kitchen gadget of the day

i was blessed with quite a few amazing kitchen gadgets for our wedding and i am still learning the wonders that my kitchen drawers and cabinets hold. today's kitchen gadget of the day is not just a gadget but more of a miracle disguised as a blender...the vitamix. i wake up each morning to a smoothie waiting in the freezer, never really knowing why it has the perfect texture. but then i finally opened up the cookbook it came with. did you know it makes soup? the blades spin so fast that you actually put whole ingredients in the blender and steamy, delicious soup can be poured straight from the vitamix to the bowl. and the best part of all? it makes ice cream. yes, you read that correctly...ice cream. we made strawberry ice cream the other night. it was not only delicious, but easy...blend frozen strawberries, milk, sugar and vanilla then eat...and it came out as perfect strawberry ice cream.

a lesson learned the hard way

when you were little and your mom said, "be sure to wash your hands after touching the jalapeno" did you listen? apparently i didn't. just in case you are ever in the situation where you "thought" you washed your hands thoroughly, and yet half way through making salsa, your upper lip and then your nose and then your cheeks start to tingle and then burn like someone is pressing an iron on your face...


you should NOT:
1. try to rinse your face with water...the burning will spread
2. try to dry your face...the burning will spread

you SHOULD:
1. combine baking soda and milk into a paste
2. cover face with paste and use q-tip to get all the way up the nose
3. breathe slowly (through mouth) and try not to cry
4. cover face with ice packs
5. once burning has resided, rinse face and cover with aloe
6. if you are as lucky as me, get a loving husband to do all of the above for you

The Texas Heat

Just so you all know what has been going on lately, here's a timeline:

April - Texas starts to get warm and I love being outside. I start running and run a 5k in 28 minutes. My brother and sister talk me into signing up for a half marathon in October in San Francisco.

May 1st - All of those beautiful trees and flowers start to make nose itch...and then my throat starts to itch...then my head starts to hurt...and my nose won't stop running...and I cough ALL day long...and the allergy medicine plus cold medicine makes me want to fall asleep at my desk.

May 5th - Then Texas decides that 95 degrees is a better temperature and I am now not only sick, but cranky. I have no desire to leave air conditioning and that makes it awfully hard to train my body to go from zero miles-a-day to 13.1 miles in 22 weeks.

I have now pushed all of my pants and long sleeve shirts to the back of my closet so that skirts and dresses will be all that I wear. I'm also thinking really hard about running in the mornings. Ladies and gentlemen, that would mean I would have to wake up early. I can't even wake up on time, let alone early.

All this to say, I am kind of cranky, but I went to the grocery store the other day, bought a bottle of wine and lots of beautiful fruit that's in season. The wine really helped the crankiness and then I think God was really trying to tell me that I need to suck it up and enjoy life, because this is what I found when cutting the watermelon:



How cool is that?!

For those of you who actually read through that post to get to the photo, (which will not be my brother) thanks for coming back to the blog after such a long time away :)