Delicious things.

Cupcake Brigade. Make cupcakes, deliver, visit- spread the love. PS. Aren't my trays AWESOME!!?! Bear and galloping stallions, yes.

Homemade tomato pasta sauce? YES. What should you do when you are gifted dozens of tomatoes, yellow squash, and zuchinni from friends and loved ones (their personal gardens no less?!)? Make pasta sauce! 

Ingredients:

-Lots of tomatoes of all kinds- fresh. Buy them, but don't use sissy canned junk.

-Garlic to taste, also fresh of course- non of that dry or canned junk. It's not that hard or exspensive to buy some real live garlic bulbs and toss some in- you don't have to cut them, just take the skin/husk whatever off (And luckily, the tomato and lemon from the pasta and hummus recipes gets rid of garlic on your fingertips)

-Zucchini- lots! Raw, and you can toss big chunks in because it's so soft- so there's minimal prep.

-Yellow squash! I don't like steaming these beasts, they're too tough, and it depletes the nutrients. Solution- blend them raw, into a tiny pulp in your pasta sauce!

-Italian seasoning or fresh herbs to taste

-Pesto. I LOVE PESTO. So naturally I put some heaping spoons in my sauce!

-Olive oil...to taste (can you tell? I don't measure things).

-A little bit of purple onion- because I love it!

Blend the mother to a cream! Food processors work good, as do blenders. Mix it and put it in jars (because I know you all keep your glass jars in piles around your house- because you'll find a use for them sometime...just like me!) 

WARNING. If you freeze your sauce, like me, don't fill it to the top- it will expand and break the glass!

What's great about this recipe- no need to cook until you heat it for eating. Boiling the contents and then cooking them again removes all of the nutrients. If you make this raw recipe you can heat it up for a few seconds when you're ready to eat- and viola! Amazing, healthy spaghetti...lasagna, etc.

Another good add-in: Wheat germ. I love it! I put it in everything! ^---Check out this link.

Note on freezing: Anytime you process food it looses nutrients, except for a few foods which need minimal processing. Heating, cooling, reheating....it takes some good every time. I freeze my sauce so I can take it out a jar at a time for use, thus preventing mold and all that. So it's okay to process it a bit, I mean, at least it's not store bought processes, but beware or over doing it.

Fun in Ogden, planning our dream houses, with Rouchelle.

Amazing fireplace featuring ocean sailing scenes.

Dream bathroom/vanity

Favorite permanent piece at the Eccles Art center

Cool color detail

Nice windows and flower boxes

Good shadows

Fun shapes

Little boy playing pool....on a min pool table...on a claw foot bath tub...on the sidewalk....

in front of a pawn shop...with a dog...and a fake horse.

DINOSAUR HORSE.

Rouchelle loved this house.

Pesto Hummus:

-Garlic to taste, but careful not too much.

-Tahini, I put in a heaping spoonful- I bought mine at a Thai store, you can usually find it at health food stores

-Pesto. Like I said, I LOVE PESTO!

-Olive oil.

-Garbanzo beans, drained (chickpeas, whatever).

-Squeeze of lemon.

-Dash of cumin and coriander.

BLEND THE MOTHER TO A CREAM! 

Eat with pita, creating the perfect protein!

Fun add-in: cucumber, artichoke hearts- anything you desire! Hummus is great because you can make a lot of flavors. Pesto just happens to be my favorite.  

PS. Both featured recipes take about 10 mins. or less.

This is what Rouchelly and my wedding announcement will look like...but not with each other...I mean...I'm not a lesbian! Haha.

Pictures.

 

 

Contradictions

I just don't get it. Racist Mormons and Christians. Priests burning holy religious scripts. The KKK. Eugenics. Nazis. Skinheads...you all hate each other...but I don't know if you've noticed...if you changed a few characters and key words in you're beliefs...you could all just form a new group and get along just fine, hating and killing innocent together...what fun.

When other people act like idiots, a magic buzzer doesn't go off in the universe giving you permission to act like an idiot. When other people do unChristian things, it doesn't mean you should, or are suddenly "allowed," to do unChristian things.

Just because you lump everyone from one faith (Muslim) into a group (terrorists), and some terrorists do bad things, it doesn't mean God suddenly wants you to burn holy scripture. I don't care if it's not your holy, it's someones holy.

 The news about a Christian preacher burning Qurans on September 11 made me so sad. There's no other way to put it.

God loves us. God loves all of His children. He loves His children from every time in the history of the world. He loves His children from every country and in every religion. 

2 Nephi 26:33 "For none of these iniquities come of the Lord; for he doeth that which is good among the children of men; and he doeth nothing save it be plain unto the children of men; and he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile."  

"Racism is an offense against God and a tool in the devil’s hands...The promises and challenges of a new millennium remind us of the continuing urgency for the human family to accept and live the Apostle Paul’s prescient pronouncement that all men and women everywhere are God’s beloved children. To the Athenians, Paul said God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26)...How grateful I am that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has from its beginnings stood strongly against racism in any of its malignant manifestations. President Spencer W. Kimball stated the Church’s position well: “We do wish that there would be no racial prejudice. … Racial prejudice is of the devil. … There is no place for it in the gospel of Jesus Christ” (The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball [1982], 236–37). The Prophet Joseph Smith, who experienced more than his share of intolerance and prejudice, understood the importance of caring for, respecting, and helping others, even those we don’t agree with. Speaking of the need to provide temporal assistance to others, the Prophet explained that a member of the Church “is to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to provide for the widow, to dry up the tear of the orphan, to comfort the afflicted, whether in this church, or in any other, or in no church at all, wherever he finds them” (Times and Seasons, 15 Mar. 1842, 732)."

http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=006ca1615ac0c010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD

I suggest watching this whole video, but if you don't want to watch it all, at least skip to 2:45:

 

Here's a good link for the LDS stance on religious freedom: http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/public-issues/religious-freedom

 Seriously- just love. When people ask questions about politics, war, homosexuality, abortion...just to get an argument out of you...answer with love. Answer love. I don't know all of the details. I don't know how everything works, or how things will work out in the eternities. I do however know this- God loves us all. Black, white, Muslim, Islamic, Jewish, Jane, Wicken, Mormon, man, woman, gay, atheist, Mexican, sinners, saints- ALL OF US. God loves everyone and everything He created.

 

Note: I was feeling very angry about all of this...racism amongst fellow Christians, hatred, ignorance...initially I wrote a lot of negative things...but I deleted them. I hope that the overall feeling of this blog entry was a good one. I don't like the idea of returning negative for negative...while I think it's appropriate to vent here and there, why should I ooze my sad on you? 

So...LOVE.

Life is crazy.

Wow. Life has been crazy. Every day is packed like a sardine box. Monday's are work, class, then FHE. Tuesdays are racquetball, work, temple, homework and church things. Wednesdays are work, class, and institute until 9 pm. Thursdays, Racquetball, work, class until 7. Fridays, sweet Fridays are only work, but so far plenty of other things afterwords. Life is good. It seems the busier I am, the more I get done. When I have nothing to do, or very little, I do nothing at all, not even a very little. When I'm busy I don't have time to worry, time to be sad, time to feel bad for myself. Time for junk.

Tonight, after a long day of homework, monumentally BORING phonics training for work, and so-so class I hit the jackpot. Pearl of Great Price. We studied my favorite of all scripture now available to me- the beginning of the book of Moses. I feel closer to God, to my pre-mortal existence, and to my spirit, Earth, eternities, family and truth while reading the book of Moses, than with any other reading available! Want to feel of God's love? Read Moses Chapter 1 with your name in place of Moses'. 

Try verse 6, "And I have a work for thee, Laura, my daughter; and thou art in the ^asimilitude of mine ^bOnly^cBegotten; and mine Only Begotten is and shall be the ^dSavior, for he is full of ^egrace and ^ftruth; but there is ^gno God beside me, and all things are present with me, for I ^hknow them all."

Can we say, holy canoli?!

I was so excited for tonight's lesson on the creation of Earth. Maybe it's the artist in me now, or maybe I was an artist in the life before this- maybe I helped paint the skies...but I LOVE the creation. Not the world traditional and limited creation story, but the everlasting, ever loving, ever continuing creation described by the Son of God in Moses. 

For the spiritual thought I shared from one of my all-time favorite articles, Man's Dominion by Hugh Nibley. I can't say enough good about this article- just read it, it will change your life if your really listen

 

 Anyways...I just felt so happy after class that I had to share. I mean, the book of Moses, donuts and a good answer to a scripture question I've had for a few years now?! What a fantastic night. What a fantastic life.

More summer shows!

This summer was bitter-sweet, but it for sure had an abundance of good music!!! I already blogged about getting to see one of my favorite bands ever, Mates of State- but the goodness didn't end there!

BEN FOLDS!

Ben leading crowd participation

 

Ben was a great performer, lacing the show with wit and audience participation. Normally Ben is also one of the most vulgar (language) shows around, but for this appearance he was comparatively tame- I think it was because the show was with a symphony as a part of a summer collection of shows (aka, if someone bought season tickets for some tame concert series they might be offended by swearing Ben). But let me make this clear, I'm not complaining- I had always wanted to see him live, but I was very happy to have an edited performance.

 

With the Utah Symphony Orchestra

BOB freaking DYLAN (front row!).

 

Oh Bob. I was SO excited to see him. I've been a fan of Bob for quite a few years. His poster hangs above my bed. I love his nasaling voice, his humor, his hair, and his subjective lyrics.

Bob on guitar 

 

At first I was going to have to go alone because none could afford it- I couldn't afford it, but I thought...honestly...Bob's gonna die and I want to see him live in all his glory!

Lucky me, I have an amazing big sister who made some calls and gave my cousin Eimile the moola to go to the show with me! She knew it wouldn't be as good, and she knew how important it was to me :) She was right, I can't imagine it without Eimile.

 

Bob had a bucket of incense on the stage, oozing out sweet smoke scents. A large majority of the crowd was helping with their own sweet herbal scents (not Eimile and I of course, haha)

 

Bob didn't sound like his 20 something year old self- it was old, raspy Bob- WHICH I LOVE.

 

I couldn't help thinking about my dad all night. I asked him a few years ago if he would go to a concert with me if I could ever work it out. I guess I just felt a connection with my dad because of Bob because he was the only one in my family who liked Bob besides me. It was nice to see Bob and to think of my dad, and the love he instilled in us for good music.

 

Saying goodnight

 

 Eimile

 

 Bob on keyboards

 

Goodnight!

Melissa stinkin' Branin! It was crazy, I was texting our mutual friend Justine before the show and she said Melissa was at the concert. I looked and sure enough, right there was Melissa and her fiance. Melissa said that she had heard about the concert via my facebook status (btw, Melissa is a MEGA Bob fan, and has seen him live before, but not front row!), but she thought there was no way she could see him. Her fiance knew how much she wanted to see him, and when they got off the plane in Utah he surprised her with a ride and tickets! It was definitely nice running into her and sharing in the BOB.

SHE AND HIM

Yes, Zooey Deschanel is that pretty in real life.

I had no idea M. Ward was so good looking!!!

I loved his mannerisms, he would grin and move with his guitar- it was too die for and gave me butterflies.

I was attacked (possibly hexed) on the way in, but it was worth it. Okay, let me explain. I was late to the show because I had class, but I knew my sister and cousins were in the front. The crowd was huge and as I shoved through people threatened me and some person said, "karma will get you." Haha, then it got weird and these girls were following me and pulling there hands through my hair, giving me strange looks, and mumbling things. I was not happy about the whole situation to say the least. I finally got to my group and I was paraniod someone would mess with, I was sweaty beyond beliefe and I was NOT feeling it. BUt then they started...and OH, it was amazing. It was more than I could have hoped for and I danced and until the annoying drunk girl showed up to grope the boys, it was perfect. Oh forget, I didn't care about the drunk girl, it was still amazing. I love going to shows. I love dancing at shows. I love being a nerd and convincing myself that the preformers would be my best friends if they met me. I just love it. I love the sway of the audience and the lack of boundaires. I LOVE MY WHOLE HOUSE. clap.

Peter Pan syndrome. Man child. Child-man. Lions.

My friend Anna sent me this, and I simply had to pass it on. SO TRUE. So afraid. Enjoy.

Kay Hymowitz: The child-man

Today's single young men hang out in a hormonal limbo between adolescence and adulthood

10:04 AM CST on Friday, February 1, 2008

It's 1965, and you're a 26-year-old white guy. You have a factory job, or maybe you work for an insurance broker. Either way, you're married, probably have been for a few years now; you met your wife in high school, where she was in your sister's class. You've already got one kid, with another on the way. For now, you're renting an apartment in your parents' two-family house, but you're saving up for a three-bedroom ranch house in the next town. Yup, you're an adult!
Now meet the 21st-century you, also 26. You've finished college and work in a cubicle in a large Chicago financial-services firm. You live in an apartment with a few single guy friends. In your spare time, you play basketball with your buddies, download the latest indie songs from iTunes , have some fun with the Xbox 360, take a leisurely shower, massage some product into your hair and face – and then it's off to bars and parties, where you meet, and often bed, girls of widely varied hues and sizes. Wife? Kids? House? Are you kidding?

JOE MORSE/Special Contributor

Not so long ago, the average mid-twentysomething had achieved most of adulthood's milestones – high school degree, financial independence, marriage and children. These days, he lingers – happily – in a new hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. Decades in unfolding, this limbo may not seem like news to many, but in fact it is to the early 21st century what adolescence was to the early 20th: a momentous sociological development of profound economic and cultural import.
It's time to state what is now obvious to legions of frustrated young women: The limbo doesn't bring out the best in young men.
With women, you could argue that adulthood is in fact emergent. Single women in their 20s and early 30s are joining an international New Girl Order, hyper-achieving in both school and an increasingly female-friendly workplace, while packing leisure hours with shopping, traveling and dining with friends. Single young males, or SYMs, by contrast, often seem to hang out in a playground of drinking, hooking up, playing Halo 3 and, in many cases, underachieving. With them, adulthood looks as though it's receding.
Freud famously asked: "What do women want?" Notice that he didn't ask what men wanted – perhaps he thought he'd figured that one out. But that's a question that ad people, media execs and cultural entrepreneurs have pondered a lot in recent years. They're particularly interested in single young men, for two reasons: There are a lot more of them than before, and they tend to have some extra change.
Consider: In 1970, 69 percent of 25-year-old and 85 percent of 30-year-old white men were married; in 2000, only 33 percent and 58 percent were, respectively. And the percentage of young guys tying the knot is declining as you read this. Census Bureau data show that the median age of marriage among men rose from 26.8 in 2000 to 27.5 in 2006 – a dramatic demographic shift for such a short time period.
That adds up to tens of millions more young men blissfully free of mortgages, wives and child-care bills. Historically, marketers have found this group an "elusive audience" – the phrase is permanently affixed to "men between 18 and 34" in adspeak – largely immune to the pleasures of magazines and television, as well as to shopping expeditions for the products advertised there.
A signal cultural moment came in April 1997, when Maxim, a popular British "lad magazine," hit American shores. Maxim plastered covers and features with pouty-lipped, tousled-haired pinups in lacy underwear and, in case that didn't do the trick, block-lettered promises of sex! lust! naughty! And it worked.
What really set Maxim apart from other men's mags was its voice. It was the sound of guys hanging around the Animal House living room. Maxim asked the SYM what he wanted and learned that he didn't want to grow up. And now the Maxim child-man voice has gone mainstream. You're that 26-year-old who wants sophomoric fun and macho action? Now the culture has a groaning table of entertainment with your name on it.

That sound you hear is women not laughing. Oh, some women get a kick out of child-men and their frat/fart jokes. But for many, the child-man is either an irritating mystery or a source of heartbreak. In contemporary female writing and conversation, the words "immature" and "men" seem united in perpetuity.
Naturally, women wonder: How did this perverse creature come to be? The most prevalent theory comes from feminist-influenced academics and cultural critics, who view dude media as symptoms of backlash, a masculinity crisis. Men feel threatened by female empowerment, these thinkers argue, and in their anxiety, they cling to outdated roles.
Insofar as the new guy media reflect a backlash against feminism, they're part of the much larger story of men's long, uneasy relationship with bourgeois order. In A Man's Place, historian John Tosh locates male resistance to bourgeois domesticity in the early 19th century, when middle-class expectations for men began to shift away from the patriarchal aloofness of the bad old days.
Under the newer bourgeois regime, the home was to be a haven in a heartless world, in which affection and intimacy were guiding virtues. But in Mr. Tosh's telling, it didn't take long before men vented frustrations with bourgeois domestication: They went looking for excitement and male camaraderie in empire building, in adventure novels and in going to "the club."
By the early 20th century, the emerging mass market in the U.S. offered new outlets for the virile urges that sat awkwardly in the bourgeois parlor; hence titles like Field & Stream and Man's Adventure, as well as steamier fare like Escapade and Caper . When television sets came on the market in the late 1940s, it was the airing of heavyweight fights and football games that led Dad to make the big purchase; to this day, sports events – the battlefield made civilized – glue him to the Barcalounger when he should be folding the laundry.
But this history suggests an uncomfortable fact about the new SYM: He's immature because he can be. We can argue endlessly about whether "masculinity" is natural or constructed – whether men are innately promiscuous, restless and slobby or socialized to be that way – but there's no denying the lesson of today's media marketplace: Give young men a choice between serious drama on the one hand, and Victoria's Secret models, battling cyborgs, exploding toilets and the NFL on the other, and it's the models, cyborgs, toilets and football by a mile.
For whatever reason, adolescence appears to be the young man's default state, proving what anthropologists have discovered in cultures everywhere: It is marriage and children that turn boys into men. Now that the SYM can put off family into the hazily distant future, he can – and will – try to stay a child-man. Not only is no one asking that today's twenty- or thirtysomething become a responsible husband and father – that is, grow up – but a freewheeling marketplace gives him everything he needs to settle down in pig's heaven indefinitely.
Now, you could argue that the motley crew of Maxim, Comedy Central and Halo 3 aren't much to worry about, that extended adolescence is what the word implies: a temporary stage. Most guys have lots of other things going on and will eventually settle down. Men know the difference between entertainment and real life. At any rate, like gravity, growing up happens; nature has rules.
That's certainly a hope driving the sharpest of recent child-man entertainments, Judd Apatow's hit movie Knocked Up. What sets Knocked Up apart from, say, Old School, is that it invites the audience to enjoy the SYM's immaturity even while insisting on its feebleness. The potheaded 23-year-old Ben Stone accidentally impregnates Alison, a gorgeous stranger he was lucky enough to score at a bar. He is clueless about what to do when she decides to have the baby, not because he's a "badass" – actually, he has a big heart – but because he dwells among social retards. In the end, though, Ben understands that he needs to grow up. He gets a job and an apartment and learns to love Alison and the baby. This is a comedy, after all.

The important question that Mr. Apatow's comedy deals with only obliquely is what extended living as a child-man does to a guy – and to the women he collides with along the way.
For the problem with child-men is that they're not very promising husbands and fathers. They suffer from a proverbial "fear of commitment," another way of saying that they can't stand to think of themselves as permanently attached to one woman. Sure, they have girlfriends; many are even willing to move in with them. But cohabiting can be just another Peter Pan delaying tactic. Women tend to see cohabiting as a potential path to marriage; men view it as another place to hang out or, as Barbara Dafoe Whitehead observes in Why There Are No Good Men Left, a way to "get the benefits of a wife without shouldering the reciprocal obligations of a husband."
And here's what may be the deepest existential problem with the child-man – a tendency to avoid not just marriage but any deep attachments. This is British writer Nick Hornby's central insight in his novel About a Boy. The book's anti-hero, Will, is an SYM whose life is as empty of passion as of responsibility. He has no self apart from pop-culture effluvia, a fact that the author symbolizes by having the jobless 36-year-old live off the residuals of a popular Christmas song written by his late father. Mr. Hornby shows how the media-saturated limbo of contemporary guyhood makes it easy to fill your days without actually doing anything.
Will's unemployment is part of a more general passionlessness. To pick up women, for instance, he pretends to have a son and joins a single-parent organization; the plight of the single mothers means nothing to him. For Will, women are simply fleshy devices that dispense sex, and sex is just another form of entertainment, a "fantastic carnal alternative to drink, drugs and a great night out, but nothing much more than that."
The superficiality, indolence and passionlessness evoked in Mr. Hornby's novels haven't triggered any kind of cultural transformation. The SYM doesn't read much, remember, and he certainly doesn't read anything prescribing personal transformation. The child-man may be into self-mockery; self-reflection is something else entirely.
That's too bad. Young men especially need a culture that can help them define worthy aspirations.
Adults don't emerge. They're made.

Kay S. Hymowitz is a contributing editor of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal (www.city-journal .org), from whose new issue this article is adapted. Her e-mail address is letters@city-journal.org.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/DN-hymowitz_27edi.ART0.State.Edition1.378ca5b.html