New Decade, Who Dis?

Well as you can imagine, I didn't participate in the look where I was in 2009 and look where I am now in 2019 retrospectives that were on Facebook and the like.  In 2009 I had more hair and boobs. Now an inch of hair and the boobs. Welp. It beats letting my boobs kill me.

Anywho... New Decade and I'm still here. In my head, I picture myself at 32. I think far too often as if I am not yet a grown-up and that middle age and retirement are thirty years away.  Turns out, that this year I will be half a century old.  I've already lived longer than many people and I'm much closer to retirement age than my high school years.  Wild how time goes by slowly and far too fast at the same time.  How can I be almost fifty and have two kids that are over 18?  It happened so fast and so slowly at the same time. 

For today, the sun is shining, I'm still here and I think I will go for a run.  Later I'll have another bowl of my soup from yesterday and read a book that I got for free for being a member of the Between the Chapters Book Club run by Kensington Books on Facebook. 

My Goodreads book goal for 2020 is 50 books. Get it?  50 years 50 books?  I love numbers tying into my life and my goals. 

Happy New Year. 2020 is going to be amazing (that's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

My year kinda sucked, how about you?

I was planning to write loads of posts in 2019.

Instead, I wound up having cancer and getting to experience surgery, CT scans, MRIs,  and chemo. Chemo is terrible and not that bad at the same time. I was lucky in that I didn't have terrible side effects. For what it's worth, if what you know about cancer and its treatment is derived from TV or Movies rest assured, it's really not like that, of course in TV and film they usually kill off all characters who have cancer which is clearly suboptimal. I do not want life to imitate art in this case.

I like living and I would greatly enjoy getting four more decades on this planet.  The cancer I had, better just stay gone.  To that end, I'm going to be spending the beginning of 2020 doing radiation, I'm all for doing what it takes to get my rate of recurrence as low possible and then I look toward science with my fingers crossed hoping that research going on right now will lead to treatments that will make cancer a chronic disease and not a life-shortening disease for all of us.

Cancer is a real buzzkill when it comes to having fun, making plans, and writing.  Talk about being blindsided by life- or potential death depending on how you want to look at it. Fortunately for me, now that the chemo is over and I've had months to adjust to my genetic predisposition to various cancers, I am ready to get back to life.  Rather I should say back to living and so here we are on New Year's Eve 2019.  Am I doing anything exciting? No. But I am writing, I ran three miles today and I made a new soup recipe.  Exciting?  No. Living? Yes.

The recipe is from this month's Real Simple magazine. Yes, I have the hard copy. I got a deal on a year subscription for $2- can't beat that.

Here is the soup.  It's vegan but still very hearty. The recipe calls for store-bought pesto to be added to the top along with Parmesan cheese crisps, but as you can see I skipped both of those and served it as is.

I looked for a link to the recipe, could not find one, in the magazine it's called Whole Grain Minestrone Soup.  In any case, the ingredients are in the picture above and you can see the directions below. Enjoy!

DIRECTIONS:
Heat the oil in your big pot. Add the first 5 ingredients and cook for 10 mins. Stir occasionally so nothing gets burnt -esp the tomato paste. Then add the rest of the ingredients except the baby kale and simmer for 30 or so minutes until the farro is tender. Take out the rosemary sprig and add the baby kale and simmer for 5 more minutes. If the soup is too thick add up to 3 cups of water.  I added some salt and pepper and Italian seasoning for just a wee bit more flavor.

Happy New Year! I will be focused on a year full of everyone and everything I love to do- so more time with friends and family as well as writing, running, cooking and my resolution for the year- TRY NEW THINGS!