Alfred Dunner: heart moment

Posted by random olio

It is amazing how you can be walking through a store, look up, and have a flashback of multiple experiences before your eyes. Almost when you accidentally click the button on an email that allows you to open all attachments at once. It is fast movement where window after window opens before you. A miasma of different experiences that cascade across the screen.

Mine happened with Alfred Dunner.

Who is that you might wonder? If you have ever gone shopping with your grandma you might have heard of the brand. From what I can remember it was one of the better “granny” clothing brands. My extensive (yes I can say that because they were often) shopping trips with my grandma spanned L.S. Ayres (now owned by Macy’s), JCPenney’s, and occasionally Sears. The main department stores in my small town, with the additional at-home shopping of Appleseeds, and a few other catalogs she would purchase from (such a big deal to her) but most of the time sent things back.

Granny Smith had great taste in clothes (well at least for a someone in her 80’s/90’s). If she found something, purchased it, and wore it that was a huge win. It meant a successful shopping trip. She was picky (maybe I get my pickiness from her). She knew what brands were crap, and what looked good on her. She did not ever want to look frumpy. Even if she was going to the grocery, she would make sure she looked nice, and church meant dressing even nicer. I have to agree on the frumpiness, although I am as frumpy as I want at home!

I am not a fan of shopping and would rather a stork showed up at my door with clothes that were perfect for me in the right fabrics, colors, and sizes. Yet, growing up in a small town meant there was not that much to do. So many Sundays after church my grandma and I would go to the mall, get a nice meal (her terms) and walk around the mall. It was a way to spend time and connect with her. It was something she felt comfortable doing, and it sure beat watching golf (her Sunday afternoon activity). Additionally, it also just might have meant a new item for me (not always but sometimes). What was not to like about that?

Alfred Dunner, I have never met you, but you gave me a heart moment to remember Granny Smith.

Eating Down the Fridge

Posted by random olio

You cannot put that book down, you lose precious sleep at night because you want to read one more page. A different book moves you emotionally to think differently about your life and make some needed changes. Yet another book prompts you to make small moves toward a more sustainable lifestyle.

“The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks” by Kathleen Flinn had an impact on me and the food I consume. Chris and I have found ourselves in a food rut. We make the same few meals each week, and continue to alternate them. Yes, most of the time it is what I crave and want, but what if I do not know what I crave and want because I have not given myself the option to try something new? Over the weekend we went to a Portland restaurant that we have wanted to go to for ages. It took us about two months to find a reservation that would both fit our schedules and be a normal hour to eat dinner (before 10:30 pm). We had an assortment of items all new and different, but one really inspired me: spacatelli, sausage, broccoli, provolone. It was very simple, and yet so delicious. I look up at Chris and say the book I just finished has inspired me and we need to radically change how we think about food. We can make this dish at home.

That does not mean that we do not eat well on a regular basis. I think we have a very balanced diet, what I wanted to radically change was our routine. With the changing season from summer to fall and soon to winter there are so many different options to try. New soups and stews, and warmer dishes we would not want in the summer. So many options to explore, inspire, and change our ways. Flinn’s book is inspired by a woman she met in the grocery store:

“No wonder we’ve forgotten that the most essential thing we do is to feed ourselves and the people we care about. When I saw the stuff the woman had in her basket, it struck me as antinourishment.” Page 22-23

As a country, we eat from cans, the freezer, and over-processed boxes of chemicals. It is what we know, and yet many of the processed foods are a very long list of chemicals that provide no nourishment at all. Flinn sets out to teach a group of women who do not know how to cook how to make food from scratch and replace the quick and easy processed counterparts. She shows them how to make Alfredo sauce from scratch in the same amount of time as you would the boxed version, and she proves that cooking from scratch is not only affordable but the tastier option. She also talks about how much we waste.

We buy food in bulk at stores such as Costco and Sam’s. It seems like a better value, but what we often do not realize is how much waste we create. Why buy one good head of lettuce when you can get three for less? They do not taste great, but oh well. You then do not feel bad when you throw away the other two heads. Which leads to what has been called: “Eating Down the Fridge.” The tactic? You do not buy groceries for a week and instead get creative and eat down all the food currently in your fridge. We would starve in our house because we often only have fresh fruits and vegetables in the fridge and eat them down each week, but we could still join the cause and make sure we are eating the salsa, and other condiments that often are forgotten and grow into other entities within the fridge.

Do an Internet search for: Eating Down the Fridge, read Flinn’s book, and use the changing season to jump-start your food inspiration!

Stop allowing it…

Posted by random olio

Things annoy us. We sometimes go over things in our mind again and again. “Why did they treat me that way?” “How come they do not listen?” Whatever the situation, I have the perfect quote for you. Nevermind that I cannot remember where I found it last week, or who it is from (an Internet search did not prove helpful). What matters is if it gets you thinking. It has me pondering things in life, work, and with friends and family.

“Stop asking why they keep doing it and start asking why you keep allowing it.”

How many times have you felt walked over, disregarded, or simply not heard? What did you do about it? Did you share how you felt? Did you speak up? Or did you just continue with your day, either because you did not want to deal with it, or because you did not know how best to confront the person, or you tried but they did not listen or hear you? How often does that happen to you? I definitely have had those times. However, I usually do not have an issue speaking up and making sure that my voice is heard.

The eye-opening part about this simple line of words is “why you keep allowing it.” That is the key difference for me. I can speak up all I want, but if things do not change, then I continue to allow the behavior. If someone is being disrespectful to you, and you say something (or even if you do not) what matters most is if they continue to disrespect you and you let them. Interesting that it means we permit these things to happen to us, by not putting a stop to them. I know it is easier said than done, and not all situations are truly in our control, but this idea is a good mantra to remember, that when you continue to complain about why someone keeps treating you in a certain way, that you ask yourself: “Why do I keep allowing them to treat me in that way?”

A good reminder for us all.

I was just existing

Posted by random olio

There is always someone else in our life that has it worse off than we do. No matter what the situation, every life is different and has extremes of good and bad. When you are in a funk, or just cannot understand why you are still in the continuously spinning hamster wheel, just remember that there is someone else in the world that is probably struggling worse than you are, or there is someone who could actually use your help.

I think of that often when I have a bad day. I ask myself questions such as: “Will I care about this situation in a day, week, month, year?” If the answer is no, then I should probably let it go. Or, “Is this really so bad?” Whatever the answer we usually have options to change our life. Sometimes we just do not know which direction to walk or which door to open. I just finished a gut-wrenching memoir titled: “Chanel Bonfire” by Wendy Lawless. It takes you through her life and her experiences with her crazy (yes truly crazy) mother. She and her sister handle their situation differently. Her sister, Robin, fights her mom and reacts. Wendy is the caretaker and the smooth-things-over daughter. The result, she loses herself:

“Talking to him made me realize that I couldn’t talk about my plans or dreams because I didn’t have any. I was amorphous. I had no idea who I was, what I liked or disliked. I had spent so much time as Mother’s warden, and Robbie’s bodyguard, that I had subjugated a large part of myself that was, from lack of tending, small and undeveloped. When I walked into a grocery store, I would walk up and down the aisles, like a robot, aimlessly looking at all the boxes and jars wondering what I should buy. Did I like green beans? Cheerios? Cheddar cheese? I didn’t know. Living my little half-life, I was so used to not thinking for or of myself. I was just going along. Just existing.” page 266

While I did not have a crazy mother (far from it) or childhood that was in any way similar to Lawless I still felt I could relate to her. She goes from socializing with the upper class in London and Paris as a kid, going to some of the top schools, to having her mom lock her in closets and threaten to kill them all. I relate to Wendy because I found that after taking care of my mom for so many years (with my sister) I felt I could relate less and less with my peers, and quietly retreated into a quiet place. Since there was no one that knew at all what it was like to be 12, have a mom who was bedridden, where we had to support her every need, what was the point of talking about it at all? In so many ways it was my little half-childhood. I was just existing.

Lawless’ memoir will remind you how vastly different families live. A similar situation could be happening at your neighbor’s house. Be grateful for the good in your life, and help those that you know might be in similar situations.

Make your world alive

Posted by random olio

I have those days where I think, why do I still write this blog? Does random olio connect, inspire, or impact any of my readers? Maybe, or maybe not. It is sometimes hard to know, and often I feel I am in this vacuum, diligent to a pact I made for myself to write everyday. Whether or not my writing is stellar or not, when I started this blog almost 3 years ago, I never thought I would go this far or write this long. I will be driving, in a store, or in a meeting at work and an idea will pop into my head and when I finally have a moment to put my fingers on the keyboard the words just flow out, 90% of the time effortlessly.

Now, that does not mean I do not struggle with whether to actually publish a post, or even if it is worthy of the Publish button, but when I started I did it for the discipline, the community, and now I continue to do it because it keeps me sharp, aware, and always listening. When I came across this quote from Chris Guillebeau, I thought “so well said.”

“That’s the promise: you will live more curiously if you write. You will become a scientist, if not of the natural world than of whatever world you care about. More of that world will pop alive. You will see more when you look at it.

Writing needn’t be a formal enterprise to have this effect. You don’t have to write well. You don’t even have to “write,” exactly—you can just talk onto the page.”

Guillebeau is an author and avid traveler with three books out, one of which I have read “The Art of Non-Conformity: Set Your Own Rules, Live the Life You Want, and Change the World” and another which I am waiting for my turn at the library: “The Happiness of Pursuit: Finding the Quest That Will Bring Purpose to Your Life.”

Often I feel that I “just talk onto the page” — it depends on my life that day, where my head is at, and my inspiration. Regardless, it has kept me curious, hungry to read voracious amounts (books + articles), to explore other blogs, and other writing styles of all the things important to me. My world is definitely alive and full, and I see so much more. This does not mean that everyone has to write a blog, but I think writing in general often breaks out what is within, we learn more about ourselves, and often resolve things in our heart.