today i will...

Like most people I have one little thing that makes me feel better no matter how bad my day is and for me that thing is book shopping. Finding a good deal on a book is my Prozac. So a few months ago I was suffering from the doldrums and stumbled upon this delightful little book and fell in love with it. The authors, Eileen and Jerry Spinelli, have perused masses of children's literature, taken one excerpt or quote for each day from those masses and attached their own inspiring advice aimed towards young adults, but applicable to everyone.

I'll often read it as a part of my morning ritual and I read this for January 3rd:

"'There's something about a blank page that makes me tingle.'

-Jazmin's Notebook by Nikki Grimes

"You can take those words-a blank page-literally, or you can take them to mean any aspect of your life that is empty, a blank space. We all have blank pages in our lives: a thank-you or an apology not yet expressed, a forgiveness not yet offered, a challenge not yet attempted, a vegetable not yet tasted. Do the blank pages in your life make you tingle? Or retreat?

"Goal:

There's a stack of blank pages in my life.

Some of them, frankly, don't excited me.

But others do. Today I'll pick one out and fill it in. "

-

I would add that sometimes it isn't up to us to select those blank pages, sometimes life takes a hand. For instance, we've been suspecting for a while that Derrick may have a gluten-intolerance or a mild to moderate form of celiac disease. This means that we now avoid wheat/oat products and are looking for substitutes to our previously static recipe list. We feel, however, that instead of solely focusing on what we can't eat and trying our best to substitute (rice bread? it's just plain gross, sorry people) we're going to use this opportunity to write on a blank page of culinary worlds not yet explored. The great news? There are lots of ethnic foods we have no idea how to cook and that use no wheat. So today we went to an Asian market and bought some of this...

and with a few other items

made this delectable yellow curry,

sans gluten!So wish us luck as we write on this blank page in our lives, and if you have any gluten-free recipes, 'ethnic' or otherwise, please feel free to write on our page too!

oh, and if you get a chance, buy "today i will" because hopefully you'll love it as much as I do.