Overnight Black Bean Soup with a Kick!

In 2016, I'm going to make an effort to do a great deal more cooking at home and committing to trying new recipes with simple and delicious ingredients. 

Here's the first recipe I whipped up in the slow cooker:

Overnight Black Bean Soup with a Kick - 12 x 1 Cup Servings 

This recipe is a healthy, low cost version of black bean soup with a little bit of a kick, taking the boring and making it delicious. Leftovers are freezable, with no loss of flavour or texture. 

Ingredients:

1 Piece of Pork Belly - Approx 2" square

1 Bell Pepper (Red / Orange / Yellow) - Diced

1 Onion - Diced

3 Cups Dried Black Beans 

1 Tbsp Chipotle Paste

1 - 3 Tsp Ground Cumin - To taste

4 Cloves Garlic - Minced 

8-9 Cups Water

2 Chicken Bullion Cubes

Optional Toppings:

Sour cream

Coriander

Cheese 

Salsa

Directions:

1. Dice Pork Belly into 1 cm cubes, cook in frying pan until translucent. 
2. Add diced onions and peppers to frying pan, and cook until pork is crispy and onions and peppers are caramelized. 
3. Pour contents of pan into crock pot, add dried black beans, chipotle paste, ground cumin, garlic, water and chicken bullion cubes. 
4. Turn slow cooker to low, and head to bed. Let the soup cook for 8-10 hours until the beans are tender to your liking. 
5. If broth in soup is too thin, use an immersion blender or potato masher to liquefy some of the beans and thicken the soup. 
6. Serve with optional toppings as desired. 

Weight Watchers Smart Points: 6 before optional toppings

Approximate cost per serving: $0.69

Enjoy!

Everything is blissfully normal

I've had the blog for six years now. 

I haven't written much of anything in the last three years.

I had stopped writing because I felt so lost that I couldn't string 500 words together anymore. It wasn't that I didn't have anything to say, but I found myself without voice. So here I am, six years from my first post, reopening the blog.

I've taken down all the old posts, because they all felt too much like a piece of my past. I woke up every day and knew less and less about that girl. I couldn't identify with her anymore. I'm not sure I ever could.

I'm 30. I have been for a little while now, actually. Nothing strange or startling there. Eventually we all wake up and arrive here, God willing.

My world and my life felt like they were constantly shifting since I was 20, and I was forever trying to get my feet under me, only to succeed and then have it slip away again. I felt like I was failing, and I was unable to shake it. I was living the cliche "one step forward and two back" life. It was amazing, and adventurous, fun and awful, challenging and a bit of a slog through it if we're being honest.

So, what has me here again, ready to put pen to paper (so to speak)? 

I have a good job with a great company. I've been a Registered Insurance Broker for a little over two years now. It's in an industry that I never really expected to be in, and that I unexpectedly excel in. As it turns out, insurance is interesting and technical and lets me deal with people and help them make good decisions. 

I have a company that pays for my education, and is willing to invest in me so that I can grow in the future. I somehow, without really noticing, am 80% of the way through a Chartered Insurance Professional designation. 

I'm not making millions, but I'm finally making ends meet and am able to look towards the future. Money doesn't buy happiness, but there are no words to describe the relief it is to be able to pay rent, and afford a car and save for the future and still by groceries and keep my cell phone turned on. It is funny how it suddenly happens, that you shift from having to make choices that no one wants to make, to having options. It happens a little at a time, and then all at once.

I have finally surrounded myself with people who support and love me as I am, as my quilting, knitting, cooking, exercising, not exercising, eating well, eating whatever I want, having a dog who sheds everywhere, driving a car that sometimes has too many empty diet coke cans, not watching TV much or keeping up with current events at all completely nerdy and imperfect self.

Life on the family front is pretty great. We still have our challenges, and I'm sure we always will. You don't have three living generations of strong willed, opinionated, smart, slightly crazy people roaming this earth without a little friction. 

I keep finding, more and more, that although it isn't perfect, life feels like it is getting better. It feels like the difference between a quick fix and a slow and proper mending. There is a sense of calm in my world now, that there really is no explanation for, except this: Things are finally good.

And now, in this moment, I am finally ready to live an extraordinary life.

On moving on to the unknown....

It is an interesting thing, moving on. It brings forward a thousand feelings of regret, sadness, joy, hope, grief for the past and excitement for the future.

I am moving, have moved, and am trying to move on all in the same breath.

For the last two years I have lived with a couple of amazing, challenging people, who have loved me despite all my struggle, and now the time has come to get my own space. While they may disagree, these last two years have been the best, hardest, fastest and slowest of my life. It has been a break to enjoy lower rent, shared expenses and companionship of friends, but also hard to live with roommates, especially ones with the history we have had.

Roommates, love, friendship and hurt feelings make it complicated. I’m sad to move out but feel it is honestly the best thing for all of us. I’m sad because the distance between us that was once so small, now feels like a massive chasm. I don’t know how we’ll come out the other side of it. I don’t know if we’ll find our way back to being friends, to standing by each other through thick and thin, to being over to each other’s house for dinners. I don’t know a lot right now.

I haven’t blogged in the time I have lived there. I haven’t shared the experience because while I was standing in it I had a truly hard time putting the experience in words.

There are a thousand regrets that I have, a thousand different choices I would make differently, and a thousand things I would do the same in a heartbeat. I have done a lot of learning and growing. I have done a lot of figuring out who I am, and all that means. I have a lot of strengths and a lot of weaknesses, but I’ve come out of this infinitely more self aware.

I doubt that they’ll read this, but I hope they know how much I appreciate them, how much I will miss living with them, and how much I hope that we come out of this better than before. I hope we find our way back, because whether they believe it or not, I do miss them.

With hope for the future, and all it brings,

K

On Respect and Personal Conversations

In the past week or so I’ve run into a couple of issues where people have repeated very personal conversations between myself and whoever the other party was. Usually part of the conversation is taken out of context, misrepresented or is a highly emotional conversation that was never intended to be communicated beyond the parties involved. The worst part about all of this is that it leads to questions from third parties, or a lot of joking around about somewhat sensitive subjects, and finally hurt feelings and questions of respect for my personal privacy and right to express myself freely with people who I trust.

Here’s the thing, I don’t mind the occasional poke to the ego, but if I’ve been emotional with you about something, or stretched myself to have a conversation and honest discussion about a topic I’m not one hundred percent sure of, please understand that I struggle at the best of times to express how I feel or what I think. When how I feel about whatever the subject is becomes the butt of a joke, I feel stupid, or like how I feel is somehow less valid. I know that the conversations aren’t being shared with this intention, but when I tell you how I feel about it, perk up your ears and listen. Try not to add insult to injury by telling me that being upset about it is silly.

All of this is made worse by the fact that the third party has often been someone who I personally would never have shared the conversation with for many reasons. Maybe I’m  a worry wart, but I hate it when there is a conversation had about me, that could change someone’s opinion of me, and no one thinks to provide the context so that I don’t sound like a raging lunatic. Everything is about perception, sure, but every once and a while, the speaker has control of how things are perceived by putting a spin on the information.

One dimensional

Sometimes I feel like a fairly one dimensional person. A lot of the time I get seen that way.

There is a lot going on in my life right now, including the fact that I'm realizing pretty quickly that I'm gay, and sorting out everything that goes with that, not seeing my family because I work two jobs, trying to pull together my apartment into some sort of reasonable and presentable setup so that it's okay for me to have company over, trying to eat right and go to the gym and look after my health, and my dog, and help out friends with different things that they need, and have a social life, and, and, and. I'm overwhelmed. Period.

Here's the thing, when I get overwhelmed I tend to pick one thing to focus on, one thing that is within my control and work on that. Right now, that thing is actually my job.

It's very frustrating because there is a lot more to me than just work, but I love my job and I'm very committed to it right now, because I want to move up within the company. I am really trying to put the effort in now, so that in a few years I will get the rewards. Because of this I've been referred to as a workaholic. I don't think that it's a bad thing to like and be committed to my job, but I can understand why it could be frustrating too.

Obviously E works with me, in case y'all missed that. That's all well and good, except that we're on opposite shifts, we see things different ways and we pick different battles to fight. She says that she thinks I'm very black and white at work, and that I want things my way or no way. She tells me I have opinions about everything, and that I make sure everyone hears them. She worries that I'm dangerous at work because I'll stop at nothing to put my plans into motion.

It hurts that she sees it in such a negative light. It makes me feel ashamed of wanting more than just staying in communications, and it makes me feel like if I do get the job it would be for all of the wrong reasons. It makes me wonder if everyone sees me the same way, and if I really got to move up, whether people would expect me to fail. 

I suddenly feel like I'm doing myself a huge disservice by knowing what I want out of this. I have been really happy with this company so far, and in the last week I've thought about quitting more than once, because it makes me so uncomfortable that I'm seen as aggressive instead of competent, and that it is perceived that I'm pushing my agenda rather than having input that could actually be useful.

I take my job very personally, I like the company, I like the people I work with, I would go to the mat for the members of my team, and I really do try to support them, and now I spend a weekend finding out that that's not what people see. It just hurts.

I put in a lot of effort with the job, and it is the one thing in my life that I feel like I have any control over at the moment. It consumes a lot of my time and energy, and I think about it in my off time. I put effort into doing the leg work, doing the training, putting together a plan for things that I think are important, for programs I believe in, and for things that I honestly want to see improve.

I talk about work because I want feedback. I talk about work with women mostly, and I make every effort to discuss and get feedback from women who I have a lot of respect for within the company, and outside it also.

I grew up with a lot of women in my life who are focused on business, and now E is in the fold of women whose opinion actually matters to me.  The fact that I debate with her about things gets her back up, because she thinks that I'm arguing, and I don't know how to explain it to her. We both take it so personally that things can get heated, but I actually enjoy talking about it with her because she sees things so differently than me. It's strikes me as odd that she sees me as a shark, when she is a shark too. If she wasn't, I wouldn't want her opinion. Part of why I like her, is because she's a shark too.

So, yeah, I talk to much about work and spend too much time focused on it. It's what I have to hold onto right now. It's my safety net. It makes me sad that E and I can't talk about it, because that was nice. We'll go back to having other things to talk about, but she'll probably still have to remind me to not talk so damned much about work.

Does that make me one dimensional?

The advice we give to others...

I'm a firm believer that the universe brings people into your life for a reason. The people you interact with are all there to teach you something, or to learn something from you, and most often, both.

I've had a lot of interesting conversations this weekend with people both new to my life, and old friends and the one thing that I'm taking away from it is that most often the advice that we give to other people reflects advice that we should probably listen to ourselves. It's scary how often I'll give advice or explain something to someone, and then have a light bulb moment about how I should have dealt with something.

This weekend I've learned:

While talking to my friend A about his girlfriend and how she felt about him having more sexual partners than she had, I explained to him that most of the time that becomes an issue when a girl is concerned that she won't be able to keep up, or that you'll ask her to do something outside of her comfort zone.

Further to that, I advised, he will have to watch out for her talking a big game in order to give the impression that she can keep up, and then not knowing how to back down from that if, in the moment, she is not actually comfortable with what's going on.

As I was sitting there telling him all of this, and it suddenly hit me. Holy shit. I've done this a lot of times. I've gotten myself into more than a few situations that I'd much rather not be in, and not known how to get out because I was scared of what the person I was with would think. Oh my god. I'm giving him the advice and warning him about something that I wish someone had have given me the heads up on.

While talking to L about people in her life and how to know who could be trusted, and who was playing the game, I realized I should watch how people behave with other people and then decide if that is how I want to be treated. If you would tell your friends not to befriend someone because they are playing games or are manipulative, why would you want to be friends with them yourself? Generally that type of behaviour is a systemic problem. I don't know why I let people in my life even though they aren't good to other people. It's so much easier to stand up for others than it is for one's self some times, but I need to work on doing both.

While talking with E, I realized that I need to be more aware of people in my personal life, and in my professional life, and the fact that I'm two totally different people in those two worlds. I suddenly understand that it is asking a lot of people to be able to reconcile the two because in my personal life I'm a lamb, and professionally I'm a lion. I tend to be very assertive and confident professionally; in fact I am quite aggressive. That works for me in the professional world, however when it trickles into my personal life, or when the submissiveness and compliance of my personal life trickles into my professional life, it can have a huge impact, which is rarely positive. I need to remember to keep the two separate, and to be more understanding when the differences between the two are hard to cope with.

While talking with H about her insecurity, we talked about how second guessing yourself all the time isn’t an attractive quality. You deserve the chance to be who you are, and you don't need to ask the permission of other people to take that chance. She was concerned about her tendency to wear her heart on her sleeve and wanted to know how to not feel like she needs to be so guarded all the time. I told her that wearing her heart on her sleeve isn't a bad thing, but a risk for sure. The thing is, sometimes it's worth the risk. I told her that most people don't walk through life with the sort of malice of intent that would cause them to purposely hurt her.

In a nut shell, I have learned:

It's important to be honest about how you feel about things, and to not make decisions based on fear.
It never hurts to observe how people treat others, and decide if that's someone you want in your life.
Keep your professional life and personal life separate, even when the two collide, or be understanding when people don't know how to reconcile that the two may not be the same person.
Be confident, and have faith in people. You don't need their permission to be who you are, and if you're at peace with who you are, they would never ask you to second guess it.

So, in short, next time I'm giving advice, I'm going to try to listen harder, because most of the time it applies to me too.

A long weekend...

You have to love a long weekend, it's always interesting whether you intend to just relax, or not.

Friday night I received a call from Alana to let me know that she wasn't going to be able to come down for the weekend. Her car crapped out and they weren't going to be able to do much with it until Wednesday.  This wouldn't be a big deal except that she was supposed to be coming with me to Cherrybomb on Saturday night. E was tied up with some friends in town for the long weekend, and she wasn't going to be around to take me, and I really wanted to go. In fact, I was quite proud of myself for having decided to go without her, and Alana's car breaks down. Murphy's Law.

Fine, I decided I would skip it instead. It wasn't that big of a deal. I spent all of Friday night trying to minimize it in my head and make myself feel like I didn't want to go and I wasn't missing out. Epic fail. I still wanted to go and on Saturday morning when I woke up I was still pouting around my apartment and feeling pretty upset about not going.

Just after lunch on Saturday, I hop on Facebook and Lindsey is online, which is great because I happen to know she doesn't have plans for Saturday night. In fact, I've been trying to text her since Friday night, but not getting a response. Turns out, she left her cell phone at Seneca.

So, I message her and see if she's available to go, which she is after some convincing, and a promise to leave at a reasonable hour, namely 11:30 or midnight. My mood significantly improves, sure I don't get to dance until the birds start chirping, but I get to go out for a bit. Lindsey and I head out and get our hair done, have some supper at Sushi & BBQ and trek over to Cherrybomb to have some drinks.

Let's backtrack for a minute.  Some time after Lindsey decided she would come, E texts me and I let her know that Alana had canceled. She was super supportive and suggests that I go alone, but I have to admit, I'm just not there yet and I wouldn't have gotten through the door. I probably would have been able to get myself down there, and I might have even gotten as far as getting my ID checked, before I bailed out.

There are a few reasons for this, firstly, when I was showing up, I knew it was going to be quiet and it would be pretty obvious I was there on my own and a little uncomfortable. I would have felt the same about this at any bar or event, gay or straight. I just find this situation very awkward.

Secondly, if something went horribly awry, I would want to know that I had someone there to bail me out. I don't know what I thought would go so wrong, but there is a part of me that insists upon preparing for all eventualities.

Last, but not least, I found the thought of being around so many people who are really comfortable with who they are, while I'm still trying to work things out, a little overwhelming. It makes me feel like they would take one look at me and think that I'm faking. I don't know why. This probably warrants some further analysis, but that's for another blog.

Anyhow, Lindsey and I get down there, get through the door and sit down to have a drink. Well, I had a drink, she wasn't drinking because she didn't want to get too caught up in the merriment and forget that we had to leave at midnight so that she wouldn't be too tired for Lost on Sunday, but I digress.

So, we sit down and I have a drink or two, and eventually a better table a little closer to the dance floor opens up and we move over there. We sit and watch and she is finally convinced that this is actually a lot of fun and she isn't nearly as uncomfortable as she expected to be. She admits that she is having a good time and that it's really comfortable here. I laughed when she said it, because I would have left with her if she was that uncomfortable, I just needed help getting through the door and getting through the part of the night where it's quiet and no one is dancing yet.

The music picks up, and all of a sudden a song we both know is on, and it seems that everyone else knows it too, because the 8 people on the dance floor, suddenly becomes 70, and it's enough that we can blend in and have a good time. We get up and dance. The next 45 minutes is all songs that we can sing along to, or that we've heard before at the very least, and we're having a great time.

All of a sudden, I notice some girl looking at me, with a big silly smile. She has sort of been dancing in the general vicinity of Lindsey and I, with a friend of hers, for a few minutes and we've all been having a great time so I don't really think much of it.

I barely have time to blink and she's dancing with me. I feel like a 14 year old writing this because dancing is just dancing and I shouldn't think anything of it, so I calm myself down, and keep dancing. She's cute, not really my type, but I can see the appeal. I figure we'll just dance for a bit and both move on, so no big.  We talk a little over the music, she says, "I love how tall you are." I laugh and say that the heels help, and smile.

E texts me to see what I'm doing, and I let her know that I'm dancing, having fun and that all is well.

Flash forward about half an hour. We're still dancing together, and this is when she decides that she wants to kiss my neck. Oh, okay. I've missed something here. I step back a little, and she steps towards me and grabs my hands to put them on her waist, as she turns around to face away from my, she pulls one of my arms up and across her chest. At this point I start to get really uncomfortable, luckily she is quite short, and I'm quite tall in the heels. So, I shoot Lindsey a look over her head, and Lindsey asks if she can borrow me to go to the washroom. I smile and apologize and say that it was nice dancing with her, and we go sit on the pool hall side of things.

Lindsey laughs, and says, well even if she's not your type, you still did better than me this evening. I have to laugh too, because I expect to be the invisible girl in the crowd, and maybe I'm not. That's exciting. We have another drink and head home.

I get home, and E and I text back and forth a little before I pass out. I missed her at the bar, because she would have caught that I was a little uncomfortable much faster, but it was also good to go and kind of work it out for myself. I think if I wanted to go and there was no one around, I could probably go down by myself. I think I would go later in the night, and I would still be nervous, but I would survive, and that's the main thing. It's sort of a nice feeling to realize that.

I have one more interesting story from this weekend, but that will have to wait until later because this girl hears her aunt starting the BBQ, and that means it is time for me to start making dinner.