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Friday Food – Korma Chicken

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When we visit Canada we always return with food, snacks, and sauces that we don’t often see at home in New York. One of the sauces that my kids brought back last August was korma sauce. We had it once at a restaurant, and I thought it was something we might use. We always make those chicken dishes (like butter chicken or teriyaki chicken) with rice, usually white, but occasionally fried.

I wanted a change for this week’s meal, and asked for my son to pick up small golden potatoes and naan to create an excellent dinner.

Korma Chicken.
(c)2026
Skillet Potatoes - once the potatoes are set up, I cut up the chicken and cook that in the oven. I don't use a lot of seasoning on the chicken since they're going to be simmered in the sauce.

For the potatoes: In a large skillet, put in 3/4 of a stick of butter. Cut the potatoes into smaller pieces, halves, thirds, whatever works for your family. I cover the potatoes and butter with the following seasonings/spices: fresh ground four pepper peppercorns, garlic powder, dill weed, orange peel. Cover and let cook on medium for about 30 minutes.

At the same time, cook the chicken at 350° for those 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, stir the potatoes gently with a spatula.
Put the chicken in a wok with the korma sauce, stir, and simmer. Add in 1/2 bag of frozen corn or can of corn, stir, and simmer until the sauce and vegetables are hot.

Raise the oven temperature to 400° and warm the naan for about 5 minutes.

Serve together.

It is delicious!

Mental Health Monday – Lent Edition

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I’m seeing a lot of concerns and posts on Threads (which is my main source of social media) about suicidal ideation, reaching out, is reaching out a codependency or a cry for help, is it merely speaking your truth “into the void”. I am not suicidal, any more. I am hyperaware of my mental health, and when I feel it diminishing, I reach into my coping tote bag (or toolbox) and see what will work *this time*. (For my story, you can search my tags for /my42, /mental-health) My evergreen go-to is writing, lists, and me time away from work and  home. I must admit that I’ve adopted “me time” from my daughter. She is fierce about her space and her alone time, in her private room in the evening, and on her days off. She has taught me so much about how important self-love and self-care is.

As Lent approaches (T-minus two days, one and a half really), again, I have not decided on an item to give up, I have not decided on a spiritual practice to adopt for the next forty days, I have not moved into a Lenten mindset. Home is harried. Work this week is harried. My writing classes and groups that I’ve committed to are harried. And I love all three of them, so my object isn’t to make the times in them go away, or worse or negative for me or the people around me. It looks like it’s time for a few lists.

But lists aren’t the only mental health tool or adaption that I’ll need this week.

I’ll also need time.

We all do.

Even when I was a stay-at-home mom and my kids were in school for most of the day, I still needed to make time, bide my time, reserve my time, reclaim time. How is time simultaneously fleeting and standing still? Of course, it matters what we are doing with those times – vacations speed by, the work day slides along slowly. Paychecks come late,and bills come early.

For the next forty days, we of the Catholic faith will try to be better, with the help of G-d, but truly for ourselves. What can we do to make ourselves better? What can we do to make our lives better? What can we do to make the world better?

Whether you follow the forty days of Lent until the Resurrection of Easter or it’s just almost spring for you, think about how you can rest in yourself, how you can reset, and recover your mental health, to be healthy in ways that work for you.

I’ll return to this subject on Wednesday when Ash Wednesday begins the Lenten season, and I will hopefully have something to add that I’ve come up with for myself.

Until then, do something quiet and peaceful for yourself, and be.

Inspired in February

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I heard Mr. Esposito express this at an event online, and it stayed with me. I hope it can inspire you as well.

This was an offering leftover from a retreat (that I did not attend), and again, it is something that spoke to me, and stayed with me for the following few weeks.
Take from here what you need, and leave something in the comments for fellow readers.

Friday Food – What Were They Thinking?

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Last month, my husband and I traveled to the Albany area to see the Titanic Exhibition at the Schenectady Armoury. I had been there a while ago to see their Monet interactive exhibit, and I was excited for the Titanic.

We had visited the Titanic Experience in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 2017, and that was fantastic. It was a superb blending of the Northern Irish pride of having built the Titanic and a solemn, respectful balance of the tragedy.

I didn’t know what to expect in Albany.

To begin, its title is Titanic: An Immersive Voyage. Now, I get that these exhibits do have an immersive quality to them. You’re made to feel that not only are you at something like a museum exhibit, you are in the space. We walked the gang plank onto the ship, we stood on the main staircase, and in the screened room, we were on the ship as it crashed and sank. They even had a life sized lifeboat in the room for some people to sit in.

However, immersive? Really? For a ship that sank? I don’t know.

The second thing that made me side-eye things is pictured below. I did not buy these, but I was surprised to see them in the gift shop. They really will sell anything – Titanic themed ice trays.

Titanic

Themed

Ice

Trays

So there you go.

Friday Food – New Year’s Amusements

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I thought for the first Friday Food of the new year, I’d share two amusing ones. Just below is an Advent Calendar I got just after Advent started. It was half price on clearance. It really is a cute box.

I had no intention of saving it for next year, but I wasn’t sure how to distribute the candy until this week.

We sat at the dining room table after dinner and had my family each choose a number between 1 and 24. We did this twice, and had fun seeing which of the candies we got. We’ll keep doing this until the box is empty and then I’ll save the box for next year and fill it with different candies to surprise us throughout Advent.

Chocolate Advent Calendar.
(c)2025-2026
Chocolate Advent Calendar.
(c)2025-2026
Morton’s Iodized Salt.
(c)2026

This is your average, everyday Morton salt that I believe everyone has in their cupboards. What is so special about this one really illustrates how little salt our family uses. This is only the fourth cannister that I’ve had since I was married more than thirty-one years ago.

My family is tired of hearing this, but I am really amused and fascinated by it. I can’t think of any other food item in our house that has lasted that long and is still good to eat. We really only use salt in baking and in our mashed potatoes!

We do have a microwave that we got for my bridal shower in 1994 that is still working well, but the salt is the only food. For added trivia, this is only the third one that we’ve bought – my mother gave us the first one with a loaf of bread, which is a tradition in Jewish families.

Election Connection – Renee Good

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I’m struggling today.

Yesterday and this morning have been very difficult for me; my spoons have clattered to the floor, and the idea of picking them up and beginning again isn’t there yet.

I’ve called this Election Connection because it is connected to our recent past elections and the two future ones in 2026 and 2028. It’s the people.

And it’s also more than the elections and the consequences of an illiterate and ignorant electorate.

It’s that the lack of fundamental thought processing is gone. Media literacy is gone. Impartiality on behalf of our journalists is gone.I’m not sure if we will ever get any of this back.

There are not always two (or more) sides to every issue. Sometimes there is the fact side and the anti-truth side. Good versus evil.

A woman and her spouse were driving home with their dog after dropping their six-year-old off at school. They never arrived home. That trauma will never go away.

I watched in real time as side-by-side, the video of the murder next to the government lying about it, and I was stunned. I truly was. I still am.

Anyone who’s watched the video saw what happened. A woman, trying to follow the direction of one ICE agent and leave was murdered by another ICE agent who then calmly walked to her car, turned around and walked away. Not limped. Not taken to the hospital. Not injured in any way. He walked away.

The federal agents on the scene refused to let a doctor attend to her. The federal agents on the scene refused to allow an ambulance to reach her.

The EMTs had to walk into the scene and them carry her limp, dead body back to the ambulance.

At the same time that her spouse was sitting on a snowy curb sobbing, the President of the United States, the Director of Homeland Security, and other federal officials claimed that the driver was a terrorist, that she attempted to harm the ICE agent. We know this is not true. It has been described in the media as the government gaslighting the rest of us.

I will say it more clearly:

The federal officials, the director of Homeland Security, the President and Vice President of the United States are lying to us. They are, in George Orwell’s words, asking us not to believe what we see, but to believe what they tell us. They are lying. Over an over again.

And this morning, we are being told that the FBI, led by a corrupt, unqualified director will be solely in charge of the investigation; that they are refusing to share any evidence found with the Minnesota State Police or the Minneapolis City Police. We cannot be expected to trust them. Not one iota when they’ve been lying to us as we watched the video of Renee Good’s murder.

We know her name because she was a white, middle class suburban woman, a mother of three.

I ask you to search the internet for the following two names:

Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez (Chicago).

Keith Porter (Los Angeles).

We know of others who’ve died in ICE custody, several not wanted on any charges, not undocumented immigrants. We don’t hear their stories because they are not white suburban women, but men of color, and we should be following their deaths and their stories equally as close.

The first man (Villegas-Gonzalez) was allegedly killed by the same ICE agent that killed Renee Good, at least that’s what Director Noem seemed to say in her press conferences.

CORRECTION: While the ICE agent who killed Renee Good was dragged by a car, it was not Mr. Villegas-Gonzalez who was driving. These were two separate incidents with two different ice agents.

The government went too far on January 21. It continues to push us to the brink of the end of democracy, the end of civil rights, the end of life in the United States as we know it.

CBS has capitulated. CNN has capitulated. AP News, the NY Times, the Washington Post have all capitulated. Who will be left to tell the true story? When will actual journalists stand up and remember their commitment to unbiased, truthful reporting, of speaking truth to power, of not showing two sides of a single truth?

I hope it’s soon, but I won’t be holding my breath.

Election Connection – Nobody Voted For This!

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(c)2025

On a road near my house, there are two of the same sign directly across from each other. For months now, I’ve been trying to take a photo because I loved and agreed with the sentiment. I finally got that photo, which you can see in this post. Once I got the photo however, the more I looked at it, trying to decide where to use it, and the more I thought about it, I realized that it’s a nice thought, a way to absolve voters, and get them to speak out and stand up. I agreed that even people who voted for the current president didn’t want this to be the outcome. But I’ve only just recently realized that it’s a lie.

“Nobody voted for this.”

That is a lie.

People did vote for this, greedily, happily, with determination and glee at what the other side would get, and indeed “get what’s coming to them.” I don’t have to give them the redemption arc they so desperately crave because the bad things are happening to them, and they’ve suddenly decided that the  monster in the room is actually the monster in the room.

I can’t possibly list all the depraved, petty, destructive things this president and his Congress cohorts have wrought upon us.

Just because they’ve changed their minds because their landscaper was deported or their cousin the farmer is going to lose his farm because of tariffs or your health insurance is going up, like we told you it would, doesn’t mean that you get a pass because you’ve joined the suffering.

What did they vote for exactly if not for this?

They voted for lawlessness, for terrorism in our streets, for pulling people out of court hearings when they’ve immigrated “the right way,” for canceling citizenship swearing in ceremonies when these almost citizens met every hurdle, for “papers please,” for higher taxes, for lies upon lies upon lies, for pettiness that would put a toddler to shame, for misogyny, transphobia, antisemitism, and white supremacy. Yes, even if you’re not white, you voted for white supremacy. You’ve allowed him to denigrate our press, and the press has allowed him to do the same also by ignoring his outlandish and despicable behavior and their complicit silence. You’ve allowed him to call our women journalists names, and ignore the questions he dislikes. You voted for war, and disrespect for our country, our military, and put our citizens here and around the world in danger. You voted for murder and the destruction of the East Wing of the White House, the paving over the Rose Garden because the dementia-addled resident of the White House can’t remember where he is or what he’s doing. His made up grievances are on repeat, his whines are pathetic, his falling asleep at the cabinet table would be cute if it was Grandpa at Thanksgiving dinner sated by the turkey, but not for the President of the United States.

He’s so narcissistic that he needs to deface a national monument, a memorial to a fallen President; yes, it’s sad, even for this joyless man, but it’s also pitiable.

His need to pull himself up by tearing everything and everyone around him down would be sad if he wasn’t also pulling down the future for my kids, for your kids. Will the next generation have a country to be proud of? Will they even have a country? Will we be able to recover from the nastiness he unleashed? Will the White House recover from the sad, gold accents that reduce this once great house, the people’s house to a tacky golf club?

Nobody voted for this.

Lies.

*I* didn’t vote for this. Many of the people reading this didn’t vote for this. But others, there are others who DID vote for this. They’re only upset that it affects them too and not just the brown skinned people they were “punishing” simply for not being white.

But make no mistake – this is exactly what you voted for, and for those of you who didn’t vote because “they’re both the same…” shame on you.

I, and many of us, won’t forget, and forgiveness is a long way off…if it ever comes.

Friday Food – Birthday Edition

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As it turned out, I was quite ill for my birthday last week. I did not want cake – no point if I’m not going to enjoy it, but some  things were simply postponed.

Instead of cake, my husband got me Haagen Dazs White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle ice cream. It was delicious. 10/10 would recommend and would try it again.

(c)2025

My birthday drink from Starbucks was a bit more complicated. The birthday drink is only available on your birthday, and I couldn’t do that, so I got my go-to: iced chai latte, but with no ice. I kept it in the fridge for three days, added my own ice, and drank it when I was feeling better. It was excellent, and I’m glad that I opted for that.

Iced Chai Latte, no ice on the left.
Hot Eggnog Chai Latte on the right.
(c)2025

Last but not least, eggnog is back at Starbucks. I’ve had their eggnog cold foam on an iced drink and their hot eggnog chai latte. Very rich, and its warmth is very soothing.

Finally, we had pulled pork sandwiches for dinner the other night. I did not want onions so I decided to put a slice of a Granny Smith apple on two slider rolls and ate that. Nice crunch, a little tart, but very nice with the pulled pork.

(c)2025

My birthday dinner consisted of a salad, a piece of brown bread and butter, and a baked potato. Overall, not exactly how I’d choose to spend my birthday, but it was still nice and I had some special time with my family.

Inspired. December.

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Simplicity.

(c)2025

Wandering through Target, checking out the holiday goodies and displays, and I saw their plastic tableware along the main aisle.

Before I could even be intrigued, I saw that someone else had already put this smaller plate on top of the large charger, and I loved how it looked. I didn’t touch it. I didn’t change it. I simply photographed it, and went on my merry way.

I hope to use this as inspiration for a simpler holiday; something quiet and unobtrusive that has meaning without forcing it to have meaning.

Have a Blessed Advent.