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.

Putting Things Back Where They Belong (A post for women)

Stephen and me with our four children.

Psst! This post gets very intimate. If that bothers you, you may want to move on to other stuff. Like this website full of things that make you say "Wow!"

Once upon a time, I had perky breasts, a flat stomach, and flawless skin. And then life happened. Time, aging cells, gravity, childbirth, hormonal changes. The result is that things are no longer quite where they used to be or where they ought to be.

A Slow Waning

I've heard that the closer you live to the equator, the more rapidly the sun sets. My mother, who grew up in northern Ontario, seems to be taking the polar route to her own sunset, drawing out each beautiful moment.

From Bad to Worse

My mother in the ER.

What can I say? My mother is old. She is frail and weak. Her days are numbered.

California Dreamin'

"Saddle up, pilgrims."
This bronze statue is at the eponymous John Wayne Airport in Orange County, CA

So, yah. I'm not dead, and I haven't stopped blogging. I'm just . . . not blogging as much as I used to. I just haven't had the urge to write so much. We'll see where that goes. For now, I have some pretty pictures from our recent trip to California.

Oh, Christmas Tree!

I have a love/hate relationship with decorating the Christmas tree each year. I love how it looks when it's done, but I do not enjoy the process. Usually.

Working It

Photo by Cathy Walters Photography. If you live in Colorado Springs, look her up.

Every time I hear couples (celebrities, for the most part) talking about how "marriage is work," I want to run around behind them saying, "No! It's not! It's rewarding!" Because they make it sound like a prison sentence. Having said that, I have to agree: all the best things in life require some effort on your part. Marriage included.

A punny thing happened . . .

Gail Anderson-Dargatz (a.k.a. Gail Krupp) with me at the Providence Bay Writers' Camp.

Writers are very fun -- and funny -- people.

I loved loved loved my week at writers' camp. We had so much laughter around that table! But the greatest surprise of the entire week was what happened on our last evening together when I lobbed a gentle pun to my classmates (six other writers and our teacher) as we lounged on the patio before doing our public readings (eek!).

Celebrate without ceasing!

Birthday date, June 22!

June is just one long series of celebrations around our house, or at least it was this year. Here's the month, in pictures.

The More the Merrier

My family, on our front lawn, circa 1979.

I grew up with four brothers and two sisters. These are full siblings, no blended families, no multiples, and, no, we weren't Catholic or part of the "quiverful" movement (which didn't even exist back then).

My parents were just . . . very productive. (Yay for that work ethic!)

Growing up as the second-youngest in a big family certainly has its pluses and minuses. Here are just a few.

Oversharing

We all learned this one in kindergarten, right? And yet, I've had to relearn it, at least when it comes to family. More specifically: my mother, here on this blog.

Regrets

I realize this sounds like a joke, but I am serious.

If you tell me you have no regrets, I can only conclude that you are either arrogant or have an unexamined life.

Because we all make mistakes. We are human. To my mind, if you have no regrets, it means that you have never looked back at your choices and honestly said, I wish I had done differently. Or you've never had the strength to gain that insight.

Light in Her Eyes

Background: my mother was admitted to hospital with Congestive Heart Failure on April 6, 2015. Read more here. On April 13, my husband and I drove from Ottawa to St. Catharines to visit her. 

This was the first trip I have made explicitly to see my mother in about 20 years. I have seen her and spoken with her in the interim, but I have not made an effort to be with her in particular.

On our trip down to southern Ontario, I bit off almost all my finger nails. I knew it might happen -- I nibble when I'm nervous or bored -- so I had made a point of filing them before we left the house, and I made sure there was a nail file in my purse. It made no difference. I was anxious.

Baggage

My mother, with her husband.

Today, my husband and I  are heading out on the road to visit my mother, who is still in hospital with congestive heart failure. We learned that she'd had a "silent" heart attack about four weeks ago. Recovery will be slow.

The Call

My father hugs me on my wedding day.

Twenty-five years ago, the phone rang. It was one of my four brothers, calling to let me know that my father had suffered a major heart attack and had not regained consciousness. He never did. Five days later, they removed the ventilator that kept him breathing; he died shortly thereafter.

Vintage

This was our wedding gift, sewn with love by my Aunt Betty in 1984. 

I believe that, until her final illness, Aunt Betty sewed every single day of her life. It was her great joy, and everyone in our family has an heirloom to remember her by. When she passed, my Aunt Betty left her vintage 1936 Singer sewing machine to my daughter Katie. I am lucky to be housing the beautiful machine until my daughter has a place in her home for it.

It's more than a little embarrassing, however, that it sat in our home for several years (I've lost track) before I finally got around to opening it up. That's partly because the drawers were so jam-packed with stuff that they wouldn't even close properly.

Kitchen Update: It's what's on the inside that counts.

A pretty kitchen is a wonderful thing, but if it is poorly organized, then its beauty really only runs skin deep. With our renovation, we really put a lot of emphasis on the organization behind of all our stuff -- the insides, as it were. So today, let's take a peek behind the doors and inside the drawers, to see what's lurking.

Suspending Judgment

From the Family Connections program developed by the
National Education Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder.

As Stephen and I continue facilitating the Family Connections program here in Ottawa, we frequently comment that the skills we develop in this course really apply to all of our relationships, not just our connection to a loved one with with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Relationship mindfulness is one of those skills.

Crushing

A hug from my dad on my wedding day.

My dad. Oh, my, could that man hug! It's as if it were his calling: hug the shit out everyone you love. And he loved a lot of people, especially his daughters. And nieces. And daughters-in-law. And grandchildren.

Statistics and Algorithms

K.B. Sterling, circa 1980

I've already done two retrospective posts on Facebook, and now, here I am, about to do one here on the blog. I'm not going to apologize, however, because I find these periods of looking back to be informative and comforting.

The interesting thing is that the automatically-generated memes don't really allow for much thought or explanation. For example, my Facebook slideshow didn't make much of one of the major events of my year: the premature and unexpected death of my friend K.B.