Three Beautiful Things 04-20-2023: Icing Routine and Walking, Suping Up HelloFresh Quesadillas a Bit, Bassoons and Oboes Take Me Back to My Old Schools

1. I'm going to adhere to the practice of icing my left big toe at least twice a day, whether I'm feeling discomfort or seeing swelling or not. Today I iced my toe for over twenty minutes and later in the day went on a walk that put my step count for the day over 3,000. I experienced no pain while walking and iced my toe later on. I sure hope this method works because walking not only invigorates me, not only helps me feel stronger, it also helps me sleep much better at night.

2. Our HelloFresh bag for today contained the ingredients for black bean quesadillas. It was very simple. All I had to do was chop up and cook a green pepper, add black beans and Tex-Mex sauce to the peppers and then, on one half of a flour tortilla put Mexican cheese, the green pepper and bean mix, and top it with Monterey Jack cheese. I folded one half of the tortilla over the filling, melted butter in the cast iron pan, and cooked each side of the quesadilla until golden and the cheese melted. I cut each quesadilla into thirds and topped each piece with a lemon juice/sour cream mixture and hot sauce.

Last time we had HelloFresh black bean quesadillas, I thought it could use a flavor kick, so when I drained the package of beans this evening, I seasoned them with cumin, oregano, and chili flakes. 

Mission accomplished. These simple additions added more layers of flavor.

3. When I went to college at NIC, at some point I learned that I could check out record albums and play them on a turntable and listen wearing library issued headphones. 

I used to go in the library, head to the card catalog, and, for some reason, I used look up to see if the library had record albums featuring specific instruments. I was curious about the bassoon and the oboe and I succeeded in finding recordings of concertos and other compositions featuring these instruments.

I listened to other classical music, too, but listening to bassoons and oboes sticks in my memory, as does the fact that when I was a grad student at the U of O, I used to go to the Listening Library and do the same thing there.  

Well, today, I wanted to experience the bassoon and oboe again, but rather than consult the card catalog, I did a search on Spotify and, to my delight, found playlists featuring these instruments and I leaned into a morning and afternoon filled with oboe and bassoon compositions and let my mind wander back to the invigorating uses I made of the libraries both at NIC and at the U or Oregon.