Summer Solstice and Pool Days

Rainbow noodle salad

The summer solstice has come and gone; the days are long and hot and water play is on the menu. This year we have been enjoying pool afternoons for the first time in recent memory. Until last year, our son needed close supervision in the pool- it was more stressful than fun- and we preferred to go to splash pads as a safer alternative and run through water features and giant sprinklers. Now, after sustained swim lessons and a great swim coach, he is confident and competent in the water, and pool days are IN. We are able to lounge around, swim laps, and read while the kids play independently for hours, making trips to the concession stand for ice cream bars and packets of chips (according to my kids, chips purchased at the concession stand taste WAY better than the same brand of chips brought from home.) A dear friend and I spent nearly 4 hours yesterday alternating between wading in the pool and lounging on the deck, chatting happily while the kids had a blast and entertained each other- truly a joy of summer. My skin is burned to a crisp but I am so happy with the way the week ended.

The best thing I ate all week was a noodle salad with whole wheat spaghetti, full of shredded raw veggies, edamame, and a savory peanut sauce. With a mandoline, blender, and some patient knife work, it comes together quickly. This hearty salad keeps well in the fridge and is great to come home to, on those aforementioned pool days. 

I try not to use the oven too much during these months, but the hash brown casserole does get on the menu now and then. This one has broccoli in it and on the side. And also a veggie sausage patty on the side.

Eggplant is another great summer veggie, and I used a big globe eggplant to make eggplant kaap to serve with usal and yogurt rice with a chili pickle. A heavenly and homely meal. 

The wonderful thing about summer is the early sunrise. Tea and toast on the porch at sunrise is one of life's luxuries, while listening to the twitter of the birdies. The only kind of twitter worth engaging with, IMHO. This time the toast was topped with a tart cherry spread- a new product I found at Trader Joe's.

 

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This weekend, our big project was to paint our daughter's room from an child-friendly aqua blue to a grown-up, sedate "marshmallow" white. The room had not been painted for a dozen years, so the makeover was overdue. Even painting a modest bedroom is quite labor intensive (especially going from a darker to a lighter color) and needed a couple of emergency trips to the home improvement store- but we all pitched in, including little bro wielding a roller, and got it done, all except the baseboards, anyway. It was quite the upper body workout. Funny enough, the Wordle on the morning we started painting predicted how the day would go. I use my morning Wordle the way other people use tarot cards.

Watching: I saw that the movie Annie (1982), based on the famous musical, was leaving Netflix on June 30, so I scrambled and watched it with my son. To my delight, he was very engaged and enjoyed it, and not only because it delayed his bedtime considerably! It is nice to see him willingly watching a non-animated film, and that too, an "old-timey" one- the movie is set in the 1930s. It is a fun and wholesome movie with familiar and catchy songs.

Every now and then, I watch an episode of the detective comedy-drama Remington Steele on Prime. It is full of mad capers and implausible situations, but the main draw for me is the trio that make up the main cast- Pierce Brosnan as Remington Steele has great chemistry with Stephanie Zimbalist as Laura Holt- her character is adorable, with sparkling intelligence making it one of those beauty and brains combinations. And their secretary is Mildred Krebs- played by Doris Roberts, who became more famous as the mom/grandmom in Raymond. This nostalgic show is a blast and an excellent mindless distraction if you're looking for one.

Reading: My reading life was exciting this week as I read a book called Beneath Divided Skies, a debut novel by Natasha Sharma. I bought this book a few weeks ago and I'm glad it finally got to my bedside table to be read and savored. I cannot write an objective review of this book as Natasha happens to be my close college friend! We met up in person after decades when I was in Pune last summer. I stayed in her home and was spoiled by her family's hospitality. 

Natasha has her own boutique software company but is truly a writer at heart. The story in this slim novel starts during the throes of India-Pakistan partition in the 1940s and catches up with the characters in the 1980s. Partition brought cruel horrors and upended millions of lives, and this book focuses on events endured by women- forced abductions, conversions, and marriages, and the efforts- first informal and then formally legalized- to repatriate the women, and the ethical conundrums of those efforts. It is a beautiful story, simply told, and while heart-rending, it is also life-affirming and heartwarming in the end. Bravo, Natasha, for highlighting a little known aspect of the history of partition! Find Natasha on Instagram and Facebook to learn more about the book and the wonderful things she is doing to promote writers and books in India. 

Other reading this week-  Dhruv Khullar's article in the New Yorker on longevity and what is sometimes called "healthspan"- years of healthy life. A good bit of the article is focused on the longevity guru Peter Attia who charges wealthy clients hefty fees to undertake expensive and extreme interventions...stuff that I have little patience for. But one sentence caught my eye, "...individual choices matter not because they are all-powerful but because they are the power that we have." Health is such a complex thing, and many health determinants- genetics, luck, environment, social factors, to name a few- are way outside an individual's control, but it is empowering to focus on the things that are within our control, the most important of which are thought to be these 4- stay as active as possible, eat as healthily as possible, get enough sleep, and nurture relationships.

I came across a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye that I loved- it made me chuckle, and it made me thoughtful. Read it if you like-  The Art of Disappearing. 

Pitcher plants at our
botanical garden

Tell me how your week is going!

Mid-June and Watermelon Season

Mid-June is here and the temperatures are climbing up in Georgia. But nothing compared by the brutal heat faced by so much of the world- my schoolfriend who now lives in Delhi texted me a pic of the thermometer on her balcony- it registered 50 Celsius at 10 AM- that is 122 Fahrenheit! Unimaginable, and yet a reality for millions.

I haven't had the bandwidth to try new recipes or the urge to make anything elaborate, but we are eating homemade meals with plenty of vegetables. Here's a sampler of what I ate this week:

Egg salad coleslaw- a mash-up of two summer favorite hearty salads. I started making a big box of cabbage mix (mandoline-sliced cabbage, red pepper, cucumber in this one) and eating it over the next 3 days. When it was time for lunch, I would take a bowlful of the veg mix, and add 2 sliced hard-boiled eggs (the egg slicer is one of my favorite kitchen unitaskers) and a "dressing"- teaspoon-sized gobs of mayo, mustard, plain homemade yogurt, a drizzle of pickle juice and some sweet and spicy jalapeños, salt and pepper. Mix it up and eat. 

Assembling the egg salad coleslaw

Cabbage salad mix

All mixed up

Misal-adjacent curry- Cook up a pot of lentils, and make it a meal with toppings of boiled potato, onion, cilantro, roasted peanuts, and other such assortments.

Dumpling salad- Much like the one I've posted before, only on a bed of roasted veg- broccoli, zucchini, green pepper, cabbage. 

The best thing I ate all week was something I actually drank- watermelon juice, made by blending fresh watermelon cubes, ice, and a squeeze lime juice in the blender, and sprinkling with some salt. Serve in a chilled glass for maximum luxury.

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What I'm watching: This week, I watched three episodes of Black Mirror- Demon 79 (brilliant acting by Anjana Vasan), Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too, and Playtest. Black Mirror is so, so brilliant. Even the less than stellar episodes stay on my mind for a few days, and this is not a series I can ever binge-watch. I can only handle a few episodes at a time. 

My son and I were home by ourselves this week (dad was on a work trip and big sis was at her first sleepaway camp) and so we had ourselves a couple of movie nights. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed/tolerated Pokémon Detective Pikachu on Netflix. I also took him to the theater (my first time in a movie theater since 2019, I think) to see Inside Out 2. We both enjoyed it, but with the theme of emotions in puberty, really it is big sis who is the target audience for this movie. 

Speaking of emotions and puberty, what I'm reading: Untangled: Guiding teenage girls through the seven transitions into adulthood by Lisa Damour. Damour is a clinical psychologist who specialized in adolescent girls, and says that the way people typically talk about teenage girls isn’t fair to girls or helpful to their parents (this part is very relatable.) But these years do not have to feel tangled and out of control because in fact there is a predictable pattern to teenage development. Damour describes seven developmental strands and how girls move along each of them at different rates and grow on several fronts at once. This is an extremely helpful book and while I did not agree with everything she said, I wrote down pages and pages of notes as reference. If you have a tween/teen girl in your life, I highly recommend reading this one. 

Occasionally, I stumble on one of my own posts from the endless blog archive and it is fun to read it again. This week, I re-read this book summary I wrote in the pandemic summer: The End of Overeating and chuckled to myself about how much I love writing book summaries and summarizing information in general. Note-taking is literally my biggest hobby, some would say a most useless trait in this age of Chat-GPT! 

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In my last post, I mentioned my newly acquired personal trainer certification. In the last dozen years, I've gone from being completely sedentary to a regular exerciser, and coupled with all the real-world experiences of these years, plus the textbook knowledge from the certification and a lot (lot!) of extra reading and experimentation (you'll see a few fitness-related posts sprinkled throughout the blog), I have plenty to share from what I've learned. 

I've put together a slide deck with the idea of conducting virtual and in-person fitness chats, or personalized consultations about understanding the world of fitness and how it relates to an individual's own exercise habits. This is designed to answer questions like- Working out is boring; how can I make it interesting?, or Where do I even begin?, or, I've heard of strength training but don't really understand what it means. You get the idea. 

I'm looking for a few testers, so if you have an active interest in fitness plus one or more fitness-related questions you'd like to brainstorm with me, and if you're willing to give up an hour of your time for a zoom call, email me at onehotstove AT gmail DOT com, and we'll try to schedule something. This is intended to be a win-win situation where you as the "test client" will get an hour of personalized advice and motivation and a boat-load of interesting information (with access to slides after) and in return, I would appreciate your honest feedback on whether this kind of thing is useful and how well you like the content.   I found all the testers I need for now- thank you! 

In the meantime, if you have fitness-related questions or if you want tips/resources on any specific topic, feel free to ask in the comments and I'll do my best to answer you. There are NO secrets in fitness, and yet it can feel very daunting and overwhelming. 

What was the highlight of your week?