“Better to be a failure at something you love than a success at something you hate.” – George Burns

Sometimes we all need a little reminder to make sure we’re fitting the things we love into daily life. Today I have two ideas to help you remind yourself…

1) Check out the Heartfish Letterpress Shop on Etsy and for $12.50 hang one (like the image above) somewhere in your house where you’ll see it. I have one in blue in my bed room that I wake up to each morning.

2) Or visit Handle with Care, a new online shop by Julia and Yuriy Manchik, and download their beautiful and free Live What You Love wallpaper to remind you each time you use your computer. It’s on mine, and I’ve got my eye on their Globetrotter t-shirt!

Julia and Yuriy are photographers who decided to travel the world for half a year after getting married. They’ve chronicled their trip at Mr and Mrs Globe Trot. I’ve enjoyed following their travels to places like Montenegro and Ukraine, among others, and not surprisingly at all, their pictures are amazing!

I hope you find a way to live a little of what you love this weekend!

- Angela

Image by Heartfish Letterpress Shop.

From my little plot of cyber earth here, I like to explore ways to live well with more joy and meaning each day. Sometimes this involves big serious questions, like When should you quit your job?, and other times it involves lighter questions, like How do you like to travel?.

My posts over the last couple of months have been kind of heavy…  So I just wanted to take a minute to thank you for coming along on the serious ride! Today, we’re exploring a much lighter, more practical question:

What should you cook for dinner?

What could be better than something healthy and simple to make, easy to freeze, and completely versatile? Don’t overlook brown rice as an easy staple to help you put a meal together fast. It’s basically the blank canvas of foods, soaking up any flavor you care to pair it with.

Brown rice can be somewhat temperamental to cook, but it’s healthy benefits make it worthwhile to learn. Most cooking methods involve using the stove top, but I’ve scorched a batch or two of rice that way.  Then (thanks to my mother) I found this recipe.

I almost always prefer a hands off method over more labor intensive ones, and this method of baking brown rice couldn’t be more hands off. It takes a little longer, but I haven’t burned a batch this way yet!

Baked (“Perfectly Every Time”) Brown Rice

1 1/2 cups brown rice
2 1/2 cups fat free broth (chicken, veggie, etc.)
1 tbsp olive oil (original recipe called for a butter substitute, but you could also use butter)
1 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Place rice in an 8″ square glass baking dish. Bring the broth, olive oil, and salt just to a boil in a kettle or covered saucepan. Once the mixture is boiling pour it over the rice. Stir to combine, and cover the dish tightly with a lid or heavy duty aluminum foil. Bake on the middle rack of the over for 1 hour.

After 1 hour, remove the rice from the oven, and take care of steam when removing the foil. Fluff the rice with a fork. Serve immediately or reheat later with leftovers. It also freezes very well!

Using Your Brown Rice

There are limitless ways to use your brown rice – as the base for dinner or as a side dish. It pairs well with anything from roasted vegetables to curry.

Below are ways  I like to use it, but please share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments!

• Stir herbs into the rice to use as a side dish
• With roasted vegetables and topped with caramelized onions and parmesan
• With scrambled eggs, green onions, and shrimp or chicken to make a mock-fried rice
• With black beans, salsa, avocado, and tortilla chips  (a knock off of the Global Dinner at The Dream Cafe in Dallas)
• With stir fry (or sauté) any mix of meat and vegetables to serve over the rice

—

A quick note…

I recently discovered The Minimalist Cook and the Minimalist Cooking ebook both by Meg Wolfe for $4.95. I really enjoyed it and recommend it to anyone who is looking to make cooking more simple, but still wholesome and healthy. Meg’s goal is to kick the marketer out of the kitchen and to remind us of cooking as a “simple, uncomplicated, intuitive and relaxing process, producing simple uncomplicated wholesome food for your friends and family.”

Not surprisingly I started with dessert and have made her Simple Rustic Apple Sauce and her Gluten-Free Fast and Easy Peanut Butter Cookie, which I made with almond butter instead of peanut butter, and both have been great.

I found Meg’s ebook as a part of the online 3 day Minimalist Book Sale (summary here), which I purchased, so you may hear a little more about this as I make my way through all the content.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers . . . live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” - Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Many, if not most, of our public interactions are automated or electronic these days instead of personal, and few of us know our neighbors. We feel disconnected, which isn’t surprising since we’ve all but edited the people out of our lives.

A Lesson in Personal

This past weekend was a perfect reminder of what personal should look like. I attended the wedding of a very good friend and one of the smartest women I know. It was just the kind of event that suited her and her now husband – simple, intimate, filled with beautiful food and wine, and uniquely them.

All of the details held meaning. The location of the wedding was the spot where they had gotten engaged six months earlier (to the day!), the judge who officiated the wedding was a friend so the words she spoke were filled with emotion and significance, and the guests were family and close friends from all the different parts of their lives.

The result was an evening perfectly focused on the union of this particular couple and their specific marriage. So often this isn’t the case anymore. Focused on the wedding itself, people get wrapped up in the affair. Then, they end up spending a ton of money on an event that feels generic and impersonal.

Adding Personal Back in Our Lives

Before you can give of yourself, that which is truly personal, you have to know who you are and what you want. It’s sounds simple, but it’s not nearly as easy as it sounds. This isn’t the stuff of whims, it’s the stuff of soul searching.

It’s easy to forget amidst the business of daily life that it’s the people who give our lives significance. Not material possessions, social status, or our careers.

To me, everything that matters in life is personal, but I’m looking to live a real, not sanitized or homogenized, intensely personal life. Of or affecting people or an individual’s character. It definitely the messier option, but I’m betting that it’s also the most fulfilling.

As always, I’d love to hear what you think… How are you adding personal experiences to your life?

—
To Kathy: I’m so happy for you, Dave and Sullivan, excited for your future, and honored to be a part of your life! Love, Angela
Photo: North Pond Restaurant, Lincoln Park, Chicago

“Waiting is a state of mind. Basically, it means that you want the future; you don’t want the present. You don’t want what you’ve got, and you want what you haven’t got. With every kind of waiting, you unconsciously create inner conflict between your here and now, where you don’t want to be, and the projected future, where you want to be. This greatly reduces the quality of your life by making you lose the present.” The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle

How much of your life do you spend waiting? In line at the grocery store, in traffic, or for someone or something to change? Waiting for winter to end and spring to come?

Waiting can definitely build anticipation, but does it make the future event any sweeter? Can waiting ever be a good thing?

I’m full of questions today with few answers so I’d love to hear your thoughts… Are you waiting for something right now?

“Budino is the Italian word for pudding;  budini, the plural, are individual servings. This is an easy and luscious hot dessert.” – Alice Medrich, Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales from a Life in Chocolate

Since it’s Valentine’s day, I’ll let you in on a little secret…  This budini is one of my favorite desserts, and one of the simplest recipes I’ve made. I love simple cooking. If you keep baking chocolate on hand, it can be whipped up in no time flat after the arrival of an unexpected visitor or for a spur of the moment craving after dinner! Enjoy, and have a happy Valentine’s Day!

Budini, From Serves 6
Alice Medrich, Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales from a Life in Chocolate

Ingredients:

• 6 oz bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
• 8 tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 tbsp brandy or rum (optional)
• 3 tbsp semolina flour (optional)
• 3 large eggs
• 2/3 cup sugar
• Pinch of salt
• Whipped cream  or ice cream to serve
• Six 8 to 16 oz ramekins or ovenproof bowls

If you are going to bake the budini immediately, position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Combine the chocolate and butter in a medium heatproof bowl set in a wide skillet or barely simmering water, and stir frequently until completed melted and smooth. Remove from heat. Stir in the liquor and semolina flour, if using.

in a large bowl, beat the eggs, sugar, and salt with an electric mixer at high speed until light and fluffy and the consistency of softly whipped cream. Use a large rubber spatula to fold one-third of the eggs into the chocolate mixture, the scrape the chocolate batter over the remaining eggs and fold until blended. Divide the batter among the ramekins or bowls. You can bake the budini now or later in the day. Simply refrigerate, covered, until about 30 minutes before you want to serve them.

To bake the budini: Place them on a cookie sheet. Bake until puffed, crusted, and deeply cracked but still gooey inside when tested with a toothpick, about 20 minutes, or 25 minutes if they have been refrigerated. Serve hot or let cool, cover, and set aside at room temperature for up to 1 day. The budini will sink as they cool, but they will puff up again when reheated in a 375 degree oven for about 10 minutes.

*I watch them closely, and if your oven runs hot, bake them in a water bath to make sure they don’t dry out.

This is the time of year when we ritualistically set amazingly lofty goals, which we expect to achieve through sheer force of willpower. We pick the issue that nags at us the most and resolve to finally get it right this year despite our long-time, contradictory habits. It’s more likely than not that we’ll break these promises to ourselves and then end up feeling terrible about the whole endeavor… This cycle is unhealthy and unproductive!

Contrary to Collective Wisdom

Our collective wisdom tells us that we learn more from failure than from success and that change has to be hard. But, a recent study (from the Scientific American) indicates that this may be completely backwards.  We focus on the failures, when we should be focusing on our previous successes. We also instinctively believe that we need more discipline to accomplish our goals, but this overlooks the fact that when we’re passionate about something, the motivation and discipline simply come and don’t have to be forced.

If getting something done takes such large amounts of willpower, maybe we’re not spending our time on the right things?

Check out this great video from Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun (via Chris Brogan):

What Really Works?

My results from the 2009 year-end goals I set were imperfect, but still substantial enough to make a real difference in my life today… It turns out that the goals that I actually achieved were based on the things I really *wanted* to change, compared to the things I felt like I *should* change.

So I’ve decided to ease up and get real without all of this militaristic self improvement stuff, once and for all. I’ve put my internal drill sergeant to rest, and the only plans I’m making for 2010 are focused on bringing more fun and more of what I love back into my life.

What do you think? Am I taking the easy way out? What’s worked for you?

Black-eyed peas symbolize good luck and prosperity. Some believe that the black-eyed peas represent the “coins,” while the winter greens they’re often served with represent the “dollars.” Eating them together on New Year’s Day is supposed to guarantee many of both in the year to come. From cookthink.

My family has followed this tradition for as long as I can remember. We do it more out of an abundance of caution to protect and ensure our luck in the new year, than any real belief in the lore behind the tradition. As you might expect, we’re defintiely not purists who only eat the peas with greens and only after they’re cooked with a hamhock.

Our family tradition involves a steaming pot of the soup below served with warm cornbread smothered with butter and honey. I’ve also included a new edition to our tradition, which is unlikely to ever replace the soup, but may supplement our black-eyed pea intake on years where we fill we need an extra boost of good luck.  It goes well with tortilla chips and a day of lingering on the couch watching football!

You can substitute dried beans in any of the recipes below, but I’m assuming that you’ve been busy over the holidays and that you may still be in an after-holiday-haze when preparing these recipes so I’ve only provided canned and frozen black-eyed pea options. Here’s some additional information about the tradition from Texas A&M university, but apparently this tradition isn’t just limited to the south…

What will you be doing on the first day of 2010?  Do you have any special family traditions to ring in the new year?

Black-Eyed Pea Soup

1 (28 oz) can diced tomatoes, undrained
2 (10 oz) packages frozen black-eyed peas
1 cup chopped onion
2 quarts chicken broth
1 1/2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon dried whole oregano
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon dried whole thyme
1/4 teaspoon red pepper
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup sliced carrots
1 cup sliced celery
1/2 cup chopped green pepper
1/4 cup fresh parsley
2 cups chopped, cooked turkey breast (smoked turkey can be used too)

Combine first 11 ingredients in a large Dutch oven. Bring ot a boil.  Reduce heat, and simmer, uncovered, 30 minutes. Stir in carrots, celery, green pepper, and parsley; simmer 30 minutes. Add turkey; simmer 30 minutes or until vegetable are tender. Ladle into serving bowls. Yield: 3 quarts (131 calories per 1 cup serving). Source unknown.

Spicy Black-Eye Pea Dip

1 (10 oz) can or frozen black-eyed peas
1/2 cup diced onion
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 (4 oz) can of spicy green chilies (or the equivlanet of 1 roasted poblano pepper coarsley chopped)
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 (8 oz) container of reduced fat sour-cream
1/3 cup chopped green onions
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

Combine first 5 ingredients in a food processor; process until smooth.  Add sour cream; process until blended. Stir in green onions. Sppon mixture into a 9-inch pie plate or shallow 1-quart baking dish coated with cooking spray. Bake at 375° for 15 minutes or until thoroughly heated. Spinkle with cilantro. Yield: 12 servings (89 calories per 1/3 cup serving). From Cooking Light, December 2007.

Whether you’re ringing in the new year surrounded by family or at a fashionable party with a flute of champagne and the familiar strains of Auld Lang Syne, I wish you a wonderful evening tonight and just enough passion, meaning, and inspiration to  make 2010 special!

In this fast paced world, taking the time to linger over a meal can be rare and getting away from your responsibilities often seems next to impossible. We say that that “time is money” and use the language of finance and business when talking about it.  We worry about wasting, budgeting, and investing our time, and we run from one thing to the next. We even push through the holidays without taking the time to enjoy them.

Having my favorite people gathered around a table enjoying good food, wine, and conversation is the highlight of the holiday season for me. I relish the kind meal where no one is rushing off to do anything and you honestly feel that with enough conversation (and enough wine!) you just might solve the world’s problems.

So in the words of Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love:

“Dear ones, EASE UP. Pump the brakes. Take a step back. Seriously. Take two steps back. Turn off all your electronics and surrender over all your aspirations and do absolutely nothing for a spell. I know, I know – we all need to save the world. But trust me: the world will still need saving tomorrow. In the meantime, you’re going to have a stroke soon (or cause a stroke in somebody else) if you don’t calm the hell down.” Elizabeth Gilbert, What Matters Now (pg 11).

We spend less and less time relaxing or enjoying unhurried time with family. That’s what I’m truly looking forward to over this holiday season, but admittedly, sometimes it’s easier said than done!

How will you be spending the holidays this year? Can you take a real, honest-to-goodness break from the maddening pace?

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