Healthy, economical "fast food" at home!

“Chicken with White Wine and Sundried Tomato Cream Sauce,” Greek-style Fish Filets,” “Maryland Salmon Cakes,” “Tortilla Pizza.” Do these sound like fix-in-a-hurry meals you can easily make at home on a budget? In today’s economy, many mothers work outside the home and struggle daily with providing healthy meals for their families with limited time and money to spend on food. With simple ingredients and 15-20 minutes of preparation time, all of the above dinners can be prepared without stress and on a reasonable budget. It just takes a little advanced planning at the beginning of the week, and dinner can become the start of an enjoyable, healthy, and stress-free evening meal for a family struggling to spend time together at the end of a busy day.

Preparing and enjoying quick and delicious meals to be enjoyed as a family can also become something you look forward to every day. It’s all about seeing this basic activity of food preparation and meal-sharing as one of the most fundamental human experiences, an essential part of family and societal culture. If it’s something you and your family must do every single day, why not enjoy the process? Meanwhile, you teach your children how to use everyday healthy ingredients to create a nutritious meal that doesn’t break the bank. For example, the “Chicken with White Wine and Sundried Tomato Cream Sauce” requires only a few ingredients: boneless chicken, olive oil, a handful of chopped sundried tomatoes, a little white wine, and cream cheese. The “Maryland Salmon Cakes” use inexpensive canned salmon, bread crumbs, egg, Old Bay and other seasonings. It is quite simple to discover similar recipes for free on the internet – no need for the latest Food Channel cookbook. Like so many other things in life, it’s about attitude, planning, and choices.

Look for my recipes to be posted soon!
 

Silent Movie

Blessed cursed memories!
Are my recollections correct
or only tainted by my longing for
what was and what is
and what could be?
Only those black and white
silent films of
yesteryear
that captured my
life on
faster-than-life reels
can tell.

Funny how time
plays its own tricks
on a mind
bent on
melancholy,
wholly devoted to
finding something miraculous
in what was likely
just one in
a zillion
other stories
written in history.

Nothing special.
Nothing worth
writing about,
crying about.
And yet it was.
It was glorious,
momentous,
almost sacred.
It was blessed.
Reading my journals,
my recollections,
proves it.

But no one else
will ever know.
Only those of us
who were there.
We lived the laughter
and fullness
and spiritual journey
and struggle
and heartache
and endless striving
for victory,
where few could be had.

Or were there more
successes than failures?
Not everything can be
measured and quantified
in some common
meaningful way.
We can only look
inside, and try
to see something there
that wasn’t there before,
sound and music, and
not a silent movie.

Paradise, a sonnet

The balmy breeze, nearly one with my skin,
a wave of tranquility, it brushes
me with its Caribbean warmth within
its moonlit sea-laden glow. It rushes
through the palms and glides over me as I
lay quietly, contemplating night skies.
Who am I under this dazzling black sky
sparkling overhead, to know all the “why’s”
of my existence, of why I should be
witness to this beauty, partaker in
this unspeakable place and its blue sea?
My questions seem to end where they begin.
The answers do not come; I’m left alone
to understand this heaven on my own.

River Tears, a sonnet

River tears, tumble and toss over stone,
streaming, running, cascading o'er my heart,
songs of love and need; I oft cry alone
in silence, feeling pain those drops impart.
River tears, going where? To the deep sea
one day? An ocean waits to gather my
salty sadness – it gladly waits for me
to come to it, until my eyes are dry.
River tears, no beginning, always there,
like the polished rocks in the river bed
that feel life pass them over. ‘Tis not fair!
Oh, that I could be those cold stones instead
of who I am. Hard. Instead, I’m sending
part of me while my tears are unending.

MARBLE STATUE

Standing guard outside
the garden entrance
looking pensive
forlorn
carrying the weight
of centuries
on your bare shoulders
now stained
with weak acids
from millions
of raindrops
and brown-red leaves
falling half-hearted
from sad trees.

What you have seen
can never be known
and I wish I could
read your thoughts
but your eyes look down
as if you know what
I would ask of you.
You are but stone
and I am jealous of
your cool indifference
your veneer that takes
hundreds, thousands,
of years to really
fade away.

IF ONLY

If only I had known back then
that I’d be here.
Would I have wanted to know, though?
I was never one to
want to know
my future.
Too scary.
Only show me the good stuff.
Like the day I held my baby in my arms
for the first time.
The perfect day on
a perfect beach.
The wonder in my
child’s laugh,
the complete and innocent joy.
I wish I could remember mine.
If only.

Nonsense

Bubbles go down this time,
not up.
But they still do
what they’re supposed to –

bursting inside me,
sending sparkles
of inspiration
to my brain,

floating through my
clogged-up mind.
And finding their way
in that dark place
isn’t easy.

Train

I wanted to work on my book,
that long, long work of
putting volumes of life
into mere pages.
But I got off-track,
the click click click of the keyboard
like a train taking me somewhere else,
but without even looking out the windows
to see the blur going by,
I ended up here.
Who is driving this machine? I asked.
I mean, am I not the conductor?
But the only answer was
more clicking.
I’m on the right track,
I can feel it tonight.