On Gardening and Growing Big Little Things...

Although I am a much more present and patient mother for Isabella than I was over a decade ago for Joe and Mads when they were babies, I will fully admit that I am still not a mother who was made to mother babies.

I know what some people are going to say - that no one is ever really prepared for motherhood, that mostly all of us do the best we can, and all that kind of stuff we say with the best of intentions to comfort and assuage those others of us who just aren't quite as gifted or inclined toward caring for the littlest ones.

fresh thyme

But I am TOTALLY ok with the fact that that I am much more naturally amenable, capable, and competent a mother for slightly older children.

That's not to say that I am not very much enjoying and learning to appreciate what it is to be a new mother again at 40, but learning is the key word here. I have talent for some things, and that talent has certainly bumped the learning curve on the things at which I'm gifted, but this mothering babies thing - well, I am always trying and learning. Specially the whole how to stay at home full time while mothering a little baby. That staying successfully, happily and fulfilled-ly at home full time with a baby thing - that is taking a lot of trying and learning.

And one of the things it's teaching me this time around, because I'm so much more ready to learn it, is a sense of wonderment and accomplishment from the "little" things (that we know are much bigger but are probably so named because we can miss them in the blink of an eye if we're not paying attention...).

as yet unidentified white bulb flower

Watching Izzy conquer her baby milestones, being here to witness the glee and pride in her big two-toofed, squirrel-cheeked, ear-to-ear grin, and realizing how blessed I am to have the chance to do it better this time than I did the last - that's a big little thing for me.

Being able to remind myself in a moment of utterly sleep-deprived and exhausted frustration when I think she's being a little nutjob baby how fortunate we are that she is healthy enough to be a nutjob baby - another big little thing.

And finding other ways, while I am however temporarily away from the paid in money work force, to derive a sense of fulfillment, achievement, evolution, purpose and productivity, to feed the pieces of me that don't answer when called "Mom," "Mommy," "Mother," or "Mama" - a truly big, essential, and sanity-saving little thing.

But the mind can only handle so much of the active and sometimes taxing - albeit rewarding- cerebral engagement it takes to write and photograph a recipe worth cooking or a blog post worth reading. And that whole domestic maintenance thing, while necessary, gets old from time to time...

Enter gardening.

resuscitated blueberry bush

A thing I never imagined in my much more impatient younger life that I would ever care to explore.

And yet it seems such a natural progression in my life at this juncture when I've finally learned to slow down, smell the roses, and be ok with doing my best and letting the rest unfold, not trying to control the uncontrollable, predict the unpredictable, or know the unknowable.

Better understanding both my abilities and limitations than I would have ten years ago, I've started out small. Just a few plants in the ground and a few more in pots.

the Christmas cactus that keeps on giving

And when I see new leaves sprouting on a blueberry bush I thought I'd killed, new little nodes on my Christmas cactus, a whole blanket of tiny thyme leaves coming in where I'd cut it back completely, new spearmint leaves growing like weeds just days after I've picked and eaten all the existing ones, and two new blossoms opening on some white bulb flower I transplanted from the side yard to the front, a big, huge, ear-to-ear, two-toofed, squirrel-cheeked grin wells up in the heart of my once black thumb.

That I get to share these big little milestones with y'all makes it all the sweeter.

Next up, it's four little garden beds for veg.

We're growing more big little things, a little at a time. :)

shinae

Me Time

In an absolutely foolish but absolutely necessary act of rebellion against the good sense that tells me to sleep while the child does, I am brewing myself a full pot of coffee at 2:40 AM and stealing the next two or three hours of the kind of solitude a mother can only get when the household sleeps deeply.

I love that this pic makes me look like I ride broomsticks
and eat small children for dinner after I've braised them
in my cauldron.

And I am doing nothing designed or intended to be productive, responsible, forward thinking or useful.

And I am blocking that person who's been intermittently getting under my skin for months. One of those people who seems to get much more out of their interaction with me than I do with them and who makes my gut twitch half the time they express themselves to me, even without the most solid empirical evidence to support it. I am going to stop agonizing over whether I'm being fair to them so I can be good to myself. Because they are not my child, lover, parent, sibling or friend. Because they do not matter.

I am also letting this mess sit and not allowing myself a moment of that feeling of obligation to do something about it.

I am sitting here, being me, being awake, being useless and letting my mind be awake while my body wants to sleep because that is what I really, really want to do, here and now.

Adrenaline, be my friend today.

shinae

Soaked Soybeans & Memories of 할머니...

I'd had these dry soybeans, or 콩 (pronounced KOHNG) in Korean, for over a year when I was taking inventory of my pantry last night and unearthed them.

So I decided I'd make some soymilk with them and make 콩비지찌개 (KOHNGbiji JJIgeh), a stew made with the solids, from the byproduct, which requires soaking/reconstituting, as with any dish made with dry beans.

And when I gave them a stir just now to remove the outer casings and smelled that distinctly green and nutty smell of dry soybeans soaking, I was immediately taken back to being in elementary school and helping my paternal grandmother (할머니 - pronounced HAHLmuhnee) pick the dud beans out of the batch so she could sprout the rest in cheesecloths in an old, broken washing machine to grow soybean sprouts (콩나물 - KOHNGnahmool).

My father's mother, probably from some combination of talent and poverty, had the greenest thumb I've ever known. She could grow anything, and she would collect rainwater in trash cans to water her plants and wash her hair because she thought it was best. (Let's just say I did not inherit her green thumb, but I think I did inherit my sense of frugality from her.)

할머니 passed away years ago at the ripe old age of something that was really close to a hundred, and I don't have that many fond memories of her to be honest - probably some combination of my feisty personality and what seemed to me her preference for the male children in the family (not uncommon for women of her culture and time) - but that's one of them. And we should all take all the fond memories we can get, I think. :)

shinae

Something About How Family Is Just Like Cooking (oh, and expletives)...

As you might already know, I share a lot about my family. And if it happens that you only see the good, easy and positive aspects, it might be the timing of my posts in your stream or that you're just an overwhelmingly positive person. But I really do try to present my life and relationships in a balanced way.

And I hope it comes across that while I am absolutely grateful that we are a mostly happy and blessed family, our relationships are not without their ups and downs, conflicts, struggles, plateaus and frustrations.

I also hope that people understand that this life you see in my posts and pictures, while genuine, was not always this way for me - not as a mother, not as a wife, and not as a daughter - or for us as a family. It took years, decades in some cases, for the people involved to live with, create, perpetuate, suffer from, deny, then finally recognize and work through lots of difficult and complicated issues, sometimes in textbook "healthy" ways, many times not, to get to this place. Sometimes it's too much *me*, not enough *them*. Other times too much them, not enough me. And finally juggling and rebalancing, we hit a healthy combination of *us*.

And the issues, while fewer, still exist, and we still have to keep cycling through them the same way, but hopefully more efficiently and less painfully with each turn.

But what's resulted is pretty much what you see - many moments of happiness, gratitude, warmth, fulfillment and contentment peppered with fewer and fewer - but still very real - moments of unhappiness, ingratitude, frustation, confusion and general unpeacefulness within ourselves and with one another.

How we got to this mostly happy point in our lives is that at some point we each and together determined that it's not an option not to keep trying, even through those moments when we're convinced we don't want to. 

And since I find myself so rarely blogging here about food anymore, I'm going to stretch this noodle a bit to say that in this way, and in so many ways, cooking is a lot like family.

It's a basic reality, necessity, and obligation of life, even if our modern way of living has progressively led us to believe it's not. We start out thinking it should be easy and intuitive to nourish ourselves in a balanced and enjoyable way, but we hit some snags - burn a pancake, oversalt a stew, overhandle our dough, or neglect our risotto - and taste the acrid, salty, chewy, gummy mess we've made and decide it's just easier to walk away from the mess in the kitchen and let a bunch of disinterested others - restaurants, fast food places, frozen dinners, protein shakes, power bars, junk food - be the primary caretaker of our bodily nutrition.

And every once in a while - maybe Valentine's Day or Hot Date Night - we figure we'll conveniently saunter back into that neglected kitchen and whip us up something perfect and delicious only to find we end up creating the same nasty mess we made that LAST time we were in the kitchen forever ago. Because we didn't put in the practice, patience, diligence, dedication and heart it requires to get to that point where we'll know with a fair amount of certainty that we can walk into that kitchen and whip up something perfectly delicious and fortifying without destroying things.

But that means doing 

- a lot of mundane things (boiling water), 

- a lot of boring and repetitive things (peeling tons of potatoes), 

- a lot of things that will make you cry (chopping garlic and onions),

- a lot of things that are a little tricky (poaching eggs)

- a lot of things that are really disappointing (deflating a souffle)

- a lot of things that are extremely painful (hacking a finger, sticking said finger into a pot of melted sugar because you are a fucking idiot, you really are), and

- a lot of things that are downright maddening (mistaking salt for sugar, stuff like that...)

And then one day you look up to find that you've put in enough practice, patience, diligence, dedication and heart to know that 8 or 9 times out of 10, you can reliably produce for yourself and your family - as we all should - something delicious, nutritious, nourishing and fulfilling. 

And just like family, there will be lots of expletives along the way...

¡Shit! ¡Fuckfuckingfuckety! and ¡Goddammit!-ly yours,

shinae :)

P.S. We're doing an African Food Cookalong this month, if you care to join us. Because what is a blog for if not shameless self promotion??? :D

Something About Just Desserts...

Last night, our friends Jay and Marcy came over for dinner.

4 adults, 7 kids, 1 baby, and 1 wiener dog between us.

We started out with some veg and Mad's Fave Ranch Dip...

And after the evening ended too soon and the house was quiet once again, I realized that was the first time in 6 years, almost half of Joey's and Maddi's lifetimes ago, that I was able to open up my own home - to our friends and their family, with my entire family intact, happy and healthy, and in place - and enjoy it the way a home was meant to be enjoyed - with the sharing of laughter, fun, space, stories, things to eat and things to drink in the company of people we not only love, but whom we like and whose company truly enriches us and lifts our spirits.

...and really sweet blueberries that tasted like candy.

Five years after I signed those papers in which I chose to relinquish two houses and my right to freely access all of the material things I earned over thirteen years housed within them, my rights to support undeniably earned and deserved - specially in my incapacitated state at the time, and most painfully, the legal say so over my children, for whom I was the primary caretaker until the events that precipitated my divorce. Five years after I'd learned that I squandered my friendship on people who were all too eagerly waiting, and for a LONG fucking time, to first patronize, then kick me when I was down.

Some said it was too much to give up. That I was crazy not to fight harder for more.

Then we moved on to some Hoisin Roast Chicken...

But even in my mentally diminished state, or maybe to some degree because of it, I realized that I had to release myself from all my opponent would attach to in order to be free from the control he'd try to exert over me, the control legally afforded him by my temporary mental illness, through those attachments.

Because maybe that mental "illness" made me just crazy enough to believe that what was truly mine, Karma and Cosmos would return to me without me having to surrender my dignity in addition to everything else I'd given up in order to reclaim it, provided I kept my head, heart and hand in the right place.

...and assorted grilled meats in tubular form.

And what was mine to have, if I was willing to earn it, was a happy, healthy, whole family in a happy, healthy, loving home, with a meaningful network of good friends with whom to share our lives.

And one of the Monsters' favorite salads...

The ongoing work? Honest knowledge of self, constant vigilance over intentions, doing what I know is right for me and my family regardless of how others might perceive it, and the frequent balancing of my needs and wants to the needs and wants of those around me, the hardest task being the one in which you acknowledge and accept your own hand in your own misery. In which you recognize those things about who you are and the choices you've made that brought those people and events you'd rather not take credit for, into your life. In which you truly determine that you are not, and will not be, a victim.

Love it when all the food gets eaten, all the drinks
get drunk, and everyone goes (or stays) home
HAPPY. :)

I earned that perfect moment with my family and friends last night. But you know what? I earned that other thing too. The good news is that if it took me 13 years to earn, and learn from, that other thing, it took me less than half that time to get it (much, MUCH) righter. ;)

shinae

On Sheryl Sandberg and Sitting at that Other Kind of Table...

I started out writing about how the child has not let me write for the past two weeks and how frustrated that was making me, but then I realized what a poor use that was of the very precious time I am being given at this very moment at 4:30 in the AM to scrape a few words off my tongue...

And what I really want to talk about is Sheryl Sandberg. Or at least the buzz phrases and concepts that have been swirling about her for the past couple of months.

To be clear, I don't want to be Sheryl Sandberg. She occupies a kind of space in the business world in which I've been able to partially participate but bear fairly full witness to over the years  - a high powered and aggressively driven kind of space where people, still mostly male, endeavor to move and shake things while wearing expensive suits and coordinating projects and "managing" people and creating deadlines (some of them legitimate) and power lunching and posturing and maneuvering and constantly seeking ways to be more productive, more efficient, more effective and sometimes doing really great things that benefit humanity in the process, sometimes not...

But if you handed me Sandberg's job and salary on a platter along with a chip that held the knowledge to do that job effectively that I could implant in the back of my neck at will, I'd probably go to facebook to see if anyone would be willing to trade me that platter for an all expense paid three month visit to certain parts of Europe (France and Spain mostly) for me and my family.

(Well, actually, if I really wanted to get the job done, I'd post it on G+, but I digress...)

Because my goals are very different from hers in so many ways. For one, she knows what hers are. She's the kind of gal who's got a very impressive bucket list and actually checks things off on it. I can tell by her hairdo. Me, I'm still wondering if I even need a bucket to contain my list once I've actually made it this time around. I'm thinking a shot glass will probably do.

For two, she likes leaning in to a testosterone dominated environment to balance it out with her brand of estrogen. Me, I'm happy to cheer for her on the sidelines because I have walked into enough meetings attended mostly by very serious East Coast corporate types in suits and ties that at some point start literally smelling of dudes sweating to outdo their competition, make more money, and WORLD DOMINATION MUAHAHAHAHAAA and I am powerless not to be knocked into a dead nap by the scent of all that manbition.

I was given many opportunities to lean in, albeit in a different industry and at a lower level, by the very type of progressive male mentor Sandberg says we need so many more of (Roger, you are dearly missed), and I learned over the course of a decade that I really didn't want to and that that wasn't the sphere of influence I was meant to influence.

But I also learned over the course of that decade that there are lots of women who really could have benefited those meetings and by extension the men in those meetings and of course their organizations at large if they had been presented with the same opportunities to lean in and make their contributions freely rather than to have to spend their energy and resources pushing and clawing just to have a chance to sit at the table. Women who by their nature were simply more efficient, more productive, more effective, more nurturing, more encouraging, more supporting, and more inspiring without having to read books about Chinese military tactics and disappearing cheese.

And while I have wondered in the past if Roger squandered that mentorship on me, I'm more inclined to think today that the sphere I choose to influence going forward will benefit from all I learned in that decade - about business, about how men and women function in business, about human nature at large, and about myself. I might also dare to think that the people who crossed my career path in that decade also benefited from my unique energy, thought process, and communication and work styles that I didn't have to suppress my true self or struggle to be able to express.

Not all of us women should be, or even desire to be, in Sandberg's position. And not everything she has to share with us applies to our chosen career paths, whether those paths be at home or office, salaried or not. But her message of balance and equality - in the home, in the work place, in the world at large - is one we can all benefit from leaning into a lot more.

shinae

Something About Doors Opening & Closing...

"When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us."

~ Alexander Graham Bell

Patch o' dirt in our new back yard. :)

This morning's usual food programming was interrupted by a visit to the OB/GYN to confirm our suspicion regarding certain events of earlier this week.

And indeed it is confirmed: I miscarried. And I am otherwise perfectly fine and healthy.

That's it. Nothing major, and nothing minor - a fact of life as sure as pregnancy itself, specially the older we get. And I did turn 40 this year, after all. :)

So while we thought it would be nice for Izzy to have a peer sibling, I also promised myself long ago that my child bearing era would end when I turned 40. And I've learned not to have too many hard and fast rules about Life, but I've also learned that determination and decision are sometimes necessary to achieve certain good things.

Dean and I together have determined and decided that we are done making babies, that we are perfectly happy and grateful that we have three beautiful children between us, that we are going to raise them to be a family even when we're long gone, and that there are lots of things to grow in this here patch of dirt behind our new home, both literal and metaphorical: fruits, vegetables, flowers, travel, goals, and other good dreams.

Thanks always for your support, encouragement and good juju in all we experience and endeavor, peeps.

Looking forward to continuing to share it with you. :)

shinae

Filling In The Gap & Streamlining...

Quick housekeeping note: If you don't know about my other blog, it might appear that I've neglected to blog for the past month and half, but other than my usual daily food (and other) posts, I actually have been blogging the month leading up to my 40th birthday (among other things), just over there. 

I started that other blog in order to compartmentalize my writing a bit - more food here, more personal stuff over there - and to spare those interested in my food content but not so much my other jibber jabber the tedium of having to read my cheap therapy posts. 

But since that inaugural compost pile post written over a year and half ago, I've come to realize that one of the things I most enjoy about this new career path I'm carving out for myself as one who relates food to life is the blending of personal and professional perspectives. The lack of that non-clinical schizophrenia we've all experienced when trying to divorce our work selves from our deeply personal selves. I am hopeful and optimistic that I won't have to.

So while I won't be shutting the compost pile down anytime soon (because Goddess knows how long it'll take me to migrate those posts over here if ever), I'll just be shoving my extraculinary scraps into a mini compost pile in this here blog because it just feels more efficient, more right, and more me.

Signing off for the morning from my new kitchen office (yes, we've finally moved from the teeny tiny bungalow),

The newly minted 40 year old and once again preggo,

shinae

(There. I'm pretty sure you're all filled in now! :D)