Yes, I’ve been poking around the Internet this week, and last, ever since I lost my job at this town’s finest pizzaria… the Pizza House. Yay! No more having to work with… oh, never mind. I’m just so happy not to have to work outside my home for a while, I could sing and dance. More about that later.

I’m getting back into the mindset of a blogger and work at home person. I’m re-arranging my life to make Internet income acquisition more feasible. I’m reacquainting myself with my blogs… blowing the dust off, and making them all homey and cozy again.

For the last couple of months I was not only working hard at the pizza place - I was also working toward achieving an online goal. I wanted to be part of the Giant Squid program at Squidoo.Com. (See my lensography.)This may sound strange to many of you, but I love the Squidness of it all.. it shows a complete lack of taking ourselves too seriously. After all, if we’re not online for fun and profit - what are we here for? Okay, so maybe some of you could do without the profit part… but seriously, I can’t. This will have to be part of my required income from here on in, and Squidoo is a place where you can easily earn money online.

Let me be a bit honest with you about my situation.

I’ve given most of my life over to the care of my children, in that I took care of them for more than thirty years. My oldest is 35 this year. My youngest just turned 18 and moved out in July. So for the first time in my adult life - ever since I was twenty (when I had my first baby) - I am suddenly childless, in that none of them live with me. YES, I get to experience “Empty Nest Syndrome” first hand. So far it hasn’t been difficult.

My main income for the last year and a half was via working at the local pizza restaurant. I live in a VERY small town with few job opportunities. I felt lucky to have the job even though it was just part time.

Early in September the woman I worked with, the morning supervisor, suddenly quit her job after being there twelve years. She’d been offered a better job with benefits at the grocery store. I got promoted into the morning supervisor job on September 8. Unfortunately the evening supervisor who had worked there on and off for more than fifteen years didn’t like me. At the time I got promoted she was plotting and planning to get me out of there. I know that because later I ran into someone who told me the other supervisor offered her MY job at about the same time I got the promotion. This woman apparently was badmouthing me to the business owner and undermining me in every way she could. Eventually she got her way and only two weeks after getting promoted, I got fired for no particular reason other than that the other supervisor didn’t want to work with me! Wow, that was a big surprise to me because I was a very good employee. For some reason that old woman (age 69) is very manipulative and always gets her way with the business owner, who seems to be a pushover, letting her run the show even if it is unfair to others involved. I’m not the first person I’ve seen affected by this phenomena.

Anyhow, to my surprise, my first emotions after being fired were relief as if a burden had been lifted from me, and then joy. Suddenly I realized how happy I was that I wouldn’t have to work in that environment anymore, and especially not around that old woman plus her progeny who also work there due to the nepotism that’s so much a part of that business. I blinked my eyes a couple of times, stretched, smiled, and started feeling like I was doing internal happy dances. Like I really NEEDED to be treated so badly? How much money is it worth to go to work daily in a hostile environment… especially one where I have to work with meats even though I’m a vegetarian?

Fortunately I’d saved some money, and am earning a bit online. Since as I said, there are few job opportunities here, I’m not expecting to get another job right away. Of course, you never know and I’m not going to turn any jobs down… but for now I’m exceedingly happy to work at home as a blogger, Squidooer, and ad salesperson. I’m not earning a living wage at this time but it might get better if I keep trying. Right?

The good news is that my expenses are few. I’ve become an expert at practicing economy. My rent is super low - I live in a small backwoods cabin (some might call it a shack)… three bedrooms, but definitely not upscale. I drive an old but economical car so there are no car payments and gas… well, let’s not mention that right now. I just won’t drive it much. I plan to save on gas and ride a bicycle. Plus I walk a lot… often to the post office and back in the late afternoon. Two miles… good exercise. And I’m stocked up on food and continually adding more staples to my collection. There are very few things I really NEED to buy. I CAN DO THIS!!! I mean, I can learn to live on a much lower income.

I know that a lot of you out there in the rest of civilization are going through financial difficulties right now. I know with the bank failure, lots of people have lost retirement funds and home equity. My heart is with you as I feel the pains of so many who aren’t used to having to cut back, suddenly finding the rug pulled out from beneath them. And I guess what I’d like to do now is share some of my techniques for living economically. I feel like I’m pretty close to the bottom of the income scale, yet living comfortably and happily because of the choices I’ve made in the past. Maybe I have some ideas I can share with others - especially the idea that we can stay cheerful and happy in hard economic times.

Enough for now. If you’ve read this far, you must be a saint, and I love you! Thanks for stopping by. I’ll be back.

Since I work at a restaurant that serves awesome deli sandwiches, I get to bring home empty pickle jars that are very helpful as far as keeping my staples goes. Each is filled with a different vegetarian delight food like hummus mix, lentils, brown rice, and falafel mix. I truly enjoy looking at the jars full of goodies. They are so colorful - and the textures are all different.

I think falafel mix is particularly good, health-wise. It is made from chick peas. I’ve had some that was too spicy, but what I buy up in Medford, Oregon is excellent quality and enjoyable. If I were hiking in the wilderness with a little stove, this is one food I’d take with me for nutrition and to provide lightweight staples. You can mix falafel mix with cooked, crushed beans to produce a thick textured burger patty. Fry that up, and eat in a hamburger bun with all the condiments, lettuce, onion, and tomato.

Recently my significant other, the magnificent Bob, decided to make beans and rice the new staple of his diet. First let me say I’m very proud of this man. He was a meat eater all his life until gout stopped him from eating 90% of the foods he loved, including red meat. Now he’s recovering thanks to some medication, but rather than going back to the bad diet, he’s adjusted to being mostly vegetarian, though he still eats fish. I don’t, so we usually don’t share meals. He cooks what he wants and I cook what I want. I’ve gone on a vegan diet. Anyhow, as I was about to say, Bob wants to eat rice and beans. So I’ve been cooking them, keeping them on hand in the fridge. I’ve been using pinto beans. The rice and beans fill several jars in my pantry. I find that when I’m cooking them constantly, I go through the beans pretty fast - so I need more than one of the gallon jars full of them.

I have granola in one jar. I’ve been using that to make the sweet treat I mentioned in my last post. More on that in another post. I’ve morphed the recipe into breakfast bars! Recipe to be announced SOON. I keep the rice flour in another gallon jar, and cinnamon I bought in bulk in another smaller jar. Cinnamon and rice flour provide the outer coating for these treats.

Anyhow, if you need jars, ask at your local restaurant or deli. If they use pickles, they probably have more jars than they want. The one gallon mayonnaise jars are plastic, but they’re handy too… I use them for pasta and beans.

Suggestion: Stock up on as many dry staples as you can.

Transitions, part one

Recently I went through a food transition. I am overweight and want very much to have my health back again. But I’ve struggled with this for many years. I was thin when I was younger, but after my fifth child was born, gained weight quickly at the rate of about ten pounds per month, until I was about seventy pounds overweight. I later learned that my thyroid went bad. Hypothyroid disorder - an under-active thyroid gland - is common for older women. So that’s what happened to me. It took almost ten years for a doctor to point out to me that I needed thyroid medication.

I’ve been using the meds for a few years now but so far, haven’t been able to lose weight and keep it off. Because of my desperation, I decided to do something drastic. I went on the lemonade diet - the Master Cleanser - for ten days and now have transitioned to a vegan diet. I’m cutting all dairy products from my diet. I’m hoping that by staying away from cheese and butter, mayonnaise, etc. I’ll get healthier and lose the excess that has plagued me for way too many years now.

I’m going through another transition at the same time. I’m 55 - enjoying life, and grateful for it. My youngest child just had his 18th birthday this last weekend. So at 55, I’m child-free for the first time in about 35 years. I’ve been very much looking forward to this for many months. I plan to celebrate by taking a trip to Oregon Caves to stay in the Chalet overnight with Bob (my significant other).

Life without worrying about minor-aged children sounds like a treat to someone who has been responsible for young people for 35 years. Believe me, I am ready for this retirement!

Since transitions are on my mind, I’m planning to write about them this month in this blog. This will be my theme for the month. Since I’m in the kitchen, I’ll mainly be talking about food transitions. In my case, it is from lacto-vegetarian to vegan. A hard jump for me to make, but the time is right.

Part Two: Looking Forward

I don’t know if any of you were in a situation anything like mine. If you identify, let me know. The problem was that my mother didn’t teach me how to cook, so as a young woman I was very much lacking in self-confidence when it came to cooking. Plus dinner preparations in our parental home were less than optimal. My mom woke up from a nap and went into the kitchen, not wanting to deal with us kids, and fixed something simple like hamburger patties or hamburger helper, and warmed-up green peas with a salad. There was always a salad, and that’s what she asked one of her daughters to fix. Honestly, my mom was and is a wonderful cook. She can do amazing things with food when she needs to. I’m just giving you a worst-case scenario. Still, I didn’t learn much about cooking.

Also my grandmother, her mother, was a fantastic cook. Dinners at her house were always wonderful. But neither of them took time to teach me how to cook, except for one incident I clearly remember. My mom wanted to teach me how to bake a cake and so she taught me - from a box. I remember baking a marble cake - I think it was chocolate cake mix with white cake mix swirled in. Now, that was a good, positive experience, and I thank Mom for it. But when I was 18, on my own, trying to start a family, I was clueless in the kitchen. I knew how to make grilled cheese sandwiches from processed prepared sliced cheese, and a tossed green salad, and oatmeal for breakfast, and that’s about it.

Of course this didn’t go over good with my first boyfriend (later he was my first husband) but he tried to help. We lived in San Francisco - at first in the Haight Ashbury, then in Noe Valley, and later in the Haight Ashbury again. At that time we started making bread together every day. He knew more about making bread than I did as apparently his mother did it. I, however, had never seen anyone making bread.

I’d seen my grandmother making pie dough. Once when I stayed with her as a teenager she decided to make a peach cobbler. I asked her to teach me how but she said something like, “Not now, I’m busy, I just want to do this and get it over with.” She put flour in a bowl, then butter. This she cut in with two knives. Nothing was measured. She poured in the appropriate amount of water, and voila! Perfect pie dough. Then she lined her 9×13″ pan with dough, put two big cans of peach slices in, poured in some sugar… again, no need to measure anything. Then she covered it with more dough and put it in the oven for an hour or so. It always came out perfect and I learned almost nothing about how to do it myself. I think I tried to make a peach cobbler once and it didn’t turn out nearly as good as my grandmother’s.

Anyhow, back to bread-baking in the Haight Ashbury. I tried every day to bake bread right, but usually it was a failure. Usually the bread didn’t rise right, or wasn’t cooked enough, or something would happen to make it less than perfect. It took months before I could produce edible bread. Somehow I had decided I couldn’t cook, so I couldn’t. A self-fulfilling prophecy. I knew nothing about being the kind of woman who could prepare a wholesome meal every evening, regularly and dependably. Plus my boyfriend and I had different eating preferences. I was a vegetarian; he wasn’t. He brought in steaks to cook for himself and didn’t want most of what I wanted to eat anyway.

So that was the beginning of my cooking career. I wish I’d worked in a restaurant back then; it would have made me feel much more comfortable with the issue of cooking food. Instead I suffered for many years, trying to learn to cook. Even to this day I still have times where a fear of cooking comes upon me. That lack of self-confidence is hard to get away from.

Because of all this, it is strange that I have a cooking blog, don’t you think? I can cook now, and have collected my own workable, practical vegetarian recipes over the years, but I’m hardly a natural at it.

I work at the local pizza restaurant during the lunch hour when we usually stay busy serving pizza by the slice, breadsticks, sandwiches, wraps, fajitos, and on Fridays, enchiladas.

This winter, soup was added to the menu. My co-worker is a marvelous cook and prepares these soups a couple times each week, varying between potato soup, chicken noodle, pizza soup, and broccoli soup. Unfortunately none of these soups are intended to be vegetarian so I don’t eat them.

A few weeks ago I took her broccoli soup recipe home and adapted it to my vegetarian diet. I still use milk products so I added whole milk to my soup; if you’re vegan, you can eliminate that and substitute water or broth instead. (Yes, more adaptions, but I’m sure you can handle it.)

Here’s my version of our Broccoli Cream Soup without the chicken broth!

In a large soup pan heat three cups of water while you’re chopping veggies.

Chop one cup of carrots and toss them in the water.
Then chop one cup of celery. Toss it in.
Next, the broccoli. You’ll need four cups of that. Toss it in and let it boil for about three minutes.

Hint: chop the carrots and celery in small pieces, not large chunks.

Next you’re going to drain the water from the veggies. But save the broth! I put the broth back into my four-cup pyrex measuring cup and put the veggies in my strainer which sits in the sink until I need them again.

The next thing you’ll need is an onion. Chop about 3/4 of a cup of onion and put it into the large soup pan with six tablespoons of butter. Heat the onions, stirring, stirring, until they are tender.

Add six tablespoons of flour, and stir until creamy. Work it all in.

Now gently and slowly, add back in your three cups of vegetable broth, stirring it into the floury onion-butter mixture so that everything is even and not lumpy.

Next add two cups of milk if you use milk. If not, stir in two cups of water.

Heat it up! You need for this to boil for at least a minute, and if you’re using milk, you’d better stir constantly.

Next add back in your veggies (remember, the ones you boiled earlier?)

To this mixture add one tablespoon parsley, one and a half teaspoons of salt, and half a teaspoon of garlic powder.

Simmer covered for 35 to 40 minutes.

Serve with warm tortillas, quesadillas, buttered french bread, or whatever you have that sounds and tastes good to you!

We get about four servings out of this soup.