Where do you go to feel brave?

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postaday2011

I have never thought about having to be somewhere to be brave. My home is my sanctuary, of course, and within my home, my bedroom is my refuge. The place where I dream about places from my childhood and family get-together, the place where I do much of my writing and my research. I use my bedroom as a home office secondary to my husband’s home office, I do whatever is needed to be done at the moment with bills, invoices and bookkeeping.

I haven’t really felt the need to feel brave in a long time which is a good thing. Perhaps that is why I was slightly taken aback by the prompt. In the larger scheme of things, I am extraordinarily blessed to not live in a repressive society where feeling unsafe would be a common occurrence. I am lucky that I struggle with finding a reason to need to feel brave instead of finding a reason instantaneously to be afraid.

A small love note to French appetizers

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bechamel sauce, coquilles Saint-Jacques, mushrooms, scallops

In front of me was a beautiful arrangement of cepes, delicate mushrooms that are hard to find yet so worth the hours of foraging for just a trayful to bring home, their subtle perfume and silky texture make them perfect in crème sauces, omelettes and they are also strong enough to assert themselves even when accompanied by the hearty combination of garlic, parsley and butter. It is especially when presented with a persillade backdrop that the cepes texture becomes center stage. It is an exquisite first course, light but with a lot of personality at the same time. The coquilles Saint-Jacques, on the other hand, their presentation speaks to elegance on the plate. The coquilles themselves are presented within their own coquillage with its classic scalloped edges and the seafood and vegetable laced béchamel sauce gratinees with a robust Gruyère cheese completes the visual culinary work of art on Jack’s plate. He is subtly transferring a coquilles onto to his bread plate to hand over to my side of the table where I, trying to be equally subtle in the transfer, am doing the same. We have unleashed a trend at our table because Guillaume and Sabine without even tasting their entrees are preparing a little taste test for each other. The beauty of our first course is that in essence we each had two tastings for the price of one. A few tables are looking askance at us but Jack has imbued me with a little newly found self-confidence and I’m able to shrug off their disapproving looks and enjoy everything on my plate and near my plate and these first courses are to die for, everything is so well seasoned. The scallops of the coquilles Saint Jacques are beautifully caramelized and just tender to the bite; the béchamel has been flavored to perfection with a well perfumed fish stock and has been simmered to the light consistency that softly coats the scallops and the vegetables.

My Winter Reading List

Teddy Roosevelt

Since I've been busy doing my own writing I haven't progressed very much with Edmund Morris biography of Teddy Roosevelt. As soon as I have finished my first attempt at a novel, I'll be throwing myself head first back into reading with abandon.

Donald Trump Pulling Out Of GOP Debate

Just great Donald, now Jon Stewart has one less thing to look forward to, just in case you weren’t aware, Jon was very upset when Cain decided to suspend his campaign but when he heard that you were moderating a debate, he was back on top of the world. He is going to be very sad now and it’s all your fault, you shouldn’t tease Jon like this. It isn’t kind especially during the holiday season.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Payroll Tax Cut Fight: Republicans Embrace Showdown With Obama Over Keystone XL

Of course McConnell would falsely tout the Keystone pipeline as a job creating propositio­n, he is catering to the oil industry, what a surprise. The job creation would be minimal at best, the oil forced out of the tar sands in Canada would be environmen­tally putting the final nail into the climate change coffin and the oil wouldn’t even be for our domestic use. It would be piped down to the refineries in Texas and off elsewhere on the globe. I don’t understand what the Canadians are all about these days with their rejection of Kyoto and Durban agreements­, they say it’s in essence our fault and China’s, that we won’t curtail our emissions and we are the biggest emitters, so why should they? Not a great global or long term approach no matter how badly we behave, they should be the better and bigger nation, not to mention what are they thinking promoting the idea of tar sands anyway. All this short-sigh­tedness is going to be very costly for our children and our grandchild­ren, forget the deficit’s, that is only money. We are talking about quality of life and life itself.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

How do you determine New Year’s resolutions?

Tags

hobby, New Years Day resolutions, postaday2011, writing

How fitting, last New Year’s resolution was to write everyday! Who would have thought that I’d still be keeping my resolution almost a year later, hooray for me! Even crazier than that is that I don’t normally make any resolutions, last year was an aberration. In the past if I needed to make a change or push myself to do something, I never waited for the New Year’s mystique, I just did what needed to be done.

I’m proud of myself, I took a resolution and turned into a hobby that I practice daily and who knows someday this hobby may evolve into something bigger, until then I’ll continue writing away for myself and my friends at WordPress and Facebook.

I am not going to bother making a New Year’s resolution this year because I’m already working on it, when I signed up to take the National Novel Writing Month challenge this past November, I didn’t expect that 50,000 words would only bring me to halfway through the story. My goal is to finish what I started and then do the necessary editing and where it goes from there is anyone’s guess. That is the game plan for the next few months while keeping up with posting daily through WordPress and Plinky.

When I Started Using the Internet

Internet Tethering

I think that I started using the Internet as a tool for research, booking trips, reading news and doing social connecting around 2005. That is six years ago so I was thirty eight. I haven't really evolved much further in terms of being more savvy just because I use it more than before. I still feel like a dinosaur in technology land.