Slow Food Challenge

Slow Food USA is challenging everyone to participate in the $5 Slow Food Day on September 17. The idea is that delicious, healthy food can be made for the same price of a fast food meal.

We happen to eat like this most nights. In fact, one of the first meals I ever ate with my husband could qualify for the slow food challenge. One night, he served me his famous turkey chili. It was like a love potion: so hearty and so healthy. It's also easy to make, so let me see if I can describe it.

Tomatoes, by Pragya Kothari

Gather a bag of beans (white, mixed, etc. it doesn't matter, although if you use kidney beans, make sure you boil them first, because they have a toxin that won't disappear in the slow cooker), a can of tomatoes, some ground turkey meat (or not if you're going for veggie bliss), chopped bell pepper, and chopped onion. Maybe add some garlic and some good red chili powder for some extra flavor.

Dump the ingredients into a slow cooker, and add about 4 cups of stock. (You're making your own and freezing it, right? It's so easy and so good.) Let everything cook on low for at least 5 hours. The longer you wait, the better it tastes.

Serve over rice, or with corn bread. Yum! A perfect summer-to-fall transition meal that's cheap and creates enough leftovers to last a week.

Admiring: Ballerinas

I just saw A Day in the Life with Misty Copeland, an African American dancer with American Ballet Theater who is passionate about getting people of color dancing in ballet. She's so beautiful to watch, and her outreach is really inspirational.

Misty Copeland

I'm also a fan of the "Five Moons Ballerinas," American Indian dancers from Oklahoma who impacted ballet in important ways. Yvonne Chouteau, a member of the Shawnee tribe, danced with Ballet Russe and founded the first nationally accredited dance program at the University of Oklahoma as well as Oklahoma City Ballet. 

Yvonne Chouteau
Photograph by Jack Mitchell, Getty Images

Maria Tallchief danced for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and the New York City Ballet, in works by her husband, George Balanchine.

Maria Tallchief

Maria's sister, Marjorie, along with Moscelyne Larkin and Rosella Hightower were also internationally renowned. 

Dreamland

An illustration from The Red Book, by Carl Jung
via weheartit

If you created a book of your inner world, what would it look like? The Red Book, Carl Jung's detailed dream journal, takes journaling to a whole new level. 

Pages from The Red Book, via the New York Times

Thunder Silence

I learned a new word in Japanese: mokurai (黙雷), which is translated as "thunder silence."

Being a quiet person, I love this word, because I feel how active and charged silences can be. Sometimes there's too much to say, and sometimes the other person needs compassionate silence more than words, anyway.

"We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet."

    —"Earth, Fire and Water" from The Celtic Twilight (1893), by William Butler Yeats

Winds from the East, by Stephen Beadles
via Selah, Selah

Magritte, and Song of the Day: Philosophia

I discovered "Philosophia," by the Guggenheim Grotto, from the free iTunes download feature, and it's been a favorite ever since.

I like the music video, too, for its references to Magritte. I went to the Magritte Museum in Brussels this past summer, and I learned so much about his philosophy, thanks to a little booklet of his own explanations that was supplied by the museum. Here are some favorites:

"All of my work results from a a feeling of certainty that we do indeed belong to an enigmatic universe."

[Tout dans mes œuvres est issue du sentiment de certitude que nous appartenons, en fait, à un universe énigmatique.]

La Bataille de l'Argonne, by René Magritte

"The real value of art is measured by its capacity for liberating revelation."
[La valeur réelle de l'art est en fonction de son pouvoir de révélation libératrice.]

Le Chef-d'Oeuvre ou les Mysteres, by René Magritte

Let Us Build Altars

Three Bee Hives, by Michelle of United Thread

"Let us build altars to the Blessed Unity which holds nature and souls in perfect solution, and compels every atom to serve an universal end. . . . "

Chickadees and Avocado Tree, by Michelle of United Thread

" . . . Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity, which secures that all is made of one piece; that plaintiff and defendant, friend and enemy, animal and planet, food and eater, are of one kind."

    —"Fate," by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Poppy Pods, by Michelle of United Thread

I've been thinking about altars as mindful collections lately. While I was thinking about what sorts of things would be on my altar, I realized that I've already started one, with the surprises found on my daily walks—egg shells, a bit of a bee hive, a beautiful black-and-white moth . . . The fragile gifts of life are all around, it seems.

Fox Rain

I came across this beautiful illustration by Jeeyon Shim of Ink and Ginger/Jeeyon Makes.

Fox Apples, by Jeeyon Shim

The illustration was inspired traditional Korean stories, where foxes are often trickster figures. There is even an expression, "fox rain" (여우비), which is used to describe sun showers.

Fox Tale, by Rupal Pearl

One important fox in Korean mythology is the gumiho (many-tailed fox; 구미호), who often takes the form of a beautiful young woman and seduces men. Some of the stories are told to warn men of femme fetales, but I love that women could be seen as dangerous tricksters. Maybe this is because I'm always trying to be good . . . sometimes the good needs to be balanced with a little more wildness.

Birthday Present, by J. Shim