Tomato Soup w/Potatoes and Peas

I was in the mood for tomato soup the other day, but I wanted to make it differently then my usual recipe. To get inspired, I resorted to the method I used when I was a professional chef. I opened up the refrigerator and looked over the ingredients. I just let my mind wander over the items on the shelves. As I thought about their aromas, textures, and tastes, ideas bubbled up in my imagination and I wrote down the out line of this recipe.

This is what I came up with. I hope you try it and enjoy it!

2ea. 28 oz cans of tomatoes peeled in juice + 3-4 ounces of water.

3ea. Cloves garlic

4-5ea. Yukon Gold Potato

1ea. Medium Size Carrot

1ea. Large Yellow Onion

4-5T Olive Oil

4-5T Vegetable or Soy to brown potatoes in

3ea. Bay Leaves

1ea. Large Oregano Sprig

3ea. Large Basil leaves

1/4 Bunch Flat Leaf Parsley

2oz Green Peas

Ingredient Prep: Puree tomatoes, peel and dice very small the carrots and onions, peel and cube large the potatoes, peel then crush the garlic, rough chop the oregano and the basil.

Cooking Instructions:

  1. Brown the crushed garlic in the olive oil. Set aside when done
  2. On a medium heat, lightly saute the carrots and onions in the same oil, stirring constantly. When done add back the browned garlic, also, the pureed tomatoes, oregano, and basil leaves. Bring to a simmer. Spoon off most of the foam that may rise to the top of the soup. Cook for 15 minutes.
  3. While the tomatoes are cooking, brown the cubed potatoes in the vegetable oil. Work them frequently so they don’t stick. After the tomatoes have cooked for 15minutes add the the browned potatoes and peas. Cook until the potatoes are soft.
  4. The last five minutes of the cooking add the flat parsley, stems and leaves. You can tie it in a bunch so it will be easy to remove later. Make sure it is completely submerged.
  5. Season to taste. Remove the parsley when serving the soup.
  6. A toasted slice of crusty Italian or French bread and lite red wine, are a perfect match.

Notes on Coffee Before Sunrise

Crows calling

in the deep blue/black, star filled dawn;

invisible among the bare tree crowns and frosted roof tops.

Restless, wrathful

the dark id side of night’s sweet slumber.

A drunken mob fleeing

from what they have done

searching for another.

Fleeing above the here and there house lights,

the glittering pearl sparkle in a black

ocean vast but fading

before the rising tide of morning.

The Lessons of the Seasons

Winter has made the Archipelago a barren landscape of ice and snow. Gone is the smell of summer rain, the microbial magic in the dew covered soil of the garden and the floor of the woods. The carefree bird song and warm summer breezes no longer play like music in the leafy crowns of the trees outside my open window.

This morning I saw the grey squirrels huddle on the bare branches. I watched their desperate digging deep into the lean times of January, to find one small acorn. A meager meal buried beneath Octobers fallen and forgotten colors.

It is easy for my mind to turn gloomy and my heart to grow empty when the world is cold and dark. My world becomes very small when the divide between warm shelter and the frozen landscape outside is sharply defined.

Prayer has always gotten me through these bleak and barren months. It is my hour of laying in the grass and watching the clouds roll by, which I carry with me through the day.

But watching the squirrels digging in the snow I was struck by the fact that the change of the seasons could be thought of as four lessons on the full arc of a human life.

Spring is our youth, a time we learn about what we are and what the world around us is. We watch, do and learn, take instruction from those who came before us and discern how these two halves fit together.

Summer is the first season to go out into the world and use what skills, talents, and wisdom we have developed in spring. Still learning but mostly doing to accomplish.

Autumn is a time to collect up and store the results of applying our talents and wisdom in the long days of summer work.

Winter is the lean time of old age and death. The harvest of our efforts, which we developed in spring, applied in summer, gathered and stored in autumn. What we have accumulated is the foundation of our comfort in old age. It determines our place in what lay ahead.

“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” Genesis 8:22

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11

Notes on Separation

Most often, we don’t know what we really have until it is gone.

I was reminded of that when my adoring wife left the Archipelago to visit her mom; who was recovering from dental surgery. We enjoy each other’s company and spend a lot of time together. If someone’s absence is going to leave an empty space in my life it would be her’s.

Texting and telephone calls can connect two people, but it is no replacement for being together in the same room.

When I was writing this, a similar situation came to mind. It is not on the same level as my sweet heart leaving town, but it did change my thinking about lose. A small change of thinking, but one that made a big difference.

One time I had dropped off my car for repairs at the mechanic’s garage, which is on the other end of the city from my house. I had to take the bus back home. A ten minute trip by car turned into a 40 minute trip by slow poke public transportation; with the added bonus of unwanted entertainment from a few ‘colorful’ passengers. On the ride, I realized a few items were needed from the grocery store for dinner. For that, a two minute car ride to the store would be a fifteen minute walk. As the bus lumbered along the emotional space of lose, created by not having my car, just got bigger and emptier.

For that entire day my life was defined by what I did not have. It had become the context for what was missing; which was not right. When I finally got home I was determined never to think that way again. I would never define myself exclusively in negative terms.

The root of my attitude change was not the lack of independent transportation, but a lack of appreciation. I lost sight of the fact that I had many other good aspects to my life beside my car, because I was focused on the aspect I lost. Consequently, I created that empty emotional space and put myself in it. It was unnecessary and I did not enjoy it either.

Being the practical sort, I made a mental list of all the positive aspects of my life. The next time I moved my thinking into that emotional space of lose, I would use it to remind myself of all the good things I had.

After I made this list I found that the most positive things on the list, and the ones that made the biggest difference for me, where the people I had relationships with.

Seeing that I had a good number of people who were a positive influence in my life I wanted to make sure they knew I appreciated them. I made it a point to show them that more often.

Over time I realized that showing appreciation was reaffirming my love for them. It acknowledged a positive bond between us which gave me joy in good times and strength in hard times.

Even after this emotional change, I still miss my wife when we are apart for a few days. But appreciating her every day, and all the other good people in my life, made that lonely space much smaller. A part of appreciating is focusing on the time I had with her and not pine over losing time with her.

Like anything you want to change in your behavior, it is a process of improvement. I have to work on it everyday to make that space as small as possible, and I don’t have to be an example of not really knowing what I have until it is gone.

After making that list I came up with a recitation; a point to focus on to keep me moving in the right direction. These kinds of reminders work well for me.

Improvement is the first step to perfection, as long as you keep walking.

Thoughts on Creating

In the past, when I wrote something that received compliments, that for me was a rare and beautiful creation, I felt really good about it. But that joy was mixed with feelings of anxiety too. Now that I had set the bar on a higher peg than usual, by working and achieving what I set out to do, I felt I had to continue that level of performance, or surpass it.

That anxiety arises from the fact that inspiration does not come along everyday. To consistently connect to the deepest, truest levels of imagination and creativity, and pour that out across the page, has a time table of completion I have little control over.

Lately, I have come to terms with this anxiety. I now see it as the natural state of the healthy, creative mind. It is constantly embroiled in the battle between mediocrity and perfection. The creative mind exists to dig into that deeper level, struggle to perfect the creation it makes from what it finds there, and put it out into the world for others to experience. That is the particular instrument God has made them to be.

To embraces this understanding, and fight that battle with gusto, is to live the creative life to the fullest.

A New Day

There was a glorious sunrise over the Archipelago on the seventh day of Christmas.

Vibrant shades of crimson colored the sky behind the branches of the leafless trees and the angles of the rooftops still filled with night and silence, the dreams of sleepers in their beds.

When I opened one of the small windows in the dining room to look at it, a lone crow was calling in the distance.

I watched it fly for a moment, a fragment of the fleeing night against the morning colors and the curling columns of woolly white chimney smoke.

Morning time, the deep time when the quietude of the world pours into the mind and the soul. It connects me with what is important in my life. What I often overlook in the busy day that follows.

That moment made me realize that I am blessed.

That all things in my world are in their right place.

That the start of that day, and every day, is another opportunity to improve, perfect, accept, forgive or achieve.

That I should be grateful for each day and take advantage of every minute.

Thoughts On Christmas Day

Two thousand and twenty years ago Christ was born during the era of the Roman Empire.

Even in the best of times, life for most was difficult beneath the crushing weight of tyrannical rulers who were to be revered as gods.

The state was the center of a citizen’s life and war was the ways and means of its’ prosperity.

But in the darkest hour of night is when the brightest light will shine.

On that day the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob had set His light in that darkest hour.

Now is the time to follow its brilliance, for the Savior of the world, the King of Kings, lays beneath it!

He is the one true God.

His word is the center of our lives

His love is our prosperity.

Rejoice, repent and follow Him, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!

Thoughts On The Shortest Day Of The Year

Since the longest day in summer, night has been reaching further and further into day as it makes itself longer and longer.

Until yesterday.

Now on the longest night of winter, day has it’s turn to reach further and further into night, making itself longer and longer.

Every year the same dance between day and night, light and dark, hope and despair. Lived out against a backdrop of clouds coming and going, leaves blooming and dying, the constellations rising and setting round and round the immobile star of the pole.

We grow and harvest our crops by this dance, set our clocks to it, measure the length of our lives with it. We are creatures of habit by design. Driven by cycles, some we know and some that remain hidden.

We stand at the center of turning cycles, concentric in design, ceaseless in motion. Some we dance with moment to moment, others turning so slowly that our time to dance will never arrive.

Big or small, fast or slow, known or hidden, these are the invisible gears that move our lives through time and space.