Falling for Fall

Today I had a day off at home... they've been few and far between lately, so I intended to enjoy every minute of it. I lounged in bed reading for a while. I'm in love with the purple booties Ross got for me.

No I don't wear spandex for fun. I had a run planned after breakfast.

When it became clear that the day was going to remain cloudy, I decided it'd be a perfect day for baking. (Like I need much of an excuse). On our way home from Omaha on Saturday, Ross and I got some Winesap apples in Nebraska City. This variety is described as "dark red, crisp, fairly tart, excellent for baking." Based on this recipe from Joy the Baker, I assembled my ingredients:

Filling:

5 to 6 medium-size apples, peeled, cored and cut into 1/4-inch slices
3 Tbsp granulated sugar
1.5 tsp cinnamon

Topping:

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup lightly packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 stick unsalted butter, well-softened
1/2 cup old-fashioned oats

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350. Generously grease an 8×8 baking pan with butter.
Place a layer of apple slices in the bottom of the pan and dust with sugar/cinnamon mixture.

Continue layering apples and dusting with cinnamon/sugar until done. Toss the apple mixture until evenly coated in cinnamon sugar. The apples should be just about to the top of the pan (they will cook down).

For the topping, place the flour, brown sugar, nuts, cinnamon and oats in a large bowl and stir well with a wooden spoon. Work the butter into the mixture with your fingertips or a fork until evenly distributed. Take one full handful of the topping and toss it into the sugared apple mixture. Spread the rest of the topping evenly over the apples.

Bake the crisp in the dish on a baking sheet on the center oven rack until the topping is crunchy and the apples are bubbling, 55-60 minutes.

While it's baking, catch up on some reading (never mind that I've read this series close to a dozen times now. I like to re-visit Hogwarts every fall). Enjoy the way a cloudy day makes the turning leaves appear neon.

When the timer goes off, practice extreme restraint so as to not burn your tongue.

When crisp has cooled to eating temperature, dig in! Ice cream is not necessary, but certainly complimentary.

I love fall!



Inspiration Board

Growing up, August always meant back-to-school shopping and browsing through catalogs at all the knit sweaters, plaid skirts, and warm tights. Every school year was a clean slate. Well, we're already into September (how did that happen?!) but I still think fall is a chance to start fresh.

Even though I'm no longer in school, I really needed to do something about my mindset. You see, I love fall. But fall means winter is coming. I do love parts of winter: the silence of the first snow, cozy sweaters, lots of hot chocolate and hot tea, sitting in front of the fireplace at my parent's house... but it all gets old after a month or so. I'm dreading going out to my car in the sub-freezing temperatures to go to work. I'm dreading hiking to my car in the dark after a long day and having to scrape the windshields. My little car doesn't handle icy roads well, and neither do I. Come January, I'm ready for SUNSHINE and WARMTH.

Inspired by another blogger, I decided to make an inspiration board of things to work towards in the next 6 months. You see, it's only September. I'm getting too far ahead of myself. And I have a lot to look forward to this winter. Like Gina said, "Fall is the perfect time of year to re-evaluate your goals and see where your priorities lie before the year ends."



Here's a look back at my 2010 Resolutions:

1) Pray daily with Ross again 
FAIL. But there's no time like the present to renew a resolution.

2) Find a church 
I think we've decided on Redeemer Fellowship. Now we just need to become regular attendees. It's taken me a long time to realize we will not find a carbon copy of our Ft. Worth church in the middle of Kansas, as ideal as that would have been.

3) Stick to a budget and use cash for most day-to-day purchases 
Most months, this is a success. Traveling a lot (and using 2 days of PTO) messed this up a bit in July and August, but for the most part we're doing well and even putting money into savings every month.

4) Make friends in my new city
This is taking so much longer than I'd hoped, but I'm finally starting to get out more.

5) Do yoga once (or more) a week while training for the Cowtown Marathon in February 2011
Yoga is not financially viable year-round right now, but I have been consistently training for a 10k this month, a 1/2 marathon in November, and the marathon in February. Come November, I'm excited to work Bikram Yoga into my training schedule again.

6) Eat at least one serving of fruits or vegetables at every meal
This has definitely improved in the past year, thanks in part to healthy living blogs I've started reading. It's good to see other active young women with a balanced mindset toward food. Also, the CSA has been a great source of local vegetables and new flavors. This summer I started to aim for 5+ servings of produce a day, but even on my lazy/low-grocery days, 3 servings is pretty standard.

7) Laugh more
I'm starting to smile more (some days it's fake it 'til you make it) and I'd like to think I'm more pleasant on a day-to-day basis, although I've noticed that my mood can be directly related to how tired I am.

8) Read more
I'm ashamed to admit that I read the Twilight series in 5 days this spring and I read all 16 books of the Stephanie Plum Series this summer. It takes me no time flat to read guilty-pleasure books. Now I've moved on to The Autobiography of Saint Therese of Lisieux: The Story of a Soul (the saint I was named after) and The Happiness Project (which was actually written by a Kansas City native).

9) Cook more
Given the fact that I've posted enough recipes here to justify a recipe page, I think it's safe to say I'm cooking more! 

10) Play more
Still a work in progress. I need to spend less time on the computer and more time enjoying the sunshine while it's still here.

Here's what I want to/plan to do in the next six months (that's from the beginning of September through the end of February):

1) Run a 10k, half marathon, and marathon (in case I haven't said that enough)!

2) Buy a 3 month Bikram pass this November and go at least once a week.

3) Cross-train/lift weights twice a week.

4) Continue to eat as locally as I can, even as the CSA dwindles and I rely more on frozen organic veggies and less on fresh produce. (This includes the more specific goal of taking Ross to Nebraska City this fall to pick apples, stock up on apple butter and homemade jam, and enjoying the local, seasonal bounty and the essence of being outdoors in the fall.)

5) Spend more time thanking God for the life he has given me, and loving God as much as my little heart is capable of.

6) Spend less time on the computer, get outside more, and sleep better.

7) Start saving more money for a new car (hopefully it lasts more than 6 more months, but it's time to start saving more in anticipation).

8) Attain my RNC certification. I'm taking a 3-day study course in October and plan to take the computerized test before December 15 (the day I graduated from nursing school in 2007).

I have a few other exciting goals for the next 2 years, but those are for another inspiration board another day!

If you read this far, thank you. I'd love to hear YOUR goals for the next 6 months as well! To quote Gina again, "Things don’t happen by accident- they’re always the result of hard work and the most meaningful goals are the ones that are not-so-easy to attain."

Bread Baking

I feel like I haven't had a night off in a long time! I worked 3 nights in a row, went to Tiffany's wedding, babysat overnight for 3 days, and then worked 5 nights in a row. Ack! I was so happy to have a quiet Sunday at home because my friend and co-worker Johanna had given me 2 dozen farm-fresh eggs from her parents' stash and I wanted to bake!

Such a lucky kid. I grew up in a "from-scratch" household. Yes, I still make a mess when I bake and yes, I still lick the bowl

These eggs are so much better than store bought because these chickens are true free-range birds. They eat grains, corn, and whatever else they can scavage, including worms and bugs. There's no such thing as a true vegeterian free-range chicken like they claim on the brown egg containers in the supermarket.

You know it's a good egg when the yolk is practically orange! True free-range eggs are much higher in beta carotene and omega-3 than their grocery store counterparts.

I trusted Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice with this liquid gold and used his recipes for challa bread and poor-man's brioche. These recipes call for 4 and 5 eggs, respectively. The recipes are more or less the same: flour, yeast, water, and eggs. But brioche is richer due to the addition of butter.

The best yeast, courtesy of Central Market. And a good example of what challa bread should look like.

That's not discoloration from the flash- it really is bright yellow!

Brioche dough rolled into a sandwich loaf

Braiding the challa dough

Mmmm bread dough is yummy!

Brioche rolls fresh from the oven. These were amazing and the crumb structure looked professional, if I do say so myself (thank you Peter Reinhart).

Challa on the left, brioche on the right. Again, the color is not distorted- the eggs made these loaves so yellow.

We'd be eating a lot of omelettes and quiche if it weren't for this book!

Imaginary Distresses

I go through phases of feeling really sorry for myself on night shift. In fact, you're probably sick of hearing about it! However, I recently picked Screwtape Letters off my bookshelf again. It's been a long time since I read it and it's the type of book that will speak differently to you depending on where you are in life.

Among some night shifters (the ones who can't return to a "normal" schedule on their days off, no matter how hard they try), there's a phenomenon called "shift work disorder." This applies to the people who suffer insomnia and excessive sleepiness from working nights.
The CDC did a study a few years ago and found that, obviously, most of the risks associated with night work are related to a simple lack of sleep and not being able to keep up steady, healthy behaviors- such as eating right and getting exercise. This, of course, leads to higher rates of cardiac disease and metabolic syndromes in night-shift workers. Digestive problems are also common, either because of poor eating habits or because the digestive system isn't used to working hard in the middle of the night.
I frequently complain of one or more of the above issues, including not being awake do to normal things with normal people at normal times of the day (or run errands during normal business hours). Poor me, right? Well, C.S. Lewis managed to kick me in the butt this week!
In Screwtape Letters, two demons are writing letters back and forth about the soul of an unfortunate man they always refer to as "the patient". The demons are trying to win the man's soul despite his conversion to Christianity and God's love for him (they refer to God as the Enemy). Quotes can be confusing out of context, but bear with me. Or even better, read the book! It's amazingly thought-provoking, but not in a way that makes it a chore to read. It's very much a story we can all learn from and not just some Christian living manual.
But I digress. Here I am, feeling sorry for myself, and I read about "the patient" taking a walk and renewing his faith in God. The senior demon writes to the younger one, saying:

...you allowed (the patient) two real positive pleasures. Were you so ignorant as not to see the danger of this? The characteristic of Pains or Pleasures is that they are unmistakably real and therefore give the man who feels them a touchstone of reality. Thus if you had been trying to damn your man by the Romantic method- by making him a kind of Childe Harold submerged in self-pity for imaginary distresses- you would try to protect him at all costs from any real pain; because, of course, five minutes' genuine toothache would reveal the romantic sorrows for the nonsense they were and unmask your whole stratagem.

I realized at that moment that I am certainly a victim of my own imaginary distresses. I had to stop and take stock of reality. Life's not perfect, but I certainly don't have it too bad! Sure, I hate my schedule, but I have a steady job! Yes, I took a paycut to move up here and I'm not used to income taxes, but I get regular paychecks every 2 weeks! I may not see my husband a lot right now, but he works so hard and I know I married a man with a wonderful heart. Yes, my back hurts and I'm struggling to live a healthy lifestyle without a healthy sleep pattern, but overall, I am still young and healthy! Most importantly, no, I cannot control my life or those around me, but God knit my inner being and He knows when I sit and when I stand. I was raised by amazing parents who taught me to turn to God in all circumstances.

Ross, my "baby" brother Bobby, me, and my Dad at the 2010 Big 12 Tournament (By the way, Mom, did you get any good pictures of the two of us when you were in town a few weeks ago?!)

Ross being a kid with the two boys I babysat in Fort Worth

I saw a homeless man on the corner today with crutches, a bad leg, and rags for clothes. Call me a sucker, but it always hurts my heart to see that depth of pain and vulnerability! (Homeless discussion aside, please. Yes, there are 1,000 reasons people are begging for change on the corner and not all of them are honorable or necessary. But it still hurts my heart.) I'm sitting here in my heated, (partially) furnished apartment with the knowledge that next Friday is payday and I have to admit that my life is pretty cushy.

September 2009: taking a walk in the Florida Keys. Definitely a Real Pleasure!

The demons want to detach their "patient" from REAL pleasures and pains and I very much recognize that sin in my life. Time goes by faster if I walk around in a general haze, always blaming others for my problems, and feeling sorry for myself. God watch to detach us from ourselves, but in a different ways. The demon tells his apprentice,

(God) sets an absurd value on the distinctness of every human. When He talks of their losing their selves, He only means abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever. Hence, while He is delighted to see them sacrificing even their innocent will to His, He hates to see them drifting away from their own nature for any other reason.

Boy am I guilty of drifting away from my own nature in a bad way! I don't feel like myself when I'm tired, cranky, self-centered, and selfish, but it's become such a habit I suppose that's what others see when they look at me. I'm not myself, and I'm not His either! What a scary place to be, and I know I no longer want to be here. I'm sure it hurts God's heart to see one of his children trying to make time pass quickly when time is such a gift, a luxury, and not something to fritter away. I need to live in the present, not yesterday or tomorrow.
In fact, C.S. Lewis says, "the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which (God) has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them." God would rather have us continually concerned with eternity or with the Present. Not the past or earthly future. Living in the present, Lewis notes, means "obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, and giving thanks for present pleasure." Quite a task!

Springing Forward

March 20 is the first day of spring this year and everyone is ready for it! Most people do hate losing the hour of sleep that "springing forward" brought this weekend, but I worked that night and losing the hour from 2-3 AM made a huge difference! An 11-hour shift is so much better than a 12-hour shift.

We got to Amarillo safely yesterday and today it's sunny and 58 degrees. Ross and I went for a 30 minute walk around his parent's neighborhood and my back is still very tight, but not as painful. I think I'll stretch tonight and hopefully try running again tomorrow. I love a good run in this weather!

I was reading my favorite springtime book (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle-- a must-read if you haven't yet) and I had to share this:

...springtime makes people crazy. We expect too much, the world burgeons with promises it can't keep, all passion is really a setup, and we're doomed to get our heats broken yet again. I agree, and would further add: Who cares? Every spring I go there anyway, around the bend, unconditionally. I'm a soul on ice flung out on a rock in the sun, where the needles that pierced me begin to melt all as one.

On the new edge of springtime when I stand on the front porch shadowing my eyes from the weak morning light, sniffing out a tinge of green on the hill and the scent of yawning earthworms, oh, boy, then! I roll like a bear out of hibernation.

The maple buds glow pink, the forsythia breaks into its yellow aria. These are the days we can't keep ourselves indoors around here, any more than we believe what out eyes keep telling us about the surrouding land (i.e. that it is still a giant mud puddle, now lacking its protective covering of ice).

So it comes to pass that one pair of boots after another run outdoors and come back mud-caked-- more shoes than we even knew we had in the house, proliferating like wild portobellos in a composty heap by the front door. So what? Noah's kids would have felt like this when the flood had almost dried up: muddy boots be hanged. Come the end of the dark days, I am more than joyful. I'm nuts.

-Barbara Kingsolver

Well-put Ms. Kingsolver; I couldn't have said it better myself. I am more than joyful when sunny days arrive again!

Happy February

Fort Worth spoiled me. I start anticipating spring this month when in reality, it'll probably come to Kansas City in early April. At least the snow is gone for now... and yesterday was sunny even though today isn't!

We've had a busy weekend. On Saturday, Ross went over to my cousins' house to stay with John and Jimmy for a few days while my aunt and uncle went to Arizona. I went to work Saturday night and finally did my first admit in my new unit! Even more exciting, her parents are really nice. I finally feel official! I even went and bought "my" baby some preemie clothes at Wal-Mart, although she won't fit into them for a while.

After getting some sleep on Sunday, I joined the boys at the Dixon's house and we stayed until Tuesday afternoon. Thanks to their cousin Emily (on the other side of their family), I started reading the Twilight books while I was there. She had left the first one at their house during a summer visit and I was desperate for something to read. Then, of course, I had to read the other three. The books are so creepy, I can't put them down until I'm done. I'd have nightmares if I went to sleep without knowing how things end up.

I literally read one Twilight book a day on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. I'm so embarrassed! I mean, the story is intriguing but I still think Harry Potter books are infinitely better-written, more symbolic, and more complex (sorry Brittnye). But I can't deny that I want to see how Twilight ends up and, of course, I want to see why everyone's so obsessed with the movies. For those who know (or even care) about Twilight, I do have to say this: how can you fall in love with someone who is stone cold?! I'm always so cold... I'd choose Jacob over Edward any day. I'm also biased because I liked Robert Pattinson so much better as Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter than as Edward in Twilight.
Okay. Teen-geek-fest over. I think I need to end this post now before embarrassing myself further. On the bright side, I get to see "my" baby tonight!

The Secret Garden

My mom went home from the hospital yesterday and she's feeling well enough to eat normal food and walk up the stairs already! Recovering from abdominal surgery is difficult and painful. Hopefully she won't have to go through this again! Nine days in the hospital is too much.

The reason I was in Omaha last Sunday when my dad took her to the ER was because the Omaha Botanical Gardens had a spring show commemorating the 100th anniversary of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden. I met my parents there for the afternoon English tea and we were all watching the movie version when my mom started feeling sick that evening.

Picture from the Lauritzen Gardens website advertising the Spring Show

I took a few pictures at the exhibit, although they don't do it justice. All captions are quotes from the book. It was one of my favorite books when I was younger.

*For two or three minutes he stood looking round him, while Mary watched him, and then he began to walk about softly, even more lightly than Mary had walked the first time she had found herself inside the four walls. His eyes seemed to be taking in everything--the gray trees with the gray creepers climbing over them and hanging from their branches, the tangle on the walls and among the grass, the evergreen alcoves with the stone seats and tall flower urns standing in them.*

*Living as it were, all by herself in a house with a hundred mysteriously closed rooms and having nothing whatever to do to amuse herself, had set her inactive brain to working and was actually awakening her imagination. There is no doubt that the fresh, strong, pure air from the moor had a great deal to do with it. Just as it had given her an appetite, and fighting with the wind had stirred her blood, so the same things had stirred her mind. In India she had always been too hot and languid and weak to care much about anything, but in this place she was beginning to care and to want to do new things. Already she felt less "contrary," though she did not know why.*

*One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts—just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live... surprising things can happen to any one who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place. "Where you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow."*

*Mrs. Sowerby answered. "I never knowed [magic] by that name but what does the name matter? ...The same thing as set the seeds swelling and the sun shining made thee a well lad and it's the Good Thing.*

*She looked at the key quite a long time. She turned it over and over, and thought about it. As I have said before, she was not a child who had been trained to ask permission or consult her elders about things. All she thought about the key was that if it was the key to the closed garden, and she could find out where the door was, she could perhaps open it and see what was inside the walls, and what had happened to the old rose-trees. It was because it had been shut up so long that she wanted to see it. It seemed as if it must be different from other places and that something strange must have happened to it during ten years.*

*And then she took a long breath and looked behind her up the long walk to see if any one was coming. No one was coming. No one ever did come, it seemed, and she took another long breath, because she could not help it, and she held back the swinging curtain of ivy and pushed back the door which opened slowly--slowly. Then she slipped through it, and shut it behind her, and stood with her back against it, looking about her and breathing quite fast with excitement, and wonder, and delight. She was standing inside the secret garden.*

*"Do bulbs live a long time? Would they live years and years if no one helped them?" inquired Mary anxiously.

"They're things as helps themselves," said Martha. "That's why poor folk can afford to have 'em. If you don't trouble 'em, most of 'em'll work away underground for a lifetime an' spread out an' have little 'uns. There's a place in th' park woods here where there's snowdrops by thousands. They're the prettiest sight in Yorkshire when th' spring comes. No one knows when they was first planted."*

*"Are there any flowers that look like bells?" she inquired.

"Lilies o' th' valley does," he answered, digging away with the trowel, "an' there's Canterbury bells, an' campanulas... Why does tha' want 'em?"

Then Mary told him about Basil and his brothers and sisters in India and of how she had hated them and of their calling her "Mistress Mary Quite Contrary."

"They used to dance round and sing at me. They sang--

`Mistress Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With silver bells, and cockle shells, And marigolds all in a row.'

I just remembered it and it made me wonder if there were really flowers like silver bells."

She frowned a little and gave her trowel a rather spiteful dig into the earth.

"I wasn't as contrary as they were."

But Dickon laughed. "Eh!" he said, and as he crumbled the rich black soil she saw he was sniffing up the scent of it. "There doesn't seem to be no need for no one to be contrary when there's flowers an' such like, an' such lots o' friendly wild things runnin' about makin' homes for themselves, or buildin' nests an' singin' an' whistlin', does there?"*