Rødkål: a Festive Side Dish

At a Christmas gathering some years ago, a friend whose birthday happens to be on Christmas Eve shared this bright, sweet-and-sour casserole. She tells me it's a "very traditional Danish dish, served with pork roast or duck or goose [or turkey, in our case], and not only at Christmas, but definitely part of Christmas dinner." (Rødkål translates as "red cabbage" and leads me to believe that this is really the only way to serve red cabbage in Denmark.)

She was kind enough to share her personal recipe. I've adapted it to work in a crockpot, which meant cutting the quantities in half. It makes fantastic leftovers or a pretty pot-luck contribution.

Recipe below.

California: Beachy

Sign at the Crystal Cove historic district

For me, water has a magnetic pull: my eyes are drawn to it, I want to touch it. I am fascinated by its mercurial nature: one minute calm, another roiling with destructive power. I love how it catches the light and doubles the magic.

Challenge Accepted

Front cover of the Sibbald Family Famous Recipes Cookbook

More than two years ago, I decided to turn our hand-written, heavily soiled family recipe book into a proper cookbook with photos and stories and personal notes. Since then, I've encountered corrupted files, obsessive perfectionism, and loss of enthusiasm.

How to Eat an Elephant

Photo taken by my mother-in-law, Jean Sibbald, when she was in Kenya last year.

First: DON'T eat elephants! (Also, don't buy ivory.*)

Second: Hypothetically speaking, eating an elephant is a daunting task. Even if you were starving, it would be hard to eat an entire elephant before it started to rot. Today, I'm thinking about this as a metaphor.

A Tale of Two Weddings

After signing the wedding registry, April 28, 1984

As many military couples have done before, we had two weddings; one for expediency, and one for broader celebration. Here's the tale.

Amazing Disappearing Treats: Bouchées aux noix or Nutty Nibbles

Bouchées aux noix

When we lived in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, we had a lovely neighbour named Odette who shared a few recipes with me. By far the most popular on was the recipe for these treats, which she called Bouchées aux noix, which roughly translates to Nutty Nibbles.

These bars may be the least healthy treats I've ever shared with you, but they are absolutely delicious.

Today, I'm sharing the recipe and some tips I've learned the hard way.

A Hot Day in a Cool Place

If you look at the water in the foreground, you can see two currents meeting each other and creating lots of turmoil.

Best thing about retirement: you don't have to wait for a weekend. Earlier this week -- on a Tuesday! -- we visited friends Yves and Paula who live in a gorgeous condo on the St. Lawrence River. They took us out for a personal tour of the Thousand Islands.

The Big Retirement Shebang

Party decor - we could not have asked for more beautiful weather --
though a little more shade would have been welcome.

Although Steve doesn't actually perform his last day at the office until the 15th of July, we wanted to celebrate his retirement while his parents were with us. With that in mind, on the 28th, we invited friends to join us and our family (including my Aunt Winkie and my brother Doug) for a barbecue party.

Dining in the Dark

Just before heading into the dining room.

Last night, for two and a half hours, Steve and I , and our friends Ron and Heidi, were "blind" as we ate a four-course meal as part of a fundraiser for Canadian Guide Dogs for the Blind. Every year, a local restaurant named Chances R invites people to don masks and eat an entire meal in the dark and gain a real appreciation for just one facet of life without eyesight.

Let me tell you how it unfolded.

Conundrum

Have I mentioned the website that we've created in memory of my friend K.B. who died in January 2014? Actually, it was her husband who got it rolling. He started it as a way of encouraging the sort of generosity that typified K.B.'s life.

But we've run into a bit of a conundrum: how to gather stories about random acts of kindness from people who are too modest to "boast."

Thankful Thursday: Looking Back

My 100 Happy Days board on Pinterest.

It's been many months since I wrote a Thankful Thursday post, partly because last fall I was simply not feeling terribly thankful. But that does not mean that I have not practiced gratitude on a daily basis. In fact, since the losses of Scooter and especially of my friend K.B., making a conscious effort to recognize the joy and beauty in my life has been important and fruitful.

One Month

K.B. with her horse

It's been a month since my friend K.B. died. In some ways, I can't believe so much time has passed already. In others, it feels like it was just yesterday.

If you knew K.B. well, you would know that she really loved animals, especially horses. For a time, she part-owned a horse in Regina. I, myself, haven't been on a horse since I was in early high school.

You might also know that she was fascinated by dreams. (Dreams really are a strange phenomenon, I must agree.) The fiction she had begun writing on her blog concerned "dream guardians."

Here is her first entry in the story she was working on:

Lazy Bones

On my way home

I'm guest posting over at I, MayB today. It's a repost from something I shared here last fall, so you may recognize it, but I think it was worth reading again. Why not pop over and see the other witty things she has to offer?

---

Have you noticed how travelling just sucks the energy out of you?

I got home from Regina late Saturday night after taking the milk run: Regina-Edmonton-Calgary-Ottawa. Ordinarily, I keep my connections to a minimum, but this time I had a choice between that and getting up at four in the morning. (Have I mentioned that I am not a morning person?)

Fortunately, all the flights were on time and there was plenty of layover time at each connection. I even had time to write a blog post and have a leisurely lunch. And I checked my bags so I could get around easily. So it was not stressful.

But, boy, when I finally got home and hit my bed, I crashed. I slept for a good ten hours, then had a nap, and still went to bed at the right time that night. The next day, I did as little as physically possible. I even skipped Kane's walk (he had a good run with Steve in the morning) and served leftovers for dinner.

Today, I'm feeling better and will get back to a more normal routine, something I'm sure Kane will enjoy. As will I.

How about you? Do you bounce right back? Do you have any tricks?

Time to say goodbye

I flew all the way to Regina, and K.B. didn't meet me at the airport, didn't even text me.

I stayed with her best friend for three nights, and still never heard from her. (Though her ears must have been ringing because, Lord have mercy, did we talk about her!)

I talked to all sorts of people who loved her. I even saw her body, but she was not there. There is no way they could have contorted her face into one of her full-body smiles. It would have been horrific.

I saw her children and was helpless to mend their hearts, because she didn't tell me what to say. She would have known.

I listened to the children's eloquent and profound eulogies and thought: oh, K.B., you must be so damned proud of these two, they do you such honour.

I hugged her bridegroom and wished that things were different, tried not to be angry on his behalf that their honeymoon had really only just begun.

I was regaled with stories of kindness, generosity, and weirdness ("How many teapots in her cubicle? Eight?! All with matching cups?").

I spoke to her ex who seemed only just to have really added up the costs of his choices, of what he had let slip through his fingers.

One friend cried as she asked, "How did I not know?" How did she not know that K.B. was really a sister, a twin. And I felt the same: everybody else knew how much she loved me. I didn't give her nearly all the love she deserved.

I saw the home she loved, touched her dance shoes and glittery scarves. I walked through the tiny kitchen and imagined all the love she had cooked up, but there was no yeasty smell of rising bread. I pictured her dancing in the dining room.

I packed a bag full of her shoes, because we shared a ridiculously small foot-size, and I pondered the metaphor of "walking in her shoes." It means I will have to dance more.

And all this time, after these hours and hours of obsessively picking at the wound of my grief, she didn't come.

Because she's gone. And all that is left are the bits of her that are in me, and the bits of her that are in these wonderful, wonderful people. And now I miss them, too, but I'm glad to add them to the circle of my friends. As C.S. Lewis wrote in The Four Loves:,

In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets... Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend. They can then say, as the blessed souls say in Dante, 'Here comes one who will augment our loves.' For in this love 'to divide is not to take away.'

My life has been augmented in so many ways for having known K.B. This last one - the gift of more friends, is a surprise to me, and I am so grateful.

Too Soon

K.B. in high school

I have a stomach ache. Not because of any bugs or food gone bad. My stomach is roiling because I just learned that my dear friend, K.B., died in the wee hours of this morning, January 9, 2014. Her death was sudden and shocking, from an extremely rare allergic reaction.

UPDATE: It may not have been an allergic reaction. 

Last spring I shared with you that I was delighted to attend K.B.'s wedding. In her fiftieth year, she was in love and full of optimism about the future. She'd found a soul mate in Chris who understood her passions.

Back in July 2012, she had sent me an e-mail before her first kinda-sorta date with Chris - a weekday lunch with a group of people, but the one that had her heart racing was Chris.

"Do we ever stop being 17?" she wrote. "Why 17? Because I’m so nervous I’m nauseous. And just thinking about it I’m blushing. AT 49!!! It’s just lunch! And thank heaven, too, given the state I appear to be in."

She was beautiful, wasn't she? She always had been.

K.B., me, my cousin Ruth

She was fearless, witty, sharp as a tack, and so very, very generous and kind. In high school, when she slept over at my house, we sometimes snuck out to Tim Horton's for donuts. We double-dated and played endless hours of Euchre.

I have to elaborate on the "generous" adjective. Generosity is one of my deepest values and K.B. knew how to give like no one else I've known. And I don't mean in big, flashy ways. Her best gifts were rarely expensive (as a single mom, she watched every dime), but were always surprising. One time, in late winter, when it felt like the sun had abandoned us forever, she gave me a styrofoam cup in which she had sprouted some tiny blades of grass: spring is coming.

She even gave (well shared) her [other best] friend with me. After K.B.'s wedding Bronwyn (who blogs over at I, Mayb)  and I connected over social media through a shared interest in writing and humour.

I originally titled this post "Proudly Flying Her Freak Flag" because she was one of those people who was brave and saucy about doing things just a little differently.

Yup. Barefoot. At her wedding. At first I thought she didn't like her shoes or her feet were sore, but, no. She just wanted to be barefoot. And why not? She had adorable tiny feet.

That same quirky and wonderful spirit passed to her daughter. As a wedding gift, she gave the happy couple a star. How amazing is that?

I'm going to share a few more of the pictures I took at her wedding, the last time I saw her.

K.B. with her son Alec and her daughter Maddy

K.B. and her husband Chris, and his two children

K.B.'s sister Susan and their father, Mr. Sterling (I can't bring myself to even type his first name.)

That picture is heartbreaking because two important people are not in it: K.B.'s mother, Joan, who died of Parkinson's, and her brother, Cullen, who died in his teens, of cancer.

But this is my favourite picture of that day, possibly even of all time.

Just a little girl, basking in her daddy's love.

Goodbye, K.B. I miss you already.

Another Beautiful Bride

My friend, K.B., whom I've mentioned previously.

That is a picture of my high-school best friend, K.B

[Not that I really have another best friend now. I mean, I have friends, but . . . I wonder if the whole "best friend" thing kind of loses its currency as we get older. Or has my continual migration from one city, province, or country to another made that difficult for me? Oh, this line of thinking is almost too sad to continue.]

K.B. is short for [redacted], which NO ONE calls her. Except, perhaps, her dad and sister. Back in high school, we often called her Killer Bunny, after the rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (though she was nothing like that evil rodent).


K.B. and I knew each other during those blistering years of high school when we feel both immortal and rawly vulnerable. She showed up in my Functions & Relations class with an enthusiasm for Math that dumbfounded me. It was, I learned, an enthusiasm for knowledge - she was, and is, eager to learn anything about anything. She's also someone who "waves her freak flag" with gusto.

Over the ensuing couple of years, we became almost inseparable. I slept over at her house about half the time, avoiding the emotional difficulties at my home. Meanwhile, her family was suffering the excruciating loss of her brother, Cullen (or "Cully"), who died too young of Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia, and her mother who died more slowly of Parkinson's Disease.

Can you even imagine the pain?

And yet, she, indeed her entire family, welcomed me, embraced me. I had a permanent seat at their dinner table. K.B. and I shared clothes like sisters (though that blue blouse she's wearing in that picture looked WORLDS better on her than it ever did on me). Cully called me from the hospital where he lay dying. I was with the family as they buried their beloved mother. To this day, I wish I had known both Cully and Mrs. Sterling before they were ill.

K.B. and I have lived geographically separate lives, but have stayed in touch, especially with the gift of e-mail and social media. (Many scoff at the "fake" nature of social-media relationships, but I have found that social media has served to strengthen many friendships and has, conversely, made me ponder why I ever considered so-and-so a friend at all.)

Well, last weekend, I had the great joy of attending K.B.'s wedding to Chris. It is a second marriage for each of them, so they went into it with eyes wide open and hearts grateful for this surprise of love. I wish I'd been able to get to know Chris better.

But I do know that they fit. In the quirky, accepting, supportive ways that matter.

Enough. Here are some pictures I took before and during their wedding and reception.

This was taken at the unofficial rehearsal dinner.
What started out as dinner for three turned into dinner for five, then dinner for six
 then . . . aw, heck. Let's just all get together. 

The new blended family.
That's Mr. Sterling at the "head" of the table. K.B.'s sister is to his right (our left).
(I won't name anyone else as I do not have their permission, but please feel free to download and use your pictures.)

K.B.'s daughter gave the couple a STAR! In Ursa Major! That's the kind of mother K.B. is.

The wedding day dawned sunny and warm.

The wedding palette.

K.B. is not a fussy, girly-girl, but she did allow for some pampering on this occasion.

The flowers were so, so beautiful.

The bride and her maids laughing at a YouTube video while getting ready.

She came down the aisle and made her vows barefoot.
Because, if you know anything about K.B., you know that you ought to expect the unexpected.
(Chris claims he absolutely did not notice.)

There was a fair bit of laughter at this ceremony, but it was absolutely earnest as well.

Yes, she loves him.

Yes, yes indeed she does.

Another little bit of the unexpected.

There are many more pictures, of course, but I will share them with K.B. and Chris, who are still on their honeymoon before I post them anywhere.

I'm so glad we are friends. I'm so glad I was there - and that K.B. and her family were there for me.

Wonderful Whirlwind Weekend

You may have noticed that Steve and I sometimes try to combine a business trip with a pleasure trip.

• In September, I tagged along on Steve's business trip to Kingston.
• In November, Steve joined me in Quebec City, then I stayed on to work.

Well, this past week, Steve had business in the Toronto area, where I happen to have family. So, Emily and I decided to meet Steve in Toronto, and we arranged to meet my Aunt Winkie for dinner, then visit my sister for the weekend.

There are no pictures of Winkie, because she detests having her picture taken. But I did snap some pictures of a few other highlights of the weekend, which we spent with my sister and brother-in-law.

Pat and Ross

On Saturday morning, I [finally] had a visit with my friend, Stephanie, whose beautiful twin girls were born last January.

Happy Mommy

One happy baby

Another baby, monkeying around.

The family dog, just waiting for her to drop the monkey.

The girls were ready for their naps, so Steve and I headed back to my sister Pat's place, where we got ready for a short road trip.

Scooter, none too happy to be excluded from the car ride.

Our destination was Palmerston, where my father, his parents, and one of his sisters are buried. Not what you would call a fun trip, but it was a pleasure to be there and to remember. I never met my grandmother, and I barely knew my grandfather, but I miss my father every day, and I have fond memories of my aunt and her great talent.

Dad loved fishing.
There were not enough days in his life to enjoy this pastime.

We planted some crocuses around the markers, just as my Aunt Winkie has done. She also planted a lilac bush. Obviously, it was not in bloom just now, but it was beautiful, just the same.

I hope lichen is not harmful for lilacs . . . 

It was chilly - snow was dancing lazily - and we were hungry, so we visited nearby Elora to warm up and grab some lunch. Elora is a popular tourist spot in Ontario (at least in the summer), with a quaint downtown.

Dressed up for the season with a uniquely eye-catching colour scheme.

After a home-cooked meal, Pat and I talked late into the evening, as we usually do. Brunch the next morning included my favourite dessert!

Tiramisu (in cake form)

Before we knew it, it was time to pack our bags and head for the train station, but not without a few hugs.

Hug

All in all, a wonderful whirlwind weekend. Now to get on with my Christmas preparations; no more excuses!

Think I'll go eat worms.

Nobody likes me.
Everybody hates me.
Think I'll go eat worms . . .

On July 27, I wanted to send a message to just my daughter Emily and her friend Laurel. For some idiotic reason, instead of just sending them a message, here's what I did. Under the status window, there is a little drop-down option to customize who can see your post.

Default setting is "Your friends."

I clicked that arrow and selected, "Customize," which opened this window.

I selected Emily and Laurel from my list of friends.

I saved the changes. I can't remember if I ever actually sent them the message I had drafted. I think I changed my mind.

What I didn't change was that little setting.

For weeks after this, no one commented on my status updates or links or blog posts, except Emily or people I had tagged in my posts. Because those few people were commenting occasionally, and because comments that I made on others' posts or photos also received replies, I just thought that most of my friends had [SOB] better things to do than comment on my posts.

I began to wonder if I had offended everyone. Or perhaps I was just . . . boring.

Then a sweet friend sent me an inbox message.

"Everything ok? You haven't been on FB in a while.

Love,

..."

I replied that I was fine and had been posting as much as usual. [Well, perhaps not quite as much.] She said she couldn't see anything.

When I got home that evening, I scoured my Facebook privacy settings. I sent screen captures to Facebook, thinking that I might somehow have been blocked.

It wasn't until my cursor happened to hover over the little setting at the bottom of the status window that I saw this.

Wait. What?
My posts were still only visible to Emily and Laurel!

D'oh! I hadn't realized that the setting under the status window was a global setting for every single post henceforward! It's kind of a cool idea. You could have a default setting of a small group of best buddies, but open it up more broadly for all your friends.

I changed my setting, and went back and changed it on every post where it was still customized. It went all the way back to July 27. I posted a "Let me know if you can see this" status and was swamped by a bunch of "welcome back" messages. It warmed the cockles of my heart, I tell you.

In the end, I learned a few things.

1. I like Facebook. I enjoy the casual banter, the sharing of news, humour, and insights. I know that many people find it silly and superficial. But it's like many social exchanges - I've been to parties where the conversation bored the bejeebers out of me, and other parties where I really clicked with someone and wanted to spend more time together. You take a little water with the wine, so to speak.
2. Without responses, I felt as if I was on the fringes of a social clique. It was a weird feeling. Kind of like being in high school again, without the benefit of sag-free skin.
3. I don't think the social connection is as artificial or empty as many people disparage it to be. My friend was genuinely concerned for me and reached out to me even though we haven't actually seen each other in two years. It isn't a substitute for offline connection, but when distance prevents "real world" get-togethers, I think social media can help maintain connection. 

What do you think about social media, specifically Facebook?