Fire in a can! (and a baby bird update!)

Lookit!! So cute! When you walk in the back door, sometimes you wake them up and they start squeaking and you see their little mouths bobbing and reaching inside the door to the nest. Then mom (or dad) shows up and all is well. I took this photo a couple days ago, and today I looked in and saw their eyes are starting to open, and they're getting little feathers on the tops of their heads. I also did a little research, and discovered that Carolina Wrens may produce two or three batches of babies over a season. So these little guys might only be the first round...guess we'll see!

Apart from bird-watching, I spent a little time this week working on a plan for our Appalachian Trail hike, which was exciting. My friend Matt was staying with me all week, before heading out on his own AT hike, so I'm looking forward to his report to get me even more excited about my and Jill's trip! Matt showed me how to make a camp stove out of a pineapple juice can. We boiled water in my driveway (even with a sudden dousing of rain), and it only took a handful of twiggy sticks, and a chunk of paper bag.
Forty-seven days until I can take a break from working to just worry about living. Ahhh.....can't wait.

Banana bread, xanthan gum, and peppers

My spring break is winding to a close...sadly. This week of not-working has been a tantalizing reminder of what it's like to not have to spend 8 to 10 (to 12) hours of your day, five days a week, doing something that isn't necessarily what you would choose to spend 8 to 10 (to 12) hours of your day doing if you didn't have to pay rent and make student loan payments. Not that, on the whole, I don't like my job - some days I love it, some days I hate it - but overall I just think sometimes what it would be like to have the hours of my day be all mine, to do with what I want.

I spent last weekend with my Mom visiting here in Charlotte, then drove up to Delaware to visit with my Dad and my brother, stopped in Maryland to see my Nana, Aunt and little cousin, and today I'm back in NC with a whole, glorious day to myself.

So far today I have planted peppers (bell and jalapeno)...

made granola...

and taken my second foray into the world of gluten-free baking with a banana bread recipe I found online.

Here's what I've learned:

1) Xanthan gum is expensive. And Harris Teeter doesn't have it. (It's a binding agent, in lieu of gluten.)
2) Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free All-Purpose Baking Flour is made from, and kind of tastes like, beans.
3) Melted brown sugar makes anything taste better.
4) You can actually make normal-textured baked goods (or quick breads, at least) without gluten.

One of the items I brought home from Delaware with me is a kitchen scale. I was going to buy a digital one online before my dad dug this out of a cabinet. Sexy, no?

I keep reading how it's better to bake by weight when you're doing it gluten-free, because 1 cup of rice flour might weigh something different than 1 cup of almond flour which might weigh something different than 1 cup of buckwheat flour (buckwheat is not wheat). And if you do it by weight, then you can sub in whatever flours you have and like the taste of. And since gluten-free flours are like six bucks for a little one-pound bag, this lets you use what you've got, instead of being a slave to what the recipe calls for. At least so goes the theory.

Since the recipe I used called for a brand-name pastry flour mix, which I didn't have, I used the aforementioned Bob's, plus a little buckwheat flour. Buckwheat is grainy, but it doesn't taste like beans. And in fairness to Bob, his flour didn't really taste too much like beans after I'd combined it with the other flours and turned it into banana bread. Not TOO much like beans.

I haven't had anything remotely bread-like in weeks, so the one slice of banana bread I've had was incredibly filling. And tasted decent, if not remarkable. It wasn't really very banana-y, despite having two whole bananas in it. It was good enough you'd eat a second piece, but not so good you'll eat the whole loaf in a day. You can definitely tell there's something different about it (like, it's made out of BEANS), but it's in the flavor, not the texture, and I feel like the flavor can more easily be tweaked by using other flours.

As much as I'd love to have exact gluten-free replicas of every wheat-y food I've ever loved, I realize that isn't about to happen. I also know that, since I don't have Celiac disease, if I really wanted to eat a baguette or something, I could. I'd just pay for it with joint pain later. I'm hopeful that the longer I go without gluten (and onions, beef, and tomatoes...my other nemeses) the more likely it will be that I can eat them again in small quantities down the road. In the meantime, I will likely stick to foods that don't require xanthan gum to work. Things like roast chicken, and buttery kale, and baked custards, and Rice Chex covered in melted marshmallows a la Rice Krispy Treats.

And roasted red peppers, which hopefully I'll be able to make from my own peppers this summer.

Shrimp (heart) Petroleum

In an antique store in Asheville yesterday, I came across this poster:
After I blinked a couple times, I thought 'Wow, bet they don't have THAT festival anymore.' So, when I got home that afternoon, I googled it. And was wrong. The 2011 Shrimp and Petroleum Festival will be held this September, and claims the title of the "oldest state chartered harvest festival in Louisiana." Besides the bizarreness of the idea of an 'oil harvest,' I just can't quite get my head around the idea of shrimp and oil rigs happily frolicking (pumping?) together in the Gulf like best friends. It's been almost a year since this little event. And I'm pretty sure the little shrimps weren't enjoying their sudden, intimate encounter with their old friend petroleum. Is this some well-known festival that everyone has heard about except for me? Am I the only one who thinks this poster is bizarre and, hindsight being what it is, a bit ominous?

My Nana's advice on how to not raise birds.

The nest on my porch has been coming together beautifully. I think the builders are wrens, not sparrows. I haven't seen them working on it lately, and there aren't any eggs in it yet, so I'm not sure where exactly they are in the whole continuance of their species process, but I guess only time will tell.

I mentioned to my Nana in an email that I had birds building on my porch. This is my Nana...
Besides being an all around fantastic grandmother and human being, she writes the world's best emails. She replied to my tale of invading birds with one of her own. I can't say I haven't been warned:

About 15 years ago, I had a robin building her nest in one of the wreaths on my front porch. What fun, I thought to watch this whole process from scraggly twigs to darling little chirpies. I could stand in the entrance hall....if I snuck up quietly enough perhaps, and espy momma regurgitating food into their tiny little mouths et cetera. I even posted a sign on one of the poles on the porch directing visitors to the back door so they wouldn't scare the birds!!

I did not foresee.....silly me... that the little tiny birds become as big as full sized robins before they are wont to leave the nest, that they make an awful racket...and more to the point, they make a helluva mess deficating all over the grillwork, the glass, the wreath, the door mat etc.

Then the ornithological genius in the neighborhood explained to me that robins will sometimes bring forth several issue before the summer is spent, so once this crop leaves, I had better take down the wreaths or they will build anew. Soooooo....good luck, Honey Babes

"Make sure you hit him with a frying pan of hot grits"

In lieu of writing anything timely, as I'm feeling the need to spend more of my hours of life doing things other than sitting in front of the computer screen, today I'll be posting a collection of student quotes collected over the past weeks. Enjoy.

One of my kids, who is brilliantly dead pan, raises his hand. The class is working independently, so I go over to answer his question. Mr. Archey is my co-teaching partner. We are not dating, but our students like to pretend/assume that we are. So my kid calls me over, waits a beat, and with no introduction asks:

"So am I invited to you and Mr. Archey's wedding? I'm just asking because I've got to get my suit, and get the date on my calendar. And also, I need to know what are the colors? And can I see some swatches?"

I laugh, and walk away to answer the question of a child who is actually interested in learning about the differences between criminal and civil trials. Maybe five minutes go by, and my student raises his hand again. So, I walk over to him...

"What's your question?"

"Ms. Andersen. When you and Mr. Archey get married, which I know you will, and when you want to divorce him, cause he's cheating on you, which I know he will, and you divorce him, would that be civil law?"

"Yes! It would! Very good!"

"Ok, just make sure you hit him with a frying pan of hot grits."

And, in the continuing series of kids making strange comments about my physical appearance:

"Man Ms. Andersen, lookit those big ol' eyes. I should call those your, hm. Green eyes...green eggs and ham eyes!"

Or about the food I eat:

[As I'm eating granola from a ziploc bag.]

"What are you eating, Ms. Andersen?"

"Granola."

"It look like bird food. Bird seed. You be eating like a bird."

"It's granola. Lots of people eat granola."

"Yeah, but you always eat like a bird. I bet when you lie down at home you turn into an owl."

One of my favorite kids made this observation about how white and black people buy groceries:

"White people be buying, like...okay. Say you see some plums in the grocery, and we got some over here for like 69 cents, and then we got some other plums over here, look exactly the same, but they like, $1. 25. Black people, we get the 69 cent ones, cause they the same damn plums. But you be like, no no, I want these ones over here, they look better! White people buy stuff like, they be the exact same thing, but they got some nice packaging on there, and so they be like, oh, these look nice, when like, the packaging cost more than the food."

And another of my favorite kids walked into class one Tuesday after being absent on Monday:

Me: Kevin! Where were you yesterday?

Kevin [not his name, of course]: At your house.

Me: Really. What were you doing at my house?

Kevin: Eating your cereal.

Me: So that's why my Rice Chex were gone this morning?

Kevin: Yep, I ate 'em all.

And from the same student...

Kevin: You’ve been to Europe?

Me: Yep, I went in college.

Kevin: You been to France? I heard they got people being kidnapped all over the place there.

Me: What? Um, yes I’ve been to France but I don’t know about the kidnapping.

Kevin: You didn’t get kidnapped?

Me: No.

Kevin: Well, Ms. Andersen, you ever get kidnapped over there, I want you to call me. You hear? You call me before you call the police. They can’t be doing that to Molly. I be over there and I get you outta there. Me before the police, alright? I got you, Ms. Andersen.

Wildlife invades my home

This morning I stepped out into the small porch room that opens into my kitchen and was startled by a sparrow who seemed to be messing around on the storage shelf. The sparrow quickly darted out the hole in the wall (meant for a dryer to vent) and I continued poking through my compost bin.
After a minute or so I noticed that the birds outside were making a lot of angry squawking and chirping, and I kind of half-thought, are they that upset I scared one sparrow out of my porch? Then the sparrow flew back in the hole again, darted out when I looked up, and continued scolding me from outside. Okay, I thought, I guess I should cover this hole. So I propped up a piece of cardboard against it and finished with my worm bin. But the birds kept yelling at me. I glanced up at the shelf the sparrow had been fussing over, and it dawned on me.
See it? Look closer.
The little buggers are building a nest in my bubble wrap. I imagine that a rational person would just block the hole in the wall and throw out the nest, but anyone who knows me knows that's not what I'm going to do. There are going to be little baby birds on my porch! Awesome!

What is a little annoying is that I like to keep my kitchen door open, and rely on the outer screen door to keep the bugs out. Now that I've got birds flying in and out of the porch, I'm a little worried they might decide to explore my kitchen, and I'm not about to have frantic sparrows flapping around inside my house. So...I'll be picking up a big piece of some meshy fabric this weekend to hang over my kitchen door. To keep the birds out.

In other local wildlife news...my anole friend from the summer is back! She was sunning herself on my back stoop when I got home from school on Thursday. The end of her tail looks a little beat up, but otherwise seemingly no worse for the wear after winter.

Bad Christian T-shirt Puns

I got my new issue of Christianity Today in the mail this afternoon, and they've got several articles about worship - what it should be, how it looks in the modern church, etc. One piece is an interview with a professor at Grove City, a gray-haired little guy with wire rimmed glasses, a buzz cut, and a bow tie, who has written a book called Why Johnny Can't Sing Hymns. T. David Gordon is his name.

"Many believe that kind of [pop-influenced] music is more 'seeker-friendly,'" the interviewer suggests.

I guess I just really liked his response:

"But it's like reaching the rich young ruler by throwing money at him. . . I'm not so sure that accommodation to an individual's consumerist preferences is consistent with the gospel call. . . I'm not sure we should say, 'Well, what kind of music do you like? After all, we're just worshiping God here, and we have no standards other than what you like.' Saying 'it's all about you' isn't the way to go about evangelism. It might be better to say, 'You may wonder why we sang a hymn today written by Bernard of Clairvaux in the 12th century. We do it because we think it's a good reflection on what our Redeemer did. We don't really care whether it's new or old.' That might cause a person to say. 'Here's one institution in the entirety of our culture that isn't driven by consumer preference. Isn't that curious?'"

He put into words something that kept bugging me when I was church shopping last summer: our culture's obsession with consuming product after product after product has filtered into even our churches and our worship. Organizations whose motivation is profit, economic engines chugging along trying to make a buck, naturally bend to the whim of the consumer, as it's the whim of the consumer that determines the success or failure of their ultimate goal: making money. But what is the ultimate goal of a church, small 'c'? Getting as many bodies into pews every Sunday as possible? Growing big enough that you need four services and a satellite campus? Drawing thousands every Sunday by offering the most attractive spiritual product? Should faith be treated as another consumer good, when the ultimate success of the Church, big 'C', is not determined by consumer behavior, or by how many people prefer the Christian brand over the Jewish or Muslim brand in a blind taste-test.


I never liked those Christian t-shirts that make bad puns out of brand names. Besides the fact that they're sometimes embarrassingly cringe-inducing, I think what always made me pass over them at Christian youth events was that they seemed to be saying, "Hey! There's nothing wrong with a consumer-driven culture where our goal is to consume more and more, and where we identify ourselves with the brands we wear. Just make sure your brand is 'Jesus!'"
Shouldn't the Church's approach to culture be something more substantive than taking whatever we find around us and subbing in Christian words for the cuss words, and pictures of sunsets and butterflies for pictures of sexy women? Obviously the t-shirts are silly and innocuous, but I think Mr. T. David Gordon is on to something in suggesting that the Church should be something qualitatively different from its surroundings, something not driven by every marketing trend and consumer preference. Something that seeks the beautiful and the true, and not just the cool or the comfortable. No?