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April Favorites

April has been full of little joys and big excitements.

Little joys like being bowled over with cleverness (see #3). Or eating my FAVORITE sugar cookies (pre-whole30, of course). Or becoming more intimately acquainted with an author I love through his diaries. Or a friend sharing his view on our place in the world, and saying something much more important in the process.

As for big excitements, I can’t share juuuuust yet, but it won’t be far now, hobbitses. Not far. Not far.

So here’s to joys and excitements big and small, and a glass of sparkling water (darn you whole30!!) raised to my April Faves.

1) 8tracks

I discovered 8tracks [Read more…]

On Life Experiments. (And Our Recent Forays Therein)

Oh, friends. April has been BIZZZZZ-y. Busy.

There are lots of things going on in our day-to-day life this month. Things like teen-and-house-sitting while our friends are on vacay and working on a BIG new project I’ll share one day soon. We’ve also intentionally taken breaks in the midst of it all for a little decompression. Not a bad scene for the middle of the desert, huh?

But it’s the host of daily experiments I’m doing this month that is really filling my April hours. Or, specifically, the biggest of the experiments I’m doing. (See #1 below.)

The Dude and I love personal experimentation. It keeps things changing and improving, and has a glorious “what if” element to it. What if I baked homemade bread every weekend for a month? What if we didn’t watch TV on weekdays? What if I committed to read 50 books this year? Or, as the Dude ventured in college, “What if I ate only cereal for a whole week?”

Ew.

But I believe [Read more…]

March Favorites

Yes I know. It’s nearly the second week of April. But I’m going to be completely self-indulgent and share my March favorites, even if I’m a little late with it.

Homemade Cake Doughnuts

Stumbling upon this cookbook from Seattle’s Top Pot Doughnuts may prove life-changing. Their great recipes and detailed instructions made for a very successful first foray into doughnutting. And it won’t be the last.

You want these, don’t you?

Cake Doughnuts

Tara Stiles, This Is Yoga

I do a good bit of yoga at home. This is because [Read more…]

I’m a Hider. (And a Little Something About the Future.)

Here’s a little something you may not know about this blog: though it is about my growing-up project (Year of the Grownup), it also is itself a part of my growing-up project.

I retain a strong number of childish tendencies. Not doing things I don’t feel like doing, for example. Or not following through on things I say I’m going to do. Project Grownup (the blog) was an element of the bigger project that would force me to confront some of those things head on. In the words of Donald Miller, it was an inciting incident*.

Would I be able to post consistently? Show up at all? Could I bear feeling like an idiot while I fumbled around bringing scraps together toward writing and blogging? Could I survive failing at part or all of the project if that’s what happened?

I didn’t know, but I needed to find out. So I jumped in, and kept at it, even when I had to take a hiatus from posting for several weeks, and regardless of how I felt about it along the way. It became an exercise in forcing myself to do things that would be more easy to just give up on. I needed that.

But in the past few weeks I realized something:

I’ve been hiding. 

I’ve been hiding and I didn’t know it. I tend to share openly things that others can be pretty guarded about, so it never occurred to me that I might be hiding something. But it turns out I’m a hider.

Experience has taught me it’s easier to not say certain things, even if they’re true and don’t hurt anyone, than to say something true, but uncommon, and endure the awkwardness. Or worse: the judgment.

I think a lot more should go unsaid in the world. Words meant to hurt, bolster oneself at another’s expense, and ones that argue with people who aren’t interested in considering a different point of view are a few of them.

But some things go unsaid because they’re unpopular or thought weird, and that’s not really helping anyone. And even though I’ve long felt that those with oddities should disclose them so that other odd-holders can be more assured in their own, apparently I’m still hiding.

I hide my academic interests because adulthood is a lot like grade school; to learn for fun is weird. I hide what I’ve learned about the world, my changing opinions about it, and my convictions about our (the privileged’s) role in it, because it’s awkward, and because I’m afraid. I hide that I have very close guy friends because Christians think I’m about to jump in bed with them (even though most of my best friends have been guys since I was two years old), and I hide my deep contentment in my infertility because clearly there is something wrong with a girl who has no desire to be a mother.

(There’s more, of course, but that’s enough freak-flag flying for one day.)

Project Grownup has helped me in so many ways. I’ve had to finish pieces of writing and hit publish. It’s pushed me to DO something new rather than just talk about it. But ultimately, I’m hiding. I’m giving you fringe pieces of my life; safe pieces that won’t be contentious or get me into any trouble.

But these pieces are a distraction. A distraction from my primary interests, and a slight-of-hand that protects me from sharing what I really love, but that might be unwelcome. Or unacceptable. Or weird.

I seems time for me, and for Project Grownup, to grow up. To leave the floaties on the shore, wear a daring outfit, and maybe take a trip (or two) around the world.

Project Grownup will eventually become something different altogether; hopefully something grittier, more global, and a lot more personal.

For my part, I still fear putting myself out there, not showing up regularly, and being woefully inadequate. But I’m excited. Excited at the convergence of my interests and projects, excited to learn and share more of humanity’s treasures, and most of all, excited to grow up, and to stop hiding.

*Read more about “inciting incidents” in this post from Donald Miller

Easy Homemade Granola (Without a Recipe)

Easy Homemade Granola. Use your pantry to make healthier granola. (Best Part? You don't need a recipe.) Pin for future reference!

Have you ever made granola from scratch? Did you have to buy new ingredients or stay glued to the recipe to do it? Happily, there’s another way. And it’s easy!

Here’s How to make granola. Right now. With what’s in your pantry.

Learning the technique this way (instead of following a recipe) will let you:

  • Have granola instantly when you want it.
  • Without going to the store (assuming you have a few everyday things on hand).
  • Use up ingredients you already have, particularly those tablespoon size remnants of random nuts and seeds.
  • Customize the perfect tasting granola for your family, while only including ingredients you can, and like, to eat (allergies, anyone?).
  • Spend less money, and usually, create less waste.
  • Feel super awesome that you can do this in your sleep. 

But first a little story…

I first started making my own granola because I thought it’d be cheaper and healthier than store-bought. It also seemed like I’d be able to make it from stuff I already had on hand, because I always have oats and some kind of nuts or seeds lying about.

But as with most try-it-from-scratch endeavors, as I began looking around for recipes, I got stuck. There were five more things I’d have to buy in order to make the recipe, and the long lists of ingredients seemed silly.

And let’s be serious. I wasn’t looking for the best granola EV-ER, I just wanted something healthier and cheaper than store bought.

Did it really have to be so complicated?

But I’ve discovered that when your goal is feeding people healthy tasteful things (rather than preparing to entertain royalty), most at-home cooking can be boiled down (heh heh) to a ratio and a technique.

If you get in the habit of testing and tasting and thinking, you can make healthy food, from what’s in your pantry, and give your creative self a playground as you do it. Dare I say, it can be fun.

Today I’m going to give you this kind of starting point for granola. Try this with what you have on hand, and think about what it looks and feels and tastes like as you do it. What does 4 cups of oats look like in the bowl? What does the ratio of ingredients look like? How much clumping happens when you add the oil/syrup mixture? Especially note your observations of saltiness before and after baking.

Let’s get started, shall we?

Homemade Granola
with What’s in Your Pantry

[Read more…]

February Favorites

Our weekend in Oman is Thursday/Friday so Thursdays at our house are like our Saturdays of yesteryear.

This Thursday finds me drinking too much coffee, downloading Nashville, and deciding what bread I want to make today (I think it’s going to be this one).

It also has me discussing illustrations for the Dude’s Art Series (as seen here on Facebook) and deciding what to share from February, a month that passed entirely too quickly.

Homemade Bread (Tastes)

At the beginning of February, I bought a fat brick of instant yeast and began experimenting with bread baking. I’m a bread-baking scaredy-cat and decided to bake a loaf each weekend in February to see if I could get the hang of it.

And I know this is really nerdy, but I wanted to be able to do it without a recipe. One of my  aversions to making bread at home is the complexity (or my perception thereof), so I figured if I could eliminate some of the fuss, I could focus more on technique and texture.

Thanks to the books Ratio and CookWise, the experiments have been edible (something I wasn’t sure was possible), and improving, even while using just the big 4 for bread: Flour, water, yeast, and salt.

What’s been most fun, though, is coming up with creative uses for the end of the loaf before it goes bad. We’ve done rustic grilled cheese sandwiches and breakfast casserole, and I think there might be Panzanella in our future very soon.

Feedly (App)

Writing about RSS this month had me curious about the apps that have hit the market since I first started using RSS years ago. As I wrote about best RSS practices, I realized a few of my own practices were really clunky and made no sense. (Don’t you just love how you can tell other people things while being totally blind to not taking your own advice?)

So I tried a few new (to me) apps, and stumbled upon Feedly. It doesn’t fit my “best practices” workflow, but I am LOVING it for quick browsing and “marking read” from my iPhone. It has teenie gestures that mark something read or add it to Pocket (or another for-future-reading app) without tapping and selecting, and it has a really nice look to it. Check it out if you you’re looking for a pleasant looking RSS app for your iPhone or iPad (or even Firefox or Chrome for that matter, though I’ve found the plugins to be a bit glitchy so far.)

(If you missed the RSS posts, this one will get you set up with an RSS reader, and this one will help you use it to spend less time on your blog reading.)

Godfather (Drink)

For “Halfiversary” this year (the celebration we created for the anniversary of our engagement and the half-anniversary of our wedding), we went to one of our favorite restaurants in town, whose cocktails rival Victor Tangos in Dallas and Ember in Breckenridge. Of course, these places are pretty proud of their cocktails, so indulging is a splurge, but is there a better reason than a celebration to splurge?

So, trying to select a drink at Left Bank that would (at least somewhat) agree with the Halloumi and Pumpkin salad we ordered, I chose an unfamiliar drink: The Godfather.

Oh heavens. Scotch and amaretto on lotsa rocks. Their particular blend of the two is better than what we’ve been able to create at home, but we’ve been loving them nonetheless. (How have I never heard of this drink?!?!)

The Books of the Bible (eBook)

I’ve been a mega-fan of “The Books of the Bible” version of the Bible ever since being gifted a copy by some amazing friends of ours. The Books of the Bible Edition (NIV), purposes to present the text more like its original readers would have experienced it (without chapter and verse markings, and also in a less disconnected order).

Fast forward to mid-Feb of this year when I decided to read the entire Bible during Lent, and I was so distracted by the page numbers (I needed to read about 50 a day to stay on track), I thought I wouldn’t be able to even get started!

But then I discovered The Books of the Bible had recently been released for Kindle! Ah sweet relief. It’s so great to read the insane ancient stories without a) getting distracted with all the numbers and b) without lugging around a giant book. LOVE.

Sea Turtles (Experience)

I have loved sea turtles since I can remember, and this month we traveled down the beach a few hours and went out at night to try to catch a glimpse. Although some nights dozens can be seen, our measly two-spot was a dream come true.

Now admittedly this video is dark, amateurish (at best), full of foreign languages, and completely indulgent on my part, but I still hope it makes you want to see these incredible creatures one day. I can’t recommend the experience highly enough.

…what about you?…

What delighted you in February?