Brussel Sprouts? I Just Can't Go There.

For some reason this post is publishing weird. I know it's distracting, but I can't figure out why it's doing this, so hopefully it won't bug you as much as it's bugging me! Must be the brussel sprouts.

I love to cook. I will try to cook almost anything. Over the years I have learned that things I thought tasted bad (broccoli, peas), are actually good when cooked properly. I love websites like Pinterest and apps like Yummly, on which I can spend hours pinning or “yum’ing” hundreds of recipes. This summer I have been trying to use my CSA veggies that we get from Bluestem Farms to try new things. Roasting vegetables has been one way that I have been experimenting with unfamiliar foods like radishes and beets. I have really been stretching the limits of my culinary experimentation even when it has come to using ingredients like tofu. But there is one food that I simply cannot CANNOT bring myself to experiment with and that’s brussel sprouts. I have seen recipe after recipe of brussel sprouts happily adorning salads and as delightful side dishes with wonderful looking sauces. But to me, brussel sprouts are that evil bitter tasting side dish that sat on my plate until bone cold at 9:00 at night while I waited out my mom’s “You will sit there until you clean your plate” command. But brussel sprouts seem to have become popular these days. If you look on Pinterest or Yummly you can find pages of recipes for them. I have been vehemently against cooking them until I started watching some cooking videos from my favorite healthy cooking guru, Dani Spies. She is a blogger and YouTuber who has all kinds of instructional videos and recipes. When I have an ingredient I don’t know what to do with (e.g. Hakurei Turnips) I will usually search her site and see if she has posted anything about them. One day in particular I kept stumbling across recipes for roasted brussel sprouts. Curiosity overtook me and I thought “maybe?” As I started watching the video I got this bad feeling deep in the pit of my stomach and I quickly paused it like one does when getting to the scary “Don’t open that door!” part of a horror movie. After about a half-hour I returned to the video and with an upset stomach and determination I watched the remainder of the video, “How to Roast Brussel Sprouts” and watched Dani tell me how to make these evil little demons into delectable morsels. As she nibbled on the completed product she said “This recipe is sure to make anyone into a brussel sprout lover!” They actually looked somewhat tempting, but as to whether or not I’ll actually get over my brusselsproutphobia is yet to be seen. Like I said, I’ll cook almost anything…almost. 

P.S. Just in case you are a BS lover (I couldn’t resist) here is the recipe:

http://cleananddelicious.com/2013/02/27/video-how-to-roast-brussels-sprouts-a-clean-eating-recipe/

Another Letting Go Moment

There’s something incredibly terrifying about watching your son pull out of the driveway on a motorcycle. I watched both of my sons pull out of the driveway in a car on their first solo journeys. I wasn’t half as sick to my stomach as I was when I watched Sammy ride out on a motorcycle. Tom and I recently decided to take the advice of a man who suddenly lost his wife of 40 years. They had decided to wait until retirement to “live.” Sadly, because of brain cancer, she didn’t make it that far. We had been at his house looking at the motorcycle he had for sale. Since we sold the Bug the boys have been bugging Tom to get a motorcycle that they could ride. I wasn’t entirely convinced that it was the right time for me to get one, but if we got one, it would be my bike that they boys could ride if they wanted to. I had been happily riding on the back of Tom’s bike for 15 years and when asked if I ride would respond, “Oh, I have my endorsement.  I plan on it someday. Just not now.” When we left that guy shook my hand and got right up to me said, “Live your life.” I couldn’t get that guy’s sad eyes out of my mind. So I looked at Tom and said, “Let’s do it.” We found a little Harley-Davidson Sportster at Maxwell’s Cycle Shop in Petoskey and within three days it was sitting in our driveway. Robby was excited but Sammy was ecstatic. As soon as he found out he went out and got his permit and had been practicing on Tom’s big touring motorcycle while Tom gave him lessons on how to safely ride. He even watched all hour and 45 minutes of the Ride Like a Pro video and read through the safety course handbook that I sent him.

            “Can I take it out to show my friend?” “Puleeze!!”

            “He’s not going to just take off on it” I remember Tom saying.

            “Call your dad. If he feels confident that you’re ready, you can go.” He immediately called Tom at work. Pretty soon he had the ‘OK’ and was suiting up. I was a wreck.

            “Tie your shoes!”

            “Wear gloves!”

            “Assume everyone is going to pull out in front of you.”

            “Don’t hug the center line!”

            “Take your time.”

And then he was off. But like every other milestone in life, I had to let him go. We have had friends who have recently lost children, one to a motorcycle crash. It was a tragic reminder that it CAN happen to us. But I can’t keep him in a bubble. I have to say a prayer and try not to pace while I wait for him to get back. Terrifying or not, parenting is full of those letting go moments. This one just happens to be on a motorcycle.

Look Twice!

Dealing with impatient summer drivers is extremely frustrating to me. Nobody wants to get stuck in traffic, especially when dealing with the bridge in Charlevoix.   If you are a regular reader of this column you might be aware of the fact that my husband Tom and I are motorcycle enthusiasts. One of our favorite things to do on a summer evening is to ride around Lake Charlevoix or just go to downtown Charlevoix or any other neighboring town to “flake out” in the grass and listen to the band. One such night we were on our way out of Charlevoix and found that the bridge was up. We were waiting to turn right on to Bridge Street and joked “Hey! We’re going to be the first ones across the bridge!” We know that even if we weren’t that someone would let us in and we would eventually get across. As we waited a large Super-Duty pick-up came out from behind us and went around us on to Bridge street, in front of the waiting traffic. We were shocked to say the least. I thought he must have been in a hurry to do something like that. I looked behind us and saw a smaller car and figured that at least he had the courtesy not to do the same thing. But just as the bridge was going down I noticed that this car, a silver Chevy Cruze, followed the pick-up’s lead, went right around us, and squeezed between the truck and our motorcycle! Just to get across the bridge before anyone else! When you live in Northern Michigan in the summer you get to see drivers do a lot of aggressive, stupid things in order to get ahead of everyone else. But what people seem to forget when they are squeezing between cars and motorcycles is that while cars are surrounded by metal, we on motorcycles are not. When you are in a big doggone hurry and hit a car you dent up someone’s fender. When you are in that same doggone hurry and hit a motorcycle, someone gets killed. Every summer I hear stories of people on motorcycles who have collisions with cars. Sometimes those accidents are the fault of the rider, but sometimes they are not.   If a person takes the extra time to look a second time for that motorcycle, maybe an accident can be avoided. I’m guilty of being in too big of a rush and seeing a car right in my rearview mirror after I’ve pulled into an intersection. It honestly freaks me out. I want to ask that guy in the silver car if it really would have killed him to be patient and wait 1 or 2 more minutes to get across the bridge. And the answer is no, it wouldn’t have killed him, but his impatience could have killed me.

What Summer Vacation?

“What are you doing on your summer vacation Dawn?” is a question I get asked by many people every summer. Many ask in a wondering way, but others ask in a sort of “Oh you teachers lounge around all summer while the rest of us work our butts off” kind of way.  I always have to bite my tongue in those circumstances because although it may seem like teaching is a cushy job, by the time summer rolls around I truly am in need of a long vacation, but that’s what it rarely turns out to be. If you want to get technical, it’s really a mandatory unpaid work stoppage and no, teachers don’t get paid “for the summer.” Last summer The Mackinaw Center for Public Policy spent a large amount of money sending out double-sided, full-color glossy postcards to teachers so that they could help us quit the union if we wanted. The postcard invited us to picnics where they would give us food and provide computers for revoking our memberships. On the backside of the postcard I noticed that it had a checklist that said,

Go to the Ballpark ‘check’

Drive to the Lake ‘check’

Really? Frankly, most of the teachers I know have separate summer jobs. The ones who don’t are the parents of young kids who spend their time away from the classroom being the stay-at-home parents they don’t get to be during the school year. If you are a full time stay-at-home parent, you know that it’s far from a “vacation.” When my boys were young I always felt fortunate that I could spend my summer months focusing on them. Few careers allow a mom (or dad) the same breaks as their children so that real vacations (a.k.a. trips) can be planned with less hassle. Many teachers take graduate classes during the summer to keep their certifications current. I spent more than a few summers doing nothing but Master’s coursework. In case you’re wondering, currently, my summer break was spent first,  teaching teachers at a reading and writing workshop during the last part of June, which gave me about a week off to regroup and get ready for that. After that I spent the month of July with about ½ of my co-workers teaching summer school. When August rolls around I usually give myself 2 weeks of true R&R before I head back in and start getting my classroom, curriculum, and materials ready for fall. The week before school starts has meetings and professional development days scheduled in. So really, summer vacation isn’t as duty-free as you might have thought and I’m pretty sure I can speak for my fellow colleagues. I guess the point of all of this is that if you’re ever tempted to ask a teacher what he or she is doing for summer vacation, you probably aren’t going to hear an enthusiastic “I’ll be at the lake!”