Welcome

 

 

This is the wreath that hangs on the door of my home. My dear friend/roommate made it for us, starting with a kind of scraggly wreath with red berries that I had bought. She added everything else, and it's not your usual autumn wreath. It makes me smile just to look at it. And not only is it pretty and cheerful, but it also smells delicious because the pine cones are cinnamon pine cones.

 

This Thanksgiving, I hope that you feel as lucky as I do. I hope you have many blessings to count, so many that you use up all your fingers and toes and then what are you going to do? I am thankful for you, my readers, because you have helped me more than you might suspect.

 

For most of you, I don't open my front door and have you in. But you have caused me to open my heart in a way that I didn't even know I was capable of, and I am not exaggerating when I say it has changed my life.

 

My wish for you this Thanksgiving, is that you will be blessed in the way you have blessed me. That you will enjoy good food and good company, and a contentment that lasts long after the day is over.

 

Susan

 

 

 

 

 



Food Brag

One of my nieces and I share a love for the kitchen. We also like to make dishes from scratch. She has been a vegetarian for many years, and when I became one a few years ago, she was very helpful as I learned to combine different foods to make sure I get enough protein. A couple of thousand miles separate us physically, but still we are close. We connect mostly on Facebook, so she would post a recent meal or dish on my wall, a possible idea for me. Then I began to do the same on her wall.

My dear roommate/friend and I love pesto and hummus. They are expensive items to buy at the grocery store, but ridiculously cheap and simple to make at home. My older son and his wife got me a food processor last Christmas, and it put me in business. So I began to experiment.

I don't know for sure, but maybe it was the day I posted something like Eggplant Hummus, Pesto with Spinach and Pistachio that my niece commented "Whatever. Bragging is not attractive." I don't know; was I being arrogant? Then she came back with a zinger, something like Homemade Pizza with Homemade Marinara, and some other yumminess. It was on! She terms it "food brag." We both have a lot of fun with it.

She said she has to up her game, but I think she has an edge over me because her husband also makes some amazing things. His lasagna outperforms anything you might have in the most authentic Italian restaurant. I hope to visit Europe one day, and I will have some lasagna when I visit Italy, and I fully expect to be disappointed because it won't be as good as his. It is seriously that delicious. And his homemade popcorn with just the perfect combination of salt and butter? OMG.

We are fast approaching Thanksgiving in America, that holiday that is more about food than any other. Yesterday at work, a customer was devastated when it seemed we had sold out on turkey basters. She looked at me with failure in her eyes and said, "I know I waited too long." Then her mother found one on the floor, and raised it high in triumph. I clapped and the three of us cheered, and well, it was a moment not unlike Food Brag.

Susan

Giving Thanks or Living Thanks?

She bubbled as she said,"You can wish me a happy birthday! I'm 51." I rarely ever find another adult as excited about her birthday as I am about mine, so feeling as though I'd found a kindred spirit, I enthusiastically wished her a happy birthday. I told her that I was 53, and felt very lucky to be here, since some don't make it to be our age.

"Well, then you'll appreciate this story," she said. "When I was 34, I was diagnosed with stage 4* breast cancer. I was basically given a death sentence by the doctors."

"And here you are, seventeen years later," I said. She was the very picture of good health...shiny hair, sparkling bright blue eyes, and a glowing complexion. She was in a word, radiant. "That explains why you are so happy," I added.

She nodded. "Yeah. Even when I have a really bad day, I just get up the next morning and say, 'Okay. Let's try this again.'"

Happy Thanksgiving.

Susan

*Stage 4 is the most advanced stage of cancer

Home for the Holidays

"Be right, and then be easy to live with, if possible, but in that order." Ezra Taft Benson

The song tells us it's the most wonderful time of the year. Thanksgiving is tomorrow and Christmas is a month away. It should be the best of times, but for some families it is the worst of times. I was talking to a man who told me he had eight family members (in addition to himself and his wife) staying with him in their rather small home. He laughed and said that things were fine "so far." Not every family is something out of a Norman Rockwell painting, but really can't we all try to get along? For some, the obvious answer is no. Holidays seem to magnify what is the best and the worst in us. Thanksgiving and Christmas should be a time when we set aside our differences, if even just for the duration of a meal, and celebrate what truly is important in life.

The world will not come crashing down if you have cake instead of pie, or if you celebrate the holiday at someone else's home or even in a restaurant. Of course, family traditions are wonderful, but for some people my age, our inflexibility can make everyone miserable. So what are the holidays really all about anyway? What is really sacred? Friends and family and those who mean the world to us. Can't we all just get along?

Susan

Thanksgiving

"Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality." Joyce Carol Oates

It's the season of thankfulness. I love it that we have a day devoted to counting our blessings. If you are anything like me, your list of things that inspire gratitude is a long one. All the good things that have come my way in life, so many people who support me and love me.

And those who don't. In a weird way, should we not be thankful for what we learn and who we become, courtesy of those who are not at all supportive and loving? People who in some cases even wish us harm?

It's good to try to live at peace as much as possible with other people, but can you live any length of time and not make a few enemies? If we are to ever have any depth of character, I wonder how much it has to do with those who love us and with those who don't?

Susan