Tag Archive: winter

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Leaving The City of Flowers and Sunshine for The Land of 10,000 Lakes

March 21st, 2012 / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , / categories: Observations, People /

I never meant to live in California.

In fact, I argued against it for several years, while married to my first husband who had grown up out here. I met him in Louisiana, we lived together in Oklahoma, and he always wanted to move back to his childhood home in Ventura, CA. After a week-long visit in 1997 or ’98, I found myself afraid of moving here – it was too big, too dirty, too different for me. There were no trees! Not like in Southeast Texas/Louisiana and even Oklahoma City. I hated palm trees. I felt so out of place.

When I got divorced, I stayed for a couple months with a boyfriend, then had nowhere to go when we broke up. My dad offered to let me stay at his place in Costa Mesa, CA, and because I had no real choice, I accepted.

I had a hard time making friends at first, and finally made some through the Camarilla Fan Club (now known as The Mind’s Eye Society) of which I’d been a member for about 4 years before I’d moved. A year after I came to Cali, I moved into my own apartment in Long Beach with a roomie and fully began to settle into California. Eventually, I loved it, especially after meeting my current husband and solidifying many friendships.

For a while, I thought I would never want to move away from here. I mean, let’s face it – Southern California is known for its exceptional weather, and it’s no lie. Sunny, warm weather is the norm here, with some grey days in May and June and a sprinkle of rain in the winter. In all my time in California ( almost 9 years now) I’ve never lived more than 2 miles from a beach, and mostly I’ve lived only a few blocks from one. Mountains with beautiful, scenic views are a short-ish drive away, and the stark beauty of the desert isn’t much further. Las Vegas is only a 4 hour drive (if you drive like a Los Angeleno) and is a great weekend get-away – Adam and I have a time share property there. One of the most fun things about living in Los Angeles County is being able to identify all the locations in movies and TV – much of the Transformers movie was shot in L.A. and Dexter (which is set in Florida) is shot down the street from my house, for the most part. Songs, books, movies, and T.V. shows are written about and in and have settings in the Southland, and I find it fun to be able to identify so readily with them.

There are so many reasons to love La La Land, but there are plenty of reasons to hate it also.

  • high crime rates
  • pollution
  • over-crowding
  • grime caused by lack of cleansing rain and too much smog
  • the huge sprawl of the metro area, unbroken by nature or pretty scenery
  • the SoCal image
  • housing prices
  • etc

One of the things I’ve disliked about California for a long time is it’s lack of proximity to family. My dad and stepmom moved to Phoenix not long after I got my apartment in Long Beach. Step-aunts and uncles, and my step-brothers either moved with them or aren’t too big on visiting. My extended birth family is mostly in Wisconsin, with the major exception being my sister, who lives in Indiana. And my husband’s family, probably the best, most good hearted people I know, mostly live in Minnesota. Except Adam’s sister, who actually lives in Riverside, CA, which is far enough away from us to limit trips to visit to 3 or 4 times a year.

Lately I’ve felt a strong urge to connect with family again. To live close to a community of people who love us. Adam’s extended family is not only huge, but they’re truly wonderful people. I’ve said before that they’re the kind of people I never believed existed outside of classic television. Not that they’re unnaturally perfect or anything – but they’re honest, kind, warm, steady, non-crazy, stable folks who are family oriented and genuinely decent people. There’s not a mess of them in jail, none of them should be kept away from small children for safety reasons, mental disease seems minimal, etc. No one punched anyone else out at the family reunion a few years back… stuff like that.

So, when I started feeling the pull to be around family, Adam’s was the obvious choice for me. I truly like them. I think they like me, mostly. So we’re looking into it, and we have a very tentative plan to move out there after my Barbershop chorus’ international competition in October. We even have a good idea on where we’d live – a large house in the rural area surrounding Northfield, MN. In fact, we may be neighbors with Adam’s parents!

It’s a paradigm shift for me – I’ve mostly lived in large-ish cities or their suburbs. I’ve never lived on a farm, or on property with more than a fraction of an acre footprint. But I’m ready. I can’t stop thinking of it, of all the opportunities it opens, all the changes it presents.

It won’t be easy. It won’t be fun all the time (especially that first Winter and it’s attendant snowfall). But I think it will be a very good thing. And that’s what matters.

Here’s hoping for the future, and the best it can bring.

Do you have any big plans in mind for this year? Any game-changers in the works for you? I’d love to hear about them!

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Stuffed Squash Dinner, or, How Not to Photograph Food

January 7th, 2012 / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , / categories: Kitchen Craft /

I like to cook. I like to go out and eat, too. Sometimes it’s a hard life, trying to decide which to do. Actually, strike that, I always choose to go out if I have the chance. But I do like to cook, and most of the time I make tasty things.

This meal, I think I made it Wednesday, tasted great, even though the picture would say otherwise:

Stuffed delicata squash with sweet potato and bamboo rice

It tasted much better than it looks, honest!

For someone looking to get into photography, I sure do a poor job of it sometimes! Anyway, I was just trying to document the meal for a Facebook group called “What Cha Eatin?“, but I never did end up posting the pic. Instead, I’m showing off my terrible food photography (hey, I took it on our standard dinner plate, in a kitchen with overhead fluorescent lighting…) here, so you can marvel in… well at least the tastiness of the dinner anyway.

Here’s what I did:

Stuffed Squash Ingredients:

1 lb ground beef
1/2 large red onion
2 tsp ground black pepper
1 tbsp ground coriander
2 tbsp curry powder
1 can cream of mushroom soup
2 Cups shredded white cheddar cheese
1 large delicata squash, halved lengthwise and seeds scooped out (the ingredients could easily make 2 squashes, so if you need to feed 4 people, use 2 delicatas, both halved and scooped).

Instructions -

1) Preheat oven to 370F. 2) Brown your ground beef over medium heat in a large skillet. Chop half a red onion and add it to the skillet, seasoning with about 2 tsp black pepper. Add the coriander and curry powder, stir, and cook until onion is soft.

3) Meanwhile, after squash(es) is/are cut in half and the seeds are scooped, brush the insides and outsides with a good quantity of olive oil and set, sliced edge down, in a baking pan or lipped cookie sheet. Place in oven for 20 – 25 minutes, or until squash is tender to a poke with a fork. Remove from oven and set aside.

4) Add cream of mushroom soup to beef mixture and stir in well. When squash comes out of the oven, turn them carefully over with tongs, being careful not to crush or split them. Fill the squash with a good amount of beef mixture, and top with a generous amount of shredded cheese.

5) Place filled squash back in the oven for 5-10 minutes until cheese is melted and gooey.

6) Enjoy! (serves 2 – 4)

On the side I microwaved a halved sweet potato using my microwave’s potato preset function (thank the gods for this, I could never wait 45 minutes for a simple baked potato) – remember to wrap potatoes in plastic cling wrap and poke a few times with a fork before placing in the microwave oven. I cut the potatoes open when serving and put some of the extra cheddar cheese inside to melt.

Also, my sister-in-law gave me some “bamboo rice” for Christmas, and I thought this meal needed a touch of green, so I made that up in my rice cooker. It came out nice and fluffy and I liked the subtle flavor of it. I saw a listing for some bamboo rice on Amazon but if you can find it at a local shop or farmer’s market, all the better.

Anyway, it was quite tasty, and very seasonal. Also, it was warm and aromatic, so it was great for a chilly evening. I enjoyed experimenting with the foods, too, which is half of what I love about cooking it. The other half is eating!

So, what did we learn from all of this?

Don’t take crappy food pictures when you’re trying to be a professional photographer. And if you do, you probably shouldn’t put them up on your blog for the world to see!

Oh well, I’ll do better next time.