Commitment, Bite-Sized and Tasty

This is the time of year for good intentions. Earnest intentions. Plans to be a newer, better YOU. 

All of which is pretty bogus. You're already you. If you want to start something new to become a slightly different you, an evolving you, why wait until January 1? 

On the other hand, the middle of winter may feel like a really bad time to try something new. In my part of the world the air feels cold, the sky looms grey overhead, somehow lower than in summer—or is that just the fog and mist? 

I don't know about you, but I feel like starting new things in spring, when the days are getting longer and the air feels fresh, or in fall, when childhood memories of back to school shopping make me long for new pencils even though I don't like writing with pencils. 

And why oh why are resolutions always about things that feel like work? What would be wrong with resolving to do something pleasant or restful or just plain fun on some regular schedule?

On top of that the resolutions so often are about going from zero to turbo overnight. Haven't been exercising? Commit to a daily run. Been meaning to start a journal? Get a new one with a format that will stare at you accusingly if you don't write every day.

Before my round number birthday this year I started a list of enjoyable things I could do to mark that number. Then I fell and broke my wrist, and most of the items on that list evaporated as possibilities in the short run.

Fortunately, at our house we laughingly refer to having a "birthdayweekmonth" celebration, because why stop at 24 hours? 

This year I resolve to make it a BirthDayWeekMonthYear. Over the course of the year I'm going to pick some of the things from that list of enjoyable possibilities and try to get to that round number mark. That's all.

If I don't get around to taking XX long hot baths or tasting XX different kinds of chocolate in a year (or longer), I will still have had a lot of long soaks and delightful tastes. What if these pleasures become—gasp!—a habit?! What if through committing to enjoyment I settle into the idea that it's okay to do something enjoyable on a regular basis? That in fact I should schedule those into my days, weeks, and months just as I do trips to the dentist and those pesky preventive health exams?

I had already started writing this when I ran across a Washington Post article by Richard Sima about research on the value of "joy snacks". They contribute to one of the ways we find meaning in our lives. In addition to having a purpose in life, feeling like our lives matter and make sense, reporter Richard Sima writes, "... valuing one’s life experiences, or experiential appreciation, is another potent way of making life feel more meaningful." 

Now, I did start keeping a daily journal a few years ago so I'm not incapable of forming habits. The power of writing things down and tracking works for me, probably thanks to those chore charts Mom used to put on the fridge with the gold stars. So another part of this commitment I'm making to myself is that I'm going to record these moments, these experiences, these joy snacks, these times when I do more of something that brings pleasure, less of something that doesn't. When I look back at a week, a month, a year, I'll remember those experiences. They'll form a part of who I am just like everything else that happens to me along the way.

My resolution: I'm going to fix myself a lot of tasty joy snacks this year. Care to join me for a snack? What's on your list?

Related Reading

• Keep that Streak Going: #30DaysOf Something that Matters to You
• Counting Up the Years
• Keeping Another Streak Going: #30DaysOfYoga
• An Easy New Year's Resolution: Write It Down
• 5 Behavior and Culture Hacks to Get People to Ride Bikes and Walk
• Set Down that Heavy Load: The Things We Carry
• Walking a Path
• How to End One Year and Begin Another
• More or Less
• Year Ending, Year Beginning
• Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Winter Solstice Readings

Without regard for the patterns or demands of modern life, the world turns on its axis and the seasons turn with it. In a group gathering earlier this week someone referred to winter as "the dusk of the year", which is a lovely way of expressing it. Dusk is a time of transition, when things of both the light and the dark may be making their way to where they need to be for the next period of their lives.

Much of my ancestry comes from the places where Celtic people lived, and they would have gathered on this night to light fires in the darkness. On this shortest day and longest night of the year, some of you may gather with friends and family at a fire or hearth to watch flames reach upward.  If I were at an open flame, I might practice a ritual I've read of that seems fitting for this night (more so than for New Year's Eve, which bears no relationship to natural cycles, only to human record-keeping): writing things I want to let go of on pieces of paper and consigning them to the fire to let them turn to ash and float up and away.

I start each day reading poetry, and this morning in addition to the sites I visit daily I went in search of winter solstice blessings, poems, and readings online and in my poetry collection. Sharing here ones I found that resonated for me with a snippet of text from some. These are excerpts only, not the entire poem or reading, and I encourage you to follow the links.

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Wendell Berry: "2007, VI" ["It is hard to have hope"]

Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground
underfoot. Be it lighted by the light that falls
freely upon it after the darkness of the nights
and the darkness of our ignorance and madness.
Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you,
which is the light of imagination. By it you see
the likeness of people in other places to yourself
in your place. It lights invariably the need for care
toward other people, other creatures, in other places
as you would ask them for care toward your place and you.

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Jan Richardson: Winter Solstice: Blessing for the Longest Night

This is the night
when you can trust
that any direction
you go,
you will be walking
toward the dawn.

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Molly Remer: A Winter Solstice Blessing

May you circle and celebrate,
may you change and grow
May that which is waiting to be unlocked
be freed.

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Terry Windling: On Winter Solstice, a round-up of reading, art, and animation

In the mythic sense, we practice moving from darkness into light every morning of our lives. The task now is make that movement larger, to join together to carry the entire world through the long night to the dawn.

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Spirituality & Practice: Winter Solstice readings, poems, reflections, and practices

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Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Take Five

it is
after all
the longest night
and even though
tomorrow
it’s only one
more minute
of light
it is one
more
minute

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I'll close with a blessing by John O'Donohue. He wrote several that resonate at this time of year, when it's dark and cold in our shared hemisphere. Rather than his blessing for the solstice I'll share the first of his works I ever read.

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Beannacht

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

~ John O’Donohue ~

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Wishing you warmth, and light, and the peace that comes in darkness when we curl into ourselves and rest before new effort, before walking toward the dawn.

An Alphabet of Things

The IoT--the Internet of Things--is a thing these days. The concept of things talking to other things doesn't really describe what goes on with most of the things in our house. In buying new appliances for a future kitchen remodel it was an actual struggle on our part to keep the amount of technology to a minimum because dinner shouldn't have to wait on a software update. The expense of things that can talk to other things isn't within reach for the vast majority of people on the planet, nor is their global proliferation sustainable within our resource base on the only planet we have. 

I remember seeing the photos years ago in Material World: A Global Family Portrait. Peter Menzel and other photographers took portraits of 30 statistically average families with everything they owned outside their homes. Having moved several times in the past few years this is the kind of thing that shows up in recurring nightmares for me. (He did something similar with food in Hungry Planet: What the World Eats.)

Perhaps inspired somewhat by the memory of that photobook, my own efforts to reduce the number of things I own, as well as the opportunity for some wordplay that Sweet Hubs and I came up with when we heard someone refer to IoT recently, I present herewith a more realistic Alphabet of Things. It definitely represents mixed feelings.

A: The Anxiety of Things

B: The Blandness of Things

C: The Cost of Things

D: The Detritus of Things

E: The Evidence of Things

F: The Fragility of Things

G: The Gunkiness of Things

H: The Heaviness of Things

I: The Interior of Things

J: The Joy of Things

K: The Knowledge of Things

L: The Load of Things

M: The Messiness of Things

N: The Newness of Things

O: The Oldness of Things

P: The Patience of Things

Q: The Quantity of Things

R: The Rarity of Things

S: The Satisfaction of Things, or The Scarcity, depending on your circumstances

T: The Tonnage of Things

U: The Urgency of Things

V: The Value of Things

W: The Weight of Things

X: The Xenomania of Things (c'mon, X-ray was too obvious and kind of weird here, and now you get to learn a new word!)

Y: The Yoke of Things

Z: The Zest of Things

Having opened with Peter Menzel and photography that shows us the world in a different way, I have to close this with a bit about a British photographer whose works both are and are not about things, and the alphabet, and time, and paying attention to what's already there: Martin Wilson. 

I encountered him thanks to reading the poetry blog of his brother, Anthony Wilson. Anthony praised his brother's genius in a post you should read because it describes Martin's process. That led me to Martin's site where I hope to one day buy a print of one of his works, probably "Double Yellow Lines" because it's so on point for the work I do. The bonus is that Martin bikes around London to capture these images, so part of the story sometimes involves a really sweaty ride to get somewhere in time to get the lighting he wants or to avoid peak traffic that would get in the way. Go look, and be sure to click on See a Detail. Sadly, images don't appear to have alt-text. Anthony's post describes the process so I hope that gives enough of an idea of what Martin has captured.

Now, I'm off to do a closet purge or clean a drawer or empty a box in the garage or something else that enables me to say goodbye to some things. If any of this made you consider the things in your life in a new light I hope you'll come back and drop a comment about that moment of mindfulness.

Vegan Cranberry Caramelized Red Onion Orange Chutney Recipe Experimentation

The sign on the Willapa Red cranberries in the Bloom Creek Cranberries booth at the Olympia Farmers' Market said they were tangier--not just like what I'd buy frozen at the big-box supermarket. I bought them, thinking of chutney. As I checked out I saw the flyer with recipes provided by the grower, including one for chutney. "Great! I'm all set," I thought.



Except.... I specifically wanted one with red onions (I'd also purchased those at the market) and their recipe didn't call for that. I mentioned it to the grower and she said, "Oh, that would be delicious." So okay, that's easy, I'll look up a recipe with the words "red onion" included and I'll be all set.

And then in my search I saw one that called for orange zest or juice or something and that sounded delicious too. But I need lower sugar content for the pre-diabetic eater. None of the recipes checked every box on my list. Hence my decision to mash up multiple recipes and taste the results.

Ones I borrowed from:

The best caramelised red onion & cranberry chutney: From the Marks & Spencer’s Christmas book. Measurements in kilograms, no problem, but this used butter and I'm aiming for vegan, plus I don't have malt vinegar. (Mental note: Yet another vinegar to add to the pantry. Oh, but wait, this recipe for Easy Homemade Cranberry Chutney says malt vinegar is "a wee bit too harsh for those delicate cranberries.")

Cranberry chutney (low sugar): Low sugar is good. But wait, no red onions, no orange zest.

Orange cranberry chutney: Orange juice, not zest, and I feel as if the robust flavors of cranberry and vinegar need the zing of zest. And again, no red onions. Interesting in that it calls for both fresh and dried cranberries.

Red Onion & Cranberry Chutney: Okay, now we're getting somewhere--has red onions and calls for zest and juice of one orange. It calls for some simmering time with vegetable stock added and that seems a bit off-putting for the flavor I'm after.

Mulled cranberry and red onion chutney: If only I'd had mulled wine on hand.

What I take away from reading these:

Spices: Each of these takes a different approach to the spice mix and I'm sorely tempted to borrow from all of them. However, I'm pretty sure my fondness for putting in lots of spices is a weakness, not a strength--I end up overpowering things I meant to enhance. Subtlety is not my strong point as a cook. I have a book called The Flavor Equation that I keep meaning to read to learn more about what to mix and what not to mix. 

If I used every spice from these recipes I'd have star anise, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, cloves, nutmeg, coriander, and garlic on top of the onion etc. This actually sounds like a pretty delicious combo but it's a lot. So for once I'm actually going to taste and adjust.

Vinegar: Some use far more vinegar than others; all call for using two different types of vinegar; all call for balsamic as one of the two types. With cranberries as the base, this is already going to be tart, and there's the OJ to boot. I'll start with less, add if the tang needs some oomphing up.

Proportions: And then there's the amount of cranberries. My plan is to cook all of what I purchased. I've come to love recipes that use weight, not volume, but I'll need both to adjust these recipes because none of them call for the 4 cups/519 grams/1 lb. 2 oz. of cranberries I have. That last recipe on the list with only the metric volumes? My brain can't read that and get a sense of the relative amounts At. All. I can give you cups, pints, quarts, and gallons, and I can tell you there are 3 teaspoons in a tablespoon and 4 tablespoons in 1/4 cup, but I don't grok this other math.

I came up with a general set of proportions, figuring that you work with what you have so any of these could flex up or down:

• Cranberries: Anywhere from 1-1/2 to 2 c. of cranberries
• Onions: 1 large red onion 
• Apple: 1 medium to large apple
• Orange: Zest/juice of one orange
• Vinegar: Start with 1/2 cup (1/4 cup each of two kinds)
• Sugar: Start with 1/3 cup

Yield for these quantities: ~ 2-1/2 cups

I also had the flashiest brain flash of all time, which was to recognize that I have enough cranberries etc. to make two separate batches. I can try this out, mess around a bit, then make a second batch with what I learned.

Batch 1: 

• 1 T. fresh ginger (I keep a tube of this on hand in the fridge. Discovering that product transformed my ability to use freshly grated ginger because I've been responsible for a lot of sad, dried-out ginger root dying in the fridge or freezer); added in the onion sauté stage
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed; added in the onion sauté stage after onions started softening, before adding apples (you don't want to add garlic too early because it gets bitter if it browns)
• Pinch whole mustard seed
• 1/4 t. coriander
• 1/8 t. cloves
• 1/8 t. allspice
• 1/2 t. sea salt (any coarse salt would work)
• Vinegars: 1/4 c. really good dark cherry balsamic, 1/4 c. red wine vinegar
• Sugar: 1/3 c. dark brown sugar

Tasted while still warm. Yummy!

Batch 2:

• 1 T. fresh ginger; added in the onion sauté stage
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed; added in the onion sauté stage after onions started softening, before adding apples
• Pinch whole mustard seed
• 1/4 t. cinnamon
• 1/8 t. coriander
• 1/8 t. cloves
• 1/8 t. allspice
• 3/4 t. sea salt
• Vinegars: 1/4 c. really good balsamic, 1/4 c. apple cider vinegar
• Sugar: 1/3 c. demerara sugar (ran out of brown sugar and I had this from some recipe I meant to make)

Also yummy.

Cooking time: The cooking time varies a fair amount across the recipes. I decided I'd cook until it looked sufficiently soft and somewhat jammy, but with recognizable bits. Unfortunately can't tell you how long that took as I worked on other things at the same time and listened to podcasts while I worked. I stirred in the orange juice and zest after around 30 minutes or so (maybe 40?) and cooked a while longer to reduce the liquid. I'd guess at an hour cooking time total, which fits with several of the recipes. Some have a shorter cooking time though--you do you.

Several of the recipes refer to the cranberries popping, which they do as the skins burst. It's pretty fun to listen to.

Of course, once I did all this I searched one more time to check on canning the chutney to make it shelf-stable and found a recipe that calls for 4 cups of cranberries so it's the right proportions: Cranberry Chutney. It includes hazelnuts, which would make a tasty addition. However, I used nowhere near the amount of sugar in that recipe and mine is really good, with the right amount of tanginess that I was seeking.

Weirdly, I initially couldn't find instructions for canning the chutney. I found some recipes that said it's shelf-stable for weeks, likely because of the vinegar and sugar. I wanted to hot-can it to be on the safe side. In this canning-friendly recipe for Cranberry Orange Chutney I finally found a link to the National Center for Home Canning and this nice list of canning recipes for cranberries. I wish they had discussed the specific balance of acidity and sugar somewhere since I know that's a factor; I plunged ahead and canned anyway, processing for 12 minutes in a hot-water bath. 

Oh, and next weekend I'm going back to the market to get more cranberries to make Homemade Christmas Cranberry Gin Liqueur.