thai chicken enchiladas.

25 Apr

I don’t think you understand the awesomeness.  Heck, I don’t even know what you’re thinking but I know that it’s not enough excitement, mouth watering, and belief in the pure feast of heaven this could be.  Could be.  I haven’t had them yet.  But you can bet your you-know-what that these will be made and devoured at some date in the very near future.
But seriously – I don’t think you understand.  This is the marriage of the always delicious enchilada, a Mexican food staple, and the Thai flavor that I love with a deep, deep passion.  Together.  As one.  Please.  Get in my belly.
I never liked Mexican or Thai food growing up.  Living on a beef cattle farm, we were meat-and-potatoes with salt-and-not-too-much-pepper kind of people.  With a side of carrots.  Or maybe peas.  But never the aspargus or rhubarb that grew in oodles in our yard.  It wasn’t until much later that I discovered I loved both of those too.  So my taste buds were late bloomers.  Get over it and let’s move on.
The Mexican food was a whole other story.  I remember going to Aunt Peggy’s for dinner one night.  Aunt Peggy and her house went global in their cooking once in awhile and I believe it was burritos on the menu that night.  I ate them.  I liked them.  And then I got sick.  I don’t blame the burritos.  I blame influenza.  But you try and eat again what you once saw coming in the wrong direction.  [I will never ever eat spaghetti-o’s.  I never liked them but seeing them in reverse from my brother’s mouth is a reoccurring nightmare.]  It took many years of healing before the spanish step came back to my palette.  
As for the Thai side of things, I don’t remember having Thai food until I was in seminary.  See, I was often fearful to try new things.  [I credit my culinary pal, James, for getting me over many hurdles.  And teaching me how to cut things with large knives.]  I was in Seattle and out with the gals for my friend, Kari’s, bachelorette party, the night before her wedding [which I flew out to be in].  We went out for Thai food and I loved the pad thai on my plate.  A love affair began.  The peanuts.  The cilantro.  I’m drooling at my computer.
Thai chicken enchiladas.  Now do you understand?  If not, come over.  We’ll make them.  We’ll eat them, and we’ll fall in love.  With the enchiladas.  Not each other.  [Though that could be negotiable if you drive a truck and are funny.] 

such a nut.

24 Apr
I’ve known for a long time that I care too much about what others think of me.  I fear being judged by others.  What I’m realizing recently is how frequently those thoughts dominate my being.  I certainly do care how my closest friends and family see me, for people who know me best help me be truly myself by being dear, honest people.  [And that’s not judging.  That’s knowing.]  But when I consistently care how perfect strangers are perceiving me, I think it borders on unhealthy.
Here’s an example.  I mowed my lawn on Monday night, and I did it successfully.  [Lindsay:1 Mower:1]  But it wasn’t done until Monday so on Sunday, when it looked like a South American jungle of grass and dandelions, I spent most of my morning wondering what the congregation was thinking.  Did they think I was lazy for not mowing it?  Did they say to themselves, why in the world isn’t the parsonage lawn mowed?  Maybe they did.  Maybe they didn’t.  [Truth is the lawn mower was being serviced all of last week – hence the jungle.]  But then, as I mowed it on Monday night, too many more judgmental thoughts came to mind.  I wondered if the people driving past thought, my, she’s driving that lawn mower slow.  Or maybe they thought, why in the world is she doing it like that?  Did any of the cars driving past seriously think any of that?  Probably not. And so what if they did?
I realized how often I think about others’ perceptions of me when I was driving somewhere new.  I don’t even remember where I was going but I recall making a wrong turn.  I knew I had to turn back but there was a car behind me.  I distinctly remember thinking to myself, I’ll just drive another block before I turn around.  That way the person behind me won’t know I’m slightly lost.  Why in the world should I ever care what the car behind me thought?  I didn’t know the person and never would.  But for some deranged reason, thoughts like that plague me all the time.  I’m nutty and I want to not be.
Then put me in a position as a public leader in a church and my what-do-they-think-of-me? goes crazy.  I want everyone to like me.  I don’t want anyone to think that I’m dumb or lazy.  I want them to know that I’m doing my job as best as I know how.  This fear of other people judging me – in addition to my need for processing time and introversion – likely leads to me saying next to nothing in new group settings.  [But then they just judge me for being quiet so really it’s a no win.]  I feel judged.  A lot.  And, really, honestly, I’m probably not.  I’m paranoid.
New goal: To not let my perceptions of other peoples’ fictitious judgments ruin my day or infiltrate my thoughts.  To know myself that I’m doing the best I can and have that be enough because I am enough.
[You’re judging me right now, aren’t you?]
wink.

priorities.

23 Apr
I’m going to quit complaining that I’m busy.  Really, I’m going to try.  I’m going to stop saying, “Sorry, I didn’t have time.”  I have 24 hours in a day and I can choose what I do with those 24.  Eight I hold tight and cherish for a night of sleep but really, even that is negotiable.  
I think it was a wise prophet named J. Timmer who told me once – something like this – It’s not that you don’t have time for it.  It’s that it’s not a priority.  [If it wasn’t you, J. Timmer, you can either own up and say it wasn’t or you can take the compliment that I just called you a prophet.]  That blew my world open.  
So true.  Granted, there are exceptions.  I have a job where unexpected things happen and sometimes that throws any perfect plan for my day out of whack.  But that’s just life.  I have a lawn that needs to be mowed tonight.  Do I wish that wasn’t a priority?  Hell yes.  But it needs to be done.  That’s life.
But for example – I used to say that I haven’t had time to sew that final curtain for my bedroom.  The truth really is that I’ve made watching reruns of HIMYM a priority over that final curtain.  When I used to say that I don’t have time to go for a walk, the truth really is that I spent that time instead pinning on pinterest.  It’s not that I don’t have the time – I have 24 hours – it’s that it’s not a priority.  I think this train of thought is helpful to me.
And it’s not that watching reruns of HIMYM can’t be a priority.  Sometimes I need an hour to not think and not do anything to care for my own sanity.  But it’s reminding myself that I choose what I do with my time.  No complaining.  And that whole not going for a walk won’t work anymore.  I have a treadmill now sitting in my house and if anything, the amount of money I paid for it will guilt me into using that puppy.  [Delivered and set up this morning – exciting!]

batman & wife were here.

22 Apr

It was a long day today.  I left the house at 7:30 this morning, stopped back briefly for lunch, and then was gone until 7 this evening.  Exhausted, I walked to the back door and found the proper key.  I reached to open the screen door and spied a piece of paper stuck in the door.
I read said note and then my jaw dropped.  I might have screamed, “Noooo!” in supreme disappointment.   I missed Batman and wife.  I missed Batman and wife!  They were at my house while I was off leading a church service at the care center and learning all about the national youth gathering in New Orleans.  Nooo!
Who’s Batman, you wonder?  Who is his wife?  And who would ever call this girl Sunshine?
Sit back.  Let me tale you a tale from Gnometown.
I still remember the day Custodian Keith of Grace Lutheran Church sauntered past my office at the church and greeted me by saying, “Good morning, Sunshine.”  From that moment on, it was [one of] my nickname[s].  [I also recall the day, fairly early in my internship year, when Custodian Keith walked past and casually asked me, “Have any boyfriends yet?”]
That year of internship I learned that Custodian Keith is pretty great at catching the bats that fly about the church.  Sometimes he put them [still living] in glass jars and set them on peoples’ desks.  He became the batman and I started buying Batman things for him when I would come across them, like a Batman sprinkler [the kind you attach to the end of a hose] for $2.50 at a church garage sale.  I would mail him toy rubber bats and he gave me toy rubber bats in jars.  [They sit on my bookshelf.]
And Batman’s wife?  She makes lovely donuts.  A true treat.
Gail, if you still read the blog on occasion, know that I’m super bummed I missed you!  There are potential plans to visit your neck of the woods a la graduation time so me hopes I’ll see you and Batman then!

a two-part rant.

21 Apr

It seems I’ve been on an impromtu blog hiatus.  Don’t worry – it wasn’t you.  It was me.  I’m back now. With two-part rant.  You don’t have to tell me twice – I know you’re excited.  Who doesn’t love a good rant?  Let’s get started.
First.  Nicholas Sparks is the man I love to hate and hate to love.  I used to read every Nicolas Sparks book like it was no one’s business.  I’d eat every new one up.  I read my favorite one, A Bend in the Road, at least three times.  I loved him.  But then The Notebook got so much attention.  The Notebook – not one of my favorites.  Besides Ryan Gosling and the well-played scene in the rain on the pier [see note on rain in chick flicks below], I didn’t care overly for the film either. gasp.  I know.  I started to only love Nicolas sometimes.  Once in a while, I’d allow myself to get sucked back into his stereotypical genre of plot lines with wounded men and the women who fall in love with them [and the other way around].  We had a mediocre relationship going, Nicolas and I. The kind where I wouldn’t bring him home for dinner but, sure, I’d meet up for a drink if I had no better plans.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was listening to a Nicolas Sparks audiobook on my Alaskan drive last summer.  I listened to it and remember laughing.  I remember thinking it was dumb.  It was cliché.  And then I remember calling myself a severe girly girl [the kind I never want to be] for ever liking him.  I slapped my own fingers in shame.  I hid all of my Spark’s novels behind another line of books on my shelf.  But then The Lucky One was released as a movie and Zac Efron looked pretty dreamy in the previews.  Yes, I read the book a while back when I was in my Spark’s phase.  And yes, I loved the movie.  Oh, Nicolas Sparks.  I can’t make up my mind.  I love to hate you.  I hate to love you.  It’s like I’m in one of your novels; I’m the wounded girl and the novel itself is the guy.  How metafiction of you, Nick.
Second.  Chick flicks are bad for my health.  I saw The Lucky One this afternoon with Paige.  We seem to entertain ourselves a lot lately by meeting up at the Owatonna theater and seeing whatever we can lose ourselves in for two hours.  [We love to escape reality, ie I love to forget that I still have a sermon to finish.]  My sister always accuses me of being super critical of movies.  Well, Emma, I loved it.  I was sucked in and had no power against its storyline or the definition of muscles in Zac Efron’s back.  Even the giggling row of junior high girls behind us laughing uncomfortably at every sign of affection on-screen weren’t enough to distract me.   I would totally see it again.  But I shouldn’t.  Chick flicks are bad for my health.
While a genre I enjoy, it’s a genre the reminds me, in one more way, that I go home to an empty house.  It’s a genre that raises expectations that will likely never be met [meet lindsay the pessimist] and that, given enough other outside circumstances, could only potentially fuel a spiral into depression.  Plus, we all know such well-timed thunderstorms and getting caught in the rain is pure creative fiction.  Rain doesn’t work like that.  Rain comes instead when you’re out running errands in canvas flats and pants a half-inch too long. [Welcome to my Thursday.]
Anyways.  Now I must move on with my evening.  I thought about creating a clandestine second blog – one where I could somewhat secretly just ream on the dangers of chick flicks to women [I’m sure there are studies somewhere.] but I won’t.  Instead, I’ll finish my sermon for tomorrow and then likely do what I do best – watch a movie I’ve already seen five hundred and three times.  Something like 27 Dresses, or Pride and Prejudice, or Pretty in Pink.
I’m doomed.
Pretty much.

it’s monday.

16 Apr
I’m still at home.  I have the hardest time going to work on Monday mornings!  If I’m in the office by 10, that’s pretty good for me.  I feel a little guilty because the quilting women begin arriving by 8:30, likely when I’m still eating my breakfast in my pajamas and watching Josh Elliot on Good Morning, America.  But then I remember how I spent Saturday writing my sermon and I don’t feel so bad.
Anyways.  Here.  Have some links [web, not sausage] on this Monday morn.
Your brain on fiction.  Further proof that book nerds are awesome and so are their brains.
I won’t love you like a love song.  Thoughts on love in popular culture and what it really might mean.

Maybe if we stopped worrying so much about finding “the one” and concentrated on being loving to everyone—ourselves included—we’d relax into the present moment a little more and actually be able to be in love, no falling required. 

I don’t even know if I like eggs benedict but it’s eggs benedict day!  It makes me want to try.  If I were to try, I would rely on the pioneer woman to teach me how.

baby!

15 Apr
Mom Lauren texted me this photo of baby-Elliot-tummy-time on the quilt I made.

All together now: oh for cute!

travel now. or in three years.

14 Apr
I visited a man named Norm on Thursday at a care center.  He’s sweet and always makes a few off-handed comments to note.  “What are you wearing on your feet?  Moccasins?” [They were red heels.]  “Men in Owatonna are tall.  At least six feet.”  
Last week while we were visiting, he shared his wisdom that went something like this –

If I could give people advice, I would tell them to travel.  Don’t wait.  People work hard and settle down with families and plan to travel later when they save their money, but things don’t always go as planned.  It might not happen.  Travel now.

Oh, Norman.  I could have hugged him for this comment, and oh how I want to do exactly what he suggests.  Today in my mailbox I received my first issue of Travel and Leisure, a magazine that boasts hotels, restaurants, and travel plans far too luxurious for my salary.  But I love to look and dream.  [And I used my frequent flyer miles to pay for the subscription, which, I suppose, is slightly backwards.]
This month, an article on Madrid is featured.  I was lucky to travel to Madrid when I was a sophomore in high school with a school group.  It was beyond awesome – a group of, oh, fifteen of us and five of them were Bananas and three more guys who grew to be close friends because of the trip.  [Two of whom are now married to Bananas!]  My eyes were opened that trip – my first time on a airplane and the longest I’d ever been away from home [two weeks].  We discovered Kinder eggs, spent a day in Morocco, and saw incredible cathedrals and fortresses.  We explored the halls of the Prado museum, walked the streets of bustling European cities, and learned the joy of eating bread and cheese for breakfast on open-air patios at our hotels.  
It’s been nearly exactly 12 years since that trip, since I caught that disease people always talk about – the travel bug.  I want to go back.  I wonder what it would be like to experience a European city for a second time around.  I feel more experienced, more ready for the adventure of travel.  It’s funny how that feeling and urge coincides exactly with my severe inability to afford anything like it.  [Thanks a lot, Norm and T&L.]
It makes me want to brush up on my Spanish [aka start over] and say that in three years – come hell or high water – Madrid and I will reunite.  I would also settle for a return visit to Istanbul, or going for the first time to Ireland or Norway.  Really, I’m not too picky so I guess I should rephrase – in three years – come hell or high water – I will get on a plane and cross an ocean.  
One can dream.

how to make dinner.

13 Apr
With the return of high-speed internet comes the return of google reader and easy access to my favorite blogs with recipes, sewing tutorials, and ideas.  It feels good to be back.  I found this entry in my feed – Ten (Super Rad) Blog Post Ideas.  Challenge accepted.
Post #1: A how-to.  I thought for a long time today about what I could show you how to do.  Sew a curtain?  Eh.  Make cakepops?  Done.  [See the Cooking Pastor tab.] How to wear sea foam green sunglasses and not look silly?  I bought a pair last night on a whim and I still don’t know the answer to that.  Then I figured I had to make dinner anyways. I now present to you my first blog post idea challenge.  [Disclaimer: I don’t take this one seriously.]
How to make dinner.
Step the first: A recipe is good.  I chose a chicken risotto with asparagus from one of my favorite cookbooks.  I have only ate risotto a handful of times and never attempted to make it.  I like trying new things so here we go.  Risotto night.  [You may see in the photo that the recipe is to have saffron in it as well.  I learned today that saffron is super duper expensive.  Like $17 for a small jar expensive.  My risotto has no saffron.]
Step two: Turn on the radio.  Lately, I’ve been choosing dance/pop music as my favorite.  Turn it up louder than your mother would ever allow.  [Sorry, Mom.  It was loud.]  Dance and sing obnoxiously.  [Sorry, Mom.]
Step three: Follow the steps in the recipe.  That meant that I chopped, shredded and stirred a lot.  A lot.  I blame the lack of photos on the necessary constant stirring.
Step four: Eat.  I paired mine with a strawberry/egg/goat cheese spinach salad with a blackberry ginger basalmic vinaigrette, and a really cheap white wine.  It. was. delicious.  The risotto was better than I expected [but that doesn’t say a whole lot – I keep expectations of my cooking fairly low so as not to end the night in tears].  And it’s a mighty good thing I did enjoy it because when you cook for one, there is a week’s worth of left overs.  Now I know what I’ll be eating all week.
There you have it.  Now you know how to follow a recipe in a cookbook.  You’re welcome.
Coming up soon – blog post idea challenge number two: Inspired by!

new acquisitions.

13 Apr
My local MN family and I have all acquired lots newness in our lives in the last weeks. Allow me to explain.
Paige bought an iPad. Lindsay is jealous. Kindle fire? Check.  iPad? Check.  A smart tv with apps?  Check.  Internet at her house?  Check.  A room decorated in a safari theme? Check.  Paige has it all.
Lindsay purchased a treadmill at the cost of more than a couple iPads. It hasn’t arrived yet but come the 23rd of April it will reside in the awkward empty space between her living room and entry way. She’s excited.  Friends in Montana and Washington recently bought treadmills and they tell her she won’t regret the purchase.  That’s the hope.
And, at the price of infinite iPads, treadmills, and smart tvs, jD and Lauren welcomed their bundle of joy to the world. Elliot Griffin was born on Wednesday. Paige and I went to visit on Thursday night, bringing Chinese food along for the new parents. Adorable doesn’t even begin to set the scene. I was so in awe of the little peanut and his button nose that I didn’t even take any photos. Just imagine one of the cutest babies ever. That’s Elliot. And this is his “Auntie” Lindsay signing off. Good night.
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