Jill & Julia

Yesterday I had my own Julia moment....

Yes, it was in the kitchen in a ill-fated attempt to venture into something new by cooking something good. It was an emotionally challenging day. I did my obligatory search for jobs...carefully scanning my favorite employers for possible openings and looking for new openings. Sending out the emails that I knew would amount to nothing. I was feeling rather bad about it.

Over the years, I have found that cooking is my outlet for a daily adventure. It transports me to a different country...it has brought me beyond my front door to connect with great cooks of the past. I've collected a small library of cookbooks, researched age-old french cooking techniques and even translated some turn of the century recipes from a french homemakers cookbook that I picked up at a garage sale.

I think it really began some years ago, possibly even before we moved into this house...but it has crept up on me since my children were born. It was something I could throw my energy into that would benefit us all.

When I was a child, I would watch Sat. afternoon PBS with my dad...he would laugh over Julia Child's accent, her mannerisms. He had no desire to cook but he loved, as we all did, the universal appeal of Julia. I loved watching with my Dad...I grew to love Julia too. Perhaps it also had a lot to do with the muppet french chef that we also loved to imitate. I kept watching her thru the years and enjoyed watching Jacques Pepin and other cooks she partnered with on her shows.

Since my mother did not enjoy cooking, I had to learn from someone and Julia did that for me.

4:30 arrived and I had a fridge full of farmer's market produce...beautiful spinach, lovely tomatoes, super jowl bacon. hmmm...Last week I made spinach ricotta gnocchi. perhaps this week I could make spinach pasta carbonara. My dh would be home in an hour. Kids were busy playing.

I set the pot to boil, cleaned the spinach...boil spinach and set up making pasta. Squeezed out water from the spinach. thawing bacon under hot water.
I was out of the correct flour...had to mix and mingle...bread flour, all purpose white, unbleached pastry....while advised not to use the mixer, I did anyway....I pulled out the pasta maker.
turn and knead...more flour...turn and knead..more flour.
pasta sticking in the pasta maker...more flour.
5:30 DH walks in the door....hmmm, bright green dough...looks interesting.
still sticking...more flour. Pasta, ready to cut?

5:45 DH comes down from shower..counter full of flour, black capri pants covered in flour...table not set, children fighting, wii too loud. Bacon frying. Where's that wine?
Pasta sticking in cutter...yeek! I look down at the horrid mess of flour and bright green lumps of dough and say to my husband. This is a dismal failure....now I really feel bad. If the futility of looking for a job doesn't get you down, then making a huge mess of dinner will certainly do it.
I'm thinking, this can't be rescued ...Shall I cobble all the odds and ends of dry pasta in the cupboard and still serve as is?

DH comes to the rescue. He sets to cutting the dough by hand. I finish the bacon and grating the cheese, prep the bowl with the eggs. DH looks skeptical. pasta boils in 2 batches...tossed in raw eggs, cheese in bowl...2nd batch tossed in. bacon poured over...all tossed. Hmmm...the egg noodles are truly artisan...wide and rough cut. I will not argue. Is this truly edible? skeptism could be mitigated with a little wine. I go to the basement to search out a bottle.

Table set, water/milk poured. lettuces thrown into bowls...salad dressing on the table.

Children called to the table.
Andrew takes a look....OOOOOOH bacon! OOOOOOH cheese! Okay, how bad can this be?
All the food was polished off in a matter of 30 minutes. I guess it wasn't so bad after all.

As with life, can we cobble together the broken bits and pieces of life and make something good of it?

Now on my 6th week of unemployment, I have set to reinvent myself at 44 just like Julia. While the idea of spinach pasta carbonara wasn't bad, my execution was off. But my basic ingredients were excellent. I may just need a little help from my dh and friends to help me pull the pieces together. I hope my skeptism for the final product doesn't send me screaming from the room ...I am still hoping that I can approach this all with some confidence that there still might be something good there to pull it all off.

Sarah Palin and the Amazing Mrs. Pritchard.

Yep, I finished my portion of the tour and had my last official ride into Calvin just a few weeks ago....

I thought the remainder of the week was more challenging than I had anticipated...
Riding from Chesterton to South Haven on Thursday of week 7 was difficult and I had a "bad" day...the wind was in our faces ... it was 80 miles and my left knee was giving me lots of pain.
A fellow rider (Lois Craven) had gotten side-swiped earlier that day and I felt pretty bad about that b/c I had been riding with her just before it happened and Dirk and I had left her at a rest stop b/c we were meeting friends for lunch. Needless to say, it was more of a challenging day than I had anticipated.

I recovered and pulled it into South Haven, but was also glad to have a short day on Fri & Saturday, as my knee was definitely rebelling from the last 850 miles.

The ride into G.R. was good and we had a bright and somewhat cool day. It was perfect riding conditions....
I miss my faithful riding partners already...Leanne Geisterfer, Nancy Niewenhuis, wow, those girls have it going on. I am so proud to know them.

The days are getting cooler and the nights are getting longer. I miss getting out of bed in the morning and getting on the bike and riding for more than an hour. It's been a good summer. I grieve the loss of being out on my bike.

I took the kids to chicago on Monday -- we took Metra into the city to the planetarium. Our membership there ends at the end of the year and we will probalby pick up a new membership somewhere else as that has been a highly successful venture for us this year. We've used our membership for at least 3 family outings and Andrew's b-day party. I love the experience of taking them into the city. It is like a mini adventure every time. I am so proud of my kids and how they've grown intellectually and with judgement and character. God has made them quite beautiful.

Emily and Andrew started school on Wednesday and it was a bit of a traumatic week getting Emily together...but we finally made it happen and got her connected at Lansing Christian and Andrew at Highland Christian...two elementary schools in two states... and two buses coming at widely different times. Our life is getting complicated and we only have 2 kids.

Today was huge for me...I reupped my membership at Fitness Pointe and went to my spin class for the first time in 2 mos. I had let my membership go into "vacation mode" b/c I was gone for the month of August..and was now back for the first tiime. I found the spin class to be equally as challenging as before.
I had a short warmup session on the rowing machine prior and thye made the announcement that John McCain would choose Sarah Palin as his running mate...WOW! there's the wild card they needed to deal to get people back to the party.

For those you haven't seen it, the similiarity between her background and the BBC's production of "The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard" is striking. It is the fictional story of a fantasticly energetic and petite woman who runs a grocery store in the UK...she takes on "the establishment" and manages to turn the electoral process in Britian on its head whehn she breaks up a fight between two candidates for parliament who throw punches in front of her store and then declears that she could do better than those two.

While it has glimpses of social commentary, this story gives every 40 something woman such as myself hope that we are not just doomed to picking up after our kids and doing laundry until we rot. Sarah Palin may be every 40 something mom's american version of hope for us women stuck in the doldrums of life.

Let's go do something beautiful... I'm getting back on the saddle...and I'm going to take the msg of sea to sea to my streets.... we don't need to have poor amongst us...they may be our neigbhros and we dont know it. Let's be the image of Christ to those who may need that extra helping hand today.

Riding at Home

It's funny how what is a normal "training" ride can turn positively delightful when you add a few friends.
My usual long ride is to Chesterton and back...it is about 60 miles.
It can be tedious and boring when I am by myself...but when you add a few new friends, that same ride becomes an adventure.
Today, Dirk and I led groups into Roseland from Trinity to see the Roseland Christian Ministries Center. We were responsible for the route and we took care of organizing groups who wanted to take the alternate route to Roseland and then connect with the tour route to Chesterton. It was great fun riding as a pack into the city.
We were on ABC News 7 last night for the nightly broadcast...I don't know if that helped, but people seemed to know who we were all along the way. They called to us from the street and they waved and shouted us along...
We were heading into the southside of the city and it was enlightening for many of our riders who had never been to Chicago. One of the riders said to me, I am feeling very "white" right now....a natural reaction that takes time to recover from I guess and so, many of our neighbors of color feel very colorful when they spend time with us!
It was a drastic difference from yesterday .. on busy roads iwth lots of misunderstanding drivers. We seemed to have a reception committee waiting for us on our arrival. I was thrilled b/c we weren't sure how we would be received. Dirk and I cycle in the city often and never have had a negative experience, but how would 50 white folks on expensive bikes be perceived in communities where getting your daily meals is sometimes in question...I was humbled and thrilled to see the support, and I hope we held just a brief moment of encouragement for them. They took us in to the shelter, gave us a tour and water and sent us on our way with cheers and lots of laughter and joy. We even made a few skeptics on our tour know that they could go safely into the city and see what people are doing to help each other in times of need....and they are doing all that at Roseland Christian Ministries.

Then we headed toward Indiana ...down Hohman Ave, a straight shot into our hometown of Munster. It was good too....signs along the route and when we came up to 2nd CRC our church had turned out on the corner and the Riemersma's were standing with others to shout and hoot and holler...and holding welcome signs. Mom and Dad Feikema, had been standing in their front lawn with a lovely sign too.
Lunch was awesome and the food, as usual was plentiful. We were some of the last riders of the day b/c Dirk and I wanted to stay back to make sure there were no questions on the route or no difficulties since we knew it so well.

Also astonishing to me was that my Weight Watcher's leader, Jen, was standing on the corner waiting too. She was so excited for me and I was excited to see her. She had been waiting for an hour and a half and finally we came. Wow, there's support in action and I will never forget the love of those ladies...They've been huge and without them I could've never have done this tour.

So lunch and then off again with a few others to finish the last 30 miles. And we had a few freinds from Munster CRC church join us too. Bob & Linda biked to Chesterton with Dirk and I and a small group of others. That was a fun way to finish the days mileage, no pressure, a little stop at a small tavern in Porter. We had some good conversations and laughs too and compared notes on our experiences at Roseland and what we appreciated about the day.

So now we are camping at Indiana Dunes State Park...I didn't get to go into the beach but I think we will see some of it tomorrow. Here's hoping that it doesn't rain as a 40% chance of rain is predicted.

Note, I have located a loaner computer,....I'm so grateful for that since my computer never did hold it's own for the last week and a half and I wasn't able to post.
So now the rides are shorter and perhaps I can do a regular blog for the next few days. Tomorrow we are off to South Haven...this is also a familiar route for me. If it doesn't rain it will be a beautiful ride along the lakeshore...Come ride with me today too!