Summer just started, and I've already made this recipe twice for barbecues. SWEET DELICIOUSNESS. Yes, you will get compliments on how tasty it is. And, yes, you will then feel guilty that people are treating you like an amazing home cook because this is basically the easiest recipe in the world and takes, like, four minutes to throw together in a bowl.
2 15-ounce cans organic black beans, rinsed and drained
1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
6 scallions (white and light green parts), minced
1 small jalapeno pepper, minced
2 tablespoons lime juice (preferably fresh)
1/4 cup olive oil or grapeseed oil
A lil' bit of Sriracha
Salt and pepper to taste
1 avocado, cubed
These books are full of white sand from the glorious beaches of Turks and Caicos now.
The Storytelling Animal: Chris got this for me this past Valentine's Day. I had many reasons for marrying Chris, and one of them definitely is Picking Out Amazing Books for Me That I Have Never Heard of But That Are Awesome and I Need to Read Because They Will Change the Way I Think About the World. This is one of those books. As someone entrenched in editing, copyediting, and proofreading fiction on a daily basis, Gottschall made me step back (or rather lay back on a beach chaise with a margarita on the rocks in hand) and think about what compels me and all of these people I work with (and just about everyone else on the planet) to obsess over story. Well done. I'll spend the next few weeks annoyingly reciting statistics that blew my mind to friends and family.
Let's Pretend This Never Happened: People kept telling me to read this book, and I didn't understand why until I actually started it. TEXAS, Y'ALL. Got it now, friends. Read the book by a Texan. Not obvious at all in the least itty-bitty way.
But it's actually so much more than that! I knew little of Jenny Lawson or her blog before getting her book. And this was, in hindsight, to MY OWN DETRIMENT. She's hilarious, and writes about the small intricacies of life with weight. In an effortless, conversational way. Which is so hard to do! Yes, please, adding her to my blog roll and patiently awaiting the day when her next book is added to a pub list.
Impromptu smoothie-making this Sunday morning led to some delicious results that I'd thought I would share. (Also, a blender is finally in my life again! Major. I had one die on me when I lived in New York and then I never bought a new one. Why? Why me? Why would I do that to myself? Some questions do not have answers.)
Strawberry Banana Smoothie
1 banana, broken into a few pieces
1/2 cup strawberries, hulled and chopped
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 yogurt
1 tablespoon honey
A few cubes of ice (preferably robot-shaped)
Throw everything into your blender jar. Blend on high for 30 seconds. Serve!
We had a ton of books at our wedding. On the sign-in table, on all the guest tables as part of the centerpieces, and even our ring holder was a hollowed-out book (more on that later). To commemorate the day on their pages, we decided to have a stamp made for the books, so that we (and anyone down the line in the future, be it children, grandchildren, or other family) would know that the books had been there on our wedding day. For the wording, we finally decided on:
A Book of Love
From Sandra and Chris's Wedding
April 21, 2013 Austin, Texas
I searched around Etsy and other sites like Paper Source, but ultimately decided on a $19.99 self-inking address stamp (7/8 inches by 2 3/8 inches) from Staples. And it's perfect. Here are a few photos from the wedding and also of Chris inking up the title pages of a few books.
From the wedding:
Coral ombre floral centerpieces with books
Coral ombre floral centerpieces with books
Ceremony (above) and sign-in table with books in library card catalog drawer (below)
For our reception, we mixed classic songs with a few indie ones. We let my dad and Chris's mom choose their respective songs, which added another unexpected layer of meaning to the process (the back-and-forth with each parent and one another about song choice and the lyrics of each contender was time-consuming, but so worth it in the end).
Some choices were easy. Nothing was going in place of Beyonce for the bouquet toss, and we decided on Peter Gabriel's version of Book of Love right after we got engaged.
The David Bowie, Edward Sharp, and Icona Pop picks all came within the last few weeks before the wedding. Last-minute inspiration was definitely working in our favor. (Also, I really recommend doing a more wider known penultimate dance song (Home) and then picking it up a dance-y notch with a faster last one. It felt like the entire wedding hall was shaking when Icona Pop started playing with all our guests already on the dance floor ready to go after the group Home sing-along/dance-it-up.)
Our entrance song
David Bowie: Golden Years
Our first dance
Peter Gabriel: Book of Love
Father/daughter dance (picked by my dad)
Tom T. Hall: Old Dogs, Children, and Watermelon Wine
Mother/son dance (picked by Chris's mom)
Lynyrd Skynyrd: Simple Man
Bouquet toss
Beyonce: All the Single Ladies
Penultimate dance
Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeroes: Home
Our tiny and awesome neighborhood grocery store in.gredients hosted a free screening of the documentary A Place at the Table last night, which was quite moving and illuminating. I had never heard of the idea of food deserts in America, have you? The fact that America has enough food to feed everyone in the states but somehow doesn't (for all the reasons explored in the documentary) is mind-boggling. Ways that you can help can be found here.
Since Chris and I were engaged for a year and a half, we had a long time to choose all the music for our wedding. And rechoose. And rechoose. It was definitely a process. But one that ended amazingly. Here are some of our final choices for our ceremony.
Prelude:
Sigur Rós: Track #3
Sigur Rós: Hoppipolla
Sigur Rós: Inni Mer Syngur Vitleysingur
Track 3 (or Untitled 3)
Hoppipolla Inni Mer Syngur Vitleysingur
Wedding party processional:
Sigur Rós: Staralfur
Staralfur
Bride's processional:
Daniel Johnston: True Love Will Find You in the End
Getting excited about seeing the Cindy Sherman exhibit at the DMA this weekend. I just read this on the museum website: In addition, the exhibition includes a site-specific photographic mural produced in 2011–12, on view for the first time in the United States. YES.
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