Two years

I have been married for two years, today. 

I like this being married thing.  I love my husband!  He's much nicer to me than I usually deserve, and I love him even more for that. 

Today we will probably not do anything fun.  I have three papers to write.  Bummer, right?  Oh well.  I may throw caution to the wind so we can spend some time together tonight.

Elizabeth Hanson

We are to the part about captivity narratives in my women's history class.  Seven years ago I took a Lit. class that focused on this genre for a month solid.  At the end I HATED Mary and Elizabeth and every other stupid Puritan frontier lady who got herself captured by Native Americans, was freed, and published her story.  Yeah, apparently you could get book deals back then if something crazy happened to you.  You probably didn't make millions in royalties like now, but you got fame and a spot in history. 
Tonight I re-read Elizabeth Hanson's "God's Mercy Surmounting Man's Cruelty".  I thought it was FASCINATING this time around.  Now, let me say I don't think I'll be devoting any more time to captivity narratives than is necessary, but I found redeeming value in her story this time.  Maybe I'm just a more mature student and can read things with a new appreciation now.  I don't know.  However, if you haven't read her story, it's worth a glance--if only so you have a better command of colonial American history.
I was struck by Hanson's portrayal of her captors--she vascilates betwee calling them civilized and savage.  Every good thing is interpreted as Divine Providence, and every bad thing is a test she must pass to achieve salvation.  She eats some crazy stuff, walks hundreds of miles, sleeps on the ground in the winter, watches her children killed or taken by other Indians, gives us a view of life as an Indian, and talks with French people!  If it hadn't been traumtic, it would have been a pretty cool adventure.  A side note: Hanson's a big fan of inserting prayers, cliches and exhortations into her account.  Given her pious and captivity narrative-loving audience, it certainly makes sense, but you should be prepared for some serious moralizing!
So I guess I'm saying that sometimes you have to give something a second chance.  Hanson wasn't terrible the second time around.

Brrrr!

It's cold in Fort Collins, my friends.  Not frigid, but definately not warm!  I have been bundling up and drinking tea and reading books--though the books aren't good novels.  (If I was reading Wilkie Collins right now, the scene would be perfect.)  I am lamenting the lack of fall.  The leaves are beginning to change, but it's nothing like fall in Iowa.

The apple never falls far from the tree.

I've been harboring a craving for zucchini bread for at least a month.  Tonight I decided I'd waited long enough.  Hang homework!  I was going to bake.  So I did an online search for said bread, though I'm not totally sure why as I have at least thiry cookbooks.  Anyway, I googled "zucchini bread", and Paula Dean's recipe was the first of many results.  As usual, the name, Paula Dean, brought a smile to my face as the words "butter" and "fat" danced through my thoughts.  I quickly scanned the recipe. 
"Yum, nutmeg!  3 cups of sugar?! ...Where's the butter?!  Oh, Paula, why have you failed me?!"
Yes, apparently even the great Paula Dean uses oil like the rest of the world when making zucchini bread. 
The recipe still looked absolutely scruptious, so I decided to give it a shot anyway.
I brought my laptop into the kitchen and plunked it on the counter--no wasting paper for this girl.  I started measuring ingredients into my happy green mixing bowl.  (Well, I measured as much as a dump and pour cook like me can measure.  I DID use a measuring cup, Allison.  It is the first time I've made this recipe, after all.) 
"Hmmmm. I wonder what whole wheat flour will do to this recipe?"  A half cup of white flour was saved as a half cup of whole wheat flour immediately went into the bowl. 
Then I got to "baking soda" and realized I had none in the house.  No problem, I had baking powder.  However, having never had the chance to perform this substitution in any way but "baking powder to soda", I thought I'd better look it up.  Apparently, baking soda is four times stronger than baking powder, so I had to add eight teaspoons of the powder to the mix.  However, the advice-givers also warned that any acids included in the recipe had to be taken out as they were there to activate baking soda.  Baking powder doesn't need extra acid.  So out went the "lemon juice".  No problem, right?  A drop of lemon extract would give the flavor.  Well, I discovered I was also out of lemon extract.  Bummer, no butter, no lemons.  This recipe was beginning to sound less and less cool.
My wits quickly returned from their brief vacation, and I decided almond extract would make this zucchini bread extra-delicious in lemon flavoring's absence.  In went the almond extract. 
And then it occurred to me: I was an inch from the top of my green bowl, and I hadn't added any wet ingredients.  Oh drat!  So I went to the only bowl I had that would do the job: the Big Blue Bowl.  The Big Blue Bowl handled my dry ingredients with plenty of room to spare, so I moved on to the wet ingredients.  Aha! The green bowl was still needed.

The green bowl became home to the great "Tower of Zucchini", and as I added eggs and oil I decided they made a great moat for the Tower, though the Tower quickly settled out and down.  The moat gave no protection to the Tower as my spatuala descended from above.  The wet ingredients went into the dry ingredients. 
"Lovely, now for some loaf pans," I said outloud.  But then I remebered; I don't have loaf pans. Ahhhh!  "What am I going to do now?"
Zucchini cake.  I made two beautiful golden rounds of zucchini cake.  After fifty minutes in the oven, they came out perfectly!  I set them on top of the stove while I got out a cooling rack.  I began to smell something burning.  NOOO!!!!  I had left a burner on after making a disasterously messy tuna melt!  One of my beautiful cakes now had a burned bottom.  I scooped it off the burner and onto the cooling rack praying my nose was lying to me.  It wasn't.  Oh well.  I still had one perfect, delicious zucchini cake.

Now for the eating part.  Yum.  I love zucchini bread, though I think I'll use less nutmeg next time, and perhaps the slight salty flavor is from the extra baking powder.

So in the midst of the "Great Zucchini Bread Adventure" I kept thinking of my mom.  She taught me to cook and bake.  She gave me my love of all things edible (except melons and liver) and made cooking seem fun and adventurous.  She's also the reason I didn't really measure and substitute things like whole wheat flour for white for the fun of it.  She's the reason that, instead of panicking, I substituted baking powder for baking soda, almond for lemon, and cake pans for loaf pans.  She's the kind of person who would taste something she'd just made and say, "This is good, but I think next time I'll put in more garlic." 
One of my mom's trademark quips to my family about a meal has always been, "I followed the recipe this time, and I didn't  substitute anything, either.  ...  Oh, except ______.  Oh yeah, and ______.  And _____, and _____."  Then we'd laugh and eat.  The food was always delicious, and my mother and I can probably count on two hands each the number of times we've followed a recipe exactly. 

I have

lived in Colorado for one month and three days.  I find it hard to believe I've alread 'blown' a month.  Time flies when you've always got something to do.

Homework

I love everything I'm learning about.  I like going to class.  I like some of the readings I do. 
I do not like writing papers.  I do not like stress.

Konfyeti!

My super-amazing friend Allison came to visit me this past weekend.  It was wonderful to see a familiar face!  Also, being the amazing person she is, she introduced me to her friends here in FC.  I now have names of doctors and dentists and mechanics.  Most importantly, I was informed that there is a candy shop here that sells Russian chocolates.  As you may imagine, I took the soonest possible opportunity to check out this place.  I was not disappointed.  The owner, a man most likely from the Black Sea or Middle East, was really helpful.  He informed us that Wyoming and Northern Colorado were full of Russian immigrants, so he caters to their requests and imports the things they want to buy.  (I know you're asking yourself, "How lucky can this girl get?!")  After nearly swooning because he carried "Rossiya Shokolad" bars with little holes throughout, I turned my attention to the middle of the store which was full of konfyeti.  Konfyeti are delicious little bon bons I ate pounds of while in Russia.  Most of the konfyeti have little sayings or stories on them. My favorite one at the store was titled “Gulliver with the strange Lilliputians,” though you must imagine saying it “Gooleevyer v stranye leeleepootov.” I love konfyeti!  Allison and I left with two pounds of these little guys. Yum!