Frugality and Eating, Week 3

February 28, 2025 //
2

Saturday morning I began my day with the last of the tahini-beet muffins I made last week, a blood orange and a cup of decaf coffee with half and half. Then I walked to the bank, where I withdrew forty dollars, which I hope will be enough to cover this week’s grocery shopping.

I like having money in the bank — in fact, I feel uncomfortable if my business account falls below $200. Today it is at $65.00. I could have left the $40.00 in there, but I also like having fresh, healthy things to eat and I like supporting local farmers, especially the ones who bring vegetables to market in the winter.

I walked from the bank to the farmers market where I purchased two bags of kale for $10.00 for salads (I still have potatoes, beets, carrots, onions, garlic and a few Brussels sprouts from previous weeks). Then I stopped at the Pane d’Amore booth to look at loaves of bread. I can bake my own bread and sometimes do, but I have a busy week and did not want to commit to baking bread. I also have tortillas and ready-made pizza crusts on hand, plus a loaf of challah in the freezer.

The bread that called to me was the Oaty Oat bread. I bought a loaf for $7.25, making use of my .25 bag discount. Farmers market total: $17.25.

On my way home, I decided to stop at the health food store because they have a sale on navel oranges. I can eat them as snacks, juice them, make orange syrup or orange curd to enhance baked goods. I can make orange rolls for breakfasts or snacks or orange-cumin bread. I can add them to salads. I still have lemons, limes and blood oranges at home. I bought a four-pound bag of organic oranges for $8.99.

I have a white board in my kitchen where I list things I want to buy soon. I decided to stop by Safeway and get just those items: sour cream, red salsa and flour. I lucked out because all three of them were on sale. I bought unbleached bread flour — I had been looking just for unbleached flour, but unbleached bread flour was on sale for $3.17 for five pounds. Because I am not planning on making an angel food cake or delicate pastry this week, I bought the bread flour, saving myself more than two dollars (Regular flour ran $5.45 and was bleached). Safeway total: $9.77.

Home again, I unpacked my groceries and put them away, except for one bag of lacinato kale. I sat at my kitchen table removing the leaves from the central stems, which allowed me to rest from my load-bearing walk. When my glass bowl was full of kale I added the usual suspects: fresh-squeezed lemon juice, minced garlic, tamari and a heaping tablespoon of tahini.

By the time I had made the salad, I realized that what I wanted for lunch was a big salad and a slice of bread with jam. I dished a big bowl of kale salad and crumbled some feta into it to make it more substantial. I cut the end slice from the oat bread, cut the slice into two halves and spread one with some marionberry jam I had received as a gift and the other with lingonberry preserves from a past baking box (More on that next week).

What goes with bread and jam? Tea. I made a pot of Irish Breakfast Tea to take the chill off the afternoon. I buy loose tea from Canada — here is my tea rant for your reading pleasure.

Saturday dinner: Homemade burrito: tomato wrap, shredded greens, refried beans, sour cream, salsa (I’m trying to organize a protest about cuts to Social Security so I needed something quick); chocolate pudding.

Sunday: An early political meeting, three loads of laundry and a breakfast bread pudding made up of half a loaf of challah from the freezer, three eggs, a quart of whole milk, juice and zest of one orange, vanilla, nutmeg and a handful of sugar, baking at 350 F. Breakfast drink: mocha made from fresh coffee, leftover cocoa and half and half. Lunch: kale salad, homemade pizza. Snack: bread and jam.

Monday: Breakfast bread pudding with a handful of frozen blueberries, coffee; Lunch: kale salad with roasted almonds, homemade pizza, bread and jam, black tea with milk (hungry and cold today). Dinner: homemade burrito.

Tuesday: Breakfast bread pudding with blueberries, coffee with half and half. Lunch: kale salad, homemade pizza. Snack: toast with butter and jam. Dinner: homemade burrito

Wednesday: Breakfast bread pudding with blueberries, coffee with half and half. Lunch: roasted cashews from the bag (bad day, spent most of it in bed). Dinner: kale salad, homemade pizza

Thursday: Breakfast out: a friend treated me to breakfast to celebrate my upcoming birthday. Very frugal for me, not so much for her. Bonus: Chestnut Cottage where we ate gives you a free pastry on your birthday, so I snagged a cinnamon roll to eat tomorrow. Late lunch: kale salad because I ate a big high-calorie breakfast. Dinner: a few sections of orange and a lot of water because I was not hungry.

Friday: Breakfast cinnamon roll from Chestnut Cottage, coffee with half and half. While the cinnamon roll heated and the coffee dripped I shredded Brussels sprouts for a later salad and doused them with olive oil and lemon juice to marinate. Later I will add matchstick pieces of green apple, dried cranberries, roasted cashews and yellow mustard. Lunch: Brussels sprouts salad and oatmeal bread. Dinner: pasta with pesto and Brussels sprouts. Snack: two chocolate-covered caramelized almonds.

Note: I am not recommending skipping meals, nor am I skipping meals to save money: I am reporting to you what I actually do, what I actually spend, and what I actually eat in case it gives you some ideas about how to eat more frugally in challenging times. I promise you that I enjoy eating the food that I prepare — if I didn’t, I would switch it up and make something different.

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Categories frugal eating, grocery shopping, home cooking, teas and tisanes, Uncategorized

Frugality and Eating, Week 2

February 21, 2025 //
0

I walked to the farmers market this morning, seeking salad ingredients and possibly other vegetables for the week. I still have carrots, beets, potatoes and onions at home from last week (Don’t worry, I’ll have uses for them). Today I bought a bag of curly kale and a bag of Brussels sprouts: I can turn each of them into winter salads. Total outlay: $12.00, as opposed to last week’s $32.40 on fresh vegetables. Because my costs were so low, I felt fine about purchasing a treat, a small cherry-almond danish for $4.25. The vendor gives me $.25 off because I bring my own cloth bag, so I always bring my bag: I keep it in my kitchen and grab it whenever I go shopping. Market total: $16.25.

On the way home I stop at Safeway. My list has three items: Kleenex, malted milk powder and marshmallows (for cocoa). I couldn’t find the marshmallows, so I bought tissues: $7.99 for a four-pack and malted milk powder for $6.49. Yikes! But it’s February and I like to have a variety of drinks in chilly weather. There is no waste to malted milk powder. So I buy it. Safeway total: $15.19.

When I got home, the first thing I did was start stripping curly kale from its stems, putting small pieces into a glass salad bowl. Three-quarters of my kale filled the bowl with a little room to toss it. Then I went to work on dressing. Into a small bowl I placed a generous tablespoon of tahini, the juice of three small lemons — smaller than your average lime — a dash of tamari and one finely minced clove of garlic. I tossed all of that with the kale, covered it and refrigerated it to soften in the dressing. Next I quartered a blood orange and peeled it, separating the segments. I put the peels in a baggie in the freezer: I candy my own orange rinds — all it takes is water, sugar, rinds and patience — and I like them straight up and in baked goods (bread pudding, French toast, muffins).

While my kale marinated, I spied some whole wheat sourdough that I had let age too long. While I could still get a knife through it, I sliced all of it. I selected two half slices, spread them with mustard and turned on my oven to 350 F. I sliced three pieces of cheddar, topped the bread with them and popped it into the oven to melt — the oven heat will soften the middle of the bread and turn the chewy edges crunchy. When the cheese toast was done, I put one slice of salami over the melted cheese.

Next I dished a bowl of tahini-dressed kale, added three-quarters of the orange segments and a small handful of roasted almonds and sat down to eat. One hour of prep and I’m eating salad and a hot sandwich. Plus, I have a few prepped orange segments, sliced bread and kale salad for other meals.

Sunday morning I made the beet root-tahini muffins, adding dried sour cherries and substituting two small grated beets for the carrots. They came out a beautiful rose color on top, perfect for post-Valentine’s Day weekend. Next time I might try a mixture of carrots and beets, just because, but these are fine. While they baked I cleaned up, chopped potatoes for a fresh batch of home fries and put them to boil and made my morning coffee. Sunday afternoon I varied my toasted cheese sandwich by spreading the bread with pesto and skipping the salami. I had some more kale salad, a pot of black tea and half of my danish. Sweet potato, salsa and sour cream for dinner.

Monday breakfast: muffin, home fries, coffee. I popped six of the muffins into the freezer to see if that preserves them better than leaving them out all week (They do dry out a bit, but nuking them to warm them makes them soft again). Monday lunch: kale salad with blood oranges, cheese toasts and cheese and salami toasts. Snack: homemade hot cocoa with marshmallows (marshmallows a gift from my landlady). Monday dinner: more cheese toasts.

Tuesday breakfast: muffin, home fries, coffee. Tuesday lunch: kale salad with oranges, homemade pizza with pesto, roasted peppers, mushrooms. Tuesday dinner: sweet potato with salsa and sour cream. Snacks: handful of Cheeze-Its, muffin. Spending: $4.00 for organic half and half (I drink half and half in my coffee. Straus organic tastes better and lasts longer than other brands. When I can’t get half and half or run out at a bad time, I use evaporated milk).

Wednesday breakfast: muffin, home fries, coffee. Lunch: kale salad with oranges, homemade pizza. Snack: cocoa. Dinner: Yummy homemade burrito — refried beans, shredded greens, salsa, and sour cream; carrot sticks.

Thursday breakfast: muffin, home fries, coffee. Lunch: kale salad, homemade pizza. Snack: too many Cheez-Its (I had a fuck-it-all kind of day). Very late dinner: another muffin.

Friday breakfast: muffin, home fries, coffee. Lunch: homemade burrito. Snack: homemade cocoa with marshmallows. Dinner: I’m still recovering from yesterday, so I steamed a bowl of Brussels sprouts, added a spoonful of pesto, ate the last slice of homemade pizza and finished dinner with a muffin.

Week 3 begins tomorrow with a farmers market trip.

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Categories frugal eating, home cooking, Uncategorized

Frugality and Eating

February 14, 2025 //
0

Dear Readers,

We are in a scary time in the U.S.A. The current administration has fired some federal workers and put others on leave. The current administration has frozen funds that had already been allocated by Congress for a number of state programs, triggering more layoffs and potential layoffs. Billionaire Elon Musk, who will not want for anything, likes to talk about how “pain” is necessary for the rest of us. He also likes to talk about cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

I have been living through a frugal period because, right now, I have extraordinary expenses that my income does not cover. I thought I would try to do some good by telling you how I am managing to grocery shop and eat on a limited budget. Perhaps it will give you some ideas that you will find helpful.

The background: I had been living in my elderly mother’s house serving as her primary caretaker 24/7 until she died of cancer in March 2024. In July 2024 I finished packing all of my things and putting them in storage in Washington State. After a period of house-sitting, traveling and bunking with friends, I rented a furnished cottage in Washington in October 2024 while I waited for my brother to sell my mother’s house and distribute to me my share of my mother’s estate.

I teach writing practice and meditation, but my income is not sufficient to pay for rent, storage, legal fees and basic living expenses. First I used some inherited money. Then I used what savings I had. Every month I cut spending where I could.

Food. When I got to Washington, I had no food. And I had Covid. You are not allowed to store any food — even canned goods or foods in sealed packages — in some storage units — so I brought no stored food with me: I was starting from scratch. Fortunately, while I was making my way to my temporary home on the bus, my landlady offered to pick up some basic foods for me. I checked the weekly local Safeway ad for specials and asked her for the following:

Two boxes of chicken broth. Two boxes of red pepper/tomato soup. A dozen eggs. A pound of butter. Five pounds of flour. A package of rolled oats. A pound of sugar. Honey. Baking powder. Baking soda. A gallon of whole milk. A box of Constant Comment tea bags. Frozen raspberries and blueberries. Salt. A hand of ginger. A head of garlic. Carrots. Broccoli. Four pounds of pasta (a weekly special). Whole wheat tortillas. She added two jars of marinara that I did not ask for. And she left me a container of lentil soup thawing on the counter in the cottage kitchen.

These basic groceries allowed me to cook and eat simple meals while I was sick: Oats cooked in milk with berries or carrots. Tortillas and cheese. Broth-based soups with garlic, ginger, vegetables and pasta. I ate the lentil soup the night I arrived, with gratitude, and climbed into my new (temporary) bed.

When I tested negative for Covid nine days later and finished my quarantine I went to Crab Fest where I bought a bottle of blood orange-infused olive oil and three containers of dark chocolate coated English toffee. I gave two of the toffee containers away as hostess gifts for people who put me up in California in November and kept the third one — I dip into it occasionally: it sits on a high shelf in my kitchen.

The blood orange oil is about half-gone. I use it in salad dressings often, along with lime or lemon juice for a citrus punch. This week I put nearly half a cup of it in some carrot-tahini muffins that I have been eating for breakfast, which gave the muffins a wonderful, fruity perfume. I also added some cut-up pitted dates and four crushed cardamom pods to the muffins. I have been eating one for breakfast every day, along with a serving of homemade home fries.

Last week, on my weekly trip to the farmers market, I bought a roasting bag of root vegetables. It costs sixteen dollars and provides enough vegetables for one person for a week with some left for the next week. This assortment contained red potatoes, carrots, Brussels sprouts and a red beet or two. I also bought a couple of onions and some orange-fleshed sweet potatoes. I described the salad I made from thinly-sliced Brussels sprouts last week. I’ve made it twice. I ate two helpings at dinner tonight and it is gone, but I’m going back to the farmers market tomorrow. Sweet potatoes became by go-to dinner this week: I roasted a bunch of them in the oven and then nuked them with red salsa from a jar and ate them with sour cream. For lunches, I mostly ate turkey chili that I had made with onions, garlic, chili powder, dried pinto beans and leftover Thanksgiving turkey breast from the freezer.

The sweet potatoes, onions, Brussels sprouts and root vegetables cost me a total of $32.40. I made the chili last week from ingredients I had on hand except for chili powder, which I bought at the grocery store. If you haven’t moved recently, you probably have some spices and herbs you like on hand. One of the last things I did before I left California was buy a Penzey’s gift card on special ($50 worth of spices for $35): that allowed me to start building up a new collection of spices. I started with sweet spices: cinnamon, nutmeg, crystallized ginger, vanilla because I like to bake.

Monday, because I was running out of milk, eggs, toilet paper, paper towels and sponges, I begged a ride to Grocery Outlet. I brought a list and tried to stick to $100.00 limit. I actually spent $105.00 (pretty close), but that included the paper towels, sponges and toilet paper. I bought mostly protein foods, including cheeses and dry salami, plus pizza crusts (four for $3.79) because I like to make pizza: I can make my own crust, but this is one easy shortcut I’m willing to pay for right now because I can assemble a pizza in ten minutes. I still have mushrooms and sausages at home and I bought cherry peppers to liven things up. I also stocked up on citrus: blood oranges, lemons and limes. And I bought myself two treats: a family-sized box of Cheez-Its (on sale) and a large container of chocolate pudding from a reliable brand. Once again, I can make cheese straws and I can make chocolate pudding, but sometimes I like to give myself a break from constant meal production from scratch.

Here’s a menu of what I ate this week:

Breakfast: decaf coffee with half and half, home fries, carrot-tahini muffin; Lunch: turkey chili, Brussels sprout salad, corn tortillas or homemade bread; Snacks: homemade hot cocoa with marshmallows, toast, butter and jam, carrot-tahini muffin, tea and shortbread finger, Cheez-Its; Dinner: roasted sweet potato with salsa and sour cream OR bread, cheese, salami and cherry peppers.

You don’t have to eat what I eat or like what I like. It does help to save money on groceries if you like to cook, but even people who like to cook don’t like to cook all of the time. My tips for making things better: 1) When you can invest in seasonings that you like. For me, investing in vanilla, nutmeg, cardamom, tahini, tamari, Tabasco and blood orange olive oil has paid off in flavorful meals, which keep me from getting bored. 2) Allow yourself a few treats. Technically, I didn’t “need” chocolate pudding and Cheez-Its, but when you are living frugally an occasional treat helps you not feel deprived or doomed. 3) Try to include some fresh, seasonal vegetables and/or fruit AND make use of dried, canned and frozen alternatives (Right now there is no local fruit here). 4) If you or your family like something, make a lot of it. I don’t mind eating the same things day after day because I like my cooking and I balance my meals, but you can always freeze some of what you make if you don’t like to eat the same thing over and over.

Stay tuned for another installment of frugal eating next week. I already know I’m going to make a beet variation on the carrot muffins. And please feel free to use the comment section to share your own tips and discoveries.

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Categories cooking, frugal eating, grocery shopping, home cooking, Philosophy, Uncategorized

Fall and Winter Salads

February 8, 2025 //
4

Dear Readers,

In July 2024 I left my beloved California, the state I was born in and resided in most of my life. In early October I moved to a small city in Washington state (I am now hoping for the opportunity to buy a house in another, smaller city).

I am an economic refugee from California. I loved the Golden State and had a large community of friends in the Bay Area and elsewhere, but housing costs were too high even with an expected inheritance, so I moved to the Evergreen State to stay on the West Coast.

I am living in a 700 sq foot furnished rental cottage while I wait for my inheritance. 95% of my belongings are in a local storage facility. I have some winter clothes and three kitchen items of my own: a bamboo cutting board, a Pyrex pie plate and a one-cup liquid measuring cup. All of my cookbooks are in storage.

There are compensations to living here. I live between mountains and water up on a bluff above downtown. When I came here, turning trees greeted me with a fall display. And last weekend I had the pleasure of watching falling snow. The seasons here have neither the mild changes of California nor the severe weather of the upper Midwest.

For decades, I have been an habitué of farmers markets where the available food (and sometimes the vendors) changes with the seasons. I like to eat what is fresh, local and plentiful.

I also love to eat salads. My favorite salads are big bowls of crunchy romaine and Greek salads full of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, Kalamata olives and feta cheese. None of these things are local and available, although fresh corn lasted here well into October. So I’m getting really good at figuring out how to make delicious cold weather salads.

In fall I ate salads of radicchio, chopped dates and feta dressed with blood orange oil and lime juice, inspired by this recipe from Smitten Kitchen: https://smittenkitchen.com/2015/11/date-feta-and-red-cabbage-salad/ When spinach and mixed baby greens made brief appearances in December I bought bags of them each week and mixed them with chopped oranges, nuts, and a strong, garlicky red wine vinaigrette. When I lived in California I got bored with citrus. Here, I crave it, so I watch for specials on limes, lemons and oranges and incorporate them in salads or salad dressings. I bought a bottle of blood orange olive oil on my first local expedition in October: it is delicious and a little imparts a lot of flavor (Turns out the oil, which I bought from a vendor here, comes from California….).

When spinach and baby greens disappeared, I bought kale. Now the reason that I called my blog The Kale Chronicles wasn’t because I love kale, but because I am challenged by it. Last week I chopped the kale finely, mixed it with said blood orange oil and said vinaigrette, which consists of red wine vinegar, minced garlic, salt, black pepper and prepared mustard (I use the cheap, bright yellow stuff because I like sharp flavors). I let the kale sit overnight in the refrigerator before adding radishes, oranges and roasted almonds. It still tasted like kale, but a mellower, acceptable kale. This is a raw kale salad: if you want a cooked one, go here :https://thekalechronicles.com/2011/12/21/kale-conquered-the-kale-salad-i-love-and-the-versatile-blogging-award/

I was going to try marinating chopped kale in lemon juice and garlic, but today’s farmers had no kale: the only green vegetable available was Brussels sprouts.

Here’s what I did:

I removed the stem ends and sliced the sprouts finely into a large glass bowl. I added a tiny drizzle of olive oil (I’m running low) and the juice of half a lemon and tossed that mixture with my hands. Then I added two handfuls of dried cranberries. I slivered a Granny Smith apple from the refrigerator and re-tossed the salad. Then I added a dollop of yellow mustard and a sprinkling of chopped, roasted cashews and tossed the salad one final time. Then I dished myself a big bowl while I reheated a bowl of chili.

I could not stop eating this salad: I ate a full bowl and half a bowl more, resolutely putting the rest away for future meals. One thing about winter salads is that, like stews and soups, they keep well, and the flavors improve with time.

My take on constructing salads of strongly-flavored vegetables is to dress them first and let them absorb dressing before you add other ingredients. Add flavorful ingredients: I like dried fruit, citrus and nuts in winter salads, and sometimes feta cheese, but also pomegranate arils. If you skew more savory, you could add anchovies, olives, or Parmesan and skip the fruit — I won’t tell.

I’m not back in the habit of painting yet, although I painted during my travels in late summer and early fall, but these salads are colorful. If I do resume painting I’ll add illustrations to this post later.

Thanks for reading. And happy salad-making with whatever your market offers.

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Categories home cooking, salads, Uncategorized

New Writing Practice Group Forming

January 28, 2025 //
4

Dear Readers,

Forgive my shameless bit of self-promotion here: this blog is one of the ways I sometimes reach people and prospective students.

A bit of background. I am one of Natalie Goldberg’s two dharma heirs. I studied with her in person multiple times of year for nearly twenty years until the pandemic sent us all online for awhile. Natalie endorses my teaching and said in a retreat in December 2024 that she would study with me.

Nearly four years ago some people who had studied with Natalie online wrote to me and asked me if I would teach a writing practice group. I formed the Monday AM Practice Group where we meet Mondays on Zoom to practice sitting meditation, writing practice and reading aloud. That group is still going strong after all this time with some of the original members still attending. I open the Monday AM Practice Group once each quarter to new students and require that new students attend the entire session (usually twelve weeks during fall, winter and spring and shorter sessions — four or eight weeks — during the summer). There will be openings in the Monday AM Practice Group for Spring Quarter in April 2025.

Do you know what writing practice is? Writing practice is generally timed writing where you just put down on paper the words that occur in your mind about any topic. You don’t cross out, edit, or self-censor, you just say what you think as you think it. Since we all think faster than we can write, you may not be able to get all of your thoughts on paper, but you try. For this reason, you keep your hand moving during the entire time period from when I say “Go” to when I say “Wind down.” You do not stop to think, ponder, consider.

Here is an example of writing practice. I wrote this on my Facebook page after an old friend died recently. It is unedited, just as I wrote it (I may have gone back once to remove a typo or to change a punctuation mark — simple proofreading — but I did not change any words or word order). Here it is.

“My old friend Ed has died and I have so many memories of him: Ed singing bass and doing a spoken part on “The Hallelujah Trilogy” on my first CD; Ed’s kitchen on Henry St with the coffee pot labeled “Psychotic Blend;” Ed taking me to a Yom Kippur service so that I could experience its beauty and majesty; Ed getting obsessed with songs from New Jersey; Ed wearing dresses on New Year’s Eve and skirts on no occasion at all; Ed being asked to peel potatoes for a holiday dinner — we showed him the bin and he peeled all ten or twenty pounds (badly, leaving skin and eyes — my Grandmother, who loved mashed potatoes, ate only a teaspoon and refused to take any home); Ed turning around at the original Freight and Salvage when he heard me sing and asking who I was, and Ed and I going after Mary O’Brien when we first heard her sing at Camp Harmony (“Who’s that? Let’s find out!”); Ed writing a love song to Dale about snoring; Ed snoring the loudest of all in the snoring cabin at camp; Ed getting in bicycle accidents (His automobile driving was terrifying); Ed driving a car with a bumper sticker that said “Legalize lutefisk”: we got stopped on Amherst Ave by an overzealous Kensington cop who wanted to know what lutefisk was and if it was legal; Ed’s loud laugh; his big blue eyes; Ed coming to a company party wearing a suit the color of orange sherbet with an elegant woman dressed in black velvet. One of the things I remember best about him is that, despite bouts of depression and discouragement, he often had some idealistic new plan for his future.”

That’s it. You can do it, too. Many people find writing practice useful for overcoming writer’s block (I believe that writer’s block happens when we are scared of what we think and feel, or are scared of taking the next step in a piece).

Teaching writing practice is a skill that I developed over two decades. Facilitating successful groups where the members feel safe and develop into a community is also a skill that I have been honing for years. I am good at what I do, although no one teacher is a good fit for every student.

Here is what one of my current students had to say about my classes:

Attending Sharyn’s classes has helped me maintain a writing and meditation practice for over three years. Sharyn’s classes have provided me structure to develop my own practice and build my “writer’s spine”. Her classes are an opportunity to write and read in a community of other writers from around the world. Sharyn provides comprehensive class summaries and additional writing topics to carry you through your week and sessions usually include a book study to explore a published author’s mind and words, recall practice to enhance listening and awareness skills, and notebook review to study your own writing and get to know when you are hot and when you are not. Sharyn is a steadfast and creative writer and mentor and if we’re lucky sometimes she sings.

If you are wanting to develop, maintain, or reconnect with your own writer’s spine (writing self) joining sharyn’s classes will give you the opportunity and experience you are looking for. — Jodi Griffith, Wholehearted Sage, Canada.

And this from my assistant Adela:

My name is Adela and I am a Mexican writer, translator and psychotherapist living near Mexico City. I have been participating in Sharyn’s Monday morning writing group for almost 3 years now and it has been a very profound and enjoyable experience. I have been able to deepen my understanding and practice of the principles developed by Natalie Goldberg in a safe and structured space. This has had a very clear impact on my creative energy as a writer of novels and short stories. Working with Sharyn and interacting with the other participants, knowing that everything is ok and nothing is judged, has opened the gates of freedom for my words. I now dare to go where I wouldn’t have before with a renewed sense of excitement and commitment.

If you think you would like to join a writing practice group on Zoom in the next few weeks or months, please let me know in the comments 1) What time zone you are in 2) What days and times would work best for you for a weekly one and a half hour class. 3) When you could start.

Eternal verities: a quarter currently costs $300 for twelve weeks, which works out to about $25.00 per week. For that, you get twelve weekly meetings of an hour and a half duration, a written class summary each week, optional writing assignments and topics to explore and email access to me for all of your questions and concerns. I accept payments via PayPal and by check and students may either pay in full at the beginning of the quarter or pay in three monthly installments.

Full transparency: Teaching writing practice is how I make my living. Please do not ask me to teach for free or ask for a deep discount on my rate. If you need an accommodation to attend, please ask me about it — I can sometimes offer discounts to a motivated student and I also sometimes need an assistant in a class (Assistants attend for free in exchange for helping me out in class and being able to hold the class if something happens to me. In fact, I have been at every class since I started teaching, sometimes on my phone during power outages because one of the rules is to show up).

Added February 10, 2025: What I Know About Editing. If you have been doing writing practice and are ready to take a first pass at editing or revising or expanding your work, I am willing to teach a class on what I know about editing. I need some guinea pigs — er, students. Dates and time to be arranged when I have five interested parties.



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Categories Uncategorized, writing practice

“This probably isn’t good.”

September 13, 2024 //
0

The area where I’m staying does not endear itself to me. Today I had need of a laundromat: without a private bathroom and a supply of towels my ability to do hand laundry does not exist.

Because there was no one on desk duty at 9:30 in the morning, I followed instructions and phoned someone on the house phone, asking where I could find a laundromat. To me, a laundromat means a place with coin-operated washing machines and dryers and boxes of detergent where you do your own laundry. I had packed all of my dirty laundry into my day pack in a plastic bag and needed to know where to take it.

The guy I spoke to gave me directions. “Go right. Go right again…”

“Could you just tell me the name of the street?”

He told me it was on Brighton Ave. I walked Brighton Ave in both directions. No laundromat.

I turned the corner onto Harvard Ave where I had seen a place where you take your laundry to be washed. You were supposed to have a minimum of ten pounds.

My laundry, including my dirty lavender day pack, came to nine pounds. Ten pounds gets you a rate of $1.50 per pound. I didn’t care. I needed clean clothes so I paid fifteen dollars and watched the proprietor dump my laundry out onto the floor in front of a washing machine. Um. She also refused to wash my day pack (I throw it into the laundry regularly).

I have to be back at 5 PM to collect my clothes and I hadn’t yet had any breakfast, so I crossed the street to a convenience store, renewed my cash supply and bought a quart of milk to eat with some granola I took from our kitchen in Ireland.

I walked back to my lodgings. I was just going to eat sitting on the front steps: I had granola and milk and a spork. Ding, ding, ding — i didn’t have a bowl, mug, glass or anything to eat out of.

I went back inside. I asked the desk man on duty if he could find me a bowl or mug. I held up the milk jug and said “I have cereal, but nothing to eat it in.”

He offered me a plastic cup, saying “This probably isn’t good” and volunteered to go looking for something. Ten minutes later he came back with a dusty pot: “This is all I could find. You probably need to wash it. It’s been sitting around upstairs.”

“Could I have the plastic cup, please?” I asked. He went and got it again.

“Sorry to trouble you,” I said. “I have a whole kitchen without a plate, bowl, or cup.”

“We used to have all that stuff,” he said. “People would steal them, or not wash them.”

I sat down at my wooden kitchen table for five and poured half my granola into my new cup, adding a splash of whole milk. I ate it with my trusty travel spork, and rinsed it twice with water, which I drank, zen-style. I still had to clear out small seeds with my fingernail and use one of my precious tissues to wipe out the cup.

I put the milk in the refrigerator along with the rest of the granola. If the milk survives the night I’ll have granola tomorrow. The kitchen is adjacent to my room and is just for my own use behind a locked and chained door. It’s hard to go wild in a kitchen with only a refrigerator, a sink and empty cupboards.

I had a nice day yesterday, sketching and spending time in the Boston Public Garden, walking around and going to hear live music at Club Passim. I might write about all that later.

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Boston: “Don’t Be Too Greedy.”

September 11, 2024 //
2

I have never been to Boston before. When I found myself in Shannon Airport in Ireland on Monday morning unable to book a flight to California I decided to go to Boston. I relied on Booking.com to find affordable lodging and chose a place called The Farrington Inn. In the photos it looked like a nice house that had been converted to lodging. It was near a T stop, which meant I could get there. The booking mentioned a shared bathroom and I pictured a bathroom between a couple of rooms, accessible from either.

I am learning that not having a smart phone is a significant deficit. Even cities with a lot of tourism have largely abandoned paper maps for their transit systems, neighborhoods and local attractions. There were subway maps inside the stations, but I didn’t see a single map I could take away with me. I did find a red-shirted transit worker whose shirt said “Ask me a question.”

“Is it really alright to ask you a question?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. When I asked him what T stop I needed for the Farrington Inn he pulled out his smart phone to answer the question. He mentioned getting on the purple line, but I had been staring at a map that indicated that Green Line B might be the right direction. “Or you could take the Red Line to Park and transfer to the Green Line B. Get off at Harvard Ave.”

“Green Line B to Harvard,” I repeated.

I took a Red Line train going toward Alewife (great name!) and got off at Park. Someone told me how to cross through the train by entering it from one platform and exiting through the opposite door onto the other in order to get the elevator to the ticket machines.

With some trouble I bought a “Charlie card,” a 7-day transit pass named for the unfortunate man who was short a nickel and could not get off the MTA. Another red-shirted transit worker helped me get through the fare gate and I was off on a crowded Green Line B train (A tall woman kindly stood and gave me her seat: I squished in my soft-sided travel backpack and held my day pack on my lap, watching the display and listening for station stops).

We traveled underground for awhile and then came above ground to see buildings, trees, sky. We passed Boston University, not to be confused with Boston College, the end of the line. I could see that there was a transit legend further down the car, but I could not read it from where I was sitting. After many stops I heard “Harvard” and staggered off the train, having no idea where I was going. The street was filled with ubiquitous American chains, including McDonald’s and 7-11.

I tried McDonald’s first, but could not figure out how to talk to a human there, so I crossed the street and asked in 7-11 if they had a street map. “We don’t have street maps,” the clerk said. “CVS has street maps.”

Back out I went and scanned the horizon for CVS. I saw it. I crossed the street again twice and asked a CVS clerk if they had street maps. She went off to look, but came back.

“We don’t have street maps,” she said.

Adjacent to CVS was Dunkin’ Donuts, Boston’s iconic coffee chain. I popped in, studied the menu, ordered a lemonade and took it to a small table. I unpacked my laptop to take advantage of free WiFi and looked up directions to the Farrington Inn. It said to turn right onto Harvard Ave, cross three intersections and turn right onto Farrington Ave.

I struggled to identify Harvard Ave: the street signs were confusing. The T called its stop Harvard Ave, but had really stopped on Commonwealth near Harvard. Turns out Harvard Ave was the first corner I had come to, anchored by the McDonald’s and the 7-11.

I trudged down the street, noting a bakery for future reference and a mailbox. I crossed what I thought were three intersections, but still had not come to Farrington Avenue. All along the way I stopped people and asked directions. No one knew anything until I asked a young man “Do you live in this neighborhood?”

“I used to,” he said.

“Do you know Farrington Avenue?”

“Are you looking for The Farrington Inn?”

It was one intersection further. I turned right and looked for number 23 with its double red doors. They were up a steep flight of steps. The first step was a doozy, twice as high as the others. I had to haul myself up by the newel post and the railing, setting my day pack down on each next step. An elderly gentleman watched from the porch and offered me help.

A red door opened and a man asked if I were a guest.

“I have a reservation for six nights,” I said.

“Let me get this gentleman settled. Wait for me in the room on the right.”

I sank onto a sofa with my big pack.

When he came back, he asked if I would prefer a room on the ground floor or a room near the bathroom. which might be on the third floor.

“You seem to have trouble walking,” he said.

“I don’t have trouble walking when I haven’t been carrying a heavy pack. I walked here from the T.”

“You walked here from the T? Wow. Let me look at my inventory.”

He showed me to a ground floor room. The first door led to a kitchen: sink, cupboards, small refrigerator, table and five chairs. No stove, oven, hot plate or microwave. From there, another door led to a bedroom: bed, desk, chair, bureau, small “bedside table” at the foot of the bed. T.V. on the wall, air conditioner fitted into one of four tall narrow windows.

He switched the air conditioner on.

“Do you want to see the bathroom?”

He led me down another corridor and said “It’s the white-painted door.”

“Do you mind if I look?” I asked.

I opened the door. There was a marblesque counter, a scarred sink, and a tiled shower over a bathtub, the kind with doors in a metal track. Sigh. No claw foot bathtub.

“Do you have any questions?”

“No,” I chirped, eager to rest.

Five minutes later, I realized there were no towels in my room.

I went back to reception. “Do you supply towels?”

“Aren’t there any in your room?”

He handed me a folded white bath towel. No hand towel. No bath mat. No face cloth. “Don’t be too greedy,” he said. “They only let us have three of them.”

I didn’t even try to figure that out.

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Categories Travel, Uncategorized

Further adventures at The Craiglands, Yorkshire

August 26, 2024 //
3

On this, my first visit to Yorkshire, I am staying at The Craiglands Hotel. I have been here seven nights so far.

The room is comfortable and the spacious bathroom has a deep tub and a heated towel rack. I make use of these amenities nearly everyday. The staff are friendly and helpful.

On Saturday as I was leaving the hotel to walk to town for a belated breakfast I saw a wedding party arriving, a red carpet laid on the front steps, people milling about. I spent the day in town, sketching and walking about, bought a picnic lunch to eat later and planned an evening rendezvous with my friend D. for a singing session on Zoom.

Saturday evening just as I had finished my in-room picnic and lay down for a rest, I heard music thumping through the floor. At first I thought it was another guest listening to music in his room, but the sound was too loud and persistent for that. As the bass and drums continued to pound and rattle I remembered the wedding party and went down to the front desk to ask how long the music would continue.

“Until midnight,” the desk clerk told me.

Midnight! It was 7 PM.

He offered to look for another room for me and he did but there was nothing available, the remaining rooms having been assigned to guests who had not yet checked in for the evening.

Back in my throbbing room, I emailed D. to ask if he could come collect me earlier, explaining the situation. He responded by asking if I needed to bring a toothbrush and said he and H. could put me up on the sofa if necessary.

I stayed at D. and H.’s until quarter after midnight, at which time he took me back to The Craiglands. The front door was wide open, and the lights were blazing, but it was blissfully quiet. I bathed and crawled into bed in my silent room.

The next morning when I went to the customary room for breakfast it was empty: no food on the steam tables, no sign of anyone else. I padded back to the front desk and asked about breakfast, which is included in the price of a stay.

“It’s down the far end,” I was told. I walked all of the way to the end of the hall and entered a ballroom. There was food alright, but there was no silverware on any table and the coffee urn was empty. I trudged out again to find a staff person whom I told about the lack of flatware and coffee. She supplied both for me — as I said, the staff are generally helpful.

As I exited the hotel after breakfast I saw another large party arriving, dressed to the nines in embroidered saris and formal clothes. “This looks like another wedding,” I thought to myself, dodging around the large, expensive vehicles idling in front of The Craiglands and going off to visit the Toy Museum, which is full of old dollhouses, teddy bears, train sets and a mechanized carnival.

Upon my return I found a message marked “urgent” from D. I feared a Covid outbreak, but the problem was that his computer was down. Since my phone does not work in the UK, D. and I communicate via email and Zoom, just as we do when I am at home in the States. He had borrowed H’s computer to send me a message.

I replied that he was welcome to use my laptop and asked him to collect me earlier than we had planned. I was able to help him access his email remotely and to strategize about what to do before he could have his computer looked at. Then I settled down to doing my laundry and having Sunday dinner with my friends.

I returned to the Craiglands at about 9 PM. The red carpet outside was strewn with the remains of flower petals and, once again, the hotel was quiet. I hung damp laundry on every surface that would bear it before I went to bed.

This morning, the lights were out in the corridor outside my room. Okay. The lights work in my room and in the other corridors. Breakfast was once again served in the ballroom. I prefer the more intimate breakfast room usually in use so I did not stay long and returned to my room to make tea.

Tonight is my last night here before I depart for Bournemouth on Tuesday to visit a student. Who knows what will happen tonight and tomorrow morning?

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Categories Travel

Hunting the Yorkshire fruit and vegetables

August 22, 2024 //
0

One of the challenges of traveling is eating something resembling your usual diet. Coming from California, I have an advantage in the fresh produce department: the state has a long growing season, temperate climate and many farmers markets.

I get breakfast at my hotel each morning. From the start I have been serving myself tomatoes and mushrooms to mix with my scrambled eggs even though I would not normally eat either of those things for breakfast. It isn’t a bad mixture: I eat it because I am constantly stalking fruit and vegetables on menus.

On the first day, I also served myself some fruit salad, which seemed to consist mostly of green apples. Alas, they looked lovely because they had been doused liberally with lemon juice to preserve their color. Sour apples with sour lemon — no. I wondered why they hadn’t served them as a cooked compote. By the next day I had learned to pick the pineapple and grapes out of the mixture, leaving the apples behind. Yesterday I scored a single orange segment and this morning a bite-sized chunk of watermelon.

My first night here I dined out in town, choosing a French restaurant where I could get steak frites. I started with a cup of soup because it was tomato and red pepper soup, a basic puree that could have used a bit of cream to smooth it out. The steak and the frites (skinny, salty French fries) were delicious, but the best thing on the plate was a little mound of watercress drizzled with tomato vinaigrette. I could have eaten an entire plate of that.

I had dinner at the hotel last night because rain threatened and it is more than a mile to town and back. I had perused the menu in the bar and was leaning heavily toward Caesar salad to get all of that crunchy green romaine. When I sat down at the table, however, the server informed me that there were no salads. Why would that be? I have no idea.

I ordered pasta carbonara and asked if the side of vegetables listed on the menu was available. Yes, it was.

“What kind of vegetables do you have?” I asked.

“What kind of vegetables do you want?” was the answer. “Tomatoes? Onions?”

“Something green, please. Not peas. Green beans? Broccoli? Broccolini? Spinach?”

I got a lovely little bowl of green beans, broccoli and courgette (zucchini), which I don’t think of as a green vegetable. The chef threw in a little butter and some flecks of parsley.

My pasta came flecked with parsley as well, but so devoid of Parmesan that it wasn’t salty or sweet, but merely bland. I added pepper from the table liberally and made a note not to order carbonara here again. The shallow, flat bowl was full: a lot of pasta.

If I eat lemon tart, will the lemon count as a fruit? It came with dabs of orange curd and a tiny pool of raspberry sauce. I ate those, pushing aside the chocolate curls and something that looked like red confetti. In my opinion, chocolate curls do not belong on a lemon dessert — a wee puff of whipped cream perhaps, but less is more.

The ubiquitous vegetable here appears to be peas. English peas or garden peas are possibly my least favorite vegetable, although I like snow peas and sugar snap peas eaten raw. Once again, my Californian upbringing.

I haven’t yet resorted to hunting up a shop and buying things I can eat raw. In the days when you could travel with a pocket knife, self-styled picnics were easier.

How do you procure fruit and vegetables when you are traveling?

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Welcome to Ilkley, Yorkshire

August 20, 2024 //
2

After countless hours in the Dublin airport, a fiendishly long layover during which I wrote, sketched, drank a cappuccino to remain awake after a near sleepless night on a red-eye from Los Angeles, and tried many times to sleep sitting in a chair, but ended up meditating instead, I ended up at a crowded gate at 4:00 in the morning, got on a bus and boarded a small plane, the kind where you walk across the tarmac and climb a narrow ladder, two seats on either side of the aisle. The flight was advertised with a meal, but to get one you would have had to pay for it, so I didn’t have breakfast on the plane.

What I noticed as we approached Leeds/Bradford airport was how green everything was, fields and trees everywhere greener than in eastern Ireland. The airport is tiny. Someone waved me through customs and I went back to see if I needed my passport stamped. Someone said they often don’t stamp them if you enter from Ireland. That means there is no official record that I am here in England.

My friend D. had told me to get a bus to Otley, Yorkshire and, after two errors, I found the right one. The bus had WiFi so I was able to log on and tell D. I was on my way to Otley. I had assured him that most bus stations had a nearby cab rank and that I would get a cab from Otley to his house. Well, most American bus stations have a cab rank…

When I inquired about a cab and said I was going to Ilkley, a bus driver said “There’s a bus to Ilkley, but it just left.”

Of course it did. The buses were 28 minutes apart so I found a place to wait. It was a dry, overcast morning, but someone had done their best to imitate rain by flooding hanging baskets of flowers which were raining on the pavement.

When the bus pulled up, I asked the driver if he was going to Ilkley. He repeated “Ilkley” in an accent that implied I hadn’t got the name quite right, a dark, swallowed sound. Because I had no idea how long it would take to reach Ilkley I did not use the free WiFi on the coach but watched out the window and watched the monitor showing the stops.

I was tempted to get off in the village of Burley when one stop featured a brick square and a map, but I stayed on the bus until it terminated at Ilkley Station. I saw a post office with a bench in front and made for it. I meant to call D. to come get me, but my phone said “No service.” I paid for international roaming, but my phone had not worked in the Dublin airport, nor did it work in Ilkley.

I dug out my laptop and tried to join the local free network. The internet hamsters ran about on their wheel as fast as they could but I never got on. Okay, plan B: get some breakfast.

I looked across the street and saw a bakery, Loafers Bakery. Perfect. I studied the unfamiliar menu and then told the counter person I had not yet eaten breakfast and asked what she recommended. She suggested a bacon and egg or an egg and sausage sandwich. I chose the latter and asked for a cup of tea.

“Sugar?” she asked

“Sugar and milk, please.”

I was running on fumes as I crossed the street and sat on a wall to unwrap my sandwich. To my horror, it contained a sausage patty as thick as a hockey puck and a fried egg with a runny yolk on flavorless white bread. I nibbled the thin white edges of the egg, careful to avoid anything yellow, took one bite of sausage and went for the tea. This was, undoubtedly, the worst cup of tea I have ever had: weak, not sweet. The only thing it had going for it was that it was hot. I drank all of it.

Wondering what I was going to do next, I looked around and saw a cab leaving: there was a cab rank in the street in front of the post office. Stowing my uneaten sandwich in my day pack, I went to stand by the sign painted on the road.

When I gave the cabbie D’s address he knew right where it was and took me up the road for five pounds. As we turned into D’s street I saw a woman who could only be D’s. wife H., whom I had glimpsed all of once in a Zoom background. She was going out to look for me.

D. and H. helped me into the house, put on a kettle for tea and showed me into their lounge or sitting room. H. placed a plate of homemade shortbread within easy reach and had me choose a china mug for tea. Good, strong Yorkshire tea. D. was full of apologies, but I assured him I had enjoyed taking the buses and watching the “shower” at Otley Bus Station. I told him that travel was all about adapting on the fly. I had found my way to him, hadn’t I? When I told them about the dreadful sandwich and tea H. said, “They’ve been there for years. I don’t know how they stay in business.”

D and H. kindly allowed me to nap on their settee. I woke just before 4 PM. We loaded my gear into D.’s car and he dropped me at the front entrance to my hotel. After wandering a maze of corridors and struggling with my key card (I had not stopped to read the instructions), I opened the door to a spacious room with a large bathroom.

Tired as I was, I unpacked all of my clothes, hanging most in the closet and folding the others onto shelves with the laundry bag isolated on the top shelf. I then did computer yoga, typing with my right hand while using my left to hold my Apple charger in the socket of the adapter in a wall plug (The weight of the Apple charger pulls it away from the adapter socket). I got to 85% battery capacity before it was time to teach a writing class on Zoom from the comfort of the big, soft bed — two and a half days later, I still owe my students their class summary — they’ll get it eventually….

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