Talkin' 'bout a (whole food) revolution

I recently read two books by journalist/food guru Michael Pollan: The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. Dilemma reads as a pretty scathing indictment of the industrial food industry in the U.S., while In Defense of Food discusses what it might look like for an individual or family to more or less opt out of eating diets high in processed food and low in whole foods--like vegetables, grains, meats, etc.

We have long tried our best to eat healthful foods, to buy locally when feasible, and to "shop the periphery" of the grocery stores where most of the whole foods are kept. So most of what Pollan discussed really resonated with me.

But one thing we have consciously tried to do since I finished In Defense of Food is to make our meals more of a celebration. When we take the time to carefully prepare, serve, and eat our food, we tend to appreciate and value our food more. So what does this look like for us? Lately, it's primarily meant that we 1)prepare complete meals without using processed foods; 2)have stopped serving the food to ourselves in the dishes we cooked the food in. Yes, friends: no pots and pans on the table. This has made for more dishes after dinner, but when we started treating ourselves the same way we treat our company, I really think we started to value our food more--and our meals are much more relaxed.

So that's the start of our whole food revolution. Huzzah!

Meet me at the fair

One of our top ten regrets about leaving Syracuse several months before we'd planned is that we were unable to bask in the wonder and spectacle that is the Great New York State Fair. Jeremy and I have always been fair folk (which is different from "carnies," if you're taking notes), but we have never seen anything like unto the Great New York State Fair. We aren't much for carnival rides, but we love strolling through the animal barns, scurrying away from escaping pigs, and watching livestock and horse competitions.


So believe me when I say that we were prepared to be disappointed in our visit to last weekend's North Idaho Fair and Rodeo. And I would be wrong if I said that a few things failed to measure up. For one, there was no dairy pavilion selling 25 cent cups of white and chocolate milk. And there was no butter sculpture. And there was no place to get a cheap and delicious baked potato with all the fixins. (Yes. In Idaho.)


Those few (albeit significant) disappointments excepted, we thought it was quite a fun fair. Clara was way more into the animals this year, and she spent the whole afternoon saying, "Pigs! Horses! Donkeys! Ponies! Chickens! Cows! Rabbits!" hoping we would eventually work our way BACK through all of the barn buildings. Plus, at one point Jeremy and I were talking with a vendor, and when we turned around Clara was sitting in her stroller playing with a stuffed frog toy that (we assume) some admirer had given to her in response to her magnetic cuteness and charm. When we asked her where she got it, she said, "Man give it you." Maybe this is true, but sometimes she makes up stuff, like when we go to get her out of bed in the morning and she says things like, "Man knock window" or "Pony knock window" or "Dolphin knock window." Really anyone (or no one) could be knocking on her window or giving her plush frogs. It's almost impossible to say.


So there it is. We have chosen to embrace the North Idaho Fair and Rodeo as a marginally acceptable substitute for the Great New York State Fair. Join us in taking a deep sigh of relief.

Bringing back the mix tape

You may recall a recent post where I solicited ideas for inexpensive stay-at-home dates. Several of you responded with extremely clever ideas that rivaled the original list of "inspiration."

I am happy to report that our first effort at super fun and creative at-home dating was an immense success. Not long after writing my original post, I heard a song on the radio that prompted me to suggest a fun-filled evening of putting together a mix tape to celebrate our love. (My friend Emily later suggested this in her own list, so clearly it's a great idea.)

Jeremy was totally on board with the project, so last Friday after Clara went to sleep (at-home dates are way easier when your daughter goes to bed between 6:30 and 7:00) we took our laptops to the backyard and spent a fun-filled hour looking up songs on the internet. The ground rules were that we could only purchase half of the total songs from Amazon, and the rest had to come from our own collection. And of course each of the songs had to be super poignant and meaningful. (OK, that last rule wasn't really a rule, as you'll see from the final songlist.)

So, for a mere $5.98, Jeremy and I were able to create the Best Mix Tape Ever, which we now listen to religiously. Each of the songs has meaning to us, even if the selections may not make sense to an outside observer. And Jeremy has to get credit for having way more songs to suggest than I did, all with the reason: "Whenever I hear this song, I always think of you and feel really tenderly towards you." I had no idea!

I'm sure you'll agree that this list of songs makes for a great and memorable album of devotion:

1. Annie Lennox--"No More I Love Yous"
2. Eric Clapton--"Wonderful Tonight"
3. James Taylor--"Something in the Way She Moves"
4. Fugees--"Ready or Not"
5. 10,000 Maniacs--"These Are Days"
6. U2--"All I Want Is You"
7. Alphaville--"Forever Young" (Classic!)
8. Sarah Maclachlan--"Angel"
9. Alicia Keys--"No One"
10. Toto--"Africa" (This video is a must see on YouTube)
11. Tracy Chapman--"Fast Car"
12. Neil Diamond--"Sweet Caroline"
13. Natalie Cole--"This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)"
14. Jason Mraz--"I'm Yours"
15. Freddy Cole--"Merry-Go-Round"
16. Julie Hill and Hazel Sally--"The Way You Love Me"

All said, this was a grand way to spend an evening. We laughed a ton, had lots of tender feelings, and got frustrated with each other when trying to figure out the logistics of downloading/uploading/burning. A classic date. Actually, Jeremy went so far as to proclaim it "The Best Date We've Ever Had." And that's saying something, since we finished the CD on our 6.5 year anniversary. Our love just continues to blossom as a rose.

100,000

Sunday marked a momentous occasion in our home: we hit our 100,000th mile in our Volkswagen Golf. When Jeremy drove this car off the lot in December 2000, the odometer boasted a mere 37 miles. We got married just over a year later in California, which marked the Golf's first real road trip. Since then Jeremy and I have ridden in that little silver wondermobile through California, Utah, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Arizona, Nevada, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Indiana, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, and Idaho.

Yes, you read that right: the Golf has been in 34 of these United States.

And that is why, on our Sunday evening drive, the odometer read this:


Jeremy, who has always taken prodigious care of the car, deserved to have his picture taken on the spot where this literal milestone occurred. We've seen a lot of beauty in the Golf, and it seems fitting that we hit this mark in front of such a stunning backdrop.


And here is Clara:


And here is the odometer as a palindrome:


Here's to the next 100,000 miles...

Oly on my mind

I have fond memories of the last summer Olympics. Jeremy and I had just moved to Bozeman, and we had two full weeks in which to do essentially nothing while we waited for school to start. Fortuitously, those two weeks just happened to be the two weeks of Olympic Glory in Athens. As I recall, we explored the wonders of Bozeman, watched the Olympics, ate, and slept. I find it hard to believe we'll ever have two weeks like that again.

Jump with me to the current Oly games, broadcast "live" from Beijing. I say "live," of course, because they're only really "live" on the east coast. But if you live in, say, the Pacific time zone, as we do, you are forced to watch the games on delay but still in the east coast time block: from 8:00 p.m. until midnight.

If you know us at all, you will know that the only time Jeremy and I stay up until midnight is when we are literally forced to--for example, by a tyrannical newborn. Otherwise, our engines shut down around 10:00. But for the sake of Sport, we have been keeping slightly later hours that we are wont to do, so we could enjoy the thrill of watching Michael Phelps compete "live" for gold, three hours after he'd finished racing.

Despite the late hours we've been forced to keep (I know there are many out there who are disappointed in my lack of Oly spirit), we've actually enjoyed watching many of the events. Phelps really is a wonder, and some of the "lesser" events--some shown, mercifully, during the lunch hour--have also been exciting to watch. Clara has loved watching midday "splashing in the ocean" (swimming in the pool), cycling, running, and sculling. It's been a good time.

But so help me, if I have to watch Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh play one more game of beach volleyball in their too-tiny "uniforms," (even Jeremy is bored with it!) I may make good on my threat to become a Canadian.

The delights of the season

We have taken full advantage of our twice-weekly farmers' market, much to our perpetual pleasure. The selection is only getting better as the season progresses, and when the market doesn't have something we want we head to a nearby farm stand or to the grocery store for local peaches and apricots. This has been the summer of fruit, and it's not unusual for Clara to wake up in the morning and ask to go to the market.

Clara loves "peachies," "neck-eens" (nectarines), and "cot-cots" (apricots) most, though she would also eat her weight in fresh blueberries and blackberries--and even huckleberries if we could afford them (40 dollars a gallon!). She was really disappointed in the picture of her eating a blackberry, though, since her face was so messy. She kept pointing and saying, "Care-la. Face. Messy. Wash it."


Another bonus we've enjoyed from the farmers' market has been fresh rhubarb, which we've used to make a little treat called red mush--a dish my family (on my mom's side) will no doubt know and love. I hadn't seen rhubarb for several weeks, but when we were there on Saturday a Chinese couple was advertising "rubber" on sale for a dollar a bundle. I figured something was probably lost in translation and worked my way over to buy the best rhubarb I've seen all year. We have thoroughly enjoyed working our way through what is probably our last batch of red mush for the year.

If I were going to peg a disappointment with the farmers' market, it would be that a few weeks ago we decided to splurge on a $3 breakfast burrito from a vendor called "The Taco Chic." Nothing on the sign indicated that they used any special ingredients, so we assumed (as I'm sure most people would) that the breakfast burrito would be made of eggs. Not so, friends. I took my first bite, then looked at Jeremy and said, "Uh, Jer, I think this is tofu." He took a few bites and was so crushed with disappointment that he couldn't continue and has scarcely spoken of it since. We do not so much love the tofu. But don't worry: since I am eight months pregnant and cannot bear to lose three dollars, I finished the whole thing. The salsa was fantastic.

The family that weeds together

Jeremy and I spend probably too much time discussing some of the "joys" of home rentership. We really enjoy our house and feel very grateful to live in a beautiful neighborhood and to have such a breathtaking view of the mountains. Nevertheless, one of the (often literal) thorns in our side is the yard. When we rented this house, we inherited the (perhaps unecessarily) complex landscaping of the owners. And since we're getting such a smoking deal on the rent, we feel extremely motivated to keep the house and yard in tip-top shape.

Unfortunately, most of our yard work so far has become little more than a string of revelations about Things We Would Not Do in a yard. The yard is SO high maintenance and has so many different kinds of unusual flowers that have hundreds of bees and wasps in ecstasy from sunup to sundown that we feel like we can't even enjoy the benefits of having a yard.

Other than a lawn that is sprouting its share of troublesome weeds, the most irksome patch of yard is the backyard planter, which can best be described as a hodgepodge of perennials with a healthy undergrowth of weeds. Actually, after three (wo)man-hours last night, I think the planter can better be described now as just a hodgepodge of perennials. Because we rocked those weeds last night. They are now dying a slow death in our trash can, good riddance.

You can probably guess from the picture which weed was our favorite. I've been watching it grow for some time now, but I honestly assumed it was just a tall, kind of ugly flower (not a strange assumption since I can identify very few of the flowers in our yard) until I saw some growing in a field the other day and decreed that It Must Go. I know that weeds are just a social construction, but as contributing members of polite society we just couldn't let the beast keep growing. Jeremy pulled it. Jeremy is 6'2". We estimate the weed at about eight feet. I challenge any of you to find something more alarming growing in your yard (photographic evidence preferred).

Date Night

So Jeremy and I are trying to make an effort to continue our courtship, since, let's be honest, marriage gets a little stale after six years. I'm only joking! Nevertheless, I will say that since Clara arrived we've had a harder time justifying (or just gathering enough inertia) to have all that many official "dates."

Our current goal is go have a date night every week, and to actually leave the house without Clara once each month. We've been doing pretty well so far, but we're both getting a little panicked about our at-home dates since we've pretty much seen everything the Red Box has to offer, and Jeremy just can't take the shame of losing to me one more time at Phase 10 (I may be exaggerating my victories here).

I went to my trusty internet search engine for advice on keeping things alive in the at-home dating world, and chortled and snorted my way through this helpful list. (To be fair, some of the ideas sound fun, but the list as a whole was a little too much for me. Seriously, what would Jeremy do if I told him that for our date night we'd be painting each other's toenails?)

Since I kind of struck out on my half-hearted internet research, I decided to turn to you, my loyal readers, for ideas. What do you do with your "other" at home? And before you answer, please note that I do not care to hear anything that happens "between husband and wife," if you know what I mean (and I think you do).

But if after hearing the above restriction you still have ideas to share, I really would love to hear them, especially if you currently live or have lived on a relatively fixed income. Because really: what good is our poverty if we cannot learn from it?