The Northern Lights

~ MaryG ~ 40 Comments

I think a lot of people in the Northeast (including me!) checked off “See the Northern Lights” from their buckets lists last night. This was especially rewarding for those of us who missed seeing them in May. Who knew our once-in-a-lifetime chance would come twice in one year?

The Northern Lights from my very own neighborhood last night around 7:15pm. I was on my way to choir practice and happened to look up.

This feels like a lot of things.

Remembrance

The lights and colors in the sky last night reminded me of my close friend from college, Carla, who died in 2022. She had brain cancer. She really wanted to see the Northern Lights before she died, but was too sick to travel, so her friends and family found a way to project them onto the ceiling in her bedroom in Santa Fe. It was beautiful.

A Sign

I know I’m not alone in feeling a lot of anxiety about the state of the country and the way it feels like we’re never going to go back to “normal” — no matter who wins the election. I’ve never in my life been afraid of a US election, but I’m afraid of this one.

Similarly, I never once saw the Northern Lights as a kid growing up in Massachusetts, but this year, many New Englanders saw them twice! A little girl standing near me last night said, “this is God.” Maybe so. Or maybe it’s a sign of transition to a new era—an era where completely new things happen.

Unknown new things are scary and I have a strong urge to “circle the wagons” and try to protect the ones I love. (I think to myself, “please stay in Massachusetts where you’ll maybe be a bit safer from gun violence, flooding, dangerous reproductive care, crappy public schools, etc.)

But I know that’s not really possible.

My new granddaughter will hopefully live into the next century. She will live out most of her life in this new era, whatever it may be. I want her to feel free, adventurous, and safe to explore the world beyond her home state.

Living in the transitional time

An activist friend of mine left for New Zealand yesterday. She’s staying until the end of the month. She said she just needed to get out of the country for these last few weeks before the election. I can relate. In some ways, it’s all just too much.

Maybe seeing the aurora borealis is the reminder some of us needed to center ourselves and live in the moment. Humans have been around a long time and have accomplished many great things and many terrible things. Even though it sometimes feels like end times are upon us, there’s a decent chance that something great is just around the corner too.

Final thought: just breathe

Related post:

Northern Lights II

Swiss cheese and mushroom quiche

~ MaryG ~ 4 Comments

I blogged recently about the good old Moosewood cookbooks—a GenX cultural touchstone for a certain demographic. My favorite recipe from the entire Moosewood Empire is—without a doubt—the “Swiss Cheese and Mushroom Quiche” from the very first Moosewood cookbook (copyright 1977), page 111. I have made this Mollie Katzen recipe dozens, if not hundreds, of times. I’ve made it for guests, potluck suppers, baby showers, brunches, and countless times for my own family. Typically I make it with a pre-made, refrigerated pie crust and it comes out great. Every. Single. Time.

So here it is:

Any Swiss 🧀 will work, but as the recipe notes, Gruyère is best.
Last night’s dinner
Side view

Who else remembers hearing or saying “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche” in the eighties? Here’s the story behind it, according to ChatGPT:

“Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche” was a famous American catchphrase from the early 1980s that poked fun at traditional ideas of masculinity.

It was essentially a joke about what supposedly made a man a real man: eating steak instead of quiche, drinking beer instead of wine, watching football instead of cooking, and avoiding anything considered too refined, delicate, or feminine.

The phrase became a cultural shorthand for macho attitudes and gender stereotypes.

Where did it come from?

The phrase originated with humorist and screenwriter Bruce Feirstein, who published a book called Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche in 1982.

Interestingly, Feirstein originally came up with the line for a screenplay. When it was rejected, he developed it into a satirical book.

The book became a huge bestseller. It sold more than 1.6 million copies and spent 55 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

What was the joke really about?

The early 1980s were a time of changing gender roles. Women were increasingly entering traditionally male professions, and men were being encouraged to be more emotionally open, involved fathers, and equal partners at home.

The book exaggerated the anxiety some men felt about losing their traditional masculine identity.

The irony was that the book was making fun of macho men, not celebrating them.

Pine nuts and wedding photos

~ MaryG ~ 14 Comments

What’s a time you ignored your gut — and paid for it?

Before I got formal allergy testing in a doctor’s office, I had a feeling that pine nuts made me sick. However, in nineteen-ninety-something, we were at a backyard party and my husband convinced me to try a bit of his friend’s delicious homemade pesto—made with homegrown basil and pine nuts. I ignored my gut and tried it. Let’s just say, my gut took revenge on me and I paid.

Thinking back, that pesto-making friend Lee was the only “no show” at our wedding reception. Didn’t call or explain. Just didn’t show up. I remember being pretty annoyed about it. After all the time we spent on the seating plan, the seats for him and his wife sat empty.

I almost never look at my wedding photos. It just seems like a lifetime ago. There are so many friends in them with whom I’m no longer in touch in a meaningful way. I feel sad when I see their faces and remember how close we once were.

A “one time” recipe

~ MaryG ~ 12 Comments

Sometimes you try a recipe and, even though it tastes good, you know you’re probably never going to make it again.

Props to my husband for planning and making the NYT Meat and Potato Skillet Gratin last night.

Recipe

It was good, but very rich. I think the heavy cream and Gruyère should’ve been the tip off. (Insert clever quip about French cooking here.) Plus, it’s hard to find fresh herbs now at our grocery store. And rutabaga is also not on the shelves…

So, this was a one-time recipe, but I’m sure I will enjoy eating the leftovers.

Processing the Blue Wave

~ MaryG ~ 22 Comments

What a crazy time to be alive.

I’m happy, but wary. And also scared.

Scared

It’s like we really don’t know what he’s going to do. Trump is too stupid, arrogant, and insulated to acknowledge that he is WILDY unpopular and RUINED his political party (and much more) for the foreseeable future. In the White House, he lives in a bubble, lovingly attended by sycophants. And yet, he remains the most powerful man in all the realm—with access to nuclear weapons—for two more years.

Happy

I mean come ON…the blue TSUNAMI feels so good. After all the poster-making, protesting, singing, letter writing, donating, art making, posting, calling…we actually won. Grassroots organizing and VOTING beat the billionaires. Holy Shit.

Wary

OK, so I’m like 93.5% sure that MAGA Trumpism is on life support. But what is gonna come next? According to historians, huge defining moments of change and great progress have taken place at the end of eras like this (1850s, 1890s, 1930s). In the words of Heather Cox Richardson, “we have a chance to build something.” I so want this to be the dawn of a new age. I want my grandchildren to grow up in a better, kinder, safer, more affordable, less terrifying world.

I’m wary because I’ve already heard such wildly diverse viewpoints from people on my side. Even SNL came right out with a skit making fun of Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer for being way too mainstream to meet the moment. Will the right leaders emerge to lead us through the storm and into 2028 so we can get The White House into good, safe, smart hands? Will people stay engaged?

OK, so that’s ⬆️ where I’m at on the Sunday night following the Tuesday, November 3rd midterm elections of 2026.

FACEBOOK

In case you don’t know, Facebook is like Ground Zero for GenX politics. (Remember youngsters, GenX lost track of our classmates for decades between school and the invention of social media.) Facebook is where you rediscovered anyone you ever knew when you were much younger, and then found out which ones had drunk the MAGA Kool-Aid and which ones you would not need to unfriend.✂️

I went to bed early on Tuesday night. (I wasn’t going to get burned again watching heartbreaking election returns into the wee hours.) On Wednesday, I woke-up early and immediately saw that there had been a huge Blue Wave—I think they were even calling it a Blue Tsunami in the NYT. My Facebook feed was weirdly quiet though.

I did see one post from an old friend who rarely posts. It just said “YAY, VOTING!” Another rare-posting old friend just said “sending thoughts.” The most ardent activists I know posted nothing. I think they were stunned. Also, gloating seemed wrong.

I decided to post my recent abstract circular painting with the caption “I’m naming this painting Blue Wave 🌊 😊” on Facebook. It just felt right to post some art on Wednesday morning. It received many hearts and wonderful comments from FB friends who were feeling like me. I even got some likes from folks with whom I very rarely interact and didn’t know their political leanings.

Blue Wave, 2026, watercolor and ink

Breathe

Moosewood

~ MaryG ~ 9 Comments

What’s a small moment from your past that you still think about years later?

I still remember my college roommate Ann making an actual meal in our sophomore apartment kitchen circa 1984. I had never done any real cooking growing up, and freshman year we ate every meal in the dining hall. It was a weird feeling to have a kitchen of our own. We were like…adults…and we could be vegetarians if we felt like it.

If you were in college in the 80s and had even a passing interest in eating less meat, you probably owned The Moosewood Cookbook, or borrowed it from a roommate and never gave it back. Mollie Katzen’s hand-lettered, hand-illustrated pages felt more like a friend’s notebook than a cookbook. Everyone made the same few things: a big pot of soup, something with lots of cheese and broccoli, and a very ambitious attempt at a dinner party for six. I still have mine.

Copyright, 1977
Decades later, my son was in college in Ithaca, NY and I finally got to eat in the legendary Moosewood Restaurant in downtown Ithaca.

Their subsequent cookbooks, including “Enchanted Broccoli Forest,” were huge bestsellers, especially among young, liberal, vegetarian types. I bought “New Recipes from Moosewood Restaurant” when it came out in 1987–the year I graduated college. I still have that one too.

Yesterday, my husband asked for my old “Apple Cheddar Cheese Pie” recipe, so I dug it out. It was in the New Recipes cookbook.

This one has typed pages, rather than the hand-illustrated look of the original.
He whipped up this pie while I was working on a painting yesterday.
We had no pre-made pie crusts on hand, so he made the crust too. Impressive, don’t you think?

It came out great. The layer of cheese under the streusel makes this pie feel more like an actual meal. I would not add ice cream to this, but truth be told, my husband did.

Moosewood Restaurant’s Apple and Cheddar Cheese Pie. The last time I made this was at least twenty years ago.
The cheese isn’t really visible, but you can taste it and it’s lovely with the apples and sweet topping.
My roommate Ann (far left) and friends in our first apartment with a kitchen.
Terrible photo of my other roommate (and dear departed friend) grating cheese in that first kitchen. It was probably for a Moosewood recipe. There is lots and lots of CHEESE in Moosewood cookbooks. No meat, but a few fish recipes are included.

NYT Stuffed Peppers

~ MaryG ~ 14 Comments

How do you define success in life?

My current definition of success (at age 61) is….I have no idea. The older I get, the less I seem to know.

My marriage has lasted 33+ years, which actually astonishes me sometimes. We are VERY different types of people. He cannot sit still, I cannot get off the couch. I like disco and yacht rock, he loves hardcore punk. I love to travel, he doesn’t feel the need. Thankfully we’ve always been on the same side of the political spectrum—from George HW Bush through the Orange Lame Duck (Duck à l’orange). In addition to politics, our common areas of interest include TV and movies, walking (hiking when we were younger) and of course our kids—and now grandkids.

He’s always been supportive of my hobbies (mainly music and art). I cannot even begin to tell you how BAD some of the singing has been at the amateur choral concerts I’ve dragged him to. And I try to be supportive of his healthier hobbies, particularly gardening. (I was not a huge fan of his more “extreme” endeavors like powerlifting.)

Anyway, yesterday I helped him trim his homegrown weed and he turned my latest still life subjects (colorful bell peppers) into a delicious dinner.

Success.

Cannabis kebab
NYT Stuffed Peppers

Recipe – really good! He used ground turkey (rather than ground beef) and it tasted great.

Watercolor bootcamp—last class

~ MaryG ~ 15 Comments
This was the second homework assignment for the last class. The idea was to draw a bunch of circles and lines over a landscape and use different styles or techniques inside each shape. I tried a bunch of stuff and didn’t worry too much about the final painting.

This was my inspo pic:

The final in-class assignment was to complete a still life of objects we brought ourselves. I brought peppers.

She was really pushing me to expand colors and contrast, including in the shadows. For example, she said quite definitively “daylight is blue” and led me towards using blue in the green pepper. And she wanted me to use purple (yellow’s complement) for shadows on the yellow one. And finally, she talked me through how to get a deeper orange by adding red, rather than it’s complement (blue) which just makes it muddier.

I feel I am learning new things from this rather demanding artist/teacher. (This wiry little woman is a bit intense, but she knows what she’s talking about!) She ran the “bootcamp” in two levels. I participated at the beginner level, but I feel I now have the confidence to join the second level. I definitely won’t be the best artist in that group, but I’m confident I could keep up.

Watercolor bootcamp 1

Watercolor bootcamp 2

Watercolor bootcamp 3

Hear me sing

~ MaryG ~ 19 Comments

What’s a song that changed your life?

View all responses

First, I want to thank Stephanie and Rojie for heeding my request to post a Vote Blue message for the midterms. Please read both of their posts, which are so heartfelt and powerful.

Second, I blogged about my performance of the song “Anthem” from the 1980s Broadway musical Chess at a cabaret night at my church last spring. In the show, it’s sung by a Soviet chess player who is thinking of defecting, but the song became newly meaningful to me in light of rising authoritarianism in my own country. These are the lyrics, with one change that I made:

No man, no madness
Though their sad power may prevail
Can possess, conquer, my country’s heart
They rise to fail

She is eternal
Long before nations’ lines were drawn
When no flags flew, when no armies stood
My land was born

And you ask me why I love her
Through wars, death, and despair
She is the constant, we, who don’t still care
And you wonder will I leave her
But how?

I cross over borders but I’m still there now

How can I leave her?
Where would I start?
Let man’s petty nations tear themselves apart
My land’s only borders lie around my heart

I’m not a professional singer, so I wasn’t gonna post the video, but in support of our imperiled democracy, here it is. I hope you can hear in my somewhat nervous voice how meaningful the song was/is to me:

Finally, please get to the polls and VOTE BLUE tomorrow. Let’s start to take our country back from this lawless administration.

And if you’re in Maine, Michigan, Iowa, Texas, Alaska, Ohio or Kansas please be sure to bring ten friends. Sometimes people just need a ride to the polls. That’s an easy way to make sure they vote.

Vote.org

“This (election) is not a choice between flavors of ice cream. This is a choice between ice cream and poison.” ~Heather Cox Richardson

Just another way he scammed you

~ MaryG ~ 9 Comments

What are your thoughts about cryptocurrency?

I’m not going to pretend to understand cryptocurrency, but I don’t need to because I have common sense.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.

Gift article from The NYT

“It is hard to wrap your head around that the president of the United States would engage in this level of self-enrichment at the expense of so many of his supporters,” said Lee Reiners, a former Federal Reserve Bank examiner who now studies cryptocurrency issues at Duke University. “This is a president of the United States who has made more money off crypto since he took office than he made in any prior year in his entire business career.”