Tag: Valerie Bertinelli

Connection

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, friends, Holidays, Karen's Kitchen, my one word

I was just watching Valerie Bertinelli’s new cooking show on the Food Network. It turns out that Karen’s Kitchen isn’t so different from Valeries’s Kitchen. She lasagnawas making a buffet for a Christmas gathering and it consisted of lasagna, salad, and a favorite Italian cookie from childhood.

I realized as I watched that one of my own favorite Italian dinners is the same. The lasagna recipe I remember from my own family dinners of yore, salad, and a different cookie, but still a favorite Italian cookie that I grew up with (I am not surprised that both of our dessert recipes include chocolate… 🙂 ).

Of course there are some differences, the biggest of which is this: Valerie has both of her parents with her. Mine have long since departed.

At the end of the show, I was surprised to hear them talking about choosing a word for next year! Their words were much different from mine (Hello, ‘Butter’? ‘Bacon’? How did I not think of using a food as my one word? Ha!).

Lesson: we really are all connected, aren’t we? We can be connected to people that we have never met by our food and our (Italian) heritage, as in this case, but there are many other ways that we can find connection in our everyday lives.

 

 

Pajama Day!

by Karen, posted in books, health, Midlife Crisis, movies, my one word, no fear

I recently read a magazine article about Valerie Bertinelli  ( Woman’s Day, I think; she was on the cover, if that helps) in which she describes a day that she spent in bed. Her husband was away travelling (I think), and of course she’s had an empty nest now for years, so there weren’t too many arrangements for her to make in advance. She gets a stack of magazines, books she has been wanting to read, movies she’s been wanting to see…then takes to her bed, staying in her jammies (duh) and even brings any meals right there to the bed for consumption.
I immediately started wondering how the heck to arrange a Pajama Day for me.

I found a day in March that looks promising.

“Now,  if there were only closer opportunity for a mental health–I mean, pajama–day!” Then a funny thing happened…I got sick.

My stack of magazines is already assembled. My stack of books is already next to the bed (and the couch, and my desk) and currently I have not one, but two books that I am actively reading and loving. My movie list is already compiled on Netflix (not to mention my DVR queue that at this point is looking longer than my life). In fact, a movie that I have been dying to see for weeks had just (finally! finally!) arrived from Netflix and was there waiting for me.

I never get sick. Here was my perfect opportunity to take a pajama day, handed to me on a silver platter, and what did I do?

I went to work.

Stupid.

It’s hard to not be afraid to just focus on oneself.

Oh, I did use the fact that I was sick as a ‘get out of (going to the) gym free’ card. Just sayin’…