I believe in God

Here is one of the many reasons why:

The Timeline
Wednesday, March 21st: I planted seeds and watered them nervously

Friday, March 23rd: I watered the seeds again, just in case

Saturday, March 24th: I woke up to this lovely picture, danced around the little nubs with joy and tried to resist the urge to poke them. I had growing things! And so soon!

Sunday, March 25th: I just laid down on the floor next to them and stared in amazement and awe. My little seeds had grown so tall, overnight! New ones that I had never seen before had pushed through that soil and grown several inches already. The first picture in this post shows my hardy zucchini sprouts, only four days after planting the seeds! To think that these glorious fuzzy green stalks came from plain old seeds and some dirt and water is just more than I can comprehend. What a beautiful earth we’ve been given!

I love how different each veggie is. Here’s a shot of our delicate Gardener’s Delight tomatoes, complete with dewy drops on each leaf:

I’m already in love with my little plants! For the curious, we planted the seeds in a little peat moss/plastic hooded haven:

In a totally uncharacteristic move, I resisted the urge to fill up every little peat cup. I took a long, hard look at our narrow little strips of dirt in the backyard, pondered our complete inexperience in the area of gardening, and decided to start off on a small-scale for our first year.

We have a mint plant thriving inside, and that gave me courage to start two peat cups of basil. For the outside garden, we’ve started three varieties of tomato (green grape heirloom, delicious, and gardener’s delight), zucchini, and crookneck squash.

Now in general, I hold to the “Go Big or Go Home” philosophy, particularly when it comes to food. I looked at our tiny little peat cups and almost got out the potting soil and the rest of the seeds when I noticed the encouraging sentiment imprinted on the top of our plastic “humidity” hood:

It was then that I realized even just one little growing green thing is something to be proud of.

Please excuse me… I’m going upstairs to sing and dance to my “seedies” some more.

p.s. I’ll preemptively say here: No, I haven’t named each sprout. Because Scott won’t let me I’m not that attached to them!

Happy Birthday Scott Bean!

This past Friday, my fabulous husband turned 26.

We had a really fun day together and I hope he felt loved.

As often happens in my family, the celebration started early. My brother and sister-in-law gave us tickets back in December to an amazing concert that took place two weeks ago. Not only was the theatre really over-the-top cool, but Scott says he’s never heard a better musical performance in his entire life. We were both swept away and stayed up late that night talking about it and replaying each part in our heads. It was a one-night performance of the Philharmonic of Russia, featuring Olga Kern as the piano soloist.

We took the camera, and I snapped a few pictures before I read on the program that, as I had admittedly suspected, photography was prohibited.

Continuing The Birthday Countdown, my parents gave Scott his present a few weeks in advance and Scott cheated and opened the fabulous (and witty) card & present from his mom a day early. So, I felt the weight of “making his birthday day special” rest squarely on my own shoulders.

I overslept on The Big Day, but luckily so did he.

While he patiently waited upstairs in bed, dutifully pretending to be asleep… I whipped together his favorite birthday treat: breakfast cake. The rest of the world calls this coffee cake, I think. Our favorite is a cinnamon streusel cake from the Williams-Sonoma Essentials of Baking cookbook. I toasted and chopped some hazelnuts and added them to the streusel as well.

Side Note: I was embarrassed to discover that I had not really thought through this special birthday breakfast ahead of time. I hadn’t even purchased the necessary sour cream for the breakfast cake. Bad wifey! However, conveniently, Scott, himself, had purchased sour cream a few days earlier. (Did I use enough commas in that sentence? I do want to keep this blog grammatically correct, after all.) Did Scott suspect that I would forget to buy the sour cream myself? Did he secretly want to secure the prospect of a buttery, cinnamon-y breakfast treat on his birthday? I wouldn’t put it past him. Not only is he a smart one, but he is a sucker for breakfast cake and knows it only gets made but once a year!

While the cake was baking, I used two pieces of construction paper to make some snazzy streamers, confetti and a birthday sign. I then artfully arranged a stack of gifties on the table amid the festive construction paper, um, bits. (Is he a lucky guy or what?)

He had received a surprise package from my Aunt and a package from another one of my brothers and sister-in-law, which was great because my gift to him consisted of homemade coupons. Hehehe. Of course he was very appreciative of my meager offerings, but it is always fun to unwrap presents as well!

Following another long-standing family tradition, I also wrapped up some new running shoes we had bought for him earlier that week (badly needed shoes, but still considered special birthday-shoes because they were purchased the same week as his birthday), an extra-special box of cereal he had selected at the grocery store a few days previous (wheat chex, what else?), and some other random things I found in the basement. As I said, it’s always fun to unwrap presents!

To further celebrate the occasion, we saw a dollar movie at the theatre and he stayed up late playing his favorite computer game. Ahhh we lead such a glamorous life!

Scott agreed to pose with his birthday sign, devoured the cake, noticed the toasted hazelnuts, laughed at the special birthday shoes, and even complimented me on the construction paper streamers. *Sigh*

He is the best husband, friend, live-in chef, running companion, and birthday boy I could ever imagine. And I still love him, even though he’s 26.

In fact, I love him so much, I let him pose with his birthday sign like a mug shot:

p.s. If you ever come stay at our house, you can admire the periodic table shower curtain Scott received for his birthday. It’s even color-coded so that you can determine which elements are considered metalloids… while you shampoo your hair. Thanks Mark and Meghan!

And you thought we couldn’t be contained…

Now, on to Saturday, where The Beans shake things up. To truly appreciate this occasion, you need to know that Scott and I don’t really shop. Sure, we enjoy grocery store runs… but buying stuff for our house? Doesn’t happen very often. However, we’ve started a system in 2007 to spruce up our Bean Abode.

After living in an apartment in Provo so tiny that our coursework filled up every cranny… when we walked into our 3-story apartment in Columbus, our jaws dropped. What would we do with all this space? Our moving truck had one level of stuff about knee-high in most spots. We didn’t even have to stack boxes!

Based on financial limitations, lack of confidence in our capabilities relating to interior design, and busy-ness, we didn’t do a thing. Our bedroom consists of an alarm clock sitting on the floor, a very small dresser and our bed without a frame. Two built-in closets hold our shoes and clothes. No curtains, no fun paint, no pictures on the wall, nada. I should say here that we are not fans of buying stuff just to buy it… and we hate the idea of accumulating clutter. In fact, we both appreciate how open and spacious our apartment looks with uh, nothing in it.

That notwithstanding, we decided that starting January 2007, we would improve one room of our apartment each month. We didn’t suddenly acquire loads of cash or any creative talent whatsoever, but we did want to add some personal touches to our home.

For January, we picked the smallest room in the house: our guest bathroom on the main floor. It already contained the one picture hanging in our house, of mountain goats, incidentally. We decided to leave the goats but go with a sort of Moroccan theme. We spent around $15 and purchased a rug, two fun towels, and a $1 garbage can. I didn’t blog about it at the time because, well, who DOESN’T have decent towels and a garbage can in their bathroom?

You’ve already met the goats, here’s the rest of the gang:

February was dining room month. We didn’t manage to put any pictures up, but I did buy lots of cute things for our dining room table, remember?

March is… drumroll…. kitchen month! Oh boy, why move on? Let’s just keep kitchen month forever, mkay?

WARNING: Very detailed recap ahead. Click through at your peril.

Hockey, Bread, and Medical School

Scott and I have had a quiet couple of weeks, but this past Saturday… everything changed.

First, the quiet bits:

1) Last minute, we were given tickets to an OSU ice hockey game and we had a great time cheering our team against our biggest rivals: Michigan. (dum DUM DUUMMMM…)

The highlight for me came in between periods when the OSU marching band came onto the ice. Scott and I saw the famous “Script Ohio” for the first time:

Unfortunately, we lost the game at the last minute (literally).

2) Lately I’ve been experimenting with my whole wheat bread recipe. I know… nothing new, huh? Well I tried two different tried-and-true recipes and neither turned out very well for me. My personal made-up “recipe”, however, has been working beautifully.

Unfortunately, I eyeball every ingredient but water and yeast… so I’m never quite sure it will turn out. Also, it has way too many ingredients. Who needs egg, applesauce, canola oil, 2 kinds of whole wheat flour, homemade dough conditioner, gluten, water, yeast, and honey in a plain loaf of good whole wheat bread? I’m trying to find a recipe that I can use weekly for many years to come. I don’t think I’ve found it yet! Here’s a picture to show the difference between my “recipe” and my good friend’s recipe:

Here’s a close-up of the difference in crumb. The one on the left was a much more dense loaf, and more moist… almost tacky in texture. The dough was incredibly hard to work with and I ended up adding much more flour than the recipe called for. The loaf still makes great toast.

The one on the left is much more light and airy, but it wasn’t dry. The dough was a breeze to work with and this loaf made great sandwich bread. I think perhaps if I was more familiar with the recipe for the loaf on the left, I could have acheived a better result. I know that recipe has made fantastic loaves of bread, so I have to conclude that my technique didn’t suit the recipe. Here’s one more look at the difference between the loaves. The crust browned nicely on the loaf on the right, but on the other loaf, it’s only brown where I rubbed a bit of butter on it.

3) Scott has finished another unit for Medical School and now he gets to spend long hours in at his desk in the 2nd bedroom studying the renal system. Let’s all say “kidney failure” together now… Amazingly, he is enjoying himself!

To read the breath-taking recap of the exciting events that transpired on Saturday, you’ll have to wait for the next post. Sorry!