M Ryan Taylor

Simply Eating : Frozen Watermelon Smoothie

September 2nd, 2010

I guess the rule against freezing watermelon only applies if you intend to thaw it out, not pulverize it. I learned about this method from a friend of a friend and was immediately curious to try it.

Take your leftover watermelon (even if it is a bit over-ripe), cut it into chunks and freeze it on a cookie sheet (store in a freezer bag). Now your ready.

Add frozen watermelon to your blender.
Optionally you may add a little organic agave nectar for sweetness and a teaspoon of lime juice for tartness.

Blend. I needed to add a little water to get it going.

That’s it. Simple and it really does taste delicious.

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Innoculate Yourself Against the Zombie Plague . . .

September 1st, 2010

Zombie : photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/felix42/

. . . of Criticism. Your Life Depends on It!

I keep trying to think of a nice way to broach this subject, but its not a nice subject, so here it goes: The Zombie Plague is REAL! There are carriers all around you. They look like normal everyday Joes and Jills. They will pretend to be your friends. Some of them are mentors and authority figures. Others are experts in their field. Some of them may be your teachers or gatekeepers to high-level institutions. They are waiting; watching carefully for an opportunity to infect you.

These Carriers will usually remain dormant until you share with them one or more of your most precious dreams. I do not advise bottling up your dreams, but please take precautions; don’t let yourself become infected!

Five ways to recognize a carrier:

Once activated, Carriers often delight in telling you, “It cannot be done.”
Particularly infectious Carriers are especially earnest in expressing why you can not do it.
Carriers will often compare your work, negatively, with luminary figures or theoretical ideals of the past.
Carriers will explain to you that you don’t have the skills, the talent, the potential, the time, the resources, the support to make an attempt at accomplishing your dream.
Carriers will believe, as they put their foot upon your throat and tell you that you are worthless, that they are doing you a favor.

The stakes are between life and a living death. How do you protect yourself?

You can listen to a Carrier, but once you recognize one for what it is, you must not believe anything it says applies to you. Period.
Avoid future contact with Carriers, if at all possible.
If the Carrier is a close friend or family member, do your best to restrict your conversation to politics and religion. Leave your personal dreams out of it.

Seriously?

It is better to ‘waste’ your life in pursuit of ‘impossible dreams’ that you are passionate about than to take the path of least resistance and never know what you might have done or been.
Never give up. Talent is nice, but not required to succeed in any field. It’s guts and determination that count in the end.
Let the things you are intensely interested in be your guide.

Are you a Carrier of the Zombie Plague? Stop yourself from spreading living death! When someone tells you of their deepest dreams, remember that none of us knows the heart, determination, passion or untapped ability in another person. Whatever you do, please don’t crush them and think you are doing them a service. Instead of imagining everything that could go wrong and probably will, imagine what your friend will need in order to accomplish their task. You don’t have to lie to them. Let them know what tools you think they’ll need and what skills you think they need to develop. You’ll be innoculating yourself and your friends against the Zombie Plague. Inspire yourself and your friends to live life.

Note: This is a post I wrote a while back. It has been moved around quite a bit. After, an old friend mentioned how helpful it actually was to her, I decided I should repost it here.

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Tags: criticism, goals, zombies
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The Power of a Simple Mantra

August 30th, 2010

: Mantras can be powerful ways to focus on your goals when the going gets tough.

One of the tools I’ve relied on in my quest for health and peace is a mantra. Everyone, it seems, knows what a mantra is. My definition is that a mantra is a short phrase of focus that helps your mind and body get on the same track.

For instance, when I feel drawn to eat some tempting non-food, I have fallen back on the phase: “I’m changing my life.”

At times, when I’ve felt been out-of-breath and weary on the trail and I start to want to turn back, I list some of my goals in a mantra-like way:

“Stronger, leaner, swifter.”

When I feel tormented by self-doubt (and dare I say, self-loathing), I find peace in repeating these words of Jesus:

“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth give I unto you, let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” (A text I set to music many years ago.)

If I will slow down and think on this for a minute, soon my feelings of anxiety and depression melt away.

The important thing, it seems clear, is to pick a mantra, or mantras, that deeply resonate with you and give you strength in times when you are week. Write your own, or look for words of wisdom from your spiritual guide, your favorite author, or even a favorite song.

The mantras I’ve used as examples are ones that came to me in the spur of the moment, when I was trying to get somewhere I wanted to go (stay true to healthy eating, keep going, find peace). But, there have been times when I wasn’t prepared to deal with temptation. Current research on overeating (The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite), suggests that coming up with a plan of action for situations you know you will be tempted in can help you stay true to your goals. Planning a combination of mental and physical strategies for those situations can really make a difference, I know.

Before a family party (where I new I would be tempted), my wife and I discussed the issue and came up with a reward for only having one plate of party food (I usually tend to eat two or three). My reward may seem silly, a night out at the movies, but it helped me focus and became a sort of mantra for me. It helped me get through that evening.

So . . .

Think ahead. What things tempt you away from your long-term goals?
Search for or compose a mantra that will help you remain true to the real you.
Use it. When the time comes, repeat it as many times as you need.
Feel good. :-)

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Tags: goals, mantra, weight loss, well being
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Changing Your Life

August 28th, 2010

Our shadows on the way back from our hike around the Brighton Lakes.

I don’t remember exactly what the final straw was, but last Spring (2010) I decided I was going to change my life. I was back up to the most I’ve ever weighed, 424 lbs (I know!). I’d been having back pain, pain in my hip and shoulder. When I walked around shopping, the middle of my right foot and part of my leg would fall asleep! How creepy is that? It’s like walking around with a dead limb.

My whole youth and adult life I’ve been looking for an easy way to lose weight; crazy diets mostly. Last Spring something popped and I didn’t want an easy solution anymore. I wanted to earn my way to health. I wanted to burn and pound myself into the ground; I wanted to rise up from the ashes like a phoenix.

I haven’t reached a standard of lasting health yet, but I don’t think a goal like that is a prize to be won and then forgotten. It is a life-long commitment. I can say, I’ve dropped 43lbs, and all the pain and weirdness that was going on in my body has mostly gone away.

What are the steps I’ve taken so far?

A radical change of attitude. I’m not looking for a quick fix anymore. When you are 424 lbs there are NO quick fixes. Whenever I feel weak I repeat to myself, “I’m changing my life. I’m changing my life.” I want to earn this. I am going to earn this. My health is my #1 priority. I started in on my stationary bike, six days a week, conditioning for our . . .
Wild goal. Dixie and I found a hiking guidebook for our area on the book tables at Costco. We are making an effort to finish each of the 60 hikes in the guidebook. As of this writing, we’ve been on 37 of the 60 trails and only had to turn back a couple of times before reaching the trail’s destination (you have to know when you’ve reached your limit, knife-edges and rock-scrambling are not my cup of tea). I’ve been posting pictures on Trailing Ahead. We’re probably only going to get a few more in before winter now that Dixie’s back teaching school, but there is the spring and summer of 2011 to look forward to. Until then, we plan to continue 3 days a week of hiking, biking, walking, swimming, etc., anyway we can get it in.
At first, I just made it a goal to start eating less. About a month ago we made the decision to start following a simple eating plan and go organic when we could with our food selections.
A while back, on non-hiking days, I started doing weight training.
I’ve made a commitment to simplify my life . . . this has been the hardest thing of all. I am interested in way too many things, but I’m trying to reorient myself. I don’t know what will come of it yet. I recently came to the the realization that I need to start paying more attention to my spiritual health if I am going to find peace.

I’ll talk more about each of these things individually on future posts.

Sometimes I’ve gotten side-tracked. A couple of times I blew a whole week’s worth of progress at a family party or on McDonalds and doughnuts (after Dixie broke her wrist by falling off her bike). The important thing is that I get right back on track, because “I’m changing my life.” I’ve got a long way to go, I weighed in at 381 lbs this morning, but I feel confident that I am on the right track, that’s less than I’ve weighed in many years.

I hope this and future posts will inspire you, especially if you have been thinking about ‘changing your life’ as well.

Harmony,
Ryan

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Tags: change, fitness, health, hiking, life, priorities, weight loss, well being
Posted in Food & Fitness, Living Simply, Spirit | 1 Comment »

Simply Eating Tomatos

August 27th, 2010

Isn’t it wonderful to have the problem of what to do with all those tomatos coming out of your home garden? Here’s a great way to use those tomatos before they get too ripe.

M Ryan Taylor’s Tomato Salad

Chop a slew of home-grown, ripe tomatos into 1/2 inch chunks and place in a large salad bowl.
Snip a bunch of fresh thyme and/or basil over the tomatos.
Salt with sea salt and add a generous amount of fresh ground pepper.
Drizzle a little olive oil over the salad and toss well.
Top with a bit of grated white cheese and serve.

Simple, but divine. You might find yourself pouring the juices that gather at the bottom of the bowl into a glass and drinking them down (tastes like a light version of V8 Italiano).

In the Garden

We planted around 20 plants this year, one or more of each variety that our local nursery had to offer. We’ve tried starting from seed many times, but the nursery plants are always much farther along than ours. We’ve shared some tomatos with my brother’s family, but with all the vegetable eating we’ve been doing it isn’t really hard to work our way through the harvest, especially with the help of the above recipe.

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Simply Eating Spinach

August 26th, 2010

One of the things we buy regularly at Costco is their 1-lb package of organic baby spinach. It is a great deal at somewhere between 3-4 dollars, about half of what we’d pay for the same volume at our local Good Earth. The problem is, how do two people eat a pound of spinach before it starts to wilt?

Besides making an excellent salad base, spinach is fantastic as a cooked vegetable. Here are the 3 ways that we use it most:

As a salad base, alone or combined with organic spring mix. I love the meatier texture that spinach adds to a traditional green salad. Top it with almost anything and add a generous drizzle of olive oil and vinegar, as well as a dash of fresh ground pepper and sea salt.
You don’t have to boil spinach (the only way I was served it as a child) to serve it as a cooked vegetable. Boiling and even steaming can make it a bit soggy. Heat a skillet to medium with a little butter or olive oil, throw in a couple of handfuls of spinach for each person (it cooks down something like 90% in volume) and stir it until it reaches the level of doneness you prefer (I go until there is just a little of the light-green left).
Serve with eggs for breakfast. After sauteing it, as above, add a couple of eggs (organic ones now available at Costco) and stir/turn gently with a silicone spatula, breaking the yolks to cook last (I like the two-color effect) so you can still taste the awesome yolkyness in the scramble. Don’t overcook eggs, they should just be a littly glossy when you turn them out and onto a plate.

When you think about it, there are a lot of ways to use a pound of spinach in a week, but these ideas are quick, easy and delicious. Bon apetit!

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Tags: eating simply, food, organic food, recipes
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The ‘Living Local’ Dilemma

August 25th, 2010

Dixie and I have been striving to buy as much of our food both ‘organic’ and ‘local’ when we can. Our reasons for buying organic are largely about health, while our reasons for buying local are primarily about our city’s tax base (why give your taxes to other cities when they could benefit your neighborhood?). We’ve run into a hitch though . . . hitch, thy name is Costco.

The closest Costco is in Lehi (don’t get me started on the deal the city struck with Walmart so Costco couldn’t build in American Fork, arrrgh!). It’s not that I’m particularly attached to Costco, but they do offer some organic produce at some really great prices. In fact, we figured that we could save enough for our membership fee just by buying Costco’s organic ‘spring mix’ rather than buy it at our American Fork Good Earth. They also have amazing organic baby spinach, carrots and pesticide-free cucumbers, not to mention organic apple sauce, frozen corn and peas . . .

Since we’re eating a boatload of vegetables each day as part of our new healthy eating plan, and being we’re on a budget, this is a big deal to us. So, do we stay true to ‘living local’ or go for the more cost-effective organic foods provider? Honestly, I wish we didn’t have to make the choice.

In a case like this, you have to look at your priorities. Our health and well-being is at the top. Financial solvency is pretty high up there as well. Community is very important to us, but you can’t contribute to the community effectively (in this case through taxes) when you are not healthy/solvent.

We’ll be getting our salad base at Costco.

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Tags: community, eating simply, health, living local, well being
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Lemon Juice and Strawberry Jam

August 15th, 2010

I’ve often thought of the relationship between harmony and dissonance, not only in our music but in our lives. I believe harmony is meaningless without dissonance, just as dissonance is meaningless without harmony. This philosophy is an extension of something taught by people in many faiths. For the far east, the most easily recognized symbol is the yinyang. For Latter-day Saints, it boils down to a scripture in the Book of Mormon that states, “there must needs be opposition in all things.”

It is impossible to know the sweet without the sour, not just in contrast, but in combination. Jeff Sermon, a local musician, church leader and president of Utah Community Credit Union tells a story I really like about lemon juice and strawberry jam. When he was a child he would help his mum harvest strawberries, then wash and mash them for strawberry jam (along with his siblings). When his mum pulled out the lemon juice, something he equated with Draino (toxic stuff), he and his siblings protested adding it to those wonderful strawberries. His mum, being wise, didn’t just go ahead, she told them to taste the strawberries first and they were good, of course. Then she asked them to trust her and added the lemon juice. She asked them to try it again. Of course, the mixture was even better, “More like strawberries than strawberries.” The point being that the dissonance (lemon juice) enhanced the harmony (the strawberries), not detracting from it, but making it an even better all-around experience.

If our lives were all harmony, we could never really appreciate it. Still a steady dose of dissonance with no resolution is pretty much unbearable. There has to be a balance in life as well as in music. Few like their lemon juice straight up.

I once took a family science class that showed research that in order for a marriage to survive, you have to have five good experiences for every bad one. If you reached a 1/1 ratio, the couple was already long since divorced. I think, in general, that’s a pretty good measure for how much dissonance the average person can handle in their lives, and, in the broadest sense, the most amount of dissonance that same person is willing to take in a piece of music. Of course, one piece might be more dissonant and another more consonant, but when it all averages out, there you have it: 5/1 in favor of consonance/harmony.

I know there are other composers with different opinions on dissonance, but that’s mine and a pretty good rule to follow if you hope anyone will want a second dose of your music.

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Force & Flow

August 15th, 2010

Force & Flow. Intellect & Instinct. Effort & Ease. Yin & Yang.

My old voice teacher, Clayne Robison, used to talk about the balance of force and flow in singing. His theory was that force and flow were two ends of a scale. If you were all force in your singing there would be no sound because there was no flow. The opposite is also true, if you were all flow you would only hear breath and no vocalization. The magic point, right in the middle, was where you would find a boost to the power and beauty of the voice.

He would talk about this principle in terms of math as well. Say your force is at 3 and your flow at 7 (you can divide up any even number and get like results), your power factor is only going to be 21 (7 x 3). But if you divide your force and flow equally (5 x 5) you get an extra boost and your power factor will be 25.

I think this applies to a lot more than just singing. Let’s take a look at composition and music itself. The absolutely most engaging music is going to contain an equal balance between force and flow. In this case, a balance not of air flow to muscle use, but of instinct and intellect. On the one hand, music that is conceived purely on an intellectual level may be interesting, but is not likely to be very moving. On the other hand, music formed completely from natural instinct (try to remove all cultural teaching as well) is likely to be on the level of banging rocks together and grunting; not very interesting (though maybe humorous).

What is music for though? This force/flow theory brings up another possibility in my mind on this question. What if music helps us balance our life? What if when our life is filled with force (stress, anxiety, etc.) what we really need is music that is more on the flow side, to balance us out? The opposite also being true, what if our life is a kind of boring, passive, day to day rut? Wouldn’t we crave music that would bring us thrills and excitement?

Just thoughts. There are of course many factors beside instinct and intellect that would come into play if this was the case, I don’t need to go into them all, but that might explain why we have so many different types of music, as many types as there are kinds of people.

Of course, music might be used to augment rather than to balance. Just thinking on screen . . .

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William Byrd’s Eight Reasons for Singing

August 15th, 2010

William Byrd (1543-1623) was the first of the great English composers. The leading musician of the Elizabethan era, he was a renowned organist and in one of the obituaries that followed his death was described as a “Father of Musicke.” He also wrote on music, and in the preface to his Psalmes, Sonnets & Songs, published in 1588, he set down these reasons “to perswade every one to learne to sing” :

William Byrd’s Eight Reasons for Singing

It is a knowledge easely taught and quickly learned, where there is a good Master and an apt Scoller.
The exercise of singing is delightfull to Nature and good to preserve the health of Man.
It doth strengthen all parts of the brest, and doth open the pipes.
It is a singular good remedie for stammering in the speech.
It is the best meanes to procure a perfect pronunciation, and to make a good Orator.
It is the onely way to know where Nature hath bestowed the benefit of a good voyce; which guift is so rare as there is not one among a thousand that hath it; and in many that excellent guift is lost because they want Art to express Nature.
There is not any Musicke of Instruments whatsoever comparable to that which is made of the voyces of men, where the voyces are good and the same well sorted and ordered.
The better the voyce is, the meter it is to honour and serve God therewith; and the voyce of man is chiefely to be employed to that ende.

Since singing is so good a thing,
I wish all men would learne to sing.

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M Ryan Taylor

Simply Eating : Frozen Watermelon Smoothie

Innoculate Yourself Against the Zombie Plague . . .

The Power of a Simple Mantra

Changing Your Life

Simply Eating Tomatos

Simply Eating Spinach

The ‘Living Local’ Dilemma

Lemon Juice and Strawberry Jam

Force & Flow

William Byrd’s Eight Reasons for Singing

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