​Many years ago, a friend of mine described a rule she and her husband had for dealing with those moments when you returned home from work and you wanted to complain about your day to your spouse. You know what that is like. You’re upset, angry, irritated, whatever, at something or someone. You’re frustrated. You need to blow off steam. So you complain.

Those situations can turn into lengthy rants. You’ve probably gone off on a few tirades yourself. And, most likely, you’ve been subjected to listening to someone else blow off steam when you’d rather be eating dinner, having a drink or outside listening to the birds sing. Because you want to be polite though, you listen to your significant other, doing your best to live up to the marital vows and show support.
 
It was those types of situations which led my friend and her husband to create “The Garvey Rule.” It’s essentially a five minute rule. When you start to complain about your day, if the person listening is not interested in the subject, the person complaining is limited to five minutes to describe his or her problems. That’s it. End of story after that, and grab your salad to start dinner.

The rule is genius. You get time to whine. But it is limited. That means you must condense your complaints. You almost must identify the most significant items irritating you, so the rule forces you to prioritize. If not, you’re left empty emotionally, wishing you’d complained about additional items.
 
The listener must be there for the complainer, actively paying attention. The five-minute time limit forces you to think things through before engaging, “Hmmm, maybe that wasn’t such a big deal,” or “Man, Sikorski was a jerk today. How the heck can I get him off my back without getting fired?”
 
At the end of the five minutes “The Garvey Rule” can be invoked, ending the dialogue. Then you move onto another subject, hopefully something fun and interesting like sports or weather. You can imagine some of these conversations.
 
“Honey, Freddie Frabnats kept forcing me to re-prioritize the chart I developed. He wanted the yellow outliner change to green outliner, then instead of using Roman numerals, he made me change everyone into a’s, b’c and c’s instead. Can you believe it? That ate up my entire day,” the husband complains.

“Garvey rule,” the wife responds.
 
“When I got to the office today, Gwen Gabnecker was at the copier. She spent the next 45 minutes monopolizing the machine and I needed to get some reports copied and over to Maurice McGillicutty by 9 a.m. She wouldn’t budge. I was ready to pop a blood vessel in my forehead,” the wife explodes.
 
“Boy, I can relate honey, but I’m invoking The Garvey Rule. You have 12 seconds left,” the husband responds.
 
“Mack Bordum set up a meeting for today and he didn’t shut up the entire hour. You should have seen Erik Slepe in the back of the room. He kept nodding off, then you’d see his head jerk back awake. I couldn’t stop laughing,” the husband says.
 
“Not bad dear, you almost got me to pay attention, but I’m still invoking The Garvey Rule. No one wants to hear about meetings,” the wife replies.
 
And so on. Try it out on your spouse. It will improve your relationship and help you figure out if your day is really as boring, trivial, demanding or frustrating as you think it is.

​As this past summer wound down, one of our neighbors encouraged us to raid their garden. They’d planted multiple vegetables and most ripened all at once. They were saturated, and had picked, canned, eaten about all they could, so they actively pushed us to hit their garden as frequently as we wanted and grab as much as we wanted. So I did.
 
With an open invitation like that, the tendency is to just take what you need. But when it became clear that many veggies were rotting on the vine, I started picking more and filling the counter in our kitchen as I contemplated what to do with the extras.

Tomatoes, cucumbers and onions were the primary culprits of the coordinated ripening problem. The question became: What “different” dish can you prepare to give tomatoes, cucumbers and onions a radical look, taste and feel?
 
This is a cooking challenge in general. There is tremendous variety god’s given us in his creation to consume. We can stay in a rut though in terms of how we prepare those foods.

For example, take the simple salad. Do you put the same ingredients in yours on a day-to-day basis? Do you typically use the same salad dressing? How often are you inspired to use a new vegetable in your salad?
 
If you’re like most people, you fall into the routine and don’t experiment. Why not add some chopped-up purple cabbage once in awhile to change the taste, texture and vitamins you receive when you eat? Ever thought about putting a red or yellow pepper in that salad instead of a green one? These are small decisions, easy to make, and yield taste and nutrition benefits.
 
The challenge I had with the tomatoes, cucumbers and onions was that those were the three vegetables in over-abundance. They served as the core for any dish I created. So the challenge became, “What to add to those three items to make the dish taste different?”
 
The solution – beyond mixing in different spices – also lay in what “type” of dish you wanted to create. Would it be an appetizer? Could they go into a soup? Do you want to create a dip? How about a casserole? Can they serve as the main meal with some added garnish? And so on.
 
The blitzkrieg of the ripening vegetables lasted about three weeks. In that time, I made fresh salsa – adding a jalapeno pepper, vinegar, cilantro, a touch of sugar and some squeezed lime juice to the core three veggies. I put together a Greek-type salad by adding feta cheese to an oil and vinegar base and tossing in some chopped black olives along with the initial three vegetables. I created a grilled cheese sandwich with the tomato, onion and cucumber in it for added texture and taste.
 
They all worked. They all tasted good. They all pushed me to think differently on what spice to work into the new dish, how to cook it (if it needed cooking at all) and what other base ingredients mixed well with tomatoes, onions and cucumbers.

It’s a good challenge to have. We’re fortunate to have fresh food coming from a local garden and a kind neighbor who shares. Then it’s up to us to do something with it. Experiment. Taste. Savor. Then give it a whirl. It’s fun, and you get to eat what you put together.