Project 52 Date Nights: Can't Get Enough

Coming off of the Thanksgiving holiday we have been eating a lot of leftovers. We have also had intermittent company which meant I didn't have a chance to get to the grocery store until Wednesday of last week. By Monday, we were both getting tired of turkey... though I did use some of it to make a pretty good Turkey and Dumpling Stew {incorporating leftover stuffing for the dumplings}.

 {via}

On Monday night we opted to go out for a post-racquetball meal at Buenavista Mexican Restaurant with one of Daniel's co-workers. Daniel and I split the Mex Tex Fajitas {one of our faves}.

Then Tuesday came and we found ourselves headed back to town and into the parking lot of our favorite Mexican restaurant {I guess that we were really sick of turkey}. I had a Shrimp Chimichanga and Daniel tried a Chicken Nacho dish. I'm just thankful that we have at least one restaurant that we truly love in our little town. We just need to make sure we don't wear it out.

Which we may be on the road to doing since we went BACK to Buenavista on Saturday when friends from Murfreesboro came for a visit! Third time's a charm?!?

52 Books in 52 Weeks: Book 47

My sister-in-law sent me a copy of A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg for my birthday. I was pretty excited to receive this memoir/recipe collection recounting Molly's coming to age and finding love.

It was a sweet book with several passages that felt like they could be describing my own life; especially the ones about the importance that her family placed on eating and cooking together.

I related more to the first portion of the book and was tempted by many of the recipes: Banana Bread with Chocolate and Crystallized Ginger, Dutch Baby Pancakes with Lemon and Sugar, and Rum Cream Pie with Graham Cracker Crust, to name a few.

The later portion shares how she met her husband {through her renowned blog, Orangette}. At this juncture, the recipes shift to a more vegetarian-style with a blend of ingredients that would not be high on my list to combine for a meal. I am sure they are fabulous but she lost me when she started in on the seemingly endless salads. I was not regaled by these recipes which included ingredients like red cabbage and anything pickled. While I love to cook, I guess I am not enough of a foodie to join in on Molly's full repertoire of recipes.

A Homemade Life is a quick read and if you love to make your dinners from scratch, it is definitely worth a look.

A few of the passages that I really liked:

"You know, we eat better at home than most people do in restaurants." ...What was so satisfying, I think, was... the steady rhythm of meeting in the kitchen every night, sitting down at the table, and sharing a meal. Dinner didn't come through a swinging door, balanced on the arm of an anonymous waiter: it was something we made together.

I guess whatever you grow up with seems normal. It's your life, no matter what it is.

In spite of the potato salad, pound cake, and pain au chocolat, I believed deep down that mine was a childhood of tragic deprivation. My parents put a tight cap on processed foods, which meant no toaster pastries, no grape-flavored bubble gum, no cinnamon-flavored cereal, and none of those shiny, single-portion packets of fruit punch with a tiny straw attached.

...It's hard to love someone, I've found, when you're preoccupied with holding your entire world firmly in place. Loving someone requires a certain amount of malleability, a willingness to be pulled along, or at least occasionally, by another person's will.

...if the best day of our lives is our wedding day, we thought, what the hell comes afterward? ...it didn't need to be the best day ever. In fact, we sincerely hoped that, in the long-term scheme of things, it wouldn't be.

"I have learned not to worry about love, but to honor its coming with all my heart."

Only in Rural Alabama

This morning after church we stopped at the local Ruby Tuesday for lunch. While I sipped my coffee, we discussed the pros and cons of the basement apartment we are about to start building. I absentmindedly glanced out the window and almost spit out my coffee when I noticed a rooster wandering around the parking lot. A rooster!!! I was so surprised that it took a minute to gather my thoughts and point out the farmyard animal to Daniel.

 

{via}

Incidentally, the only other place we have noticed chickens wandering around {in a developed place} was on a week-long camping trip in Oahu, Hawaii...

A Visit From the Taylors

Matt, Zeke, Melissa, Me and Daniel

Now that we are getting settled into our new house, we are finally starting to host company {let us know if you want to come visit, our doors are always open}. Last night, Matt and Melissa and their baby, Zeke, came for a quick overnight stay. Matt was the best man in our wedding and a long-time friend of Daniel's. 

Today we showed them the "sights" of Scottsboro: The Unclaimed Baggage Store and The Catalog Return Store. We also took them to lunch at our favorite Mexican joint. It was fun getting to hang out and I even picked up some books at Unclaimed Baggage.

The Lost City of Z
 The God of Small Things

A Walk in the Woods

Love in the Time of Cholera

City if Thieves
and

Infidel

My First 5K

Laura and I, freezing in the parking lot before running the Jingle Bell Jog 5K

 

As I mentioned earlier this week I spent the last five days training with a friend for my first 5K. Somehow we managed to get in enough training to actually run the race. Our goal was to complete it in under 40 minutes and I ended up finishing in 38 minutes and 47 seconds, while Laura finished in 36 minutes and some change.

At the starting line

 

The course was hillier than I expected and a blister that plagued me all week started to bother me again in the last mile {which was incidentally a long climb uphill}. I succumbed and walked part of that last mile, but still managed to finish in under 40 minutes, so I am proud of that. 

Eating Pioneer Woman's Blueberry Baked French Toast post race.

I wouldn't recommend training in five days for a 3-mile run, but Laura and I are proof that it can be done. Next time, I plan to train longer and finish without walking.

What race is complete without a T-shirt?

52 Books in 52 Weeks: Book 46

I am getting close on finishing my goal of 52 books... 6 books left and 4 weeks to do it.

Hatchet by Gary Paulson is a throw back to my childhood. I read this novel when I was a pre-adolescent and perhaps it had a hand in triggering my passion for the outdoors. 

The story is about Brian Robeson, a 13-year-old boy, who is stuck in the Northern Canadian woods after surviving a plane crash. The pilot is dead and the plane has crashed off course into a small lake. All he has to help him survive are his wits and a hatchet.

I know that it is a work of fiction, but at the time it really intrigued me that this young boy was able to survive. Re-reading it I am still amazed at the story. The author claims that over the years, he has personally experienced everything the boy went through (in one form or another, and certainly not to the same scope). Brian is rescued after 54 days alone in the wilderness. This type of rescue is probably unlikely, but on occasion, miracles do happen. People really do survive against amazing odds to recount their experiences.

It was a quick read that I enjoyed immensely. It has a bit of a Cast Away feel {except he is a boy stranded in the woods and not Tom Hanks stranded on a deserted island}.

Excerpts from the book: 

And he was, at that very moment, almost overcome with self pity. He was dirty and starving and bitten {by mosquitoes} and hurt and lonely and ugly and afraid and so completely miserable that it was like being in a pit, a dark, deep pit with no way out.

He did not know how long it took, but later he looked back on this time of crying in the corner of the dark cave and thought of it was when he learned the most important rule of survival, which was that feeling sorry for yourself didn't work.

...Maybe it was always that way, discoveries happened because they needed to happen.

Early in the new time he learned the most important thing, the truly vital knowledge that drives all creatures in the forest – food is all.

Patience, he thought, so much of this was patience – waiting and thinking and doing things right. So much of all of this, so much of all living was patience and thinking.

52 Books in 52 Weeks: Book 45

During the summer of 2006, Daniel and I went to Oregon for a 2-week vacation. We spent time visiting one of my college roommates and her family before embarking on a tour of the state. We camped at Mt. Hood, visited Crater Lake, climbed South Sister, toured a lava tube, rode ATVs on 400-ft sand dunes and camped on the coast. We had a blast.

En route to Oregon I browsed books at the airport and picked out A Blistered Kind of Love by Angela and Duffy Ballard. It is the story of one couple's journey hiking the entire Pacific Crest Trail {PCT}. It is a humorous glimpse of life on the trail and the effects that long-distance hiking had on a blossoming romance. 

I reread it as part of my 52 Books experiment. I enjoyed being reminded about our trip out West as well as reading about a through hike. That summer, in Oregon, I was all set to go hike the PCT for our next big adventure. Obviously that didn't happen, but I would like to do a through hike of a long-distance trail sometime in my life {#93 on my life list}.

Excerpts from the book:

Thirst, fear and pain will greet you on the PCT, and like a good ol' pair of leather boots stuffed with callused, hoof-like feet, they'll stay with you until you've been thoroughly broken in.

The symptoms {of being 'mileage crazy'} may lead to obsessively placing more importance on how many miles are traveled than on the real reason for traveling... On foot, in a van, on a fleet motorcycle or on a bicycle, a person must be very careful not to become overly concerned with arriving.

"People believe that if they walk long distances to holy places it purifies the bad deeds they've committed. They believe that the more difficult the journey, the greater the depth of purification." – Heinrich Harrer {Brad Pitt's character in Seven Years in Tibet}

Perhaps this line captured a quiet agenda... of all us aspiring through hikers.

... to many of us trapped in the ethos of a youth-centric culture, thirty comes on like a death sentence. Rational minds recognize that not much changes between twenty-nine and thirty, but it's a turning point none the less. No more excuses – when you hit thirty, it's for real.

Walking for a living gives you a lot of time to think. Take that time, mix it with a little deprivation and physical strain, add a splash of the type of peace one can find in the wilderness, and you get a special perspective on life.