Pies in the oven!

It's fall, when farmer-types harvest their bounty and people who were super-excited about a farm share are overwhelmed.

We have a hundred tomatoes. And a million peppers of all sorts (included the hottest peppers known to man! Yikes!). We also have three squash-pumpkin-looking things, funny-shaped sweet potatoes, basil (yay) and various fall bounty. It's awesome, even when the squash look a little bewitched.

B's brothers and their exceptional wives, B's mom, B's mom's boyfriend, the nieces and I are starting a monthly dinner tradition. Tonight is our first go at it. I've made two pies - a pumpkin and an apple - for the occasion.

My studying for Organic is going good so far. I'm hoping to take the test this week or next. I'm trying to get out of the house when I hit the books. On Friday I arrived at the restaurant where B and I were meeting for dinner and studied at the bar for an hour!

This is pretty random, but life is wonderful. Hoody season is upon us, cool breezes are whipping through our apartment and we get to eat pie tonight! Yay!

What's up.

Me-oh-my. I used to teach with a woman who used that term as a "watch yourself!"-type warning. She really rocked it, even though it's a silly phrase.

I'm trying to watch myself a bit these days - I've got big goals, big plans - and I need to accomplish these so I can get on with my awesome life.

1. I must finish Organic & Biochemistry, which I took an incomplete in this summer after B's second Lyme disease hospitalization. This incomplete is looming over my head and I just need to f-ing finish it. Or else. My plan, which earns more credence when I post it here, is to study like it's my job and press on as though I'm about to take the bar/boards/whatever. I can do this. I just need to hunker down and do it. Tomorrow I'm going to leave the house after I finish classes and study, study, STUDY.
2. Once I finish Organic I can move along and start applying or preparing to apply to nursing school! Yay!
3. After I apply or at least get all this in better order, I can get a part-time job. Doing something.
   

I've got plenty of other goals, including playing defense for the Chicago Bears, running a lot more, and making a decent-looking pie crust - but those are the crucial ones. Tomorrow is Super Serious Study Day 1. I know I can do it and I'll report back about my progress.

(Between B and myself I've been promised a pedicure, dinner out, new clothes and permission to ready trashy novels once I finish Organic. I can do this!)

It's not like I have a problem with carbon. I love carbon. I actually think Organic is really neat. I'm definitely not discounting carbon.

Cooking

I love to cook. B does too.

Most of our favorite wedding gifts involve our kitchen and we try to make dinner (with plenty of leftovers for lunches) several nights a week. B can whip up a mean brunch. I've written about food a bit, in part to show off but also to share ideas.

I try to be fearless in the kitchen. My mom is an amazing cook and her mom never cooked! Seriously! Her best recipe, as recalled at her memorial service when I was in elementary, was to preheat the oven and call the local fried chicken place. (You keep fried chicken crispy, warm and happy in an oven, you know.)

While I was growing up my mom made everything... pumpkin bars, cookies of all sorts (especially chocolate chip cookies, which come from the best dough EVER), casseroles, kabobs, pasta, lasagna, stir fry, oven fried chicken, and so much more. There's no possible way to describe my mom's cooking. She's just wonderful - one of those cooks who tosses things in, just knows when things are done, cooks with a rhythm. (I think she shivers when she sees me peeling potatoes - but she still lets me help.)

B and I are bold cooks. We eat late in the evening - grating Parmesan freely, stealing basil from our neighbor, forgoing recipe rules and laughing at each other. B's still not at all comfortable with all my additions and omissions - I can admit I once made brownies, as a preteen, without oil thinking they'd be healthier (they're actually so terrible that you consider eating a stick of butter - lesson learned). But I'm smart cook these days.

B even gets nervous when I'm making my mom's recipes. She tends to assume we all know what she knows - "Cook them until they look done" or "Add 2 tablespoons or more."

At this very moment I'm attempting to replicate Kolokytho Keftedes from a Greek restaurant we love. I googled the dish and found exactly one recipe. I got the basic idea, made something approximately like what the recipe described and I'm going to cook them. Until whenever they look done.

Today's photo demonstrates another important element of delicious-meal-making, or enjoying. Whatever. It's actually from Bin 36 and I can't wait to go there again!

Retirement and filling your time

My awesome DAD just retired at the end of July. Yay!

He told me that many people ask him what on earth he'll do with all this free time. His answer made me laugh and feel proud at the same time:

"First, what's it to you? Second, I'm NOT working. Third, I'm going to a lot of ball games. Then they ask if I really like ball games that much."

I think my dad is a little exasperated, as am I, with the idea that we need to be so damned busy. I'm three months into the jobless life, taking exactly 8 credit hours, and can't believe how much stuff - mostly stupid stuff, some real need-to-get-dones, but lots of little things to do - fills up my time. I'm trying to be a person who enjoys life more, takes it a little slower and takes time to rest, write and do what's good for myself.

For my dad retirement means watching Westerns, fixing things around the house, attending a lot of ball games, reading and hanging out. Nothing ridiculous and definitely something wonderful.

As for me, retirement is a ways off - but today I've made use of some leftover veggies, baked crackers, finished a lab report, thoroughly enjoyed a half-pot of coffee, met with a professor and chatted with my sister-in-law for a spell. There are certainly moments when I feel bored, but I think that's something I'm going to combat - with cooking, cleaning, organizing, studying, walking, biking, reading, and even a few ballgames.

The photo here is a gang of harbor seals we saw on our way to Channel Islands National Park (by boat). Harbor seals, and other seal-types, are - by my observation - very good at hanging out.