teresa

I have had a day within a day and I would like to share it with you.

After leaving work, a little later than I should have I came home for a first.  Our first herb garden!  Elliott had to go out of town for an off site meeting so that left me to complete our seed planting.  Many of the seeds required soaking which was reminiscent of the wedding flowers, every cup out of the cupboards, filled with water and spread out on kitchen counters.  We didn’t get organized early enough in the weekend because of our special date to see the nerdcore movie so we didn’t start our soak until Sunday.

Tonight I had to prepare the pellets of soil by soaking them in water and then plant the seeds as instructed from 1/16″ to 1/4″ to 1/2″ deep.  I certainly hope that this measurement is not critical because I found this placement of the tiny seeds to be sketchy at best.  I started out spreading out the 3 seeds throughout the 2″ diameter pellet until after 2 or 3 I decided they could all go in the same hole in the middle.  I felt like a sushi chef, hunched over, with a spoon corralling the seeds from the glass and pouring them into the hole in the dirt, completing each implantation slowly and deliberately.  I kept a chart to know which herb was planted in which pellet, we have 2 of each including herbs like sage, basil, chives, mustard, and many more totaling 12.  We purchased the kit from www.herbkits.com.

After the herbs where planted and the lid installed  I walked to the grocery store in my “flip flops, flip flops” to purchase the remaining items I would need to make a broccoli salad.  Now all of this may sound normal to some of you but for those of you who really know me lets take a second to appreciate that I am starting a garden and cooking!  These are truly phenomenal steps for me.  I have had few hobbies at best the last few years and none of them have included cooking or gardening.

The cooking has been inspired by our recent efforts to go to the farmers market each week.  We started this as a step towards increasing our sustainability – buy local food.  It turned out it has also inspired us to eat more fruits and vegetables and to try new things.  So each Saturday we go to the farmers market, select our inspiration for the week (which has included a variety of mushrooms, eggplant, purple potatoes, green beans…) as well as our staples dates nan or focaccia for our weekly pizza dinner and so on and we are off.

So this week we bought broccoli which inspired us to make a knock off of the Costco broccoli salad.  The recipe I used is a blend between 2 I found on the internet:

• http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/001949broccoli_salad.php
• http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/broccoli-salad-recipe/index.html

The second one suggested blanching the broccoli which before today I would have thought had something to do with this Golden Girl . But now I know that it means to drop food in boiling water for a short amount of time which I decided was a good suggestion.  I also followed the instructions to cool the broccoli in a bowl of ice water, the crackling of the ice made this step fun.  I modified the recipe slightly, this is a confident cooking move that Elliott taught me.  In lieu of red or purple unions I used the white onion I already had in the fridge and caramelized it using brown sugar (another trick Elliott taught me).  This is partly because Elliott doesn’t like red onions and partly because I already had white onion and didn’t want to waste it, besides it allowed for creativity.  Also I decided to exclude the bacon so the caramelized onion would add some extra flavor.  I liked the dressing of the second recipe better using honey instead of sugar.  I did use white instead of apple cider vinegar because we currently have an overstock of 2 bottles of white vinegar, a good reason why to check your cabinet while making your grocery list.  I included peas and will use raisins, although those are at the office so I will have to add them to my lunch tomorrow before enjoying.  The end product looks like: 

All of this was completed with the sound of the waterfall from our courtyard for better or worse and the slight breeze through the apartment that every once in a while catches the vertical blinds and sends them dancing into each other for a few moments, “click clack, click clack”.

Tonight I will turn in by myself and will look at the soft glow of our sun in a jar.  A pretty cool gift that my Vistage group gave us as a wedding present along with some other goodies.  The sun jar is a solar panel with rechargeable batteries and a little light.  It charges during the day and lights up at night, pretty cool.

To more nights full of planting and cooking, who knew how fun it could be!  Of course the only thing that would have made it better besides raisins and a green thumb is Elliott.

As I was begging Elliott to go to the city pool with me the other day to do laps I realized something abot myself.  He said he didn’t want to go and he would let me test it out, see how it works and then he would go with me.  Thats when I realized how being brought up to notion that if you show weekness or fear your brothers will sing the chrorus of the song ‘don’t cry out loud’ really changed my life.  I fake, act, pretend whatever I have to when I am dolng something that is new, foreign, or scary.  I walk in there like I know exactly what I am doing.  For the most part I am very thankful for this.  It allows me to try new things and get out there. 

Analyzing it further I realize this mentality does affect much of my life.  When I was a new engineer I think I asked very limited questions because I wanted to look like I knew what I was doing.  This was dangerous because the first few years of learning are critical.  At meetings with a new client I have to force myself to ask questions for understanding about their process or procedure.  Because showing a lack of knowledge or understanding is totally against my grain.

Another reflection, one of the interesting parts of married life for us has been recently we have both not been as flexible.  I think right before the wedding we were both very flexible, I guess you could say walking on eggshells, we both did what we could to keep the other happy.  Now that the stress of the big event is over we are both working to recharge.  And neither of us is being as accomodating as we were before.  So I went to the pool by myself.  Walked in there like I knew what I was doing.  Found the women’s locker room – success.  Located a lane that I could use.  And I swam over 500 yards.  I think that the lifeguard was probably sure I didn’t know exactly what I was doing as I think my swimming form is still pretty rough.  That doesn’t matter though.  I needed to prove to myself I could do it becuase Deb and I are going to do a triathlon early next month and it is a 500 yard swim.  So now I just want to do it faster, or really with less breaks which will make it faster.

So believe it or not I would like to thank my brothers for toughening me up.  Teaching me to hide my feelings.  Because that has allowed me to do and experience things that I might not have wanted to do, instead I seek out the scary to conquer!  I do however balance that toughness with a reminder that it is good to ’show your feelings’ to those you love.