Did you think I forgot?

About the diamond in the rough posts??  Well I didn't but as things have gotten a bit busier here, I haven't had the time to catch up on cool things in the world. Anyways. I saw this awhile back and thought it was touching. Its a PSA from One, a nonprofit organization that attempts to create change by raising public awareness and pressuring political leaders to support change. It's a unique stance in today's world - create change through discourse rather than money. Check it out if you have time. Their blog is great too.  And the video is worth watching.

Some people

In each of our lives there are some people who make a bigger impact, who enter our lives at a time that is just right. They are the people who touch a part of your heart in a way that doesn't happen often. And because of this, those people stay with you forever, are woven into your life in a significant and lasting way.

Today, and for the past few weeks, I've been reminded of how my high school softball coach and PE teacher is one of those people for me. As I have witnessed from afar his struggle with an aggressive form of cancer and now am mourning his death, I have been reminded of how some people have this amazing ability to bring peace and happiness to others' lives.

You see, Coach Cook was a high school coach of girls' varsity softball, JV basketball, and briefly JV volleyball, a PE teacher, and ran detention. He had the patience, love, and clarity to see past adolescent angst into the soul of each of his students. In doing so he found a way to nurture all of us in such a profound way. He was both strong and gentle, challenging and supportive. Winning wasn't important; respect, grace, discernment were.

It is truly amazing the number of lives he so positively affected. His family used a caring bridge page to keep everyone updated on his health, and along with this, came a guestbook. Thousands of people wrote into that guestbook and his facebook wall. Thousands of people touched by this great man. He will be greatly and deeply missed.

How many tomatoes does it take to...

I'm sure I mentioned that we planted a few (approximately 85,000) tomato plants. Supposedly some were 'early' varieties, while others were 'indeterminate' varieties. Both suggesting that we might have some tomatoes early in the season followed by more from our longer growing varieties. Right. So our garden has a mind of its own, clearly and we have what I might describe as a monsoon of tomatoes from all of varieties.

I'm kinda overwhelmed by the tomatoes. When I go out to the garden and can count at least 10 tomatoes on most of our plants I start thinking I might turn into a tomato. I'm not ready yet!!! I haven't figured out how to can them or ordered the supplies for that matter. Agghh!! Really, I don't quite feel this way (yet). I'll keep you posted on that!

In the last few days we've picked more than 4 lbs. Yes, you read correctly. 4 lbs! So I made some gazpacho. Tasty and a terrific way to use your yummy (out of control) garden pickings.

One Year Celebration Part 2

We drove home from the beach on our actual anniversary so we decided to have a little celebration at home that night too. It saved us from having to pack frozen wedding cupcakes and cards! :)

Anniversary flowers and cards

For gifts, we decided to buy a lens, tripod, and bag for our camera. The lens was the big present and we're so glad we got it - so much more zooming power now! 

Our celebratory dinner prior included a tomato, mozzarella, and basil salad with steak. The tomato was a huge heirloom from our garden and it was tasty!

We also did the traditional eat the old wedding (cup) cake thing and celebrated with a bottle of prosecco. That has been our tradition for a long time. We've had a bottle for every special occasion since I can remember and we keep the corks, labeling them as we go. Amazingly, the cupcakes from Dewey's Bakery in Winston Salem, NC were really good - they lost some of the flavor over the year in the freezer but they still tasted great. I wish I would have known b/c we had so many leftover that we could have a freezer full!!

One year celebrations Part 1

We traveled down to Port Aransas with the dogs in tow to enjoy a much needed brief vacation and celebrate our one year anniversary! We all needed to get out of town for awhile and we had a great time!

We went out do dinner the first night at Shells - great island restaurant. We enjoyed mango ceviche and shared a swordfish dish with caper aoili and a mahi mahi dish with spicy tomatillo salsa.

We tried getting some family photos. Impossible.

The dogs didn't quite understand the crate situation.

There was a beach wedding Saturday that we watched from our chairs - nice reminder of our own one year prior.

We enjoyed the sun and sand despite a crazy amount of seaweed.

There is an actual Texas road on the beach.

Shadow enjoyed her first beach trip ever - unfortunately the waves were too big and the seaweed too wide for us to really enjoy playing in the water.

Some pelicans perched very close to the ferry launch.

One year

Wow. Has it really been one whole year since we got married??  Actually, this Sunday the answer is yes!!  This strikes me both as a normal everyday kind of thing AND a crazy, what in the world kind of thing!

What I've learned (that all of you already know but I'm going to share anyways):

1. Marriage is hard, a whole helluva lot harder than I imagined.
2. Marriage is likely made more difficult by: moving away from my everything in my life except my husband, my crazy independent nature (please note the word crazy in this sentence), my mother (haha, not in the way you might think but because she instilled in me some hardcore cleaning expectations that neither myself nor my husband can live up to and yet I still want to attain), not having any many friends here but I mentioned that already, so on and so forth...
3. I'm amazed at what we can do together.
4. I'm amazed at what I can convince my husband to do (like get another dog, plant a garden the size of our garage, start making our own - insert whatever type of food here - and so on and so forth)
5. I love our leisurely coffee drinking weekend mornings (at least until I start freaking out about the house needing to be cleaned or the - insert type of food here - needing to be made).
6. There is nothing quite like having his support, especially on the things that he knows mean the most to me
7. We've learned more about one another - mostly good things thankfully.
8. Patience is a necessary skill.
9. So is communication.
10. Both go out the window when I'm hungry - I'm working on this one.

Ten things is probably enough for now. To be honest, we've had a hard year. This year has been full of loss for me and it has been hard to manage at times. In the last week of May 2010, I got married (yay!) and moved away from my family, my friends, the paths I was on to creating the career I want, basically EVERYTHING (boo!). And it has taken me almost the entire year to adjust to that. I could never expect how terrible I would feel. In addition, it hasn't been easy for the husband either. He has a good job but it at times lacks the challenge and activity that he wants. He also moved, although a few months earlier, away from his friends and further away from his family. Through all of that, we have had to figure out marriage. And I think we've done a pretty good job this first year. Despite all that we are facing individually we come together as a team quite well. The upcoming years I'm sure will include more challenges and even more triumphs and times of happiness. I look forward to this all, knowing that we will face it together.

Update

The console for the kitchen is ready for the sanding-priming-painting phase. But I'm struggling with what to do to it. I've considered painting it a light gray (with brown undertones), and I've also considered staining it a grayish color. I'll try out the stain on the wood filler sometime this week hopefully and then if it seems to take ok, I might move forward in that direction. But who knows! :)

Haute Wheels

I follow the Houston Press Food blog - which I do have to say is awesomeness - and they keep me up to date on all the food happenings around town. They also keep me updated on issues related to the food industry, which is how I came to learn about Houston's food truck industry and some of the issues they're facing.

A little back story is needed here - Houston is pretty much unregulated - no taxes, no zoning laws (yes, this means sex shops can be right next door to high quality Thai restaurants, or Joann's Fabric - true story), etc. The one exception to this unregulated chaos appears to be the food truck industry which is regulated above and beyond most things down here. All of this is to say that these ordinances suck b/c food trucks down here in Houston are often owned and operated by high end restaurateurs and/or chefs i.e. they're putting out some good quality food on the cheap! I ranted for a hot second there - sorry.

The whole purpose of this post is to share our fun times at this past weekend's Haute Wheels: Houston's Food Truck Festival. It was awesomeness. The weather was unusually seasonable (high was upper 70's/lower 80's) so we headed down to the Houston Community College's South campus to enjoy some tasty food truck treats!  And man were they tasty.

Our first stop: Cut & Fry. They were so busy that we ordered and then they called us about 45 minutes later with our order ready. We got the sweet potato fries with sea salt and honey chipotle mayo sauce - um, SOO GOOD.

Then we stopped by Zilla for some chicken and waffles, and macaroni and cheese. Again, wow - so tasty.

Then we walked around a bit and headed to La Luz for a yummy chicken taco.

And our last stop was Good Dog for the best hot dog I've ever had. We got the Ol' Zapata dog with caramelized onions, bacon, cheese, tomatoes, and jalapeno relish. Amazing! :)

Here are some other pictures from the festival. Definitely a fun time and totally worth the long lines. Now I need to join twitter so I can follow all the food trucks! :)

The husband taking a break in the shade.

Crazy amounts of people - the black truck, Fusion Taco, was creating some amazing looking food but the line was too long - definitely on the must try soon list.

The husband picked up a cupcake on the way out.

Organizing

It's one of those things that has to be done. And it usually takes time, creativity, and money. All of which I don't have or want to devote to organizing. But after awhile the clutter and chaos eat away at the very strings that hold my sanity together and I hit a wall. I did just that with the kitchen a few weeks ago. I will not name names or point fingers or note how many times 'solutions' have been ignored but suffice it to say it's been enough times that I can no longer handle the situation.

The problem: the entrance which we use almost 100% of the time leads directly into the kitchen. The result is that EVERYTHING ends up a) on the kitchen table, b) on the kitchen floor by the door, or c) on the kitchen counters. NONE of which work for me.

The solution (in the works):

This soon to be lovely piece of furniture will sit below the chalkboard and will become the mail, key, junk, shoe, and whatever-else-lands-in-the-kitchen station.

The plan is modified from Ana White's salsa console.  The spaces in the bottom will be open and the husband has made it so I can have adjustable shelving in those three sections. I'll likely stain the top surface and paint the rest but we'll see.

Picture from Ana-White.com

The massive garden

We started here.

Then we had this.

Now we have this.

Under all of those massive zucchini leaves.

Running count of harvested veggies
3 zucchini
14 tomatoes
1 jalapeno

Of last count, the husband reported 63 tomatoes in the works. Now, lets just hope the red peppers bounce back from the caterpillar ravaging.

Seasons

One of the things about living in Texas that I've found interesting is the difference in seasons. As we begin to enjoy veggies from our garden, most of our friends and families are just now planting their gardens. As we enter into the beginning of weeks of 90 degree temperatures, our friends and families are enjoying temperatures in the 70s. I love that we will have a garden to enjoy for quite awhile and that we have two growing seasons - we'll get to plant another set of veggies in late summer. But I have to admit, I much prefer milder temperatures. Oh well. I can't complain though, because Texas is perfect for me and my dislike of snow and cold weather!

Some pictures from around our yard.

Baby grapefruit

Baby orange

Quick update

I've been pretty busy the last couple of weeks so I haven't had a ton of time to write for this blog (read: work is SUPER busy and life at home has involved less fun things). But I'll give you a quick rundown on what we've been up to.

1. We went to our first crawfish boil. Crawfish are pretty tasty but much like crabs, etc they are a bit too much work to make eating a bunch of them worthwhile. We also met wonderful people from NC!! :)

2. The garden is....still growing. I know, strange how that works out that way. We did get our first zucchini which the husband proudly displayed on facebook - all 15 oz of it.

3. Shadow gave us a bit of a scare, and my resulting thought process solidified my realization that I have an irrational fear of something bad happening to her.

4. I did what any transplant looking for friends does - I joined a social group and went to my first social meetup last night. It was surprisingly fun, we made fondant roses, learned how to make lemon drops and cosmos (although I already new how to make a cosmo), sampled said drinks and other drinks, and concluded at a wine bar. These ladies know how to have fun. What was especially nice was getting to meet other transplants. And randomly, one of the ladies is married to a NC State grad and lived in NC for 9 years - AWESOME.

Our little roses

5. I miss my people and NC - could you tell? You should see my face when I meet people from NC - they probably think I'm nuts.

6. We priced some tree services and are thinking about removing 3 large trees in the front yard and doing a complete overhaul of the front yard. If we go for it, we'll have to temporarily move all of the stone and mulch - yeah, we're nuts.

7. My new little softball team won the championship!  We get free t-shirts b/c we won.

8. The husband is building a piece of furniture for the kitchen - I'm excited! :)

That seems like enough of an update for now.  We're going to work on taking more pictures and such so I can have more fun things to look at here.