breaking the ice when breaking bread and backing up your favorite recipes
Being an INFP (I = “introvert”), I lack, in the words of Bobby Boucher’s mom, “What dey call da social skills.” So I am constantly on the lookout for no-brainer ways to prove that I can indeed interact successfully with other human beings offline. 
This weekend, I was invited to a social gathering (a small group study, if you must know). Everyone was supposed to bring a dish. I am not much of a cook, but I do have a few recipes that work well for me and my short attention span. So I made a pie. I had promised my friend, the hostess, the recipe for this particular pie in payback for a favor. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any blank 3 x 5 cards in the house. I suppose I could have copied the recipe on the back of the un-blank index cards I found, but I seriously doubt my friend has any real interest in Air Force Weather School flash cards. But I digress.
I found a really nifty site, opensourcefood.com, where you can post pictures and recipes. I made the pie, snapped a photo of it artfully placed on my tatami placemat with my cell phone, uploaded it to my computer, and in less than 5 minutes, I had the prettiest printed recipe sheet, complete with a picture of the actual dish I’d be sharing and my friend would be eating that very night.
My friend seemed to like the recipe sheet, and I thought “Aha! In the future, that would be a nice gesture to the hostess of any social gathering where you bring food. Bring the recipe, with a picture of the actual dish to be eaten.”
Of course, if you’re bringing a two-liter of Big Red and a bag of Fritos, you might want to consider something else. But if you’re going to go to the trouble of fixing a dish, heck, why not memorialize the occasion for both you and your friend? After a certain number of parties, you’ll end up with all your favorite sharable recipes in one handy spot. So in the event that you accidentally set fire to your precious real-world recipe cards (hey, you’re working with a stove, it could happen) you’ve got a backup of your most important ones online.
In fact, if you had the time, you could go ahead and post all your favorite family recipes, and then just update the pictures as you actually made them for family and friends. If you don’t like opensourcefood, there are lots of recipe sites on the web. Pick the one you like best.
camping: good for the body, good for the soul
We went camping as a family at O’Bannon Woods State Park this weekend (pictures to follow soon) and had a great time. The weather was perfect for camping: 70s during the day, and 50s at night. At one point, I realized that camping is good for you in so many ways. So here is a rundown of all the reasons you should take yourself and/or your family camping … the sooner the better.
- Camping gets you out in the fresh air. Lots of research has been performed in recent years about the fact that living and working in climate-controlled environments with poor ventilation spreads colds, flu and other common illnesses. Let’s face it: trees are better at recycling air than an HVAC system.
- Camping requires you to get off your butt. Particularly if you’re tent camping, rather than RVing it, setting up camp is a lot of work! You have to assemble your tent(s), blow up air mattresses or arrange other bedding, gather firewood, and unpack your gear. And cooking over a fire pit is a cardiovascular activity–you have to tend the fire and the food the entire time.
- Camping makes you work as a team. When you get to the campsite with 20 minutes of daylight left to pitch a tent, start a fire, and roast some weiners, trust me, you will learn to work with your spouse as a team.
- Camping forces you to ask for help sometimes. We forgot, in our rush, to bring a lighter, matches, or anything whatsoever to start a fire with, and our friends the Frakeses wouldn’t be arriving till the next day. So we had two choices: sit in the cold or humble ourselves enough to admit we didn’t have it all together and ask strangers for a match. Sounds like a no-brainer to some, but that’s actually a really hard thing for some people.
- Camping gives you the opportunity to meet new people. Interestingly enough, the next morning, yet another camper came by … looking for a match or a lighter, having forgotten to bring anything to start a fire with. We also met an interesting couple who were walking their domesticated wild dog from India. Part of the joy of camping is a change of scenery and environment, and most campers extend that to the social environment, and like meeting new people from different backgrounds.
So now, while the weather isn’t too hot and isn’t too cold, it’s a great time to make plans to go into the great outdoors and spend some quality family time. Even if you think you’re allergic to roughing it and, in the words of Woody Allen “at two with nature” you might find that it has more to offer than you realized.
weight loss and one year of leapfrogging
Wednesday was my 1 year employment anniversary at LeapFrog, which is reason enough to celebrate. I love my job. I get to write for the internet, record podcasts, and generally hang out with other creative, web-obsessed people like myself.
But I had another reason to celebrate this week. One year ago, when I started working at LeapFrog, I was hovering around 190 pounds. Yup, you read that right–5′6″ and 190. I started making some diet changes right after starting the job, which gradually resulted in a fifteen pound loss by January or February of this year. At that point, I hit a plateau, and quite frankly, I was feeling pretty good (read: complacent) about that much weight lost. So a few weeks ago, we took “team pictures” at work, and when I saw them, it was a shock. I still didn’t look like myself. That same week, Chris decided that we’d do family photos this fall in November for our family Christmas cards.
So I started getting a little more focused on my eating habits, but more importantly, I started walking EVERY. DAY. Rain, shine, or 100 degree heat. And Chris and I started tracking our weight weekly “competing” with each other.
Today I am proud to announce I’m down to 164, and as of this week, I’m not at my goal weight, but I officially feel like I look like “me” again. My final goal weight is around 150-155. I’m not shooting for supermodel skinny, here, just what author Mireille Guiliano calls “comfortable in your own skin” weight.
Speaking of which, in case you’re wondering, that’s essentially the “plan” I’ve been following–based on Guiliano’s book French Women Don’t Get Fat (which is oddly appropriate, given my last name.) I’ve got the book checked out of the library again, just to refresh on the general principles and maintain a good attitude.
As earlier reported by Jonna on the Full Life, the Hob Knobbers got together last night, and everyone was very kind in complimenting me on how I looked. I think it was partly the weight, but partly just feeling more like myself than I have in a long while. Which is probably another post.
personality types and spiritual formation
My previous post about people seeking to find their identity in the products they buy has brought up something else I’d like to write about. People like identifying themselves with something. They like categorizing themselves. One reason for that is it’s easier than deeper self-reflection and introspection.
I believe that life should be balanced between reflection and action. Mainly because that’s what Jesus’ life was like. Read the Gospels. He was definitely a man of action, getting things done–but he also took frequent breaks to go alone by himself to pray. Socrates said “An unexamined life isn’t worth living.” Of course, he eventually committed suicide with hemlock, but still, I hear he was a pretty smart guy.
So anyway, like most people, I like categorizing myself. Because of that, I know that I’m an enneagram type 4 and an INFP according to the Jung/Myers-Briggs typing system. I also recognize that part of the reason I have a natural affinity for this balanced, harmonious approach to life is because that is the natural bent of an INFP.
Personality typing isn’t without merit, in fact, I’ve found it to be an extremely helpful tool in my own spiritual and personal development. Helps me spot my own blind spots. It’s only a problem when you start thinking your type is who you are.
If you’re interested in learning about your personality type, I recommend a few resources. Similar Minds has probably the best and most comprehensive free online personality tests. If that seems too complicated, or if you have concerns about the spiritual aspect of it, you might try the spiritual types test at MethodX. (I’m a Mystic, not surprisingly.)
Your soul was designed for Paradise. Learning about your personality is essentially learning about the ways your soul has adapted to live in a fallen world. With those adaptations come particular strengths and weaknesses, which the people who study personality types have documented pretty effectively. Part of discipleship and spiritual formation is unlearning those adaptations to the fall, and relearning how to live as a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven.
kayaking, waterskiing or sailing?
Despite the title, this is not a post about water sports. The water sports are a metaphor. Work with me here, people.
At different times in my life, I have been looking at some very different paths in regards to an area of my life. I’ve learned that I need to think long term, and plan and act accordingly in the short term.
It occurred to me that I love a challenge. Often, I will work furiously at learning to do something strictly to see if I can learn to do it at all. Sailing was like that for me. I did it like, a grand total of two or three times, before I realized I did not enjoy it one tiny bit. But I needed to do it those two or three times to show myself I could do it. There is something beneficial to the soul in trying oneself against a challenge strictly for the sake of risking failure and for the value of what you learn about yourself in being tested. Life isn’t meant to be a leisurely stroll through the park. Read more
Have you sold your soul to Starbucks? Have I?
I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately, and my volume of writing at work has increased a lot in the last few weeks, so I apologize for neglecting my readers and friends here.
On the Reading Table: Just finished Geek Gods, Karma Queens and Innerpreneurs, and reviewed it on the podcast at work. I really enjoyed this book; it combines up-to-the-moment sociological trends with marketing and advertising strategy. Possibly boring to most of my readers here, but even those who don’t work in marketing might find the type profiles interesting, and gain an increased awareness regarding the ways that Madison Avenue is working to capture your attention and loyalty.
From the complete opposite direction, I also just finished reading The Contented Soul, which I really enjoyed as well. The author comes from a Quaker/Society of Friends background, and is a sociologist, so much of her ideology resonated with me. (According to the Belief-o-Matic, I’m apparently an Orthodox Quaker…probably a subject for another post.) And if there is anything the Friends are known for, it’s simplifying life and focusing on contentment.
Interestingly, like Geek Gods, this book also talks about the way that people are struggling to define a sense of identity in our postmodern culture. Both books agree that people are increasingly using their purchasing decisions to define their sense of self. (This is something that is very openly touched on in my favorite movie: You’ve Got Mail, in Joe Fox’s monologue where he says the purpose of Starbuck’s is to get a defining sense of self by ordering coffee.) Obviously, the two books have dramatically different opinions on whether that is a good thing or a bad thing.
Which leads to the question, as both a Christian and a copywriter, what do I think? Read more
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