What Now?

Gratitude and apple oven pancakes

So it seems that reframing requires a great deal of effort on my part and is still very much a work in progress.

Jackie suggested last week that I consider adopting a gratitude journal, and on Sunday I decided that I had nothing to lose. So I went out and bought myself a nice little notebook to keep by my bedside and have embarked on working on gratitude as a new nightly routine. But in order for it to work, I think that I have to write *real* things that I'm specifically grateful for from that particular day, not just general things like "home, family, enough food to eat, blah, blah" -- all of which are things that I should in fact be grateful for, of course, but the whole point is that I'm in the doldrums and am not feeling good about the life that I know I should be grateful for but am not. 

The goal is to write three things every night, although it's only been three nights thus far and there was already one night when I couldn't come up with three things. So I've decided that, if I'm not feeling "naturally" grateful on any given day, I need to take steps to do something specific that I will be grateful for.

And that brings us to apple oven pancakes. I got this recipe from a blogger, but I can't give credit where credit was due because this was back in 2006 and the blogger, Academom, no longer has her blog (or maybe has a new, different blog that I don't know about). This is the recipe that I can always count on to give me something specific to be very grateful for:

Apple Oven Pancakes

Melt 2 Tbs butter in a pie plate.

Sprinkle a thin coat of brown sugar evenly onto the butter.

Arrange one thinly-sliced apple onto the sugar. [The original recipe said to peel the apple, but I don't.]

Pour over the top of the apples a quick pancake batter (2 eggs, 1/2 C flour, 1/2 C milk, 1/4 tsp salt).

Bake @ 400 for 30 mins.

Loosen sides and flip onto big plate immediately.

The end product is somewhere between an elephant ear and an eggy pancake with apples and the perfect amount of sweet.

Clearly this is the simplest of recipes, one that even I of limited domestic abilities can whip up in just a few minutes, and it is delicious and heart-warming and deeply, deeply satisfying. And it gives me something real and specific to write in the gratitude journal. I've made it twice in the last three days.

So whoever you are, Academom, I thank you.

Inexplicable

Last night's dinner:

At 4:00, a bowl of popcorn because I was starving
At 7:00, at a reception, several glasses of wine and a small plate of standard appetizers (a mini-quiche, a stuffed mushroom, etc.)
That's it.

And yet, I slept very restlessly and woke up with a terrible headache. But surely all of this couldn't be related, could it?!

I've been doing much better on the eating front, and keeping an eye on if not actually improving on the drinking front, but clearly last night was a major backsliding.

What do you all drink in the evening when you don't want soda or wine? It's occurred to me lately that I may be drinking more wine in the evening because I'm cutting back on soda, both on general principle and because I don't want to have caffeine after mid-afternoon. Clearly I need new beverage options.

One present, on the rocks

I bought my mother a lovely wooden cross this summer at the Episcopal Church's General Convention. She and I had gone to Convention together six years ago and had each bought a cross then, and I thought it would be a nice tradition to continue. Her birthday is in late August, so I was even being all prepared and stuff, what with having gotten her present two months early.

And then we moved. And in the packing and turmoil, I managed to lose her present. I had another present for her on her birthday, and I promised her that I would send her the Convention present as soon as I found it, which would undoubtedly be very soon since almost all the boxes had been unpacked.

And yet another month passed, and the boxes were unpacked, and the present still hadn't shown up. D. had a vivid memory of seeing the cross on our last day in the house and of knowing that it got into the car, but she didn't remember where either of us had put it, just that it was no longer in the house when we did our last walk-through. And I was so crazed that day that I had no memory of it at all.

Today, the cross showed up, and in a place that I would never have looked for it in a million years.

I was putting together a batch of cinnamon pecans* to cook, and I reached into the freezer for the huge bag of pecans that we had bought in Small City and had brought with us to Adventure City. They were in a big ziplock bag, and there was also another, smaller plastic bag in there with all the nuts. I looked inside the smaller bag, and there was the cross! Apparently one of us had stuck the cross into the bag of pecans and then thrown it into the car on that last, totally crazy day as we were leaving Small City.

Yes, my mother's birthday present had been in the freezer this whole time. In a bag of pecans. I don't know when I've laughed so hard. Ah, the moving adventures continue, even two months later. Life is kind of fun sometimes!

*Recipe for Cinnamon Nuts (adapted from Broihier and Mayone's The Everyday Low-Carb Slow Cooker Cookbook)

One pound raw nuts (the original recipe calls for walnut halves; I'm using pecan halves because I like them better; I bet almonds would also be good)
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) of butter, melted
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 packets of Splenda
1 tsp. vanilla

Spread the nuts in the slow cooker. Melt the butter and then stir in the remaining ingredients; pour this mixture over the nuts and stir to coat the nuts. Cook on Low in the slow cooker for 2 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally.

Once the nuts are cooked, remove from heat and sprinkle over them a combination of 1 tsp. cinnamon and 1 packet Splenda, stirring so that the nuts are evenly coated.

Serve warm or room temperature. A guaranteed hit! This is an especially nice recipe because (1) roasting nuts can be kind of a delicate procedure -- prone to burning and whatnot -- but using a Crock Pot makes it remarkably easy, and (2) your house will smell like warm cinnamon the whole time, which is lovely.

The Cow Report -- ice cream edition

D. surprised me yesterday with a new (or at least new to me) flavor of Ben and Jerry's ice cream: Vermonty Python. It's coffee liqueuer ice cream with a chocolate cookie crumble swirl and fudge "cows." She bought it for me just for the cows!

The cows are actually my least favorite part of it; the cookie crumble swirl is the best part. Altogether, a very yummy treat indeed!

Too darn cute

D. and I are watching Good Eats, a TV show we've fallen in love with. This episode is about toast, and especially French Toast, which just happens to be D.'s favorite breakfast food in the world. She is drooling over the show and taking in everything Alton Brown has to say. (His preference is to first cook the French toast in the skillet and then put it in the oven for about five minutes to let the egg custard set -- a new trick that D. is now dying to try.)

Anyway, D. is being too cute for words, enough to make me wish I cooked so that I could surprise her some morning with French toast for breakfast. But let's face facts: that's just not going to happen. But I will cheer her on some morning as she makes French toast and shares it with me. (Hey, I do my part; I wash the dishes!)