Food Friday: What I Learned!

After the Vegetable Smoothie debacle yesterday I decided to leave out future beet parts from them.  The bunch had four beets, plus the greens attached.  Since I could not bear to toss them out I decided to cook them up somehow.  I remember my father eating beet greens with vinegar on them, then uplifting the bowl and draining the vinegar into his mouth.  I am not sure I will go that route, but I did steam the beet greens. They are now waiting in the refrigerator for me to eat them tonight.  I am not even going to TRY to offer them to Dear One.  Why plague the poor guy?!

Now there were the four beets, well, three and three-quarters beets...remember the quarter beet in the benighted vegetable smoothie...What to do with them. Hmmm. 

What I did with them was scrubbed the rest of them then cut them into quarters, pole to pole; put them in a large bowl with about 2 teaspoons olive oil; mixed them until there was oil on all surfaces; then sprinkled in some coarse Kosher salt and stirred again.  I roasted them for 45 minutes at 400 degrees F.  They were not quite done when we had to leave for the office so I just shut them off and left them in the oven, hoping the residual heat would finish cooking them.

Fast forward ten hours.  We arrived home from the office but I had gotten a bug to go to a hardware store to get some plexi-glass sheeting cut for watercolor paper support.  When I found an Ace Hardware store I noticed it was right next door to a Tienda Mexicana.  This was a sign!  I HAD to go. 

So I left Dear One at home to shift for himself and headed out.  I had a couple other stops in my mind, not that I shared that news widely, so I hoped he would eat up the leftover lasagna in the refrigerator.

The hardware store trip was way more successful than I had imagined and the Tienda Mexicana adventure came out really well. I walked out of the store with a few items (this had been an assignment for last week from my Spanish tutor which I had not completed for some reason, mostly gutlessness, but now it is done. I might go back and try again, and talk and listen a little more...).

When I got home Dear One met me in the kitchen doorway and apologized for turning on the oven without looking.  May I say, the beets were ready to eat?!  Actually, they were fabulous.  Roasting beets is the best way to ingest that important food.  This is a good thing to learn.

Another thing I learned this week is that it is possible to "over-process" flax seeds when you are turning them into flax seed meal.  You could have knocked me over with a feather when I opened the container and found that rather than flax seed meal, it was almost flax seed butter.  May I say that this has not stopped me from using it in smoothies and in the best oatmeal bowl ever.  It just is not as pleasant...

Well, back to work!

Mission: Learning Spanish

What a great thing it is to learn a new language!  We really want to be able to converse comfortably with our brothers and sisters who speak only Spanish so we have taken on the task of learning.  We have met three times with a tutor at the Missionary Training Center over an application called Zoom where we can both see and hear each other. He is a good teacher and a native speaker. We have met three times also with our coach.  She is a lovely girl who does not speak Spanish but she DOES know how to study effectively and she is helping us set goals and reach them.

This is all sounding very familiar as if I had said it before in this blog.  Well, then, let's get on to something new!

This morning I have been working in The Book of Mormon.  I started (today) in 1 Nephi chapter 8.  My method was to copy the whole chapter in Spanish into a table format on my computer then  I added a second column to the right for notes.  This is what it looks like:

Capítulo 8
Lehi ve una visión del árbol de la vida — Come de su fruto y desea que su familia haga lo mismo — Ve una barra de hierro, un sendero estrecho y angosto y el vapor de tinieblas que envuelve a los hombres — Saríah, Nefi y Sam comen del fruto, pero Lamán y Lemuel no quieren hacerlo. Aproximadamente 600–592 a.C.	Ve—present indicative  ver-to see  He sees Come-present indicative  comer- to eat -He eats Desea- present indicative Desear to want-He wants Haga- present tense Hacer- to have He does in this case Ve—present indicative ver- to see  He sees Estrecho—narrow Angosto—narrow Envuelve—present indicative envolver to wrap up, envelop—It envelops Comen—present indicative co mer-to eat, They eat No Quieren—present indicative querer to want—They want in this case-they don’t want Hacerlo--to do it
1 Y aconteció que habíamos recogido toda suerte de semillas de toda especie, tanto de granos de todas clases, como de todo género de frutas.	Y aconteció que-and it came to pass that Habíamos—haber to have—We had
2 Y sucedió que mientras mi padre estaba en el desierto, nos habló, diciendo: He aquí, he soñado un sueño o, en otras palabras, he visto una visión.	Y sucedió que-and it came to pass Estaba-  he was Nos habló—he talked to us Diciendo—saying He aquí—Behold! He soñado—I have dreamed He visto-I have seen

As you can see, I was much more detailed in the heading part, inserting the verb tenses.  Well, that did not last, though it really needs to continue. I spent almost an hour just doing this small amount of work.  When I got to what I thought was a verb, I typed it into the right column then went to the internet for the forms I did not know.  Which was most of them!  

I have the internet but also my various Spanish study aids.  When I was at the office the computer translated into English directly.  That was great. I cannot figure that out on my Mac. I must try harder I guess.

Anyway,  the assignment from our coach is to speak with two different people in church this week. Yikes!  That is somewhat scary.  After the meeting with her, I had a dream that I was speaking with a little boy in the hallway.  Several other times conversations ran through my mind, and maybe they were good-is, but I was also sleeping and did not wake up and write them down. I remember "having"  those conversations. I just don't remember what they were.  Rats!  Now I will just have to wing it.  We shall see.

One of the major things I have learned this last three weeks is that the old gray cells are not what they used to be!  However, this classwork is a gift from God and I plan to use it to the best that I can.  During the class with Hermano B. I was able to say things that I did not know where they came from. He was so kind about it and said I did great.  People are really kind for the most part, is all that I can say.  Adiós.