Category: Uncategorized

As the trees shed their leaves and the sun sets what feels like faster, there’s nothing better than warm bowl of chicken noodle soup. You can substitue a lot of things here: the type of chicken (thigh, bone-in, or, on the opposite scale, a vegan alternative), the noodle, the broth. Whatever you need to do to make it perfect for you.

ingredients

• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 onion, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 celery stalks, diced
• 2 carrots, peels & chopped
• 2 chicken breasts, raw
• 64 oz chicken broth
• 2 bay leaves
• seasonings (thyme, oregano, parsley), to taste
• salt & pepper
• 12 oz. egg noodles or half a box of dried pasta
• fresh parsley for garnish

method

1. Set your Instant Pot to sauté, melting your butter in the olive oil
2. Once the butter is melted, add diced onion to the Instant Pot. Sauté for a few minutes.
3. Add the minced onion, carrots, & celery, continuing to sauté for a few minutes more.
4. Hit cancel on the instant pot, season the vegetables with salt, pepper, and other herbs.
   1. I don’t measure, but I would say a hefty sprinkling or 1-2 tsp of each seasoning.
5. Add in bay leaves, raw chicken breast, & chicken broth. Mix & cover with the lid.
   1. Make sure the silicone ring is in place before covering to pressure cook
6. Set Instant Pot to pressure cook for 12 minutes. Once time is up, do a 10-minute release.
7. Follow the release, remove the lid & set the Instant Pot to sauté.
8. Remove bay leaves & chicken. Shred the chicken, discard the bay leaves.
9. Add in noodles, following the directions on your choice of pasta/noodle.
10. Once noodles are cooked, add back in the shredded chicken. Stir & hit cancel on the Instant Pot.
11. Adjust for seasoning by taste. I usually like to add more salt, pepper, and fresh chopped parsley.

It’s a strange time to be looking forward to a season full of growth & sunshine.

Particularly when everything at the moment seems so heavy, like the world is a weighted blanket draped on top of us. Every article is a climbing number; orange-faced press briefings are the best at saying nothing new and public health officials are rubbing their heads in the background. I’m not anti-press nor am I anti-government, but damn is it overwhelming. Searches for smiling faces or stupid, “slow news day” segments on local channels come up empty. Everything is horrible and nothing else is worth reporting.

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Prior to the “Shelter in Place” order, I found myself sitting in my cubicle day-dreaming about what I believed two weeks* of isolation would look like. I pictured myself cleaning things neglected and moving around furniture to just the right spot. I researched new recipe ideas to try in my small, rental house kitchen. I mapped out my garden on a sheet of printer paper, making sure to include the right color the watermelon would be and how many carrots we would sow. I curated a list of books I own but have not read, planning to consume chapters in-between conference calls. I thought of evenings steeped in cannabis, cranking out poems on my pink typewriter. A figurative pipe dream considering I hadn’t written in months, and before that, years.

*It will not be two weeks, obviously.

Flash forward to a mere three days into the order and I was already depressed and more anxious than my standard silent current of automatic negative thoughts.

I found myself unable to concentrate at my work from home desk, too busy thinking about how my parents were still working at their grocer and takeout jobs, exposed. I ruminated on how these times would affect me and my fiance’s wedding plans, and if the venue we fell in love with in March would survive to still be open in 2021. I tried to better incorporate yoga/meditation into my routines. This helped a bit, but every time I had to read the news for work (I work in nonprofit/communications), I couldn’t get out of my head. I lived up there, cowering in a dark corner thinking about all of the ways this pandemic and our country’s poor response to it would harm not just myself and those I love, but the whole world. By the time the clock hit 5 p.m. each day I was feeling both exhausted and unproductive, a failure. As a Capricorn, that is serious. Did I clean? Yeah. Bake? Sure. But no amount of tidying or creating could alone stifle those feelings.

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I struggled with my gratefulness and my anxiety. I weighed my gratitude for being able to work from home and general employment against my depressed thoughts about the economy, people dying, and how I may not be as mentally healthy as I thought I had become. After a few mental breakdowns and hard conversations with myself and those in my circle, I was able to start accepting that it is human to have mixed feelings. I can feel anxious over this ever-evolving event and be thankful that I left the food and beverage industry after ten years of trying to. I can feel guilty about even bragging about that at a time like this while being proud. In the end, feelings and thoughts are not facts. I can choose how I feel about the facts, which I also choose to take in at any given moment.

“The paradox is that peace comes from giving up the struggle to control the things you cannot control.”

“How to Stay Sane During a Crisis,” Kara Loewentheil

During this reworking of perspective, I tuned into Unf*ck Your Brain podcaster Kara Loewentheil’s webinar on “How to Stay Sane During a Crisis.” If you don’t listen to Kara’s podcast, you’re doing it wrong. A friend invited me to watch this webinar and I am so happy that she did. It covered the importance of understanding control, curating what you feed your mind, and creating something beautiful out of the chaos. She also has a series on her podcast dedicated to your mind on pandemic panic; highly recommend.

That brings us to today, 10 days into the quarantine here in Illinois. Mentally, I feel like this is March 76th and I’m ready to part with the shit month. I feel more in control of myself and I am kinder to my falls. I don’t deny the heartache, I let myself lay down on top of it instead of sinking. Just long enough to embrace those harder to think about things for a short amount of time before moving on. My therapist calls this compartmentalizing; I like to visualize having rooms in your brain where you can deal with the darker thoughts, and in the end not let those thoughts spread to your whole house like some dingy brown carpet covering beautiful hardwood floors.

So where do we go from here? Well, we go up. And maybe down a little bit, but then up again. That’s life, and life is scary but it goes on whether we want it to or not. It’s symbolic that these pandemics tend to happen as spring is around the bend, a time where what once was will be again. It’s never too late to learn how to dig your dirt and plant something there within yourself.

This year we have big plans for the garden, as you saw, so we decided to use our lazy Sunday to start our seedlings in the garage. Last year, we started our summer garden way too late. It’s like each year we get a little bit better about starting early. The volatile Midwestern weather (and well, ☀️ global warming) makes growing certain plants a bit trickier but not impossible. Particularly, tomatoes and peppers have been an issue; cucumbers have always been a breeze, just check my pickle collection. *humble brag*

We are waiting on a seed order delivery, but were able to start off with what we had leftover from last year. I’m not sure if these seedlings will germinate or not, but we figured why not try. We had kale, broccoli, red pepper, yellow pepper, cilantro, thyme, parsley, sunflower, and wildflowers. Nick has these styrofoam squares from his lab (he’s a microbiologist) that have nine cylindrical holes each, perfect for seedling starters.

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We filled each hole with potting soil, being sure to pay attention to each plants’ depth requirements. We were sure not to pack it too tight so that the roots can reach the water trays placed underneath each styrofoam square. We managed to create 48 starters, not including the herb pots.

A successful start to springtime and an act of self-care.

Taking care of yourself can look different for everyone. It can be exercising, cooking a comforting meal, painting your nails, or sometimes even just taking a shower. Every night since I turned a new leaf (pun intended), I create a schedule for the following day in the Notes app on my iPhone, using check boxes next to each time frame’s task. This way, if I start to feel listless or lost the following day I know what to do. And if I have a bad day, I can look to my task list and prioritize things to allow myself some time to work through my feelings and not feel guilty about it. Today, my list included taking the time to work through these experiences by writing my first blog post. The cathartic nature of writing is not foreign to me, but it was temporarily forgotten.

I am so happy to have it back.

Be safe, be well, and don’t forget to live today while preparing for tomorrow.