Author: KC Shomler

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Why Yes, I do have a degree in Philosophy

I’ve been mocked by many over the years for my philosophy degree. Here’s aRodin-the thinker sculpture-kcisme-philosophy=pithy wisdom sample of the gems that these wise critics have imparted to me:

“Philosophy is just mental masturbation.”

“A philosophy degree won’t get you a job.”

“What are you going to do with THAT?”

“She has a philosophy degree? HAHAHAHAHA!”

The level of derision my degree provokes just blows me away, because I use my philosophy background every single day.

It may not have taught me a lot of useful (or even useless) facts, per se, but studying philosophy did teach me how to operate my brain better, which has wide applicability (that goes far beyond being able to dissect people and figure out what the hell they’re up to, but that’s a definite perk, too). I can read deep, dense writing effectively and find meaning in it. I can evaluate the validity of an argument and use logic to craft my own. I can contemplate the meaning of life in a meaningful way. I can understand and appreciate multiple points of view and potential courses of action. I can write, clearly and persuasively. I can consider the moral implications of my actions and the actions of others.

I am where I am today precisely because of my foundation in philosophy, and I am so very grateful for having that tool under my proverbial belt. It’s pushed me to seek a better life. I’ve weathered my share of losses and abuses and changes, but I’ve emerged stronger and better as a result of knowing how to apply the hidden lessons beneath those things.

My degree hangs proudly in my laundry room. Why the laundry room? Well, partly because I think it is a funny play on what many believe is the quality of work my philosophy degree has prepared me for. But at the same time, it’s a reminder to myself that even while I’m doing the most mundane of chores, my mind is still working on bigger, badder stuff.

 

“Knowledge doesn’t age well. Methods do.”

—Erik Weiner, American writer and comedian

 

 

 

 

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Hot Salad

I love salad. The crunch, the colors, the unbridled creativity involved in making plants reach their amazing potential. A big plate of vegetables also makes me feel good inside. Nourished. But in the colder months? Salad is not so appealing. I want something to warm me up! While soup often stands in for salads for me when I want something veg-heavy, there are times when I want to eat something with a fork instead.

Enter the concept of the hot salad. I first saw this idea on TikTok and was captivated by the thought of making a warm salad. And I don’t mean the 1980s version of the “wilted” spinach salad or the more recent travesty of the grilled romaine salad (yuck). I mean an honest to god salad, but, you know, heated up so it’s not cold anymore.

The naysayers will say this is really just a “bowl” or a side dish of roasted vegetables in disguise, but so what? I like the idea of giving boring old salad an upgrade. Making it spicier and sexier, making it “hot”.

This is less a recipe and more of a method, so give it a try, freely substituting for your tastes. I found the following combination incredibly satisfying, even on a wintry day.

hot salad

 

Kale, chopped and tough stems removed

White onion, sliced

Bell pepper (whichever color you like), sliced

Beans of choice, cooked or canned and drained (I used cannellini here)

Neutral oil

Smoked paprika

Garlic pepper

Tarragon or other dried herb of choice

Quinoa, cooked in broth

Chili oil

Lemon juice and zest

Salt and pepper

 

Cook quinoa as per package directions substituting broth for water.

Drain and spread out on a lined sheet pan to cool and dry while oven heats to 350 degrees. Toss cooled quinoa in a judicious amount of hot chili oil and spread back out on lined pan. Cook in oven until browned and crisp, stirring occasionally.

crunchy quinoa, crisped in the oven

Remove cooked quinoa from oven, set aside and crank the heat up to 400 degrees.

 

In a big bowl, combine vegetables and beans, coat with oil and sprinkle liberally with herbs and spices.

Spread veg mix out on a sheet pan and set bowl aside (we will use it again). Roast veg mix in the oven until everything is tender and the kale leaves have some color and crunch.

In same big bowl, combine veg mix and the zest and juice of one lemon, toss and taste for salt and pepper.

Serve in bowls and add crunchy quinoa.

This is pretty healthy and satisfying all on its own, but a runny egg on top takes it to the next level.

 

 

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The 4-Hour Workweek, by Tim Ferriss

It is a tantalizing title, isn’t it?  Many of us would love to escape the bondage of the 9-5 life, but does this book deliver us from that evil? Maybe or maybe not, but it is an interesting read nonetheless.

I love how the big ideas in this book really got me thinking and dreaming of a life better structured around my actual priorities rather than those of some rando employer who could care less about my personal well-being.

I am a non-conformist at heart and this book speaks to my subversive side. The working norm in this country is just that – the norm. Doesn’t mean it’s the only way to go about it. Tim convincingly presents examples from his own experience of how it really is possible to redesign your life to maximize enjoyment while making a living. Really.

He goes into a lot of detail about certain ways to go about this kind of approach to work with an emphasis on building a business that can be automated to free up your time to enjoy life. It makes sense, but he kind of lost me in these parts since I do not have an interest in building such a business. However, there were still a ton of tips to streamline work and increase effective use of time that were insightful and apply to anyone.

4 Good quotes from the book:

“Most people aren’t lucky enough to be fired and die a slow spiritual death over 30-40 years of tolerating the mediocre.”

“Don’t only evaluate the downside of action. It is equally important to measure the atrocious cost of inaction.”

“Don’t save it all for the end. There is every reason not to.”

“Let’s define ‘laziness’ anew – to endure a non-ideal existence to let circumstances or others decide life for you, or to amass a fortune while passing through life like a spectator from an office window.”

 

Life wisdom obtained:

He points out how dumb it is that we all play along with this deferred gratification model of saving for a retirement that may never come. Or when it does, we might be too old or infirm to enjoy it. He is so right.

He really got me thinking about money in a new way. I’m paraphrasing Tim, but he convincingly shows us that the goal really isn’t gathering lots of money. It’s about the lifestyle we want and that is where we need to put our attention. Many of us think and dream about having an abstract pile of big bucks in the bank, but why? Why do we want that money? To live a great life filled with experiences that make us feel alive, fulfilled, happy, whole. Those are the things that actually make you rich and are often surprisingly affordable. Even right here, right now in this very point in your life, so go get ‘em, don’t wait.

 

4 Must read chapters:

  1. Rules That Change the Rules
  2. Dodging Bullets
  3. System Reset
  4. Beyond Repair

 

Will I keep it on my bookshelf or donate it? I will keep it and refer back to it when I am feeling weak about taking a socially unsanctioned approach to work.

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Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be by Steven Pressfield

Steven Pressfield’s books are tiny, but mighty inspirational for creative types like me. I personally adore how he eliminates much of the preamble, discussion and repetition that other writers deem necessary and which tend to bury the all-important point. He delivers a short, no bullshit form of wisdom that prevents me from hiding from myself or getting wrapped up in looking for faulty logic in what I’m reading. Pressfield just says what I need to hear without all of the nuts and fruitcake around it. Brevity like this that retains meaning is deceptively simple, but in fact requires great depth of knowledge and immense skill. I thank him for it.

 

4 Good quotes from the book:

“Any time I tried to take the intelligent course, i.e., get a real job, I became so depressed I couldn’t stand it.”

“At some point the practice of our vocation moves from being a challenge that we must will ourselves into accepting and enacting to become simply…our life.”

“This is the job. There is no other job. This is the job.”

“When you’re tired, stop.”

 

Life wisdom obtained:

It is possible to be 100% committed 10% of the time.

The ability to self-reinforce is more important than talent.

Things are not as bad as you are imagining them.

Show up in a predictable fashion so the muse knows where and when to find you.

 

Must read chapters:

Book 6

Book 8

 

Will I keep it on my bookshelf or donate it? Definitely a keeper for when I need a kick in the ass to keep going.

 

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One Hit Wonders

I am emphatically anti-clutter in the kitchen. Well, actually, most places in my house but especially in the kitchen. I like a clean, streamlined space. If my kitchen is dirty, I clean it before I cook in it. My weirdness is already well-established. My husband learned the hard way when he moved in that I do not tolerate multiples of any kitchen item (except silverware, dishes and wooden spoons). His favored corkscrew? Gone. I already had a similar one. His wine glasses? Out. I’ve got plenty. Ditto for cutting boards, cookie cutters, coffee pots, whatever else I already had and did not need. Don’t even get me started on single use kitchen gadgets! Most of these are pure clutter and seem utterly ridiculous to me, albeit as such, often entertaining. It was a relatively tense moment when I asked him to prove the utility of his milk foamer under intense scrutiny before I would consent to its continued residence in our cupboards.

I am not without my vices however. I cannot deny an abiding love for the following single use items, some admittedly silly.

I must confess a deep attachment  for my rice cooker. I have owned one since receiving my first model as a high school graduation gift from my grandma. Priceless bit of magical machinery. Lasted 25+ years before I had to replace it. That little baby kept me and my poor hungry college friends fed on many an impaired occasion when the sobering and nourishing power of white rice was desperately needed. My mom gave me my first egg cooker as a joke one Christmas. It was a branded model, Foghorn Leghorn (for those who understand that reference) and I instantly fell in love. This ridiculous little machine pays for itself by turning out perfectly hard cooked eggs every time without requiring me to boil water or set a timer. I am emphatically anti-timer. Related item – I also have an egg slicer, because I like eggs on toast without having to squish everything up using a knife getting crumbly yolk all over my hands. Stupid, I know, but I like it. A salad spinner is indispensable because, um, I like salad and wish to avoid food borne illnesses.

In the interest of complete transparency I also own an electric kettle (life changing for this tea drinker and I’ve never looked back), a lemon twist cutter (I like martinis), and a tortilla press – I’ll tell you more about that one later, but homemade tortillas are a cinch, dirt cheap, taste great and make you look like a rockstar in the kitchen. Worth the cupboard space. Otherwise, I’m pretty much opposed to over stocking my kitchen drawers.  I mean if you use it, fine, but if not, get rid of it! For most things I use a knife, sometimes scissors (much overlooked versatile kitchen tool), a pan, the stove, and the oven to get things done. More on my favorite kitchen essentials to come and a collection of my all time favorite stupid kitchen gadgets here can be found on instagram @stupidkitchengadgets.

Stupid Kitchen Gadgets Haiku Poem by Kc is me AKA Karyn Shomler

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I’m a Hypocrite

I work in the American healthcare (AHC) system. I see patients. I dispense health related advice. I order screening tests. I prescribe medicines and treatments.

And I partake of none of these things for myself on a regular basis. In fact, I avoid the AHC system for my own needs as much as possible. I even abstained from care when I broke my ankle a couple of years ago while in-between jobs and temporarily without health insurance (long story). Rather than invite all sorts of high charges and possibly unnecessary tests and over-treatment (like surgery), I treated it at home myself, successfully. I’m not advising anyone else to take this route, and I would absolutely seek more care if I had any health conditions that demanded it, but gratefully, I do not. This is just me sharing my own story and the extremes to which I am personally willing to go!

Why this deep aversion? Simple: Lack of trust. I do not believe AHC as a system has our best interests as patients at heart. Many of the providers working within this system do care, but their hands are largely tied by AHC.  As an industry, AHC doesn’t really work to make us healthier or allow providers to do the best job they can for us. Like it or not, and they do not advertise this, but AHC is in it for the money.  And the money is in fixing us when we are “broken” (or perceived to be). Similarly, insurance companies don’t care about us or our wellbeing. They care about their profits, which rarely translates into approving more care. There are sooo many examples where insurance companies could have done the right thing with sick, desperate people and did not. For money. Drug companies are no better and scam us with shoddy research then convince us through tv ads and such that we need expensive drugs to be ok. Then they jack up the prices once we are hooked. I know I sound like a cynical crackpot, but this is just so hard to witness! I think people go into healthcare for altruistic reasons for the most part, and consumers have faith that they will receive good care, but the system stymies all of us.

Let us remember that living, aging and even dying are not pathological. Bodies change, parts wear out and sometimes break. The best way to be healthy is to take care of ourselves and prevent/reverse illnesses that require ongoing care whenever possible. How do you keep your car running well? Don’t drive like a maniac, get regular maintenance, use proper fuel. Same with bodies. The AHC system is like the oily mechanic who price gouges when you are broken down or sells you all sorts of parts and questionable services by preying on your ignorance and your fears. This is not ethical. This is not healthcare. Our best defense here is a good offense: take care of ourselves better! This won’t always work, but there are things we can do to fix ourselves and keep AHC out of our lives and pockets! Maybe I’m not a hypocrite, maybe I am a crackpot…

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Tortilla Soup

 

My kids love tortilla soup. I love not wasting food. This soup is our solution to the problem of 10,000 partially used packages of corn tortillas that regularly wind up in the back of our fridge.

Yesterday I pulled a turkey breast carcass from the freezer and popped it in the slow cooker with a couple of handfuls of pinto beans, covered with water, added some bay leaves and let it cook on low for 4-5 hours. When the beans were almost tender I removed the bones and picked off the last bits of meat for the soup. You could also skip this whole process and just start with broth, any variety and canned beans if you want. You can leave the beans out too if you don’t groove on the frijoles.

Then I sauteed up some carrots, onion and green pepper in a bit of olive oil. Once soft I added some cumin and chili powder to the pan. Heating the dried spices helps the flavor come alive. Then I added a ladleful of stock to the pan and swirled it around to help dislodge all of the yumminess and added it to the broth in the slow cooker. Tasted it and added some salt (if using pre-made broth, you won’t likely need to add any more salt).

Here’s where the magic happens: I tore up a bunch of forgotten corn tortillas and put them in my blender, added some of the stock to cover along with a crushed clove of garlic and let it sit there for a while to soften. Then I whizzed it all together and added it to the soup. This helps thicken the soup and give it an awesome, corny flavor and depth. Served it with avocado, chopped red onion, clilantro, cotija cheese, corn chips and hot sauce (of course!) on the side. Easy to make vegetarian or vegan, just leave that meaty stuff out and use vegetable stock.

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The REAL Daiquiri

Erase from your mind all of the images you have of cloyingly sweet, frothy, fruit flavoured daquiris and hear me out on this one.

A REAL daquiri is beyond simple. And incredibly delicious. Dangerously so in my experience, but I’m the first to admit that I can’t drink the way I used to in my younger years. Oy vey.

A real daquiri is sophisticated and classy. Never served in a foot long plastic souvenir glass and/or from a smoothie machine.

A real daquiri is white rum, simple syrup and lime juice (plus lime zest if you are like me and can’t have it limey enough) shaken with ice and served straight up. Roughly 2:1 on the rum to lime juice ratio. Titrate simple syrup to your taste, but I like mine tart, so i didn’t put in much at all. That’s it. No fuss, no muss, just a refreshing and enjoyable preventative for scurvy. See? Its medicinal.

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Green Beans of Heaven

I was first introduced to dry fried green beans several years ago by my dear friend SBG who is a vegetarian (but I love her anyway. JK – I actually eat vegetarian much of the time, I just like to poke fun at her non-existent flaws). I immediately fell in love. With the beans, not SBG, although she is pretty awesome…

A slightly tatty bunch of green beans in my fridge quickly losing their youthful splendor inspired me to attempt a recreation of the dish. Taking my own liberties though, of course. I googled several recipes and then cobbled together my own thing. Here’s what I did:

Washed and trimmed ends and yucky spots from a bunch of fresh-ish green beans. I don’t see how this dish would work with frozen or, shudder, canned, but I guess you could try it. Dried them off and cut them into ~2-inch-long pieces. Heated some light oil in a wok, but a sautee pan would work too. I’m even tempted to try broiling these in the oven, but then I guess the name would be false advertising as they would no longer be technically “fried”. But anyway, then I cooked the beans in the oil over high heat until they started to look crispy and brown in spots. That’s flavor baby! Then I added in some chopped garlic, ginger, green onions and a spoonful of sambal olek (chili sauce, great condiment, get it). Stirred that around for a couple of minutes until everything smelled amazing and then finished it off with some soy sauce and a dash of mirin (sweet cooking wine; I don’t usually stock this condiment, the bottle was bought on accident when I was trying to get some rice vinegar, but I have come to like it. Great way to add a touch of sweetness to a dish to balance flavours). Not too much on the liquids, you don’t want mushy beans, just a little sauce to coat everything. Done!

My sweetie and I gobbled this up straight from the serving bowl as an appetizer before our tofu and vegetable fried rice. As we snacked, we dreamed of other veg we could cook with this same technique – broccoli, asparagus, snow peas, who knows what else! Plenty of opportunity for improvisation.

 

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WTF is Kitchari?

I’ve always been sort of intrigued by the concepts of Ayurveda. Loosely speaking, in my own words, it is the idea that a healthy body is one that is in balance. One part of ensuring that balance or restoring that balance if/when it is lost, is through feeding it the proper food. That just sounds…right.

It is easy to get into ruts and mindlessly feed myself without paying much attention to how that food makes me feel.  I do stuff like keep eating all the cheese because it just tastes so darn gooooood! But when I stop to think about it, cheese (in large, soul satisfying quantities) doesn’t really make me feel very good. Dang it!

So anyway, back to kitchari (kit-chur-ee): I was reading up on this Ayurveda concept and one of the main dishes is called kitchari which is a stew that comes in different varieties. At its heart, it is a combination of grains and legumes (often mung beans and basmati rice) cooked in broth or water with tons of lovely spices. It’s supposed to be easy to digest, cleansing and rebalancing. Sounded good, so I made it. And then I made some more. And then I introduced it to my husband and now we are eating it almost every day. It is nourishing satisfaction in a big warm bowl. I don’t mean to get all mystical on you, but it really does make me feel good when I eat it! And the house smells amazing.

I’ve made a bunch of different varieties, it lends itself very well to improv, probably another reason why I love it so much! Here’s the description of my basic method: I use my Crock-Pot for this, but an ordinary pot would work. I don’t know about those new-fangled Insta-Pots, I don’t have one, but it is probably possible in that thing too. Put in a handful of split mung beans (I know these sound kinda gross, but they are delicious little devils that look like lentils and come in different colors) and a handful of basamati rice (I use brown because that’s what I have in my larder). Next comes all of the delicious spices. You need to cook them a bit in oil or ghee til aromatic. Most of the time I use some combination of cumin, cardamom, cayenne (careful!), black pepper and chopped garlic. I’ve also tried cinnamon, allspice, dill and fennel – all of them work and experimenting with new combinations is fun. You can warm the spices in the oil in a pan or I actually do it in a glass measuring cup in my microwave. You just have to be careful not to burn them. Then add these to the beans and rice and cover with a couple of inches of broth. Cook until everything is soft and thick soupy. You can thin it out with more broth or water along the way if it is too thick. Near the end of the cooking process I add chopped fresh ginger and a squeeze of lemon. I serve mine with hot sauce and chopped red onion. Fresh cilantro might be nice too.