My Beautiful Birthday Dinner

Remember when I made those orange juice ice cubes with pieces of mango inside?  Perhaps you wondered what kind of drink besides orange juice they would taste good in?  Well, as I was making dinner on my birthday, I drank a tall glass of ginger ale with those very ice cubes.

Pretty and delicious!
I like to sip on something yummy while I cook.  Usually it's hot tea.  It helps me relax and puts me in the cooking mood.

If you are a longtime reader then you have probably noticed that I love bright colors.  I love wearing them, I love seeing them, and I love basking in their glow.  Really.  Looking at the beauty of rainbows lifts my spirits in a major way and is one of the reasons why I have a rainbow as the main picture for this blog.  For my birthday dinner, I made a hearty vegetarian curry that looked like a rainbow itself:
Beautiful!  Visually, I especially like the red pepper pieces next to the green peas.  Here's the recipe, which I got from allrecipes.

Vegetarian Korma

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 small onion, diced
• 1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger root
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 potatoes, cubed
• 4 carrots, cubed
• 1 fresh jalapeno pepper, seeded and sliced (I left out.)
• 3 tablespoons ground unsalted cashews (I left out.)
• 1 (4 ounce) can tomato sauce (I used tomato juice)
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/2 tablespoons curry powder
• 1 cup frozen green peas (I used canned)
• 1/2 green bell pepper, chopped
• 1/2 red bell pepper, chopped (for convenience, use a whole red bell pepper)
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 bunch fresh cilantro for garnish (I left out.)

Wow!  It's a rainbow in my bowl!  They tasted wonderful too, with the help of a little cream.  Hey, it was my birthday-if any day deserves cream, that day is it!

 One of the lessons I must absolutely learn is that I cannot keep internalizing shame.  I do have an invisible disability, but that doesn't mean that I must apologize for it or for being who I am.  I have made serious mistakes before.  I am more than willing to apologize for those.  Those are things I've done and not the essence of who I am.  Who I am is good enough.

  Imagine attending an event where accommodations are provided without fuss and comment; the speaker steps up to the podium and a sign language interpreter follows her seamlessly; the space is ramped and seats at the front are silently cleared for wheelchair users; seating for people with service animals is provided; descriptions of visual content are smoothly integrated into the presentation; there are no flashing sequences or loud noises; colours have been chosen with care; and no one is wearing scent. […]  Access is an add-on, it’s something special, and it’s something remarkable. In this sense, it becomes a way of singling out people who aren’t normative; ‘ah, you’re the one who needs the sign language interpreter.’ ‘I see you’re using a wheelchair.’ It is another reminder that a shared space is not truly shared, because some people are in it by tolerance only, and it would be easy to take that tolerance away and exclude them from the space. When accommodations are something special, they draw attention to the people who need them.

He responded that those committed to fighting social justice aren’t oppressors, but that’s not accurate. An oppressor is anyone who benefits from a system that gives some privileges. If you are white and you benefit from a system of institutionalized whiteness, if you are male and benefit from patriarchy, if you are straight and benefit from a heterosexist society, you are an oppressor. This does not make you a bad person. You cannot help being white or male or straight. I fight for social justice everyday of my life, that does not negate the fact that my whiteness has given me benefits over others that I have used to my advantage.

Although non-feminism isn't always actively malicious, when sexism is a social norm, not being sexist needs active work which many people are unwilling to put in.