melbell51

What’s in the news today?

A fourteen year old girl goes on a diet–in a children’s book.

Bill Clinton’s a Vegan.

Celebrity this, celebrity that.

Social networking is harmful.

REALLY?

Maybe I was a sheltered kid and as an adolescent, really stayed in my own bubble, but as I get older and become an “adult” (whatever that is), I am growing sadder and sadder at the state of the world around me. And feeling more and more helpless because I can’t change that. Even with God in the equation, the state of things is the state of things. So how can one possibly have a chance at happiness when every habitual nature of human beings is becoming detrimental to each self, each other, and the planet? De-pressing. I don’t have an answer. I really don’t.

Instead, I have decided to take a break from social networking–if I can’t change the world, I can change myself, at least temporarily, and ignore the rest of the world while doing it! Hah. I will go one week without checking Facebook, without reading daily blogs and tweets and feeling like my brain is wiring in ten thousand different directions all at once.

In place of mind grumbling brain scrambling, I will read newspapers, every day, some on paper, some on-line (because we only get the Times once a week). And I’ve decided that for every article I read that makes me want to cry, pull my hair out, or do ten hail Marys, I will find a positive, uplifting article to read to remind me that the world is not ending because of mechanically processed chicken, for example.

I started this morning, and I want to share the articles I have found:

#1-Hail Mary Full of Grace, What Is This World I Live In? (take a look at the side articles as well)

#2- Uplifting (a truly touching story)

#3- Yay, Human Rights and Progress!!

I also got to spend this past week with a wonderful little man, nine months old and discovering life for this first time. This is Lydon, and for him, I want the world; a clean, genuine, unspoiled world. I pray this is the case.

Cookery

I went through a phase my junior year of high school where I only watched Food Network and that is how I learned to cook. Of course, when I got to college, I abandoned my culinary knowledge for easy mac and beer but still looked forward to those long holiday breaks where I could get back in the kitchen and get creative.
Cooking has always been unobtrusive therapy for me. I love escaping into the quiet, bright openness of the room, usually with Pandora radio or WEVL playing in the background. If it’s the morning, I have a mug of hot coffee or tea in my hand as I stir. In the evening, wine, if I’m lucky. I like to lay all the ingredients out on the counter tops so they don’t get lonely as I transport them one by one to their bath of steam or butter or olive oil, sizzling all the way. There is something blissfully monotonous in the creation of a recipe, something warm and welcoming that I can get lost in, like the continual soft needing of a ball of dough, or the beating of egg yolks in sugar into that amazing lemon yellow color. And it always helps to have a house full of recipe testers at my disposal. I read cookbooks like novels, but much prefer to leave them on the shelf (or my bedside table) when I enter my workspace, relying on intuition, acquired knowledge, random impulses, and a slightly askew sense of creativity to be my guides.

However: my friend recently married (and, side note, gave birth to the cutest kid in the universe, whom I get to play with) and received this book as one of her wedding gifts (to which I remarked, why is it only married couples who get awesome household gifts? to which her husband responded “throw a house warming party” to which I responded “…Oh…”) and since she put it in my hands I have not put it down (and dreamt of beef stew last night).

I have been on the hunt for a “cookbook bible” lately and I think I’ve found my grail. This book, created by self taught home cook Mark Bittman, has two thousand (count them) recipes and weighs more than any textbook I’ve ever encountered. He has sections for every single meat, and explains things that all Americans really should know, like how Organic is the ONLY label that has any rules for regulations of meat production and treatment and diet of the animals (as an aside, Kosher, I learned, means much cleaner, unprocessed meat that is typically cured and fresh). Also, grass-fed cows are becoming increasingly rare, and none of what factory farms feed their cows (soy, corn, grain) is in a cow’s natural diet. Bleh.

Anyway, all this to say that I know exactly how I will be spending my spare time in the coming weeks. Fall is slowly encroaching on us, the perfect time for homemade breads and slow-cooked stews. Bittman even includes a section on how to make your own cheeses and yogurts, which I am bursting with excitement to try. I’ve never been a crafty person, or someone who can make pottery or paint (though I’ve always wished I could), but I believe that cooking can be as equally as artistic an endeavour, from the the stress-relieving, screw-the-world-I’m-in-my-zone process to the final palatable product. I don’t actually own this book yet (catch the sutble hint, family? Kidding.), but I plan to absorb as much as humanly possible in the next five days, before I venture home to Tennessee (where, I will, most likely, buy this book and then sleep with it under my pillow).

I Have Seen the LIGHT.

And it’s going eastward on Route 78.

Somewhere in Alabama.

Lies I told myself.

I was born at home, in a five room house, the youngest of the three children of a school teacher and a book store manager taking night classes. My parents’ room was in the hall near the back door. My brother slept in what was marketed to my parents as the dining room, and my sister and I shared the front bedroom. When I was seven years old, my sister, ripe in her pubescent distain for everything, decided she wanted her own room. She moved into our parents room, they moved into our room, and I “moved” into the living room. We had a sleeper sofa.

When I was fourteen, living in Memphis with my very own room (and blue and white painted ceiling), I decided I wanted to go to NYU to be a stage actress. I was, after all, starring in most of my middle school skits. How much harder could it be? The world was my oyster, and I wasn’t taking no for an answer.

When I was eighteen, I decided I wanted stay in Memphis and study so that I could get that extra “F” on my transcript. BFA. It just looks more romantic than a plain old B A. Also, I learned that NYU, like many other “reputable” schools, is designed for kids with trust funds. Not me.

I am now twenty years old, and I still believe that the world is my oyster, despite the fact that once again, I am living in my parents’ living room (different house though, slightly different family, and this time, I have a mattress). I guess family is handy like that. They only see the best in you, even when all you can see is the worst.

I am part of a generation of go-getters. We are CPAs and on the fast track for CEO.

We tour in bands and tour foreign countries, and eventually, after we’ve conquered the world and created our 401ks, maybe we’ll marry another rich CPA and have some kids. And we’ll do it all without disturbing our French manicures or missing our spin classes.

That’s all well and good, but what about breathing? I think somewhere along the line, there’s something we forgot…

The northern Mississippi River peeks out from behind some Minneapolis foliage to say hello to the sun.

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