Vacation Time!

September 6, 2015

Posts will be few and far between (if at all) for the next couple of weeks:  I and a friend are heading west, for a road trip through the Prairies and the Rockies.  We fly to Calgary, and other than a couple of nights booked at Banff, we’ll go where fancy takes us.

I’m taking the laptop along…but whether or not I’ll find time to write for this blog remains to be seen.  In many ways I hope not: I’d like us to have two weeks of good weather, lots of outdoor activities, and good sleeps from the exercise and being outdoors.

I’m sure I’ll have stories to tell!

The Real Start of Retirement

September 5, 2015

This is Labour Day weekend, the weekend that for BD and me has been the real “New Year” start for all our lives. Here in Ontario, school starts the Tuesday after Labour Day, so for all our years of school – elementary, secondary, university and post-graduate – this was the start of something new – new teachers, new schools, new courses, new friends. New cities, once we were in university. Even when we were working at the university after grad school, this was still the start of the new school year, with new grad students, and sometimes professors, arriving, and new undergrads needing direction and help around the campus. The campus changed from quiet to busy; new lecture series, concerts and plays started up; excitement was in the air.

Then we left research for teaching and so September continued to be the start of the year. I was off last fall recuperating from surgery, but even so I was connected with work, answering e-mails, helping out the person who had stepped into my role. So this is the first September since we were six years old that school or work, in one form or another, isn’t starting for us. I’m not sure it’s really sunk in yet.

This weekend is also our anniversary: BD and I have been married for thirty-four years today. But it’s more than our wedding anniversary: we moved in together thirty-six years ago this weekend, and we met this weekend thirty-seven years ago.

So, as you can see, this is a weekend of significance for us. There have been a lot of new starts this first weekend of September, and this year is another one, the true start of our retirement life. Because up to now, it’s just been a summer like the last twenty-five of teaching. Only on Tuesday, when work and school starts without us, will we begin to fully realize we’re retired. I think we’ll go to a movie matinee, just because we can.

Not Too Much

September 4, 2015

This morning, as always, just about the first thing I did when I got up was make coffee.  As it dripped through the filter, I did a few morning chores, putting out the recycling and putting away last night’s dishes from the dish rack.  Then I reached for my favourite mug, and stopped.

That mug holds about 325 mL of coffee (12 oz.). Not a bad size, but I tend to drink coffee either while I’m writing or while I’m reading…and I rarely finish the cup.  Usually the last quarter-mug or so goes down the sink, and I start again.  And I know this is the case – so why do I keep using that mug?

It’s not just at home.  I tend to order the medium size from take-out places – and I never finish those, either.  What an incredibly bad and wasteful habit!  And why am I just thinking about it now?  It’s not like BD hasn’t been bugging me about it for thirty-five years. (Actually, he has been bugging me about drinking coffee, period.  He hates the stuff – the taste and the smell.  He drinks it under protest at the end of overnight flights if he needs to drive, and that’s it.  And perhaps I’ve grown so inured to his complaints about coffee in general I didn’t listen to the specifics. A point I need to consider.)

So now I’m sitting here at my computer with a smaller cup of coffee…and I’ve finished it.  Too small a sample size to draw any conclusions, of course.  But it’s got me thinking about portion sizes in general.

Portion size creep and its effects on the health of populations has been well documented for restaurant meals and packaged foods.  I remain annoyed at one of my favourite bistros whose burger – and I love an occasional, well-made, burger – remains at half-a-pound.  It’s just too big.  A friend and I share it, occasionally, when we lunch there.  Large portions are either eaten, increasing calorie, fat, and sodium intake beyond what is reasonable for most people, or it’s wasted.  But restaurant portion creep has also affected what we see as a reasonable meal size in our homes.

I’ve been reviewing our meals in my mind as I write this.  BD needs more food than I do, and he is by no stretch of the imagination over-fed. I, on the other hand, could stand to lose some inches. But we tend to eat the same amount of food at dinner, and at brunch.  Otherwise, no.  But while three blueberry pancakes and three turkey breakfast sausages are appropriate for him at brunch, are they for me?  Or am I eating that much just because it looks ‘right’ on the plate?  Meals based around pasta, quinoa or couscous are simply split between two bowls; occasionally I keep some of mine back for lunch the next day, but not as often as I should.

As fall approaches, and we eat more slow-cooker meals, I can see this as even more of an issue – it’s just too easy to fill up two bowls with chili or stew without really thinking about it.  I’m not worried about what I eat – our vegetable-and-fruit rich diet, low in meat, fat, added sugar, and sodium, is pretty healthy.  But it’s still quite possible to eat too much of healthy foods.  So I think it’s time to introduce a new discipline into my life – that of being mindful of how much food I am taking.

Michael Pollan summed up what he believes our approach to food should be in seven words:  Eat food.  Not too much. Mostly plants.  It’s those middle three words I need to take more seriously, for my own health and that of the planet. I’ll let you know how it goes.

On Being a Tortoise

September 3, 2015

I have become somewhat sloppy in some of my practices of mindful living this past month. Somehow, I got out of my habit of shopping only twice a week, and have been running in to town to pick up a few items almost every day. (We live twelve miles outside of town, in a tiny village with no shop.) This needs to stop, not just because it’s wasteful of gas and time, but because it’s just not how I want to live my life.

I shopped Monday this week, but Tuesday and Wednesday, except for picking up fresh corn and tomatoes, I didn’t (and that doesn’t involve going in to town). Instead, I went walking, good two-hour hikes both mornings through woods and fields. Today I need to go into town again; but I have a plan. I’m going to put my bike on its carrier, park at the store I buy the most at, and then bike to the other places I need to go. I have both a basket and panniers for my bike, and the university town has both bike lanes and an extensive network of off-road multi-use trails, making it easy to get around.

To be fair to myself, I haven’t just been being lazy by not using them. I didn’t have the core strength to ride my bike with the added weight, especially the panniers, which I find also affect the balance of the bike. Following major abdominal surgery thirteen months ago, I was forbidden to do anything except walk or swim for six months, to allow complete healing. (And I can’t swim.) That took me to January, and the middle of the coldest winter on record for many years here. I kept active, but mostly inside, and mall walking, painting woodwork, and using the treadmill or exercise bike wasn’t enough to strengthen the core. (A lot of the regular abdominal exercises are also contraindicated after the type of surgery I had, so I couldn’t just do crunches, either.)

But then spring finally arrived, and I started walking seriously again, and biking, My balance was bad for a while.  I kept at it, and finally this last ten days I have been walking without my Nordic poles; first for half an hour, then for an hour, and for the last two days for two hours each day, on hiking trails with all their ruts, roots, and rocks.  I think I can safely say I don’t need the poles any more, at least on fairly level ground.  This means my core is stronger.  A small but significant victory.

So I’ll put the basket and panniers on my bike, and park in town at the grocery store, and after shopping there plan a circular route that will take me to the specialty poultry store, and the library, and back to the car.  I could walk it, and carry the chicken and the books, but biking works different muscles and I like to do both. If it goes well, then this will be how I run errands in town, at least until snow makes it too dangerous.

There have been times in this past year when I have felt like a tortoise:  slow, ungainly, and dependent on an external support system.  But ‘slow and steady’ did the trick.  I didn’t rush anything; I built on small gains in small increments. Sometimes I did push myself too hard, thinking I was ready for a distance or a difficulty of terrain I wasn’t, but I backed off immediately once I realized I’d misjudged.  I didn’t let either pride or the desire for a quick fix to result in injury, which in turn could have meant more surgery.  (That was quite the incentive to not overdo it, by the way.)

My healthier body means I will drive less, which benefits the environment as well as our gas budget.  I can do my share of the heavier chores, which BD’s bad back will definitely like!  I’m less likely to use (more) health-care resources, more likely to stay creative, happy, and useful in the community, and I’ll be living my life in a manner closer to my ideal.

*****

A later-in-the-day update….the plan worked.  I learned the following:  I have to make sure I have my balance completely right before I take a hand off the handlebars to signal a turn, or I wobble, especially after I had made my purchases and was carrying some weight.  I also learned that choosing to try this out on the hottest and most humid day of the entire summer wasn’t the best choice; normally I bike on rail trails and bike paths, and the additional heat radiating off the paved road surface was more than I had expected…and it was ten-thirty in the morning.  But I did it!

Kitchen Gadgets I Wouldn’t Want to be Without # 1: the Mouli-Julienne

September 2, 2015

home

I’ve had this little manual food processor for at least thirty years.  Surprisingly, I still have both the original box and all five of the processing discs, but not the manual – not that it’s needed. It’s only got three parts: the body, the handle, and the disc. This is one of the simplest but effective tools I use in the kitchen.

Today I used it to make just enough carrot-and-broccoli slaw for lunch.  It took two minutes, I used up part of the broccoli stems I’d saved from making a stir-fry earlier in the week, and the slaw was, of course, super-fresh and therefore very tasty.  Stuffed in a kamut wrap with a bit of sliced sharp cheddar, it was a darned good lunch, along with iced green tea and greek yogurt and blueberries.

Over the years I’ve used it to grate cheese, slice radishes, cucumbers, and just about any other sort of vegetable you can think of, shred potatoes for potato cakes…even grate frozen butter for pastry. It cleans up easily:  if I’ve grated cheese, I usually put it in the top shelf of the dishwasher – the whole thing, not just the wheel; if I’ve been doing vegetables, I just hand wash it.  The wheels haven’t rusted or significantly discoloured, and they remain sharp.

I went on-line to see if they are still available; there are a few on e-bay (one described as ‘rare, vintage’ (!)) and a similar product by Westmark on Amazon.  I no longer remember where mine came from; it might have been a present from my parents, as I know they also had one.

It’s easy to use, does what it’s supposed to, has lasted a very long time, and uses no electricity.  Four stars in my book!

What are your favourite kitchen gadgets, the ones you can’t imagine cooking without?

Senior’s (and other) Discounts

September 1, 2015

Am I a senior?  Well, that depends on whose definition you use.  For some organizations – the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), for example, it’s 50, so I certainly am.  For some other places, it’s 55, so again, I am.  Sixty is quite common, and sixty-five remains the norm in some place, and I haven’t got there yet!

Due to genetics and nothing else, my hair is still 95% brown at fifty-seven. I had it cut yesterday, and was not offered the senior’s discount! (I don’t qualify, there.)  BD’s had grey hair since his 40’s, and now is almost pure white at fifty-nine.  He gets senior discounts everywhere, no questions asked, so he does the shopping at the bulk food store that offers 10% for seniors on Wednesdays, and the pharmacy that does the same on the last Tuesday of every month.

When we retired, we bought supplemental health insurance – it covers dental and opthamalogical costs, travel insurance, and drugs, plus health services such as physiotherapy and orthotics – and along with that came membership in group that provides discounts on items ranging from fitness club memberships to rental cars.  I’m heading west in a week with a cousin from the UK, to spend ten days in the Rockies, so I thought I’d check it out for the hotels and rental car.  It turned out to be definitely worth it for the rental car, saving me thirty percent of the next-cheapest price I could find through Expedia, Kayak, or anywhere else.  For the hotels, not as much – you’re limited to the ones that participate, which aren’t always in the locations you want.  I’ve used it for one or two sites, but am falling back on the discount offered to Automobile Association (CAA in Canada) members in most places.

Even little things add up.  The buy-ten-coffees-get-one-free cards offered by many coffee shops doesn’t sound like much, but if you get a $2 coffee free every second week, that’s $52 you save over the year.  Which can buy you a reasonable dinner out here at a small bistro.  Gas at the south end of our closest town is generally five cents a litre (twenty cents a US gallon) cheaper than it is at the north end; again, it’s only a couple of dollars at most every fill, but that’s another $50 to $100 a year to spend on something else, and if I use my gas station loyalty card to gain points at every fill-up, I can exchange it for an even greater discount on gas.  But even better is gas at Costco, which is generally ten cents a litre (forty cents a gallon) cheaper, and makes the cost of the membership worthwhile. And as it’s directly across the street from a grocery store I visit once a week, it’s not out of my way.

In Canada, automobile insurers are required by law to offer a discounts to “retirees aged 65 or older, and to younger retirees too, if they are receiving a Canada or Quebec Pension or a pension registered under the Income Tax Act.” so we qualified for that.  Banks, too, offer a reduction in service fees (or waive them completely) for older customers – it appears to vary from bank to bank, and they don’t necessarily advertise it, so ask! I did, and it saved us $132 a year.

Many chain restaurants, from McDonalds onward, have senior’s deals or senior’s meals. I’ve been ordering senior’s meals on road trips for years, since they are almost the only thing on the menu with a reasonable portion size at most chains.

I’m learning just to ask if a shop or service offers a senior’s discount, and many are happy to offer it to me just because I asked.  If they stress the age limit, I’m honest and say I do or don’t qualify. It’s a new mind-set, and like all new things is taking a while to learn, but it’s well on it’s way to becoming a habit.

What senior (or other)  discounts have I missed?   Please share!

Chili and Corn Bread

August 31, 2015

One of the aftermaths of the surgery and treatment I had last fall and winter was to leave me with what is best described as acquired irritable bowel syndrome. It might pass with time, I was told by my doctor; meanwhile, eat a good sugar-free live-culture yogurt every day, and re-introduce foods high in fibre – especially insoluble fibre – slowly.

This meant a few adjustments to our meal-planning. Legumes – kidney beans, white beans, black beans and lentils – whether in salads, stews, soups, curries or chili – were a large part of our dinners. But the effects of eating them were far too unpleasant to ignore the doctor’s advice!  So for the last eight months they’ve been gone from our dinner table. We just ate more poultry to replace them, and hoped it wouldn’t be a permanent situation.

I went back to eating raw apples, skin and all, and raw cabbage and carrots, in the past six weeks. When there were no ill effects from those, I decided it was time to reintroduce legumes.  So this week I tried black-bean chili, served with corn muffins…and happily, all went well.  It wasn’t quite my usual chili – I used half the beans I normally do, and added some spicy turkey sausage to round out the protein, but next time I’ll add a few more beans, and leave out the meat.

It will be good to get back to eating less meat.  For all our relationship BD and I have tried to eat meat or fish (now because of his allergies only poultry meat) three times a week, choosing eggs, legumes, or cheese-based meals for the other four. Once he could no longer eat cheese, that ratio moved up to four meat-or-fish to three non-meat; and then my issues moved it to six meat-or-fish to one egg-based dinner a week.  It bothered us – there are a myriad of good reasons, for both personal health and the health and sustainability of the planet – to eat less meat.

But now I can start planning legume-based meals again, once a week to start, and we have recently re-introduced small amounts of cheese to BD’s diet without problems.  Home-made vegetarian pizza is on the menu again!  And lentil soup…and dhal…and baked beans.  Just in time for fall!

Black Bean Chili and Cornbread for Two

Two cups de-skinned and chopped Roma tomatoes (or one 19 oz can)

¼ c diced onion

½ c diced red, orange, or yellow pepper

1 c black beans, cooked (or ½ c beans and the meat from one spicy turkey dinner sausage)

½ c corn niblets – fresh or frozen

3 Tbsp chili powder

1 rounded tsp chopped garlic

Oil for browning

Brown the onion and garlic in 1 Tbsp of oil in a heavy frying pan. Add 1 further Tbsp of oil and the chopped pepper, and the sausage meat if using. Cook until the meat is brown throughout.

Put the tomatoes, the onion mix, and the black beans in a oven-proof pot or a slow cooker. Add the chili powder and stir well.

Cook in a 300 degree oven for two hours. If using the slow cooker, I cook on low for 6 hours.

Before serving, taste and adjust chili seasoning. Add the corn a few minutes before serving – it should be cooked but not mushy.

Serve with cornbread/muffins:

1 cup soymilk (or regular milk)

1 egg

2 Tbsp corn oil

¾ c flour

1 ¼ c corn meal

1 Tbsp baking powder

3 Tbsp sugar (optional – I leave it out, especially if I’m using sweetened soymilk.)

1 ½ tsp chili flakes (also optional).

Mix together the milk, egg and oil. Blend the dry ingredients together and add to the liquid. Spoon into either a greased 8″ pan, or greased muffin tins (I use silicon, so no greasing) and bake at 425 for twenty minutes. Makes 8 medium muffins if you use the muffin tins.

Lessons from “Doing it Ourselves”

August 30, 2015

BD and I started off our relationship with very different skill sets. He had helped do the wiring in his newly-finished basement when he was fourteen, and a bit later helped his parents build a cottage, starting with clearing the lot and ending with the finished cottage. I could cook, sew a bit, and grow just about anything. For my father, horticulture was both a vocation and one of his avocations, and I was helping him in the garden when I was no more than three. I could also hang wallpaper. That’s pretty well where my hands-on skills ended.

When we were first together my lack of construction skills frustrated BD. I didn’t know the names for tools, or how to tell a Robertson screwdriver from a Phillips. (Mind you, he didn’t know a Dutch hoe from a cultivator, either, or a zucchini from a pepper.) But we persevered through two fixer-uppers, and I learned to lay tile and use a caulking gun; to strip hardwood and patch plaster. He’s learned I see the steps in a project better than he does, and can both create the workflow for the job, and be creative when we run into problems. On top of that, I’m ambidextrous with both a hammer and a paintbrush, and can lay roofing shingles better than he can.

We’ve learned to be mindful of each other, respecting knowledge, listening to each other even when the correct vocabulary isn’t necessarily being used. We know each other’s limits, both physical and mental. I know I have to paint ceilings, because it hurts BD’s back too much to do so. He knows I can’t work over my head with an electric screwdriver.

Doing the work ourselves has also increased our sense of belonging in, and to, this house. We are familiar with every square inch of it, from the basement crawl space to the attic rafters. We’ve seen it naked, stripped to the pine beams that run from foundation to attic. We’ve heard it groan when basement support jacks are moved. We’ve patched its wounds and learned its secrets: the burned beams in the old summer kitchen from a stove fire; the potato store uncovered under the kitchen floor when we stripped the old linoleum. We know where the coal chute was, and the original well, and where the stovepipes ran.

The house belongs to this village; it is built from local trees, sawn and finished at the village sawmill. Its foundation is of local fieldstone. We were the incomers, to a house that had been in one family for seventy-five years. But twenty-one years later, we belong here. We’ve earned that belonging in part by respecting our old house. The woman from whom we bought it had been born in the big bedroom upstairs. She wanted to sell it to someone who would love it, not tear it down and build a new house, and when we invited her back to the housewarming a few months later, she was so happy with what we had – and more to the point – hadn’t done to it. We’d respected its character, and that was important to her, and by extension to the village. Without her approval, we’d never had been offered the hundred-year-old cedar rails by the retired farmer down the road; he’d heard we wanted to build a fence, and said they were ours for the taking if we wanted to pull them out of the fence-rows. Our local chimney-sweep and furnace man told us never to worry about our old wonky furnace going out if we were away in the winter; he’d drop by every day to make sure it was on; he knew the furnace well, and he’d been told we were taking good care of “Doris’s” house.

Now when I walk to the community mailbox, or down to Rose’s for a coffee, or on any of my local walks, it’s the people working on their houses I am most often drawn to stop to talk to, the ones with tools in their hands and sweat dripping. I know it’s not completely fair: I know not everyone has the skills, and that employing others to do work for you is important for the economy. But I’m glad there are still young couples who are doing it themselves. Because I do not love the bathroom we contracted out nearly as much as I love the kitchen we tore down to the bare beams and built up again completely by ourselves; nor do I love the floor someone else laid in the sunroom the way I love the old hardwood I scrubbed and sanded and finished in the long living/dining room. There are memories that go with building that kitchen and sanding that floor, that are part of our journey to understanding and respecting not just this house, and not even our place in this community, but each other.

The Two Books I Wish I’d Kept

August 29, 2015

A year or so ago we culled the library bookshelves. We had to; they were overflowing. Books can take over this house very easily.

I thought I’d done a mindful, considered cull. I really thought about each book. But it’s now clear I culled two books I should have kept.  They were both books that fall into my ‘contemplation’ category: books I read, think about, read again, think some more. Books that have changed, and continue to change, how I see the world. In the case of these two books, they were among the first – one was the first – to do that for me.

The first book, the one that first made me look at the world differently, is Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I read it for the first time at sixteen or seventeen: it was published in 1974, the year I turned sixteen, so I must have found it (how?) shortly after. A deeply personal and sometimes mystical narrative of the writer’s relationship with the natural world that surrounds her home, it spoke to me at many levels. Dillard’s understanding of the natural world and the appreciation of the rhythms and cycles of life were key to my love affair with the book, but the fact it was also written by a woman was immensely important. I’d read Aldo Leopold and Thoreau and others, but there was always a small disconnect; I couldn’t project myself into them. With Dillard, I could.

I re-read the book several times in my twenties, each time understanding more, recognizing more of the spiritual aspect of it. Then I left it alone for a long time, before reading it again about a decade ago. By then I was on my second copy of it – I’d read my paperback to pieces, and when I found a hardback at a used book store, I bought it. And then last year I gave it away.

The second book is Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I suspect no other book has influenced my own approach to life as much as this one. I didn’t tackle it until my early to mid twenties, and it was the first book I read (other than my calculus textbook) where I remember recognizing as I read it that I really didn’t understand all of it, not in depth. So I read it again…and again…and again, over the next ten years. Finally, I thought I did understand it, how the search for understanding the elusive definition of quality, of what is good or not good, had become entwined with the author’s mental illness, and how recovery entailed learning to embrace and balance both the romantic and the rational. But again, my paperback was in tatters, and I thought I’d learned all I needed from it.

I wonder now why I thought I was done with them; where that hubris arose from. I have written elsewhere about how I understand the world through walking; in doing so, I create mental maps both real and unreal. The real mental maps mean that once I walk a place mindfully, I cannot get lost there, unless a very long time goes by before I am there again. The unreal are dreamt maps, dreamt walks, that overlay the real world, are different from it but always echo it. These books have been guidebooks for both my conscious and unconscious journeys. And I thought I could give them away?

I can either buy them again – they won’t break the budget, and both are still in print, and easily available used – or I can get them from the library. I think I’ll buy them. And at some level, ask their forgiveness for thinking I could navigate through this life without them.