Coming in from the cold

Well, obviously I haven't been posting too much on this site. Partially I've been pretty busy at work, but also the things that have been taking my attention are things that fit better on Fed Reb, like Gaza and the like. Some of the more political things that I was talking about on this blog earlier, like TARP, I've been moving over the Fed Reb site as well. The last couple of posts here have been cross-posted with the COEJL blog, where I've committed to posting twice a month. Even those might have been better at Fed Reb, if I'm really making that my political site, but environmentalism fits well with the sustainability aspect of this blog's subject matter so I've kept those here.

So all that's kind of left JS kind of out in the cold. The original idea for this site was that it would be frugality and simplicity from a Jewish perspective, but part of the reason I haven't been posting much is that I just haven't had that much to say about that topic for a while. I've been thinking that maybe I should just make this more of my autobiographical site, a la Mary at Pokeberry.

What I really need to do is treat this site more like a job. David Brooks has to write 2 or 3 columns a week whether he feels like it or not. I probably just need to decide to post twice a week and treat that commitment like it means something.

Anyway, here's a couple of things while I'm here. I went to Chicago last week for a meeting. When we lived in "Chicagoland" we actually lived in a suburb about 45 minutes west, and I worked in the same town where we lived. So I was somewhat protected from some of the disadvantages of living in a big urban area. But coming from Wichita to Chicago after a year was quite a culture shock! It took me longer to get back to where I was staying from an event on Sunday night than it would take me to get anywhere in Wichita at the busiest time of the day. I've been thinking that I'd like to get back into a more urban, connected area but it was actually kind of daunting.

Wichita has some real advantages from the simplicity perspective: it's cheaper to live here, and you don't spend a lot of time in traffic. There are a lot of disadvantages too, obviously, like it's really disconnected culturally and also (I'm sorry to say) that we are not satisfied with the level of the spiritual options available to us here.

The other thing I wanted to mention was that I had a real simplicity moment in the kitchen last week. I've been cooking more often since DW has been working two evenings a week. Last week I made a lentil soup with Indian flavors, curry and cumin and the rest, to go with some boxed Indian food that I sometimes buy to make when DW is at work - DK really likes it. I had a lot of the soup leftover and we didn't have any brilliant ideas for Shabbat last week - we really like to have a nice meal on Friday night, to make the Sabbath special - so I bought some fish, heated up the lentil soup, took out the lentils with a slotted spoon and then put the fish in the broth for 5 minutes, to poach. Then I served the Indian-flavored fish over the lentils and served it with brown rice. Yum! It would have worked with tofu, too, for you veganish people.