thankful

rosemary & lemon

A few of the ingredients for our Thanksgiving dinner - Mlou's recipe for

lemon rosemary roast chicken

1 chicken (3 1/2lb)
2 lemons
bunch of fresh rosemary
butter
salt & pepper

Slice one of the lemons and push slices underneath the skin of the chicken wherever possible. Poke holes in the other lemon with a skewer or paring knife and put this lemon and the rosemary inside the cavity of the chicken. Brush entire chicken with melted butter, season with salt and pepper and roast 1.5 hours at 350-375. Cover loosely with foil for first hour, remove foil, baste and cook for the final 30 minutes. Yum.

This was our dinner the first evening dans le cottage on our weekend get away to that Magical Island. MLou served this roast chicken with a salad of greens (arugula would be great) sliced pears and scallions and a simple vinaigrette dressing and this totally yummy side by Dorie Greenspan - Pumpkin packed with Bread & Cheese - like a savoury bread pudding that's baked in a pumpkin. I fought her for the last spoonful - it was that good. (ps she added sauted onions and chunks of ham to her version).

Yesterday I puttered around all day. I finally made chili sauce which involved much standing in the kitchen chopping, (chopping, chopping and more chopping) and all day I listened to my favourite CBC radio 1 station. Sunday's a great line up of programs and yesterday the theme running through the day's schedule of programming was thankfulness and gratitude. Anya recently mentioned on her blog the concept of receiving "messages". Messages from the Universe, from animals, from God, or sometimes from your own internal M. Invincible (you know how I'm a big believer in Animal Totem messages - scroll down to the bottom of this page and click on an animal that has recently visited you). These messages are meant just for us and we need to be aware and in a receptive mood to notice them, to pay attention and to understand their meaning and hopefully to learn and grow a little from them.

I was reminded of my own reasons to be thankful these last few days, by many messages I've recently received - Dr. Oz on Oprah talking about dealing with the stress of the recent financial crash and what it means and feels like for many of us to watch our money and savings dwindle away. He reminded us of the value of breathing and stretching to help to deal with the physical symptoms of stress and to try instead to focus on what's really important in our life - and really, it's not the things, the stuff, the houses ... is it ? it's having people (and animals) around you that love you and that you love back. MLou and I often say as long as we had a library and a park filled with nature nearby to walk our dogs, some sort of roof above our head, a warm cozy nest to sleep in and some food - what more do we really need ? And so many others don't even have these basic things.

Here's a link to the Sunday morning show on CBC (scroll down to mid way on the page and click on the small red square "listen to the most recent broadcast") it's three hours long and it's the last hour that I found most inspiring - an hour long show on being thankful and about appreciating the things in life that are REALLY important. Not always following along on that busy consumer freeway that we've all been on, speeding along fairly unconsciously like lemmings to the shopping mall with everyone else, and not getting so caught up with money. Also another favourite afternoon show - Tapestry and an interview with Margaret Visser on her new book The Gift of Thanks.

It's a funny thing, this recent financial mess - I've been stressing and worrying about money for what seems like forever and suddenly through all this recent crashing and burning I actually feel a bit better in a strange way. Suddenly I don't feel so alone, I feel like I have this huge community of people who now feel just like me, who worry about losing their homes, or not being able to pay their bills. I think in the long run there is a huge silver lining to all this big mess. It's time we all woke up. We (the big we) need to learn to be thankful for what we have (and we have SO much) and not be so concerned all the time with always wanting more.

Long winded & big deep thoughts this early Thanksgiving morning. Wink.

Not sure if you checked out last week's blog of the week here at 29 Black Street - a blog called Down to Earth - this woman should have a book and her blog is like an amazing book - completely chock full of ideas, inspiration and information on living a much more simple and conscious life and also here simple • green • frugal