Carrie’s Painting of the Week – 01/10/14
Thursday, January 9th, 2014
Kicking Up Dust
Oil on canvas, 30×30
By Carrie Jacobson
Like Jeff Page, I find it impossible to escape the pull of the blank calendar. I’ve tried not making resolutions – but truth be told, I like making them. I like the idea of a fresh start, no matter how artificial it may be.
But I’m determined to make resolutions that matter – and which I can keep. So I have three for 2014.
1. Focus on gratitude. I am grateful every day, and I can, should, must and will bring that gratitude to the front of my being. The days in which I do focus on gratitude are inevitably more interesting, more rich and more fulfilling.
2. Stop leaving the recyclables next to the sink, where I’ve rinsed them out. Walk the 20 steps to the recycle bin whenever I rinse, and put the clean cans, jars and bottles in it right away. This is one of my most annoying habits. It is one I detest in myself, and one that I can change easily.
3. Make more soup. Soup is great on all sorts of levels, the spiritual, the culinary, the metaphorical. It makes me shop differently. I buy different – and cheaper! – cuts of meat and poultry, because it will be delicious today, and then will go to great use in soup.
Soup uses all the leftovers, too, turning stuff I used to throw away into stuff that’s delicious and healthy and smells great all day.
This week, I made soup with the bones of our Thanksgiving turkey, which I froze after Thanksgiving. I also used a couple of chicken carcasses, one from a chicken we cooked, one from an already-bought chicken. I’d frozen those bones, too.
I added some roasted vegetables I froze from our Thanksgiving dinner, and the remaining vegetables and pork from our Christmas dinner. We had some odds and ends of this and that that – sausage from Sunday breakfast, the tail end of some ham we had last week, and a turkey kielbasa I found in the meat drawer.
In the afternoon, while I was painting, I cooked potatoes and carrots and onions in the oven, and added them, too. Tossed in some beans, some canned corn and some broccoli I froze this fall, from a neighbor’s garden, and we have an icebox full of fabulous soup.
I love making something from nothing – and especially, making something delicious from nothing.
If that’s not a resolution to treasure and to keep, I don’t know what is!