...national ice cream day...

It has not been a very adventurous week. Mostly, the wild and crazy adventures have been happening in my mind, as I read and daydream and imagine. So, maybe adventurous, but in a different sort of way. Forgive me for falling behind?

As today is National Ice Cream Day (yippee!) it seemed like the perfect opportunity to whip out our ice cream maker wedding gift and put it to work. I found a Pinterest recipe I'd been hoarding for quite some time, purchased the ingredients, read and reread the instructions, and cautiously began.

After warming the milk, cream and sugar, I sliced the vanilla bean length-wise, and scraped out all the teeny, tiny little beans. I whipped the egg yolks and carefully mixed it all together, whisking as I poured. Then, I strained the entire mixture and put it all back on the heat, stirring it with a spatula while I waited for it to thicken. Which took over 30 minutes...30 minutes! Standing, stirring, waiting. (This better be worth it, or it might be my last cooking adventure for a while.)

I impatiently waited for the whole thing to chill as I cleaned the kitchen, dining room and living room, checking and stirring it every 10 minutes. When it was finally ready, I pulled out the mixer and the attachments that were chilling in the freezer and put them together. Suddenly, I realized the frozen “bowl” that was to hold the ice cream mixture had some small specs of dirt in it, so I grabbed a slightly damp paper towel and proceeded to wipe out the frozen inside.

Sometimes we do things without thinking through the consequences. We see a problem and we immediately want to fix it, so we proceed in the best way we know how. It's our knee-jerk reaction. Still, I should have known better.

I should have known that that damp paper towel would cling to the sides of that frozen bowl and shred into a million little pieces. I should have recognized the futility in attempting to scrape it all off with my fingernails. I started to panic just a tinge, until I decided to rinse it out with some cool water, which allowed the tiny paper smidgeons to detach from the sides and spill out. Phew! All was not lost.

It's like magic!

Again, impatient as ever, I watched as the mixer spun round and round. After 15 minutes, there was only a slight change. Quite nearly annoyed, I sat down and began reading my book, until I could hear the mixer start to slow down, like it was having difficulty spinning round. When I look at it again, it had doubled in size. I let it mix a bit longer, and then spooned it all out into a tupperware and stuffed it deep in the freezer. 

It's taken most of the day to do this, so if it's not amazing, and I mean, amazing, I don't know that this will be happening again.

Here's to hoping my hubby is pleased!

Friends, if you haven't celebrated National Ice Cream Day, there is still time. Go enjoy! I'm sure that ice cream doesn't have calories on this special day. (I mean, I'm pretty sure...)

Update: Though it's not completely frozen, we taste-tested the ice cream. Andy's response: So creamy! Feeling more adventurous due to my success, I thought I'd tackle another Pinterest recipe - cookie cups. Yeah, those didn't turn out so well. 

You win some, you lose some...

...challenge accepted...

Challenge accomplished!

Earlier this summer, a librarian managed to talk me into joining the library's adult summer reading program. With great incentives, and a desire to commit to reading more, I signed up and set to the task of reading six books in three months.

Check out my swell coolie!

I'm not one of those people that devours books. There is a part of me that wishes I was a rabid reader, but then there is another part of me that enjoys taking my time. And, as I've said before, I like to sit with the thoughts and ideas in a book before moving onto the next chapter, and sometimes I can sit with a thought for days and days before moving on.

All the other entrants.
Not sure I stand a chance...

But today, I finished my final book, and proudly marched my ledger to the librarian's desk. I was given this sweet coolie and a free fry certificate to Penn Station (which Andy will love) and I am now entered to win St. Louis Cardinals baseball tickets, gift cards to many different stores, or, possibly, a Kindle Fire HD!

If you haven't signed up for the St. Louis County Library's Adult Summer Reading program, you can do so here. The program goes on until August 2. You can do it!

Here's what's next on my reading list. What have you been reading? I would love to hear your summer reading suggestions in the comments below.

...new beginnings...

Training for the Nike Women's Half Marathon in San Francisco began today. My feet hit the floor with nervous anticipation and my stomach fluttered. Was I sure I wanted to do this? Too late now. 

When I think about what I'm hoping to accomplish, it all seems a little bit bigger than me and what I'm able to do...and I'm scared.

...scared I'll fall...





...scared I'll get hurt...





...scared I'll fail...

I pinned this quote a long time ago, and came across it again yesterday as I scoured my Pinterest boards for projects that were awaiting my attention. It's a great little reminder, don't you think?

It's Monday. A new day, a new week, a new beginning. Go make it an amazing week!

...cooking adventures...

Due to our desire to eat well, we have developed a new found fondness for the sweet potato. Sweet potato fries, sweet potato chips, sweet potato hash browns (not really mashed sweet potatoes) have become staples in our diet.

We recently bought 12 bags of Food Should Taste Good Sweet Potato Chips on Amazon because they are our favorite and they are crazy expensive at the store. I love this brand because there are three or four ingredients and they are listed in big bold letters. I've made sweet potato chips at home, and while they were delicious, they took hours and hours to make. 

We've even found sweet potato fries that we love at Trader Joe's, but I'm always looking to save a bit here or there, so when I found this recipe for the perfect, crispy sweet potato fry, I pinned it until the moment I could give it a go...which was tonight.

The most difficult part in working with sweet potatoes is cutting them. They are hard as rocks and it's imperative that you are very careful. I researched the best method for cutting them into fries and I found a few different sites that all gave great suggestions like this one, and this one.

I feel that the best suggestion was to make sure you have a sharp knife. I actually used two, a larger, long knife so that I could use both hands to press the knife through the potato, and a smaller knife to cut the potato into fries. Simply cutting them took 30 minutes!

I let them soak in the water, I preheated the oven to 425, I tossed them in the starch, I drizzled them with olive oil, I spread them out on the pan, and I waited 15 minutes before I opened the oven door to flip them...only to find that they were stuck to the bottom of the pan!

I also think I need to make them thicker. They shrunk considerably in the oven.

I should have known to spray the pan. Some directions shouldn't need to be written down. I put it back in the oven for the final five minutes and then pulled it out and scraped as much of the sweet potato mush off as I could. They were actually pretty good, though they were still a bit raw. 

Unfortunately, I was so caught up in my failure that I didn't take a picture of my meal before eating it. I've been posting pictures of my meals on social media because of this campaign. You might consider joining in! 

If you try to make these sweet potato fries, please follow the instructions for cutting sweet potatoes and take your time.

Also...spray the bottom of the pan. 

...new paths...

Have you ever done something that made you feel completely inadequate? That was me at my very first tennis lesson this evening.

Andy loves to play tennis. He's tried to teach me at the tennis courts near our house, but sadly, for as much as I've tried, it's been a lost cause. Even volleying with me is a disaster as I either miss the ball completely, hit it into the net, or hit it over his head. Me playing tennis is just plain sad to watch.

Upon arriving, I surveyed the people who would be my classmates for the next four weeks. All women, all dressed in cute tennis outfits...and all impressive on the court. I had thought this was a class for beginners, but none of them seemed like beginners to me, especially since they all knew how to hold a racquet and I had to receive special instruction. But each lady was friendly, fun and reassuring of my skills.

I was so insecure for the first 30 minutes that I bit my lip and apologized repeatedly, focusing only on the technique of my newly acquired forehand and backhand skills. The instructors, high school/college students, were all kind and patient. They'd laugh and chat, encourage and instruct. Honestly, I think I got worse as the hour wore on. But they all put me so at ease, that I began to feel safe enough to laugh at myself and have fun.

At the end of the hour, I was surprised at how disappointed I was it was over.

As I venture into my own unchartered waters, I'm still learning how to ignore these intimidating feelings of inadequacy. To accept myself as I am, flaws and all, and enjoy the task of opening a new door in the hopes that it will lead me down new path.

Have you opened any new doors recently? How can I encourage your curiosity?

(ps. Also...are you a tennis pro? Any tips for a beginner?)

...what we leave behind...

Kate left a message asking if I was going to Fair St. Louis this weekend. (She felt it was my kind of adventure!) We made a plan to meet at the fair, and, when Saturday rolled around, we walked our way into Forest Park, along with countless others, to celebrate the 250th birthday of St. Louis.

The day was perfect for a fair! A warm sun accompanied by a cool breeze, the sky a bright blue with the perfect amount of marshmallow clouds. We tramped through the fair grounds, past an endless array of food vendors, with lines a block long, past the Mexican dancers, past the kids corner (where we saw Juggling Jeff) until we found a nice spot stage left to listen to the music and chat before the big fireworks display. I gazed around at the people sitting alongside me, and began to consider all our lives, how we are different, how we are the same.

The top picture shows the smiling faces of the fair goers back in 1914, celebrating the 150th birthday of St. Louis. When I saw this picture earlier this week, I was intrigued about the lives of all these people. I wondered how they celebrated this special event in their lives, how it was different or similar from how I was celebrating. Could they even imagine what life would look like for us now?

Underneath that, is a picture of the faces that graced art hill last night. I couldn't help but wonder what life will look like for the citizens of St. Louis in the next 100 years.

Many of my wild daydreams were aided by what I've seen on screen. Will space exploration and space tourism be a thing? Will the rich leave a broken earth behind and live out in space? Will we be riding hover boards or driving flying cars? Will clones be created for organ harvesting, and will we allow it? What will happen if/when the aliens arrive?

My thoughts were a muddled maze, each turn leading down a different rabbit hole. As the smoke from cigarettes, cigars, hookahs and joints wafted through the air, The Fray performed a moving, a cappella rendition of Just a Closer Walk with Thee. It was a beautiful and odd moment. Surrounded by these people, connected by our humanity and our citizenship, I wondered what beauty (or horror) we will leave behind.

Then today as I was cleaning out some computer folders, I found two old files that Andy and I had created on a whim in 2012, a list of 100 goals we had for our lives. It was an exercise we tried, typing up 100 life goals in 10 minutes. Some of the goals are utterly ridiculous. But there are some that really matter, and it was nice to be able to type, "Accomplished" with the date, next to a few.

It encouraged me as I seek out adventure and meaning and purpose.

Have you made a list of life goals? How close are you to completing them?

...country living...

We had gone to bed late, but for some reason, sleeplessness whispered in my ear at 3:42am and my brain refused to rest. Tired of tossing and turning, I got dressed and climbed out of the tent and into the cool night air around 5am, intent on catching the sunrise.

There is something dazzling about the country. Maybe it's the air, or the
smells (manure and fresh cut grass), or the silence that makes one's
eyes sparkle just a bit brighter.

I paced around the little campground as I waited for the sun to make her
spectacular appearance - two miles worth of pacing.

The sheep and the goats stared at me as I meandered past. I waved.

There is something inherently hopeful in a sunrise.
And it was breathtaking.

Spent the morning fishing and Andy caught a fish!
His first in a long time. 

I held a minnow. My first time ever to touch a fish!
(That wasn't in the shape of a square or a stick!)
It was wiggly and slimey...and wiggly. Super wiggly.
Totally freaked (and grossed) me out!

After fishing, we finished our card game, had lunch, and then headed back to the city. Exhausted from our adventure, we spent the rest of the afternoon napping. 

My eyes filled with tears as he kissed me goodbye and left for work. The best part of vacation is always time spent with Andy, and the worst part is having to go back to our odd schedules, where we barely see each other.

I hope you all have had a wonderful week! I'm so grateful to have people in my corner that encourage me to get out there and experience life and be brave. If it weren't for you, I might just sit at home and watch TV. Thanks for pushing me beyond my comfort zones.

Now you go out and do something brave, too - then tell me all about it! I'm cheering for you!