In Harold Kushner's "Living a Life that Matters: Resolving the Conflict Between Conscience and Success" I found a heartening description of friendship, and I offer it to those who are my friends and to whom I might learn to be a friend. Starting on p. 119.
"Friendships are a key to survival in an unfriendly world,...a way for us to be recognized as unique people, to be reassured that we are appreciated for who we are. One step less intense than marriage or parenthood, genuine friendships are a mirror reflecting back to us a flattering image of ourselves. The fact that they are voluntary, easier to enter or leave than family, marriage, or professional relationships, reassures us that people remain our friends because they genuinelly like us, even when we have hurt or disapointed us. It has been said, 'When a friend makes a mistake, the mistake remains a mistake, but the friend is still a friend.' And friendships are a way of being important in another person's life, knowing that someone we like and care about is happier, more secure, and more likely to make right choices because of us.. As Patricia O'Brien said of her friend, 'she needed me, which is no small thing.' "
Why the chimpanzee title? An anthropologist who studied this species said that a chimp needs other chimps in order to become what it was meant to be. Kushner: "We need other people, and we need to be neede by other people, in order to be who we might be, who we yearn to be."
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
House on a Hill? Or House with Porch?
This column was published in U.S. 1 Newspaper in 2004.
The first house we bought was on a steep hill. You went in the
front door, up the steps to the second floor, and out the back
door.
One side of the driveway was an embankment with a three-foot stone
wall. The other was a sheer drop, protected by a one-foot stone
wall. In the winter we did not attempt to shovel the driveway. We
just clambered up from the bottom of the hill (precarious when
you are seven months pregnant and carrying groceries) and waited
until the thaw. Or we gunned the motor up the hill and hoped we
could get back down.
One memorable day my car ended up at the bottom of the hill,
planted cross ways on the stone wall, and was blessedly rescued by
two Mormon missionaries who happened to be passing by.
Only the young, you say, would make such a foolish house purchase.
Or else it was a beautiful house. Or it came at a bargain price.
Yes, yes, and yes, but those aren't the real reasons.
The real reason for our purchase was that my husband grew up in a
house on a steep hill with a curvy driveway. And they didn't
shovel in the winter. It was a family point of honor that if you
had a car, you could get up the hill past that icy curve.
Your childhood environment, as it turns out, is a major factor in
what kinds of living spaces you will like as an adult. A house or
a room or a piece of furniture that made you uncomfortable as a
child -- you will avoid it as an adult. A staircase, a chair, a
porch that you loved as a child -- you will resonate with it later
in life.
Architects and savvy real estate agents began to take childhood
experiences into account in the 1960s, when Gaston Bachelard
began to write about the poetics of space. In this new field of
"Design Psychology," Princeton-based author Toby Israel's recent
book, "Some Place Like Home: Using Design Psychology to Create Ideal Places," breaks new ground. She does in-depth interviews with three architects -- Michael Graves, Andres Duany,
and Charles Jencks -- digging into the emotional roots of their
early environments, finding out "how places from the past contain
the seeds of future choices, for home locations, dwellings, and interior design."
On the practical side, Israel's book provides self-help
worksheets. Take her questions, interview yourself, and come up with your own
"emotion-based environmental roots" analysis. Use this to buy your
next house -- or remodel your current abode -- and you are
will most likely be happy with the results.
Her book, lavishly illustrated in black and white and color and printed on glossy stock, is published by John Wiley. It sells for $32 and is available for $37 including shipping by mailing a check to Toby Israel Consulting, 429 Walnut Lane, Princeton 08540.
Israel refers to Bachelard’s "land of that Motionless Childhood,"
motionless because it stays in place while our lives move on. By
recalling the memories of childhood, we add to our store of
dreams.
She urges the reader to "go into the storehouse of memory and
come as close as possible to retrieving the poetry of lost home."
Reflecting on these memories can help us make better decisions. With clearer vision, we can strive to create homes and other places that mirror our most fulfilled selves."
But Design Psychology isnot<$> about nostalgia design," cautions
Israel. "Instead, the point of Design Psychology is to identify
the primal, satisfying, existentialessence<$>of these places in order to use the 'high positive' associations they trigger as a touchstone from which to design." If you have fond memories of a primitive, old-world kitchen, for instance, you need not install a wood burning stove. Instead you create a space that is simple and earthy, with a lively close-knit quality that encourages the
family to gather there.
Israel offers a Design Psychology Toolbox, exercises to do and
questions to ask yourself. For instance, in what way(s), if any,
do you think your personality is reflected in your present home? If
you think your personality isnot<$> reflected in your home, why
do you think this is so? In what way(s), if any, do you think your
home reflects anyone else's personality?
Overall, do you feel comfortable that your home reflects who you
really are? If not, what changes would you make to your home so
that it expresses who you are?
Ponder how your family's environmental experiences differed from
generation to generation. How did your environmental genealogy
influence your own environmental perspective and values, and was
this influence positive or negative? What sense of home do you want to
pass down to future generations as part of your legacy of place?
Create a time line of city settings you lived in from birth to
Present and indicate your age at this place. Now calculate how many years
You have lived in each of the following settings: city, town, village,
suburb, or countryside.
Looking at the timeline, decide what kind of setting you lived in
Most from ages infant to eighteen, and judge if you like that kind of
setting. Also, is there a place that has had a major impact on you?
As an adult, did you choose to live in a setting same or different
from what you had as a child? Are you happy in your current setting?
Why or why not?
Other tools that Israel offers include drawing mental maps and
going through self guided visualizations of favorite childhood places.
Israel applies her design therapist's eye to the selection
and furnishing of her own house in Princeton. She describes how
she and a team of architects from Witherspoon Street-based KSS Architects (including
Michael Shatkin, Merilee Meacock, and Peter Mattioni) applied her tools to designing a charter school
in Jersey City. Another chapter tells how she trained design
professionals in the Manhattan-based Mufson Group.
But what gives Israel's book its special eclat are the in-depth
interviews with celebrity architects. Interestingly, Israel was
turned down in her interview request by the likes of Denise Scott-Brown and Frank Gehry. Of the three who did agree, Andres Duany is a
New Urbanist planner who advocates "walkable" communities, Charles
Jencks is a noted critic, and Michael Graves is, of course,
Princeton's own reigning prince of Post Modernism, the
antithesis to look-alike big box buildings.
Though Graves is relaxed and accommodating to interviewers, he generally veers away from discussions of his personal life to focus on his work. But over the course of six hours Israel’s probing questions helped Graves to discover new insights about himself, and Graves' groupies will be fascinated by his candid replies. For instance, he tells of his grandmother's wonderfully creaky old Carpenter Gothic
house:
"It was an extremely pleasant house -- made pleasant by my
grandmother. There was a pump in the kitchen, and dark, floral
wall paper. Always waiting for us the huge Thanksgiving-style dinner my
grandmother prepared. I can remember my grandmother telling us
stories, cooking. It was all very loving. The stories were all
about her family, and they were all true, though we didn't know that
until we grew up."
The most startling insight was that his visits to the Cleveland
stockyards, where his father, grandfather, and uncle worked, has
been a significant influence on his design for libraries in Venice, California, San Juan Capistrano and Denver, and even his own Princeton home.
His memories of the stockyards fall into the category of a
"transcendent place," not a place that represents family, love,
and affection, but a place remembered as "an unforgettable living
presence in itself, exciting all five senses and inspiring
exuberance, calm, or awe." Graves describes it:
"An exaggerated building with great elevated passageways all made
of wood which crisscrossed in the air, more like Piranesi though I
didn't know that at the time. It was not just the passageways, but
that you looked on the animals in their pens. There was a
character to it that I've never seen since.
"I talk about character a lot. I wasn't so aware of it when I was
in school. Now I'm more aware of what that experience meant; it
was dramatic. This was an exaggerated building. For me it was the
recognition of character. It affected how I later came to regard
Modernity -- particularly its lack of breadth.
"Understand that I'm from a place in the Midwest without much
culture, without much building," says Graves. He has no warm
feelings for the nondescript houses of the Indianapolis suburbs. "The library, the church were real buildings but they were so ordinary that you wouldn't think twice about them. The profundity of the stockyards was a result of its
contrast compared to my house, school, shopping center, etc."
Though the suburbs offered good streets for bicycling, but that was about all. “It had biases,” says Graves, “in that we didn't go to theater, exhibitions, galleries. We didn't travel. We weren't deprived. We just didn't do those things.”
The depth of his youthful naivete can be indicated by the fact that when he
went to architecture school in Cincinatti, he had never even heard
of Frank Lloyd Wright. When he went to Harvard for a master's
degree, he was the only one in the class who had never been to
Europe. And when he visited Rome at age 27, to spend two years at
the American Academy, it was a seminal experience. He describes it
as a return to his (non literal) roots. "Graves clearly
acknowledged his own development while in Rome," writes Israel.
"He was able to let go of Modernism's 'moralism' and let color
replace whiteness. In Rome, culture and conviviality joined hands
for Graves on both a personal and an architectural level."
A short teaching stint at Princeton University turned into a lifelong stay. Princeton offered the safe streets of the Indianapolis suburb, but it had more cultural opportunities.
"I liked it OK, but 30 years ago it was a different place. The
university wasn't co-ed. Nor was it as popular as it is today.
Since then, the explosion of everything in the immediate area has
brought a kind of roundness to the town's life which is quite satisfying.
It's a university town, a commercial center with a variety of people.
Princeton is like a small, contained city, but avoiding all the
negatives of a big city. It's a good base. In some ways it's like
Verona, rather insular yet manageable, though Princeton has
greater choices."
His house in Princeton is a former Princeton University warehouse used to store furniture. Israel compares the warehouse, which came with 44 long and narrow rooms, to the stockyards, with its line of narrow pens. Graves admitted there might be a connection, that he might have been subliminally attracted to the warehouse for that reason, but he is more enthusiastic about a different conclusion, that both the warehouse and the stockyards attracted him because they had character. Said Graves: “The interest in character , itself, is something I see as a distinguishing character of my work. If I were building a hotel in Egypt it doesn’t look like a hotel in Ohio. . .
He also thinks he was strongly influenced by his stay in Italy. When he found the warehouse it was in ruins but, says Grave, “had a certain integrity. It didn’t seem to be styled. I find out later why that character came through. It was built by Italian masons. They built it as a Tuscan warehouse, a Tuscan barn.”
When it comes to his struggle to make a house a home -- about the financial pressures Graves had when he was young, the collapse of two marriages (who was Lucy??), his current lack of leisure time, and his bachelor existence --- Graves goes into some detail,
wistfully admitting that his house never achieved the sense of conviviality that he remembered from his grandmother’s home.
Israel pointedly criticizes the lack of psychological training for today’s designers. In particular, she castigates Peter Eisenman for his design for the World Trade Center, office towers “which would appear to be collapsing – buckling at the news. If, in a moment of insanity, such buildings were actually to be built, they would enshrine and extend our trauma rather than heal the American psyche. How could designers come to propse such a disjuncture between people and place.”
For most of us, though, this book is a rich source of speculative conversation on one’s own environmental memories and those of one’s friends. It could certainly be a useful in making decisions on what houses to buy or how to decorate. Speaking of houses.. .
If the house on a hill was my husband's fond memory, mine was of a
childhood spent in an small farmhouse set close to its newer
neighbors on each side, and the farmhouse had an L-shaped porch, complete
with swing. Oh I loved to sit on that swing and watch the cars and
people pass. Every other house I've lived in since then has had a porch
of some kind.
Until we moved to the house on the hill. And several years after
We moved into the house on the hill, we built a deck on the front
That could pass for a porch. Now I know why. Now that I have "gone into
My storehouse of memory and retrieved the poetry of my Motionless
Childhood," I realize that Ineeded<$> that porch.
Does my current house, an aging Cape Cod where we have lived for
30 years, possess a porch? No, and to tell you the truth, I
Never really resonated with that house. So if you see trucks parked in
Front of it, and you see workmen digging footings on our front lawn,
you'll know that Design Psychology triumphed again.
The first house we bought was on a steep hill. You went in the
front door, up the steps to the second floor, and out the back
door.
One side of the driveway was an embankment with a three-foot stone
wall. The other was a sheer drop, protected by a one-foot stone
wall. In the winter we did not attempt to shovel the driveway. We
just clambered up from the bottom of the hill (precarious when
you are seven months pregnant and carrying groceries) and waited
until the thaw. Or we gunned the motor up the hill and hoped we
could get back down.
One memorable day my car ended up at the bottom of the hill,
planted cross ways on the stone wall, and was blessedly rescued by
two Mormon missionaries who happened to be passing by.
Only the young, you say, would make such a foolish house purchase.
Or else it was a beautiful house. Or it came at a bargain price.
Yes, yes, and yes, but those aren't the real reasons.
The real reason for our purchase was that my husband grew up in a
house on a steep hill with a curvy driveway. And they didn't
shovel in the winter. It was a family point of honor that if you
had a car, you could get up the hill past that icy curve.
Your childhood environment, as it turns out, is a major factor in
what kinds of living spaces you will like as an adult. A house or
a room or a piece of furniture that made you uncomfortable as a
child -- you will avoid it as an adult. A staircase, a chair, a
porch that you loved as a child -- you will resonate with it later
in life.
Architects and savvy real estate agents began to take childhood
experiences into account in the 1960s, when Gaston Bachelard
began to write about the poetics of space. In this new field of
"Design Psychology," Princeton-based author Toby Israel's recent
book, "Some Place Like Home: Using Design Psychology to Create Ideal Places," breaks new ground. She does in-depth interviews with three architects -- Michael Graves, Andres Duany,
and Charles Jencks -- digging into the emotional roots of their
early environments, finding out "how places from the past contain
the seeds of future choices, for home locations, dwellings, and interior design."
On the practical side, Israel's book provides self-help
worksheets. Take her questions, interview yourself, and come up with your own
"emotion-based environmental roots" analysis. Use this to buy your
next house -- or remodel your current abode -- and you are
will most likely be happy with the results.
Her book, lavishly illustrated in black and white and color and printed on glossy stock, is published by John Wiley. It sells for $32 and is available for $37 including shipping by mailing a check to Toby Israel Consulting, 429 Walnut Lane, Princeton 08540.
Israel refers to Bachelard’s "land of that Motionless Childhood,"
motionless because it stays in place while our lives move on. By
recalling the memories of childhood, we add to our store of
dreams.
She urges the reader to "go into the storehouse of memory and
come as close as possible to retrieving the poetry of lost home."
Reflecting on these memories can help us make better decisions. With clearer vision, we can strive to create homes and other places that mirror our most fulfilled selves."
But Design Psychology is
Israel. "Instead, the point of Design Psychology is to identify
the primal, satisfying, existential
family to gather there.
Israel offers a Design Psychology Toolbox, exercises to do and
questions to ask yourself. For instance, in what way(s), if any,
do you think your personality is reflected in your present home? If
you think your personality is
do you think this is so? In what way(s), if any, do you think your
home reflects anyone else's personality?
Overall, do you feel comfortable that your home reflects who you
really are? If not, what changes would you make to your home so
that it expresses who you are?
Ponder how your family's environmental experiences differed from
generation to generation. How did your environmental genealogy
influence your own environmental perspective and values, and was
this influence positive or negative? What sense of home do you want to
pass down to future generations as part of your legacy of place?
Create a time line of city settings you lived in from birth to
Present and indicate your age at this place. Now calculate how many years
You have lived in each of the following settings: city, town, village,
suburb, or countryside.
Looking at the timeline, decide what kind of setting you lived in
Most from ages infant to eighteen, and judge if you like that kind of
setting. Also, is there a place that has had a major impact on you?
As an adult, did you choose to live in a setting same or different
from what you had as a child? Are you happy in your current setting?
Why or why not?
Other tools that Israel offers include drawing mental maps and
going through self guided visualizations of favorite childhood places.
Israel applies her design therapist's eye to the selection
and furnishing of her own house in Princeton. She describes how
she and a team of architects from Witherspoon Street-based KSS Architects (including
Michael Shatkin, Merilee Meacock, and Peter Mattioni) applied her tools to designing a charter school
in Jersey City. Another chapter tells how she trained design
professionals in the Manhattan-based Mufson Group.
But what gives Israel's book its special eclat are the in-depth
interviews with celebrity architects. Interestingly, Israel was
turned down in her interview request by the likes of Denise Scott-Brown and Frank Gehry. Of the three who did agree, Andres Duany is a
New Urbanist planner who advocates "walkable" communities, Charles
Jencks is a noted critic, and Michael Graves is, of course,
Princeton's own reigning prince of Post Modernism, the
antithesis to look-alike big box buildings.
Though Graves is relaxed and accommodating to interviewers, he generally veers away from discussions of his personal life to focus on his work. But over the course of six hours Israel’s probing questions helped Graves to discover new insights about himself, and Graves' groupies will be fascinated by his candid replies. For instance, he tells of his grandmother's wonderfully creaky old Carpenter Gothic
house:
"It was an extremely pleasant house -- made pleasant by my
grandmother. There was a pump in the kitchen, and dark, floral
wall paper. Always waiting for us the huge Thanksgiving-style dinner my
grandmother prepared. I can remember my grandmother telling us
stories, cooking. It was all very loving. The stories were all
about her family, and they were all true, though we didn't know that
until we grew up."
The most startling insight was that his visits to the Cleveland
stockyards, where his father, grandfather, and uncle worked, has
been a significant influence on his design for libraries in Venice, California, San Juan Capistrano and Denver, and even his own Princeton home.
His memories of the stockyards fall into the category of a
"transcendent place," not a place that represents family, love,
and affection, but a place remembered as "an unforgettable living
presence in itself, exciting all five senses and inspiring
exuberance, calm, or awe." Graves describes it:
"An exaggerated building with great elevated passageways all made
of wood which crisscrossed in the air, more like Piranesi though I
didn't know that at the time. It was not just the passageways, but
that you looked
character to it that I've never seen since.
"I talk about character a lot. I wasn't so aware of it when I was
in school. Now I'm more aware of what that experience meant; it
was dramatic. This was an exaggerated building. For me it was the
recognition of character. It affected how I later came to regard
Modernity -- particularly its lack of breadth.
"Understand that I'm from a place in the Midwest without much
culture, without much building," says Graves. He has no warm
feelings for the nondescript houses of the Indianapolis suburbs. "The library, the church were real buildings but they were so ordinary that you wouldn't think twice about them. The profundity of the stockyards was a result of its
contrast compared to my house, school, shopping center, etc."
Though the suburbs offered good streets for bicycling, but that was about all. “It had biases,” says Graves, “in that we didn't go to theater, exhibitions, galleries. We didn't travel. We weren't deprived. We just didn't do those things.”
The depth of his youthful naivete can be indicated by the fact that when he
went to architecture school in Cincinatti, he had never even heard
of Frank Lloyd Wright. When he went to Harvard for a master's
degree, he was the only one in the class who had never been to
Europe. And when he visited Rome at age 27, to spend two years at
the American Academy, it was a seminal experience. He describes it
as a return to his (non literal) roots. "Graves clearly
acknowledged his own development while in Rome," writes Israel.
"He was able to let go of Modernism's 'moralism' and let color
replace whiteness. In Rome, culture and conviviality joined hands
for Graves on both a personal and an architectural level."
A short teaching stint at Princeton University turned into a lifelong stay. Princeton offered the safe streets of the Indianapolis suburb, but it had more cultural opportunities.
"I liked it OK, but 30 years ago it was a different place. The
university wasn't co-ed. Nor was it as popular as it is today.
Since then, the explosion of everything in the immediate area has
brought a kind of roundness to the town's life which is quite satisfying.
It's a university town, a commercial center with a variety of people.
Princeton is like a small, contained city, but avoiding all the
negatives of a big city. It's a good base. In some ways it's like
Verona, rather insular yet manageable, though Princeton has
greater choices."
His house in Princeton is a former Princeton University warehouse used to store furniture. Israel compares the warehouse, which came with 44 long and narrow rooms, to the stockyards, with its line of narrow pens. Graves admitted there might be a connection, that he might have been subliminally attracted to the warehouse for that reason, but he is more enthusiastic about a different conclusion, that both the warehouse and the stockyards attracted him because they had character. Said Graves: “The interest in character , itself, is something I see as a distinguishing character of my work. If I were building a hotel in Egypt it doesn’t look like a hotel in Ohio. . .
He also thinks he was strongly influenced by his stay in Italy. When he found the warehouse it was in ruins but, says Grave, “had a certain integrity. It didn’t seem to be styled. I find out later why that character came through. It was built by Italian masons. They built it as a Tuscan warehouse, a Tuscan barn.”
When it comes to his struggle to make a house a home -- about the financial pressures Graves had when he was young, the collapse of two marriages (who was Lucy??), his current lack of leisure time, and his bachelor existence --- Graves goes into some detail,
wistfully admitting that his house never achieved the sense of conviviality that he remembered from his grandmother’s home.
Israel pointedly criticizes the lack of psychological training for today’s designers. In particular, she castigates Peter Eisenman for his design for the World Trade Center, office towers “which would appear to be collapsing – buckling at the news. If, in a moment of insanity, such buildings were actually to be built, they would enshrine and extend our trauma rather than heal the American psyche. How could designers come to propse such a disjuncture between people and place.”
For most of us, though, this book is a rich source of speculative conversation on one’s own environmental memories and those of one’s friends. It could certainly be a useful in making decisions on what houses to buy or how to decorate. Speaking of houses.. .
If the house on a hill was my husband's fond memory, mine was of a
childhood spent in an small farmhouse set close to its newer
neighbors on each side, and the farmhouse had an L-shaped porch, complete
with swing. Oh I loved to sit on that swing and watch the cars and
people pass. Every other house I've lived in since then has had a porch
of some kind.
Until we moved to the house on the hill. And several years after
We moved into the house on the hill, we built a deck on the front
That could pass for a porch. Now I know why. Now that I have "gone into
My storehouse of memory and retrieved the poetry of my Motionless
Childhood," I realize that I
Does my current house, an aging Cape Cod where we have lived for
30 years, possess a porch? No, and to tell you the truth, I
Never really resonated with that house. So if you see trucks parked in
Front of it, and you see workmen digging footings on our front lawn,
you'll know that Design Psychology triumphed again.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
The Church's Digital Challenge
Thanks to Pat Hatton for forwarding a blog posting at "Church, Culture, and the Media," a site owned by the United Methodist Church, I posted this comment on "Digital Culture Demands Relevance, Change."
The field of healthcare was slow to adapt to digital media, and the global church faces some of the same problems. How to "certify" the "real" Gospel?
Healthcare started out by setting up a "seal of approval" system, aka Good Housekeeping seals. They were supposed to be the guideposts for consumers to select the most accurate information.
As United Methodists, we have the advantage of "first claim" on the eyeballs of our current members, and it's up to us to take advantage of that and strengthen that digital bond.
But I worry about the spiritually lost who are turning to Google for solace and comfort. About 10 years ago a "newbie" Christian in our church began spouting some weird ideas. Where did she get these ideas? From a website, from an online course she wanted to take.
We looked at that site together, and I was appalled. Rank heresy. I was able to steer her to something more mainstream and later she signed up for a Disciple course and is now on Disciple IV.
Would that still happen today? Perhaps the "standard" Christian sites have proliferated so they don't pop to the top of Google. (Is someone studying this?)
Further, should we United Methodists, or a consortium of churches, be paying for Google search words in order to get "first chance" at reaching the spiritually lost?
The field of healthcare was slow to adapt to digital media, and the global church faces some of the same problems. How to "certify" the "real" Gospel?
Healthcare started out by setting up a "seal of approval" system, aka Good Housekeeping seals. They were supposed to be the guideposts for consumers to select the most accurate information.
As United Methodists, we have the advantage of "first claim" on the eyeballs of our current members, and it's up to us to take advantage of that and strengthen that digital bond.
But I worry about the spiritually lost who are turning to Google for solace and comfort. About 10 years ago a "newbie" Christian in our church began spouting some weird ideas. Where did she get these ideas? From a website, from an online course she wanted to take.
We looked at that site together, and I was appalled. Rank heresy. I was able to steer her to something more mainstream and later she signed up for a Disciple course and is now on Disciple IV.
Would that still happen today? Perhaps the "standard" Christian sites have proliferated so they don't pop to the top of Google. (Is someone studying this?)
Further, should we United Methodists, or a consortium of churches, be paying for Google search words in order to get "first chance" at reaching the spiritually lost?
Monday, November 23, 2009
Monday, October 5, 2009
Comfort Food: Skillet Low-Fat Lasagna
This is such an outrageously good short cut for lasagna I have to share it. I'm writing it in blog form so I will always be able to find it myself.
Earlier, my short cut was to use no boil lasagna noodles. You can find them on most grocery shelves but somehow the sauce never quite covered the top layer and the recipe made too many servings. We always had to freeze it.
Not so with the skillet version. I use low-cost, no-fat cottage cheese in place of ricotta, and ground turkey meat in place of beef, and you really can't tell. You could add peppers and spinach as well. The downside of this is that it might not look picture perfect the way the baked version does. You can make it ahead and reheat it in the oven or microwave.
I bet it would be good with gluten free pasta because it has lots of juices. It would be pretty easy to make two batches, side by side.
Supposedly it serves 4 to 6 but we got 7 servings out of it.
Thanks to Susan Yeske who printed this in the Times of Trenton on September 23. She took it from cookscountry.com, part of the Cook's Illustrated and America's Test Kitchen family. My variation:
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes (any kind, really)
water
1 tablespoon olive oil
at least 1 medium onion, minced (I just chop it and like to use two)
table salt (I don't)
table salt (I don't)
at least 3 medium cloves garlic (1 tablespoon) minced or pressed unless cooking for Nate
at least 1/8 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 pound meatloaf mix (I use ground turkey)
10 curly edged lasagna noodles broken into 2-inch lengths (I use any kind)
1 8-ounce can tomato sauce
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, plus 2 Tablespoons for on top
ground black pepper
1 cup ricotta (I use no-fat cottage cheese. I guess you don't use mozzarella because it wouldn't melt fast enough? )
basil -- dry or fresh, and if you have it fresh I add plenty of it.
1. Pour tomatoes and their juices into 1 quart measuring cup, add water until it measures 1 quart
2. Heat oil in large 12-inch nonstick skillet with tight lid (I use my Le Creuset French oven) over medium heat until shimmering. Add onion (and 1/2 t. salt) and cook until begins to brown, about 5 minutes, Stir in garlic and pepper flakes and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Here's where I add extra fresh basil. Add ground meat and cook, breaking apart meat, until no longer pink, about 4 minutes.
3. Scatter cut up pasta over meat and don't stir. Pour diced tomatoes with juices AND don't forget that can of tomato sauce over pasta. Cover and bring to simmer. Reduce heat and simmer, STIRRING OCCASIONALLY (I forgot the first time and ended up with pasta stuck together, still good though) until pasta is tender, for just about 20 minutes.
4. Turn off the gas burner if you are lucky enough to have gas. If not, remove from heat, stir in 1/2 cup Parmesan. Season with pepper (and or salt if you don't have that problem). Dot with heaping tablespoons of whatever you are using, ricotta or cottage cheese, cover, and let stand off heat for 5 minutes. Sprinkle with basil and remaining 2 tablespoons of Parmesan.
And thank you to the sister-in-law who gave me the Le Creuset pot some three-decades ago.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
First Lives Trump Second Life
A college friend, MRC, asks me if I have tried Second Life, and my answer is No No Athousandtimesno. I am afraid if I do, I won't have a First Life. Already so much of my time, as noted, is spent in front of the computer, and I want to live out my hopes and dreams in the here and now.
Which brings up the subject of the Next Life. One of my friends, an unofficial Bible student, says that Jesus didn't know Hebrew, that he spoke in Aramaic, and there are no Aramaic words for Body, Spirit, Heaven, or Hell.
So where does this leave us, with regard to an afterlife? I found myself saying, that's OK. I'm not focused on "meeting" people in heaven. It's up to me to make heaven on earth. What do you think?
Friday, August 7, 2009
At Arm's Length
I use this blog, Gramma Fox, for journal entries -- no rough drafts made in a Word document (with the ability to use a thesaurus), few links, minimal initial distribution. If I send it to you, fine. If you find it, OK. It's a barely-edited riff, one that I feel impelled to write for reasons you will learn.
It really ought to be named Grandma Figge Fox, because these days, in my mother's century year, I'm impelled to self-examine.
I realized this morning, and am taken aback by the discovery, that she and I share the same yen for many friends held at arm's length. In her last two decades (she died at 96) she had a huge cyber audience, with whom she shared iris lore and also genealogy tips. They have a fancy name for this now, "Social Media."
I had tried to point out how much time she was spending in front of the computer versus in physical activity that might improve her health, but she kept on spending hours and hours, monitoring list servs and responding to emails. When I was a kid, she spent those hours and hours on the phone, hardly ever seeing the people she talked to, because she simply did not make time for many social occasions that did not involve my father's work, but keeping up with those contacts on the phone. I remember being jealous and wishing she would get off the phone and talk to me.
Now I spend hours and hours, even though I am "retired," responding to business friends, linking up to more people by blogging, using Linked In, Twittering, and now even using Facebooking. These hours weren't available when I was working a 45-50 hour week. And it's revealing that Facebook is my least favorite Social Media. That's because I consider it the "least businessy." In my value system, as in my mother's, "work" should take priority over "fun," and the ideal way to spend time is to do work things that are also somewhat fun.
So I work on church committee's, where the emphasis is 'work' and the camadarie only a side benefit.
I eagerly spend time on LinkedIn, because I "feel called" to try to be a conduit for people who need to network with folks I know. Because I have written about biz people for more than 22 years, I "know," i.e. have had contact with, lots of people, and sometimes I can be really useful.
And my business blog, Princeton Comment, is a blatant example of fun combined with business, and of wanting a readership audience of "friends" who are not close friends, but "pass the time and pleasant chatter" friends. Every month I collect more business cards and spend an hour or so adding them to my blog circulation list.
This personal quirk of mine -- to desire a lot of acquaintences but hold them at arm's length -- dates back even to college, when I was president of Duke's dance club. I "governed" the club, not with meetings, but with upbeat, cheery-and-exhorting newsletters, duplicated 12 times. I'd go from dorm to dorm and post them on the bulletin board. If you wanted to know when your rehearsals were, you checked the board. My actual real friends and buddies were always asking "why can't you go to the movies with us?" and I rarely could, because I devoted my time to "work," i.e. dancing.
I had a similar experience in high school, with my MerrieLander Girl Scout friends, but that's another journal entry.
My mother did have a few really close friends. And now, so do I. And I'm trying to reach out to those school chums and remaining friends who have been there for me even when I was "too busy" for them.
"When are you going to write that book?" they prod.
"When are you going to get up from the computer and go to the gym?" I ask myself.
Do I walk away from the "social media" and write my book, go to the gym, pull those weeds, go to lunch with all who ask?
No answer yet.
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