Some things that happened this week that made me shake my head in wonder:
I made meatloaf.
Never did I understand how meatloaf was something people decided to make for dinner. Growing up I ate it, but was never excited about it. One evening this week, I was trying to figure out what to make for dinner and it then I had this idea: meatloaf. As if it was the most brilliant thing ever. And a second later was the thought, "Really?...Meatloaf?" And by golly, I did it. I made meatloaf. And I liked it.
I wished for a pantry.
You heard me. A pantry. I was surprised too.
I was looking at our kitchen counter wishing there was more space, a space to take all the stuff sitting on the counter and move it out of my sight. It was such a strange moment. I think this has a direct correlation to being married and doing much more in the kitchen, but I never would have guessed that this would be something I would one day dream about.
I agreed with my mom on fashion.
My mom and I, years ago started a tradition of shopping together for my gifts for Christmas and my birthday. I often wanted clothes but my mom's idea of a great shirt, was not the same as my own. This was a great solution. It's a day we both look forward to to catch up and enjoy one another's company.
My mom and I went birthday shopping this weekend. My mom pointed out several tops that I ended up trying on and liking. Even she was surprised and questioned how that happened. My sobering thought was...I'm getting old. More accurately perhaps, my taste is maturing.
I have a long ago memory from my childhood is sitting on my parent's bed and picking up a clothing catalog that my mom had just finished looking through. I flipped through the pages and looked at all the horrid looking clothes. The shirts and pants were all solid colors, maybe a stripe here or there and I remember thinking to myself how boring all their clothes were. How did adults stand it? There was not a single Minnie Mouse shirt, nothing with dolphins or fish or rainbows. Most of the colors were incredibly dull as well, a bunch of black, browns, pastels, earth tones. Where are the bright pink, orange, yellow, and green shirts? Why were these people so afraid of color?
I remember being perplexed at what I was going to do when I grew up. What would I wear? Lucky for me my tastes did change as I became and adult! I do enjoy age appropriate clothing. Whew...because I sure cringe to think of me wearing a bunch of Minnie the Mouse t-shirts at this point in life.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Monday, June 20, 2011
The Perfect Camping Trip
This weekend kicked off "camping season" for us. Nate and I have been talking about doing so for quite some time but just didn't get in any trips last fall, so we were determined to camp this spring/summer/fall, and being the planner and scheduler that I am, I sad down with our calendars at the beginning of June and worked it out two weekends that we could block off for camping so we would actually do it.
On this trip, Nate and I headed to a state park in southern Indiana. I had been keeping an eye on the weather as the camping trip got closer and while there was rain possible in the forecast, I was reassured that the percentages of rain were relatively low. However, in the last day and during...those percentages doubled in most cases. What can you do? I opted to think that the chances for rain would pass on through. But we weren't that fortunate.
We arrived Friday evening in time to set up and then go right into making dinner. On the menu: pork and beans with some chips on the side. Classy, right?! I don't know if it gets more "camping" than that. We were eating within minutes. During the evening the sky held no promise of sun, but held many shades of grey. However, the threat of rain could not put a damper on our spirits and Nate then worked on his fire building skills while I called out "52 across, 4 letters, starts with 'P' the clue is...", from the newspaper crossword. The evening went quickly and before we knew it we were curled up and falling asleep when the rain finally fell from the sky.
That whole night it rained and stormed, but we stayed dry in our tent thanks to our new rain cover.
When we woke for the morning it was still raining, so we moved up our Saturday plan of going to Louisville for the evening, to a morning/afternoon trip. And it was such a great day! We went to breakfast and then our first stop was a the Thomas Edison museum, full of interesting quotes, facts, and inventions of his. The museum had only one man working there who just happened to have a huge wealth of knowledge of Thomas' life and story. =) Go figure. He was really interesting to listen to and we both enjoyed it very much. Afterwards, we headed to downtown Louisville and visited The Louisville Slugger Factory and enjoyed lunch at one of the local restaurants. I had a jerk chicken sandwich and it was amazing! After lunch we found a movie theater nearby and caught a movie, before heading back to the campsite. At some point during the movie all the clouds had moved out and the sun was shining brightly!
On the drive back we seemed to be heading back into a faint line of clouds in the distance. By the time we did return the grey skies were back, but we decided to ignore the possibility of rain and go about our night as we had planned. We did go see some of the parks waterfalls, had for dinner for the second night: peanut butter and banana sandwiches with apples and chips, (I enjoyed not cooking during this trip!) and even had s'mores for dessert. We also had a visitor that evening. A persistent raccoon visitor. He came sauntering from a wooded area nearby while we where chatting at the fire, took a look at us and walked over to the picnic table to go about his business of looking for trinkets or food to take home with him. Our shooing made very little impact on him, even standing up and advancing a few steps was not a bother. We chased him out of the campsite several times for him to come back in less than 2 seconds as soon as we turned our backs to walk back to our chairs. It was only a few pieces of firewood being thrown at him that finally deterred him from coming back. And the first piece of wood that hit him only seemed to delight him, perhaps thinking we were throwing large dense food at him, I don't know...but he quickly bounced over to it once it settled to explore. The second piece hit more solidly and did the trick of getting him to leave us. After taking a walk and enjoying the fire we realized that the night sky had turned beautiful...it was full of stars and all the clouds had moved out.
Sunday morning arrived with the clouds back but no rain. So we forged ahead with blueberry pancakes and bacon for breakfast and as we were finishing the last bites...a few distant rumbles turned into rain. We did a very quick pack up and finished in a light steady rain, but was able to get in the car and head back home.
In the way back, watching the rain stream down the side of the window I was thankful.
While the weather wasn't perfect, I felt our camping trip was.
On this trip, Nate and I headed to a state park in southern Indiana. I had been keeping an eye on the weather as the camping trip got closer and while there was rain possible in the forecast, I was reassured that the percentages of rain were relatively low. However, in the last day and during...those percentages doubled in most cases. What can you do? I opted to think that the chances for rain would pass on through. But we weren't that fortunate.
We arrived Friday evening in time to set up and then go right into making dinner. On the menu: pork and beans with some chips on the side. Classy, right?! I don't know if it gets more "camping" than that. We were eating within minutes. During the evening the sky held no promise of sun, but held many shades of grey. However, the threat of rain could not put a damper on our spirits and Nate then worked on his fire building skills while I called out "52 across, 4 letters, starts with 'P' the clue is...", from the newspaper crossword. The evening went quickly and before we knew it we were curled up and falling asleep when the rain finally fell from the sky.
That whole night it rained and stormed, but we stayed dry in our tent thanks to our new rain cover.
When we woke for the morning it was still raining, so we moved up our Saturday plan of going to Louisville for the evening, to a morning/afternoon trip. And it was such a great day! We went to breakfast and then our first stop was a the Thomas Edison museum, full of interesting quotes, facts, and inventions of his. The museum had only one man working there who just happened to have a huge wealth of knowledge of Thomas' life and story. =) Go figure. He was really interesting to listen to and we both enjoyed it very much. Afterwards, we headed to downtown Louisville and visited The Louisville Slugger Factory and enjoyed lunch at one of the local restaurants. I had a jerk chicken sandwich and it was amazing! After lunch we found a movie theater nearby and caught a movie, before heading back to the campsite. At some point during the movie all the clouds had moved out and the sun was shining brightly!
On the drive back we seemed to be heading back into a faint line of clouds in the distance. By the time we did return the grey skies were back, but we decided to ignore the possibility of rain and go about our night as we had planned. We did go see some of the parks waterfalls, had for dinner for the second night: peanut butter and banana sandwiches with apples and chips, (I enjoyed not cooking during this trip!) and even had s'mores for dessert. We also had a visitor that evening. A persistent raccoon visitor. He came sauntering from a wooded area nearby while we where chatting at the fire, took a look at us and walked over to the picnic table to go about his business of looking for trinkets or food to take home with him. Our shooing made very little impact on him, even standing up and advancing a few steps was not a bother. We chased him out of the campsite several times for him to come back in less than 2 seconds as soon as we turned our backs to walk back to our chairs. It was only a few pieces of firewood being thrown at him that finally deterred him from coming back. And the first piece of wood that hit him only seemed to delight him, perhaps thinking we were throwing large dense food at him, I don't know...but he quickly bounced over to it once it settled to explore. The second piece hit more solidly and did the trick of getting him to leave us. After taking a walk and enjoying the fire we realized that the night sky had turned beautiful...it was full of stars and all the clouds had moved out.
Sunday morning arrived with the clouds back but no rain. So we forged ahead with blueberry pancakes and bacon for breakfast and as we were finishing the last bites...a few distant rumbles turned into rain. We did a very quick pack up and finished in a light steady rain, but was able to get in the car and head back home.
In the way back, watching the rain stream down the side of the window I was thankful.
While the weather wasn't perfect, I felt our camping trip was.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Vegetables Galore!
So this summer we have gone in with a couple of friends to buy our vegetables from a locally-grown and tended, organic, community garden (that might be overkill with the adjectives, but I want to do it justice). People pay a flat fee at the beginning of the season and then every week you pick up your bag of vegetables. Our friends have done it in the past and found for just two people it is too many vegetables to use in one week. So the creative solution is to split the veggies (along with the cost) with another couple. And we were the lucky recipients to be asked to join them! Yes!! A dream come true! I know I might sound overly excited about veggies, but we had been talking about eating more organic and eating more vegetables in general. It really was perfect.
So this week (you guessed it!) we received our first bag of goodies and the all-star line up is as follows:
Salad beets
Zucchini
Radishes
Swiss chard
Spinach
Field greens
Lettuce
This knowledge comes after spending a good amount of time in a vegetable picture glossary (yes we own one, don't judge), plus we had to break down and text our veggie buddies asking for the names of the vegetables they dropped off for us.
Because friends, vegetables do not look the same out of a garden as they do in a bag at the grocery store. I'm still skeptical that what Nate is labeling spinach really is, it doesn't look like spinach I've bought before. But these are the things marriage's are built on right? If he says it's spinach, it's spinach. And to be frank, I've never bought swiss chard or salad beets. We are breaking new ground here.
So tonight we made "Chard Stir-Fry"...the recipe is below
However, we made one or two substitutions. We didn't have vegetable juice, so we used tomato juice. And our swiss chard had already lost it's stalks so we borrowed some of the stalks from our spinach leaves. It was different form our normal style stir fry but still had good flavor!
We are gaining great new vegetable knowledge this summer...if all goes well we will be master vegetable eaters and cookers. If it doesn't...you can wait for the "Vegetables for Sale" sign outside our door to buy wonderful vegetables of your very own! ;)
So this week (you guessed it!) we received our first bag of goodies and the all-star line up is as follows:
Salad beets
Zucchini
Radishes
Swiss chard
Spinach
Field greens
Lettuce
This knowledge comes after spending a good amount of time in a vegetable picture glossary (yes we own one, don't judge), plus we had to break down and text our veggie buddies asking for the names of the vegetables they dropped off for us.
Because friends, vegetables do not look the same out of a garden as they do in a bag at the grocery store. I'm still skeptical that what Nate is labeling spinach really is, it doesn't look like spinach I've bought before. But these are the things marriage's are built on right? If he says it's spinach, it's spinach. And to be frank, I've never bought swiss chard or salad beets. We are breaking new ground here.
So tonight we made "Chard Stir-Fry"...the recipe is below
However, we made one or two substitutions. We didn't have vegetable juice, so we used tomato juice. And our swiss chard had already lost it's stalks so we borrowed some of the stalks from our spinach leaves. It was different form our normal style stir fry but still had good flavor!
We are gaining great new vegetable knowledge this summer...if all goes well we will be master vegetable eaters and cookers. If it doesn't...you can wait for the "Vegetables for Sale" sign outside our door to buy wonderful vegetables of your very own! ;)
 |
| Phase 1 (we added green peppers too) |
 |
| Phase2--in goes the swiss chard |
 |
| Phase 3--everybody is in! |
 |
| The final product- Enjoy! |
INGREDIENTS
| 3/4 | pound Swiss chard, red or white |
| 2 | cloves garlic, minced |
| 4 | green onions |
| 1 | tablespoon cornstarch |
| 2 | teaspoons onion powder |
| 1 | teaspoon paprika |
| 1/4 | teaspoon black pepper |
| 1/2 | cup reduced-sodium vegetable juice |
| 2 | teaspoons canola or vegetable oil |
| 1/2 | pound mushrooms, sliced |
| 2 | medium tomatoes, cored, cut into 1/2-inch-thick wedges |
| 2 | slices Canadian bacon, cut into julienne strips |
PREPARATION:
- Rinse chard, shaking off excess water. Cut out rib sections; coarsely chop ribs and stems. Place in medium bowl; toss with garlic. Stack chard leaves; cut crosswise into 1/2-inch strips. Set aside.
- Slice green onions, separating white parts from green tops. Add white parts to chard stem mixture. Combine cornstarch, onion powder, paprika and pepper in 1-cup measure; stir in vegetable juice until smooth.
- Heat oil in wok or large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add chard stem mixture; stir-fry 1 minute. Add mushrooms; stir-fry 1 minute. Add chard leaves; stir-fry 2 minutes or until wilted. Stir cornstarch mixture; add to wok with tomatoes, green onion tops and Canadian bacon. Cook and stir about 3 minutes or until sauce thickens and mixture is heated through.
NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION:
| Fiber | 3 g |
| Carbohydrate | 14 g |
| Cholesterol | 7 mg |
| Saturated Fat | 1 g |
| Total Fat | 4 g |
| Calories from Fat | 30 % |
| Calories | 109 |
| Protein | 7 g |
| Sodium | 349 mg |
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