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Rebecca Crichton Archives - Page 2 of 4 - All The Single Girlfriends

Photo Opportunities

Oct 31, 2011 by

Photo Opportunities

Remember back to the days when we took photographs with a single-function device? Perhaps you still have one from before we all went digital and you still produce actual photographs to hold and look at. Over the years I accumulated hundreds of photos and fully intended to put them into albums. I had been a diligent mother of a young child, documenting my daughter’s baby and toddler years, affixing the school and birthday party photos  into dated albums up through the Third Grade. But the rest of them:  me, my friends, the holiday celebrations and vacation, were still in their yellow Kodak envelopes, with the negatives neatly tucked in front and stashed into a large bin to await the eventual transfer to the appropriate album.  Most of the envelopes were labeled although there were...

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Elevating the Lowly Lentil

Oct 14, 2011 by

Elevating the Lowly Lentil

Many years ago, during what might be called my ‘Hippy Phase,’ I took a lentil salad to a potluck. A young, intense man approached me, declaring it the best lentil salad he had ever had. That started a brief but pleasant affair. He was a vegetarian who ended the relationship by declaring that meat-eaters smell different than vegetarians. This might be true, and his sensitivity might have been heightened by his daily pot habit.  We parted as friends and I gave him the recipe to share with the vegetarian woman who next caught his fancy. Many years after that, I wrote cover copy for an advertising agency that handled several growers’ associations and learned more about lentils than I had ever imagined. High in fiber and protein, low in fat, quick cooking, they adopt...

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I’m Sorry. Please Forgive Me....

Oct 3, 2011 by

I’m Sorry. Please Forgive Me.

The Jewish High Holidays kicked off with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, on Wednesday, September 28 and continues until Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement – on October 8.  The ten day span between those two events is often called the Days of Awe. It is time when we are asked to reflect on the past year and the ways we have ‘missed the mark,’ the literal translation for the Hebrew word often translated as ‘sin.’ Part of that work is to ask for forgiveness from others for ways we might have caused distress or pain or created distance and misunderstanding. We are told that we can work out our relationship with God through prayer, with ourselves in a variety of personal ways, yet when it comes to clearing what has happened...

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My Grandmother’s Pickles

Sep 23, 2011 by

My Grandmother’s Pickles

It’s pickle time! Pickling cucumbers, those knarly, hard little cucumbers that always seem dirtier than their large glossy cousins are in my local co-op and at the farmers markets, right next to the large stocks of flowering dill. I’m assembling the ingredients to do my own pickles and have the dill in a bucket by my front door, wafting its unmistakable aroma as I go in and out. My mouth waters just thinking about the kosher dill pickles my grandmother made. And the thought reminds me of my favorite pickle story. When I was in my late teens, I worked briefly as a cashier for a grocery store in Roslyn, Long Island, the New York suburb where I grew up. The pickling cucumbers and dill arrived at the store the same week my grandmother...

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Plum Delicious

Sep 9, 2011 by

Plum Delicious

I heard a local radio foodie declare that this time of year is the very best for just about everything worth harvesting from our gardens. For me, this is the time when the fruit on my Italian plum tree ripens and I start salivating just thinking about my favorite ways to enjoy them. I love picking one or two, covered in their silvery grey cloak, rubbing them on my shirt or pants until they polish up, revealing their amazing deep purple sheen, and then biting through the thin skin into amber flesh for a satisfying mixture of sweet and tart. Last year the branches seemed weighted by the fruit. But this year’s harvest is sparse –probably related to our odd weather.  I’ll have to reach or climb to find them hiding in their small...

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Weird Ingredients

Aug 26, 2011 by

Weird Ingredients

Here are a few weird ingredients I always have on hand and you should too… Okay, maybe you don’t need to have them, once you know what they are, but at least let me try to convince you. If you have read my food blogs these past 6 months, you probably know that I don’t cook bland food. Intense flavors with strong ethnic roots dominate my cooking. I have been known to un-invite someone for dinner at my house when they tell me they like simple food, not too highly flavored. (I suggest we meet somewhere to eat where I pray there will at least be hot sauce!) I imagine they also have homes with lots of the color Beige. But I know that is unfair because I know some serious eaters whose environments are...

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So What Makes a Foodie, Anyway?...

Aug 19, 2011 by

So What Makes a Foodie, Anyway?

We just passed the six month mark for our wonderful All the Single Girlfriends website and we now know that our Foodie Friday feature is a big hit with our readers. I started to think about what, exactly, defines a ‘Foodie.’ I did a quick Google search and found: “A person who has an ardent or refined interest in food; a gourmet.” “A person having an enthusiastic interest in the preparation and consumption of good food.” “A person devoted to refined sensuous enjoyment (especially good food and drink).” My response: “Yeah, yeah… tell me something I don’t know.” Thus I offer my ideas of what makes a Foodie. I consider this a work in progress and open to additions from anybody who wants to share. Rebecca’s Ten Top Tips for Knowing You are a...

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My Grand Pup, The Model

Aug 10, 2011 by

My Grand Pup, The Model

I often write about my wonderful daughter Erika.  She is a Hospice Social Worker in Bellingham, Washington, and has been happily married for 3 years to a man she met on Match.com. She is beautiful, smart and funny and absolutely dotty about her two Chihuahuas, Ginger and Lulu.  They make her laugh and she admits she loves them to distraction and makes no excuses about it. Ginger, my first grand pup, led the wedding processional in my garden 3 years ago. Dressed in fetching pink organza with a flower on her back, she pranced down the garden steps, her matching pink leash held high by one of Erika’s friends. She set the tone for the whole affair and everybody agreed it captured the lightness and love that permeated the whole event.  My daughter declared...

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Wonderful Meal by a Very Good Lake...

Jul 29, 2011 by

Wonderful Meal by a Very Good Lake

Last week I visited friends I have known since high school at their beautiful house on the shores of Lake Champlain in Vermont.  The lake is 125 miles long and goes from New York to Canada.  It’s not one of the Great Lakes, but it is a very good lake indeed. To manage the super-hot temperatures we cooled off in the lake and then made food that went together easily to eat al fresco on their deck overlooking the lake.  The menu was easy, light and delicious. Citronella candles to discourage the mosquitoes, flowers from the abundant garden, and a good bottle of wine were more than enough blessings to count for the night. Our menu: my Summer Tomato Soup, Roasted Green Peppers –made in a counter top toaster oven and dressed with chopped garlic,...

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Summer Salad Trio

Jul 1, 2011 by

Summer Salad Trio

Word has it that the rest of the country has topped 80 degrees while here in the Northwest we are still hoping for more than one day of sun and warmth.  I don’t long for sweltering temperatures but a bit more sun would be welcome. With all the fresh vegetables available at famers’ markets, it’s easy to assemble salads that highlight summer’s abundance. The three salads below go together quickly and make good additions to any potluck. They also qualify as a meal by themselves. Just add some crusty bread and a cool drink.  The exertion is minimal and no extra heat is required in the process! Rebecca’s Watermelon Salad This is a variation on a popular watermelon salad first introduced in the 1990’s. Salad Ingredients Half large seedless watermelon – cut into 1/2...

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‘C’-ing my way Forward

Jun 27, 2011 by

‘C’-ing my way Forward

Forgive the pun, but I finally found a cluster concept that is helping me navigate this new landscape of retirement. They all start with the letter ‘C’.  I call it my ‘Three C’s.’ They are Contribute, Collaborate and Create. I know that if keep them in good harmony with each other, I will feel satisfied and fulfilled.( I’m choosing the metaphor of Harmony over Balance because I think it reflects the way life isn’t always that balanced, but more of a melody with harmonic elements that create the tune of the moment, day, week, phase.) I freely admit they are not earth-shattering ideas, but they mean a to me. They are about what I need to do to feel good about myself. And they relate deeply to two other C’s I discovered years ago about...

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Finding the Right Words

Jun 17, 2011 by

Finding the Right Words

My father, Sol Radam, died at the age of 90, right after celebrating his ‘second’ 90th birthday. It seemed fitting that my bigger- than- life father would wind up with two birthdays. We always believed his birth date was December 17, 1913, the date on his passport and Army papers. But at the age of 88, after requesting his birth certificate from Liverpool, England, where he was born, he was informed that his birthday was ‘officially’ January 22, 1914. Evidently the midwife, who delivered him on December 17, didn’t register the birth until January 22 after the turn of the year.  His tombstone in the National Cemetery in Denver, Colorado shows the January date of birth. When it came time to choose words for the tombstone, my family knew we wanted something that captured...

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