Peg Kerr's Journal

A telephone call:

Rob: (outraged) Where's the hamburger that was in the refrigerator?!

Peg: (who knew this call would probably be coming) I threw it away. Yes, I know, I know. I'll reimburse you the $8.00.

[explanatory note: Rob does the grocery shopping. It's my job to then separate the big chunk of hamburger into little 4 oz chunks and throw 'em in the freezer. Yeah, I didn't get to this one in time.]

Rob: (even more outraged) You threw it away!?

Peg: It was gray. It was three days past its freeze by date and it wasn't safe to eat. [Unspoken: I'm sorry. I was at a spa weekend getaway and didn't get around to doing it.]

Rob: (in the voice of someone starving) Then what am I supposed to eat for lunch?

Peg: You could make a peanut butter sandwich. You could make some bratwurst.

Rob: (a crie de coeur) But I wanted hamburger!

Peg: (highly amused) Well...I suppose you'll just have to make due with leftover flank steak, then.

Rob: [pause] Left over flank steak?

Peg: Mmm hmm. In the long tupperware. The leftover cheesey potatoes are in the container on top of it. Do you think you could endure having that instead?

Rob: [long pause, and then in the voice of someone who is attempting to channel deep umbrage but actually really really wants some flank steak, now that its presence has been pointed out] Well...I suppose.

( What I did today to make the world a better place )

My hands are extremely painful, with cracked dry skin.

I hurt all over today. I went back to karate class yesterday (I'd intended to be going to two classes a week by now, but I've missed two weeks of classes due to all sorts of conflicts, plus depression). I'm using this knee brace, which works pretty well, and gives me good support, and keeps it warm, but of course, it prevents me from chambering my kicks very tightly.






It's so hard not to get discouraged. This knee problem, I've decided, seems to be a permanant injury. It still hurts, hurts, hurts when I do a full squat, even fourteen months later. I still can't do slow kicks on the injured side without holding the bar--my balance on that side is entirely shot. I have no more balance on that side than a green belt. I'm in the class below my belt level, and it still just seems so hard. And I'm not even going back to sparring class yet. After sparring class on Monday night (I was waiting because Fiona was attending), I joined the class to do the killer abs workout (the dreaded Ab Ripper DVD) and that's making me even more sore today. Alarmed by my physical deterioration, I've re-started the leg exercises I'd been doing when I was going to rehab, and so my hips and butt are sore, too. Gah. I WANT the black belt, but I just have a hard time believing I'll be able to accomplish it. Fiona is trying to buck me up, and I try to cheer myself by reminding myself that even if my side kicks seem lousy to me, there are very few women I know my age who can do a side kick at all.

Fiona is testing for a section star this Saturday (her second of three she needs to begin the screening process for black belt second degree.) She's doing the bo form, Soishi No Kang. She looks absolutely great doing it, except for one fault that just drives me crazy: her back heel pops up off the ground in almost every single one of her front stances. It's a bad habit she's had since she was a purple belt. I'll try to get a video of her doing it when she does the test this Saturday.

The girls are very difficult to rouse in the morning. Delia, poor thing, has to be out at the bus stop at 6:50 a.m., and she is downright snarly when I go in to wake her up (the alarm clock doesn't work for her. I have to rub her arms and legs for five to ten minutes every morning before she reluctantly surfaces). And Fiona has been incredibly groggy lately, too. We usually can't get her out of bed for as long as forty minutes after her alarm goes off, and then she attempts to dress, eat, and get out the door in ten minutes. The results are not happy.

The garage door is cracked, making it extremely difficult to close.

Cooking has been...interesting lately, mainly because I've been depending more on whatever we get from the food shelf. (Thank heavens for the food shelf. It's been just a God send for us.) It's different than shopping for yourself; instead of going to the store for what you intend to buy, you take whatever they happen to have on hand and then try to figure out how to use it. Often, stuff at the food shelf is distributed right before the expiration date, so sometimes its a challenge to use it in time. Rob's been volunteering there on Tuesdays, so we're entitled to two visits a month. At church this week (our church is one of the ones supporting this week) they said that food shelf visits are way up. They distributed 5,000 pounds of food last week.

We've been working on cleaning the house, in preparation for starting to cull stuff so that we can rearrange two and possibly three rooms. As I mentioned, I am giving up my office to give Fiona a bedroom. I'm viewing this as a temporary solution, until she goes away to college, but it's very difficult emotionally. We are trying to work out a way to carve out at least a small space for me, either in my bedroom, or in a room downstairs. The process of all this rearrangement will take us quite a while.

Rob has started another short term job with the Census. He's pleased because they went to more than the usual amount of trouble to call him back and promote him to a higher position. He's also gotten a call back for a legal editorial position. This means he's cleared the first hurdle, but he has to pass a test and, of course, battle with a bunch of other candidates for a limited number of slots, so it's useless to get hopes up yet. Still, it's more movement on the job front than we've had for months.

I'm really really really angry at Congress over the loss of a chance to pass health care reform, and I'm pretty ticked at Obama, too.

There is stuff that Elinor Dashwood isn't talking about (isn't there always). It's been preoccupying me a lot lately, which is why this journal has been quiet lately. I'm still here, though, still battling to keep my family together, moving forward through this tough time.

I wanted something a little special today to start the new year, so I made a porridge based on something I've eaten and enjoyed at a local restaurant, Hell's Kitchen. It's made with brown and wild rice, chopped apples, walnuts, maple syrup, cream and cinnamon, topped with blueberries.

Happy New Year!

To get my mind off my heartache about the bikes last night, I set out to re-create a delicious dinner I'd had at the Birchwood Cafe last week. The end result wasn't quite as pretty (I don't have quite the knack for plating food that they do) but it was a definite hit. The family rated it 9 out of 10:

Dinner Green beans, tomato, Risotto made with Arborio rice, fresh sweet corn, Canadian bacon (prosciutto was too expensive!)

( The table, before and after )

( What I did today to make the world a better place )

Me (requesting feedback on a new recipe): "So what do you think of the Shepherd's pie?"

Fiona: "I like it better than the taco pie recipe. The strawberries helped, I think." (This sounds like a strange addition to a Shepherd's pie, but she was actually referring to the strawberries which topped the side spinach salad).

I gave her an amused look. "Strawberries are magical like that."

Fiona: "There is little in this world that cannot be vastly improved by the ingestion of strawberries."

Me: "Eat your spinach, Fiona. You need your folate."

Rob (helpfully): "The spinach is better with the strawberries."

Fiona (wrinkling her nose): "The strawberries are much better without the spinach."

I had a sandwich for lunch that I'll bet anything none of you have tried: goat cheese with honey and pumpkin.

It was delicious.

Jennifer McCann, who writes the Vegan Lunchbox (veganlunchbox) has started a new blog, This is Why You're Thin. I've set up a syndicated feed for it, whyyourethin.

The goal of this site will be to encourage exercise and the consumption of healthy plant-based foods through fun, intriguing, and beautiful images that will inspire us all. I’m looking for inspiring photos or video links of the things you do for health: pictures of fresh fruits and vegetables ... beautiful bean soups or hearty wholegrain bread ... people running, climbing, swimming, stretching ... smiling kids drinking smoothies and picking strawberries.

Edited to add: The entire reason for the name of the journal is that it is a response to a different journal, This is Why You're Fat.

Edited to add again: How to put this nicely. All right, I won't.

Look. I was just Syndicating. The. Fricking. Feed. And then informing you about it, as a courtesy. I have disabled further comments on this post. If anyone has any further sniffy comments they want to make about what Jennifer McCann chooses to title her new blog, take them up with Jennifer McCann. Not with me. I am definitely not in my Happy Place today and I cannot stomach any further righteous indignation today. And if you have issues with THAT, tough. Come back in forty-eight hours and hopefully by then I will have absorbed enough chocolate and coffee and Ibuprophen for the cramps and Obama will have fixed the economy. You might find a more sweet and tractable Peg then. Until then, BUZZ OFF.

I stopped by the beautiful shiny new Seward Co-op on the way home from work, thinking I'd pick something up ready-made to feed the girls, since I didn't feel like cooking. Everything I saw looked incredibly delicious. I called up the girls on my cell phone and consulted. These were the various options I suggested, all of which were summarily rejected (reasons in parentheses).

From the grab and go cooler:
Turkey soup (black beans)
Tomato basil soup (cooked tomatoes, ick)
Broccoli cheese (broccoli)
Clam chowder (all seafood is verboten)
Borchst (beets)
Sushi (ha. You were kidding, right?)

From the hot bar:
Rotisserie chicken (it, uh, resembles something that was living once, which is icky)
Pizza (has mushrooms)
Spinach lasagna (spinach and onions)
Chickpea curry (chickpeas. And curry)

At this point, I lost my temper, told them that they could get their own damn dinner, bought the spinach lasagna and carmelized beets (I didn't even bother asking about those) and a carton of chocolate tofu mousse to smooth my ruffled feathers. Came home and ate it all, studiously, ignoring both girls. I feared I might say something unforgiveable if I spoke to them.

I have no idea what they had for dinner. Maybe cardboard, for all I know.

I was not in the mood to pander to my family's tender sensibilities about what foods they will or will not eat.

So: dinner. An experiment. A winter stew made with onions (yes, gasp! onions! although I cut the amount in half) brussel sprouts, fennel, butternut squash, tenderly simmered in a mixture of broth and hard cider. Add in kidney beans and apples, balsamic vinegar and honey near the end, and when they are heated through, serve. Did my family eat it? Ha! I laugh you to scorn. Of course they did not. It was fearfully healthy, and quite delicious so why on earth should they eat it? It will doubtless be my lunch for the rest of the week.

Edited to add: Recipe is here, for the people who asked.

Fiona hasn't yet shown much interest in cooking, other than making an occasional batch of chocolate chip cookies. It's a family joke that she even has the ability to burn a salad (she made a salad once and set the mixing bowl it was in down on a burner on the stove, not realizing it was on.) Delia is much more interested in messing around in the kitchen. She decided she wanted to make dinner last night. She chose a couple recipes that her Girl Scout troop had made together for a supper for the troop's parents: sweet and sour chicken (except we substituted pork tenderloin since it'd been hanging around in our refrigerator and needed to be used up) and potstickers from scratch.

We never made it to karate last night. Rob and Delia worked on the dinner for about two hours. They made the classic mistake, starting the recipe without reading it through all the way first and realized too late that there was a stage where something had to sit a half hour.

Then, too, they had to improvise: the sweet and sour sauce is based on pineapple, but Fiona is allergic to pineapple; it gives her hives. So they decided to make a separate sauce for her based on pears. Trying to make sure that the sauces wouldn't get mixed up (which was really thoughtful of her) Delia decided just to put one drop of food coloring in Fiona's sauce. She chose blue, thinking there would be just a slight tint and -- wow. Just one drop turned the sauce neon blue. It was really funny. Fiona couldn't bring herself to put the sauce on her pork, and I couldn't quite blame her.

Rob got burned with hot oil. The dinner was finally on the table at about 8:45 p.m. The sweet and sour sauce had been sitting at that point for about an hour, and they'd used a titch too much cornstarch to thicken it, so it was more like sweet and sour gell. "I'm sorry it's so late," Delia said gloomily. But we ate it up, and it tasted pretty good. I brought some of the leftovers for my lunch today.

"Well, it's all part of the learning experience," I told her. "I remember the story I read in a job-hunting book once: a woman who hadn't worked outside the house in years went job hunting, and she was asked during an interview why, with her lack of experience, she thought she could work for the company.

"I can get the meat, the potatoes, and the vegetables on the table at the same time. That's management."