Kitchen Goings-On

While we had a bit of a lull last week, we've been having some pretty yummy from-scratch (or close) meals recently. Saturday, we made Low Country Boil because shrimp and sausage were on sale, and oh, it was so, so good. It's super easy: all you have to do beforehand is boil a BIG pot of water (we had to use two pots because I couldn't find our one enormous pot) and put in some Old Bay seasoning, salt, and vinegar, and then chop up a bunch of corn, sausage, and potatoes, and finally throw in some shrimp. Doesn't even take that long, either. As Brandon says, though, it's a bit of a labor-intensive meal to eat, what with the peeling of the shrimp and the corn on the cob. But it's worth it.

Tonight, we're having pizza on dough made in our bread machine (do you have a bread machine? If you love homemade bread/pizza dough/rolls, it makes them so much easier!). Since we don't agree on pizza toppings, we're gonna do what we always do and have a half-and-halfer: pineapple and sausage on Brandon's side, and tonight, a concoction of all sorts of wonderful things on my side: sauteed chopped garlic, sauteed chopped shallots, diced tomato, a little bit of pepperoni, a little bit of canadian bacon. YUM. Plus sauce and cheese of course.

Then tomorrow and Thursday (depending on how much effort I'm wanting to put in each of those days) we'll have chicken Caesar salad, with pre-cooked chicken from Trader Joe's, and chicken stir-fry with snow peas, broccoli, and red pepper (cut in big chunks for easy removal 'cause one of us - ahem - doesn't like red peppers). I realize with the pre-cooked chicken it's not exactly "from scratch," but it's more from scratch than heating up frozen green chili enchiladas (a TJ's favorite) or going to Wendy's.

This weekend - and here's where I'm getting excited - we're going to have grilled chicken and pineapple quesadillas. Oh my word, those look so good. We'll probably make bacon-wrapped, cream-cheese-stuffed jalapenos (I know!) too. And I believe there will be a brunch of the waffles/sausage/eggs variety as well. We're going to Charleston with our dear friends Alan and Megan, and since we're staying in a fully-furnished condo, we're looking forward to having time to cook together (well, Megan and I are - it is a pretty small kitchen, I don't know if we could get all four of us in there!).

I really like planning meals for the week, even if it's only a few different things. It's nice to have a lot of fresh ingredients in the fridge, so that if, for example, I decide I want an omelette for lunch, I don't have to improvise and use...um...pepperoni instead of delicious grilled chicken. (The pepperoni omelette was not a success, for the record.)

Hopefully there will be photos of our food-palooza this weekend! Or at very least, updates and plans for next week's meals.

Pioneer Woman!

First of all, if you haven't heard of The Pioneer Woman, you MUST check her out. She lives on a working cattle ranch in Oklahoma with her husband and four children, and she just about does it all: she cooks (and documents each recipe with many photos), even recently publishing a cookbook that shot to the top of the bestseller list; she homeschools her children, and blogs about it, sharing helpful resources; she just finished a book about how she met and fell in love with her husband; and she does all the things that a wife and a mom have to do on top of that, including keeping cows out of her front yard. It's not hard to see why she's gotten popular - her writing is hilarious and self-deprecating, and yet she makes you want her life all the same. She has been very inspirational to me and many of my friends, so we were thrilled when we found out that she would be doing a book-signing at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Charlotte!

Ree Drummond (her real name) gave a short talk about herself before the signing, and then answered questions from the audience. She's just as funny and approachable in real life as she is on her blog. Despite a long wait (we were in group H - each group had probably 20-30 people), we had a great time, and it was completely worth it to get to meet her and have my cookbook signed! We got photos, too, but those are on Megan's camera, so I'll add them later.

Our friends Alisa and Jason also came to the signing, but since they had to drive down from Greensboro after work, they were there a bit later. We all went to Amelie's afterwards. We found out later that someone had brought Ree a box of pastries from Amelie's at the signing, because she mentioned them both on Twitter and on her blog. Glad to see such a great place is getting national recognition!

This is big.

In the interest of health, I have decided to stop eating sweets. (I don't like saying 'cut out sweets' 'cause that makes it sound like more of a diet-type thing, which it isn't. I don't think.)

This is really big for me. It's probably something I should've done years ago, but just never could stomach the idea. (Heh.) Sweets have always equaled life for me. I've craved sweets form a very young age. Sometimes, my rebellion as a child even took this form - I'd sneak sweets instead of other, more in-your-face transgressions.

But it got to be too much. Over the past few months, I've noticed my willpower wearing down at an alarmingly rapid pace. I used to be able to go a few days without a dessert, but no more. Now I was eating ice cream every day, sometimes a piece of cake for lunch, and having multiple servings of dessert, all the time feeling like I couldn't stop. It got kinda scary.

A few years ago, I gave up sweets for Lent. I'd never done anything for Lent before, and it isn't really something I observe carefully, but it ended up being really good for me. The problem was, I didn't hold onto healthier habits after Lent was over. This time, I've decided not to put a determined end to my sweets-fast. We're going to Florida for our 5th anniversary at the beginning of July, and had already planned to go to several AMAZING restaurants while we're there, so I will have a controlled fast-break for a day or two. Only one or two desserts, though, total - and we've made an "Only when we're sitting down for a meal" rule, so we can't just walk around and get ice cream or a funnel cake on a whim. But after our trip, I'm going back to the no-sweets lifestyle.

From what I know of myself, if I put an end date on this, I'll look forward to it too much, and find life in the fact that I don't have to give up sweets forever. This isn't going to do anything for me, emotional-health-wise. The point isn't just to go without sweets for a while. The point is to break my dependence on them. Right now, I feel like I deserve sweets. I look to something sweet to either finish out a good day or to redeem a bad one. I eat something sweet when I'm hungry, for a snack. I feel like dinner isn't complete if it isn't finished up by something sweet. I don't want to have this attitude anymore, so for the past week, I haven't eaten anything sweet.

Let me clarify: I'm still eating fruit. Things that are naturally sweet are totally on the table. But no pastries, no chocolate, no ice cream, no sorbet, no candy. I'm defining it pretty broadly, 'cause I don't want to let myself cheat by just holding to the letter of the law.

I've been toying with this idea for a while now, but for a very long time it was just too scary to contemplate. (That alone should've been a huge red flag.) Then, a few weeks ago, I found the blog of a woman who had become an alcoholic, and while I know this is in some ways completely different (please don't send me hate mail because you think I am 1) comparing sweets to alcohol or 2) making this into a bigger, more dramatic problem than it actually is), there were a few things about the way she spoke of her addiction that reminded me of my relationship with sweets. And that scared me.

So far, I've gone one week. The hardest things this past week were going to Amelie's with some good friends. We had already planned to take them there, or I would've saved myself the misery, but it went okay - I just didn't look at the pastry case. I ordered a sandwich and didn't pay attention to what everyone else was eating. The other thing was the next night, when a friend brought some cookies when she came over for dinner. I stupidly picked one up to take it back to Brandon, and it made it a good bit harder to resist when I had actually touched it, but once that was over, I was fine again.

It's already made me so much more intentional about my food. It's as if once I started practicing self-control in one area, it made all the other areas come to my attention. I've started paying attention to portion sizes, and bringing healthy snacks to work so I don't have to eat such a big lunch every day. (Baby carrots, apples, slices of cheddar cheese, oatmeal, and yogurt are my daily staples right now.) I'm actually excited about eating more healthily, about not feeling sick and guilty about my eating habits all the time.

One thing that is also helping is that my sweet friend Megan is doing this with me. I didn't even coerce her - she volunteered! Both of our husbands are participating as well (though Brandon isn't holding himself to it when he's not around me - he's just trying to make things easier for me when we're together). Megan even wrote about our exercise on her blog - check it out!

I am hoping that this will be an instrument of sanctification in my life. I need to remember not to find hope and righteousness in the fact that I haven't had a bowl of ice cream today, but in what Jesus has done for me. And when I really, really want that bowl of ice cream, I can't just encourage myself with some other delicious snack - I need to let myself sit in that craving for a little while and try to figure out what it is that I'm really wanting. Security? Comfort? Pleasure? Are any of these things worth bending over backwards for, ultimately possibly destroying my health for? Of course not. But beyond that, I want my hunger for sweets to lead me to Jesus, for my longings to be transferred into longings for Him.

Things I'm Working On

New Year's Resolutions have never worked for me, but making lists of things I want to improve, work on, or accomplish usually ends up being more effective. This isn't comprehensive...just some things I've been thinking about or actively pursuing.

• Cooking three meals a week mostly from scratch
• Walking the dog every morning before work
• Trying not to buy food during the week (limiting it to our weekend grocery trips), and only going out to eat once a week ('out' means anything from Chick-Fil-A to Chili's...but usually something like Chick-Fil-A)
• Keeping up with the dishes and laundry
• Reading grown-up books (I love YA literature...really love it. But sometimes I need to put those down and read something non-fiction, or at least something written for adults)
• Pursuing my friends well
• Opening our home, being hospitable

The good thing is, a lot of these things aren't really chores. I enjoy cooking, I enjoy getting out into the early morning air (as long as the dog doesn't bark too much and wake up all the neighbors!), and I really love having people over to our house. I think, though, that writing these things down, rather than just having them sort of happen to us by accident, will help me stick to them as habits, rather than happenstance.

Go Check Out The Button Club!

A bunch of my friends are currently working through a really cool project on their blog The Button Club. Drawing inspiration from Erin Bried's book How to Sew a Button and Other Nifty Things Your Grandmother Knew, these women are going through several tasks a month and blogging about their experiences. Even though I won't be officially participating, their great idea has piqued my interest; How to Sew a Button will probably be my next book purchase! I share their desire to learn how to do some of the things that are becoming lost arts in our generation. I imagine that Victoria Austin and Kate Murry knew how to do a lot of these things (go look at the list of tasks they're going to be working through here), and I know my mom does, too. So in my desire to try to be more like these women, I am saluting The Button Club in their efforts. Go read the first set of entries - they're hilarious, touching, and informative! It helps to know that I'm not the only person who is less domestic than I want to be.

Kate Murry, Victoria Austin, and My Mom

I've always wanted to be like Victoria Austin.* Not really like Vicky Austin - I related very well to her, but I didn't aspire to be like her. But her mother, Victoria, really embodies the type of mother and homemaker I want to be.

Kate Murry, on the other hand, is a molecular physicist (I think? Someone correct me if I'm wrong in that). I certainly don't aspire to her career, but I do admire the way she integrates her work and her family. She does what she loves, what she is gifted at, but she still (mostly) manages to care for her husband and her children, even, if necessary, making stew on her Bunsen burner.

In short, I want my household to feel like Victoria's does, like Kate's does. I have a very specific mental picture from countless times reading and re-reading these books, but that's hard to put into words. Some of the things that I hope will characterize my own home: good, home-cooked food; several varieties of dogs and cats; music, whether it's classical or folk-rock or blues, live and in the next room or recorded; a sense of peace and orderliness despite minor bouts of chaos and clutter.

Of course, the thing that ties all of those things together is love. I know, how cliche. None of those things will happen, though, or at least they won't have the desired result (the 'feel' won't be right) if love isn't driving them. I know I won't always feel warm and fuzzy about cooking dinner for my family. I won't always jump up and down at the idea of washing a small someone's dirty laundry. I may sometimes just want a little peace and quiet more than I want to hear my children practicing musical instruments. But even if I end up burning dinner more often than not, even if my children are violently allergic to animals or don't have a musical bone in their bodies, even if the house is covered in toys and clothes and junk...if there is a pervasive spirit of love (first and foremost to God, next between me and my husband, and third from us to our children), I think I will have succeeded in following in Victoria's and Kate's foosteps.

Since Victoria Austin and Kate Murry are fictional, and, much as this would thrill me, I can't just go sit at their feet and get them to teach me everything they know, it helps that I have a real, concrete person to emulate as well: my mom. Even though our house growing up didn't look exactly like the Austins' or the Murrys', in large measure because I was an only child, the love was there from the beginning. I never wondered if my parents loved me. I didn't agree with their assessment of things from time to time, sure. ("What do you mean I can't drive out on curvy country roads at two in the morning on a snowy New Year's Eve??") But that base-level security was always there.

I am discovering how much I am becoming like my mom. I never used to understand why it would make her so happy if I willingly emptied the dishwasher or swept the porch without complaining, or even without being asked. Now, though, when my husband surprises me by welcoming me home from work with a clean kitchen, my heart swells. In the world of Love Languages, I wouldn't say Acts of Service is a primary one for me, but I have learned how well it can convey love in a way I never grasped before.

To look at it from the other side, it helps me to see how all of the hours my mom spent in the kitchen, making hot, delicious meals from scratch (even when it was 95 degrees outside!), doing our laundry, decorating the house, and scrubbing the floors were, at the deepest level, ways she showed my dad and me how much she loved us. Of course, she said it out loud a lot, too! You can't have one without the other. But it's becoming obvious to me how important both sides of the coin are: overtly-expressed affection, and the more subtle, service-expressed kind.

What I hope to do on this blog is to document the ways I am attempting to become more like Kate Murry and Victoria Austin. More like my mom. Some of the time this may focus on outward things, like new recipes I've tried or ways I am learning to be more domestic, and some of the time I may write more about the inward stuff, stuff that needs to be worked on inside my heart so I can love God and others better. I hope it will be an encouragement to you. Please feel free to comment - I'd love to hear from you!

*Note - if you aren't familiar with the Murry and Austin families in Madeleine L'Engle's books, you won't know a lot of what I'm talking about in this post, at least not the beginning part. First, what are you waiting for? Go read The Time Quintet and The Austin Family Chronicles! Second, as much as I love these characters, they are really more of an inspiration for this blog, and probably won't be as intimately involved in the content itself.