The Relationship Ninja Volume 6 - Salmon Ceviche and Rebound Sex

When I first went through the horrible pain of a divorce, I went to Nina cause I knew she would know what to say to me, what to feed me and best of all how to relate everything she was feeding me to what was happening my life....and she did.

     I will have been divorced for 5 years this September. None of it is ever easy, and the longer you've been married it seems like the more junk you have to work out. It is a sad situation that we sometimes find ourselves in. The good news is that time does heal things.

    Once again, I was blessed to have my ninja Nina share her wonderful and sometimes harsh advice. This time it was about 'life after divorce." 

    I was gone from Arizona for nearly 18 months and had just recently returned. We hadn't seen each other in a while, but had spoken via phone and she knew that I was coming home to Phoenix. I came back in January of 2012 and it was February before I made it to see my friend. 
    While I was gone, I was involved with someone and things were perfectly fine for a while, then it got dicey and weird. I couldn't figure out why. I knew Nina would have an answer.

     I got the feeling that I may have been interrupting her 'alone time' but she opened the door, saw me, wrapped her arms around me, nearly squeezing the breath out of me and said "Bella, you are home!"

     A brief time later, we were at the dining room table, just off the kitchen having coffee. Nina handed me a giant piece of an amazing "I can't believe anyone would ever want to stop eating this" chocolate cake. 
     It was a Saturday and we had the house to ourselves, her family was all out doing things even her husband had gone off to golf.  

    She reached across the small table and lifted my chin so that I was looking her in the eye. She held my face in her hand for a minute while she looked for something in my eyes, when she let go she immediately said "Let's Make Ceviche!" She got up and headed to the kitchen. I was confused but followed her anyway.

    "Get some things out of the fridge for me?" She half asked, half ordered. She began pulling large bowls and pots out of the cabinets.

"You know Ceviche, yes?" I shook my head. “Well, you will learn now, Bella....There's a large chunk of salmon in there, and some limes in the drawer." I brought her a half of a raw salmon and a small bag of about 8 limes. “Get me the cilantro, a couple of tomatoes, the peppers in the bottom of the fridge and a red onion." Her request was nearly automated, as she cut the salmon into chunks and put them in a large glass bowl.

"Salmon go upstream to spawn." She said I nodded. This is something that I did actually know, being from a Michigan, where many salmon go to spawn.

"Those little basturds will do anything to make this happen." I giggle and she proceeds into the real reason she is teaching me this lesson. 

    "You are the salmon. Follow me Bella?" I shook my head. At that point I was completely dumbfounded. Did she just relate my situation to a spawning little basturd of a salmon? I think she did.                   
       She continued to cut the salmon, when she finished. She took out the hand juicer, began juicing the limes, and continued to talk "Salmon swim upstream against all odds to return to the place where they were born." She paused. I had no idea that she knew so much about fish, but then she always amazes me. "You are the salmon. You want love and attention and rebound sex." Who doesn't want love and attention? It's the rebound sex, I didn't understand why she was calling it that.

    "Nina, explain 'rebound sex' to me please. I just spend 18 months in a place I didn't wanna be with someone who I thought was someone they weren't. This is all very confusing." I told her. She nodded. 

     I get it, “she answered " but there's more to the story and the cooking." She held up her finger in infamous Nina style, signifying that she had one more point to make. 

     When the limes were juiced, she set them aside and diced and chopped the Serrano, the tomatoes, and the onion into a separate bowl, she added some spices and tossed them for a minute.

"This is you before you left Phoenix." She pointed to the bowl of items that she just tossed together "A bit of a hot mess, no?" I smiled, nodded and agreed with her. She continued "Confused, hurt, and not knowing what you want besides attention and love, yes?" I nodded again. "Bella. No one wants their life to collapse. No one wants to be alone." She touched my chin again, making me look her in the eye. She was shaking her head. 

"So after they make it back to the place where they were born, the fish I mean. They will lay eggs. 

    Rebound sex has to do largely with being the object of someone's attention. That's not the person you are going to spend eternity with, especially if you are not equally yoked...ah, on the same page, I think you call it. Sex is physical, it doesn't have to be 'on the same page'. Relationships have to be on the same page or it fails." She made a signal as if cutting her throat with her finger. 

    She went back to making the Ceviche. "Now, we add the lime to the salmon, this 'cooks' the salmon. In reference to the rebound sex, this is the part when you will have had just about enough and are ready to move onto something more permanent or perhaps be single for a while." I look at her in disbelief. But I recall how I felt at the end of the short lived fun and I realize that she's right. She leaned over to me and though we were the only ones there she half whispered "Rebound sex is something that no one really talks about. But I'm telling it to you, so you can recognize where you've been, now you can move forward." 

     Thirty minutes later she served those little salmon basturds on a crunchy tostada shell and we had Ceviche for lunch.

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Relationship Ninja Vol 5 - Equally Yo(l)ked

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The Relationship Ninja Vol 5 - Equally Yo(l)ked

     A long time ago, my good friends Peggy and his sister Jeanie told me that if I was ever to find what I DID want in a significant other, that I would first have to discover all of the things that I DIDN'T want. And of course, like always, they were right.

     Today we are cooking with eggs. Nina is in an "Egg Frenzy." We are not making one egg dish, we are are making several. On the menu line up for the egg recipes are: deviled eggs, meatloaf, and an assortment of sweet breads. They may not all sound like egg dishes, but they do all require eggs.
     There is generally a purpose to all of this cooking, or is there? I think Nina just loves to cook and share her gifts of  her delicious treats and knowledge with the world.
     Our first acts of Eggery are a banana nut bread, followed by a cranberry orange bread. Nina has all of the ingredients spread out on the counter. She hands me the loaf pans and motions for me to grease and flour them. She's told me before 'without a good base, food will crash and burn, just like your relationships.' And I know she's right.
     "First understand that eggs are used for many different reasons. Leavening, richness and moisture and as a binder. They are for leavening when you don't have baking soda or powder," Nina stops talking and holds her index finger up in the air, looking over her glasses that are falling down her nose, scolding to make her point. "or to off set acidic agents like vinegar or buttermilk, like in banana or a nice cranberry orange bread. There are many people who are the leavening agent in their relationships. I've seen you do this before child... It's not always healthy to be the leavening agent. You see this can often mean that there is something toxic in your relationships....maybe the other is a drinker, or they do things in excess that can damage the relationship. But we need leavening in the breads. Yes, a stabilizer. Many people are looking for a 'stabilizer' in a partner for various reasons; it's a common form of denial in my opinion." She emphasizes the 'O' in opinion. 
"I generally think those looking for a 'leavening agent' don't have the confidence to love themselves. That makes me sad." She shrugs her shoulders and begins adding ingredients to a large mixing bowl. 
     When the breads are safely in the oven, She takes out a large pot to boil the deviled eggs in. She puts about five inches of water in the pot and asks me to bring her two dozen eggs from the fridge.     
     She takes the first carton from me and and withdraws one egg at a time, placing them carefully in the water. "These are the beginning of what needs to be equally yoked. You understand equally yoked?" Apparently the look on my face says that I do not understand the phrase, even though I give a little chuckle to the 'yolk' pun she's used. 
"Equally yoked is what John and I are, what that cute little Italian couple you told me you knew as a child were, and your grandparents were. They had the same 'core' values. They believed the same way. They didn't worry about trust or lack of it. They knew, they BELIEVED in each other...and God too." She points to the ceiling and then quickly signs the cross in front of her. Your generation, not so blessed maybe." She finishes adding the eggs to the water in speaking silence but gently hums a tune I recognize as 'It had to be you.' 
       Once we have the boiled eggs peeled, cut, and the yolks in a separate bowl, the lesson continues 
"The yolks provide the rich taste in the whites. Another purpose of eggs is to have richness in flavor. Richness, like adventures. Equally yoked is also about having fun and feeling fulfilled. Adventures, like travelling, raising children, or something as simple as laughing together, provides the foundation for memories, making your life rich." She smiles and mashes the yolks with with a fork. A short time later two dozen beautiful deviled eggs share an 'equally yolked' platter.
       Our final task, to finish the day's cooking is a meatloaf. As she's forming the loaf in the pan and arranging it for it's final oven destination, she tells me..
"The eggs are a binder in this case. A binder holds things together. In the case of the meatloaf, it binds with the bread crumbs and meat, coagulating in togetherness in the oven." She laughs then, so do I. She can be very silly sometimes; it's one of the reasons I adore her. " A good relationship binder are two who are willing to share responsibilities, like work, gardening, and chores. Also, equally and if not more important in being equally yoked is your emotional state of being. One will quickly outgrow the other if they are stifled by the other instead of encouraged, or one remains trapped in the past, unable to let go of the past, or refuses change altogether. You must be like the meatloaf, that changes from it's raw form to a juicy encrusted cooked dish. Even it has to go through a transformation to become edible."

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The Relationship Ninja Vol 4 Part 2 - Marriage and the Wedding Meal

 Not for lack of trying, but here again, sometimes we get busy doing things, living life and being distracted, and I hate to admit it, but it happens to all writer's at some point...we just get writer's block and even the stories that we know and love to tell and talk about, just don't seem to fit correctly on the page. After a bit of thought, a smidge of writer's block, and of course all of life's distractions; I want to finish telling you about "Marriage and the Wedding Meal."  Follow me.
  
    After lunch and coffee ( I love that about Nina...there's always coffee), we go back to work on the menu.
    "It's hard to talk about or think about food, right after you eat, no?" I nod my head. I'm stuffed, and thinking I should be looking for a treadmill or we should go for a walk. Nina grabs a remote and turns on some music. 
    As if on cue Earth, Wind, And Fire's 'September' promptly begins, and we're dancing...Seriously? How we could not be? I bet you are right now. It's just one of those grooves that make you groove. She turns the music down after a few minutes.
"This meal, needs an antipasto, and more bread." Nina says matter-of-factly. She looks at me over her thick rimmed glasses. "You know it too, Baby Girl." She doesn't wait for my answer "We'll make room." She says. I look over her shoulder and read as she writes and dictates aloud. "Mozzarella, grape tomatoes, green and black olives, in a nice vinegar & oil with pepperoncinis on the side,...You don't need to be Italian to know this meal needs an antipasto."
    "And bread." I remind.
    "Hmm, of course." She's in the 'trance.' It's kind of a deer in the headlights look. Interrupting her trance, I ask 
    "What do the antipasto items represent?"
   "The in laws." Is all she says. I don't have the heart to ask why. She looks so serious, writing the items on her list. I chuckle under my breath and patiently wait for her return. It's slow, but she finally begins to speak "Lasagna with meat, and Eggplant Parmesan for the vegetarians, for the main course." She announces. "Why are so many people Vegee..tear..ian" she drags out the word with thick enunciation "these days? What's wrong with meat?" I shrug my shoulders. I know she means me, since I haven't eaten meat in over two years. I have my reasons, whatever anyone else's reasons are, I have no idea.
"The Eggplant Parmesan with wide noodles. Charlie will want the angel hair pasta, but I hate that. It get's all 'mushy.'" John interjects quietly from behind his rattling newspaper in the other room 
     "For goodness sakes, let the girl have what she wants." 
     "Mind your business, Johnny." she calls. I just smile at these two. She turns back to me and says "Now, the lasagna will have meat. I think sweet Italian sausage. I like hot but I agree with Charlie and most people will like the sweet better."
      Nina digs in her extremely impressive recipe box. She still has one. It's kind of old school and cool. I am still dismayed that a load of people can't or don't bother or learn to cook these days. 
      She finishes her list and hands it to me to make sure that she hasn't missed anything for the main meal. I approve and hand it back. "Now, coffee and dessert." She says. 

continued from part 1
    
    

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The Marlboro Man - Opinions

Sometimes we are overly obsessed with pleasing people or living up to their standards or expectations. My first experience with this thought was delivered to me from a man I look up to on every level. Sometimes the simplest words, can make the biggest impact on you.       

Most of you have "met" the Marlboro Man through me at some point, and know that he is one of my ultimate heroes. He is the one who gave me direction in my life, when I really had none and was quite clueless. If we could pick our own relatives, I'd pick him more than once! 

      Nick (the Marlboro Man) is a striking force of nature. He's one of those men that you hope will live until they are a hundred and twenty just so you can listen to their advice and learn from them, 

       He is the Shi Fu of cowboys, all things cowboy, and represents his life lived here on earth as a cowboy. For those who have never met a real cowboy, think John Wayne, direct, right as rain, and comfortable in his own skin. 

      There are four of us. Marlboro Man, me, Wade and his brother Jesse. We are in Tombstone, playing cards. It's 2 a.m. and no one has won the pot yet. Marlboro Man lays those piercing blue eyes on me, and with perfect clarity, let's me know I am the target of something he is about to say. He glances at his cards for a second and pulls one from his hand, as he lays it face down on the table and says 

     "You look distant, Cupcake, what's the skinny?" He winks at Wade. Wade smiles and Jesse chuckles into his arm. Marlboro Man shoots them a glare and they immediately settle into a hush. I watch the smoke from his cigarette nub rise and engulf his face, his eyes never leave me. He's waiting for an answer.

     "I've been thinking about what I wanna be when I 'grow' up. If I feel like growing up that is." Wade chuckles. It seems as if he knows what's coming next.

     "Who says you gotta do anything at all?" The old cowboy asks.

     "Unwritten societal expectation." I say, as if I know something.

     He lays his card hand face down on the table, snubs out the cigarette, draws another from the pack in shirt pocket, lights it, sits back in his chair. Wade fills the shot glass in front of MM with Jack Daniels. They all look at me and then Marlboro Man leans in, puts his elbows on the table, slams the shot and says

     "Opinions are like Assholes and drunk relatives, everyone has one. You don't need anyone's approval to do or be anything, Cupcake." He pauses, sits back in the chair, changes his mind, and then leans in again. “If you listen to what everyone else wants, you'll find yourself always chasing your tail and gettin' nothin' done; Or worse trying to make everyone else happy. That's not your job. You got one life, one job, yours. What makes you happy? What things do you wanna do, be, or have? At the end of this life, the only ones you gotta answer to is yourself and God." He winks at me, and then flips over his hand to reveal a full house of Aces over kings.

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The Relationship Ninja Vol 4 Part 1 - Marriage and the Wedding Meal (2 Courses)

      In the "Let's Eat" chapter of my book "A Perfect Body" the character's have a euphoric and heavenly experience with their food. It's not so much about the love of food (there is nothing respectful about they way they gorge themselves); it's about the complete power that the situation has over them and their unwillingness to change.

       Today we are planning a wedding.......


      My Ninja, Nina's second eldest daughter is planning a wedding. Nina explains that Charlie's (short for Charlene) fiance Jeff has been asking Nina and her husband to marry Charlie for over a year. Yes, you guessed it, Nina's 'old school' beliefs and ideas about marriage have been the hold up here and for good reason (she says).
     "Let them be happy."  Her husband John says from behind the rattling of his newspaper in den. He mumbles something else inaudible, and Nina calls back
     "Mind your business John." She then turns to me sitting across the kitchen table and says "They've dated for five years, these two. They got engaged three years ago and Jeff has been asking me and John to have a wedding to the girl for about fourteen months....and a few days." She stops fidgeting with her ring, looks up at me, shrugs her shoulders and adds "but whose counting?" Her thick accent breaking through. She's counting, I know she is. Marriage is a big deal to Nina. 
    She prepared the wedding cake for her eldest daughter's wedding a few years before. It was beautiful. The wedding was stressful. The groom's mother was a pain in the neck, but my Ninja was composed and awesome through the whole thing. That time she was only creating the cake; this time she won't actually be cooking the meal (it's being catered) but she has been chosen by Charlie to plan the menu.
"Sometimes, my kids don't understand the freedoms they have. They get to choose things that I never got to." Her parents were very strict and very much thought in favor of arranged marriages, Nina's parents had had an arranged marriage. Fortunately for Nina and her siblings the parents decided not to continue that tradition, I think she used that 'idea' more to teach her children about the importance of making solid and good decisions than anything else.
    Today we are planning a 5 course meal. I am excited to hear her opinions on the lovely foods that we will be putting together for the menu.
"I think we should start with Wedding Soup. You understand the five things that make a successful marriage, yes?" I shake my head. But I am absolutely open to hearing what her perspective is going to be.
    The Wedding Soup represents HEALTH; the staple Nina says that will carry the marriage. There are four other areas that are dependent on the health of the marriage; health is the umbrella for the others.
     The first and generally the most obvious when we hear the word health is physical health.
"You must have good health and mental strength to endure the long hours of balancing work, and family. People forget that once the kids come along, you still gotta have time with your spouse away from the kids. It's a constant battle to keep things together. Something is always trying to come between you...job, parents, family, friends with opinions or jealousies. Yes jealousies. We will talk about that later, Darling." She drawls at me and chuckles.
    The Wedding soup generally has a chicken broth base, meatballs, sausage or some type of chicken as well as bread crumbs and small noodles like an orzo or  tiny stars with vegetables such as celery, onion, and carrots. My ninja says "The broth represents physical strength, the meat represents mental strength, the noodles and bread are the bombardments of everyday life and the vegetables are the divine balance that you seek." I never learned so much from soup!
"Course two will be an appetizer whose fancy name is hors d'oeuvre." She says it like it's spelled, not like it's pronounced   or derve. Her thick accent getting in the way again, as it often does when she's excited or stressed. "Let's stick with calling them appetizers, no? It's much easier." I nod "You are so quiet today." She notices.
   "I am learning," I tell her "You can't learn when your mouth is moving." She smiles at me and shakes her finger reminding me of Billy Crystal in The Princess Bride when he talks about his favorite sandwich.
   "At least I raised you right." she jokes. "Now, Shrimp cocktail or bacon wrapped oysters?"
   "What's the main course?" I ask. She looks at me and I immediately get that her question, though she said it out loud, was rhetorical and for sorting purposes only. We are not yet to the lesson of the main course, I stop talking and she continues, until she has decided that the appetizer will be Shrimp Cocktail.
   The Shrimp Cocktail represents what Nina calls HOUSEKEEPING. She explains that two people moving into together have a responsibility to create a nice home for one another. Sometimes that means one handles everything at home while the other handles work or things outside the home. But it should be a combined effort and not an expectation. 
  The shrimp can be eaten alone or dunked in a lovely spiced red cocktail sauce, either way she says when they come together, it should work well. The horseradish should not over power the sweetness of the red sauce. She explains the dangers of the sauce being too spicy.
   "If one gives more and the other takes too much, your house will be out of balance. This makes people fight over things that can be handled by simple communication. Sometimes we don't think first. We react." She raps on her head closed fist like she's thumping a coconut. "Anyway, the cocktail sauce has to be perfectly balanced tangy to sweet." She puts her pad of paper down and goes to make lunch. I follow her into the kitchen.


to be continued...

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The Relationship Ninja Vol 3 Family and a Breakfast Casserole

    When I first met Nina, we would always cook on Sundays and make it a "merged" family afternoon. We are cooking on a Saturday afternoon in this event, so that all is ready for Sunday morning. Weekend family events with Nina and her family are never dull. She once asked me why it was only me and why I did not have any other family in Arizona. I explained that I was the only one who moved away from my small home town. That was when she taught me about breakfast casseroles.
    "They can be tricky," she said "more like a quiche and less like a souffle. But you have to know how to add the ingredients to get the results that you want."
     First we cut potatoes and onion, next cook and drain sausage crumbles, then crisp the bacon. "There are many other vegetables we could add in place of the meat, but I find that the meat adds a specific type of flavor to the business." She smiles and cracks egg number twelve into the large mixing bowl. "Stir those potatoes." she directs and motions with her head as she whips the eggs into a frenzy. 
   The potatoes are being slow roasted before they will be added to the mixture. I open the oven and stir them," The key here" Nina says, "is to have everything prepped and ready to go." I look inquisitively at her and ask 
   "And how does that relate?" The thought pops out of my mouth before I can stop it.
   "I was just about to tell you that." She heavily enunciates the word that. "sometimes you get ahead on the conversation." she warns. I nod and listen.  "You see all of these ingredients have to be prepped, much like when people are young children. If you do it one way, you get a certain result. If you do it another way, you get quite a different result..." she pauses and stops whipping the eggs.   
   Nina gives me a stern look, but her eye brows are raised as if to say 'Take good mental notes.'  I know I am simply to listen. " Like the potatoes. See how we slow roast them in the oven?" She doesn't wait for me to answer and I nod as she continues. "We could par boil them on top of the stove, or even microwave the little buggers, and with each we will would get a different result. This way, they are more flavorful and they have a little bit of crust on top. If this were a child, you would have a well behaved and disciplined child, because you spent time with them, you understand?" I nod. 
   She sets two 9 X 13 pans on the counter top. "Now we will make two. One because some people don't like meat." She dumps the bacon and the potatoes (the well behaved children) into the pan and says "Here's the TV family, like the one that causes people to have dysfunction or think they are not as good as they could be, you know?" I continue to nod and smile. I get her point. Then she adds sausage
into the same pan and describes it as a 'blended family' step father or mother. I noticed the potatoes, grow a bit less crunchy as they soak up the little bit of grease from the meats. "What's Happening to the children?" I joke. "We have changed the original family make up by adding more fat, you know, making it different. The children are learning a different perspective exists." She says as she pops one of the potato children into her mouth. "And they are tasty too." She smiles and laughs. She adds onion, and a few green chilies. " These additions represent opinions. They can add flavor or they can over power the meat and potatoes if we add too many, then you will have problems for sure. The flavors will fight for dominance. So to calm it all down we add the constant in every breakfast casserole, eggs. The eggs, represent the right to choose. Once they are cooked they are a more stable environment for the rest of the ingredients." Now we were ready to put the first mixture into the oven. 
   As I hand Nina the pan to place into the oven she continues
 "This Breakfast family casserole now will have stability. We have given it the meat, or the head of the family if you will, the children (behaved and disciplined) and enough opinions to add flavor but not over power the choices the impressionable potato children will need to make in their lives, they will be stabilized by the eggs or the beliefs that they have based their opinions on. And here my Dear, you have Family and a Breakfast Casserole." She smiles and hugs me, grabs her coffee cup. refills it from the pot, and refills mine. Next I follow her to the table. where we sit to wait for the casserole. 
    "You know, even when you love the thought of breakfast...like a breakfast casserole - not everyone likes it? It's sometimes bland and boring and your get tired of eating the leftovers faster than you want more." 
   We had already prepped the vegetarian casserole to go in when the other came out. She made vegetarian because not everyone liked meat. "Meat upsets some tummies yes? Kind of like advice from your parents when you realize they were right you made a bad choice. You get that feeling in your stomach knowing that you were wrong and they were right.

 

Cheers until the next adventure

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