Becky's Veggie Tale

I obsess over healthy stuff during the summer.

"This is going to be the year I run twelve miles a day!" I have been known to say.

I am not running twelve miles a day right now, and school starts in a couple of weeks. Chances are, I will not be running twelve miles a day this summer . . . once again.

However, I am going to blog about something healthy: Vegetables!

I love vegetables. I don't only eat vegetables and cut out everything else. I also love a lot of things that are bad for me, and I eat plenty of that too. I was just born with taste buds that love vegetables.

I am pretty sure my parents thought they had the market cornered on how to raise a healthy eater.

When I was younger, I remember my mother telling me, "We didn't put up with picky eating. You had no choice but to eat what was in front of you."

I ate what was in front of me because I liked EVERYTHING. Plus, she didn't explain how that applied to my much pickier little brother who didn't eat everything in front of him.

At school, the teachers would ask us about our favorite foods. Other kids would say spaghetti, mac and cheese, and pizza. When it was my turn, I would proudly proclaim that my favorite food was cooked spinach.

My teachers found this amusing (and unusual).

"Becky says cooked spinach is her favorite food?" they would ask my mother during conferences.

"Yeah, she's kind of like Popeye in that way," my mom would respond.

(Last year, I asked my kindergartners what their favorite foods were. Several of them said, "sushi." How times have changed.)

Full disclosure: I never liked sweet potatoes as a kid. It was the one vegetable I wouldn't eat.

"Even when we gave them to you as a baby, you would just spit them out," my parents told me.

I love sweet potatoes now.

That brings me to okra. Okra is my other favorite food. It doesn't even have to be fried, although I'm fine with it if it is. My husband, Dan, thinks I'm crazy.

"It's slimy," he says with a crinkled nose.

"Oh my gosh! That's why it's so good!"

Lucky for him, we don't get much fresh okra in Idaho. I keep a bag of frozen okra year round though.

Last week at our CSA, I went to pick up our vegetables and was amazed to find a quart-size bag of okra as part of our share.
"OKRA! That's my favorite vegetable!"

"This is the first year we have been able to harvest it. We tried before, and it just died."

"Oh! This is so exciting!" I exclaimed.

Dan was gone that evening, so I cooked and ate the entire bag.

"Fine with me," Dan said later that night. "Sounds like it was the perfect night for me to be gone."

A few months ago, I was with my school's running club, and we had circle time before hitting the trails. All of the participants (including the teachers and parents) were asked, "What is your favorite food?"

When it was my turn, almost without thinking, I answered, "Cooked spinach."

All of the students paused and stared at me for a moment before nodding and moving on.

One of the parent volunteers leaned over and whispered, "My husband likes cooked spinach too."

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European Vacation: A Few Observations

Last week, you might remember my blog post was a compilation of photographs from my European Vacation. Well, you're in luck! I'm not done telling you about my trip to Europe. After all, that is what is expected of us fancy European travelers (insert snooty picture here).

Just kidding. I'm not going to go on and on about my vacation. But I will share a few of my observations, straight out of my travel journal, from our time in Amsterdam.

1. You have probably heard about how popular biking is in the Netherlands. What you may or may not know is the bikes don't stop or slow down. The riders ring their bells very aggressively, "DING, DING, DING, DING!" Just because there is a crosswalk doesn't mean pedestrians have the right of way. Apparently, not wanting to hit pedestrians is an American thing. You know that scene in Elf when Buddy runs out in front of the taxi and says, "The yellow ones don't stop!" That's how I felt walking around Amsterdam. Cars, mopeds, and trams will also run you over. Cross at your own risk.

2. They have a screaming Jesus lady in Amsterdam too. She stands on the corner and screams in Dutch except when she points directly at you and shouts, "God not the problem! You the problem!" Don't make eye contact.

3. It is weird how people want to take selfies with the plaque at the Anne Frank House, like "Anne and me are buds!" It feels wrong and irreverent to me.

4. Restaurant servers are polite, but they leave you alone while you eat. I kind of like that.

5. I know it's cliché, but marijuana really does permeate the air in Amsterdam. And it doesn't feel any less safe than any other big city. Hmm . . . #legalizeweed

6. Cheese is really good in the Netherlands.

7. So are the museums. During our last day in Amsterdam, Dan chose to go to another art museum instead of the Heineken Experience. Now that says something.

8. In Amsterdam, they speak fairly Americanized English. It is almost easier to understand the Americanized English in Amsterdam than the British English in England where they have a very different vocabulary. They must be used to the partying American tourists in Amsterdam.

Check out The Book of Mormon advertisement on the left.

9. Things in the Netherlands are made for tall people. I couldn't see out of the peepholes on hotel room doors. My feet didn't touch the ground on tram seats or most of the city benches. I had a hard time reaching the handles on the trams, and the mirrors in public restrooms often hit me above my forehead.

10. Dessert for breakfast is a thing in the Netherlands. Nothing wrong with that.

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European Vacation: Just the Highlights

Many of you know that my husband, Dan, and I went on a European Vacation (not quite National Lampoon style though). We spent a week in the Netherlands, and then we met up with the choir of which I am a part and toured Belgium and France. It was quite the experience. This week, I thought I would introduce our journey through some photographic highlights.

All set for Amsterdam!

View from our hotel in Amsterdam (left)

Canals in Amsterdam (right)

Red Light District at 9:00 on a Sunday morning (really quiet, for some reason . . .)

At the Rijksmuseum:

The Dollhouse the inspired the book, The Miniaturist (left)

The Milkmaid by Vermeer (right)

Banksy at the Moco Museum

Organ played by Mozart (age 10) and Handel at St. Bavo's in Haarlem

Lion's Mound at Waterloo (left)

View from the Lion's Mound (right)

 

Madonna of Bruges by Michelangelo

Graffiti Street in Ghent

Our choir at the Flanders Field American Cemetery

Menin Gate in Ypres

Performance venue, St. Michael's in Ghent

Ghent, Belgium

 

 

Omaha Beach in Normandy

St. Catherine's in Honfleur

Performance venue, L'Oratoire du Louvre in Paris

Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe in Paris!

 

Sad to leave on the flight to Seattle (left)

Line at customs (right) America doesn't want us back. Go figure.

 

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Birthday Fun!

It has been a month since my forty-second birthday, but I have been busy again.

You might ask, "With what? What could have possibly kept you from your witty repartee?"

And I would reply, "Just touring around Europe. No big deal."

I should probably blog about that experience sometime.

Today though, I am writing my annual birthday post because if there is one thing we all have in common, it is getting older. In fact, nowadays I celebrate my birthday for an entire week. I figure if I have to be in my forties (and beyond), I might as well make the most of it.

This is how I celebrated birthday #42.

1. I got a new hair cut. Well, not a completely new hair cut. I wear my hair short a lot, but it had grown out over the year. It was new for the summer though.

 

2. My husband, Dan, and I saw Rocketman. The movie about Elton John's life turned out to be a full blown musical, not just a biopic about a musician like Bohemian Rhapsody. It had dance numbers and conceptual storytelling. What a birthday treat!

3. I was able to take a break and read on my birthday. Simple pleasures . . .

4. Dan and I attended our first Idaho Shakespeare Festival performance of the summer on my actual birthday.

5. Then we attended the musical Rent that weekend at the Morrison Center. So much theater=Becky's birthday.

6. AND The Tony Awards aired that weekend. Happy birthday to me.

7. We also went on a birthday hike. This has become an annual tradition around my birthday because, in early June, the wildflowers are still blooming in the foothills. Often my birthday hike tradition consists of me freezing on the side of a mountain (due to my crippling fear of heights), calling out to Dan, "Whose idea was this anyway?" 

I am happy to say this wasn't the case this year. (Much.)

 

Of course, the reality of aging hit me the next week when I took stock of the OTC drugs we needed for our trip to Europe. Our forty-something digestive tracts are not what they use to be.

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