Three Beautiful Things 11-19-2024: Longtime Friends and Longtime Anxieties, Heritage's Nurse Practitioner Goes the Extra Mile, Steak and Roasted Vegetables

1. Over the last two or three weeks, I initiated contact with two longtime friends who had been silent (one of them for two years). I was concerned about their well being and had some (unfounded) anxiety about whether I'd done something to alienate them.  I also contacted a friend who was worried if I'd decided to end contact with him after I failed to respond to an email. We are back on track again and I will see him when I travel to Eugene. 

I've resumed correspondence and contact with all three of these friends. The two friends I had the unfounded anxiety about have, indeed, been dealing with health problems. I understand so much better why I hadn't heard from them and I'll be able to spend time with one of these friends when I visit Eugene, but not the other because of his struggles with health. 

I'm relieved that these three friendships are intact, that it's clear from our recent correspondence that we care very much for each other. 

I think when I was younger I always thought that when I was older, I would outgrow or somehow get beyond anxieties that have troubled me much of my life. 

The most constant anxiety I've lived with since I was a teenager is that I'm just one wrong move, one utterance, one act of recklessness or neglect away from alienating any one of my friends and even family members. It's an anxiety I've experienced (big time) in marriage.  I used to experience this anxiety a lot in relation to the people I worked with when I was an instructor and also at church. 

I'm better at fending off this anxiety now than I was when I was younger. 

But old habits are stubborn and my inner voice's longtime patterns of sowing doubt and anxiety are difficult to change and silence. 

So when that long familiar feeling that I've disappointed a friend or family member rises up or when that voice inside me tries to persuade me that I've alienated a longtime friend and that friend is done with me, I am better at interrupting, putting an invisible wedge between my consciousness and those dark feelings, better at arguing back with that voice. 

The recent correspondence between the three friends I alluded to in this blog post and me was a very positive move. I'm glad the trip I have planned to Eugene gave me good reason to contact each of them, tell them I wanted to see them, and that things are all good. 

2. I've had a cyst on my backside emerge and recede for a couple or three months. It's not been especially painful, nor has it ever gone away on its own.

Today I visited my primary care giver at Heritage Health uptown.

I had also corresponded a bit with the transplant team about this cyst. 

No one seems overly concerned about it -- that was a relief. 

I was very happy with how the NP  I saw today handled things. 

She examined the cyst, told me to occasionally put a warm moist wash cloth on it and she told me she would put in an order for a seven day course of antibiotics. 

I told her I was a recent transplant recipient so she did some research, determined which antibiotic my kidneys could best deal with, and then she went the xtra mile. She called me to get a phone number for my transplant nurse coordinator, called the transplant clinic, talked, as it turned out, with one of the transplant pharmacy specialists, and confirmed that the antibiotic she had in mind for me to take was acceptable. 

I appreciated and was very impressed with her conscientiousness and willingness to put in this extra effort on my new kidney's behalf. 

She called me back, raved about how helpful the transplant team was, confirmed my date of birth, and ordered the medicine from Yoke's pharmacy -- and I picked it up. 

3. I do like these packages of marinated meat that Trader Joe's sells. I bought a couple of them in CdA over the weekend. Tonight I roasted potato strips, red onion chunks, zucchini spears, and red pepper slices and I stir fried the pieces of balsamic and rosemary steak tips I'd bought from Trader Joe's. 

Debbie and I both enjoyed the marinated beef and the roasted vegetables, seasoned with Trader Joe's 21 Seasoning Salute. 

I hope I can remember that one day I'd like to try to replicate some of these Trader Joe's packages of marinated meat on my own at home. 

 

Three Beautiful Things 11-18-2024: Tina and The Waterboys, I Build a Loaded Salad, Paul's Birthday Family Dinner

1. In my retirement, I'd say, off the top of my head, that I miss two things the most. 

I miss yakkin' with my fellow instructors -- I miss hallway and office conversations, coffee meetings, meals together, photo outings with Russell, theater projects with Judy, and more. 

I also miss all that I used to learn from my students and from actors I got to play with in the theater. 

Students and fellow theater-ites expanded me immeasurably, especially in the worlds of music and movies. 

Today, out of the blue, a student who was in, I think, two classes I taught at the University of Oregon about forty years ago popped into my mind. 

Her name is Tina. 

Tina once handed me a cassette tape of This is the Sea, an album recorded by a U.K. group, The Waterboys. 

I loved that album.  

I played one song, "The Whole of the Moon", from that tape repeatedly, in large part because, in my mind, it described what I thought and how I felt about a woman I loved at that time. 

With this vivid flashback of becoming friends with Tina and with that song occupying my mind all of a sudden, I wondered what kind of playlist Spotify would offer, so I did a search for Waterboys Radio. 

I played Waterboys Radio as I fell asleep and in my half sleeping half awake state heard a variety of artists: Fleetwood Mac, Van Morrison, Nick Lowe, R.E.M., Supertramp, The Cure, and others. Finally, though, after an hour or two, I turned off the radio and slept the rest of the night without Neil Young, Crowded House, Robbie Robertson, 10cc, Roxy Music, and other bands lulling me to sleep only to jolt me awake again. 

2. Carol assigned Debbie and me to bring a loaf of crusty bread and a green salad to Family Dinner tonight. 

I eat salads frequently, so I had a lot of salad making ingredients on hand and decided to make an "everything but the kitchen sink" salad. 

I probably won't remember everything I put in the bowl, but among the ingredients were Romaine lettuce, baby spinach leaves, cabbage. red pepper, cosmic crisp apple pieces, blueberries, fresh basil, cilantro, celery, zucchini, grape tomatoes, and maybe more. I made a walnut oil, lemon juice, garlic, and balsamic vinegar dressing for the salad and topped it with shaved Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. 

I had fun making it and family members told me it worked. 

3. We enjoyed a simple Spanish-themed dinner in celebration of Paul's 65th birthday. Molly made a superb  Spanish white bean dip to go with tortilla chips to start. In honor of Paul's love of Amaretto, tonight's cocktail was an Amaretto Sour. Carol prepared a delicious, and wouldn't you know it!, comforting paelle for our main dish, complimented with the salad I made and the bread I brought. 

After enjoying our meal, we retired to the living room. Christy baked a perfectly moist and flavorful Spanish almond cake and Paul opened his gifts. 

I left dinner tonight asking myself if I'm overly sensitive about matters (in my view) of confidentiality and privacy. 

Maybe it would be good if I loosened up about such things. 

I'd say more, but what I'm referring to feels confidential to me! 🤣🤣🤣

Three Beautiful Things 11-17-2024: Seeking Enlightenment and Purpose, Thanksgiving Dinner Figured Out, That Chicken!

1. Tonight I finished reading Haruki Murakami's book, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche. 

I admit, I didn't come away from this book with a clear understanding of what the title calls "the Japanese psyche". 

Nor, after reading Murakami's interviews with those past members of the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo (known as just Aum) or with those who remain loosely affiliated with Aum, did I see any patterns in terms of these members' backgrounds, family life, level of education, or much of anything else aside from a shared desire to live a more purposeful life, to follow the disciplines and practices and demands of Aum and renounce the secular world in order to experience a more fully enlightened existence, and, for many, enter into a monastic life. 

Those who consented to be interviewed saw Aum's leader, Asahara Shoko, as a man of great wisdom, inspiring teachings, deep insight, and something like spiritual purity. 

But, he turned out to be corrupt. 

He orchestrated two sarin gas attacks and ordered assassinations and set several other criminal actions into motion. 

Aum Shinrikyo disintegrated. 

Asahara Shoko was tried, found guilty, and eventually, in 2018, executed by hanging. 

Regarding my ongoing project to learn about extremism, I have more reading planned. 

I have some reviewing to do of things I've already read. 

I have questions. 

No answers. 

I'll leave it at that for now. 

2. Debbie, Christy, and I agreed this afternoon on what we are going to do for Thanksgiving. 

Carol and Paul will be in Meridian. 

Debbie and I will have three guests in our home: Patrick, Meagan, and our niece, Misty. 

Molly will be in town and we'll see how our plans and Brian's family plans mesh (or don't). 

We set aside a plan we made a while back to have our Thanksgiving Day dinner at the Inland Lounge. 

We set aside a plan to have a second Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday. 

We will have dinner at our house on Thanksgiving Day and we will follow the menu that Christy created for the dinner we were originally going to have on Saturday. 

I was really happy that we settled on this simpler plan and that we worked it out so easily. 

3. Months -- oh many months! -- ago I bought a couple whole chickens at Costco and one of them has been in our freezer ever since. A few days ago, I decided it was way past time to thaw that chicken and cook it. 

Today, it was finally thawed out and Debbie told me she'd like to fix it. 

She prepared it in the crock pot and fixed a delicious combination of chicken and leftover rice we had on hand. She also made a terrific zucchini salad. Our dinner was simple, delicious, and comforting and, best of all, we had enough food left over that we can have a simple dinner ready on Thanksgiving Eve when Debbie arrives home with Misty, after picking her up late in the afternoon at the Spokane airport. 

Three Beautiful Things 11-16-2024: Listening to Old Music I Never Listened to Before, *Underground* and Extremism, A Great Casserole

1. Having spent a couple or three days listening to Luna and other Lofi DreamPop bands and then spending hours listening to Moby while reading and putting him on overnight, I suddenly realized that over the last, wow!, nearly forty years, I've paid very little attention to Radiohead. 

So I did a Radiohead search on Spotify and requested a playlist called Radiohead Radio.

I don't have intelligent words to describe the music that came on for the next couple of hours while I continued to read Underground. I do know the playlist included bands like The Smiths whom I've heard mention of over the years, but haven't tried out. It also included a couple of Pink Floyd songs -- and while I can't really explain it, I heard these familiar Pink Floyd songs in a different way when they popped up in the company of Radiohead and The Smiths and others. 

I'll continue this exploration of music I missed all those years ago -- it was during a time when my attention was on Richard Thompson, a wide array of acoustic folk and singer/songwriter music, Celtic bands, the Fairport Convention family tree of musicians, the Grateful Dead, and other similar music -- but not Radiohead, not Luna, not a wide array of bands and musicians I'd never hear of until this week, not the music I'm enjoying going back to and, I guess you'd say, catching up with now. 

It's fun. 

2. Haruki Murakami's book, Underground, took quite a turn when he added interviews with members of the religious cult Aum to his oral history of the March 20, 1995 Tokyo subway system sarin gas attack.

The individuals, so far, who agreed to talk with Murakami are mostly now only loosely affiliated with Aum, but continue to have high regard for the spiritual teachings and guidance of the cult. 

The interviews I've read so far feature individuals who were (are?) seekers, searchers, introspective, philosophical, hungry for spiritual meaning. They found in the teachings of Aum's leader, Shoko Asahara, 

inspiration, stimulation, intrigue, and deeper meaning and became, at different levels, involved in the cult.

Not one of those individuals Murakami interviewed was involved in the sarin gas attack in Tokyo, nor did they know it was going to happen. Each of them condemned the attack. Each was bewildered by it. It affected their future involvement with Aum. 

Over the last year and a half or so, I've been reading books and listening to podcasts dealing with extremism, trying to understand what moves people to commit themselves to ways of seeing the world that are often dark, often involve violence, are deeply distrusting, and often put them under the sway of a mesmerizing leader. 

This blog includes a written record of the reading and listening I've been doing. 

Underground is another book chronicling extremism. 

I have been hoping all this reading would help me understand more fully why people turn to extremism and why they follow extremist leaders, join extremist groups, and embrace extremist ideologies. 

So far, I haven't succeeded. 

In fact, I'd say the more I read, the more I'm bewildered. 

But, I'll keep chugging along. 

3. Debbie found a recipe for a ground beef and sauerkraut casserole and she fixed it for dinner tonight. It's a simple casserole consisting of ground beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, sour cream, and seasonings. She also boiled some delicious noodles to go along with this dish. 

Awesome. This dinner was awesome. Debbie made two pans of this recipe. She'll freeze the second and some day, on down the road, we'll pull it out of the freezer and enjoy its awesomeness again!  

Three Beautiful Things 11-15-2024: I Made It Into CdA's Trader Joe's, Traveling Back in Time with Moby, Superb Left Over Stir Fry

1. Okay. 

I have fun shopping at Trader Joe's. 

It's nostalgic. 

I also enjoy the novelty of some of their products. 

It's kind of like going to a grocery theme park -- by the way, I went through a period of not enjoying Trader Joe's around twenty years ago or so -- I'm not sure when I quit being a grump about the store. 

So, today, Debbie and I were yakkin' about eating the left over stir fry from last night for dinner again tonight. Debbie wondered if we had any of those Thai wheat noodles from Trader Joe's we like so much, that she'd rather have noodles than rice in the stir fry. 

I replied that we were out -- but, I also said that after not going to Trader Joe's in CdA on Wednesday because of the full parking lot, but being inspired by Christy's parking lot success on Thursday, I'd pop over and give it another shot today!

So full of hope and enthusiasm, early this afternoon,  I bought a latte at Espresso Peak,  blasted over to CdA, arrived at Trader Joe's, and, as I was circling around the parking lot, I was near an exit on to Spokane Street and a shopper pulled out of a street parking spot that was easy for me to slide into.

I snagged it. 

Trader Joe's just opened in CdA on Tuesday. Shoppers thronged there and, like me, continued to do so today. 

I toured around the store, acquainted myself with its layout, dropped a few things in my cart, and eventually found the Thai wheat noodles. I was grateful they hadn't sold out. Many products had. . I grabbed three boxes, added it to my cart, checked out, and headed across the the street to Pilgrim's Market where I bought produce, tofu, and a few other items. 

I enjoyed this outing a lot. 

2. On my way to CdA and back I enjoyed listening to more Lofi Dream Pop alternative rock music from around the 1980s and 1990s.

Back home, an album I loved right at the turn of the century suddenly came to mind. 

Moby's album Play. 

Patrick absorbed this album when he was in high school and when he wasn't playing it, I got way into myself. 

Then, to my utter delight, when I used to assign my students creative projects, some of them used tracks from Moby's Play as accompaniment to slide shows or videos and their work moved me, stayed with me. 

I spent about three hours this evening listening to Moby, to his versatility, to his ambient music, to his electro genius, and I enjoyed the trip he took me on back to the early 2000s when I lived out my home life and work life with Moby occasionally providing the soundtrack to my life. 

3. By the way, stretching that stir fry from last night worked. I don't know if I can replicate it because making stir fried food is, for me, inexact and spontaneous. But, adding the noodles, fresh spinach, more yellow squash, and fresh Thai basil transformed what I'd already made and enjoyed Thursday night into a miraculously delicious new dinner tonight. 

Three Beautiful Things 11-14-2024: Lofi Dream Pop Music, Jeff Pays Tribute to Phil Lesh, A Fun Stir Fry

1. I mentioned the other day that I returned to listening to Luna, an alternative band, and their album Bewitched. I played that album on Spotify, and to my surprise and delight, once the album was done playing, Spotify continued to play music similar to Luna and played some other Luna from other albums. Until a few days ago, I was completely unfamiliar with Stephen Malkmus, Smog,  Silver Jews, Loose Fur, The Glands, The Sea and Cake, Sparklehorse, The Ladybug Transistor, and other groups from the 80s and 90s that recorded and performed way off my radar. 

I did a little reading about these groups and discovered their music can be known as Dream Pop and this made a lot of sense to me -- there is a dreamy quality to this music (I think I mentioned this in a recent blog post) that I enjoy a lot. Sometimes these recordings are referred to as Lofi. They are often not highly produced and not only leave flaws in the recordings, but seem to invite them. 

Two artists come immediately to mind as I listen to this music. I think at least some of these musicians were influenced by Lou Reed's vocals and by some of the Velvet Underground's musical stylings. From time to time I also hear pop sounds from the sixties -- could I have heard musical references to The Monkees? -- to Chad and Jeremy? -- did I occasionally hear some surf-like guitar?

Often, at least this is how I see it, J. J. Cale's recordings are Lofi. I'm not sure I can explain how or why I think this is true, but I'm going to trust that the way some of this music has been produced seems similar to  J. J. Cale recordings and maybe to the Tulsa sound (I could be all wet). 

Oh well. Whatever this genre is or isn't, I'm sure enjoying it! 

2. Jeff Harrison emailed me a quick message to be sure to listen to his November 7th Deadish show on Eugene's KEPW radio (streaming at kepw.org). It was a show paying tribute to Phil Lesh, the Grateful Dead's bass player who died on October 25, 2024. 

I went to the KEPW archives and listened to Jeff's show tonight. 

After Jerry Garcia died and as the surviving members of the Grateful Dead reorganized themselves, Phil Lesh got musicians together and called them Phil and Friends. I guess my attention was elsewhere over the last, oh, 25-30 years because tonight was the first time I ever listened to any music by Phil and Friends. 

Jeff played a generous helping of Phil and Friends music from a show at Eugene's Cuthbert Amphitheater in August, 1999 and the magic of his band's performances began to take hold of me. 

It was especially fun that during the half hour of his show's overtime, Jeff played a fantastic Grateful Dead "Dark Star" leading into "Morning Dew", an uplifting and stirring way for Jeff's show to end and for my evening to begin to draw to a close. 

3. I had a blast tonight making a stir fry composed of chicken tenders, red onion, cabbage, yellow squash, broccoli, eggplant, cilantro, and mushrooms. I seasoned the chicken with soy sauce and red pepper flakes and poured toasted sesame seeds over the meat pieces. I put the stir fry in my bowl over brown rice and flavored it all with Trader Joe's peanut satay sauce. 

Wow! Believe me! It worked!  

Three Beautiful Things 11-13-2024: Quick Labs, Relaxing at Great Harvest, Lunch with Shelley (and Shopping)

1. Lab day! 

I'm always eager to get going to Spokane on lab day and so I bolted out of bed at 4:15 this morning, got cleaned up, gathered a few things, completed Wordle, and by 5:45 I was on I-90 for a fairly uneventful drive to Spokane. 

Until November 1, I went to a lab in the same building on Sacred Heart's campus for labs as houses the transplant clinic.

Sacred Heart closed that lab.

Now I go to the main hospital, check in at the surgery check in area, and wait to be called in.

It was all quick this morning and lo and behold the superb Angela drew my blood -- it was good to see she came over to the hospital when Sacred Hearts bosses closed that other lab. 

How quick? 

I was out of the parking garage I use in under a half and hour and so parking was FREE! Ha ha ha!  I saved three bucks!

Test results came quickly, too, and I hope the transplant team is happy with the numbers.

I sure was. 

2. My day continued to be fun when I left Sacred Heart.

I immediately blasted over to Great Harvest and bought a loaf of Harvest Blend bread, a magnificent Morning Glory muffin, and a 16 oz cup of Cravens Earth & Sky dark roast coffee.

I dove back into Haruk Murakami's book Underground and learned that I was reading a newer edition with material added to the book that had not been in the original. 

Originally, Murakami's plan was to interview only victims of the gas attack along with a few medical personnel and a few relatives of victims. 

But, reader responses to his original book moved him to interview members of the cult, Aum, who perpetrated the attack.

I'm reading those interviews now. 

I relaxed and read. 

Mornings at Great Harvest are quiet. 

Morning customers tend to be, like me, older people, often in small coffee clatches. 

Today, the counter person who took my order lit up when she saw I was reading a book by Murakami, told me she enjoyed his fiction, and asked me to report back to her when I finished Underground. 

I'll do that. 

3. Back around the time of Don Knott's Celebration of Life, Don's sister Shelley and I agreed to get together for lunch some time. We made some plans that fell through for good reasons, but today our plan didn't fall through. 

I arrived in Coeur d'Alene about an hour so ahead of our appointed time to meet. 

I spent that hour happily wandering around Fred Meyer, looking at what coffees they sell, checking out kitchen ware, browsing their men's T-shirts, and seeing if anything else caught my eye. 

I wasn't in the buying mood, so I left the store empty handed.

I buzzed over to Tomato Street and met up with Shelley.

We had a splendid lunch. 

I enjoyed a plate of spaghetti topped with a sauce of brown butter and myzithra, a Greek cheese made from goat or sheep milk. I splurged and added three meatballs to my pasta and enjoyed a small green salad and Tomato Street's garlic bread. 

Shelley and I had a lot to talk about. We told each other what we experienced in the time period around the celebration of Don's life. Shelley filled me in on how the area around the Kellogg cemetery was a place where she and her brothers spent fun times growing up and how she and Don had returned to that area not too long ago and that some of Don's ashes are now scattered there. 

I enjoyed how wide ranging our conversation was and that I got to know Shelley better, a delight. 

I lost track of time, but I think we talked for nearly two hours. 

I wanted to check out the Trader Joe's that opened Tuesday in Coeur d'Alene, but, ha!, the fairly ample parking lot was full with several cars driving around looking for shoppers to leave. 

I almost immediately gave up. I'll go back later. I also wanted to buy some groceries at Pilgrim's Market and so drove across the street (its parking lot was almost full!) and purchased produce, Cravens Earth and Sky coffee, Nancy's kefir, raw almonds, and maybe one or two other items. 

Back home, I was happy to find Copper was relaxed and content despite being behind a closed door for nearly eight hours. 

I was tired.

I napped. 

I relished that I had done today what I enjoy most: expanding my post-transplant trips to Sacred Heart into fun times in Spokane and Coeur d'Alene. 

Three Beautiful Things 11-12-2024: Winter Tires On, *Underground* Changes Gears, A Simple Soup

 1. I loaded the winter tires into the back of the Sube, dropped the Sube off at Silver Valley Tire Center, dropped Debbie off at school in the Camry, dropped the Camry off at Silver Valley Tire Center, walked home, got a call that the tires had been switched, walked, drove the Sube home, stored the spring/summer/fall tires in the garage, walked, paid, brought home the Camry, sighed a sigh of relief, and felt happy that our cars both are equipped with winter tires. 

2. The book Underground suddenly turned philosophical. It's a different book now that interviews with victims, family members, and medical professionals are finished. It's as if I'm reading two books in one. 

3. Because Debbie had to work late tonight, I fixed dinner for me alone and had fun sautéing onion and mushrooms, adding chicken bouillon and hot water, and finishing my simple soup by adding Trader Joe's Thai Wheat Noodles. Easy. Quick. Warming. Satisfying. 

Three Beautiful Things 11-11-2024: Mending, Plumbing, Carry Out -- A Day of Relief!

1. It was my fault. A misunderstanding (not related to the election) transpired between me and a longtime (not Kellogg or Whitworth) friend. We exchanged a few kind and honest emails that cleared up everything and I'm confident our friendship is right back on track again. 

I'm immeasurably relieved. 

2. Another source of relief: the three small plumbing problems that needed fixing are repaired. Our toilet is running as it should; a basement drain is unclogged; our basement sink has a new faucet. 

I'm immeasurably relieved. 

3. The plumber and his helper worked on these jobs in the afternoon around the time I usually fix dinner for Debbie and me. 

When she got off work, Debbie drove by the house and saw the plumber's truck was out front. 

She buzzed up to Radio Brewing where she enjoys getting work done after school.

She also ordered sandwiches and pasta salad to carry out. I was no longer responsible for figuring out dinner. 

I was immeasurably relieved. 

Three Beautiful Things 11-10-2024: ZOOMing and Goodness, Cooking Wild Rice, Minnesota Themed Family Dinner

 1. Bridgit, Diane, Bill, Val, and I jumped on ZOOM this morning and got right into an intelligent discussion of the election results. I prefer to keep the content of our discussion private,  confidential. 

I thought a lot after we were finished about something I find remarkable. Bill, Bridgit, and Val were all students of mine at Whitworth forty and more years ago. In fact, Bill was in a writing course I taught at Whitworth in 1977. 

That's 47 years ago.

I met Diane at a get together at Bridgit's mom and dad's house on the Kalama River on August 28, 2010. 

Here's what I wrote about meeting Diane, in this very blog, referring, when I say "we", to Susan-Louise, Bridgit, and me:  "We reunited with Bill and got to meet Diane and within minutes we were all talking with each other as if it had been 20 minutes, not over twenty years since we'd seen each other and it felt like those of us who went to Whitworth had known Diane forever."

I kept thinking, as we talked today, not only how fortunate we are to be continuing to grow together as friends, but what deep thinking, caring, alert, and good people we've become as we've aged. 

All of us went to Christian colleges, Whitworth and, in Diane's case, Pacific Lutheran University. 

We've lived out our spiritual lives in a variety of ways since our Whitworth and PLU days.

It's awesome to listen to each other talk about where our paths have taken us, where we are now, and where we might be headed.

What's unwavering in each of us is our commitment to goodness and this came through urgently and admirably as we talked today. 

Even as we moved away from talking about the election results and talked about food and cooking and other lighter subjects, our discussion, our laughter, our enjoyment of each other was grounded in our commitment to goodness, making the two hours we ZOOMed together uplifting and nourishing. 

2. Speaking of cooking and nourishment, in preparation for today's family dinner, I cooked up a batch of wild rice, something I can't remember ever having done before. 

If you've cooked wild rice, you know that it can take as long as ninety minutes for the rice to cook. That was exactly my experience today. 

First, I chopped an onion, some celery, and some mushrooms and sautéed them in butter in our smaller cast iron Dutch oven. 

Then I poured in the uncooked Minnesota wild rice and about five cups of chicken broth.

I put the lid on the Dutch oven and, following the recipe Christy sent me, I set the oven at 375 degrees and let the rice cook for 75 minutes. Upon checking it after that amount of time, Debbie and I determined the rice needed more broth and gave it another 15 minutes to cook.

Ah! Success! I was a little late for dinner, but the rice turned out pretty good. 

3. Christy's longtime friend Tracy visited Christy this weekend. Her family's roots are in Minnesota. Tracy and Christy put their heads together and planned a Minnesotan family dinner. The main entree was a tater tot hot dish with venison that Christy made. I contributed the wild rice with celery, onion, and mushroom. Christy made a loaf of wild rice cranberry bread and Tracy fixed a fruit salad. Tracy told us about traditions around food in Minnesota and her family. We rounded out the meal with a dessert Carol made, a cake with the words apple and donut in its title, but I didn't quite get the name of it right. 

We visited about Minnesota and midwestern food. I got kind of carried away talking about The Band and their song "The Weight", but the rest of the family nicely balanced me out as we commented on different Light Rock from the 70s songs that played on Pandora while we ate and yakked. 

It was a fun and delicious dinner with a lot of fun and sometimes funny conversation. 

I'd be just fine with the idea of returning to Minnesota cuisine again, if Tracy returns for another family dinner or if we decide to repeat it on our own!