The Great Experiment

Posted on December 11, 2009 by Rachel

Update: Thanks to everyone for reading my post and voting in the contest! I didn’t win, but I’ll probably try again soon. If I don’t see you before the holidays, Merry Christmas!

I’m participating in a contest called The Great Experiment. It was started and is hosted by The Girl Who.

Each month, a topic is posted and readers are asked to submit a blog post about the topic. Then all the readers vote on the topic they like best. It’s $10 to enter, and the winner takes home all the money.

I thought this was such a neat idea. So simple and fun. This month’s topic was open, so I entered my post on cooking pulled pork sandwiches. Check it out, and if you like it, be sure to vote for my entry.

To vote (ends Saturday night at 10:00pm Mountain Time):

Voting is only open for one day, and only one person can vote from each computer. She tracks IP addresses to keep it fair.

Go to The Girl Who blog.
Enter a comment saying that you are voting for my post.

Wish me luck!

I cheated on Thanksgiving

Posted on November 25, 2009 by Rachel

I have a rule – I don’t listen to Christmas music or put up decorations until after Thanksgiving. But that Friday it’s on. I listen to the 24/7 Christmas music station with total glee. And if I’m lucky I’ll talk Roger into getting the Christmas tree.

Normally this rule is easy to follow (despite my love for Christmas music), because I’m in the church choir. Around September we start practicing music for the Christmas cantata, and by November we are having extra rehearsals devoted to only the cantata music. It’s Heaven!

However, this morning I don’t know what happened. I cranked my car and 104.7 The Fish greeted me as usual. I can always count on them, because they wait until the Friday after Thanksgiving to start playing Christmas music. So I was confused when I heard the DJ say, “It’s The Fish Holiday season…” and proceeded to play “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.”

Well that was all it took. I’m like a junkie – a Christmas music junkie – and I needed a fix. But I was maintaining. I was OK. I was going to make it to Thanksgiving dang it! Mind over matter!

But here’s the thing. I love Christmas music. No I mean, I LOVE it. I have Christmas music on my iPhone all the time. I never know when I’ll need to hear “O Come, O Come Emanuel” or “O Holy Night.” Usually in the sweltering sauna we call August around here, I can listen to one song and I’m good.

But in November? With the leaves falling and the wind blowing? With my excitement that my parents will be here in less than 24 hours? With pumpkin pie waiting for me? How could I resist? It was the perfect storm. So I gave in. I sang along with the radio and then switched to my own music. It was a holiday hoedown in my car all the way to work this morning!

I’ve managed to regain control of myself, so I won’t be singing “Frosty the Snowman” while I cook the ham. Baby steps. I can do this.

Tomato and sausage risotto

Posted on November 13, 2009 by Rachel

Why should you make this dish? Sure, it’s delicious and somewhat healthy. But let’s get serious. Here are the real reasons to make it:

watching 1 cup of Arborio rice soak up 3 cups of liquid is better than watching old reruns of Mr. Wizard’s World
all the stirring and chopping builds up your arm muscles
your mom never let you throw a pile of leaves into a pot and cook them
it’s meat, veggies, and carbs in one dish (who needs sides?)
saying “risotto” makes you feel like a real chef
nothing fills you up quicker than rice so this meal can go a long ways

This is yet another great recipe from Martha Stewart. It was really easy to make, and I found all the ingredients at my local Publix. Click the link to view the recipe. Enjoy!

Continue reading →

Beautiful sunrise, pool chair flags, good beer in a plastic cup: our Hilton Head experience

Posted on September 29, 2009 by Rachel

After Lauren’s graduation, we headed to Hilton Head for a weekend at the beach and stayed at the Marriott Resort and Spa at Palmetto Dunes. The first day we went to the spa, which was really nice after driving from Atlanta to the coast in constant rain. We didn’t plan much for the weekend, because it was supposed to rain the whole time. But then something crazy happened – the sun came out.

And stuck around.

So on Saturday we headed down to the pool, and discovered flags. Each pool chair had a flag you could raise for when you needed a drink or food or whatever. Hello lap of luxury! There was a bar and a restaurant next to the pool, so you could eat at a table right on the beach if you wanted. We passed on the alcohol (it was before noon) (ok, that wouldn’t really stop us – we were just not thirsty), but we took a short swim and that water was cold!

Then we headed down to the sand to check out the beach. The beach there is pretty, and like most Atlantic beaches I’ve seen, has a huge area of packed down sand where the tide comes in and out. That always amazes me, because on the Gulf the tide comes in about 5 feet. So there’s not a lot of packed sand lying around. It’s all fluffy white sand that gets everywhere (and stays everywhere despite the 3 showers you took to get rid of it).

That afternoon we explored the south end of the island and found Sea Pines. Yeah, we just thought we were mingling with the fancy pants folks at the Marriott. Sea Pines has mansions on the beach and golf courses on the PGA tour. This place is gorgeous! We at lunch at The Wreck of the Salty Dog outside overlooking the harbour and then wandered around that area looking at shops and sights.

Then we headed off to Harbour Town to tour the lighthouse and visit more shops. They had a Christmas shop (Heaven!) where we found a nativity for Mom. My mom doesn’t officially collect nativities, but during Christmas her house is covered in them. (I’m on my way to becoming an unofficial collector too – it must be genetic.) Anyway, a palmetto tree makes up the right side of the nativity, and I thought that was a cool way to tie South Carolina into it. It also shows Mary and Jesus on a donkey, which I’d never seen before in a nativity.

Late Saturday evening we went to Brews on the Harbour, a beer, jazz, and seafood festival at Shelter Cove Harbour. This festival is pretty new to the island, as this was only the second year for it. Roger found out about it through an article in a local magazine that did its best to convince Hilton Head Islanders that beer wasn’t just for frat boys anymore.

See, Hilton Head is all about their wine. Every restaurant we went too had a page long wine list. The first restaurant we went to served Roger a Magic Hat 9 in a plastic cup, while my Riesling was presented in an actual wine glass. See the problem here? It was a Magic Hat people! It’s not like we were having Miller time!

So this festival was all about showing the masses how great beer can be. Yay! Unfortunately they ran out of glasses and gave us a Dixie cup instead for the SAME PRICE. And they gave us drink tokens. Tokens? What happened to all the beer you can drink from a tiny cup? Ah well, the festival is still a toddler. It will grow and learn and become a better festival one day. We still had fun!

After a long day I fell asleep watching the UGA/Arkansas game. The lead changed hands 4 times in 5 minutes, but even that wasn’t enough to keep me awake. And it’s a good thing I fell asleep early, because Roger woke me up in time to see the sunrise. I was too confused to say “what the??” and just sort of stumbled out of bed. And I’m glad I did. I got a great picture (see above) and some quiet time with my sweetie.

Check out the rest of our Hilton Head pictures on our photo site.

Our niece can kick your fanny

Posted on September 21, 2009 by Rachel

Last Friday Lauren graduated from Marine boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina. We’re so proud of her. As her mom said, she’s an adult now (and yes, there were tears soon after). I asked Lauren how the final test (known as the Crucible) went, and she told me it was “fun.” According to Wikipedia:

…the Crucible is a rigorous 54-hour field training exercise demanding the application of everything a recruit has learned until that point in recruit training, and includes a total of 48 miles of marching. It simulates typical combat situations with strenuous testing, hardship, and the deprivation of food and sleep. A recruit is given three MREs and four to eight hours of sleep through the entire 54-hour event.

Yeah, that sounds like “fun.”

We got to the base around 6:00am so we could find a good seat, and the Marines were already up and practicing the ceremony for the 1,000th time. The weather was awful, but we didn’t mind too much. After all, if Lauren could deal with total hell for 12 weeks, we could deal with a little rain.

Unfortunately the weather didn’t let up, so the ceremony was moved inside. There’s not as much room inside, so the Marines didn’t march by the crowd as they would have outside. But they still looked great. From my vantage point, graduation went something like this:

An officer yells or grunts something I don’t understand.
All the Marines move together from attention to saluting to at ease.

I asked Lauren later if she could actually understand what they were saying or if she just knew what to do and when. She said at first, the officers speak normally to them and slowly. Then they speed it up and get louder until you’re used to it. So yeah, she knew what they were saying.

After graduation, we walked down to greet the toughest member of our family. Here she is with her parents and recruiting officer. The uniform she’s wearing is called her “Service Charlies.”

By the way, the little tag on her shirt is not a name tag. It’s a medal to let you know Lauren knows how to use a gun. She also explained to me a few combat tactics she learned, including her tan belt in mixed martial arts. I’m a little afraid (and totally proud!). Definitely getting my niece whatever she wants for Christmas!

There’s more pictures on our photo site, including some from family day where you can see more of the base.