My Favorite Things

Tonight is the Relief Society "weekday meeting," or the meeting-formerly-known-as-Enrichment. It's the first time since I've moved here that I've been in town for the meeting and I'm going. But there's homework for this one--I have to bring stuff. My favorite stuff. It's made me really think about what my favorite things are.

Music that lifts your spirit and soothes your soul:

Listening to this boy makes me happy. When it gets really turbulent on an airplane and I need to go to my Happy Place, I put on my headphones and listen to Jason Mraz on my iPod and he takes me there.

Just look at him. This is my favorite CD of his. Well, it's my only CD of his.

Favorite book:
Where to begin? There are so many. My two most re-read books during the last year were Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist and Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love. Both books have dog-eared pages and highlighted passages throughout, and both books were consciousness-raising for me, teaching me lessons I needed to learn--about trusting my instincts, listening to my heart, recognizing the "omens" on my life's path, and accepting the direction that path takes. Tonight, if I can find my copy, I'll take the witty and wise Eat Pray Love with me instead of the metaphysical allegory of The Alchemist. Don't want to blow too many minds.

My personal "feel-good" movie:
Return to Me. Filmed in Chicago and directed by Bonnie Hunt, this is the story of a man who falls in love with the woman who received his dead wife's heart. The tagline was "A comedy straight from the heart." It's funny, charming, full of great performances. Just lovely. The last time I visited Chicago, I went to the little restaurant that is the setting for many of the scenes and sat and thought about the movie and how much I like it.

A painting or poster that makes life brighter:

This one has me stumped. Well, I love Impressionism. I love the light and the lift it gives me. I don't have any Impressionistic paintings, though. I have books of paintings. Looking, looking.

"Water-Lilies, Evening Effect," Claude Monet. I saw this very one in Paris.

"Must-have" make-up, lotion, or shampoo:
I'm gonna go with perfume instead. For years, whenever I visited EPCOT's Norway Pavilion I enjoyed dousing myself with the sweet, fresh Laila perfume sold there--"an infusion of Norwegian mountain wildflowers." Two years ago I finally bought some and now I am hooked. After falling in love with two fragrances (No. 1 by Laura Ashley and Perfect White Dress by Bare Escentuals) that were discontinued, I am so happy to have found one that will always be available. The only negative--the bottle is made of slippery glass. I've already broken two of them. The bathroom smelled good forever, though!

Favorite dessert:I'm pretty simple. I love the chocolate croissants at La Madeleine. Buttery, flaky pastry filled with just the right amount of warm semi-sweet chocolate really does it for me. And they are a cinch to re-create!
So there you have it. Some of my favorite things. How am I going to fit them all into my purse to take to Relief Society tonight without looking like I am the over-achiever in the group? I'll just pack it all into another one of my favorite things--my Lily Waters fabric tote. When I use mine, I feel as happy as the girl in the ad.

The Truth of Battlestar Galactica

Ever since my dad handed down his tattered copy of The Warlord of Mars to me when I was a kid, I have been a science fiction aficionado. I have a Star Trek uniform in my closet (a couple, actually), a collection of Star War action figures in the garage, and an unfinished science fiction novel on my computer. I go to conventions, where I get autographs and buy things like earrings in the shape of the Enterprise.

I have read the classics--Dune, Stranger in a Strange Land, 2001, and more, and have seen every single episode of Star Trek (the original, Next Generation, and Voyager) and even a lot of Deep Space Nine, which I'm sorry, just didn't work for me. I have stood in line with my kids for the midnight premieres of science fiction blockbusters and own them all on DVD, soon to be replaced by Blu-ray. I love the excitement, the escape, the hope of possibilities for the future of science fiction. But I have never experienced anything like Battlestar Galactica before.

Battlestar Galactica felt real. That is the highest compliment I can give it. There were no aliens-of-the-week, no beaming down to the planet with expendable Red Shirts, no perfect heroes. Just a bunch of people like you and me who were trying to survive, making mistakes along the way, learning lessons, growing, and working hard. By the time the series was over, I believed in those people and I felt like I had learned a few lessons along the way right along side them.

Shot in documentary-style, the show aims to deliver filmic truth. In the show's "Bible," Ronald D. Moore, the creator of the series, calls it "Naturalistic Science Fiction," or "Taking the Opera Out of Space Opera." I call it genius.

You should watch it.

Keeping Our Eye on the Prize

I have a really good reason for not posting anything for two months, oh gosh, has it been three months?

All of our spare time has been spent either:
1. Hanging out together at restaurants (screw cooking),
OR
2. Hanging out in front of the TV, watching all four seasons of THE BEST SCIENCE FICTION SERIES OF ALL TIME:

We've been floating...in time...and space. That's all I'll say for now. We have to go watch "Caprica" right now to get ready for the new BSG series that starts this month. I'll explain it all later, I promise. But we have kept our eye on the prize this long, so I have to maintain my focus. Actually, I can't wait to explain it to you. You will LOVE it!

So say we all.

October Cooking Fun

After my great success with "cooking" Mango Lassis for my husband, I was on a roll. I next made some Portuguese Bean Soup (a favorite from when I lived in Hawaii), and some Chicken Noodle Soup (when my husband had a bad cold. The soup wasn't his fave, but it did make him feel better!). I even had a Pumpkin Day when my daughter visited, when we baked a whole pumpkin, scooped out the pulp, made Pumpkin Soup and Pumpkin Bread and Pumpkin Seeds, and ate it all for dinner. That was fun, but...here's the thing.

It was fun because I was doing it with my daughter. We could have been making bead bracelets or painting furniture together and it would have been fun. It wasn't fun because it was cooking. The cooking part was messy and hot and stressful and took hours and hours and then there was still an hour of cleaning up to do. We could laugh and chat about it and so that got me through it, but it took seven hours to bake the big squash, mash it up, and create food out of it. If I had been doing that by myself, I would have been lonely and feeling like, "THIS IS TAKING SEVEN HOURS TO MAKE, BUT THEY'LL EAT IT ALL IN FIFTEEN MINUTES!" Sure enough, we ate it all in 15.

I just don't like to cook, I realized. What I like, is to EAT.

Cooking for Two: The Mango Lassi Experiment

Since our mutually-enjoyed pasttimes clearly involved the consumption of foodstuffs, I decided to try to cook for my new husband. Now this may not sound like a very big deal to you, but I had given up cooking long, long ago, due to the fact that nobody ever did anything but criticize anything I made ("WHAT is the green part in this?" "Do we HAVE to eat that?" and, one of my favorites, "Well, the only thing I can find to criticize about this dinner is the color palette"), not to mention that as a single mom working full-time and going to graduate school, I just didn't have time for it. And my kids had gotten big enough to make their own salads and pop their own Pop-tarts in the toaster.

But with all the kids off at college, the workload cut back, and graduate school reduced to a manageable internship, I had some time on my hands. So I decided to make Mango Lassis. This may not seem like cooking to you, since no heat--or sharp utensils--are involved. But it was cooking to me, for it involved a recipe and ingredients and my time, and it could be criticized. I chose Mango Lassis because they are my husband's favorite Indian drink, sort of a mango smoothie, and because we had a can of "mango pulp" from India in our pantry, a gift from my husband's good friend Hirin's father, who owns a mango farm in India. So I got online to find a recipe.

There were a dozen different recipes for Mango Lassis! Some involved yogurt and milk, some left out the milk, some required only fresh mango, others insisted that the acid in fresh mangos would ruin the drink and that only canned pulp should be used. None of the recipes used the same proportions. Every other recipe included a spice called cardamom, which sounded so cool I decided I would definitely use some of that. And there was even a jar of it in the pantry (what on earth had my husband used it for?) After studying all of the recipes carefully, I fixed upon one that contained the mango pulp and cardamom I had on hand, as well as yogurt (NOT FAT-FREE, it advised in bold letters) and ice, in proportions that were fairly equal and would be easy to remember.

Mango Lassi

2 cups mango pulp (I used Taj brand)

2 cups whole milk plain yogurt (I had to go to a health-food store to find this!)

2 teaspoons sugar

1-2 teaspoons cardamom (I only used one teaspoon the first time because I was chicken, but will use two teaspoons from now on. For one thing, that makes all the ingredients 2 of something.)

2 cups ice

Puree all ingredients in a blender and serve chilled.

Makes 4 one-cup servings (who are we kidding, it barely made two glasses of deliciousness for me and my husband)

Sounds easy, right? It was easy! But I was still sweating bullets as I poured it out into a glass for my husband and he took his first sip. "This is good," he said, and then I took a sip. It WAS good--creamy-rich and smooth and sweet, but not too sweet. The cardamom had the flavor of India itself. It was so good that I had a Mango Lassi for lunch every day until we ran out of mango pulp!

Now that my confidence is up, it's on to my next project: DINNER! I'm starting simple. Soup. I'll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, I'm thinking of getting this t-shirt from http://www.turbaninc.com/:

The Love Diet

I told my husband the other day that my stress level had gone down to about zero since I married him, which I thought was a big bonus. And then I thought to myself, and I actually told my husband, too, because I can tell him anything, that one of the big reasons my stress had decreased was because I had given up dieting once I met him. Because he loved me no matter what!

Since we met in January, we have enjoyed introducing each other to our favorite restaurants and feeding each other our favorite things and just being Foodies together indiscriminately. We ate Key Lime cheesecake at The Cheesecake Factory, New Orleans Beignets (with three sauces!) at the Grand Lux, and sushi at every sushi place in town. We chowed down on Chinese food in Des Moines, Thai food in Houston, Italian food in Hot Springs, Indian food in Dallas, and barbecued beef in Texarkana. We had popcorn and Cokes at every movie, and sometimes even movie dogs with the works, too. We indulged in the ice cream of our choice with our home movies--Mango, Passion Fruit, Chocolate, and Dulce de Leche. And we didn't eat that ice cream out of a bowl, oh no, we ate it right out of the CARTON--our OWN carton.

I watched the pounds pack on almost like a scientist conducting an experiment, and I observed my condition in a bemused way, as if I were gaining weight purposefully for a big movie role like what's-her-name did for Bridget Jones (not that she ever actually got FAT) or Robert DeNiro for Raging Bull. I would pull on a pair of pants and laugh at how they no longer fit, ha ha ha, and throw them in the stack of Clothes That No Longer Fit, and grab something else from the other side of my closet, which is stocked fairly well with three different sizes of clothes, due to all of the afore-mentioned dieting. I would giggle when my husband played with my "love handles" and tell him there was more of me to love. I would consciously be aware of how most parts of my body felt like they were encased in a thick cake-layer frosting of lard. I laughed and felt loved.

And then I weighed myself. O. M. G. And, OK, this is the truth, I have never weighed this much before in my LIFE. Well, unless you count the time I had my third child. I did weigh this much after I had her. But I think pregnancy is a much better excuse than being in love. Although, I have to say that the being in love part prevents me from wanting to practically kill myself like I did back when I weighed this much about 19 years ago.

I did tell hubby that I'm going on a diet. He chuckled, amused at me. "That's OK," he said. "Go ahead and lose some weight. I can put it right back on you."

Ha! Let the dieting begin. Man, I feel stressed already.

Hawaiian Honeymoon

After three days at the swanky Stoneleigh Hotel in uptown Dallas (or is it Dallas Uptown?), I had to leave for a five-day business trip on the big island of Hawaii.

"Come with me," I cajoled, winningly.

"You'll be working. I have to work, too," he replied, matter-of-factly.

"All we have to pay for is your air fare. The hotel's paid for, the rent car is paid for, my air fare is paid for, my food is paid for. Come on." So much for my winning ways, now I was whining.

"I can't take another five days off work." He was firm.

(POUT) (That was me.)

"I can't go. You love Hawaii--you'll have a blast. And besides, you went to Hawaii for your FIRST TWO HONEYMOONS. Let's not tempt fate."

"Hey, I wore a round ring on the fourth finger of my left hand on my first two honeymoons, too, but you don't seem worried about that karma."

"Well, you could stay home and cancel the trip."

"ALOHA!" Aloha means hello and love--but it also means good-bye!

So I went to Hawaii on my honeymoon. Again. But this time by myself. And I DID have a blast! I snorkeled at night with manta rays and spent a day taking a circle island tour with 52 new best friends on a rainbow-painted bus. I posed for one-armed photos of myself in front of waterfalls, palm trees, sea turtles, volcanoes, and black sand beaches which I emailed instantly home to my absent husband.

The picture I sent before I swam with manta rays

The "after" picture. I DID IT!

I ate my way around the island, reliving my past through shave ice, arare, li hing mui, and plate lunches of shoyu chicken and teriyaki beef with rice and macaroni salad, pictures of which I also sent homeward, mostly to my brother who was texting me regularly about da kine.

But the best part about the trip was having someone to come home to!