Reflections and Risotto

I don't rant very much, but every so often I hear or read something that makes me want to shake some sense into people. On my way to work, I heard the local radio morning show talking about a new poster for an upcoming Yogi Bear movie. Apparently, people are protesting the appearance because it's "inappropriate" and contains sexual innuendo. I looked at the picture in question and all I have to say is COME ON! If I hadn't heard about the picture's apparent double meaning, I never would have thought that on my own. I'm getting sick and tired of people reading meanings into pictures/books/movies/anything than what is there and/or intended. Sometimes I wonder if there are people who sit around, sifting through books and media, just waiting to find something they deem questionable to cry "Inappropriate! We must protest!" Human behavior never ceases to astound me in its insanity. /end rant

Ok, now that that's over with, time to get on to this week's recipe: risotto. This is one of my favorite recipes, and I have used it many a time for something good and comforting. It was actually passed on to me by my best friend, and it's a recipe easy to adapt to your personal taste. You can use it for either a main dish or to compliment something else you want to serve.

Here is what you'll need:
4 c. chicken broth (or vegetable broth to make it vegetarian)
2 Tbs. butter
1 Tbs. extra-virgin olive oil
1 small to medium onion (chopped into small pieces)
5-6 button mushrooms (chopped into small pieces)
2-3 cloves of garlic (minced)
1 1/2 c. arborio rice
1/2 c. dry white wine
1/2 c. grated cheese (whatever you prefer--parmigiano reggiano or chedder are my go-tos)
salt and fresh ground pepper (optional)

Here's what to do:
1. Put the broth in a saucepan and set it to simmer.
2. In a deep skillet, melt the butter into the olive oil over medium to medium-high heat. Add the garlic, onions, and mushrooms and saute for about 3 minutes. Add the arborio rice and saute for another 2 minutes.
3. Add the wine to the rice and let it cook away, about 2 minutes.
4. Add the broth two ladels at a time. Let it absorb into the rice each time before adding another two ladels.
5. After broth has been completely absorbed, turn off the heat, stir in the cheese, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot.

That's it! Risotto is not that hard to make. The great thing about it is that you can add whatever you want with the rice, like additional veggies or some small pieces of meat. And the garlic, onion, or mushrooms can be omitted if you don't like them. I personally like to serve it on the side with chicken that I've fried up in olive oil and garlic (can you tell I'm Italian?). One thing I would recommend is using a nice drinking wine. One of the "rules" about cooking with wine is to use a wine that you would want to drink for the food. So crack open that bottle of white that you like so much, put some in the risotto, and have the rest with dinner. It will taste yummy, I promise!

If you have something that you love in your risotto, let me know. :)

The Online Student

I have the blessing of not having to go to a physical campus for my program. All of my classes and coursework are completely online. And while to some this may seem like the easier road, all evidence to this point has pointed to the contrary.

There is more work involved on the part of the student. More responsibility lands on the shoulders of the student to stay current with readings, assignments, posting responses, and communicating with fellow classmates. In many ways, an online program is harder because you lose that face-to-face interaction with your instructor and other classmates. Still, I think I can make that up with organization, motivation, and time-management. All three of these qualities are ones that are agreed to be absolutely necessary for a program like the one I am now embarking on.

I have the technology aspect down. I grew up using various computers. My dad had one of the old systems that was basically a black monitor with gold font (yay DOS!). I also had my own computer in the 4th grade that ran on Windows 3.11 (now that's a blast from the past), so I've followed the PC as it has evolved through the past couple of decades. I also created and continue to maintain the library website used by the campus I work at. Learning new interfaces and computer programs for my coursework has been virtually pain-free.

But the teamwork aspect of this program may be the one thing that will upset this grasp on confidence that I've been slowly building. The picture paired with this post has been my idea of teamwork for a good long while: something that will ultimately drag you down, so should therefore be avoided at all costs. Viewing two videos, one a presentation given by Dr. Ken Haycock and the other a presentation by Enid Irwin, has started turning my views more to the positive. However I still see so much that can go wrong.

Dr. Haycock discussed a lot of factors that affect, improve, and detract from teamwork. He talked about the type of teams that form and for what reasons. One of the terms he used, vertical teams, caught my attention. He explained these as being more successful in libraries because it brings very different perspectives to a problem and would involve different levels of an organization working on a common issue. To that effect, I would argue that any teams I form during my MLIS program would be vertical teams by virtue of the fact that I have seen in merely the first week the variety of students and backgrounds that this program attracts. In my current class alone, there is a student who just graduated with her BA, a student who has done work in the Amazon, a student who has been working in network security, and everything in between. My classmates live all over the nation. Some are parents (both of human children and furry ones!). Many have full-time jobs that they will have to balance with school. I'm guessing that my other classes will have students that are just as varied. With so many diverse backgrounds and so many varied experiences that we are all drawing from, our teams could not be anything but the vertical teams that Dr. Haycock describes.

But successful teamwork cannot be defined only by the type of team that has formed. A successful team has followed through in its plan and completed its objective. After listening to Dr. Haycock's and Ms. Irwin's input on teamwork, I put together 10 rules for good teamwork.
1. Issues discussed should stay on topic. This will help the team move forward without a lot of digressions.
2. Whatever you say to one person, you should be prepared to say to the whole group. Sidebars keep information from the group as a whole, and your teammate is not the person to discuss your personal dislike of another classmate in the team.
3. If the assignment is not clear, get clarification from the instructor.
4. Clearly state your performance expectations for the assignment. That way no one is left in the dark about any one thing.
5. Make a plan for the assignment that clearly establishes tasks and the deadlines for them.
6. Agree on some ground rules that everyone will follow. These can address things like tardiness, lack of follow-through, etc and can outline consequences for not following them.
7. Take responsibility for your actions, and respect your teammates.
8. Check in several times during the assignment as a group to review your progress so far and your goals.
9. Follow through with your assigned tasks/role until the assignment/course is complete.
10. Group health is everyone's responsibility. If something is amiss, it's everyone's duty to address it and come up with a solution.

With all of that (and more) to mull over, I will end this post. This week's recipe will be posted on Monday.

**Picture was originally found on the Very Demotivational website.**

Find Your Comfort

Things are going well on the academic front. I'm progressing steadily through my school work, and so far I'm able to balance work and school (and life) fairly well. The true test of my ability will come when I dive into my first three-unit class at the end of the month. Until then, I'm floating in a bubble of confidence because I'm able to get through what I should, when I should, and how I should. And maybe that's done on purpose so that you have that confidence when the rest of your classes do finally start.

I started thinking more about food and why I chose to add this other aspect into my blog. Why post and share recipes? What about sharing recipes appealed to me so much? I realized that food is my comfort. It may not be the healthiest of things (especially since I love making desserts), but there it is. I have so many memories of food, and a lot of my culture on both sides of my family is celebrated with food.

Let me give you some family history. My dad was born and raised in Sweden. He met my mother when he came to the US to visit his cousin who was marrying my mother's sister. The way my mother tells it, my father was no more than a skinny boy the first time she met him. It wasn't until he returned years later that my parents fell in love. My mother comes from a very Italian family. My great-grandparents settled in the area where my family still lives now, and raised my grandmother and her brothers during the eras of prohibition and the Great Depression. My family has a very, shall we say, colorful history from that time.

Because of these strong and much-celebrated cultures on both sides of my family, we would usually celebrate the big holidays twice. We would have Swedish Christmas on Christmas Eve, and Italian Christmas on Christmas Day, allowing both parents and sets of grandparents to celebrate the holiday with their traditions and with our family.

Years went by, and my grandparents passed away one by one, but still we hold to these traditions. I started to become more involved in the cooking for our holidays for both sides of the family. It had become very important to me to help out and learn the various recipes; I didn't want these traditions that I loved so much to go away. I started out small by helping with the Swedish meatballs, and slowly worked up to being able to do them on my own. Now, I can put together the whole Swedish Christmas julbord myself (which I had to do one year when my father was in the hospital). As for the Italian Christmas, my grandmother would make homemade raviolis from scratch every year until the day she died. All the ladies on my mom's side of the family (and me of course) keep this tradition alive by making the raviolis, just like Gramma did, every year in November. It has become a labor of love.

Perhaps that is why food is my comfort--because cooking is a comfort. Every time I'm in the kitchen, I always think about Gramma and Farmor (my two grandmothers). Both of these wonderful women were expert cooks, and I feel as though they passed some of that on to me. I miss both of them terribly, but in the kitchen they don't feel so far away. The kitchen is their domain that I am now sharing. Somehow, I know they're watching me putter around with my mixing bowls and my cutting boards and my frying pans, and they approve.

Cooking is my comfort, and I will use that to help center myself in the next few years when things get rough, when deadlines are imminent, and when I need a moment to step back and take a break. Everyone should find their comfort for those times when life gets to be too full, too chaotic, too much. What's yours?