Happy 30th Birthday to Me!

Birthdays of old... oh, how the times fly.


1st birthday


The year I got a dirt cake (hooray!) ... I can't find a photo of the barbie cake.


16th...


21st.


28th.


30th!! (That's me with my 7 month old, Zeke)

Approaching 30 (Part 7)... Birthday Freebies

Less than a week left of being in my 20s! And this week is going to FLY BY, let me tell you. December is always crazy. Good, but crazy. And at this point I think I'm all tapped out on reflection, so now I'm just going to glide on into my 30s.

Celebrations... my parents took me out to sushi when they were in town on their way back home, so I have continued my tradition of birthday sushi. Chris is gonna take me out sometime this weekend if he can find someone to watch Zeke. So not sure if that will happen or not.

Oh yeah, and I'm keeping track of what kinds of freebies I can get on or around my birthday from stores. So far the only good ones I've found are a free drink at Caribou Coffee on my actual birthday, and a free entree at Doc Chey's on the day. A lot of places only give away a free dessert with purchase, which I think is lame. The Gap gave me a 25% off coupon, which is the same as the rest of their promos for the month so that isn't special. I THINK Moe's usually emails a coupon for a free burrito but I haven't gotten it yet, and at any rate I'm allergic so that will go to Chris. So it looks like on Sunday after church we'll be doing Doc Chey's and picking up my coffee.

If you want to plan for your own birthday, here's a national list of places that offer birthday promos.

Approaching 30 (Part 6)... Birthdays of Old

To commemorate the passing of my 20s and my 30-year milestone, I'm reflecting on memorable birthdays of my "youth." Let the nostalgia begin!

One year... maybe around my 11th or 12th birthday, my mom asked me if I wanted a "barbie cake." You know, where you stick a barbie in the middle of the cake and decorate it like a dress. My mom always wanted one but never got one, I guess. I told her no, I didn't want a barbie cake, I wanted a dirt cake. That's where you crush up oreos in some ice cream and hide gummy worms in it and put it in a flower pot and stick fake flowers in it. For my birthday I got a barbie cake. Then I had to pretend to like it. I was sorely disappointed.

For my 16th birthday I was planning a big bash for the Friday after my birthday. So the Saturday before my birthday, my dad took me out to a movie. But there wasn't anything good showing at the time we wanted to see something, so we wound up going to an awful movie with the Olsen Twins and a treasure hunt? Awful. Then we came home, I opened the door to walk inside and all my friends yelled SURPRISE! I just closed the door again. It took me a couple minutes to get over the shock and go into my surprise (a week early!) party. Turns out my mom and my two best friends had been secretly planning for a while, and my parakeet kept almost ruining the surprise. For a week whenever I wasn't in the room he would yell "Surprise!" and my mom couldn't figure out WHY, but was worried he would say it when I was in the room and I would start to suspect what they were up to.

For my 18th birthday some friends "kidnapped" me and took me out to dinner and bowling.

Most of my birthdays since college have been really quiet, because even when I wasn't a college student, all my friends were so they were either studying for finals or had already gone home for Christmas break by the time my birthday comes around. But sometimes I've been lucky and people were still in town.

For my 21st birthday, my roommate threw a surprise party for me and my friend Mandy, whose birthday is one day before mine. This should have been awesome, except I had just become a Christian and had a lot of drama going on (losing friends, gaining friends), so one friend who hadn't been talking to me showed up to tell me that he thought I was doing the God thing all for show and I wound up crying for half the party.

For my 25th birthday we wanted to do a Lord of the Rings marathon. People kept saying they would still be in town when my birthday came along and would come over. But instead everyone had left Savannah for the holidays by then, so only one person came over. We didn't make it through all the movies.

Starting with my 26th birthday (I think), I always go out for sushi on my birthday. In Savannah that meant going to Sakura on Broughton Street. Then the last year we were in Savannah, Chris and I went to visit Atlanta for my birthday weekend and my friend Beth took us to Ru Sans, where they sing to you and give you a $20 gift certificate to eat there later when it's your birthday. So every year since, we've gone to Ru Sans on my birthday.

Last year, 29th, I was pregnant so I could only eat cooked and veggie sushi, and Chris and I spent a quiet date night out. And over my birthday weekend my mom came into town and we went shopping for maternity clothes all weekend. It was great to have quiet girl time to celebrate.

So what does this year hold? Probably time spent with my hubby and my best little man. I haven't thought much about it, though I'm counting on some sushi! Probably a rainbow roll. Hmmm, baby snuggles and a rainbow roll. That sounds about right.

Approaching 30 (Part 5)... Places I've been - Places to go...

Welcome to the next installment of my countdown to the end of my 20s.

Places I visited for the first time in my 20s:

• San Francisco, CA
  
• Washington D.C.
• New York City, NY
• Philadelphia, PA
  
• Cleveland, OH (well, sort of. I was there but didn't get to do much visiting)
  
• Portland, OR
• Oxford, MS
• Dallas, TX
• Myrtle Beach, SC
  

Places I hope to visit before I'm 40:

• Seattle, WA
• Vancouver, CA
• Boston, MA
• Luang Prabang, Laos
• Bangkok, Thailand
• Rome, Italy
• Yellowstone
• Chicago, IL
• Austin, TX

Reflections on My 9 Day Fast from Junk Food

This is a followup to my rambling about an 8 Day Fast from Junk Food.

So my 8 day chocolate / caffeine / refined sugars fast became a 9 day fast and was very successful! Why did it become a 9 day fast? Because apparently Day 8 was my threshold... although I still was craving coffee and chocolate (for the taste, not the caffeine) during Day 7, by Friday, when I was allowed to break my fast, I didn't want to. It was strange to me, too, but I just didn't really care about having a piece of chocolate or a coffee, even though we were taking a 6 hour drive with our screaming baby and reached our destination after midnight. So I figured as long as I didn't WANT it, I certainly wasn't going to be silly and EAT it.

On Day 10 I did have a little chocolate, but still didn't wind up drinking any decaf until about Day 12... and only then because I was cold and it was brewing at my grandma's house.

All last week I was at my grandma's farmhouse in rural Indiana (and by rural I mean corn fields are our neighbors and my uncle owns ducks). It was fantastic and I never want to leave when we're there. My grandma made about a dozen different sugary snacks and desserts that taunted me all week, so even though I was allergic to most of them, I still found sugary chocolaty sweet things that I could eat, to make up for all the food I could not. And I did drink a TON of decaf coffee. Like I said, it was there, and I was cold, and it was tasty. But although I indulged quite a bit over the Thanksgiving week, I didn't feel the same need for the stuff that I had before the fast, so I was very happy to have done it. Getting back to normal life is a bit easier now, and it's been easier to cut back down on the sweets.

On the plus side, Zeke didn't sleep any better or act any less rambunctious when I cut down on the caffeine and sweets, so it looks like having them in my diet wasn't really affecting him that much. This makes me happy because that means I don't have to cut them out altogether. He's just a rambunctious kid, plain and simple.

Approaching 30 (Part 4)... Goals for my 30s

Yesterday's list was my 20 Milestones of my 20s, now for the Goals for my 30s. Things I hope to list in my Milestones in another 10 years.

1. Become a Stay-At-Home Mom. This part isn't up to me at all. It's completely out of my control. But it's something I hope to achieve before I'm 40. Not to say I wouldn't work at all, I'm sure I would work from home some. But I would like to devote the bulk of my time to my children and my home, instead of those being secondary to the day job.
2. Have baby #2. I'm not committing to any more than two kids. Any more than that will have to be the Lord changing my heart again, but I at least want to have a second child. Preferably 2 years from now, when Zeke is 2 1/2 and about out of diapers.
   
3. Figure out if I want to go to grad school, and if I do, get started with it. I talked about this in a post a few days ago. I honestly thought I would have at least gotten a start on grad school before I was 30, if not finished with it. This is not to say that I regret where I am. It was clearly not what the Lord had planned for us - He had Atlanta, learning about food allergies, and a gorgeous baby boy in our future. Grad school would have meant 3 years of sleep deprivation, stress, and sickness (I am pretty positive I would not have figured out my food allergies causing me to feel exhausted and sick all the time on a college health plan). So in the next 10 years I hope to figure out, once and for all, if I even NEED and WANT to get a graduate degree, if so, what kind, then when to do it.
4. Learn to do wet felting.
5. Learn to knit. Yes, I've knitted a couple of scarfs in the past, but I don't remember how to do it and I wasn't very good at it so it doesn't count anymore.
   
6. Learn to sew. I have the sewing machine, and even a friend who is willing to teach me. But I expect a few years to pass before I actually have the time to put into it.
7. Complete a fine art project. I have an idea in mind, I just need to execute it.
   
8. Find a place where I can get into wheel-throwing pottery again. I miss it. It feeds my soul. Then I want to get good enough to make a teapot. A good one. I tried last time around, when I first got into pottery after I graduated from undergrad, but my teapot was a bust and I never even took it home.
9. Produce another film.
10. Buy a house. I was debating whether or not to put this as a goal. Chris asked and I even said I didn't want it to be a goal, because if we don't do it then I'll feel like a failure. But I'm not afraid to list my other goals, so... yeah, to be perfectly honest I DO hope that we'll be able to buy a house in the next 10 years. It's impossible with our current financial situation and with what we want out of a house (size, location, etc). But I DO want a yard and a place to call our own with kids... we don't want to be moving from apartment to apartment forever. So there you have it. It's a goal, and we're slowly trying to put money away for a down payment, and while it's not on our 5 year plan, I do hope to have it on our 10 year plan.

So there you have it. 10 goals for the next 10 years seems adequately ambitious to me... it's like 1 a year. I wonder if this blog will still be around in some incarnation in 10 years so I can look back at my list and see what I've accomplished.

Approaching 30 (Part 3) ... 20 Greatest Milestones of my 20s

Here we are, 20 days before I turn 30. So I bring to you a recap of the 20 Milestones / Accompishments of my 20s.

1. Giving my life to Christ (just days before I turned 21)
2. Marrying Chris (age 23)
3. Giving birth to my first child (age 29)
4. Graduating college with high honors (age 22)
5. Finding out I was pregnant (age 28)
6. Realizing I was in love with Chris (age 22)
   
7. Producing a feature-length independent documentary (age 26-27)
   
8. Showing our first feature documentary in film festivals (age 27)
9. Showing my art in a two-woman show at the Reitz Union with .tif (age 21)
   
10. Learning to crochet, and writing my own patterns (age 27, 28)
11. Becoming friends with my mother (early 20s)
12. Discovering how to eat to feel healthy (age 28)
13. Letting go of "my plans" to move to Portland, and following the Lord's lead in moving to Atlanta instead, without a plan, and watching as God put the pieces into place (age 27)
    
14. Learning to teach (age 22)
15. Designing our own PEZ dispenser that PEZ made for us.
    
16. Learning how to throw pottery on a wheel (age 22)
    
17. Learning how to solder silver to make jewelry (age 22)
    
18. Learning to do stained glass (age 24)
    
19. Having the guts to dye my hair blue for a few months (age 21-22)
20. Learning needle felting (age 28)

My 8 Day Fast from My Favorite Junk Foods

taking a short break from my Turning 30 rambling to talk about my favorite junk food.

Most of you know that a couple years ago, I found out that I have a TON of food sensitivities that prevent me from eating a lot of "normal people" food. While this has made some things very tricky (like finding food when I travel), it's been a blessing in so many other ways. I feel a lot better, for one thing. I also learned how to eat an appropriate amount of calories for my size, which meant that I went from a size 12 to a size 6 in the first 6 months after learning about my allergies, and have since been able to maintain a healthy weight (even the day I went into labor, I weighed less that I did before I learned about my food issues). I have also learned how to cook tons of tasty food and have gotten in a groove of making food to take with me places, which also saves us money. Finally, with all the research I've had to do to find tasty recipes, I've learned so much about eating healthy and the benefits of healthy eating. All great things that NEVER would have happened if I could still get away with just popping open a BPA-laden can of gluten-and-corn-and-sodium-filled Progresso Soup every time I was lazy and hungry, like I did for so many years before.

But because there are so many foods that I have to avoid, I tend to really enjoy the ones I CAN have. I was really praying that Zeke wouldn't be lactose intolerant like many babies are, because then I would have to give up dairy for as long as I was nursing. (Thankfully, a two-week dairy fast proved that it didn't have any effect!) I also really enjoy my chocolate and coffee (decaf, of course, because I'm sensitive to caffeine).

One great thing about nursing a baby is that you can eat a lot more calories and not gain weight. This means I've stopped counting calories (because who has time with a baby, anyways?) and have been giving into my sweet tooth a LOT lately. I even started to cheat and have some M&Ms and Snickers bars every now and then, because that little bit of corn syrup wasn't hurting me much, and they are soooo good. But the more I gave into my sweet tooth, the harder it's been to say no. I finally had to acknowledge that it was getting out of control, and that I didn't have the willpower to stop eating this stuff.

Another thing I started to notice is that I was getting caffeine headaches if I went a day without a decaf coffee or a green tea. I thought that was kind of ridiculous, that I could even develop a dependency on such a low dose of caffeine. I was also wondering if that caffeine was keeping the little man awake... we've always had trouble getting him to sleep, and he's VERY active - always needs stimulation - so I was starting to wonder if the caffeine and sugar from my diet had anything to do with it.

Then I kept reading about how sugar consumption makes you much more susceptible to colds/flus, and with this crazy flu season I didn't want to be increasing my chances of bringing something home to my son.

All of this combined kept me thinking about my dependency on my favorite junk foods, and how with the holiday season around the corner, between traveling and holiday meals my eating habits were only going to get worse. I needed to do something about this now instead of deciding to do something about it in January when I will already be burnt out.

So I decided it was time for drastic action. Telling myself to "cut down" on the junk wouldn't do the trick. I needed to detox from the junk... so I am doing an 8 day fast from chocolate, caffeine, and sugar. I'm now on Day 5 and doing great!

Why 8 days? Because I'm going out of town on the 9th day and I don't want to deny myself coffee or anything else that I can eat when I'm on the road and struggling with the normal difficulties of eating on the road. 8 days was as good as it was going to get - and I'm hoping a good week of eliminating those things will make it easier for me to make healthy eating choices over the holidays.

The decision was hard to make but it's been easier to do than I thought (except for the coffee... I just love coffee! I miss it!). I've realized that my mind works in a very specific way. Food that I know I shouldn't eat is a strong temptation that I almost always give in to. But food that I know I can't eat isn't a temptation at all. I just look right past it, like it's rocks or something. So I just needed to tell myself that I can't eat chocolate, sugar, or caffeine and then it's not so hard. I even made my husband some of my favorite no-bake chocolate oatmeal cookies last night (ingredients are basically butter, sugar, chocolate, milk, and oats) and didn't even think of eating one.

I do need to come up with some reasonable limits to my junk intake for when I allow myself to eat these again, so I don't go right back off the deep end. Otherwise it will have all been for nothing. I'm thinking one cup of decaf a day, one serving of chocolate a day... but is that too much? Maybe 4 servings of chocolate a week? This is the tricky part... I'll get back to you on that.

In the meantime, I've just been chowing down on dried papaya chunks whenever I have a sweet tooth, and I've been drinking lots of fruity tea with honey. Those both help, but it also helps that my husband and friends are all very supportive (not tempting me or telling me I'm silly). I've been posting a Facebook status about this at least once a day to keep myself accountable and get a little encouragement.

And, of course, I keep dreaming of the coffee I'll make on Friday.

Approaching 30 (Part 2)... Well, what did you expect?

To me the most natural thing about hitting a "milestone" birthday is to ask yourself whether or not you are doing what you hoped to be doing at that certain milestone. Yesterday I talked about where my parents were at 30, and what expectations they may have had. So now to think about where I am, and where I thought I'd be.

When I was around 20 years old, in college for computer graphics, I had some definite expectations of where I would be 10 years later. I always believed that if I worked hard I would be able to do whatever I wanted, doors would open, jobs would appear, and I would be successful. I was always a really hard worker, so I figured I would graduate with honors, get a great job in a big city as a web designer, and move my way up the ladder. A couple years after that I would get a graduate degree, then get a job as a web design professor at a college somewhere. I saw myself happily married and owning a fancy loft somewhere. No kids. I'd have plenty of money, not rich but living comfortably with a good savings. I didn't know who I'd be married to or where I'd live, but I figured I'd make my way out to California, maybe the San Francisco bay area. I always had a very romanticized idea about California. Good weather and fun stuff to do and artsy people I could related to.

Cut to real life at 30. I am happily married, I'm a web designer, and I live in a big city. I did graduate undergrad with honors, but I guess I didn't work hard enough of something, because I never have found a job that pays what the career sites say someone with my skill set should be paid. And there is no ladder to climb where I work. We just barely pay the bills, and we live in an apartment, nothing fancy. We're in Atlanta, not California, and plan to be here for a long time. Even still, we don't have any plan to buy our own place soon because the money just isn't there. I haven't gone to grad school, so although I've taught at a tech college, I'm not on my way to being a professor. Perhaps the biggest difference from what I envisioned is the little man who has become the center of my world as of late. I honestly never saw myself as a mom.

So this begs the question - do I regret where I am? I think that's a tough question. There are things that I WISH were different, but nothing that I wish I had done differently... does that make sense? I believe I am where the Lord would have me right now. I am glad that I married Chris. Glad that I followed him to Savannah. Glad that we followed the Lord's leading to Atlanta. Ecstatic that we followed the Lord's prompting that led to the birth of our amazing son, Zeke.

I tried a couple of times in the past 6 years to do the grad school thing. I was accepted into graduate school at SCAD in Savannah, but after one quarter and speaking with a dean, I realized that the programs SCAD could offer me would not give me the education I wanted, and so I dropped out. I didn't want to go into debt for a degree that I wouldn't use. I am VERY happy that I decided not to complete my degree at SCAD. Then I applied to some fine art graduate schools after Chris graduated... I really worked at it this time and thought I knew what I wanted, but I wasn't accepted to any of the programs. That was really hard on me. Really hard.

But looking back 3 years later, I know that those programs wouldn't have been quite right, either. And if we HAD gone someplace for me to go to grad school, well... life would be very different. And while I can't reasonably speculate on what would have been different in an alternate reality, I will say that I doubt I would have discovered my food allergies (the secret to how I am able to function for a full day now instead of crashing horribly after just a few hours), and I highly doubt that I would be a mother now. The Lord's plan was different from my plan... and I have to say that the Lord's plan looks a lot better than my own. At this point I honestly don't know if I wanted graduate school for the right reasons anyways. I may have wanted it because it's what I was "supposed to do" to "live up to my potential." And that might be a really bad reason to do something, if it's not truly where the Lord is leading me in my life. I am hoping that I will gain more insight in the next 10 years about whether or not I need to pursue a graduate degree in anything.

So, sure. It would be awesome to have more money, a nice house, a fancier job. Or Chris with a fancy job so I could be a stay-at-home momma. And to be honest, I still hope to have those things when I hit my 40-year milestone. But these are the areas of my life where I am learning to be content with what we have, while I am joyful over the things I never even hoped for... trust in the Lord and an amazing baby boy. And I know that so far, the Lord's plan is better than my own.

Approaching 30 (Part 1)... Where were you?

So here I am, thinking about how close I am to the Big Three-Oh, and wondering if my life looks like I expected it to look at 30. It got me wondering what my parents' lives were like when THEY were 30, so I sent them each a Facebook message (yeppers, my dad just joined the big FB, so now you KNOW it's no longer cool. I'm joking, Dad). They were both kind enough to give me a bit of reflection on their lives at 30, and told me I could share it with you.

When my Dad turned 30, he had a daughter who had just turned 5 (that would be me), and a 2 1/2 year old son. We lived in Richmond, IN, just 30 minutes from my mom's family and about 4 hours from his family in Louisville, KY. He was working his second job since graduating college with an accounting degree. He owned his first house, and he had been married for 7 years. I think it's 7, anyways. He told me,

I really wasn't sure what I would be doing at 30. We lived in Richmond and were ready to try something new. Florida was a growing state (plus warm), while Richmond was struggling, so we thought we would give Florida a try.

We could always move back if Fl didn't work out.

I was 31 when we moved. I obviously wanted a better life for our family so we went where there were more opportunities. Similar to you guys going to Atlanta.

My mom is a couple years younger than my dad, so when she turned 30 we had moved to Florida, but we were still renting the condo we lived in the first year we were down in the Fort Myers area. (They bought a house in Cape Coral and moved us there just 5 months later). She had a daughter who had just turned 7 and was in the 1st grade, and a son who was 4 and in preschool. She had started her own business selling and delivering copier paper to local businesses - a job that she could work from home most of the time, and where she could make deliveries during the day while we were at school to make sure she was home for us when we got out of school. She said,

I had just started my business in August, and we bought my first business car on my birthday, so I joked that it was my birthday present, a used celebrity wagon, stick shift.

When I asked her if her life was what she thought it would be at 30, she told me,

My life was so much more than I had anticipated it to be at 30. For one, I had never anticipated we would live in Florida. I thought we would live in Indiana, Kentucky, or Ohio. I thought I would be working in interior design. So when we moved to Florida, and I started my own business, that was so far from my anticipations.

Was it what I wanted it to be, I guess I didn't have big expectations. I think I always wanted a bigger house, and I always wished I had the money to have the furniture of my dreams, and build the house of my dreams. But that is all material, and I'm not really disappointed that I didn't. What I did have of my dreams was, and is, a wonderful, kind, considerate, loving husband, who has provided well for his family. And two healthy children, a girl and boy, what more could I really want. Because from the time I was a little girl I think all I really wanted was just that, the husband of my dreams, and children. All the rest is just icing on the cake.

By the time my parents each turned 30, they were on their way down the path of what I would consider their "lives" once the dust settled, but even at 30 they still hadn't met the people who have made up their tight circle of friends for over 20 years. I don't know why, but for some reason that blows my mind. Sure, I know that within a couple years of that milestone age, they would be settling into a home in Cape Coral they would live in for 10 years. My dad would get a job in Fort Myers that he would stay in for even longer. My mom would use her paper business to buy groceries and save up for her kids' college educations, and wouldn't retire it until her kids went off to college. All of that, the career stuff, the house stuff, it's important stuff but even as all of that changes, your core friends are the people who walk through it all with you, so it's just crazy to me to think that at 30, the people they still hang out with on a weekly (and often more-than-weekly) basis, and have been for as long as I can remember, were still a couple of years away.

It's interesting to me... I always had in my mind that by 30 I should "be" where I'm going to be in my life, so it's kind of comforting, in a way, to realize that my parents, who I think have done very well for themselves, weren't quite to that stage yet at 30. It makes me wonder what the next 2 to 5 years have in store for us. If it will be a journey into "the next 20 years of our lives" in a way. What jobs, homes, children, and friends will come our way. If there are friends I haven't met yet (or am just beginning to get to know) that will walk with us through the next 20 or 30 years of our lives. I wonder if you will be celebrating Zeke's 30th birthday with me?

Now that I have pondered where my parents were at 30, tomorrow I will reflect on where I thought I would be vs. where I am at 30.

30 days 'til I turn 30

In one month I'll be thirty. Wow... 30. Thir-ty. Chris turned the big Three-Oh just two weeks after Zeke was born, so he didn't get much fanfare. (Though my dad took him out to two movies that weekend and to Ted's Montana Grill - leave it to my daddoo to make up for me being too tired and distracted to be good at celebrating). Ever since then I've caught myself referring to myself as thirty, too... I guess I figured I was close enough and just started rounding up. Which is pretty ridiculous - I should be holding on to every last vestige of my 20s. I guess being a mother makes me feel older or something.

At any rate, as time passes I'm becoming more and more aware that I will soon be out of my 20s forever, and it's a little odd. I never thought of 30 as old; I have plenty of friends in their 30s and they don't seem old. I even had a few friends turn the big Four-Oh this past year. That doesn't seem old either ... for them. But for ME to be turning thirty, suddenly it seems much older than I expected it to.

So to commemorate, I plan to write a handful of navel-gazing, completely self-centered posts. Lucky you. (Hey, no one's forcing you to read them!) I only turn 30 once so I plan to enjoy it a little. I remember when I turned 26, it wasn't until I was turning 26 that I realized I had completely blown an entire year of pointing out that my dad was "twice my age," and that he would never again be twice my age... from now on I was gaining on him. He will still be 25 years older than me, but never again would he be "twice my age" or "more than twice my age." All that fun, wasted. I called him to lament that I had missed such a golden opportunity, but that was NOT the same as seizing said opportunity for the year.

Not so for 30! I will do things like think back to the big things that happened in my 20s, talk about where my parents were at 30, talk about previous birthday milestones, and make lists like my goals of things to do before I'm 40, places I want to visit in my 30s... I told you, self-centered navel gazing for the world to see. If I was really good, I would do this in the form of a countdown of the 30 days before I'm 30, with a post a day... but I've got a full-time job and an infant, so I am not that ambitious.

My Recipe for Yummy Veggie and Chicken Noodle Soup

On Saturday I finally made my favorite chicken noodle soup, that I haven't taken the time to make since Zeke was born. It was super tasty and so I decided to finally write down my "recipe" to share. Just a reminder that you can ammend as necessary if you don't have something or don't like something in the recipe. We usually have all this stuff in the fridge, and when Chris bakes chicken thighs he always makes extra for me to shred and freeze for later recipes. We also had some extra broccoli prepared for omelets last night, so I threw what was left into my soup. I don't usually add broccoli, so even though it's in the photo it's not in my recipe below.

Kendra's All-natural Yummy Veggie and Chicken Noodle Soup

• 1 cup chicken broth
• 2 cups water
  
• 5 oz. cooked shredded chicken thigh or breast
• 1 small yellow onion or 1/2 a large onion, chopped
  
• 1 stalk celery, chopped
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 3 baby bella mushrooms, sliced
• 2 cups of greens (spinach, or kale, mixed greens, whatever works).
  
• 1 bag spaghetti-style tofu shiritake noodles
  
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• tbsp olive oil
  
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp cumin powder
• pepper to taste
• pinch of cayenne pepper
  

1. Put water, chicken broth, onion, celery, carrots, mushrooms, garlic, and olive oil in a pot and bring it to a boil. Reduce to medium heat, it should be boiling lightly for 10-15 minutes or until carrots are as soft as you want them.
   
2. While that's boiling, rinse the tofu noodles, cut them in half, and microwave for 1 minute.
3. Mix in the salt, cumin powder, onion powder, pepper, and pinch of cayenne pepper.
4. Mix in the greens, and shredded chicken. Let simmer for another 3 minutes or so until greens have wilted.
   
5. Get two big soup bowls*. Put half the tofu noodles in each bowl. Ladle the soup over the noodles, half in each bowl.
6. Serve!
   

* For me this makes 2 big bowls of soup, depending on how much you eat you might want to break it into more bowls. I have found that the noodles are hard to divide evenly if they are added to the pan of soup, which is why I put the soup on top of it. Sometimes I do the same thing with the chicken, heating it first and then just adding as much as I want for each bowl to the top of the soup.

Cooking Day

Today Chris had to work all day, so Zeke and I were on our own for the Saturday. Since I had some squash and a pumpkin and stuff that I needed to do something with, today became a busy Cooking Day. I often get a bit too ambitious when it comes to baking days... I just keep adding "one more thing" and they keep piling up and it gets a bit hard to juggle, but today wound up being pretty successful nonetheless. By the end of the day I had accomplished the following:

1. Crock pot full of the tastiest batch of White Bean Chili I've ever made (with ground turkey and sprouted beans - navy, garbanzo, pinto, lentils).
   
2. 6 servings of Roasted Pumpkin Salad (not that tasty, but I'll cope - it was fun to try and now I've got lunches for a week).
3. A batch of sweet potato puree for Zeke (ice cube tray full of batches for later)
4. 4 cups of pumpkin puree for baking later
5. Ice cube tray full of pumpkin puree for later recipes
6. Roasted pumpkin seeds - best part of baking pumpkins!

The problem with all the cooking is that lots of things needed to be frozen, but our freezer is already full of veggie broth and shredded chicken and breast milk and tons of other miscellaneous stuff, so I also had to organize the freezer with a baby strapped to my hip and remove the ice cream maker bin to make room.

I also did two loads of laundry, took a walk with a friend, and... watched 2 episodes of Gilmore Girls. And all with a 6 month old who refused to nap. Good day!

Tomorrow after church I have a friend coming over to hang out. We're making some sort of lunch with the squash and turnip greens I have (need to find a recipe), and I need to bake something yummy and gluten free with the pumpkin puree that I didn't freeze. I love free weekends.

Now cleaning... yeah, cleaning isn't happening at all. I might try to do some of that tomorrow. I also might actually FOLD some clothes tonight. I do much better with baking that with cleaning. Cleaning doesn't fill my belly.

Kitchen shelves

Our new kitchen has much less counter and cabinet space than our old apartment... that was the one thing that made me uncertain about renting the place. But everything else about the place was so perfect, so we decided we would make the kitchen work. Luckily it does have a "breakfast nook" so we got an island from Ikea (as-is section!) and then the fun part. We had been collecting wine crates from places around town to use as shelves and drawers and such. So we put some up on the walls in the breakfast nook to make more cabinet space. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.



For more on our craftiness in the new place, check out Chris's awesome tables. These things are amazing!

Atlanta Deluge

So if you don't live in Atlanta, it's possible that you've missed the news that it's been raining for about a week, and yesterday's storms brought the metro area to its tipping point... floods everywhere!

So yesterday my coworkers and I decided we should leave work early to try and get home before storms and flooding got worse, but we were about an hour late in making that decision... a coworker and I got stuck on the I-75/I-85 connector in downtown Atlanta when the interstate flooded in both directions. I circled the approximate location of my car when this aerial shot was taken - right under that overpass. I was just grateful to be under the overpass so I could get out of my car and walk around a bit to figure out what was happening... and also grateful that I wasn't about 10 minutes earlier to the scene, or that may have been my car drowned out in the water!



My coworker took this photo of the scene.



After probably an hour of sitting there, police organized things enough that we could all turn around and squeeze up the side and get onto a bypass a little ways back on the interstate. Then I had to call Chris and get him to figure out for me what the best alternate route was for me to get home and not get stuck on another flooded road. Chris had a friend who was also going home from downtown, who was able to tell him how he made it safely to the interstate, so I followed suit, slowly but surely... and my 30 minute commute finally ended 2 hours after it started.

I was just soooo grateful to be home and not stuck on the interstate for longer than we were. At first I was anticipating being there for hours!

At least now I have a story, and I can mark "make a three-point turn and drive back the wrong way on the interstate" off my list of "Things to do before I'm 30." *

* No, that wasn't on my list. I don't even have a list. But I SHOULD have a list, and if I did, that should have been on it.

ceramics fun day, and the craft tables...

A couple Saturdays ago, my friend Bethany and I (and little Zeke!) went down to my local independent coffee shop and had fun painting ceramics, courtesy of Glazy Dazy. Zeke was pretty well behaved for most of the time, playing in his car seat and sleeping in the carrier I was wearing, so that I was able to get most of my set painted before I had to get Bethany to help out with him so I could finish it up. We had a good time and I have a new addition to my teapot collection!

The pottery was really reasonably priced, and the woman who does the ceramics also does parties, so we're thinking we HAVE to get a party together to paint once we get our all-purpose-creative-room finished. Chris and his dad built some super cool work tables for the room, but Chris has to put the finishing touches on them and finish organizing that room. I can't wait until it's all together, it is going to be an awesome room.

Here is a sneak peak of the work in progress.

compost fail

Yeah, so we gave up on composting. After a year of trying with our 5 gallon bucket system and winding up with compost that killed my plants and smelled bad, Chris decided he would dig a trench for compost in the back of our new apartment, only to find that we had hard clay, not dirt back there. So since we don't have the money for a real compost drum or anything, we're back to throwing away our food trash and calling our year-plus experiment of saving food waste a total waste of time and effort. Bummer.

Studies show that Prenatal Air Pollution Lowers Children's IQ

So I just read the first article to really make me paranoid ... a new study showed a link between exposure to smog before birth and low IQ in children. I live in Atlanta and, until about two months before I got pregnant, would walk a mile down a really smoggy street to the train station and back 4 times a week for work. Sometimes in July/August even the short walk from the train station to my office building would make me feel sick from the car exhaust. I'm just glad we happened to move to a less busy area right before we got pregnant... but it still makes me a bit paranoid about living in a big city.

Zeke and the mobile

Zeke just got old enough to care about things like his mobile, so we finally put it up in his bassinet. The first time he saw it he was mesmerized for quite a while and actually smiled and talked to it, which was the best compliment a momma could get! Here he is at 11 weeks old, checking out his sea mobile.

Genetically Modified corn and soy

Chris sent me this interesting (although long) article on the effects of genetically modified (GM) foods. It further makes me wonder if my corn allergy is related to eating GM corn before I started avoiding corn. Some of the side effects they mention (other than allergies) are flu-like symptoms... which are exactly the symptoms I get now when I eat things with corn or corn derivatives.