I love the State Fair

Seriously. Where else can you not only purchase, but be acceptable to society walking around with a 1/3 lb slice of bacon, fried, caramelized with maple syrup, on a stick?

I won't be buying one of those today. I will be buying cheese curds though! And, perhaps for old times' sake, Jaime and I will buy the giant pail of Sweet Martha's cookies and go to the "All The Milk You Can Drink For $1" booth and have ourselves a good time!

Oh, memories of being 17 years old, and having the metabolism that let me get away with eating 30 chocolate chip cookies in one day! Wow.

Nomenclature

I've been thinking a lot lately about name changing. I don't know how I feel about this.

I want to emphasize now to Ryan: no pressure, no pressure. Seriously! I'm perfectly happy with the way that things are.

My mother didn't take Poulter as her name, which lead to myself (and my sister and brother) being given two last names--or, two middle names, which is how it functionally operates: though my full legal name is Lauren Ann Buchele Poulter, I use L.A.P. as my "full" name.

I have a few friends (Paula, Elise) who kept their birth names completely intact at marriage. I have one friend that hyphenated her last name with her husband's. I have unknown number of friends and associates who just plain old took their husband's last name at marriage.

And, of course, there's my sister; she and her husband both changed their last names to his maternal grandfather's traditional Norwegian name.

The thing is, though, that she didn't like Poulter. I actually like Poulter. It's who I am. I've had it for 24-plus-and-counting years. I always imagined that at marriage, I would go with "Lauren Poulter His-Last-Name", for all professional and personal purposes (I call this "going HRC" for the recent near-Democratic nominee for president.) There's just no easy answer for me. Ryan has not taken kindly to suggestions that he might change his last name to Poulter!

What is more interesting, perhaps, is women that I've encountered who married, took their husband's name in some capacity or another, and then were divorced, yet kept their married name. How peculiar! I would think that would be such a masochistic choice!

Of course, there's a story behind all this: I remember very, very vividly, when I was in the third grade, my mother instructing me that I ought never to hyphenate my name when I got married. Yet, when I was 16 and she re-married, what did she do? Hyphenate her name! (If you're keeping score at home, that marriage lasted only three years.)

I think, at the end of the day, I might be too stubborn to just take a new name, regardless of whether or not I like it.

To all readers (yeah, both of you. Ha!): if married, did you (your wife) change your (her) name? What was the motivation? I find this subject intruiging.

Ryan Birthday Recap

It began officially with Ryan waking me up, saying "I swear I'm not gay. PLEASE don't be mad at me!"

Apparently Ryan had a dream where a certain friend named Collin decided he was gay, put the moves on Ryan and I walked in on the situation and became very angry. So to clarify, no, sweetie, I don't think that you are gay! And if it turned out that you were, I would be more hurt than I would be mad.

The rest of the birthday was much less silly. Jason and Brad Gausman showed up early, tapping the keg of Grain Belt Premium (The beer of exceptional quality!) while I cooked Ryan his favorite breakfast of biscuits and sausage gravy, with eggs over easy (gross) on the side. Drinking commenced.

Patrick, Steve, and Liz showed up. We watched the Twins game, there was Goofy Golf to be played.

In addition to all the friends that were in attendance, my parents, my sister and her husband, my step-brother, his wife and my niece Abby, and my other step-brother Nate showed up. Quite the crowd, I must say! I had purchased 20 (!) bratwursts in expectation of half of them being eaten but they were ALL polished off in good fashion.

Drinking of Grain Belt continued.

I must say, both Ryan and I were a little disappointed that no Glanzers showed up at the party! Ryan had a phone call with his mum that was very detail-filled, leading him to believe that perhaps they would surprise him with a visit! (I don't want to embarrass him, but he's a bit jealous that they pop in on his sister for visits and have only visited him a few times! Plus, Glanzers, all the Poulters were in attendance! You were showed up! :) )

Never the less, a successful birthday party, if I do say so myself. Happy birthday, sweetie! Hope work on Monday isn't too painful! :)

The negative: I got so caught up in socializing with my family and friends that I forgot to grill the cabbage or the sweet corn!
But luckily, my darling friend Jaime showed up later in the evening and after preaching the wonders of the CSA program to her, I was able to pass along the a few sweet corn, a green pepper and the 4lb CABBAGE! Thank god for wonderful friends!

shrugging

Big River Farms and the CSA

I've been yammering on about the CSA for a few weeks now, so I thought I might share some information about what a CSA is and why Ryan and I are supporting it.

I found out about Community Supported Agriculture through my sister, Kate, last summer. It was her first year doing a CSA and she and her husband split a share with another couple. The only thing I really remember her mentioning is beets, lots and lots of beets (see my previous post for my non-love of beets).

This spring she asked if Ryan and I would be interested in splitting a share with them. It was pretty reasonable, at the time: About $450 for a full share, so about $115 each for Ryan and I. I definitely think we're getting our money's worth!

Another really appealing aspect is the locality of it. Big River Farms/MN Food Association is located in Marine on St Croix, about 40 minutes outside of the Twin Cities. So, we're "eating local", such as it were. MFA just got organic certification, so it's there's that feel-good aspect.

I think the best part about BRF is that one of the purposes of their farms is to train new immigrants to Minnesota how to farm in this climate. A lot of them were farmers in their home country--true to recent immigration patterns, largely they are Hmong and Hispanic. I'm a total softie for things like that, so I like that the big box o' veggies I pick up each week is also helping to strengthen the rural Midwestern economy, keeping the small-farm tradition alive and letting hard-working people earn a living off the land, all while treating the earth nicely.

Any hope of my becoming a farmer myself surely died with my 4-H career at age 9 or so, but nonetheless I like to think that Grandad Wes would be proud that I'm doing this very small part to help small farms!

More info: Big River Farms/MN Food Association

(More) Vegetables

Got more CSA veggies yesterday (this was week 8 of ... 12? 16? How long is the growing season? ETA: CSA deliveries continue until Oct 27th... 18 weeks!) More corn, more onions, lots more tomatoes, more summer squash and basil and green peppers. And more beets.

Beets are weird. Today I tried a pretty well-reviewed recipe from All Recipes for roasted beets with sautéed beet greens. The beet greens were pretty tasty, with toasted sesame oil (best oil EVER, fyi), garlic and pepper. The beets were a different story. They were roasted... but they were still beets. Beets are so weird! They are bright red and they're so sweet, but they're a root vegetable! But I threw some salt and pepper and some fancy vinegar from the Asian grocery store down the street (I LOVE the Asian grocery store! So cheap and so Asian!) and they were tolerable. I think Ryan liked them. Not that either of us are going to run out and buy more beets at the market.

So, the current veggie stock:
• 1 3lb cabbage
• 4 green peppers
• decent amount of green beans
• 1 red onion
• 1 summer squash
• 1 tomato (would have put it in the fresh salsa I made today, but it didn't look quite ripe)
• 4 cucumbers
• 7 ears of sweet corn
• Basil

The upside of this is that Ryan's big birthday barbecue is this Sunday, so I will make up grilled cabbage, boil the sweet corn and chop up some of the green pepper and cucumber for a crudité plate!

Hosting a party = forcing friends and family to eat my vegetables before they go bad. I love it.

A few thoughts

• Every time the summer Olympics comes around, I realize that I've forgotten how much I love volleyball! Men's, women's, indoor or beach, I just love volleyball. It's such an precise, beautiful sport.

• The tv show Bridezillas is fantastically addicting and entertaining. I'm not even shamed by watching it anymore; I really love watching these ridiculous girls get so beast-like over a wedding. Funny stuff! And best of all, Ryan likes it too.

• I've been missing Toronto really intensely the last few days. I really wish it would have worked out to take a trip there over Labor Day. There's been talk of doing a road trip to the Black Hills over the holiday weekend instead.

• I miss blogging about baseball, but I don't have nearly the time it takes to keep up a decent blog. You'd think it'd be easy-ish, blogging with someone, but I haven't really talked to or seen Nicky in, what, a month?

• Ryan's birthday party has been changed to Sunday, Aug 24th. I hope many people come for bbq and beer and to eat lots of our vegetables.

• My computer was attacked by some bizarre spyware last night. It somehow is spyware that tries to tell me that I have lots of infections and should download and pay for a spyware removal program. It's taken over my desktop and I'm trying to keep it from taking over MSIE. Which means I'm running Firefox for the time being. I know that so many people love Firefox, blah blah blah, but I don't care for it. I never had any problems with IE and never saw the need to change, especially as there are plenty of things that won't run on Firefox.

• We still have lots and lots of veggies. A cabbage, 2 green peppers, 4 sweet corn, 2 beets, 2 cucumbers, a zucchini and some herbs. And I haven't yet picked up today's delivery (which I will go do as soon as I finish this blog post!).

• I hate Friday weddings. I hate the idea of them, and I hate the hassle that is involved in going to them. No offense to anyone who will have/is having/has had a Friday wedding, of course. Is it a money-saving tactic, or is it something that people do because the wedding site they wanted was already booked on all acceptable Saturdays? Even having a wedding on a Sunday is far, far better than having one on a Friday. Friday weddings, from the guest perspective, says "I'm the bride and I don't really care that 90% of my guests have to work Mondays-Fridays, I think they should take vacation time for ME!" This is, of course, more directed at weddings that start prior to 6pm or so on Fridays, but even so. My personal opinion is that if it is indeed a money-saving strategy, then you should reconsider your idea of a wedding. If you can't afford a gangbusters affair then you should downsize your guestlist, your menu, whatever. If you can't afford an open bar? Don't have a bar! Have a keg or just beer and wine or no booze at all! Yes, in my opinion asking people to take time off of work to attend your wedding is about as crappy as asking them to pay for their own drinks at a wedding. This may all be simply my idea of being an good host, of course, that if you are indeed throwing a party for your nearest and dearest, that you should make that party as easy and fun as possible for them. It shouldn't involve taking vacation time, fighting rush hour traffic, or paying for their own drinks.

It's safe to say that when I do get married (touch wood), it will not be on a Friday.

I realize the last bit probably comes off rather screed-like, but it's just rambling about weddings generally and I'd hate for any person, be they friend or random passerby at my blog, to take it personally. For the record, my best friend had a wedding that began at 5:30pm on the Friday before Christmas, and I Maid of Honor-ed it happily.

Worried 'bout my baby

My Ryan went to the doctor this morning and returned with a diagnosis of very high blood pressure. Not good!

In the end it may turn out okay: he was instructed to drink less and exercise more. In addition, there are basic dietary things that should help--obvious things like less sodium, more fruits and veggies, fewer sweets, less meat, etc.

My family has a history of hypertension in addition, so it's a good idea for both of us to do these things. Plus, we could both stand do lose a pound or two!

Lauren's Super Healthy Zucchini Bread

Lauren's Super Healthy Zucchini Bread
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 t ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
3 eggs
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup applesauce (I like the Mott's All Natural kind, no sugar added)
3 cups grated zucchini (or zucchini and carrot mix)
1 or 2 handfuls choclate chips (optional, but awesome)

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease bundt pan.

2. Sift together flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and spices in medium bowl.

3. In large bowl, beat eggs. Mix in sugar, extract, oil, applesauce and grated zucchini. Add dry ingredients, mixing only until flour is absorbed. Lightly stir in chololate chunks, if desired.

4. Bake at 350 for about 50 minutes, or until a knife insterted comes out clean. Serve warm or cold.

Vegetables Pt 2

Got another huge delivery of vegetables today!

Ryan's and my half:

4 ears of corn
2 red onions
3 tomatoes
2 green peppers
8 carrots
2 beets
2 zucchini
2 summer squash
Green beans
Cilantro
Basil

The fridge is jammed with vegetables... it's craziness!

So help me God, we will eat these vegetables!

I want to document this week's CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) delivery for posterity.

Keep in mind that this is a HALF share of a CSA!

One green pepper
Two onions
One large bunch (probably 15 leaves) collard greens
Four carrots
Two random summer squash
One zucchini
One very large cucumber
One broccoli
One HUGE (it weighs like five pounds!) cabbage
A lot of green beans
Four turnips rutabaga
Bunch of dill
Bunch of mint

I REALLY want to eat all of the vegetables before they go bad. We get a new delivery tomorrow!! I prepped a stew with some Glanzer beef, the broccoli, the carrots, about half of the collard greens, the summer squash, and one of the onions. I'm going to mash the rutabaga up with potatoes (from last week's CSA) for some carb action there. Put curry-style spice in it, hope it turns out tasty-like.

The other onion and the green pepper will go towards a fajita dinner sometime this week.

The dill will go with a lovely piece of salmon I bought last week.

The green beans and the rest of the collard greens will have to go in a stir fry some time soon.

The zucchini will go in zucchini bread (which, with other fruits/veggies, whole wheat flour, and a handful of chocolate chips, baked in a Bundt pan, is an AWESOME breakfast cake. So healthy and yummy. Just replace most of the oil in whatever recipe you use for applesauce and you're golden.)

Now. What on earth will I do with all that cabbage?

love in this club

Great-Uncle Luther

I received an email this evening informing me that my maternal grandfather's twin brother had died.

Apparently he and my grandad Wes (they were named Wesley and Luther...my family isn't Norwegian or anything, ha!) were in a car accident and, while Grandad only suffered a couple bruises and such, Luther wasn't so lucky and, long story made short, was removed from life support once the immediate family had gathered.

Due to strained relations with my mother's family, I only met him a handful of times. The last time I saw them was probably when I was 6 or 7 years old.

What I do remember is that when I graduated high school, he and his wife Joan sent me a check and a lovely letter, reminding me that the University of Toledo was only an hour or so from their home in Ann Arbor, MI, and that I would be invited to dinner the first week I was settled at school!

I, of course, was obliged to write a polite, if slightly awkward, letter back to them informing them that they were misinformed--I was to be attending the University of Toronto in the fall. But thanks regardless!