11 Reasons I am Thankful in 2012

 

Photo collage by Karen Balvin, Sunlitway Photography (sunlitway.com)
Thanks, Karen!

 

Thanksgiving is nearly here. What are you thankful for?

All You Need to Know About Life

I don't know who said this so I can't give proper attribution - but I had to share it anyway.

Life is like a coin. You can choose to spend it any way you wish, but you can only spend it once. Make your choices wisely.

~ Unknown

Give Consumable Gifts for a Stress-free Holiday Season

For a truly stress-free holiday, give consumable gifts to everyone on your list. Think about it – consumable gifts are always in style and you have no worries about getting the right size or color, consumable gifts are affordable even on a tight budget, and consumable gifts are appreciated and used (and used up!) – what more could you want?

So, what are my favorite consumable gifts?

For small to middle sized children, you can’t go wrong with crayons and a coloring book. If you want to encourage a budding artist, choose watercolor paints or modeling clay.

For older kids and teens, it gets a little trickier. My favorites for this age group are food gifts. Think a batch of their favorite homemade cookies. Or better yet, a cookie-of-the-month club subscription with a small plate of homemade treats delivered fresh from your very own kitchen at the beginning of each month throughout the year.

And what about adults? Well, it’s usually food gifts again! For women, I prefer chocolate. Delicious homemade fudge is always a big hit. For men, I tend toward salty snacks, such as Chex Mix.

What are your favorite consumable Christmas gifts?

Looking Forward to the Change

The time change, that is. Yep. Tomorrow is the day – time to ‘fall back’ for those of us who must adjust our clocks twice each year. I’ll get up in the dark, but by 6:45 when we prefer to go for our morning walk, it will be light! Come evening, however, I’m sure I’ll be whining about the earlier darkness...

Oh well. It’s a tradeoff and one that I’m looking forward to this year. Lately, we don’t have adequate light for walking until about 7:10. Beings I don’t eat until after we walk, waiting that extra 30 minutes or so for breakfast when I’ve been up a couple of hours just isn’t working for me.

As for that other change (you know, the one that hits women around age 50) – well, I welcomed it, too. For someone who is usually totally resistant to change, isn’t that amazing?

Live in the Present

"One has to live in the present. Whatever is past is gone beyond recall; whatever is future remains beyond one's reach, until it becomes present. Remembering the past and giving thought to the future are important, but only to the extent that they help one deal with the present."

~ S.N. Goenka

Acorns - Free Nutrition for the Taking

I'm currently polishing Impossible Beyond This Point (due out in 2013), the story of my in-law's move to the wilderness back in the 60s, and I ran across an account of a wild edibles meal my MIL made when her sister came to visit. The mainstay of the meal was acorns.

Did you know that you can eat acorns? That's right - they're not just for squirrels! I haven't done it recently, but we've made acorn meal in years gone by. Properly prepared, you can use chopped acorns in place of nuts or grind them into meal to make acorn mush or add to recipes. So if you have acorns available, gather some up and give them a try!

Preparing acorns

The first thing you have to do to make acorns edible is leach out the tannin. So shell them with a nutcracker or hammer and get the meats out. Then boil them and re-boil them and re-boil them again and again until the water is clear.

Use two pots and transfer the acorns from one to the other every 15 minutes or so. Bring fresh water to a boil in the pot without acorns while they're boiling away in the other pot. Make sure to keep them mostly boiling and DON'T put them in cold water. Keep this up until the cooking water stays clear and then dry them on a cookie sheet in the oven at about 250 degrees. Once they're mostly dry, chop or grind for use in recipes.

Another way to leach tannin

You can also leach out the tannin without boiling but it takes MUCH longer. First, grind up the meats into a fine meal. Put the ground meal in a basket or strainer lined with a clean muslin cloth and set atop a pot.  Slowly pour in water to fill the basket and let it run through the ground acorn meal (same principle as a drip coffee maker). Check it often and add more water and empty the pot, as needed, until the water runs clear.

Alternatively, I suppose you could put the acorn meal in a clean muslin bag and tie it suspended in a stream. I also read that you can leach them in your toilet tank (clean it good first!) but I think I'll just stick to the boiling or drip filtering methods!

Are You Cheerful or Gloomy?

"You find yourself refreshed in the presence of cheerful people. Why not make an honest effort to confer that pleasure on others? Half the battle is gained if you never allow yourself to say anything gloomy."

~ Lydia M. Child

How often are you cheerful? How often are you gloomy? Which is your "default" state of mind and being?

YOU can choose to be cheerful

Spend a little time over the next few days observing your attitude and behavior. Make a conscious effort to be cheerful and avoid gloomy. When a gloomy mood strikes, don't allow it to take over. Focus on cheerful thoughts - by force, if necessary.

Will this be easy? Probably not! But cheerfulness and gloominess are both habits that can be cultivated. So choose to develop the habit of being cheerful. Doing so will not only enhance the lives of everyone around you, a conscious effort to change your default to cheerful will dramatically improve your life, as well.

Have a great day!

Dreams or Regrets?

"A person is not old until regrets take the place of dreams."

~ Anonymous

How true this is! As you move into (or through) your best 50 years, are you still cultivating your dreams or have you lapsed into regret? If you're still a dreamer, keep it up! And if you've allowed regret to creep in, it's not too late to shove it aside and go back to dreaming.