What are those funny little cookies that look like mini hamburgers in an assortment of colours? I saw them on our visit to Paris, at every little sidewalk baker and cafe. Our favorite place to stop every morning before a full day of sightseeing was Paul’s. We were so obsessed with the croissants, we barely gave those odd hamburger cookies a moments notice. Frankly, I didn’t think they looked that appetizing. And, I thought they were a little ugly. (Like Uggs until they were all the rage. Or Birkenstocks). We probably passed the Laduree shop several times as we walked the Champs élysées oohing and awing. We visited the Elie Saab boutique and Louis Vuitton and Chloe but walked right past Laduree, the inventor of the macaron as we know it today. Two little almond meringue cookies with a flavoured filling sandwiched between. The macaron was actually born in Italy and somehow made its way to France. It was at La Masion Laduree that they began to sandwich a filling between the two cookies.

It wasn’t until we returned home that we started to see the emergence of this sweet, glorious, haute cuisine delight in our little village. Maybe it was there all the time, we just didn’t have any interest in it. Not unlike the time Mike bought us a brand new car. A Sable. I’d never seen one or heard of it before. Ours was a rich deep wine color and I thought I’d acquired at Jag. Until I started to drive it and realized there was a Sable on every corner… almost.

Once we were aware that this little French delicacy was taking over from the cupcake, we had to be on board. We’re nothing, if not on top of the food and fashion trends. When I say ‘we’, I’m talking about my daughter and I. We examined them when we had the pleasure of tasting them at various events. Well, we must make some, we decided. We will not be left behind. We were already making pies, cakes, cupcakes, sugar cookies and selling them to connoisseurs of fine baking in our circle of friends. I mean, how hard can it be???

Quite. As it turns out. They are very finicky little things. Mostly because of the egg whites or the meringue texture of them. It’s actually much easier to just make meringues. But no, let’s complicate this…it mustn’t be easy. We can’t have every Tom, Dick and Geri making them. You have to beat egg whites with sugar and egg albumen to the perfect consistency. Not too little and not too much. You have to sift, several times, the already fine icing sugar and almond flour. I mean..
Who tried this out for the first time? Apparently King Louis XIV ate macarons at his wedding in 1660. Who knew? They were individual cookies back then. No filling. No sandwiches. So someone just decided to put these ingredients together and noticed that very often the cookies ended up with this frilly little base that is now called a foot. And that foot is everything. I mean, EVERYTHING! What probably started out as a mistake is now the measuring stick for success. So actually I am possibly trying to replicate someone else’s mistake. Very often my macarons look like they have hobbit feet. They still taste delish but they are not haute cuisine at this point. They are just peasant dessert.

Next, you have to do something called macaronage. There are many different theories as to how many times you have to fold the batter into the centre of the bowl to create the perfect consistently. It should end up flowing like slow moving lava. What if I’ve never seen slow moving lava? What then? Some instructions suggest or should drop from the spatula like a continuous thin ribbon. I can relate to that. But do not over mix or death quell. The eggs should be room temperature. They should be older. You have to tap the cookie sheets on the counter to get rid of air bubbles and prevent the tops of the cookies from cracking. You must cook on low temperature so the cookies don’t discolour. But not under bake them. Rumour has it… Ok, I actually heard her say it… that the owner of the Duchess Bakery in Edmonton used to bake her macarons in a toaster oven because that’s all she had, which leads me to believe the finesse is in the preparation of the batter.

I have made these delightful little delicacies with a modicum of success over the past ten years. Tossed many batches of macarons out for fear someone would guess that I am unable to tame these little beasts. The ingredients are delicious so they never taste bad, you just can’t serve them up and call them macarons. Mastering these little dessert hamburgers is the bain of my culinary existence. My Waterloo. Did I mention that the level of humidity in the air also can seriously affect these little buggers? I mean, burgers.

I just can’t base my whole self esteem on whether my macarons turn out on any given day. I’ll just keep making them. Sometimes they are lovely and sometimes not. I’m going to invent a dessert using mutant macarons and I’ll be famous.

To Be Continued

I’ve been reading so much about purpose this 2020.  And I have spent an exorbitant amount of time trying to figure out what mine is,  I keep thinking…shouldn’t someone who is 62 already know what their purpose is?  Some people suggest that I have already been moving in my purpose and don’t even know it.  I certainly do not what to miss out on it.
I have had wishes for years.  I wish this would happen and I wish that would happen and I wish I could do this and I wish I was good at this and I wish that was my lot in life.  And why do I find myself, very often, not doing what I am truly good at or what nurtures my soul?    As I have mentioned before, this last layoff had me more seriously considering a dream. There’s got to be more to life than 9-5, repeat, same old, same old. Everybody that’s doing something they love and are good at had to start somewhere. So I began to rationalize.  Why can’t I have a dream?   An actual dream!  Not a ridiculous dream.  But rather something that is quite possible.  Well, highly improbable for me (us) given our fears, doubts and lack of where-with-all.  But still.  My mom showed me a quote from her recent bible study that said this, “Nothing happens until somebody starts dreaming.  God cannot help you reach your goals if you don’t have any goals.  He cannot fulfill your dreams if you don’t have any dreams.  He cannot exceed your expectations if you don’t have any expectations”.  This, of course, makes total sense.

Joanna Gaines suggest asking yourself these questions and writing out your answers.  What do you want to be able to say about your life a year from now?  Or at the end of this decade?  What’s most important to you in life?  What thrills you?  What do you talk passionately about?  If nothing stood in my way, what kind of life would I lead?  SUCH A GOOD QUESTION.
Then she says:  Now take that dream and define it.  Then translate that vision into a tangible form as a physical reminder – a mini manifestation of what you want to see happen in yourself and in your life. Keep the vision before your eyes.  Distill your vision into a single word….my word for the year is ‘courage’.  So appropriate, because to push myself towards my dream will definitely take courage.

As I fill up my new journal with all my thoughts, fears, dreams, failures, desires, victories and questions, I see a theme emerging over and over again. What the rest of this paragraph is about, is not it.   However, I am, if nothing else, a maker.   I am creative and excited about making beautiful things.  Whether these creations are paintings or sewn together or baked or cooked or require the use of my Cricut machine, I love to create something beautiful that did not exist before.  So I have dragged myself down the alley of being a seller.  Having an Etsy shop as a possibility.  Making and selling things from my home or on Instagram.  Recovering furniture.  Making quilts and bridesmaid and graduation dresses.  I even sold a painting once.  Selling my favorite kitchen products at home parties.  Believe it or not…I used to be a fitness instructor. Sold Tupperware. Worked in a mine.  In a pizza joint, in the middle of the bald prairies for a week.  In a hardware store.  In a quilt shop – now we are getting closer to ‘me’.  I’ve spend many years working as an Administrative Assistant in the corporate world, because everyone knows that’s where the big money is.  The paid vacation, the benefits, the security…or not (given I have been laid off  or let go of no less than five of these positions since 1985.)

I have even started and run my own business, teaching kids to sew and quilt, out of a basement studio my dad helped me build.  I did this for six years.  I started out with summer sewing camps and managed to get myself on the local breakfast TV show  four years in a row.  This is how I got my enrollment.  The first year, the show just mentioned my endeavor along with the rest of the city’s summer camps being offered.  The second year they asked me to bring some kids and some sewing machines to the studio to have us actually live on the show.  That was exciting.  The fourth year, they brought the cameras and the van to my studio and interviewed myself and the students and gave a tour of the studio I’d set up.  When I think of it now,  that was actually something I am proud of.  I did that.

But as I journal, ponder and pray…this new dream is truly more of what I have been preparing myself for, for a long time now.  I mentioned in a previous post,  that what I can really see myself doing is moving to an acreage with a farm house (with a wrap around veranda) and land to grow flowers on  (maybe construct a greenhouse for more variety) and a large white barn.  My first purpose for the barn would be as a wedding venue but truly, I would like it to be a life events venue.  I realize what I am really good at and what I love doing, is transforming something ordinary into something ‘other worldly’.  Something dreamy.  Something that will take your breath away.  Something that will make you pee your pants. (I’ll have facilities on the premises).

As I reminisce, I realize I have already been doing that for years as I host tables at fundraisers, throw bridal showers to bless young girls, baby showers to usher in a new life, make a memorial service a celebration of life where people end up feeling comforted, transforming a friends home into a cruise ship for a 60th birthday party.  Transforming my own living room into a Tuscan banquet venue.  Hosting a family Christmas for twenty seven people that claim it was magical.    My friends and colleagues think I am nuts most of the time, but I get lost in the creating an atmosphere.  Creating a mood.  Transporting people.  Friends, family, guests.  Not event planning, as I first thought was my calling…but transforming ordinary spaces into memorable places.  I could do this by redecorating your home.  But I really want to do it on a grander scale.  And regardless of what society says about marriage in this day and age…people keep getting married.  Women keep having babies.  Kids keep graduating.  Couples keep having anniversaries. Families keep gathering and loved ones keep passing on from this life to the next.  I would love to play a part in making all of these events sacred and sensational.  Fun and festive.  Meaningful and memorable. I get carried away in the process and love to make the guests and families at these events feel they have been transported.
Whether I get my acreage, my farmhouse, my greenhouse (I know nothing about growing) and/or my white barn remains to be seen, but I WILL continue to pursue this dream and continue to do all the things.

I’ve been thinking about dreams a lot lately.  Not the kind of dreams you have when you’ve drifted off into lalaland.  No, I’m talking about the kind of dreams that begin to formulate when you’ve been laid off three times from jobs that you weren’t sure why you were doing anyway.
All my life, I have played it safe.  Don’t take any risks or walk out on any limbs.  A person could get hurt doing that.  They could fail.  They could look foolish.  It might be more work than they bargained for.  They could go broke. It could be painful and who needs more of that? So I have played my cards pretty close to my vest.
I’ve never thought of myself as the kind of person that can have a dream. Not a dream that I want to turn into a reality anyway.   I’m more of a wisher.  More of a ‘someday’ kind of person. People like me don’t get to dream.  I’m not Martin Luther King.   I don’t get to do great things.  I am just an just average person that plays it safe and tries to keep my nose clean and stay out of trouble.  What’s with all this new fangled talk of dreams?
It finally occurs to me that people that are doing things that I want to do had to start somewhere.  They started from nothing. OK…some started from wealth and power but a lot started from nothing…just like me. There has to be that burning dream and desire deep in your soul that this is what you want to do and nothing is going to stop you.  I’m going to dream big and if I end up with only half of what I’m dreaming, it will still be a win.
I’ve always wished and dreamed that I could do something that I was good at, to make a living.  The facts are – I have to work for our family to thrive and survive.  Just the way it is for us.   Why can’t I be doing something I am good at and something I love?  Where is the crime in that?  Instead of always feeling like I sold out to something my heart just isn’t into because its ‘safe’?   True…one of these corporate admin jobs (just jobs to me, not a career) could be a means to an end.  I don’t discount that and I may find myself working admin again just to move closer to the dream. But the dream has to be there and after I have assessed all my talents and strengths and that of my family’s…because there is no way I am a one woman show…I think I know what I want to do.  People have been telling me for years to use my creativity, energy and work ethic to start a business.
And I’m NOT too old and its NOT too late.  I’m still breathing.  I’m not trying to parallel or exceed Walt Disney’s empire.  I just want a nice farm house with a wrap around veranda on an acreage with land to grow flowers and greenery for my daughters business and a lovely barn to glorify as a wedding venue (with all the accessories).   That’s not ridiculous.  Its totally doable.  No,  I don’t have any money.  WE don’t have any money.  But we can’t let a little thing like that stop us, can we?   I watched a documentary movie on Netflix recently called “The Biggest Little Farm”.  It was SO inspirational.   Those people started from nothing and faced and conquered all kinds of obstacles.  This also isn’t about getting rich – its about making a living doing what I love and am good at.  What my family is good at.  There is room for us all in this dream.
I must not forget that my heavenly Father owns the cattle on a thousand hills and He also knows how to give good gifts to his children – of which, I am one. The parable of the talents keeps running through my mind over and over and over again.  I don’t want to be that sorry little servant that buried his talents in the ground and left his Master much disappointed.
So I am dreaming now.  And I am dreaming big.  I’m off to make a vision board and figure out how to write up a business plan and pray.  Dream Big.  Pray Bigger.

Lemon ice cream. I could taste it already. Last time I made it we were fighting over it. Truth is, anytime I make homemade ice cream we are fighting over it. It’s kind of hard to hide because it has to be kept in a freezer and we only have so many freezers in our home. So it is right there. (I wonder if they make under the bed freezers? Or maybe a freezer that looks like one of your dresser drawers?)

I whipped up a lovely, light lemon cake with lemon icing out of one of my many cookbooks in the collection. Name of the book? Butter. What else do you need to know? I guess I didn’t really whip it up. The recipe involved many steps. I have long sworn off cake mixes for various reasons. I make every cake from scratch. Creaming the butter. Lemonizing the whole milk. Zesting the lemons and subsequently squeezing the juice out of them. Intoxicated by the aroma of fresh lemons. I guess that’s why they put lemon in household cleaning products. Who doesn’t want their home to smell like lemons? I was enjoying every finicky step. Anyway… I wanted some smooth, refreshing, lemon ice cream to go with it.

I had cooked and mixed and re-cooked the rich milk and egg mixture that makes up the ice cream and set it in the fridge to cool for eight hours. I guess thats when I should have started to look for my ice cream paddle. But I didn’t know it was lost at that point.

Finally when I needed it, I went directly to the last spot I saw it and it was not there. I tore apart the pantry and as result cleaned it. Tore apart the linen closet. The cupboards  and many other nooks and crannys where it may have wandered off to. Nothing. That ice cream paddle had vanished off the face of the earth. I told myself-be calm. Don’t lose your cool over this. Which would be my default reaction. It’s ok… just go to the store and buy ice cream. No, it won’t be the same but it’s not the end of the world. Me being me, I kept searching, but this time with a calm demeanour. Finally, I had to force myself to move on. My OCD tendencies insist I search until I find it but I had twelve people coming for dinner so I had to work on the rest of the meal.

I did move on to other tasks but as I did I asked myself ‘what’s the magic of the ice cream maker paddle anyway?’ I had the frozen ice cream bowl. So I tried my regular KitchenAid attachments. They did not work. I reasoned, all that plastic paddle does is move slowly around the freeze bowl for twenty minutes and you end up with ice cream. Why couldn’t I just stir the ice cream in the freeze bowl myself for twenty minutes? I guess the real beauty of having the attachments was I could turn it on and go do something else for twenty minutes. But this could work.

So I settled in for twenty minutes of slow stirring. I could not get anything else done during this time. As I watched the cooked milk and egg mixture start to freeze and thicken by the motion of my stirring (well actually the nature of the freeze bowl)  it occurred to me that many things in life require our undivided attention and there is no easy quick way to achieve the desired results. We have to do the work. We can do the work. Once we set our face as flint about a thing…. we get it done. We can’t always have easy. Sometimes we need to slow down and focus and just do the hard work.

As I watched the cream thicken, I could feel my stirring becoming more laboured. Ice cream was happening and it was going to be so worth it. Many things in life are totally worth the hard work but we seem to run from hard. Who doesn’t want easy?   I want the best results by doing nothing.  But this small incident reminded me that I set out to do the hard and holy things in 2020. I want to do the things that require resolve and discipine and  intention.  I am getting weak and lazy.  Always succumbing to the path of least resistance.  I need to build up my stamina. In every way.

But because I set my mind to stirring that cream for twenty minutes (which seems like eternity, by the way) I ended up with a rich, refreshing, creamy frozen product which would compliment my lemon cake perfectly. I was tempted to order new parts off Amazon right away but our Internet was down so that wasn’t happening.

Those parts have to be here somewhere but until I find them I guess I will make ice cream the old fashioned way. Churning it. And remind myself that the result is worth the work. Hopefully I will be able to apply this reasoning to the many things I want to achieve this year. I can’t just let something or someone else do the hard work while I fritter off doing something less onerous.

I do love the tactile side of cooking and baking. It brings such a sense of accomplishment and I hate to be defeated by a piece of plastic. And I wasn’t. I can do this thing. Life…. I can do it. I can stir the defeat out of it because I want to.  I want to do the hard and holy things*.

 

*Ann Voscamp

I dried the last plate ten minutes before my coach turned back into a pumpkin. The thing with hosting an authentic Italian meal, Tuscan style, are all the courses (and all the dishes).  Those Italians love to eat. And I’m sure it’s because the food is so amazing. Not that I’ve ever eaten an authentic Italian meal at one of those long, never ending tables with a million bottles of wine and candles in empty olive oil bottles with wax dripping down on all sides. Everything I know about Italian cuisine and culture I learned from the movie Under the Tuscan Sun. Sure, I’ve been to Rome, Florence and Venice. When my daughter and I arrived in Venice on an overnight train from Paris, we were so stunned by the heat that we ate gelato all day. A thin crust margarita pizza on the board walk at night. We ran around Rome like crazies trying to see everything in a day. Maybe it wasn’t built in a day but we proved you can see all the highlights in a day…. if you don’t stop to eat. When we hit Florence we decided not to remember it as a blur… so after a short morning sight seeing tour we were left in the square with naked David to have lunch at an outdoor cafe. Then we just wandered around the shops listening to street musicians in the afternoon. So really, Italy was not a food experience for us. It was not ‘Eat, Pray, Love ’.

However, I believe our Night in Tuscany dinner with our ‘first responder’ friends, was. First of all, first responder friends are those people in your life that respond first when you have a crisis or a joy. They are our safe people. And we have so much fun with them. Anyhoo, we had our valentine potluck last night and I offered to host since I could and I wanted to play a bit.

We eat with these folks. We pray with them. And we love them. So cleaning up the dishes and by dishes, I mean every dish in the house, was a joy for me. As I scrubbed those cheesy, tomatoey pots and pans I had a direct line view of our long Tuscan table with greenery hanging above. And I relived the laughter and the tastes and the smells and the music (which was supposed to be a romantic Italian restaurant playlist but bordered on circus music at times). Such a good memory made. There were talks of going on cooking class vacations to Italy or France. We reminisced about trips any of us had made to Italy. We ate too much food and drank too much wine and had an Italian good time. So this experience WAS Eat, Pray, Love.

Here’s the thing about food. We are very needy and vulnerable when it comes to food because we can’t live without it. We have to eat. People do die from starvation. It’s a basic human need. So when we gather around the table to eat, we make ourselves vulnerable once more. So if we eat in a safe, loving environment our physical needs are met under the guise of our social and emotional needs. It’s a sweet harmony. I adore this harmony and am committed to making it happen as often as I can.
—

We are having a crisis of epic proportions over here. We’ve had no internet for almost a week. I know right? And you thought you had problems. Our peaceful, blissful existence has been upturned by this catostrophic turn of events. No blogging. No instagram. No Facebook. NO NETFLIX.

This is pretty much all we’ve talked about all week. We’ve had to turn the wifi off on our phones and resort to using our carefully rationed data plans. We‘ve had to watch regularly scheduled TV with commercials. Some of us have even had to resort to reading books. Of course there is always Starbucks with its free wifi. They’ve seen a bit more of us this week than usual and that’s hard to imagine.

It’s absolutely mind boggling how dependent we have become on this trendy technological discovery. Remember back in the olden days when we sat around the dinner table and all we did was eat and talk and share ‘worst part of day and best part of day’? Or fight over who was doing the dishes? Or when we looked facts up in the World Book encyclopedia  or had to go to the library? When we went to the store to buys things? We went to Blockbuster to rent movies. We listened to music on our walkmans? We took care of Tamogochi’s for entertainment. We met people for coffee face to face. We got our affirmation from people we knew for real life things we did.

But a distant memory. Hazy at best. Those were the days my friend…

Why would an old, lumpy deny-er like myself foolishly sign up for a gym membership? It seemed like a good thing to do at the time. I needed a new hangout. When you walk through the door of your local Starbucks/Chapters and all the staff yell out ‘Hi Geri’, you know you’ve been there too often. Don’t get me wrong… I love it there. But when the Chapters staff have your Plum card number memorized… it’s time for new stomping grounds. So Lexie sold the idea to me using perfect logic. ‘You need a new place to hangout-it will cost one Starbucks a week and if your going to curtail your time there then you just reappropriate the funds.’ Still making total sense. ‘You wanted to get more exercise for the health of your aging brain and this is an excuse to order those wireless earphones from Amazon’. Price of gym just went up. AND Lexie trains there so we could car pool when it works out. Plus there’s a sauna and tanning facilities and a hydro massage bed. So I bit the bullet and joined. One year commitment. As I was sitting in the sauna after my workout the first day, I was having buyers remorse. Maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea. Well, it was definitely hot in the sauna but … maybe I should have come as Lexie’s guest a couple of times first.

It’s not that I don’t like working out. I totally do. It feels good to do something good for yourself. Get the heart rate up and the adrenalin flowing. Get the bad cholesterol and blood pressure down. But what Lexie failed to mention was that the place was lined with mirrors. Well, I just don’t really want to see myself everywhere.  I tried not looking but I just ran into more mirrors with my eyes averted to the floor. At home, I could pretend I was pretty ok. Not here. At home I don’t wear racer back sports bras and tanks. I try really hard not to be in front of a mirror until I know I’m not going to scare the crap out of myself and others.

I noticed there are no sharp objects at the gym. Probably a good idea with all those people and mirrors. In fact, they should probably provide counselling after each visit. The sauna rules suggest we get naked. I don’t even want to see that.  That’s not happening. I’ll just wring out my sweatshirt when I’m done.

I noticed that my workout wear was also not up to speed at the gym. I’ve only been twice in three days but, so far, I have not seen anyone of my particular species, so looking at all the trainers and svelte bodies has been a bit daunting. I went to Winners to find some different workout gear. Turns out the plus size section doesn’t have workout wear. Why not? We’re the ones that need it. So I wrestled myself into the largest sports bra I could find in the hip young adult women’s section.  Who needs to go to the gym? That was the best workout I’ve had in years. Then I had to take it off. I didn’t bother going to the gym yesterday. I was exhausted. Anyway, no sports bras for me. They just flatten and spread and make your stomach look like it starts right under your two chins. Not flattering. Not only that, I have to put my hair in a ponytail if I don’t want to faint from heat exhaustion and I did not want to know what that was covering up. When did I start looking like someone’s pet Boxer?

And to add to the joy of the experience, I set out on the elliptical with my brand new wireless bluetooth earphones, and was feeling quite trendy for an old gal, I listened to three songs and a voice came on that said my battery was dead.  Are you kidding?  I’m 8 minutes into a 60 minutes cardio routine.  Problem was the instructions that came with the earphones were printed on a two inch by two inch paper.  That’s pretty tiny printing.  It can’t be read with the natural eye, so I just guessed at what they were saying about the red and blue lights.  I was wrong.

Joining the gym has turned out to be the perfect way to humble myself. Who knew? Who cares what anyone else thinks? Although I am fairly certain no one else is thinking about me or watching me, it feels like I am the gym entertainment. But I have every right to be there. I paid my dues and will continue to do so. And eventually it will get better. I’ll either start to accept that I don’t look 35 anymore or I’ll actually start to look better.

PS… I have a really nice personality and I can sing.