Consider this:

New Year’s Resolutions, Day 1(40)

This year, I’ve had some unexpected down time from work. It’s a bummer to lose precious billable hours (two of my ongoing editorial projects from 2015 crossed their natural finish line), but I’ve put my time to good use. In the past few months, I’ve attended workshops, readings, conferences, round table discussions and webinars on everything from online marketing and mindfulness to story telling, book publishing and 21^st-century education. Here in Mill Valley, let alone in San Francisco and the greater Bay Area, we have so many opportunities to listen and learn. I figured it was time to step out of my cozy office/studio and pay attention to some of the words and wisdom swirling around out there on the foggy breeze, available to anyone who chooses to stop and listen.

Plus, I had my own nagging New Year’s resolutions to tend to, a short list of goals which came to me in an oh-so-timely flash, just before midnight booted 2015 out the door.

In 2016 (I wrote in a note to myself on January 1), I will:

1. Be bold
2. Be generous
3. Find my voice

(Actually, I made four resolutions. Number four: begin again, again. My parenting mantra. A topic for another day.)

This morning I was thinking about how I’ve managed to achieve exactly none of my resolutions as I sat cross-legged for my eighth day in a row of mindfulness meditation. (Yup, mediation is another journey I’ve (re)embarked on, thanks in part to hearing Jack Kornfield’s conversation with Kelly McGonigal at City Arts and Lectures and my sister sending me a link to, plus her rave review of, www.Headspace.com.)

 

Anyway, I was comfortably seated on my purple meditation pillow, focusing on my breath, when it hit me: Maybe I can achieve all three of my goals at once by creating a newsletter-type-of-thingy, some sort of friendly, regular(ish) update where I can share thoughts, ideas, book reviews (I read a lot), recipes (I cook a lot) and, who knows, maybe even a funny pet video or 30 (I record my dog and cat, a lot) – really, anything I think you might enjoy or even find helpful.

Of course, by now I’d completely lost track of counting ten breaths in a row and was lost somewhere around breath number 147. I tried to resettle my mind, but it was too late. I had stopped non-judgmentally watching as my thoughts floated by like clouds scudding across a blue sky. Worse still, with ninja-like stealth, my critical conscious mind was starting to sabotage my creative subconscious: You’re going to start a newsletter thingy? That’s dumb. You don’t have anything interesting to say. No one will want to read your random emails. Besides, 2016 is half way done. You should wait until January 1^st 2017. Or wait until never. How about never?

But just as my inner critic was about to KO my creative impulse, a tiny question bubbled up: Willow, what’s stopping you from chipping away at the old resolutions starting T-O-D-A-Y?

The silence of the following moments, as I tried to come up with a single good reason not get going right this minute, on the 140th day of the year, was deafening. And then I heard something else:

Kapow. Bam. Splat.

(That was the sound of my inner critic getting walloped.)

Okay. Message received. So now, a few hours later, I’m unexpectedly (and quickly!) writing this disclaimer: Everything you see and read here (format! Schedule! Content! Title! Everything) is subject to change. Think of this newsletter thingy as an experiment, an excursion, an exercise, an expression. Without doubt, it’s a work in progress. Because if I’ve learned anything in my 20+ years as a writer, it’s this:

1. I can’t get it right until I’ve got it written.
2. I’ve never met a deadline I haven’t met.

Thanks for reading (and, if you’re so inspired, sharing). Now I’ve gotta’ go. I’ve got a deadline to meet.

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Cook this:

Roasted Sweet Potato & Coconut Soup

Here’s my version of Yotam Ottolenghi’s delicious Carrot and Coconut Soup. I was a little intimidated when I first read the recipe but now that I’ve made it a bunch of times, I’ve simplified (and sped up) the cooking process a bit. The results are an RQ (Restaurant Quality) soup that’s healthy to boot!

Roasted Sweet Potato & Coconut Soup
Serves six.
1 tsp ground coriander*
2 tsp ground cumin*
2 Tbs olive oil
4 shallots, peeled and sliced
1 red chili, deseeded and chopped (or a dash of cayenne pepper)
5cm ginger, peeled and sliced
1-2 whole stick lemongrass, pounded
3 kaffir lime leaves
Salt
3 large carrots, peeled and cut into 2-inch dice
2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 2-inch dice
6 cups vegetable stock (or chicken, for non-vegetarians)
1 can coconut milk
3 tbsp lime juice
4 tbsp chopped coriander, to serve
1½ limes, quartered, to serve

Toss diced carrots and sweet potatoes in olive oil and arrange on a baking sheet. Roast at 350 degrees for about 30-40 minutes, turning 2-3 times, until veggies are soft and browned. If carrots finish cooking first, remove them from the oven separately.

Meanwhile, dry toast the cumin and coriander in the bottom of a heavy soup pot on low-to-medium heat for three to four minutes, until fragrant. Add olive oil to the spices, then add shallots, chili or cayenne, ginger, lemongrass, lime leaves and a teaspoon of salt. Cook on medium-low heat for 10-15 minutes, stirring often, until the shallots are very soft. Add the roasted carrots, sweet potatoes, stock and coconut milk and cook on a low simmer for 20 minutes, until the vegetables are tender.

Remove the lime leaves and lemongrass. Blitz the soup in a blender (in batches) until very smooth. Stir in lime juice, adjust the seasoning to taste and serve garnished with coriander and a wedge of lime

* The original recipe calls for toasting, then grinding, cumin and coriander seeds. It’s easier (and almost as tasty) to dry toast the ground spices over medium heat for a few minutes to release the flavor before adding olive oil and starting to sautee.

Original recipe here: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/aug/12/summer-soup-recipes-yotam-ottolenghi

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Read this:

Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie

I’m participating in the 2016 Mill Valley Library Reading Challenge, aiming to read 24 award-winning books (across all genres and award categories) and decide if they were, in fact, award worthy. I’m enjoying have a framework to help me pick my books and the challenge has led me down literary paths I’ve never explored before (Robert Massie’s Pulitzer-prize winning biography of Catherine the Great, anyone?). Today’s review:

Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie (2010 winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards).

I just loved Burnt Shadows. It begins in Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, the day the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb and ends in New York, a few months after 9/11. The book introduces three generations of two complex, complicated families as they live in and journey from Japan, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States. This book is about love, loss, home, identity, war, foreignness and forgiveness. It’s also about the role of language in how we identify ourselves — and how we identify and define others.

“But just that glimpse moved Raza into a profound melancholy – no, not melancholy. It was uljhan he was feeling. His emotions were in Urdu now, melancholy and disquiet abutting each other like the two syllables of a single word.”

Wow. This kind of gorgeous writing made me get into bed an hour earlier than usual, just so I’d have plenty of time to read Burnt Shadows before I fell asleep.

Award worthy? Absolutely yes.