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Respecting our food
“Cooking is at once one of the simplest and most gratifying of the arts, but to cook well, one must love and respect food.” ~Craig Claiborne Like everyone else I know, I cooked at home more often during the early days of the pandemic. I spent untold hours searching online for recipes to vary our weekly menus. And I realized (more than ever) that having access to the right ingredients is essential to preparing a delicious, healthful meal. Once I was able to get out and shop for our own groceries again, I was twice as grateful for the variety of fresh produce available at the local markets. I had…
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… And don’t look back
“Contrary to popular opinion, quitting is for winners. Knowing when to quit — change direction, leave a toxic situation, demand more from life, give up on something that wasn’t working and move on — is a very important skill that people who win in life always seem to have.” ~Steven Bartlett Have you ever had to leave a toxic workplace or difficult relationship that created more stress and drama than satisfaction? Did you ever find yourself investing way more of yourself in something/anything than you were getting out of it? If so, you understand the merits of quitting. Quitting is underrated — and sometimes it’s the only route back to…
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Dear subscribers …
Mailchimp, the service that sends my email posts, has changed its free program limits. To curb new monthly costs — while keeping the subscriptions free to you — I’ll share fewer posts each week. Starting next month, I will stop offering email subscriptions to NEW readers, making “Life Lines” more like a private blog with a limited audience. Again, I will not charge you for a “Life Lines” subscription. If you currently subscribe, or if you start a new subscription by the end of this month, you’ll still get free “Life Lines” email updates when they’re posted. If you have friends who’d enjoy getting “Life Lines” posts, the time to subscribe is now, before the “Subscribe via…
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Spring blooms
“Giving flowers is a disarming way to remember another person, but flowers were first a gift from nature to all of us. They look beautiful, they smell beautiful, and they make us feel beautiful.” Victoria Moran, Younger by the Day This week I spotted a hyacinth and a miniature daffodil starting to bloom in my garden — the first of the spring bulbs to surface this season — so much earlier than usual. Like some of the other bulbs scattered around our yard, the hyacinth was an Easter gift, years ago, and I’m always delighted and amazed to see it reappear every spring. Flowers are living symbols of perseverance and…
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Keep calm and carry on
“Don’t Panic.” ~ Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Yesterday was one of those days. I spent four hours working on a new 800-word column, only to watch it completely disappear from my computer monitor when I accidentally hit the wrong key. Gone. Totally gone. All my attempts to retrieve the piece failed; I couldn’t “undo” whatever I did to zap it. It didn’t help that I’d been rushing because I was scheduled to visit my cardiologist for a follow-up EKG later that afternoon. (I was sure everything would be off the charts, thanks to the morning’s calamity.) But I took a deep breath. I thought of the British meme,…
