You see I have this vision in my head of the person I want to be.  She is poised and well put together (despite the fact that yes, indeed, there is spit-up on her shoulder).  She is a fantastic cook and gardener and is able to bring the bounty of each season in to the table. She has created a home that is both visually lovely while also feeling cozy and inviting.  She is an accomplished Ashtantgi and an engaging yoga teacher.  She manages to balance her home and her family while still carving out time for herself both to teach and to do little necessary things like pedicures.  She has a dynamic relationship with her husband and despite the years that continue pass them both by, they are able to maintain that little bit of wonderfulness that drew them together in the beginning both inside and outside the bedroom.

Needless to say, I fail in achieving this vision most of the time.  Then there are times when I have this moment of wonderfulness where I feel like I actually am the person I want to be.  The good news is that I am generally able to achieve some part of this most of the time.  To this end I have realized that I have a couple of things I am currently emphasizing to make this vision more of a reality more of the time and I am going to list them because boy do I love lists!  A therapist once told me to stop making them because they were adding to my anxiety, but that is a whole ‘nother story!

1) Get dressed.  This is defined as: showering, putting on clothes that fit and match, fixing my hair and putting on a bit of make-up (because somewhere inside of me there is a Texas woman that I have fought against for too long – I am conceding – she is right, I feel better when I look decent)

2) If it has sugar in it, don’t eat it.  Sugar is my weakness and I have an awfully hard time stopping eating it once I start.  Walter is at an age where he wants to eat things that I am eating.  I would like whatever I am eating to be something I am comfortable feeding to him.  If I don’t want him to eat it, why the heck am I eating it?  The one exception to this is caffeine.  I will tackle that beast when the munchkins learn to sleep in.

3) Make a menu and then buy the groceries required to cook it.  I am capable of pulling together about one, maybe two meals a week out of whatever happens to be in the fridge.  I am not capable of week’s worth of meals.  Therefore, I should accept this, make a menu (shoutout to Lauren and her tasty blog for making my menu making easy,  I tend to just cook whatever she has recently.) and then cook it.  We will be happier for it.

4) Do my best and let go of the rest.  This is my mantra of late.  I have grand schemes, but I feel like it is just as important to realize when the grand schemes are just too grand for my britches and need to be tossed aside.

What are your daily aspirations?

We have a wonderful realtor, Phil Lopez.  He bent over back wards to help us buy our house this summer (the sellers were mad that they were losing money and took it out on us – thank goodness that is over!) and we wanted to do something to thank him and his wife, Gabby.  So, of course, we had them over for dinner.  It was a good excuse for us to cook up something tasty!  We had guacamole and margaritas with Alex’s beef stew.  I know, I know, the menu doesn’t exactly match, but avocados were on sale at Whole Foods that Friday and avocados lead to guacamole which leads to margaritas in my mind!  Here are the recipes.

Guacamole

This makes a large batch because the avocadoes were too cheap to turn down and it always makes a good snack.  Did you know you can prevent the brown on top by placing the pits into the guacamole?  I put in 3 for this recipe and it kept quite well.

• 6 avocados
• 1 large onion
• 5 cloves of garlic
• 3 limes
• 2 teaspoons salt (preferably sea salt)
• 3 tomatoes

Peel and de-pit the avocados.  Then mash them up in a large bowl.  Dice the onion, garlic and tomatoes and add them to the avocado mixture. Then juice the limes and add it along with the salt.  Jalapenos or cayenne pepper can also be added to give it some kick.  However, Alex is allergic to the capsaicin in the pepper so we are a pepper free household.

Real Margaritas

I don’t like the super sweet mixes you usually get so I stole this recipe from my brother-in-law, Will.  It is quite potent so don’t plan to do any driving anytime soon after drinking them.  I usually plan them for an appetizer drink so that everyone is sober enough to go home.

• 6 shots tequila
• 6 shots lime juice
• 3 shots cointreau
• 3 shots grand marnier

I prefer key lime juice where possible.  However, it isn’t always possible.  This time I used half meyer lemon and half lime juice.  Mix everything together and drink!

Alex’s Beef Stew

This recipe got its start in Alex’s early days after college, when he lived at the Oakton Community Center with the Brads. Originally this was made in a crockpot, using bisquick and cheap burgandy wine. I made some additions influenced heavily by Julia Child’s Beef Bourguignon and now it is quite hearty, fatty, and gourmet!

• 1 lb. thick-cut dry-rubbed bacon
• 1½ lb. lean stew beef
• ¼ c. flour in a small bowl
• 1 medium onion, medium diced
• 1 bunch small-medium carrots, sliced in 1-2” chunks on a diagonal
• 5 medium yukon gold potatoes, cubed similarly to the beef
• 4 c. beef broth
• ½ c. Red wine (we like Cabernet Sauvignon) – reserve the rest for the meal and be sure to have a glass while cooking
• fresh rosemary
• fresh sage if it’s in season, ground/dried otherwise
• whole cumin

Heat the oven to 350°F.

Lay out the bacon slices on a jelly roll pan in a single layer, and place them in the oven. Check them at 20 minutes. They should get nicely crispy at the edge.

Drain about 2T. of the bacon fat into a large sauté pan. The exact measurement isn’t important, just use enough to cover the bottom of the pan. Pour the rest of the fat into a heavy cast iron casserole pot (with a lid, aka coquette pot), and set the bacon aside.

Heat up the bacon fat in the coquette pot until it is nice and hot.  Then add in flour until there is no more grease left.  The flour and grease mixture should be fairly thick and brownish in color.  This is called a roux in french cooking. Stir the roux and let it cook for a few minutes until it begins to turn a darker brown.  Then add in beef broth.  Stir vigorously for several minutes.  Put the heat on medium and stir it occasionally as it thickens up.

While the roux is heating up, heat the fat in the sauté pan. Pat the beef dry with a kitchen towel, and roll the chunks in flour. Then drop them in the heated bacon fat. Brown on each side for about 3 minutes, then add the beef to the coquette pot. Chop up the onion and then sauté it in the remaining bacon fat until it becomes translucent.  Then transfer it to the coquette pot with the beef.

Add the carrots, potatoes and rosemary. Grind the sage and cumin, and add those along with salt and pepper to taste. Finally, pour in the wine, stir, and place in the oven with a lid on it for 30-45 minutes.

When ready to serve, remove from the oven. Rip the bacon into chunks and toss in, stir again. Purée some of the stew for babies as needed (This is a Walter favorite!).

You see back in DC, political jobs don’t last for whatever reason they just don’t and believe me I feel like I have been through every reason at least once and maybe twice.  The most fun definitely being the layoffs.  I lived in DC for 3 1/2 years and I did 4 job searches.  Fortunately, I am quite good at networking when I want to be so I generally could keep myself employed enough that I paid all my bills and didn’t end up in credit card debt.  I also had a wonderful boyfriend, who is now my husband, who took care of me when things got really bad.  I hate looking for a job, even now when I am working just a bit on teaching a couple of yoga classes, the nasty emotions still come back.  In the process of looking for a job in DC, each time you have to develop your own story about your previous experience.  Why this job ended or why you left there.  Generally the real reason sucked – your boss was a witch and dealing with her was unbearable, someone stole your work and your boss decided that you weren’t necessary, etc.  However, somehow you had to come up with a plausible enough sounding way of glossing over it all and giving your scattered jobs some cohesion.  Every time I told this story it always sounded fake to me and I wondered whether my interviewer would see through it.  Even now, 3 1/2 years after we left DC, as I type this I am feeling a bit shaky.

When we moved to California, I tried to shed the story I lived in DC.  I tried to pursue a life that actually made me happy and I would say that I have succeeded in large part.  I have a wonderful husband and beautiful baby boy and I am enjoying motherhood far more than I thought would.  My yoga practice has progressed in a way that I wouldn’t have thought possible back in DC.  I am blessed to have a wonderful community of friends, both yogis and non-yogis, here who are always there to help out if I need it.  But every once in awhile something strikes me in a way to remind me that wound is still there.  It isn’t as fresh as it used to be, but it still requires some love and attention.  Now off to do some digging in the sunshine- it is hard to be too sad with sunshine on your back.

This practice is completely different than when I practice with others.  First, it requires far more discipline.  At YIY, I know that if I decide to cop out on my practice half way through Anne will come around ask what is wrong and when I have nothing really to say, instruct me to get my bum moving (in the nicest possible way!).  At home, no one keeps me moving through my practice.  However, I find that it is much easier to just get lost in the practice.  No one interrupts my practice and the house is quiet so I can just be myself in my yoga.

I can hear my own breath very clearly and it has a way of lulling myself into a rhythm.  I also notice that my breath slows down.  My inhales are longer as are my exhales which leads me to stay in poses longer than I would normally.  The room is colder so I don’t sweat as much.  The temperature in the room at YIY is cause for much discussion among Ashtangis.  It is a bit harder to get going when the room is colder, but I find once I warm up, I enjoy the fact that I am not dripping sweat.  The sweat doesn’t interfere with my practice that way.  Can you tell that I am one of the ones arguing for the room being a bit cooler as opposed to warmer?   When I am finished I can quickly shower and get on with my day.  However, I have to say that one serious downside is that there is no chai afterwards unless I make it, which doesn’t normally happen.  That is a serious downside!  To finish out this otherwise somewhat serious post, I will include my recipe for homemade chai.

The turkey was quite a story in itself.  It came from Petaluma and was raised by 4-H kids.  Since I did 4-H when I was a kid, I like to support the program whenever possible.  We got a delicious turkey from them last year so I figured we would try it again.  So I drove an hour and a half to Petaluma and back.  Walter was wonderful and slept both ways so I considered myself lucky.  Did I mention it came with the neck and head attached?

However, I have decided that there are tons of articles out there about different dishes for Thanksgiving and the perfect way to cook a turkey so I thought I would devote this blog article to two things that you could easily just bypass and buy, but I think the quality is superior when you do it yourself.

The Pie Crust

*back when I was a kid we used Blue Bonnet margarine in place of butter because the consistency was such that it made the pie crust easier to roll out and pick up without it falling apart.  I try to avoid it and stick to organic non-weird ingredients and use butter.  However, if you are having trouble with the pie crust, use blue bonnet until you get the knack of it.

Now if you have filling for the pie crust you and put it in and bake it.  If you need to bake the crust separately, simply take a fork and poke holes into the crust so it won’t separate from your pan and put it in the oven at 400 degrees for about 10-15 minutes.

I have a friend from my mom’s group, Lauren, who writes a wonderful blog called Gourmet Veggie Mama.  I am continually impressed with both her ability to find new recipes, cook them, and then blog about them on a regular basis.  I tend to consider my day a success if I can just make the dinner.  So today I am overachieving which leads me back to the chard and the enchiladas.  She made them and I was skeptical, but hopeful.  You see as discussed above, I don’t like chard, but I do like enchiladas.  However, my definition of enchiladas usually involves meat and a lot of cheese with rice and beans.  Her recipe and post are here.

Last weekend, I bought some wonderful looking rainbow chard and assembled the rest of the ingredients.  I even got ambitious and picked a couple more of Lauren’s recipes to try out too, we will see how the week goes.  Tonight, I followed her instructions and they turned out wonderfully.  I even fried up with tortillas which I had never done before.  It was much easier than I thought it would be.  Although in the future, I might just stick them in the microwave to soften them up a bit in the interest of losing more baby weight.  Try them out and give her blog a read.  Walter is cranky and needs to nurse so I guess my blogging time is up!

This year, the mom’s group that I am a part of, Las Madres, had a Halloween party this last weekend.  This was an unabashed excuse to dress our little guys up in their Halloween costumes, take pictures and then eat yummy treats.  So I volunteered to make the caramel apples.  I had a devil of a time with them.  I looked up recipes online just to get a general jist of a recipe.  It seemed that most recipes added milk or water to the caramel and maybe some vanilla.  So I unwrapped all the caramel and then added a splash of milk and a splash of vanilla.  I melted the caramel in my spiffy copper sugar pot that we brought back from Paris last spring.  Then I chopped up a mixture of walnuts and pecans for the toppings.  I washed and dried the apples.  Then I stuck forks into the apples and dipped them in caramel and then dipped them in the nuts.  Problem was that the caramel refused to stay put on the apples.  It pooled at the bottom.  I just couldn’t get it to stay put.  I had Alex twirl them for me, I blew on it to cool the caramel, and Alex even stuck them in the freezer all to no avail.  It was quite sad.  So if anyone has some ideas, I would love them.  I guess I could also do the obvious and call my Mother and ask for her secret.  After all, I am a mom now, I get some of those secrets too, right?

My goal was to fit back into my pre-pregnancy jeans on Walter’s first birthday.  So I decided to join Weight Watchers again.  I had success with them several years ago and lost 30 pounds.  Besides, I had heard that fruit was now 0 points which had to be so much better cause I love fruit!  I have been following it pretty faithfully for the last two months until last weekend that is.  I find myself rapidly losing motivation to stick to it.  I like to eat sweets and cook with butter.  Which brings me to my current, and ongoing, quandary in life: where does nutrition end and vanity or the pressure of society begin?  Despite my earlier statements, I eat fairly healthy with lots of veggies and fruit and lean meat.  However, I also read continually about how we are an obese nation and that we need to not be overweight or it will cause us significant health problems.  I want to lose the baby weight because I think it would be healthy for me.  However, at the same time I recently saw a picture posted to Facebook of a nude woman who was much curvier.  It had been posted my someone in my mom’s groups and the caption relayed something to the effect that this was beautiful too.  The intent of the poster was to say that society expected too much of women (and moms in particular) to expect that they would be super thin after having a baby.

These two things cause me much concern and I waiver between the two depending on the day.  I, too, feel that my body is different after having a baby.  I know that certain things will just never go back to the way they were and that I need to let go of it.  However, I want to teach my son healthy eating habits and I don’t want to set a bad example by being overweight either.  On the flip side, I want to teach him to respect women and that women have curves, period.  Where is the line between being healthy and just being in your body as it is and being unhealthy and setting a bad example for my little guy?

Today I realized just how exhausted I am.  I came home from my first foray into mommies groups.  I had a good time, but I was unusually tired.  I thought, I will just lay down for a minute and bribe Walter to lay down too by nursing him.  I lay down and got Walter situated and the next thing I know I am waking up and Walter has long since finished nursing and is passed out at my side.  It is two hours later.  I think about getting up, but this wave of tiredness just rolls over me and I almost can’t move.  Walter woke up and started to get fussy so I popped him back on the boob again to buy me some more time.

In times past, it takes me awhile to fall asleep.  Lately, I just pass out as soon as my head hits the pillow and I just feel weary and bone tired when I wake up.  I know this shouldn’t be a surprise to me.  Moms seem to mostly always be tired, but lately I thought I wasn’t tired.  Lately I thought that I had things under control.  Life has seemed doable so it is surprising that I am so tired.

Back to my yummy iced coffee.  Actually, here is my tie in for this blog post. My friend Donna, who is also a mom of two adorable little boys who are 2 and 1, had this fantastic idea. She makes a pot of coffee in the morning, drinks her cup and then sticks the pot in the fridge.  Then you have iced coffee in the afternoon.  It is simple, but just brilliant! The added bonus is that I have good iced coffee as opposed to the crap that you generally buy that has lots of sugar in it.