Scrambled!

I'm no stranger to the blogging world, but I find that I don't really do flat out cooking posts that much.  Usually, this is because I have much more profound things to say.  But recently, I have found myself with nine new cookbooks -  all of which entered my life within the last two weeks.  Given this unexpected windfall of food preparation instruction, it only seems appropriate that I should write a cooking post or two to share the wealth - especially when a recipe has a crazy awesome name like "scramblewich."

Yes.  Today, we are making Scramblewiches.

Scramblewiches are brought to you by Rachel Ray's cookbook 365: No Repeats - A Year of Delightfully Different Dinners, which I bought nearly brand new for $3 at a secondhand bookstore.  It's the very first recipe in the book, has an eye-catching name, and is basically breakfast on a baguette.  Obviously, an excellent choice for dinner.

It occurred to me after the fact that I should have timed the cooking to see if this was truly a "30-Minute Meal", as Ms. Ray purports to provide, but oh well.  It definitely didn't take very long to make at all, and was super simple aside from some unusually clumsy missteps - for example, dropping the baguette on the floor immediately upon unwrapping it.  Five second rule.

Step one, after picking up the baguette from the floor, is to toast it in a low-temperature oven until it's nice and crispy.  Seeing as I bought this baguette two days ago, it was already pretty crispy, so I skipped this step.  Next, cut the baguette in half lengthwise and crosswise to make four slices, then hollow out the middle to make boats.  For convenience, you might consider collecting all the bread innards into a bowl.  Then you can also enjoy a game of willpower against the temptation of snacking on bread the entire time you're cooking.

Come sail away...

With your bread looking all boat-y and half the bread crumbs likely devoured already, it's time to turn to the eggs.  Crack eight eggs into a bowl, and whisk them on up.  Pro tip: the shell goes outside the bowl.

Win.

Once the eggs are beaten, add a splash of milk, salt, pepper, and a teaspoon of hot sauce.  Saucy.  It was around this point that I realized what folly it was to try and beat all this together in a cereal bowl, and pulled out a bonafide mixing bowl.

Next, it was time to cook the ham.  Half a pound of ham, specifically.  Basically, this involved throwing as many slices of ham into the pan as could possibly fit.  Also, this is fancy fresh-sliced-from-the-deli-counter ham, so be impressed.

Ham-tastic.

After the ham is browned at the edges, it's time to add the eggs and scramble them.  You'll recall that I had to upgrade to the big bowl for the eggs, so I wasn't quite sure how this would turn out.  My problem with recipes that call for a "large skillet" is that my large skillet is also my small skillet, and my midsize skillet (translation: I only have one skillet).  But I just dumped them all in there anyway and hoped for the best.  As you can see, it was somewhat disconcerting at first...

Scramble-soup?

It stayed that way for an unnerving amount of time, before I got impatient and jacked up the heat, resulting in this beautiful pan of scrambley goodness.

That's better.

When the eggs are still a bit soft, but no longer soup, divide up the mixture evenly between the four bread bowls.  Top each one with a slice of Swiss cheese split in half, and try to balance their teeter-totter-y-ness on a baking sheet.  Turn the broiler on, and pop those babies in the oven.

Ready to go!

According to the recipe, the bread boats needed to be broiled long enough that the cheese melted but not so long that it got all bubbly and brown, because it would overcook the eggs underneath.  Seeing this as the crucial moment, I plopped down on my kitchen floor and stared at them through the oven door, not wanting to overcook them at all.  It only took about a minute for them to broil, and then Bam!  Scramblewiches!

Hooray!

I let them cool for about a minute, rounded out my meal with some grapes, and set about to eating my creation.

The Verdict: 

It was delicious.  It had all the goodness of one of those fast food breakfast sandwiches without all the grease.  The scramblewich does not lend itself to graceful eating - I actually pulled the whole napkin-in-your-shirt thing to keep from getting bread crumbs everywhere.  But it was awesome, and generally easy.  It's great as breakfast-for-dinner, but would also be an easy brunch meal.  People would scramble to eat them.

Too corny?

Whatevs.  

Stop Hiding the Healthy!

Disclaimer: Any St. Louis-ans reading this post should be aware that I will herein refer to the eating establishment in question as Panera, and NOT as Saint Louis Bread Company.  Yes, I know that it's the same thing.  Yes, I know that you think I should remain loyal to our hometown by calling it Bread Co.  Let it go.  And yes, Jessica, I am talking to you.

I met with some church members at Panera yesterday morning to discuss some details of our upcoming Vacation Bible School program, also known as the most intense event of the children's ministry year.  We met for breakfast, and being five months into an intentional healthy-eating endeavor I decided to look up the nutritional information of the menu beforehand to find the healthiest options.

Obviously, fluffy buttery pastries abound behind Panera's glass-shielded counter (which, let's face it, is one of the principal draws of Panera).  But the general core of my healthy-eating plan is low-carb and low-fat, so I wanted to steer clear of the fluffy buttery pastries.  Bagels weren't much better.  But then, in my research, I stumbled upon something called the power breakfast bowl - two eggs, steak, fresh tomato, and fresh avocado.

Say what?

I am no stranger to the world of Panera, but I'd never heard of a power breakfast bowl.  That was weird enough, but what was weirder was that there were apparently multiple kinds of power breakfast bowls.  And there were power lunch bowls.  In the otherwise carb-explosive setting of Panera, these protein-rich and veggie-filled options were something I had never seen on the menu.

And that's because...they're not there.

The power breakfast bowl is literally nowhere on the menu board.  You could read the whole thing and never find it listed, because it doesn't exist.  So unless you stumble upon it through intentional research to find healthy options, you don't know that those choices are available.

Apparently what I had found was the "hidden menu" that Panera unveiled at the beginning of the year.  This is a collection of low-carb, gluten-free options that Panera offers, but doesn't advertise on their menu because they don't want to take up space for what they consider a "niche market."  And, apparently the secrecy of the menu is supposed to be a fun draw for Panera "insiders" and "regulars" to benefit from, and therefore feel special because they are "in the know."

I think that is utter and complete nonsense.

It's no secret that the United States has a healthy eating problem, in that we Americans aren't very good at it.  And I'm sure that there are manifold reasons why that is.  But it seems to me that "hidden menus" like this aren't exactly helping.  If I hadn't made it a point to research the nutrition info beforehand, I would have assumed that the fluffy buttery pastries and carb-tastic bagels were the only options to choose from.  And then I would have missed the opportunity to make a healthier choice.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't really think that's fair.

I'm not saying that it should be up to restaurants to make people be healthy.  Obviously, personal responsibility is the main component when it comes to healthy eating.  But if restaurants didn't purposefully hide healthy options, maybe people would make wiser choices.  You can't make a wise decision if you're not informed, and when you go to a restaurant, it's only natural to assume that the menu is the menu.  Even though I'd read enough to know that this healthier option supposedly existed, I wasn't sure the cashier was going to know what I was talking about and feared that I would sound stupid for making up non-menu items.

I've heard of other restaurants having hidden menus - mostly restaurants of the burger joint variety.  I guess hidden menus can be fun incentives for teenagers who want crazy 5-tiered burgers or chili-cheese covered fries.  But why do yo have to go and hide the healthy stuff?  Does it really take that much room on a menu board to add five additional items?  The healthy-eating niche market is bound to stay as a niche-market if you don't make those options easily to locate.  Who knows, maybe someone will order it just because it sounds good, and the "niche market" argument will prove pointless anyway.

I mean heck, if you're gonna hide something, why don't you hide that delicious chocolate pastry that will take up half of my daily fat and carb intake?  It might do Americans' health a favor.

A Confusingly Intricate Story: A Review of "The Shadow of the Wind"

I finished the first book in my stack of summer reading.  Or, perhaps I should say, I FINALLY finished the book that happened to be on the top of my stack for the summer, but which I had really been reading since early January - a 480 page block of tangled plot lines and 15+ primary characters known as The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

First, some background on how I got this book.  I acquired this book through a coworker who, upon learning that I had recently finished The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, suggested that I borrow it on the basis that I must like "books about books."  And sure, I do like books about books.  The problem though, and the reason that I immediately felt a surge of "uh oh" sweep over me, is that I take a LONG time to read books - especially books that I didn't necessarily choose to read.  People...I borrowed this book in October.  OCTOBER.  It is now June.  That is how long it takes me to read books that people lend me.  I tried to warn my coworker, but she insisted that I take it.  So I took it.

Now, some background on the general plot.  The Shadow of the Wind is set in Barcelona in the 1930s/40s, and opens when a young boy named Daniel is taken by his father to a place called "The Cemetery of Forgotten Books" by his father, a bookseller.  There, Daniel finds a book called "The Shadow of the Wind," written by a man named Julian Carax, and takes it home with him.  He loves the book, and decides to find out more about its author.  Soon enough, Daniel encounters a mysterious shadowy figure with a completely scarred face who warns him not to pursue Julian Carax's history, lest horrible things befall him.  Given this obviously cheery encounter, Daniel decides to keep up his search for information about Carax, taking up with a local homeless man and unwisely pursuing a romantic relationship with the betrothed sister of his best friend.  

From there the great (and greatly complex) story of Julian Carax begins to unfold in an A-plot/B-plot style, with the A-plot set in the present with Daniel and the B-plot set in the past with Carax and company.  I found this to be a bit confusing.  The publisher attempts to distinguish between the now-story and the then-story by italicizing entire chapters of the B-plot, which just gave me a headache.  It didn't really help that the names are super-confusing for someone who doesn't speak Spanish.  You've got your Fermin's and your Francisco Fumero's and your Fernando's, your Montfort's and your Miquel Moliner's, and your Don-Everybody's, and they all start to run together if you're not paying close attention.  It is a good story at it's core, full of twists and turns and shocking plot developments, but it sometimes felt like two disjointed stories squished into one book.  Again, some of this might be because I took six months to read the book...but it just didn't grab my attention well.  It certainly didn't help that I figured out who the mysterious masked figure was about two-thirds of the way through the book, spoiling that whole climactic reveal.  The most surprising plot development ended up involving unintentional incest, which is a plot twist that I unequivocally detest in any format (I mean, come on, no one really wants to think about that.)

Apparently this book spent over two years on Spain's best-seller list, and it is an impressive story with it's well-planned intricacies.  Unfortunately for Mr. Zafon and his many, many characters...I didn't love it.

I didn't hate it.

But I didn't love it.

Maybe I would have liked it more if I didn't take so many breaks while reading it (week-long, month-long breaks at that).  Between the happening-in-the-past plot lines and the happening-in-the-present plot lines, and the many lengthily Spanish-named characters that seemed like minor characters but were all important to the story, I just got confused.  But once I sat down with a deliberate goal to "just finish the darn book already", I actually found myself caught up in the story and rapidly turning the pages to see what happened next.

This is one of those books that I like a lot better in retrospect than I liked it while I was reading it.  So I don't know, have a go at it if you want.  I've tried not to include too many spoiler-details in my review.  My advice would be to really read it if you're going to read it.  This is definitely not a book to read lazily, and it shouldn't be read lazily.  If you can keep at it diligently from the beginning, the complex plot will probably be a blessing rather than a burden.  

And even if it is slow at times, any book that starts out with a place called "The Cemetery of Forgotten Books" is bound to be an intriguing read for a book lover, right?

Summer Reading List

I don't read as much as I would like to.  I'm not sure why.  When I was little, I read "Boxcar Children" and "Little House" books like there was no tomorrow.  (I was going to say that I ate those books for breakfast, but it seemed like a weird metaphor and not at all what I was trying to say).  Anyway, I think that college and grad school stamped the reading-for-pleasure gene out of me.  But, seeing that I'm not in school anymore, I want to try and get that reading gene back...particularly since I am in the habit of browsing bookstores during my free time, which leads to a lot of impulse purchases that get half-read before they start collecting dust on my overcrowded bookshelves.

So, because I like projects and to-do lists and similar endeavors, I have created a summer reading list.  Not just a list, rather...I've created a summer reading stack, which is now living on my dining table waiting to be devoured (there, that's a better food metaphor).  Let's have a look...

Here's a bit more information about each book, and why it has shown up on my summer reading list...

1) The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon - This one is on the list by default, because I borrowed this book from a coworker (at her insistence that I would like it, not because I asked for it) sometime around last October, began reading it lazily around January, and now it's getting to the point where I'm embarrassed that I still have it and must return it to her as soon as possible.  Happily, since the creation of this list two days ago, I have finished this one.  A review post will be forthcoming.

2) The Age of Magnificence: Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon - A collection of memoirs of Louis XIV's court at Versailles, written by one of the courtiers.  I read bits of this book for research in 2010 for my senior thesis, and I'm super excited to read the whole thing.

3) Love Wins, by Rob Bell - Like The Shadow of the Wind, I borrowed this book from my friend Amy a shamefully long time ago, wanting to read for myself the book that caused so much theological controversy several years ago.  

4) My Boyfriend Wrote a Book About Me, by Hilary Winston - Like the title suggests, Hilary Winston's boyfriend wrote a book about her, a discovery which led her to write a book of her own recounting her dating woes over the years.  My friend Miranda sent it to me and said it's absolutely hilarious, if a bit raunchy from time to time.

5) Paris to the Past, by Ina Caro - I found this book randomly while browsing Barnes and Noble one day, and read it right there in the store for half an hour before buying it.  It's a travel essay that tells the history of France through weekend train rides from Paris to various cities.  A French major's dream.

6)  How to Be Lovely: The Audrey Hepburn Way of Life, by Melissa Hellstern - I got this for Christmas from my parents, and just haven't gotten around to reading it yet.  It's a biography-esque coffee table book about Audrey Hepburn, who I love, and who you probably love too (and who you should love, if you don't).

7) An Abundance of Katherines by John Green - A young adult novel by one of the Vlogbrothers, a pair of YouTubers whom I have followed since my sophomore year of college.  This is one of his earlier books, which I started reading but never finished.  John Green also wrote Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars, both of which I have read and found to be phenomenal, particularly for their genre.

8) Celia Garth, by Gwen Bristow - I found this book completely by chance at a thrift store, and picked it up because it had my name in the title.  On the spot, I decided to start collecting books featuring lead characters with my name (I have only one other, a beautifully illustrated children's book called Celia's Island Journal which I have had since I was 3 years old.)  It's about a young woman named Celia living in colonial South Carolina, who apparently engages in espionage during the Revolutionary War or something.  Awesome.

9) Cinderella Ate My Daugther: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture, by Peggy Ornstein - About how commercialized gender stereotypes affect young girls' perceptions of themselves, what it means to be a woman, and limits their vision of who they could become.  All topics that I've been interested in for quite some time, and am eager to learn more about.

10) French Lessons, by Peter Mayle - My aunt gave me this book years ago, and I never got around to finishing it.  At the time, I think I was too young to really identify with anything happening in the book, which is written by a man who moved to southern France and learned to appreciate the various nuances of the French way of life.  I want to read it again now that I've traveled more and grown up quite a bit since I first received it.

So there's the list!  Like I said, I finished The Shadow of the Wind today, and will write a review of it in the next couple days, which I plan to do for all these books.  Let the reading begin!

A Year in Review

Today was the one-year anniversary of when I started working at my current job.  It's kind of hard to believe that it's been a year...but in some ways, it feels like I've been here way longer.  In any case, today I reached the little calendar square where, many months ago, I scribbled "You made it through a whole year!" In recent weeks, this impending date has been referred to in my mind as "cupcake day," because I decided that a fancy cupcake from the local bakery would be a fitting treat to celebrate overcoming my first year of working in ministry full-time.  Never mind that I just ate a cupcake from there three days ago, when my sister was visiting.  That is neither here nor there.

OK, so "cupcake day" turned into "cupcake-and-tiny-cannoli" day.  What can I say, it's been a long year, and I love canolis.  That's a banana split cupcake if you're interested...strawberry cake with a pineapple filling, with banana frosting, dipped in chocolate and topped with a cherry.  Soooooo delicious.  I took my little pink bakery box and settled into one of their patio chairs to reflect on the year.  I wanted to savor the moment, and really think about everything I've accomplished over the last year.  It's been a hard year in a lot of ways, but on my one-year anniversary it seemed appropriate to take note of all the positive things.

Here's what I came up with.

Over the past year, I have...

-Lost 30 lbs (which isn't work related, but is totally worth noting)

-Successfully rebuilt a derailed preschool program from the ground up

-Written and orchestrated two preschool performances

-Recruited Sunday School teachers to not only teach for a single season, but continue teaching even after their first responsibilities ended because they enjoyed it

-Learned how to be a positive force against negativity

-Learned to be okay when I can't please everyone

-Learned that sometimes people will take out more anger on me than I deserve, and that I shouldn't take it personally

-Taught kindergartners what the word "exile" means, and had them actually remember (and similarly complex components of Bible stories)

-Written, and nearly implemented, an entire summer Sunday School curriculum (work in progress)

-Become more self-confident and outgoing with people I don't know, or barely know

-Become less apologetic for being who I am

-Gotten better at handling stress

-Built good relationships with my boss and other coworkers

-Made friends in a brand new place

-Gained the trust of parents to be a spiritual leader for their children

-Built teacher relationships with the children of the church, and learned the name of every child in the church

-Been yelled at a lot and have cried a lot, but have still managed to do my job

-Built good relationships with my employees, and survived angry exit interviews of unhappy employees

-Implemented a brand new Christian Education methodology with increasing success

-Done a lot of ridiculous things (scheduled fire truck visits, ordered a zipline, arranged for bounce house rental, sung Beyonce in front of people, choreographed a space-themed Christmas musical, etc)

-Developed a strong volunteer committee

-Inspired the church to create our own Vacation Bible School, and to take ownership in it and be excited about it

-Started to encourage people to expect more from the children's ministry than they have in the past (meaning, it's more than coloring sheets and Veggie Tales)

-Taught kids about God, and encouraged their curiosity in the Bible and in God

So, despite all the hard times, all the overwhelmedness, all the troubled phone calls and facebook messages to friends and family, I'd say that it's been a pretty good year overall.  Not sure how I got here, but I think God deserves a lot of the credit.  Because, to be honest, I was kind of a mess a lot of the time.  But God works, even through my own anxiety.  And that's a pretty good deal.

On to next year!

Looking for Orion

When I was little, somewhere between the age of old-enough-to-remember and second grade, my dad took me out stargazing.

We didn't go very far from home - we just went to the backyard.  But we stood there, and we looked up at the sky, and my dad taught me how to pick out constellations.  The big dipper, the little dipper, all the usual.  But the one I most liked, and the only one I can still find to this day, was Orion.  The Hunter.

It's possible that the reason why I liked Orion so much was that it was the only one I actually saw.  I don't particularly remember any "aha!" moment with the others, but I vividly remember the pride that I felt upon locating the three stars that make up Orion's belt, and being able to put together the rest of the picture from there.  After all, a single finger pointing at the expanse of the universe isn't the most accurate of navigation methods.  Being able to see for myself what my dad was pointing at was a big deal.

For years since then, Orion is the only constellation that I have been able to locate with any degree of regularity.  I remember being able to see it from the driveway of our new house when we moved the next year, and the constellation remained with me as I grew up.  I didn't acknowledge at that time that Orion was becoming a sort of constant companion to me.  Constellations aren't exactly a frequent conversation topic among adolescents these days.

After I graduated from high school, I entered into a six-year period without stars.  Night skies dotted with celestial lights gave way to the hazy glow that hangs around big cities.  Lexington, Paris, and Dallas all hid the stars from me.  There were intervals within these years, of course, when I was met with a starry night, typically on camping trips or during late-night travel.  But those moments were filled with a more general awe than any intentional picking-out of constellations, which became lost in the unending canvas of stars spread before me.

So I lost Orion for awhile.  But when I moved here, to Murfreesboro, I found him again.

It wasn't until a few months ago, when I was getting my bags out of my car after a late work night, that I looked up and saw Orion shining dimly above my head.  In that moment, I had a flashback to that night nearly twenty years ago, when my dad pointed out the three-starred belt to me.  Missing my family dearly in a new town for a new job, I felt tears well up in my eyes at the sight of a familiar friend.

Since then, every time I find myself outside at night, I take a second to pause and find Orion.  It usually doesn't take more than a couple seconds.  It seems like, in looking for Orion, I'm looking for that which anchors me to my past.

Lately, I've come to see myself as always looking for Orion.  Not in the sense that I am looking to live in the past, but in the sense that I'm looking for simplicity.  I long for the peacefulness that I find within this small memory.  Simplicity, when the volume is turned down, the media is unplugged, and I can escape the barrage of metaphorical and audible noise which too often overrns my daily life.

Perhaps you know what I'm talking about.  Perhaps you too have a memory of such a moment, a memory so old it's more like a fleeting vision, that links you immovably to the very core of who you are.  I think everyone must have such a memory, though some people may not have discovered theirs just yet.

Now I go looking for Orion.  I don't just find him in the night sky anymore.  I find Orion on a hike through the woods.  I find Orion in films that embody the idealism of youth.  I find Orion in music that, for whatever reason, reaches within me to strike my soul.  I find Orion in hot chocolate and a warm blanket, and in long-lost favorite books pulled from used-book-store shelves.  And of course, I find Orion in the stars that gaze down from the heavens each night.

In the weeks to come, I'll be sharing these moments of simplicity and quiet beauty with you.  Now that I've gone looking for Orion with intention, I happen upon such moments everywhere.  I hope that, in hearing my stories, you will be able to share in the simple pleasures that they bring.

Because it's much easier to find Orion when you are actually looking for him.

Beautiful Thing: Director of Mysteries

Today's Beautiful Moment:

When an eight year old child saw this sign on my door...

...and read out loud, "Director of Children's...MYSTERIES???"

The music director (who had just finished teaching the boy's piano lesson) and I certainly got a kick out of it.  You have to love the fanciful nature of childhood, when it makes perfect sense to have a department of mysteries right next door to where you take piano lessons.  I felt a bit bad telling the boy that I am actually the Director of Children's MINISTRIES, and that there were no mysteries to be had - in fact, I'm not sure he bought my explanation.  

Although, I have taken to watching Sherlock on my lunch breaks...maybe it's left an air of mystery about my office.