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I haven’t been writing a lot lately because I’ve been busy working on my writing…I’ve been sending out a lot of query letters for articles I’ve already written and for article ideas that I have. I usually never hear anything back but I’ve been getting some amazing tips by following some freelance writing blogs: http://www.thewmfreelanceconnection.com/ and http://writetodone.com/ and http://www.makealivingwriting.com/

The result? I feel enriched. And inspired. I am feeling excited, rather than overwhelmed, about the possibilities. Based on these blogs, I’ve decided that I need to create an “author website” that shows some of my work and some testimonials from clients…and I’m going to start working on that right away…

And just as I’d been settling this in my mind, a good friend of mine from college messaged me and said she’s been doing some writing for http://madisonconsumer.com/ -- a great resource that offers money saving tips for people in the Madison, Wisconsin area -- and that she suggested me as a writer should they consider starting a similar resource in my area. Wow. The timing on all of that was incredible.

It reminds me of a line from The Alchemist:

"And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it."

— Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

(On that note, check out these inspiring quotes from The Alchemist. I also enjoyed A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle for its similar themes).

I’ve also enrolled in a fiction writing workshop at KSURF http://ksurf.net/ and I plan to do the memoir writing workshop next…I subscribed to a fiction writing newsletter, and here is the quote I got today:

"Even if what you're working on doesn't go anywhere, it will help you with the next thing you're doing. Make yourself available for something to happen. Give it a shot."

- Cormac McCarthy

I recently read The Road by Cormac McCarthy and I felt like this quote was speaking directly to me. Maybe this is a new way to think about all those articles I’m sitting on that no one apparently wants! I need to change my mindset, and keep working on things…keep myself open to the possibilities of the universe.

Presents!!!

I just love getting presents! I sure wasn't expecting it, but presents at work have been coming in steadily this week. It's sure nice that people show their appreciation for each other.


My Green Tea Sampler and a Storybook

My Beautiful Green Tea Sampler



A Bottle of Wine



Snowman Doorknob Hanger & Homemade Plum Jam

And here is a photo of a gift I gave to a co-worker who has been especially helpful and supportive as I began a new job this fall. I decorated two cans of my homemade rhubarb jelly. I also gave her a jar of freezer jam but I didn't decorate that one because it was still cold. I love receiving homemade gifts as much as I enjoy giving them (the plum jelly above is one of my favorites).

My Homemade Rhubarb Jelly

Lefse: A Family Tradition

Families have their own special food traditions. Some of these traditions are captured in those famous church cookbooks (aside from having good recipes, these cookbooks reveal much about the nature of a certain time and place and the personalities of the contributors…) But how many of these traditions are simply forgotten?

Lefse, a Norwegian tortilla made from potatoes, is our family tradition. My Grandma Carrie has always made lefse for us, especially for the holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Lefse, according to Linda’s Culinary Dictionary, is “to any "good" Norwegian the same as the tortilla is to the Mexican and the crepes are to the French. A Scandinavian tradition for decades, lefse is a pastry made from potatoes, flour, butter, and cream. It is widely prized as a delicious delicacy, whether served plain or with butter and sugar.”

Grandma Carrie tells me that she didn’t learn how to make lefse until after her mother passed away. She also tells me that my Grandma Tena used to make and sell her lefse. According to http://www.foodtimeline.org/, "Lefse is not yet a lost art. But it is dwindling...” I don’t want this dwindling art to be forgotten in our family. So I’ve been making lefse with Grandma Carrie. Here is Grandma’s lefse recipe and the technique for making it.

 Grandma Carrie’s Lefse

Ingredients

• 3.5 pounds of russet potatoes (In my Grandma’s words, 2/3 of a 5 pound bag of potatoes or enough to fill s small 2 QT sauce pan)
• ½ stick of butter
• ½ C condensed milk or heavy cream
• 2 T salt
• 1 T sugar
• 2 C unsifted flour

Equipment
I've included the Amazon widget here so you can see what the pastry board, corrugated rolling pin, and lefse stick look like.

• Pastry board and cloth (optional)
• Lefse stick
• Lefse grill / 'Heritage Grill' or a pancake griddle
• Corrugated wood rolling pin
• Cloth rolling pin covers
• Potato ricer (optional)
• Flour sifter

Directions
Preparing the Dough

• Peel the potatoes
• Boil the potatoes in a 2 QT sauce pan
• Rice or mash the potatoes. Place the potatoes in a large bowl and chill overnight
• Using the microwave, melt the butter in the condensed milk and stir
• Add salt to the butter-milk mixture and stir
• Add sugar to the salt-butter-milk mixture and stir




The lefse dough


• Add the liquid to the potatoes and mix with your hands
• Sift the flour into the potato mixture and knead with your hands until the flour disappears. If the dough is still sticky, add a little more flour.
  
  Grandma tells me that a "natural leavening process" occurs with the potatoes, so it’s important to use your hands rather than an automatic mixer, which could over-develop the gluten and cause the dough to rise.

Rolling Out the Dough





Starts as a small round dough ball!


• Spread a thin layer of flour on the pastry board (Grandma uses a circular Bethany pastry board, which is covered in fabric to help prevent the dough from sticking)
• Fill 1/3 C with the dough to roll out
• Place the dough on the pastry board and shape it into a circle
• Lightly flour each side of the circular dough ball with the flour sifter
• Using a covered corrugated rolling pin, roll the dough into a thin, circular shape, flipping and flouring the dough as needed to prevent the dough from sticking




Rolled out lefse dough


• Continue to flip, flour, and roll until the dough is about 12 inches wide and very thin
• Transfer the lefse to the ungreased griddle using the lefse stick
• Cook the lefse on high heat on each side until it is lightly browned
• Flip the lefse as needed using the lefse stick



Flipping the lefse with the lefse stick

Let the lefse cool on wire baking racks. This recipe makes about 14 pieces of lefse.

To prepare, spread the lefse with butter and/or sugar and roll it up and serve. Some even use the lefse as a bread, serving sandwich fixings or meats rolled up inside the lefse.



The final product: about 14 pieces of lefse

Stress is Bad at the Bottom of the Hierarchy...Luckily Your Attitude Counts for Something

I just read this amazing article in Wired about the connection between stress, your physical health, and your emotional state. This article describes how anthropologist Robert Sapolsky proved that baboons at the bottom of the social hierarchy were more stressed out and had more health problems than baboons at the top of the hierarchy. This article cites studies of stress in baboons, Oscar nominees/winners, and British civil servants, showing that there is a direct connection between stress and your health:

Stress hollows out our bones and atrophies our muscles. It triggers adult-onset diabetes and is a leading cause of male impotence. In fact, numerous studies of human longevity in developed countries have found that psychosocial factors such as stress are the single most important variable in determining the length of a life. It’s not that genes and risk factors like smoking don’t matter. It’s that our levels of stress matter more.

The shocking part of the article for me was the finding that it’s not necessarily a stressful, demanding job that is so “deadly,” but rather the feeling like you have no control or that your work is meaningless…sound familiar to anyone?!

While doctors speculated for years that increasing rates of cardiovascular disease in women might be linked to the increasing number of females employed outside the home, that correlation turned out to be nonexistent. Working women didn’t have more heart attacks. There were, however, two glaring statistical exceptions to the rule: Women developed significantly more heart disease if they performed menial clerical work or when they had an unsupportive boss. The work, in other words, wasn’t the problem. It was the subordination.

This passage also points to the fact that some groups are more vulnerable than others. In this case, women. That got me thinking about our campus hierarchy and our limited term employees, roughly 75 percent of which are women. It is even more troubling to think that many of these women, probably the most vulnerable in our campus community to stress-related health problems, have no health insurance, paid time off, and don’t make a living wage.

I was floored by the description of the following study by Michael Marmot about British Civil Servants. For the past 25 years the study has tracked 28,000 British men and women working in Civil Servant positions who all have access to the same health care system, who “don’t have to worry about getting laid off,” and “spend most of their workdays shuffling papers.” Here is a description of the findings:

The differences are dramatic. After tracking thousands of civil servants for decades, Marmot was able to demonstrate that between the ages of 40 and 64, workers at the bottom of the hierarchy had a mortality rate four times higher than that of people at the top. Even after accounting for genetic risks and behaviors like smoking and binge drinking, civil servants at the bottom of the pecking order still had nearly double the mortality rate of those at the top.

This study is haunting to me because our campus has the same type of hierarchical Civil Servant system. If the people at the bottom of the hierarchy have “double the mortality rate” in a situation where they have the same benefits as people at the top of the hierarchy, what about the people at the bottom of the hierarchy who DON’T have benefits? What would a study of stress reveal about this population?

In light of these thoughts, the following quote really stuck with me, and I’ll be thinking about how I can be more aware of my own emotional state and my attitude and how these affect my health.

The moral is that the most dangerous kinds of stress don’t feel that stressful. It’s not the late night at the office that’s going to kill us; it’s the feeling that nothing can be done. The person most at risk for heart disease isn’t the high-powered executive anxious about their endless to-do list — it’s the frustrated janitor stuck with existential despair.