When was the last time your inner romantic nudged you to learn something new? Sometimes people get in a rut and begin doing the same things over and over. Days become routine and life gets boring. Has this happened to you? Does the romance of life feel hidden away in a closet somewhere with your old textbooks or that half finished sewing project you started four years ago? Let your romantic self out of the closet. Go find something new to learn or try.

Maybe you aren’t a crafting type of person, so go to an evening history event at your local library. Book stores host events with great authors reading from their books and sharing their own story. Go be inspired. Maybe you love to cook simple things but wish you were more confident and daring in the kitchen. Take a cooking class through community education, a cooking store or check out the offerings at your local co-op.

Co-op’s offer really fun classes in unusual skills. A quick look at one of our local co-ops, Mississippi Market, shows classes as diverse as making home brewed root beer to mastering the art of creating homespun yarn for your winter knitting. Maybe you need to start with something simple, like sampling new coffee. Find out why a freshly roasted bag of beans makes a better tasting cup of coffee than that big plastic tub of ground coffee you have been buying.

If you are a reader, head to the library shelves and find a book on a topic that intrigues you. Love the computer, find an online course. Want to learn how to raise chickens or make cheese? Head to a store like Egg|Plant Urban Farm Supply.

I am a firm believer that when it comes to opportunities for learning, there is something for everyone. Dust off your romantic self, take a deep breath of the cool fall air and find a new opportunity just waiting out there for you to join in the romance of learning!

Yours along TheRomanticWay,

Holly

In addition to our wonderful winter sports, here in Minnesota we have a lot of fun stuff to go see and do. Here are a few of our great outings to get you thinking about what might be fun to do near you.

One of my favorite places to go is the Como Conservatory. I love going through the ferns exhibit, then the tropical garden and on into the sunken flower garden to see the current seasonal display. I was there just last week to see the gorgeous poinsettias. There is nothing quite like seeing all those beautiful plants and flowers and the koi in the pond while watching the snow fall outside the glass surrounding you.

For a great dose of color and artistic stimulation, I head to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts Museum. It always stirs up the creative juices to see works of art from cultures all around the world. If it is the third Thursday of the month, there will be a fun program in the evening that is free to all and has live music and a fun theme. Sometimes they even do a little matchmaking by providing color coded bracelets so you can let others know you are looking for that special someone!

Coming up later in January, our Saint Paul Winter Carnival will be in full swing. Events range from hot air balloons, the treasure hunt, a Snow Snake Tournament, ice sculpting and the crowd pleasing Vulcan’s overthrow of King Boreas immediately after the Torchlight Parade. There is something for everyone and no excuses allowed for sitting home bored.

What’s happening in your town? Tackle your cabin fever and head on out!

Yours along TheRomanticWay!

Holly

Are the world’s lovers mindful of the cost of life to the Roman saint from whom our holiday takes it’s name? The history books tell us that during the third century, Roman Emperor Claudius II struggled with the fact that his young army recruits would rather make love than war and concluded that the best solution was to eliminate one of their options. Hence, and I’m sure to horror of all sweethearts, the emperor outlawed marriage for soldiers.

Enter the hero, Valentinus, a priest and it would seem, a hopeless romantic himself. He had his own romantic ideas and out of compassion for the celibate plight of young soldiers and their would-be sweethearts, he opened his own underground wedding chapel. The emperor got wind of Valentine’s clandestine matrimonial meetings, and though he admired the priest’s verve, he was obliged to execute the poor cleric.

The rest is legend but makes a great love story. While Valentine contemplated his last days in the Emperor’s Roman dungeon, the jailer asked him to pray for his blind daughter, Asterius. Valentine’s prayers were answered, and young Asterius was able to read his farewell note to her with her own eyes, those words of love which would linger on lips of lovers, and their cards for centuries, “From Your Valentine”.

Now you know the story, but what are some romantic Valentines Day ideas? Shopping centers, gift and card shops, florists and on-line retailers are eager to help you with your quandary, but I recommend a little thought first. Our hero Valentine reminds us of the reason for the season: “Be Mine!” My tradition is to think of how many ways I can say “I love you!”

Exactly one week before Valentines Day on February 8th, I remind my one and only of my undying love by giving her a gift of something red each day. I know that Holly really likes to be remembered often. She enjoys lots of little things and looks forward to receiving them.

Simple Romantic Valentines Day Ideas You Can Use

• Sometimes, I’ll put a little gift someplace where she’ll find it like little chocolates wrapped in red foil, or a unique or funny card I bought or made.
• Sometimes the red gift is a treat to eat like a carton of cherry-nut ice cream or a frosty glass of strawberry soda served over ice.
• Maybe I see some flowers that catch my eye or a simple little special gift.
• I seldom fail to buy a bag of those little candy sweethearts with the messages.

What is my advice on the best romantic Valentines Day ideas? Pause, consider, and go for the simpler choices. You don’t need to spend a lot of money to say “I love you.” If you’re going to celebrate Valentines Day with tickets to a play or a reservation for a nice dinner out with champagne and red roses, be sure to allow time to talk and simply be together. You know the most romantic Valentines Day idea is to spend time alone together. Let your lover know you love her and that you love to be with her. The best way to do that is…. well, to be with her.

Yours along TheRomanticWay!

Rod

Romantic Candle Light is Easy!

If you haven’t got a beautiful pair of matching silver candle holders with lovely elegant tapers, try looking around your kitchen cupboards for a bunch of glass jars. Yes, jars! Save those jelly jars, mustard jars and any other jars you may use that have a wide opening at the top and an interesting shape. Keep a package of those inexpensive little tea light candles on hand for instant romance. Just put a candle in each jar, using several different shapes and sizes together to make an instant centerpiece on your table or to set around the room to add that soft candle light that sets a wonderful, romantic mood.

Tea light candles can be purchased in economical, large packages at Ikea, Walmart, craft stores, etc. If you like scented candles, those are available in small tea lights too. (Just be sure the person you are sharing the romantic moment with doesn’t have perfume allergies like I do!)

If you want to add a little extra touch to those jars, string a few beads on craft wire and tie them around the neck of the jar.

Jar candles are a great way to add the romance of candle light to a patio picnic as well since they help protect your candles from any breeze as you enjoy being outdoors.

Another fast and easy way to set up an elegant and romantic candle lit scene is to hit the thrift shops, like Goodwill and Salvation Army stores and purchase an odd number of different shapes and sizes of brass candle holders (or silver if you don’t mind the polishing, or better yet, go for the tarnished look!) If you want to protect your table top from wax, just grab a pretty tray or plate while you are there to arrange them on. Don’t be afraid to mix fat and skinny candles together or even a tea light holder too. Mix things up and enjoy a fun and inexpensive way to light up your life with romantic candle light!

Yours along TheRomanticWay!

Holly

Melodee’s Date Bars

Filling

1 1/2 to 2 pounds chopped dates
2 cups water
1/3 cup granulated sugar

Blend together in a saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly until thickened, about 10 minutes.

Crust

Cream together in a bowl:

1 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup butter, softened

Really… what’s a date without a date?

Add and mix well:

1 3/4 cup flour
1 1/2 cups oats
1 t salt
1/2 t baking soda

Press half of crust mixture into a greased 9×13″ pan. Spread with filling. Top with remaining mixture, pressing lightly.

Bake 25-35 minutes. Cut while warm.

Yours along TheRomanticWay!

Rod & Holly

The Proof is in the Romantic Features

I consider a life moving to the romantic when qualities of fullness and margin emerge. For Andrew, fullness meant finding his life mate in a Central Russian Republic and really making it happen. It took some time and a sea of paperwork, but they’re married and happy. They’ve been back to visit Gulnara’s home village and wrote about it in Andrew’s eBay store.

Andrew, an artist with an eclectic style, virtually swims in his own creativity and is at home there. Media is no problem for Andrew as he can create art with anything within arm’s length: a manila envelope, shoe box, toilet seat, someone else’s painting or a lamp.

He Can Sell Anything on eBay

If you want to know how to eBay, study Andrew. Visit Andrew’s eBay Store here. Romantic life isn’t easy. Andrew and Gulnara work hard to make eBay successful. If Andrew’s art is eclectic, his store is as well and it reflects his broad interest and creative bent. From belt buckles to a diesel engine — from old films to Andrew’s outsider art, if you keep watching, you’ll find something you’ll love.

What’s really attractive about Andrew’s eBay store is that it really reflects who he is. His warm, humorous conversational style on virtually any subject translates him in his eBay store to a veritable poet. He knows his stuff and writes about it with artistic flare that fosters fondness and loyalty in his buyers.

And true to a romantic lifestyle, their lives aren’t all wrapped up in themselves. They lavishly give of themselves to church, family and community. In romance, there is always margin — whitespace in life to move around, be flexible and available to give, help, and create a fuller life for others. For years Gulnara and Andrew have been serving children’s work both in Russia and in their own community.

I think the most recent development really defines them. Several weeks ago, Andrew and Gulnara sublet their apartment in LA, loaded up their pickup and moved to Illinois to take care of his mother who is suffering from terminal cancer. It’s a remarkable heart and a remarkable life that can move in a moment without difficulty. Art and eBay continue — now from the Illinois office.

Yours along TheRomanticWay!

Rod

My obsession with images started as a kid with an antique Ansco box camera. I tried pinhole photography discovering that I was more intrigued with the whole process of capturing images than I was with the final images themselves. With film the outcome is always a surprise, and I learned quickly not to be disappointed with what I got, but to say, “Now, that’s interesting!”

A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know. Diane Arbus

Once I had some money, I bought a nice Pentax and a couple lenses. It expanded me, gave me some options in my shooting. Then some years later, that Pentax was accidentally lost and I began working with a $3 garage sale Yashika — totally manual. My father-in-law gave me that camera and shortly after I enrolled in a darkroom class at a nearby art institute. The combination of the basic camera and the vague assignments of the photo class gave me permission to experiment, break bounds and go wild with ideas. It revolutionized my art.

When we left for Russia, my friend, Tom, gave me a little digital camera. It only had room on it for a few pictures and those just a few KB in size, but it introduced me to a concept that my photos were now more than just prints in an album. They had unlimited possibilities. It wasn’t until a few years later that I got my first serious Nikon digital. I’ve been going crazy ever since.

No matter how advanced your camera you still need to be responsible for getting it to the right place at the right time and pointing it in the right direction to get the photo you want. Ken Rockwell

I learned two things in those next years. First, I don’t “take pictures”. I “make pictures”. Some cultures of the world believe that the camera has the power to actually remove something from a person in order to make an image. Certainly the idea of “taking” is involved in their thinking. Art is art and art is painted, sculpted, sketched, written, composed and photographic images are “made”, not taken.

Almost all of the images on The Romantic Way are mine. I’ve borrowed a few for specific purposes to illustrate an idea or emotion for which I have no image, but most you see are mine, and most are digital using either of the two Nikons I own.

Few things incite me to violence more than an admirer of my photographs who casually says, “Wow, your pictures are really nice. You must have a really good camera.” Death. Dismemberment.

I’m an amateur. It’s an art I love, and it helps me see my world from another perspective. It also helps me express how I see my world in countless ways.

I’m an amateur. Enjoy the pix!

Yours along TheRomanticWay!

Rod

Chocolat

Benny and Joon

So, “Why?”, I thought, shouldn’t we writers also write on location?

It makes perfect sense. While it’s true that images aren’t captured on celluloid or videotape, but they are captured. They’re captured in a far more profound way, processed, and published in probably the most profound medium ever thought of — writing. It’s a medium that can transfer images like none other. And it makes sense that writers should at least sometimes write on location.

A Writer’s Date — Writing on Location

On Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, we packed a wonderful lunch of roast chicken sandwiches with humus, fresh leaf lettuce and generous slices of Vidalia onion. We drove up the river about 40 minutes and found a pristine spot packed with historical legend, wildlife and sunshine.

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
Henry David Thoreau

There, with fresh pens and notebooks with plenty of potential, we wrote until our souls were satisfied. We kept the talking to a minimum so as not to interrupt the help of the muse or to hand over the binoculars to gaze at a hawk or passing canoe.

I don’t really know what Holly’s writing about. She hasn’t said, but since that day, she’s been writing every free moment. Writing on location was a good idea for her.

And writing on location was a good idea for me as well. I hadn’t realized what was holding up my current project until we “went on location” and the exact creative input that I needed was all around me. It was nearly overwhelming.

Writing on location is sure medicine for blocked writers and artists as well as help for aspiring writers needing a little kick start. Here are a few tips:

• Choose a place where you can immerse yourself in the atmosphere you’re looking for. Be aware that some environments might be more distracting than helpful. Try it, but be take note of what works for you. Maybe you’ll need to try something different.
• Writing partners are great, but don’t talk about writing. Write.
• Choose cautiously between a laptop computer and a notebook and pen. The notebook is even more portable allowing you subtle adjustments in your on location choices.
• Allow plenty of time. In fact, the best situation is when you allow yourself an open-ended writing time. Then you can write till you’re finished. A luxury to be sure, but really nice if you can swing it.

Enjoy your next on-location writer’s date. Post a comment to tell me about it!

Yours along TheRomanticWay!

Rod

Select a fresh five-pound chicken at your grocery store. If they’re on sale, you can buy a couple and freeze one, but I like to buy it, take it home and prepare it right away.

Wash the inside of the chicken pulling out all the disgusting stuff. Rinse again and pat it dry inside and out with paper toweling.

Here’s the fun part. Stuff the inside cavity and neck with vegetables, fruits or herbs or any combination that suites you. Then stuff herbs, fruit, butter or garlic under the skin along the breast. Finally, rub spices, herbs, mustard and salt into the skin with a little olive oil.

A Couple of my Roast Chicken Preps

• Stuff the cavity with a small quartered onion, a chunked stalk of celery, and a half lemon and a few sprigs of thyme. Then stuff a few additional sprigs of thyme, a couple of slices of lemon and a little butter under the skin. Finally, rub all over with a mixture of a couple tablespoons of dijon mustard, salt and pepper.

• Another great one is to chunk a fresh stalk of rhubarb and a couple of unpealed orange quarters and stuff them in the cavity. Then chop some more rhubarb and thin slices of orange and stuff it under the skin. Finally, rub the skin all over with salt and pepper.

• Make up some of your own! You really can’t go wrong!

Finally, jam a wire poultry roasting stand into the cavity of the bird. Always use a poultry stand whenever you can. The meat comes out much more moist, the skin is crisp and your bird isn’t sitting in its own grease.

Stand it in a roasting pan and place it uncovered on the lowest rack of your oven at about 400F. Check it after about twenty minutes and if the skin is nice and brown, take it out and place a tent of foil over the bird, reduce the heat to 375F. and continue roasting for another hour. Check the temperature by inserting an instant-read thermometer in the thickest part of the breast. When the temperature reaches at least 165F. your bird is done.

When your whole roast chicken has finished roasting, remove from the oven and let it rest for 5-10 minutes and then carve it up any way you like using a meat fork and carving knife. They’re a little awkward to handle, but be bold and don’t worry about how you cut it up.

Serve it up with rice pilaf or roasted potatoes along with a fresh green salad with sunflower seeds and orange bits and a nice vinagrette dressing. Generous hunks of whole grain bread are a nice touch.

Enjoy!

Yours along TheRomanticWay!

Rod

4 c. Cut Rhubarb for a 10-inch or a little less for a 9-inch pie
1 c. Sugar
1 tsp. Grated orange peel
3 Tbsp. Flour
1/8 tsp. Salt
1 Two-crust pastry recipe for a 10-inch pie
2 Tbsp. Butter

Roll out your favorite pie crust!

Wash and cut the rhubarb into 1/2 inch pieces. Combine the first five ingredients. Fill the pie crust and dot the top with butter. Adjust the top crust to the pie. Vent the top with a sharp knife and sprinkle the crust with sugar.

Protect the pie edges with strips of foil if you like and remove for the last ten minutes of baking. Place pie in preheated 400F oven and bake for ten minutes. Then reduce temperature and bake another thirty minutes at 350F.

Cool pie and serve with cream, ice cream or as is. Enjoy!


Yours along TheRomanticWay!

Rod & Holly