• Baby Boomers,  It is What it is...,  Personal Growth

    Baking Cookies

    November 2, 2012

    For as long as I can remember, I have been making great quantities of baked goods (cookies, fudge, candy and pies) every year, at this time, for the holidays.  I spent ten years perfecting my chocolate chip cookie recipe and then I changed it some more to make it a healthy cookie.  I was going through menopause and the doctors said, “no more white sugar and no more white flour”.   So the recipe was updated even again.  I still have the original version written on a message pad that I bought in 1986.  That’s how serious I have always been about my holiday baking.

    Well, a couple of years ago, I quit smoking.  I am not sure that it was soon enough, but, it is what it is.  I was 52… since then, I have been s.t.r.u.g.g.l.i.n.g. with my weight.  Suddenly I find myself needing a Ph.D. in nutrition.  Recently, I was talking with my daughter-in-law and she expressed a frustration with this very need.  If you want to be healthy in today’s America, you must do an e.x.t.r.e.m.e. amount of research and NOT trust anything you see on the food packaging.  It really is that difficult to find good food.  So my favorite daughter-in-law tells me that she has actually become resentful because food companies make it difficult to just simply go grocery shopping.  But I digress…apologies.

    This year, I have no little people around to bake for.  My grown sons have partners, and everyone seems to want to eschew sugar.  I don’t get the warm fuzzy vibes for cookies and holiday sweets locally.  My partner and I are working very hard on losing another ten pounds before the holidays.  He is going to the gym and I am faithfully walking twice a week and stretching three times a week.  We eat tons of vegetables and I make an extreme effort to cook dinners that are less than 500 calories.  We quit ice cream, rarely eat bread and finally: the pasta is whole grain.  I want you to know that I resisted whole grain pasta for YEARS.

    My oldest daughter has been instrumental in our diet transformation.  She finally convinced me through a series of (lectures really) research articles, that food, has indeed changed in the last 30 years.  My own observation is that some things are going back to the way they were when my mother was cooking, for example, now my daughter tells me that sugar is the “safest” sweetener (and so the pendulum swings, doesn’t it?).

    In any case, this year I said to myself “self, don’t bake all of that mess, you don’t want to eat cookies and fudge now, it will just mess up your diet, no one likes that stuff and no one appreciates that stuff.”  Well then, here is what happened; I started thinking about my mothers (Patsy and Ella Mae) and their cooking and all of our traditions.  I got all nostalgic and then I remembered that my partner’s son-in-law loves home baked goodies.  Then I thought about my daughter in Virginia, who doesn’t worry so much about food processing and sugar and she is taking care of 3 boys under the age of 4!  Then I thought about posterity.  And, of course!  Here is the other piece: I love baking and cooking and fooling around in the kitchen.  I figure that I can find an audience that will appreciate holiday goodies from my kitchen.  I just have to mail them away very quickly so that my partner and I do not gain 5 pounds.

    I can’t quit baking yet, I’m just not going to give it up.  I will, some day, and maybe even soon, just not today…

    The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies:

    I do use butter flavor Crisco, for a couple of reasons: today’s margarine has a lot of water in it, so it messes up the recipe.  On the other hand, butter melts too quickly in the oven and the cookies come out flat.  The Crisco has some hydrogenated oil, but I don’t know how to get around that flaw yet.  So here it is:
    Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
    1&3/4 cups of unbleached whole wheat organic flour
    1/2 cup of unbleached white flour (needed for recipe stability)
    1 teaspoon baking soda
    1/2 teaspoon salt
    Mix in large bowl – I use a fork to stir the dry ingredients briskly
    In another bowl, cream together 1 stick of butter flavor Crisco with 1 cup of hard packed brown sugar and 1/2 cup of regular white sugar
    Mix in 2 eggs with the beater and 1&1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
    Blend / mix the two bowls together into whichever bowl is the biggest.
    Add your chocolate chips, 12 ounces is = to 2 cups, I also add 1 cup of chopped walnuts.  Some folks do not like nuts in their cookies, you can take half of the dough out and add walnuts to just that half.
    It usually takes about 12 minutes for the cookies to be done, I look for a tan crown on the top of the cookie.
    I now use parchment paper (which I love) for baking cookies, well worth skipping the cookie sheet clean up.
    25 years ago, I invested in a Revereware stainless steel cookie sheet (no aluminum), it has served me very well.  If you are going to bake, it is worth the investment.

    I hope that however you decide to celebrate, that it makes you happy and fills your heart with joy.

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  • Hmmm...,  Philosophy

    I Am Sure Everyone Else Knew This…

    October 23, 2012

    There is a different quality to life if you are not desperately working on achievement, or worse yet, over-achievement.  There is a totally different experience of time that is available only to those who have time.  I used to get very frustrated by unemployed folks who spend a lot of time on FaceBook.  I wasn’t frustrated for any reason except that they were frustrated by me.  I get invitations to play something or the other and there is just no way that I will get to that activity.  There has never been enough time in my life.

    Here it is: there is a thoughtfulness, thoroughness and completeness available to those lucky people who have time to dedicate themselves to the object of their desire…

    I have never found this to be the case in my life and now that I have discovered this new possibility (called time), I am thrilled and amazed.  I have always been one without enough time.  I always prioritized my activities, yet in retrospect, with my new-found wisdom about time, I can see that prioritization falls very short of the individual goal-making.

    Shockingly, I have relentlessly lectured others about these concepts.  I explained to my daughters and daughters-in-law that life energy is finite and you must make decisions about where you want to spend your life energy!  I didn’t know that I was talking about TIME.  To do a thing well, one must have time to do it.  It takes time to bring those qualities to the object of your desire: thoughtfulness, thoroughness and completion.

    Isn’t everything done better with those qualities afforded to it?  So there it is, the rub, the relentless pursuit of achievements and the time it takes to actually accomplish them.  It is the paradox of modern times, if you pursue accomplishment, you become busy, making it difficult to have accomplishment.

    Here I am, playing in the middle.  I currently have some time, which I do not want to lose, it’s wonderful.  However, I would like to achieve a few things…

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  • World Affairs

    The Power of We Begins at Home

    October 15, 2012

    I was very happy to hear that Blog Action Day 2012 is about The Power of We.  I couldn’t help but think that the most important “Power of We” begins in our own heart and in our own home. The micro level of we is where it all must start. Exclusivity cannot exist within the power of we. Power of we requires a new value, a newly unified belief system: Inclusivity.

    In order for us to begin our process, we must be personally aware of our tendency, either culturally or within our belief system, to be exclusive. Exclusivity gives us what sociologists call “belongingness” and while this is a very good thing – it will not help us with the Power of WE.

    We need each other for all that there is to be human.

    If you are inclusive, it is much more difficult for you to cheat and steal from others. If you are inclusive, you realize that your own well being is as important as the person who is beside you.  If you were to preface your thought and activity with the concept of we; you would find a remarkable change coming over your life.  By acknowledging the importance and the value of others, you bring a new energy to every encounter.  That energy transforms your encounter into a process that benefits everyone rather than just one.   It takes faith and diligence to give power to inclusivity, yet it is the way for making a future for everyone.

    As we deal with the awfulness of the “one percenters” and those who have tricked and cheated the world in order to gain for themselves, we can know beyond a shadow of doubt that the “power of we” will prevail.

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  • Economic Equality (A Goal),  Womens Issues,  World Affairs

    I Do Not Wish to be Political, But…

    October 13, 2012

    I  watched the vice-presidential debate this week between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan.  I woke up this morning (two days later) feeling angry and here is why:  forget about the idea that a white man (Paul Ryan) believes that he can tell me whether or not I can have an abortion, forget that that issue is in the very forefront of this presidential battle.  I am unbelievably disappointed that we are not saying more about the awfulness of war.  Throughout the 20th century our leaders have taken us to war.  For decades now, we are the most heavily armed country in the world.  In any serious fight, the United States of America, is completely superior in weaponry.

    Yet, we, as a nation, continue to send our young men into the line of fire.  If we believe so much in the sanctity of human life, that some declare that “life begins at conception and therefore abortion is murder”, then how do we, these same such people that call ourselves Americans, then send an 18 year old man into a war that we cannot articulate a reason for?

    Any reasoning person would think we are insane.  Our politicians (thank God, not all of them) want to control women’s bodies and make sure that every woman who makes a mistake with a man MUST give birth to an unwanted child and yet these same people will mandate a war that kills and maims our young men and it just doesn’t make any sense.

    As a nation, we have to decide to call it, one way or another.  Do we value human life?  If so, how can a fetus have a more viable place among us than our 18 year old sons and daughters?

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  • Love and Relationships

    If You Miss Someone That You Love Dearly

    October 8, 2012

    At least once a week, when you think about missing your loved one, you must stop everything that you are doing and let them know that you miss them and love them.  If you have more than one “missed one”, that is okay!  At least once a week, remind one of your loved ones how much you love them.  You will feel more connected in your heart and your loved one will too.

    Too often, we are too busy to let people know how much we care about them.  By making a weekly commitment, we can keep our love energetic and make sure that our loved ones feel our love.

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  • Baby Boomers,  Love and Relationships,  Speaking as a Parent

    Who Does That?

    October 1, 2012

    I asked my sister, because I am very frustrated about how adults blame their parents for their life.  My sister gently reminded me that is the point of therapists and shouldn’t I know that?  I’ve been a therapist for longer than a decade…

    I realized that by going beyond my own childhood demons, I had lost touch with being young, with being thirty, with the whole idea of evolving from child to adult to parenting and grandparenting and on, and on.  Often people learn to resolve their childhood when they are raising their own children.  At times, life can be so difficult that people have to stop and engage in therapy so that childhood issues can be put to rest and life can move forward.

    However, this new fashion (and it may be old, just un-recognized) of blaming your parents for all of your adult life is just unrealistic.  Yes, I inherited outgoing behavior from my mother and yes I inherited a short frustration fuse from my father, I get all of that.  Isn’t it up to me to decide what I do with that?  If I get angry with every supervisor I have because s/he reminds me of my father and I end up chronically unemployed, is that my father’s fault?  If my mother spoiled me and I therefore expect my jobs to be easy and life to be without sacrifice, is that my mother’s fault?

    We all experience great pain and great grief in our lives.  Some of us have great challenges, such as disabilities and handicaps.  Some of us have had great parents who taught us how to cope and how to be disciplined.  Some of us had great parents who TRIED to teach us how to cope and have discipline and we did not listen or integrate those values into our lives.  Our hair color is determined by DNA and possibly our attitude about life is determined by DNA.  Who we are is a complex connection between our DNA, how we feel about ourselves and our intense and intimate relationships with ourselves and with others. 

    I believe to the bottom of my heart that we owe it to our best self to find out what we are capable of by applying our best effort and our best discipline to our own lives.  In order to do that, we must own our lives.  In order to own our own lives, sometimes, we must reclaim it from our parents.  We must unequivocally state, my life, my responsibility, my results.  This action requires bravery and ownership of some, perhaps, not so good decisions.  I do believe that this action is one great way to happiness.  If you are in another’s “clutches” you may never gain freedom for yourself and that is a sad way to live a life.

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  • It is What it is...,  Love and Relationships,  Speaking as a Parent

    Clarification…

    September 19, 2012

    Being loving and gentle does not mean allowing your “other” to do and have anything s/he wants.  If you are treating your partner and/or your kids this way, then I must tell you, that you are mistaken.  Recall that codependence comes out of a very small and subtle beginning.  We allow our loved one to speak inappropriately and then we allow our loved one to be rude and brusque and before we know it, we are being abused.

    How do we assure that people do not treat us badly?  We must let them know in an unrelenting conversation what the effect of their behavior is on ourself.  It’s important that we do this from the beginning of the relationship and not wait until we are being abused.

    I mean this!  Start with your infant.  It is quite the thing these days to allow the child to run the household.  We know that this is not the correct way of doing things, but it is the easy way to do things.  Conflict is difficult and who wants to participate in anything that is difficult?  Easier to let the “wild child” to just run free.

    Mistake.

    If you have a “wild child” you make a mistake if you let this child run free.  I’ll admit that parenting is a complex combination of who-I-am and who-you-are; it is important for parents to remember that kids NEED real limits placed on their behavior.  It’s not an option to gallivant and roam freely in this United States.  To allow a child to think this, is an error for the child.  The child grows up with expectations of an easy-going world, which, of course, does not exist.

    Do the difficult thing including the nurture, nourish, it’s the right thing to do…

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