Tag Archives: love

An Old Column About Coffee Cups

Posted on by
Reply

I had to pull out this old column that I wrote many years ago about Coffee Cups. Coffee Cups are still special to me all these years later. I hope my writing has improved but beyond that I know my love of coffee and coffee mugs will never leave me. They are a legacy to those who have given them to me. They are a warning to those who read whatever cup I am using that day as to my mood. Coffee Cups also keep me reminded through the day to always be thankful. If I keep an encouraging message in front of me for the day or a picture of a loved one on a coffee cup my day seems be full of spirit and joy. Here is my old column IMG_1250 IMG_1251

SOMETHINGABOUT NOTHING

By Julie Seedorf © March 2007

 

My in-house critic thinks my columns are too frivolous. This critic thinks I should take more of a stand on issues instead of writing about fluffy things. I gave this friendly criticism quite some thought this week. Should I become tougher and more opinionated? Those who know me probably feel I state my opinions much too often. I debated about throwing out the fluff and becoming a tough columnist.

 

Do I want to become a serious columnist that writes about serious issues? Do I want to debate and disagree with politicians, landowners, authority and the list could go on? I do read quite a few columns and most of them are various serious columns about very serious issues. I thought long and hard about changing the tone of my column. I have made my decision.

 

This week we will discuss coffee cups! That is a very serious issue to me. As you already know from previous columns, I value my coffee in the morning. What I did not tell you is that I value my coffee cups. My mood in the morning sets the tone for the coffee cup that I use. For instance, my coffee cup this morning was given to me by a friend 20 years ago. Yes I still have it! It is an angel sitting on the moon and looking at the stars and it says, “You brighten God’s world! Let your little light shine.”  This morning I needed inspiration and I needed to feel that I mattered to someone today.

 

My coffee cups change during the day depending on how I feel. One day I made the comment to a friend “It’s been one of those days!” A few days later I received a coffee cup from her that says, “It’s been one of those days.” Along with that sentence is a blonde women lying on the ground just frazzled at 5:00 o’clock after a long day of work. Another cup tells me to “Have a day filled with rainbows.” One of my favorites says, “Exceptional Beauty, a fine mind and natural talent made me what I am today.” The picture on the cup looks somewhat like a very, very old red hat lady in black. Some days that picture fits me very well.

 

These cups can change my mood. They can pick me up. They can remind me of the important things in life. These cups can put a smile on my face in the middle of a chaotic day.

 

My cups remind me of friends. I received a rainbow cup from a friend that was dying of cancer. It came out of her cupboard and she knew my love of rainbows. It was her remembrance to me. I still have it and use it 25 years later. I remember my friend every time I use my cup. My friends have given me some awesome coffee cups.

 

To my in-house critic a coffee cup is just a coffee cup. He should read his coffee cups! I thought I was alone in my strange coffee cup world and then my sister-in-law had coffee at my house. She had to choose her own cup because as she stated “I’m not sure how I feel today so I need to choose a cup that fits my mood.” A co-worker bought special cups for work. As she was drinking her first cup of coffee in her new cup she stated “My coffee tastes so much better in this cute cup.”

 

I am taking a stand! Read this Mr. In-house critic. Coffee cups make a difference!  The wrong saying on a coffee cup can make or break your day. If you are having a bad day it must be because of that Styrofoam cup!!!  Restaurants should forget the blah cups and give us pizzazz in our coffee cups. Forget the matching set. Go for glow, go for inspiration, go for smiles. A restaurant with great coffee cups and great coffee would have my business forever.

 

I hope this column was serious enough for my in-house critic.

 

I Cook Like Lucy Ricardo!

Posted on by
Reply

Column: Something About Nothing, by Julie Seedorf Published in the Albert Lea Tribune, January 20, 2014

I am hooked. I am hooked on cooking shows. My son made me watch “Chopped” on the Food Channel, and now I watch “Chopped” and any other cooking show that I can find while my eyes are still open as I lounge on my couch. HGTV does not have exclusive rights to my eyes anymore.

The problem with watching these cooking shows is that at times I think I can do some of the crazy things that they do, such as coming up with my own recipes from weird ingredients.

I identify most with the sloppy cooks that have ingredients flying all over. I remember watching “I Love Lucy” when I was younger and laughing at her kitchen antics especially with flour. In my old age I think I am the “Lucy” of my household. The past week was a perfect example of my Luciness.

My family loves hot chocolate. For some strange reason I decided that for our Christmas this past month I was going to gift the kids and my son in law with homemade marshmallows. I bought the ingredients and set them out on my kitchen counter to start creating my fluffy creations.

I love my big stand mixer. Am I challenged by it? Absolutely! You should see how my potatoes whip around the room when I have the spin cycle on high. I put the gelatin and water in my mixer and mixed them up.

I needed to boil my other ingredients. The first oops was dropping the open bottle of corn syrup on my kitchen floor. It flew out of my hands. I had to grab my cats and give them a time out in the bathroom before I could clean up the corn syrup or they would have been sticky icky. With that out of the way I wiped up the corn syrup, but of course my slippers wanted to stick to the floor so I had to scrub that part of the floor.

I melted my corn syrup, water and sugar on the stove and kept stirring with a spoon. I propped the spoon on the stove to get my thermometer to measure the heat. I didn’t have a clip-on one so I used a different one. As I put the thermometer in the liquid, my spoon knocked out onto the floor.

As I picked up the spoon my thermometer fell out of the pan and rolled against the flame. You guessed it, it cracked. As all of this was happening I thought perhaps it was a sign from up above that I wasn’t supposed to do this. But I persevered and got the ingredients into the mixer and mixed. There were no problems this time with the mixture.

The recipe called for lining the pan with cornstarch and powdered sugar. I love using my hands to sprinkle this. As I was reaching for something else the powdered sugar bag fell onto the floor and sprinkled powdered sugar all over the wood floor. At that point I hollered to my husband, “Don’t come in here.” I knew he was planning on doing this because he was hearing the plops and I knew he would be appalled as he is a neat cook. This time I swept the floor and then scrubbed it because the crevices were filled with white. I must admit I looked like Lucy covered in flour but the difference was the powdered sugar. If you lick it off your face it tastes better than flour.

I am happy to say my marshmallows were a hit with my family.

Fast forward to the next week where salad was my contribution to the meal at a Bible study. I decided to try a new recipe that I could substitute mayonnaise for a gluten-free kind. I haven’t mentioned that I am having trouble with arthritis in my right hand and holding something tightly or slicing with a knife is hard. Since my better half was not here to help me I pulled out the knives and started chopping away at the cabbage. This time I had not yet given my cat’s time out. They were very interested in what I was doing at the table and tried climbing on the stools to see. Some of the cabbage flew on the floor as I quickly tried to drop the knife and grab the cats to put them in a bathroom time out. I didn’t want to have sliced or diced cats. I left the fallen cabbage on the floor as I knew I would make more of a mess while creating, and I could clean it up later. My theory is to clean it up once.

It was time to julienne the carrots. Remember that I watch all the cooking shows so I think I am a chef too. I positioned my carrots and started chopping. It was going well until I got a little to close to the tip of my thumb which shouldn’t have been there and I tried julienning my thumb. The color red would have added some color to the salad but I didn’t think the others would be fooled if I said it was strawberry juice since there were no strawberries in the salad. I bandaged myself up, finished the salad. adding a couple of ingredients that were not in the recipe. That was in honor of The Food Channel cooks. I looked at the floor and thought I must live in a garden as it was so green.

After I cleaned everything up I thought about my messiness. I had such a good time making the marshmallows and the coleslaw. They both turned out great and so I forgave myself for my messiness. After all, I made sure everything was sanitary as I was doing it. It was the aftermath that didn’t look so good. but I am a creative person and I felt that creativity while I was cooking. I realized I can’t create in any orderly place. I thrive in the chaos of messy. It makes me happy because out of chaos many times comes a creative product.

The moral of this story is: Try something new, be yourself and let it be OK to do things the way that works for you. Your creative messiness might be the gateway to happiness for you or someone else.i love lucy photo: i love lucy ilovelucy.gif“>”>

Are You Ready For Christmas? Or Not?

Posted on by
Reply
Manger scene under the Christmas tree in Ely C...

Manger scene under the Christmas tree in Ely Cathedral (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Column: Something About Nothing, by Julie Seedorf

“Are you ready for Christmas?”

That question seems to be something that I ask frequently. Of course people respond with shopping stories, Santa stories and family get together stories. I do the same thing. As I was contemplating writing this column for the week of Christmas I reviewed the conversations I have had with people throughout the week including my grandchildren. Then it hit me. All my conversations have been about the materialistic things of Christmas.

I must admit I am not hustling and bustling this Christmas. I have decorated my house. I have put up my tree, taken down my tree because of the cats and put up a smaller tree. I have listened to Christmas music on the radio and I feel the excitement of the coming week. I have to finish my crafty projects and gifts. I have a little shopping to do for my grandchildren but they are easy things. I am in the midst of working on Christmas cards and maybe by the time you read this some of them might be in the mail. I am not my usual hyper Christmas self. I am enjoying the season because of it. The commercial part of my Christmas is almost ready.

But am I ready for Christmas? I don’t think I have contemplated the right reason we celebrate this holiday. So, no, I am not ready for Christmas.

Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus on Dec. 25. We may go to church before that day to prepare for the actual day. Or not. We may read “The Christmas Story” to our children and grandchildren. Or not. We may take the time to sit in silence and remember that night so long ago that leads to more Christian Holidays, Good Friday and Easter that happen in our spring. Or not. We may take the time to realize the roots of the tradition that we call Christmas. Or not.

Somewhere, somehow, we spend more time thinking about what we are going to buy someone for Christmas, what we are going to eat and how we are going to spend the holiday than we do thinking and feeling about the story that has been told to us through the ages, the birth of Christ. This tiny baby has gotten lost in the tinsel and the wrapping paper and the ribbon.

We may take the time to go to Christmas Eve services and if they run long we are impatient because there is more fun waiting for us at home. Many churches don’t have Christmas Day services anymore because attendance was so low. Could it be dinner preparations were more important?

Most stores are still closed on Christmas, unlike Thanksgiving, but I imagine that trend will change with time when that tiny baby born in a manger is forgotten some more. No, I have not taken the time to get ready for the birth of Christ and if I think about Christmas in that way, then I am not ready for Christmas.

Perhaps there are ways we can be ready in the midst of the tinsel and tree lights. We can look into the face of a tiny child and see the goodness and beauty in them. We can look into the face of a person we normally would not take the time to greet and see the hunger for acceptance in their face. We can take the time each day to find that tiny baby in the people we meet. We can drop a few coins in the Salvation Army kettle. We can look around us and be grateful for the freedom of religion. We can reach out our hearts and touch someone that isn’t seeing the joy of the season that we see in the lights and the music and the merriment of food and family.

I enjoy the sights and sounds and fun of Christmas. My Christmas wish for you, is for moments in the midst of the merriment to remember the reason for the season and to feel the peace and the joy that those moments may bring.

Some of my readers added a few Christmas wishes too:

“My Christmas wish is for peace in the world and safe return home for our troops.” — Mary Stenzel

“My wish would be for tickets home for Christmas. We would love to be with family for the holidays and haven’t seen snow since 2010!” — Alissa Bruss Ellingson, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

“My wish this year is that my many family members who are suffering illness, shall all improve, and hopefully we will have some healing and cures.” — Gina Nelson

“My one wish is our family all get together and enjoy each other’s company.” — Cecile Schnebly

And I will end with this quotation from Sunday school lesson book author Roy L. Smith:

“He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.”

Related articles