10 Reasons to be happy :)

I used to keep a little journal of things that make me happy, and I thought it might be fun to to a monthly "Happy List" on my blog!  So here goes...

10 reasons to be happy - August 2012

World's cutest dog!

1.  Juno has begun perching in our windowsill (cutest thing EVER!)

2. We have tomatoes from our 2x2 foot garden under our window! Yum :)

Backyard tomatoes :)

3.  Two of my favorite people are getting married in a week! :)

Chris, Jess & Pesto! So excited for their wedding : )

4. I ran 8 miles! My longest ever.... and hopefully will be doing 9 this weekend!

5. My blog went public! (and it looks like a few people might actually be reading it! yay!)

6. I've had several long phone calls & Skype dates with family and friends (need to do that more often!)

7. I got my hair cut! For the first time in over a year -- it always feels so nice :)

New fleece & new hair :)

8. I got a new Patagonia R1 fleece!  Woohoo! I still have my first one I purchased in 2008 - that I've worn it a million times (it's getting really thin) and used on our thru-hike... so I thought it was time for a new one! And it was a major sale on Steep and Cheap!

9. I got to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the Appalachian Trail in Harpers Ferry with some really great staff and volunteers!

Diana & I at the 75th!

Cute hubby in our tiny little kitchen!

10. My cute hubby has been helping to cook a lot around the Sheldon apartment! YAY :)


What makes you happy this month??

Berry Picking!

The berry farm

If you haven't been... you need to go!  There's something so fun about going out and picking your own berries!  This past week Shane, Andrea, Lara and I headed to 3 Birds Berry Farm in Blacksburg. We had been earlier in the season to get blueberries, but right now they have blueberries, blackberries and raspberries!  YUM!  Thursday night is the only weeknight they have pickin' hours, and we got there about an hour after the start...so a lot of the raspberries were already harvested.  But, if you're patient and willing to do a little searching, you can still fill a pint!  Shane and I got a pint of raspberries and then headed over to the blueberry patch (where we got 2 pints!).  I don't know much about different varieties of berries, but it was interesting to see the difference in the blueberries we picked last week compared to the blueberries in June.  They were much smaller this time around and seemed a little shinier.  After picking at the farm, Shane and I joined Lara at her neighborhood community garden to grab a few handfuls of blackberries, too!  Check out some photos from our fun evening with great friends :) 

What a cutie :)

Raspberries - check!  Onto the blueberry patch :)

One happy berry picker!

Checking out!

Proud of our loot!

Lara & Zelda at the community garden

Finishing off the night with some blackberries - thanks Lara!

Delicious berry recipes coming soon!

Root Roast

Our friends Abby & Randy introduced this meal to us a couple of years ago and now we make all the time!  So easy and delicious!  It's great as a side or the main dish.  You can use a variety of roots - my favorites being: beets, turnips, sweet potato, potato, carrots and onion!  When I made this a few days ago, I was limited on ingredients... but they were all straight from our garden :)

Root Roast Deliciousness :)

A quick rewind back to February... when we decided to try to grow onion from seed this season!  It was maybe a little ambitious since we'd never grown anything besides tomatoes and cilantro, but it was such a fun adventure.  Shane built a wooden structure for us to hang a grow light (aka a fluorescent shop light) where we could start our onions.  This was our first little onion seedling to sprout!  I was like a little kid on Christmas the day it popped up out of the soil!  It's so neat to look back and see where our little onions started and how well they turned out :)

Onion seedling popping up!

Harvesting roots!

 

Onion

Here's me harvesting our beets, onions and potatoes last week!  It was another exciting visit to the garden expecting weedfilled disaster and instead finding edible produce (along with lots of weeds).  I was drooling thinking about the root roast I could make with these ingredients... and finally a few nights ago I did - so I thought I'd share....

Ingredients:

Any roots you want! For a 9x13 inch baking pan, here's a guesstimate of quantity:

5 beets
4 potatos
1 small onion
2 cloves of garlic (minced)

(if you have it, I highly recommend sweet potatoes, carrots & turnips as well!)

Olive Oil
Rosemary
Thyme

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 375.  Chop all of the roots into approximately 1 inch pieces.  Combine all roots in a sprayed 9x13 inch baking pan.  Add minced garlic, rosemary and thyme.  Drizzle olive oil over the mixture and then toss with your hands to mix in the spices and coat with oil. Bake for about 20 minutes, then remove from oven to mix so roots don't stick to the bottom of the pan.  Return to the oven and bake for another 20-30 minutes until roots are easy to poke with a fork (I've noticed soft beets are a good indicator).  Let cool and enjoy!

Beets!

Chop about an inch square

Our potatos

Adding garlic... you can never have too much, right?!

I love rosemary :)

Before baking...

After!

Happy Roasting :)

My running journey...

After my longest run to date - 8 miles :)

I've always enjoyed running, but have never been one to go out for more than 2 miles at a time and usually never run consistently throughout the year.  I'm definitely a fair weather runner :)  Somehow for the past 3 years I've mustered up the energy to run in the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving when we're back in Ohio visiting family.  It's a 5 mile race that always makes me want to puke/cry by the last mile!  All this being said - I've had the dream of running a half marathon for the past couple of years.  Crazy, right?   Last year I really started training, but never made it to race day.  I'm not the best at pushing myself - sometimes when I feel like walking, I just stop and start walking.  But this year I am determined!!  I've officially signed up for the VHRTC Women's Half Marathon.  I'm excited that it's a small, all women's race AND is on trail :)  And the best part is that I have an amazing friend joining me for the race! :)  So, now that Andrea and I realize we have 4 weeks until race day - we've been getting our butts in gear.  It's so great to have a running buddy waiting on you at 7:15 every Tuesday morning.  As tempting as it is to hit the snooze button, I know she'll be out there stretching and ready to go -- such good motivation!  It will be both of our first half marathon's and as nervous as I am, I know it'll be such a great experience. 

Any advice for my first half??

Strawberry Lemon Bars

I loooove lemon bars, and recently found an amazing recipe.  I was planning to make them a few nights ago, but when reaching into the refrigerator to pull out the ingredients my eye caught the 2 pints of fresh strawberries we'd recently bought (and needed to eat!).  So I decided to invent (well not really, because there are plenty of other recipes out there) Strawberry Lemon Bars :)  They're like fresh squeezed strawberry lemonade on a hot summer day!  They are really simple to make and only take about an hour from start to eat (maybe a little longer if you let them cool completely!).  I also decided to nearly half the sugar from many regular lemon bar recipes since I was adding in sweet tangy strawberries.  Here it is...

Ingredients:
Crust

I chop up the butter into thin slices before working into mixture

1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup confectioners sugar
1/4 tsp sea salt
1 stick cold butter

For the strawberry lemon filling:
3/4 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup all purpose flour
4 eggs
2 tsp lemon zest
2/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
5-6 large fresh strawberries (pureed)
additional confectioners sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 350. To make the crust, combine the confectioners sugar, flour and sea salt in a large bowl. Cut in the cold butter and work with your fingers and a fork until it's well mixed and crumbly. Press into a greased nine inch pan and bake for 18-20 minutes, or until golden.

Should look something like this before pressing into your pan

While the crust is baking, start on the lemon filling.  Whisk together the granulated sugar and flour in a bowl. Add the eggs and whisk well.  Add the lemon zest and juice and mix until everything is smooth and combined.

Puree strawberries (I just used a little food processor for this) and keep in a separate dish for now. Pour lemon filling over hot crust.  Pour strawberry puree over lemon filling and use a knife or spatula to swirl.  (You could also just mix the strawberries in with the lemon mixture before pouring over the crust. I just like the swirled look!)   Return to oven to bake for another 18-20 minutes. When done, the filling will no longer jiggle. Let cool completely in the pan, then dust with powdered sugar and slice!

I cut the strawberries in half and throw them in the food processor

After :)

Pour into lemon mixture

Swirl!

Swirled conconction before being baked!  Last picture I took because we inhaled them so quickly once they were done :)

Happy Summer!

Homemade Laundry Detergent

Ingredients

This is so easy & fun AND saves you a lot of money! So all you need are few simple, easy to find ingredients and a cheese grater!

Ingredients:
1 cup washing soda
1 cup borax
1 bar Fels-Naptha (grated)

Grate the soap --- looks just like cheese! And smells amazing...

You can find everything you need in the laundry aisle in any major store.  The large boxes of washing soda and borax are only about $3 each!  This conconction makes enough detergent for about 64 loads of laundry! Looking on some other websites, people have estimated that it only cost about $0.01 per load.  What a deal :)         

Mixed ingredients

So, all you do is grate the Fels-Naptha - I just used a simple cheese grater.  And then mix all of the ingredients together - ta da! I've even tested it on a load of laundry and it worked great!  If you like your laundry to have more of a scent to it when it comes out, you can try using Zote instead of Fels-Naptha.  (it's also pink!)

You only need 1-2 Tablespoons per load :)

Put some in a Ball jar for a cute, simple gift :)

Has anyone else ever made their own detergent??