Shifting

...into a cooking zone, thanks to Cap who has taken over cooking-for-the-kids duty this week.

This afternoon, the CSA share arrived and I was able to take the time to put everything on the table and pick and choose what I was going to do with each veggie/fruit.

I made a sauté of kielbasa, onions and peppers; a sauté of mustard greens, garlic and walnuts; and Japanese style pickled salad turnips.

On deck for tomorrow: curried beef stew with coconut milk; carrot tofu scramble; apple sauce; and butternut squash stuffed with ground turkey.

My dinner tonight was so satisfying...the mustard greens sauté on Paleo bread with mayo.

I have two days left to finish Women Food and God (it's due back to the library after multiple renewals), so I picked it up again this afternoon.  There are some wonderful nuggets of wisdom in this book.  Here's a passage that resonated deeply for me:

"Or we pass by a bakery window and see a bear claw and we are suddenly convinced we have to have it now.  Convinced that we were born to be standing here, at this very window, about to walk into the bakery and get it, eat it.  Be transported to a bliss realm.  Meditation develops the capacity to question your mind.  Without it, you are at the mercy of every thought, every desire, every wave of emotion.  You become unhinged, dependent on whether things are going well that day or not.  Whether anyone has rejected you that day or not.  If nothing kicks up the "They Did Me Wrong" mix, or the "I Am Fat And Unloved And Will Always Be This Way" mix you might have a good eating day.  But if you pass a mirror and don't like what you see, if you have a fight with a friend, a partner, a boss, a child, there is nowhere to go but your mind, which usually means listening to one of the familiar whipped-up melodies.  And believing every word of it."

I found the following passage provocative...and reminiscent of things Vinny has said within the context of TCM and practicing Qigong.

"The mind, as Catherine Ingram says, is mad.  And this is very good news.  Because once you accept the madness, once you stop trying to reform what cannot be reformed, you can pay attention to what isn't mad.  Which, in my opinion, is one of the main purposes of meditation."

In this passage, Geneen Roth name checks one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver:

"In her poem "When Death Comes," Mary Oliver writes: "When it's over, I want to say: all my life/I was a bride married to amazement."
      Me, too.  I want a life of amazement.  I want to show up for what Zorba the Greek called "the whole catastrophe."  And after living through decades of being married to obsession and self-constructed suffering, I have found that being married to amazement means showing up in the only place from which to experience it: here, now, in this very moment.
     Usually, when people hear the word meditation, they think of transcending their clunky earthly plane.  The kind of meditation I refer to has nothing to do with transcending or leaving or changing yourself in any way---and everything to do with its opposite: showing up where you already are."

Off to be with Sag where he is...feeling very overwhelmed by the cleaning up of his room.

Peace and love.