Big News

Here's that recipe I promised for Salsa Couscous Chicken, the Pillsbury Bake-Off Winner. If you like Mediterranean food--flavored with cumin, cinnamon, raisins and almonds--you'll love the way my friend Diane's friend Ellie made mexican salsa taste like it came from Morocco. In case you didn't know, the Pillsbury folks don't require that contestants use only traditional baking ingredients; in 1998, the year this recipe won the $1 million, Old El Paso Salsa was on the list of acceptable ingredients (I assume Pillsbury owns the company). It isn't on the 2009 list, but this year contestants can use certain Green Giant veggies, among other things. Bon appetit!

Now for the big news: I'm going on a cruise to Alaska! A woman on a local listserve put out a call for a stateroom-mate for a cruise leaving on July 11, a week from tomorrow. It's a cheap deal on a "family" cruise with Rosie O'Donnell: all inclusive for one week, $577. I couldn't drive up there for that! Now I can get a postcard of the Juneau capitol. Woo-hoo! Folks say being in Alaska is like being in a different country--or perhaps just a different time. I can't wait.

Closer to home, I've been organizing my photos and found a couple from Montana that are pretty special. See what you think.

This is the glacier for which the national park was named. There's a sign with pictures depicting how much it has shrunk.

These guys are the real deal, you just can't see the cows because I didn't get the shot in time.

I love the clouds in this photo, too.

Montana Song
Big sky country spring
Ice, earth, wind moving in time
In the car we sing

July 3, 2009
Seattle

Moving Day

I've been parked on the street near Greg's condo since a week ago Friday, all that time searching for a more "permanent" home, where I can plug into the big grid and juice up: microwave and computer being the really important appliances that make a home a home. I'm going up to Edmonds this afternoon (pop. 40,000; 87% white; median family income $85,000) to check out the home of a woman who is a retired substance-abuse counselor now working as a writer. I don't know what she writes but it impresses the hellouta me that she calls herself one.

So today I took my camera on my last walk in Madison Park. But instead of filling up all this space with photos I'll put them into a slideshow in the right sidebar. I'm also going to see if I can put them into a Picasa link so you can enlarge them for better viewing. A fellow blogger has done that so I am going to her blog and see if I can figure it out.

I will, however, share just a few photos in case you don't want to open the album. One is for my blogger friend Linda who likes flower photos. Here are those lavenders we talked about, and some other purple stuff...

And a photo of a house that's for sale here in the Madison Park neighborhood, which is sandwiched between the Arboretum and Lake Washington. It's really a lovely neighborhood, with homes, condos, apartments, shops (even a hardware and a grocery store), salons, coffee shops, restaurants, bars: just about anything you would need can be found here except a library, a post office and an adult bookstore--which I don't need but you might).

This fine home can be yours for a mere $1,695,000. Taxes: $14,231. (Seattle, in case you're interested, has a population of 595,000 in the city and 3.2 million in the metro; 74% white; median family income $62,000).

This last one is for my older siblings (the "little boys" were not old enough to remember). As I passed this hedge a very familiar scent stopped me in my tracks. This is the species of hedge that was in front of our first home in Davenport, Iowa, where we lived from about 1951-1957. Ours didn't look like this because Dad used to keep it trimmed to about four feet tall and perhaps 18 inches deep, but sometimes, maybe right before the first spring trimming, the flowers would come out. Frankly, they stink, but it's a childhood thing, you know?

Okay, I lied. Here are two more pictures that I couldn't resist showing you, and they need an explanation. If you look near the top of this "tree" you'll see a streetlight poking through the leaves.

Here's what it looks like inside...

Pretty cool, huh? More soon, from Edmonds, WA, home of Rick Steves, the travel guy.

Finally, the Rain

I've been in Seattle rain before. It's not nearly as menacing as Houston rain, which comes down in buckets and fills the underpasses so your car becomes a boat while you're trying to get home through rush-hour traffic. In fact, the Seattle rain I've experienced is such a gentle misting rain that you hardly need an umbrella. It's a small price to pay for the luxuriant foliage that thrives in this climate.

Greg and I didn't make it to Whidbey Island but we went to Kubota Garden, which was started in 1927 by a Japanese immigrant and protected from development in 1981 when the core 4.5 acres were designated a historic landmark. What a lovely spot. I've always enjoyed Japanese gardens (if you go to this link, just press 'cancel' if it tells you to download Japanese language), and even though this one is a bit more...well... more...than I have seen other places, it's unique plantings soon filled up my camera's memory. I'll bore you with only a few photos.

You see what I mean about "more?"

In honor of my visit to the garden, and despite the fact that my sister says Haiku is "cheating," here's another:

Seattle Spring

In Seattle spring

Riotous color abounds

Green both king and queen

June 19, 2009

Seattle

And here's that photo from the living room window (actually the balcony) that I promised. Don't you love the little table and chairs at the end of the dock?

Perfect

Some days we feel like strangers. When our hearts open, we will realize that we belong just here.- The Buddha

If you have not subscribed to the Daily Peace Quote, you must do it now. When you do, you will receive a quote by email every day. Some days the quote will not speak to you. Some days you will wonder how in the world those wise people at Living Compassion picked a quote that is so absolutely right for you, right here, today.

The quote above has reminded me that it doesn't matter whether or not I remember what is on the corner of Bloomington Avenue and 34th Street in Minneapolis, that when I visit other places I have lived and don't feel like I fit in anymore, it's okay. I'm not a stranger. I belong just here. And here. And here.

How about another:

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.- Denis Waitley

And this one:

Change always comes bearing gifts. It is our choice whether or not to accept the gifts.- Price Pritchett

Here's what it looks like today in Minneapolis, with the sun out and the temperature hovering around 65 degrees.

There's that green again!

The lilacs are coming! The lilacs are coming! You don't get these in the too-warm southlands, so there.

I love that Rita actually uses this old plow to prepare the soil for her beans. Here's hoping your soil is warm and your heart is full.

Good Days

This is one of those posts that will probably appeal only to family and close friends, and only then because I'm sure they are totally enthralled with everything I do. It also may appeal to people who:

• like Perkins Restaurant but haven't been there in a long time
• are interested in the obscure architecture of Minneapolis
• like to gloat because they are enjoying Spring in its fullest flowering
• have a passion for New York City memorabilia

Okay, I know you must fit into two or three of those categories at least, and can't wait to read on, so here goes.

This is the dessert menu at Perkins. I opted to take home a Cranberry Nut cat-head muffin (I took a picture of the bag I carried it home in, too, but I'll spare you that).

This is the building where I go twice a week to have acupuncture. I must give them a plug, for your benefit as well. A few years ago I discovered acupuncture as a treatment for tendonitis (the link lists many conditions that can be treated with acupuncture), after a friend told me he had only three sessions for his neck pain and was completely cured. So whenever I feel the need to have my Chi jump-started, I go in search of a practitioner I can afford (the going rate is about $60 a session, which is too much for me). My first practitioner, back in Asheville, was a woman just out of training who just wanted to help people while she got her "real" practice going. The second was a student at an Asheville School of Chinese Medicine (who told me to eat more millet--ugh). Now I go to Three Treasures Acupuncture in Minneapolis, just while I'm in town. I got hooked up with these folks through the Community Acupuncture Network. These "clinics" are located all over the country and they charge on a sliding scale (I pay only $15 for each session). Check it out!

Okay, here's your chance to gloat over my having to have hay fever all over again now that I have arrived in the cold northland. You are probably going swimming already! I'm wondering if I will have to do Spring again when I go through the Montana Rockies in June. Sheesh!

This is my present from Rita on her return from The Big Apple, where she went to meet family for a concert by her nephew and the orchestra of The Curtis Institute at Carnegie Hall (not too shabby). She got to go to New York and I stayed here to eat at Perkins, have needles poked into me and sneeze. It's all good.

What Day Is It?

Is it Day 11? Day 12? Yesterday I rolled out of bed at 5:15 to accompany my sister Marcia as a volunteer for The Food Bank of Memphis. We drove to Amory, Mississippi, to interview 12 people at a food pantry as part of the Hunger in America survey. We were home by 1 p.m. but I was a slug the rest of the day: watched movies, etc.

Today we drove to Oxford, MS, to do the same. But instead of vegging out when we got home, I put on my walking shoes and took Trixie and myself for a walk. It was so beautiful I just had to share it with you. I hope that wherever you are, it is this beautiful, and that you are really looking at it, and thinking of nothing at all. I am. And I'm hooked into the collective conscousness of the Universe. Peace.

Spring

My friend Patti reminds us in her blog post that yesterday was the birthday of poet Billy Collins, on whom she has a giant crush that you can't blame her for. He is a brilliant and totally accessible poet who served as Poet Laureate of the U.S. 2001-2003 and has a zillion other awards to his credit. But it's more than that (I think it helps to hear him read his poetry). I've heard him on A Prairie Home Companion more than once.

Patti asks us to submit our own poem in honor of Billy's birthday, and even though I'm not "standing in [my] slippers at a granite counter with good light on ripe bananas," but merely looking out the window of my motorhome, parked in front of my sister's house in Memphis, I am inspired to submit the following:

Spring

How wonderful to be back

Where Spring is anticipated

For its flowers,

A winter-long yearning

Satisfied,

The change of seasons

Bringing daily surprises.

How can I not remember

From one Spring to the next

That the redbud tree

Sprouts flowers on its trunk?

That there is no green

Like the green

That mists the maples?

That a simple walk

In the neighborhood

Is like seeing the world

For the first time?

It is Nature's amnesia,

Otherwise my heart would break

To see it go.