Snow Day

Springtime Chicken Soup

INGREDIENTS

1 pound 6 oz chicken breast

1 white onion

Half a large cabbage

7 stalks celery

Unsalted chicken broth

1 tablespoon Coconut oil

Italian seasoning to taste

PREPARATION

Cut the chicken into bite size pieces.

Finely chop onion, cabbage, and celery.

COOKING

Melt the coconut oil in a stackpot. Add onions and cook until translucent.

Add the chicken, and sauté until just cooked through.

Add Italian Seasoning to taste. Pour the unsalted chicken broth to the pan, and add the cabbage and celery.

Cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

COMMENTS

This mixture of vegetables gives the soup a bright, fresh taste, just right for early spring (or when you want to be reminded of Spring!)

The recipe makes 6 normal sized servings.

Cheese Steak Bowl

INGREDIENTS:

2 lb grass fed organic ground beef

2 white onions, chopped

2 green bell peppers, chopped

1 lb mushrooms, sliced

4 T coconut cream

2 T organic grass fed butter

4 oz organic mozzarella cheese, grated

2 c riced cauliflower

2 T no salt added tomato paste

METHOD:

Brown beef in skillet, then transfer to bowl and set aside.

Melt butter in skillet. Add onion, peppers, and mushrooms, and cook until softened.

Stir in beef, coconut cream, riced cauliflower, cheese, and tomato paste.

Cover and cook for a few minutes, until cheese is melted.

Makes 6 portions.

NOTES:

Average calories 515 per portion.

You can spice this up with the addition of hot peppers and/or mustard.

Wild Tuna Supper

Ingredients:

One 5oz can Wild caught, no salt added Albacore Tuna, drained

One 4oz can Mushrooms, drained

Half onion, chopped finely

2 sticks celery, chopped finely

6oz Cauliflower florets

Half cup no salt added chicken broth

Method

Drain tuna and mushrooms

In a microwaveable bowl, flake the tuna. Add remaining ingredients, and mix well.

Microwave until the cauliflower is tender, serve with crusty bread and butter.

Notes

Other tuna could be used, but I find Wild Caught to be meatier and less likely to dissolve.

Bison Apple Flat Burgers

Ingredients:

2 pounds Ground Bison

2 Apples (grated)

1 Onion (finely chopped)

4 cloves garlic (crushed)

Half-cup Tomato Sauce

Method:

Heat oven to 350F. Line a large oven tray with foil.

Put the ground Bison in a large mixing bowl. Add all the other ingredients and mix well.

Divide into 6 portions. Work into a square shape, less than a half inch thick.

Put the flat burgers into the oven tray, and cook for approximately 20/30 minutes. Check that the burger are the right cooked level for your taste.

Comments:

Each burger is approximately 320 calories.

Serve with garlic cauliflower mash, or mixed vegetables

In-between places

Just recently, I was walking along a beach. It wasn’t warm, and the sun was hidden by clouds. There were no “amusements,” no entertainment, no people at all, in fact. Just me and the seagulls, watching the waves lap onto the shore.

I remember when I lived in East Anglia, getting up at 3am, driving to the beach, and just walking. It was mid-summer, but that early in the morning, there was no one around. The tide had just turned, and the water was receding, leaving rivulets of water. The beach there was very flat, and at low tide revealed miles of wet sand, and I found myself walking both along the coast and further out. A couple of hours passed, and I started to notice a few dog walkers appearing on the shore, so I headed back. Still, it was as if I was alone in a capsule of time and space, somehow separate from the rest of the world for those few hours.

Other memories came to mind, too – a shingle beach in the winter, cold wind striking my face and hands, and yet feeling totally at one with the elements. A foggy day with ships’ mournful horns sounding somewhere in the distance and the oily water lapping gently onto the shore. A night walk along a shoreline invisible in the darkness, just the sound of the waves and my own hesitant footsteps. The path alongside an amusement park closed for the season but alive with ducklings making their first faltering steps behind their mother.

I love beaches in summer, of course, I do. Then they are full of fun and laughter, of merry crowds and warmth and sunshine. But off-season, or at out of the normal time, I find them totally different. For me, this is just where I feel the most at peace. At first, I thought it was the sea I longed for, but then I discovered beaches on lakes and rivers too. These are very different in many trivial ways but have the same essence and power.

There are way-places, neither land nor water, and contain a kind of in-betweenness that resonates somewhere deep inside one’s soul. Being human, we try to control the sea, lake, or river with walls of stone or mud, but the beaches show that such attempts are, in the end, futile. Here the land and water mix and reinvent themselves with each wave. With every high tide, flood, or drought, the beach changes. And yet, it is always the same, ever unchangingly different.

Sea-Fever

BY JOHN MASEFIELD

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;

And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,

And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;

And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,

And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,

To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;

And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,

And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

Bits of my heart

Maybe if I’d never moved more than a few miles from my birthplace, I’d be different. As it is, I find that I’ve left bits of my heart in many places, and I love where I live now; some part of me yearns for those places I’ve connected to in one way or another.

I don’t really remember the place that I was born. We moved when I was about 6, so there are some vague memories of the back garden at the house we had, a tricycle, my pet rabbit. I remember my eldest sister leaving. I know she got married, but I don’t remember that at all, just that she was no longer living in our house.

The next place I lived, I remember more about. It was on the south coast of England, and it started my deep love of moving water. In summer, the sea was bright and inviting, and I loved to walk on the beach, listening to the rigging clang on the fishing boats pulled up onto the shore. During winter storms, I would get as close as I dared to the breakwaters as the waves crashed and the wind blew the water above my head. There was never a season that I didn’t want to go to the beach, and I found great happiness just being there.

I remember the walk to school. At that time, the area had not all been developed after the Second World War, and there were still some areas of cleared rubble that we kids would use as a shortcut. At the end of our street were a millpond and mill. I’m not sure if the mill was actually working even then, but the waterway I remember well, and I would follow along its banks for maybe half a mile to my school.
My main recollection of that school is of one bullying teacher and one other one that took some of my innocence away. I also remember School Fates in the tiny playing field attached to the school. Looking back, I’m sure it was a small affair, but to me, it was a fantastic event, full of excitement and thrills.
In my last year at that school, we moved from the center of town to a new bungalow about 5 miles away. This was the first house I remember living in that had an inside bathroom, complete with a bath! I got the bus to school back in town for the remainder of the school year. One day I spent the bus money on sweets instead, and had to walk all the way home, a very long walk for a small child!
The next school I went to, I hated. It was a large school, and I was bullied and miserable the whole time I was there. The situation there went from bad to worse, and I’m not sure what would have happened had we not moved.

But move we did, a few hundred miles mort to a suburb in Southeast London. It seems to me that I walked everywhere back then. I remember walking into town for the library: using a footbridge to cross a busy road to see my friends, going up the hill to the forest, and down to the park with its swimming pool. After I left school, I got a job in the West End of London. I would travel each day on the train to Charring Cross, and I must have done that for a few years. Still, somehow, I remember the walking as a child most, the cut-throughs and the side streets, the bridges, and the long slogs along suburban streets.
My next 4 homes were all in a single Northeast London borough, but in 4 different communities. By this time, I was married, and we moved up the property ladder, from a rented flat to a 2 bedroom apartment, then a 3 bedroom house, and finally a 4 bedroom home with a double garage and large garden. And yet, it’s the more minor things that tug at my heart: the parks, the bus rides, the market (the longest in Europe at the time).

While I lived there, my job took me to two other places that really affected me. The City of London is often thought of as just a financial hub, but its history impacted me. The roman remains and the historic buildings, the tiny alleyways, and the big modern buildings. And, of course, the River Thames, running its way through the heart of the capital.

In the early 2000s, the company I worked for was taken over by a Scottish company, and I started to work part of the week in Edinburgh. This arrangement was interesting – I was not entirely a native, but I spent so much time in the City that it felt a bit like home too. Edinburgh is a fantastic city shaped by its history. While staying as I did in the center of the City, I loved exploring both the old and the new towns. I could never claim to be a native, but I was certainly not just a tourist. Some of my heart still walks over North Bridge, up the Royal Mile, and then takes the steep incline down to Grassmarket before retracing my steps and climbing up Arthurs Seat for a majestic view of the City.

My next home was a hundred miles north of London, but it felt like another world despite being so close. My home was in a Market town on the East Coast, and I lived right in the historic center of the town, in a cottage overlooking the river. This town is the one that I most yearn for. I moved there at a particularly traumatic time in my life, knowing no one. Indeed, I’d never even been there before making it my home! And maybe that is why it became somewhere I consider my “hometown” in such a short time. The river was constantly amazing to watch, it was just a short walk or bike ride to the natural countryside, and the sea was just a short bus ride away. The people were diverse and friendly, and there was always something going on, even in the dead of winter. When I eventually bought a car, I would just drive along the country lanes and lose myself, only to crest a hill and see the sea away in the distance.

I try not to think of it as an ideal place, because I know that every place has a mix of good and bad, and I’m sure that there was much that could have been improved in the area. But for me, for that time in my life, the town itself was my safe haven.

My move to the Midwestern USA was a culture shock. It felt like I was living in a film set for a long time, expecting the director to shout “Cut!” at any moment. I moved to the City of St Louis and lived in a small community not 10 minutes from downtown. As you drove, you’d suddenly catch sight of The Arch, and that came to symbolize the place for me. I was introduced to baseball and loved the atmosphere that a ballpark has on game day. But it’s the gentler things that tug at my heart – the free concerts, Art Hill, the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, the ferries, the back streets, and the alleyways. It’s less than 2 years since I moved to another State, up to a place where the snow stays on the ground for months, but the summers are sweet, and the countryside is beautiful.

And I guess all of that is to say this: it’s possible to love where you are, AND where you have been. My heart is here in Chicagoland, but some of it is still in all the places I lived and loved.

Sometimes, the human heart is complicated

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