She lives

I am surviving life as a first year teacher. I am always busy, overwhelmed, exhausted, and in love. I have the sweetest students and if it weren't for my room having no a/c I would have no complaints. I think my students think I have an overly shimmery upper lip because it is always sweating. I have 10th-12th graders and they are lovely. They make me laugh every single day, all day. I cannot explain how much I love my job and the super helpful coworkers. I'm still figuring out how I feel about living where I work but I do know that I love Floyd County High School. How I feel about living in Floyd is yet to be determined.

This is a review game I did a couple of weeks ago

If I do anything besides school work it is this: 

Picking, freezing, picking, canning. We have LOADS of zucchini in the fridge: shredded, slices, spears, casseroles. And all of those cans are either tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, salsa, apple butter or apple sauce. I am very proud of us for jumping right in with the preservation (or prepping as our friends Sarah and Ben say). I promise we're not preppers. We just like to grow things and because we aren't a family of 12 we can't eat it as quickly as it comes in so we are prepping (in a sense) but just for winter not for an apocalypse.  

The only thing outside of canning and teaching we have done is travel home for Labor day weekend. My sister's wedding shower was on Saturday and Drew spent the weekend camping with my uncle and other family members who came and went (like myself). The shower was lovely and the hiking and camping were just what I needed on my weekend off. 

Drew is hiking this weekend and I'm trying to get ahead on some lesson planning for next week. Football has started so that will fill all free moments of our weekends. Fantasy football, college football, FCHS football, thank God it's fall. Here's hoping this heat ends soon so I can't stop frightening my students with a glowing face.

Farmer's Marketing

So on the reg' we've been frequenting the Blacksburg farmer's market. It's such a great little family outing and it always boosts Ike's self esteem because people are so curious about him. "What kind is he?" "You should enter him in a contest!" "His fur is so unique." I'm not gonna lie, it gets old but after being home by himself most of the week, we figure he deserves a little pick me up so we indulge him.

Of course, everything is local which I love! That's Blacksburg's mantra after all: "Buy local. Eat local. Be local."

That's my handsome bearded man up there, pickin' apples. Our usual haul includes: bread, apples, and veggies. We have our favorite little stands but we're looking into eventually getting some meat from some of the local farms. We shall see.

I only wish I had nothing to do on Wednesdays so that I could get fresh supplies twice a week.

 

But that could get expensive. You know how normally you feel really terrible after leaving the grocery store because you just spent a shit-ton of money?? Well you spend a lot of money at the Farmer's Market but you just feel better about it. You know where the money is going and it ain't to Kroger. It's to local farmers who rely on this for their livelihood and are proud of their products. I'm a believer!!!

 

 

P.S. Take your own bag or you might be judged. I learned that lesson the hard way.

Hope you got some yummy fixin's for dinner tonight at your farmer's market. Enjoy this crisp early fall Saturday!!

 

 





Say Cheese

So in case you don't follow me on other social networks, here's the latest on our vegan diet:

In case you can't tell that's a crap-load of cheese. We feel off the wagon yesterday at around 10:00 AM

We were waiting for a table for brunch yesterday morning and I told Drew he would be responsible for planning meals the rest of the month so he made the call (thankfully before brunch) to finish out the month as vegetarians instead of vegans. I didn't object because I knew what awaited me at brunch: French toast!!!

This was our last vegan meal the night before:

Saturday we did this:

2 full laundry baskets of potatoes. I was so sore the next day but it was a good haul and we had some good size taters.

Other weekend news:
-I finished my book.
-Girls night watching Nashville was a success I was skeptical of the show but ended up really liking it
-Cleaned out the spare bedroom upstairs and got rid of a ridiculous number of movies and other misc. items

-Had a bonfire
- And got our Mumford tickets in the mail!

 

Vegan Update

Like SNL's "Weekend Update" but much less exciting and humorous.

So, vegan lifestyle has been good to us so far. It helps that all of this came from our backyard (minus the bread, we don't grow much wheat in these parts). Mere minutes before this was eaten all of that food looked like this:

 

So that's pretty cool. Walking out our back door to go grocery shopping for free has been a nice perk.

 

Otherwise a lot of my lunches have looked like this:

 



Hummus, guac, and salsa which is delicious. We tried the Mediterranean restaurant in town a couple of nights ago because they had some options we thought we might like but it was a bust. So really Chipotle and the Vegetarian restaurant in town are our only outlets if we want something we didn't have to fix.

And in the interest of full disclosure we totally cheated last night. It wasn't an accident and we're not sorry. It was planned well in advance. As soon as we decided to go to a baseball game with friends I knew I'd be having a cheeseburger and Drew would be having a hot dog and we'd be sharing some dippin' dots. So judge us if you like but it was goooood.

But we're back on the wagon today. Breakfast has proven to be the hardest meal for me. We've run out of fruit (time for another grocery run) and I don't care for what almond milk does to cereal...it's odd.

Other than that minor difficulty, cheese is the thing I miss most. And hot meals. I feel like most things we've eaten (salad, pasta salad, fruit, salsa, hummus, etc.) have all been cold and I have sensitive teeth insert Drew's eye roll here

After Drew's hot dog last night he was ready to jump off the wagon altogether but we will see it through. After all, it's only 3 more weeks, right?? actually that sounds terrible

I doubt this post inspired anyone to go vegan. It's a difficult lifestyle, especially when you are used to ordering pizza 1-2 times a week. But I'm glad we're doing it, it's teaching us discipline which we normally have very little of.

Changing Tastes... we hope

Another example of my photog skillz: I didn't even bother moving our Christmas napkins or my antibiotics before snapping this beaut'

But, you get the point, right? This picture screams: We're going vegan!!!!

Before you call some sort of police force to have Drew taken away from me, we're just trying it for a month. And what better month than the one where we have tomatoes coming out of our ears??

Anyone who knows us can tell you that Drew and I aren't the healthiest eaters. We normally grocery shop once a month because that's how often Drew gets paid which prompts questions form our friends like "What do you do about fresh fruits and veggies?" To which I respond "We eat a lot of Dorito's."

This isn't going to become the norm for us but we are definitely looking forward to our tastes changing this month and looking at other options than animal products to get our protein. We were inspired by this documentary. And we have a whole bunch of others in our Netflix queue to watch as we battle through this month.

Don't worry, I won't be journaling my every meal. Mostly because there probably won't be tons of variation: peanut butter, tomatoes, corn, apples, repeat.

I can just tell you cheese will be the thing I miss in all this, not meat, milk or eggs. Any vegan recipes you'd like to share would be greatly appreciated.

Look for a post on about Saturday where I say "Nevermind, Drew made deer jerky."

Garden Party

I've never really known what a garden party is but I'm fairly certain this isn't it. I don't remember blogging about our garden before so I will catch everyone up. Drew and I planted potatoes back in April (I think). This is my first time gardening so it was all new to me. This is what it looked like then....

I just thought the fertilizer was made of lovely colors. And clearly we thought we would have to supply all of Bishop Road with taters so of course we planted three rows. Drew "hilled" them a couple of times, a part of the process I was not in attendance for. But now we have this:

Real potatoes! I dug yesterday and Drew picked up and it was like hunting Easter eggs, I got so excited I cried. We only dug up enough for dinner the next couple of nights but I was so proud of us. Drew laughed at me because he has done this every year for his entire life but it amazed me that this was all it took to grow our own food! Why doesn't everyone do it? I also did the math (in my head) and figured that this small portion is about 1/12 of our crop. Very specific but I'm certain that is an exact figure.

We have not, however, been so lucky with other parts of our garden....tomatoes for instance......Drew's graduation gift from my parents, 2 tomato plants and we killed them both. Dead. 

Which is so unfortunate because I love a good tomoato (Drew is indifferent so maybe that's why he didn't baby them). I will spare you a picture because they are pathetic and it would likely piss my mom off.

So I will go on to other parts that seem to be doing well too, our corn is coming up nicely.

Also take note of the still many broken limbs left from the storm, it's amazing our garden survived. Our corn is not as high as my granny's in Pound, I was coveting hers over the weekend but I believe ours will get there.

This here is Drew cussing whatever has been eating his cucumbers, I imagine it's the cute little bunny that Ike caught and killed yesterday. Problem solved.

I say "his" cucumbers because I have my own little patch next to the house which is thriving! We've not had any to pick yet (I'm not sure how we're so behind everyone in Pound) but I suspect we will soon. I also suspect we will have PLENTY. Anyone want some cukes?

We are also growing lettuce but in the interest of full disclosure, it is not what I expected when Drew said he was going "sow" lettuce. I expected to find a head of lettuce under the ground much like the potatoes but that has not been the case. It's purple. Someone tell me what to do with it please. Otherwise I will leave it for the critters.

P.S. You like how my camera strap has make it into all of these photos? I think I will start my own photography business hardy har.



Also, probably the thing I'm most excited about are the pumpkins. We planted them super late but I'm okay with putting up my Christmas decor a little later this year if I have to wait on my pumpkins. All in all this garden is shaping up to be the best idea I've we've had in a long time. But we are learning as we go.

Hope this inspires you all to plant your own gardens next year and give us some suggestions of what to grow next time. Next year I'm thinking watermelons and cantaloupes. What do you think?