Simply Norma – Page 83 – Living Simply

Minnesota Orchestra

My husband and I went to hear the Minnesota Orchestra in Minneapolis last week for the first time. It was also the first time we walked around downtown Minneapolis with its beautiful tall architectural buildings.

I found this sidewalk sculpture intriguing — I believe the rusted look is natural.

Minnesota Sidewalk Sculpture — Minneapolis Sidewalk Sculpture

Some of the downtown area reminded me of Spokane, Washington as they had sky bridges going from building to building. I don’t see these too often in the cities I’ve visited.

On the side of one of the buildings we passed was a musical mural that caught my attention as it loomed in spite of everything around it. I wonder who made this mural … anyone know?

After dinner, we walked to the Orchestra Hall. It looked a lot smaller on the outside than I expected although I’m not sure why I had any expectations since I don’t frequent orchestra halls very often.

We arrived a little early so we sat and waited until the pre-symphony performance was over. We could have attended this performance also but chose instead to walk around the downtown area and have dinner. We weren’t the only ones early though. Soon enough we handed in our tickets and went to find our balcony seats on the second floor.

I think we had one of the best seats as we could see everything and everyone and the music sounded great from here. The orchestra hall lighting was not very conducive to picture taking so the couple pictures I did take didn’t turn out very well.

I was pretty impressed with the inside of the hall and felt happy in my belly. I’m not sure why but I think I smiled throughout the whole performance.

The performance we chose to see was Vanska Conducts Beethoven. The violinist, Jennifer Frautschi, was impressive although sometimes it looked like her arm was tired from holding the violin as she shook it rather vigorously a couple of times between sets.

The music director, Osmo Vanska, was quite spry and his whole body moved with the music as he was directing. I could tell that he has a passion for the work he does as his directing was so intense. What a great job he did! He is now in his ninth season in Minnesota and has led the Orchestra on four major European tours.

One of my favorite pieces that was played was Wheat Dance which is part of a Ballet Suite from Estancia. It made me feel calm. A second piece they played that was quite upbeat and I enjoyed was part of Symphony No. 6 in F major, Opus 68, Pastoral and was called Andante molto moto: Scene by the brook.

My mother-in-law gave us these tickets for Christmas and we are so appreciative that she chose this unique gift. We will have to go back sometime as we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Minnesota Spring

Spring in Minnesota is very different than Seattle. At least where I’ve been, I haven’t seen very many azaleas or rhododendrons and one couldn’t walk a block without seeing one of those bushes in Seattle. Part of it, I’m sure, is that our neighborhood is considered “woods” so not much sunlight penetrates the ground.

The pollen count was high the other day and I couldn’t stop sneezing. One “trick” that both Dr. Oz and my doctor recommend to help with handling allergies is to buy a nose saline solution spray and use it in the morning and also at night. It’s worked for me quite well except for that one day.

I enjoy looking at the buds on trees and bushes. New growth is always beautiful even in its early stages.

Another thing we don’t see too much of are tulips as the deer eat them up as if they were drinking water. I don’t know why they don’t eat the daffodils though.

On a recent walk, we spotted an albino (white) squirrel. Apparently there are quite a few towns that “fight” over who has the most or the best looking albino squirrels. I was just happy to have spotted one.

Ahhh … spring.

Lastly, I found an old wasp nest. This thing is huge and I believe it’s from last year as there were no wasps flying to and fro. One of the advantages of being short is that I’m always looking “up” so I see things that my tall husband normally wouldn’t see.

It’s a blessing that I am able to enjoy these little snippets of nature even though I have not found an appreciation yet for the bugs of this world.

This morning the news people announced that because we’ve had a few days of colder weather overnight, the mosquitoes have been kept at bay. Whew! That’s another blessing I’m thankful for.

Lentil Yogurt Soup

My attempt to make an old favorite of mine, Lentil Spinach Soup, failed miserably due to the problem I had with the brown lentils turning purple. Since I don’t consider myself a chef, nor a basic chef for that matter, I was quite frustrated and wasn’t sure what to do since I had spinach and onions that I had chopped up for my soup that I felt I had to use.

I’m truly not sure what happened next as I normally have trouble cooking unless I have a recipe but a sudden sense of adventure surged up inside me. I took this surge in stride and went to the cupboard to see how I could salvage dinner without calling the pizza restaurant.

Inside the cupboard I found a large bag of unopened red split lentils. Hmmm, I wondered, are all lentils made the same? (The answer is no but I didn’t find that out until my cooking trial was over.)

This experimental soup was truly and my pulse quickened as I tried to figure out what I was doing not having ventured into the “try it and see” realm of cooking too often.

But I have to say — this soup was great!! I loved the texture and taste. My husband did not like the texture though. For me it felt so soft (can soup feel soft?) — I think the correct cooking term might be “velvety.” Well, try it. It had no hint of the lentils after I completed my experiment.

Ingredients

8 cups of water
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
1 onion, chopped
1 tablespoon dried thyme
1 tablespoon dried basil
1 bag of spinach or 1 fresh bunch, chopped
4 medium red or Yukon potatoes, diced
2 cups of red lentils, rinsed
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
3/4 cup Greek yogurt

Directions

In a soup pot, add the water, red split lentils and the bay leaves then boil until the lentils are cooked — 20 to 30 minutes approximately
In a skillet, add the oil and heat until bubbly
Add the garlic to the oil and stir for a few seconds then add the onion and cook until they are translucent
Turn your skillet heat to low, add the thyme and basil then stir
In a medium sized pot, add the potatoes and water to just cover the potatoes. Allow the water to boil and cook the potatoes until a fork inserted in the middle of one of the diced cubes comes out soft then set this aside
In the skillet, add half of the chopped spinach and stir until it’s mixed in well with the onion mixture
Add the rest of the spinach and stir
Once the lentils are cooked, lower the heat then add the cooked potatoes (including the water) and add the onion-spinach mixture that’s in the skillet
Stir everything together and let it cook through for about 10 minutes
Add the red wine vinegar to the soup and cook another 5 minutes
When the soup is ready, taste and make sure the seasoning is to your liking, ie does it need more salt, thyme, basil? Let your palette be the judge. If you add more seasoning, allow a few minutes for them to cook through in the pot
Let the soup cool for 10-15 minutes
In a blender, add 1/4 of the soup and some of the yogurt then blend them together
Continue adding soup then yogurt until you have a smooth consistency

As you combine the soup with the yogurt in the blender, use a large bowl to pour the readied soup into.

Once all the soup and yogurt have been combined, transfer the soup back to the pot and serve.

It really was delicious so enjoy!

What I learned:

All lentils are not the same as the red split lentils cook quickly and can become mushy which is why I decided to blend the ingredients in a blender

Chicago Rabbit

It feels odd for me to walk around the inner city of Chicago and see … a rabbit.

He stood quite still as I took a picture of him and only hopped away as I got a little closer. What are rabbits doing in Chicago, I wonder? If they are pets then this one must have gotten loose. Perhaps someone had a pet, it had too many babies and they just let it go? With busy streets nearby, a hospital, a church, filled parking lots but no parks, it feels odd.

Quite odd. And, it reminds me of a camp song I used to sing …

I Love A Rabbit

I love a rabbit
A crazy, crazy rabbit
Hop, hop, bunny, bunny, hop, hop bunny, bunny
Hop, hop, ho, ho, hop, hop.

He loves carrots
He’s crazy over carrots
Chew, chew, bunny, bunny, chew, chew, bunny, bunny
Chew, chew, ho, ho, chew, chew

When we go to sleep at night
I kiss he and he kiss I
But if he’s been a such and such
He has to sleep in the rabbit hutch

Oh — I love a rabbit
A crazy, crazy rabbit
Hop, hop, bunny, bunny, hop, hop bunny, bunny
Hop, hop, ho, ho, hop, hop

Yeah, ok, maybe I’m the one going crazy! Â (laughing)Â

Eggless Blueberry Muffins

I woke up one day wanting to making blueberry muffins. Ever have one of those days where you just have an urge for a particular food? It doesn’t happen very often to me, well, unless it’s chocolate. (laughing)

But, I had a problem. I had no eggs. I looked high and low in all of my recipe books and couldn’t find one recipe that did not include eggs. So, I started a search on the internet and found a good recipe. The muffins came out light and “soft.”

Ingredients

2 cups All Purpose Flour
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon lemon juice
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup of milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1 cup frozen blueberries, unthawed

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees fahrenheit for 15 minutes
Lightly grease a muffin tin
In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking soda and salt
In a large bowl, combine the sugar, milk, oil, lemon juice and vinegar then mix this all together
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ones and stir until it’s just combined — don’t over-stir or the muffins will come out tough instead of soft
Gently fold in the blueberries
Fill the muffin tin about 2/3 full of the batter
Bake until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean (about 20 minutes but ovens vary so check after 15 minutes and make the necessary adjustments)
When done, remove from the oven, let the muffins cool for about 5 minutes then move the muffins to a rack to cool

The original recipe calls for unbleached flour but I don’t believe it matters. I also made the following adjustments from the original recipe:

Instead of using 2 lemons, I used already made lemon juice I bought at the store
I used vegetable oil instead of canola oil
I used apple cider vinegar instead of white vinegar
I halved the recipe and it came out fine (the recipe above is for 12 muffins)

This recipe (I hear) can alsoÂ be made with rice or soy milk if you want the recipe to be vegan. Â Enjoy!

(The original recipe can be found at Eggless Cooking.)

Lentil Disaster

Since the weather in Minnesota has decided to go back to what it should be (in the 40’s), I decided to make soup but not just any ordinary soup — lentil soup. Yum!

Unfortunately, as the picture above shows, the soup I was trying to make was not going to be successful — at least not following the recipe I was using. I don’t understand it as I’ve made this soup so many times and have never had any problems. The recipe said to put the lentils in 7 cups of water and add 2 bay leaves. That was not a problem.

I used water that was filtered through my Brita instead of tap water. And then, I let it boil and this is what I got …

Yeah, what happened? I really don’t know and continued to be baffled by it.

I decided to turn on the scientific side of my brain (which is pretty much non-existent) and determine the cause of this, uh, disaster. It has to be the water or the bay leaves, I reasoned, so I took a smaller pot, added filtered water from the refrigerator and the 2 bay leaves then let it boil.

Okay — the bay leaves boiling in the water are fine.

Then I added brown lentils. Oh dear! What is happening??

One last scientific experiment, I thought. I put filtered water in a pot and added red lentils instead of the brown ones and they boiled just fine.

I never knew that lentils could go bad. I can recall having a bag of lentils in my cupboard, opened or unopened, for a couple years and never having this problem. And I’ve never had to remove the lentils from the bag they came to store them in a container as I’ve read others have done.

A search on the internet revealed that there are various thoughts on whether lentils can go bad. One person said that you should use the lentils within 12 months although they shouldn’t go bad. Another person said that lentils last a lifetime. Have you ever had this experience?

These lentils didn’t last a lifetime. In fact, I’ve only had this bag of lentils for 6 months or so.

What happened to my lentil soup? Well, I wound up using red lentils and changing the recipe completely around using the basic lentil recipe but with a few changes. More on that later.

Thoughts anyone?

Easter Sunday

The Friday before Easter Sunday, I went to the local grocery store for some weekend groceries and read a sign that they had posted which read “Closed Easter Sunday.” That seemed a little odd to me but since I normally do my groceries during the week it wasn’t going to impact my life so I didn’t worry about it.

Sunday morning arrived and we decided we would go out for breakfast braving the mass crowds who would be there since we had a late start to our day. Arriving at the Woodbury Cafe, we expected long lines of people waiting since we arrived around 10 a.m. Â Much to our delight we walked in and were seated right away. Looking around, the waiters & waitresses weren’t busy but were relaxed having casual conversations.

Service was good as usual and when we were ready to leave we noticed that there still weren’t many people here. Where were the mass of people exiting the Sunday Easter services, I wondered, as normal Sundays here are quite busy.

Our goal for the day was to buy curtain rods as we are hanging curtain panels in our living room. Heading to Bed, Bath and Beyond we took notice that the parking lot looked quite empty but since we saw a couple entering the store we decided it must be open and it was. But the store had very few customers.

Not having any luck finding what we were looking for, we headed to Home Depot and were disappointed that they didn’t have much of a selection of curtain rods. Oh well, we have all day, I thought.

On to J C Penney. The parking lot was empty here, lights were out and the door was locked. Hmmm … okay then — we’ll go to Pier One I determined. Nope. They had a visible sign that they were closed.

Onto Target! Nope. And this was the Super Target that we went to …

It appears that Easter Sunday in the Twin Cities means that many stores allow their employees to have the day off. A trip to the local Menard’s (similar to Lowe’s) and WalMart later in the day did reward us with stores that were open but not with the curtain rods we were looking for.

I don’t recall having this many stores closed on Easter Sunday in Seattle. Have I just forgotten or was I just more prepared?

It’s interesting to me because recently, when we were looking for a second car, we found out that car dealerships are closed on Sunday.

Oh well — I’ll adapt and next year I won’t plan on shopping on Easter Sunday.

Rice with Cranberries, Walnuts and Dates

At first I thought this recipe might not taste good due to its combination of ingredients but I was wrong. The cranberries give it a nice sweet taste while the nuts make it crunchy which made it very palatable . Another good recipe from the book 1000 Vegan Recipes.

Ingredients

5 cups basmati rice, cooked and cooled
1 cup frozen baby peas, thawed
1/2 cup chopped toasted walnuts
1/2 cup sweetened dried cranberries
4 dates, finely chopped
2 green onions, finely minced
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup cranberry juice
1.5 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sugar
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Directions

In a large bowl, combine the rice, walnuts, cranberries, dates and green onions
In a small bowl, combine the cranberry juice, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and sugar
Pour the liquid mixture over the rice mixture a little at a time until it has the right consistency and taste for you
Season with the salt and pepper
Set the mixture aside for 30 minutes before serving to marinate the rice with the seasoning

That’s it! Pretty easy and tasty. I did make some changes to the original recipe as follows:

I used 5 cups of white rice instead of a combination of wild rice and basmati rice
I used dates instead of figs
I did not use all of the seasoning as I thought it would come out too liquidy

I liked this entree at room temperature which is what they recommend. Since we had leftovers, I had refrigerated the leftovers and microwaved them and they tasted fine a little warmer than room temperature. So — try it both ways to your liking. This is also simple enough to make ahead of time and then add the dressing right before you’re ready to serve it.

Rice Salad with Walnuts, Cranberries and Dates

Enjoy!

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Trust

Sometimes I feel I don’t have enough trust in what God can do for me and for those around me. Even with the celebration of Easter tomorrow by millions of Christians, the sense of trust in a Creator that is invisible (at least as we view visibility) seems absurd. And yet, we have so much creation, not including prophecies that have come true, around us that give us reason to believe and trust.

The story of a man named Elijah came to mind today as I read an article about him written by someone else. The story goes as follows:

“Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah:Â â€œLeave here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan.Â You will drink from the brook, and I have directed the ravens to supply you with food there.â€

Let’s stop right here. First, if I were to hear a voice telling me to go somewhere, drink from a brook and then wait for ravens to feed me, I would think I’d gone mad. But such is the life of a believer as even stranger things have happened. Continuing with the story:

“So he did what the LORD had told him. He went to the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan, and stayed there.The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook.”

This story tells me that what the LORD promised He would do He actually did. But Elijah had to do what the LORD had asked him to do or else the result would not have been the same.

There have been many times in my life when I have experienced events in my life that were similar to Elijah’s. Times when impossibilities became possibilities. Times when I was told to step out in faith — what some would call blind faith — and do things that I thought were incredulously stupid.

I mean, really, would you wait around for ravens to feed you? Most people would say no and scrounge around for something to eat on their own. Trust though tells me the answer should be yes. Yet sometimes all we have is a very thin string to hang onto and it has to be enough.

The craziness of living as a Christian means that we learn to expect the unexpected, behave opposite of what our brains say is “normal,” think outside the box — wait, there is no box. (laughing)

But it doesn’t mean that trust in God always comes easy. When He says to “turn the other cheek” we think retaliation. When He says to “forgive” we think ignore. When He says “go” we think it best and more comfortable to stay. Nope, not easy walking this Christian life and yet I would have no other. I would rather have the slap on the face ….

After all, if Jesus could hang on a cross with a crown of thorns on His head while being mocked for me, this is a piece of cake.

“They stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him,Â and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on His head. They put a staff in His right hand. Then they knelt in front of Him and mocked Him. â€œHail, king of the Jews!â€ they said.Â They spit on Him and took the staff and struck Him on the head again and again.Â After they had mocked Him, they took off the robe and put His own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify Him.” Matthew 27:28-31

Today

It’s rather gloomy outside today — rainy, cloudy and windy. Despite that, I managed to make it to church and attend the Easter program that they had which was a narration interspersed with solo songs and congregational singing. Â The soloists all did a great job and the last song “He Is Risen” received applause for its climactic ending.

A family was sitting next to me who had five (5) children. Unfortunately, one of the girls had a really bad cough so I offered her a cough drop which she gladly took. Her mother came prepared with water for her to drink and later I found out that the girl’s cough started this morning. Poor thing.

After church, my husband and I drove around in search of a park that said they had blooming wildflowers but with the continual raindrops we decided not to venture out for a walk or we would have been sopping wet. So homeward we went.

Minnesota is not known for dreary days as most days have blue skies overhead as far as the eye can see.

A cup of hot chocolate, small pieces of edam cheese, crackers and a roaring fireplace have enhanced the otherwise dreariness of today.