Question Answered and a Book

One of my friends saw my last post for a meatless beef broth and asked, why bother when you can get real beef broth right out of a can.  Short answer and big question - I'm a vegetarian and, have you read the ingredients list on a can of beef broth lately?  Besides sugar there's generally a list of polysyllabic words that sound like chemicals.  I like to know what I'm putting into my body.  It's all about choices.

A book I recently read is called "Keeper' by Andrea Gillies.  It's subtitle is "One House, Three Generations, and s Journey into Alzheimer's."  The focus of the book is on the author and her mother-in-law, Nancy, who's journey into the depths of Alzheimer's is documented.  The impact of that journey on the family is also honestly glimpsed. 

Keeper won the 2009 Wellcome Trust Book Prize, the United Kingdom's preeminent popular science writing award and the 2010 Orwell Prize. 

While the book was compelling and gave numerous reasons to fear Alzheimer's and aging, I felt that its emphasis on the loss of self and loss in general gave the book an oppressive tone.  Look around the room where you're sitting right now and notice everything that's the color blue.  Now close your eyes and tell me everything in the room that's the color yellow.  It's hard to focus on the yellow when you're looking only for the blue.

Quote by actor, Tony Curtis, who died this week at age 85.  "Service to others is the rent we pay for our time on this planet."  Wonderfully said.

Meatless Beef Broth

OK.  So you're wondering about my sanity.  How can a beef broth be meatless.  But I promise that when you cook up a batch of this broth, which can be used as the base for many wonderful dishes, the aroma of beef broth will fill your abode.

Ingredients:
   3 Tablespoons soy sauce
   2 teaspoons Kitchen Bouquet
   2 Tablespoons nutritional yeast
   1/2 cup chopped onion
   1/2 teaspoon rubbed sage
   1 teaspoon oil
   2 cups water

Combine everything in a saucepan and simmer for 5 minutes.  That's all there's to it!


Optional - go nuts and add some sliced mushrooms to make this into a delicious mushroom soup.  The broth in the picture is loaded with sliced mushrooms.  A sprinkle of Parmesan cheese on top is delicious.

Footnote:  If you're wondering about nutritional yeast it's a source of vitamins especially the B-complex vitamins and is a complete protein.  It's also naturally low in fat and sodium.  Really yummy when sprinkled on popcorn.  Available at stores that sell organic and vegetarian products.

Enjoy!

Indoor Windsock

Supplies:
  Mailing tube or oatmeal box
  Lid for the aforementioned
  Paint
  Paintbrush
  Glue Dots or other adhesive
  Ribbon or rickrack - 6 or 8 pieces, about 3 feet long plus 1 piece about 18 inches long for the handle
  Embellishments

If you're using an oatmeal box or other similar container you're going to have to cut the bottom out or make slits into the bottom edge in order to insert and attach the ribbons.

Paint your mailing tube, oatmeal box, or other container of that shape.  Add stripes or dots or stencil on a design.  You could also glue colored tissue shapes to the outside of the cylinder once the paint is dry.

Attach the streamer to the lower edge of the cylinder, sticking them in place with Glue Dots or other adhesive.  Attach embellishments to the ends of the ribbon if you'd like.

Attach the final 18-inch piece of ribbon and attach it to the top as a handle.  Snap the lid onto the container, which will hold the handle in place.

This windsock brings a splash of color to the indoors.  It's easy to construct and fun to decorate.

Enjoy!

9/11

It would seem that everything that could be said about 9/11 has been said.  But everyone has their own particular story.  The way that my husband and I experienced the event probably put us outside the box.  As we went through those days we were repeatedly tempted to say, "But wait..."

On 9/11 my husband and I were driving back to our home in the Midwest from Portland Maine.  We were listening to an audio book in the car and driving through Pennsylvania at about the time the plane went down in that state.  We were returning from an Aids ride, bicycling 400 miles in 5 days in order raise money to find a cure for Aids.  We were clueless as to what the rest of the world was experiencing.

When we finally stopped at a rest stop a gentleman outside the building said, "It's kind of strange not seeing any airplanes."  By our blank expressions he could tell we hadn't heard the news and told us to go inside the building and watch the TV.  We watched the interminable replay of the towers coming down.  The assembled travelers stood in silence, having no words to express what they were feeling about the images before them.  My husband and I, for reasons we had yet to discover, felt outside of the group.  Not a part.  We later discussed our feelings and guessed that it had to do with the week we had just experienced.

We had just come from a week of living with a diverse group of 2000 riders and hundreds of support personnel.  Emphasis on the word, diverse.  We were a mix of ethnic, abled, sexually orientated, and any other group that you want to throw into the mix.  The group had one goal in mind - to help everyone succeed.  I especially remember a veteran of many such rides who rode through the group dressed as a super hero with his cape flying out over the back tire of his bike.  As he pedaled past the novices in the group he would shout out, "Go, you super heroes!  You can do it!"  There were no "we" and "they" in the group.  There was only "us" working together to accomplish a common goal of making everyone a success.  We came away from the experience with a different mindset than the mindset that we began with.

We knew that people did not have to be about groups, about "we" and "they."  We knew that people could work together for the common good.  We had experienced it and believed that this could be translated to the world.  We experienced 9/11 with a profound sadness, not only because of the event itself, but also because of what we knew and wanted the rest of the world to know.  We had, and still have hope for creation of a world where everyone can be a winner.  So may it be.