Soul search in Barley soup and oatmeal muffins?

Today, required soul food and these are the foods that warmed me up from the inside.
I got the idea for Barley and beef (Ram steak in this case) from a wonderful blog called Feeding My Enthusiasm.
When I saw the picture of that soup I felt like something deep and forgotten from my childhood was unearthed and needed to be attended to.immediately. I had completely forgotten about barley and boy how I missed it.
The next day the soup was made and the flavor was better than the childhood memory.
The muffins were baking in the over while the soup was cooking on the stove and this place smelled like where I wanted to be. I added frozen Okra to my soup and used bacon to rendered fat to soften the vegetables instead of olive oil or canola oil, I know, I'm terrible, but I'll take bacon fat over the others any time. I also added parsip to the suggested celery, carrot, and mushrooms.
So you see, it was not even up to me, I was attacked by an urge to cook from beyond and was surprised to find out how soothing and healing it was to obey, eat to my satisfaction, and be calm.






She was not there,
Who was?
She could not be sure, but it wasn't herself.
It had been too long. The person she had come to identify as herself had changed and she did not know how to make friends with this new one, new what?
She missed some quiet, she had no patience, too often, she found no joy, but then, where did she want to be?
As the days wore on she learned to make it through, it took changing every single thought in her routine of thought.
No wonder she had become someone else, but staying away from the deep end depended on it. After a while there was no going back, the tracks had been erased, she had no desire to find them anyway.
In the new world, there was no use for the old ways.
She had to face it, all of it, all the time - reality
it never went stops, what with its multitude shades of gray.
New layers of it kept unfolding and there was no averting what was exposed, staring as it was - right in the face,
It was too much, for anybody, really, . . . so she had to numb it out - called "detach."
Detach, what an ugly word, but necessary, she kept practicing.
What to do?
Where was the inner voice that was suppose to know ?
It is said; if you look inside, fearlessly, relentlessly, unabashedly, you will find a new meaning, a new peace.
She tried, it wasn't there, really.
"Always, the non believer, . . . why should anything miraculous happen to you?
But she needed a miracle, so desperately. . . .
To feel her body floating up in the air in meditation. . .or something of the sort, it's all in the mind, why couldn't it happen?
just that feeling, for once, of having overcome her daemons?
So true to her nature she kept trying, because if nothing else she had always been a per-severer.
What was it that had the controls over her soul?
No, don't say it. It is to much to comprehend that it all boils down to chemical imbalances. .. that all she was came down to matter over soul any time any day.
Soul being merely the thing that trapped her inside this body.
Make yourself a cup of feel good tea and drink up, cause it ain't gonna get any better than this.
Yet, only earlier that very day she was so high on cloud nine.
And even as she was walking on that cloud she was aware, too aware of being in an ever so happy moment.
And what was going through her mind?!!!!!! here it is: "How long before the fall?"
Yes, that's what she was thinking!
She should have slapped herself right there in the middle of the step she was taking in the middle of that sidewalk she was walking, in the middle of the day she was living.
She took a picture.
A mental picture; one foot in the air, holding hands with her two children, one on the left, one on the right - a moment - her moment.
Her existence in that split second so palpable, she could taste it - the taste of newness, of delicious hope.
And all the while her mind contemplating the end of the step, the fall.
What was it, this way of thought robbing her of that protective innocence which was the very thing defining who she used to be?
Having lost it, how could she hope to be in the moment?

Yes, she knew the answer all along, still, she now had to survive it.


Now, now, . . . A phase, just a phase, . . . it'll be alright, it'll be OK,

"I am a child of the light,
I am loved by the light,
I am born into the light,
I am sustained by the light,
I am protected by the light,
I am surrounded by the light,
I am born anew into the light every moment of the day.
Amen!"







to be specific without being specific

Assorted bean soup for a rainy day in LA and some thoughts about love (making)

Although she does not go to school Georgia has registered herself (by demand) to an afternoon "home work club." A program run by the city in our neighborhood park which allows kids to get help with homework after school.
Georgia, as I have mention before, is going through a Pokemon stage and that, for now, is the main incentive for going (so she could exchange 'valuables' with the other collecting club mates).
Of course, she is supposed to finish her assignment of work first.
Assignment being; writing a chapter of her own book.
For now her title is "A 7 year old journal." She has written quite a few very cute chapters that left us in awe, but as soon as we put it out there that she should write a chapter every time she goes to "Home Work Club" it wasn't interesting anymore.
That's how it works with Georgia.
Still, as I sit here and try to figure out what is most on my mind (besides food) to put down today, I can't help envy the ease with witch Georgia's pure and unencumbered psyche comes up with themes. True, her themes are a little underdeveloped and straightforward, but that is the enviable quality I so strive to achieve.
A 7 year old chapter (re the Horrid Henry one, Georgia's favorite book at the moment )can astonish with it's straightforward ease of flow, not to mention the incredible drawings that accompany some of the pages.
Call me crazy, but how do I achieve that?
Well, as an overloaded adult the only true writing comes from becoming a master editor. Yes, sadly good writing is good editing.





Being a person of accumulated memory and experience, I find my mind takes me on whimsical journeys of a sort that take me by surprise. It is my task to make sense of them and to put them down coherently.
Last night I found myself in my Grandfather and Grandmother's fruit tree garden (yes, like the Garden of Eden, exactly!). My grandparents had every fruit tree you could imagine in their yard, Including a huge Avocado and pecan tree. Looking back I can't believe the assortment of fruits they had. I don't recall my Grandpa, or Grandma doing anything special besides watering in order to get their trees to yield all that delicious fruit: There was plums (yellow and purple) pomegranate, clementines, small red berries of a sort unknown here, which my grandma would use to make preserves and another exotic fruit I have not seen here, kumquat and orange. When the grand kids came for holiday visits we were all over the trees picking and eating straight off the trees. My parents lived in a city apartment and so this (my grandparents' house) was the house of my childhood. Also the house were I spent my army years and lost my virginity when I moved to live with them at 19. Yes, I was a virgin until then.
Last night I was in that balcony on the second floor, the little guest quarters where I spent that time of my youth. I could smell the plum blossom and I saw the view of that little neighborhood on the outskirts of the big city, with the triangular roofs and electric lines and TV antennas, I saw myself sitting on the cold marble, leaning against the iron rail (which I could smell clearly as well), in that state of young pining I had forgotten all about. It is my acute memory of scent that had brought back the plum blossom beneath me as i sat there. In my reminiscent state of mind I remembered the smell of the air on that hot summer night and I remembered the way my youthful mind entertained the excitement in reliving secret moments of love from the night before (oh, if my grandfather found out!).
That house has been demolished for many years now, a big rich monster built instead by the new owner who purchased the land from the feuding siblings - the ones who were the beloved aunts and uncles of my childhood.
How ugly it all became since, have I?
I hope not. It is another life though, could easily be someone else's. The girl that I once was, so far from me now and when my brain brings her back so vividly, so alive, when I literally smell her thoughts - a lump forms in my throat. I just want to hug her, like I never did when she was me. And she needed a hug - from me.
What up? I asked my brain at the end of the day.
It was last night's love making that brought it on.
Stolen moments of closeness with Daniel after Georgia and Wylder finally fell asleep.
Some nights, it's suddenly different. Magically, a moment of connection that hankers back to something the mind didn't know it remembered.
And I know I could write a whole book about her, she whom I once was. Looking back and having the advantage of knowing - it turned out pretty interesting - her life did - for her.
This however, and without undermining the beauty, is mine.




Assorted bean soup for a rainy day in LA.
2 cups of assorted beans soaked over night.
5 strips of bacon.
1 healthy looking onion,
2 big carrots chopped.
4 celery stalks chopped.
1 fresh fennel chopped.
1 can of roasted tomatoes,
or 4 freshly cubed tomatoes. ( I dont' bothrer blanching and peeling if I use fresh)
4 cups of soup stock of your choice.
1 tspoon of cumin seeds,
1 tsp fennel seeds,
3 sprigs of fresh herbs, preferably thyme.
sea salt,
Malabar pepper.
Lots of parsley for garnish and nourishment. Mint is good too.
To make.
In a very big pot let the bacon yeild it's wonderful fat over high heat.
throw in vegetables and let soften, but don't thoroughly cook.
add herbs.
Wash and clean the soaked beans and pour into the pot.
Add the tomatoes, and cook for 5 minutes,
Add soup stock and salt and pepper.
Bring to light simmer partially cover (leave the crack in the lid so it doesn't over boil)
Cook on low heat for 11/2 - 2 hours,
Check to see desired texture.
When ready to serve drizzle olive oil and sprinkle parsley.
YOu can also puree part of the soup and pour it back to the pot for added thickness.
Daniel and I have been enjoying this soup 3 days now
It keeps getting better:-)
Enjoy!

Olive oil Muffins.

So today, Sunday morning,
Georgia, Wylder and myself and I finally made those Olive Oil Muffins I found on Smitten Kitchen and have been conspiring to make ever since.
I have to admit, this sort of baked good is really my thing and no one else in this house hold shares my enthusiasm for bran and olive and other heavy baked goods of the sort
Kids will be kids, and Daniel whose favorite cake (which has now officially become his traditional birthday cake) is an almond and custard filled Gateau Basque, did not understand the charm of these muffins.
Now, having said this, it occurred to me that chocolate would be a great way to give these a perk.
Indeed, Georgia and Wilder, were all over them as soon Nutella was added..
To me the nutty chocolate-y Nutella only enhanced the flavors of the olive oil and citrus. Everybody was happy.
Well almost everybody, Daniel remained unsold on the idea. "Where do I fit in a craving for such a muffin. Is it breakfast? afternoon? dinner?"
I say all of the above, because (and not that I recommend this on a regular basis,) Georgia and Wilder are stuffed after having one of these satisfying muffins. Dinner will be served much later tonight.
Here's to lazy Sunday afternoons in the kitchen.
And then, to watching the sunset from the bedroom window.

What did she want after all?

Breakfast.











She took him in.
A decision based on the way of his smell.
It was a scent she had never known in a man. Clean, but not from soap. The scent of his sweat staying buried in his dark armpits, irrupting from the depth of his movements surprisingly sharp yet enticing, pure, clean, innocent - of him.
It made her go back to a time when she played doctor with the boy next door.
Of hidden places in the back yard, the musty smell of wet earth in places that remain shaded. Could he be that boy ?
With him, she sensed his awareness to the warmth that almost attacked him as soon as he entered.
Hers was a shrine of personal collections, soft and rough in a contour of throbs that came and went.
Watching the moment form outside herself she felt that overwhelming wave that seemed to begin in her inner muscles and spread out in circular motions all the way to her heart.
The slightest of touch was enough to transport her into his existence, 180 degrees from her own. It made made for another wave of circular muscle emotion wash over her.
His, being unaware of anything besides the focused physicality of the flesh.
Completely engulfed in the totality of the now.
Always watchful she had grown old with herself, time and time again. Bored with her inability to participate.
He was in her protectiveness now.
All hers to keep warm and safe from the hurtful world - of course, that was her job.
She couldn't help thinking it, feeling it, as hard as she tried to resist, the maternal instinct.
Close to her breast she was too aware of her nipples contracting hard enough to hurt.
She couldn't suppress the thought of milk, of holding a baby boy, this warmth - unearthing a connection despite what should be an alienating difference. This, which sucked the marrow out of her woman's soul time and time again.
This knowing, that came with cradling an entity so different from her own - a man's.
She touched the taut soft skin of his arms, shoulders, back, his movement inside of her so determined, guided by a force beyond them, unstoppable, programmed sometime so long before now.
His face buried in that place between her shoulder and neck. The scent of his hair taking her to the balcony of her youth, to that hot summer night with the blossom of the plum tree mingling with the the new scents of a night after which everything would change forever.
A young girl yearnings for the love in a life ahead of her not knowing that the seeds of change had been planted already. From withing this watchful observation she was almost there again, experiencing her young self, allowed a precious peek into her long forgotten innocence, what it felt like to be untouched by the maligning nagging of a more experienced self. A self that never turns off, a constant noise that cannot be shut down. Why was it that she needed to be outside of herself to be inside of herself?
He would never bother to be so interested in going back into past moments. No, how pathetic, what purpose would that serve?
But she wanted him to look into her eyes right now, if only for a moment. It was she living this moment, even it was a repeating moment in time.
If he did, , , , had he looked in her eyes - the moment would freeze.
The scents, the memories would crack like icicles.
Would fall off and pierce her heart.
She wouldn't like it.
She would avert her eyes and turn cold.
She would die.


So what did she want?

Meditation, last night's dinner and some late night sex.

I
just go there







Because I live in a one bedroom apartment with two kids and my beloved the bathroom is my designated office/sanctuary..
Still, I wake up every morning no later than 5:30 (before the little ones) and hope with all my heart that they will not awake before my 45 minute meditation is over.
I brush my teeth and bowl cleanse. I then seat myself cross legged with my back to the tub, and place my palms in my chosen mudra position on my knees.
I take a deep breath and I'm already sinking into a place of peace, self forgiveness and acceptance.
I take 9 more full lung filling breaths and breath out fully through my nose.
After than I start another kind of breath: I breath out forcefully tightening my lower abdomen while allowing it to expand back naturally. I do this for 10 minutes all the while envisioning all physical and spirit poisons forced out of my body making room for pure warming light to fill the gaps left by their exit.
I proceed to do deep expulsion breaths, - I breath in deep and blow air out for the length of a minute, at the end of each breath my tummy feels (and looks) sucked all the way to my back and I remain with it completely depleted of air for as long as I can. This particular kind of breath leaves my feeling absolutely cleansed and emptied of all lurking inner enemies, physical and spiritual alike.
I then will do 10 Om breaths, breathing out to the sound of my own voice and keeping it as long as I can (at least one minute). This kind of breathing always makes me feel (at least while I'm doing it) connected to the universe and being part of something beyond myself.
After this, I use my right hand to close right nostril with my thumb and use third and forth fingers to alternately close the left, I do this for 10 minutes while focusing on the light and on having good intentions for the day with forgiveness and patience especially toward my Georgia and Wilder with whom I spend every waking minute and often lose it.
After focusing on all this goodness and light I sit surrounded by a feeling inner peace (which I know won't last long, by I relish it) and allow myself to breath naturally for a while.
When I feel ready to let go of this place (which is hard) I snap my fingers and open my eyes charged with inner power and motivation I footsteps and someone (Georgia, Wilder?) is at the bathroom door already. I unfold my numb legs and emerge to face my day prepared and brave.
It doesn't take away my tendency toward unpredicted outbursts when I've had it up to . . . and I lose it. But over time (a long time) I am gaining a sense of understanding, acceptance and a newly acquired ability to loosen up and let go, which I know I never possessed before. It's an ongoing process though - God isn't everything. . . .

And for desert Grape fruit yogurt cake from smitten kitchen which also inspired the Pizza (with Mario Batalli's dough which I did not love even with Smitten's adaptations, but I blame myself, because I used whole wheat flour rather than regular, I always stubbornly make changes, I just have to - so annoying I am).
This cake is what happened directly after I announced (on the post before this one) that I'm ready to make Olive Oil muffins.
It's another law in life for me - whatever I plan and absolutely intend to do never happens.
I should learn to count on this law and anticipate the forthcoming failure to launch, but somehow I am always freshly surprised.
As Georgia likes to say, whenever we get sarcastic and and give her silly answers:
"I'm not gullible!" Yes you are!













as for lat night sex, I know I haven't been reporting about it as dutifully as was my intention when I started this blog, but as you may imagine that's because there wasn't that much to report.
Yes, I have to admit I have sunk into a period (almost two weeks) where I just wanted very little to do with any of it. And as much as I thought I was just going to conquer all that by simply "doing" the "easier said than done" law has proven me wrong yet again.
But to cut a long story short, last night we had some wild bathroom sex that made for a good angel sleep.
To be fair, I will also admit to my nonexistent readers that during these past two weeks some very real, yet unreported issues encroached grossly on my already naturally frowning disposition. These "issues" contributed to my mood dips during this period of abstinence, really, not just hormones - the ever blamable cause for everything feminine (and I resent this vehemently!)
But life goes on, and sex is part of it when you have a partner. So I'm feeling better today and hoping to have much more "betterness" to report at least in the near future as I can't account for much further (-:

The colors of her world

I wait to see the picture she posts.
The big green tea cup with honey and milk
and that whole grain bread with what I imagine to be butter, jam and a slice of good stinking cheese.
Oh I am hungry, always hungry, always craving, somebody else's toast and tea.
An imagined inner calmness which I can never find.
The knowledge of being, of being at peace within.
She only writes a few sentences that speak of design and simple day tasks, nothing much, really, nothing to expose the innards, yet she has the talent to convey so much in a simple picture.
Not all of them, I have no patience for pictures of view, of white winters somewhere far from here, Nature's beauty bores me to tears. But when she posts a cup of tea and the little bag of Finish cookies beside it on her simple table in her simple tasteful home, I just want to die in peace.
There is not simplicity in my life, even though I too live in simple home and I too love my simple home. Every corner in my little home captures so much beauty I could ever ask for more in my daily picture.
But my home is not mine, and my life is apt to change. At any give moment i expect the rug of stability to be pulled from under my feet and everything I have called my life will change abruptly.
That's how it is for me. And for a homebody Torus that 's enough to shake every cell of security I don't posses even before it ever actually happens.
I am in a place of extreme financial duress, everything we have done and worked so hard for has brought this family to this place.
And looking at the path we have chosen, although unconventional and stubborn, no doubt, I have to admit that some lives are simply not blessed with luck in certain respects, period.
Money never came my way, no matter what I did. It apparently was to be my curse.
So now I brace myself, trying to adjust my brain to the make friends with the change and instability that is about to befall my way. Me, a mother of two who will have to some how feed and bed two children who holey depend on my for their every breath.
Really it is due to the light in the cold land where she lives. It is the light which allows for that sombre yet alluring flavor, a hue, a glow.
I know it, still, even though I don't really want to live there, to me it is so delicious.
It is raining to day. very befitting of my gloomy mood, but we will be alright, I know it.
Somewhere along the way luck will finally find us, there is enough out there and I only ask for a little.
But in the meantime it's time to make those Olive Oil muffins (a recipe I've been dying to make for a while now). I can see the picture I'm gonna take already, of one half bitten muffin with crumbs on the plate and a big mug of green tea with honey and milk on the side. I will describe the sweet savory flavor meticulously. I promise. :-).

How was it for her?
Feeling trapped, mid forties,
3 children with a man she now found, but probably never admitted to herself, she could not stand for the most part.
When she had not a moment to herself.
During the evenings at home when everybody was driving her mad and while she was doing her endless evening mother chores her husband (who had no doubt worked all day and earned it) was sprawled on the living room couch snoring in front of the TV.
Sure he worked hard, but for her it never ended and she never got to have the "say" on what would or would not be done in her life unless by sly careful, cunning, manipulation.
How did she survive the claustrophobia?
Where did she go for solace?
But then again, she was not much of thinker,
did not have much expectation of life, and those that she did have she pretty much accomplished. Simple enough: A nice home, normal children which she considered beautiful,
a husband who compared to all the fat mediocre other men her friends and neighbors were married to seemed handsome, successful, talented, with a shining career which kept him out of the beautiful home for the better part of the day to boot.
Those were her hours of independence, her time when the kids were in school and he was at work.
She worked too, she worked hard, but it was her freedom time still.
Compliments earned from low men she came across in the markets and shops,
thinking that she was beautiful and cheating time while no one could ever guess she had 3 children no less.
She flourished like that, from those vapid complements, and times when she thought she was different from the rest of them, all of them - life.
She never seemed bored though, she did manage to keep herself stimulated while living in all that oppression.

I watch you, not give up, endless patience. Taking on a project and not letting go for days and nights at at time.
Teaching our daughter to sing, when she clearly is uninterested and doing her best to be done with it and go watch TV. It drives me crazy, I can't listen to the voices, to the effort, to the noise,
I admire you, but I want to scream, I want to scream because I could never do it,
I want to scream because you are driving me crazy and I don't want to be here.
I want to scream because I am not a good enough mother and I never will be.
Because I have no patience and I'm so bored with my life, with being me..
I am bored, but there's nothing I find my heart gravitating toward.
My confidence is squashed to zero and that's because you are the doer and I am the nincompoop.
Because between the two of us I have worked hard to earn this title and now it's too much effort to prove you or myself wrong and become a doer, a writer, an interested and interesting human being.
I have reached a point, a midlife crisis, where my life is nothing, nothing I ever dreamed it would be.
Where my disappointment and disillusionment is so so so I don't know where I could ever turn for a new beginning, I am clueless bored.
Why bored? because I find myself incapable of being, of doing, of having any trust in myself.
I am a shackled prisoner in my own body and soul which I despise.
The best line to describe my thinking at any given moment is "I just want to be left alone!!!!!"
Yes, I know, I am describing a depressed state of mind, I need help, pills possibly?????
But I am a loner at heart, the sort of person who would never turns outwardly for advice or help, and devout autodidact.
If I don't do it myself I won't do it at all.
And you see, there is something, somebody in here, that wants to climb out, because I am writing this.
meditation.

Haiti - a candle

To Haiti,

A candle.

My funny Valentine.

Coming back from the market.
I love vegetables and fruits, love to shop and come home with bags full and wash and prepare for use in my own bags.
Fridge stocked up with all that I'm going to cook - yum,





And that heart thing - y ???
That's Valentine
Her day is coming up you know.
Now don't be quick to judge a book. . . , she's very sensitive as she's all heart.

Down in Little Tokyo.
A favorite restaurant of ours in little Japan is a simple unpretentious dive that serves up a mix of Japanese and Chinese favorite dishes.
We ordered Pork Ramen a beef chow main with vegetables and a side dish of vegetable Gyoza.

It's been a rough start of new year.
My new cell phone fell into the washing machine and died.
And all the prototype designs we were waiting on were delayed for what seemed like forever.
Nothing had began with the New Year and again we scrambled for rent.
But going out to eat in another world of food and culture made me feel new to myself and forget about my troubles completely (almost).
Finally today some of our designs arrived and they look so pretty that I got my hopes all up and going once again.
It amazes me how just what goes on in your head can make one day sunny and the other hopeless and gray. But then again, I even love gray days, so it's truly all how you look at it, right?



When we got home I made dessert,
I had made Olive Oil Yogurt cake the day before and now I added a quickly whipped a sauce from frozen blueberries and sour cream - delicious.














I'm determined to keep it sweet.
So what if things did not start at all gloriously,
They could still turn around and this will prove to be a good year after all, right? Right.