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pet peeves

I often tell people that I have one perfect dog and one very sweet but very crazy dog.

And then yesterday, I had the following exchange on Twitter:

Still thinking about this exchange as Jon and I went to bed, I said, “My friend says that people project their own personalities and issues on their pets. But we have two very different pets! And he says that one of them is probably me, and one of them is probably you.  But which is which?”

Very quickly, Jon replied, “I think it’s pretty obvious that I’m the chilled out, obedient one.”

To which I replied, “Are you saying I’m the cracked out crazy one in constant need of attention and affection and snuggles?”

His silence said all I needed to know.

Bessie, aka Jon. The chilled out, obedient dog with a voracious appetite who has never met a food she doesn't like. Her dad, on the other hand, has met two foods he doesn't like: olives and corned beef.
Olive, aka me. She's prone to run off chasing things that interest her, often lashes out at strangers, and is sometimes too smart for her own good.
But let's be honest here, this is how you normally find Olive, because she's a total attention whore.
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bufflo’s boozy peach cobbler

Along with raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bourbon is one of my favorite things.  Somewhere high on the list is also peach cobbler.  So I decided to combine the two into a boozy peach cobbler, to great effect, and I thought I’d share my recipe, created after looking at several recipes and finding none I loved, with you.

You can't go wrong with Maker's Mark.
Local Arkansas peaches!

This cobbler has a rustic cornmeal crust, which I think really goes well with the peaches and adds to the Southern appeal.

Rustic Cornmeal Crust:

  • 1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
  • 1/4 cup yellow cornmeal
  • generous pinch salt
  • 1 T sugar
  • 9 T frozen or very cold butter cut into cubes
  • 3-4 T ice cold water

Pulse the flour, cornmeal, salt, and sugar together 2 or 3 times in the bowl of a food processor fitted w/ a plastic blade.  Add the cold butter and pulse another 8 or 10 times, until the mixture looks like small peas.  Drizzle the cold water through the mouth of the processor while pulsing until the mixture starts holding together (It may take you more water. That’s fine. My crust didn’t hold together very well, so I wish I had added more water).  Turn the pastry onto a lightly floured surface and form into a 2 inch thick disk.  Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Boozy Peach Cobbler:

  • Peaches (I had about 8 smallish peaches, another time I had 4 softball sized peaches, so you be the judge of what will fit in your dish)
  • 1/2 cup honey (or sugar, if you don’t keep that much honey around)
  • Zest of 1 lemon
  • 2 T bourbon (or more, you can never have too much!)
  • 2 T cornstarch
  • Cinnamon to your taste (I like cinnamon, so I used 1 tsp)
  • 4 T butter

Preheat oven to 425. Peel and slice the peaches and mix with all ingredients except the butter.  After your crust has chilled, roll out to 1/4 inch thickness on a floured surface and transfer gently to your pie dish/cake pan/whatever you’re using, letting excess hang over the sides.  Pour in the peach mixture, placing pats of butter on top.  Fold over the overhanging crust, tearing off peaces to cover the middle if necessary. Place the cobbler in a rimmed cookie sheet to catch any overflow of the bubbling filling and bake at 425 for 40-50 minutes, until bubbling and crust is nicely browned.  Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

Excuse the chipped bowl. We had a few years without a dishwasher, and they got chipped all to heck in the hand washing.
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i love lamp

One of my BFF’s (technically half of our BCFFL (Best Couple Friends 4 Lyfe)) is having a BABY GIRL!!!  We’re very excited for our friends, and I fully intend to be this kid’s Crazy Aunt Sarah.  My friend is a really awesome, creative, crafty, thrifting queen, so I knew I really had to step it up in the gift department.  You can check out her awesome Etsy shop of vintage treasures, if you want!

My friend and I looking cute on the Subway, sharing some tunes, on Jon's big 30th Birthday in NYC trip.

Ultimately inspiration struck in the form of this origami lamp from Sweet Sweet Life, which I think I originally found via Apartment Therapy’s Ohdeedoh.

image via Sweet Sweet Life.

That lamp was inspired by a lamp that costs over $210.  And I thought, I have origami skills! I could do that! $200+ is ridiculous! Though I’ve been into origami for a while, I really honed my skills when I got laid off in October of 2008 and decided to use my abundant free time crafting origami Christmas ornaments.

The great origami Christmas ornament project of 2008. I made garlands out of tiny boxes, ornaments out of cranes...
...and origami ball ornaments.

Of course, I wouldn’t just make a giant origami lamp for someone’s nursery without asking, but I remembered my friend liking the lamp when I posted about it on Facebook.  So I shot her a quick note and asked if she’d be interested in an origami lamp for the baby’s nursery, and she said sure! I inquired about the color scheme: “i’m planning on doing olive green, lime green, fuschia, light pink, lemon drop yellow and lots of wood grains, burlap and galvanized steel (like those buckets)… if that helps”

So I headed off to Hobby Lobby, where, to my luck, scrapbooking paper was on sale for half off! I selected a variety of large squares, which are normally $0.59 apiece, in the colors she had mentioned, supplementing with traditional origami paper in coordinating colors.  After that came the folding. Holy crap, what a lot of folding.  I’d say it takes about 250 cranes to cover a typical lamp shade.  Luckily, it’s an activity you can do in front of the TV, and luckily for me, Jon knows how to fold cranes, and he helped me with my folding load.  Still, I’d say it was about 12 hours of folding…so THAT’S why they cost over $200.  You can follow this tutorial video to learn how to fold an origami crane.

A big pile of cranes, ready to be hot-glued onto a lampshade from Target.

I applied the cranes to the lamp with a hot-glue gun, which took about 4 hours, during which time I watched “The West Wing” on my laptop– I’m newly hooked on the show, having missed it when it originally aired.

I'm going to let my friend choose whether to use this as a hanging lamp or on a standing lamp, so I put the shade on one of my lamps to show off the finished product.
Here's what it looks like with the light on.
Closeup of the cranes on the lamp. As you can see, I managed to find paper that actually looked like burlap and wood grain. I think I did a pretty good job coordinating with my friend's color scheme!

So, there you have it. The Coolest Lamp in the World. The World’s Most Ambitious Origami Lamp Project!  All you need is: a lamp shade, a glue gun, enough paper for around 250 cranes, and a crapload of free time.

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i love you cheezeburgherz

What goes better with a great dress than a bag on your head?

I am addicted to the internet. I’m active on Twitter and in the local TweetUp community, I’m a blogger, I’m a prolific blog reader, I’m an active commenter on several major blogs, and I have a long history on message boards.  Sometimes, my husband gives me a hard time about my internet addiction, but lately he’s been forced to change his tune.

Little Rock, Arkansas, while not exactly a major metropolis, is home to an awesome network of bloggers and Tweeps (what we Twitter addicts call fellow Twitterers).  Monthly TweetUps are just the most visible manifestation of an engaged and enthusiastic online community of local folk, sharing their lives 140 characters at a time.  As I’ve written, I connected with the LR online community before we moved out here, and I even used Twitter to find a house (I put the word out about what we were looking for, and it turned out one of my tweeps was moving out of a great house that we subsequently moved into).  But more importantly, I’ve used the local internet community to find My People.

We had/have many wonderful close friends in Charleston, but none of them were “mine.” What I mean is, almost everyone I knew there, I had met through my husband or his work.  I was always, to some degree, Jon’s wife, Sarah, not Sarah, Jon’s wife.  While I wouldn’t trade those friends for anything, after all, we survived the wild and crazy world of residency together, I needed to find My People. I have found them.

This week, I had the pleasure of being invited to a local gathering of fabulous women bloggers.  It’s called CheeseburgHer, and it’s a spinoff of the big BlogHer national conference that just took place this week in New York.  What started as an impromptu gathering there led, a few years hence, to satellite parties in various cities, and Little Rock, with its somewhat-surprisingly active blogging community, was selected to host such an event, largely thanks to the very talented Kyran, who has a BOOK coming out next year, because she’s a rockstar. She knows how to throw a party!

Anyway, I got an Evite encouraging me to come to a swanky downtown address to party on the 18th floor with fellow bloggers, looking fabulous, sipping wine (courtesy of Middle Sister), eating McDonald’s cheeseburgers, and wearing a bag on my head.  I was really excited to go, and as I was telling a friend about my Saturday night plans, my husband kind of ragged on me a bit about it.  I asked why he couldn’t be a bit more supportive, and he said he was just messing around– “after all, no one can knock the awesome community that you’ve found.”

He was right. What an awesome community of talented, funny, fabulous women! I arrived at the swanky address wearing one of my favorite dresses, I hugged “old” (being that I’ve been here, what, a month?) friends and met new ones, and, stereotypes of internet nerds be damned, we clicked!  I had an amazing time, and I laughed my head off.

These were My People. People who feel the urge to share their stories with the Interwebz.  People who know what it means to have friends you’ve never met in person, though you’ve watched videos of their kids and read their life stories.  People who don’t bat an eye if you pull out your camera to document the party, or whip out a smartphone to check in to Gowalla or send out a quick tweet.  While we may be very different– some of us are childless, others are stay-at-home-moms, others are juggling work and home life, some of us are young, and others think some of us are still babies– we all are very much alike in many ways.  Unlike my experience with the Bible study group, where I felt like no one knew me, no one liked me, and no one would like me if they really knew me, I felt at home with this group of women.  It was a raucous, joyous evening, and I’m so glad I got to be a part of it.  There’s something very powerful about a gathering of women who have a voice and aren’t afraid to use it!

I’ll end with some images of the event:

This one is snatched from the lovely Audreya:

Audreya and I apparently didn't get the kissyface memo. Amy and I think we look like we're clad in Mexican serapes.

Image via Audreya.
At an event full of bloggers, you know we're all trying to document it for a future post!
We had a delightfully tacky cupcake cakewreck to celebrate @amybhole's birthday. It looked like an airbrushed teeshirt from a Gulf Shores vacation, but it was darn tasty!
I think I declared at least 10 times "THIS IS MY JAM!" Here I was demonstrating how I boogie around my house to MGMT, I believe. Image via Audreya.
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mousetraps and crying jags

Friday morning I made a very disappointing and distressing discovery on the kitchen counter: mouse poop.  I’m not sure how any mice survive our neighborhood given the army of flea-bitten stray cats prowling around, but apparently they survive by hiding out in my house.  I called the World’s Greatest Landlord (no lie) and informed him of the discovery.  He told me he’d call the pest control people and asked if I was opposed to kill traps.  “Of course not! They’re mice! They have no natural habitat to be released into, as their natural habitat is my kitchen!”  He delivered a couple of mousetraps later that day.  They looked like this:

Image via Rennet Stowe's Flickr photostream.

Fast forward to about 1:00 am: Jon and I, sleepy and ready for bed, remember that we need to set the mousetraps.  We quickly realize we have no IDEA how to set them. In our sleepy state, we fumble around, trying to figure out these tiny death machines.  I finally get one set, when, just as I go to show it to Jon, SNAP! Right on my thumb. The dogs jumped a mile. Jon jumped a mile. I immediately burst into tears. It HURT.  But then I kept crying. I cried harder. And it wasn’t just because my thumb really really hurt.  I couldn’t bear the thought of that SNAP! happening to some little creature’s head.  I really lost it just thinking about it. I couldn’t handle the idea that I might be woken up in the night by a SNAP!, knowing what had just happened.  We went to bed, having given up on the traps for a while.

I kept crying. Jon started laughing his head off.  I started crying harder, thinking he was laughing at me. And, in all honesty, he probably should have been laughing at me, because who gets hysterical over mousetraps?  In reality, he was laughing because the SNAP! had really startled him, and for some reason his startle reflex is connected to his giggle box.  Eventually I splashed some cold water on my face and blew my very snotty nose.  We agreed we’d find some other solution than SNAP! traps.  I may or may not be hoping to get a kitty out of this deal.  I’m still not sure why the whole SNAP! incident got me so shook up, but all I know is, I can’t handle a SNAP! trap.

Anyone have suggestions for getting mice out of your kitchen without SNAP! traps?

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a winner of a chicken dinner

We’re eating a lot less meat these days, but when I saw organic free-range chicken on sale at Kroger, I knew I had to grab it.  After that, I had to decide what I wanted to do with it.  Very quickly, I remembered Jamie Oliver’s Chicken in Milk recipe which I had seen hyped on Apartment Therapy’s The Kitchn more than once.  They even called it “the best chicken I’ve ever had.” So of course I had to try it!

Overall, the recipe is a very easy one.  Aside from browning the chicken in butter in a skillet (which I think you could totally skip if you’re not planning to eat the skin), the recipe is pretty hands-off.  You just put all the ingredients in a dutch oven and let the chicken braise in the delicious flavors of lemon, herbs, garlic, and, strangely, milk.  Many Apartment Therapy commenters seemed confused that you’d mix milk and citrus and were concerned about curdling. They were right to be concerned, as I often mix lemon juice with milk to make buttermilk in a pinch.  In this recipe, it’s just lemon zest, not juice, in with the milk, so it doesn’t really curdle and separate so much as melt into the chicken, tenderizing it with the lactic acid and keeping it nice and moist during cooking. This is NOT a dried-out chicken recipe.  I’m pretty sure if you just served this up to someone, they’d have no idea milk was an ingredient.

When perusing recipes online, always read the comments– you’ll probably pick up some interesting tips that may make for a better dining experience.  Reading the entire Apartment Therapy post and comments rather than just Jamie’s recipe let me know that I should probably cook this with the lid on for the first hour and off for the last 30 minutes.  I also got the idea to stuff the cavity of the chicken with the zested lemons and a little thyme (the herb I had on hand, though the original recipe calls for sage).

OK, so it's not magazine gorgeous and I should have tucked the wings back instead of letting them flop all over. I PROMISE it's one of the tastiest, easiest "roasted" chicken recipes you'll find.

Here’s the recipe, modified to my liking.

Chicken in Milk, a la Jamie Oliver

Ingredients:

  • 1 3.5 lb. organic chicken
  • 1 pint milk
  • 2 lemons, zested, and lemons halved (If you can, zest the lemon with a coarser grater or use a vegetable peeler for larger strips)
  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • 1 handful of sage leaves or whatever herb you have on hand. Rosemary or thyme works too.
  • 10 (or more) cloves garlic, skin left on
  • salt
  • pepper

How to:

  1. Preheat oven to 375°F
  2. OPTIONAL, only do this if you like to eat crispy chicken skin or want it to look pretty and brown, otherwise, it’s just an unnecessary step: Season chicken all over with salt and pepper and heat a few tablespoons of butter or olive oil in your dutch oven. Sear the chicken to golden brown on all sides. Remove the chicken and discard the oil/butter. Otherwise, just season chicken all over and move along.
  3. Stuff cavity of chicken with the halved zested lemon and some of your herbs.
  4. Place chicken and all other ingredients back into the dutch oven, sprinkling with salt and pepper to taste. Cook for 1.5 hours, lid on for the first hour, lid off for the last 30 minutes. Baste if you want, but I totally didn’t, and it worked out fine.
  5. Let chicken rest for at least 10 minutes before cutting and serving. While it rests, fish out the garlic, because it’s SO YUMMY smeared on crusty bread.
  6. Reserve the sauce. Pour it over the chicken, dip your bread in it, pour it over the chicken and serve over rice, make mashed potatoes with it… DO SOMETHING WITH IT, as it’s so delicious.

I served my Chicken in Milk with homemade beer bread smeared with the garlic and sauteed squash and zucchini.

Save your chicken carcass and giblets to make chicken stock.  It’s SO NOT HARD, and so much more flavorful and less sodium-filled than canned/cartoned stock.  My method is to put the carcass and giblets with a halved onion in my crock pot and cover with water. Then I cook it on low for at least 12 hours. Fish out the big stuff, strain the rest, the freeze in Ziploc bags in 1 or 2 cup increments for future use.

It may be cloudier than store-bought stock, but it's much more flavorful and has way less sodium.
I freeze my stock flat in Ziplock bags in 2 cup increments. Makes for fast defrosting in a sink of warm water when I'm ready to cook. Usually it's thawed by the time I'm done chopping other ingredients.

Let me know if you try this recipe!

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sweating it

Before I got married, my last name was a certain word synonymous with perspiration (which is why, despite my feminist tendencies, I wasn’t so keen on keeping it).  I’ve been living up to that name this week in more ways than one.

My lovely state has been on the news lately as the HOTTEST PLACE IN THE WORLD. In case you don’t believe me, this was our forecast this week (apologies for the weird alt text in my screenshot):

Last night, at 9 pm, the heat index was still in the HIGH 90s. Just walking outside from the car into a building is enough to work up a good sweat.  My poor air conditioner has been chugging away non-stop all week in a valiant effort to keep the interior of our house a frosty 80 degrees.  It probably doesn’t help that we have furniture covering almost all the vents, to which I ask, why, God, why, are all our vents also in the most logical places to put furniture?  Our couch has now been pulled 6 inches out from the wall to expose the vent. It looks kind of silly, but damn if it isn’t cooler in here.

In addition to this heat wave, this week my husband signed me up for a membership at the gym at his work and has invited me to come work out with him.  Something to know about me: I’m basically allergic to physical activity.  As a kid, I spent one season on a softball team and spent the entirety of it making daisy chains in the outfield.  My parents signed me up for tennis lessons, where it was discovered that I had a knack for hitting myself in the head when I tossed the ball to serve.  I routinely flunked the Presidential Physical Fitness Test, but even this socialist would like to know why it’s any of the president’s business how many sit-ups I can do, anyway. Pretty much the only exercise I’ve ever loved was yoga, but classes haven’t started up at our gym yet.

And still, I know I need to get some exercise. I don’t need to lose weight, but I do need to get some cardiovascular activity in for the sake of my heart. I’m skinny but I’m not in shape.  And the gym is chock full of the one and only exercise machine I’m willing to touch: the elliptical.  I’m not sure what it is about the elliptical that makes it the least repellent form of exercise to me, but I don’t abjectly hate it, which is a big deal. It feels like walking on the moon. I can moonwalk for 30 minutes 3 times a week, right?

Well, huffing and puffing, I moonwalked for 30 minutes on Monday. I’d like to attribute some of that huffing and puffing to the fact that I made the mistake of hopping on a machine in front of a TV playing Fox News.  Yesterday, my legs felt like jelly, so I didn’t go to the gym.  Today, my sports-loving man messaged me that he was off work early, and did I want to meet him in the gym?

Something else to know about me: I’m great at guilt tripping myself. I think maybe my mother just did such a good job of it that now I just do it on autopilot. I know Jon isn’t thinking this, but I project my own guilt onto him: “What a lazyass, home in your pjs at noon on a weekday! You never work out! You should go to the gym!”  I put on my workout clothes and hopped into the car and headed to the gym. Jon had already done 20 minutes of weights when we met up at the cardio machines, him on a bike and me on the elliptical. About 15 minutes in, huffing and puffing harder than before, I told him I wasn’t sure I’d make it 30 minutes.

Something to know about Jon: he’s the most encouraging person ever, and he knows how I operate. Occasionally he tries to teach me tennis, and he’s learned that I just do not respond to negative feedback.  I need a LOT of cheerleading.  As he pedaled away on his bike set to some insane incline, he assured me that I could definitely survive 20 minutes on that machine. Then my stubbornness kicked in, and I became determined to keep moving until the time ticked down.

Now, an hour later, I think I might have finally stopped sweating.  For a minute there I thought I might puke.  Yep, 20 minutes on an elliptical machine and I’m sweating like a pig and thinking I might puke. THIS is why I need to work out.

Now I just have to decide if it’s even worth it to bother showering when it’s a million degrees outside and I’ll just be sweaty again in 10 minutes.

Are you a gym nut? Do you love to work out? Or are you like me, and frankly hate it? How do you make yourself exercise? What’s your favorite machine?

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when i grow up

Image: Coiled Notebook, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from genbug's photostream

In the bio to this blog, I say that I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Most days I still don’t.  My husband has long maintained that I’m destined to be an English professor, whether I accept it or not.  These days, I think he’s probably right. In my last job in Charleston, I worked at a college and had the opportunity to take a few English grad classes as a non-degree student.  I loved every minute of them. I think there may be nothing I enjoy quite so much as reading, writing about, and talking about literature.  So, having still failed to receive a burning bush or singing telegram to tell me my future, I’m taking a step in that direction. Today, I submitted my application to join the English Lit MA program at the University of Central Arkansas, and, if everything works out, I’ll be starting classes this fall. As in, weeks from now.  And I actually have some surety that I’m doing the right thing for a change.

How do I know I’m doing the right thing? Well, while entertaining the possibility that I might start grad school this spring, I tried to tally up how much the degree would cost. When my total came up $30,000, I burst into disappointed tears, convinced I’d never get to go.  As he attempted to calm down the crazy, Jon pointed out that if I was so sad to think I wouldn’t get to go, it surely must be the thing I need to do.  Then, knowing my math skill level, he double checked my calculations and discovered that my total was way off. The real cost is somewhere in the neighborhood of $9,000, provided I could get in-state tuition. This, folks, is why he does the bill paying around here.

At this point, I was still thinking I’d have to start school in the spring, and not sure I’d qualify for in-state tuition.  Though I’m from Arkansas, born and raised, I’ve spent the last 3 years in South Carolina.  I emailed the graduate school office and was surprised to learn that all they ask for is my current address, which is in Arkansas, so I’m in-state.  I was also concerned that I haven’t taken the GRE, but it turns out I don’t need it to start classes this fall– I get a term to submit a score and become a full graduate student eligible for financial aid and assistantships.  So, everything seems to be falling into place!

I still need to find a part-time job, and I still need to take the GRE so I can be eligible for teaching assistantships come springtime, but I’m really, really excited.  Guess I need to go shopping for some school supplies!

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Do I get a diploma now?

Today I have been married for four years. Or, as I like to say, I’ve put in enough time to have earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Marriage to Jon O. I’m thinking it’s a BA, because marriage is more an art than a science- what works for us may not work for anyone else, but 4 years in, I pretty well know what works for us.  I guess I’m now working on my Master’s, and I’m planning to go for a Ph.D. After that, I guess I’ll have to find a new metaphor!

I’ve been thinking about weddings a lot this week.  Last Saturday, I went to the wedding of a dear friend, a friend who had been a bridesmaid in my wedding.  It was a lovely, joyous occasion, and being there, I have to say the ceremony was just SO HER, so true to who my friend is as an exuberant, whimsical, beautiful, and loving person. I got teared up as they said their vows, and I grinned with true, shared joy as they walked down the aisle as husband and wife to the music of “All You Need Is Love” complete with live marimba, trombone, piano, and violin accompaniment.  Later, I told my husband that I think I need to arrange to go to a wedding the week of our anniversary every year, because they remind me what a special joy it is to be married.

Then, a few days ago, I tweeted something about my disgust at Chelsea Clinton’s wedding costing over $4 million.  Many of my “tweeps” joined in my disgust, and a few shared how they managed to pull off astonishingly cheap weddings.  Like, less than $50, cheap.  I like to think I had a pretty inexpensive wedding, but the truth is, our event probably cost our families around the national average when all was said and done. I’d like to see a poll of my tweeps’ wedding costs when controlled for an average ceremony and reception, because those who eloped were really throwing off the curve. And of course, all the cheap wedding talk led to someone wondering if she was a bad person because she had a more expensive wedding.  To which I say: of course not.  If you’ve got the money to spend and a vision to execute, more power to ya, enjoy your day. I certainly did. (And I’m not really as grossed out by Chelsea Clinton’s $4 million wedding now that I’ve been reminded that she’s throwing a shindig that will be attended by dignitaries and heads of state accustomed to a certain standard of accommodation.)

While I’m well aware that people in this country all too often focus on the wedding instead of the marriage, looking back at my wedding, I think it well-represented who we are as a couple, both then and now. I thought I’d share a few aspects.

In my life, I’ve been blessed with a wonderful family and a wonderful church family, all of whom had a hand in raising me, and all of whom share credit for the person I’ve become.  To grow up in a strong church family is a huge blessing, and everyone at Westminster Presbyterian Church really came together to make my special day a true “family” affair. We were married in the church I grew up in, and my church family had a hand in every aspect of our wedding.  As a small example, when, at the last minute, we realized the bouquets and boutonnieres had not arrived for the ceremony (long story, maybe I’ll tell you sometime), a woman of the church hurried into the reception hall, gathered up any extra flowers she could get her hands on, and stuck stems in the pockets of all the groomsmen.  She tied ribbons around white chrysanthemums for all the bridesmaids, and she quickly fashioned a bouquet for me.  While they weren’t the hand-tied mini white calla lilies I had envisioned, I had flowers in my hands and a smile on my face when I went down the aisle, and no one knew they weren’t the flowers I had planned on.  I had no time to worry, and no need to, because I was surrounded by people who loved us and who were taking care of us. I know that those people surround and care for us to this day.

Another thing that was very important to us was that our wedding be first and foremost a service of worship for the God who taught us to love and brought us together and blessed us so richly.  Led by a dear friend and Jon’s sister, we sang both modern praise and worship songs (more Jon’s style) and favorite hymns (more mine).  We were even beautifully serenaded by Jon’s best friend and best man, who sang “Ave Maria.”  After the wedding, several friends and even our wedding photographer remarked on the genuine and joyful faith they had seen on display both in the ceremony and over the weekend with our families. I’m pretty sure our photographer was introduced to Jesus for the first time at our wedding!

Jon and I met while working as counselors at a Presbyterian summer camp, so it was only right that the camp director performed our wedding.  Knowing David, who has a penchant for preaching parables entirely in alliteration, I knew we’d get a very unique message on our special day, and he did not disappoint.  He centered his message on lessons from camp that apply to marriage.  Here’s part of what he said:

(1) Feed the Untraditional. If there is any adjective we can all agree on to describe Jesus, it is that he was “untraditional.” He did things differently. He shattered traditions. He said things in new ways. I think this is what makes camp so powerful. The same message, but shared in a new context with a different vocabulary and lived out in community. I encourage you to finds ways to keep your faith and marriage fresh. Look for new wineskins. Hold fast to your faith, but don’t mistake the packaging for the real thing. Jesus had harsh words for the traditionalists. Those he hung with were the marginalized. Keep your faith untraditional and fresh.
(2) Find some wilderness places. Ask a camper what their favorite part of camp was and you’ll get a variety of answers, swimming, games, camping out, capture the flag, but ask a counselor, and one response dominates. They like FOB. Flat On Bunk, that time after lunch when you go back to the cabin for rest time. It is time to recharge and renew. Marriages need FOB as well. We may not get it after lunch each day, but we need to find it somewhere. Jesus had only three years of ministry to share the Good News and change the world, yet we constantly find him sneaking away for time away to reflect and renew; to step back and refocus; to be intentional about his relationship with God and listen for direction.
You two face busy times ahead. School, marriage, and real life are coming at you. Times of stress and times when the demands of the world seem to press in from all sides. Jesus always got away to wilderness and natural places….mountain tops, sea shores, desserts, and gardens. Find the time and places that help you stay grounded and well-rounded. Take FOB time to cultivate your relationship with each other and your relationship with your Creator.
(3) Finally, Form Your Own Family Group. One of the things about camp that makes it so impacting is that we form family groups and for that week of camp they share meals, activities, worship. They live together 24 hours a day in community so they see each other as they really are. Each person has to give of themselves to make it work. In a way it is a microcosm of life and of marriage. You are forming your own family group and God will now see you as one unit. You are giving each other the greatest gift possible – yourself – even as Christ gave himself for the church. It is the marriage relationship that Scripture chooses to use as its model for the relationship between Jesus and the church. With God’s help you can model the relationship. You will have challenges, but God promises to be with you through it all, just as you today make public your commitment to be with each other through it all.

Enjoy the gift of life. And enjoy the gift of each other. And don’t forget to have fun along the way. Roast a marshmallow or two and have a s’more. And remember, you have this huge community of friends and family here to root you on, to encourage and support you.

Four years later, I can say that his advice was right on. I’m even rather amused now at how apt it was. We are all about “untraditional.” On our wedding day, we spent our time before the ceremony smooching in the hallway, tradition of not seeing each other be damned. At the end of the ceremony, we were introduced as “Jon and Sarah [Lastname], husband and wife” because I absolutely despise the traditional erasing of female identity in announcing them as “Mr. and Mrs. Jon [Lastname].” And to this day, we strive not to fall back on traditional roles in our marriage, but to be who we are, completely and honestly, supporting and encouraging each other and playing to our strengths.

We are also all about FOB time. Through the rigors of residency and the trials of life, our time to relax and recharge together has been fought for fiercely and guarded closely. At the wedding last weekend, one of the bridesmaids, upon learning I was about to celebrate four years of marriage, asked me “Four good years? Was it easy?” I thought for a minute and replied: “Life has sometimes been very hard, but the marriage has been easy.” I know this might not always be the case, that sometimes marriage itself might get hard, but over the past four years, our marriage has been our sanctuary in a life that has sometimes been tumultuous.

And we have, over the past four years, been knit together as a family, one unit. While moving halfway across the country from everyone you know and love is a stressful and hard thing, it was also an immense blessing for us as a newlywed couple. We have been forced to forge together and rely on each other when we had no one else to rely on. We know we that no matter what comes our way, we’re in it together.

I am so happy to look back at how far we’ve come in our marriage over the past four years.  And I’m impressed with how perfectly our ceremony foretold our life together.  Now, I’m off to give Jon the gift I made for him. I promise to tell you all about that tomorrow!

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we might starve without a CSA

Image: Clagett Farm CSA Week 9, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from galant's photostream

We’ve been in Little Rock and without our beloved CSA for three weeks now, and I’ve realized that after a year as a CSA member, I completely forgot how to feed us in a conventional way.

You see, I became so used to receiving a giant box of veggies each week and planning my meals accordingly, that I actually forgot how to plan a week’s worth of meals and shop for us without it.  This became apparent today when we realized we were both starving and had nothing in the house for lunch.  Before, back in our CSA days, when our fridge was always overflowing with veggies, every meal I cooked involved enough leftovers for at least two lunches.  On top of that, just to use up all the veggies before they went bad, I was always making and freezing ratatouilles, soups, and pasta sauces that could be pulled out and defrosted to make a last-minute meal.

Today, stomach growling, I peeked in the fridge and realized that while I had ingredients to make two more dinners (I shop the Farmer’s Market on Saturdays and fill in with the grocery store on Sundays), the only other things I had to eat were bacon, eggs, tortillas, cheese, pita chips, and hummus.  I had completely forgotten to plan for lunch, because I got so used to having leftovers or something from the freezer!  “What are we going to EAT?” I wailed to Jon, flopping down on the guest bed near where he was using his computer.  (I tend to get swoony and dramatic when hungry.)  “We could get some lunchmeat and sandwich stuff,” he suggested.  “But that’s against the rules!”

What are the rules? Well, after seeing “Food, Inc.” we agreed upon the following:

  • We only eat meat that is sustainably and ethically raised.  This basically means “pastured” meat, or meat that comes from an animal raised in a pasture (more than “free-range”, which is basically meaningless) where it can stretch its legs, graze on grass, and, in the case of chickens, munch on bugs and worms.  This meat would preferably be local, but does not have to be.
  • In order to afford that meat, we eat vegetarian (or nearly vegetarian) for much of the week.
  • What veggies we do consume are to be local (when possible), first and foremost, and preferably organic.
  • All of our dairy is to be organic.  Eggs are to be from pastured nesting hens.
  • We avoid corn syrup, processed foods, and excessive packaging.
  • Our coffee is to be fair trade and shade grown.
  • Most of these rules go out the window outside our home.

After some discussion, we decided that 1) we might have to relax our rules while we figure out a food routine here in our new city, and 2) it was time to get ourselves to Sam’s Club.  In Charleston, we were members of Costco, but it’s basically the same thing as Sam’s.  The #1 major reason to be a member is to get big frozen bags of seafood.  Currently, we don’t have rules about seafood, though we are moving in that direction as we learn more about the environmental impact of commercial fishing and fish farming operations.  I have a general idea that wild-caught salmon is “better” than farmed salmon, but I couldn’t tell you why.  Still, fish is a staple in our diet, because it’s easier to get than pastured meat most of the time, and because I’m still not a good enough vegetarian cook not to base most of my meals around a protein source.  Other things we commonly buy at Sam’s/Costco: canned tomatoes, chicken stock, chocolate chips, pasta, pita chips, Zyrtec, Prilosec, Lactaid, parmesan cheese, feta cheese, and dog food.

So, now we’re members of Sam’s (which, I have to say, membership for a year was $40 and they gave us a $20 gift card, so, with the savings on what we bought today alone, our membership is more than paid for), and our pantry is nicely stocked.  I’m realizing I need to buy more than I think I need at the farmer’s market on Saturdays so I can make a few extra dishes and freeze them to have in a pinch later.  We’re still figuring out how to eat our values in a new city, and I’m sure we have a ways to go.  I’m also trying to figure out how the food aspect of this blog will look without the weekly rhythm of our CSA boxes, though I know I want to keep sharing stories and recipes of our adventures in more ethical eating.  If you have suggestions, let me know! Here’s hoping we won’t starve because I don’t know how to eat like a regular person anymore.