Is It Possible to Have a Civil Conversation About Guns?

     Growing up in Missouri we always had guns in the house. As a young girl my dad would take my brother and I out into the country to shoot rifles, that was our bonding time. Driving down the dirt road outside of town we would eventually reach our destination, a rundown metal bridge that crossed over the 102 River. Dad would throw big, round balloons in on one side of the bridge and as they drifted down the river we would take aim and shoot; I was a poor shot and never much hit anything. I did however learn to respect the power of guns and it quickly became obvious to me that they were not toys. Most of my relatives are still in Missouri and anticipate the coming of each new hunting season.I see pictures on Facebook each year of my cousins and their respective kills. Missouri has an avid hunting culture and I respect the history behind it. Our forefathers provided sustenance for their families through hunting and I know for many it's an important link to their heritage. So, given all this information, you might speculate that I'm a card carrying member of the NRA. I'm not. Statistics show that a gun in the home is more likely to be used in a homicide, suicide, or accidental shooting than in self-defense, which is some of the reason I find myself on the “more gun control” side of the argument. My mother used my father's own gun to try and shoot him some years ago; they are divorced now for obvious reasons. I think I feel emboldened by the Christmas season to express my opinion on such a controversial subject and hope to inspire some of you to think about your stance. I realize I cannot change anyone's mind about anything really but, with an open heart, I simply wish to give my opinion on the subject of guns.

     Most of us learned as children that we can't always have our way and that we need to compromise, but it seems to me as though many of our politicians are more akin to petulant children than adults. My hope is to start a conversation about our differences and finding our way back to the idea of compromise or, at the very least, respectfully agreeing to disagree. If it were up to me I would ban all guns, but I realize the world doesn't revolve around my wants. I also know my ideology would not sit well with all the gun-totin' Americans out there, including many of those near and dear to me. So, I'm willing to soften my stance and head toward the middle. In the middle I see Americans keeping the guns that they have legally obtained, but why does anyone need an assault weapon? I am in no way a gun expert, and I realize some automatic rifles are used for hunting, but why does any civilian need a gun that can fire thirty-three rounds? If it takes thirty-three shots to take down that waterfowl your hunting maybe you need to find a new hobby. Ultimately we all want a safe community for ourselves and our children to not only maintain, but to grow and thrive. I also realize guns are not our only problem, but we have to start making changes somewhere. Had Adam Lanza's mother not have had the ability to build up such an arsenal we might not be mourning the loss of so many innocent lives this Christmas. Let's not let these children's lives be lost in vain. It's time for an intelligent conversation about what is right for all Americans and to stop allowing one very powerful lobby to control our gun laws. It's time we start speaking up not just for what we want, but for what is truly best for our country. As John F. Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you- ask what you can do for your country.”  

Who Writes a Blog on Juice?

     I had lunch with yoga friends a few weeks ago and one of them ask me to give her some juice recipes, so here they are. This is a collection of some of our favorites. All of the recipes serve 2.

Cilantro Juice:                        Harvest Juice:                   Swiss Chard Juice:      
1/2 bunch cilantro                   1/4 large beet                    2 apples                        
2 green apple                          2 carrots                            4 carrots                        
2 celery sticks                         1 apple                              1/2 beet                        
1 lemon                                   2 celery sticks                   6 chard leaves              
1/2 inch ginger  root                 1 lemon                             1/2 inch ginger              
                                               1/2 inch ginger
                                                2 kale leaves
                                             
Mint/Lime Juice:                   My Favorite Beet Juice:     Kale/Grapefruit:             
4 sticks celery                        1 beet                                 4 kale leaves                  
1 apple                                   2 carrots                             2 carrots                        
5 sprigs of mint                      1 apple                               2 grapefruits                  
1 lime                                     1 orange                                                                        
                                               1 stick celery          
                                               1/2 inch ginger

Kale/Carrot Juice:                   Pete's Favorite:                Pear/Broccoli:                
5 large kale leaves                   8 broccoli spears             8 broccoli spears              
3 carrots                                  2 grapefruits                    3 celery sticks                  
1 orange                                                                          2 pears                              
                                                                                                                                 

Pineapple/Carrots:                 Tomato Salad:                   Parsley Juice:
1/2 pineapple                         3 carrots                            1/2 bunch parsley
1 apple                                   2 tomatoes                        1/2 head of lettuce
3 carrots                                 2 celery sticks                   4 carrots
1 celery stick                          1/2 lime                            1 lime

Apple Cleanser:
2 apples
2 kale leaves
1 celery stick
1/2 cucumber
1/2 beet

I keep kale, beets, green apples, carrots, oranges, and grapefruit in my refrigerator and mix them in numerous ways. I try to do a fruit with all the veggies to add a little sweetness.

When In Doubt, Yoga

    I love to run and play with our dogs; in general I think I have a playful spirit. I'm finding, thanks to a recent encounter with Ginger, that my body is lagging behind my spirit though. Last month I was throwing a stick around in the yard with Ted, the youngest member of our pack, and I didn't see Ginger coming at me. Ginger is an eighty pound Rhodesian Ridgeback that at first glance appears to be one solid mass of muscle. She hit my shins so hard it sent me flying into the air and, as gravity dictates, I came down hard. I lay in the grass where I'd landed for a few moments stunned, then I started to laugh. The dogs had gathered round me, all of them looking guilty. I think they know where their meals come from and were trying to make sure there would be no retaliation come dinner time. It was quite comical until I tried to get up, then I was confronted with the reality of my age. You just can't take a hit like that at fourty-six and expect to come out unscathed. I could tell my right hip, shoulder, and knee were all out of wack, so I headed in for some ibuprofen and to take inventory of my injuries. I was stiff and sore, but all in all it didn't seem too bad. I tried for three weeks to “yoga through” the pain, taking ibuprofen each moring and each evening. I continued to walk the dogs, and tried to stretch it out, all in the hope that things would pop back into place given some time. Things didn't pop back into place though. What happened was that I had a migrating pain on my right side. First my right hip hurt, then the pain would morph into what felt like a pinched nerve in my neck, then my sciatic nerve felt tweaked, then the muscles on the right side of my spine began to seize up, and then I came to an epiphany that many of us “hippies” who profess we don't need pharmaceuticals or doctors often come to: God gave us doctors for a reason, stop being an idiot and get some help. I may not be an idiot, but I am still a hippy at heart, so I chose acupuncture.

     At first I thought about going to the chiropractor, which seemed like the natural choice given my symptoms, but the voice inside my head is loud and acupuncture is what it was telling me to do. So I made an appointment with Lester, an acupuncturist who came highly recommended. As is the holistic practitioners custom we sat and talked for a bit before the exam began. He took my vitals by looking at my tongue and observing my pulse, then he had me hop up on the table to check out my back. As he examined my spine he asked again how the injury had happened and I told him. He responsed that I could have told him I was hit by a car and he would have believed me. I had five vertebrae out of alignment. (Note to self: You weren't being a baby.) He then began soft tissue manipulation by gently pressing down on the vertibrae that had come out of alignment until they eased back into place. As he moved down my spine he explained that the muscles on the right side of my spine had begun to seize up to hold the vertebrae in place so they wouldn't slide any further out of alignment. As he continued to push and prod at the vertebrae in my spine he asked more questions. How long ago had the injury occurred? I told him three weeks ago. He was surprised and made the following observation, “My guess is, if you hadn't been doing so much yoga in the last three weeks, you might not be able to walk right now.” I love it when the universe affirms my choices were right. Our lives are cyclical and I'm in a cycle of transition. I'm finishing grad school and Jayne, my only child, is applying to college and will be leaving home in the fall. When change occurs I have a hard time trusting in my inner voice. I doubt my own intuition, yet I knew that yoga, even injured, was the way to regaining my health and I'm glad, at least on some level, I was able to hear and act on this guidance even through the doubt.   

Spicy Sweet Potato and Corn Soup

Friday is my day off but I normally pack more into it then on a work day. Today has been no different. I have an outing tonight so I made dinner for Pete and Jayne. They already fend for themselves on Tuesday and Thursday nights when I work, which is obviously fine since they are quite capable, but what they end up making is bean burritos, frozen meals, canned soup....not the healthiest fare. So I often leave something ready to warm up, bonus: I get to eat it when I get home as well. So tonight I scoured through my fridge and came up with all the fixings I needed to make this soup. I first ran into this recipe in a cookbook from Moosewood Restaurant many years ago and come back to it each fall.

1/2 cup chopped onion            2 cloves of garlic, pressed
1 small can of green chiles or 1 whole jalapeño, seeded (the jalapeño is much hotter)
salt to taste
3 cups vegetable or chicken stock
2 tsp cumin
2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
1/ 2 bell pepper or 1 green zucchini, cubed. Sometimes I use both.
1 can yellow corn

Top hot soup with fresh cilantro and sour cream or plain yogurt.

In a covered pot, simmer the onion, garlic, chile, and salt in one cup of broth for 10 minutes. In a small bowl mix one tablespoon of the leftover broth with the cumin to make a paste, then mix into pot with veggies. Add the sweet potato and remaining stock and cook for 10 minutes, then add zucchini and/or bell pepper, and corn. Simmer for another 10 minutes or until all veggies are soft. Take out one cup of broth and veggies and puree. Stir back in then serve with a dollop of sour cream and fresh cilantro on top.
Makes 4 large servings with about 200 calories a serving

Trusting In My Own Ability to Balance Life

No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve in quality as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing it is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.

Alan Watts

     I miss the days of mindlessly going about my life. Of driving through McDonald's with no guilt. Arguing with Pete and being certain I was the agrieved party. Buying cheap clothes without any thought to where they came from or, more importantly, what child might have been exploited to make it. Wondering about everything I pick up at the grocery store: Is it organic? Is it made with GMO's? Is it 100% recycled paper? Is it free range/cage free meat? Does the company use animal testing? And on and on and on. I've been feeling so much pressure to do the right thing each day that I think I've been forgetting to enjoy my life. I realize I've been doing this, to some extent, for many years and I'm grateful that Pete and Jayne have been such good sports. I have a vivid memory from eleven years ago when I was hiking around Aurora Reservoir in Colorado with our friend Neil, Pete's oldest and dearest friend. Neil visits us every year and this particular year the task of taking him to the airport fell to me. I decided we should go for a hike before going to the airport. As we hiked, as usual, I talked. At some point Neil said to me, “You sure talk about psychology stuff a lot these days. Don't you get tired of working all the time?” Neil has a way of pointing out the everyday absurd that can become a part of our lives when we aren't looking. He normally gets it spot on too.

     I have felt broken for so long, desperately searching for the right thing to fix me. Perhaps if I ate healthier, went to school just a little longer, meditated for just one more hour, achieved that next challenging yoga pose.....I kept thinking that around the next corner I might find the perfect panacea. This past Thursday I sat through yet another fifty minutes of therapy (which I'm also tired of) and I realized I'm burned out on self-help. I resent my meditation, I'm craving food that isn't good for me, I'm surly and not sleeping, it's hard to practice yoga (which is like breathing to me); it's as though my life has become a chore. I talked with Connie, my therapist, about this and her response was so simple: “Do what you want. Stop worrying and just be.” I've been working this path to a healthier me for twenty years, and I think Connie's right, it's time I trust in myself to do the right thing and stop worrying. If I don't do the right thing, oh well. It's not the end of the world if I have a Coke or eat a frozen pizza or act like an ass when I argue with Pete. Life will go on and the next time I'll return to my green tea or choose a salad instead of pizza or realize Pete might just be right. For years I've been espousing that once you find the balance in asana it will lead to finding balance in other areas of your life. I need to trust in myself that I too can find the balance off my mat without always worrying about it. I have a feeling I'm going to surprise myself at how often I actually do the right thing; after all, I have twenty years of experience and, even when I do screw up, I know my intention was good. So I will silently hum my new mantra, an oldie but a goodie, “Don't worry about a thing,'cause every little thing gonna' be all right.” Thank you Bob Marley for these words of wisdom.

Jerk Chicken and Veggies with Rice

     Living in Southern California I have learned that the weather is hard to predict. Even though it's getting close to Thanksgiving we had a high of 90 degrees today. Thankfully it will drop thirty to forty degrees tonight so the house stays cool. I try to grill when it gets like this to keep from cranking the air back on. Here is one of our family favorites. I had some cherry tomatoes laying around so I added them as a side dish. Pete likes tomatoes on the grill so I added some to his skewer, I like mine cold, and Jayne skips them all together unless in ketchup or pasta sauce. My guess is this could be made vegetarian by using portobello mushrooms.

Spicy Caribbean Jerked Chicken with Rice

Ingredients

 

Make spicy marinade by combining:

4 medium green onions

2 jalapenos

1/3 cup lemon juice

1/4 cup honey

2 tsp dried thyme

2 Tbl vegetable oil

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cinamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp clove

Directions:

I use my braun handblender to whip the marinade together. Then pour over one pound of boneless, skinless chicken breast and marinate for at least two hours. I cut the chicken into cubes and add onion and bell peppers to make kabobs with this, I have never used whole breast but whole is what the recipe calls for. I make a side dish of rice in the rice cooker with a 1 Tbl of chicken broth and 1 Tbl jerk seasoning and serve the chicken over the rice.

Roasted Root Vegetable with Quinoa

      My friend Beth just gave me a butternut squash and, as luck would have it, we're having a bit of a cold snap (at least it's cold by Southern California standards). There's nothing like roasted root vegetables when the weather turns chilly. I had some other veggies I mixed in, added some quinoa, and dinner is served. Next time I'm going to mix in a can of garbanzo beans for a little bit more substance, but I thought it was really tasty. I adapted this recipe from a couple of different sources, it serves four with 390 calories per serving. 

     1 tsp. ground cumin                        1 tsp. coriander

     1 tsp. ginger                                    1 tsp. salt

     1 tsp. cayenne pepper                     1 tsp. cinnamon

     2 Tbl. honey                                   3 Tbl. olive oil

     1 medium onion, cubed                  2 carrots, peeled and cubed

     1 potato, cubed

     2 sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed                             

     1 red bell pepper

     1 butternut or acorn squash, cubed 

     1 tsp. thyme leaves

     

 Quinoa:

      1 cup quinoa, rinsed

      2 cups water

      1 Tbl. balsamic vinegar        

      1 tsp. olive oil

Mix all spices except thyme with olive oil and honey in a large bowl, then add the cubed vegetables and mix. Pour in roaster and bake on 375 for 30 minutes. Then add thyme, mix, and return to oven for 20 more minutes or until veggies are soft. 

Follow quinoa cooking directions. When done add vinegar and olive oil. Place a serving of quinoa in a bowl and spoon veggie mixture over it. Serve while hot.