It has been cold the last few days so we have been building a fire in the evening. Last night my hubby and I were talking about roasting marshmallows which led to a discussion about what is our roasting preferences. We noted that while I like a well done steak and my hubby loves a medium rare it is quite the opposite with marshmallows. I love mine just turned to a golden brown and he likes a good old fashion “Joan of Arc” marshmallow (see how to roast a marshmallow below).

Marshmallows have been around for quite some time in the modern market. I did discover that the use of marshmallow to make a candy dates back to ancient Egypt. I never thought about that before, even though the mass marketing of marshmallows that I buy are commercially packaged under the Kraft brand. You can even find a recipe for making marshmallows online but after reading it I decided it was more hassle than just buying the packaged plumes of white balls. Interestingly, the recipe calls for gelatin which is a animal product so generally they are considered not to be kosher or halal unless it can be proven that the animal was kosher or halal. There is even a vegetarian alternative which may be very good reasons to make your own recipe. I was not sure about marshmallow crème products but I read that general use is egg whites instead. So there was much to learn about the marshmallow and if you are concerned about kosher, halal or you are a vegetation the link for the recipe is below.

Roasting is an art. It includes the actual roasting, the ambiance of a cook campfire and sometimes added goodies to make smores. A good campfire with marshmallows requires a few stories and a few songs. So first the marshmallow are important, then dive in with a song or two.

Campfire Poem

Campfire’s burning, campfire’s burning

Draw nearer, draw nearer

In the gloaming, in the gloaming

Come sing and be merry

~Thanks to Rebecca Maltese Girl Guides

I have done one on a stick or loaded a couple on. How do we like our marshmallow at our house? Like I said, I like mine turned to a lovely golden brown. My hubby? He can’t wait to make a Joan of Arc, which is leaving it on the fire until a flame gently turns it to a crisp on the outside.

Marshmallow recipe: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/5838

How to roast a marshmallow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5QvvnETZ7c

Some days the weight of the world seems to be too much. I watch too much news or I debate too many negative topics and then whammo, decompression time is needed. And that means right now! I have found five things that keep me grounded.

Gardening:

I love gardening. Whenever some issue needs some sorting out I put on my garden hat, grab my gloves, clogs and tools. Out I go, there is always something to do in the garden no matter what season I am in.

A great thing about gardening is that it is just outside my door. I do not need special gym clothes or shoes to go outside. The fresh air clears my head and after a while I relax. With my dog at my feet I sit on the garden bench to survey our hard work. Mine the garden, hers……keeping the squirrels and lizards at bay. A very symbiotic relationship.

Walking:

This is right up there with gardening for clearing my head and being relaxing. I used to be satisfied just walking in the neighborhood but I need a good long walk so now I go to the local state park. I head out most days for the long walk and stop when my head is clear. My walking companion, my dog, is good for my soul too. A dog is an integral part of my decompressing. When I get home I am ready to take on the world.

Sewing:

I love to sew or do crafts. Cross-stitching is my craft of choice. Something I can do when being a couch potato. I have never been good at just sitting still so there has to be something to do while I am watching TV with my hubby and girl dog. Making clothes or quilting are fun projects too. Sewing is so relaxing. Like gardening you can see what you have produced immediately. It takes my mind of things I can not control.

Research and Writing:

I put these two together because once I start researching then it just has to be written down. It doesn’t matter the topic. It can me anything that has hit my curiosity bone from a quote I heard to full blown historical research. No matter I am out on the Information Highway, pulling out books or whatever to get the answer. I do not quit until I have the answers! I can get so absorbed that I forget time and space for days at a time. But when I process it all I am ready to face the world again.

Writing is fun. I can write for my blog, about a specific topic or as I piecing together ideas for a novella, I have one rolling around in my head right now. I have to be in a “flow” to write so it is critical I have released anything on my mind to get in that space.

All five of these decompressing tools work. The pay off is after I am done I am ready again for another run at life. I call it my internal housecleaning. I have either exercised my brain or my body. Both of which are necessary for a good night’s sleep. Sweet dreams!

“We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves, otherwise we harden”

~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe~

When it hurts all over.

Chronic pain. You know it if you have it. You know it if you know someone with it or if you have heard medical research about it. Chronic pain comes in all forms and fashion. There is no one condition that causes it, there is no one lifestyle that is affected by it, nor is there no one cure-all with the right diet or drugs. One thing that can be said about chronic pain is that it hurts and it is never going away.

If you have chronic pain you know you live with it 24/7. You also know that most of the people who have it have no outward “sign” that says they are suffering from it. All the awareness in the world will not make it go away. And if you suffer from chronic pain you may know that it will only get worse the longer it exist.

There are two things that can be done about it. Either we can give into it or we can deal with it. We can grieve it and then get up and get proactive. Oh yes, that oversimplifies it if you have chronic pain. I know that. I began suffering from chronic pain in my thirties. So now, close to thirty years later I have felt it continually worsen. I cursed God and myself for having so much pain. I bartered with God to make it go away. I thought maybe exercise and proper diet would change my fate. Nothing I could do could change that I have chronic pain.

I have degenerative arthritis along with a break down in the autoimmune system. I was angry about ten years ago when my doctor told me what to look forward to. I said, “but I did everything right, I eat right, exercise, manage my stress and anything else I can do.” He just told me he was sorry but, “life handed me a raw deal and this is what you have.” Anger, helplessness, and grief became my friends for a few years. I took all the test. Blood tests, CatScans, MRI’s, some test that checked my nerve endings. I took the drugs and cortisone shots. I even had one doctor recommend carpal tunnel surgery. The only thing any of these tests did positively were pay a health care professional.

What I have come to realize, is there is no fix. There is only management. And acceptance. Then it is time to find a lifestyle that can best manage the chronic pain. So that is where I am now. If you have chronic pain you know that management does not mean lack of pain, it is still there. It only means you fine relief to relax once and awhile. I am thankful I can still move. I take walks every day, vital to keep the joints well oiled. Most days I am able to enjoy wonderful walks for 1-2 miles in the local forest or city park. That is a major blessing. I always watch my diet and weight. I take the supplements required and pain relievers so I can keep moving. That helps the chronic pain from arthritis. But know this, as soon as I wake every morning I am aware I am in pain until I fall asleep at night.

But the autoimmune issue needs to be dealt with separately. This one is much more limiting than the arthritis. With the arthritis I can take pain relievers, use a cane or wrap my knee. I can use heat or cold on the joints and I get relief. But I cannot manage the autoimmune issues this way. I get sick, can’t eat, and go to bed in sheer exhaustion for 24-72 hours. I never know what will set it off. It can be a positive or negative experience that excites me past normal routine, or not. I just don’t know, all I know is that it happens. For most people they just roll through the day to day ups and downs but for me it knocks me down. And even here I am learning the signals. I know a “episode” is coming when I sleep really hard accompanied with nightmares. Or I start stumbling and can hear myself slurring. This one can be an issue because once I fall I hurt myself. I have learned when to feel myself stumble once and I then I am on high alert. Time to watch my lifestyle so I don’t run my car into someone (yep, done that) or fall and crack a rib (that was not pleasant). Along with the stumbling comes a deep depression that unless you have experienced this kind of depression you can not describe it to anyone. I know it is happening and it is oppressive. The stumbling, the nausea, the depression all require immediate attention.

These conditions were limiting for some time. I couldn’t do much or was afraid to do much. Then I learned to work with it instead of feeling sorry for myself. I started getting productive again. I found things that I could do so if something happened I could take care of it. I went to college. I volunteer to Chair a Master Gardener Helpline for my County. I walk my Springer spaniel daily and do my own yard. My daughter got me active writing this blog and I network on social media. I do not work for financial gain because I am lucky that my husband provides for me. This is a great support during the bad days and I know others are not so lucky.

I am very much aware the conditions that cause my chronic pain will only worsen as time goes on. The TMJ, my knee and back pain will need attention, possibly surgery but, I am thankful for every day I have. I operate on a day to day basis now. I gave up making plans that fall through. I know I have 24 hours in the day. What I do with it is all have because there is no do over. The only time I give in to negativity is when the depression overwhelms me. It always feels like such a waste of time to be so useless for 24-72 hours. But I know that it will pass, and at least it does pass. Some people do not have the luxury of relief for autoimmune conditions. I have a husband to help me and we have children to help him out as I get older.

Chronic pain is here to stay, not just for me, but for others who have it. We have heard that talking about it helps. I think it does. What can those who know us do to help? Don’t try to fix it! Don’t say you should go to the doctor, frankly, I already know that and have been to more doctors than I care to count. Know that if a person who has chronic pain says they can not do something don’t pressure them. It is hard enough to admit you can’t keep up without someone prodding you on. And most importantly, just listen. I personally do not share enough with my family, I am told. Even my doctor says I don’t complain enough. Honestly this article was hard to write. But I thought of people I know who suffer from chronic pain or live with someone who does and I thought, why not share. I know it has helped me. I hope it helps you too.

Nothing says “comfort food” like chicken pot pie. It has yummy vegetables and a slowed cooked chicken in its own broth. I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I enjoyed making it. It is easy and good for a multi-meal leftover. Prep and cook time total about an hour.

Crust:

2 boxes refrigerated pie crusts, (that is four crusts).

Filling:

1/3 cup butter, unsalted

1/3 cup chopped onion

1/3 cup flour

½ cup milk

salt and pepper to taste

1 ½ cup each potatoes, carrots and peas

Precooked whole roasting chicken in crockpot day before cool and deboned.

Keep leftover broth from chicken that was cooked before hand in crock pot. Do not add water, just the juices coming off the chicken.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In stock pot add chicken, diced potatoes, carrots and peas with broth from chicken. Warm up, gradually stirring in the broth and milk mixture (see below).

While waiting for the chicken and veggies to warm up, about 15 minutes, prepare in a 2-quart saucepan to melt butter at medium heat. Add onions, cook about 2 minutes, stirring under tender. Stir in flour, salt and pepper until well blended. Gradually add milk until it begins to thickened. If it starts to thicken too quickly add in enough Progresso chicken stock to loosen it up.

Line casserole dish with pie crust. Takes two, as you can see I overlapped and did the “Jamie Oliver” way of throwing it together. Spoon in mixture, cover with two more pie crust and then fold edges up. Place on cookie sheet in case it cooks over the top, do not want it all over the oven. As you can see it may have some spillage.

Bake time 30-40 minutes. If you find that the crust is turning dark too fast, cover crust edge with strip of foil to prevent excessive browning. I cooked my casserole pie for 35 minutes, turned off oven let rest in oven for about 45 minutes then served. Perfect!

Hint: We ate this over a four day period, heating up in the microwave. We added Progresso chicken stock to taste to give it more liquid each time we warmed it up.

I feel old. But my mind does not know it. I still feel the“the fountain of youth; it is your mind…..” If you are any age over seventeen you know your mind does not know you are aging at all. The only thing that I find that works against a person aging is well, the body. It just starts to slow down and no matter how much the mind does not accept the changing, the body does know that aging happens. There are things that started happening that made me realize I could not just bounce back. It started happening in my mid-thirties. I was playing kick ball with the kids. They were happy and playful and down I went. What! What was that? It felt like my vital organs relocated. It hurt. I mean it really hurt. That was the first time I noticed that I was not seventeen anymore.

Okay that river in Egypt,“denial”was still working for me until my mid-forties. The mirror became my nemesis. It kept looking back at me while I saw my face begin to look like my mother. And what is that waddle there? Oh and gray hair? I had to get that covered and fast. However, it was not until I hit the fifties that the glorious nap while sitting in a chair began to be common place. When I was a youth I wondered how older people could just nap in a chair, gently doze off. One minute they are there and the next minute snore city is going on.

I think youth is wasted on the young. Not that young people do not have the right to it. They do. But youth without a life of information is well, just youth. There is one other thing that youth has besides vitality that aging does not. The ability to take risk without counting the cost. Once you get older you just know you have to be more reserved. Every once and awhile I miss that risk taking.

Slowing down has been the hardest for me. Both my husband and I lost our parents at a relatively young age. So we never had the opportunity of our parents passing on vital information about aging and watching how it is done. Experiences we picked up from others or reading on the internet replaced our parents. What I see now is that young people look at older people as invisible. I find this in public situations the most often. And I love it! Why? Because it affords me the opportunity to see things that I would not get to if I was noticed. For example, the other day I got up pre-dawn per my normal habit to go out and get the paper. There coming up the street were two young men. They did not even notice me. But I noticed them. I remember what it felt like to be like them. That was awfully early for them to up. Or were they still up for the night before? What were they into that they were up that early? Anyone who is past youth knows that is unusual behavior that early in the morning and we draw on our own youthful antics to wonder about the situation.

Yes, I think if I had the strength physically of youth then that would be ideal. But would I give up decades of aging for it? Never! I like aging, it is quite satisfying to know what to expect and how to plan for the future. Yes, the fountain of youth does exist,“It is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.”

Aging is in the eye of the beholder!