dawnkinster

January 14, 2013
by dawnkinster 12 Comments

The press conference

I caught a little bit of the Sandy Hook parents’ press conference today, a month after the horrific deaths of their children. I was walking through the living room when I saw them on the television, one of them speaking, the spouse holding the picture, the rest of them sitting behind, holding their own child’s photo. It stopped me cold. They are us.

I’ve stood right where they are, speaking into the cameras. I’ve sat behind the podium holding Dad’s photo. I’ve tried to make America see how important my private pain was, how relevant it was to everyone else. I know their pain and I know the strength they get from that pain. I know that every single parent there wants something, no, demands something good to come from that pain.

Their fight is so similar to ours…they are fighting big money of the NRA while we fight the big money of the ATA. They are individual families just like us, riding the grief roller coaster and fighting a fight so large it seems impossible. But all they are asking is for dialog. They recognize that all guns can’t go away just like we realize that all semi trucks won’t and shouldn’t disappear.

All they want is honest dialog from both sides of the discussion. Honest, nondefensive dialog and some compromise for the good of everyone. That shouldn’t be such a difficult thing to do. For the kids. So that the loss of the kids and their wonderful teachers wasn’t just a waste of humanity. A little honest dialog. It’s not too much to ask.

David Wheeler, whose son Ben was murdered said “What I have recently come to realize is that I am not done being the best parent I can be for Ben.” Exactly Mr. Wheeler. You will always be Ben’s Dad. Always.

And I am not done being the best daughter I can be for my Dad. My siblings and I will never be done being Dad and Mom’s kids. We know we’ve made a difference. That means a lot to me.

I hope and pray that the Sandy Hook parents find that bit of peace too. We can give them that if we pressure our legislature to sit down and talk. Honestly. Open to change. Willing to give a little. And if we can join the dialog too. Let’s listen to the other side. Let’s consider each others beliefs. And lets come to a middle ground for the good of all of us.

And to honor those 26 lives and all the lives lost before. Let’s honor them all. We can do this. We have to do this.

Change is hard.

January 14, 2013
by dawnkinster 17 Comments

Mishmash Monday

Play time!

January 13, 2013
by dawnkinster 14 Comments

Food blogging

Karma challenged us to photograph our meals for a week. You’d think that would be easy, but it turned out to be quite the challenge. Who remembers to photo dinner before shoveling it in after a day at work? So I have, over the course of two weeks, taken photos of some of my more favorite meals. And, because I had a huge family meal right in the middle of the two weeks, you’ll get to see some food that only shows itself once a year. Enjoy!

At the beginning of the challenge we had just cooked a ham, and I was looking for something to do with the leftovers. My cousin suggested escaloped potatoes and they turned out wonderful! I didn’t get a photo of the finished product, but I did them in the crock pot and they were spectacular.

The wine didn’t go into the potatoes…but it was good.

Then later that week I did crock pot stew. See a theme here?

Good on a cold night after a long day.

Then it was time to get ready for the big dinner. Two of my favorite things to make are do ahead mashed potatoes….

Yukon gold, cream cheese & sour cream.

…and orange cranberry sweet potatoes that can also be done the day before. Both just get heated up the day of the meal, leaving you less stressed and more available to your guests.

You’ve got to try this one. Easy and amazing.

But the star of our big meal was the rib roast.

Yummy!

We had a wonderful time, and ate leftovers for a couple of days.

No we don’t eat like this every day!

After that we settled down to more normal meals. I forgot to take pictures of the night we ate hamburgers….or the night we went out to eat at a local eatery and I had chicken with dried Michigan cherries. Or the night we wolfed down a frozen pizza. After I heated it up.

I did remember to document the night we had scrambled eggs…which I thought would be boring, so I added sauteed onions, leftover ham, and cheese. Filling and quick.

Who says eggs are only for breakfast?

And Saturday night we had marinated chicken (you can buy it already marinated or marinate it yourself in Italian dressing for an hour or so), more onions (you can never go wrong with onions!), stuffing bought already prepared from the grocery store (Bob Evans) and peas. Pretty darn good and fast.

No leftovers.

So there you go….a week or so of meals. Oh. What did we have for desert? Well. We definitely didn’t take time to photograph that before we ate it. But it involved chocolate.

Thanks Karma, for making me think more about what we eat. AND for picking a perfect couple of weeks when I was really cooking. Versus any other two week period of the year when you’d see a lot more of this.

Healthy and fast. Perfect.

If anyone wants to recipes to any of this let me know. It’s all easy. Trust me on that.

January 12, 2013
by dawnkinster 11 Comments

Confused weather

People down in Phoenix Arizona are suffering through unusually cold weather with temperatures at night hovering near freezing (32F, 0C). I hear there is snow near Los Angles California and this morning I saw it was -6 degrees F (-21.1 C) in Denver Colorado. Yet here in Michigan we took down our Christmas lights on a balmy 50+F (10 C) afternoon.

Though the sky was overcast and the air felt damp we enjoyed our afternoon of packing away the lights. Normally we are doing this with frozen fingers, bundled up in layers complete with hats and gloves. Or worse, in blowing snow while tromping through drifts up to our knees. We commented as we worked that it felt like we were in midwinter Alabama. And we smiled.

Yet…there is this niggling worry in the back of my mind. Though it’s easier to deal with outdoor winter tasks when it’s warm, it just feels wrong. We had an unusually warm day when we put the lights up this past November too…and now are blessed with an easy dismantling. Something just isn’t right. Maybe I’m feeling unsettled because I just read Barbara Kingsolver’s latest book, “Flight Behavior” which revolves around the warming of our earth and the consequences wrought by barely discernible changes. Maybe it’s because I remember winters as a kid where we dug snow caves and argued about whose turn it was to shovel the sidewalk. So far this winter we’ve only used the snowblower once. I don’t know if we used it all last winter. Don’t get me wrong, part of me is grateful that I’m not driving to work in blizzards or shoveling the driveway. But something just feels wrong.

Now I’ve probably gone and jinxed it, and likely tomorrow’s cold snap will feel more familiar. And I suppose now there will be 6 or more inches of snow falling on Monday just in time for the morning commute. But I think I’d be OK with all of that.

Remind me I said this later on as the winter wears on — won’t you?

January 10, 2013
by dawnkinster 18 Comments

Dancing to the Danzon

Tuesday night was our first band practice since our Christmas concert mid-December. Though it was nice to have the time off, we were all eager to get back to playing again. We are getting ready for a community band festival held at the end of February. This of course makes us more nervous because the audience will be filled with our peers – other community bands, people that know music and will be listening with more critical ears than our family and friends. So we want to have our stuff together. We have six weeks.

On of the pieces we will be playing is “Danzon #2” by Marquez. I had never heard it before, but our director sent an email out during the break letting us know, and telling us that we should go find it online and listen. You can hear it here. It’s almost 10 minutes long but worth the listen/watch. This particular version is done by an orchestra, but we’ll be doing a version for a concert band. I followed along in my music and our version is almost exactly like this one, with a few minor orchestration differences.

Tuesday night it took us 45 minutes to get from the beginning to the end of the piece. We stopped and started a lot but some sections sounded pretty good even on the first attempt. And there was a long duet between our first chair clarinet and an oboe player who just happens to be his 10th grade daughter. They sounded so wonderful, the two of them together, that the rest of us, the entire band, forgot to keep counting and none of us came in after the 14 or so measures of their solo. The director laughed and lowered her baton, voicing what we were all thinking; what a wonderful opportunity for this father/daughter duo to play something so beautiful together. To create something breathlessly beautiful with her Dad…it will be a memory she remembers forever.

That is the beauty of playing in a group like this. There are several parent/teenager duos in the band and I think they all enjoy the experience of doing something like this together. I know we enjoy having them with us. We would not be the group we are without the support of many local musically talented kids. They fill in our gaps, cover our mistakes and generally don’t treat us like the old farts we are. Sometimes they remind us of how old we are just by their intense youthfulness. But generally it’s just fun to have them around.

So, time to get back to the daily practicing. Don’t want those young whippersnappers to outshine us more experienced players. They get to play in their high school bands every day. We have two hours a week. But then we have less homework to do at night so it all balances out.

I hope.

January 7, 2013
by dawnkinster 24 Comments

Wordless Wednesday – icy naptime.

January 7, 2013
by dawnkinster 13 Comments

Resting. Or not.

The big Dinner is over. I’ve cleaned and cooked and dished and served and cleaned up after. I’ve got today off work, otherwise I would collapse in exhaustion. On the other hand…I don’t want to waste this day sleeping. Or vacuuming. So I’m taking the camera and heading out. An adventure for one.

Cause you never know what you’ll find.

January 5, 2013
by dawnkinster 22 Comments

The miracle roast

We’ve got a big family gathering here tomorrow afternoon. Husband’s extended family is heading over for a get together and lots of food is waiting, almost ready! My biggest worry was that the rib roast I ordered turned out to be too small when I picked it up yesterday. “Oh well,” I thought, “everyone will just have to eat a lot of other stuff.” Still. It bothered me. Last time we did this we barely had enough meat and the roast was larger.

Today I made the salads and the do ahead mashed potatoes, the sweet potatoes and ambrosia. During all the preparation I realized I was running out of dish washing liquid. Really? I have to go to the store for soap? I planned this project so well specifically to avoid that last minute dash to the store. I really didn’t need anything, except that darn dish washing soap – and something for husband and I to eat today.

So I went to the grocery store which sits right next to a Subway sub shop. The plan was to pick up the soap and then run over to the sub store and pick up dinner for us tonight. In the grocery store I grabbed a couple things, bananas, stuff to make chili for later in the week…and guess what I found at the meat counter? ANOTHER rib roast just exactly the right size to add to the one I ordered! Tomorrow we will have enough meat! What were the odds that I’d run out of something which would make me go to the store when I didn’t really want to go out and that there would be one roast just the perfect size waiting for me. I muscled my way in between two women who were considering hamburger or pork and scooped that roast up.

And I sang along with the radio all the way home. Perfect. Like it was meant to be.

Which I’m sure it was.

January 1, 2013
by dawnkinster 18 Comments

Food photo challenge

Karma’s blog has challenged us to photograph our meals for a week. Or parts of our meals on some days. Certainly not all our meals…I mean how interesting can cereal look. Oh wait. Pretty interesting actually. But anyway, Karma is giving us until Jan 13 to put together a blog about the food we eat. You might want to go over to her blog to read the real rules as the above was only a representation of the truth.

This turns out to be a good time for food photography, given I’ll have a few days off and I have the big family dinner next weekend, so there will be lots of food prep opportunities. I wouldn’t want you to think we eat this well every week. Most of the time my husband is reduced to foraging for food either from the back of the fridge or some local eatery. And I bet there will still be a fair share of that between now and January 13.

Regardless, you MIGHT get to see a few of my favorite things to cook and/or bake. You never know. I’m hoping some or all of you will join in. As we move on into January let’s share what we use as healthy or comfort (or both) food!

Yum.

January 1, 2013
by dawnkinster 20 Comments

Happy New Year!

I just don’t feel any affinity for 2013. The number itself seems awkward, unwieldy, just a bit off. Where 2012 appeared to be a good, strong, well rounded and full number right from the start, 2013 seems rather empty and irregular. Maybe the problem stems from the odd number itself or maybe I’m superstitious about the whole 13th of it all. I don’t know.

I was unable to stay up to see 2012 out last night. Part of that was my uncomfortable feeling about 2013 and part of it was that I was exhausted from crazy work. Mostly I just wasn’t ready to let 2012 go. I know there are many people – thousands of people – that are more than ready to move on. People who survived Sandy, people who lost family members in any number of tragedies, people who are going to graduate in 2013, get married in 2013, have a child in 2013. But me? I don’t have a specific event planed for this new year; to me it appears as a long long beige tunnel the curves away into the future. There’s no telling what’s out there waiting and it’s a bit unnerving. It feels more comfortable to cling to the known, no matter how horrific some of it was, then move on into the beige.

I know, I know. I’m responsible for colorizing my own beige world and 2013 will likely contain amazing and as yet unknown events. And I also know that as I move into the year my feelings will settle down, my camera will be busy, my dog will sill make me laugh, work will be work, and my family will love me.

I was sound asleep when 2013 arrived, Katie and I snoring away when stupid neighbors began yelling and shooting off fireworks. Katie barked and made all the crazy noise go away and we settled back to sleep. I felt detached from the excitement, ambivalent about time marching on without me. Mostly I felt annoyed. But I’ll get over it.

I wish all of you a very very happy and healthy New Year. Time to join all the thousands who are out walking and jogging and eating right because this is January 1. I’ll go for a walk, track my points today. Tomorrow? Well tomorrow is January 2 and all bets are off.

Happy New Year to all of you!

Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Author Archives: dawnkinster