in the place

I think I just want to talk about...food. For someone who--for the better part of my twenty five years, and along with the astounding majority of women everywhere--has been consumed with the idea of "those last few pounds", I think about food all the time. I watch Food Network when I work out, when I eat, and when I'm sitting on the couch making excuses why not to work out. I love Top Chef, Ruth Reichel, foodie blogs, cookbooks, Ina Garten, Cooking Light, and memoirs about how food influences life. I love reading about food, listening to people talk about food, making food of my own, and most all (which really goes without saying) eating food. Not that I'm particularly good at cooking, and I don't do it nearly as much as a married woman should, but once I am standing in my kitchen with my good knives, listening to Afro Cuban Jazz Project (thanks, Kate), with the bounty from my latest trip to Central Market laid out in front of me (oh, Central Market), it doesn't matter the weather or the type of day I've had or the drama I've encountered. Cooking is methodical and challenging and rewarding. Notice, I said "cooking," not "baking." I don't have the type of brain it takes to bake. I'll leave that to Haylie and Anna.

During a particularly grueling day at work this past week, my friend Violet said that on days like this particular one, she wishes she was a gardener. For her, having her hands covered in dirt instead of who-knows-what-in-the-ER sounded like a peaceful, relaxing profession. I, on the other hand, would cook and take pictures of food. How much fun would that be? Get paid to make delicious food look delicious. I highly doubt that a head of cauliflower is going to come in tweaking on meth or with foreign objects stuck up where the don't belong. Only on the most terrible days do I fantasize about my chosen backup profession, but in my alternate universe, I hope Violet is the one growing the tomatoes I get up close and personal with.

Here are a couple of dinners I've made over the past few weeks:

Tomatoes, Mozzarella, and Prosciutto with Honey-Lemon Dressing

Coconut Curry Shrimp with Sugar Snap Peas

And then there's the act of going out to eat. I read somewhere that Austinines spend more money eating out than any other city in the country. At first, I scoffed at this idea. And then I realized that it isn't so far-fetched after all. Although I am chronically indecisive, I love finally deciding on a restaurant, scrolling through a menu, and having someone else whip me up something wonderful that I wouldn't cook at home. Half the time, Jimmy and I just go out to eat for the fellowship. What better than food to bring people together?

Red's Porch Date with Miss Chelsea

Jack Allen's with the Normans

Happy Hour Oysters

Guess which one is mine -- I'll give you a hint, it's got rainbow sprinkles, gummi bears, health bar, strawberries, cheesecake bites, and peanut butter cups on it! Yeah, that's right. FatKid. Right here.

And then there were...

THE RIBS.

My dad bought a fancy schmancy new grill, and since has become something of a grill master. He pours over Cooking Illustrated and grilling books, searching for the perfect combination of rub, mop, and sauce. And when Jimmy and I headed to Dallas last month, he spent all day Friday working on what were to become the most delicious, succulent, porkiest ribs I've ever tasted.

So we begin with a little rub...

...and a little love

The great Daddoo, Grill Master Extraordinaire

The setup

Droooooooool

The final cut, try to contain yourself.

I would post a picture of me enjoying these amazing ribs, but we were all too involved with the actual eating to be bothered by picture-taking. That, and nobody touches Lucius (my camera, and current proof that I still enjoy naming inanimate objects) with sticky rib-sauce-fingers. Nobody.

So, if all else fails and my nursing profession goes up in flames, at least I know my dad and I will be able to use those flames to grill up something delicious.

much for love

How the heck is it July thirteenth already? Seriously? Wasn't it just Fourth of July?

Speaking of which, the husband and I spent a lovely holiday weekend in the Great Midwest, more specifically the Twin Cities. It was a vacation full of Settlers of Catan, noodle salad, and catching up with Jimmy's side of the family/friends-that-may-as-well-be-family. Some photo evidence of our time together is posted below for your viewing pleasure.

I am obviously not winning.

Anthony, obsessed with the resources, the resources!

Myself, laughing at the absurdity of me actually enjoying Settlers of Catan

The Twins are not my favorite baseball team, but a close second...and bonus points for Target Field!

Joe Mauer is also not my favorite twin (see, see what I did there? Because Jimmy's a twin! BAH HA!), but he sure looks nice from behind!

The Mill City Museum, freakin' amazing.

Aunt Kathy's incredible house in Stewartville, Minnesota

The Lykes/Skyhawks (is that not the coolest last name ever?)

Minnehaha Falls

Thus ends our photo tour of the Great State of Minnesota, I hope it was enjoyed by many!

I leave for July Vacation Numero Dos on Sunday, to my favorite place in the entire world -- the Adirondack Mountains. Those of you who have been there hopefully understand, and the rest of you will just have to trust me that rustic cabins, no cell service, and mosquitoes the size of small automobiles are over-shadowed by spending two weeks with my wonderful--albeit, gigantic--family, warm days and cool water, the best running I've ever experienced, card games, square-dancing, BINGO played with Smarties, and crisp nights with more stars than you can ever imagine.

And don't worry, you can expect another guided photo adventure when I get back. The Streffs, we're picture takers, like it or not.

:)

do it all again

I spent the majority of the day on Wednesday on what was quite possibly the most epic girl-date in history.

My wonderful friend Anna is kicking off her Reckless Trust Discovery Tour today, moving herself from Austin back to the Great Midwest. Though we haven't hung out regularly in the last few months, we have been trying to make up for lost time over the past two weeks, eating Cowboy Queso at Kerbey Lane, chips and green-salsa-mixed-with-ranch-dressing at Trudy's, and then our impromptu best-ever girl-date this afternoon. It breaks my heart to know that she's leaving, especially when we're just now catching up with each other, but I admire her courage to trust that the Midwest is where she is supposed to be. She will be missed, but with her affinity for travel, I know she'll be back to play soon.

After an incredibly informative mandatory work obligation (see? the sarcasm I did there?), Anna and I sauntered over to Alamo Drafthouse for the 11am showing of Toy Story 3D. I had had nightmares of walking into a theater teeming with screaming, drooling, kicking-the-back-of-my-seat-while-talking-in-outside-voices-during-the-quiet-parts children, but Anna and I made up two of seven people in the theater. Popcorn. Diet Coke. Blissful silence during the movie, with the exception of our tendency to crack each other up.

Movie? Highly recommended, but then again, I'm a sucker for Disney/Pixar.

Though neither one of us was very hungry, I felt the need to soak up every last ounce of Anna before she leaves Austin for the Great Midwest on the Reckless Trust Discover Tour, so we headed to Homeslice Pizza for a little goodbye lunch. We parked ourselves under the backyard awning and relished in the Texas heat as we consumed more salad, pizza, and Fireman's #4 than two girls should be able to eat on a Wednesday afternoon.





And to put the cherry on the top of the epitome of girl-dateness, we ate gourmet popsicles at the Goodpop stand on Barton Springs. Thank you, Abby from Ohio in your Cheerios T-shirt for selling your product so well. A Hibiscus Mint popsicle melting down your arm on a hot summer day is the perfect end to a perfect afternoon. We may or may not have gone back and bought a half-dozen apiece to share with friends. Also, the free Tamarind Chile popsicle I ate on the drive home? Deliciously strange and equally wonderful.





Anna, the Great State of Texas will miss you, my love, but the time has come for you to participate in your next great adventure! I will always be here to see matinees, bake bread, or go on a fabulous girl-date, whenever it strikes your fancy to grace Austin with your presence again!

or you can get with that

It has been a great weekend.

I never thought I would have anything against the state of Pennsylvania. That is, until Friday. We ventured out to Cedar Park to watch the Texas Stars battle the Hershey Bears (who do not have chocolate-y brown uniforms, much to my dismay) in game five of the Calder Cup finals. I have grown up in a hockey household, which seem few and far between in the great state of Texas. I've learned to appreciate the slap of stick to puck, the look of freshly-zambonied ice, and the satisfaction that comes from watching two grown men in padding try and beat the living crap out of each other. I would like to say that my love of hockey transcends my dislike for small children whacking inflatable clappers together fourteen inches from my ear, but unfortunately, it hasn't quite come to that, although two dollar plastic cups of beer and dollar foil-wrapped-and-nothing-natural-about-them-but-still-terribly-terribly-delicious hot dogs helped to dull the pain immensely. The Stars lost in overtime--very disappointing--but it was already an hour and a half past my bedtime for a work-night, and we still had to navigate our way back to our comfort-zone of



I worked all day Saturday and then high-tailed it to Lakeway with Jimmy for movie night with the Normans. After much debate, we settled on watching Hook, one of my all-time favorite childhood movies. I lasted just long enough to eat myself sick on popcorn and Mike 'n Ikes before falling asleep on Jimmy's shoulder for most of the movie. Of the many traits I've inherited from my mother, not being able to make it through a movie past eight o clock is one of the most prevalent.

And this morning I awoke with a blazing sugar hangover, made infinitely better and then ten times worse by hamburgers for lunch from Five Guys. Jimmy joined with me in a collective "eh" and shrug for Five Guys. If we're going to spend nearly twenty dollars on hamburgers and fries, I'd rather hit up Huts or Phil's Icehouse. Just sayin'.

But everything was cured with the Sunday Afternoon Nap.

Why is it that even after sleeping in this morning, and although the sun was bright and the world looked scrubbed clean after the last few days full of the threat of rain and drear, that I can spend Sunday feeling so incredibly tired?

I have found that one of the great pleasures in my life is the utter joy of the nap. I feel I have perfected the art of the afternoon nap, excelling on those occurring on Sunday afternoons. There is something so blissful about escaping to a dark, cold bedroom on a scorching, humid day, and falling into the peacefulness of oblivion for a few hours. Bonus points for reading a good book or the latest issue of Real Simple before succumbing to the inevitable.

And then somehow, even after several hours of deepdarksleep in the afternoon, I still find myself completely exhausted at the end of the day, knowing that I have work in the morning and that it is Monday. But, by God's grace, I will make it through another start of the week in the ED unscathed, and I will come home to find that Jimmy has made it through the start of his week unharmed as well, and we will venture together into the blur of Tuesday and Wednesday and then the weekend is here again before we know it.

Oh, and in closing, here are some lovely shots of Jimmy and I looking so freakin' intense, RAWR! at Crossfit on Friday. Not pictured, the twenty seconds later when Katie wimps out and pulls her back. Collective sigh.




Yeah, that's right.

winding path i tread

I no longer have to suffer through the summer heat bespectacled. As much as I love my glasses, I don't so much love the inability to wear sunglasses and the squinty-eyed looks I get from coworkers as they ask, "Are you sick or something?" Not sick, just too lazy to make an eye doctor appointment. But all of that was taken care of today, at SuperTarget, no less, and I am now stocked up on contacts for the next year. Or, at the rate that I change them, the next six years. Don't tell my eye doctor.

My good friend Haylie should be here any minute with quite possibly the most beautiful little boy I've ever seen. I am not at all biologically related to him, but I have more love for that sweet baby than I ever thought possible. I mean, just look at this face!



That picture was stolen from Miss Haylie's facebook profile picture. Everyone wants Jimmy and I to jump on the baby train, but I'm perfectly content pouring my love out on this itty bitty one. We will, God-willing, have plenty of time to be parents, so we want to enjoy each other for the time being!

Haylie and I debated on what to do on our girls' day today, and I think we've successfully decided on making a strawberry pie for small group tonight. I'm using a recipe I found on one of my new favorite blogs, Sweet Fine Day. This blog is also what pushed me over the edge in my decision to purchase a 50mm prime lens for my Nikon. Her pictures are simple and beautiful and exactly the type that I hope to be able to take one day.

I also experimented with making cucumber limeade this afternoon, we'll see how that turned out a little later.

There's the knock at the door. Get your aprons on, ladies and gentlemen, it's pie-makin' time!

jump up on it

Setting off the smoke detector while cooking steak totally counts as testing the batteries in said smoke detector, right?

And so I begin blogging again, in a slightly smoky apartment in Austin that smells mouth-watering-ly like steak, with a glass of seven dollar Vinho Verde on my desk, and my wonderful husband killing zombie spiders on the XBox directly behind me. Eleven years ago, I started a Scribble or LiveJournal or whatever was popular and free at the time, and launched my innermost, drama-laden, high school desires and woes into the abyss of the world wide web. Looking back on those entries, which now sit printed-out and tucked safely under my bed in a dusty Bongo boots box, I cringe at the melodrama but relish in the words as a way of realizing how much my life has changed, and what a drastically different person I am eleven years later.

Eleven years? How did that happen? How did I graduate high school, move to Austin, go the the University of Texas, meet my husband, graduate with a degree in nursing, run a marathon, start my dream job, and get married? How does one's life become a delectable blur overnight? I want to be able to read the entries from this blog eleven years from now, and vividly remember this time in my life: my mid-twenties, eight-months-married, free from the commitments of house-ownership or kids, doing a job I love in a city I love surrounded by people I love.

A great man once said, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it."

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Here we go.