Category Archives: Everything else

Rice Noodle Soup for Mother’s Day

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Soup and sandwiches were on the menu for Mother’s Day brunch with my family yesterday, but the soup wasn’t your typical American Sunday fare. We opted to have the Rice Noodle Soup from Simply Yunnan to celebrate the day (see recipe below).

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Rice Noodle Soup

We met at my cousin Karen’s house and celebrated with my mom and my aunt — an admirable group of mothers who have made an impact on my life for years and continue to do so as I adjust to my new life as a (step)mom. Karen did a delicious job with the Rice Noodle Soup. For the greens she used rainbow chard from our latest vegetable co-op shipment, and I brought over some cooked chicken from my freezer to contribute as our meat option.

The soup is light yet flavorful, and rice noodles are a perfect wheat-free option for those on special diets. The recipe below is featured in my cookbook, Simply Yunnan: Simple Ingredients, Simple Technique, available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle version.

I love to make the soup after I’ve cooked a whole chicken in my crock pot and have let the bones simmer overnight for a hearty, healthful broth — one chicken provides several meals worth of cooked chicken and several cups worth of broth. For more information on how to cook a whole chicken and make bone broth, check out my friend Roxie’s recipe on her blog, Crunchy in the Panhandle (the West Virginia panhandle, not the Texas one). Side note that brings the crock pot chicken back to Yunnan — Roxie first showed me how to cook a chicken this way in her kitchen in Kunming. From Kunming to West Virginia to Texas, it’s my favorite way to get the most bang for my buck when cooking a whole chicken.

I hope you enjoy a bowl of Rice Noodle Soup soon!

Rice Noodle Soup

Serves 4

Prep time: 5 minutes

Cooking time: 35 minutes

12 oz. rice noodles (usually labelled as “rice stick” or “rice vermicelli”)

10 c. water

10 c. beef or chicken stock

1-inch piece of ginger, peeled and crushed with the flat side of a cleaver blade

3 whole star anise

2 whole cloves

salt to taste

1 to 1 1/2 c. cooked meat (beef or chicken, depending on which type of stock you use), thinly sliced

1 c. cabbage or spinach, cut in 2-inch pieces

2 spring onions, cut in 1-inch strips

chopped cilantro, red pepper flakes, soy sauce, vinegar for seasoning

 

In a large stock pot, bring the meat stock to a boil over medium-high heat, along with the ginger, star anise, and cloves. Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove the ginger, star anise, and cloves from the soup. Add the meat slices and simmer for 2 minutes. Add the cabbage or spinach and spring onions and simmer for 3 minutes.

During the final 10 minutes of cooking the soup, prepare the rice noodles. In a large pot, bring 10 c. water to a boil over medium-high heat. Add the rice noodles, reduce heat to medium, and boil the noodles for 4 to 5 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat and allow the noodles to continue soaking in the hot water for another 4 to 5 minutes. Alternatively, prepare the noodles according to the package’s instructions. Drain the water from the noodles.

Divide the noodles evenly into 4 large soup bowls. Ladle equal amounts of soup with meat, onions, and leafy vegetables over the noodles in each bowl. Allow each person to add cilantro, red pepper flakes, soy sauce, and vinegar according to his or her own taste.

Shopping note:

This noodle soup is best prepared using a type of thin, round rice noodle usually labeled in English as “rice stick” or “rice vermicelli” and found at Asian markets or on the Asian aisle at your grocery store.

Preparation note:

Plan to make this soup when you have leftover cooked meat that you can thinly slice; choose to make the soup with beef or chicken stock according to the type of meat you have leftover.

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The New Version of Self-Employment

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Self-employment has been my way of life for close to three years now. It allows me to retain control of my schedule, organizing my days around the times when I best see fit to do house work versus work work. I like being able to make those decisions for myself, rather than being tied to office hours and letting someone else determine my schedule. And as my Uncle Stub told me a while back, “Better to earn your own livin’ than to earn someone else’s livin’ for ‘em.”

Some may say it’s a luxury to have this kind of self-employed make-my-own-choices lifestyle, but I work hard to be able to maintain it, and really, there’s nothing luxurious about my tiny duplex with no tv, internet, or dishwasher or the amount I have to pay each month to purchase my own health insurance. There’s give and take in choosing to be self-employed — that choice is the key. I choose to give up certain things in order to gain others.

After spending the past couple of years writing full-time, I moved back to Texas to be close to my then-boyfriend now-fiance and began looking for a part-time job to tide me over during this transition period before we get married and share bills. I wanted to do something that would help pay the bills at my duplex but wouldn’t be a huge time commitment after the wedding, so that I would still have time to keep house and cook for Stephen and his four boys. And write, of course.

But nothing worked out. I sent in several applications, interviewed with a couple of places, but nothing. The past years as a writer have taught me nothing if not how to handle rejection, but still it was perplexing and disappointing not to be hired right away.

And then Stephen and I saw the solution right under our noses. I began helping him with his online resale business, learning the basics of FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon). I’ve learned how to scout for products to buy at retail stores, thrift stores, and garage sales, as well as how to process them for shipping to Amazon. My help has enabled Stephen to speed up the turn-around time on his purchases, just in time for the end-of-the-year gift buying season. Our goal is for me to put in enough hours to increase his business to make up for (or exceed!) what I could have been making at a part-time job, but still have time to work on publishing the three book projects I have underway (more on that in the next blog post).

The past few weeks of trying this experiment have been wonderful. We’ll see how much our profits increase over time, but it’s been a huge relief to be able to maintain my self-employed lifestyle and choose which hours I want to work on the business and which I want to work on other stuff. I also love the fact that, unlike my writing career where I’ve poured my heart into my work day after day after day for month after month without seeing a direct financial benefit at times, the FBA business gives me a quick return on my time investment. We’re not going to get rich quick with this business, but we do see that however much effort we put into it is how much profit we’ll get out of it. That kind of business model is way less insanity-inducing than the starving artist business model I had before.

I’ll be very honest, too. This gig has a huge perk. My boss is my fiance, and I really like spending time with him. I’m blessed by God (really, it’s a direct answer to prayer) to be able to make the choice to work beside Stephen each day. He’s a gifted teacher and leader, and I’ve learned a lot about business from him already. I’m reminded of the themes in Wendell Berry’s novel Hannah Coulter, how Hannah and Nathan worked their land side by side and did what it took to build a home and a family together. I like that Stephen and I are working together to build our business, home, and family. It is work, but it’s also a joy to work with the one you love.

And at times it’s just downright fun — recently we instituted a monthly trip to Arlington to do some buying at several thrift stores, which we’re going to combine with lunch or dinner at a different ethnic restaurant each month. I love this new job.

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Vintage vs Modern

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I recently acquired two vintage small appliances — this Sunbeam Mixmaster…

…and this 1940s White rotary sewing machine, 77 series.

Well, I’ve had the sewing machine for over a decade now, but it’s been folded in its cabinet and used as a TV stand at my parents’ house while I’ve moved around the world. It belonged to my mother’s mother, and I remember her letting us learn to sew on it as kids. Now that I’m living in Texas long term for the first time in recent history, I moved the machine to my place and opened up the cabinet to check it out. It’s a bit dusty and probably needs to be oiled, and I have no idea if it still works — but as my mom says, “I don’t know why it wouldn’t.” Here’s hoping it does, because I’d love to start on some sewing projects soon.

Now, the Sunbeam stand mixer, on the other hand…I had such great hopes for it, but yesterday it broke my heart.

Oftentimes I’m just as happy with gently used items as I am with something brand shiny new. My boyfriend was given this stand mixer and has kept it unused under his sink for who knows how long. I pulled it out to test it a couple of weeks ago. For years I’ve wanted a stand mixer, a KitchenAid preferably, but a Sunbeam could be just as handy, right? I cleaned up the body of the mixer, washed out the bowls and the beaters, plugged it in, and tested the speeds. It appeared to work just fine. I was pleased — a stand mixer, for free, and a vintage one that looks super cool. A nice find.

Until I used it to beat something other than air. I decided to try it out with a batch of chocolate chip cookies yesterday morning. It looked like I had the perfect set-up for cookies — a small bowl for the flour, salt, and baking soda, a large bowl for the butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla. But when I started to cream the butter and sugar, the mixer sent chunks of butter and grains of sugar flying across the table. I chalked it up to the butter not being soft enough, and I persevered, thinking I would just clean up the mess and not repeat that mistake next time. Eventually the butter softened enough to make a nice mixture, and I was ready to add the eggs.

When the mixer flung strings of egg white into the air, I decided the experiment was over. The beaters work just fine, but the shape of the bowl is too shallow to keep the ingredients from making a huge mess. I gave it a shot. I wanted it to work, but it just isn’t going to happen for me and the vintage Sunbeam.

So I’m back in the market for a new KitchenAid, but hopefully the White rotary sewing machine can be more for me than a TV stand.

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Internet Austerity

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For the sake of cheaper rent, I’ve opted to live in a little house outside of town during this season of life. Just across the road, within view of my living room window, is a field with a barn and a windmill and cows who graze the days away. The house at the end of my road has three donkeys and a llama, and someone in the neighborhood — I haven’t figured out who — has a rooster that greets the mornings. And the afternoons. And sometimes the evenings. Overall, it’s a pleasant neighborhood to live in.

This neighborhood, however, does not have cable. Which is fine for me as far as TV goes, since I don’t own a TV. But it means no cable internet. Neither does the neighborhood have DSL internet. But there is, I discovered after moving into my new place, a pricey fiber optic internet option available. I begrudgingly signed up for this high-speed high-price option, including the mandatory purchase of a $100 modem/router combination exclusive to this provider (and just what am I supposed to do with the cable modem and router that I bought only a year and a half ago to start up my internet in Washington?).

After a week of waiting, the new modem/router “gateway” arrived. Then I waited another 24 hours for the activation date to arrive. Bright and early on activation day, I commenced activation only to realize I wasn’t authorized to activate until after 8pm (for crying out loud!). I was busy that evening and didn’t feel like activating internet after 10pm. I finally got around to activating the next morning, only to discover the “gateway” didn’t work. I spent twenty minutes on the phone with a customer service rep and an entire day as a hostage in my own home waiting for a technician to arrive, and the issue was still not resolved.

It was at this point I realized that I’d gone without internet in my home for a week — why couldn’t I go for a few months? I can check email and social media on my phone, as well as look up directions and or do basic internet searches. Any task that requires using my laptop with wi-fi I can do at my boyfriend’s house, Starbucks, the library, wherever. I did a little math and figured I’d save almost $300 over the next six months by not having internet in my home.

And so I’m trying an experiment I’m calling Internet Austerity. The experiment wouldn’t work if I were depending on freelance income right now — but, since I’m planning to work outside the home for a season, I just might be able to pull it off and save some money. Actually, I’m finding that using my phone as my primary internet source at home helps me waste a lot less time. I really don’t enjoy reading articles or blogs on the tiny screen, so I don’t end up going off on rabbit trails, clicking from one site to the next like I would on my laptop. I keep a running list of online tasks that I need to accomplish on my computer, and I do them all at once when I’m around wi-fi, rather than being on and off my browser several times an hour from home. So far it is a blessed freedom. Here’s hoping I really make the most of this season of Internet Austerity!

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Return to Texas and the Grandest Adventure

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The past decade plus a couple of years have been one adventure after another — here, there, and everywhere else, a lifetime of experience packed into my late twenties and thirties. Many years on roads in the mountains of Yunnan. Countless hours spent with Lydia, with roommates, learning to be a true friend and a sister. Coffee trees and alphabets. Jungle hikes and arctic flights. Raspberries in Wyoming, buses through Laos, a garden in Washington. Two completed book manuscripts and a third on the way. A lifetime of experience, one adventure after another.

I’ve written of love from time to time on the blog, but mostly I’ve kept my personal trials off the internet. Those who know me well, though, know that these last few years have been filled with both wonder and pain. There’s always been a longing in the roaming, a desire for the constancy and rootedness that have remained so long out of reach.

Now the grandest adventure of all begins, the one that has led me home to my own place of stability. Now begins the joy and delight of adventuring every day in relationship and in family. The years of rootlessness and wandering have taught me that this life of following Jesus is a pilgrim life — I am a stranger in a strange land, and my citizenship is in heaven. But I breathe the greatest sigh of relief to think those years of moving around are over. I am still a pilgrim on this earth, but now I will not walk alone. I don’t know how much I’ll write on this blog about this new adventure, though I can assure my four or five faithful readers that my writing adventures will continue on this website. For now I’m settling back into life in Texas and into this new season.

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God in the Garden: God Gives Abundantly

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The truths we’ve seen in the garden over the past year are nothing new or complex. They are simple yet profound. Nothing earth shattering, but sometimes seeing a visual reinforces in our hearts what God wants to teach us. Jesus used vivid imagery in his speech for a reason.

Have you been to the community garden lately? It looks a bit like the Amazon jungle. We have bushes and stalks and vines taking over this corner of the property. So much green!

So far, we’ve been able to take boxes and bags of produce to My Friends Place teen shelter, Second Harvest, and a Burmese refugee family through World Relief, not to mention various neighbors of people in the church. God has caused the garden to grow in abundance, to the point of overflowing. Literally. You can’t walk between some of the garden boxes because of the vines flowing down the sides and along the ground. I’ve never seen so much spaghetti squash in my life!

And that abundance has been given to us in order that we may give it to others. The visual we see of healthy, growing vines and a bountiful harvest of delicious vegetables is a picture of God’s grace in our hearts. As those who love and follow Christ and trust the Spirit to transform our hearts, we have God’s abundant grace flowing in us and through us to give us the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control that we otherwise lack. He gives us that fruit of his Spirit, and he gives it abundantly, not just for us, but for others. Yes, we get to enjoy the tomatoes and cabbage and corn from our garden, but we have greater joy not from eating a big salad on our own, but from giving that produce away and telling others about the good and mighty God who provided it.

May God have all the glory!

He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. 2 Corinthians 9:10-11

 

Other essays in the series from Quinault Community Garden:

God is Good

God is Faithful

God Works in His Time

God is in Control

God Gives the Seed for Sowing

God Gives Joy in Our Work

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God in the Garden: God Gives Joy in Our Work

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The latest in the “God in the Garden” series from the Quinault Community Garden:

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. Colossians 3:23-24

Once all the excitement of setting up the garden boxes passes, once we’re past the dream stage of envisioning neatly planted rows of corn and onions and peppers and melons, once the sun gets more intense and the temperatures get higher, let’s be honest: gardening is a lot of work.

Now we’re in the phase where the plants have sprouted and the beds need tending on a regular basis. They need daily watering and will eventually need weeding, when they get beyond the point where it’s easy to confuse the plants with the weeds. These tasks are important, but they don’t require group work days. So far, we’ve taken turns going by the garden each day, turning on the sprinklers, waiting while the ground soaks, turning the compost, and just generally making sure the place still looks OK. And it does look OK — go by and check it out next time you’re at the building.

It doesn’t take a long time to complete these tasks, but it does take time, and a little effort, and some discipline. It is work.

God designed us to work and to take joy in our work. God Himself is always at work, always carrying out His plans, always delighting to accomplish His purposes. He created us in His image and has given us “every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth” to have as food (Genesis 1:29) — and so, in accordance with God’s image, we can tend those plants and can delight to look after them day by day, week by week through the summer, even when no one else is there to help, to talk to, to joke around with or commiserate with. We can go about our work — in the community garden or at the office or at home or wherever — and delight to do the things that God made us to do, knowing that God will give us joy in our tasks if we ask Him for it. We can see God in the garden and all around us if we work heartily to serve the Lord Christ.

 

Previous essays:

God Gives the Seed for Sowing

God is Good

God is Faithful

God Works in His Time

God is in Control

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God in the Garden: God Gives the Seed for Sowing

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A little update on the Quinault Community Garden here in the Tri-Cities…

You can read previous essays from “God in the Garden” at these links:

God is Good

God is Faithful

God Works in His Time

God is in Control

 

The days are growing longer, and our community garden is at the stage for planting seeds. Spring seemed so distant when we first began work on the garden space last October, but now the land is cleared, the boxes are in place, and the soil is full of rich nutrients from our compost bins. All is ready for the seeds and starters we’re going to plant — the main attraction of this garden we’ve been imagining since last year.

Many people have put in a lot of work to make the garden possible to this point — we’ve had donations of supplies, discounts from local businesses, gifts from members of the church, an immeasurable amount of labor and sweat to dig holes in rocky ground and move, literally, tons of soil. Who knew dirt was so heavy?

The reason we’re willing to go to all this is effort is that we expect an abundance of produce in summertime. We trust that getting this ground ready for little seeds and little green shoots will lead to cucumbers and lettuce and watermelons and tomatoes and peppers and cabbage. A lot of it. Enough to help local families who might not otherwise afford it be able to have fresh produce for a change, this year and in years to come. It’s hard to know right now what all the implications of those vegetables might have in the lives of those who eat them, who might experience the goodness of Jesus because of this garden, but we pray big prayers that God would draw people into His community and help them to know Him through our lives and work. We believe the truth in the Psalm of Ascent, Psalm 126:5-6:

Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy!

He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing,

shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.

As the seeds go into the ground at Quinault Community Garden, may we also join in prayer that God will give us opportunity to plant seeds of His Word in the hearts of our neighbors and friends. He has wonderfully provided everything we need in the form of material goods and services to make this garden a reality — we can trust Him also to cultivate relationships and provide the seed that will bear good fruit in the lives of our community.

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Clams vs Oysters

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At some point on my birthday/Easter road trip with my friend Jen — I think it was somewhere after wine tasting but before going crazy on cheese and fudge at the Tillamook factory — one or the other of us asked the question, “What is the difference between clams and oysters?”

Is there a difference? Seafood varieties are an important question when you’re on the Oregon coast. And we needed to know if clams and oysters are basically the same creature with two names, or if there’s really something else going on here in the mollusk world.

To satisfy our curiosity and put an end to this conundrum, Jen pulled out her iPhone — because, really, what’s a road trip these days without an iPhone? She googled “What is the difference between clams and oysters?” and was led to this brilliant page on the Big Site of Amazing Facts: “What is the difference between oysters and clams?” Slightly different from our original question, but as you can see, more or less getting to the gist of our quandary.

Now, the true brilliance in the link Jen discovered is not just the answer given in the brief article: “Both clams and oysters are a class of mollusks, called bivalves….

“One big difference between oysters and clams is that the oyster spends all of its life except its first few weeks attached to one spot. The clam moves itself around throughout its life by means of a foot, a hatchet-shaped muscle which protrudes from the shell.

“The clam pushes its foot out, hooks it in the sand, and pulls itself along. Oysters have a foot like this when they are very young, but it disappears when the oyster finds a place to settle.”

This answer was perfectly adequate to cover what we wanted to know: yes, in fact, there is a difference between clams and oysters. However, the true joy of the link is in the comments. I’ll let you scroll down on the site to read them all for yourself, but suffice it to say that people are amusing. And demanding of their anonymous internet sources.

Getting past the whiners, there are a couple of priceless comments that helped sum up part of the lessons Jen and I had been discussing as we read Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove’s The Wisdom of Stability (see my review from last year) during our road trip. I know it’s a leap to get from mollusks to a book by Wilson-Hartgrove, but hang with me here.

“Oysters are much cooler than clams. Oysters know what they want from life and are comfortable just the way they are. Clams are always running around seeking an identity. The only good place for a clam is in my chowder. Who’s with me? Oyster supporters unite! Oyster crackers rule!”

And then another commenter: “by the way for the clam vs. oyster, i think clams are MUCH cooler than oysters. i mean, who likes sitting around in the same spot all day? not me! though i agree the clam’s right place to be is in my chowder.”

Right there you have a nugget — a pearl, if you will, haha — of telling insight. Some people are oysters, some people are clams. Wilson-Hartgrove makes a fair case in favor of oysters. There’s something to be said for being certain of your identity, settling down and sticking to one spot, finding stability within a place and a people.

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Accessibility

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Yesterday I spent about an hour online and on the phone trying to figure out where my parents were as I heard reports of a tornado on the ground within a couple of miles from their house — but no worries, they were in an airplane scheduled to land at the exact time the storm system was supposed to hit the DFW airport. I couldn’t find their correct flight information in my email, couldn’t get hold of my sister who was teaching a class at the time, and was getting all of my up-to-the-minute storm information via Facebook and my cousin, who was perched with her children near their newly installed storm room (she herself was waiting to see if they should take cover).

The whole thing brought back a horrible memory of almost this exact time last year, when tornadoes hit Raleigh, North Carolina, as I was driving there from West Virginia to visit my sister’s family. I got a phone call from my sister telling me to pull over and not drive any closer to Raleigh because tornado sirens were going off in their neighborhood. It was raining pretty hard where I was, somewhere in Virginia at that point, but I had no clue that it was severe enough for tornadoes. I tried to find a radio station with local weather, but the reports ended up not being all that helpful — weather reports are announced by names of counties, not cities, and I have no idea where any counties in Virginia and North Carolina are. At one point, though, they announced a tornado was on the ground on the street where my sister lives — that information, I could recognize.

I ended up seeking shelter in the lobby of a Holiday Inn, along with another stranded family from South Carolina on their way to D.C., and we all watched the local weather reports and wondered when it would be safe to get back on the road. For 45 minutes I tried calling my family in Raleigh again and again to see if they were ok. They didn’t pick up any of the phones I tried calling — no cell service in the space under their stairs, and the power was out, so their home phone wasn’t working. It was a terrifying 45 minutes until they were able to come out from under the stairs and get in touch with me again. (They were fine, but I saw quite a bit of damage as I drove into the neighborhood.)

All of this has me thinking about accessibility. We have become trained to expect to reach people whenever we want, via phone, email, Facebook, whatever. And if we can’t get in touch with them or they don’t return a message right away, we (ok, I) begin to get nervous. Or in some cases, freak out slightly. Or not so slightly.

The ironic part is that I personally have a tendency to go offline or without a cell phone for long periods of time while I’m traveling. Well, for longer than 45 minutes to an hour. And I don’t get worked up thinking about people trying to reach me. Maybe I should. Or maybe I shouldn’t. I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s a moral to draw from all of this, or what conclusions I should come to. I just felt like blogging about it.

All of that having been said, I’m leaving for vacation in Oregon, so if you don’t hear from me for a few days, you know why.

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