Sourdough Bread

Mmmmm. Bread. Bonnie and I have been trying to save money, and one big expense has been our grocery/food budget. We've slowly started bringing it down with a variety of tactics, but one thing that has been driving both of us nuts is the price of bread. Your options seem to be either cheap ($1 per loaf) bread that has no taste or substance, or expensive ($2 or $2.50 up to $4) bread that tastes good but kills the wallet.

No more I say! We decided to start making our own bread, and since we didn't want to spend an exorbitant amount on yeast (it really adds up when you're using it two or three times a week), we decided to make sourdough. Best decision ever. The sourdough bread that we make at home tastes better than the expensive stuff, and costs less than the cheap stuff. My math says that it costs us about $0.25 per loaf with sourdough. In addition, we've also made some sourdough pizza crusts with the starter that you'd normally discard, so that has saved us even more. Honestly, if you're willing to put in a little time and effort with the sourdough, you can save a lot of money every month. So today I'm grateful for sourdough. It's seriously the best.

Cheap Books

The Bloomington Library had a sale on books this weekend. Bonnie and I spent about 5 dollars. We got a couple of large hardback books, and about 15 children's book for Lydia (10 cents each. woot). Bonnie and I both enjoy reading, so any time we can get books for cheap we always try to grab some.

I suppose in a broader sense I'm grateful for books and the joy that I've gotten over the years from my love of reading. I'm grateful that I was raised in a family that read, and I'm grateful that I learned to read early (well before preschool). Bonnie and I have four bookshelves in our living room, and we have frequently gotten the comment from people that they love the way that our books look. It seems to be a design thing for them. These people never comment on what books we have, just that we have and display books. And honestly they never seem to consider that the books might be more than just nice decor for us. I'm grateful that the books on our shelves are more than just nice to look at. They're something that we use and treasure.

Seeds (Did you know that they actually grow?)

Bonnie and I have been wanting to try growing some of our own food for a while now, but we've always lived in apartments. Of course we know that people use planters an grow stuff in their windows, but we've just never been good at that sort of thing. Well, we decided to give it a try this year, so we bought some pots and a planter. We decided to grow things straight from seed, instead of buying the already started plants.

Now, I've studied biology quite a bit. I was planning on going to medical school, so I took a lot of science courses during my undergrad. I understand how seeds work and how they grow. Intellectually I grasp the concept of how they work, but when Bonnie and I saw how small the seeds actually were, we both looked at each other not quite believing that they'd actually grow. Well on Saturday I went up to water the things, and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but some tiny green shoots and something that rhymes with appear.

I guess it's a human thing that even though you intellectually know something is true, it can be hard to act on that knowledge without your own experience. Well, if you haven't heard it already, I can tell you that seeds actually do grow, and I'm grateful for that.

Hidden Treasures of Knowledge, Part Deux

So yesterday I was talking about being a vegetarian. Here is why the specifically has made me grateful. Let me start with the Word of Wisdom. There is a promise at the end of it:

"And all saints who remember to keep and do these sayings, walking in obedience to the commandments, shall receive health in their navel and marrow to their bones;

"And shall find wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures;
"And shall run and not be weary, and shall walk and not faint."

Pretty straightforward, right? Basically you'll be blessed both body and mind. This story is how I realized some of that being fulfilled. My family came to visit in February, and my Grandma's (we call her Gran, which I will use from now on) favorite thing that she ate while she here was Steak & Shake. If you don't already know, it's basically a chain restaurant. It's kind of a diner place, so it falls somewhere between Wendy's and Olive Garden in price and quality. Probably closer to the Wendy's end of the spectrum.

Gran is a very generous person, and I am her favorite grandchild (due to singing at her retirement community almost every month for a couple of years). She was incredibly kind and gave Bonnie and me some money to go out to Steak & Shake (since I hadn't been able to go because of rehearsal I think) to celebrate the anniversary of our engagement in March. We hadn't gotten the chance to go yet, but decided to go on Friday night.

Since she had specified how we were to use the gift, we decided to suspend our vegetarian restrictions and just eat meat for the meal. I think we were both excited to have some meat, since it had been a few weeks, and we both agreed that the food tasted really great. It was amazing while we were eating it, but as soon as we got most of the way through the meal, we both realized that we had stopped enjoying it quite so much.

Here's the problem: when you're eating vegetarian, most everything is really light. For some reason you don't feel compelled to have these out-of-control proportions. In addition, you just feel really good. I can't explain it, but it just feels like everything is working well in your body. You don't feel heavy. After that meal though, both of us felt really heavy sluggish. You might say that it's because our bodies weren't used to having much meat anymore, but we both distinctly remembered the feeling we were having. It was the feeling we used to use to gauge when to stop eating. We used to eat with that feeling as a goal. Now it had just become unpleasant. It's not that we don't like meat anymore, it's just that we've learned how to control ourselves, and more importantly we understand why it's important to eat meat "sparingly."

Before I go on too much about this, I do want to say one more time how much I appreciate the gift that Gran gave to me and Bonnie. She went and really enjoyed herself and wanted us to have the same great experience. To be honest we did have a great time going out to eat together and having a date. I don't want to take anything away from the gift we were given. I'm not critiquing the gift. I just wanted to share something about the realizations that Bonnie and I had while we were out to eat. I could have just as easily have happened at a backyard barbecue or a pizza party, it just happened to occur here. Now back to the meat of the post.

I'm sitting here writing this on Friday at 1:00 am (so I guess it's actually Saturday). I ate hours ago and I still feel like there is a great brick sitting inside me. Eating vegetarian actually makes you feel better. So, for this whole weekend I'm grateful for hidden treasures of knowledge. Had I not felt inspired to try cutting meat out of my diet while the weather is warm, I would never have known how good you can feel by eating more healthy and by following the Word of Wisdom more closely.

Hidden Treasures of Knowledge

Look at me! Three posts in a row! It's a three-peat, though probably not the most impressive one in history. So this post has a bit of a back story (is that hyphenated?) to it. My wife and I were reading the Doctrine and Covenants a few months ago (if I haven't already mentioned it, we're Mormons). We consider the Doctrine and Covenants to be scripture, like the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Anyway, back to the story, we were reading what we call the Word of Wisdom. It's basically the reason that Mormons don't drink coffee or alcohol, don't smoke, and don't do drugs. There are lots of don't but there are also some important do's there. Here is the section that caught our eye:

And again, verily I say unto you, all wholesome herbs God hath ordained for the constitution, nature, and use of man—
Every herb in the season thereof, and every fruit in the season thereof; all these to be used with prudence and thanksgiving.

Okay, pretty good so far. Use fruits, vegetables, and wholesome herbs.

Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly;

Alright, meat is there for the use of man, but you should use it sparingly. Now here is where I usually stopped paying attention, but there is a little more on the subject of meat in the next verse.

And it is pleasing unto me that they should not be used, only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine.

Hmmm. Okay, so if I read that right, the Lord says that it's better if you don't eat meat, except in more extreme circumstances. So we read this, and neither of us were particularly happy about it, since we both love meat. We were both raised in families where dinner was based around the meat. We frequently say things like "everything's better with bacon." Regardless of all of that, we both read that and felt like we should try to live a little closer to what that said. With that in mind, we decided to try being seasonal vegetarians.

We read this in the middle of winter, so we figured that we had some time to gather some good vegetarian recipes and figure out how to do it healthily, but more quickly than we expected our meat days ran out. We actually built up to it slowly so that by the time that our official day came we were already basically eating vegetarian anyway. Honestly it has gone really well, much better than I expected. Regardless, we are several weeks into the experiment and we are loving it.

I was going to tell this whole story in one post, but I hate massive walls of text, so I'll pick this up tomorrow. Just remember these things: Word of Wisdom, we like meat, we are now vegetarian, and the youtube video is rabbits eating because I knew a guy who referred to all vegetables with disdain as "rabbit food."

Weather

So, an amazing thing happened. I actually got to walk around without my coat. I know, it's amazing. Seriously though, weather is just a cool thing. I'm amazed that the planet is able to keep itself in perfect balance between hot and cold. The Earth is the perfect distance from the sun, it revolves and rotates at the right speeds so that we get day and night, summer and winter. And while it can get uncomfortably hot or cold, it never really gets out of the range that humans can't find a way to live there. The world is pretty amazing when you think about it.

I'm a slackface...

But I'm getting back on the wagon here. Yes, it's been a few weeks since my last post. I kept thinking about the blog, but I was really sick and was having trouble being grateful. Remember how I said I'm a bit of an ingrate? Yeah, that's pretty much true. Anyway, here is a new post for today where I recommit myself to doing this.

I'm grateful today that I went to a University that has a high standard of morality. I attended BYU for my undergrad, and as they were just eliminated from the NCAA tournament, let me take a moment to say that I'm glad they stuck by their guns on the Brandon Davies issue. Considering how close the game was, I feel like BYU had a very good chance of pulling out a victory if they had Davies playing, but at BYU it's more important to do the right thing than to get money or national acclaim. I'm proud to come from that culture, which is so radically different than other places. Way to go BYU.