Maison Tranquille Blog

  I have been on Duolingo for 1,545 consecutive days. That sounds much more impressive than it is. It does not mean I have spent 1,545 days becoming fluent in French. Some days I have done several lessons. Some days I have only done enough to keep the flame from going out. At this point, I am not even sure why I maintain the streak.  Is it because I am devoted to French or because I refuse to be defeated by a cartoon owl. For a long time, learning French had the usual framework around it: lessons, levels, progress and the distant possibility of becoming fluent. Fluency is a fine goal, but it can turn an interest into another job. There is always more vocabulary to learn, another verb tense to master and another level showing how far I still have to go. Maybe, instead, I can simply be interested in French. I do not have to become fluent to justify the time I spend with it. I can like the sound of the language, enjoy recognizing a sentence and remain curious about how French peo...

  I opened the freezer the other day and decided things had gotten ridiculous. It was packed, with vegetables crammed into every available space. Broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, carrots, corn, peas, beans, berries and assorted bags of things I would have to pull out to identify. I took a picture, which somehow made it look even worse. Then I remembered this wasn't our only freezer. We have another freezer in the garage, and another refrigerator with a side freezer. Apparently I was preparing for the apocalypse. Or maybe I was planning on catering the apocalypse.  Anyway, the apocalypse has been canceled. We're eating the freezer. This comes at a good time. We're trying to pay down some bills, and I'm also working on downsizing our lives a little. Buying more groceries while several freezers are already full doesn't help either project, so for the next couple of weeks we're shopping at home first. We will still buy fresh produce, bread and other things we need, b...

  Let’s Cook It Right by Adelle Davis was more than a book that sat on a shelf. This one helped feed my family. I have spent an inordinate amount of time reading about nutrition for most of my adult life. My interest may have developed during a few years of food insecurity, but from my discovery of Prevention magazine back in the 1970s until now, I have tried to figure out the healthiest way to eat. I have been vegetarian, mostly raw, Mediterranean-minded and several things in between. I am still interested, still experimenting and still trying to do better without making food the only measure of a healthy life. Because it isn’t. How we move, rest, handle stress, love our people and enjoy our days matters too. When my family was young, I regularly made a ground beef and vegetable soup from Adelle Davis’s Let’s Cook It Right . I had almost forgotten about it until I started looking for ways to use some of the food already in our freezer. Suddenly, I remembered that soup and how mu...