Asparagus and Linguine: Easy, Healthy Dinner Idea

     It kind of baffles me, in a completely good way, but my daughter is in love with veggies these days. This recipe has turned into one of her favorite meals, especially since she has sworn off meat. Hopefully this is encouraging to hear for all of you moms with little kids, just keep offering them the veggies and someday they will be requesting them. This is a strange recipe because it has a dollop of avocado on top of each serving making it interesting in a quite delicious way.

1/2 package Barilla protein fortified linguine, or whatever type of pasta you like
3 Tbl olive oil
2 cloves garlic
1 bunch asparagus, tough ends removed, and cut into 1 inch pieces
1 cup grape tomatoes, cut in half
3/4 cup chicken or vegetable broth
1 avocado
garlic salt
dill (I use dried herbs for this, just a small amount on each serving) 
parmesan cheese (I use fresh, but dried parmesan would work as well)

-Cook the pasta according to directions. Drain and set aside, adding to asparagus mixture when done.  
-Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat, add and cook garlic for one minute. Add the asparagus and stir to coat. Pour broth into pan and continue cooking until asparagus is tender, about ten minutes. 
-Peel and mash avocado in a bowl adding a pinch of garlic salt. 
-Mix pasta into asparagus pan to coat. 

Place a serving of pasta on a plate, top with tomatoes, avocado, dill, and parmesan. 
Serves 4

Making Peace with my Fear

     Just when I think I've discovered all the hidden mines in my psyche, a simple conversation with a friend can expose a treasure trove of pain. I woke this morning compelled to write about my brother Jack's death. This shouldn't have surprised me since the pain always seems to be floating just past my peripheral vision. You would think with all the years of therapy under my belt I would be expecting these little gems of pain, but the human mind loves to dodge the really tough stuff. I sat before yoga class yesterday talking with Kristin. Her mother's dog Snookie, a round, sweet, dachshund mix, was at the studio with her. Our conversation turned to the healing power of dogs. As Kristin spoke about her father's death I watched Snookie back her haunches into my leg. I should have known I was in avoidance mode as my mind wandered to the notion that watching Snookie back up was like watching a bread truck slowly backing in for the morning delivery. I mindlessly scratched her hips as our conversation segued into our experiences with death and the intuitiveness of the dog. Kristen's father died two years ago of ALS combined with dementia, a rare and painful combination from what she described. As she spoke about the last day she spent with her father I held back the urge to sob, not for her pain, which was palpable, or her father, but for Jack. Kristen's father died at home under hospice care with his wife and children beside him. The beauty of this picture was almost too much for me to bear.

     You see, my brother died alone on the floor of a strangers apartment. Up until yesterday I had avoided dealing with the reality of the circumstances surrounding his death by simply ignoring them. Yet, for the last twenty-four hours it is all I can think about. I picture a cold, filthy floor and Jack lying in a pool of his own vomit; how I love to stoke the embers of my pain. I sometimes put on my “at peace with the universe” face and might be heard saying something like, “I wouldn't change a thing in my life, it has made me the person I am......blah, blah, blah.” Honestly, to use my father's phraseology, that's a bunch of bullshit. If I could change one thing in my life I would have been in that apartment to hold my brother's hand, to smooth his hair back, and to tell him everything's gonna be all right. I have long accepted that Jack is dead, but I realized yesterday that I have not fully processed the pain I feel for him dying alone. Each time I unearth something hidden deep within me like this I know that on the other side of this dark place I will come out in the light, so I embrace it, ready for the sun to burn off the darkness.

     I have a theory that when we don't deal with these burried gems, they are exposed in some other way. I believe that the avoidance of this pain has manifested itself into a psychological issue for me, an issue that has been paralyzing at times over the last ten years. When Pete or Jayne travel, not us traveling as a family, but when they are traveling alone, I become sick with fear that they are going to die. It has gotten to the point that to alleviate my panic they text me at regular interervals along their routes. When this began I might call every few minutes until I reached them, I would leave freaked out voice mails, I would send the same text over and over until I got a response, sometimes I even got physically ill from the fear as I waited. I sought therapy, tried breathing exercises, berated myself for the “craziness”, forced myself to ignore the panic, and today.....I found some compassion for myself. I believe this fear springs directly from my sadness for Jack. I wasn't there for him and I have been living in fear that I won't be there for Pete and Jayne, to hold their hand, to usher them out of this world with love. Everyone dies, so to live in fear of death is pointless. I'm going to try and make some peace with this fear and to give it over to God. The timing couldn't be more perfect, I was a little worried for my sanity as Jayne heads to New York next week alone. Once more I am struck by the beauty of life. When the time is right the stone loosens and falls away, leaving a hole for the light to shine through, and the time is right for me to let this stone go.  

Flexing My Gratitude Muscle

     While teaching yoga a few weeks ago I found myself wandering through the rows of mats making corrections here and there when I thought, “are these students aware of what an amazing thing they've stumbled onto?” I certainly wasn't conscious in the beginning of what a profound difference my yoga practice would mean to my life. Learning the philosophy behind the practice has made me acutely cognizant of my behavior both on and off my mat. I now know my yoga practice is a gift, a life altering gift that I'm grateful for every day. My people, my family of origin, were poor, uneducated, and the only way they knew to find spirituality was through a Sunday sermon filled with hand raising capitulation and loud choruses of Hallelujah. Times have changed, but most of them are still scraping by and the idea of the time, let alone the money, it takes to have a yoga practice would be considered a luxury. Don't get me wrong, I know that you can spread out a towel on your living room floor and practice yoga in your pajamas (no Lululemon required), but when you are a single mom, working two jobs, the reality is there is just not enough time in the day. How many of us take this for granted? I certainly did. I thought the way to happiness was more of everything when I began my adult life; a nice house with matchy-matchy furniture, an expensive car, all the trappings that showed the world I had arrived. Then I found yoga and became “enlightened.” I transcended that lowly behavior, yet my stealthy humaness was lurking in the shadows. My wants became subtler; more advanced asana, outrageously expensive yoga accessories, then, again, “enlightenment.” I want to stop chasing (fill in the blank here) and to just Be. Grateful, happy to have a pulse. Not an easy state to achieve in our modern world, but I'm trying.

     If you haven't guessed, gratitude seems to be a reccurring theme in my life lately. I've found my personal yoga practice directly correlates to my happiness meter and I've been consistently rolling out my mat again. I've been making it a point to attend many different instructors and styles, but I'm especially enjoying Dylan Werner's (see photo) class at Inner Evolution right now. This is a big deal for me because his class is way out of my comfort zone. I jokingly call this class the “kick your ass hour”, but I'm having a blast learning from this very strong yogi. At the end of class on Friday night we were guided into sukhasana (easy cross-legged pose) then he asked us to take a moment in gratitude (there it is again). I felt an easy smile arise on my face, humbled by the strength and health of my body and grateful for all that I'm learning from this young yoga teacher. I've been looking at gratitude like a muscle that can be strengthened and was pleased to sense it engage at the end of this class of its own free will. I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but Norman Vincent Peale was right when he said, “change your thoughts and you change the world.” Man, am I grateful for my world. Wrinkles, age spots, poochy belly and all. Let's just see if I can keep it up.    

A New Motto?

    I recently gave an extra credit assignment to my college students. The assignment was to watch one of two shows on Netflix: Hungry for Change or Enlighten Up! Quick sidebar: Enlighten Up! is a movie about one guy's journey to find out if he commits to a yoga practice how his life might change, and Hungry for Change is a movie about the food industry and eating healthier; pretty diverse topics on the surface. It's been my experience in the past that many of the students at the college don't take assignments seriously from a junior college yoga teacher. The work that many have turned in to me in the past has been underwhelming to say the least. I'm afraid I've become jaded when I give out homework at the college (full disclosure: I stopped reading their assignments). I told myself I was too busy (isn't that the most cliché excuse?) and that I knew what I was going to find anyway. Last semester I gave out a similiar assignment and instead of reading each paper I simply glanced over them to make sure they had dotted all their i's and crossed all their t's and then gave them credit. As I sat down with the papers in front of me I noticed one student had made a cover sheet that was quite professional and he had placed his work into a plastic sleeve to assure safe delivery. What kind of schmuck would I be if I didn't even read that one? Then it dawned on me that each student had taken their time to watch what I suggested, to type out their opinions about what they had seen, with the expectation that I would at least read them. Didn't they deserve for me to take a little time out of my oh so “busy” day to read what they had written? Of course the answer is YES!

    I found the usual suspects when I began to peruse the papers: pages filled with empty facts trying to kill some space so they could be done, facts mixed up, skewed perceptions, words misspelled (how does that even happen with spell check?), and then I happened on a genuinely sincere paper. This particular student is a young, single mom who took offense at some of the issues presented in Hungry for Change. At one point the documentary says something like, “feeding your children cereal is like feeding them heroin.” The producers are talking about the high sugar content, as well as the GMO's (genetically modified organisms), that can be found in many cereals. I continued to read and noticed a pattern taking shape. In paper after paper students were waffling between defensive and self-deprecating about their life choices after watching this film. I found myself instinctually making notes on some of the pages, words of encouragement, gentle corrections when they were misinformed, yet, I don't even return these papers. Hmmm? Still not sure of what to do with the sense that I had somehow done them a disservice, I continued to read on. I picked up the next paper which happened to be on Enlighten Up! Krystal wrote the usual fare at first; what the documentary was about, the characters, how she felt about it, and then she WOWed me. In fact, what she wrote is going to be my new motto for life. Krystal said that what she took from the Gurus was “Yoga practice is simply to become better, whatever your version of better may be.” SHAZAM! This was the answer. I went in the next day and wrote Krystal's line on the mirror with a bar of soap. I had to improvise since I have no whiteboard. I told them I noticed a theme that was insidiously weaving its way through many of the papers I had read, as well as in yoga classes around the west, and that is that many of us believe we aren't quite good enough. I read the line again and then asked if they had changed any habits based on our discussions, the documentaries, asana practice. I received a resounding nod to indicate “yes” (they don't say much). So it seems to me that the answer is simple; just be the best “you” you can be today and stop worrying. I like to think my students got it, but, if not, I know Krystal and I did.         

Discovering Me Isn't Going To Be Easy

...and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be~

Patanjali

     Yesterday I felt good, today I feel like I'm falling to the floor in a thousand tiny pieces. I did my yoga and meditation yesterday then I pulled out my research for a project I'm involved in. I'm highly passionate about my work and spent hours taking notes and googling information, then dinner with a girlfriend I haven't seen in a while to catch up. Fast forward to today and I'm not speaking to Pete over a fight about...wait for it...cereal. What the fuck is going on with me? I worry that the bipolar my mom suffers from is finally manifesting itself in me and that scares the shit out of me. My mom has lost everything that is dear to her because of this disease. She refuses to stay on meds and continues to add alcohol to the mix. Her craziness has driven all of the people that she loves away; I think of my own departure from her life as self-preservation. In order to maintain my sanity I moved five states away from her and I don't answer the phone when she calls anymore. Too many conversations ended with her screaming obscenities at me by way of the “shitty daughter” speech and saying things like, “Oh, if Jack (my dead brother) were only alive he wouldn't treat me like this.” I so don't want to allow my own self-pity to turn me into someone who hates the people I'm supposed to love most. I feel out of control emotionally and it scares me. I wonder if my mom feels scared by her own instability? Or perhaps just the awareness of my own instability means I'm not crazy?

     I can't decide if I should cut myself some slack or shake it off or just grow up. It has been a hard two years and now I'm looking at my only child, the main focus of my life for over eighteen years, heading off to college and creating her own story. I will only be a footnote in her story from now on, no longer the mother lifeline I so loved playing. I have been healing my childhood wounds through the act of nurturing my own daughter for years now; I'm feeling a little wobbly at the idea of no longer having that. It has been achingly painful at times and just as equally beautiful. After what seems like a lifetime of yoga the message is suddenly crystal clear to me: It is time that I begin to truly love and nurture myself, to be far greater than I ever dreamed. No longer am I able to use the excuse that Jayne must come first, or the dogs, or Pete. All are self-sufficient and that terrifies me. I must truly face who I am, this painfully flawed human with an overflowing abundance of both love and anger, and find a way to make peace with myself once and for all. I think I'm truly ready to find some equanimity, but that may have to wait until I have a good cry.  

Weak-Willed Lisa No More

      The yoga studio that I teach for is also the studio where I practice. Every March they have a thirty-day challenge to get students to recommit to their asana practice. Think Patanjali's Yoga Sutra 1:14, “This practice becomes firmly rooted when it is cultivated skillfully and continuously for a long time.” I, being the weak-willed woman that I am, have not participated in the past. This year I inadvertantly stepped into the challenge. I noticed that by sheer happenstance I had practiced asana for seven days in a row; I just started a few days earlier than the challenge, so I thought I'd just see how it goes. Then I really went out on a limb and announced to Phil and Sandrine, the owners of the studio, that I was following along with the challenge even though I hadn't registered for it. Great, now there is someone to hold me accountable! I have avoided situations like this for many years; I like to keep it loose. Goes along with my weak-willed mantra quite well don't you think? So, I was cruising along having made it to day eighteen, I was feeling proud...then we took a college roadtrip to Flagstaff with our daughter.

     I had planned on doing some yoga in our hotel room before we headed to NAU to tour the campus, but my body had other plans for me. I woke up on Friday morning looking and feeling like Johnny Depp in the opening scene from The Rum Diary; it was bad, and I hadn't even been drinking. My allergies had been kicking my butt for days and seemed to intensify with the new location, and I slept for just two hours thanks to my cough that night. I was looking at a five and a half hour tour of a college campus and then a six hour drive home. I told myself that I would surely feel better when we got home and I could practice then. Right, after a twelve hour day? What I did when we got home was pour myself a glass of wine and watched Grimm with Pete. Later we talked about how disappointed I was in myself. I really wanted to follow through this time. I talked about getting up and going to yoga anyway the next morning and Pete suggested I just start over. Note: My husband has run an ultra-marathon, he is not weak-willed. I laughed at that suggestion and thought that maybe I would just give in to the mantra once more and quit. Then, I must have felt Patanjali tapping me on the head, because I realized I could just pick it up today. I didn't miss a day because I was feeling lazy, I was following through on a parental obligation that I felt was very important, not to mention I felt terrible. So, I got up and went to yoga this morning for my (almost) twentieth day in a row. I think I will just tack an extra day onto the end to make sure I actually hit thirty days. It feels to me like Patanjali would approve of this arrangement.    

Cauliflower. It's What's for Dinner.

Traditionally I cook meat two to three times a week, fish counting as a meat. Recently Jayne declared herself vegetarian and I've been working on creating interesting vegetarian meals that we all will like and that aren't too labor intensive.  Last night my family was skeptical about the dinner I served. We had cauliflower as a main dish and green beans as a side dish. To our surprise, it was quite filling. I called it mac-n-cheese without the mac. It was really delicious and full of protein.

Mac-n-Cheese without the Mac

1 head of cauliflower, cut into pieces and steamed

2 Tbl butter

2 Tbl flour

1 1/4 cup milk

1 tsp dijon mustard

1/2 cup Tillamook cheddar, grated

1/2 cup fresh parmesan, grated

2 Tbl Italian bread crumbs 

3 Tbl grated cheddar 

Oil a large baking dish. Steam the cauliflower until just tender, drain and place in oiled dish. Then melt the butter in a pan. Stir in the flour until golden brown. Remove from heat and mix in milk and dijon mustard. Return to heat and bring to a boil. Cook over low for two minutes, then remove and stir in 1/2 cup cheddar and 1/2 cup parmesan. Season with salt and pepper. Pour over cauliflower and then mix breadcrumbs and remaining 3 Tbl cheddar, sprinkle over top. Cook in oven until top is golden brown. Serve with something green on the side, spinach, asparagus, green beans.  Serves 4.