Quinn McDonald's Blog, page 19

Easy Treat: Chocolate Covered Orange Peels

Note: While I can no longer eat chocolate covered orange peels, I still have an orange tree. And in hopes that someone else will enjoy these, here is the recipe.

Chocolate covered orange peels are one of my strong childhood memories–a treat for adults, with adult tastes. The orange peel was soft and slightly bitter, coated in a sugar syrup and then in dark chocolate. Aromatic, sweet and bitter, with a soft peel and brittle chocolate coating–it was always a treat.

Now I care for an orange tree, and the pesticide-free, organic oranges have the most amazing fragrance when they are ready to be picked–floral and dense, not at all what an orange tastes like.

So when we eat oranges, we save the peel to make chocolate-striped peel. Here’s how it’s done:

Ingredients: sugar, clean water, orange peels, good quality dark chocolate (Belgian semi-sweet chocolate from Trader Joe’s works very well.)

Pick four large pesticide-free, organic oranges. Mine are navels. Wash and dry them. Score them from top to bottom (stem to blossom end) into four or six segments. Pull off the peel carefully.

If it breaks, you can still use them. Eat the orange, this is about the peels. Cut the peels in long strips. Remove some of the white pith by using a sharp knife and cutting slowly, holding the knife flat and parallel to the cutting board. Do not remove all the pith—about half will do.

4 oranges will yield about 2 cups of loosely-packed peel.

Put 2 cups of clean water in a small saucepan–about 2 quart size. Bring to a boil. Put the orange peel in, wait for it to barely boil again. Pour out the water. Repeat for a total of three times. This removes the bitter flavor of the peel.

Drain the peel. While it’s draining, make the sugar syrup. Use twice as much sugar as water. For the 2 cups of peel, about 2/3 cup sugar and 1/3 cup water will make a good syrup amount. Pour the sugar and water into the same saucepan as before. Stir until the sugar dissolves. Add in the cooked orange peel. Stir. Keep stirring until the liquid is completely absorbed. The sugar will form crystals on the bottom of the pan.

Immediately pour the peels onto a sheet of parchment or a large platter. Using a fork, pick apart the peels into individual pieces before the sugar coating hardens. The ideal peel will be soft and have a crunchy coating. If the sugar syrup remains sticky, you can slide it into a 200-degree oven for a half hour.

Melt about an ounce of chocolate (more or less to taste) by putting it in a microwave-safe container and heat it at high heat for 30 seconds. Stir to check for consistency. If it isn’t the consistency of sour cream, heat at another 10-second interval until it is. Using a small spoon pick up about half a spoon full and pour a stream over the orange peels. Using a fast back-and-forth motion, you’ll web the orange peels in chocolate. Let it dry and they are ready to eat.

And if you are diabetic or shun sugar, you can always use those yummy peels to make orange dust.

–-Quinn McDonald has fond memories, which will have to be enough for now.

 

Filed under: Food & Recipes Tagged: chocolate covered orange peels, holiday recipes, orange peels

Shifting Words

Teaching grammar and writing is a fascinating job for me. I get to track down word meanings and how they change, watch the language grow. English is a flexible language, and for all the exceptions to rules, crazy spelling and grammar twists, the fact that the language develops new words to cover new experiences is exciting.

Ten years ago, we could not live without the phrase “floppy disk.” Today? It’s long gone. That’s how fast our language develops, uses, discards words.

For language, that’s healthy growth. Some other words that have changed meaning or are entirely new:

Doxing. An internet practice of outing sources or protected witnesses or hackers. Usually done by other hackers.

Bail-out: Used to mean taking water out of something, like a boat, to keep it afloat. Now it means pouring public money into a Wall Street company to keep it afloat. Notice that it used to mean taking out of and now it means putting into.

Like: Used to mean “to care for or about,” but now means “I saw what you posted on Facebook and don’t want to comment,” or even “I hate what is happening to you, but showing solidarity.”

Linked: Used to mean you were probably in trouble, as in “Your name has been linked to the embezzlers.” Now it shows you know a lot of people in businesses related to yours.

Favorite: Used to mean that something was special, unique, at the top of the good heap. Now it means, “I’ve seen your Tweet, and want you to know I’ve seen it.” Often not associated with being pleased at all.

Tag: Used to be a children’s game or a piece of paper affixed to an object to give more information. Now it means grabbing attention for items that might otherwise be ignored. If you’ve ever been tagged on Facebook, you know you have to look and sometimes wish you could have ignored it.

Follow: Used to mean to walk behind someone, sometimes a bit creepy. Stalkers followed you. Now used as a path to popularity: “I have 1,500 followers on Facebook.”

Break: Used to be something bad, a result of a clumsy move. Now, if you do it to the internet, you are an instant idol, for a nanosecond or more. “Your post broke the internet, dude!”

–Quinn McDonald loves watching the language change. But she is still a stubborn user of the Oxford comma.

 

 

Filed under: idea boosts, The Writing Life Tagged: changing words, grammar, internet words, word use

Bring Back the Light

December 21 is the shortest day of the year, for those of us who live to the North of the equator. The North pole is pointed furthest from the sun, and experiences 24 hours of night. The South pole gets a full blast of sun for 24 hours.

Darkness wasn’t valued until the invention of video games and it wasn’t until I moved to Phoenix that I began to like the shorter days that bring us relief from the griddle of summer.

Our ancestors so disliked the dark, they brought artificial light into their lives in as many ways as possible. Sometime in the late 1400s, people decorated trees with apples and nuts to keep the birds alive (and worth eating) and then added candles to the trees, to chase the darkness.

The Yule log is a large piece of oak that is lit to scare away the darkness (and accompanying evil spirits) and burns for days. In some traditions, the remnants of last year’s log is used to light this year’s log. Notice all the light being brought out to brighten the gloom of winter.

Hanukkah candles, which represent the miracle of a small amount of oil lasting for eight days starts with one candle and gets brighter until the last night when a total of nine candles light up the room. (The extra candle burns every night and is used to light the others.)

We are a heat-seeking, story-telling, light-loving people. If the sun and earth don’t cooperate, we’ll invent candles and blinking lights and fireplaces to provide heat and light. If I had my way (and aren’t you glad I don’t run the economy), we would celebrate the winter holidays–all of them–with candles and lights and song and food and forget about the crush of buying presents and the day after Christmas sales.

It’s the dark days of winter. Brighten up someone’s life with a smile or a small kindness. It will bring more warmth to your heart than a plaid slanket.

—Quinn McDonald wishes you a joyous Solstice.

Filed under: Inside and Out, Nature Tagged: candles, nature, solstice, winter

Chasing Clients

You own the business, you have to have clients. Find them, nurture them, and sometimes humor them. But there are also roads I won’t take for the sake of my coaching clients. This week, I’ve had some specific questions, some of them twice. So it’s time to review the underlying ideas to my coaching set up.

llustration from “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint Exupery

1. Coaching is done over the phone or Skype. I won’t go to your house, have you come to mine, or meet you half way. The reasoning behind this is simple: I was trained to coach over the phone. To listen. To not be distracted by facial expressions, which often are done to mask real emotions. I also take notes and people often get distracted by that. “What are you writing down?” “Can I see your notes?” And the conversation shifts from you to note-taking.

2. No in-person coaching means financial savings for you. If I have to drive to meet you, be there early, coach, then drive home, I’m going to have to charge you for that time. One of my goals for coaching has always been to keep the price of sessions reasonable. Once I start driving, that can’t happen anymore. And frankly, a lot of my coaching is international. And the commute’s really boring.

3. You will phone me for the appointment. When you phone me, I know you are ready, that you have put aside time to pay attention. That your heart is fully in it. If I phone you, you will still be eating, won’t have thought about the session, or ask me to phone back “in a few minutes.” I know, this used to happen.

4. Ask and sign up on your own. I won’t coach your friend, your spouse, or your child because you want me to. Unless the client talks to me directly, coaching is not a good idea. Coaching isn’t a spa day. It’s a soul-deep, life-changing experience. And you can’t make someone else have that.

Having these rules in place creates an amazing combination of heart-and-soul concentration and results. I don’t want to coach people who are lukewarm, vague or not really interested. I want to dig in with people who are aware, alive, and stuck. Who have hit a wall, can’t find their way around an obstacle, or can’t find what they know is there. People who want to work hard to build what they have always wanted. For those people, I will pay full attention, give you all my power and charge up your life. I think it’s smart to have the rules; you will, too.

Read more about coaching with Quinn.

–-Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach.

 

Filed under: Art/Freelance Biz, Coaching, idea boosts, Links, resources, idea boosts Tagged: benefits of coaching, Coaching, creativity coaching

Talisman: Stone and Gold

In the years I was a young, single mother, I traveled a lot, internationally. The trips were rushed and I often didn’t have time to shop for a gift for my son. One day, I saw a small stone on the path–a type of stone we didn’t see at home. It came home with me, and I made a story about the stone’s family and how it always wanted to travel. My son enjoyed the story, and a tradition started.

Every trip I took, I brought home a rock and a story. It became a habit to scan the ground for interesting stones. When I hike, I still do.

I’m not a happy airline traveler. But it’s still the fastest way from here to there, so I brave the TSA, the delays, and the bumpy flights. Some years ago, on my way to the airport, I scooped up a rock from the front yard and put it in my pocket. When I got home, I tossed it back in the yard. It became a way for me to assure myself that I’d come back to return the rock. I’d hold the rock during take-off and landing, and it helped keep me calm.

A few weeks ago, during walking meditation, a rock caught my eye. It was unusual, because it was a good 50 feet away, and it was a small stone. I walked over and picked it up. It was remarkably smooth, rectangular, and split halfway down the length. The split created a landscape of a mesa and a distant mountain.

The rock came home with me, got washed, and put in my pocket. It was a good rock. Everybody needs a rock. It went on one trip with me, and another. It did the job of grounding me. One night, I put it under my pillow and dreamed of the most amazing sunrise. I was standing on a Mesa and watched the sun rise, filling me with strength and courage. I left the hotel the next morning and had to dash back to retrieve the stone–I needed it to remind me of the dawns that come after the darkest night, and of strength and courage.

As I often do with special work, I called Matt Muralt, who does custom jewelry in Mesa, Arizona. I explained I wanted a sunrise put into the stone. A thin line of gold inset into the stone face to outline the top of the mesa and the far-away mountain. Matt also drilled a hole in the top for the bail and lined the hole to avoid having the stone wear out the silver bail. Matt had made my pencil amulet, and he transformed this stone into a talisman. From a distance, it looks like a minimalist piece of jewelry. But in my hand, it is the stone that will bring me safely home, with strength and courage.

–-Quinn McDonald knows the value of amulets and talismans.

Filed under: Art in Progress, In My Life, Inside and Out, Nature Tagged: amulet, stone, stone amulet, talisman

When Your Journal Talks to You

Listening to your journal is a skill missed by the very people who would benefit from it. We write a lot in our journals, but then we put them on the shelf and forget about them.  We are used to writing, asking to be heard, seen–praying for answers. We often miss the answer when it shows up. And it will show up. That’s one of the benefits of  journaling.

For a while, all the writing is pouring out of you in an endless flow. One day, you will find yourself thinking about what you are writing–the words aren’t pouring out on their own. You are paying attention. And all of a sudden, you write something interesting. Profound. An answer to a question you had. You are now in a deep connection to your own wisdom or a wisdom greater than yourself. You have tunneled deep enough to be away from the distraction, and you just dug up an important truth.

Truth is surprising. We recognize it and blink. Sometimes we wish it were something else. But the flash of recognition is the key. You will know. Maybe it’s not the answer you had hoped for, maybe it’s exactly what you need.

Your pen may race on, while your mind hangs on to the answer. You may not want to listen, but you will. You will be drawn back to those words, that flash of recognition. It can be an answer, a key to an answer, or simply a truth you have not believed.

And there it is, on the page in front of you. Underline it. Save it. You may have to finish your thought, your paragraph, your page, but the answer is right there.

You have created the start of a habit. A habit of writing and listening. And when you listen, you’ll find answers. You might have to write a long time to learn to trust yourself, but once you start to listen, you will hear your answers.

-–Quinn McDonald keeps a journal and is surprised when it shows her something big.

Filed under: Journal Pages, The Writing Life Tagged: journaling, learning from your own journal, truth in journaling

I’ll Ride With You

While the hostages were still being held in Sydney and all that was known was that the hostage-taker was Muslim, Central Sydney was in lockdown. And then, as must happen, innocent and good Muslims began to be afraid. Women who wear the hijab wondered what would happen if they rode on public transportation.

I’ve seen this before, right after 9/11, in Washington, D.C. I also know the fear of seeing some crime committed and cringing, holding by breath and thinking, “please don’t let it be [my ethnic group].”

Fear is an ugly thing. Its only reaction is anger. But what I began to see in Sydney gave me real hope for the goodness in people. Tweets began to appear, people volunteering to sit with Muslim women (and men) on public transportation.

People who would provide friendly company and companionship, and yes, protection. Because a White person sitting next to a person of color (or wearing a headscarf) and speaking with them reduces the fear level.

The Tweets grew. The hashtag was #Illridewithyou. Hundreds of people began to post their public transportation routes, to identify themselves with photos, scarves, signs on bags and briefcases.

This was not a sanctioned, public, government movement. It was started by one woman and picked up by others who wanted to help. Because help is something everyone can do. Not a big heroic move, just sitting with someone who is scared. Making them feel normal. Because they are. Reducing fear and anger in others.

We can all do small things to reduce fear and anger. Not passing fear on is one way. Margaret Mead, the anthropologist said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

I might be 7,800 miles from that coffee shop that held hostages, but I love those people I don’t even know. They have heart. Big heart. #I’llridewithyou.

—Quinn McDonald knows that it takes small acts of love to make big moves of courage.

Filed under: Coaching, idea boosts, Life as Metaphor Tagged: grassroots, illridewithyou, nonviolence, Sydney

The Past (Tense?) of The Word of the Year

Note: Congratulations to snicklefritzen43! She’s the winner of the Natalie Goldberg book. I hope your word of the year brighten with the book! Contact me at quinncreative [at] yahoo [dot] com with a mailing address and the book will be on the way!

Many of you have chosen your Word for 2015. Some of you are trying out the last cull from the ones you thought of. This is excellent work, thinking about the word or phrase that will serve you well for 2015. How it will fit you, how you will have to make room for it in your life.

Before we leave 2014, let’s think about the year that is quickly coming to a close. What word would you use to describe 2014? Did the word you chose for 2014 match your experience?

Was it close? It doesn’t have to be, after all. You could have had a big intention word and constantly worked on it, while 2014 plotted against you.

Or maybe your word was not big enough and it was an easy word, but not a challenge. Not everything has to be a challenge. Some things can be a treat.

How would you describe 2014 if you thought of it in an overall sense? Was it a year that pushed you to grow? One that you negotiated with a bit of stress but made it through? I like to pit my chosen Word of 2014 against the word (phrase) I’d use to describe 2014 and see how thy line up. Then see if that balance is reflected in my Word for 2015.

Here’s my own example. I started 2014 with the word Scatter, with the intention of broadcasting ideas like seeds–in big, joyous arcs. Halfway through the year, I felt too scattered. I was doing too much, too little, not doing enough well enough and feeling confused. I switched the word to Distill, which I loved doing for the rest of the year.

The year 2014 had some tough challenges for me. There were a few big, crushing disappointments, and a few pleasant, unexpected developments. If I had to choose a phrase for 2014, I’d choose “Give up control.” Every time I try to control the future, the path is too narrow, too paved, too engineered. And every time I think I want that, I experience a big tear in my plans that shows just how foolish that idea is in my life.

Summary: My words for 2014 were both Scatter and Distill and the year was a year of Giving Up Control. The words were a good match for what I experienced, but it felt a bit removed from digging in.

Moving Ahead: My Word for 2015 is Heart.  Yes, I am the one who hates heart shapes, I have no talismans shaped as hearts (to my view), I don’t use them in my artwork. So why choose that word? Because I am working on a book, and I have slowly discovered that I need to write it with Heart, because that will make it come alive, while writing it with brain will just make it accurate. Because passing ideas through my heart will show me what my work really is, not what I think it should be. In a world where I give up control, when I do not compete, or become attached to winning, Heart will help me find balance at the point where I so often fail–going with what is soul-satifying instead of career building. Because soul-satifying will attract the participants who build career. And it’s time for the Tribe. You know, the one you are part of on this blog.

—Quinn McDonald is a writer who keeps a Commonplace Journal.

Filed under: Giveaway, Links, resources, idea boosts, The Writing Life Tagged: looking back at word of the year, word of 2015, Word of the Year

Seeing the World

About a year ago, I got new eyes. To be exact, I had lens implants. When I could no longer drive at night, distinguish brown from purple, and thought every traffic light was huge and fuzzy and had six lights, I went to an eye doctor who told me my eyesight was “near normal.” It could not be. Three doctors later, I met one who asked what I did. I told her I was a writer and then added, slowly, “and an artist.”

Cypress at dawn. © Quinn McDonald, 2014 There are no lights in this photo. Natural light and rain lit up the cypress. The pink is a Bougainvillaea blossom.

“You see the world differently,” she said, “and you need to see the world clearly.” I could not believe that anyone who saw the world as I did at the time could survive. Because I had brought my blood sugar under control and lost a lot of weight, the lens implant surgery was recommended and my life changed overnight. I had clear, color-correct vision back.

Since then, there has not been a single day that I have not been grateful for my eyesight.

Sparkling branches. © 2014

But I keep thinking about how artists, sensitive people, and people who are “different” see the world. This morning I noticed how hard it was to get these photos right. I could see them very clearly, but the camera could not.

Cypress against palm tree. © Quinn McDonald 2014

This is not the first time this has happened. The camera and I do not see the same things. Sure, lighting can be tricky. Angles have to be just right. But so often I see an image that the camera cannot seem to capture. I wonder if I do see the world differently.

--Quinn McDonald likes the world she sees, even if her camera doesn’t see the same thing.

Filed under: In My Life, Nature, Nature, Inside and Out Tagged: rain in Phoenix, see more, seeing the world

Possibility Starts Now

Peter Callesan is a paper artist who cuts images out of paper and uses both the positive and negative space. CreativeGreed has a series of his work. You can also see different sculptures at Peter Callesan’s website.

Paper art by Peter Callesan

His sense of humor combined with his talent turns ordinary  A4 sheets of paper into clever art.

We all know the commentors on this blog are smart, sharp and verbal. So are my coaching clients. Last week, one of my clients was talking about changing her approach to creativity. She’s done some wrestling with her Inner Critic over the past few weeks. “I want to get back to possibility,” she said.

And just like that, I knew it was a brilliant. We wake up in the morning and start thinking what we are not and what we don’t have–“I’m still tired, I didn’t get enough sleep,” or “I’m late,” or “I don’t have time for breakfast,” or  “It’s not Friday, and I hate work.” Imagine if we woke up and got back to possibility.

“It’s a new day, and I wonder what will happen today?” or “If I don’t check my email, I can get to work on time and avoid the stink eye. That would be nice!” The place of possibility is right under the wet blanket we toss on the smouldering resentment of our lives. You don’t have to fear the place of possibility–it doesn’t obligate you. It just has. . . a fresh possibility.

--Quinn McDonald thinks possibility is almost as good as a cappuccino first thing in the morning.

Filed under: Art in Progress, Creativity, idea boosts Tagged: paper art, possibility in life