Disturbing Trend #2: Weddings

Well, fall is just around the corner and you know what that means - weddings! Wait, what? you're saying...Wedding season is May/June! Yes, yes it is, but inexplicably I have two weddings in a row on the upcoming weekends.

One of these weddings is for one of my closest middle school friends, and I was able to get together with her and her bridesmaids to help put together the programs, name cards, etc. During this crafting session, the bride starting talking about some things she saw either on her guest list, or from friends' weddings. Let me explain:

Traditionally, the outer envelope is addressed to the person to whom it is traveling in the mail. The inner envelope is addressed to the invitee(s). For example, when I get an invitation, the outer envelope says Natalie + my mailing address. The inner envelope would say Natalie and Guest.

Since my friend didn't have an inner envelope, she had pre-made cards saying "____ seats have been reserved in your honor at the wedding. Please choose your meal: [steak, chicken, pasta...I picked pasta CLARO!]". She then wrote in the blank the number of seats, i.e. 1 or 2. Apparently, some people crossed out the number and raised it!! So one family wanted their daughter to come, and they crossed off the 2 and wrote a 3 instead!

In other instances, she addressed the letter to one person and had the number 1 in the blank, and they asked her if they could bring a date. Now, I understand if you're close to the bride and groom and you want to bring your boyfriend, but if they aren't your best friend or family, I think you need to take the invitation and accept the fact that they are on a budget.

The other wedding I was invited to was addressed to only me on both envelopes, and then had the traditional RSVP card where you jot down how many people are attending. I wrote 1, but I was wondering about the protocol for that situation. This may be common knowledge for all, but not me, so I will share. Those little RSVP cards are standard, so unless it says you and guest on the inner envelope, it's super rude to write "2" attending the wedding.

I'm pretty appalled by the rudeness in this whole process. How do people not know how expensive weddings are?? My friend told me it was all her single friends that were committing the faux pas' (sidenote: what IS the plural of faux pas??), which makes sense...but at the same time, I'm single and super aware of the price tag on the big event.

I'm assuming all these people weren't TRYING to be rude...but for crying out loud let's have some awareness! If it's addressed to you and not your significant other of 4 years, don't take it personally. If you aren't married, engaged, or living together you have no place to expect cousin Ginny to invite you AND Guest.

And that's this week's rant. More on weddings after I attend possibly? More on food? My thoughts on TEACHING?! Grad school? We'll see!

Labor Day burgers!

Labor Day is for picnics, no? What's a vegetarian-ish to do? (I added the -ish because I've been smelling the barbecue ALL WEEKEND and I have been utterly tempted.) Well, you see, you make black bean burgers! I got this recipe from ReadyMade, one of my FAVORITE magazines. I had to alter it a little because I didn't have all the ingredients. They turned out really well!

Yield: 4 burgers

2 (14-ounce) cans black beans, rinsed and drained, divided
3 tablespoons plain yogurt
1/3 cup plain dry bread crumbs
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano, crumbled
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika
generous pinch of salt
1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro
1 lime
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
4 soft hamburger buns

Accompaniments: sliced avocado, romaine, salsa, sliced sharp cheddar

Pulse 1 can beans in a food processor with yogurt, bread crumbs, cumin, oregano, cayenne, paprika and salt until a coarse purée forms. Transfer to a bowl and stir in cilantro and remaining can beans. Add as much juice from the lime as needed to create a mixture that holds together well (you likely won’t need the entire lime; slice the leftover lime into wedges and serve with the burgers). Form mixture into 4 patties.

Heat oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over medium-high heat until it shimmers (alternatively, heat a grill pan and brush it with the oil). Cook burgers until outsides are crisp and lightly browned, turning once, about 5 minutes total. Serve on buns, along with the accompaniments.

Tomorrow is the first day of school...and school! I have the elementary/middle school classes in the morning, and my graduate class in the evening. Wish me luck and pray HARD!

"So are we not hanging out??"

Hey look, a post not about food!

This, rather, is about a trend I'm noticing in my friends and people around me. I don't know if it's an age-group thing or not.

Let's start with last Monday. A friend of mine, L, gets a phone call from an out of state friend letting her know they'll be in town for a week, and would she want to make plans to go to the movies on Sunday? She casually agrees Sunday will work out fine, and makes a mental note to not plan anything for that day.

Sunday: after lunch L hasn't heard anything from her friend, so she texts them. They respond that they're painting their parents' house. She decides to take a nap in the meantime, assuming that they'll go out later in the afternoon. She's losing her patience at 4 o'clock when her friend finally calls. They catch up for a few minutes, and when the appropriate lull in the conversation comes up, her friend asks for a number of a mutual friend. NOTHING is said about their plans for that evening. L hangs up thoroughly confused and annoyed. Which is when she calls me, and asks if she's crazy. Yes, I say, but not about this. She was too flustered to ask about their plans for that evening, and she had kept the day clear to hang out.

As I mentioned, things of this nature seem to be happening more and more frequently. I have been known to have plans with a friend or two for about 7 or 8 pm, only to have them show up at 9 or 10. My close friend K is always thanking me for my reliability in her life; her other two close friends are infamous for setting a day to spend time together and then forgetting and/or planning other things.

Is this just me? Is reliability going out of style? Is it a 20something malady? If you say, Hey let's get together on Thursday night, then I'm going to go ahead and block that time off for you. Please don't cancel on me the day of, because I still consider that plain rude.

It occurs to me that this has always been my pet peeve: people who bail or are ineffective at keeping plans. But lately it just seems like it has gotten worse, and after L's experience on Sunday, I'm as baffled as she is. Did her friend forget? Did they just flat out ignore them? Has L started hallucinating?

All questions I'm going to ponder as I go off to dinner.

(And I was so close to not including food in this at all...)

family food

Apparently my food theme is continuing. I guess because it's new to me and I think it's a good thing to talk about...

Anyway, I promise I don't normally spend Saturday nights at home with my family in my parents' family room. But my sister and I had plans to go camping with our best friends, which fell through on Thursday. (Said best friends had to bail.) So I'm sitting down with my mom, dad, brother and sister to make them watch Food, Inc.

This 2008 documentary explores the sources of our food and the people that work in the factories. Most of it does center around meat, but the film also discusses the history of factories and the economic effects and implications of how our food is created.

I sat down to watch this on Thursday with my friend Brenda, who is also a vegetarian. We munched on our Indian veggie meals while thanking God that there was no beef, pork, or chicken in our food. After I finished, I was slightly bummed to realize that I couldn't just return it to the library like I wanted to. I knew my family had to watch it, but I wondered about my dad's reaction. He loves to acquire new knowledge, but he equally loves conservative politics and hamburgers. If you can combine them both for him, all the better. Fortunately, my uncle had recommended Food, Inc. to him so he is all for it. We are currently about 45 minutes into it, and he says he is intrigued. (He has to stop now to go watch the Ravens get some Skins.

I'm kind of okay with pausing the movie to let him and my brother go downstairs. It started a conversation about what we could do as a family to eat better, which I'm all for! Secretly I'm hoping it will push my mom and sister to vegetarianism...they're somewhat close. My dad is throwing out ideas about getting a large freezer in our garage to store locally grown meat and produce. (I would be more excited, but I'll believe it when I see it. We need to have further conversation about this.)

My brother, J, is currently the hardest sell. Who can blame him? The kid is 14, and perfectly content to be ignorant to what's in his food. He doesn't want to work harder, and his youth and metabolism prevent him from having health issues or weight issues that would inspire him to eat better. In his eyes, everything is fine, and his crazy hippie sister coming back from the DR with all these new ideas about food is not sitting well with him.

My mom's been sick for over a week now, and when she gets sick she's kind of out of it, so it's hard to see what her reaction is. As a general rule she doesn't eat red meat, and a few weeks ago after I read her a chapter out of Eating Animals she didn't eat the chicken she had made for dinner. She tries to eat healthy anyway for her health, BUT since my dad doesn't consider it dinner unless it has meat, what she cooks usually contains ground turkey. (She also does turkey bacon and turkey hot dogs instead of beef.) She doesn't like cooking, so she'll go ahead and eat whatever she's made for her dad. I think she would be an easy convert if my dad could be convinced.

As for my sister, I think she's starting to try eating differently. I like to feel like she's not eating meat with me, but she's not quite there yet. We'll see what happens.

What's next? My dad has promised to finish the film tomorrow, and I'm hoping he'll make J watch too. I'm excited to see what kind of dialogue this sparks amidst the fam.

If you're reading this and you're from my county, I highly recommend checking Food, Inc. out of the library. If you're not from the area, I would check your local library anyway!

I have a few more thoughts on food, so they'll probably show up here in the next week or so...

More new things

I'm aware that it's been over two weeks since my last post, but I think when I sum up all that has been going on, I will be excused by the general public. And by general public, I mean my mom. Although I don't know that even she reads this...

Anyway, following my grandmother's funeral and my birthday, I skipped over to Lubbock, Texas to visit Holly. We did a lot of fantastic things, but one of my favorites was flying with Holls and her dad in this plane!!

I also got to eat Huevos rancheros, which is one of my new favorite dishes :)


On my last Sunday I discovered via facebook that my new best friend Chad decided to move to Seattle for a new job, much to my chagrin. So new start for him.

Thursday night I got three calls from my best friend Erica. The first two I ignored, since it was 2:30 am. I finally picked up it a sleep induced rage, but quickly forgave her since she was calling to announce her ENGAGEMENT. So new start for her too!

Also Thursday night I went with all members of my fam minus my mom to M&T Bank Stadium for the Ravens Preseason opener. It's great to watch live football.

Anyway, it's been a busy few evenings and I'm fairly sleep deprived, which is why this post is pretty rambly. Speaking of rambly, Kaylie informed me that my blog needs more of a theme. But I'm not really sure what theme to go with...and I'm too tired to think about it. It appears that all 3 posts thus far have been about food...but I don't feel like that can last too long. With my new job starting in TWO WEEKS and grad school starting in three, there's a fairly decent chance the theme will be education. But who knows. :)

For now, I'm off to see Kaylie since she's leaving for Africa in two weeks. What a crazy August!

DIY: Spinach Pasta!

In coordination with my previous post, I would like to share a fun and healthy thing I made last week....Spinach pesto pasta! My wonderful Italian grandmother passed away yesterday, so I think it is only fitting to publish this in her honor. I'm fairly certain she never cooked anything healthy, but she did cook alot of pasta.

First, I am the blessed owner of a pasta machine, purchased because I wanted to make pasta with whole grain flour instead of eating the boxed stuff. Last week I started to ponder the power of pesto and the benefits of spinach, and thus was born my idea. Here are my tools:

Eggs, spinach, whole wheat flour, blender, pasta machine, and a little bit of basil. (I cheated and used a packet for the actual pesto.) Since pasta dough is essentially just eggs and flour, I decided to blend the spinach leaves in with the eggs, and came up with:

It LOOKS nasty, but it's healthy! After that I added flour until there was no stickiness in the dough, and then I separated it into golf-ball sized sections. (Once you crank it through the pasta machine, the pieces become HUGE.) Voila:


I put it through the next section on the pasta machine, and behold my...linguini??


I failed to get a final picture...so this is as good as it gets.

I mixed around in pesto, and it was enjoyed by all! Even the 14 year old brother who thought it looked weird admitted it was tasty.

The moral of the story is that there are other main dishes besides meat. And very good for you!

On food...and meat.

Before I begin, let me offer my disclaimers and qualifiers to this post.

I was not supposed to turn out this way. I’m a quarter Italian and I’ve grown up in Carroll County. There are a lot of cows here. My father (through which my Sicilian blood is filtered) has a special place in his heart (and stomach) for red meat. My mother thinks chicken has its own corner in the food pyramid.

And this is why I am embarrassed and appalled to announce I’ve become a vegetarian.

Well, kind of a vegetarian.

(Let me pause to reiterate that I think vegetarians are weird. They never eat burgers at cookouts or turkey on thanksgiving. They make people cook them separate dishes without meat. It’s just strange. And now I’m one of them.)

Let’s back up. In March 2009, a professor recommended to me the book Skinny Bitch, so I read it. I had a mixed reaction of horror and skepticism. There was no way I would ever stop eating meat, but there were some legitimately nasty things occurring in the processing of beef, pork, poultry, etc. I pushed them out of my mind, my mom started buying eggs from local farmers, and we all felt better about ourselves.

August 2009. I randomly run off to a foreign country in the Caribbean, where my diet changes drastically in a lot of ways:

A) I start eating way more fruits and vegetables. They’re cheap and easy to get.
B) I eat less in general. We’re poor, so my snacking habits all but disappear.
C) Everything I eat is prepared via propane stove, thus breaking my dependence on the microwave.
D) I eat significantly less meat because I don’t know where it’s from, I don’t trust my cooking skills, and I don’t trust my cleaning skills.

The result of this is that I had more energy, felt better, and lost weight. I said to myself, hm, there might be something to this whole not-eating-meat thing. I decided when I went home I would try to continue this little experiment.

Meanwhile, I discovered that one of my favorite novelists, Jonathan Safran Foer, had delved into the realm of nonfiction by publishing a book on…eating! Specifically, eating animals. I’m not done with it, but it pushed me over the edge into a tofu-eating vegetarian.

Foer is about to become a father when he starts to think about his own dietary tendencies, and decides to look into the food industry to help him decide what to feed his son and how to raise him.

My family members aren’t pets people; we’ve had them, but my mom has never liked them. That said, we aren’t huge into animal protection or anything. But even I cringe at the inhumane circumstances the author found. Not only that, but the entire process that our meat has to go through from “moo” to “yum” is pretty disgusting. I thought I could be safe eating chicken from time to time, but after what I’ve read, there’s no way.

But Natalie, you say, what about protein? You need your protein! Yes, yes I do; and that’s why I eat eggs and black beans. What else you got? What about your absolute favorite dish of all time, Cheesecake Factory’s Bang Bang Chicken and Shrimp? Well, yes, there is a good possibility that I will eat that. You did notice I said a kind of vegetarian.

What I mean by kind of vegetarian is that I think I will occasionally eat meat. If I’m a guest at someone’s house and that’s what they serve, I will eat it. If there are ribs at a barbecue, I could be tempted.

But for the foreseeable future, consider me sold to the dark side. Make fun of me all you want, but I'm still eating my garden burger.