This week’s recipe is Cardamom Rice Pilaf. Although a bowl of rice doesn’t allow for a gorgeous picture (see my attempt below), this is a delicious take-off on a Pilaf. I like the slight taste of the cardamom which is enhanced and tempered by the lemon zest. Perhaps I’d toss in some figs for additional flavor (not necessary, of course.) While I am still in Aspen, working in my condo kitchen, with limited cuisine resources, we women-folk were able to pull together a wonderful meal. Green salad. Salmon with Pesto. Cardamom Rice Pilaf. It worked. This picture is entitled: “Austine, Eating; Karen, Posing; Judy, Scooping“. (Ansel Adams, I am not but the gals were “game”.)
Following dinner, we saw the award-winning film “Queen of the Sun” , which, my fellow food bloggers, I URGE you all to see. This is a documentary about honeybees, with more sting to it than honey. These little tigers are disappearing at an incredibly alarming rate due to a phenomenon now called “Colony Collapse Disorder”. Bottom line, we need bees to survive so we can!
Today begins a mid-week Memo, SNAP OUT OF IT. Each SNAP will be a nifty clue to lift the blues, should you require that. These notions will be short, cheap and easily mastered. From fantastic to interesting and down the chute to absurdly ridiculous. Every SNAP works, guaranteed. I’ve utilized them all! Enjoy. Participate. If you have an idea, send and share.
Starting with absurdly ridiculous:
SNAP #1: In the dumper? Feeling low? Run to your local U.S. Post Office and buy stamps. No kidding. The best social life I have is the 20-to-30 minutes I wait in the U.S.P.S. queue. Strangers though we be, people chat, meet and greet. Kids run wild. Babies howl. And, those cell phones – the conversations I’ve heard! You’ll leave with stamps, a grin, and thinking, “My life really isn’t that bad.” — all compliments of Uncle Sam.
In late April, writer Alex Witchel wrote a compelling piece, “The Return of Ellen Barkin” for The New York Times Magazine. ( http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/magazine/mag-24barkin-t.html ) Presently, Barkin, an actress, is best remembered as the former fourth wife of multi-billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, chairman of Revlon. The six-year marriage, which ended in divorce in 2006, was stormy. The divorce, more turbulent.
Before we suffer tears or hand-wringing over Barkin’s plight, let me add that she’s landed on her feet. The shoes on those feet were probably Jimmy Choo or Manolo Blahniks’. Besides the $20 million-or-more settlement, Barkin’s not blabbing, she decided to bid her baubles ‘adieu” at a Christie’s auction.
Now, here’s the Wow factor? In just six years, Perleman had gifted her with more than 100 trinkets, which she cashed in for another $20 million. By my calculations, she received about 16 precious pieces of glitz and glitter every year. That’s something-very-special, every three weeks. Who has time to do that much shopping? Let me be frank, Ellen and I run in different social circles.
On her own terms, Barkin, who is 57, is certainly no slouch. By Witchel’s count, pre-Perleman, she’d already made 44 feature films and 7 television movies. Since the divorce, she’s added another 2 films, a television pilot and, in April, opened on Broadway in “Normal Heart” for which she’s been nominated for a Tony Award.
While all this is interesting, and, who doesn’t like a little gossip, what facinated me was her answer to Witchel’s inquiry , ‘So these days, when she [Barkin] wakes up at 3 a.m. worrying about something, what is it?’
“I don’t worry about my children, which is a good thing,” she said. I guess I worry about wierd existential things, like how do we spend our final act? I think, You’re 56 [now, 57] years old, what did you do? You raised two good kids. What am I going to do that is as meaningful as that?”
She continued, “I don’t know the answer yet. I guess I’m up thinking, Am I too old to start to absorb new things?”
Here’s when I start to realize that Barkin and I may have something in common. No one has ever asked me, but I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with a worry or two also. For my final act, what I call the fourth quarter, I know I want to be cast in the starring role. Although I’ll never win a Tony, it’s my life and I want to be in control of it. For a woman flying solo, that requires courage, good health, financial stability, and luck.
In the last two lines of “The Summer Day”, a wonderful poem by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver, she asks,
“What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Does our one wild and precious life have to be any less meaningful or productive or fruitful or imaginative now than when we were younger and engaged in the rigors of family and social lives, careers, and other timely pursuits? While lifestyle adjustments may seem overwhelming and health issues, challenging, can’t we still wring the most out of each day?
Someone who has done that very well is my former Aspen neighbor and long-time friend, Austine. Her life, as I observed it for 18 years, was meaningful, productive and fruitful. Austine, always active in the community, was happily on-the-run. Unfortunately, her husband, also a doctor, suffered from Alzheimer’s, and died four years ago. She was his caregiver the last nine years of his life. Recently I asked her about her new life as a single woman, a widow.
“So how do I cope with being alone?”, she wrote, in an e-mail. “The truth is I love being alone in my own home. I cook only if there is a quorum (2 or more). I realized just how much time it takes to cook, what with planning, shopping, preparation, eating, cleaning up, and I decided it wasn’t worth the time and effort.
I play lots of bridge, take walks, and read. I don’t seek out new friends but am open to them. I have traveled a good bit with a long-time friend from New York. I am in that sweet spot right now after not being able to go because I couldn’t leave my husband alone and before the physical decline sets in [for me]. I am making progress on my Bucket List. I don’t enjoy traveling or going to restaurants alone, so I don’t. I have not yet had to ask “Why do I bother?”. If I have a block of time, I have only to refer to My List, never mind those back-burner projects. I am able to spend time with my daughters and grandchildren now.
I do miss being part of a couple. I get twingey when I see a couple in a restaurant at a table for two, sharing a meal, looking as though they belong together. I miss my husband’s mind, human contact.
Am I happy? I am not unhappy. I am content. I am not sure what the next chapter is, but I am up for it.”
This is, it seems to me, what flying solo is all about, a time to imagine our possibilities, welcome our choices, and celebrate our differences. Like Austine, I’m a home-hugger, my safe place to hunker down, especially when times are rotten. Unlike her, I add cooking to the many hobbies and pastimes we both enjoy. Traveling alone? I like it. Another real treat, for me, is a nice restaurant for lunch. If need be, I’ll dine alone. And, while, like Austine, I’ve never met “bored”, I do admit to sometimes wondering, “Why do I bother?” I also rejoice in my family but miss the couple-dom, especially the male/female repartee. As a former business journalist at a time when the majority of my subjects, sources and sidekicks, were men, I like mixing it up with smart men. Because I’m in a different place emotionally, remaining a caretaker, I’m still peddling towards contentment, still trying to find my path.
“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experiences.”
I’ve gone rogue this week, definitely am off message. Mustard Bâtons is not the recipe scheduled for today. Forgive me French Friday Foodies, never again, pinkie swear. But, I just arrived for a month’s stay in my Aspen condo, drove through a snowstorm in Utah to get here, and found my kitchen presently ill-equipped for cooking. Dorie’s Bâtons are 5-ingredient hor d’oeuvres with a sublime kick and an easy preparation. Variations, galore. Freeze like champs. I’ll pair Sancerre with these delightful strips of goodness, throw my long-time Aspen friends in the mix and revel in my own “Rocky Mountain High”. Merci, Ms. Greenspan.
Over the week-end I became a DIVA, a role I have been auditioning for and failing miserably at for more than six decades. According to most dictionaries, the word was originally meant to describe a woman of rare, outstanding talent. The Italian word ‘divina’, meaning “divine”, is a derivative of the Latin word diva, meaning “divine one.” So, there you go.
While pleading to not being divine but with visions of Kate, wearing the Queen’s glittery tiara, still in my head, I’m feeling royal. Having just purchased a crown at K-Mart, tacky though it may be, it’s plopped on my head as I pen this Post. Fully registered as Mary, the Tango Diva, (which translates loosely to travel goddess), the moniker fits as awkwardly as my crown. It’s just amazing who you can become on-line these days!
“One certainty, when you travel, is the moment you arrive in a foreign country, the American dollar will fall like a stone“. Erma Bombeck
This nonsense all began after a conversation with my friend, Judy, about traveling alone, without a playmate. Empowered, knowledgeable, and armed with enough hi-tech equipment to wire the world, modern young women are flying solo to faraways in increasingly growing numbers. No furrowed brow or tsk, tsk, tsk, from family or friends, as they grab their backpacks or Tumi satchels, and hit the road.
Traveling alone is not common for my Generation. When I was a young, women rarely travelled to foreign and exotic destinations by themselves. According to a recent AARP report, over 76 million people, Baby Boomers, represent the largest single population growth in US history. Born between 1946 and 1964, about 7,000 are turning 65 daily. Many are women, single, in good physical and financial health, who have caught the travel bug. Despite the obstacles, and there are many, they are applying for passports, exchanging dollars for foreign currency, and dropping the dog at the kennel. If women our age want to be wild, it may be the “blue yonder”, they’re after.
“When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money”. Unknown
Travelling solo is no obstacle to my three friends, Judy, Ardyth and Michelle, who may be more qualified for diva-hood than me. Interestingly, these gals span, age-wise, three generations, being 64, 51 and 70. (Ages are jumbled to protect the friendships!) While none of them throw caution to the wind, they do know how to control it, by thoughtful pre-planning, careful scheduling and painstaking organization. Readers, this is not the time nor are we at the age, to do anything on ‘a wing and a prayer’.
That being said, the manner in which these women travel dovetails nicely into their personalities.
Ardyth is a gutzy woman, brilliant, always pushing the boundaries. No, let me be truthful here. If there’s a border, she is probably on the other side of it. Although she has traveled throughout the world with her family, many of her solo trips have been in her role as a educator. In that capacity, her most challenging have been six month-junkets, on Fulbright Fellowships, in the Ukraine (Spring 2004, just prior to the Orange Revolution) and Latvia (January-July, 2010).
Although just getting to these destinations, armed with six months of apparel, medicines, and technical equipment, would be daunting, finding a secure apartment and navigating a new city safely is even more so. After throwing in university teaching, some by translation; a half-mile, cold Winter walk to the bus stop each morning; and navigating the rigors of a daily routine, you have to wonder if these were borders worth crossing. To Ardyth, the answer is always an enpowering, “jā”.
“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.”Susan Sontag
Judy, who is well-read, intelligent, thoughtfully low-key but indefatigable, just returned from spending three weeks in her only destination-of-choice, the City of Lights. Having studied French in school and still being tutored privately, Judy and I met in 2007, when we were both enrolled in a 30-day language immersion course at the Institut de Français in Villefranche. I have never known Judy to be somewhere, meet some stranger, and not make a friend-for-life. Luckily for me, four years ago, I was her stranger-in-paradise.
Prior to her solo Paris trips, Judy spends hours, even days, on her computer, scrolling through rental apartment after apartment, pouring over Sites. Although, she always nestles into an apartment in a 17th Century building on the Île Saint-Louis, this gal knows what’s available in every arrondisement! Unlike me, Judy doesn’t attack a destination, she strolls through it. For example, when I was recently in Madrid, I spent a day in the Prado and “knocked-off” the Top 100 Paintings in six hours. Armed with a list, I dashed, I saw and I conquered. Pride in my accomplishment has now succombed to the embarrassment of attaining my goal. Judy prefers a more intimate approach, with a casualness that belies her growth and keen sense of understanding this complex city.
“Most travel is best of all in the anticipation or the remembering; the reality has more to do with losing your luggage”. Regina Nadelson
Everyone needs an over-achiever in her life, and, for me, that’s my friend, Michelle, who is not only a lawyer and judge but also a professionally-trained Chef. When I spend an evening with her, it always makes me want to ‘pick up my game.‘ She’s smart, fun, ambitious, and about to embark on a week-long intensive travel/food writing seminar in Italy. Why not? If three jobs aren’t enough, let’s aim for another! Although traveling alone, she’s been in constant e-mail contact with other classmates and has already made plans for sharing cars, rooms and costs. Michelle is going to be my first Guest Blogger and will be writing about her solo traveling experiences on her return. We’ll wait for her own observations.
If you wish to be a Tango Diva, are thinking about a solo journey, or are just curious about traveling alone, go to Google and go crazy. There are an amazing number of good Sites to explore. If you want to be a Diva, in your own eyes, start first at “Tango Diva, An Online Travel Magazine & Social Network for Women Travelers & Solo Travel.” http://tangodiva.com/
“When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.” Clifton Fadiman
I’ve gone rogue this week, definitely am off message. Mustard Bâtons is not the recipe scheduled for today. Forgive me French Friday Foodies, never again, pinkie swear. But, I just arrived for a month’s stay in my Aspen condo, drove through a snowstorm in Utah to get here, and found my kitchen presently ill-equipped for cooking. Dorie’s Bâtons are 5-ingredient hor d’oeuvres with a sublime kick and an easy preparation. Variations, galore. Freeze like champs. I’ll pair Sancerre with these delightful strips of goodness, throw my long-time Aspen friends in the mix and revel in my own “Rocky Mountain High”. Merci, Ms. Greenspan.
