Uncategorized – Page 16 – in thriver words

If You Can’t Take the Heat

If you can’t take the heat, as they say, get out of the kitchen. My kitchen is on the west side of my house. On summer afternoons, it’s hot in there. I’ve added a/c vents, but the heat still gathers. When I can’t take the heat, I opt for salad.

Many of my salads have been based around bok choy and romaine this summer because I’m growing those in the garden. I also grow arugula and Swiss chard which I add to some salads. The arugula adds a wonderful peppery dimension.

Once the greens are chosen, the toppings are a wonderland of experimentation. Sometimes the combination feels just right. Other times, one ingredient stands out more than it should. No matter, the kitchen stays cool and the crunch is satisfying.

Another way to get out of the kitchen is to eat from someone else’s. Restaurant salads have a more predictable composition. That means there are some that become favorites. Here are a few that stand out:

GP’s Classic-ish Cobb from Goop Kitchen: It features a 7-minute egg, avocado, tomatoes, Point Reyes blue cheese, roasted golden beets, Mama Lil’s peppers and house pickled shishito mix, maple glazed bacon, little gem, radicchio, and a side of GCC Dijon mustard vinaigrette. The combination is perfection!

The Iceberg Wedge at The Olde Pink House: This one keeps it simple. An iceberg wedge with blue cheese dressing, tomatoes, and cucumbers. When done right, it doesn’t get better than a wedge salad. A great one begins with a chilled triangle of lettuce. I like that this version doesn’t include bacon. I often think bacon detracts from the cool light flavors that receive just the right balance from bleu cheese. I like the addition of cucumbers here though – another light note.

Peck’s Salad from Trio’s: The recipe for the dressing on this salad came from the Sam Peck Hotel that operated from 1935 – 1972. The light, sweet vinaigrette tops leaf & romaine lettuce with roasted pulled chicken breast, toasted almonds and bacon. I often opt for dressing on the side, but the portion here is exactly right.

Cucumber Salad from Zankou Chicken^®: I always order extra and eat it for days! Cucumber, tomato, red onion, and parsley tossed in lemon juice and oil. This is the perfect side for soooo many things.

MoMa Arugula and Proscuitto: I don’t think they serve this anymore, but they should. It was so simple and full of bold flavor. I think it was just the two ingredients with some coarse ground black pepper and a light drizzle of dressing, perhaps balsamic? It felt like it belonged with the impressionists. But, just like trends in art, menus change.

There are other standout salads that have disappeared – a Greek salad at a storefront restaurant on the north edge of Albuquerque and the Medite, made of organic quinoa, spinach, garbanzo beans, artichoke, fire roasted peppers, grape tomatoes, feta, lemon and extra virgin olive oil at The Pantry West in Little Rock.

There are salads that may still be served if I could remember the restaurant name or location closely enough to check. I had a wonderful tableside Caesar in Manhattan and a soaked salad…somewhere.

Salads with seasonal fruit entice me. I also like salads with crunchies like tortilla strips. While the heat continues, I’ll be searching for even more standouts to add to my list of salads that can help me get out of the kitchen when I can’t take the heat.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Trust and Health

Trust can be a forgotten element in making wise health decisions. It is not unusual to spend a portion of each day wishing we had made a healthier choice or two. Sometimes it’s because we’ve eaten 2 pieces of cake. Sometimes it’s because we skipped a workout. Occasionally, it’s because of our experience of the healthcare system.

Healthcare professionals often fail to create opportunities to listen and build trust. There are many reasons for this. One is that they may work for an institution that sets a maximum time goal for patient visits. One common time goal is 10 minutes. That might be sufficient for a follow-up after a treatment plan is chosen, but it’s not much time for an initial visit or a visit in which options will be presented.

Ten minutes is not much time to answer questions or establish a trusting relationship. And the fact that we meet many of these professionals for the first time when we’re partially clothed doesn’t encourage trust either. The lopsidedness of the doctor/patient relationship as it’s currently experienced in the US can even undermine our trust in ourselves and our experience.

Then there are the careless errors: Being told my MRI was normal for someone with migraines after I was scanned because my fingers were numb. I’d never had a migraine.

The deliberate deceptions: The doctor prescribing a drug to treat a condition because of what he said were abnormal test numbers. The numbers falling in the middle of normal range, “exactly where we want them,” when I asked the nurse to read me the actual numbers.

The misogynistic assumptions: “If you didn’t have an intelligent boyfriend sitting here, I’d tell you it’s all in your head.”

And those are just some of my experiences.

How are we supposed to trust our perceptions when a highly trained professional tells us it’s all in our heads. Mind you, I’m not saying that psychological symptoms and somatic experience can’t go hand in hand, but at the visit mentioned above, I was recovering from recurring pneumonia and asking for a diagnostic referral to determine the underlying cause.

Taken as a whole, the experience of healthcare often isn’t all that healthy. That is unfortunate. And it makes it more difficult to decipher and determine the best course of action to take in our everyday lives.

Good daily health practices and good healthcare can both begin with the same question, “What matters to you?” Determining your priorities and what you want your life to look like is a great way to guide your decisions and actions.

And your priorities can be whatever you want them to be. There’s no right or wrong. You are in the driver’s seat. You can allow yourself grace and the flexibility to change priorities as you grow or when something doesn’t feel right.

You can learn to trust yourself. That may not mean trusting your instincts as much as trusting yourself to gather credible information and learn, trusting yourself to listen to the signals your body gives you, and trusting yourself to face problems head-on.

When you are clear on the things that matter to you most, you’ll be better able to trust your decisions and measure whether the advice of others is in line with your priorities. This can guide you to better health decisions.

Walk A Mile

Before you judge someone, walk a mile in their shoes.

When I hear this, my first thought is, I hope they’re comfortable and stylish ‘cause that’s what I require in shoes. But to the subject at hand, it’s a good admonishment to be reminded that everyone’s burden is different and not all wounds are visible.

Some of us take this admonishment to heart. We go so far as to put ourselves into the shoes of our most difficult family, friends, or co-workers before holding them accountable for the hurt or chaos they cause us. This feels like an appropriate, compassionate approach.

We imagine the fear our cousin will feel if we refuse to fund their project in spite of their failure to repay our previous loans. We feel the devastation our parent will feel if we cut off connection even though their drinking is out of control. After all, we’d feel devasted if our children no longer wanted to connect with us. We feel the hurt a sibling will feel when we won’t let them live with us because they bring dangerous people home with them in spite of our request for them not to. Often, this stops us from maintaining good boundaries.

So should we walk in someone else’s shoes?

Yes, it’s a helpful exercise. The problem with the above scenarios is they aren’t describing walking in someone else’s shoes at all. They’re describing us imagining the offender walking in our emotional shoes.

In other words, yes, we would feel afraid, devastated, or hurt in the situations we imagine. But someone who is willing to take advantage of us, betray us, or disrespect our boundaries may not have the same emotional landscape we do. They may not feel their actions are at all problematic and the resulting damage to our relationship may not phase them.

It’s hard to get your mind around the idea that a parent might not care whether they ever see us again or a brother would allow someone who would hurt us into our home. It changes how we see people who we’d like to believe care for us. Of course, we expect them to have a similar point of view. But they may not.

Having the perspective and courage to work through complicated relationships is not easy. It can take significant support and years of peeling back layers of memories and feeling. But making sure that you don’t project your point of view onto someone else can make the process go faster.

Believe behavior more than words. Observe body language that doesn’t match what is being said. Take note of unreliable behavior, manipulation of facts, outright lies, and attempts to convince you how you feel is invalid. These are all clues that your experience differs from the other person’s in ways that may mean you will never understand their emotional reasoning.

And you don’t need to. You don’t have to understand why someone repeatedly hurts, betrays, abuses, gaslights, or is dishonest with you. It may be interesting or helpful, but it is not necessary to walk a mile in their shoes. It is not necessary to try to repair a relationship that hasn’t and may never exist in the way you’d hoped. It is not necessary to keep the door open.

All you need to do is set boundaries that will allow you to grow and be your best self. Those can be whatever they need to be. And you can change them if the situation or your needs change.

Withholding judgement, granting grace, and baseline human kindness are all good. Attempting to understand how someone feels is good.

Twisting yourself into a pretzel for someone who treats you with disregard is not good for anyone, even if you have walked a mile in their shoes.

Perk Up Your Day

Here’s a way to perk up your day! As summer afternoons begin to heat up, I can start to feel draggy. Sometimes a quick break energizes me. Sometimes I need a little more.

On those 100+ humid afternoons, the air conditioner in my office can’t keep up. As the heat accumulates, so does my lethargy. This is especially true when I’m knocking out those tasks that aren’t fun but must be done.

Hot coffee doesn’t appeal and I hate tepid coffee. On the other hand, I enjoy an occasional iced coffee with coconut milk, cinnamon, and nutmeg. But with intense heat, even that seems too heavy.

I recently explored another coffee option – coffee soda. I didn’t create one myself. I bought it at a coffee shop nearby. Their version was cold brew and plus an orange infused syrup garnished with orange peel. The syrup wasn’t too sweet and the coffee and orange flavors were well-balanced.

My friend mentioned chocolate would be delicious as an addition. This made me wonder whether there are common flavor options for coffee sodas. In a weird twist, I don’t really think of Starbucks sparkling coffee drinks as coffee sodas. The premise is the same, but the use of the word sparkling makes my brain lean toward water rather than soda.

It’s probably just me because Cold-Pressed Ginger Fizz definitely sounds like a soda – ginger ale infused with a shot of cold-pressed espresso poured over vanilla syrup and finished with grapefruit bitters. Slingshot Coffee Company’s canned coffee soda flavors are also reminiscent of familiar soda flavors – Black Cherry Cola, Vintage Root Beer, and Citrus Vanilla Cream Soda.

I don’t know if this speaks to the general popularity of coffee sodas, but Coca-Cola discontinued their line of Coke with Coffee in the US at the end of last year. The reviews I saw described a favorable pairing of coffee and cola plus a large amount of sweetness. It’s hard to imagine something being too sweet for the US market.

My friend noted that her coffee soda was not as pleasant once she began eating her cinnamon roll. Maybe it’s the combination of sweet with not-really-sweet-but-kind-of that doesn’t work well in an American market saturated with sugar-filled products.

Back to their potential as a pick me up, coffee sodas have the caffeine/sugar combination working in their favor. The caffeine content is about 2/3 that of a cup of coffee. For me, that’s great. I don’t want a large amount of caffeine after lunch.

This also seems like a drink that would be easy to play with depending on the mood of the day. Plain or flavored sparkling water is easy to keep in the pantry and it takes minimal effort to make a spiced, citrus, or herb-infused simple syrup. Leftover coffee that’s been refrigerated would eliminate the need for brewing.

I love the idea of a lighter drink to perk up a hot afternoon. Coffee sodas seem like a great option!