Favorite Things Friday: Wholly Guacamole 100-Calorie Packs

I love avocados, but for much time I didn't buy them because of price or availability.    I would usually save my time for getting avocados when we would go out to eat, and I could get it on a salad or burger.

But some time back, I decided that I really, really like avocados on my lunch sandwich, and this fruit is really nutritious.  So I started buying individual avocados occasionally. Sometimes it worked beautifully because the ripeness of the avocado was perfect when I cut it, and I could save some of the avocado for the next day's sandwich. (I don't really mind how it goes brown, but I also could have drizzled some lemon juice on it if I did). But sometimes it didn't work out, as the avocado would be too ripe or not ripe enough.

Several times I saw a bag of them at Sam's Club, and they were usually high quality and a good ripeness. I would use one and maybe make guacamole with several others, saving the rest in the fridge for future sandwiches, but I could never get to all of them and there would be waste. My husband would eat some guacamole if I made Mexican food, but the kids didn't and the waste (or me having to eat guacamole day after day) became annoying, too.

So I once again abandoned buying avocados. And then, one day, I was (woefully) passing the beautiful bag of avocados at Sam's Club, I happened to see in just the next aisle over, Wholly Guacamole 100-calorie packs. Wow! I thought. Here's a way to have individual servings for me that don't go to waste. They are freezable, so even if I buy the Sam's Club version, I can save any that are nearing the sell-by date and take them out individually. Joy!

I see at the Wholly Guacamole website that they also have individual packs of salsa, though I haven't seen those available in our local grocery stores.  I don't see individual packs of their queso dip, but that could be fun.

My only request to the Wholly Guacamole people is to make a 100-calorie pack of just avocados, without the guacamole spices.  Sometimes I just want that clean creamy avocado flavor without the guacamole/salsa spice.

Do you like avocados?  What's your favorite way to use them?

Back to Blogging Here

After a very long hiatus, I've decided to start blogging again here at "Let Mercy Lead."  I often have great ideas for sharing things that wouldn't really fit into the blog I write for the Catholic Post, the Catholic Post Book Group.  It always seems like my official writing should take precedence, and so ideas I might have had usually go by the wayside.  In addition, Facebook (and Twitter) has really become the place people gather on the Internet to share ideas and thoughts, but I occasionally find myself writing a status update that is too long for Facebook (and certainly Twitter), and want a way to share.

However, I've had terrible trouble writing and blogging in the last few months.  I'm not going to spend a lot of time writing about that, since it should be obvious that writing is hard work, but for me it's always been enjoyable and satisfying along with being hard work.  That's hasn't been the case recently, even when I write well.  After thinking and talking and praying about how to jump-start things and make writing a little more joyful, I decided that more writing, not less, is in order, but about a different range of things.  I hope it will make me more prolific and better in my "official" writing, as well as just happier all around.  I also hope to find out about more great things from others in the categories I plan to write about. And yet I still need a structure.

So the plan is to blog three-ish times a week.  On Fridays, I want to share "Favorite Things"--random things like food, clothing, places, etc.  On Wednesdays, I plan to share "What You Can Do with a Book," which is really sharing ideas we have used in our family and with the many, many book groups that I've run over the years.  I will enjoy sharing those ideas, and perhaps others will find the ideas fun to use. On Mondays, I plan to share a quote.  Since I was about 10 years old, I've collected quotes, but never been careful about keeping them.  I hope the blog will be a place to keep the quotes.

Later today will be the first "Favorite Things Friday" and over time I will work on re-design of the blog here.

I invite your feedback!

Testing Out Live Blogging

I'm testing out live blogging from the Cathedral of St. Mary in Peoria.

Stay tuned for updates through the afternoon and evening.

My Entry In the Maud Hart Lovelace Challenge

I think I am too late to officially enter the drawing, but I still want to be part of the Maud Hart Lovelace Reading Challenge sponsored by the blog A Library is a Hospital for the Mind.  (now, that is a cool name for a blog).  I discovered this challenge from one of my favorite blogs, Here in the Bonny Glen by author Melissa Wiley, who wrote the forward to the newly released edition of Carney's House Party/Winona's Pony Cart. I cannot wait to re-read both of those books, as well as probably my favorite Lovelace book, Emily of Deep Valley
see what I'm sure is Melissa's excellent introduction to this classic.

So, here are my answers to the challenge questions:

1. Why I joined the challenge: Our whole family loves Maud Hart Lovelace
2. I will be re-reading Carney's House Party once the new copy arrives. I'd also like to re-read Early Candlelight, a grown-up novel Lovelace wrote that is not my favorite, but maybe needs a re-read.
3. I love everything about MHL's books. I am so glad to introduce my kids to these books at a young age, because in addition to being such great reads, they teach such life lessons in a gentle way that promotes rather than detracts from the growth of virtues.
4. I can't decide which I would hope to win: Emily of Deep Valley, because it is my favorite, or Carney's House Party, because of Melissa' introduction.  I'll have to go with Carney's House Party/Winona's Pony Cart, because it's two books in one!

Post from the Past: The 80-Year-Old 43 Year Old

This post was originally published in 2007 on the first incarnation of this blog--no longer up.  I wanted to repost some good writing from time to time just to remind myself, even in all the busy craziness, that I can do it!  I also wrote this when my parents were not well, but now they have both died, so it makes this post even more poignant to me.  


This post seemed especially appropriate because today's first Mass reading is from Job 1, with all the servants coming to Job and saying, "I alone have escaped to tell you."  That's the title of Ralph McInerny's beautiful memoir, and I write about today here today.


Several weeks ago,  I was at a gathering of moms.  I made a comment about "being older" in some context which escapes me now.  We all laughed about whatever the comment was, but then one mom said, laughingly, something along the lines of, "When you make a comment like that, I always think about it like you think you are some 80-year-old lady."  It was a funny aside, but it gave me pause.  I have noticed myself that I tend to make these "I am getting older" comments and I think my (just a bit) younger friends are a little perplexed, or think I am giving up.  I've been reflecting on this lately and wondering why I do this.


When my mother was 60 years old, I was 25.  I remember her saying, "I'm old," and it seemed to me at the time as a kind of giving up or a hopeless statement.    And I said, "Mom, you are NOT old.  You are 60--that's middle-aged!"  She replied, "60 is not middle-aged.  Nancy, how many 120 year-olds do you know?"  That set me back a little, but I still argued with her and talked about how active she was, how much she did, how much of her life was left to live well.  She agreed with all of that, but persisted in saying that it was "real" that she was old.  Now I think I understand a little of what she meant by the statement.  It's just an acceptance of a reality; a meditation in a way on the end of human life.  What one does with this reality is the important thing. 


I am officially middle-aged now.  I don't really see it as a crisis or a tragedy--oh, no, no more miniskirts! (never me anyway), but as a reality that can be frustrating, funny and frightening, all in the same moment.   Having a preschooler when one is over 40 and very (though happily) gray-haired in a small community where more people have grandchildren than children at this age sometimes makes me feel a bit odd.  My husband and I laugh about it, but we tire of having to say, "No, they are my children, not my grandchildren."   It is kind of funny to have to admit my wounded pride there.  Do I really look or act that old, I think?  I don't feel that I do; I stay active and love having little kids; I know I am a much better parent at this age than I would have been as a younger me (though children earlier would have been good for me in so many ways!) 


There is a sense in which these comments of mine, even internal comments, are my mid-life crisis--really coming to terms with and meditating on what it means to grow older, and yes, to die.  I am so much more aware of it than I was in my 20s and 30s.  The physical signs are only a little bit of what I'm feeling.   While it is true that I don't bounce back from injuries or late nights or overeating as I did in my "younger days,"  I I would say I am in better shape now than many times during my life, and I am much more careful about taking care of myself.


But at the same time, I feel a growing sense of urgency to accomplish goals before... I don't know; it's not exactly getting old, or dying....  Even though I know that decline is decades in the future, decades is not so long anymore.  It is so easy to keep putting things off and putting things off until it really is too late.  Time is just moving too quickly for me these days.


Also, I am much more sensitive in a number of ways to mortality, and old age, and weakness.  It is not just my own, far away as that may be (or as close as it may be; the fragility of life is painfully close sometimes).   Emotionally I am much more aware.  Funerals affect me much more deeply than in the past; I feel more a sense of being closer to the person dying than  I ever have in the past.   I feel this partially because my mother is somewhere along the path to death.  The idea of losing my mom, either of my parents, is just overwhelming at times.  I know intellectually this is the normal scope of things, but it still feels scary.


Ralph McInerny, one of my personal heroes and author of the excellent memoir ,I Alone Have Escaped to Tell You talks about "standing on the precipice separating time and eternity" when the people he most admires begin to die.  He says it much more eloquently, but I would describe it is as a fundamental vulnerability--there is no more layer of protection between me and the wide world.  That sounds strange; I have been independent of my parents for many years in so many ways, and I act very grown-up, but actually being that grown-up person...wow.


And yet I can remind myself that we are all surrounded by "so great a cloud of witnesses" in the communion of saints.  There is a layer there; we are all connected; perhaps this is God's way of helping me understand some of these theological concepts in a real way.


So I tend to comment on my age a bit lately, and I will continue to comment on my age.  For me, it is not an excuse, or a complaint, or a giving up.  It is a continuing meditation about what it means to grow older, to have life and have it abundantly, at the same time to always keep in mind the last things.    It is not because I feel like an 80-year-old, I promise you, even if I do complain about the aches and pains and grandmother comments.  I am just standing on the precipice of time and eternity, trying to embrace the view.

Mother-Daughter Book Group: The Shadow of the Bear thoughts and discussion notes

The Shadow of the Bear by Regina Doman is the first of the (currently, five) Fairy Tale Series of Novels by Regina Doman.  Shadow is a retelling of Snow White and Rose Red by the Brothers Grimm.  Each chapter begins with a quote from the original fairy tale, and the events of the chapter relate to each.

Some important points:  even though the novel takes place in “reality” (relatively recent NYC), it has fairy tale elements that make it not strictly “realistic.”  Some of the specifics (young people trying to solve mysteries on their own, people getting out of dangerous situations improbably) are more in the fairy tale mode than realistic mode.

We need to be clear here, both in our reading and in our discussions, about what plot elements are meant to be an interesting, page-turning part of the story, and what could be edifying or useful to us in our lives.

We’re not meant to think through how we would handle the situation if a group of surly teenagers kidnap us, or how to foil an evil treasure-crazed man in an abandoned church, because those events from The Shadow of the Bear are not likely to happen to us.

But we can take away a number of points about how to behave from, for instance, what Rose does right (and what she could have done differently) on prom night, because while we won’t be in the specific situation described, situations like it are very likely to come up during one’s high school and college years.

Also, we’re not meant to emulate the specific actions of the characters (trying to solve capital crimes on our own, putting ourselves and others in dangerous situations), but rather learn from their virtues (thought they are not perfect) and their ability to view situations in the light of their Catholic faith.  Most of all, we’re also meant to enjoy this fantastically written and engaging story as the great story just as it is!

Here is an annotated version of an early version of the Snow White and Rose Red fairy tale.

Here’s a link  from author Regina Doman’s website, of pages on The Shadow of the Bear.

Following are the Catechism connections we will make/discuss with this book at the Mother-Daughter Book Group.  Please bring your Catechism with you, but if you want to look these up online, I love this searchable Catechism of the Catholic Church.

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Chapter 1:, p. 30:  Mrs. Brier:  “After all, we were sheltering the stranger and tending the sick, weren’t we?  That wasn’t wrong no matter what may happen from hereafter.”

CCC Connection:  2447, 2448

Chapter 2:  Blanche overhears Mr. Freet, brother of the principal (also Mr. Freet), saying, “Art isn’t about truth, it’s about form,…That’s why the absence of a beautiful, structured form destroys music.    Yes, and art, too.”

Blanche consider this and wants to discuss it with her family and Bear.  Is this true? (they conclude in a later chapter that it is not true, truth and beauty are one, and that even evil that appears as beauty just steals beauty away from truth)

CCC Connection:  2500, 2501, 2502 (339)

Chapter 4:  Bear takes the girls to St. Lawrence Church, a now closed church next to their high school where he was an altar boy.  It is dark and a little scary, since they all know the former pastor, Fr. Raymond, was murdered there.

p.82:  Bear:  “Um, you know, since it is my secret place, you wouldn’t tell any of your friends that I took you there, would you?”  Bear suddenly seemed a bit flustered.

“Oh, we don’t have any friends to tell,” Rose assured him.  “Just Mom.”

“Oh, I don’t care if your Mother knows.  She’s as solid as a brick.”

CCC Connection:  2488, 2489, 2491, 2492

Chapter 8:  Rose and Blanche go shopping for a prom dress and other items as a thrift store, and  Rose finds and buys two dresses, and the girls buy a few other items.

p. 110:  discussion of  relative modesty of dresses

CCC Connection: 2521, 2524, 2525

Chapter 11:  after-prom party Rose attends; be prepared for discussion about what she did right, and what she might have done differently

CCC Connection:  CCC 1806 (prudence), 1807 (justice), 1808 (fortitude), 1809 (temperance)

Chapter 14:  Blanche goes to talk to old Sister Geraldine to get information about Bear, and he tells her about how he and his brother Ben converted to Catholicism with the help of Father Raymond. Fr. Raymond collected and had quite a storehouse of unused church vessels that had been in flea markets, etc. 

Sister Blanche:  “Most people thought he was crazy.  After all, most of them weren’t worth very much.  But Father believed, “holy things for the holy,’ and he kept them safe and in good condition.  He wasn’t a reactionary or anything of that sort.  He simply believed in showing reverence for all things connected with the Holy Mass.”

CCC Connection:  CCC 948

Chapter 17 & 18:  When Bear parts from Blanche to “go to his fate,’” he tells her:

"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well"  (a quote from St. Julian of Norwich, afterwards used in a poem by T.S. Eliot.)  What do you think that Bear means?

CCC Connection:  313, 314

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard

I read  Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard  last month, and have wished for time to write about it nearly every day.

I found the book transformative in so many ways.  I do enjoy reading books about personal productivity; but it is rare when I can take away more than a few nuggets of good information to apply to family life and running a busy household.

Switch really goes beyond the typical business-y productivity book.  Almost every page brings new ways of looking at situations and relationships.  Wow!

Greatest take-away points:

            *small changes can  make a huge difference

*self-control is finite

*the notion of “pre-deciding” to do something makes it far more likelier to happen

The three sections of the book correspond to different elements of decision-making:  Directing the The Rider (or self-control), Motivating the Elephant (the emotions or passions), and Shaping the Path (or controlling the environment so good outcomes are easier).

I can think of so many ways I want to implement this in so many areas:

Direct the Rider (self-control, which is finite, the authors point out again and again):

Find the bright spots:  this is about finding positives and focusing on them instead of dwelling on the negative.  I think this has particularly powerful applications in relationships.  A good example of this is trying to distract from or ignore most negative behavior, not as a cop-out but as a way to “starve” them of attention.  Then, pointing out the positive behavior in myself (I ran 10 miles!) and others (you brought the books in from the van without anyone asking you! I like that!) promotes a better family culture.  This is hard for me because I am so verbal, so not only does the positive get highlighted but the negative.  I find it easier as I get older to be quiet for the negative.

Script the critical moves:  As a planner, I LOVE this concept, but the way they describe it as “pre-deciding” to do something is powerful, and really a new way to look at it, especially for the non-planners among us.  For instance, I can say, oh, I want to clean out my closet, but scheduling it (even in my head) for Saturday morning before going out makes it much more likely to happen.  It takes the decision point away from the moment of, “Oh, it’s Saturday morning, what should I do?”

Point to the Destination:  I also love this concept.  The authors point out people should provide big goals for ourselves and those around us, helping to set a tone for excellence.  In the book, the authors describe a teacher who kept telling her low-performing first grade students, “at the end of the year, you’ll be second-graders.”  Then she provided specific  ways to help turn them into second-graders, and she succeeded.

Motivate the Elephant: (the emotions and passions)

Find the feeling: This is using emotions to motivate the elephant to get started on a project or change goal.  Instead of a powerpoint or a  technical article, a visual of the impact of a bad decision can be much more powerful.

Shrink the Change: Breaking things into baby steps makes the bigger jobs more likely to be completed.  I loved that they quoted Flylady’s mantra of “you can do anything for 15 minutes (I think they actually used the five minute rule, but her timers say, “Just 15 minutes” and I’m amazed at how that has changed so many of my projects.

Grow Your People: this is providing time and space for people to daydream and brainstorm solutions to challenges.  I think home education is well-suited to this, providing ample opportunity to come up with good ideas to challenges or new ways of doing things. The problem for me sometimes is holding (kids in this case) accountable for putting the good ideas into practice, even temporarily.

Shape the Path: (controlling the environment to make good outcomes more likely)

Tweak the Environment: The classic example given in the book is that people eat less when eating off smaller plates or out of smaller containers.  It doesn’t seem possible something so small can have such a big difference, but it can in a range of circumstances.  I am mulling ways I can change our environment to make it easier for kids to keep tidy and pick up after themselves without mom extremely verbal voice! Hmm.

Build Habits: By having a habit of virtue and of doing the good, it makes it easier to keep doing it.  This is also shows the importance of family rituals that become second nature, like family dinners and certain traditions. 

Rally the Herd:  Group psychology can help people do the good better than one-on-one.  Here’s something of a disadvantage to home education.