the air was filled with snow

Windy, and the air was filled with dust.

A good day to hang in the greenhouse,

with Percie.

Now the air is filled with snow.

the weather is under the weather

This is that little reminder that winter always drops on us just when we really begin to believe in spring.

About a month ago K got the news that he would be taking a pay cut of about 1/3. We are lucky to still be in a position to pay our bills but it means that it will be longer before the debts are payed off and he can retire. Since I came down with chronic fatigue I have not been able to work so I find myself walking in my mother's footsteps, trying to find every possible way to cut household expenses. One thing I can do is cook to replace some of the pre-prepared food we buy at the grocery store. As you could see from my previous post I am making an attempt to make bread. Since I really love good bread and really good bread is approaching $4 a loaf these days, this could be a way to cut costs. Also there is the satisfaction of doing something for ourselves and our bodies, and the fact that food one has spent time and energy on feeds one's body more fully. So I am baking bread and coming up with things that will make enough to leave leftovers in the fridge which K might be tempted to eat. Of course he has "husband refrigerator blindness" and so it's an ongoing battle.

Anyway, back to the weather. Since I know that every pleasant spring day will draw me out to work on the gardens I have been using these stormy days to get a few things cooked in advance.

Here is a great brine for an inexpensive pork loin which I did over the last few days. The brine makes the meat stay moist through cooking and gives it some flavor. It has a slightly Asian flavor to it but not so strong that one can't use the leftovers for just about any purpose. In addition to the initial serving of Roast Pork Loin, I intend to use the pork for Sandwiches, Pork fried rice, Arroz A la Malloquina, and Japanese Curry Rice. It was a big Pork Loin but quite inexpensive at a dollar forty something a pound.

adapted from epicurious.com

Brine for Pork Loin

1 T whole Sichuan Peppercorns

6 whole star Anise

3 sticks cinnamon

1 T cloves

1 T Coriander Seed

1 3 inch piece fresh ginger - sliced

1 C Kosher Salt

Combine spices with a few cups water in a a saucepan. Heat, stirring occasionally until boiling and salt is dissolved. Remove from heat and add enough water to cool the spice mixture to room temp. Place Spice mixture and pork loin in a metal or ceramic container big enough for pork loin to be submerged. I cut a large loin into 3 pieces and put the three pieces in a large stockpot. Add enough water to cover and swish things around a bit to distribute the salt and spices. Let the loin sit in the brine in a refrigerator for two or three days. Remove Pork from the brine, wipe off any spices that cling and roast Pork in the oven or on the grill, or cut into cubes for rice dishes or strips for stir fry.

It occurs to me that these are not cheap spices, but since I already had them before the axe fell it is economic to use what I have on hand. When they run out I'll have to rethink.

I feel quite energized by the thought of making a difference in our situation with cooking. So I'm giving it a whole lot more energy that I should and tiring myself out every day. I know I will pay the penalty but I don't seem to be able to hold myself back, there are so many things I could make! This period of excitement will just have to run its course, then perhaps I will be able to approach it more sensibly. Part of accepting life with Chronic Fatigue is accepting the fact that I sometimes don't operate wisely, but I do enjoy my life!

Spring is really here even though it doesn't seem like it today. Here's a shot of a miniature nectarine tree in bloom. It bloomed last year but had no fruit. It probably needs a pollinator, but I won't be buying any new trees this year so I'll just enjoy its extravagant pink blooms.

sourdough success!

Success! This is my third loaf this try. I've tried to bake bread before with very mediocre results. This is my best so far. The flavor was also good - a bonus! I do hope to develop even better internal structure. This loaf was baked in a cast iron dutch oven in my oven. The dutch oven keeps the moisture around the loaf and helps it to develop this lovely crust. The previous loaves I baked on a stone on the racks of the oven and they were over done and hard.

I read a Post on a blog today that was most honest and moving. Raven spoke about the inner demons that make even a disabled person disbelieve their own pain and feel as if they are just lazy and perpetrating a fraud. Her mother disbelieved her pain when she was a child and that became an inner lie that effected her for her entire life. This is a place where health and emotional health are so deeply interlinked.

a day indoors to cook

Just for fun here's a picture of a tiny butterfly on a Chrysanthemum flower in the garden last fall. Love her stripey antenae!

We had the craziest dust storm last night, really unusual for our location. After the storm there were tiny drifts of fine red sand on the windows of my car. The light actually was red at the height of the dust, it looked like sunset but was much too early. It blew our patio furniture around and broke one of the cable ties holding the shade cloth onto my greenhouse.

I'm baking bread again, I'm trying to replace a bread that has been a part of my diet for several years, an artisan multigrain from Albertson's made by Maple Leaf Bakeries. This is the first multigrain bread I have ever had that is not sweet, has great flavor, and crust and crumb are both enticing. It's also been great for my health and eating it every morning actually lowered my cholesterol, which had been climbing in spite of eating meat only three times a week at the time. Unfortunately it costs nearly $4 a loaf and the budget just won't handle that any more. Well, that's one reason, the other is that I believe that any food you invest your time and interest in gains chi and returns it to your body, thus making it a more physically satisfying and energy giving meal.

The best breads I have ever tasted come from La Brea Bakery. The catering company I worked for used them and they are ever so good, chewy, crusty, and flavorful. So I got Nancy Silverton's Breads from the la Brea Bakery and am learning from it. I got a sourdough starter from King Arthur Flour last week and fed it and got it ready to go. My first loaves of County Bread, the bread she recommends beginning with, were not very good, flavor wise because of stale flour from the grocery store shelves and crust wise, dark, hard and bitter. But I'm learning. I got a big bag of flour from Sam's Club and it is fresh and sweet. My next two loaves are now safely retarding in the fridge and will be ready for lunch tomorrow. What a fun adventure.

It was gloomy, cold, and windy today so it was a perfect day to cook. I made Jambalaya, a recipe that I have been working on and customizing for the last year. Here it is:

JAMBALAYA

1 t Olive Oil
2 large onions, chopped
4 medium cloves garlic, peeled
1 red and 1 green bell pepper, cored, seeded, and chopped
4 stalks celery, diced

6 Tbs fresh Italian parsley, minced
½ Polska Kielbasa, cut into ½ inch cubes
8 oz. ham, diced
1 chicken breast, diced
1 large bay leaf
¼ t ground white pepper
½ t Cayenne
3 inch sprig fresh thyme or ½ t dried thyme
3 inch sprig fresh oregano or ½ t dried oregano

3 lbs fresh tomatoes diced or 3 cans diced tomatoes with juice
4 Cups Chicken Broth

¾ C uncooked rice

You will need a large dutch oven or stovetop safe casserole.
Sauté onion, garlic, bell peppers and celery until onion is translucent.
Add Parsley, ham, Polska, chicken, bay leaf and spices.
Cook, stirring often until chicken turns white.
Add tomatoes and chicken broth. Bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer.
Add rice, cover and cook, barely simmering, for a good three hours or more.
This is better the next day, and the next. Add shrimp after reheating or 5 minutes before serving if you like. Very tasty.

Apricots in Bloom

It is a little early, five weeks before last frost, but who can blame them? I'm blooming too. The weather continues to be spectacular. Now it's a race to get everything transplanted before it gets too hot. I am so much happier when I can be out in the sunshine and messing with the soil. The gloom of winter is not just a weather condition.

Today I was able to help a good friend with sinus problems by giving her a Jin Shin Do treatment. J has sinus problems associated with burn season for the local farmers. She began to get relief while I was doing the basic neck release, even before I began on the Sinus release pattern. I am so grateful for Ioana Marsaa Teeguarden's books http://www.jinshindo.org/products.htm on the subject. One day maybe I'll get to go study and become accredited, but until then it is incredibly wonderful to be able to do a few small things for my friends and family's comfort.

Couldn't garden today

The twins Anapurna and Wee Jock

You'd think that after six years of working with Chronic Fatigue I'd be at peace with having to take a day and rest. There was a time when I couldn't even take out the trash because one trip down and back up the steps to our front door was more than I could handle. I learned to be patient with it then. Now that I'm feeling better for some reason it's back to finding it hard to accept. Healing sometimes is about working through the layers of ourselves, like an onion. It's funny though, because sometimes the new layer looks an awful lot like one of the old ones.

PercieOne of my tricks to make myself rest is to watch a movie in the middle of the day. Love Netflix! Today it was Man on Fire with Denzel Washington. It started out really good, heartwarming, talking about moral and spiritual questions, giving hints of things maybe not being what they appear. But the hints became too heavy handed and the last half just degenerated into basic violent tough guy thriller. Plplplplplpl. It gets a raspberry from me. (There's no good way to spell that).

Pippin

It was so nice outside I had to find a way to do nothing outside. So I tried to get shots of my garden companions. Here are some of the better ones.

Pippin and Chester

garden makeovers

The weather has been so beautiful these days, it's too good to be indoors. In accord with the theory that one should do what makes one happy, rather than what one "should" do , I worked on an area that has been bothering me and did a redo. It required hard work, which makes me tired, which is hard to recover from. But nevertheless these lovely days would be wasted without grabbing a chance to work and do something good.

Above is a before picture, it's the garden in front of the greenhouse that I have been wanting to redo. although I love day lilies I have not been pleased with the messy appearance of the massed day lily bed in this location. So I dug it up, raised the bed with a stone edging, and prepped it to be planted in vegetables this year. It's already warm enough to plant lettuce, onion, chard, and peas from seed. Later I will add Tomatoes and green beans. This location is sunny about half the day, being shaded on one side with a tree and on the other side by the house. The soil is very shallow, we're on the crest of a sandstone hill. That's the reason for raising the bed.

Here is the improved bed, of course it'll be better when there's something green growing in it. Spring is the time for bursting out from our winter dormancy. It's time to grow, and watch things growing.

No time for health

In all of the methods I've found for coping with Chronic Fatigue there is one thing all of them require. That is patience. Just resting and letting the things you think you ought to be doing, or would like to be doing, letting those things go. Weeks like this one where every day is spectacular and the garden is calling out to be dug, plants moved, seeds started, I have to make myself rest. One good way is to watch a movie every day, that seems to slow me down a bit. Most of the gardening that needs done requires truly hard work, digging, hauling dirt and stones, climbing around and getting the irrigation ready to go. I have to just choose one small area at a time and do a complete job on that area no matter how many days it takes to complete.

I've begun investigating the role of healer as I've had to become my own healer. There are so many beneficial techniques of healing available to us these days, and yet I fear that I would be completely frustrated as a healer. The reason for the frustration is that it is so hard to find anyone who is willing to work for their own health. Even other healers I know do not have the patience and the time to give themselves to the requirements of healing.
The method of healing I've found most beneficial is Tai Chi, which of course takes years to learn. But it becomes beneficial as soon as we become willing to let it change us and our way of life. But that's another problem.

The next most beneficial healing method I've come across is cooking for myself. I've become aware that food you have invested your interest and time in feeds your body more fully.

Finally I've found a method of Acupressure called Jin Shin Do which is marvelously relaxing and has granted me great jumps forward in my healing. I've learned to do it and have been really excited to think that I can help my friends and family, even with minor things like headaches, hot flashes, chronically cold hands and feet etc. To my shock, the people I love do not have the patience to lay on a table and be held for the amount of time needed. Impatience overcomes them. Wow, we are sicker than we think.


The photo is of a local canyon in a spring snowfall last week. You can see red sandstone cliffs in the far back of the photo.

a day without a good meal is a day wasted

Those words were spoken by the Chef of one of the oldest restaurants in Paris, that means one of the first restaurants ever in existence . http://www.ovationtv.com/programs/151 But sometimes the meal that makes the day worthwhile is not a meal of food, but a meal of life. For me today, it's the ferocious love of a half grown kitten, the sun and the soil of a warm spring day.

That's not to say that these things are all I desire of life. Sometimes the possibilities of the world seem overwhelming. Even to live an ordinary life in a place where the history and art are as grand as Paris. Or even to live in a city which has one of those great looking markets where you walk by stalls brimming with vegetables, herbs, seafood of the freshest kind. Or to find that thing at which one could be great, stand out from everyone else and change the world. These thoughts torment, tantalize, cause ambition and discontent. I'm not saying ambition and such things are bad. There is no good or bad here, there's just life.

Here is a description of the acupressure point B 47 from A Complete Guide to Acupressure by Iona Marsaa Teeguarden http://www.jinshindo.org/products.htm, The quote begins with the name of the point; "Ambitious Room or Room of Will influences Zhi (human will), ... The character for Zhi consists of two parts. The upper half depicts plants which are growing: the lower half denotes the human heart-mind. The character Zhi may be taken to indicate the will of the heart growing into the world, directed by its own intention. It is human will (Zhi) which enables a person to align his/her heart and will with the will of heaven, and thus fulfill his/her destiny. " This is such a beautiful image, lovely growing plants rising out of the soil of our hearts. Meeting our destiny, by aligning our will with whatever it is that provides us with destiny, as naturally as plants growing out of the fertile ground.

The Tao Te Ching says discontent is the worst calamity. Taoist wisdom would seem to indicate that being content in one's life, whatever life it is, the Tao can be trusted to lead one to one's destiny. I think it's positively un-american to think that one's destiny might be to live a small life at home with one's animals and loved ones, cooking and cleaning, serving one's friends and significant others, and perhaps never making one single significant mark on the world.

You can see my struggles here. That's why I named this blog 'struggles with nothing'. Because truly it's a contentment with Nothing to which I aspire, and many nothings which cause so many struggles of discontent. Aligning one's will with the will of heaven, if that will is destiny, what is there to struggle with?

what a spectacular day

After a cool start it was a really wonderful day - too warm to work in long sleeves. Well it is seed starting time and I'm on a high from having my hands in the dirt, my head in the sunshine and an accomplishment under my belt. It is true that soil contains an antidepressant, the best one I've ever tried.

Of course to do any one thing you have to do three other things in order to get that one thing done. So I uncovered my potting bench (of all the debris it had collected from its time in the garage), dragged it out of the garage and up some curved steps to the back yard gate. It's about eight feet long and heavy enough that I can only just lift it. I'm sure anyone watching would have got a laugh out of all of that. Once I got it inside the back yard gate I put one end of the table in a garden cart and carried the other end, hauling it to a new place on the back patio.

Of course I then had to spray it down with a couple of spray cans of outdoor urethane. letting it dry while I moved the bags of soil pep that were in the way, still there from last year when I didn't get it spread. Then covering the table with a sheet of plastic in case it wasn't thoroughly dry I finally got down to the business of starting the seeds.

I have the usual collection of Tomatoes, Eggplant, Peppers, Herbs, a few flowers, plus Okra and Artichokes and a few other thing I can't remember at the moment. I'm always excited about trying some new things and this year it's Epazote and Tomatillos for Mexican food, Asparagus, and Leeks.

In all of the things I had to do today it seemed like I had an unusual clarity. The solutions to problems and the decisions about what to do came with unusual ease, I really liked it. I hope it has something to do with the acupressure method I've been working with lately and that it will continue.

Right now from the way I feel, exhilarated and tired, I'm guessing I did too much and won't be having such a good day tomorrow. Still, it sure was a good day.

chronic fatigue: about what causes it

Actually the causes of chronic fatigue are what I wrote about on my previous post, but , as usual, I think I published an incomplete thought. All of my ranting yesterday about the universal message of never being good enough which we receive from our culture, our families, and ourselves is the crux of the thought. The completion of that thought is that it drives us to overwork, with a big dose of anxiety thrown in. And in pursuit of the goal of finally being successful - even good enough - we learn not to value the things our body needs. Such as good food prepared with our own hands, adequate sleep, and gentle rejuvenating exercise. We also forget the things which feed our spirits such as laughter, friendship, and spiritual/emotional growth. The result is that we don't listen to our bodies until the minor things which might be warning signs become major things we can't ignore. Like Chronic Fatigue.

So now for example, even after six years of careful rejuvenation, I still struggle with fatigue. Frankly, I did too much yesterday, woke up tired, and have had to spend today resting even though it was a spectacular 60 degree day and I would have loved to have been in the garden. At least I recover more quickly now and there's a chance that I will be able to enjoy some activity in the next few days.

chronic fatigue the first thing

A woman named Holly suggested that I had chronic fatigue a couple of years before I was diagnosed, I told her it couldn't be. I still feel guilty for not acknowledging that she was right, more about that later. Finally one day I said, half joking to my husband, that surely everyone couldn't be in as much pain as I was that morning. He said "probably not" and I realized that I was dealing with something real. By that time I was limping after a long day, and groaning into life every morning. That was six years ago now, and over those years of thinking about it I guess I probably had symptoms as far back as my teenage years. After diagnosis I refused to talk about it for a year or two. I did not want to face the conversations that would inevitably come. I expected two things - those who had a cure they wanted me to try and those who were sick themselves and just wanted to talk about how sick we both were. I still resist both of those conversations. The first because I'm always already trying a cure and you can only try one cure at a time - otherwise how will you know what's working. Despite the good intentions behind people's suggestions of cures I ought to try, they can't understand that I spend days at a time researching these things, and months trying them, and so I have trouble with something somebody heard was helping somebody's sister in law, or with the one cure that cured them and so surely will cure everyone else.
The other conversation about how sick we are I resist also because I'm not really interested in how sick we are. This will show me to be duplicitous on both counts because I am going to talk about the things which have helped me, and maybe now and then - especially in mid winter - about how sick I am.
The conversations which surprised me, I guess I was naive, were the ones in which everyone wanted to talk about what I think caused it. So let's get that out here right away, to make a proper start on this blog. I think it's caused by a whole bunch of factors together. Here are some possibilities:
It's cultural: I grew up upper middle class and in my social class not a day goes by when we don't tell our children, and each other, that we must be successful. I don't know if this is just a middle class thing or universally true. "You could write a book!" is my favorite example of this mind frame. We keep thinking, 'if only' we, or our children, did things right, and wrote a book about it, we would be whatever it is we think we ought to be. And if we're only average, well, it's just never good enough. Then we grow up to be average and our society accepts -moreover needs - us that way but we still keep hearing the message - it's never good enough.
I think it's familial - in my family I repeatedly received the message, "if I only did things right I'd be whatever I think I ought to be" ... We hear this or receive it wordlessly as children and parents.
I think it's personal, being someone who internalizes things, and feels guilty over every mistake I've ever made, I felt I could never do well enough. In my eyes any unpleasant occurrence must be my fault, and any mistake was a failure. I felt if only I could do things right I'd be whatever I thought I ought to be.
In my head is that song from My Fair Lady with Audrey Hepburn - "In my own little corner in my own little chair I can be whatever I want to be." We tell our children "you can be anything you want to be" because we don't want to limit their dreams, but the truth is that what we say is only true for the very lucky, very talented few. I met a man who was responsible for monitoring and sending out repair teams for the power grid for the city of Zurich. Important, yes, successful, in a manner of speaking, the money is good, but it certainly is no child's dream.
And I think it's physical. It could have come from a virus, or from an undersized pituitary gland, or an overactive nervous system, or from any of the many other physical factors that have been proposed in the many medical theories out there.
But my conclusion is that it is all of these things together. You cannot separate mind from body. Our attitudes towards ourselves influence our bodies which shape the way we think about things which dictates the way we feed ourselves which influences the way we feel about ourselves which dictates the way we work which controls the way we exercise which overcomes our common sense which makes us insensitive to what our bodies are telling us, and on it goes.
There's no one cause. There's no one cure.
The story of my recovery, my struggles with nothing, new worlds I've found, things I've had to give up, things I've learned to value or am trying to learn to value, will unfold over the coming days.

May You Be With the Force.

S 10

Cooking cooking cooking

Made a second effort on bread. Trying to replace the bread I love, Maple Leaf Bakeries' Multigrain, a staple in my life for the last 4 or 5 years. At nearly $4 a loaf it is now too expensive. I'm working with a recipe called Jack of All Breads from an old paperback camping cookbook which has long ago passed out of my collection. It is the only bread recipe with which I have had consistent success. Instead of wheat germ used quinoa - tasty and nutritious. Also added a mixture of seeds for their analgesic value, and because the bread I love has seeds too, especially sunflower seeds which gain a certain yummy texture and flavor when baked...I digress. Also made Arroz a la Mallorca to eat by myself over the next two weeks, and Monterey Chix with rice out of an old Southwest Cookbook to feed to friends on the ranch this weekend. I'm sure there will be more about these over the next few posts.


I hope this blog will be about the last ten years, a struggle with self, culture, hereditary expectations, Chronic Fatigue, tai chi, healing, food, Western Colorado (my home whether I like it or not, sometimes both in the same breath), and many other things including the philosophy of Terry Pratchett. May the gods bear with me.