Updates, Confessions, and Countdowns

12/27/202203/12/2023 ~ Distracted Sunbeam ~ Leave a comment

Ahhhhh… The 26th–30th of December have to be the most “restful” days of the year. These were the days when I would start a knitting project for myself and spend a few hours watching sappy rom-coms or bingeing a show, because I literally had nothing else demanding my time (we will not mention the cleaning or second-semester Co-op prep that needs to be done—that can happen between January 1st and 5th, when it’s a new year and I’m supposed to be all motivated and stuff).

But I have a bit of a confession to make: Christmas didn’t really…”happen”…this year. I mean, we did have some presents to open, sorta, on Christmas morning. We spent wonderful time with family. I did manage to get a tree up around 10pm Christmas Eve (my trusty, dusty 12″ backup tree with battery-powered lights, which was all I could bring myself to set up this year). But neither my husband nor I were feeling the spirit, and we were not even motivated by guilt or our children to make the magic happen this year.

See, we’re both kinda jaded and burnt out at the moment. I spent much of the week leading up to Christmas trying to keep a massive inflammatory issue at the Symphony down to a controlled burn. We managed to make some decisions during that week that mitigated the disaster somewhat, but I confess that I am still frustrated, angry, and downright DONE WITH IT. I wish I could go into detail, but I cannot. Suffice it to say, I’d rather go back to Covid policy discussions. Those were a breeze compared to this enormous train wreck I’ve found myself smack in the middle of.

(I’d just finished reading back over old blog posts, and found it somewhat hilarious that I’d been trying to back out of committees and commitments with them, but now I’m so embroiled in everything, even more than I was before! And I am currently so fully fed-up with some of my colleagues that I just might quit earlier than June 30th, when my elected term is up. I’m hanging by a string right now.)

On the military front, my husband’s job is not what it promised it would be, and he’s dealing with a certain level of frustration—but he is home far more often than he used to be and there is a light at the end of the tunnel (which is probably not a train). However, every fiscal year continues to get worse, with how late (and erroneously) they publish active-duty Guard orders. We were five weeks without active-duty eligibility (more than 30 days, which can screw up the works even more if the right incompetent people are in charge), which meant no healthcare for any of us. Their “fix” was to erase our eligibility from the time Husband started his new Title-10 job last June (around the time I fixed our last eligibility issue, following his return from deployment—I should just tell this whole story in another post, because I can go into detail with this, and it’s a doozy!).

Long story short (because I can tell the long version later), I had to start pulling strings that I learned to pull the last time we had an issue like this, and it was like an escape-room puzzle: Pull one string to correct past eligibility (which should not have disappeared!), and you erase current eligibility! Which string do I pull to make us fully eligible, like we have been the entire time my husband has been commuting to work for the past six months?!

AHEM. Near as I can tell, it’s FINNNNALLLLLY been fixed—three whole months later!—and I should be able to start calling doctors, setting up new appointments and rescheduling old ones, and doing the dance of “referral, authorization, or that’s-not-covered-don’t-even-bother”. And somehow I have to figure out whether I still have my vision insurance…

So we’re kinda exhausted. On all fronts.

BUT! We’re also well-fed! The Hello Fresh kit has been super helpful while I’ve been struggling to just barely keep things going at home. I’ve made some very tasty dishes, learned a few recipe hacks, and have figured out at least two nights a week when I can take time to cook the meal kits. I’ve also regained some motivation for cooking some of my own recipes on other nights that may be busier or have less time in the evening to make much. We don’t eat quite as much frozen pizza as we did, and I’m not subsisting on pasta when I’m hungry but lacking motivation to eat it with anything but butter.

And, even though no real Christmas traditions (other than procrastination) were exercised this year, I did get some baking done, and that does wonders for my mood (if not my waistline, LOL), because I’m good at baking, and the smells are uplifting.

Now I’m looking a new year in the face, and I’m trying not to delude myself into thinking that this year is the year I actually keep anything resembling a New Year’s Resolution or list of goals. At this point, I’m happy if I can keep putting one foot in front of the other and gain some ground over what I had before.

I wear a Fossil smartwatch (Google Wear OS), and one of the customizable faces has a calendar countdown. Right now, it’s set for June 30th, 2023, just a little over 180 days from now. I also have an alarm set on my phone for 10pm June 30th, so I can even see how many minutes and seconds until I can FULLY peace out, without the risk of anyone calling me last-minute. I’m not under the illusion that I’ll be entirely free on that date, but I’m going to do the best I can to make a clean cut and not go back, not even to help with any little things (because that is a slippery slope!). My hope is that we’ll have a new CEO in place (even if he is an interim) who will be able to do the straightening up and cleaning house that those of us who’ve been in charge for the last three or four years have not been able to do. I’m praying he’s a great fit, and can right the ship before it drives itself straight into the Bay of Good Intentions and crashes into the Cliffs of Terrible Execution (which is where it’s headed right now).

Ugh. I need more coffee and a break from the computer… Next post, I’ll try to tell the long tale of “Why the Guard Bureau Sucks, and Other Woes of Military Service”. Until then, I hope you have a fabulous transition into 2023!

New Attempts

11/21/202211/21/2022 ~ Distracted Sunbeam ~ 4 Comments

More and more often lately, I’ve procrastinated, put off, avoided, and straight-up phoned in a number of daily housekeeping responsibilities I should have been taking care of regularly — because, y’all, burnout is REAL.

I’ve been working with/for a certain arts nonprofit in our community, which I won’t name right now but can probably be figured out if you a) know me IRL or b) have seen the name dropped in a previous post (I can’t remember if I did ever name it). I’m a volunteer with this organization in a number of ways, but my main role is that of secretary for the board of directors. I joined as a musician several times off-and-on over the years, but started back as a regular in 2015. From that, I became a representative of that musical ensemble to the board, then they elected me as a board member maybe a year later (the time kind of runs together). I do not remember whether I jumped from ensemble-rep to secretary without ever being a “normal” board member, and it really doesn’t matter that much in the long-term.

What does matter is that, for the last five years at least, we have been in some form of crisis mode, and I basically got my feet wet as a board executive by just jumping right into the deep end. 😆 Or being pushed. It’s hard to say this far into it…

I get to resign this coming June, and to say that I am looking forward to it is something of an understatement. It has been one of the biggest learning experiences of my life, professionally, and — to be fair — what I have gained probably outweighs the frustrations, and not by a small margin. I am definitely grateful for the friends I’ve made, the things I’ve learned, the growth I’ve experienced as a person, and the people skills I’ve developed — all of which are priceless (even if it would be nice to get paid for the work that I do).

But crisis after crisis can wear on a person, and I think I’ve had my fill by now.

BUT! That is not what I intended to write about in this post. It just sets the stage. 🙂

Because I’ve been so burnt-out and tired, my creativity for anything other than problem-solving and firefighting for this organization (and maintaining survival for my family) has been pretty much nil. I’ve written down story ideas here and there, but I haven’t squished any clay for months or done as much music-making as I’d like (there has been some, and it’s been great, but I’m getting rusty despite all that), and let’s just say cooking anything more complicated than toast, frozen pizza, pasta, and ground meat has been a big challenge.

But something feels like it’s shifting. Maybe out of necessity, because I’ve felt SO VERY crappy the last week or two — bloated, fat, painful insides, sore joints, etc. — and maybe also because I’m sort of reaching a point where I may be jaded enough that I’m becoming numb to the drama and don’t care as much as I used to. I’m also getting fed-up with the hoarder’s den I call a house. My energy levels have allowed me to at least get food made and dishes done every day, but there is precious little left over for purging and organizing the mountains of junk cluttering up my living space (which is a heavy (and sometimes embarrassing) albatross I can’t work up the energy to get rid of).

One thing at a time, then. Today I’m not exactly fasting, because I ate eggs for breakfast, but I am consciously — and deliberately — hydrating. I will probably fast through lunch, but I need to cook and eat dinner, because I started something I’ve been thinking of doing for some time: Subscription meal kits!

I have a friend who has been doing Hello Fresh for a long time, so she sent me a free box offer, with further discounts attached, and I took advantage of it. I’d occasionally bought Home Chef boxes from the grocery store (a brand that also has a subscription service), and they were delicious and introduced some new cooking skills that were fun, and not super-challenging (which is good, when I’m fed up with being challenged). I’ve wanted to try a subscription service for some time now, so I would cook at least twice a week but wouldn’t always have a fridge full of random extra ingredients left over from that one meal I wanted to try (I do not have a good rotation right now; I’m a terrible meal-planner). However, I couldn’t choose which company to go with. The free-box coupon and discount made the choice easy, and now I have a little variety in my week! (Also, there was some escaped rice from one of the kits, so I reported it on the website and they gave me a credit that will go on my next undiscounted box!)

In addition to meal kits, I’ve been trying to get more vegetables into our bodies that aren’t just celery or potatoes, so I occasionally will buy the little bagged salad kits at the grocery store and add some kind of protein to it — usually canned chicken, browned and seasoned in a pan. They’re just so yummy, even if they’re more expensive than making my own salad at home (again, I don’t need a whole head of lettuce in my fridge if I’m going to eat salad maybe once a week). I don’t think I’ve ever bought any at full-price, though; they’re usually on sale when I choose to get some.

The chop salads sometimes contain a lot of the harder-to-digest cruciferous veggies (broccoli, cabbage, kale, Brussels sprouts, etc), and as delicious as they are, I don’t really want the bloat and stomachache that follow. So the other day I decided on a whim to stir-fry the green stuff after browning the chicken, and it was sooooo goooooood. I still think I may have had some difficulty digesting it afterward, but it was SO much better than trying to make a stir-fry from frozen veg, or produce I don’t use all of at one time (or have to chop, myself!).

So here’s a little cooking hack that I’m going to play with, mainly to see if I can get it to a point where it’s more digestible (even if that means I just take an ACV pill beforehand and some activated charcoal after 😉 ), but which turned out delectable the other night, and was a meal all by itself:

INGREDIENTS:

Large fry pan or wok
Bagged salad kit containing non-lettuce, cruciferous or dark-leafy greens & veg (e.g. cabbage, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, kale, chard, carrots)
Salad-kit contents (like sunflower seeds, dressing, etc)
Oil for stir-frying (I used avocado and coconut for a Thai-flavored salad)
Kirkland (or other trusted brand) canned chicken
Oil or butter for browning chicken
Seasoning of choice for chicken, even if only salt and pepper

METHOD:

Drain the can of chicken and brown in a pan with oil or butter, seasoning midway (for the Thai-style salad, I used Sriracha and lime juice, which we keep stocked in the fridge, and some salt).
Put chicken aside in a large bowl and heat oil(s) in the pan. Add greens from salad kit and stir-fry until caramelized and/or soft.
Pour greens in the large bowl with the chicken.
Add salad-kit ingredients.
Stir to combine and serve!

See? Easy-peasy!

And it just occurred to me that this ended up being one of THOSE recipe posts that take you through a meandering example of life before actually getting to a recipe. 😆

Fortunately, it’s not much of a recipe. Also fortunately, this is not technically a recipe-blog post. 😉

But maybe I’ll start sharing some of my cooking adventures, because I’ve come up with a bunch of hacks and cheats that don’t entirely suck (though I have cooked some food for myself that is…subpar… “Dubious” if you play Breath of the Wild at all 😉 ), and it gives me a little more motivation to update this blog more often, if not become some great home cook.

I need to share some clay adventures, too, because I’ve put off being creative for too long… I miss making things!

I actually can’t wait to cook my first Hello Fresh meal tonight! But in the meantime, I have to do some housecleaning and keep up with my hydrating plan…

If anyone is still reading this blog, what are some of your favorite cooking/cleaning/productivity hacks that keep you from just giving up and phoning it in for the week?

(EDIT: 3:30pm and one liter of water down! Time to go refill and drink another…)

I Rule at Pizza

03/05/201503/06/2015 ~ Distracted Sunbeam ~ 3 Comments

Not to toot my own horn, but I make a darn good pizza. (Okay, I totally am going to toot my own horn, but I don’t do it that often, so it’s okay right?) Even if it’s a cheapo cheese pie from Costco that I put the fixin’s on, myself, pizza is a subject at which I excel.

Homemade, from-scratch pizza is a labor of love, but no one has time for that every time a pizza craving rears its ugly head. So I’ll share a few pizza-making secrets, which can probably be found on the Food Network, either as Rachel Ray shortcuts or looked upon with disdain by Emeril Legasse. But pssh. Who cares? This isn’t a food blog!

The first suggestion is find a decent base. If you’re not picky, even a Totino’s cheese pizza will do (and, despite my quarter-Italian heritage, I’m so not picky). Costco’s cheese pizzas are great, and come in a four-pack. Hey, if D’Giorno can claim to be gourmet, so can your homemade concoctions. Just sayin’. You know what you like, so go with that. I make mini pizzas with Orowheat Oatnut bread, because it’s what I’ve got.

I can make my own crust — and I’ll post a recipe — but I do it in the bread maker, because I also don’t have the patience/attention span to do it by hand. 🙂 Unfortunately, I have not managed to develop my own sauce that tastes right, so to save myself time, I’ve used Contadina’s “Pizza Squeeze” and Kroger’s “Pizza Sauce” in a jar (the latter is my favorite so far; it has the fewest additives and tastes yummy). As for cheese, fresh mozzarella is tempting to use, because it’s SO delicious, but it is also labor intensive, because you have to drain all the moisture out of it or it will “weep” all over your pizza — and no one likes soggy pizza. Alternatives are block mozzarella and pre-shredded. I’ve used both and they’re fine. However, you have not lived until you’ve tried pepperjack on a pizza. Trust me and do it. You will wonder where it’s been all your life.

ANYway, back to the base… Regardless of how you do your crust, sauce, and cheese, the toppings are the most important part. I can make gourmet out of cheapo, with just the right toppings. And you can, too! So here is a list of toppings we have used to “decorate” our pizzas, with great success:

Canned chicken, browned in butter or oil (make sure it’s a very chunky variety. Kirkland is my favorite, and you’d do well to avoid Hormel)
Bacon (sliced and browned)
Garlic
Onions (I use Mayan Sweets and sauté or caramelize them in butter. Scallions work well, too)
Mushrooms (sautéed in lots of butter, with herbs and maybe a little wine)
Hamburger (browned — in a pinch, you can slice frozen meatballs in half)
Herbs, like sage, rosemary, basil, savory, chives, garlic powder, thyme
Sauces, like Smoked Chipotle Tabasco

Honestly, the best thing to do is to use your imagination. For instance, we usually do some chicken/bacon combination that includes onions and garlic. Tonight, I made bacon, onions, garlic, and sautéed mushroom (with sage, basil, thyme, and red wine), and put them on a cheapo Costco pizza, then sprinkled it with grated Asiago. It was excellente! If I’m feeling super-lazy, but also super-hungry, I’ll just cut frozen meatballs in half and place them evenly over the top.

I am by no means a gourmet cook, so don’t think I learned any of these techniques anywhere but the School of Hard Knocks. So when I say “caramelize”, I’m probably not doing it right. The onions are lightly browned and soft, and crazy delicious. Good enough for me! By the time they reach that stage, our mouths are watering and we couldn’t care less if they’re properly caramelized.

However, it has taken a bit of trial and error to get the crust just right. I have a basic recipe, which I have tweaked shamelessly until I got rid of the bitter taste and dense texture. Again, this is for a bread maker. I’m really not one to ask for tips on how to do it by hand, so that will have to be something to look up on your own, unless you already know how to do it. More power to you if you do!

BASIC 12″ Pizza Crust (with tweaks in parentheses):

* Put these ingredients in the bread pan in the order given, unless your bread maker says to do otherwise:

3/4 cup warm water
1 Tbsp olive oil (substitute with a dollop of yogurt)
1 & 1/2 tsp salt
2 & 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp sugar (substitute with a dollop of honey, in a corner of the pan)
1 tsp yeast (in a divot in the center of the flour)

* Set to the “pizza dough” setting and check once to make sure it’s wet or dry enough while mixing (I tend to eyeball the yogurt and honey, which add extra moisture content, so you might find you need a little more flour than just the 2 & 1/4 cups). It should take about 55 minutes, or so; about as long as it would take doing it by hand.
* When it’s done, dump it out on a floured surface (wet fingers will make this easier) and coat it in flour. Squish it a little, then ignore it for a minute (go pour a glass of wine — or another, if you’re like me 😉 ).
* I’ve discovered that rolling pins do not work well with fresh pizza dough. Lift the lump of dough and balance it on your fists, letting gravity stretch it while you kind of walk your fists around the edges (I should probably do a video on this…)

Now for the rest of the pizza!:

* Preheat the oven to 425°F
* Once the crust is the right size and even through the middle (don’t let it get too thin!), place it on your pizza pan or pizza stone, in a circle LARGER than the finished product will be.
* Brush sauce over the whole crust, and sprinkle cheese (pepperjack, I’m telling you!) over the entire circumference.
* Start rolling the outer edge of the crust inward, folding in the sauce and cheese. Gently pull the crust in the direction you are rolling (left or right), and it will stay rolled better than if you just roll it toward the center.
* Finish cooking or prepping your toppings and spread them evenly over the cheese.
* Brush the outer crust with a thin layer of sauce. Finely grate Asiago or Parmesan over it, or sprinkle with garlic powder or garlic salt.
* Depending on your oven, cook for 15 minutes or so, checking after 10, until crust is golden brown and cheese is thoroughly melted. Sometimes, I’ll start it on a low rack to make sure the crust is well done before transferring it to an upper rack to brown the rest of it.
* Take it out when it looks done and let it cool as long as you can possibly stand it.

There you have it! I hope you have success in your future pizza-making endeavors! If you have any interesting tips (especially on how to make sauce), post them in the comments! 🙂

Waffles on Wednesday!

02/22/201202/22/2012 ~ Distracted Sunbeam ~ 2 Comments

We had waffles for dinner, but this post is more about coconut oil, because it’s awesome. 🙂 The post is kind of disjointed, too, because I’m experimenting with pictures in a post, using the WordPress app on my phone. Also, I was cooking and eating the waffles between sections.

The waffle iron needs to be “prepped” before cooking, which means brushing oil on the plates. I used to use a sandwich baggie over my hand to spread coconut oil (which is better for cooking at high heats than veggie or olive oil) between all the little ridges. We like the non-Belgian style of waffles, so there are a LOT of little ridges!

I either read about this trick somewhere, or had a brain blast, and started using my silicone basting brush (which I rarely ever use for actual basting) to get between all the ridges. MUCH faster, and less mess! 🙂

I also like to use coconut oil in the batter, instead of butter. This recipe calls for melted butter or oil, and since coconut oil is slightly more solid than butter at room temp, I have to melt it. But I don’t like to use the microwave for healthy food, so I put the oil in a glass cup and put that in a pan of boiling water, so it melts — and it will fairly quickly, because it has a low melting point.

Yum!

I use Nutiva, which I get in a two-pack order every six months, or so, through Amazon.com “subscribe & save”.

After I get it all over my hands while measuring it out for the glass cup, I rub it into my skin and wipe the excess off with a paper towel. My skin likes that, especially if I washed dishes earlier in the day (which I did today, and got alligator hands as a result).

My skin is nice and smooth now, with no cracks or pain. 🙂

I didn’t take a picture of it, but when the coconut oil was done boiling, I just turned off the burner but left the pan of water there so I could put the plate of waffles on top of it to keep them warm while the others were cooking.

I spread a little cocoa powder into the batter after pouring it on the waffle iron. Turned out very nice!

And tasty! I love waffles for dinner. 🙂

(If you’re looking for a recipe, find one anywhere — I just used the “crispy waffles” recipe from my orange, 1970s Betty Crocker cookbook that I cannot live without, and replaced the butter with oil. I was going to use honey instead of sugar, too, but I forgot.)