Santa eats breakfast too.....

This past Wednesday I decided to go out to my regular diner for breakfast. I hadn't been there in a while. I don't go out as much as I used to. The diner was decorated for the holidays, my waitress was wearing red and a special holiday apron plus just about everyone had that Christmas smile on. Even before I was seated my waitress had my first cup of coffee on the counter and asked if I wanted my regular order. It was great to be back. My breakfast was very good as usual. I have their breakfast special. That's two eggs, home fries, toast, coffee and orange juice. I have my eggs over medium with rye toast. It was much appreciated when she offered me a third cup of coffee which was great to go with this very cold morning. As I sat there daydreaming a little while drinking that third cup, Santa was at the check out to pay for his breakfast. I don't know if he was a regular or not, but the owner of the diner said that his breakfast was on the house. Now there wasn't any kids in the place to prompt this goodwill gesture, only the spirit of Christmas in these two men came together to bring this present to those in the diner that felt it. Just like the hearts of those holiday giving people, our hearts filled with that special warmth of knowing that, "yes Santa really does exist". "And he eats breakfast where I do!"

My 2009 Christmas gift to me.....

Each year for Christmas since my wife died I give myself something special. It had to be something that no one would know that I wanted or needed and wouldn't cost an arm and a leg to get. Sometimes these gifts would be just a quiet time spent some place I wouldn't normally go to. Other times it was a special book or spending time with a friend I hadn't seen for a while. This year my gift to myself is a very special gift that I've been a little afraid to give to myself. It's a few written notes and letters that my late wife wrote to me at the very beginning of our relationship that she never gave to me. I found them when I was going through her things just after she died. These writings are now over thirty years old and I haven't read them fully. Until this time I just read a few words here and there. I just haven't been able to read those words without feeling like I would explode with my emotions. This is the year I plan to read those words on Christmas Eve.

The Holiday Season.....

I think all of us should try to give gifts to others that come from the heart more than money. These gifts can sometimes be so apparent that all around see them. Such as, opening a door for someone, letting a person check out ahead of you or just being polite to the waitress or waiter. Other times the gift is less noticeable. Such as, calling someone just to say hello, thinking of a person who has moved away or died. These gifts are also gifts for the giver. We feel better about the holiday season which in turn affects how we interact with others and also helps to boost our immune system. Other gifts could be, finding a new friend on facebook, tweet on the positive for the whole holiday season or email those people that you haven't for a while. Let's all think of ways to give from the heart and not the wallet. I don't think that it makes much sense to read or watch heart inspiring stories and then cut others off in traffic, yell those foul four letter words at kids in the store just because they're full of the holiday excitement or try to walk over others physically or verbally in the stores.

Afford?

Who decides what affordable is for you? How can advertisers claim, affordable price, for this or that? The government apparently does the same thing when it comes to Obama health care. How can anyone decide for someone else what is affordable for them? Now whenever I hear the word, affordable, I listen to something else inside of my thinking. I don't need or want someone to dictate to me what I can, or can't, afford.

KHS Tiger Marching Band places second at competition - The Daily Freeman News: Serving the Hudson Valley since 1871(DailyFreeman.com)

KHS Tiger Marching Band places second at competition - The Daily Freeman News: Serving the Hudson Valley since 1871(DailyFreeman.com)

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Fall into a moment.....

Even the very first day that the temperature gets to that, cool enough to be fall, my thoughts turn to soup, the smell of burning leaves and the first snow fall that turns my little part of the world into a life size snow globe. I can't help myself. Those feelings all come so quickly that they seem to be in my head all at once. Of course those thoughts bring memories of snow sledding, cold hands and feet and coming into the house when I was young to smell the food that my mother was preparing for supper. It's funny how thoughts of the cold mixed with my thoughts of the warmth of my childhood make me feel warmer no matter how cold this old body feels at the moment and it doesn't cost me anything except the time to think it.

Eat to live, live to eat.....

What category do you put yourself in? "Eat to live", or "Live to eat". Where we put ourselves stays with us for our entire life. That along with an amount of creativity and an adventurous nature, determine, not only what we eat, but also how often we do takeout or buy convenience foods. If you're also single like me and only have to please yourself, well the sky's the limit as far as our meals go. I also enjoy getting more and more out of my cooking than I did ever before. I hardly ever now throw anything edible away. I even find myself using the liquid from pickled hot peppers, that last bit of mayo and even my bacon fat. The only thing that I don't do is bake. I really don't see myself eating a dozen muffins or a whole chocolate cake. For me it's far better to buy what I can eat of these things. Not only is it much cheaper, but I don't have to carry the extra weight either.

Multi use.....

I love having my multi use food items on hand. With some of these I can whip up various tasty meals on a moments notice. Their versatility is ever growing as I challenge myself to come up with more choices. I'm also loving my fusion cooking that allows me to tempt my creative urge as well as my taste buds. The main two multi use items I use are, kimchi and salsa. With these two items I can make every meal different for a month. All I need are a few other ingredients in the kitchen to add to them.

Kimchi:
-soup, stir-fry, side dish, bowl dish, many more.....

Salsa:
-omelet, Spanish rice, quick chili, on hot dog, bread pizza, many more.....

Things.....

Things. Somethings are more important than other things. Anything can be something of importance to someone because of something that's connected to it. Those things become an important part of our lives and can last a lifetime. Sometimes we can't remember exactly why those things are so important to us, or why they bring such happiness just to be with us, or a part of us. We should have a national thing day. A day to remember those things that give us great peace of mind or bring memories of loved ones and friends, two and four legged. I vote for a THING DAY!

Thought.....

By seeking my own communication I am coming closer to hearing those true answers to my inner questions. It pays to live with blinders on every once in a while.

Local/organic food.....

Why do you have to pay more money for local food? Is it me or do other people think of this also? They don't have to ship their food to sell it locally, therefore it should be cheaper, right? They usually man their rented farmer market space themselves, so they don't need to hire someone to man it. Where's the logic except that they too want their fair share of the financial pie and price their food accordingly. I would love to be able to afford to buy local food a lot more than I do, but I can't and it just makes me a little angry that the local farmers are pricing their food items the way that they do. I also don't like the fact that organic food items are two to five times the amounts than non-organic. I can only hope that people with more money to spend buy local and organic foods long enough so that the prices come down to a more sensible level and I too can afford to eat a more healthy diet.

What Came First.....

What came first, the chicken or the egg? Well in my apartment it depends on what is in the refrigerator. I might also have the urge to have something else, or a combination of somethings. Years ago my mother was horrified when I combined ketchup with mayo or mayo with mustard to go with a sandwich or use as a dip. I would also add soy sauce or some other condiment that was there but mostly not used by my mother's cooking technique. She bought lots of things and didn't use a lot of those things. Or she bought it for a recipe and didn't use it anymore. She was a person that had to use the exact items in a recipe and didn't think twice about a trip to the local market to get those items for that one time recipe. In those days she didn't especially like to cook. She cooked because it was required by her. Somewhere along my teenage years I started to get creative with my snacking and came ups with quite a few variations. There's one that I still have on occasion. It's a peanut butter sandwich with mustard and mayo. It's one of my comfort foods that I need to have at those special times. So what came first, the chicken or the egg today.

Kitchen: Melting Pot

Kitchens are getting more and more like the melting pot of America. We now have Mexican pizza, Korean/Hawaiian sliders, Korean tacos, Chinese fries and Southwestern everything. Fusion is the new age word that comes closest to describing this fairly new culinary technique. I find that this opens up so many new edible ways for me to be so creative with a medium that I have to buy anyway to survive.

Master Dowser.....

Before my father died he taught many people the art of dowsing including myself. It almost felt like magic the first time the rods moved on their own in my hands. That feeling will stay with me for the rest of my life. My father was a 'Master Dowser' who not only found water, he also moved water from nearby veins into dry wells and away from basements to dry them up. Plus he dowsed for missing people or pets and he could dowse using a map. One of his interesting techniques was to dowse another person's property without actually being there. My father would have the person walk the area as he visualized that person walking while holding his dowsing rods. When the rods crossed he told the person to stop. He would then ask the rods for the depth after first determining if the water was good for drinking. He would even give them the approximate gallons per minute. He had a good percentage of success no matter if he was actually there or not. Many local newspapers and magazines interviewed him for their publications and he visited many local schools to show the kids how to dowse. I still have many of the letters sent to him from his clients telling some pretty amazing things he did for them. He also followed up on the sites that he dowsed to make sure that they still had water and everything was as he told them. To my knowledge, not one of his dowsed wells has gone dry. He used all kinds of dowsing devices made of wood, plastic and metal. He died in 1993 and was so well known that my sister still gets phone calls from people around the world asking for him.

Silence.....

The coolness of the night had made it's way into my apartment via the intake mode of my fan in the window to the point where it woke me up two hours earlier than I usually do. I'm one of those people that need a noise of some sort to help me sleep. It's the a/c, the fan or my noise machine that I use for that purpose. This time I was so cool that I had to get up and turn the fan off and then the loudness of the silence was apparent. I decided to go back to bed without turning anything on. After a few seconds the absolute silence became a welcome place to be. Not even the refrigerator made a sound. I became aware that it's been a very long time indeed since I heard this amount of silence. When I lived in the country I heard it many times during my early morning, walk the dog, days. I was surprised not only by the fact that there was no traffic, no people talking on the street below or no sirens of any kind, but I was also becoming aware of the fact that not the smallest hint of a breeze was there. And also no early birds were singing, cats yelling or dogs barking. There was only me and the silence. A silence so peaceful that I just lie there with extreme contentment. It became obvious that I haven't been aware of the amount of noise that I've become used to. I swore to myself that from now on I'll try to listen to that silence more often because of that feeling of total connection to myself and Mother Earth.

A Thought

Upon awakening today I had a thought. I thought about a thought and thought how many times a thought leads to another thought and to another until the original thought wasn't there to think about. With this thought coming to mind I decided to think about this thought and not think of any other thought. I thought more about this thought, just the thought and nothing else. It didn't take long for me to think only of that one thought, but it did take a while to keep my train of thought on this one track. With this one thought I was meditating. Think about it.

The Sahara of Tillson....

I was pretty young when we moved from Port Ewen, New York to Tillson, New York, about six years old I think. Along with one boy living next door and the many cats living in my Grandparent's garage, was the sand pit just across the street. This was one of the two places in Tillson where they were getting sand to build the New York State Thruway. For a short time the machine they used was still there to fill the trucks coming each day, and then they were gone and my newest best friend and I had a place to explore and use as our stage for our imagination's. Most of our time was spent throwing dirt bombs at each other or imagining foes who had come out of the past or future to fight the mightiest of foes, namely us! Everyday, when it didn't rain, we used the sands of our Sahara to the best use that we could think of. At the day's end we always took some of that Sahara home with us to share with our Mothers who gladly swept up the dirt that didn't cling to our skin, lodge in our hair and hid in other places too numerous to mention. The sand pits are now invaded by the outside world and hold many homes to new explorers to maybe find some our remains that we left as kids.

Not Happy....

After my wife died many people have asked the question, "Are you Happy?" I'm sure that they're trying to help me in some way by asking. I gave up trying to find just the right answer that would really tell how I was truly feeling. Most times I just ended up tying my tongue in knots and ended up saying, "Yes". Maybe with the written word I can fair better. Here goes. Imagine you're taking a trip with that special someone in your life. The excitement has been building ever since you decided where you wanted to go. Each day the excitement builds more and more until the point where you feel that little kid inside of you wanting to jump up and down. On the way there you're both talking about what you can do and hope for fair weather. Upon reaching your destination you look around and face the horror of not finding your partner. They're nowhere to be found. Then the reality of knowing that you will never again see them sets in. Do you really feel happy to be at your destination? Now imagine that you can't go back home. You're stuck in a place that has now become more like a nightmare than the pleasant dream that you had of it before. Days go by and you find yourself exploring your new surroundings. You meet new friends, take up new hobbies and even feel better. Happy is a word that I still find difficult to use instead of better. Yes life goes on and I enjoy seeing each new day, but the word 'happy' isn't in my vocabulary at the present time.

Life Writing

Life writing for me is like attending a life drawing class with a mirror in the middle of the room for me to see me. At various times I'll see more of this or that. The light of my mind's eye will give subtle variances to enhance or diminish what was seen before. Catching that moment with words is my quest. Within this quest are more quests waiting to found by a deeper understanding that comes from my life writing quest. With one word at a time I'm beginning this journey among the many family trees on Mother Earth. Each one has an impact on another. Let's begin...