I Never Promised You an Organic Garden

I am feeling very inspired by the presentation that Elizabeth Keller and Turner Ritchie gave this morning about their recent trip to Nepal and the time they spent with a grassroots organization called Women Empowerment. The group is working to help women overcome poverty and oppression in a society where they are considered less than second class citizens.

And while it would have been easy to become overwhelmed and saddened by the stories of oppressed impoverished women in a far off country so different from my own, I felt inspired. Not only by the stories of women who have learned to provide for themselves and their families and to speak out for the basic rights of all women in their countries, but also by the amazing women in my life.

Women like Elizabeth who are unabashedly strong and forthright. Women who reach out to others with compassion and an honest desire to help support and lift one another up. These women go far beyond simply being opinionated and stubborn and are truly empowered and a force to be reckoned with.

Along with Elizabeth Keller, I think of:

Anna Lisa Gross

Emily Mingle-Hershberger

Amy Gall Ritchie

Dawn Ottoni Wilhelm

Tracy Stoddart

Karen Poling

Ashely Saylor

Katie O’Donnell

These women are an inspiration and example for men and women alike!

This weekend Matt and I participated in Iron Chef Bethany. For those of you who don’t know a lot about Iron Chef, it is a Food Network TV show where two chefs (an Iron Chef and a competitor) compete to cook six dishes in an hour using a secret ingredient. Each dish is judged on plating, taste, and originality and an overall winner is determined by three celebrity judges.

Obviously, Iron Chef Bethany had to be slightly different, but we had a blast anyway. There were three teams, four judges, and one very orange secret ingredient — CARROTS. Matt, Karen and Travis Poling, Chris Hardie, and myself formed the Fairview Five and made 6 carroty dishes:

• Carrot jello jigglers
• Carrot, cabbage, broccoli, and bean sprout spring rolls
• Homemade carrot pasta with carrot marinara sauce
• Spicy peanut carrot soup
• Carrot ginger sorbet
• Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting

All the dishes turned out great, and I even helped cook. I didn’t burn anything, break any dishes, set anything on fire, leave out any ingredients, or cause anything to fall on my head. All in all it was a very successful day in the kitchen.

Unfortunately our team only received the “most creative use of the secret ingredient” award, but there were lots of great carrot dishes, and everyone had a wonderful time.

If you want to see some more photos, checkout my Facebook photo album or, if you don’t use Facebook, my Picasa Web Album.

This has been quite a fun filled and varied weekend…

Friday night we had a group of people over to have dinner and play with our new wii. It was quite a spectacle! Seeing 7 grown adults shaking the wiimote like sugar crazed children was very entertaining. We took plenty of photos, and after looking at them, I think I will definitely have to create a wii photo gallery in my Picasa web album.

Here a few samples of what is yet to come:

Saturday Matt and I joined a large group from the church and went to the ice skating rink at Miami University of Ohio in Oxford. We only skated for 2 hours, but it was quite a workout. Unfortunately, at the end of our time I took a catastrophic fall and landed hard on my knee. I have a nice black and blue goose egg but fortunately no real damage.

I also spent some time indulging my geekie tendencies.  I built the newest version of banshee (an open source Itunes equivalent) from the source.  It was a quite a different experience than installing a program that comes prepackaged.  After installing things from the command line, I felt a much greater since of accomplishment than just clicking install in Windows and letting the computer do it itself.   I also spent time playing tech support for my grandparents.

All in all it was a great weekend!

If you are looking for something fun to do on Saturday or an alternative to Christmas shopping at the mall, head over to the Clear Creek Co-Op for their Annual Alternative Holiday Bazaar.

The festivities start at 9am and last until 5pm. There will be lots of local artisans, hot tea, and live music. I will be there selling the fabulous jewelry that Emily and I made.

Stop by, check things out, and buy some jewelry!