Snowboarding part 2

I have graduated to being able to snowboard down a hill (rather than have Henry pull me around in his flat yard) AND I didn't even hurt myself! Except for every muscle in my body, which definitely hurt for a few days.

I'm seeing the potential to enjoy snowboarding, especially if I can strengthen my legs and get snowpants that fit me so snow doesn't continually get inside my clothes. Right now, my proud moment was going about 15 feet without falling down--it did take me about an hour to make it down the hill that kids sled down in Lakeville 3 times. But, I've been working hard at the gym to strengthen my legs so that it isn't so difficult for me to turn, stop and stand back up once I've fallen, and I'm hoping that will start to make a difference. At my last outing, I fell down quite a few times on purpose after finding out that my legs were way too tired to turn me the way I wanted to go. I still consider that a success, as I substituted falling in the snow for running into trees (or Henry)!

I have the next week off for Christmas, so I'm hoping to get to try again--maybe I'll make it a quarter of the way down the hill this time!

Merry Christmas!

A lazy weekend, recipe and a book project

I haven't had more than a 3-day weekend to relax since January, so this Thanksgiving has been a wonderful break and I have mostly done ABSOLUTELY nothing. It's been glorious. I'm starting grad school in January (assuming the school finishes getting their ducks in a row and does not lose any more of my information), and I know that means that my weekends to dedicate my time primarily to books, movies and video games are extremely numbered.

So this weekend, my biggest adventure has really been continuing a project I started a few months ago--re-reading the Wheel of Time books. I started these books when I was in middle school or early high school at the recommendation of a clerk at Barnes and Noble. Although they definitely mark me as a nerd, they tell a (very long) story that I continually get wrapped up in whenever I see a new book out or pick up one of the old ones. One of the last two books came out this November, and after trying to remember about 12,000 pages worth of material the last time a book came out, I decided to try to re-read the entire series.

It's going to take a long time. The books (all 13 of them) are each around 800-1000 pages, with a pretty intricate plot. But, if you have any inclinations towards being a fantasy fiction nerd like I am, it is entirely worth it. The characterization is fantastic, and the plot (while very involved and complicated) keeps you turning the pages. All in all, this series is a whole world and compelling story that will probably be occupying my spare time for the next few months. As inspiration, I have the newest book sitting on a bookshelf in the kitchen so that I can walk by it every day and remind myself that there's all new material in the story that I have yet to find out.

On an entirely different note, I did try a recipe experiment that I was extremely unsure of but that I liked a lot more than I expected. The ingredients in this recipe for Cuban bowls sounded strange together and I wasn't sure that I would enjoy them, but since I have yet to make a recipe from I'm Losing It that I don't like, I thought it was worth a try. I used both avacados and fried bananas, made my own Cuban-style black beans and am glad that I tried it! It's a great easy vegetarian recipe--it took me awhile since I made my own beans, but if you used canned beans it would definitely be a quick and easy option.

This post ended up being a bit of a hodge-podge of ideas, but I guess that's been my long weekend! Now the countdown to Christmas begins!

Winter sport experiments #2: Snowboarding

In spite of my rather embarrassing end to my last winter experiment, I decided to once again try a winter sport. Henry was pretty enthusiastic about this decision, because he loves to snowboard and most of his snowboarding friends moved away up north, so he promised to teach me (and let me borrow all his old equipment, so all I had to buy were boots!).

I can't really say that I successfully snowboarded today, because the biggest hill I attempted was about a foot high. I learned from my last experience that I need to start ridiculously small because I HATE the feeling of sliding along when I'm not controlling where I'm going. So, I spent what felt like about 6 hours but was probably only about 45 minutes (at most!) jumping, shuffling, sliding and being pushed around Henry's yard while strapped to a big piece of wood polished to be very, very slippery.

It reminded me again, several times, that something about the cold makes Minnesotans go a little nuts. The worst part is, we've only had snow for a couple weeks now--what am I going to decide to do when the cabin fever actually sets in?

At any rate, when I was just going very slowly on flat ground, it was a little less scary than I expected. I still fell down upwards of 15 times and learned that long jackets and high pants are VERY important (I've been inside for half an hour and am just starting to regain feeling in my butt) BUT by the end, Henry pushed me in a circle all the way around his yard before I fell down! This was a very big step from the 3 feet I made it the first time and leads me to believe that maybe by March, I'll be ready for the bunny hill (although Henry's plan is closer to early December....) On the plus side, if I keep this up, I will absolutely not need to take Steamboat Willie up one her offer to have a trainer friend come up with the strength training plan. About five minutes in, my calves started to feel vaguely like they were on fire...it slowly spread to the rest of my legs and I'm pretty sure that I ended up getting better exercise there than I have in anything since Tae Soo Do.

I'm sure there will be more updates...hopefully in them the number of falls will go down! I promised to try again on Wednesday night, so hopefully I'll be in good enough shape to head all over Minnesota to eat turkey!

Mmm...Thai food

I ate good Thai food for the first time this summer, and it was DELICIOUS. I've been hoping to go back to the restaurant since then but haven't had the time or people willing to go. So, I decided to try making my own last week, and it went pretty well! I can't say it was as good as what I had at the restaurant, but it was very good. (In fact, it was good enough that Henry helped me eat leftovers all week, when he normall throws a fit after one day!) This was definitely one of my more successful recipe experiments, which I'll be making again sometime when I'm ready for all the calories--it makes a lot of food that is by no means good for you, but definitely good! I found this recipe on the Internet one day, but I couldn't tell you where beyond the note that says that it was originally from Martha Stewart.

Thai Spicy Chicken Casserole
Yum. But this makes enough to feed a LOT of people or two people for a very long time.

Ingredients
1 T olive oil
2.5 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs (this was cut down from the original recipe and I would cut it down further next time and replace it with more veggies)
Pepper
Salt
1 can reduced fat coconut milk (I couldn't find this, so I used about 3/4 cup regular coconut milk)
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 cups chicken broth (I used a full can of this to make up for the less coconut milk)
3-4 T Thai red curry paste (It called for a lot less, but this amount was spicy and good!)
1 T cayenne pepper (I added this--you could easily reduce it)
1 cup white long grain rice (not instant!)
2 bell peppers, chopped (I used one green and one red, but you could easily add another pepper)
8 oz. green beans, cut into 1-inch lengths (could easily add more to replace some of the chicken)

Directions

1. Salt and pepper the chicken. In a 5-quart stock pot, heat the oil and brown the chicken. You may need to do this in two batches. Remove the chicken to a plate (It will cook more later, so don't worry if it's not done as long as it's browned).
2. Add the coconut milk, broth, curry paste and water to the stock pot. Bring to a boil. Add the rice. Add the chicken on top in a layer, including any juices that leaked out to the plate. Cover and reduce heat to medium-low. Cook without stirring for 15 minutes until rice is almost tender. (If you're using a different type of rice, you may need to cook it longer, but I'm not sure if the rice will turn out as fluffy.)
3. Add the veggies on top of the chicken, cover again and cook until tender-crisp, about 10 more minutes.

Books: Sh*t My Dad Says

I read an article about Sh*t My Dad Says, requested it from the library and then promptly forgot about it for about 4 months. Last week, after I finally made my way through the very long waiting list, I couldn't really remember why I wanted to read the book but still went and picked it up.

I finished it in about an hour and a half--a particularly annoying hour and a half for Henry and his roommate, who never seemed to get used to me bursting into laughter every couple of minutes. This book is a quick read and doesn't have a very continuous plot to pull you in, but it is funny! The structure of the book is largely based around the author telling stories of times when his father shared some politically incorrect but valuable and entertaining wisdom, with each story followed by a few pages of funny quotes and advice. If you remember that this book was inspired by a Twitter feed set up to record the author's father's (mostly profane) one-liners of wisdom, you will be prepared to accept the book as it is. I would also recommend having a thick skin, as the author's dad is far from politically correct or gentlemanly.

A few of my favorites, so you'll know what you're getting yourself into:

ON THE DEATH OF OUR FIRST DOG


He was a good dog. Your brother is pretty broken up about it, so go easy on him. He had a nice last moment with Brownie before the vet tossed him in the garbage.

ON MY BLOODY NOSE

What happened? Did somebody punch you in the face?!... The what? The air is dry? Do me a favor and tell people you got punched in the face.

ON FURNISHING ONE'S HOME
Pick your furniture like you pick a wife: It should make you feel comfortable and look nice, but not so nice that if someone walks past it they want to steal it.

I would recommend borrowing this book from the library to brighten your day a little bit. As long as you're not looking for something heavy and important and are willing to not take the book too seriously, this will make you laugh and be worth the time. It's short, entertaining, and a great way to get in some laughter!

Carpets, bored dogs and new toys

We learned this weekend that although Boris refuses to play or be awake for more than 10 minutes when we're home (and shakes incessantly outside if it's below 60 degrees), he is extremely bored in our new house We discovered this when I moved the furniture to scrub our carpets and discovered that Boris had been claiming the house much more frequently than we previously thought. This was seconded when Steamboat Willie got woken up around 2 am earlier this week because Boris learned that he could make a new noise by grabbing the shower curtain and running back and forth incessantly.

We decided bored Boris was hazardous to our physical and mental health.

He is now confined to the kitchen as much as we can keep him in there while we're ast work (he's quite the escape artist) and we've been doing a lot of research on how to make our prima donna dog less bored when he throws a fit about being kept awake during normal human hours. Most of the ideas we found required much more determined, tough and energetic dogs. Ones who like to play in the snow, don't give up chasing their toys after about 3 minutes and aren't so busy sulking that they refuse to eat or drink until you come back. But, a few sounded promising and, after testing them out, I'm pleased to report that Boris is not quite as stupid as we previously thought. (Ok, fine...Steamboat Willie had faith that he would pass. But I was extremely surprised that he didn't respond as well to "Dishwasher" as he does to his name.)

Our first experiment was filling an empty water bottle with some treats and food and waiting for him to figure out how to get it out. Yesterday, all that resulted in was him smelling the bottle and then going to finally eat his food out of his dish. But today, after about 20 minutes of me alternately shaking the bottle of food at him and grabbing his paw to make him move it, it finally dawned on him. If he moved it around enough, the food came out. Then came Boris' true, very food-motivated personality, and he spent the next hour chasing, pawing, chewing and carrying the bottle around. After a little while, he even figured out that the food came out better if he threw the bottle down the stairs. Turns out sometimes, he's much smarter than I thought!

It took him most of the night, but he finally got the food out. It took him much less time to clean the peanut butter out of the Kong toy we got him. And best of all...after that, he fell right asleep and with any luck, he'll leave the shower curtain...and his tail...and the blankets all alone tonight!

Hello again...

Now that it's once again dark before I leave work and there's snow on the ground here, I have no more excuses for putting off any of my writing work! So here I am; hopefully I won't disappear off the blogging radar again for quite awhile. While my summer was not very adventurous, I have some plans coming up that bring me back to my writing. (For instance--since Henry has decided this is the year for me to stop stalling and learn how to snowboard, and I fall down even when I'm not flying through the snow on a waxed board, I figure I should keep this up to give everyone a little more amusement!)

I've had a few adventures, both good and bad, over the last few months. Rather than going through the scattered details in my head, I figure I'll summarize with some photos.

Cooper, my parents' new golden retriever puppy, showed up!

We went to the Renaissance Fair. Henry got soaked.

Henry and I took a long weekend in Chicago and ate a lot of pizza and hot dogs

I spent a few days helping my family clean up from a flood

Steamboat Willie and I moved...we now have our own front door, grilling area AND washer and dryer!

And now that it's winter again, it's time for the holidays, birthdays, snowboarding and a bunch of new adventures!

Plum Brandy Jam!

One of my new goals is accomplished: I successfully (I think) made a batch of plum brandy jam this afternoon. I learned how to do this at my last cooking class, and this was one of the recipes that I was most impressed with. I have to say I was still very intimidated by the idea of making jam, and all the discussions on how to avoid botulism growing in my jam certainly added to that nervousness! I am surprised now, though, at how fast and easy the process ended up being. I'm sure there are much more complicated recipes (this one didn't require a pressure cooker or anything other than a lot of dishes and food) but this seemed like a pretty good one to start with.

I modified this recipe a little bit, because I couldn't find the the particular type of pectin that the recipe I got called for at Cub, Target or EconoFoods. I also added a little bit more sugar to get closer to the recipe on the pectin, and a little bit of lemon juice to avoid my new paranoia of giving people botulism. I spread the remaining jam from the pan that didn't go into a jar on some toast, and it tasted pretty good (and I'm still not paralyzed), so my recipe adjustments seemed to have worked.

Plum Brandy Jam
This makes about 2 pints, so I only got 2 jars out of it. It also take a lot of pots, preferably really big tall ones. Next time, I would probably choose to use smaller jars (1/2 pint), but I couldn't find those anywhere that was open last night at 8:30! This would not only give me a few more jars, but would mean I could use smaller pots.

Ingredients

• 4 cups plums (this was about 1 pint)
• 3/4 cups brandy
• 3/4 pacakge sure-jell no sugar needed pectin (the original recipe recommended Pomona's universal pectin)
• 2 cups sugar (original recipe called for 1 1/2 cups)
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice (I added this because I was using sweet plums, while the original recipe called for sour plums)

Equipment

• 2 really tall pots (big enough that you can fill them with boiling water, put the jars in and have the water cover them by an inch or two)
• 2 normal sized pots (one to boil the lids, which can be pretty small, and another just big enough to fit all the ingredients)
• 2 pint-sized jars or the equivalent, with rings and new lids
• A jar lifter (not necessary but really, really helpful)
•  A magnetic thingy to pull the lids out of the water (again, not necessary but really helpful)
• A funnel (I didn't use one. I should have--there would be a lot less plum jam all over everything right now)
• A thick towel with some pot holders underneath it or a wooden cutting board
• A potato masher or just a big spoon to squash the fruit with
• Normal cooking tools (cutting board, knife, measuring utensils, bowls)

Process

1. In one of the big and one of the small pots, add water. Put the lids for the jars you'll be using in the small pot, and the jars themselves in the big pot. Bring the water to a boil. This will sanitize the jars--make sure they are boiling for at least 10 minutes. I learned that it's probably a lot easier if you put the jars in with the mouth facing down--otherwise, you have to worry about pouring the water out later when you really just want to worry about getting your jam in!

2. Fill the other big pot a little over half full with water and start to bring it to a boil. You will be putting the filled jars into this pot to help them seal, so be sure there's enough room to add a jar without overflowing the pot, but enough water to cover the jar. It might help to make some extra hot water in a teapot to add later if the jar isn't covered.
3. Make sure there is a wooden cutting board or a thick dish towel on top of some pot holder nearby. This is where you'll be setting the hot jars both to fill with jam and to cool.
4. Pit the plums and chop them coarsely. You don't need to peel them.
5. Put the plums in the remaining small pot and heat them up. If they aren't juicy enough, you may need to add some water to soften the plums. It took me about 10 minutes to soften them up so I could smash them with a spoon, until they were almost liquid.
   
6. Smash the plums with a potato masher or a spoon until the mix is very liquidy. Mine already looked a little bit jam-like here.
7. Bring the plums to a boil, stirring constantly. Add the brandy and lemon juice. (If you are using the Pomona's pectin, you can add the calcium water during this step, too.)
8. Mix the sugar and pectin together in a separate bowl. Add the mix to the plums and stir vigorously for 1-2 minutes to dissolve the pectin. Return the mix to a boil and remove it from the heat. Don't cook this mixture for too long, or the pectin will break down and your jam will end up being pretty soup-like.
9. Take the first jar out of the water bath and make sure the water is out (jar lifter is very handy here). Also pull a lid out (this is where the magnetic thing is really useful!) and set both on your towel or cutting board. Carefully pour the jam into the jar. This is where a funnel would have come in really, really handy for me; as it was, I used a big spoon and poured it in a little bit at a time. It took a long time and I have a very messy dish towel, but most of the jam ended up in the jars! I filled my jars to about 1/4" below the metal ring line.
10. Place the lid back on the jar and tighten the ring with your fingers (not too tight--otherwise the expanding and contracting that happens with the heat can cause some problems).
11. Using the jar lifter again, place the filled jar into the second large pot with the boiling water. Make sure the water covers the jar by an inch or two. If your water isn't quite boiling yet, it's ok--just get it there as fast as possible and don't start timing until it has started boiling. Boil the jar for 11-12 minutes (this is at an elevation for the Twin Cities area in Minnesota--you may need to adjust this based on your own elevation). While this jar is boiling, you can go ahead and fill the next one.

12. Pull the first jar out of the water bath with the jar lifter and place it back on your cutting board/towel. You can put the second jar into the water bath and start timing it. Let the first jar cool for awhile--you should hear a little popping sound after a bit indicating that the seal worked. My first jar took probably 5 minutes to pop--the second one popped within a minute. The seal is based off of the time and heat of the water, which is why it's important not to start the timer until the water is at a slow boil. If it doesn't pop, you can also toss it back in the boiling water for another 11 minutes. However, if it's been long enough to let the jam cool, it's better to put it in a new, re-sterilized jar.
13. Take the metal ring off at least long enough to ensure there's no water underneath, so it won't rust. You can also test your seal here (carefully) by picking the jar up by its lid. If it sealed correctly, it should stay. If not, the lid will come off and the jar will fall...so be careful!
14. Enjoy your success!

"Yes, you Can Can!"

I know. It's cheesy. But "Yes, you Can Can" is the name of the class I took today to work on one of my new goals of learning to can. It was taught by Jill Jacoby at the Cooks of Crocus Hill, and while going into the class I wasn't sure if it was worth paying for (after all, there are so many books and websites on canning, plus so many people who already know!) I was thoroughly impressed. I learned more in this class than I have in probably any other cooking class I've taken. I'm sure it helped that I knew absolutely zero about canning going in, but now I have enough of a foundation to feel like there's a possibility I could successfully make something this fall. The instructor was really knowledgeable, excited about what she did and very clear. The only drawback I saw to the class was that it was only scheduled for 2 hours, and with the amount of material she covered we could have easily filled a normal 3 hours session.

It was a "methods" class, so it focused much more heavily on how to can than the recipes to use. I did get a few fantastic recipes, which I'll share when I hopefully successfully make my batches of plum jam and apple butter, but more than that I went from knowing zero about how to safely put food in jars that will last for a year or so to having a pretty good idea. Some of the most important things I learned were that you need very little equipment, really--a really tall pot, a few more heavy pots for boiling the ingredients and sterilizing the jars and lids, a ladle, the jars themselves and a good colander. I also came out with a list of cool gadgets that would be handy, but it's nice to know that I can start experimenting small and cheap. I also learned the the basics of canning are just timing (so the food doesn't boil to short and not kill all the bacteria, or too long and not jell correctly), enough acid to keep botulism from being a problem and a whole lot of sterilization by boiling water.

My last few weeks have been pretty disgustingly busy with little stuff that keeps popping up, but I'm really hoping that in the next 2-3 weeks I'll be able to set aside a weekend day and try to make a batch of plum brandy jam. Cross my fingers (and yours, if you want to get any!) and I'll make sure to take some pictures and write some specifics if that day happens.

Book: Physics of the Impossible

After about a month of working on it, I finally finished Michio Kaku's Physics of the Impossible. It was an interesting book and well-written, and I'm a little bit sad that it took me so long to finish. Compared to many of the physics books geared towards a general audience that I've tried to read, this one was remarkably fun and easy to read. (Last week Steamboat Willie was having trouble sleeping, so I gave her one of my previous attempts at a readable physics book. After a few weeks of laying awake for 2 or 3 hours a night, she read 2 pages and not only slept through the night, but overslept the next morning. This book was much more interesting than that!)

Unfortunately, it was still a physics book for me. As much as I really am interested in physics, when I'm reading about it my attention span is even shorter than normal (which is hard to achieve). If I'm in a quiet room by myself, I can read for hours. If I'm anywhere else, I tend to get distracted by just about anything going on, which is why it took me so darn long to finish the book.

The basis of Physics of the Impossible is an explanation of the real physics of things that we've always considered science fiction, from interspace travel to telling the future. He divides the book into 3 sections, based on the probability of the event actually happening. One of my favorite parts of the book is that he is completely unabashed about the fact that many physicists got into the profession because they wanted to know about how Star Trek or Star Wars or even Batman could happen in real life. It made the whole subject more approachable to hear about the discoveries that were made because a physicist happened to read Jules Verne or watch Aliens. The author was also great at conveying some real physics information without confusing the issue by jumping into the very complicated issues too deep.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is just a little bit geeky (like me) and interested in both physics and science fiction. If you have a longer attention span than me, you'll be able to breeze through it--otherwise, plan a little bit of time when the tv is off and no one is around, and you'll learn enough physics to make yourself look like a good science geek!

Food Experiments: Made-up Zucchini Casserole

When I finally decided I wanted to learn how to cook, my experience came mostly in 2 waves. My mom taught me how to read recipes so they made sense, how to make the best rice krispie bars in the world, and basically got me started. My dad then took over and started to teach me how to make stuff up.

That's a skill I'm still learning, but it's coming easier as I cook more and get a better idea of what things go together and what I like. One of my biggest challenges is branching out--I have a few made-up recipes, but since I like so many of the same spices and ingredients so much, a lot of my new attempts end up tasting just the same. Last week, based on the produce from my garden and the farmers market, I successfully made up a casserole (that's a new attempt for me!) that was not only good, but different from my past experiments. And on top of that--not only was it relatively healthy (at least, most of the ingredients are good for you, although I have no idea on calorie count) but Henry even liked it. For healthy food, that's quite a compliment! Unfortunately, I cooked this in my father's style, which means I have only a very general idea at best as to how much of things I put into it. When you make it, just put in lots of the spices you like and not so much of the ones you don't. It works for me!

Made-Up Zucchini Casserole
I used a 9x9 ceramic casserole dish with a lid, and I think it was probably 3-4 inches tall. You could probably make it in a wider, shorter dish, but I liked the layers I added in this. They make it seem more casserole-y to me.

Ingredients

• Mixed brown and wild rice to cover the bottom of the pan (around 3/4 or 1 cup?)
• 1 large-ish zucchini, sliced into 1/4 inch rounds
• 1/2 large green pepper, diced
• 2 jalpenos, diced
• 1-2 tomatoes, diced
• 1 small onion, diced
• minced garlic (I used a lot. probably 2-4 tablespoons?)
• pepper
• cayenne pepper
• rosemary
• oregano
• 1 large chicken breast, cut into 1/2" cubes
• spaghetti sauce (about 3/4 of a normal sized jar)
• Cheddar cheese, enough to cover the top of the casserole and extra to sprinkle on before serving (1 cup?)
• Bread crumbs, enough to cover the top of the casserole (1/2 cup?)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350.
2. Cover the bottom of the casserole dish with the mixed rice.
3. On top of the rice, layer the zucchini rounds, green pepper and jalapenos, tomatoes, and onion. Lightly cover with the spices (garlic through oregano).
4. Top the spices and veggies with the dicecd chicken breast and pour the spaghetti sauce over the top, making sure it covers as much of the casserole as possible. (I also added a little bit of extra water here for the rice, but I'm pretty sure I didn't need to. The finished product was plenty liquid-y.)
5. Cover with cheddar cheese and bread crumbs.
6. Bake covered for 1 hour. Remove the cover and bake for another 30 minutes. Top with more cheese for serving.

Tosca and trampolines

This weekend I had a completely new experience; I went to my first opera. It's one of those things I've been meaning to do for quite awhile, mostly out of curiosity and partly because it just seems like something you should try once in your life. I ended up dragging my sister and brother-in-law with me to see Tosca, put on by the Minnesota Orchestra. (I figured that as music professors, bringing them was my best bet as to someone who would enjoy it!)

It was interesting. I'm glad I went to see an opera once, but based on this experience I would have to say that I definiely prefer musicals. For starters, while I appreciated the screen with some English translations to help me understand what was going on, I found it ended up being similar to watching TV with the closed captioning. I was so busy reading the words that I didn't notice nearly as much of the music or acting. Also, it drove me a little bit nuts when they would continue singing with no captions occasionally! I should have expected it to be depressing, I suppose, but I was still surprised by the complete pessimism of the story!

One of my favorite moments, however, had nothing to do with this particular show. A man sitting next to my sister shared an article he had printed off with her, about mishaps that have happened during other stagings of the opera. Without ruining too much (hopefully), there is a scene in the play when a main character is supposed to jump off a parapet to her death. In the past, apparently there have been a lot of accidents resulting in broken bones, but the article focused more on the funny mishaps. In one staging, they placed a trampoline to break this character's fall, so the dramatic suicide plunge was followed by several re-appearances over the wall. In another, soldier supposedly pursuing this character had simply been told to "exit with the principals" and so all threw themselves off the wall immediately afterwards. While the performance I went to was extremely well done (the music was beautifully done and the staging, while basic, was nice) there was a little bit of me that regretted our performance not going just a little bit wrong, in a similarly funny (and non-traumatic!) way.

Re-thinking my goals

I started the new year with a lot of plans and goals, named so because I hoped that calling them that would make it easier not to just forget them, like I generally do with resolutions.

It didn't work.

My plans for the entire year have changed, putting off a lot of my ideas. Our trip to France and Italy has been postponed until next spring, I've temporarily lost interest in Web programming, and it appears another member beat me to creating a website for my hometown church. I tried malva pudding...not the same as I remember. And the difficult part is that it's such an incredibly rich dessert, I have a hard time convinving anyone to eat my almosts. However, my garden is doing well (I've eaten a few veggies out of it, as well as a lot of raspberries) and the other website I was planning is out there at least in its first stages. It still needs some tweaking, some more content and some extra features like email, but it's more progress than I make on a lot of new years goals!

It's a little over halfway through the year--I figure it's time to set some new goals. Achievable ones, and ones that will keep the experiments and adventures going.

• If my feet heal in time, run a 5K
• Read all the Sandman books or Les Miserables (bucket list items)
• Get down the basics of canning, and make a batch of something (jam, jelly, apple butter...not sure yet!)
• Go to a waterpark
• Go canoing or kayaking
• Go camping
• Start thinking seriously about writing fiction again. Maybe even come up with an outline for something.

There are so many more goals that I'd like to add to this, but I think I'm going to need to start relatively small and hopefully add on further goals as the year wears on.

Some food experiments: Grilling and sweet potato burritos

Since I found the list of 101 ideas for the grill, I've been experimenting with different grilled foods. My results: grilled asparagus, great, but don't overcook it. Grilled watermelon, not great. But my parents' dog Amos really, really liked that one--probably something about the bratwurst flavor that was infused in the watermelon after grilling. In fact, Amos liked it so much that he scarfed down all his food for the first time since I got here, with minimal coaxing! Grilled avacado is ok, but it didn't add a lot to the normal avacado flavor. Grilled peppers, very good. All in all, my favorite grill experiment so far is definitely the asparagus. I just tossed it in olive oil with sea salt (since my parents don't have kosher salt and I was house-sitting during this particular experiment) and a little bit of pepper, and grilled it for probably less than 5 minutes. The coals were super hot from the chimney starter (I'm not ready for gas or the green egg grill yet...they seem much more likely to blow up in my face when I don't know which buttons to hit) so the stalks directly over the coals were already burnt by that point.

My other experiment for the week was sweet potato burritos. I was very skeptical about these, even though they are labeled "addictive." I'm very picky about how I like sweet potatoes, and I wasn't entirely sure about the idea of a burrito essentially completely filled with smooshy food. I decided to take my chances since all the reviews were so positive, and I'm glad I did. I made all the fillings from scratch (no canned sweet potatoes or refried beans) since I heard that made a difference, and they were delicious. My cautions--they are best when you make sure the beans and the sweet potatoes are mixed well inside the tortilla, to make sure you're not getting a full bite of sweet potatoes and another full bite of beans. Make sure you have enough cheese, as the sharpness balances out the rest of the flavors. And, if you're using the smaller tortillas, make a few of these! They're good enough to eat several of and not as filling as they look. These are vegetarian, but I think you could easily add shredded pork or chicken to them if you wanted.

Back into the swing of things--Books: Shadow of the Silk Road

I'm starting to realize how much more of a winter project this blog is for me. IN the winter, I'm generally bored from continually staying inside and bummed about not seeing the sun. Also, just about every winter I go through a funk where I forget that I'm just upset because it's thirty below outside and I only get to see the sun through windows, and decide that there's some normal part of my life that needs to change and I'll be as happy as I am when I'm swimming outside in the summer. This winter, my funk produced this blog. While it's certainly still a good project, I'm noticing that my dedication to having adventures is dulled significantly when I can substitute an evening of grilling and swimming in the pool, or trying to see if my foot has healed enough to take the dog for a walk, or really anything else outside. And for the most part, that is what I've been doing for the last 2 weeks--really, the last two months. I've stopped buying groceries for the week, because if it's a nice week most of them just sit there as I make emergency trips to the store for brats or steaks and corn or some other new grilling food. (Speaking of which--I found this blog this week, which I'm highly enjoying and also has a link to 101 ideas for grilling. Good, easy ideas. Yum.)

This week I've been doing ok for little experiments--I made a new vegetarian recipe that turned out great and finally finished a book I've had out from the library for a few months now. (I'll post that tomorrow--hopefully breaking things up will keep me going!)

I got Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron probably 6 weeks to 2 months ago from the library, and it has really taken me that long to finish it. The book is extremely well written and I think it has a fantastic premise--the author begins in China and follows the old silk road back to Antioch. He is entirely by himself, does not speak the language of every country he passes through (although he does speak both Mandarin and Russian, which get him by in quite a lot of countries) doesn't have a plan beyond which cities he intends to stop in, and even spends a decent amount of the way hitchhiking. It's the sort of adventure that is great to read about because I know I could never do it, especially through the territory he covers--through China and Mongolia, perhaps, but he also moves through Afghanistan and Iran.

This book has a well-written travel story, showing you not only the sights that the author sees but the people he speaks to and the way they look at the world. Although we are entangled in so may of the countries he travels to, this book shows me how little I really knew about the history and the way people think in many of these countries. For so much of it, we only see the propaganda put out by one government or another (or by immigrants who have chosen to leave that country, and so probably have very different viewpoints than those who chose to stay), and never really get the opportunity to speak to an Iranian or an Afghani who chooses to stay in their country. My biggest issue with this book was probably my interest level. Depending on the chapter and my level of interest in where the author was, I either couldn't put the book down or I'd put it down for a week or two at a time. I'm glad I read the book, even the parts that interested me less, but it's a book that you might need some time to go through unless you're interested in everywhere between China and Turkey.

Unfortunately, after taking so long to finish this book I now have a backlog of requests that have come in that the library to sift through. So, expect quite a few more book posts coming up!

Lots of sumi-e

I was too lazy all of last week to post my pictures from my sumi-e class, so I have quite a lot of photos. I have to say that last week, I was not particularly interested in continuing with sumi-e. We drew a lot of baby chicks and grapes, which is a nice idea until you try to do that for two whole hours when you normally can't concentrate for more than 10 minutes. On anything. So, I ended up with a progression like this:

Instead of what I was supposed to paint, which looked more like this:

This week, I enjoyed myself a lot more. For starters, we were painting landscapes, which I find more interesting than chickens. More importantly, landscapes seemed to be more adaptable than chickens. When I got bored with the one she had demonstrated, I started to make some up that used the same strokes.

On top of there being more variety, I feel like I had a little more skill at drawing landscapes, which is a nice motivator! So, class ended with me buying some more xuan paper and some colors to try. Hopefully, in spite of the fact that the ink smells like extra strength bug spray, that means I'll keep going at least sometimes with this!

Sumi-e practice

After a whole lot of practice, I'm making some progress....I'm having fun with the different shades of grey, although I'm not very good at controlling them yet. I like the leaves on this, though:

But my favorite drawing so far was done entirely with the small brush that I was only supposed to use for detail. Maybe I'm better on the small scale?

First garden produce!

The rain has really paid off--I got my first real produce out of my garden today! And it was delicious. Not much, but it's a start.

Matting and Sumi-e

It's been a busy week--yesterday was my last matting and framing class, and today was my first sumi-e brush painting class.

The matting class worked out surprisingly well, considering that I screwed up my first mat for each of my pictures. In the end, though, I ended up with two pretty photos that would have probably cost me hundreds of dollars to have custom matted and framed.

And the really tricky one, painted on a ceiling tile:

My sumi-e class was fun, but unfortunately got a little long for me. It's a fun idea, and I did find it easier than regular painting. Next week I believe that we'll get to start using some color, which should be fun. This week we concentrated on painting peonies, which would have been much easier if I had more than a passing acquaintance with what peonies look like. I remembered them being a big, showy flower and otherwise went off my instructors demonstration paintings.

After a few pages of practice, I managed to make some decent flowers. Next week, I believe the plans is baby chicks--we'll see how that goes!

Framing and Matting Class...Pt. 1

Yesterday I attended the first round of a framing and matting class at Dakota County Technical College. It was just a kickoff class, getting us familiar with a lot of the terms and artistic parts of matting pictures, but it was a lot of fun! As a writer, my visual skills are not always my highest priority, which generally shows in any kind of color matching, spacial things or really anything I need to make look really nice. Because of this, the class was a mind-set change for me and it was kind of fun to look at the ways that colors and sizes of mats can change the way a picture looks. I'd honestly never paid attention to the way that a double-layered mat worked color-wise before, but I found out there's actually a lot of thought behind it. The under-layer that only shows a little bit is picked out to bring out a specific color in the photo, and it really does make a huge difference in what your eye focuses on. Also, the color of this layer should not actually touch that same color in the photo (e.g., a red mat never touches the red in the photo) because it's so hard to match the colors exactly--if they touch, it brings attention to the dissonance. The top layer, which is what you notice the most, should really have very little to do with the photo beyond not clashing, and instead should be matched to the decorating in the room the picture will be hung in. Just some interesting thoughts! Next week we'll actually get into the work of measuring, cutting and putting together the mats. I come out of the class with two matted and framed pictures, which doesn't seem like a half bad class project to me!

On a completely unrelated note, I saw yesterday that since last Thursday, my asparagus has sprouted, my peas have flowered, my potato plant is growing so big it might be trying to take over the world AND my raspberry bushes are getting berries! I figured I'd be lucky to even get some berries in the fall, but they're apparently happy where they are and want to let me know that. Give it another few weeks to a month, and I might be getting actual food out of this garden!

Garden progress!

I think I can officially cross my "plant a garden" item off my bucket list. Just when I was about to give up and go buy plants instead of seeds for my broccoli, cauliflower, garlic and green beans, it decided to rain for an entire week and put my gardening plans off. When I came back out to examine the garden after--voila! Everything except for my asparagus had sprouted and was growing by leaps and bounds. I think I may still need to replace my strawberries, as the rabbits feasted on them before I got my fence up after all that rain, but I'm still going to call this garden a success.

Before the rain, all I had going for me was a couple good rows of onions and a single potato plant:

And now:

Hurray!

Books: Miracle in the Andes and Alive

When I was in high school, I watched the movie Alive in one of my lit classes. It was one of a few movies that managed to make an impression on me in spite of being shown in school. The story was gruesome and painful, but absolutely fascinating. I went on to read the book Alive by Piers Paul Read, which was different from the movie but equally impacting.

For those of you who don't have the slightest idea what I'm talking about, Alive is the true story (at least the book is...if I remember correctly, the movie is based on the story but takes some creative liberties) of a rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes mountains in the middle of winter. They were far off course and deep in a treacherous area of the mountains, and searchers weren't able to find them. This group stayed alive for 72 days, before two of them finally walked out of the mountains (I believe it's the second highest mountain range on Earth) to get help. This survival was impressive enough, before adding in the details that the plane was broken in half, many of the survivors were very injured, they were completely mislead about their own position in the mountains and (the gruesome part) they ran out of normal food a week or so after they crashed. (I'll leave that jump in logic to you, and just say that they broke a very, very big taboo.) The story had incredible potential to be sensationalist, horrific and gross; instead, it was handled in a way that can't help but amaze you in the people's incredible will to survive.

Because this story made an impact on me years ago, I was pretty much stopped in my tracks when I was wandering through the library and saw a book about the Andes by Nando Parrado. Nando was the main protagonist of Alive, the young man whose skull was cracked open in the crash, whose mother and sister died beside him, and who eventually led the trek out of the mountains. I picked up Miracle in the Andes and read the whole book yesterday. It had most of the great elements that I remembered from Alive, with the benefit of being narrated first person by someone who had been on the mountain, rather than a journalist. I'm not sure I would love the book if I hadn't already read Alive and been pulled into the story--I really don't know. As it was, though, it was a great continuation of the story for me. It was extremely difficult to put down and if you have a reasonably strong stomach, I would highly recommend it. It's the sort of story that makes you slow down and appreciate how good your life is. When I read both Alive and Miracle in the Andes, I was surprisingly humbled. It's hard to be upset about the little things in life when you're faced with a story of people who had such a horrible experience and still fought so hard to live.

Getting things into gear

I didn't intend a pun with my title but it almost works out. This weekend, with the little bit of extra time, I managed to finally get working on some of my goals--like actually learning how to work on my car! After years of bribing and paying people to work on my car, I decided it was time to learn how to do some of the basics myself. (This may have been motivated in part by the dealership informing me that it was $400 to do maintenance that basically was an oil change and two air filter changes.) And, with only a few people helping, supervising and laughing at me, I actually changed my own oil (mostly), filled all the fluids I was low on, checked my tire pressure, and changed one of the two air filters. (I would have changed both, but one of Henry's well-meaning friends came over and started pitching in to help fix things before he figured out this was supposed to be teaching time!) Little and easy as all those fixes were, I was still pretty proud of myself when I got done.

Adding to that, I weeded my garden and figured out that everything except the asparagus and the strawberries is growing pretty darn well! The asparagus never came up and the rabbits ate my strawberry plants for a snack before I got my fence up, but I can replant both of those next year. In the meantime, I'll have some good vegetables in a month or two, and maybe even a small raspberry crop in the fall.

To top it off, I successfully made some of my recipes from my cooking class. Apparently with a little extra sleep, motivation and relaxation, I gained at least a little bit of skill. Now, I just hope that will continue for the future! I was getting tired of screwing up all my new recipes.

This seems like a good start heading into June, when I'll be starting a couple new art classes, continuing my gardening and hopefully enjoying every bit of the summer!

Books: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

I read about The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks months ago and requested it from the library; apparently I wasn't the only one! It took months to get here, but it was worth it. This book tells the story of Henrietta Lacks, a poor Southern woman who went in to a free clinic to receive treatment for cancer. Her doctors took a sample of her cancer to use in research without her knowledge, which turned out to be the first cells that could stay alive and continue dividing indefinitely. These cells are still used in research and have been important to everything from space travel to the polio vaccine.

The book is fascinating and covers a lot of ground, from what is known of Henrietta's life to the lives of her children and the science and ethics involved in the situation. Her cells have grown into a multimillion dollar industry, none of which is being given to her children; for years, no one even knew Henrietta's name. Later, more research was conducted on her children without them knowing or understanding what was going on.

This book is difficult to read at times because it can be almost overwhelming; there is so much to think over and try to understand. It is well worth the effort, though!

Crossing an item off my bucket list

I've been absolutely terrible about posting the last few weeks--I've either been busy or reveling in the few days I had to sit around or do laundry! It's time to get back to this and keep myself accountable for new adventures and experiments, especially now that it seems to be summer!

This last weekend, I crossed something off my bucket list and my family had a big day--my nephew Conner was baptized and I am now officially his godmother. Everyone except for him seemed to have a great time--he was not pleased about the cold water or about having to wait for his next breakfast!

I have plenty of catching up to do on the last few weeks and hopefully some new adventures coming up, so here's hoping I can get back in the habit of being here!

Golfing (kind of)

Ok, I take it back...all the things I've said about golf in my life and how incredibly boring it seems. At least, I think I do--I have yet to play an actual round of real golf. And based on my performance today at the driving range, I think it will be quite awhile before I'm ready for anything like a real game of golf! Especially the kind where there are other golfers behind me who need to wait for me to finish the hole before they can get there. I can't even finish mini-golf in time to avoid upsetting families with children, generally, and I can hit the ball every time when it comes to mini-golf.

This is me. Notice how my club is coming down about two inches behind the ball.

This is also me. I feel like I look cool in this photo, until I realize that the ball is really not very far away and didn't go much further than that. But hey, at least I hit it, right?

I need to work on these digressions...the moral of the story was that I had fun, even though I was really, really terrible. Luckily Henry came with to give me some lessons, because until today, I had never held real golf clubs. And it definitely showed! I think I missed my first 10-15 swings completely. By the end of the day, though, I had showed some pretty significant improvement: I was hitting the ball once every five or six swings! (Yes, I know. That's still sad. But I have to get excited about the small things, especially when it comes to me and athletics.) And I hit four in a row once without missing. As long as I ignored all the serious golfers around us and just concentrated on our group (most of who also missed the ball a lot), it was a lot of fun.

We did take some videos, but I'm going to have to do some messing with them to make them show up right side up. Hopefully we'll be doing this again soon, with another few women from work who weren't able to come today!

Book Reviews: The Lightning Thief and Eat, Pray, Love"

I finished two books yesterday. I ended up along on an "adventure" with Henry as he played some very geeky card games with his friends, so I made him stop so I could get another book to read when I finished my library book.

I got Eat, Pray, Love from the library on a friend's recommendation. The book is basically about a woman who goes through a very painful divorce and decides to find peace with herself by travelling and searching out three important aspects she needs in her life: pleasure, discipline and balance. It was an interesting story; the author spent four months in Italy learning Italian and eating, four months in India meditating and learning traditional Hindu yoga, and four months in Bali studying with a medicine man, healer and learning to live in society with people again. There were some really interesting ideas in this book, and I really liked the premise. There are also some great one-liners of wisdom that I took away. On the negative side, the author herself drove me up the wall. I don't think I really fully understood that in the book about a depressed woman trying to find herself would be full of a lot (for lack of a better word) whining. There would be long spells when I could sympathize with her and find her story interesting, but every so often it just reminded me a little too much of a teenaged girl crying because she didn't have a date for Friday night. All in all, I have mixed feelings, but I'm glad I read it. It's a good travel read, and provides an interesting introduction to some ideas that normal Americans don't usually have a ton of exposure to--like yoga and traditional Bali life.

At my emergency stop, I found that the best book I could find in Best Buy was The Lightning Thief. It's a kids book and has the simplicity of a kids book, but it was entertaining. The story is about a kid who learns by being chased by monsters that he's the son of one of the Greek gods, who are still very much alive and involved in the world. It then follows his training and quests. It can be a little cheesy (in particular, some of the jokes are a little groan-worthy!) but if you take it as a kids book, it's a good read. It's also a very fast one--I think I finished it in three hours or under. There's not a lot I can say about the book without giving away important parts of the story, but I liked it enough that I'll be seeking out the next books in the series.

Tomorrow I'm going to be holding real (not mini) golf clubs for the first time. After Steamboat Willie got called out for mocking golf as a dumb game when she had never played it, we planned a group outing of a bunch of people from work to a driving range. Most of us have either never golfed before or are terrible, so I'll be in good company. My goal by the end of the evening is to be able to actually connect with the ball most of the time when I swing...I'm pretty sure my first few shots are going to miss entirely!

Garden part 2

I finally had a little bit more time in my garden last night, after getting my butt kicked in kickboxing. I only had about an hour before it got dark, but I managed to get my raspberry bushes planted, as well as seeds for broccoli and cauliflower.

I did my best to try to find anything that has sprouted from my last planting session, and as far as I can tell I must have planted a whole lot of weeds and not much else. I'm  hoping that they're just slower than I think they should be to come up, but we'll see what happens!

My goal is to finish planting the seeds and plants that I have this weekend, if there's a day with nice weather: that will be the garlic, asparagus, squash, green beans and possibly the strawberry plants.

Rent, jazz, baseball and food experiments

It's 11:15 and I think this is the earliest I've really had the opportunity to sit down for a few minutes all week. It's been an incredibly busy week--fun, but very busy.

This last weekend I went to Eau Claire to visit my old college roommate, who I haven't seen in probably two years. It was great to see her but strange to be back in Eau Claire. I suddenly didn't fit in at a lot of the places I used to love to go, and I was surprised at how much worse my old apartment in the "student ghetto" looked after a few years of perspective. It was also good to be back; Eau Claire has a great arts scene that I've missed. The Twin Cities definitely has a lot of arts opportunities, but most of them are farther away, a LOT more expensive, and generally both. We took advantage of the weekend to see a jazz concert and the musical Rent (as put on by the Eau Clare Children's Theater...odd). I was honestly surprised at how much I liked Rent--from the things I'd been told, I expected to spend a large part of the time frustrated with starving artists. Instead, I found the play to be a lot more about trying to live with impending death. Depressing, but much less frustrating as a member of the audience. The music was good and the play was not watered down or performed by children, although I was a little nervous when I realized that the play was being put on by a children's theater. It was a great busy weekend.

Tuesday I got my first experience at Target Field, which was pretty darn awesome. My brother, sister and I took my oldest nephew to the game, and I'm pretty sure nobody in the ballpark was having a better time for a lot of that game than my nephew.

 It was nice to have somebody to cheer with me, even if he was only five! The Twins didn't play great--their pitcher was fantastic, but I wasn't impressed with the offense. If you're facing a pitcher who is walking in runs and giving up more runs with wild pitches, I feel like you should be able to get your offense going to build on their runs--not so last night. In spite of that, it was a good experience. The ballpark is beautiful and, thanks to my very generous brother, I got to sit in some fantastic seats. It was a perfect night for baseball weather-wise, AND it was just wonderful to get back to baseball. And the ballpark has tacos and gelato. I'm not really sure what more you can ask for.

Finally...I've been seriously falling behind on my food experiments. This is partly because I've been crazy busy this month, and partly because my last several experiments have flopped miserably. My spicy Asian peanut butter cookies from last week were not much of an exception...I liked them and a few other people did, but in general they did not go over well. They aren't a normal cookie, and with so many strong flavors a lot of people found different flavors they didn't like. I adapted it from this recipe according to what I had on hand. Feel free to make these if you are adventurous, and try them with some good vanilla ice cream. Like I said, I really enjoyed them--but don't expect a normal peanut butter cookie!

Spicy Asian-Inspired Peanut Butter Cookies 
My version, as adapted from the one I link to above. This made me between 2-3 dozen cookies. Also, I think I could have left out the cayenne pepper without compromising the taste at all. I never tasted the pepper, but after a few bites a slow burn started that you could feel rather than taste. Weird for a cookie, too hot for a lot of people and since it didn't add any noticeable flavor, not particularly important to me.

Ingredients

• 1 stick butter (room temperature)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (scant)
• zest of one lemon (make sure the zest is very small!)
• 1.25 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 cup chunky peanut butter
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Directions

1. Sift together the flour, spices, baking powder and baking soda.
2. In another bowl, beat the butter, sugars and lemon zest until light and smooth but not fluffy. Add the peanut butter and vanilla, and blend until smooth. Add the egg and combine.
3. Add the flour mix to the peanut butter mix, mixing just until combined and no flour streaks appear.
4. Chill the dough until firm.
5. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
6. Grease cookie sheets and create balls about 1.25 inches across for cookies. On the cookie sheet, flatten each ball slightly with a fork.
7. Bake for about 10-12 minutes; let cool slightly before removing from the pan.

Books: Scheherazade Goes West

I bought Scherezade Goes West as an impulse buy at Half Price Books a few months ago. I was interested by the idea of a book by an Eastern Muslim women who had spent a lot of time in the West talking about the challenges she faced travelling in the West and the differences she saw. After wading through my library books, I picked this up. It was absolutely not what I expected, but I still enjoyed it.

The biggest change that I found from what I expected when I picked the book up was that it is much more focused than I expected on feminism in the East and West. I still found it very interesting and full of things I had no idea about, but I'm a little disappointed that it didn't have a bigger picture. I learned a lot about Muslim culture (mostly in Morocco, which is where the author lives) and about its recent history with women. I also learned a lot of traditional stories that were told about Muslim women and got to understand a lot more about the Thousand and One Nights, which are stories that I love and have been reading since I was little. (Even if you don't think you know them, you probably do: Aladdin, Sindbad and Ali Baba are all characters from Scherezade's stories. Side note--they are absolutely worth reading, but you'll have to get them in several volumes. Above I have a link to just the first volume, as the only complete set I saw on Amazon was $2500 dollars, and even I don't love my books that much.) Throughout the narrative, the author's points and observations are held together by her struggle to understand Scherezade, harems and their different perceptions in the East and West.

One of the largest things that turned me off about this book is unfortunately something that give feminism a bad name; far too much of it was focused on the ways that men enslave and entrap women. Many of her observations were probably accurate to a degree--she looked at the different ridiculous expectations that women are held to (or hold themselves to) from wearing a veil in the East to wearing a size 4 in the West. However, she had a bad habit of continually blaming those restrictions specifically on men, rather than looking at society as a whole. If you can overlook this, though, Scheherezade Goes West is a really interesting, easy to read introduction to the differences between Eastern Muslim and traditional Western roles and views of women. I'm very glad I read it and I would recommend it, but I do very much wish that it had contrained more information about how an Eastern Muslim woman, brought up in such a different culture, perceived the Western world and the misconceptions that she found on both sides.

Gardening...a beginning!

I hardly went inside yesterday. It was beautiful outside and I got my first Minnesota sunburn of the season. It was wonderful.

Last year, Henry and I dug a garden outside his house for me to plant. I had been whining for awhile about how I wanted one and wished I could cultivate the deck in my apartment, and I think he finally got sick of hearing it! Either way, this spring I uncovered a huge patch of black dirt waiting for me.

After many, many phone calls to my mom trying to figure out what exactly I should be doing, I planted my first seeds yesterday. I had no idea what I should be planting this early (really, I wouldn't have thought I should be planting anything at the beginning of April, if it was up to me!), but I figured out that there was actually quite a lot of things I should be planting. Yesterday, I took care of my snap peas, carrots, onions and potatoes.

Tomorrow, I'm planning on adding broccoli and cauliflower, and in another week or so I'll plant my squash in a pot to get it started. I don't think I'll actually be able to say I've achieved my goal of planting a garden for another month of so (when it's warm enough to put in the peppers, tomatoes and strawberries) but I have a good start!