Purslane and New Achievement Unlocked

herb purslane rice salad

Herb and purslane rice salad: tons of purslane and parsley, just a bit of mint, cucumber, tomatoes, a tiny bit of everlasting spinach and red orache, rice (obviously), dressed in a simple lemon and olive oil dressing.

Purslane harvest

The people you spend the most amount of time with are bound to affect your morale, whether for good or ill. The quality of people you spend time with has a distinct influence on the quality of life you’re living. I have just emancipated myself from two master self-delusionists* and already my shoulders feel lighter. Today I will not be lied to or disrespected boldly by people I have no real power of rebuttal with. Walking out on them was the only power I truly had.

Today my psychic house is clean and fresh. A new chapter begins. My coffee tastes better, my outlook is more hopeful, and I have the space to evaluate what lessons I have learned from this past experience spending time with people not practicing at being Good Humans. I can either be shaped negatively by it all or be shaped positively by learning something and working at improving myself through it.

My first few minutes home I spent in my garden. Hahaha. That’s a lie. I was really upset so the first few minutes home I spent on my couch staving off a panic attack and also easing my anger back down my throat. THEN I went out in the garden and picked some purslane. I picked a lot of purslane. Turns out purslane is thriving in the bed we put it in and doesn’t mind the heat or dryness. I picked some tomatoes too, then I staked up my rudbeckia as I’ve been meaning to do for at least a week. I did a crap-ton of dishes and then I looked for purslane recipes.

My wonderful Canadian Twin who writes the blog Soup and Sustenance, and is half of the design team Winter-Hebert, suggested I make tabbouleh with it. I have traditionally not liked tabbouleh particularly because I don’t love bulgar wheat. So I thought I’d make a rice salad inspired by tabbouleh. In the end it was almost just like tabbouleh, texture and all, but I LOVED it. I even put some mint from the garden in it. I don’t generally like mint in my food. I like it in tea. Maybe it’s just what I needed. I don’t know, it was so good. I did not put feta on it. NO CHEESE. And still it was fabulous.

I’m going to end this post reminding you all that in any endeavor, you build a good reputation by practicing being a Good Human and you keep it by continuing the practice of being a Good Human to all the people you work with/deal with in life. If you find you need to do a lot of damage control by limiting what the people around you are able to SAY about you, that says A WHOLE LOT OF SHIT ABOUT YOU. And it aint good shit. A person who is always behaving well to other humans doesn’t have need of damage control.

And here’s a truth even the self-delusional must realize at some point: you can’t gag every person you encounter, work with, know, or deal with. The truth about your quality of behavior WILL get out. Plug a leak in one place, it will come out through another crack in your carefully constructed facade.

So don’t be lying douche-nozzles who treat other people like crap.

 *Obviously, I could be talking about ANYONE.

3 comments

  1. Sarah says:

    You’re a good human and I love you. And put that lovely purslane in a separate container, unless you want to only eat that next year. Really. Jeff can’t say the word without an F bomb in front of it.

  2. angelina says:

    I love you too and you’re also a good human. As to purslane – it’s pretty difficult to get greens to grow abundantly in droughty climates like this so if purslane wants to cover my property, there are worse things that could go wild. I can only grow good lettuce here in winter. So I’m going to explore all the ways an abundance of purslane can be used in a tasty fashion. Right now they all want to flower and soon I’ll let them and see what happens. What I want to know is: why can’t I get parsley to seed everywhere? I use a lot of it and in Oregon I never had to buy it. I just let it go to seed and I always had plenty. Sigh.

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