Bungalow Breakfast

Currently listening to Glad, "You Put This Love in my Heart".

This morning I woke up slow and easy with the sun, rolled out of bed, (used the bathroom,) and went upstairs to fix myself some breakfast. The menu today? Homemade almond milk over homemade cereal with dried currants and plump, ripe raspberries.

Say what!?

That's right: I made my own cereal yesterday. It was actually really easy. Have you ever wondered how they make cereal? They actually have machines that manipulate the chemicals of the grain and spit it out in the most unnatural fashion to achieve the specific shapes for each brand. (Read more about it in the "Breakfast Cereals" section of this article.) It's terribly unhealthy. But does that mean that you can't eat cold breakfasts anymore? For awhile now, that's what I've been doing. It takes a bit of time to prepare a hot breakfast every morning. Usually I've been baking johnny cake or Amish baked oatmeal, or cooking up a pot of cream cereal and reheating it for the next few days or so. But if you know me, you know that I LOVE milk and cereal. Could I really go the rest of my life without it?

So I googled it up, and found a recipe for homemade cereal. You make up a dough, spread it all over parchment paper on a cookie sheet, and bake yourself one giant cracker. Then you turn down the oven, break the cracker into little pieces, and cook it awhile more until you get flakes! No crazy, pressurized, molecular manipulation here! Now, I didn't follow the directions very well, and ended up with pretty thick flakes and not very many of them. You're supposed to divide the dough and do two sheets and I kept it together and filled one. But they were still pretty delicious this morning. The whole thing took a little over 30 minutes to make - and it would probably still be under an hour if I did two trays like I was supposed to.

The almond milk was the easiest thing ever, too. I soaked 1/2 cup of raw almonds in 2 cups of water for the better part of the day, then came back and blended it into a paste, adding the water as I went to keep it thinned. When I had finished, I poured it into a .8 liter stainless steel bottle, adding a bit of extra water to fill it up. I just have to shake it up before I pour it out, and it turns out pretty good! Now, I think I might need to add some sort of sweetener, but I didn't know what I wanted to add, and as long as I don't try to drink it on its own (as opposed to having it over cereal or using it in baking) I don't think it's that bad. And again, the prep time was very small.

I think I may have found a new weekly activity.

Sometimes you gotta get out...

 Through the fields, through the woods, across the empty stream bed with its smooth stones, upriver to a rock in the middle of the flowing river. Because when you feel like you need to just get out and relax and forget about things for awhile, a rock in the middle of a babbling river is the best thing to drown out your thoughts. Coincidentally, it also makes you have to pee.

You can stay out there until the sun starts to go down, the clouds start to shift, the Blackhawk flies past you on his way back home for the evening, the rock spider becomes a bit too comfortable with your presence for your own comfort, and you really just can't hold it anymore.

Then you can hop back to the shore from your rock, walk down the empty stream bed with its smooth stones, downriver to where the stream meets the path, discover that the land you're on is Flood Control No Tresspassing, slip back into the park through a little grove of trees and a bend in the fence, and walk back through the fields as the sun goes down, and the moon comes up on the other side.

And then watch the first four episodes of Avatar on nick.com.

It's a beautiful world, just don't forget to be a part of it.

Of New Shoes and Sunday Songs

That's right: after almost 5 years, I finally bought a new pair of running shoes. Those poor old Pumas were so run-down, worn out by age more than anything else, and had deviated from my minimalist shoe trends years ago. This new pair is from the Merrell Barefoot Collection, and I'm excited to see how they work out. I'd been interested in these since they came out before I went to Botswana, having long since decided that I wanted a minimalist running shoe, and it wasn't until I saw my friend here, Shannon, slipping on a pair and heard her rave review that I finally decided it was time to get one. For the first time, I went online and bought a pair from some online website that had closeout shoes... this color, "acacia" (a pale-ish yellow with the slightest tint of green to it), is no longer being made. I saved $40, and bought these shoes for about the same price as a cheap pair from Shoe Carnival would've cost. So, now I've officially dipped my feet (somewhat literally) in the dark side of online shopping (with the exception of Amazon books, because I feel like every college student does that now, no matter what).

The second bit of news is that my wish was granted, my prayer answered, and I have this coming, Easter Sunday, off of work. Along with the two days following. Can you say weekend? I'm thinking of going to Cottonwood for the weekend, and possibly driving over the mountains to Prescott, where they opened a Trader Joe's last month. But whatever happens the rest of the weekend, I'm excited for Sunday in and of itself. Easter has long been a "big deal" holiday for me. I find it more important than Christmas, and I take it very seriously. Last year I was staying at a hostel in a Reformed Church village compound on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. This year, I'm going to wake up early for the Sunrise Service (a new and exciting event for me!), then go to the regular church service where I will sing in the choir cantata, then - and here's the best part - I've been invited to share Easter dinner with Shannon and her family! I am so honored and excited that she's invited me over, and I am really looking forward to it. Easter is a family holiday for me - always has been - and frankly I was a bit saddened that I was going to be alone on Easter. But now, praise God, I've been given a friend in this town who not only likes to get together for cinnamon rolls and random movie nights, but is also willing to invite me in to join her family for my second favorite holiday of the year!

I am so blessed.