subjects2change

Show me your mussels..

Sometimes I crack myself up with the headlines for these posts. But enough random food blogger banter let’s get down to business. The dish below is a favorite at our house for a couple of reasons. It’s healthy, uses one pot, cooks in 20 minutes and will cost you under $10.00, and uses only 10 ingredients. That alone should be enough to get any weeknight cook excited for what’s coming next. It utilizes frozen precooked mussels in a tomato sauce. We purchase ours at Aldi’s and at less than $3.00 for a 1lb box how can you go wrong.

Bloody Mary Mussels

1/2 tbs olive oil
3 ribs of celery finely diced
1 whole onion finely diced
1/2 tsp each of sea salt and cracked black pepper
3 large cloves of garlic minced
16.9z can of fire-roasted tomatoes with the juice
1.5 tbs of horseradish
1 TBS of Worchester sauce
1.5 tsp cayenne hot sauce
2lbs of precooked mussels in sauce thawed

In a large heavy-bottomed dutch oven heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the diced celery and onions and cook for 3 minutes or until they start to soften and go a little translucent. Add the minced garlic and the salt and pepper and cook for another 2-3 minutes. lower the heat to medium and add the entire can of diced tomatoes with the liquid along with the horseradish, Worcester, and hot sauce and allow the sauce to reduce for at least 5-6 minutes (Depending on your tastebuds feel free to add more or less of the hot sauce and horseradish) Add the mussels with the sauce to the pan and bring the heat back to medium-high, cover with the lid and allow to cook for another 4-5 minutes or until mussels are heated through and the shells have opened up. I usually give the mussels a stir once or twice during the cooking process to make sure everything is cooking evenly.

If your feeling fancy garnish with leaves of celery and scallions and you’re ready to eat. We usually eat this over pasta or with some crusty artisan bread. The sauce is really the star of this dish and you’re going to want to make sure you scoop up every bite.

If you are going to use fresh mussels add about a 1/2 cup of spaghetti sauce to the recipe and add it when you put in the other wet ingredients. The key with cooking mussels or any other shellfish like clams and oysters is they are ready once the shells open. If a mussel or clam doesn’t open during the cooking process don’t eat it, it very well could make you sick.

So dinners on the table in under 20 minutes and when you finish up all you have are the plates and probably two pans to clean up, what could be better than that? The only thing I can think of is if someone else does the dishes.

The cool Dad..

I’m not lying to you when I tell you that my favorite television show is a cartoon on Disney Junior called Bluey. The show is about a family of Australian blue heeler dogs and their adventures in raising two small children. First, off it’s actually an Australian TV show that Disney picked up for viewing in America and it reminds me of a cleaned-up version of the Simpsons. It’s seriously funny but always does a great job of passing along a valuable life lesson in the end.

Bandit Heeller is precisely the kind of dad I want to be when I grow. Equal parts goofball that never really grew up and is willing to play silly games and get into mischief while also being able to pepper in solid parenting, encouragement, and life lesson along the way to make sure they know they are loved and prepared to be the best possible versions of themselves they can be. I know your thinking to yourself seriously Brian a cartoon on Disney junior can be that deep or funny, My child likes Fancy Nancy or paw patrol and I’ve never once thought that any part of those shows was enjoyable. Don’t believe me? Go ahead and give it a watch. The first two stories are epically fun and the last one called Shadowlands is an excellent lesson in life.

In my little more than 5 years as a dad and the life lessons learned from Bandit aka Dad on bluey, I’ve decided I want to be the cool dad for my kids. Not the cool dad that lets the kids drink and have parties at the house or the one that lets them run around like crazy whackado’s because coming down on your kids and disciplining them is just not the cool thing to do.

I want to be the dad that can take his kids rock climbing and bring their friends along and show off my abilities so they can brag about how strong their dad is. I want to be the dad that goes surfing with his kids and gets barrelled with all their friends watching. I want to be the house where the kids want to come and hang out because we’ve built an awesome backyard filled with things to eat and play with. I want to be the dad that laughs and jokes and has a good time so they want me to be around.

Because if they want me around and I get invited to do those things listed above I’m there to help, supervise and set an example, and maybe just maybe if I’m lucky figure out how to pass along a little life lesson in there while everyone’s having a great time. I know a time will come when they won’t want to hang out with me all the time but hopefully trying to be the cool dad will push that a couple more years into the future. And with that kind of time, I might be able to pass along just enough wisdom to keep them out of trouble and give them the ability to make choices filled with integrity when there isn’t an adult insight.

Like Bandit says in that first episode about making it too fun, ” Sorry, squirts. It’s a hard one to get right” but I figure if I’m there, we’re laughing and having a good time I must be doing an okay job.

Call to Action

if you’ve got kids under the age of 7 or so watch some episodes of bluey with them. If you don’t it’s fine I watched that entire youtube video before typing this and everyone’s asleep in my house. It’s high-quality family entertainment, and everyone is sure to laugh. These are our favorites ones. The Dump, The pool, Shadowlands, and the Fairy Spell.
Find a hobby that you and your kid can do together. I think it’s best if it’s something that you are both new to, this way you can grow and develop together and watch each other’s development. Might I suggest rock climbing/bouldering.

Betting on the future…

If you distill this journey of life down to its purest form I think you’ll find that everything we do and say is reasoning with the future and its potential outcomes. Were always looking way out into the future dreaming about what could be if we just stay the path. The fundamental problem with the long play is just that it’s long, arduous, and more often than not the progress is so slow that it’s barely noticeable at all.

The good news about a task so huge is that it can usually be widdled down into more manageable pieces. I know this isn’t a mind blowing epiphany as I’m sure you’ve heard a dozen or so analogies about this subject matter, but the question is are you employing those in your daily life.

5 years ago I started down the path of losing weight and getting healthy, there were a ton of mountains just on the horizon but I didn’t focus on those. I tackled the molehills in hopes that I would be strong enough to take on the mountains a couple of years down the path. There was certainly no guarantee that I would ever make it to the base of those mountains and even if I never would have gotten there I would have made significant progress in my life.

Fast forward to March 18th of 2020 aka 5 days into the epidemic I went out to my backyard to contemplate just what the heck was going on and I looked out into a jungle of an overgrown yard and thought to myself maybe this is finally the time when I’ll be able to clear out all this junk and put in all those fruit trees and vegetable plots I’d always talked about but never got around to.

Over a long hot summer, I got out the shovel and the chainsaw and went to town whenever I could find the time. If you want to see what a mountain looks like when it comes to back yards here it is.

I snapped a shovel digging out one of these trees.

That was a lot of bargaining with the future if you ask me. People would come by seeing what I was trying to accomplish and they would tell me I was nuts and that I should just hire someone with a bobcat to dig everything out. Sure this would have been the easy path and put me months ahead of where I am now but when the results come easy you won’t be willing to put the work in the work to maintain what you have.

Hundreds of hours later including taking a full week off from work I rounded the corner on destruction and finally got to a point where I could put plants in the ground instead of ripping them out by the roots. It was 11 months worth of bargaining with the future to get to this point and there’s still a decent amount of finishing touches to do but you wouldn’t believe how good it felt to put a few trees in the ground and then stand back and appreciate how it amazing it looked and just how much blood, sweat and tears went into getting to a rainy valentines day morning when the next chapter of bargaining with the future began.

A couple of the fruit trees I bought should be short term wins and produce fruit this year but several of them are long term investments. Sure I am the happy new owner of a mango and avocado tree but the reality of walking out to the backyard and being able to make a mango smoothie and a bowl of guacamole is still years out into the future and that’s if the weather and ton of other variables decide to cooperate. But you know what all that work I put in digging out giant tree stumps pails into comparison to maintaining the food forest.

My hope is that one day my kids will say. Hey Dad, I’m hungry and I will just be able to point to the backyard and say I’m sure there are several things ready to pick out there.

Call to Action.

search out a local independent nursery this spring and buy a fruit tree for your backyard. Don’t have a back yard? buy a planter box and grow some herbs. It’s super exciting to watch something as small as a seed turns into something that can fuel your body.
Don’t take the shortcut no matter how tempting it is, sure it looks tempting but it will most likely cost you in the long run. Put your head down, put in the work, relish the process and never forget just how miserable the journey was as it will be the best motivator possible to keep pushing forward.

Be Nice or Else…

Mike Tyson might not be the guy you would naturally lean-to for deep and profound insight but he does offer up at least one amazing pearl of wisdom that may be the most profound statement of the last 15 years.

“Social media made y’all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”

I’m not sure about you but this rings true loud and clear to me. Think about it would you say those mean and nasty things to a real person face to face on the street? I seriously doubt it, I know I’ve said some things on social media platforms in the past that I certainly would never say out loud. It certainly is easy to punch away at the keypad and get those aggressive unfounded and downright mean posts out in the world for everyone to see just how impressive and witty your prose is.

If I’ve said it once on here I’ve said it at least a dozen times the internet is a magical place of learning if you search it out. Sure there is a significant amount of weeds in that field of wisdom but that surely doesn’t mean we torch the field or contribute to the problem by casting a few more weed seeds to it. I’m not going to change the world with this little post but my hope is that the next time you start being a keyboard warrior set on leaving a path of destruction in your wake ask yourself this. What good is this going to do? Have I offered up some kind of factual information? or is it even worth it to post this, and how long or upset am I going to get when I start this battle?

Call to action

How good does it feel when someone gives you a genuine compliment? I love it, it brings a smile to my face and can help pull me through the day. Why can’t you be that person who finds ways to say or do something nice for somebody. It doesn’t have to be holding the door open or helping an old lady cross the street it could be just as simple as sending someone a message on social media offering up encouragement and a brief explanation on how you are enjoying what they’re doing. (This feels like I’m fishing for compliments here, I’ll take them if you have them but be sure to spread the wealth”

Any way we slice it this life is difficult and we don’t need to pile more crap on either people’s plates with our keystrokes. Lighten the load with some kind words and you’ll find that giving feels just as good as receiving.

breakfast club #2…

Shakshuka is an amazing north African dish that packs a ton of flavor but is easy on the wallet. There’s a really good chance that you have all of these ingredients in your fridge and pantry right now.

4-5 cloves of garlic
1 onion chopped
1 large red bell pepper diced
1 TBSP olive oil
1/2 tbsp of cumin, paprika and chili powder
1 can of diced tomatoes 14.50z with liquid
1/2 container of fresh grape tomatoes
4 eggs
Crusty bread.

In a sautee pan heat 1 TBS of olive oil over medium heat saute the garlic, diced pepper and onions for 2-3 minutes or until they soften. Preheat the oven to 350. Add half a tablespoon of each spice to the pan and cook for another 1-2 minutes. Add the fresh tomatoes along with the entire can of diced tomatoes, Don’t drain the juice.

Put a lid on your pan and place in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. During the last 5-7 minutes of cooking the shakshuka put your bread in the oven so its warm. After the 30 minute cooking time transfer the pan back to the stove top and place over a medium low heat. Make a couple of little holes with a spoon and crack your eggs directly into the pan. Place the lid back on top of the pan and cook for another 2 -3 minutes or until eggs reach desired temp. Ideally you want them still a little runny.

The key to this dish is timing. Make sure you have your hot crusty bread ready and drinks on the table so that you can take the pan to the table while the eggs are still the perfect temperature. Use the crusty bread to scoop up the mixture and if you like feel free to spice it up with an added 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper or add a little hot sauce at the table.

breakfast club… 1

I don’t know about you but I’ve always been a fan of savory/spicy breakfast dishes than sweet breakfast items. In fact, I bet I haven’t had a bowl of cereal with milk more than a handful of times this century. So without further ado here’s another recipe you can add to your repertoire.

I know I said I was going to get down to business but I want to talk about the word “recipe” here and elaborate that I see them as a general set of guidelines that will help point you in the right direction. I’m always more interested in the over reaching concept of a dish than a lot of the specifics. This way if you don’t have peas but you do have zucchini you can improvise and still create something delicious. Do not take this approach to baking as it will end in a total disaster.

Kedgeree. aka Indian fried rice.

Kedgeree is traditionally made with smoked fish and a small number of vegetables and often cream and butter. This version ups the vegetables and although it calls for boiled eggs you can easily leave those out to make it vegan

cup basmati rice
8z package of baby portobello mushrooms
Thumb sized piece of ginger, finely chopped
1 red chili
¼ of a bunch of fresh cilantro
2-3 scallions
1.5 teaspoons curry powder
olive oil
15-20 cherry tomatoes cut in half
4oz of frozen peas
2-3oz fresh greens, (kale, collards, spinach)
Fresh Lemon

Cook the rice following the instructions on the package and allow it to cool off and dry out a little bit. If you can do this step a couple of hours in advance it will turn out even better.

Quarter the mushrooms and add them to a dry frypan over medium heat and cook for 3-4 minutes, stir them frequently allowing them to get a bit of color. Chop half of the cilantro, deseed the chili and finely slice, reserve some of the chilies for plating, and finely chop the ginger and the green onions. Move the mushrooms to one side of the pan and add 1 TBS of olive oil. Add the above-mentioned cilantro, chili, ginger, and green onion and saute for 2-3 minutes. Add 1.5 teaspoons of curry powder and mix thoroughly into the vegetable mixture. After 1-2 minutes add the tomatoes and the greens and cook for another 2-3 minutes. Add your peas to the vegetable mixture and cook until they are heated through. Add your cooked rice and stir regularly to avoid sticking to the bottom of the pan, at this point zest your lemon and add it to the mixture. The goal here is to bring everything up to temperature. just before service juice half your lemon and serve with remaining cilantro leaves, sliced chilis, and top with the cooked eggs.

I love Soup.

The ability to create a tasty bowl of soup from leftovers or limited ingredients is the true test of a cook’s merit in my opinion. It’s also a great skill to learn so you can manage food waste and feed your family a nice home cooked meal that’s cheap but doesn’t feel like it. The recipe below is really easy and the concept of the recipe is a little more important than the ingredients that you use.

Roasted vegetable bisque with croutons and balsamic drizzle.

Acorn squash, medium-sized butternut squash, and 1-2 sweet potatoes depending on size
Olive oil, Salt and Pepper
1.5 quarts of vegetable stock
1 cup of oat milk
Crusty bread- preferably a day or so old and a little bit dried out

This version of the recipe has been made vegan but can be adjusted to fit your dietary preferences.

Roughly chop up your vegetables, your not looking for perfection here just the same general size across all 3 veggies so they cook at a similar time.
Place the vegetables on a roasting pan and drizzle with a 1TBS of olive oil and a TBS of Sea salt. with your hands give the vegetables a toss and make sure the oil and salt are distributed evenly.
Place in a 375-degree oven for 35-45 minutes or until vegetables are cooked through and tender to the touch. Cooking time will vary on the size you cut the vegetables.
Allow the vegetables to cool for 5-10 minutes and transfer to a blender and add the stock. You may need to do this in batches depending on the size of your blender. Also, be sure to allow plenty of space and vent the lid to avoid a GIANT MESS when the steam builds up and blows the lid off the blender. I like a velvety smooth soup so we blended the soup for about two minutes.
Transfer the blended soup to a large soup pot and bring it back up to temperature. Add your milk of choice in the last 3-4 minutes of heating and mix thoroughly. Crank in about 8-10 cracks of fresh cracked black pepper and you’re ready to serve.
Fill up your soup bowls, top with the croutons and a drizzle of balsamic, and enjoy.

For the croutons. Start this process with about 15 minutes left in the cooking process for your vegetables

Chunk up a hand size’s worth of crusty bread like a baguette or focaccia into pieces twice the size of a dice. If the bread is a little old and dried out that’s even better. Heat 1.5 TBS worth of olive oil in a saute pan over medium-low heat and throw in the cubed bread. sautee the bread for 5-7 minutes and be sure to keep the bread moving often and pay attention to the heat so the bread doesn’t burn. Making croutons is a delicate balance of time and temp and I’d rather toast the bread at a lower temp for a longer period of time instead of burning the bread. Take the pan off of the burner and transfer it to the oven for another 5-7 minutes worth of cooking to finish developing color and crunch. The croutons are the most technically difficult step in this recipe and staying close and paying attention will result in some tasty crunchy croutons that will elevate the soup.

On Work.

You may have noticed that I say I have a lot of favorite things, I don’t think this is a bad character trait I just feel lie it makes me well rounded. The quote below is one of my said favorite things.

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” Thomas Edison

I don’t know as many things as I did when I was younger but I have come to the complete realization that the above statement is a cold hard truth. We know this down to the core of our being but it doesn’t stop us or clever marketing executives from trying to convince us that they in fact have finally figured out the shortcut to success that does not contain excessive amounts of work but it will cost you at least $39.95 to get started. There is no easy path to growth and change in our lives it is filled with bumps and obstacles and the relentless fact that you have to get up and do it all over again tomorrow. Add on the hecklers telling/selling you the short cut and it’s easy to see why it’s so hard to make and stick to a plan of personal development.

Were at that natural time to reflect on things we liked to quit, start or improve in our lives this week. Can I make a suggestion from personal experience?

Often times we think that working the absolute hardest is the best path to opportunity when in reality taking a controlled and measured approach will get us better results in the end. It may take us longer to get where it is we want to be but the likelihood of reaching the goal is far greater when we put in a little bit of work every single day.

Call to Action.

If you’re thinking I need to start exercising every day or I’m going to go on a super restrictive calorie deficient diet starting Friday morning it’s highly likely that it isn’t going to last, It’s never worked for me in the past anyway. Biologically speaking one of our greatest strengths as humans is our endurance and when we look past this characteristic and rely on a change to happen like a sprint we are left dejected on the sidelines trying to catch our breath and getting further behind in the long run.

What I’m suggesting from personal experience is that we work efficiently to drive change in our lives. If you haven’t been working out for months running a 5k on Friday is not where you start or if you’ve been relying on the standard American diet for the better part of the last decade switching to whole 30 like a light switch is the fastest way to end up back where you started. Try this instead, find one or two small things that you can do fairly easily and start there and grow into your work, it won’t be long before you start to notice those other opportunities to put in a little more effort and before you know it you will be miles down the path instead of saying “well there’s always next year”

Why, Subjects 2 change?

It probably would have been a good idea to write the answer to this question 40 or so blog posts ago but I’m glad I never got around to it until now.

Like most good brand names and nicknames this one started in a bar. We were talking about a restaurant in town that had undergone its 3rd concept change in about a year and just how expensive it must have been to build out, advertise and open and close that many times. That’s when one of the guy’s chimes up and goes if it was my restaurant I would just call it “menu, subject to change. And then I could do what ever I pleased.” We laughed hysterically at first and then I started thinking about the genius behind that name. I told him how smart I thought it was and that there was a good chance that I might utilize that name at some point in my life, he obliged and then I didn’t think about it for at least a year.

In June of 2019, the idea to start a blog was kicking around in my head, I had an idea for what to talk about but didn’t want to pick a name that narrowed potential subject maters to much. I wanted to be able to stay on a path but shoot off on a side trail for a change of view. And that’s when I remembered that lunch at the bar and subjects to change. I had already said I was going to use it and secured his approval through proper barroom protocol so a blog got a name that day.

A title like that gave me Cart Blanche to do whatever I felt like and write on a wide subject of topics and that felt awesome. I was telling you right from the start that this thing doesn’t have a lot of rules, we’re going on an adventure and maybe we’ll learn a few things along the way. And for about 6 months if people asked that was the 1-dimensional answer I gave them about the name.

But then one day out on a run I started contemplating on how change was a constant in life. The weather, our jobs, traffic, and a magnitude of other variables change around us every day. We often perceive ourselves to be the constant in this equation of change and that outside forces should adapt to our needs. That option sounds great but answer this question. When the temperature drops outside do you try and make the weather change or do you adapt to the changing conditions and grab a jacket? How we react to that change can play a huge role in the outcome of our day, week, month, and life. We are subjects to the change happening all around us and our ability to adapt keeps us from freezing in a world that is trying to take us down.

We are here on this journey called life to evolve, grow, and overcome. I want to push myself to unknown heights of my ability and the best way to do that is be ready for the things that are subject to change and learn to adapt to them.

nobody wants to read your sh*t

Not too long ago I would become very distraught over the fact that something I took a great time to develop in writing or in my art didn’t garner the amount of attention that I thought it deserved through social media platforms. It made me want to quit and a few times I had to shut it all off because it had a tendency to be more a destructive force than something that was building me up.

I had quite a few audible credits at my disposal and I figured I should do something with them so I downloaded these three books. An audience of one by Srinivas Rao and the following two books by Steven Pressfield the war of art and nobody wants to read your sh*t. These three books changed my outlook on my art and gave me the resolve to keep being creative.

To be honest, I didn’t finish an Audience of one, it didn’t draw me in as much as other books have but a lesson early on was well worth the price of admission. When you tailor your art to what you think people are going to like you end up with something that you don’t like and more importantly others won’t like either. In other words, I’m writing things and taking pictures of things that I find interesting, hopefully, you feel the same way, and if not there are a couple hundred thousand or so other writers that might be a better fit for you. I’m not mad anymore I’m just trying to be me.

Art of war taught me something that I already knew but wasn’t smart enough to put into practice in this side of my life. If you want to get good at something you just have to sit down and do it. This was common sense to me when it came to building your personal health, I tell people all the time when they ask me how did you get so good at doing pull ups? “I did a lot of pull-ups.’ I’m not really certain why this truth I held dear never manifested itself into this side of my life but what’s important is that I’ve been writing almost every single day since I finished that book. I hope you see a difference.

and last but not least nobody wants to read your sh*t to paraphrase Mr. Pressfield, it’s not that they don’t care or are mean it’s just that they’re busy and they’ll actually have to take the time to read what you wrote and well who has time for that. This book helped me realize that If I want you to read my sh*t I need to make it clear, concise, and have some actual value so that one day after I write a ton of sh*t it might actually be good and worth reading.

This random cocktail of books has been very educational and more importantly set my artistic soul on fire. I hope that you enjoy my photos and sophomoric attempts at wisdom and humor through this blog I’m trying to get better by focusing on the things I like, I hope you enjoy them as well.