Gretchen Rubin put a really gorgeous interview up on The Happiness Project with Tina Roth Eisenberg. Tina is a designer and blogger on SwissMiss, which is a cool compendium of sleek new products, furniture, and websites. Tina quotes Goethe in the interview, and for some reason it particularly struck me today:

Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve found very helpful? (e.g., I remind myself to “Spend out.”) Or a happiness quotation that has struck you as particularly insightful?
I have this Goethe quote I find myself going back to:

“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”[I love that passage too, and in fact, quoted it in The Happiness Project.]

I try to remind myself that I am the decisive element. I try hard not to be a complainer but a problem solver. If I don’t like something in my life, or think something is missing, I try to create it, actively go after it.

It’s good to remind myself that while I can’t control a lot of what happens in life, and even can’t control my feelings about it, I do control my response to the situation and that can make all the difference.

Read the interview HERE

Tina’s blog is pretty cool too. SwissMiss

dailyworldbuzz.com

Have a wonderful eight days of Hanukkah, everyone.

I’ve gotten the nicest comments from people – I didn’t really know anyone was reading the blog regularly, and it feels so great to know you’re all enjoying it enough to miss it!

I somehow lost my mojo over the last few months, with a cross-country move, taking the bar exam, another cross-country move – and now living in an apartment with a tiny kitchen. It is seriously this size, guys:

This is from an ugly kitchen contest: http://getpublished.news-leader.com/UglyKitchen/Gallery.php?ImageID=49

If you’ve never lived in New York, you probably think I’m exaggerating. I am not.

I don’t think I’ve cooked anything happily in…a long time. I can’t remember when. So I’ve felt completely lame about posting when I haven’t been doing anything myself.

However, my wonderful and persistent best friend has been (nicely) bugging me to start writing here again, and I remembered when talking with her that this was never meant to be a “cooking blog”. I’ve never claimed to be the world’s best or most knowledgeable – or even vaguely knowledgeable! – cook. It’s meant to be about entertaining people you love, and good food and cocktails and pretty tables all go into that, and that is why they’re on this blog. So even if I’m not cooking much these days, we can still talk about all that other lovely stuff.

This is especially true as we go into the holidays, which I wholeheartedly and energetically adore. Having an entire section of the year in which everyone is remembering to love and be grateful for each other is an absolutely extraordinary thing. Plus, there’s seeing family, choosing gifts for people they love, having parties, dressing up, and Christmas music! I’ll be back home in Wyoming in a few weeks, and already have one dinner planned and a champagne tasting New Year’s party to throw, so those will be a few really fun things to tell you all about.

I know, it seems like you shouldn’t need a how-to for drinking on an airplane. Still: this article is amusing and semi-educational for those of us often stuck in the middle seat because we booked a last minute flight and then we got on the plane and realize we forgot any reading material or headphones….not that that’s ever happened to me.

We generally order two bottles of liquor. We won’t necessarily start drinking the booze right away. We might not drink them at all. But we have them. Some people need an inflatable pillow around their necks. Some people need a word search book. Some people need Xanax and Coldplay. We need two tiny bottles of single malt Scotch nestled in the seat-back pocket.

(Or maybe gin. Really, the only time we drink gin and tonics is on an airplane. We’re not sure why. And why don’t airlines stock tequila? Seems strange to us. You can get amaretto on an American Airlines flight, but no tequila. You can get bloody mary mix. You can get cranapple. Rule: In the hierarchy of necessary beverages, tequila beats cranapple. Anyway, thank you Frontier, JetBlue, US Airways, and Virgin, all of which stock passable tequila.)

So, usually we will order the two bottles of Scotch and a cup of ice. (Not “rocks.” Seems odd to call ice “rocks” on a plane.) Sometimes we drink it neat. But if we have the sense that we won’t be getting service again any time soon, we pour the booze over the ice, so it lasts.

It’s been an absolutely chock-full year. I literally have not cooked anything more complicated than boxed mac and cheese since March, which has felt like I’m missing a part of myself. But, it had to be done. I had to devote myself to finishing law school and studying for the bar – both of which are now OVER!

I’m so excited to get this BB&B part of my life back. There hasn’t been any balance in my life for quite a few months, and feeling that balance come back is like a giant aaaaaaaaaaahhhh sigh of contentment. It feels good.

And, coincidentally, yesterday was my birthday. My mom made me a gooey decadent chocolate birthday cake, which is so good that the recipe might have to stay a family secret. It was such a wonderful birthday, filled with love and great meals and lots of champagne – exactly how every birthday should be!

With lots more change and several life decisions coming up about where to live and where to work, it feels good to return to this website, which in so many ways gives me a creative outlet. I hope you all will forgive my long absence; believe that I didn’t want to leave!; and start coming back regularly again for dinner party menus, cocktail recipes, entertaining ideas, and of course many other recipes for all sorts of yummy noshes. I’m so excited to get started again and to have the time to cook!

Sorry guys – I have been incredibly negligent due to my non-cooking life becoming completely overwhelming. Finals, graduation, moving, a wonderful vacation, my wonderful grandfather passing away, and straight into studying for the dreaded bar exam and finding out why it’s so dreaded. To state the obvious, you really really have to know a LOT of stuff.

I literally have hardly cooked in months. I miss it.

Now that I’m semi-settled in one place for a few months, I’ll be posting more. For instance, right now I have some morel mushrooms on my counter that I can’t wait to sauté in butter and taste. You’re going to laugh when you read what I’m eating them with, though – let’s say for now that this blog is going to become a lot less gourmet and a lot more Sandra Lee semi-homemade style. Which I kind of love, actually. Everyone needs shortcuts every now and then – or oftener than that ;)