1/31/2017

Cilantro turmeric salmon patties

I mentioned that we would be doing an elimination diet (no gluten, dairy, eggs, soy, nuts, shellfish, or corn) to see if it could help my (and Emilyn's) eczema. We officially started on January 10, after the kids' birthdays and grandparents' visits, so today marks the first day of Phase 2, where we challenge the allergens, one at a time, to determine which we may have intolerances to.

True story: when David told Theo we'd be eating toast for breakfast, he quickly retorted, "No, Emilyn can't have gluten! Just like she can't have marbles!"

The diet has been hard because, as you know, I do like my food. And these allergens are in a lot of things. Basically we've been eating meat (and I'm not a huge meat eater so that was different), vegetables, and rice. The saving grace of this diet is that we've not been asked to give up rice. Also, we've treated ourselves to a never-ending supply of avocados (which are great for turkey avocado roll ups).


Though weight loss wasn't one of the goals for me personally, I did lose almost six pounds because it was just too much effort to snack. (It also didn't help/hurt that we got sick with the stomach flu on Day 3.)

I think my skin is better, but I never achieved complete relief. We'll see what happens over the course of the new few weeks of the challenge phase.

In the meantime, I wanted to share one recipe that we really loved. It's inspired by my friend Kayla's salmon patties which she serves over salad with her incredible Greek dressing.

David jumped on making these one night for dinner and they turned out so well. He tweaked it with turmeric and it is amazing. Turmeric goes so well with fish.



Cilantro-turmeric salmon patties
Inspired by Kayla Dunbar and Nourishing Meals

gluten-, dairy-, and egg-free!

1 cup cooked quinoa
1 clove garlic, minced
1 large handful fresh cilantro, chopped
1 thin slice of lemon, including rind (remove any seeds)
1/2 medium yellow onion, minced
2 (6 oz) cans of wild salmon, drained
1 t ground turmeric
1 t salt
freshly ground black pepper

In a food processor, blend together quinoa, garlic, cilantro, and lemon slice. Add in onion, salmon, turmeric, salt and pepper and blend until combined.

Heat up a skillet on medium to medium high, add 1 T olive oil, and fry patties in batches, adding oil as needed. We made ours about 2-2.5" in diameter.

Serve with baby greens, or with rice. I also think it'd be awesome with oven fries, another thing we've been eating a lot on this diet.


---

Post-script: David and I were talking after about how we are so snobby and had never had salmon from a can before. Without missing a beat, he slipped into Fred Armisen's Portlandia character, reassuring me to not worry, he had gone and met the fish before (Fred and Teddy), they were wild and free-range, etc., etc.

1/28/2017

Everything in its place

My kid desk (but "corner office" with a window!) that has worked for 5 years.
You know how when organizing your home, people always say to make sure you have "a place for everything, and everything in its place"?

During Morning Pages on Wednesday I had this random thought. We know this principle as it pertains to stuff, but what about in the way we spend our time?

As you know from all my posts, I have been working hard to carve out space and time for "creative" pursuits. But honestly, it sometimes feels rigid to say I must do morning pages in the mornings, and I must work on my blog in the afternoons.

But I can also see that if I don't make "a home" to work on writing, then other, less-fulfilling things will inevitably fill in those pockets of time.

Before this recent energy around producing/creating/doing, I think I inadvertently spent a lot of my time trying to stay on top of the dishes as a way to feel successful about my day. Hint: I can never keep up, I will never win the battle.

So, technically, as I am now using less of my time cleaning up (perhaps the cleaning is now more consolidated to the evenings, once David is home, ha), my house is actually not that much worse for the neglect - it was already bad - and now I'm using what limited free time I have to create, and create stuff that no one is going to undo (but maybe myself).


I still only have 168 hours a week. But using a few of these hours each week specifically for creativity has filled a place in my spirit which more than makes up for the sinking feeling I would experience when I looked at how un-picked up our house was.

It's weird; the mess is still there, but it doesn't matter as much anymore.

Creating art and living out art has become more important than the blank canvas I use to covet.

David brought up this desk that we built (!) together when we first got married because there was no room for an office in our one-bedroom apartment. Now we are using it again to create a living room office.
This season of diving into blogging/writing without a defined plan - but with clear discipline - feels very different for me. I'm trying to focus more on input than output, but I am, of course, anxious to see how things will turn out. In the meantime, I shall keep plugging along, trying my best to remain open and curious.

Something tells me that if I follow inspiration, it will follow me.

***

And now for the randoms:
  1. new (to me) writer/blogger whose writing is inspiring.
  2. An interesting article David sent me on happiness.
  3. Tsh Oxenreider's "On Making Friends and Partial Solutions"
  4. This looks good, and, as I've already asked Stephanie, can someone please make this for me already? (And Happy Chinese New Year!)
  5. Did you know about the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows? Found this through encountering the word "sonder" somewhere.

1/25/2017

Seven days of morning pages


"What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while." 
--Gretchen Rubin

I talked last week about committing to Morning Pages (tl;dr: handwriting three full pages, every single day). I plan to go at this for a month and see what happens. So far it's been a week.

I've been finding it challenging to get to three full pages on some days, but at least there's a production/output goal and I know when I'm done.

(It kind of surprises me how I can run out of things to say.)

(...but here I am, generating things to say about it. Ta da!)

Here are some things that helped me with it:

1. Finding the right notebook.

It helped to find a notebook that is nice enough that I want to write in it, but not so nice that I'm afraid of sullying it with my silly thoughts.

I mentioned the irony of me going out to Target to buy a notebook the other day because most people have half-finished spiral notebooks from college that would be perfect for the job. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I had gotten rid of all these things in the Purge.

I found the perfect-for-this-purpose notebook at Target: the Yoobi college-ruled spiral notebook. It was $2.29, which back when I was going to school seems kind of expensive, but it's still significantly cheaper than a $8-10 journal.

I love it because it's not stupidly sized (8"x10.5" anyone?), although, ha!, I just realized this is actually 9"x11" (so weird) and thus I've actually been forced to write more than three 8.5"x11" pages. Insert sideways glance emoji.

It has a firm cover and lays nicely, so whether you're writing on the left side or the right side, it's very sturdy. (Side note: every other day you will get to start on the "nice" side. Ha!)

2. Writing at the same time every day.

For me it works out to do it in the morning during Emilyn's first nap and when Theo is in independent play time. Morning pages takes 20-30 minutes for me.

I have been super slacking about my early wake up. (David is probably on to something when I said I should resume with that after our elimination diet is over.) I can't be consistent enough to do this before the kids wake up (and my brain probably wouldn't be awake enough either), so if's going to be during the "work day" I like getting it done at the first moment of free time I have so I can get the most possible benefit from it, and I can check it off my list.

(I think this point may not be universal. Some people may benefit more from not doing it at the same time every day. It's just what works for me.)

If I remember, I lay out my notebook and pen on top of my laptop the night before so I am reminded to do it.

3. Setting the stage for work.

It helps me to be dressed (at least jeans and shoes) and to have my face clean and moisturized. Lately when I've been trying to sit down for work I turn my phone to Do Not Disturb. Some people even go so far as to put their phones in airplane mode. I don't find that necessary for me, but I could see how that could help.

On one morning I was feeling anxious about random stuff and it prevented me from beginning well. I didn't want to do a full-blown meditation and not have enough time to write (sigh), so I set a timer for five minutes and did a self-guided body scan. I finished before the timer rang (obviously not the goal, but just fyi), and I felt way more relaxed and able to begin.


4. Coloring outside the lines.

In college, I frequently took notes on printer paper because I don't love how diagrams look on lined paper and I like to take notes in a non-linear fashion. But for this, I am trying not to freak out about crossing through lines to draw pictures, make lists, sketch mind maps, and chart out matrices.

There are no rules other than filling up three pages!

You can change the subject on yourself every paragraph, or every sentence. I insert a ton of parentheticals (duh), even though I am writing to myself. Some people say you should never go back and read them, but I've been taking a highlighter to the things that are worth referring back to.

5. Using it to hash out whatever is bothering me.

This is related to the previous point. Using non-linear ways of expression often helps me solve a problem. One day I drew a big heart and filled it in with elements/pieces that would help me feel like if they were in place, I would be living out of a whole heart. (To be honest, this exercise was from an assignment I didn't finish during the Known workshop last summer.)

The other day I made chart with three columns: (1) Topic, (2) Fear, (3) When I have acted on this topic, what happened?

That same day, I started lists entitled "What things around the house don't have a home?" and "What overwhelming-to-me things do I need to stop overthinking about, and just execute upon?"

6. Just keep going, even if I feel like I have nothing to say.

I had one day where I felt like I was seriously making up crap the whole time just to get to the finish line and at the very end, I came up with what I really needed to say, and I had to curve up the margin to fit it on the third page.

Highlighted: "You are scared to show/reveal the ways in which you are letting go of the long-held beliefs that you feel are what allow you to belong. BUT you belong. You have tried to combat fear with belief, but the antidote to fear is faith."
7. That completed my list, but I'm not sure how to transition out of a list to my conclusion, and doesn't making this point number seven just work perfectly for this piece?

With this, and in combination with what I said in my last two posts about blogging, I've decided to use my morning nap time for Morning Pages, and my afternoon nap time for working on the blog. I think I need to write specifically for this (i.e., the blog) every day, even if I'm only posting twice a week.

So that's how it's going so far, and these are notes to myself on how I might keep plugging along. I will be sure to keep you posted as things go on!

And tell me: what is your journaling style these days? How many different notebooks (physical and/or digital) do you have and what is each of their purposes?

1/20/2017

Designing my blog


After writing and publishing that last post, I felt great (awesome comments/discussion too!) but nowhere nearer to a satisfactory solution for structuring this blog.

It was a gift, then, that Designing Your Life showed up in my queue on Overdrive, because the concepts raised in the book addressed the questions that have been rising up in my soul.

Using the principles taught in the Design School at Stanford, Burnett and Evans talk about how to design your life. (I mentioned in a previous post on vocation that I once took a course with Dave Evans at Berkeley.)

I think the biggest takeaway so far is that there isn't one life waiting to be discovered and lived by me; in fact, there may be multiple lives that want to live through me.

It could appear a little haunting, but I'm trying to see it as freeing. I am totally the person who (as far as I can tell) was not made for a specific vocation. However, I am so used to thinking in terms of goals, teleology, and so this free-floating that is happening nowadays kind of freaks me out.

This blog is such a reflection of my life; I want to structure it, organize it, but that wouldn't be me. It won't let me rein it it. Simultaneously, I want to hide, and not show people my real self because I feel completely un-put together. But something keeps telling me to come back.

I am re-reading Big Magic, trying not to be freaked out by the question, "Do you have the courage to bring for this work [i.e., the creative life]? The treasures that are hidden inside you are hoping you will say yes" (7).

I think I struggle more with faith than I do courage. It's not so much about bravery for me, I'm willing to do a lot of stupid things. But I do struggle to believe that there's a purpose for what I'm doing.

The hardest thing for me is to act on those still, tiny feelings when I don't have everything lined up in a row first.

Even with this blog, when I first re-launched it with my thirty day project, I had no idea where I was going, but when I completed it, I was pretty darn proud of what was unearthed.

Theo discovered a "treaded tractor" in the shadow of the couch plus some other random object that was there. 
In Designing Your Life, the authors explain how designers use prototypes, trying not to be too committed to one idea (and certainly not the first idea that comes up), and hoping that if it fails, that it fails fast so you can move to the next one.

I have been 99% consistent with once-weekly blog posts since the close of my thirty day project, and I think I'm ready to increase my output to two posts per week. Perhaps one of them will be the so-called scheduled type post that follows a more traditional pattern (e.g., kid updates, fun lists, photos, etc.) and the other will be open-ended (scary! wonderful!), as has been my wont.

(Does that just totally fit my personality or what? Rules and rule-breaking. Oh my gah I'm so predictable.)

The other random tidbit from the book is the difference between engineering and designing. The authors purport that when approaching your life from a design stance, you don't focus on the problems, but on the people. The best design is done with empathy and consideration for the people the designed thing will ultimately be for.

(Elizabeth, I'm totally all ears for your thoughts on design! :D)

So I'm trying to apply that to my life/blog. How can I design a life/blog that really serves me? What would that even look like?

I seriously have no idea.

---

(Can I blog about how writing this blog post about blogging - and the previous one too - made me feel 5238947329427 times better about my angst? This is so bizarre, and I'm trying to pay attention to this pattern. When I sat down to write today I was like, "I hate writing. I hate this stupid commitment I made to blogging. I don't want to write. All my ideas are stupid. I am such a contradiction. Everything I thought I wanted to say is mush. No one is making me do this except myself. I want to die." And then after I do it, I feel lighter. So weird. Okay, just had to share that.)

1/16/2017

Meta footnote be with you

(With a title like that - so sorry - be prepared for a super stream-of-consciousness post.)

Yeesh, lots of things going on in my mind these days and I am way behind on updates - Christmas, New Years, two birthday, etc.

I have been wavering* about setting up a so-called "editorial calendar" or posting schedule, but I think it could really help me approach my blog with less fear.

[*Lisa footnote: the other day I was journalling about how I am lacking structure in life but that the reason I wasn't putting it into place was because I was fearing that I was idolizing it. And yet because God made me this way, maybe that fear message was really from the Enemy. And then I realized one of the labels for my Enneagram type is "Devil's Advocate." (!) Talk about mind-blowing. And then today when I was reading Healing The Purpose of Your Life by the beloved Linns of Sleeping with Bread, they discussed how "one clue to our sealed orders will often be what we like least about ourselves" (65). I wrote in the margin, "my ability to see both sides in every situation, when taken to an extreme, leads me to paralysis / without a guiding center."**]

[**meta-footnote: this is what happens to me when I go a long time without externally processing. I go crazy!]

So. Where does this leave us? I see both sides to the situation:

1. Having a schedule allows me to write without having to think about what I'm going to write about; the topics will have already been decided.

2. Having a schedule may limit what I can write about, and might also prevent me from thinking creatively about other things beyond the plan. Also, it feels like doing what Everyone Else does.

Writing this out, I feel that the cons are somewhat lame: they are my excuse for not wanting to do this, they are what help me feel like I am taking a risk.

I think what I am discovering about myself is that what feels like no big deal to most people feels like A Very Big Deal to me.

***

One benefit of having a schedule will be less of the "random" posts where I lump 2349083284723 different types of information into one post. But until I get to this schedule, bear with me while I dump: (This is supposedly done for your benefit but also so I can close the 2349083284723 tabs open in my browser currently.)

  • I loved this article on longing and limits
  • An interesting, if not provocative, essay entitled "Is Parenthood the Enemy of Creative Work?"
  • Currently making my first ever batch of kombucha!
  • Okay, this is totally not me, but when I saw this my heart stopped for a second.
  • Sometimes doing the most important thing on my list for the day first, even if it seems very minor and certainly not urgent (and thus it doesn't seem prioritized based on schedule optimization), can make a tremendous difference in the flow of my day.
  • After listening to the Liturgists talk about meditation, I have been trying to incorporate some (you'd probably call it secular) meditation practice into my life lately. I've been doing it almost every day for over two weeks now and I think it is making a huge improvement in my stress, anxiety, and depression. I think it is also helping me have more patience with others and myself. Insert thumbs up emoji.
  • Do you Bullet Journal? (Kendra has the best introduction if you need one.) I have avoided jumping on the bandwagon, despite its seeming similarities to the Moleskine hack for GTD that has worked for me so well for almost 10 years now, and which I keep going back to despite attempts at other planners/life management tools. I am wondering if it will help with my currently-very-scattered brain.
  • Related: I finally bought a cheap notebook (ironic because you're probably supposed to use something cheap you have laying around the house that you don't care about, but I #konmari'd those) to do Morning Pages. I found Chris Winfield's article on it through Google today and it finally sold me on it. 
  • Also related: when I read this article on the Pomodoro method of productivity on Lifehacker, I thought it was a joke / April Fools' hoax. That was last week. Then today, when clicking around on Chris Winfield's site after discovering him today, I was quite convinced of the benefit of the tool, even if it's just used as a nmemonic device, a way of reminding yourself to mono-task, and to do so for a certain amount of time. I don't have a traditional job, and I don't quite have the freedom to work in eight 25-minute shifts of work every day, but I have (usually) some moments of time to myself every day that are pretty regular (during naps, and independent playtime) that I can use to focus on specific tasks for a set amount of time. Today I made sure to not browse during naps (in general, I'm trying to not do anything while the kids are asleep that I can do while they are awake, such as cleaning, etc.). I got some reading, writing, and thinking done, AND I cleaned up the garage for 21 minutes (I set timers for 8, 7, then 6 minutes). I got a LOT done in less than one hour.
  • (Back to the Bullet Journal, one final time. Because it's because I've used a makeshift BuJo for four days that I can even remember some of these randoms to tell you. The Bullet Journal centralizes things that we tend to think are more compartmentalizable. It messes with me and also jives with me. This must be related to the pendulum swing of my mind.)
Okay well I hope I didn't lose my small readership with all that cuh-RAziness! I hope to bring you some more order and structure, but that if I don't do that any time soon, please show me some grace. Thanks everyone!

1/11/2017

More/Less

LESS
sugar
over-thinking
worrying
judgment

MORE
journaling/writing/expressing
drawing/art
questions
awareness about the things that make me feel good
lists!

Happy 2017, y'all!