The West Jordan War

It started with a silly string war.

We arrived at West Jordan on Friday the 13th to visit my family, and to be there for various events that are coming up. And it turned out that Josh, Spencer and Dad had 2 cans of silly string each. It was the appointed day for battle.

It was fun to watch. At first I was kinda jealous and wanted a can for myself.

But then I didn't.

And thus began the most irrational weekend in the history of the century.

We're in Quite the Pickle

Since we got so many cucumbers from Bountiful Baskets, I decided to NOT waste them this time. I made pickles!

I got the recipe from a website, but I am not sure if it is the best one. They are preeetty vinegary. But they're still OK enough to eat. Plus it was fun to make them.

The jar was from DI (which James was nervous about, but I did my best to sanitize it) and came with a handy dandy lid. It only held about 1.5 cucumbers. I guess that's pretty decent, though. Then I made brine with vinegar (probably too much), water, salt, some spices, and loads of dill weed. We just happen to have dill weed in our spice rack that we got for our wedding. Yay! However, James says the pickles aren't very dilly.

*shrug*

Then we packed 'em up and let them sit in the fridge for a few days. Making pickles seems pretty easy and works great, but the flavor is the tricky part. Next time, I will buy some Famous Dave's pickles, eat them all, and then re-use the juice for our next batch of cucumbers.

Cool as a cucumber.

Plentiful Produce

A while back I heard from my friend Alyssa that there was this thing called Bountiful Baskets, where a bunch of people pool their money and get produce. It sounded fun and is only $17.50 for a boatload of food so I decided to try it, about a month ago.

These are the pictures I took from last time. A bunch of fruit, cucumber and zucchini, potatoes, and butternut squash! And tomatoes and asparagus, and something called Broccoflower or maybe just green cauliflower. Anywho, it was yummy.

 Last month was ok but I feel bad for wasting a lot of the food. There's just SO MUCH and I didn't plan what to do with it very well. I think most of the cucumbers and zucchinis went to waste, along with the lemons and a few potatoes. I am happy to say we used the butternut squashes to make a delectable soup.

 Those tomatoes are way better than store-bought ones, by the way. I think they try to buy everything as local as possible. Even though it's not that local, it seems to be better quality than what I would get at the store.

So this time we're going to make the most of it. I was actually really lucky this week, because I missed the pick-up window for the food. You're supposed to get it within 20 minutes of the pick-up time (which is super early on a Saturday) or else it will get donated to a fire department, and I forgot about it completely. Lucky for me, the lady still had it because she was teaching a martial arts class.

Anyway, here's a picture of how much lettuce there was. Two giant bunches, and that made three because we'd just bought one at the store. So I've been giving away lettuce to people.

I went to Walmart and looked at all the produce to compare prices and see if we are really getting a deal. I figure if I compare the cheapest stuff at Walmart with the nice stuff we got, and it still costs less, then I can rest easy. Phew, it was! Here is what we got.

Thing	Price at Walmart
8 Bosc pears	$6.64
9 oranges	$3.24
4 apples (not sure what type)	$1.24
1 bunch asparagus	$2.97
1 cabbage	N/A
1 honeydew melon	$1.75
2 bunches greenleaf lettuce	$1.76
3 carrots	$0.39
4 cucumbers	$1.96
11 Roma tomatoes	$4.07
14 mini bell peppers	$2.48
Total cost:	> $26.50

Banana for scale.

So at the very least we saved $9. (Assuming we eat it all.) But like I said, everything we got was bigger than the ones at the store. Look at these carrots!!! Walmart carrots are like a sixth of this size!

Well anyway, this is really fun and the food lasts about 3-4 weeks for just two people, so we might do it every month. This month's goal is to plan all the dinners and eat all the food!

Books Read (Dec, Jan, Feb)

Since I've been reading a lot more lately, I decided to write about all the books I read. It would be fun to look back at the end of the year and see them all. So, here are a handful (I am including some from December as well) that James and I have read in the past few months and our "reviews" about them.

The Glass Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg. It's the second in a series, the first of which is called The Paper Magician. The stories are great and fun to get into, but the characters don't always act in believable ways. Like, really traumatic things will happen, but the people don't have enough emotion about it. They kind of just roll with it. It feels a lot like the author wants to have certain events happen in the storyline, but doesn't really think about what effect the events would actually have on an actual person. Still, I'm reading the next one when it comes out.
--Miranda

Notes of a Russian Sniper by Vassili Zaitsev. I've always liked reading about World War II and this book has been on my list of books to read since reading about the author of the book. To me it was very interesting to read about the gritty and raw situation that the Russians were in while trying to repel the attack from Germany in the Battle for Stalingrad (now Called Volograd). The book follows Vassili Zaitsev, a peasant hunter/farmer from the Ural Mountains, as he was deployed to the front lines in Stalingrad. The book follows how he goes from a regular soldier to being part of a very successful group of snipers. For his work he was awarded "Hero of the Soviet Union" which is similar to the Medal of Honor here in the US.
--James

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. I've gotten really into Agatha Christie books over the past several months, especially ones with the character Hercule Poirot. Which is super weird because mystery novels were never really my thing. But these are really fun because they don't really focus at all on the murder, or anything scary or creepy. It's really thinking about how all the different clues and bits and pieces of information end up fitting together until it all makes sense and the whole case is revealed. I think Agatha Christie is a master. I love that she reveals everything and ties off ALL loose ends. One time I read a Sherlock Holmes story, and it didn't explain anything. Bogus.
--Miranda

Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax. My dad recommended this to me because it applies to future children and future students. It was written by a doctor who has noticed that the current generation of boys and young men have a huge problem with being motivated to do anything with their lives. More than ever before they are living with their parents, not dating, not getting jobs, etc. It talks about his research and reasons he's discovered about why this may be happening. It's a good eye-opener and was super interesting to read. Also, I thought it had a good mix of large scale scientific studies and personal stories.
--Miranda

The Word Eater by Mary Amato. Yeah...this book is for middle-schoolers. I read it when I was a lot younger. But I love the story and writing style so much. It's about a worm who eats words off of the paper, and whenever he eats a word, that actual thing disappears in real life. It's super cute and deals with what C. S. Lewis calls "The Inner Ring." The desire to get into a group and become one of them.
--Miranda

Well, that's where I shall have to stop, because otherwise it will be book overload. Next time there will be more. If you've read any of these books, you should definitely let us know what you think of them! And suggestions for others would always be welcome :)

The Lunch Artist

Since I've been substituting at schools every day, James has started making my lunch a lot of nights. It really makes my day when he does that. But to make it even better, he has been drawing pictures on the lunch bags! It is such fantastic art that I had to share it with everyone.

Monday 2/9, Freedom Academy with special ed elementary kids.

Wednesday 2/18, Landmark High School with teenage troublemakers.

Wednesday 2/25, Traverse Mountain Elementary with energetic preschoolers.

"Have a wild Wednesday wrangling wiggly children"

Thursday 2/26, Traverse Mountain with same group of kids. This one also has a back story. Zed the zebra, rainbow-striped and well-versed in ebonics, is a story character made up by James. When we have children, their bedtime stories will revolve around this guy.

Monday 3/2, Sunrise Preschool with special ed 4-year-olds. (On the other side of the Zed the zebra bag.)

I love how he's talking through his trunk!

Tuesday 3/3, Northridge Elementary with special ed preschoolers. The latest and greatest!!! You can't teach a sneetch!