Roasted Butternut Squash

A couple of people asked for my recipe for roasted pear and butternut squash with walnuts, so I am sharing it here.

1 butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cubed (1 inch cubes)
3 firm pears, cored and cubed
1/4 cup walnut pieces
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
2 teaspoons of sugar (optional)
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon (optional)

Combine cubed squash, pears, walnuts and olive oil.
Spread mixture in a single layer on a sheet pan.
Season with salt, pepper, sugar and cinnamon.

Roast in a 375 degree oven for 30 minutes. Stir gently and roast another 15 minutes or until as done as you like it.

I roasted mine before I put the turkey in the oven, then reheated it in a casserole dish for 30 minutes after the turkey came out.

I have a lot to be thankful for this year.

Here is one of my favorite hymns in honor of the season.

For the beauty of the earth,
for the glory of the skies,
for the love which from our birth
over and around us lies;
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.

For the beauty of each hour
of the day and of the night,
hill and vale, and tree and flower,
sun and moon, and stars of light;
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.

For the joy of ear and eye,
for the heart and mind's delight,
for the mystic harmony,
linking sense to sound and sight;
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.

For the joy of human love,
brother, sister, parent, child,
friends on earth and friends above,
for all gentle thoughts and mild;
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.

For thy church, that evermore
lifteth holy hands above,
offering up on every shore
her pure sacrifice of love;
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.

For thyself, best Gift Divine,
to the world so freely given,
for that great, great love of thine,
peace on earth, and joy in heaven:
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.


Folliot S. Pierpoint

A Poem for David

My son has a complicated relationship with the woman who shares his (2 bedroom) apartment. He never knows what she wants.

The following is poetry for thought.

Rent

If you want my apartment, sleep in it
but let’s have a clear understanding:
the books are still free agents.

If the rocking chair’s arms surround you
they can also let you go,
they can shape the air like a body.

I don’t want your rent, I want
a radiance of attention
like the candle’s flame when we eat.

I mean a kind of awe
attending the spaces between us—
Not a roof but a field of stars.

Jane Cooper

A Poem for Veronica

I got my annual rating at work today. I wasn't pleased. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Liar

Mary Karr

Swept overboard, unconscious in the breakers,
strangled with seaweed, may you wake up in a gelid
surf, your teeth, already cracked into the shingle
now set rattling by the wind, while facedown,
helpless as a poison cur, on all fours, you puke
brine reeking of dead fish. May those you meet,
barbarians as ugly as their souls are hateful,
treat you to the moldy wooden bread of slaves.
And may you, with your split teeth sunk in that,
smile, then, the way you did when speaking as my friend.

Halloween

The scariest part of Halloween for me these days is the candy. I'm doing pretty good these days with healthy eating - I'm eating my fruits & vegetables, getting plenty of fiber, eating fish a couple times a week, choosing brown rice and black beans - but those little Snickers bars just call out to me. One is never enough. Five is not too many. My husband is going to take the left overs into his office tomorrow, if there are any.

Here's a creepy little poem I've always enjoyed this time of year.

Karl Krolow
translated by Herman Salinger

Someone, in the twilight, is taking a walk
And singing.

The wolf from the fable
Is in flight.

The wild plum thickets
Hover before him.
The man in the moon
Starts up out of the yellow straw
Whenever anyone goes past.

The wind’s hand rubs
The hazel nuts
Whenever the darkness
Likes anybody.

Somebody takes the night
Upon his shoulders,
Gives love her names,
And the hands of the dead
Begin again in the dust
To stir.

Enough

I've had enough of working. It's not fun any more.
But do I have enough money to retire?
Who knows?

Somehow the following poem sums up my mood today.


Enough

Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
Until now.

David Whyte, Where Many Rivers Meet

Don't Forget to Be Happy

I just responded to a post on one of my teams. The team leader was asking what we did to stay positive. I liked my answer well enough to share it as a blog.

My Dad is my role model for a positive attitude.

He was born in 1913.

He remembers the great flu epidemic of 1918. The whole family got sick, but they all survived.

His older brother drowned in the Mississippi River when my Dad was about 16. Because the family was poor, my Dad had to drop out of high school after the tragedy and go to work. He was happy to be strong and healthy and able to find work.

He survived the Great Depression. He worked for a while in a Civilian Conservation Corps Camp in northern Minnesota. He says he enjoyed it. They fed him well and he earned money to send home to his mother and younger siblings.

He survived World War II. He was in the Signal Corps, and he says that kept him alive. The radio boys weren't the first ones ashore in the South Pacific, so fewer of them got shot. He was proud of being a soldier, and he met my Mom in New Zealand during the war, so he is always positive about his war experience.

He did factory work, supported my mother and 4 kids. My mother went through college with my Dad's support, and he was immensely proud of her. He taught me that I could accomplish anything with hard work and education.

After retiring from his factory job, my Dad worked another 10 years as a cook at a church operated day care center. He loved cooking, and loved the little kids.

My Dad is 97 now. He forgets what day it is, but remembers his long life with happiness. He enjoys the VA home he's in. He says they feed him well, and the bed is soft, what more could he want.

Any time I get discouraged I think of my Dad, and all that he was able to overcome and accomplish and survive. I'm going to keep working hard, and stay happy.

Billy Collins wrote a wonderful poem about forgetfulness that I'm going to share today. It makes me think of my Dad, too.

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses good-bye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of you spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Billy Collins

Two Friends Met for Lunch

This blog was written for my weight loss web site, exploring some of the differences in people's attitudes towards food.


Two friends met at a diner for gossip and lunch. I’m calling the thin friend Bitsy and the ample friend Betsy.

Bitsy barely glanced at the menu and set it aside. She knew what she wanted. Betsy studied the menu avidly, looking at all the options, and wondered what she should eat. She was on a diet, as she always was.

The waitress came and Bitsy ordered a cheeseburger with lettuce and tomato, fries and a coke. Betsy sighed and ordered a chef salad with (after some hesitation) blue cheese dressing, and iced tea. “Sweet tea or regular?” asked the waitress. Betsy hesitated again then said “sweet – after all, I’m getting a salad – and I love sweet tea”.

The waitress brought the drinks. Bitsy set hers aside. Betsy took a long swallow and said, “I wish I was thin like you so I could eat anything I wanted. You must have a good metabolism. Everything I eat turns to fat.”

Bitsy shrugged. “I never really thought about it.”

The food came.

Bitsy removed the top bun of the burger, along with the lettuce and tomato and both slices of cheese. She took a paper napkin and blotted the top of the burger, turned it over to blot the other side, studied the cheese for a moment, then replaced one slice and left the other sitting on the discarded top of the bun. She added back the tomato and lettuce, picked up her fork and knife and cut off a small bite of burger, being careful to get a bit of tomato, lettuce and cheese in the bite. She put down her fork and knife, took one small sip of coke, and began to share some juicy gossip.

Betsy picked up the gravy boat full of blue cheese dressing and poured it over her salad. In the salad bowl was a head of iceberg lettuce, a tomato cut in wedges, 2 hard boiled eggs, cut in halves, a chopped cucumber, an ounce of American cheese, an ounce of Swiss cheese, an ounce of turkey and an ounce of ham. She mixed in the dressing and started to eat steadily, stopping only for long swallows of sweet tea.

Bitsy studied her fries, carefully picking out those that were too dark or too pale, setting them aside by the cast off bun and cheese. She ate half a large fry, another bite of burger, and had a small sip of coke.

By the time Bitsy had eaten her third bite of burger and her third French fry, Betsy had eaten half her salad and was signaling the waitress for more sweet tea.

I think you can see where this is going. Betsy consumed her entire salad, along with half a cup of blue cheese dressing, two glasses of sweet tea, and two packages of saltines. Bitsy ate about ¾ of her stripped down cheeseburger, eight fries, and drank half her coke.

Bitsy left satisfied. She hadn’t eaten a lot of fruits or vegetables for lunch, but she didn’t really think about it. She’d eaten a big bowl of strawberries for breakfast, and was planning to have salmon and green beans for dinner, with a baked sweet potato.

Betsy felt deprived. She thought of her lunch as “rabbit food” and was already anticipating a candy bar mid afternoon to make up for her “diet” lunch. She still blamed her metabolism for her weight problem.

Which friend are you?


Here is a poem I’ve always like. It reminds me of the special relationship between parent and child.

Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road?

Don't fill up on bread
I say absent-mindedly
The servings here are huge

My son, whose hair may be
receding a bit, says
Did you really just
say that to me?

What he doesn't know
is that when we're walking
together, when we get
to the curb
I sometimes start to reach
for his hand

Robert Hershon

Pick One - Get Moving

Adapted Aquatics
Bowling
Circuit Training
Dancing
Elliptical
Free Weights
Gardening
Hiking
Inclined Treadmill
Jump Rope
Kick Boxing
Lacrosse
Miniature Golf
Nautilus
Off Road Biking
Pilates
Quoits
Rowing
Swimming
Tennis
Ultimate Challenge
Volley Ball
Wii Fit
X-treme Fitness
Yoga
Zumba

Come up with a list of your own.



And if you happen to find Jesus at the bowling alley, think of this poem.


Heaven on Earth

I saw Jesus at the bowling alley,
slinging nothing but gutter balls.
He said, "You've gotta love a hobby
that allows ugly shoes."
He lit a cigarette and bought me a beer.
So I invited him to dinner.

I knew the Lord couldn't see my house
in its current condition, so I gave it an out
of season spring cleaning. What to serve
for dinner? Fish—the logical
choice, but after 2000 years, he must grow weary
of everyone's favorite seafood dishes.
I thought of my Granny's ham with Coca Cola
glaze, but you can't serve that to a Jewish
boy. Likewise pizza—all my favorite
toppings involve pork.

In the end, I made us an all-dessert buffet.
We played Scrabble and Uno and Yahtzee
and listened to Bill Monroe.
Jesus has a healthy appetite for sweets,
I'm happy to report. He told strange
stories which I've puzzled over for days now.

We've got an appointment for golf on Wednesday.
Ordinarily I don't play, and certainly not in this humidity.
But the Lord says he knows a grand miniature
golf course with fiberglass mermaids and working windmills
and the best homemade ice cream you ever tasted.
Sounds like Heaven to me.

Kristin Berkey-Abbott

I originally posted this blog on my weight loss site, where exercise is a key component of weight control.

April is National Poetry Month, Part 4

In the Washington DC area, politics is local news. Just as Iowans follow hog futures, the folks here in Northern Virginia pay attention to what’s going on in Congress. The big news recently was the budget fight and the possible shut down of the Federal Government. Congress seems to have forgotten that they are there to run the country, not just to get reelected.

The following poem by Alicia Suskin Ostriker was published in 2005 and still seems relevant. I heard it one morning on the radio, on The Writer’s Almanac, one of my favorite sources for new poetry. The link is below.

Fix

The puzzled ones, the Americans, go through their lives
Buying what they are told to buy,
Pursuing their love affairs with the automobile,

Baseball and football, romance and beauty,
Enthusiastic as trained seals, going into debt, struggling —
True believers in liberty, and also security,

And of course sex — cheating on each other
For the most part only a little, mostly avoiding violence
Except at a vast blue distance, as between bombsight and earth,

Or on the violent screen, which they adore.
Those who are not Americans think Americans are happy
Because they are so filthy rich, but not so.

They are mostly puzzled and at a loss
As if someone pulled the floor out from under them,
They'd like to believe in God, or something, and they do try.

You can see it in their white faces at the supermarket and the gas station
— Not the immigrant faces, they know what they want,
Not the blacks, whose faces are hurt and proud —

The white faces, lipsticked, shaven, we do try
To keep smiling, for when we're smiling, the whole world
Smiles with us, but we feel we've lost

That loving feeling. Clouds ride by above us,
Rivers flow, toilets work, traffic lights work, barring floods, fires
And earthquakes, houses and streets appear stable

So what is it, this moon-shaped blankness?
What the hell is it? America is perplexed.
We would fix it if we knew what was broken.


writersalmanac.publicrad
io.org/index.php?date=2008
/04/17

April is National Poetry Month, Part 3

Sometimes poetry is just fun, like the following poem that my daughter brought to my attention a couple of years ago.

I like this poem, too, because it reminds me that opportunity doesn’t always look like opportunity. We should be open to what the Universe brings us and not flush it down the drain because we are afraid, or even sadder, because we don’t feel worthy.

Hazel Tells LaVerne

last night
im cleanin out my
howard johnsons ladies room
when all of a sudden
up pops this frog
musta come from the sewer
swimmin aroun an tryin ta
climb up the sida that bowl
so i goes ta flushm down
but sohelpmegod he starts talkin
bout a golden ball
an how i can be a princess
me a princess
well my mouth drops
all the way to the floor
an he says
kiss me just kiss me
once on the nose
well i screams
ya little green pervert
an i hitsm with my mop
an has ta flush
the toilet down three times
me
a princess

Katharyn Howd Machan

If my want to know more about Machan, link to the following web page. She sounds fascinating, particularly the part about being a belly dancer.

faculty.ithaca.edu/macha
n/

April in National Poetry Month, Part 2

My dear on line friend VALERIEMAHA shared this wonderful poem with me and suggested I pass it along for National Poetry month, something I am delighted to do.
Read and enjoy.

By Ted Hughes

Because it is occasionally possible, just for brief moments,
to find the words that will unlock the doors of all those many mansions inside
the head and express something - perhaps not much, just something - of the crush of
information that presses in on us from the way a crow flies over
and the way a man walks and the look of a street and from what we did
one day a dozen years ago.

Words that will express something of the deep complexity that makes us
precisely the way we are, from the momentary effect of the barometer to the
force that created men distinct from trees.

Something of the inaudible music that moves us along in our bodies from
moment to moment like water in a river.

Something of the spirit of the snowflake in the water of the river.

Something of the duplicity and the relativity and the merely fleeting quality
of all this.

Something of the almighty importance of it and something of the utter
meaninglessness.

And when words can manage something of this, and manage it in a moment,
of time, and in that same moment, make out of it all the vital signature of a human being
- not of an atom, or of a geometrical diagram, or of a heap of lenses -
but a human being, we call it poetry.

April is National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month, so I am sharing the following poem by Edna St Vincent Millay. Just read it, and make of it what you will.


Edna St Vincent Millay
Spring

To what purpose April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only underground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.


Did you know Edna St Vincent Millay died falling down a flight of uncarpeted stairs?

changing everything carefully

We had snow here last night, but by noon it was all melted. When I spoke to my Dad this morning I told him about the snow and he said “It’s kind of late in March for snow.” I am delighted that at 97 he is still oriented enough to know that.

The following poem speaks of “changing everything carefully.” For the last year and a half that’s what I’ve been doing – changing everything carefully – not all at once, not big changes, but real changes.

This is one of my favorite poems for spring.

e.e.cummings


Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and from moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

What Do I Want to Be?

When I was young, I wanted to be an architect, an actuary, or a physical therapist. I was actually accepted into a graduate program in physical therapy, but I met my husband and got married instead. I have never regretted that decision, but it did change my life. I started working for the Federal Government in 1973, and except for a few years off when my children were born and we lived in Bermuda, I have worked there ever since. My job is interesting, challenging, sensitive, and well paid. I have a thousand stories, but I can’t tell them. I’ve been a front line manager with my agency since 1989, and anyone who has ever managed other employees knows that adds a whole new level of challenge, as well as a lot of stories.

Well, now I am thinking seriously about retiring within the next year, and it suddenly occurred to me that if I live to my father’s age I will be retired for 35 years. What am I going to do with those years? What do I want to be now?

It’s too late to be a physical therapist, but not too late to do volunteer work at the County Recreation Center in the adapted aquatics program. I can’t be an architect, but I have a new camera and I can learn photography. I have my health back. I could move to California and bug my daughter full time. (Just kidding, dear)

So tell me – what did you want to do when you grew up? Did you do it? If you are retired, what are you doing to keep busy?

Here is a poem by John Engman about wanting to be one thing, and settling for something else.

WORK

I wanted to be a rain salesman,
because rain makes the flowers grow,
but because of certain diversions and exhaustions,
certain limitations and refusals and runnings low,
because of chills and pressures, shaky prisms, big blows,
and apes climbing down from banana trees, and dinosaurs
weeping openly by glacial shores, and sunlight warming
the backsides of Adam and Eve in Eden ...
I am paid
to make the screen of my computer glow, radioactive
leakage bearing the song of the smart money muse:
this little bleep went to market, this little clunk has none.

The woman who works the cubicle beside me has pretty knees
and smells of wild blossoms, but I am paid to work
my fingers up and down the keys, an almost sexy rhythm,
king of the chimpanzees picking fleas from his beloved.
I wanted to be a rain salesman , but that's a memory
I keep returning to my childhood for minor repairs:
the green sky cracking, then rain, and after,
those flowers growing faster than I can name them,
those flowers that fix me and make me stare.

I wanted to be a rain salesman,
carrying my satchel full of rain from door to door,
selling thunder, selling the way air feels after a downpour,
but there were no openings in the rain department,
and so they left me dying behind this desk—adding bleeps,
subtracting clunks—and I would give a bowl of wild blossoms,
some rain, and two shakes of my fist at the sky to be living.
Above my desk, lounging in a bed of brushstrokes flowers,
a woman beckons from my cheap Modigliani print, and I know
by the way she gazes that she sees something beautiful
in me. She has green eyes. I am paid to ignore her.

Everything Round is Good

I never hated my body, even when I weighed 70 pounds more than I weigh now. I was disappointed that my body was breaking down, health-wise, with the high blood sugar, cholesterol, blood pressure. I was bummed out when walking up a flight of stairs left me winded. But I never hated myself for being that way. My body was still capable of some wonderful things and I appreciated it. Oddly enough, I think that self appreciation actually helped me in my weight loss. Once I made up my mind to be healthier and look better, I knew I was worth it, I knew I was capable. I loved myself enough to make the effort.

Today I'm sharing a poem by Jane Yolen .

Fat Is Not a Fairy Tale

I am thinking of a fairy tale,
Cinder Elephant,
Sleeping Tubby,
Snow Weight,
where the princess is not
anorexic, wasp-waisted,
flinging herself down the stairs.

I am thinking of a fairy tale,
Hansel and Great,
Repoundsel,
Bounty and the Beast,
where the beauty
has a pillowed breast,
and fingers plump as sausage.

I am thinking of a fairy tale
that is not yet written,
for a teller not yet born,
for a listener not yet conceived,
for a world not yet won,
where everything round is good:
the sun, wheels, cookies, and the princess.