Bits & Pieces of Memorial Weekend

On Friday night, Matt drove two traffic-less hours to spend the weekend with our brother, Kelsay, giving me a couple days alone with the family and the whole air mattress to myself. I decided against locking myself in our room and sought out to get some one on one time with each person. 

Through bird watching, cooking and chasing many tiny dogs around, I enjoyed the company of each family member. One of my favorite moments of the weekend was out on the porch with Grandma. We sat with plates of buttermilk pie on our laps and listened as the backyard came alive with the humming of crickets.   I'm getting use to the quiet moments around here. In my family, the loudest person gets heard and conversation never stops, even through movies. (You can imagine the culture shock this created for Matt and me when we got married.) Sometimes there are three or four minutes of silence with Grandma. She'll lock her fingers together, purse her lips and look quietly around, observing. Then start right in on a story. 

"I've had a hard life", she told me while still looking over the yard. I lowered my fork in anticipation of responding somehow, but she continued. She started in on stories of becoming a single mother of five and continued on, telling about her days working in the cotton fields, hiding from storms and burying her husband and eventually, her son. "I've had a hard life", she repeated, this time with a voice inflection that sounded like she was convincing herself. She sat quietly for just a moment before rising to collect the plates and going inside. I sat outside a bit longer, hoping to spot the flicker of fireflies and soaking in the life of this family. So much sorrow, so much loss and so much pain. As an incredibly fearful person, I spot bravery quickly and admire it greatly. These people are brave. (I, on the other hand, have been asking an 82 year old to stomp on the spiders that I fish out of the pool.) 

On Saturday, Grandma and I sneaked out of house to hit the Memorial Day sales. "Are you going to church with me tomorrow? You need to wear a dress." I nodded as I wondered what she thought I had been wearing the last two Sundays. In the morning, after splitting a pot of coffee on the patio, we drove the two blocks down to her church and parked in her usual spot under a willow tree. " That was for the slaves" she informed me, pointing to a rickety set of stairs winding up the side of the church. "They'd go up there and sit in the balcony." I love the way she looks at me when she's anticipating my reaction to something. 

    Later that day Matt's Aunt Amy pulled me into the kitchen. "Hey", she checked over her shoulder, "I want you to drive me to the mall so I can shop the sales." Browsing the racks at their favorite department store, Amy pulled out a sleeveless, white cotton dress. " Let's buy you some dresses. You can wear 'em to church!" After that, any item of clothing I touched she shoved into the cart. "Your birthday is coming up! You are the only niece we have, let us spoil you." I tucked most of the items back on the rack, but suddenly feeling self-conscious about my church apparel, I gave in to her buying me a couple dresses. "Now, if Matt asks, you tell him you've always had these dresses and he won't know nothin'." 

On Monday night we closed out the weekend by grilling hamburgers and eating plate-loads of warm, peach cobbler Grandma baked.

Welcome, summer! 

                        

I saw my first bolt of lightening last night.

 As an Oregonian, I am no stranger to rain storms, but I can count on one hand the times I've seen thunder and lightening.

When the clouds gathered over our heads as we were eating dinner on the patio, Grandma asked me if I'd ever seen a storm. "Sure", I said confidently, fondly remembering sitting around the lake at camp with friends to watch a storm that followed a record-breaking heat wave. We all sat on fallen logs and watched the lake light up from lightening that was miles and miles away. Nothing like the power of the infamous southern storms Matt had told me about though.

Later that night, a fuzzy, gray screen and loud beeping interrupted our movie as the words "Severe Thunderstorm Watch" scrolled across the screen. Still in our swim suits from an afternoon in the pool, Matt and I took glasses of sweet tea outside and sat on the steps of the porch, watching dark clouds creep closer to the house. The hype of finally experiencing a southern storm had me imagining zig zag lightening bolts flashing from a pitch black sky, like I'd seen in any cartoon. As the wind picked up, my mind wandered to extremes, questioning the likelihood that we would be able to wheel a portable hospital bed, six people and around ten animals into the closet if this storm turned tornadic.

The storm was still miles away, so we couldn't see more than a dull flash now and then, not much brighter than a changing TV screen. I started losing interest once the sky cleared up above our heads; the storm had stopped moving forward. The muggy, hot air at 10pm had melted the ice in my drink and just as I rose to go inside, I saw a scribble of yellow light tear across the sky. I sat back down on the brick, giving the storm my undivided attention. It was still about twenty miles away so we couldn't hear the deafening thunder Matt promised, but the clouds lit up frequently. 

Not more than a minute went by and my jaw dropped open as lightening spread across the sky in the brightest flash of the night. It spread out quickly and resembled roots of a tree. It seemed like it took up the entire sky. Every branch of it so vivid, so defined. 

Matt holds back laughter every time I gush about my love for the south. Compared to the trailer park in rural northern Alabama he grew up in, visiting the middle class, suburban city his family moved to recently is practically tourism to him. But to me, the south is the south. And no matter what part of the south you live in, a storm is a storm.

 We hadn't spoken for a few minutes after that last flash, but the rain was moving in so we stood up to head back inside. My eyebrows were still raised from the epic and powerful sight we'd seen. Without taking his eyes off the sky, Matt folded his arms across his chest, leaned towards me and with a smirk said, "that-was nothin'". 

Back down south.

After a very long two weeks of double shifts, late night packing and constant worrying, we made it. We cleaned out our house, packed almost everything into storage, parked my car into a lot and sat on our front porch, waiting for our landlord to arrive and hand her the keys. Reeking of cleaning product, we leaned against each other, looking over our yard and trying to muster up some emotions about leaving the house we love so much. But we couldn't. Mostly because all of this still feels surreal. But also because after four moves in our 1.5 years of marriage, finding a new place to live has become an endearing adventure and feels sort of normal.

After three plane rides, two over-priced dinners and three mindless magazines later, we made it to Alabama. We wheeled our suitcases and bags into the office of his aunt's house, stacked them on the houndstooth couch and collapsed onto a twin size air mattress.

Despite the circumstances of why we hurried out here, we are loving being here. I feel more at home when we're in the south than I ever have in California. Maybe it's because Matt's accent comes out a little bit. Maybe it's because we're always on vacation when we're here. But I love it. I still get a little wide-eyed when we're pushing a cart through Walmart and I see a Dad with his kids, a hand gun strapped to his hip. (To be honest I'm a little wide-eyed just being in Walmart.) I'm impatient at the post office, while the woman behind the counter shares her secret for sunburnt shoulders with a customer as the line grows longer. But I love it here. I love the open fields filled with livestock in between streetlights, I love the neighborhoods lined with brick houses and I love seeing all the things I don't understand about Matt fall into place in his natural habitat.

It feels a little bit like vacation so far, only filled with heavy hearts and hospital beds. The days are long and slow and different, depending on how chemo treats her body that day.

There are seven of us at the house, all fumbling around trying to help out. I've found my spot next to Grandma's side. We drink coffee until noon, working on her crossword puzzles. She makes a batch of sweet tea after lunch so it's cool enough to drink with dinner. At 82 years old, she can remember every detail of her life and the lives of her children, but leaves the stove on. She tells me story after story about Matt's dad, as I mentally line up their similarities. Her sweet, southern voice softens when she talks about God or to her cats. My heart melts hearing Matt say "yes ma'am" to every question she poses.

Last night, while sausage was sizzling in the skillet, we rolled up our sleeves and I watched Grandma make her famous biscuits. Laughing and clapping flour into her hands, she admitted that there's no recipe and to "keep watch". Two scoops of flour, three spoonfuls of Crisco and a splash of milk later, the most beautiful, flaky golden-brown biscuits were rising in the oven. She stirred in flour and water into the leftover sausage grease and whipped up creamy gravy that we all heaped onto the warm biscuits and ate on the backyard patio.

We're still adjusting. Still taking in everything that's in front of us. Still processing everything we left. But in the meanwhile, I am so, so glad we're here.

Family News

I read in this month's edition of Real Simple that daffodils mean "new beginnings" or that change is coming. Coincidentally, we have had jars full of daffodils displayed around our house over the past few long, hard weeks we've had.

I've been hiding behind recipes and how-to's on this blog for the past few weeks because it's been hard to know what to share, but since this is primarily a tool we use to include people on our life, I guess it's time for an update.

Matt and I are packing up our little farm house and moving ourselves out to Alabama for the summer to be with his family. With heavy hearts and tear-filled eyes, we are facing the unbearable pain that comes when cancer is taking over a loved one. Moving out there is not the hard part, in fact, we can't get out there fast enough, but we are bracing ourselves for what we'll see when we get there.

We are so, so thankful to have the opportunity to go out there. Matt's work and our landlord have been incredibly compassionate with us and depending on how quickly our weary hands can pack, we will be gone in two weeks.

Feeling overwhelmed is an understatement, so forgive us if we lose track of social media for a while as the tunnel-vision sets in...

Raspberry-Lemonade Muffins

A couple of weeks ago, I impulsively bought the Comfort Foods edition of Country Living's magazine. Big mistake. Every page offers a mouth-watering recipe filled with sugar and flour. All of our off-limits favorites. Everything from bacon-topped corn muffin sliders to stuffed macaroni and cheese. On Saturday, I tip-toed into our kitchen to make coffee before work and noticed the magazine suspiciously found it's way onto the recipe display, opened to a beautiful picture of strawberry-lemonade muffins. I decided to take the hint and give it a try during my usual therapeutic day-off baking session the next day.

I made some adjustments to the recipe and it still turned out incredibly delicious (especially for something sugar-free and gluten-free), although it didn't resemble the fluffy, high-topped muffins in the magazine, it hit the spot. I'll include the original recipe and my altered version:

 

GF & SF Raspeberry-Lemonade Muffins

(Makes 15 muffins)

2 1/2 cups gluten-free baking flour

3/4 cup raw honey

8 ounces plain yogurt

1/2 cup butter, melted

1 Tbsp. lemon zest

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

1 1/2 cups frozen raspberries, slightly defrosted

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Combine flour, honey, yogurt, melted butter, lemon zest, lemon juice and eggs together until just moistened. Don't over-stir the batter, some lumps are fine. Gently fold in raspberries.

2. Spoon batter into lightly greased muffin pans or paper liners, filling almost to the top. 

3. Once you put the muffins into the oven, lower the oven temperature to 400 degrees (the heat change helps get a better rise on the muffin tops). Bake between 16-18 minutes or until golden brown around edges. Cool for about ten minutes. Serve alone or with homemade raspberry jam.

Here's the original recipe printed in the March issue of Southern Living's recipe edition.

Strawberry-Lemonade Muffins

2 1/2 cups self-rising flour
1 1/4 cups sugar, divided
1 (8oz) container sour cream
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 Tbsp. lemon zest
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups diced fresh strawberries

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine flour and 1 cup of the sugar in a large bowl; make a well in center of mixture.

2. Stir together sour cream and next 4 ingredients; add to flour mixture, stirring just until dry ingredients are moistened. Gently fold strawberries into batter. Spoon batter into lightly greased 12-cup muffin pans, filling three-fourths full. Sprinkle remaining 1/4 cup sugar over batter.

3. Bake for 16 to 18 minutes or until golden brown and a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pans or on a wire rack 1 minute; remove from pans to wire rack and cool 10 minutes.

Although everything about "raspberry" and "lemonade" screams summer to me, it'd be a delicious addition to an Easter brunch. I'm slightly tempted to make (and devour) a batch of the real stuff for this weekend...

Coconut Creamer

Despite my ode to cream earlier, I have been working on finding/creating a good substitute to cream in my coffee in an effort to clear up my skin (and arteries) a bit. Spring is upon us, which in my book means coconut coffee season! A couple summers ago, my girl Molly introduced me to what is now a great love of mine: coconut iced coffee. When I'm working in the coffee shop, I'm always tempted to whip up a coconut latte for myself, but after peeking at the nutritional value and seeing that 1 ounce of the coconut syrup has 21 grams of sugar in it, I got to work in the kitchen.

It took a few tries to get the coconut creamer recipe just right. It kept coming out chunky, or not sweet enough for me. I bought some "So Delicious Coconut Creamer" (the original flavor) to try to match up the same flavor with my sugar-free recipe and I decided I just don't like coconut creamer. It's not creamy enough for me and has a bit of an odd after-taste that I don't want clouding up my precious coffee. I settled for a coconut syrup I created combined with my soy milk creamer. (I don't think the soy creamer will last long, I keep coming crawling back to cream.) But for those of you who are interested, I thought I'd share the recipe anyway:

  

Coconut Creamer:

1 can full-fat coconut cream

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup milk (I used coconut milk, but soy or almond would be great too)

2 tablespoons maple syrup, honey or agave nectar

A sprinkle of guar gum*

1. Heat up the coconut cream, milk of choice, vanilla extract and sweetener in a small sauce pan on low heat and stir until warm and thoroughly combined.

2. Pour the mixture in a blender, Vitamix or Magic Bullet. Shake a small amount of guar gum in. Blend the ingredients together until smooth (around 30 seconds).

3. Stir desired amount into your coffee and store the rest in the fridge, about 7-10 days.

*I realize that not everyone has guar gum lying around (unless you are use to gluten-free baking in which case I'm sure that you do!), but you need some sort of thickening agent to hold everything together otherwise the creamer will turn out chunky once it hits your coffee. Xanthan gum also works, but you will need more of it. Guar gum is the strongest thickening agent that I've found, so you need quite a bit less of it than corn starch, etc, in your cooking.

 Coconut Syrup:

4 drops liquid stevia (or melted down regular stevia or chosen sweetener)

1 teaspoon imitation coconut extract (hats off to anyone who can find non-imitation!)

2 teaspoons filtered water

Stir ingredients together until combined. Stevia is a pretty great sugar replacement. It's natural and has very little sugar-free aftertaste, like the others do, but I still rarely choose to use it. I'm all about honey these days. If you want to use honey instead, use 1 tablespoon with 1 teaspoon coconut extract. (You'll need to melt it down with the coconut extract and water first.) This makes the perfect amount for about two glasses of coconut iced coffee.

 Welcome, spring!

 

A Getaway

Early Saturday morning, we packed up the car and headed onto the freeway to explore San Luis Obispo, an incredibly charming college a couple hours north of us. There are lots of quaint beach towns on the way up there, so we carved out lots of time in our very short trip to explore them. The drive itself felt like a vacation. We've finally been getting some rain around here, so the rolling hills were blanketed with smooth, freshly sprouted, green grass and cluttered with appreciative livestock. I couldn't put my camera down! About half the drove outlined the coast and since it was pretty early, the fog was still pulling off the shore, giving us some pretty epic-looking scenery. 

 We stopped in Avila Beach around lunch time. It turned out to be pretty touristy, but we enjoyed stretching our legs a bit and strolling down the pier. 

After our drive, we had a few hours before checking into our room, but of course my Type A husband had already thought of that and mapped out a hike for us! It was incredibly breathtaking to wind through a green forest; a very rare event in our beach town habitat. After about a mile, we arrived at a huge clearing that overlooked the ocean and decided to sit and enjoy it. It was exactly what we needed. Get out of the house, get out of Ventura and sort through our thoughts. I could have stayed there all day!

 

As if we weren't feeling relaxed enough after sitting in the shade of a tree for an hour, we soaked in hot springs nearby and then got deep tissue massages! I really can't remember the last time I felt that relaxed, physically or mentally. Our hotel was in a small town right by SLO called Pismo Beach. It was so adorable! We had an amazing dinner (I may or may not have ordered the macaroni and cheese pizza...) at an appropriately named restaurant called Rooster Creek. I'm not sure if it was the absurdly heavy dinner I ate or the results of a great massage, but I am incredibly proud to admit that I fell asleep at 8pm that night and enjoyed ten hours of much-needed sleep. I'll work six days a week for the rest of my life if it means a weekend like that every once in a while!

 

 

 I (tried to) let Matt sleep in on Sunday before we headed out to explore SLO. We've been there once before, where I found my beloved wooden breakfast tray, so we were looking forward to finding some more treasures. Such a charming area! We weren't prepared for the myriad of inebriated college students dressed head to toe in green, but what did we think was going to happen when we explored the most popular area of downtown on St. Patrick's Day?

Thrifting was an absolute success. I found a copper kettle, which I can't wait to place on top of an old stove in a big southern house someday, and bulked up my handkerchief collection quite a bit. While browsing through a record store, I found a Loretta Lynn vinyl for $1! I'm not super into her music, but after watching Coal Miner's Daughter a couple weeks ago, I had to snag it. (If you haven't seen that movie, do yourself a favor and watch it! It has hunky & young Tommy Lee Jones in it.) Matt found a few books on his list, we picked up a couple other records and my ultimate find of the day: a Bob Dylan teeshirt! An avid fan, I have been on the hunt for a Dylan shirt for years. 

I'm always hunting for vintage kitchen appliances, mostly because I like the way they look but partly because the quality is unmatchable. Some people probably think it's weird to buy used kitchen tools, but we have quite the sanitizing system and it's totally worth it. Our vintage cheese grader cuts through parmesan like nothing else! I'm pretty excited to add this old fashioned ricer to my kitchen. A sweet woman shopping nearby had to explain to me what it was, but once she did I had to have it!

You use it to make smooth, creamy mashed potatoes! Once you've peeled and boiled (or baked) a potato, you place it in inside and close it. Good-bye lumpy mashed potatoes. (Unless you prefer it that way, which I sometimes do...) 

This weekend was a much-needed escape and sabbath. I want to rewind and do it all over it! Spending three days straight with Matt made it that much more difficult to kiss him good-bye and face another work week in the face this morning, but I feel so rested!

Thanks again for planning such a wonderful weekend together for us, love!