the latest

I know I ended the last post with a serious cliff hanger and you are anxiously waiting to hear about your excursion to Las Vegas.

However, it seems like there is not much to tell. We didn't want to spend much money, but we debated the whole time about whether or not to try to get tickets to a Cirque de Soleil show (because I have always wanted to see one). We were really really close to buying tickets, too. I can't exactly remember what happened, but we didn't see a show. I think we were just in this daze of "What are we doing in Vegas?" and we never got out of it. We even stayed in the MGM Hotel, but I didn't know until we got back that they have live lions in the hotel. Basically, we spent lots of hours wandering the strip, walking through the mazes of shops and casinos, wondering why people bring small children to this place, and trying to find food that wasn't greasy.

We took pictures, but they are nothing special.

Advice for Vegas goers? Stay in a hotel that is at least 10 miles from the strip. We did. Amazingly nice and just as expensive as a dinky little room on the strip. And plan to see a show beforehand.


In other news...

As alluded to in the previous post, Aaron and I are undergoing a "food revolution." With the start of my new blog about becoming more green, we have watched a couple movies about food. Though I am definitely more passionate about it than Aaron is, I think he is still onboard.

So what is the plan?

Eat less meat
When eating meat, eat organic
Eat more veggies 
Eat more raw things (I actually just added that one today and haven't really told Aaron) 
Buy organic when possible and pertinent 
Eat the seasons 
Investigate "super foods" (Also added this one today)
Drink more water (for detoxifying purposes) 
Eat less to no processed foods (to decrease intake of strange chemicals)
Somehow overcome my addiction to sugar (nearly impossible)


Of course, these are the goals, not the immediate reality. Achieving this goal with take psychological and physiological determination. It will take me basically learning how to shop at the grocery store again and learning how to cook (or not cook) again. It will be hard, but I am determined.


If anyone out there has any wonderful advice, helpful blogs, or tasty recipes they would like to share, I would love it.


And check out my website!  
myownshadeofgreen.com/blog
(Even though something terrible happened this weekend and the pictures suddenly failed to load. Once Aaron has a free hour or two, he'll set to two trying to fix it; but that might not be until graduation in April.)

aaron's eats

Aaron loves pizza. He says ideally he would eat pizza twice a week. He doesn't even care about the quality of the pizza--a 5$ Hot and Ready will do. That doesn't really cut it for me, so I decided I need to adopt the practice of my parents and always have pizza dough on hand in the freezer, and pizza toppings around. Our first (actually second) batch of homemade pizzas were a great success, and a great failure. The first pizza was a success because it slid off the pizza peel onto the stone with no problems. Tomato sauce with homegrown tomatoes from Grandpa's garden, chicken leftovers from Aunt Julee's delicious Sunday dinner, cooked spinach, slices of more tomatoes and mozzarella. The disaster was when the pizza did not slide off so easily, and when I accidentally assembled the pizza on the counter instead of on the peel. Whoops!

Also, unlike the majority of the American population, Aaron has decided he is done losing weight and wants to start gaining it. I wish I could say that. This knew desire means mostly that he has to eat a lot more (and work out a lot) so we have been having fun thinking of ways to pack in the calories and protein to his diet. We made two batches of protein shakes, consisting of ingredients such as Chobani Greek Yoghurt, Whey Protein Powder, raw oats, bananas, peanut butter, chocolate powder, wheat germ, flax seeds, and other random things Aaron threw in there. I made granola that is also packed with protein, and have those steel-cut oats ready in the fridge. I also bought cottage cheese, but Aaron doesn't know if he likes it, and hasn't tried it yet. I started putting extra pieces of turkey on his sandwiches for lunch, and when I made broccoli Alfredo, I also cooked some chicken so he could throw that in his pasta. Aaron also has an unlimited source of milk and ice cream and work...yet somehow he always forgets about the ice cream. I don't know how that is possible.

I feel like I finally figured out something about food that gets Aaron excited. Unlike me, who loves to eat for pleasure, he loves to eat for purpose. When confronted with a salad, he thinks, wouldn't I be able to pack in a lot more if this where all blended up? It was exciting for me to see him excited about food...even though it wasn't exactly what I would call food.

The tricky part is that I am still in the category of Americans that would enjoy loosing weight. How will I survive having all this food around me intended for Aaron's use and not want to gorge myself as well?

Will power? It has been proved that I have very little of that when it comes to food. Hot fresh cookies out of the oven? I'll take three.

reasons for feasting

last weekend aaron and i went up to visit his family and celebrate an early father's day. we decided to make a delicious meal for the family to show our love. sadly, i forgot the pie dough i made at home in the fridge. not a big problem, i just made some more. (happily, that means i am currently making a blueberry pie with the forgotten dough.)

it was a busy saturday getting everything prepared, but I had lots of needed help from kaye and kaili. It was all deliciously worth it in the end.

on the father's day feast menu:

Three Bean Salad with Oranges, Cilantro, and Lime Juice

Chunky Guacamole

Grilled Asparagus with Grilled Lemon Halves

The Best Burgers Any Of Us Have Ever Had with Garlic, Chipotles, and Scallions (which we topped with the Guacamole and Sliced Tomatoes)

French Fries That Didn't Get Too Crispy--both salted and spiced versions

And a Strawberry Rhubarb Pie with Homemade Pie Crust and Vanilla Bean Ice Cream (not pictured)

it really was a great success. even with the spontaneous run to the store for more propane after everything had been "cooking" (maybe not really cooking) for a few minutes. we were all stuffed to the max after dinner. so we played a few games before we ate the pie. toffee, the new robison puppy, wanted to play, too.

(this meal was brought to you entirely by the best new recipe cookbook, known in the clark family as "the bible")

in the mood

i feel like posting something, even though i don't have a purpose in writing. perhaps that corresponds to the fact that i feel like i don't have much a purpose in life right now. not in a depressed, self-pity way, but in the way that i only got dressed today at 3:30 p.m. to go out to lehi for one of my dance classes to have a photo shoot.

for lunch i ate re-heated cornbread that is so full of butter and sugar and not really much cornmeal that all the sweet goodness is starting to soak to the bottom, causing the cornbread to seem like it has a butter sauce akin to that of the delicious cake that my family loves called kentucky butter cake. if you have had the cake, you will know what i mean. if you have not had the cake, you should make it. (seriously, if you want the recipe, let me know.) I also ate some left-over broccoli and then an apple an hour or so later.

but why would you care what i ate for lunch today? especially because the meal consisted of only very quotidian and stodgy food items. (yes, i used thesaurus.com to find those words. they are a test for david and adrienne who made known that they are readers of the blog. they are word people, so i thought i'd put some nice words in here for them. if you are thinking you don't know what those words mean, that just proves how superior david and adrienne's vocabularies are to yours, for i would bet my remaining pan of cornbread that they know these words.)

you know, i think my life of late has seemed exceptionally purposeless because it has been insanely rainy in this desert where i live. that means that aaron is unmotivated to ride his bike to work, leaving me unmotivated to ride my bike anywhere at all. hence the coopedupedness. (that one i just made up.)

now on to more purposeful things. there are four things that have got me out of the cold basement this week. each of these things brings purpose and excitement to my life.

1. driving aaron to work when he doesn't want to ride his bike but i need to car later in the day. if aaron can be a purpose, then he is a pretty great purpose. he decided he wanted to ride his bike to work. well, his bike is a terribly old, chunky mountain bike that, until we were able to get a leftover brake handle put on it, had one broken brake handle. i don't know how he rides it, but at first he didn't care. it takes him 30 minutes to get to work on that thing, all along the way seeing dudes on road bikes zooming past him. i think he is starting to believe me that he would be much happier on a road bike.

2. going out to pull weeds. i have joined a community shares garden, though it is still unofficial because i haven't paid yet. this garden has a "garden intern" program. we pay $35, and then put in 5 hours of work in the garden per week, and then we get our produce shares when harvest time comes. if you are doing the math in your head, yes it would be cheaper to just buy a share and do no work. but going out to the garden gives me something to do, and i have been wanting to learn how to garden, so i thought this would be a good step. even though all i do is pull weeds and water, i like it, and i can't wait for the produce!

3. i went to my first ever, paid-for yoga class. i have done yoga plenty as a dancer, but i have never really gone to an official, public yoga class that was in no way associated to dance. it was pretty great to move my body and stretch, breathe deeply, and feel some sore muscles the next day. i am hoping to make yoga classes a bigger part of my summer, and future.

4. driving all the way out to lehi for a half-an-hour photo shoot for my little class. again, not really the most economical use of my time, but i love those girls i teach. they are so much fun and they will try any strange thing i throw at them. it is great to just go feel of young people's energy, especially after being inside the apartment all day.

on a completely different note, you know when you feel like something happened while you were sleeping but it is so vague and fuzzy you aren't quite sure what was real and what was a dream? last night, i was startled awake by aaron breathing loud, fast, and desperately. my reaction was to start shaking and hitting him. it took him a second, but he finally stopped and said "whoa....what happened?" at that point, i was already becoming unsure if i had really witnessed my husband being possessed by an evil spirit, or if i had been responding to a dream of my own. luckily, i don't have dreams in which i vigorously shake and slap aaron's face. after a moments pause he said that he thought maybe he was having a dream that he was being possessed. creepy.

so this was a very random, rambling blog post. i will stop rambling and continue reading "independent people" by halldor laxness. my comparative literature teacher last semester said it was his favorite book of all time, so i got it from the library.

oh that's another thing! i got a library membership. we live a whole block from the library.

playtime and chocolate waffles

aaron spent a lot of last saturday reading about random financial things on the internet. due to the hours of time spent staring at a computer screen combined with his ever guilty conscience that he isn't doing everything he should be with his life, both in the immediate and long-term sense, he went bonkers for about 20 minutes. he had been asking me to "play" all afternoon, and i told him if he figured out something to "play" to let me know and i would do it. the only thing he really vocalized was playing a card or board game. i guess i'm a terrible wife who doesn't keep her promises because i shot that idea down by saying that i didn't know where the games were at my grandparents house (which was where we were, doing our laundry). and it's not like i could have asked or anything...i know i sound terrible, but i'll make up for it, just keep reading.

so then aaron imploded, sat in the laundry room with his head on a pile of clean shirts, and stared out the window. we ate beef stew with my grandparents, which had been crock-potting for several hours (my grandparents weren't crock-potting...the stew was). then my grandma and i ate some ice cream and the men turned their noses down to such a silly dairy dessert. seriously, what is it about ice cream that men can turn down and women can't resist? i think ice cream beats just about anything else on my list of tasty treats.

then we got in the car to go home. this is where i repented for my former misdeeds. i told aaron to take a detour, go down the hill and around the corner, where we ended up at a park. it was kind of chilly out, we only had t-shirts on, but we got out and ran to the playground. we swang/swung/swinged for a while, aaron jumping off at the top of his highest swing, me jumping off at the low point of the curve so that i pretty much just walked right off. we had some handstand competitions. i think i actually held my handstand for just shy of 3 whole seconds! we ran through the playground and slid down all the slides in under 15 seconds, then we talked to each other through those silly "telephone" poles that go under the ground and come out in triangular speakers. we secretly told each other it was cold and we should go.

isn't it kind of funny that children learn so much from "play", and yet we "mature adults" play so little? i guess that proves our superiority to children. we don't need play. we already know everything that play has to offer. (i hope everyone--or should i say anyone--reading this understands my sarcasm in those last sentences.) one time aaron and i were "playing" on a playground and a father came with his two children. he kicked a soccer ball around with his son and told his little daughter to go play on the playground. when he finally gave in to her requests for him to come push her on the swings, he was on his phone texting while he pushed her. he missed a few swings, obviously, and what the heck! play, man! get on the slide with your kid. i could be a total hypocrite. i have no idea, and i have no kids.

on a completely different note from play, but on a very common note for this blog, i have some more observations about aaron's eating habits. sometimes, right when he wakes up, he'll walk into the kitchen and if there happens to be a chocolatey treat laying around, he will have more desire to eat it then any other time of the day. i have seen him eat cookies and chocolate cake while he is still basically half asleep. yet, this morning, when i asked him if he would want waffles for breakfast, he said yes, but with the tone that he was only doing it because he suspected that that is what i wanted. i finally got him to admit, in almost these exact words, that waffles are good, but if they were chocolate they would be better. so, i made him chocolate waffles.

when i asked him to get the syrup out of the fridge, he also grabbed the chocolate syrup. chocolate waffles weren't enough?

i have realized that since aaron doesn't write on this blog and i do, most everything is about aaron and food. yet, i believe you--the potential reader--may in fact be geting a greater look into myself as well by reading what i write. but if anyone wants to know a little more straightforwardly about my life, i'll try to give a few highlights here:

--i was in moscow, idaho for a dance festival last week. i took lots of amazing classes, a few weird ones, saw some amazing dances from students at other universities, and plenty of weird ones, and got to perform a group piece and my solo piece at the festival.

--i am plowing my way through my classes, with the end in sight. only 18 or some days of classes left! i have decided to go to graduation, at least to the ceremony where i walk across the stage and take some awkward pictures holding my diploma.

--if you have forgotten what i look like, here is a picture.

i have been holding spoons a lot lately. and pointing them at people as if holding a magic wand. i didn't notice there was hair in my mouth until aaron showed me the picture. he said there is always hair in my mouth.

rare words

last night, sometime around 10:00 p.m., as we were in bed, aaron spoke some rare words. he said he was hungry.

aaron barely ever expresses desires to eat food, which is quite the opposite of myself. you can imagine the excitement that flittered into my heart upon hearing these words, and the dreams that i had that perhaps this once, aaron might eat in excess, as i so often do. suddenly, my sleepiness vanished and my sole intent was to get him out of bed and eating a bowl of honey nut cheerios.

after telling him, for about 10 minutes, to leave the warmth and coziness of the bed, venture through the cold, darkness in his underwear, and go eat a bowl of honey nut cheerios, i started sensing, from the depths of my bowels, an intense and insatiable craving for honey nut cheerios. aaron kept saying he didn't even want any cereal, but now i kept saying that i did. somehow, the roles had switched. talking about cheerios so much, and trying to get someone else to eat them actually sparked in me my own craving for cheerios. and then, the roles switched again, when aaron finally came to agreement within himself and i decided that it was silly to eat cheerios at 10:30 at night. it didn't take long, probably a matter of seconds, in fact, for me to switch back over and initiate the trek to the kitchen.

aaron didn't follow at first, but as soon as the sound of those cheerios hitting the bowl was heard, he came dragging himself into the kitchen, like a hungry mole blinded by the light. we both poured ourselves hefty bowls of cheerios, and then proceeded back to the warmth of our bed, where we scarfed our cereal snack.

after all the milk was gone, we snuggled back up for a good sleep with stomaches full. or so i thought. to my surprise, only a few minutes later, these words (or words almost similar to these) came our of aaron's mouth: "i'm so hungry i could go open a can of tuna and eat it raw and then scarf down three whoppers and still be hungry." wow. this kind of food passion rarely bubbles within aaron. i was thrilled. i told him now to go eat an apple. but he refused. a turkey sandwich. more refusal. scrambled eggs. still no. i went back to the apple, and even offered to go get it and bring it to him in bed. he refused. i may have persisted more and gone and got the apple anyways, just to see what he would do if it were actually in his hands, but all the memories of finding day old, uneaten apples in the deep caverns of aaron's backpack haunted my mind, not wanting to let another apple's hopes of being eaten get so postponed that that poor apple's psyche has turned on eating itself.

i gave up and went to sleep.

more amazing food secrets were revealed today when i told aaron about the groceries i bought for him to eat while i am gone for the rest of the week. fifty cent frozen burritos, one dollar frozen pizzas, bagels and cream cheese, one dollar pasta sauce for the noodles we have, and a real treat of wheat thins baked crackers. garden veggie flavored. his eyes actually were glowing at the description of all this food and he admitted that he probably would eat it all while i was gone. he confessed that when i make such a fuss about wanting him to eat more food, it actually makes him want to eat less. that almost crushed my little heart. my food obsession has turned terribly south and is now working against me! my love for food is destroying aaron's desire to eat! how can this be?

well, he can eat all the frozen burritos he wants while i am gone.

5 months

yes. aaron and i have been married for five whole months. not really a landmark, i know, but why not make it one?

a few weeks ago, i decided that in order to manage budget expenses and calorie savings, i would only ask aaron for ice cream once a month. well, tonight was the night. 5 month anniversary and a banana peanut butter cup milkshake from the malt shoppe that was over flowing. it wasn't our favorite combination, but there is always next month to experiment again!

cottonseed oil + hair = monster

last night, aaron and i did something we don't usually do. we went to the grocery store. when all that is in your fridge is half a loaf of homemade bread, a little bit of milk, and eggs, you know it's time to do whatever it takes to make time to go to the store.

aaron has a serious grocery-store phobia. he claims it is a combination of the fluorescent lights, the innumerable decisions that need to be made between almost similar products, and the sheer amount of time spent mindlessly walking up and down aisle looking for things that cause the trip to the store to suck the happiness and life out of him.

for me however, the grocery trip is like an efficient microcosm of life. it starts with me making a list. i can check so many things off that one list in such a short period of time. it is quite satisfying. plus, i like to dilly-dally, looking at all the strange products i didn't know existed and dream about what delicious food could be made with them, if only i had an endless amount of money to spend on food, and an endless amount of time to make it all. and so it is with life--i like to dream about all the things i want to learn and do, but then continue forward with checking off my list. i should really break out of the list mind-set. i think it's holding me back. i should just go for it, live my dreams, and buy the spice apple bran muffin mix.

i always have this goal that i only want to go to the grocery store once a month. i don't think it has ever happened, but i keep trying. i planned out about eight legitimate meals, thinking that would last us the whole month of march, also knowing that we always have a few illegitimate meal options as well when time or resources fail us--namely tuna melts dipped in hot chocolate, kraft macaroni and cheese that we scored at a white elephant party, and oatmeal. hopefully, i got everything i needed for all the legitimate meals. what i am not so good at planning out is when the tomatoes and lettuce will go bad (it's not even tomato season), and if aaron will end up eating all the cheese before i get to use it for the designated meal. aaron's new job gives him free cereal and milk every morning, so i'm already afraid that the usual two gallons of milk rule will end in rotten milk this time around.

anyway, back to the grocery store. as we were looking for minced clams and clam juice (to make clam chowder), we found that they neighbored a dear friend of mine, smoked oysters. i decided it was time to initiate aaron into a clark family tradition of eating and enjoying smoked oysters, which we do at least every christmas eve (not to mention the waning tradition of oyster stew on christmas eve). since i didn't see the brand that my family usually buys, naturally we went for the .99 cent option.

i'll just let the pictures display aaron's feelings about eating the .99 cent oysters...

mmmmm.....

now, to explain the title of this post. let's just say that the cottonseed oil that the oyster were bathing in ended up dripping almost everywhere. combine that with the omnipresence of my hair almost everywhere and aaron decided we were creating monsters on our kitchen floor. he liked the oysters, in fact he said he might even be able to get addicted to him, but the cottonseed oil repulsed him.

comparisons

milkshakes are to rachel as what is to aaron?

a) nutty nuggets (the off brand of grape nuts)
b) sour patch kids
c) sharp cheddar cheese
d) tuna melts and hot chocolate


answer?
c! sharp cheddar cheese!

on wisconsin!

Ice Cubes of Oranges

rachel is a very detail oriented person. she likes to plan and is also very organized. I have known this for a long time. I've observed her comb through her itunes library and meticulously assign an album artwork to each of the albums in the library. Ive seen her color coordinate books. Ive seen her many lists and her urgency to check as many things off as possible. the list could go on.rachel took it to a new level recently. A week or so leading up to us leaving for arizona, rach began to ration our level of juice and milk intake. She was set on us leaving to arizona with no liquids left in the fridge. At first I thought we were trying to draw out the life of the juice and milk, in order to avoid an awkward trip to the store one or two days before leaving the state; however, on the day of our departure I quickly realized we had a surplus as I see Rach leaving to the car with a giant filled-to-the-brim glass of juice and milk jug in hand. oh.... all after also having filled our ice tray with remaining juice. so we began to chug on our drive out. the fridge is clean.

confessions from a closet obsessive complusive

So Aaron is always pointing out my weird, obsessive, usually organizational quirks. Like needing to have the the fronts of the shirts hanging on hangers all facing the left. He got used to that one.

On Tuesday, however, I learned that Aaron is a closet obsessive compulsive. I brought home a bag of assorted chocolate candy and left it by him to tempt him to eat it. When I came home, I found that a lot of the Almond Joys were missing. Naturally, I asked Aaron if he loved Almond Joys. He said that he didn't especially love them.

That's when the truth came out.

He confessed that when eating assorted chocolate candy, he has this desire to keep the colors balanced. His candy of choice was Hershey's, but he found that the bag was lacking brown and was heavy on the blue, so he had to eat some Almond Joys. You can see how this then spread to eating more Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Kit Kat's as well.

I think it was all a ploy so he could eat lots and lots of chocolate.