Autumn Reads, Bants and Eats!
Halloooo my old pals I am making good on my promise to flex my sleepy little writing fingers and newish attempt to generate cohesive grown up thoughts that have deserted me in the wake of spending all my time with a newborn human. Hence the first of something I personally enjoy a lot, a weekly post filled with some recommendations of good little reads, silly life things that caught my fancy and some yummy noms that are filling our bellies right now. I always love reading these types of blogs so I thought why not share my own.
Reads
1.) I think it’s likely I will be regularly sharing articles written by Maria Popova because she is one of my favourites and every week when I get her emails it’s like the articles were specifically chosen to speak to the status of my soul at that given time. HOW DOES SHE KNOW WHAT I NEED TO READ? I just aspire to write with such vivacity, prowess and brilliance one day. This short article really resonates with the theme of selfhood that I have been exploring. The Courage to Be Yourself: Virginia Woolf on How to Hear Your Soul. Since I have been finding a stirring in me for great female writers, particularly in bygone eras, I was intrigued to read about Virginia Woolf and her perspective on the soul. It’s a quick read that will hang out in your brainstuff for a while.
2.) My daughter is ten weeks old. I came across this poem online and cried reading it thinking about the incredibly intense love I feel for this teacup human and how much it terrifies me and is rewriting me. The gift of parenthood is so much sweeter and so much more responsibility than I had anticipated. I am wading through the bog of myself and my tiny pooka child is leading me deeper and deeper to confront goodness knows what in the dark. You may say I am in my ‘Brooding Era’ as I have been reading several books of poems lately to wallow away my thoughts in. I highly recommend it for spacing out with existential thoughts.
Bants
So I was (all too) briefly in art college a few years back after the pandemic when I thought (wrongly) that the cost of education in the US was worth it. BIG MISTAKE! The debt incurred for those few years of learning in the ways of something that has always been a dream of mine simply pushed my family further into a financially stressed position, and I have nothing to show for it. I digress. However, recently an old classmate of mine who is incredibly hardworking and talented shared on instagram her final painting project. We took painting together, just the two of us, with a brilliant but challenging professor. The theme for her project was Self-Representation and she painted a beautiful piece. One thing I recall from my college experience as an older student is that she, and other Gen Z, had an easier time connecting to her sense of self, her identity and exploring that openly than I did. She was 19, I am 32. I struggled so hard to open up and it limited my confidence. I would deflect constantly any direct commentary on my work that was positive and only hold onto the negatives. I would be so unsure of how to engage my deep self with what I was making. I was almost ashamed of any self-referential work and shied away from sharing what I had made or taking any pride in it. Even now as I reflect on this final brief I would have been undertaking had I remained in the Midwest, I can’t seem to conclude how I would choose to reveal who I am to the world through art. I am, it would seem, classically trained in the art of self-deprecation, self-flagellation, self-hatred (seriously all the bad self things) and all of it is wrapped up in a neat bow of shame and the millennial tendency to be confused as to how best to connect to my authentic self without falling into main character syndrome. Is this confusion because we were born straddling the line between pre- and post- internet age? ANYways it got me thinking I really need to tune into my deep self and sit with…well me. One thing I love to do for others is ask them to share with me three things they like about themselves without judgement (or fear of) and it’s always a sweet conversation tool. I think I am going to try turn this on myself and readers I encourage you to do the same. Do the awkward thing, look in your eyes (yes directly into them which chronic self-avoiders like me have not done for quite some time) and say aloud without giggling, three big or small or in between-y things you like about yourself. I read a recent substack post about human encounters and it really set me thinking how it would be to encounter-truly, fully-ourselves. It could be a very beautiful and terrifying thing, but those are always the things worth doing in this brief flash in the pan of a life we have.
Now dear ones if you were to paint a piece titled ‘Self-Representation’, what would you paint?
Eats
FOOD FOOD FOOD FOOD….my how I love food. Unfortunately I live in a very expensive place and the cost of everything-particularly groceries-is climbing up and up leaving those of us who live paycheck to paycheck (if we can even make it stretch that far) with fewer and fewer options to nourish ourselves. So on a quest to try to shop as conservatively as possible while still feeding ourselves I am always on the lookout for good recipes that are simple, and use as many staple pantry ingredients as possible with easy substitutions as opposed to ones requiring specific fresh ingredients that don’t last and die quickly if you don’t use them asap.
1.) My husband hates canned tuna, he regularly shares his feelings of repulsiveness towards tuna sandwiches and mocks my tuna breath whenever I eat it. I LOVE tuna I don’t know why he is such a hater, the man eats peanut butter and jam sammies for christ’s sake talk about disgusting :D So here is an easy Tuna Pasta Bake recipe I found that is low cost and you can batch make and freeze for easy leftovers.
Cost-saving tip: I always use ground, jarred herbs instead of fresh because fresh are more expensive and I never use them fast enough to warrant the cost.
2.) Oh my god I can’t believe how easy this is to make and the most expensive ingredient is salmon which I just buy frozen fillets in bulk from Costco. They are a little up there in price but since I don’t buy meat except chicken every so often for my husband and they are such a good source of protein I usually get a bag every few weeks. This Miso Butter Glazed Salmon takes like 15 minutes to whip up and then serve it over a bowl of rice or whatever grain you fancy and BOOM a delicious, nutritious meal.
Substitution: I often use a whole onion instead of the scallions and shallots because they are hard to come by and expensive.
So my friends onwards to another week of blurry sleepy days, crisp autumnal weather, pots of coffee warming the cold hungry bellies and another opportunity to just live this precious gift of life as fully and with as much presence as we can muster!