Category: Uncategorized

Serves 4 to 6

INGREDIENTS

4 teaspoons minced fresh thyme, divided
1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary
1 tablespoon kosher salt
2 teaspoons ground fennel
1 teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 (3-pound) boneless pork loin roast, trimmed
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
40 garlic cloves, peeled
1 ¼ cups chicken broth
⅓ cup dry white wine
⅓ cup heavy cream

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

You can use a blade-end or center-cut pork loin here. Three to four heads of garlic will yield 40 cloves. Note that the pork needs to be salted and refrigerated for at least an hour before cooking.

INSTRUCTIONS

Combine 2 teaspoons thyme, rosemary, salt, fennel, pepper, and pepper flakes in bowl. Sprinkle pork with thyme mixture. Wrap pork in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour or up to 24 hours. (I did 24 hours)

Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 300 degrees. Heat oil in 12-inch ovensafe nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until just smoking. Unwrap pork and place in skillet. Cook until browned on all sides, about 7 minutes.

Scatter garlic around pork and transfer skillet to oven. Roast until pork registers 130 degrees, 40 to 50 minutes. Transfer pork to carving board, tent with aluminum foil, and let rest for 20 minutes. (After resting pork was right at 142°)

While pork rests, place skillet with garlic over medium-high heat (skillet handle will be hot) and cook, stirring occasionally, until garlic is sizzling and light golden brown all over, about 3 minutes. Add broth, wine, cream, and remaining 2 teaspoons thyme and bring to boil. Cook until sauce has reduced to slightly more than 1 cup and is thick enough to coat back of spoon, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and cover to keep warm.

Slice pork thin. Serve with sauce.

I’ve been a feminist most of my life as I’ve always believed that women should be able to do anything that men should do and that we should be paid the same. However, I’ve also always believed that women shouldn’t get special treatment and if we’re not prepared to do the exact same job that men do, then we shouldn’t get the same pay. When I was 22 and an auditor for the Air Force, I was supremely disappointed when I was sent on a road trip because a more senior auditor chose to stay home to nurse her six month old baby. In my mind, she wasn’t doing her job because she was choosing to ask for accommodations because she was female and in my mind that wasn’t right.

It’s been 30 years since that happened, but I still don’t think it was right to ask for accommodations because she was female and a mother. And I also have issues with parental leave because I don’t think it is fair that new parents get time off when people caring for sick kids, sick parents, or new dogs don’t get the same accommodation. it doesn’t seem fair that people who choose to have children get more time off than people who choose not to have children. In my mind, it would be much more fair to offer everyone a set amount of time to take off for a sabbatical.

Oh I can hear the parental whiners bitching that I don’t understand what they are going through and I must not have children if I don’t think they deserve special treatment. However, I’ve got news for you, I do have children and I went back to work three weeks after having a C-section because I didn’t want special treatment. I signed up to do a job and it was in my best interests to do the job. Yes having a baby is a special moment and a woman’s body needs time to recover, but having a baby is a woman’s choice and not her employer’s choice. She and her partner need to figure it out.

I know this sounds harsh, but it is also harsh to expect people without children to work extra time or sacrifice to cover for people who have children.

Recipes For A Sacred Life: True Stories and a Few Miracles by Rivvy Neshama
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recipes For A Sacred Life: True Stories and a Few Miracles is not just another book of feel good stories detailing how other people have overcome adversity. Instead, it is a book of stories that includes specific suggestions for how people can live a sacred life. The book came about after Neshama did an exercise in a book to find her highest purpose. She identified her highest purpose as living a sacred life and she soon realized through a series of synchronicities that she should write a book about how to live a sacred life. Once she set her intention, she began meeting the people who provided the stories for the book.

Throughout the book Neshama shares stories of her successes, her failures, her happiness, and her grief and she provides guidance on dealing with the good days and the bad. One of the practices in her book that really spoke to me was saying hello to the sun each morning. She doesn’t advocate a hard core practice of rising at god-awful o’clock each morning to see the sunrise, but recommends making a conscious effort to say hello to the sun when you first step outside or making an effort to step outside to greet the sun. I’ve started this practice over the last few weeks and it has helped me be more in touch with the world around me. Once I realized how good saying hello to the sun felt, I expanded the practice and I now say hello to the sun, the earth, the wind, and the water. Saying hello to the elements has helped me to realize that I am supported on this journey through life.

What I love most about this book is that each of the vignettes in the book are only a few pages so I can pick it up and read a few pages, then go on with my day. Or I can settle in for a longer read if that’s what I need. This will definitely be a book that sits on my nightstand to provide a pick me up.

View all my reviews

Travels with the Evil Inclination: A Rabble-Rousing Renegade Rabbi’s Story by Gershon Winkler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Gershon Winkler is the spiritual leader that we all need even if is funny and sometimes irreverent manner are shocking to the more sober minded. Travels with the Evil Inclination is a book about Winkler’s journey from an ultra Orthodox upbringing in the Bronx to an Ultra Flexidox life in the middle of New Mexico. The book is bold and beautiful as Winkler is honest about his desires, his shortcomings, and his missteps.

What I found the most interesting about this book is that even tough Winkler is Jewish and I practice an eclectic form of spirituality, many of our lessons and experiences are the same. I firmly believe that if you put your intentions out there, the goddess will deliver, but that you will be tested as few things are easy in this life. Winkler exemplifies this lesson as he put out his intention to live a more flexible life and while he was continually tested on his path by the Evil Inclination, he ultimately persevered. Some of the tests he encountered included having all of his belongings wash away and being robbed by hitchhikers.

This book reinforced my growing realization that there are many similarities between different religious paths and that there is no right or wrong path only a right or wrong path for an individual.

View all my reviews

Comfort: A Journey Through Grief by Ann Hood
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It seems odd that a book about grief would be called Comfort because grief can be one of the least comfortable things imaginable. It is full of shards and tears and unexpected agony, but it also has, I supposed, a kind of comfort all its own. It can be that warm bed that you crawl into and never want to crawl out of because as long as you are nestled into your cocoon, you can forget the pain of living without someone you loved. As long as you’re in that comfortable bed, you can forget that the person who promised to love you forever broke that promise, you can forget the pain of seeing your father laying in a hospital bed grasping for a last breath that will never come, and you can forget helplessly watching the eyes of your dog close the last time as the vet plunges the needle into his fur.

When grief inducing incidents happen, people offer empty platitudes promising that time will heal all wounds, that someday you will let go of the pain, and that someday you will claw your way out of the pain and move on with your life. Ann Hood opens Comfort with an essay about all the promises that people made when her daughter Grace died on April 18, 2002. As I read her words, I found myself nodding as I had heard some version of those words when my father died, when my marriage ended, and when my dog (who had loved me through both of those events) died.

My dad died on November 28, 2008, the day after Thanksgiving, and in some ways I never properly grieved him because I was the one that had to be strong for everyone else. I had to reassure my kids that life was still good, I had to help my mother navigate the funeral process, and I had to be there for my husband who was mourning in his own way. It seemed I never got a chance to grieve as that first year was about helping my mother who had never lived alone navigate widowhood. And just when it finally felt like I could tend to my own emotions, my husband had a heart attack, almost tied, and just when he was out of the woods decided he wanted to be out of the woods alone and told me he wanted to end our 22 year marriage.

Again, there was no time to grieve and no time to tend to my own broken heart because I had to be strong for the kids, I had to find a new place to live, and I had to navigate on my own. I didn’t do so well those first few months as all I wanted to do was to drown in my sorrow. And it was Luke, my Australian Shepherd Collie Mix who kept me alive. As much as I didn’t want to tend to my own needs, I wanted to tend to his. He let me cry into his fur, he listened to me endlessly complain, and he loved me unconditionally when I thought no one would ever love me again. He was there for me in that way that dogs are oh so good at. He just loved me.

Eventually, I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and the kids, Luke, and I moved to Cleveland. Life was wonderful, we had a big back yard for him to run in, a house, and we were happy. Until the end of August 2017 when we woke up and Luke couldn’t make it down the stairs. We carried him down the stairs, rushed him to the doctor, and said yes when she said the kind thing to do would be to let him go. My son, Sean, cried into the phone as we held the phone near Luke’s ear for him to say goodbye. Then my daughter and I gathered all our courage and held him as the doctor plunged the needle into his fur. Our consolation was knowing that he knew he was loved.

As I read Hood’s words about all the types of grief, all the types of platitudes, and how joy and grief can live side by side within our soul, something clicked and I realized that life and grief are complicated and that while time doesn’t necessarily heal all wounds, it does make them bearable. I also realized that there are days when I am still going to want to snuggle up in my warm little nest and that that’s okay. There is no right way to grieve, there’s only my way.

View all my reviews