Cooking: A Means of Relationship Building

April 4, 2022 Shirleyjdietz4 Comments

Everybody eats, and when we are together it makes sense to share the job of getting a meal together. It’s called cooking, most of the time, and it’s one of my least favorite jobs. Knowing that I have to think of something to eat, two or three times every day, for the entirety of my life sounds like cruel punishment to me – made tolerable only by sharing the load.

My children have sometimes made the job easier, but a lot of our bonding over food is because they have made it more complicated. Youngest daughter E decided to be vegetarian in her early teens. My memory of those years is foggy, but there were a lot of brownies, and peanut butter/jelly sandwiches for her. The rest of us ate everything, but it was hard for me to think I might be shortening her life by not feeding her better.

Oldest daughter J, on the other hand, was early into amateur chef behavior. Even on our hike on the Appalachian Trail, she was the one who had to bring real coffee, and fixings for blueberry pancakes. Now I have given up learning how to use all the machines she has in her kitchen. Electric crepe griddle, blenders, choppers, mixer, espresso machine, ice cream maker, air fryer, steamers, driers, toasters, more – I just can’t think of them all. I find cooking with her very interesting because it’s about the only time I really use a recipe, and I get to learn a new gadget. I am in awe of her knife collection, and her many pans.

Looks dangerous, I know. What are all these?

Cooking with E became easier when she started eating more food and searching out some of her health problems. We spent time on special diets like the autoimmune protocol, where we did things like making spaghetti sauce out of beets, and talking about umami, and boiling bones for hours and hours. One of her favorite recipes from childhood is still the meatloaf made out of everything except meat.

We had fun making ordinary food. No beets were involved.

Even though I don’t like to spend hours in the kitchen on fussy food, I have inherited a gene that demands food on social occasions. I get it from Mom, better known in the family as Cinnamon Girl. She always make the cinnamon rolls for our family gatherings and although we have all tried to learn, no one does it quite like she does. The feature film “Cinnamon Girl”, made by my marketing guru brother, is a family treasure. It was supposed to be a tutorial for us all, but we laugh so much that it’s more of a comedy documentary.

I find that bonding and relationship building over and around food is really pretty available, easy and satisfying. I text the daughters and send pictures when I make milk soup. We laugh over our dinner menu of popcorn, just popcorn. We have rituals involving donuts and ice cream. Maybe it’s not all technically “cooking” but that’s where I put it. Just sayin’… close enough.

The chicken is sitting in a really awesome pan! Also, all those spices in matching bottles – I’ve never been able to do that…

Ball Game!

April 2, 2022 Shirleyjdietz8 Comments

Baseball, or any other kind of ball or sport, is a fun way to spend time with your people. Baseball is particularly good because there is almost nothing happening out there in the field, leaving a lot of time for talking, concessions and hanging out in general.

There was time for us to hang out with what’s his name, I forget.

Eldest daughter’s husband was a baseball player and one of the first things I got to do with their family was go to a baseball game. There’s something down home and All American about these events. The stadiums are usually beautiful, clean, spacious and well lit at night. It’s usually summer when games are played so the weather is good. And there are often fireworks.

But while we are on the subject of sports, I have to say that the seasons when my girls played sports were some of the best times of our lives. Sure, it’s a little unnerving when you’re worried about them hurting themselves physically or being disappointed, but those times in the car riding back and forth are so good for relationship building. Watching young adults learn teamwork, discipline, and awesome physical skills is so satisfying, and should they happen to be on a winning team, all the better.

Some “young’ns” in my family hanging out at a game.

You’ve heard of soccer moms, but how about golf moms? Yes, there are such people. They get to do a lot of walking, which I’m always in favor of. I liked it when E played golf because the uniforms were more like regular clothes and didn’t usually get sweaty. She was a good golfer. We never did figure out what happened to that set of titanium clubs she had.

I hear that relationship building is even better if you can coach a sports team instead of sitting on the sidelines watching. My brother has always taken opportunities like that and as a result he knows families and their kids all over town. High school, middle school and even grade and pre-school kids are on sports teams and they are often looking for adult volunteers.

Remember the song “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”? It’s proof of what I’m saying here – memories will be made and you’ll have a great time!

Art in Building Relationship

April 1, 2022 Shirleyjdietz5 Comments

It helps to have a loose definition of “art”. Mine is “anything I like to look at”.

My daughters have always shown interest in artistic pursuits, from painting and drawing to writing poetry and stories. I like to think their early attempts showed promise, and I have kept quite a few of them to frame.

But now that they are working adults, I’m lucky to get time with them looking at other people’s art. Even that is a great way to spend time together and gets us talking, and finding out surprising things about likes and dislikes. Something as simple as sharing a great pic online or on my phone is using art to enhance a relationship.

I saw this cutie in J’s yard this week and had fun showing it to the family. Seriously, I would print and frame this. Art, right?

You don’t have to live in a metropolitan area full of museums and art shows to do this. I am now in a small town in northern Wisconsin and we have art walks, a “touristy” shop featuring local art, and small collections of great art in some of our major buildings – like the hospital and medical clinic. And of course there is the outdoors, where art is everywhere for the camera to find.

This stack of fabric is an art exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum. I have something almost like this in my sewing stash.

One of my memorable outings was to a museum in Seattle with my daughter E. This was probably during one of our April birthday week celebrations and what I saw there stretched my definition of “art” in some fun ways. Actually, walking around E’s house and seeing what she likes to look at is also quite fun, and stretching.