Wednesday Awwwwwww

You made it to Wednesday! This hamster is so proud of you!!

from The Fluffington Post

Hello, green things

These are my pepper babies.

I would have given them names but there are far too many plants--and I already have enough trouble distinguishing between the different types of peppers that are in these trays. Soon, if I treat 'em right, I'll be collecting Jalapenos, Thai Hots, purple and red and orange Bells, and Anchos and putting them in my Asian dinner experiments at the end of the summer. This represents only a fraction of the behemoth project I have "officially" entitled Epic Garden 2012. It is one of many New Years Resolutions I had established in January, and so far this is the only one that has stood the test of time (test of time = 4 months).


I've never gardened before in my life until a month ago. Growing up I may have helped my mom weed the garden beds around my old house, but I didn't care for it one bit. I still don't. However, there is something about planting a seed and watching life emerge from the soil that kind of makes me feel giddy. And the anticipation of being able to harvest food from these little stemmy miracles gets me through the drudgery of weeding and tilling and weeding again.

Sorry about the dark photo--the fluorescent light bulbs make taking a decent picture of the whole plant set-up next to impossible

Inspired by some good friends of mine in Pittsburgh, I set up a four-shelf growing station of sorts in my basement to hang fluorescent lights and set seed trays to jump-start vegetables and get them ready to transplant in the middle of May (PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE). Instead of using seed cells or peat pots I decided to go to the soil block route, which (for me) entails mixing seed starting soil and water in a Rubbermaid container, pushing in a soil block maker (which makes 4 2"x2" soil blocks at one time), releasing the free-standing soil blocks onto a flat seed tray, and planting one seed per block. I will document the process photographically next time I do this. Anyhoo, I've have had surprisingly decent success so far--out of the 48ish peppers that I've planted, about 44 of them are growing very well. I can't wait to get them outdoors, but for now they won't be able to tolerate the chilly weather.

infant tomatoes!

Like I said... I have never done this before, so I had a ton of help in the form of books (thanks again for the B&N gift card, Mom and Dad!) and internet articles. But if you haven't gardened before and have really no idea where to start or who to trust, I hiiiiighly recommend The Garden Primer by Barbara Damrosch. It was through that book that I learned about the concept of soil block making too (though I don't yet have the courage to put together my own seed starting mix! Maybe next year...) and bought a soil block maker from Johnny's Selected Seeds (the link is to the block maker I bought for my garden, but there are different sizes available--with this one I can fit 24-28 soil blocks in one 18"x10" seed tray). I hope to start planting carrots really soon in some great wooden planters that some seminary friends gave us last summer... particularly these carrots (whaaaat!!).

Jack White's interrupting my morning

We just burned our newly-purchased Jack White album to listen to in the car on the way to work/school this morning.


Maybe the best way to start a Tuesday. :)

Post-work nanner bread craving

The Monday work day has officially come and gone, and I am in the mood for banana bread.


I discovered a great recipe I found on the ol' internets several weeks ago that helped me produce an almost perfect loaf of banana bread, so I am currently trying to recreate that and fulfill my "nanner" bread longings.


The recipe is by Zoe Francois, author of the blog Zoe Bakes (which is phenomenal if you're into making tasty things), and it is as follows (and can also be found here) (also my own pictures are used) (and I've added notes that follow the way I am baking it at this very moment in time):

Pecan Banana Bread

1 ½ cups (about 4 medium sized) over ripe bananas, mashed 
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour (spoon and sweep)
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup (4 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
½ cup brown sugar, tightly packed
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons heavy cream
¾ cup pecan pieces

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F with the rack in the middle of the oven. Butter an 8 ½ x 4 ½ inch loaf pan, set aside.
2. In a bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.
3. In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter, sugar and brown sugar on medium speed for about 3 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time and mix well after each.  Mix in the vanilla and heavy cream. (So I didn't have heavy cream last time, so I used vanilla yogurt instead, which turned out wonderfully. This time I still didn't have heavy cream, and I had yogurt, as pictured, but I very sadly realized that it was moldy (grossssss). I only have 1% milk, which I didn't think would work well, then I saw that I still had Cool Whip in the fridge from a friend who brought it here last week.... It'll be interesting to see if it still works out!)
4. Remove the bowl from the mixer and use a rubber spatula to stir, alternate adding the dry ingredients and the mashed bananas in 3 batches, mixing just enough to combine them. Add the nuts and mix just to combine. (Didn't add nuts. I like my banana bread super simple.)
5. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth out the top. Bake for about 1 hour or until a tester comes out clean. If the top is over browning after 45 minutes, gently drape the top with foil.

Bake, lil buddy, bake!!

One hour and dinnertime later....

Aaaayyooo! Here she is! Photo-bomb courtesy of our friend Rory:

And the Cool Whip actually worked decently well, if you ever need to substitute it in baked goods for heavy cream...

Not a whole lot can brighten the mood more than success in baking. :)

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Just one hour left (Central Time!)

Happy Earth Day, friends!

Here I go again on my own!

Greetings, reader--so glad you stumbled upon my newest blogging endeavor. I'm not sure how you did it, but I'm impressed, and I'm flattered.

Previous to this I had a blog entitled Just a Seminary Wife, which was mainly about living on a seminary campus with my grad student husband, Aaron, and all of the excellent seminary adventures we embarked upon. I realized as I published posts though that I have a lot more interests that I'd love to explore by utilizing this fine medium but wasn't sure how they were all that relevant to seminary lifestyle; so the more I tried to force the posts in that blog to stick within a particular niche in my life, the less I desired to write in general. Then I got a full-time job, experimented with other blogs, then moved off-campus anyway. 

So here we are. 

My name is Christie, and I, at this present time, work in the office of a therapeutic day school and clinic while my husband Aaron is in his 2nd year of a Master of Divinity program. We live in Chicagoland by way of the Pittsburgh area of Pennsylvania, and I'm learning to love all of my little communities here, including my immediate neighborhood, my church, and the campus where I still participate in wifey things. 

In this silly little blog, I hope to do the following (and you are welcome to yell at me if later posts are lacking in any of these things):

• Write creatively, intentionally, and regularly: Writing is a skill I have always dabbled in, and it is the skill I have in which I am most confident; it would be a shame to let myself get out of practice, and keeping this practice public will keep me more accountable. I hope.
• Share interesting things with you: I pretty much love everything, but sadly I don't take the time to research in depth the things I'm interested in. I'm convinced that I'll write better if I read and study more often, and the more I devote my time to this, the more interesting my posts will turn out to be.
• To share bits of my life...: I have a problem, though it may be minor (correct me if I'm wrong), with being a closed book, in a sense. If I think something that is happening or has happened in my life that I think will be uplifting to others, then I want to be more willing to share it.
• ...but not for a minute take myself too seriously: I reeeeaaallllyyy hope to develop more of a sense of humor in my writing. 
• Finally, to address the fact that there are a lack of blogs out there devoted to desert-wandering scaly anteaters and breakfast foods: Consider this sad sorry situation rectified.

Did you make it through all of that? You're certainly a trooper.  :)

Until next time, crazy kids!