Hold on to your taste buds. This is going to rock your peanut sauce loving world. This recipe was snipped from a great Thai food hole in the wall in Portland, OR.
So, as usual, I start the rice first in the steamer. It keeps it toasty warm and moist when done until you’re ready for it.
Okay! Here we go. Usually I mix up a batch of restaurant quality peanut sauce next and let it simmer verrry slowly while I stir fry the veggies. You’ll notice there is no meat in this dish, but you could easily stir fry a little chicken before the veggies for meat eaters.
So peanut sauce…in a sauce pan add one can of really good coconut milk, 1 cup of smooth peanut butter, 2 tablespoons of minced ginger, 2 tablespoons of chili sauce with garlic, 2 tablespoons of fish sauce, 4 tablespoons of soy sauce, and some cilantro. Heat, whisk, and simmer.
Now chop a variety of veggies. There’s no right or wrong, but here is what I have come to prefer: broccoli, baby corn, green pepper, mushrooms, lemongrass, and then whatever else I can add. Tonight it was spinach. Stir fry in olive oil over medium heat.
Layer the rice, then veggies, followed by peanut sauce. Enjoy! It’s terrific!
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
An excerpt from “The Stolen Child,” one of my favorite poems… And just to say, the fairies had it right. Find joy, find release, and leave the realm of misery, complacency, and thoughtlessness to encounter imagination, creativity, and joy. Yeats was a master of mood and fantasy. This is so in the moment with its sense of urgency that the reader is running along, escaping to the land of the fey.
I’m finishing a book on writing, Rumors of Water by L.L. Barkat and about to start another. There are lots of meaningful lists in this book that I admired, gave a nod to, or otherwise flicked the page corner down as a salute to skill, observation, and accomplishment.
Here is some of the fruit of this book that gave me pause.
Principles of Writing (Common, practical sense)
Have goals
Rest on a weekly basis.
Choose writer friends carefully.
Choose sharing time (about the project) wisely.
Watch out for syphons (people who don’t give you your creative space.)
Strengthening the Structure of a Book
Search for pet words and delete them.
Remove repeated words from a paragraph.
Trim sentences so they read aloud without glitches.
Vary sentence length and complexity.
Switch sentence order in a paragraph to add surprise or prevent confusion.
Check for details/add as needed.
Simplify details. (spread them around, not too close together)
Delete the first paragraph or the last one.
Scan down the left side of a final draft and note how each sentence starts.
And when working on a book, move chapters around, delete chapters, and add a recurring detail.
I am blogging my very awesome Thai green curry recipe snipped from a Thai place in Hood River, OR. This is a very easy recipe to follow that will yield green curry success.
First, make cooking fun and gather ingredients and cookware before cooking. The necessary tools should be ready and waiting for you to create something wonderful.
Alright, and here we go. Put some rice on first. I like jasmine rice and enjoy a steamer. It works well independently while I’m doing other things like chopping vegetables, things like sweet potato, zucchini, and green beans. When the rice is done, the steamer will hold it at warm automatically until I am ready for it. Nice.
So these veggies are a denser variety, well the sweet potatoes and green beans are. So instead of stir frying, they are par boiled over medium heat in water while you put the sauce together from these ingredients in a saucepan. From left to right: ginger root, coconut milk, Thai green curry paste, chili sauce with garlic, fish sauce, soy sauce, and cilantro.
Start with the creamy coconut milk. Very nice. Take the top off with a can opener. It’s thick and creamy. Not all coconut milks at the same. This is really good coconut milk. Put it into a sauce pan. All of it. Then find the Thai green curry paste. Three tablespoons whisked into the coconut milk should blend nicely. Mince a tablespoon of ginger root and add to the coconut milk curry mix. Add a tablespoon of the chili and garlic sauce. No need to heat this yet. Find the fish sauce and add about 2 tablespoons and then about 4 tablespoons of soy sauce. If you like a little more garlic, add a tablespoon of minced garlic. Whisk again to blend. Now a little spice. You can’t miss with 2 pinches of garam masala and 2 pinches of Chinese five spice. Whisk again. Add a teaspoon of corn starch to thicken, heat over medium heat, and whisk at it thickens slightly. Strain fork tender veggies and add to the curry sauce. Add chopped cilanto and stir a little to mix and coat the veggies. Spoon over a bed of rice and enjoy!
Gnocchi is an Italian potato dumpling that is very small and is served with a sauce. So I leveled up the gnocchi by making it myself, adding a selection of veggies for good health, and spicing them up a bit, too, with Italian flavors.
This is my version of gnocchi. Gnocchi, spinach, mushroom, broccoli, and pesto sauce. I made the gnocchi, and here is how…(pre-chopped my veggies and simmered Knorr’s Creamy Pesto Sauce while cooking gnocchi)
Cook a potato (boil), then put in the food processor, add seasonings like basil, garlic powder, and seasoning salt. Blend to a mush then start adding flour to make a dough. This is potato dough. Take out, flour your cutting board, and roll a third of the potato dough into a snake.
The dough…
Rolled into a snake and sliced…
Add veggies: I used spinach, broccoli, and mushrooms. This can be done in advance. Then brown one side of the gnocchi in olive oil. I use my wok for pretty much everything. Flip gnocchi over, add veggies, and stir fry.
Top with pesto sauce and enjoy!! For one serving, I used one third of the dough. The pesto sauce can be Knorr’s Creamy Pesto when cooking quickly or make your own pesto sauce if you have time. I also enjoyed a little bit of Asiago cheese bread (Safeway) with this.
So that was a fun and interesting culinary experience. Now yoga a little later.
The snow is melting, and I guess another storm is on the way for tomorrow. I’m not so concerned about the weather as much as I am the change in air pressure. It’s the migraines. The one I got today was a real bell ringer. I’m just getting over it….four hours, six Excedrin, and very long nap. I tried to sleep through most of it. Pretty intense. I haven’t had one like that for a while. So many places are flooded outside of Vancouver, four counties have been declared a disaster area in Oregon, and it’s not over. Here in Vancouver, the worst I encountered today was water over part of the roadway in one spot. That was it. Not so bad/thankful for so much.
So I’ve got a painting in the works. I sketched out some koi yesterday and am almost ready to put them on paper. Scratch that. It’s on watercolor paper now. I’m working out the composition before I transfer it to watercolor paper. Yep, done with that, too. Done. Less erasing on the watercolor paper this way, and I can keep my sketch in my sketch pad. I’m pretty excited about beginning the painting and had hoped to paint tonight, but it looks like it will be tomorrow. I will do some prep work tonight, but painting will wait until I am pain free. Sheesh. Migraines!
So I visited a new Dick Blick store in Portland today. They absorbed my go-to art store downtown, and it’s nice, very well organized, and very typical of a Dick Blick store. Came home with some paper and, of course, a few extras. I am in the zone for drawing and painting and just in time for the weekend. So I’m stocked for the arts whatever comes my way.
It is the ever so weest hour of the morning and need to sleep, I suppose, at some point before dawn! Pleasant sleeps and sweetest of dreams.
I’m at the keyboard tonight trying to finish a writing project for someone, a book manuscript waiting to be published. It has been a little while since my last post, so here is a recent update.
When I started this post last night, it was my birthday. Now it is morning. I, like most teacher personalities (of which many are January children) tend to be reflective. We dwell on what was, what is, and what could be. Janus. We all tend to be this way…seeing the past, present, and future quite clearly.
“What was” for me has been an incredibly challenging life that would wring your heart. It required courage way beyond my years from a very early age to survive against the greatest odds. To be where I am today given my challenges is nothing short of amazing. The power of persistence and faith. Then the joys of being a mom to two daughters who have taken a piece of my heart with them, and finally the pursuit of my own educational goals and what I could contribute to the world with my time on this planet. I want to do so much more, but I do what I can.
“What is” now is pretty remarkable when I consider my starting place in life and the challenges I have faced. I’ve run a good race so far and am doing some pretty amazing things. I currently hold three degrees and the highest teacher certification possible. I live in the most amazing place. Portland/Vancouver area is home to me, and I love it very much. I work in the best school district ever, and I teach for one of the major universities in the state. My friends are bright, intellectuals who care about the world around them. I have been incredibly blessed, and for that I am so, so thankful. And finally, I live comfortably and want for nothing really.
“What could be,” I feel, is somewhat in my control and some…not so much…just out of my grasp. The things that I could and want to accomplish are to continue teaching and pushing my writing accomplishments and artistic abilities. This is my joy. I enjoy teaching and learning and have from a very early age. I enjoy writing and art and find it cathartic, an emotional release, and like most creative people, need a release for my creative energies. The not so much is where I need to have the courage to let go of what I cannot change which is hard when it’s part of your heart. But I’ve learned to let prayer take over when my abilities reach their limits and to know exactly where this is. Let go and let God, as they say.
Some of the Things I’ve Learned About Being Human
Treat yourself and others right and fair. They, like you, will reap what they sow. Life is a circle. We get what we give.
Guard your happiness. It is everything.
Take care of yourself. You are all that you’ve got.
Do what makes you happy. Your health depends on it.
Try to contribute positively to the world. Make your time count for something. Make a difference.
Care about others. We should.
If someone hurts you, it is on them. They will have to square with that. Forgive them as soon as possible. Don’t invest in their pain. Move on. Protect your happiness. It is your health.
Let no one own you. If they are inclined to own you, they are inclined to control you or worse.
Don’t let the addictions of others rule you or affect you. No one has a right or free pass to hurt you, not even family.
Protect yourself and those you love from those whose addictions strike out to hurt others as they are hurting themselves. Don’t enable those with addictions to continue hurting you and those you love.
Continue to grow and to learn as long as you are alive. To stop is to stop living.
Practice kindness, caring, and compassion daily no matter what. We are all connected. We all are humans with the same needs. We are humans first.
Practice good judgement. In all matters, ask is this right? Do what is right, not what is popular or enticing.
Be compassionate but not taken advantage of.
Care about how you let yourself be treated by others. Do not engage in things that disrespect you.
Dream big and set your goals high regardless of where you begin in life. You achieve what you dare to dream.
Avoid the pitfalls in life. Learn from your mistakes when you don’t. We are not perfect and life happens. Not everything is in our control.
Keep a pure, true heart. Harbor no resentments. Live like a child.
Compassion over judgment. It is not your place to judge. There may be so much that you don’t know about them. Forgive, love, endure, help carry one another’s burdens, and lighten one another’s load.
Do your best in your work. This is when you will feel the best about the work that you have done.
Nothing inspires like a sunny day in Winter. It was magnificent. So I went exploring Vancouver with no particular destination in mind. Just roaming. It was great to just go wherever, do whatever. I have been so focused on schedules, goals, things that must get done that I needed time to just do whatever with no particular destination, just allowing the spirit to move. I was hoping there would be writing in it somewhere, and there was.
I came home refreshed, made a stir fry, did some yoga, and then massaged essential oils into my hair before a shampoo. Eucalyptus, tea tree, and almond oil. The residual affects of the oils remain after a shampoo. In this case refreshing and calming as I am wired after such a beautiful day!
And I was fighting sleep tonight, so I took to the journal, and a short story just poured out from some deep, dark place about seventh grade. There is the writing I was hoping for, but had no idea it would be a dark story of difficulties overcome by a seventh grade girl. It has an unsure, self-conscious young girl in it who was fighting for her freedom from oppression. This is an everygirl story with bits and pieces that girls can relate to in different ways. I am amazed at how fast I wrote it. Add a little sunshine to ordinarily gray Winter skies, and there you go! Soon I will dress it up a bit more, give it a better title, too, and then send it out to meet the world. I love breakthroughs even if they’re dark. It does end well. This may become a chapter book. It has the potential to.
So sleep. I know this means the weekend is over, and I so don’t want it to be, but it’s the last hour and sleep now is a must, not an option. I want to write more and revise what I have already written, but it will have to wait. It is squirming to be written, but I’ll take that over no motivation at all and wishing I had something to write.
Instead of getting up, getting out, and making a difference today, I was home getting over a stomach ache and sinus situation. This can best be described as not fun. It was almost dawn before I went to sleep, and I’m just starting to feel better. It has been a full day of 7up, orange juice, vitamins, and anything to help. The challenge to this day was the amount of downtime I had. You know that feeling of wanting to do things but not being able. That one. Not fun.
Tonight was the beginning of the Portlandia season.
Can hardly wait to see what the writers have put together for this year. Based on bits of information from those who are on the writing staff, it should be good.
The home network went through a major upgrade and is now spinning faster than ever. I’m delighted to have had the courage to seek change. And change, as is constantly reaffirmed to me through life experiences, is a very good thing. My former ISP provider was not delivering the goods no matter what I tried. The download speed was very low, and I knew this by the trouble I was having with some movies. So, I did what I had to do…conducted a speed test, wrote down my data for up and download, then researched the other major ISP provider here, got their stated download and upload speed data, and then gave them a call. After a new ISP and modem were in place, I conducted another speed test, and the results were exactly what I had hoped for. Phenomenal. And as someone who loves streaming online content, mostly movies, entertainment and lifestyle just got an upgrade.
The weather here has been La Nina blissfulness. So mild. I’m enjoying getting physically active after a little Winter hybernation fest. It feels good to get back in my fitness routine, especially yoga.
How did it get so late so quick? Think I’m turning in to finish reading Rumors of Water by L.L.Barkat, a book on writing. It is very stream of consciousness and about the world around the writer/how it should inform the content. It’s a fast not especially layered read that does have some entertainment quality to it and suggestions for writing, but it’s not a book that you can pull off the shelf and practice that thing with that activity from it. The chapters are short, based on every day life, and analogies are drawn to writing based on daily life. For me, it essentially is a peek inside the writer’s mind, how content is found from daily life. It’s an easy read.
I have enjoyed the coziness of holiday decor so much this Christmas season…okay certain parts of it more than others. Most of it is down but parts are lingering about because I like them so much. I feel like I could leave twinkle lights and a lit village up all year, but better judgment prevails.
So the first day of the new year was spent writing interspersed with bouts of distractedess which I’ll call errands and necessary naps. You may be wondering where the black eye peas, rice, and ham are for good luck in the new year, but not to worry. I would not miss an opportunity for good luck. I made my good luck in the new year black eye peas and rice dinner yesterday, feasted, and then pork loin roast today, and feasted. So got it covered.
Okay, here is a little video that reminds me of the hairy back side of Winter, the part after the holidays, cold minus the festive lights, and the let’s get on with Spring part. Now planning for green growing things begins.
I rang in the new year dancing. They band was great, and the dances were excellent. It was very well attended and frankly, good clean fun. We danced from 7:30 to midnight then welcomed in the new year. And here it is. 2012. A present to be unwrapped. A date with destiny to be revealed. Aren’t you curious as to what the year will be like? What will it bring? 2011 has been, by all accounts, good to me. It has been about establishing a new routine, creating a new normal. This is my second year in Vancouver, it has been completely positive, and I’m really enjoying living here. So I’m staying indefinitely and now feel I have a home, a place where I belong, something I haven’t felt in a very long time. If you know how important putting down roots and being established is to me, then you can understand what a challenge this has been up until now.
I am loving the mild winters here. Mostly gone are my aches and pains from being in really cold weather. I hardly ever get headaches and migraines anymore. And I don’t remember the last time I’ve been sick. My health has improved 100 times over. I am happy, feel blessed to be here, and am looking forward to 2012 and all that it has to offer.
I want for very little anymore. In fact my list is very, very short. My wish for 2012 is to stay, get rooted, and be productive here where I want to be and want to make a difference. I’m so very thankful to be here. Happiness…. is everything. It is your health, your quality of life, your joy, your contentment. This is the brass ring to reach for. Everything falls in place when you’re happy. So if I could wish anything for you and for myself in 2012, it would be happiness. This intangible state of being…this is the wellspring of so much goodness that it is hard to measure.
And now on to Spring, to Chinese New Year where the dragon follows the rabbit, which is gentleness followed by good fortune. May our new year be blessed with more joy than we can measure and happiness reside in our hearts and in our homes. Do those things that bring you the greatest joy.
