In true Heifer International style (that’s one of my favorite nonprofits; they train families to care for livestock, and then the families must pass on the first born of their animals to another family in the village), I would like to introduce someone else to the fun that is making your own jam. Earlier this week, I read Alisha’s blog post about this — Alisha is a missionary in Vienna — and since I live near the German Deli, where she recommended buying gelling sugar, and the German Deli is down the street from Central Market, where I had a coupon for $10 of free produce this week, I decided there was no time like the present to learn how to can. I was surprised by how easy this task was, and I finished in less than an hour. If you don’t use the German gelling sugar (you can order it online), making jam is a bit more complicated, as you then have to find the right combo of pectin, sugar, and acid for your fruit. The gelling sugar is premixed, so it is perfect for beginning canners. You just use twice as much fruit as gelling sugar. We used about 340 grams of raspberries (so 170 grams of gelling sugar, and since I have a scale, I was able to measure) to make one jar of raspberry jam. With about 350 grams of blueberries, we made one jar of blueberry jam. If you read Alisha’s post, you’ll see that she used strawberries, and since strawberries produce more natural juice, you get more jam for less berry weight with them. Also, we combined the instructions from Alisha’s post with the directions in German on the gelling sugar sack and with some other online instructions we found. What did we do differently? We stirred the fruit at a rolling boil with the gelling sugar for at least three minutes, and we turned our cans upside down for 15 minutes immediately after filling them. Read and see more about our culinary adventure here.

How did it get to be the last week of June already?! Ashley and I have been action heroes the past month, to say the least. Here’s a family update:

We’ve been happily involved with our church and have enjoyed celebrating graduations and first birthdays, hanging out with the college class (which Ashley is second-in-command of teaching, after Jessy), and participating with the congregation in selecting new elders. Oh yeah, and last week, Ashley was a sponsor for the youth Uplift trip to Harding so our youth minister could stay home with his very pregnant wife. Whew! Here’s a photo of Ashley with the graduation present some of our friends surprised him with. It came just in time, since he had only 300 megabytes left on his hard drive.

We are three lessons into our dance instruction. Our teachers (a married couple) are probably in their 80s, and the wife is a sassy little thing. The husband says the men must lead — it’s their last stand! We’ve learned basic steps of the fox trot, swing, and the rumba. Ashley likes box steps. I like not box steps. But so far, we both still have all 10 toes, so we’re pretty much set.

Ashley is job hunting, and I am hoping to keep mine. Layoffs loom, and oh how I do not want to be a victim of the pink slip. This weekend, Ashley came down with a sinus infection. I think it’s partially due to extreme stress. Just call me Dr. J.

I look forward to a day when I either (a) become much better at balancing all of life’s activities, responsibilities, budgets, etc., or (b) have fewer activities, responsibilities, budgets, etc. to balance! Sometimes I have to take a deep breath and realize that I just can’t do it all, and that that’s okay. I can manage keeping up with the necessities! To debrief and unwind from these chaotic days, we strive to squeeze in a few late-night walks each week in our local park. We found a little friend last week!

As I promised, I am announcing my big birthday present from Ashley this year. My husband is so creative! We’re taking dance lessons (YAY!), and as this is so not Ashley’s cup of tea, I do feel very loved. Like my two new bods?!

With this year’s birthday, I have reached “eternal age” of women: 29. I still remember my great aunt Dorothy telling me she was 29, when, in fact, she was in her late 50s. Thanks to everyone who has made my birthday so special this year: my family (for the fun party last weekend), Lana and Jen (who took me out), Sherri (who brought in yumminess for all of us at work to share), all those who sent cards and wrote on my Facebook wall, Janet (who sent me three gifts to open in the weeks leading up to my birthday - woohoo!), Brooke and Jess and Cody and Glenda and Grandma D. and the sisters (who all called me), Olan and Lora (for the Panera treat), and Ashley (who tackled planning my birthday this year with never-before-seen gusto and showered me with lots of presents, love, and quality time). After work on the day of my birthday, Ashley and I made enchiladas, watched some season finales, and ate pie while I opened presents. More on my big present will come later. We’d had a little celebration with my family the weekend before, where there were also pie and presents. Today, Ashley and I went to the lake that’s 20 minutes from us and had a picnic. Tonight, we went to La Hacienda Ranch for some fajita goodness. Then we finished the evening with a walk. Here are some photos of the festivities, starting in San Antonio (pre-sunburn) and finishing at La Hacienda Ranch.

I’ve pedaled my way through this Saturday at record pace! I woke up at five a.m. to get ready for the Fort Worth Tarrant County Race for the Cure. I was at the church by 6:30, and by 7:15 or so, we were all enjoying free bananas, water, tea, yogurt, Panera, and Starbucks — not to mention scarves, key chains, etc. Race for the Cure is like a free carnival that caters specifically to women; it offers a really positive, healthy atmosphere of friendship, strength, encouragement, support, and love. I’ve participated in the Arkansas race before, but today was my initiation into the Fort Worth version. I’ve enjoyed every one of my Race for the Cure experiences, and I walk to celebrate my grandma’s victory over breast cancer and to support my sisters in Christ who’ve also battled this disease, personally or in their family. Photos of our group come courtesy of Brandi. You may notice our crew has grown by the end of the race. With a 6:30 Saturday morning departure time, there were bound to be a few who overslept and had to catch up! But we all made it eventually. After I got home, Ashley and I went to the park, where we were reminded that today and tomorrow are Arbor Daze in our town. So, we went and checked out the festivities there for a while. Then we came home and watched Jeeves and Wooster, and now I am working on tallying receipts and checking our budget. Amazingly, I haven’t required a nap yet! I guess a 5K can really start the day off right! I’ll post the race photos now and Arbor Daze photos in a few days.

When I was in high school, I started to experiment with cooking. I made many not-so-tasty things in the process, but my sisters and I both approved of the creation that was distantly related to beef Stroganoff. It’s been years since I’ve had, or even thought of, that dish, but Shannon mentioned to me last week that she’s introduced her family to it and revamped it a bit. So, the meal that started with just egg noodles, hamburger meat, and swiss or mozzarella cheese has become this much-improved version:

RECIPE FOR BEEF STROGANOFF

One package egg noodles, cooked

One small can of Shitake mushrooms, sauteed

One-half pound of ground beef, seasoned with onion salt and browned

One package brown gravy mix, prepared

Grated swiss or mozzarella cheese to taste

Boil and strain noodles and then combine with meat, mushrooms, and cheese (I prefer swiss). Mix in gravy. Serve! (Shannon doesn’t use mushrooms, but she adds onions.)

Ashley and I have made the tough decision to divorce from our weekly Wednesday McDonald’s tradition. I believe the restaurant is under new management, and it shows. We’ve had poor service, been submitted to not-so-pretty smells, and been shocked to find the restaurant completely without napkins (they said the truck was on the way) in the past few weeks.  Plus, we’ve received no discounts. After talking it over, we’ve decided it will be best for us to try other options, like the Wendy’s near us! We will probably check back in with our McD’s occasionally, but for now, we’re looking forward to trying out some new menus.

[AMSides] This was weird. I was leafing through an 1820s geography textbook today, and I stumbled across a list of the known planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Herschel.

…HERSCHEL!?!?

Has anyone ever heard of that?

I learn something new (even if it’s from the 1820s) every day.

I am a tennis-shoe snob. I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember. When I was little, I had to have Velcro action on my tennis shoes. And I preferred to have rainbows on them, particularly the plastic kind that magically rippled different colors when I walked. Oh, and I had a very narrow foot (double A), and my tennis shoes absolutely had to be snug — and still do. The rest of the shoes in my closet are Target purchases or hand-me-downs from my sisters, and almost all of them are falling apart, and I don’t care. But tennis shoes have always been my one indulgence, my very great splurge. This obsession heightened when I started to play basketball in middle school and then to run track. You simply can’t wear basketball shoes to run track, at least, not if you want to run track well. Because I took ballet for five years, my feet require shoes with arches just so high and in just the perfect place, or I end up in a lot of pain. Plus, they must be pretty shoes; I am a girl, after all. And white is absolutely out. What makes finding this combination more complicated is that my left foot is about a half size larger than my right. So when I find a shoe whose arch feels good on one foot, it still rarely rises in the needed area on the other. Ugh. I am willing to pay the big bucks for my tennis shoes, as they are so important to my being able to work out and avoid knee injury (which I also have a history of), but I will not purchase a pair that does not meet my strict standards. My mom won’t even go tennis-shoe shopping with me anymore. I can spend hours trying on different pairs and walking and jogging around the store in them and still not find something I’m comfortable with. Usually this happens at three or so stores. I think Mom feels sorry for the salesmen. When I lived overseas, I quickly wore out the pair of tennis shoes I went over with; I walked practically everywhere. On cobblestones. When Mom came to visit, she brought several boxes of shoes with her, and I got to pick a pair. Lo and behold, the joy of my feet was in one of those boxes, a pair of New Balances that have been my trusty comrades for the past three years now. I usually get new shoes every single year, so that tells you how much I’ve bonded with my 871 off-road trail runners. Everything about them is perfect — the color, the attached wrap-around tongue with the tug-hole in it for easy foot entry, the wavy laces that stay in place, the light weight, the stability grid that corrects my pronation tendencies, and the arch. But I have killed my dear shoes. The traction on the soles is no more. The side material is cracked and ripped. And most tragic of all, where there once was a soft heel cushion, there is now only hard plastic, which recently tore into my ankle and caused quite a bit of bleeding while I was at the park. I started doubling my socks to delay the inevitable, but at last I couldn’t take it anymore. It was time to begin the dreaded task of finding a new pair of tennis shoes. If only they hadn’t discontinued the 871 and its successors. If only they hadn’t changed some of the most attractive features of the 871 when they made their newest trail runners. I’ve been a New Balance girl for about 10 years, but this year, there was nothing at all in the New Balance store that I deemed worthy of my feet. I had to start from scratch. After no fewer than five hours of shoe shopping spread over two weekends at no fewer than six stores (and I went to two of those stores multiple times), I’d narrowed down my selection to Asics and Sauconys. There was a problem, though: While Asics offered the high arch and had awesome colors, it couldn’t compare with Saucony’s cushioning. But the Sauconys had no real arch to speak of. I liked feeling like I was walking on virgin memory foam with every step in the Saucony shoes, but I loved the solid rise in the Asics. And I wasn’t willing to purchase either without the other’s best feature. So the sales lady introduced me to SofSole’s performance insoles, which offer maximum arch support for high-impact activities. You can buy them with low, medium, or high arches, but I need the high ones. I pretty much had to build my own shoe this year to get something I could be happy with. So I took out the manufacturer’s insoles in the Saucony 1927-6 (which I decided to go with) and replaced them with the high-arch insoles. Now I have cushion and support. I’m still not convinced I will ever be as bonded to these new shoes as I am to my 871s, but it’s time to make new friends, and I’ll definitely give it my best shot. Do any of you walkers/runners out there have other shoe suggestions? I saw Ryka brand at many of the shoe stores, and I have zero knowledge of what they’re like — do any of you have experience with them? What’s your favorite pair of shoe, athletic or otherwise?