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Friday Five Things 12/10

~ kofriedery ~ Leave a comment

“Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control.” – Jack Kornfield

This time of year is for joyful celebration as well as thoughtful reflection for me. In January I’ll be sharing some of my intentions and goals for 2022, but for now I’m thinking about this year, how well some things went, and also how much didn’t go to plan. The great thing though is that I came into this year with a mindset of letting go of control and acknowledging that sometimes the universe throws curveballs. So instead of feeling defeated about my missed goals, I feel peaceful knowing that I did what I could do and the rest was out of my control. This perspective lets me continue to focus on the present moment and the little things that bring me joy.

  1. Tiny Christmas tree. With two cats in the house I never feel comfortable with a traditional Christmas tree setup. In previous years we’ve put ornaments on a tall faux birch tree (similar to this one). But this year I wanted something real and green in the house. So we went to Home Depot and picked out the tiniest potted Colorado Blue Spruce. It is too small for ornaments but I found a skinny strand of twinkle lights for it and it have been bringing me such joy. We also got a real greenery wreath from the Boy Scout who lives down the street and have that hanging in our living room. Now, I already have a lot of green in the space with my usual houseplants, but the decidedly wintery addition of spruce and fir needles is festive and fun for the season.
  2. Finishing Christmas shopping! Just this week I bought all the last items on my list! Feels great to have shopping finished early this year, especially because I’ll need to ship a bunch of stuff and earlier is better for that. I still have a couple gift cards to order and crafts to finish, but all of the physical things have been purchased and are just waiting to be wrapped and shipped.
  3. Bright light therapy. My doctor recommended that I try bright light therapy this winter to help combat my mild seasonal affective disorder. It involves sitting by a very bright LED light for 30 minutes every morning when I first get up and I started it last week. So far I love it! I sit for 30 minutes every morning while I journal or read emails or do some other sedentary activity. I feel like it’s helping a lot with resetting my sleep/wake cycle to the point that I’m waking up without an alarm and falling asleep faster than usual. I’ve also had a noticeable improvement in my motivation during the day. I have read that there can be negative side effects (I haven’t experienced any) so this isn’t a recommendation to go out and buy a lamp, but maybe if you have trouble during the winter months it is worth talking to your doctor about it. I wish I had started this a few years ago!
  4. Paint-by-number. One of the things I’ve been doing during my 30 minute light sessions is a paint-by-number. When I’m sitting with the light I have to have my eyes open, so meditating during that time isn’t an option. But I wanted to find an activity that would help me focus my mind since I’m already sitting there. I found a botanical paint-by-number kit at Target the other day (this one) and I’ve been working on it for 20-30 minutes every morning. It’s actually been a great alternative to meditation for me because I can block out distracting thoughts and just focus on what is in front of me. Highly recommend!
  5. Being able to throw together an unplanned dinner. For the past year or so I’ve been meal planning all our dinners. This has helped a ton with keeping our grocery bill under budget and cutting down on waste. I use this template each week. By the way, I LOVE her planners also. I use the weekly page, but she has monthly and daily version in digital or print that are just fabulous. Anyway, I had planned for a meal of chicken fajitas to make enough for two nights and I just didn’t buy enough chicken for that. We had leftover peppers, onions, cheese and tortillas though. And I had a sweet potato I hadn’t used last week and a can of black beans in the pantry. So I made sweet potato and black bean enchiladas for night two! It felt like such a success that I could pull something together to use up leftovers without needing to purchase anything extra for the week. (FYI – I used this recipe as a guide, but catered to what I had available.)

Friday Five Things 11/12

~ kofriedery ~ Leave a comment

“In most things success depends on knowing long it takes to succeed.” – Montesquieu

These days I have to remind myself that I’m playing the long game in many parts of my life. Writing a novel does not happen overnight. It doesn’t even happen in a year in my case. But I just keep chipping away at it and reminding myself that success will come! And this week I’ve found joy in a few things finally coming to fruition after a long waiting period, so it’s a good reminder that time does actually pass and the seeds we sow do grow roots. Quite literally in some cases!

  1. Roots growing on propagating plants. Several weeks ago I had a list item about how I took cuttings from several of my plants in hopes of propagating them. Most of those failed, which happens. But one in particular was a cutting from my big dieffenbachia that I really didn’t have much hope for. But it kept not dying, so I kept changing its water every few days and letting it sit. And finally, just this last weekend I noticed a little baby root!!! I got so excited that I went and took a new round of cuttings from plants. The great thing about a little success is that it can spark a new round of attempts.
  2. Meditation practice. A few months ago I started setting a weekly goal of meditating a couple times a week for just one or two minutes at a time. I’m happy to report that I’m now clocking four or five minutes almost every day! For someone who has a very overactive internal monologue, even just a few minutes of quieting my mind feels like a huge win.
  3. This Zuppa Toscana copycat recipe. Soup season is officially upon us and I’ll be adding this one to my weekly meal plan in heavy rotation. If you’ve ever had the Zuppa Toscana at Olive Garden, that’s what this recipe is inspired by. I make it with turkey sausage and I usually add twice as much kale as the recipe calls for to really pack in the greens. I also find if you are short on time and/or garlic, a couple shakes of garlic powder can replace the minced garlic without much impact on the overall flavor. This week I made a loaf of no knead bread (I used this recipe) in my Dutch oven to serve with it and it was a perfect hearty meal.
  4. Covid vaccines for kiddos. I don’t have kids, but I have celebrated this week with my friends and family who have been waiting and waiting for the covid vaccine to be available for their school-aged kids. Several have already gotten their first shot and I know their parents are starting to breathe a little easier knowing their kids will have that additional layer of protection while they’re at school, sports, camp, and the myriad other things that keep them busy.
  5. The coziest new blanket. We are a blanket family at my house. I can usually be found snuggled under a blanket on the couch pretty much year round. Which means our blankets get a lot of love and use. We have a few that are finally ready to be retired, so when I saw this Pendleton sherpa blanket at my local Sierra, I snatched it up so quickly (not the exact colors, but very similar). I know they’ve had them at Costco from time to time as well and I HIGHLY recommend getting it if you are a snuggly blanket person. Funny though, one of the cats absolutely loves it and the other can’t stand touching the ultra softness!

Friday Five Things 10/8

~ kofriedery ~ Leave a comment

“Our heads are round so thought can change direction.” – Francis Picabia

It was a pretty good week here! Fall feels in full swing here, I’ve had to wear a jacket or vest for my morning walks with Bama and the leaves are changing in our neighborhood. Some neighbors have put out elaborate Halloween decorations and Bama tends to give those houses a very wide berth. Hope you are all having a good October so far!

  1. Rewrites on my novel. My original plan was to finish a complete first draft before I went back to the beginning to make changes, but I was stalling out on how to finish up the story because I changed my mind about a few key things in the plot. So instead of continuing to write forward, I went back and started rewrites already. And I’m so glad I adjusted my plan! Making these changes is really sparking creativity about the story and I’m having a lot of fun writing right now.
  2. Virgin River. Okay, so I’m late to the party on this one. A lot of people I know watched it at the beginning of the pandemic shut down. But I finally decided to give it a shot! If you don’t know, it’s a drama/soapy-type show on Netflix. It’s set in a small town in northern California and full of all the small town characters tropes you would expect. The cranky older doctor, the handsome but troubled bar owner, the gossipy town matriarch, and, of course, the new girl in town. Here’s the deal, it’s not a good show. Like, objectively it isn’t great writing, great acting, anything like that. But it’s so easy to watch especially if you are doing something else like folding clothes, cooking, or doing a puzzle. It’s the same kind of mom-watching-All-My-Children-while-ironing vibes that a lot of us grew up with.
  3. Disney planning. We are going to Disney World in the spring and I am so excited! I am one of those people who loves researching and planning ahead of a trip almost as much as I enjoy going on the actual vacation. I’ve been following Disney Instagrammers, watching YouTube videos, and reading blogs so we can make the best of our time in the most magical place on earth!
  4. Being social. I met up with a couple friends on Tuesday to grab margaritas and Mexican food. We had a lot of fun chatting and laughing and catching up. I’ve been making a concerted effort to get out of the house and be more social. It always seems daunting to me at first but I always have so much fun.
  5. Soup season! I really love soup and would make it year round, but our kitchen gets so warm with the stove on for awhile so I usually skip the homemade soup in the summer. Now that the evenings are getting cooler, I’m back to soup making! I made a delicious butternut squash soup the other day (kinda followed this recipe but included carrots and added a little heavy cream at the end.) I had enough for two nights of dinner and then some, so I froze it in our big ice cube tray (like this). If what we had didn’t work well enough, I would get some of these souper cubes. Makes freezing thawing the right portion so much easier!

“You can’t go wrong with relatively simple comfort food. It’s also about ease. Some cook to impress. I cook for people to enjoy the food.” – Al Roker

~ kofriedery ~ Leave a comment

If ever there was a year to dive into cooking, 2020 is it! And after the week we’ve had…comfort food seems like the best option. I love being in the kitchen – it becomes like meditation for me to just focus on the task at hand and when I can produce something the nourishes my body and my soul I feel such a sense of pride and accomplishment.

I really try to take advantage of seasonal squash this time of year. I’ve always been a squash and pumpkin fan. The story goes it was such a favorite of mine when I was a baby that my skin actually took on an orange tint! So if you like squash as much as I do…here’s a few recipes I know you’ll enjoy!

  • Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese I made this recently using this recipe as a guide…but I used Havarti and Gruyere with the cheddar cheese instead of Parmesan and Asiago. I am usually in the camp of using more cheese than a recipe calls for…but this recipe really doesn’t need extra cheese. It’s pretty extra to begin with! Next time I make it I might add some broccoli or spinach into the mix because I am a child who likes to hide veggies in my mac and cheese.
  • Baked Gnocchi with Butternut Squash and Kale I just made this on Wednesday night and it was the perfect cozy dish for watching stressful election results. A couple notes: I like to add a splash more liquid than the recipe calls for to make it more saucy. And, as with almost any recipe, I add more cheese (the Mac and Cheese above being the exception to that rule). Also I usually scale back on the kale. The recipe calls for 3 bunches and I just find that amount overwhelms the rest of the dish. You can get away with 1 bunch or 2 if you really like kale. I used about 2 bunches this week to make up for the fact that the rest of my diet has consisted of Cheetos and Poptarts.
  • Turkey Pumpkin Chili Fair warning – I am not a chili purist. I love putting beans and other veggies into my chili and this is a fun and yummy recipe. The link includes both slow cooker and instant pot instructions. Also, if you don’t eat chili poured over Fritos…try it.
  • Roasted Acorn Squash Cut an acorn squash in half and scoop out the seeds. Place in a pan cut side up and put a generous amount of butter into the hollow and rub/brush it all over the surface of the squash. Salt and pepper and roast in a 375 degree over for 45-60 minutes until the flesh is soft and brown around the edges. This can be served as a side or, as I prefer, just put the squash half in a bowl and go to town! This is something we had occasionally when I was little and it is such a comfort food for me.

In an effort to diversify my diet and avoid turning orange again, I do venture outside of the world of squash. A couple other recipes on heavy rotation during the fall are:

  • Santa Fe Chicken Serve it over rice or as taco/burrito filling in a tortilla. Super easy, brainless meal to throw together in your crockpot or instant pot.
  • Sheet Pan Salmon, Potatoes and Broccolini This one is too easy. Put everything on one pan and pop it in the oven. If you can’t find broccolini you can just use broccoli. Or asparagus.
  • Polenta with Sausage, Peppers, and Onions I do not use a recipe for this. I make the polenta according to the instructions on the package, add a generous amount of butter and Parmesan cheese to taste along with some fresh cracked black pepper. And then I sauté sliced onions and bell peppers in a hot cast iron pan until they are soft. Next, push the peppers and onions to the edges of the pan so they continue to cook down and add sausages to the middle of the pan. Italian sausage, kielbasa, or andouille will work just fine. Once the sausages are cooked through, polenta goes into a bowl and it topped with the peppers, onions, and sausage. Yum!

If you try any of these recipes I’d love to hear what you think! Happy eating.