Tag Archive | perseverance

Caketastrophe!

Feb19
Their time in DC was amazing. The number of people they gathered along their route to the Lincoln Memorial lifted my spirits, and the crowd that stood and listened to the closing ceremony was impressive.

I’m still following the Walk for Peace on Instagram, and reading articles about it as people including the monks reflect on what it meant for them, what it means for us. I enjoyed this article in Mindful.org, ‘An Invitation to Reimagine Where Peace Begins.’

“…the longer we resist offering our attention to these unhealed places, the more we will keep living through the reverberating echoes of those same wounds over and over and over again. Different possible futures are only made possible by first giving our loving awareness to what’s happening right now—even (maybe especially) when it surfaces sorrow, hopelessness, or anger that we’re not sure we can handle in the moment.”

It’s a good thing I’m practicing inner peace every day. In my Quest to bake birthday cakes, today’s has been rough! I started last night baking the cake and the cookies with which to decorate it. I got excited because the beaten egg yolks looked so perfectly aerated that I forgot to whip in the sugar before adding flour, so I had to add sugar last. I think it resulted in a slightly heavier batter that didn’t rise as much, but overall the cake itself was okay and the orange shortbreads were perfect.

The first attempt at white chocolate mascarpone frosting went horribly awry. I thought at first it was because I beat the butter and cheese at too high a speed: the recipe said the only thing you can do wrong is overmix it, and to beat it on medium til light and fluffy. Or maybe because the butter and cheese were different temperatures. But in retrospect I think it failed because I used the whisk attachment in addition to high speed. Anyway, I set that mess aside, grateful that I had another cup of mascarpone and another stick of butter. But that started to split too! Though the finished white frosting tasted delicious it looked rather like cottage cheese if you’d blended it just enough to make the curds really tiny. I was afraid to beat it longer to try to thicken it, in case that just made it split even worse! Piping was pointless, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t try, and gooped up the silicone piping bag for no reason. There’s not much more challenging baking tool to wash than a piping bag; I see why people use disposables but can’t bring myself to waste plastic like that.

The lemon curd for the filling between layers turned out beautifully, though. And to salvage the split white frosting I whipped up a quick chocolate ganache, grateful that I had not used all the cream and that I had dark chocolate on hand. However, that also started to split! What? I think I know what happened there too: I added the chocolate to the hot cream in the hot pan, instead of adding hot cream to chocolate in a cold bowl, and the heat caused the chocolate to seize. I was able to salvage it, though, by tossing in a tablespoon of soft butter and whipping it, but that made it too thick to pour a thin layer over top. So the cake ended up with too much frosting of two kinds of chocolate that wouldn’t hold on the sides, and I was grateful I had the shortbreads which I’d planned to stick on there anyway. I took my tithe portion before frosting the cake and filled that missing space with shortbread also. I’d have been sent home from Bake Off with that cake, but instead of feeling I’d failed I chalked it up to practice. And isn’t that what this Birthday Cake Quest is all about, learning new skills? I learned a lot, and the Head Bitch at the Bad Dog Ranch was delighted with all the “many fun layers of yummies!” which is all that really matters.

After the cake was picked up, I dumped the split mascarpone/butter mix back into the Kitchenaid, and used the beater attachment to try to salvage that. It worked, sort of smoothing it, which is how I figured out that while the whisk might work for creaming butter and sugar, it doesn’t work for creaming butter and mascarpone. I was grateful that I have a flourishing herb garden in pots in the sunroom, where I harvested a handful of rosemary, oregano, parsley, sage, chives, and a little tarragon, which I minced and mixed into the butter blend with salt and pepper. All those fresh herbs left only a hint of vanilla from when it was destined to be frosting, and it turned into an adequate spread for toast for lunch, and topping for a baked potato for dinner. A busy and educational day in the kitchen!

I’m grateful, too, that we got a little snow the past few days, with more up in the mountains, but Colorado (the state and the river) are in dire drought this year regardless. That’s the real ‘tastrophe, as explained in this article from The Atlantic. Just before the snow fell I caught the first crocus blooms, and enjoyed a few sessions counting birds for the Great Backyard Bird Count. Never mind that there were hardly any birds over the weekend, at least it got me and Wren outside. So just a few more things I’ve been grateful for this week:

Joyous Effort

Nov28
In a way, my gratitude starts with potatoes. Some of my mother’s ancestors left Ireland and came to the U.S. when the subsistence potato crop failed catastrophically in the mid-19th Century. Some had left Ireland a century earlier, perhaps just sick of potatoes, and successfully established themselves as scions of their new country in both military and business leadership.
I’m grateful for all the elements of this, and every, lunch…

I am profoundly grateful for more than enough. In this unequal world where the rich are currently getting shamefully richer and the poor and disenfranchised are about to get hit with even more egregious existential assaults, I have enough. I’ve never been dangerously hungry, never slept out in the cold except by choice. One thing I’ve learned in recent years is not to tell others what they should do, a principle of live and let live that the politicians who’ve hijacked my ancestors’ Republican Party, and on which the formerly Grand old party was based, have lost sight of. But what I desperately wish, is that those Americans, those people everywhere, who have more than enough, would quit grasping for more and more and more. For there are so many humans, so many sentient beings of all species, who currently suffer because of the insatiable greed of the wealthiest one percent. It isn’t fair, and it isn’t sustainable. And it will only get worse from escalating profiteering and shrinking scientific and rational grounding, without strong, consistent resistance to the new world order that looms with this incoming regime.

I’m grateful to live in a supportive neighborhood, with strong and helpful friends, including one who has shoveled my pathway and helped clear my driveway, and one who came to help Wren set up a new bed-couch.
I’m grateful for nourishing moisture, even though this week’s precipitation caused numerous tree limbs to come down. I haven’t been able to get out and look around much, but can tell just around the house that several junipers didn’t withstand the heavy wet snow and ice; including the sentinel by my front gate. I’m grateful my car wasn’t parked under it, though that limb already broke off a few years ago and landed just behind the car.

I’m grateful for a cozy, solid house to shelter from the elements during snow and ice that brought awesome power to the forest; grateful for good fortune, for the choices I made throughout my life, and for the inheritances from several generations of long-ago Irish farmers and German Lutheran immigrants who made it big in banking in the 18th Century. That’s right, in the 1700s, in St. Louis and in Washington, D.C. (I’m grateful for findagrave.com which helped me follow my initial question about the provenance of my great-great-great-grandfather, Gottlieb Grammer, son of a Lutheran minister in the German state of Wurtemburg.) Some of those ancestors were no doubt One Percenters at a time when the discrepancy wasn’t quite so astonishing as it is now. It definitely been a case of trickle-down economics, in which some descendants turned a fraction of a fortune into their own wealth, and some (myself included) did not. I am the end of my mother’s line of the family, though her brother’s children are now becoming grandparents. We cousins haven’t gathered on Thanksgiving as a clan since the death of our common grandmother in 1990, whom we called Grammer, which was her middle name… What a rabbit hole! All to express that I’m grateful for my mother and her ancestors, who contributed to the illusory sense of security I experience this bright winter day.

I dug this old photo out of a trunk of Auntie’s a couple of years ago but only recently got it into a frame. I knew it was of our ancestor Gottlieb, and learned in my research today that he bore at least three daughters. Was this our original Alice, grandmother of our grandmother? This ancestral matrilineal inquiry is actually quite in keeping with the novel I’m reading… I’m grateful to be fascinated by my own mind.
I’m grateful for my now-consistent nighttime arm-warmer. Once an occasional occurrence, Topaz now sleeps here every night since I returned to the bed post-surgery.

Grateful for another perfect loaf – maybe the most perfect loaf ever – of homemade bread, and for all the little potted plants thriving under the light; grateful for the good fortune to have all the ingredients from salt and flour to solar-powered electricity and an oven and a counter and running water everything else that is more than enough to enjoy being alive in this precarious time. I wish for everyone who reads this to be grateful for what you have.

I’ve read that you should let your bread rest for at least an hour, better yet several, before slicing it, to retain moisture and allow some alchemy to happen inside. But really, who could resist a loaf that perfect, so I sliced off an end and enjoyed a deconstructed cheese sandwich for lunch, with triple-cream Brie, a cold chicken drumstick, half an avocado, mayo, and of course dark chocolate M&Ms. At the sunroom table, sitting in a comfortable chair, reading The Volcano Daughters. I’m grateful for every single element of this moment, and all the causes and conditions that led to it, including but not limited to: every bit of food and how it was grown and/or processed, and the people who did that, and the people responsible all along its trajectory from farm or factory to my table; and for the table and the tree it originated as and the craftspeople who made it, and the stone of the sunroom floor and the craftsman who gathered and laid it, and the placemat from China I bought at a little store in Kilmarnock with Auntie; and the Kindle and the technology and people behind every element of that, and access through a digital library to literature from around the world, and to Gina Maria Balibrera for writing a marvelous fable for our time about greed, fascism, insanity, myth, persecution, and survival with fabulous female characters; and for the tired old leather chair given new life with sturdy cushions, one bought, one gifted, and for the giver of that gift… Indeed I have more than enough.

Wren surveys the damage from the snow: half the tree will need to be cut down. Will it make sense to keep the remainder which is clearly losing strength, or is it time to remove the entire tree? What a change it will be either way.

I’m grateful that at just over ten weeks post hip replacement I have the strength and energy to shovel snow, that I’m able to bring joyous effort to the task, and able to reflect with equally joyous effort on all that I have to be grateful for. I’m grateful to people out there in the wide world – you – who find my musings worth reading. And I’m grateful for a surprising inquiry from a fellow sangha member this morning, to wit: We all focus this time of year on what we are grateful for or whom we are grateful to; let us consider in addition, who or what might be grateful to or for us? And so I’ll spend the rest of this Thanksgiving evening basking in the reflection of the dogs, cats, friends, students, my mother, my auntie, even trees, and anyone else I can think of who might be or once have been grateful for or to me, just as I am.

Practice Makes Perfect

Feb13
Look, Ma! No Cheese! I’ve been approaching Dairy Overload this past week, so was grateful to have a bunch of goodies to make a delicious salad for lunch, even without cheese. And the dressing was mostly walnut oil and vinegar, I just made it in an ’empty’ mayonnaise jar to use up the last tablespoon I couldn’t scrape out.

I made apple cider cinnamon rolls again, this time determined to do everything exactly according to the recipe. I started the dough Sunday night, left it in the mudroom overnight, and was delighted to see it so beautifully risen in the morning. I remembered to bring it inside as soon as I got up, and set the bowl across from the fire to help it come to room temperature more quickly. It rolled easier this time, and I brushed the melted butter on the dough as prescribed instead of mixing it with the filling.

It made a perfect log that turned out just about the diameter of the rolling pin. I sliced that in half, then quarters, and each quarter into thirds…
…making twelve nearly perfectly even rings.
These rose for an hour until doubled, more or less…

And this time they baked perfectly all the way through. Then I made the glaze exactly according to directions, cooking one-half cup apple cider with a pinch of salt down to exactly a quarter cup, and mixing in cream cheese and butter. It turned out perfectly. And once the rolls had cooled for five minutes, I spread a very thin layer of glaze over, and let them cool an additional twenty minutes before spreading the rest of the glaze. I’m not sure why this extra step, but I’m not going to argue with it: I can imagine some magical alchemy of the thin layer melting into the hot rolls and creating a protective film or something.

The looked absolutely perfect. I could hardly wait for them to cool enough to try one. And when I did, it tasted like something was missing. It was delicious, but there was just a little something something not quite right… a few hours later it hit me: I forgot the nutmeg! The filling mix, mostly brown sugar, also calls for cinnamon, ground ginger, nutmeg, and a pinch of ground cloves. I had lined up the spices from the baking drawer, but forgot to set out the nutmeg grinder from the countertop turntable. I’ve never been a huge nutmeg fan, but I can see that even a quarter teaspoon can add that extra little pop in a cinnamon roll. Oh well! Practice makes perfect.

Perseverance

Dec24
Wren, by popular demand. She’s cleaning the pot I cooked her latest batch of food in. And what a good job she’s doing!

I’m grateful for so much today. For friends reaching out or responding… for the desperately compassionate work of people like Robert Hubbell and John Pavlovitz among so many others who are trying to help us navigate these dark global days and darker nights. Honestly, it’s hard for me to get done in a day the few things I want to get done, and not because I’m overwhelmed with holiday festivities.

But I’m grateful I did manage to get bread baked today, and what a perfect loaf it was. I’m grateful for all the usual things; and grateful for incrementally longer days, and only two months or less until I can be gardening again. I’m grateful a lost cat I don’t even know returned home safely after weeks away. I’m grateful I’ve learned an antidote for empathy fatigue, and that is compassion. I’m grateful friends are healing well from injuries and surgeries, and grateful they have good medical care. I’m grateful I have backup internet access. I’m grateful my puppy, though her eye condition fluctuates, is healthy in all other ways. I’m grateful that daily exercise with my cousin seems to be keeping physical pain at bay these days.

And I’m grateful for perseverance. I set myself a monthly deadline to publish a podcast, and I’ve failed to meet it as often as I’ve succeeded. I’m more than a month overdue this time, but I’m grateful today that I finally managed to overcome inertia, to write and release episode 8 of ‘Suffer Less with Mindfulness,’ available now on your favorite podcast site. This episode is called Letting Go is a Diamond. Check it out when you’re somewhere you can get still and meditate for half an hour.

And of course I’m grateful for the cheese sandwich, after days without one. Today’s iteration: smoked gouda, avocado, lettuce, shiitake ‘bacon,’ and requisite mayo and Penzeys sandwich sprinkle. Each sandwich, each moment, unique.

Obstacles in Stride

Sep7

Morning smoke haze, the new normal in the gathering storm. Visually beautiful in its own way. One obstacle to joy can be an overarching awareness of the planet’s dire state; and yet, to me, that makes experiencing joy in all the tenuous elements of being alive all the more urgent.

An unforeseen obstacle on the path this morning threw me for a few seconds: wait, where’s the path? Did I get off the trail? No, just a down dead piñon tree. With equanimity, I stepped around it, knowing I’ll return and remove it when I have the right tools for the job, gloves and a rope. And maybe wait a bit til my hand is better. No hurry! Sometimes simply avoiding an obstacle for awhile is the wise choice.

I’m grateful for our long, leisurely walk this morning, a holiday stroll. Stellar is feeling good these days, which inspires him to bark for me in the morning and bounce on his front legs, eager for his walk; and makes him move faster, a bit too fast. His back feet trip over each other more when he’s feeling good, but he has strength to correct and doesn’t stumble as much as when he moves slower, when he’s weaker, and falls down. Fingers crossed for a long streak of this mobility and his obvious joy in his morning walks.

After a self-satisfied shelving of the first preserved jars, I turned my attention to today’s major obstacle, the plugged drain that is causing kitchen sink water to burble up from the sunroom pond drain. I was optimistic. I’d borrowed a drain snake, and started to work after morning coffee. I had the right tool for the job, which I’m always grateful for having, and a spirit of joyful effort.

Three hours later, I had seemingly cleared the clog, dismantled and thoroughly cleaned out all the pieces of undersink pipe, perhaps irrevocably kinked the snake, and managed one load of dishes, before the pond gurgled full again and I surrendered to whatever tomorrow brings: effective enzyme action, or a call to the plumber. I went on with the day, detouring around the obstacle after giving it my best shot, practicing patience, and grateful that it isn’t worse: the toilet and bathroom sink still drain, and the shower flows straight outside. Fresh water, for which I’m always grateful, still runs from the faucets, I’ve got a bucket to wash dishes in, and a yarden right outside the front door that will welcome the dishwater.

I served up a leftover burrito with chopped tomato and the last half of avocado, ate a late lunch outside on the patio, took Stellar for another stroll, and enjoyed the rest of my Labor Day holiday. I’m grateful for the mindfulness skills and practice that have enabled me to take obstacles in stride, with patience and equanimity, knowing these are not big deals in the grand scheme of things. Trees in the trail, clogs in the drain, smoke in the sky, and even Stellar’s lameness are all simply transient conditions, while gratitude, contentment, compassion and calm are states I can cultivate and come to depend upon.

Late in his full day of adventures, naps, dreams, and watchdog duties, Stellar’s stand resembled a half-sit, but that doesn’t dampen his lust for life as he sniffs the wind currents. I aspire to live like this dog, so completely present in each moment.