Reading his books is like being driven in a Ferrari at high speed, and then ending up at a McDonald’s.

The ride is amazing, but the payoff is disappointing.  All the twists and turns and suspense don’t build up to anything except your getting a soggy hamburger.  So enjoy the ride, and try not to dwell on how it all ended up.

It’s still in progress, but I’m giving up on perfectionism and just going with life as it happens so I won’t wait any longer to make it “perfect” before I share it.  I hope to make a sidebar out of it once I figure out WordPress, but here it is for now.

Do you have a Mighty Life list?  Link in the comments!

ANYway, my point is that mypinktoes is going to look a little wonky while I get the bugs figured out. If you like watching paint dry, you could hit the “refresh” button repeatedly! Or, you can just watch your RSS reader for an “all clear” post.

To be fair, I guess the main issue is that she hated cooking. Loathed it. My mom was one of the first once-a-month cookers, although she adapted the concept a little: instead of cooking a variety of things on one day to freeze and eat for the month, Mom just made one recipe and served it all month long. I can never eat porcupine meatballs (meatballs with rice inside) again. She also adapted EVERYTHING to be able to cook it in our electric fry pan. No matter what the recipe said, that’s what she cooked it in.

To make things even more interesting, Mom also liked to just throw anything together, and no substitution was too far afield (out of fresh mozzarella? Substitute velveeta…or cottage cheese….or potato flakes). I tend to hate most of these improvised dishes, because there’s always something too weird for me. This approach is very cost-effective, but the refrigerator-roulette approach is not for everyone. Thankfully for my parents marriage, my dad loves whatever my mom throws together. But somehow, spinach salad with asiago cheese, sunflower seeds, craisins, olives, and hot dog slices just doesn’t do it for me.

So when I set off on my own, I decided I was going to learn to cook what I liked. As one might expect, this quest started off with the acquisition of a bunch of cookbooks. I have made and loved many wonderful recipes over the years. In my quest to learn how to cook reliably edible and often tasty meals, I have leaned heavily on the recipes within these cookbooks. This has been a good thing (edible is good), but lately I have felt like I wasn’t really cooking. The great cooks I know (like my friend Giseli), use what they know about taste and how food works, and just combine what they like. The other problem of only using a recipe is that I feel like I waste too much food , and spend too much on ingredients. Very few recipes use exactly the portion one can buy at the grocery store of any one item, so I end up with odds and ends. Since I don’t have a recipe that uses EXACTLY what I have left, I will often purchase more expensive ingredients in order to use another up, and/or let a lot go to waste. One of my missions this year is to cook more without a book – to trust myself with regard to taste, and to use ingredients more efficiently.

So this finally brings me to last week when I was staring at the fridge. I had some leftover parsley, and had eaten middle eastern food for lunch…so I started thinking… I could make a tabouli salad. Now here’s where I got a bit like Mom: I wanted to make my salad with quinoa instead of bulgur wheat, but I figured that was a straight enough substitution. (See, Mom – substitutions within limits are good!) I thought about what I liked about tabouli salad..the fresh crunch and “green” taste of the parsley, the bright bitterness of the lemon, the contrast of the red tomatoes…and to, well, wing it.
[The recipe is after the jump]

Quinoa Tabouli Salad

This is a great “clean out the fridge” salad. I like my tabouli really tart, so that’s what this reflects. I found the mixture also took much more salt than I thought it would. I added another teaspoon at the end (reflected in the recipe below). I also really love parsley. It’s traditional in the recipe, but you can be flexible (like I’m learning to do…).

Dressing:
1 clove garlic, minced
Juice of 2 lemons
Olive oil (I like about 2 parts lemon to one part olive oil)
1-2 teaspoons kosher salt (I felt like it needed the other teaspoon – you won’t need this much if using table salt)
Freshly ground pepper
Salad:
About 2 cups cooked quinoa (You could also make this with couscous, bulgar (like the traditional), or even rice.)
One pound tomatoes, cut into bite-size pieces (for cherry tomatoes, I’d do quarters or eighths; for grape tomatoes, quarters or halves; you could also dice up roma tomatoes)
½ bunch parsley, minced very very finely
About ½ of a red onion, diced finely

Other things you could add (be creative!):
Grated carrots
Finely minced mint
Finely minced basil
Raisins or other dried fruit
Chopped nuts
Lemon zest (to the dressing or the salad)
Olives
Feta cheese
Scallions

Whisk dressing together in a small dish with a fork. Mix other ingredients in a salad bowl. Pour the dressing over and toss to combine. Let sit for at least one hour for full flavor (tossing occasionally if you think of it). I like it at room temperature for eating. It even tastes great after a night in the fridge – Dave and I fought over the leftovers.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

1 Beyonce’s “All the Single Ladies”. By the way, if you haven’t heard/seen Pomplamoose’s version, you MUST watch it now! Also, do yourself a favorite and listen to your new favorite new song.
2. From “Somebody to Love“. (Where the lyrics say “I spent all my years in believing you”.)
3. Okay, so this is actually from So You Think You Can Dance. (Yes, my iPod is full of songs I’ve heard on TV). It’s Rhianna’s “Please Don’t Stop the Music”
You can stream all the GLEE songs here.
* For anyone who doesn’t get the title of this post, I send you here. You’ll be there for a while, trust me!

“She dresses herself with strength and makes her arms strong.

]]> http://www.mypinktoes.com/2009/08/they-might-not-be-strong-yet-but-they-sure-are-sore/feed/ 0 http://www.mypinktoes.com/2009/08/discipline/ http://www.mypinktoes.com/2009/08/discipline/#comments Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:59:31 +0000 lsmith http://www.mypinktoes.com/wp/?p=281 I’ve been stuck in a rut for a while. I have goals, dreams, things I want to do! But I don’t make the progress I would like on them. Pregnancy and early childhood were valid excuses for me. With my health issues (and with my adorable-yet-very-cranky babies), just surviving was a valid and all-consuming agenda for about six years of my life.
But things have been stirring for the last couple of years. My health has gotten much better (I’ll write another post on that later!), and my babies have been growing up. I spent a lot of time two years ago praying about what I wanted to do, and what God wanted me to do with this next chapter in my life. I did a lot of the typical soul-searching, continued with my very important therapy, prayed a lot, and talked to friends. I finally felt strongly that God was calling me back to teaching. I wasn’t sure what that would look like, exactly, but knew I was supposed to renew my certificate. So, I spent 2007-8 earning 15 credits in Chinese and graphic design. I loved the challenge. I loved using my mind again. I discovered that I really, really missed the classroom.
One of my favorite quotes kept coming to mind:

Your vocation is where your greatest bliss encounters the world’s deepest need. – Frederick Buechner

So last September, after my mom’s heart issues were stabilizing and we found out that she for-sure did NOT have ovarian cancer (thank God), I decided to apply to the sub pool and went ahead and checked “permanent position

]]> http://www.mypinktoes.com/2009/08/discipline/feed/ 0 http://www.mypinktoes.com/2009/08/dinosaur/ http://www.mypinktoes.com/2009/08/dinosaur/#comments Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:35:06 +0000 lsmith http://www.mypinktoes.com/wp/?p=280 As part of the blog neglect/reinvigoration/navel-gazing, I have been thinking about what a techno-dinosaur I am to the young things today. I still run Movable Type, which all the cool kids used to use, but now they’ve all gone WordPress or Drupal or whatever. I don’t even run the latest version of Movable Type – I still run 3.4 (all the way back from 2005, baby!). My blog doesn’t even support TAGS, for heaven’s sake! I’m considering upgrading, but my IT guy is so “over” MT and on to other things. He is also currently out of town, and since I don’t stand much chance of learning how to use an Apache server and Perl script in the next 48 hours, I have to wait for him to return to do any change – no matter how small.

I’ve worked hard to learn CSS, HTML, and MT tags, but am wondering if I would actually save time and grief by upgrading/switching. Is it a cop-out? Or a time-saver? I don’t know. Heck, I still use Bloglines as my feed reader, which I think only me, Gordon, and 6 other people in the world join me in. I was quick to the rss movement, but apparently slow to adapt…

Heck, I just realized my computer has a card reader. The things they’re making these days!

If anybody has a blog engine they love, let me know in the comments!

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