Pumpkin Pie
Oct 21, 13
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read moreWhy I Stayed Up All Night Making a Personal Kanban and Why You Should Too!
Oct 19, 13
For the last couple of years I have been doing some work with a great guy named Kevin Behr who wrote The Phoenix Project. He works in the space of IT and continuous improvement and helps organizations get better at what they do. One of the ways they get better fast is to control Work in Progress or WIP, which led me to the concept of “Kanban” (rhymes with bonbon) and I’ve been curious about it for a while now. What’s a Kanban, you might ask… Here’s what Wikipedia has to say: Kanban (かんばん(看板)?) (literally signboard or billboard) is a scheduling system for lean and just-in-time (JIT) production.[2]Kanban is a system to control the logistical chain from a production point of view, and is not an inventory control system. Kanban was developed by Taiichi Ohno, at Toyota, to find a system to improve and maintain a high level of production. Kanban is one method through which JIT is achieved.[3] Kanban became an effective tool in support of running a production system as a whole, and it proved to be an excellent way for promoting improvement. Problem areas were highlighted by reducing the number of Kanban in circulation. That all sounds great for manufacturing, right? But why would I want a personal Kanban? I asked Kevin for a book recommendation to further explore the Kanban concept and he recommended Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life by Jim Benson. It is about using a Kanban system to help organize the complex and disparate tasks we all juggle. That is why last night I woke up in the middle of the night and spent a couple of hours creating my own personal Kanban. This book is almost diabolically simple and yet offers a solution to the management of life’s complexity by “managing work.” This idea of calling the complex lists of tasks in my life “work” helps me think about them in a new way. The book suggests we can only focus on one task at a time, thus we should only be actually working on a small number of tasks at any...
read moreMy Legacy
Oct 18, 13
If I died tomorrow, or even today in a fiery hot car crash and people arrived at my funeral, talked about how I mattered, what would they say? Would they mention how busy I was raising kids and driving carpools? Would they talk about how I made school lunches and got dinner on the table every night? Would they talk about how I redecorated my parents’ home, how I helped with their farm finances, helped them buy a car, cleaned their garage? Would they talk about how much I loved my family? How I worried about them in the middle of the night? How I was so incredibly in love with my husband? How I loved my kids with all my heart until it hurt? Would they talk about how I helped my clients with their businesses? How I helped them strategize and improve the bottom line with almost limitless zeal through long term relationships, love and tender care? Would they talk about how I was sometimes bitchy and cranky? How I would get upset by injustice? How I would rattle cages and sometimes annoy even those who love me? Would my life, my legacy, my journey be viewed as enough by those who mourned? Would they talk about the feelings close to my heart or far away? Would my life of toting water, buying bootleg raw milk, and cooking for my family be enough? It is enough for...
read moreFresh Eggplant with Balsamic Vinegar
Oct 17, 13
I have always loved the look of eggplant; when else do we get to eat a purple vegetable? Lured in by its shiny skin and intriguing shape, I used to bring an eggplant home from the market, admire it from afar, and eventually throw it away because I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Then I discovered this recipe, which has become my favorite way to eat eggplant (even though by now I’ve discovered baba ghanouge and other eggplant-based recipes!) This is a delicious accompaniment to grilled chicken or seafood. Ingredients: Extra virgin olive oil 1 medium or 2 small organic eggplants, sliced & quartered 1 clove garlic, minced 1 white onion, chopped 8 organic mushrooms, quartered 2 tbsp high quality balsamic vinegar Preparation time: About 25 minutes Heat the olive oil in a large skillet on medium heat until it is quite hot. Olive oil has a lower “flash point”–or temperature at which it will burn—than some other vegetable oils, so you don’t want it to be too hot for long. Add the eggplant. Let the slices cook well on one side and then stir them so they can cook awhile on the other side. When the eggplant is lightly browned on both sides, add the onion and garlic. Cover and cook for 15 minutes or until the eggplant is soft and fully cooked. Add the vinegar and stir. Add the mushrooms and cover again. Serve when the mushrooms are...
read moreFrontier Restaurant: A Review of My Favorite Restaurant
Oct 11, 13
If I had to pick a most favorite restaurant in the world, I think this would be it. It isn’t fancy or even innovative. It is always the same, never changing. And yet, when someone does something this well, why would they need to change? They are completely dependable, fabulously delicious, spicy, flavorful and amazing. When I was at the University of New Mexico over 20 years ago, I ate there a lot. It was cheap, delicious, and a pretty good place to study. Now, I often wake up on Saturday morning and wish for a Frontier Restaurant breakfast burrito. This morning during a visit to Albuquerque, I got my wish. I woke up and made my way to the Frontier on Central Avenue. It was as good as I remember—it always is. The building itself is iconic. Rumor is they bought it during the Vietnam War era when anti-war protesters were smashing all the windows on Central Ave. and real estate prices plummeted. The restaurant takes up an entire city block right across the street from the University of New Mexico which has about 30,000 students. It has 7 rooms. The loudest room is the front where you order at the counter. I stood around trying to get a table in the front room. I wanted it for the people watching. I scored! Back further in the restaurant the rooms get progressively quieter with student study groups working in the very back. The walls are covered in tacky southwestern art including several paintings of John Wayne. It is fantastically visually stimulating. It is not unusual to see a homeless guy sitting at a table next to business men in suits. On this Saturday morning, the restaurant was pretty full. Everyone loves the Frontier. There seems to be a magical flow that no matter how full it is, you can always get a table. I am sure they have figured out how to make this work. People order at the counter and always find a...
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