Tag Archives: cooking

First ever cooking post: soda bread!

image of baked soda bread, with one end piece cut awayThis is a totally non-writing related post!

I mentioned, in today’s earlier post, that I’d made bread four times this past weekend — two soda breads and two batches of chapatti. Right now I’m enjoying the tail end of the first batch, toasted with a little butter. That plus a strong cup of (green) tea is making my whole morning.

Baking is one of my favorite things to do, and I’ve been experimenting a lot with wheat-free recipes because the Mr. and I can both overdo it on the wheat, and so we’ve been working to cut back. Still, homemade bread is a gorgeous thing — it brings a tremendous sense of ‘home’ for me, which, as you may know from reading earlier posts, is something I’m always searching for, so I hate to have to give up baking just because I’m trying to eat less wheat!

Continue reading

my body still tries to become her body

graffiti: water + bread + home = basicsGood morning — it’s the day after the day after; it’s also the second day of Kwanzaa, Kujichagulia (Self-Determination). This time, for me, tends to be one of reflection: what’s happened in this year just passing? What are the possibilities, my dreams and visions, for the year to come?

(Aha – a prompt!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Continue reading

this buoyancy: workshops, holding space, and the netting we create for one another

spilling tea graffiti

the description of this image says its spilled coffee, but look at the tea bag tag hanging off the side -- let's say it could very well be tea.

a lovely way to wait for the tea water to boil: wandering around the kitchen, grabbing allspice berries, clove buds, breaking off bits of Mexican cinnamon stick, cracking open cardamom pods and coriander, all to put into the tea ball for spiced green tea. Now it’s simmering next to me and smells like goodness, smells like cool mornings, smells like something clean and differentiating and sharp.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Continue reading

pay attention to all the different facets that truth has

crying is ok here - graffitiI’m afraid to start writing again this morning. There’s this fragile peace within me, something inside that’s just barely standing on its own two feet, and I don’t want to shatter it or shake it up or push it back over.

I didn’t blog last Friday — I got up, overwhelmed and sad, and didn’t have any words to meet me once I sat down at the page. That happens sometimes, and often I write through it anyway. What am I doing here, I type — why aren’t I asleep, I could be in bed, what’s the point of this? Then I get tired of that sort of writing and I move into something else, something more interesting. On Friday, I couldn’t get to something more interesting. Everything fell away from what words could do for me. I hate that place. So instead I went online, I read my email, something I try never to do before doing my writing, because it’s always easier to read than to write, at least for me.

There’s a mailing list I’m on, STAT (Society for Treating Abuse Today), for survivors of extreme and ritual abuse and also for therapists who work with survivors of such abuse. Someone had posted a link to the Franklin Scandal. I followed the link, and found myself reading excerpts from a book about a man, Larry King (not the television star). Larry King ran a credit union, where kids from Boys Town worked. There was a contract between Boys Town and Franklin Credit Union. Larry King also flew kids from Boys Town to Washington DC, where the kids had to have sex with/get raped by prominent public officials, at sex “parties.” This went on in the 80s, and I don’t want to go back to the page again to get all the details — I don’t want to get sucked in again. He provided kids for the parties, and also a photographer — he wanted to get pictures of these politicians that could be used for blackmail. In this scenario, the kids were stage makeup for a higher game — political jockeying between/among adults. These kids were pawns, tools, utensils in a bigger game. Their individual humanity didn’t matter — what mattered was getting a photo of this particular individual, this career politician, this power broker, having sex with some kid. Any kid. The humanity of the kid doesn’t matter to the adults running the game.

Continue reading