The Abundant Life

I'm trying a new tactic this year to keep myself from being all stressed out during the holidays.  It's pretty simple - just a perspective change.  I thought of it while I was preparing for a talk I gave last week at my church's women's Christmas dinner.  One of the Bible verses that reminds me of the very 'essence' or point of Christmas is John 10:10, where Jesus says He has come to earth to give us a full and abundant life.  In the past, I have looked at many activities as events that interrupt my holiday preparations.  But this year, I've been thinking that all of these things are not really interruptions, but signs that I indeed have been given an abundance of blessings.  We get to do amazing things for our job, like visit students in El Salvador and bring them suitcases full of goodies from home.  We get to watch our son play soccer games and even captain the defense.  I get to spend a fantastic day shopping with my amazing daughter and enjoying a lunch at the one-and-only Madonna Inn.  I get to have my farmgirl friends over for food, chatter, and a craft project to make empty jars look like beautiful sea glass.  These are the things that make my life full and abundant.  They are amazing and wonderful things, and in the midst of card-writing and present-wrapping, I feel incredibly blessed, not overly-stressed (honestly I was not trying to make that rhyme; that is so cheesy!).

Colder and Colder

 It is slowly but surely getting colder out.  We began the week in the 80's and are ending it today with our first dip into the 30's this morning.  Around the neighborhood, there are many signs that it is cooling off.  
Yesterday, for the first time this fall, I came around a corner in the car and almost nailed several turkeys who found the middle of the road a nice place to gather.  I don't know why they do this (I think they might like the warm pavement in the sun, but I'm no bird expert.  In my opinion, this is just further evidence of the stupidity of poultry).  
Also, our apricot tree starts dropping gorgeous yellow leaves onto the grass (as you can see in the picture - not seen in the picture are a few gopher holes.  We are officially at war presently with a few gophers.  It's always something here!).  The walnut  tree is also dropping nice big walnuts for us (Ha!  Take that, evil squirrels!).  
Soccer season has started at the high school, which I personally love, because it gets chilly out and I have an awesome orange coat to show my school spirit, and a hat and mittens, too.  
I harvested some horseradish from the herb garden today, washed it, peeled it, and put it into a jar of vinegar.  This is what the web site said to do... I have no idea how to actually use it, so any suggestions are welcome. 
 I also canned some plum-cherry jam today - delicious! I was waiting for it to cool off enough to have two pots of boiling water on the stove, and the oven on (I keep the lids and jars in there so they remain sterile).  I am starting to feel more confident in my canning ability after this, batch number 6.  The bag of plums pictured is the second bag from the summer - and I still have another bag down in the freezer, so I am anticipating more jam making at some point.  I need to get more jars.  As I made the jam, I thought about my Aunt Betty, who makes the absolute best sour cherry jam in the entire world.  My jam turned out pretty darn well, if I do say so myself....but it's no Aunt Betty's sour cherry jam. I wonder how many batches of jam she has made, not to mention all of the other stuff that my aunts have canned over the years (they have it down to an art form!).  I am just happy that it's cool enough now to practice - because practicing is quite delicious with toast and a cup of coffee! 

Max's Night of Gastronomic Delight

This is a photo of how Max-the-Dog looked most all of Saturday.  We referred to it as a 'doggy hangover' or a 'gastronomic-induced coma'.  
It all started on Friday evening.  In a moment of madness, Jamey and I thought it would be a fun idea to host this year's Junior-Senior Overnighter at our house.  Our staff team wanted to appreciate our junior and senior students for all of the work they do, so we decided to give them a free tri-tip dinner and a movie, followed by a campout and some breakfast burritos.  Now, normally, we have about 75 people show up for dinner, with about 20 or so spending the night at the camp ground.  This year, however, the word spread (thank you Facebook events!!) and as of Friday afternoon, exactly 140 people had rsvp'd.  

In the chaos of feeding and enjoying the company of all of these students, we didn't keep a close eye on Max.  At one point early on, I caught him, in an act of desperation, licking up the tri-tip juice that had dripped off the table and onto our gravel driveway. You have to really want meat juice to resort to licking it off of the rocks.  I am not sure how many plates he snuck food off of - he got more and more brazen as the night went on.  I do know that he ate about a third of someone's paper plate when they set it on the deck (in his defense, the plate was soaked with tri-tip juice, barbecue sauce and salad dressing, rendering it delicious and therefore irresistable).  I heard that he took an entire piece of pizza right out of a girl's hand (his rudeness knew no bounds at this point), and later on grabbed an apple core away from another girl.
After we started the movie ('Sandlot', outside, just like the drive-in but without cars!), Max made it his duty to wander around eating all of the popcorn that students dropped onto the grass.  And probably some right out of their hands, too.  He also helped himself to a crumbly granola bar that a boy spilled onto the ground.
At about midnight, I put earplugs in and went to bed and left about 60 students out in the yard.  

Max faithfully keeps watch over the campers....and their food

At 6 a.m., I got up to feed the cats (they did not reappear until the afternoon - they wanted no part of this whole thing!) and looked out the window and saw Max, snuggled up between a couple of students on their blankets.  He looked like he had had the night of his life.  He is quite an extrovert, after all.  Upon going outside, I also noticed that one of the many bags of trash had been opened, and several more paper plates had been nibbled, along with some napkins.  
And finally, while we were preparing breakfast, Max somehow found a large roasting tray with some leftover cooking oil in it and proceeded to lick it up happily.  Oh, and he ate a few eggshells that dropped out of the bag while I was taking the trash outside (we cooked over 200 eggs that morning - all outside on the grill!)
The students left at ten that morning, and Max proceeded to crawl up onto the porch, where he remained for the entire rest of the day with a sad, slightly embarrassed look on his face.  I also think he was a little depressed that all of his new friends had gone away.  It did get rather quiet.  
It took his stomach the rest of the day to recover (I myself actually took a nap on the couch and spent most of the afternoon watching baseball and football.  In other words, just another fall Saturday for me!) but I am happy to report that he is back to normal today, eating dog food out of his bowl and chicken poop wherever he can find it.

Silver Linings

If every cloud has a silver lining, we have spent this month looking for silver, and finding it.
Grace moved to Cal Poly on September 12. We miss her.  Silver lining - she LOVES college.  On the first day of class, I received a text that was a photo of the table of contents of her psychology book with the message, "Can you believe I get to study this?"  Friday night she came home (she had a cold and wanted to take some NyQuil and go to sleep) and for almost an hour, told us all about the friends she is making, the classes she is enjoying, and how much she is loving college.
Cru at Cal Poly and Cuesta keeps us busy - up late (midnight entering names and numbers into a database, or talking to students after a weekly meeting) and up early (6:30 a.m. meeting with student leaders).  Silver lining - hundreds of freshmen have come to the weekly meetings, to the dorm Bible studies, and to an amazing Barn Dance that we put on.  So we are off to an amazing start!
The annual battle for walnuts with the squirrels has begun.  Yesterday I 'scared' one out of the tree and it dropped right in front of Max-the-Dog, who tried to pick it up in his mouth to toss it about (a favorite hobby of his) and got a bite on the lip for his trouble (the squirrel crossed the  fence to safety).  Silver lining - the walnut tree is loaded with walnuts, and Max was quite entertained for several minutes (and his lip is fine!).
As we approach October, there is a heat wave expected and it is supposed to hit 100 over the next couple of days (ugh).  Silver lining - finally, after a summer of nothing, the tomatoes are in!  So we now have a big jar of dried tomatoes, and several cups of tomato sauce ready for winter.  And more every day.  It's about time!
I had so much hope that the Pirates would finally have a winning season, but alas.  A very-late-season collapse has made that impossible (they were so close).  Silver lining - the A's (Jason's favorite team) are in front in the wild card race with just a few games left!  
And now, it's time to make lunch for some students (Grace's friends are coming over for burgers), then hunker down out of the heat and enjoy some football before another busy (but wonderful) week!

What We Did This Summer

This summer, for the second time in 23 years, Jamey and I were given a sabbatical.  For Jamey, this means a break from meetings, emails, leading, and having to keep aware of everything that's happening in our gigantic wonderful mess of a ministry.  For all of us, it meant one precious month of togetherness before Grace heads off for college and Jason starts to drive and we never see him again.  
When all was said and done, we divided the month into three totally different parts, so there really was something for everyone.  Here's how it turned out:

Week One - "Kids At Camp - Parents Staycation at Home".  Jason and Grace headed off to Hume Lake for the week and had a blast of course.  Jamey and I stayed at home and were amazed at how easy it was to decide where and what to eat.  The highlight was probably the 4th of July - we have friends who live on the beach (yes, the beach is their back yard) in Cayucos, and because it is always crowded there on the fourth (they do a very popular parade and fireworks - people come from Fresno for Pete's sake) they head for the mountains.  Soooooo, they graciously allowed us to bring ourselves, our picnic food, our truck, and our dog to their home and enjoy a wonderful cool holiday.  Best moment of the day:  Max-the-Dog does not at all like fireworks, so when they started, he got up and tried to walk into the house, forgetting that there was a sliding glass door in the way.

Weeks Two and Three - HAWAII.  One of the great by-products of job travel is air miles and hotel points, which we had been racking up for years.  This provided us with free airfare and ten amazing nights at the Marriott Waikiki on Oahu (they have big dispensers of pineapple-infused water in the lobby).  Generous friends of ours brought us three surfboards and, through a friend of theirs, a free car to use.  Our general schedule was: sleep in, surf/beach/sightsee/hike/shop, lunch, surf/beach/pool, eat a great dinner (Rainbow Drive-In, pho restaurant, Korean BBQ, poke, for example), play cribbage/hang out at hotel.  Unbelievable, and utterly relaxing.  Pretty much the vacation of a lifetime.  

Week Four - Jamey's Solo Bike Trip.  Jamey loves to mountain bike, so he had the opportunity to head up PCH for a 5-day solo trek from SLO to Carmel.  Along the way, he met quite a few people who were doing the same thing (although most go north-to-south, because of wind).  Some were from Europe or Canada, most were doing a longer trip (San Francisco to San Diego for example), and one couple was riding in honor of a family member.  Now, Jamey is fairly neat and well-kept, but we found it amusing that people did offer him food a couple of times (either they were a: being nice, or b: thought he was a hobo).  Also, he did have the opportunity to sleep like a hobo one night, as the bike camping spot at one state park in Big Sur is actually located under a bridge.  


All in all, it was a wonderful, amazing, refreshing summer.  We once again felt overly-blessed.  It felt surprisingly long and luxurious, which is good, because August is ending and the blur of fall is right around the corner!

Summer = Zucchini

This is a picture of what happens in your garden around here when you go away for 12 days (note the 12-inch ruler at left).  There were four of them, but we were able to slice and grill one of these babies and eat it the day after we returned from our vacation.  That of course left me with about 10 pounds of zucchini to use up (we planted one zucchini plant in the garden this year, mind you).  Fortunately I have joined the trendy web site Pinterest, which is actually really helpful when searching for new recipes.  So when I searched 'zucchini' and found a recipe for zucchini hummus, I was happy to give it a try.  It didn't involve any cooking whatsoever, was easy, used up an entire zuke, and I figured if it was a huge fail, it wouldn't be that big a deal since it only takes about ten minutes to make.  I am low-commitment and really lazy this summer.
But it wasn't a fail!  In fact, it was delicious!!  So delicious that I have now made it twice - once for the family and once for the neighbors at our local farmers' market, who raved about it and are putting the recipe in our neighborhood 'Garden Farms Gazette'.  We used it as a dip with carrots, cucumbers, peppers, and with crackers.  I realize that if you don't enjoy hummus, you might think it looks gross, and in that case, feel free not to try it.  But if you, like all of us around here, spend time during the summer trying to come up with creative uses for the ever-prolific zucchini, this might be for you!

Here's the recipe:
4 cups peeled and chopped raw zucchini
3/4 cup tahini (sesame seed paste)
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup olive oil
3-4 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
2 tsp kosher salt
2 tsp ground cumin
Combine all ingredients in blender and puree until thick and smooth.  Garnish with paprika and parsley.
(Recipe from "I Breathe....I'm Hungry")

"Kids-At-Camp-Week" 2012

I love my kids so much it's crazy, but they left for Hume Lake on Sunday morning, and holy cow  are Jamey and I having fun at home all by ourselves!  On Sunday, we had our friends Reid and Misty over for dinner (without their kids - they have 3 and 1 on the way; clearly they needed a break!) and Jamey smoked a tri-tip and we grilled a bunch of veggies and had a big salad and cake (food that grown-ups like to eat).  Yesterday I made some shrimp po' boy sandwiches and we took them down to the beach, along with the dog, and enjoyed dinner by the ocean (doesn't the photo look absolutely peaceful?  Well, truth be told, it was horribly windy, so we didn't stay all that long, but still....).  This afternoon we are heading to SLO for some thrift-store furniture shopping (we are looking for a coffee table) and then dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant, Upper Crust.  I think the best part is that we decide what we want to do and then we do it - it's just so easy!  No negotiating, no working out schedules or rides, we just go!  This gives me hope for the future, because Jamey and I have joked about having to move to separate houses when we retire, since he loves the warm-water surf of southern California and I love the foggy rugged coast up north (better for hunkering down inside and reading!).  But now I have confidence that we will indeed be good empty-nesters when the time comes (still years from now).  And of course I couldn't relax at all if I didn't know that my kids are having a fantastic time at camp.  Grace is a counselor for the week with the junior-high girls she's been leading all year in Sunday school, and I'm sure Jason and his friends are having fun although I really don't want to think about what exactly they might be doing at this moment (chances are it involves a game of some sort, or eating some kind of food, or a bodily function...). I think about them often but I hope they have such a blast that they don't really think about us at all.  Or all the fun we have planned for the rest of the week (Fourth of July in Cayucos, drive-in, bike rides, neighborhood bbq, and so on).  Who knew that not going anywhere could be so relaxing?!