Historical Dinners

This week in history marks the 99th anniversary of the sinking of RMS Titanic. For a while the kids have wanted to see the movie, so we thought this would be a good time to make that happen.

 

We got to talking about the event, the girls started to google facts, and before long we had discovered interesting things such as the music played, lists of passengers, and the menus for the first, second and third class.

 

Menus...Hmmm.

 

With a rainy afternoon before us, and Anna at a birthday, Grace and I set to work to recreate a Titanic dinner menu. Now 10 courses seemed a bit over the top, so we scaled back a little. And I took a little liberty with the actual food served on the ship. This is what we made:

 

Titanic Menu

• Roasted Garlic Soup (a Chez Piggy recipe) 
• Mixed greens with chevre and almonds

(This is where the fish course would go - we skipped it. Likewise the sorbet which would be course 4)

• Chicken Lyonaisse with cream sauce
• Lyonaisse Potatoes (Lyonaisse basically means with onions, and was served on Titanic)
• Green Beans Almondine
• Broccoli with cheese sauce
• Victoria Sponge cake (not actually a Titanic dish, but only fashioned and sweet. And delicious. Thanks Nigella Lawson)

(Courses 8, 9 and 10 - we skipped them too. I imagine a cheese course, a sweet pastry course, and no clue what the other would be. Seemed like overkill. We were all stuffed.)

 

And then we sat down rather corpulently, to watch the movie. I should note that we did not have wine with every course as they might have in 1914. We had sherry with our soup, wine with our dinner, and a snifter of brandy with dessert. And the kids had juice.

 

So successful was our historically themed dinner, that the kids are keen to do it again. It struck me that with the date also being the anniversary of Culloden, we could have done that too...but maybe we'll save it for another time.

 

Now I am racking my brains for another event to mark with a feast. History is more fun when you can eat it! If you have any ideas, feel free to pass them along...

Friday Reads

In honour of Friday Reads, I went around the house snapping a few pictures of the books we are reading right now.

Me and Grace

Andrew

Andrew and Erik

The Girls - Grandma bought this back from Down Under

 

Books in my office waiting to be next...

These came out of the car...

Happy Reading!

Double Time

What's the right term? I "twitted" the elected debate last night gives off a casualness that is unfair. To Twitter. But that's what I did. Instead of tuning in to the radio which aired live coverage, I turned to Twitter and followed the action there.

But the debate is not what I want to write about. Though I will say that though the leaders themseves did not inspire - same old arguments, same old tirade, same old mud-slinging - Twitter, more specifically, the reactions of people on Twitter, did and for the first time in years I found myself feeling hopeful about the state of Canadian politics.

One of the funny things about Twitter is that although I was focused on the debate, other things kept popping up. Like the friend looking for a highland dance outfit for her daughter. Or like the discussion around Jamie Oliver's TV show. And just like at a cocktail party, I found myself participating in one conversation but being aware of numerous others happening around me.

That's not what I want to write about either.

What interested me this morning was another Tweet giving a link to the Jamie Oliver show for all those who had missed it because of the debate.

It made me think. So many of us are busy. We know it, we feel it, we say it. Yes, we sometimes complain about it. And I wonder if we aren't all part of the problem. If our technology, rather than saving us time, actually enables us to get busier.

Last night for example, people had the choice between watching the election debate and watching Jamie Oliver. You make a decision, and maybe you make the wrong one. The point is that during that hour long slot of time you pick one thing. But with the internet and innovative TV scheduling, we no longer have to pick one. And so we can watch Jamie Oliver this morning. On our own schedule. Good news, right?

Hang on, but that means another choice that has to be made (and hopefully it's not nutritious breakfast or Jamie Oliver because that would be deliciously ironic) .

I'm not being particularly articulate, but I am in a rush to get off to class. What I think I am trying to say that if we see events as things we can manipulate, push around, watch, do, or participate in at our own convenience,we are at risk of trying to fit too many things into our lives. If we didn't have the option to watch Jamie Oliver another time, we would have a whole extra hour today. Instead, we are trying to borrow time from the future to get everything done.

It's like a line of credit that you just can't ever pay back.

On My Own

What does a Saturday on your own look like? Here's mine:

• Drink coffee, kiss husband and kids goodbye and watch them drive away to camp.
• Check emails, twitter, facebook
• Drink more coffee
• Tidy kitchen, throw in laundry, load dishwasher
• Morning run, followed by hot shower and more coffee, on back steps, facing the warm morning sun
• Figure out what to wear to a writer's conference on a day that is neither cool enough for pants or warm enough for bare legs
• Writer's Conference, hang out at library
• Treat myself to a Cafe Latte and lunch, read a book on my kobo at the coffee shop before heading home
• Hang laundry, do a garden reconaissance, figure out what needs to be done, make a list
• Read on the deck in a lawnchair for a blissful, precious hour.
• Write
• Decide some work is in order so head back to garden to rake away some of last year's foliage and reveal new shoots :)
• Walk the dog through the fields, shout back at the nosiy snow geese, wish I had my camera
• Read
• Write
• Open Wine
• Listen to opera. Loudly. While having a long lesisurely bubble bath
• Eat scrambled eggs
• Blog
• Watch a chick flick - Eat Pray Love tonight. Will it hold up to the book (which I quite enjoyed)?

The End

(my plans to have dinner with a friend and then head to the arts evening fizzled after I raked my gardens and realized that what I really wanted was some down time. So lovely.)

Two Minutes

I know the value of managing my time. I know how to keep a pretty good balance between work, family, domestic chores, and downtime.

I say that with my tongue firmly in cheek. It might be true in the abstract big picture universal truth sense, but the reality is sometimes very different.

This I discovered Sunday morning.

I spent a big chunk of time the latter half of this week - and part of Saturday while the kids and Andrew were out at an insectarium with the cubs - catching up on work. A combination of factors really. Starting behind the eight ball when I first started full time freelancing, a snowball effect as manuscripts started to come in all together, a weekend away in New Brunswick coupled with a heavy cold that left me fuzzy headed and unable to focus...all of them meant that I had some looming deadlines that I needed to meet.

I finished it all. It felt really good. There was just ONE thing, a quick eyeball of a final chapter finished late in the afternoon. No problem, I told myself. I'll look it over really quickly Sunday morning and send it out to the author before she leaves for her cottage at noon.

There are a whole lot of "What if's" here that might have changed the way that worked out. But the bottom line is that we were leaving the house that morning for a special funtion with the kids and we had to be there for 11am. I had the manuscript done. I ate breakfast. I got the kids dressed, hair brushed. I got dressed. Heck, I even brushed my own hair. And then I took the five minutes before we left to connect to my email and send it...and the internet was slow. It wasn't working. It was taking forever.

The kids were waiting in the car, Andrew was pacing, the clock was ticking. I HAD TO LEAVE.

If I had two extra minutes, I'd have got that out on time. As it was, it had to wait until this afternoon when I got back.

Not a big deal really. I hate missing a deadline, but it was minor as far as it goes. But to me it was like the universe just gave me a big fat wake up call.

Two minutes!! If your time is at the point where two minutes can make or break it, it's NOT well managed.

It's like that some mornings getting the kids to the bus. A frantic rush to eat, make lunches get out the door with bags, homework and shoes on the right feet. Two minutes late and I have to drive them - a 45 minute round trip.

But get up half an hour earlier and it's a nice leisurely pace. Time for a song, a dance, a laugh, a revision of homework, a chat, a jump on the trampoline. We are all much happier.

And it's the same with work. Get ahead of it and you have time for things to go wrong, time for a second look, time to have a cold and just spend a couple of days in bed.

The two minute warning bell went off.

I hope I learned from it.

On Guard

We have a ton of lambs outside. Mewling and bleating and skipping and gamboling. There is a game they play where they creep up to the sleeping guard dog. Closer and closer and closer until...one of the lambs dares to touch her and--

Rrrruff!

They scatter, the dog goes back to sleep, and five minutes later the lambs come creeping back.

Tundra is our guard dog, a beautiful Great Pyrenees whose gentle nature with the kids, the lambs, and our house dog is matched by a fierce and protective ferocity when coyotes come near. Seriously, we have seen her rip a coyote into shreds. Since we got her we have had zero kills among our little flock. And that's good news.

But I wonder sometimes, what she is really thinking? Protect the little helpless lambs?

Or Dinner?

Yellow Wood

Just when everything is going along swimmingly - I love teaching, my classes are going well, I have a bunch of terrific novels in various stages of editing that I am thrilled and excited to be working on, the kids are doing well, and Spring is coming - change rears its head.

Not all change is bad, of course. This change isn't even a change. More the opportunity for a change. The question is do I want change at all?

I just made changes, leaving my corporate job for freelance editing and the life of a part time college prof. I am happy with them. All things being even, I'd leave it exactly the way it is.

But...

But change doesn't always come when you are looking for it. Sometimes it shows up when you least expect it. And like the "two roads diverged in a yellow wood" in Frost's poem, you will always wonder what might have happened if you took the other path.

And so I am thinking.


(Don't worry - I will still be writing, editing, teaching. Some things are too good to give up.)