Man oh man, I love to cook. Currently I'm on a Moroccan cooking kick resulting in my first kitchen purchase in ages.....the tagine (pictured below). It's like a slow cooker for the top of the stove or in the oven, and it's used for the most delectable stews I've ever had.
A messy kitchen (!) makes it onto my happiness list for this reason: It's messy because I love to cook for people. End of story.
Kailina just returned from Nepal with a box of henna, which they used to tell stories from the New Testament at a Nepalese women's retreat. So she indulged me and a couple of other friends after I treated them to a grand Moroccan feast on my coffee table last week.
My killer henna tattoo...(for at least two weeks anyways).
Sunshine in the Gorge!
Quickest way to my heart is through a dynamite latte. *sigh* That's because I have a ridiculous love affair with coffee foam.
Wow. Looks like I really let myself go during finals week back in May...
I love coffee and long conversations with good friends....
Danielle knitted a beard and started a Women's Fake Beard Society, of which I am a proud member.
Went for a long walk this week. Old school. Van Morrison, live in 1973. Now what would this list be without some good tunes? Worthless, that's what.
Coffee with Laurie at River Maiden...
There are other things of which I have no photos for. Like Heather's homemade strawberry ice cream, for one. I also may or may not have a crush on Gordon Ramsay. Why I'm so engrossed in his Kitchen Nightmare show I'll never know. What a train wreck! We're right in the middle of getting ready to move back to Idaho in two weeks, so with things to do stacking up quickly, I find myself taking great pleasure in so many simple things, great food, bad tv shows, and good friends.
The other day I read something that said that small souls chase after small things and think they are grand. Is that true? I initially agreed but often sound bites like that fuel condescension toward others. Thoughts like, "Thank God I'm too deep to get excited about something like coffee or a fake beard," are a cheap way (at least in my mind) of measuring another's place on the deep-thoughts-scale. I have to wonder if the difference between being superficial or substantial is not necessarily found in what one takes pleasure in but rather in what said pleasure produces or affects in a person. And that's what the author was actually getting at, but it took me awhile to realize it.
I enjoy all sorts of simple things, but the truth is that I often feel like God is waiting for me in the most mundane and unusual places and people. I know it when it happens. I do something I've done a thousand times over and then suddenly it's as if I've never done that thing or read that statement before. It happens with unlikely people too. Just when I think I've gotten someone figured out, something catches me completely off guard, and it's like I've never even noticed that person before. I'm humbled and reminded that in all my knowing, there is still much left to discover.
