The Common Ingredient is Love

Garlicky Tomato and White Bean soup pairs well with cornbread and honey. #TheCommonIngredient
Credit: Cathy Salter’s Garlicky Tomato and White Bean Soup–#The Common Ingredient

March 2020–Long lines at food pantries; thousands of people out of work and worried they cannot feed their families. 

March 2020–At home in Columbia, Missouri, Anne Deaton saw these lines, worried about the food insecure, and how she could help. Not content to just worry but, as always, ready to act, Anne got busy. She contacted fellow Columbians Nina Mukerjee Furstenau, Cathy Salter, and Robin Labrunerie, all culinary talents, writers and all founding members of The Common Ingredient (TCI). Barbara Schlemeier and Linda Cupp joined in along with Holly Enowski, their webmaster, and a website was born:  thecommoningredient.com.

And not just any website. A website where people who could no longer share meals with family and friends could find recipes for future meals once the pandemic abated as well as act on their concern for those hard hit by COVID-19. Through the website these food warriors raised awareness about food insecurity, especially during COVID-19, and provided a way for people, like me, to donate to organizations serving those who need food. 

 “Yes, this was a very small action step that we could do from our home (and have fun doing so),” explained Anne, “as none of us felt, at our ages, that we could go volunteer at the food pantry or other food distribution sites when COVID began.” 

Anne Deaton, founding member of TCI.
Photo Credit: The Common Ingredient 2021 summer newsletter

It was also a way for those of us stuck at home to enjoy this virtual cookbook where the common ingredient is love–love for food, for family, for those who need our help.

What a resource these women have prepared for their online visitors–recipes, comfort food stories, tips and tricks (which I need), recipe submissions (yes, submit your favorite recipe and grow their collection), and a donation link to organizations serving the food insecure in Northeast Missouri. Future plans include ways to grow the site to include other states and organizations.

January 2022–Yes, these talented, energetic, caring women inspired me and continue to inspire. They could have just donated to Feeding America or similar organizations and said “Enough. I did my part.” But they didn’t. They continue to expand their efforts and declare to the world that they will help overcome food insecurity. I will join them. Will you?

#bloganuary2022, #daily-prompt, #food-insecure

Soaring out of my comfort zone

Nervous smile as I await take off from New Castle International Gliderport, New Caste, VA

That smile on my face hides the grimace in my gut as I prepared for my first sailplane ride. Launch took place from the New Castle International Gliderport in New Castle, Virginia, home of the Blue Ridge Soaring Society (BRSS), our host for this adventure. Cecil McBride, the scribe of my husband’s motorcycle group, organized rides for members who wanted to sail the friendly skies in lieu of two wheels on asphalt.

White knuckled flyer that I am in a plane that has an engine, why would I choose to soar in an aircraft without an engine? Well, my thoughts at the time were that we couldn’t really lose power and plummet from 30,000 feet to a certain death. After all, the tow plane would take us high enough (but not too high) to catch an updraft, or if I want to sound really knowledgable, a thermal. My thoughts were should any emergency arise, we would just glide to earth. No fuel means no fire, just in case of an emergency landing

Oh woman of little learning! (Remember a little learning is a dangerous thing.) Guess what? Sailplanes can fall from the sky, do go fast, and one can die in a glider. Not likely, but possible. So glad I had not consulted Google before sailing away.

My biggest concern after the pilot’s orientation about our flight, was that somehow, I would not disconnect us correctly from the tow plane.(My only job.) Such a silly worry, but my overactive imagination conjured up within seconds all sorts of weird occurrences–we wouldn’t disconnect somehow causing both us and the tow plane to go down or we would follow behind the tow plane and not experience this adventure and be the laughing stock of the BRSS and the motorcycle group. All my fault. 

Ok, none of that happened or probably could not have happened. I never asked. Once we safely disconnected from the tow plane, caught an updraft, and began to soar, so did my heart. Even though the day was not sunny so another worry, where were our thermals, the silence filled my ears–just the whish, whish, of the air around us, beneath us, over us, calmed me down, and I took in every second, every frame of the scenes running under us. 

When I was much, much younger, I dreamed that I could fly. I felt myself bobbing in the air, floating on updrafts as I flew over hills and into valleys. Was this my dream come true? Perhaps, but that freedom of being buoyed only by the air, I have not felt since that cloudy, October day in 2015.

I sailed out of my comfort zone because I like challenges, because I do not want to dissolve away into old age, with only my walker to support me, because my anxiety prompts me to try those adventures that make me anxious. I’ve lived a good life but I want more until the day I decide that my life is complete. Not there yet.