The Legend of Rock Soup Examined

It’s a great story, about how this wandering peasant came into a village hoping for some handouts. He was hungry, he was willing to work, but he needed some sustenance first. But the houses... the humble wee houses... were all locked up tight, their occupants keeping to themselves, protecting what little they had from everyone else.

They were all poor themselves. Each of these households only had so much, they had no intention of sharing. None of them had enough to share, they thought. So the wanderer picked up a rock and called out to the villagers, proposing to light a fire in the square and make a soup out of this rock. It was to be a big pot of soup they could all share. The villagers watched this crazy man from their windows as he somehow assembled a fire, a large old pot which he filled with water from the river, and then added his rock. One by one they came out of their houses to watch this crazy man. Each brought some small thing they could afford to show him what was really needed to make a healthy soup. One came with a carrot, one an onion, one a potato, one some cabbage, etc. Before long, the rock soup began to resemble a real soup, giving off the delicious odour of a nutritional meal. As it cooked, neighbours got acquainted and shared their stories, and when the soup was ready, everyone got a meal from the pot, including the resourceful wanderer.
Of course, it’s a story of community. None of us is an island and all that. And indeed, there are some great places online to share nuggets of our experience, knowledge, acquired wisdom, as well as great sites to learn new things and toss around ideas, and blogs to read about what others are experiencing. Many are focussed on one aspect of one thing, such as health, but if it’s where you need to be, that’s great. Some are more general in their scope, and are also free. Physically ill from the gluten in my diet and very depressed from it as well, I went to several sites this past Spring, and it was on the health sites that I discovered what might be my problem. I removed gluten from my diet and began to feel better. I took vitamin D and Omega 3 and began to pick up mentally and emotionally as well. I found ideas at one site and began a renewed exploration of self, where I was at and where I was headed. It was here I discovered the legend of Rock Soup.

The owner of this site is well versed in legend, learning, philosophy and life. He put out some very thought-provoking ideas in videos as well as posts that helped get my brain working again. The only problem I had with this site, was that there was no one of my age and experience to talk with. This man was gathering quite the following of young people. Now don’t get me wrong... I have nothing against young people. They are refreshing and often have approaches and ideas that keep the aging mind alive. Out of the mouths of babes and all that. But a sprinkling of older folk would be nice on such sites too... sort of for balance.

Also, I can't help noticing that the internet is not the money-making glam marketplace some think it ought to be. A lot of sites start out free and wind up trying to make their buck up front because people just aren’t buying the products advertised. Others earn their keep by getting visitors to at least click on an ad. But do they? Too many internet users are like me, I suspect. I will not pay to toss around ideas and I do not buy what others tell me I need. Cheap? Ok. C'mon, rabid consumerism just isn’t sustainable. So I decide for myself what I need, thanks. I have only ever paid for one site: enchantedlearning.com. It’s a nominal fee to access a plethora of educational materials that would cost substantially more in a trendy education store. It was a very worthwhile fee in other words, and I paid it gladly.

So, as helpful as any chat site might be, I'm just not paying for one. I will bring a carrot to the soup, a nugget of what I have learned, I will bring something to share and take away a small bowl of soup, but I will not pay for the privilege. I have been casting around, looking for art sites and have found a group of quilling artists I can relate to, as well as other ways to keep in touch with others, while leaving myself enough time to pursue improved health, my writing, my art, my projects, my life. And if I have to go back to hiding inside my humble home because everyone wants money, I guess I can always dust off my library card ~ a less personal form of community. I have something to give while I’m on here, but it isn’t money. Here’s a valid question to ponder: if every one of those villagers makes their own soup and is trying to sell it door-to-door, who’s going to do the buying?

Mmmmmm.... good soup. Please pass the salt.

A Costume Exchange ~ Really?

I understand the concept of food banks, winter coat exchanges, even prom dress exchanges. These things help those less fortunate in a society that seems increasingly geared to leaving people behind. But this past week I heard a new one: there on the morning news show was a woman and her interviewer talking in earnest about this new effort for the poor..... a Hallowe'en costume exchange. Um.... really? Wait.... REALLY?

Ok, wait. I agree we have to give those less fortunate a break sometimes and help them out. I've been there and the kindness of others can really make a difference. And I'm all for recycling of any kind. But a costume exchange? Has it really come to this? C'mon!

In my day we didn't even BUY costumes. My dad burned an old dried out wine cork once to make char to put on my face for that fake 5 o'clock shadow, then an old beat up hat of his and an old jacket, and out I went as a hobo, an old pillow case for the goodies I collected. One teen boy came around our place with those wax wrappers out of bread bags pinned all over him. I guess he was supposed to be a loaf of bread? A bakery? I don't know. In fact, we didn't actually know what a lot of the kids were supposed to be, but they all got candy. It wasn't some sort of requirement to be dressed in a fancy store-bought rendition of a politic figure or a movie character to be given a treat. You didn't even have to be a "little" kid to get a treat.

I remember our first year in a new community, Mom hadn't known how much candy to buy for Hallowe'en and she was running out. My friend and I, about 15 at the time, threw on some silly stuff out of the closet, went a few streets over and collected some candy. Then we came home and gave it to Mom to give out. Hey... hey... we didn't want our windows soaped or our house toilet-papered. Recycled candy works. (Yes, the next year she bought LOTS more candy.)

Sure we bought a few things for my daughter's Hallowe'en experiences... a foam nose and funny hair among them, and one year a witch's hat. But these were drug or dollar store items used to enhance something out of the closet to make her look funny, and they were used over and over again, by one or another of us, for something.
OK, time to take stock: some canned goods for the food bank; winter coat that's a bit worn, but it's still got life and it's too big for me now and I'm never going to go there again, right? Heh... hope not. So I'll wash it up and take it to the winter coat exchange. Red foam nose. Hmmm... not much bounce left in it. I dunno. Maybe not. Feel bad. I mean, I guess things are pretty bad out there. A charity costume exchange? Really?

The Reluctant Vegan

Ack ~ I've been struggling for weeks trying to figure out what's still bothering me. For years I've eliminated white wheat, meat and dairy from my diet because of colitis. Lots of fibre was an important element in anything I ate. Since spring I also had to stop having gluten. No biggy really, once I figured out what the problem was. I love brown rice pasta. I do miss bread though. A lot of gluten-free alternatives available where I shop have improved over the years, but not the bread. It's icky.

The family still eats meat, and to keep them healthy, I buy locally grown natural, organic and free-range meats and poultry. There's also an elk farm nearby and they love the spicey elk pepperettes for snacks. I also use ground elk in chili and spaghetti sauce. (Spaghetti sauce... I remember that.) Elk has a lot less fat than beef, so it helps keep that bad cholesterol down. I can also get bison burgers at a farm not too far away. They can have gluten, so it's whole grain bread, rolls and pastas for them. But Butterfly is also dairy-free because of Leaky-gut Syndrome. She can have goat milk cheese though ~ in moderation. And being of more adventurous nature than the ol' man, she'll try different foods, so she'll have vegetarian meals regularly, making her meal options more varied and quite healthy.

But for months I've been dairy, meat, gluten-free.... vegan, except for eggs. A good source of protein, I'd have egg salad on a brown rice cake for breakfast, and a hard boiled egg in the evening. This was a stinky, but yummy, 70 calory snack that got me through the night, but also, having protein at these two points in the day helps balance out that blood sugar. Coming from a diabetic lineage, I keep an eye on my blood sugar and eat accordingly. Colitis and Celiac disease is plenty, thanks... don't need to be diabetic too.

But, back to the beginning, something has still been bothering me and despite the fact that I didn't want to lose eggs, it seems my body just doesn't want them. *sigh* And so I go kicking and screaming into the world of the full-fledged vegan. For the past two mornings I had that brown rice cake spread generously with sunflower seed butter, and I put some crabapple jelly on top just because I can. (Yes, it's homemade.) Breakfast is still good (she says grudgingly).

My lunch won't change much. No more potato and egg salad, but I'm about to go roast a red pepper for my red pepper humus (recipe here somewhere... even though I can't spell). I think while I'm at it, and to help keep the house warm, I'll just roast up a bulb of garlic too. :) Then I'm going to cook about 3/4 cup of brown rice macaroni and make pasta salad with large black olives and home grown tomatoes to go with a plate of raw veggies and humus. Must go out and pick some fresh basil and sweet marjoram for the pasta salad too. Ok, there's a bunch of stuff I can't have, but I'm in no danger of starving.

So yeah, I go only reluctantly into the life of a vegan, but if I'm tempted to feel sorry for myself, I just think about those people in parts of the world where the principal food is... say... maize. And what if they can't have maize? What if they don't have agriculture nearby that grows other healthy foods? And what if they don't have a big store nearby with a health food section chock full of food alternatives? And what if they couldn't afford them even if there was?

Feh... gotta go roast that red pepper. And the garlic! Warm the house and have yum!

If you feel bad for me and want to make me feel better, click on one of these links and get involved:
https://www.shopunicef.ca/ec/Portal.aspx?LN=EN

http://plancanada.ca/

I feel better now. :)

True Human Beauty and Cliches

I was much younger and living in what seems now like another lifetime, when I learned the truth about human beauty. There are no pictures with this blog post, because I'm going to try to paint you a word picture, or two:

The students in the photographic college where I worked had been given an assignment to use their cameras to create an artistic nude. The resulting photos were used to construct a mid-term art show. I took the time to go see what the students had created.

Of course, there was photo after photo of pretty girls on the wall. There were some interesting poses, some partial nudes where the human body was made to look like some sort of landscape. Some of these were inspired and very artistic. Then, there amongst the pretty, young, mostly white women, was this older, very overweight, black woman, photographed in a frontal pose, sitting on the floor, leaning on one hand, her huge breasts hanging low like large sacks of dried peas. At first I was perplexed by the student's choice of model. She seemed incongruous amid all the pretty girls.

Then it clicked. Of course she was going to stand out ~ that was at least part of the idea. All the other photos could well have been of the same model for all I was aware. This photo was certainly going to get more attention than the others. It's the one that made me look again. And when I did, I saw something quite unexpected that I hadn't noticed at first glance ~ her eyes. This woman's eyes shone from the photo. They were so expressive, revealing her very life ~ her hardships and triumphs, her sorrows and joys, her hard work, her disappointments and heartbreaks, and the depth of love in her soul. It was all there in that photograph, and in that moment, I suddenly realized what human beauty was really all about. It had nothing to do with the pretty girls. True beauty is all about what is inside us. It was a lesson that certainly helped shape my view of life over the years.

This brings me to what I've learned about cliches. We hear them when we are young until we become quite bored with them. We yawn or wave a dismissive hand when someone speaks them. Calling something cliched is not intended as a compliment. When pondering this lesson about human beauty later, that cliche about beauty being only skin deep seemed limited and misguided forever after. Another about the eyes being windows to the soul took on fresh and profound meaning for me. I realized that many cliches became cliches to begin with because they contain a glimmer of truth, or at least something to make us think. It isn't enough to hear them. One must understand a few things about life before they have much meaning. If there was anything cliched in a bad way about that student art show, it was all the pretty girls. Regardless of the pose, the use of pretty models was merely predictable.

This happened 30 years ago, and now when I look at how our society has developed, I'm seeing this shallow rendition of skin-deep beauty take up more and more of our consciousness, with ads enticing us to hang on tenaciously to our youth by getting our breasts lifted or our kissers fixed, or "news" about what this beautiful person is doing, and which beautiful stars split up or got caught high/drunk/raving/cheating ~ all of this "news" taking the place of world events on our news channels. The world, far from becoming more beautiful, is becoming increasingly shallow, with the true beauty of humanity buried deeper and deeper in human tragedy, such as earthquakes, hurricanes and other hardships that scarcely interrupt news of who's been put in rehab lately. It makes me feel grateful, and privileged, for having even seen that photograph by an inspired young student. I never even thanked him or her for the lesson in beauty. So, if you're out there, thank you. When I got up this morning, I peeled off my jammy shirt, threw it into the laundry and walked into the bathroom naked. There in the mirror was an older woman, her breasts hanging low like sacks of dried peas.... but in her eyes, a life very much lived. I might have missed that and felt sorry myself, but for that photograph so long ago. Thanks again.

Pantyhose, Garlic and Garter Belts

So my teen daughter has her driver’s licence and likes to go out and do my errands for me. It’s an excuse for her to take the car out alone and since I'm often content to stay home and get things done, it works for me. The other day, I put “pantyhose” on the shopping list. She questioned it. I mean, I haven’t worn a dress in..... um... well, let’s just say it’s been a long, long time.

Butterfly: “Pantyhose? What do you need those for?”

Me: “Garlic.”

Butterfly, looking a little as if she’s sure it’s time to start looking for an old folks’ home: “Whaa?”

Me: “I need some sort of hosiery to store my garlic. I’m tired of it sitting around in a basket.”

Butterfly: “Oh. Anyway, pantyhose are weird.”

Me, looking at her like I’m sure I won’t be going into the home alone: “Well geez, what came before was weirder.” She looked at me with a bemused expression. I told her about this thing called a garter belt I had to wear when I was a teen. We had stockings, and they only came up to the thighs where you hooked these things hanging down from the garter belt into the tops of the stockings to hold them up. They were lumpy. They left marks on the backs of your legs from sitting on them. They were ugly, weird and uncomfortable. Pantyhose, I told her, are fantastic by comparison. (I spared her colourful reminiscences about my girdle.)

Butterfly only laughed. So I went on. When I went to school there was a dress code. Girls had to wear skirts and blouses. I wore a garter belt, and apparently was the last one to wear this antiquated garment in my school, just because I didn’t know about pantyhose when they first came out. When the other girls did wear slacks outside school, and obviously had hosiery on their feet, I wondered how they were holding up their stockings underneath, without those telltale lumps on their thighs. Bandaids, I wondered? Had they just taped their stockings to their legs? If my mom knew about pantyhose, she kept quiet about them. And I didn’t hang out with the girly-girls. I mean, they were so.... um.... you know... girly ~ all lacy frills and pinching their cheeks to make them pink. Ew.

I didn’t discover pantyhose until one day I was walking through Kresge’s and saw these “Bas Culotte” with a picture on the thin package that looked like mannequin legs. I sort of screeched to a halt and backed up. Searching the package for the English, I found “pantyhose.” What’s this? You pull them all the way up like long johns and no garter belt needed?? Cooool! After that, discovering knee highs was just a matter of time.

I think I buried the garter belt in the back garden. Deep. I didn’t want Mom coming across it if she decided to put a plant there or something. While I was at it, I put my pad belt with it. (Remember those, ladies?) I had discovered tampons. And later, of course, came sticky backs on those other things. Wow. I mean, innovation applied to women’s products. Coooool!
Well now, wasn’t this an interesting jaunt down Memory Lane? Meanwhile, my garlic is all packed away in the pantyhose Butterfly brought home. I cut the legs off, put in a bulb of garlic and tied a knot, repeating until I had all my bulbs tied up in the hosiery. Then I tied them to a shelf on the side of my kitchen cupboard where they will hang throughout the winter for as long as they last. I just need to cut them under a knot to get hold of a bulb of garlic when I need it. I’ll store my onions out of the garden the same way. Actually wear pantyhose? Not on your life. That’s for girly-girls. For me, pantyhose are for garlic, onions, and polishing my hand-made candles.

There's a Pickle in My Apple Tree

No kidding. OK, so school's in. Cucumber plants are climbers and side-winders. They will climb up almost any other plant if they're allowed to. You have to keep an eye on them. But there weren't too many plants near where I planted the dill cukes so I left them alone. There was just an apple tree.

Ok, so there's more than one pickle in my apple tree. And precious few apples. What am I gonna tell people who ask how my apple tree did this year? I'll have to tell them I got a fair to middlin' crop of pickles out of it. As if that's not enough, I'm going to have to convince Hubby to get a ladder to pick them. I can't reach 'em.

*sigh* Oh the travails of the gardener.

Peach~Blueberry Bundle

Here's a gluten-free recipe that worked... at least my fam thinks it's good. :) It's that time of year for fresh peaches and wild blueberries, so that's what I used. Here's what I did:

Fruit mixture:

5 or 6 fresh peaches, peeled and cut up

1 and 1/2 cups blueberries

about 1/4 cup brown sugar, or to taste (or sub honey or maple syrup to taste)

3 tbsp. tapioca starch

2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 lemon, squeezed (about 2 tbsp. juice) [Reserve other half of lemon for crust.]

Stir it up to blend everything.

Crust:

1 cup almond flour

3/4 cup whole bean flour

3/4 cup sourghum flour

2 tbsp. sugar (any kind, to help it rise, or a bit of honey,but cut down a bit on fat)

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. sea salt

1 tsp. baking soda

1/3 cup shortening

1/2 cup milk alternative (or real milk if you can have it)

1/2 lemon squeezed (or 2 tbsp. juice)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Stir the flours to blend. Add sugar, salt, soda, cinnamon and stir. Now, I recommend vegetable shortening cut into the flour mixture, but I used safflour oil because I just spring-cleaned my kitchen (better late than never) and couldn't find where I now keep that shortening (I know I have some. I'll no doubt find it when I'm looking for something else.) Anyway, you need 1/3 cup neutral fat cut into the flour mixture till it's crumbly. Pour 1/2 cup milk alternative (I used soy, but almond would go great with this, rice is fine, etc.) Add lemon juice to the milk to sour. Leave it sit a few minutes, then stir. Add it all at once to the crumbled flour mixture and stir until milk is absorbed. Do not overwork. Drop by spoonfuls into greased baking pan to coat bottom of pan. Spoon fruit mixture evenly on top. Bake in 425 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Serve with a little ice cream or whipped cream of some kind if you like. :)

This is a healthy, hearty, fruity, yummy dessert or breakfast food ~ also gluten-free with all the best of the season. Of course, you can substitute apples or other fruit as your family likes. I just like to enjoy peaches and blueberries in season. :) I may even try a fall version of this with pumpkin, to replace that pie I'm not going to make this year. ;o)