like, plant them. (I’ll probably give them to my mother-in-law.) People had labored to put up draped

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This, too, shall pass.

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Somehow, we have to manage to do two contradictory things at once: Passionately enjoy and pursue the present, with whatever challenges and pleasures it holds, and at the same time keep at least a corner of our minds focused on what comes next.

I’ve been pondering this lately because, and I’m sure you couldn’t possibly have guessed this, I’ve been listening to Liz Craft, a TV writer and producer and the sister of Gretchen Rubin. I reference her podcasts all the time,

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A Lovely Payoff

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Not a food-related post today, but just a nice reminder from our trip that sometimes you get to see the fruits of your labors in a surprising and gratifying way. These two trees are in the front of our old house in Northern Virginia where we lived from 1994-2009. We planted them when Gideon was a baby/toddler–I think he may have been a year and a half old. I remember that we did some gardening in the front yard with him sitting out there in his playpen with us. Jim and I pondered and pondered about what trees to choose and decided on the contrast of the Japanese red maple with the Kousa dogwood. The photograph doesn’t do the dogwood justice; it was covered with blooms. Kousas are so much nicer than the regular dogwoods as they bloom quite a bit later and their blossoms are longer-lasting than the regular ones. I keep saying  that I want to plant one here, as they are hardy to zone 4. Since they bloom later in the season they are less likely than the earlier-flowering ones to have their buds killed by a freeze. Seeing the spectacular results of our efforts over two decades ago is a nice spur for me to get going on planting one now. They take awhile to get going, and we aren’t necessarily going to be at this house for 20 more years! Maybe I’d better go over to the garden center today and see if they have any in stock.

Is there a project you need to start so that you can see the results down the road?

Two Recent Gatherings, Plus a Great Frosting Recipe

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Here I sit in Kansas City, Missouri, well after the events I described in my last post: the post-concert reception and the dinner for the annual business meeting. So I’ll give you a quick update and then a great, simple frosting recipe that you can use in the place of that horrible powdered-sugar stuff. I’ll be doing an exhaustive (and exhausting) recipe and variations for my streamlined Swiss buttercream, but that will have to wait.

In the meantime, here’s what I did, with some helpful hints along the way:

I nixed the black pepper-Parmesan biscotti and just stuck with the spicy Cheddar cookies.

I nixed the banana cupcakes and just stuck with the pistachio ones, part of them with strawberry buttercream (recipe to come) and part with white chocolate-cream cheese frosting (recipe below).

Sorry about the rather distorted photograph; it was taken in haste via smartphone at the reception itself.

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My Personal New Year’s Resolutions

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Image by Mary Pahlke from Pixabay

I have a dear friend who said that she always looked at her birthday as the start of her own personal New Year. I feel the same way. Sunday was my 67th, and I had promised myself that I’d take an A1C test then, which I did yesterday. After a glitch with the first test, I got a result with the second. (Don’t worry—I’m going to get my money back.) It was (ta-da-da-da-a-a-a-h!) 5.3. If the test is correct, then I’ve managed to get down to well below the new, lowered threshold for pre-diabetes of 5.7. (There’s some controversy over whether or not this stricter definition is warranted, as people are being put on

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Bad Advice from a Good Source.

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Image accessed from Soloman Baking Co. website, http://solomanbakingco.com/chip-variety/

What’s the bad advice? I’ll quote two statements (actually imperatives) from the back of the bag: “Snack Often with Our Guilt-Free Ancient Grain Chips!” and “great for all day snacking.” What’s the good source? This locally-owned company, Soloman Baking Co., that produces a range of pita bread and pita chips. My mother-in-law had bought a bag of their chips on sale and boy, were they good! I liked them so much that I bought a dozen bags online. (Small bags.) But here’s the thing: they’re very tempting just to eat on their own, and their overwhelming encouragement on the bag is to eat the chips as snacks. I’ve eaten two of the bags, I think, and while I’ve tried to eat them as an adjunct to a meal probably most of them were eaten between meals–the dreaded s-n-a-a-a-a-a-a-c-k-s. I plan to use the rest of the crackers as part of a concert reception and use them up that way. They’re just too tempting! (I normally buy chips and crackers to use for parties

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My Weight History–What’s Yours?

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Well, the post that was going to be written on Christmas Eve is being written today. What with cooking, and running around madly, and game playing, and movie watching, all with our guests in the house, my beloved sister-in-law and her husband (my brother-in-law-in-law), not a whole lot of blog posting has taken place. I have some time this morning, though, and want to get some more material down before the start of the new year.

I may be re-plowing old ground here, but I’m not going to go back through all 500+ articles on this site to find out. My point here is to encourage you to do what I’m doing today: go back and look at your weight history. Let me emphasize again: this blog has not transitioned into some rivulet of Weight Watchers. But your weight is an indicator of how you’re eating, and I am obsessed with the subject of eating well and healthfully. The more we can see our weight as an end result of behavior that can be changed, the better off we’ll be.

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Change Your Eating by Changing Your Mind

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As we head further into the holiday season I think it’s a good time to launch my series on respecting food roles. Indeed, sometime over the next few weeks you’ll see this entire site transform before your very eyes! The banner will change from its leafy tendrils to a food-related theme and the name will change from “Intentional Living” to “Respect Food Roles.” And what are those roles? Glad you asked. As I’ve thought about that question I’ve come up with only two legitimate ones:

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