Fall is a time of year that is both beautiful and noisy. We have politicians on one side and leaf blowers on the other sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.
I turned off the television and relaxed with a book. In it was a chapter about being happy. The first thing I read said that we could choose to be happy every single day.
Now I know I make choices that cause me to be happy, for example waking up my family quietly with a hug makes me happy and having a piece of salted dark chocolate for breakfast makes me happy but I never really thought about opening my eyes each day and saying to myself I am going to be happy today. What if I jinx it somehow?
For example, I decide that I am going to be happy all day but the dog has decided to get into the trash can and make a huge mess for me to clean up… Bam, right there, happiness over.
One of my favorite quotes is “Life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you react to it.”
So here is my choice: do I let the messy dog ruin my day and make me crabby or do I clean it up put a smile back on my face and move on? I am hoping I choose the latter but it really depends on the amount of trash, doesn’t it?
It’s funny but when I think of happy times, most of them are surrounded by food. Breakfast with my friends, coffee with neighbors, lunches at the park, birthdays and special dinners with my family are all great times and all involve food. I recently had a memorable lunch with my husband at Zorbas on the Lake in Detroit Lakes. We tried their tap beer, hard cider, fish tacos and unusual pizzas. I had the peanut butter pepperoni pizza and it was amazing! We relaxed for a couple of hours snacking, talking and relaxing. This made me happy.
My friend Eva reminded me of our grade school, Birch Grove Elementary, and all the happy times we had there. The playground was not really special but it had some tractor tires buried standing up in the dirt. We could fit inside and it was a fun place to hide for hide-andseek. It also was the first place everyone looked. (I said it was a fun place to hide, not a smart place to hide….)
When I close my eyes I can still hear the screams of laughter. We didn’t think about being happy, we just were happy. Fresh air, friends and great homemade school lunches….hamburger gravy with mashed potatoes and corn and Jell-O!
Eva also reminded me of a Birch Grove Elementary Cookbook that we made as a fundraiser in 1972. Of course my mom still had the cookbook in her kitchen so she mailed it to me! Here are some of the recipes from this memorable little book. Contact me if you want a copy. I will print it and mail it to your door for $6. (All the profit will go to Birch Grove Community School….I bet they will be surprised that this fundraiser is still working 30 years later!)
Here are some “happy” Birch Grove recipes for you to try!
Just because I laugh a lot doesn’t mean my life is easy. Just because I have a smile on my face every day doesn’t mean that something is not bothering me. It’s just that I choose to move on from the negative in my life and keep my head up instead of dwelling on the past.
Wise Author Unknown
Taste of Home columnist Sandy (Anderson) Holthaus lives on a farm in South Haven, MN with her husband, Michael, and their children Zoe, Jack and Ben. Her heart remains on the North Shore where she grew up with her parents, Art and LaVonne Anderson of Schroeder. She enjoys writing about her childhood and mixes memories with delicious helpings of home-style recipes.
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