Yay for budgeting!
Yay for eating out of the pantry!

That said, this has caused some, uh, more interesting food inventions.
Some dishes, like this Lemongrass Coconut Shrimp Soup, were successful.
Some dishes, like the noodly shrimpy rice noodle toss pictured below, were less so.

But we shall learn from my mistakes, and soldier on.
On to a soup that’s lovely for summer,
easy on the waistline and
customizable enough for the rest of us.

Ingredients
1 pound raw shrimp in shells
2 cups water
2 cups chicken broth
2 tablespoons Lemongrass paste or 3 stalks lemongrass, chopped into 2 inch pieces.
1 tablespoon peanut oil
1 shallot, chopped fine
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
2 teaspoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 cup coconut milk
2 scallions, chopped fine
Minced cilantro and Sriracha sauce to garnish

Directions
Separate shrimp from their shells, save the shells.
Cut larger shrimp in thirds, smaller shrimp in half — set aside.

Rinse the shrimp shells and put them in a large soup pot.

Add 2 cups water and 2 cups of chicken broth.
Heat shrimp shells and water/broth to boiling.

If you’re adding lemongrass stalks, add those now too.
Strain mixture and discard shrimp shells and lemongrass stalks.
Set the broth aside.

In a dutch oven or soup pot, add the peanut oil, heat to medium high.
Add chopped shallot, stir until translucent, about 3 minutes.
If you’re using lemongrass paste, add it to the soup pot now. Stir through.
Add garlic and light brown sugar, stir through for about a minute or until the pot is fragrant and the shallot pieces are starting to goldenify.

Add the strained shrimp broth to the soup pot.
Add fish sauce, soy sauce and coconut milk, heat to boiling.

Add shrimp, turn to low.
Add scallions, stir through.

After shrimp are opaque – about 3 minutes – turn off the heat and serve.
I like to serve it with Siracha and cilantro.
James likes it just the way it is.

If you like these kinds of soups, my Hot and Sour Thai Soup is also a winner. We’ll serve it with Pad Thai or these lettuce wraps (scroll down a bit on the linked page — I made the wraps with ground chicken on this particular night).

Soup win!
High five!
Pantry gold!

Time and time again, I get confused by reality television’s insistence on pitting human against human. That aggressive competition is the opposite of my experience. This sounds naive. I know. Reality tv has been around for years, and I consume the drama willingly and gleefully.

But what makes a reality tv show great and my actual human experience is so far apart, I think it’s time for some course correction.

I should have been more surprised to see the Girl Scouts release a study about the harmful effects this is having on young girls’ development. But there it is, girls, my girls, our girls are growing up believing that they can’t trust people, that they have to compete to win a guy’s attention and that their value lies in their appearance. Ugh.

Every Hale Bopp or so, there’s been that guy in the office who took credit for my ideas – or who openly undermined my efforts, but most of the time, it’s all collaboration. In all the years I’ve held jobs, I’ve worked with 2 of those people. That’s a lot of jobs, with hundreds of people. Perhaps it’s my industry, but there have only been two, two sociopaths for whom those reality tv lessons rang true.

Maybe it’s because I worked hard to join networking groups of people in different circles — tech, wine country, lifestyle — where the whole reason for our collaboration is to  help each other out.

These loose associations have turned into a pillowy soft landing place for when things aren’t going so well. These groups serve as a trampoline to launch me back on my feet. The core value of all of these groups is to belong to a community of people helping each other succeed.

Of the three groups I’m thinking of, each meets once a year, each is roughly about 5 – 10 people strong and each is a continuing professional support system for this new internet.

If not, here are a few tips for starting a group like this of your own.

Figure out what you want
You can’t get what you want if you don’t spend the time figuring it out. It seems silly, but you might not actually want that tv show, that book deal, that singing contract.

Aim high
Ask people you admire. Ask people who have something to offer the world. Surround yourself with people you want to be more like.

Meet in person
One of my groups meets every other month, one meets twice a year and one meets once a year. This in-person meeting is our last resort for trust.

Cap the membership
Keeping it small keeps it focused.

Use great technology
One of my groups lives mostly in an email thread, another in a private Facebook group. Google hangouts can work, Skype too. We have some amazing tools to collaborate big. Let’s do that.

Do you have a group like that?
A sort of professional development group?
A group that surrounds you that cheers you on to aim higher and celebrates hard wins?

How do you keep it going?

Update bound!

My daughters play hair salon.
That hat is the dryer.
Those chopsticks are the scissors.
This is exactly what I hoped having two daughters would be like.

Bocce season starts this week.
We’re playing the Holy Rollers.

***

And oh, hey!
I’ve written some things in other places on the internet.

Here, I wrote about how to avoid mom hair for Style United.
Here, I wrote about shopping after weight loss or weight gain for Style United, yet again.

***

Here is what we’re eating this week.

I’m going to invent a vaguely Asian noodly shrimp toss tonight. Let’s see how that goes.

***

I went to Mom 2.0 in Key Biscane last weekend. I went as a speaker and as a sponsor (for FMP, my day job). I spoke about some of the ways the internet can make you feel bad and how to feel better. I spoke to lots of other authors and publishers about Daily Buzz Moms and Federated Media.

That was fun.

I got to officially meet Tracey and Kristen for the maybe lots of times, maybe first time, doesn’t matter, we’re bloggers, we get to stay in touch.

Seeing Kristen Howerton from Rage Against the Minivan. She has this reasonable energy around her that’s so intoxicating. Intoxicated by reason! 

Sarah from Whoorl.com ain’t too shabby herself, what with her secret, valued, accumulated beauty knowledge.

I always love seeing Heather Spohr. She is a force. A sweet, smart, force. The internet is a better place with her optimism and grounding.

And that’s what’s been going on.

Any ideas for what I should put in that vaguely Asian noodly shrimp toss tonight? That would be awesome.