Green With... Sorrel?

I've got a bad case of the greens; little monsters everywhere... Recently I've been getting in touch with several old friends with whom I had lost contact after several school changes and moving down here to Boise. It really is amazing the ways that we can find one another nowadays! I was lucky with friends in the two high schools I attended. Back home, I found these eclectic and compassionate people who really filled in the more drab areas of my life. However, when I changed schools, I lost touch with nearly all of them because I am an awful friend. I admit it! I'm a terrible friend.... Communication is my strong point, so long as I'm in contact with you on a regular basis, but move to another school, another city, and I'm incommunicado... It's something that I'm only now just getting a handle on.

Learning about everyone's lives, accomplishments and triumphs is proving to be equal parts exciting and terrifying, though. Jackson thinks that I have the propensity to measure the worst in myself against the best in all others. Perhaps there's a grain of truth in that, but right now the green bits of me are feeling very loud and I keep running into this feeling that I'm just not measuring up to snuff. One of my friends is PUBLISHING as an undergrad (amazing!!!). Talk about feeling inferior! I have quite a bit to be proud of (I think...), but it's hard to feel very enthused when it feels like there is a substantial amount of treading water going on and very little return. I'm getting to this point where the goals I set for myself are no longer satisfying and this is abjectly terrifying.

I've been here before, but with my current status in life, I'm having a hard time putting things in adequate perspective, and so I am green... Should I ditch academia and start up that bookstore I've always dreamed of? Is the simplicity of that aspiration compatible with the part of me that wants to get my PhD and meaningfully contribute to society through that sort of outlet? What about my aspirations for a family? Could I just complete the bachelors and embrace a domestic life? Mommy-envy has been plaguing me for a while now as well! Several of my friends down here and up north are nesting and the life they display is so attractive, but I know that behind each Instagram photo of the cherubic little kid is a screaming tyrant in T-2 min... But perhaps that life is as attractive as it seems... I've always wanted to be a mother and yet I never contemplated actually being a mother. 


And so the final green monster, and the one I choose to absorb myself with post-post, is a bunch of sorrel that has been chilling in my fridge for the past day and a half. I've never cooked with the green and yet it looked so lovely at the market this past Saturday that I was compelled to buy a bunch. But what to make? I have issues actually cooking a lot of greens because I love the taste of raw foods so I wanted to make something raw, but sorrel is a bit bitter for my taste. Lucky me, one of the friends I've been reconnecting with suggested making a pesto out of it. So, I'm off to the blender to pulverize some sorrel, garlic, walnuts, and a tomato. At least there is one green monster I can overcome this afternoon! 

EDIT: The finished product! It was delicious, and I think it's a make again! Into the blender went a bunch of sorrel, 1/2 of a tomato, 1/2 clove of garlic, about 1/4 cups of olive oil, 1/4 cup of walnuts, a pinch of rosemary and basil each, freshly ground S+P, and as a final touch I stirred in some feta cheese. The whole mess went wonderfully over some whole wheat spaghetti and I sprinkled some more cheese on top and finished it off with a couple of tomato slices. Jack wasn't really the biggest fan of this combo, but I think that it is mostly because he's not into pesto's in general. Nuts aren't really his thing!