Dear Readers,
My husband loves following flag protocol, and so on Memorial Day today we lowered our Stars and Stripes until noon in honor of those brave souls who gave their lives to defend this country, and particularly those soldiers who liberated his mom in the summer of 1944, when she was a hidden Jewish child in the French countryside under Nazi occupation.
Of course we'll follow the good old American tradition of having a cookout tonight, especially since summer has really moved in. Temperatures have reached the high 80s, the forest is an explosion of green, and the mosquitoes' whining is upon us. But before we do that, it felt good to do something to honor Memorial Day.
And later on I wouldn't be surprised if we follow another Memorial Day tradition and watch one of the classic WWII movies. For me that's always Midway, because many years ago my husband and I watched it in a hotel lobby on the Gulf Coast of Alabama at the tail end of this long weekend. As we were checking out,
Midway was playing on a giant screen. We got hooked and almost didn't make it to the ferry in time to get back to the airport.
My daughter spotted this dogwood blooming in the middle of our forest.
It's been fun to watch nature come alive and learn to identify our trees.
As I am writing this, I realize I have settled into country life. I am more relaxed. Some of that might simply be due to my having gotten used to life under the COVID-19 shutdown. My anxiety has abated, thank God, but I keep up with what has helped me: staying away from TV news,
keeping up with my formal mindfulness practice, and accepting that I can enjoy a good moment while the dread is still around (see The Unwelcome Party Guest to see what I
mean).
Even through the throes of family strife (my main challenge these days!), I've stuck to my morning routine, as I've come to appreciate that it sustains me on all
levels:
- Doing my exercises, mainly for my hip - "thanks" to my hip surgery I finally have stuck to an exercise routine. I do those exercises religiously every day and credit them with keeping me going.
- Five minutes of doing the Lake Visualization or some other mindfulness
practice
- Reading a page in the Bible along with a related commentary - A year ago I began reading a psalm a day, simply because I had never read them all, and I enjoyed that very much. I found it so grounding that King David's words are still with us 3,000 years later and continue to speak to so many people. When I reached the end of the psalms around Simchat Torah (the holiday when
Jews begin a new cycle of reading the Bible), I decided to continue reading one page a day in my green leather-bound Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), beginning at the beginning. While I was familiar with most of the Bible stories, I had never read every word chronologically. This has been such a calming and grounding practice that I expanded it to include reading some commentary as well.
- Writing Morning Pages, my tried and true creative practice, which I have stuck to since 2013!
A bus stop on the drive south from Lima to Paracas, Peru, July 2019
(This is so far my favorite picture from that trip but there are
hundreds more to plow through!)
The best evidence of my being more relaxed is that I am more likely to do what I feel like doing, trusting that eventually it all gets done. Thus I embarked on putting together a photo album of our trip to Peru last summer. If you want to get your mind off the pandemic and all that it might mean for our future, I highly recommend working on a photo
album. It will beam you into a lovely time in your past, and it is such a great way to relive and celebrate those trips we were fortunate enough to take. This lull in our ability to travel is the perfect time to catch up on creating albums of past trips! I decided to just go back in time. Since I already did one of my trip to London with my siblings last November, I'm now knee deep in the trip to Peru last July. For a taste of that trip, see my recent blog post on the Ballestas Islands. I use Shutterfly for my albums, in case you were wondering.
Cooking continues to be another source of calm, joy and creativity. For our dinner last Shabbat, I tried the following recipe from Israeli Soul. The result met with the resounding approval of not only my vegetarian daughter, but my meat-loving older son, who's
usually not one for vegetables. He kept saying, "You can make this again, Mom!" Thankfully, it is super easy to make and little work. You just need all those spices and 3 1/2 hours of lead time before serving.
Cauliflower Shawarma
2 quarts water
2 cups kosher salt
1 tbsp. ground tumeric
1 tbsp. ground cumin
1 tbsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground allspice
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
2 tsp. maple syrup
1 whole head cauliflower ( 1 1/2 to 2 pounds)
2 tbsp. canola oil
Mix the dry spices in a small bowl. Pour the water into a large stock pot and add the salt (yes, two cups is a lot!), 1 tsp. of the maple syrup and 1 tbsp. of the spice mix. Stir over medium heat until the salt is dissolved. Let it cool, then put in the cauliflower and let it brine in the spiced water for 2 hours at room temperature, turning the head after one
hour.
When the brining time is almost up, preheat the oven to 450F and line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil. Add the canola oil and remaining maple syrup to the spice mix and stir to form a paste. Remove the cauliflower from the brine, shake it off, then rub the spice paste over it with your hands. Transfer the cauliflower to the baking sheet, stem down and roast for 45 minutes to an
hour. It'll be done when you stick in a fork and it doesn't meet much resistance.
Remove the cauliflower from the oven, let it cool a little, and serve like you would a juicy roast.
If you happen to be looking for a good recipe for the upcoming Jewish holiday for Shavuot, I can recommend my grandmother's Rice Pudding. She used to serve it as a main dish (Bohemian kitchen style where a main dish can be sweet and was called "Mehlspeise," which literally means "meal of
flour"). I will definitely be making it this Thursday for Shavuot as it is one of my kids' favorite dishes.
With that I shall leave you for now and get on with making guacamole for our cookout. I hope you're hanging in there, wherever on this planet you are, and that the effects of the pandemic aren't too hard on you. Don't forget, I love hearing from you if you feel like writing back.
Be well,
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