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My dog ate my eggplant

July 23, 2008 – 11:04 pm

I know some of you come looking for reflections on theology and culture.  Some of you come for house progress or pictures.

But this is all I have for you tonight.

Seriously though, this was traumatic.  I mean, have you ever cooked eggplant?  It needs some prep before you cook it so that it doesn’t taste sharp or bitter.  So you salt it for a bit and pop it in boiling water for about 30 seconds.  Of course, the water takes like a long time to actually boil, so that takes time.  And then you have to cook it.

So, I went to the farmer’s market at the Turnip Truck today and had come home with some beautiful Japenes eggplant which I prepared all at once, and cooked, planning to have leftovers. I left them cooling on the counter after we ate, and we ran out to see the house.

We put the puppy in her crate, but left our faithful, almost perfect boxer out in the apartment as usual.

But I hadn’t pushed the cooling eggplant back far enough from the edge of the counter.

And apparently, Otto was hungry (normally, he’ll just lie on the couch and sleep).

So, no more eggplant.

Come on, I need sympathy, I’m seriously distressed!  Besides, I’ve been craving eggplant, and I’m now going to have to go find more to go with all the sauce and noodles I still have.

*sticks lower lip out*

*sighs*

By Anna | Posted in My life, The dog of many names | Comments (0)

Because Shari told me to…

July 19, 2008 – 3:11 pm

My good friend Shari told me I had to post a close-up picture of the art glass in our new front door.  So, being obediant friend that I am (okay, so it was the mood!) I decided to comply… enjoy!

If you happened to come here looking for craftsman-style doors, this one is from Jeld-Wen craftsman line.

By Anna | Posted in Craftsman Style Bungalow, Havenknoll, Simple things, The house on a hill | Tags: , , , | Comments (1)

Cabinets, lights, and tile, oh my!

July 18, 2008 – 11:11 pm

Jody took some more pics of the house progress… enjoy!

Front porch
Front hall light
Kitchen

Kitchen Cabinet
Office Ceiling
Master bath

Tile

By Anna | Posted in Craftsman Style Bungalow, Havenknoll, The house on a hill | Tags: , , , , | Comments (0)

Super quick lunch

July 13, 2008 – 2:49 pm

So Jody called today and said, “I’m on my way home.” Now, it takes less than ten minutes to get from the church to our apartment, so I hung up the phone and got busy with some food. I was in the middle of cubing zucchini to make zucchini bread (currently smelling up our humble apt with yummy smells!) and so I sliced the last of the zucchini while boiling some water for cous-cous, and heating my saute pan. I added some butter, basil, and minced garlic to the water before it boiled, then threw in the cous-cous, removed from heat, chopped and onion, and put a bit of butter in the saute pan once it was hot.

When the butter melted, I added the onions and zucchini slices, sauted them until the onions were translucent (probably about 5 minutes) and just as I was removing that from the heat, Jody walked in th door.

Awesome timing! I plated it with the zucchini and onions on top of the cous-cous and grated some nicely aged parmigiana and fresh ground pepper over the top, and added some honeydew on the side because I had it!

Forgot to take a pic, but it was yummy and husband went back for seconds. What else do you need to know?

This would make 3-4 servings.

1 cup of cous-cous prepared as directed, and about 1 and 1/2 large zucchini or 2 smaller ones, one red onion, about 2-3 tablespoons of butter (one for the cous-cous, 2 to saute the zucchini and onions in), and some seasonings.

This was inspired by Alice Water’s The Art of Simple Food. her philosophy is to use good, fresh ingredients, and then keep your recipes simple and let the food speak for itself. It’s such a great cook book :-)

By Anna | Posted in Cooking, Local/Seasonal Eating, Simple things | Tags: , , | Comments (0)

Local yummies

July 11, 2008 – 10:26 pm

Anna Howard picked a peck of purple peppers and then blogged about purple peppers while picky puppies picked a puppy battle under the table. *sigh*

Actually, I didn’t pick a peck, I only got one.

And actually, I didn’t buy it, the farmer gave it to me for free to try.

Anyway, I headed off to the Nashville Farmer’s Market today, and it was way cool. I guess something that’s been around since 1828 is going to have a lot of very cool stuff to offer.

I got a good bunch of local fruits and veggies, which I’m going to turn into several meals. Some sort of pasta with eggplant (I’ve got tomatoes for the sauce, and onions for seasoning, as well as jalapeños and banana peppers if we want to kick things up a notch). And I’ve got some new potatoes to accompany something, as well as several melons to turn into fruit salad. yay! Summer and fruit, I like much!

Farmer's Market Finds
Eggplant
Purple Bell Pepper

Apple Butter

By Anna | Posted in Around town, Local/Seasonal Eating | Tags: , , , | Comments (2)

Color!

July 10, 2008 – 11:03 pm

They’ve started painting over at the house, a coat of primer, and now all the trim! We didn’t go upstairs because the risers were still wet when we went over, but here’s a couple of glimpses of the progress.

(1) The awesome pillars (2) my cute husband contemplating the sky (3) the front door I’m in love with… seriously, do you see that art glass! I could swoon! Red oak, mmm mmm. This is unstained, we’re going to darken it a bit. (4) this is the powder room off the entry, I love beadboard. (5) fireplace with painted molding! (6) built-in bookshelves. A whole WALL of built in bookshelves. 12 feet long by 8 1/2 feet high! (7) check out the delish coffers with the contrasting dark ceiling. I’m going to lie on the floor for a while when the house is done and contemplate this ceiling.

(I’m trying the gallery feature on this… you have to click on the thumbs to enlarge, tell me what you think, you like this or the other way I’ve been inserting them better?)

Porch pillars
Husband
yummy front door

Powder room
Fireplace
Bookshelves

Coffered ceiling

By Anna | Posted in Craftsman, Craftsman Style Bungalow, Havenknoll, The house on a hill | Tags: , , , | Comments (4)

Get out of the church…

July 9, 2008 – 3:36 pm

I’m sitting here trying to work out some thoughts and several conversations have been running around in my head of late.

I’m the coordinator for youth and young adult ministries for the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee, and so I often get questions from churches (and not just in our diocese either) that sound like this “how can we attract more young people?”

And something’s been bothering me about those questions, regardless of which of the several reasons is behind it.

The thing is, most of the people, and like I said, regardless of the wonderful motivation behind it, asking this question, want a program or solution to bring young people into their existing church structure.

Well, I think I’ve happened on the solution as I was musing.

Get out of the church.

That’s right leave.

Because you see, the church isn’t that building no matter how cute, historic, grand, beautiful, or whatever it may be.  The building is an incidental.  You are the church.

So go out and start taking the church, and the fantastic message of life in Jesus to people you know.

Just live life in relationship with people, not from your church (*gasp, I know*).

Live life in relationship with people with no agenda.  Share with them what excites you, hopefully Jesus is on the list, if not, perhaps you should start by doing a little soul searching and having a few in depth Jesus-times yourself.

As you share your life with people, including how you live in relationship with Jesus, they might get interested.  Or they might not.  But at least they won’t be in the category of people that don’t know a single Christian.

Some stats for you.

The number of non-Christians a person knows has an inverse relationship with the length of time that person has been a Christian.  So the most mature Christians, who should be out there making disciples, don’t know any non-Christians. Hmmm…

The average number of conversions per 100 people in mainline denomination per year is… Are you ready?

One.

And those of you non-mainline folks, your rate of conversion is actually better.  I know you knew this. But wait, what is it?

One point seven.  Yup, nearly double, but still, per one hundred? sort of pitiful.

People, our entire mission as the church is to make disciples.

And we’re failing!  Churches that are growing are mainly getting Christians from other churches.

It’s a giant shell game of “find the Christians.”

So what we’ve been doing, isn’t working.  People will no longer “come and see.”

Get out of the church.  Get into the world.

It’s time we tried out that whole “salt and light” thing again.

Just go.

By Anna | Posted in Ecclesiology, Theology and Culture | Comments (3)

Wall-E: I loved it!

July 7, 2008 – 12:46 am

‘Nuff said, go see it!

Seriously though, it was great. To quote Ben Witherington: “I ask you, if Pixar can make you sympathetic to the plight of a cockroach, obviously the sky is the limit with their powers–NO?”

And that was just one of the poignant and funny elements to this movie. A cute, but lonely robot with a personality, who travels through space to rescue his love interest, a robot from outer space called EVE, of course somehow managing to awaken humanity to their plight, and interest them in their true home: earth.

It’s a story of conservation, yes, but also of awakening, rebirth, and redemption.

There were so many scenes I liked in this movie. But if you haven’t seen it stop reading here and go see it so I don’t spoil it for you.

Seriously there are spoilers to follow…

Are you still reading.

***Sigh***

Fine, if you really, really want the spoilers too click below to read more…
Read More »

By Anna | Posted in Green living, Local/Seasonal Eating, Theology and Culture | Tags: , , , , , | Comments (2)

Unattended children will be traded for donuts… (or sold as slaves)

July 5, 2008 – 11:00 pm

I saw this sign at Elder’s Bookstore, a happy little used and rare bookstore near Centennial Park here in Nashville, that said “Unattended children will be traded for donuts” and then a second one that said “Unattended children will be sold as slaves.” I thought the first one in particular was funny, but didn’t think much else of it until today.

I was at our local Home Depot, picking up a few things on the recommended cleaning list from Green Housekeeping when I became aware that there was a message playing over and over again over the speaker system in between songs and such. “Parents do not let your children climb on shelves. Keep an eye on your children as there are many hazardous items…” And so on and so forth.

And I thought, what parent in their right mind would let their child do any of the things that the message was warning against? I mean, I know kids will be kids and all and would definitely do everything on the message and then some if left to themselves, but the warning was to make sure that parents didn’t let their kids do any of it.

All of this resonated around in my head for a while I’ve begun reading a book of Wendall Berry’s called Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community. The book’s mission is laid out in his opening paragraph:

“Dear Reader,

This is a book about sales resistance. We live in a time when technologies and ideas (often the same thing) are adopted in response not to need, but to advertising, salesmanship, and fashion.”

He then goes into laying out why we value education, basically, education is about the future, and the future is a product that sells better than any other. This leads him to discuss with great subtle irony as only Wendall Berry can, that politicians are big on talking about the future, and discusses a number of facets of that. One in particular spurred all of this thinking of mine with regards to the “unattended children” warnings.

2. Preservation of Human Resources. Despite world-record advances in automation, robotification, and other “labor saving” technologies, it is assumed that almost every human being may, at least in the Future, turn out to be useful for something, just like the members of other endangered species. Sometimes, after all, the Economy still requires a “human component.” At such times, human resources are called “human components” and are highly esteemed in that capacity as long as their usefulness lasts. Therefore, don’t quit taking care of human resources yet. See that the schools are run as ideal orphanages, or ideal jails. Provide preschool and pre-preschool. Also postschool. Keep the children in institutions and away from home as much as possible–remember that their parents wanted children only because other people have them and are much too busy to care for them. Only the government cares. Move the children around as much as possible while their young, for this provides many opportunities for socialization. Show them a lot of TV, for TV is educational. Teach them about computers, for computers still require a “human component.” Teach them the three S’s: Sex can be Scientific and Safe. When the children grow up, try to keep them busy. Try to see that they become addicted only to legal substances. That’s about it.

And I couldn’t help but think how true this is for far too many people. It is a sort of caricature, but grounded in very real observations. What are people for? to steal a title from another of his books. What are families for? Isn’t there more to this life than ending up as a “human component” in the large machine of a national economy? Perhaps it’s time a lot more of us started thinking about vocation as opposed to career, value as opposed to amounts of money, quality of life over quantity of stuff.

I know that when one frames it in such cold terms as those, who wouldn’t choose the former over the latter. But do we really?

It’s something to think about…

By Anna | Posted in Culture, Theology and Culture | Tags: , , , | Comments (4)

Puppy-proofing the recycling bin

July 4, 2008 – 11:10 pm

After moving to Nashville, I got less overwhelmed about a lot of things and decided I had the energy to be more eco-friendly. So we started recycling, beginning with a large trash can dedicated for the purpose, and hidden, remarkably enough in the minuscule enclosure in the apt kitchen that thinks it’s a pantry. (right, don’t tell it it’s not, we wouldn’t want to hurt it’s feelings).

Anyway, our paper waste was bothering me too, but since there wasn’t room for anything else on the floor of said “pantry” besides a large bag of dog food, I had to bring a recycling bin into our living space. So I invested in a nice “milk-crate” basket from target and the recycling began.

And then Lacey came into our lives. Lacey, also known as the demon chew puppy. And the recycling basket was at a great height for her to get into it. Did I mention she likes to eat things? Now, she never tried to eat the basket, thank goodness, but she loved the contents! She ate paper like it was going out of style, and left little bits all over the floor.

Now, fortunately paper doesn’t seem to hurt dogs, or at least not her (but this is the puppy who ate one of those plastic bags for picking up poop, and then, well, you know…) but processing the paper through her digestive system wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when we started recycling.

So I needed to move the basket up higher, and also store some files and such. Short of investing in an expensive filing cabinet that looked good, or living with a cheap ugly metal one, I wandered around target for quite awhile this evening, and this was my solution:

Target has this new kind of organizer called “itso” that’s modular, and snaps together with little connectors that are included. Most of the bins and boxes are cloth, like book cloth, but far less expensive then say, Pottery Barn. The cubes themselves are some sort of durable plastic. You can also buy dry erase tags for the little plastic slots, which I think is cool, b/c then they’re reusable!

What I’ve got here are two of the plastic squares locked together, with a file box and two magazine sorters each.

And of course, my paper recycling basket sitting on top.

That strange purple thing in the bottom left corner is the wheel of my vacuum. I could have (a) put it away or (b) cropped it out of the picture, but then you might get the impression that I always put my vacuum back where it belongs, but who does that? Not me. At least I vacuum.

And given the limited space in the apt, it actually “belongs” in the hallway, sort of hiding behind an antique secretary desk which isn’t a hug improvement on being in the dining area. So there.

But the moral of the story is, now I have a convenient place to sort regular things that insist on coming in the mail and need to be filed, and I have magazine racks to store my growing collection of garden ideas for our new house, and the puppy can’t reach the recycling bin, so no more shredded paper and partially masticated bits of cardboard all over the floor! Yay!

By Anna | Posted in Chew puppy, Green living, House keeping, My life | Tags: , , , | Comments (1)