Really good soup recipe

Was going to whine a little today but I really don't have the time...maybe tomorrow.... here's a recipe for my daughters favorite soup instead...

vegetarian corn chowder

2 boxes of vegetarian vegetable broth.
water
1 head of celery
1 red pepper
1 carrot
5 medium potatoes
1 large yellow onion
2 large garlic cloves
1 bag frozen corn kernels
red pepper flakes
curry powder
peppercorns
olive oil
corn starch

*amounts are just suggestions, you have to see what it looks like and tastes like while cooking it

cut up garlic and onions saute in olive oil until soft, add broth and bring to a gentle boil.

cut up veggies into bite size pieces and add to the broth, put the frozen corn in too, and here's where the water comes in...add enough so that the veggies are covered well you can always add more later if the soup is to thick.

cook for about 1/2 hour or until the veggies are soft. then ladle out about 2 cups of broth into your blender,
and blend on low speed (be careful cause the steam makes this want to blow the top off the blender and splatter the walls!!! (not that it's ever happened to me, LOL) Add about 2 tablespoons of cornstarch and blend before it becomes a gelatinous clump at the bottom of the blender.

add this mixture to the rest of the soup, stir and cook on low temp for about another 10-20 minutes
*add curry and red pepper flakes to taste also if you want, throw in a teaspoon of peppercorns (whole)

enjoy, this is thick creamy and delicious, add some salad and bread and it's dinner.

Virtual loss of innocence

I was talking to a very good friend last night...we were just lamenting the fact that our kids have such a vastly different and in many ways deficient childhood then we did. We were raised in a middle to lower economic class neighborhoods. we were not hungry or lacking in toys or "things" no grinding poverty etc... you get the picture, but God did we have fun. I was up with the sun I got myself a bowl of cold cereal got dressed and went outside barefoot to collect my friends. there were lots of us and we were completely unsupervised by adults from sun up to sun down. We were expected to show up to check in at intervals just to let the parents know we were alive..we would have done that anyway because we had to pee, or we wanted a snack. when I think of the things we did!!! I can't imagine my own daughter doing them. such horrible things as riding my bicycle down hills at intersections, through woods and dirt paths...getting scratched and dirty with out a grownup around to wash my cuts and put antibacterial ointment on them. No cell phones, no adults it was wonderful. When I was little there was a lot of new houses going up and so we would take rusty old coffee cans and scour the construction sites for nails and scraps of wood to build tree house with. We would then go quietly into our respective houses and sneak out a hammer with which to build our forts, again there were many bruises and gashes and we never gave any thought to washing them, as far as I know we never lost a kid to tetanus. Though our days were spent in the woods I never had a tick ( found a few crawling on me now and again though) maybe got stung by a bee once or twice. The woods were used by all age groups of kids from the ridiculously little 5-6 year olds to teenagers...so this could lead to enlightening encounters, not with the actual kids...as the older ones came out when we went in, but with interesting things the would leave lying around like beer bottles and playboy magazines, this was all taken in stride by us. There were alcoholic parents, philandering parents, absent parents, dead parents...divorces, catastrophic illnesses and death. I remember them all and I never felt that I was being sheltered from them, and I didn't feel traumatized by these things they were simply part of life, and we just kept playing. There were "molestations" and lots of them of various types. of course we didn't know as we were growing up but as we became adults and started reminiscing the stories came out one by one. An older neighbor a father or cousin, it might have been once or twice or lasted longer, but still we played. and while I certainly wouldn't want my daughter to experience some of the things I went through I wonder at the price she's had to pay for her own safety. I'm sorry that she lives in a sharply circumscribed world of play dates, and nintendogs, and a computer with parental controls, to protect her from what??? When I was running wild and happy unsupervised in the streets, I lost my innocence a little at a time as I experienced things, good and bad. My daughter to the best of my knowledge has never been molested, she has never gotten into a physical altercation with another child, she attends private school and has dance lessons and girl scouts, she is involved with various clubs after school. she has every comfort and advantage I could think to give her, I have protected her with all my strength. And though I think society would call me a good mother, I wonder if I haven't participated in robbing my daughter of her innocence more violently then mine was ever taken from me, by unintentionally placing terror in her heart of all the things I experienced and lived to tell about.

a poem...

Listen I named this blog "a spoiled whiney girl" for a reason...

this is a poem I wrote while laying in bed thinking about a summer romance gone bad...

I would like to kill myself
I would like to cut myself
and let the blood run out
let it seep from my veins
slowly watch it as my
consciousness fades...

I'd like to let the blood out to follow my soul-
which has seeped from my body over time-
sometimes stolen, more often given freely-gently as a quiet gift
like a frightened child tugging at the hem of an inattentive parent-
quietly hoping for a reply-a reassurance-

only to walk away empty...

don't go callin' 911 I wrote it years ago and I'm still here....

Lisa

what defines true love???

So basically I started this so I don't have to regale my friends and family with tales of woe, I just want to sent my complaints and rants into the anonymous ethers and what ever will be will be. So I will begin: This is my question of the day... what is love? I mean the love between a man and a woman??? What defines it and makes it real and legitimate?? Say for instance (and of course this is all hypothetical) I had been married, and this man allegedly loved me enough to walk down the proverbial isle with me and swear on the bible that he loved me yadda yadda yadda...you get the picture right?? he swears he wants to buy a house and start a family live the middle class life of boredom and mediocrity.... Then once married comes up with a million and one excuses not to do all of the above??? Not to mention a secret love child and a married lover (but this is all hypothetical, and that would be a story for another time anyway) Then say I (hypothetically) years later were to hook up with a man who was devoted, understanding, loving, supported me in my endeavors to continue my education, achieve financial independence, who calls every day (going on 6 years now) and in all my 40 years on the earth is the most perfect person (for me) except for the fact that he's married and is never ever going to leave his wife??? NOW forget the fact that I am F'd up.... that is obvious....we come into the adult world with issues and do the best we can to live our lives...and I am no different... is there space for this kind of "love" in the world...people say it's selfish, immature...but is it if he stays married??? no disruption on the homefront?? he goes home every night and brings his paycheck with him...well a person could go on forever with this argument...Infidelity has been around for as long as people have been, and it will never go away...and what I'm saying is that of course it would be best to not do it...to be in a close and loving relationship with your spouse...but what if you couldn't be??? Have you sentenced yourself to a lifetime of loneliness after you say till death do us part?? if after 30 years of marriage you grow into two separate people??? with separate lives??? There are plenty of scorned women, and (no offence bible thumping Christians) who I am pretty sure will not like this post but, the world is not, not, not black and white as much as we would like it to be, as easy as it would make things to just know that "this is just the way things are" but life is messy. Sometime the best we can hope for is to do the least possible amount of damage, while trying to gain some happiness out of our rapidly passing lives...

Lisa

1st post

Just signed up and seeing how this works, as I am technologically challenged...be back soon