Cafe Rio... to eat or not to eat?

And I quote:

"It is no secret that Cafe Rio is one of the more popular restaurants among BYU students. It is for this reason I felt compelled to write this letter to expose something I found both shocking and saddening. I noticed Cafe Rio uses real Coca-Cola in its recipe for pork barbacoa. That means many of us have disobeyed the commandments of our prophets without even knowing it!

"I am appalled Cafe Rio would perpetuate this subterfuge in Provo. Surely the owners must realize how many of us are striving to uphold the Word of Wisdom. How can we do that when they are secretly giving us real Coke? Now that this despicable deception has been brought to light, I think the only solution that we, as students of the Lord's university, can embrace is to immediately stop patronizing Cafe Rio until it uses caffeine-free Coke in its pork barbacoa recipe.

"Until then, let us eat on campus -- BYU Dining would never serve real Coke. Further, I call on the Honor Code Office to consider whether students who continue to order pork barbacoa should have a place at this university. Surely we cannot have students attending BYU who don't think it's important to follow the prophets. If students insist on eating pork barbacoa at Cafe Rio, they should cede their spot at this university to someone who is willing to be obedient, even when it doesn't suit their carnal tastes."

This was a letter to the editor in the Daily Universe. I laughed my head off. Hope to hear what you have to say!

Should give you a good laugh

I have to say this is the funniest thing I've seen in a while! I'm not really high tech like my siblings, so pardon me for just posting the link. http://www.flickr.com/photos/passiveaggressive/3642661392/

Photography Class

A woman in our ward offers a free seven-week photography course each summer - one of the reasons I was glad we ended up staying here. I've finally purchased a new camera for us, since the idea of trying to shoot for two hours with an obsolete memory card that can hold 36 pictures and a camera that probably uses up batteries in 1 hour didn't appeal to me. (When I looked through the manual for that camera I noticed that they assure the owner that the date function will continue to work after the year 2000. Definitely time for an upgrade.) I decided to stick with a compact camera for now, and went with this one. Happily, it arrived late Monday afternoon, just in time for my class yesterday.

The class is called "Learning Design Through Digital Photography", so we are focusing on how to compose our pictures, with an emphasis on line and texture. Our first assignment was due yesterday, consisting of two pictures each of the following categories of art: representational, abstract, and non-representational. Here are my best of the bunch:

I felt like I had a very difficult time finding abstract photos, but I must do a much better job of taking abstract pictures than representational or non-representational, since our teacher seemed to like these. Hopefully I'll improve in the representational category over the course of the class! Our class yesterday was focused on line, so look forward to some line pictures next week!

The Word of Wisdom

A Sunday school lesson on the Word of Wisdom is a very funny thing. Sunday school lessons are funny things for a lot of reasons, but I noticed it particularly this time because my mind has recently been on the topic of food as the result of reading The Omnivore's Dilemma.

Discussing the Word of Wisdom in Sunday school is largely an exercise of patting ourselves on the back for not drinking alcohol, smoking, or dropping acid. First, we dive into D&C 89:4:

Behold, verily, thus saith the Lord unto you: In consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days, I have warned you, and forewarn you, by giving unto you this word of wisdom by revelation—

After reading that, the inevitable Sunday school question ensues: "What are some examples of these evils and designs that we have seen in these latter-days?" Now the faithful members of the Sunday school class will reveal our main enemies, the dangerous, conspiring evils that constantly threaten to undermine our health: the tobacco industry, the alcohol industry, and the illegal drug underworld.

Can you see anything missing from this picture? Like maybe the industry whose products end up on our plates every day? Let me state a few observations about the demographics of the Sunday school members in this ward as well as many other wards I've been to in the U.S. The overwhelming majority of them do not smoke, drink, or use illegal drugs. I would bet that a majority of them have never in their lives sipped coffee, smoked a cigarette, sipped alcohol, or would even recognize an illegal drug. I'm practically 30 and the only time I've ever come close to ingesting these things is in the occasional annoyance of a nearby smoker or that one time that I confusedly gave in to the incoherent demands of a teppanyaki chef (long story).

Constant vigilance, brethren and sistren! Let's be extremely conservative and say that 10% of the Sunday school members actually struggle with one of the Big Word of Wisdom No-Nos. What do the other 90% get out of the lesson? They get to feel good about themselves while telling anecdotes about other people they've known (or sometimes younger versions of themselves). For most people there, the Word of Wisdom has nothing to do with sacrifice or resisting temptation. Many of us believe that the Word of Wisdom is as easy as the law of tithing, or easier.

I'd like to submit that "obeying the Word of Wisdom", by which I mean taking the typical legalistic approach and adhering to the simple list of official proscriptions, can be culturally compared to graduating from high school. Congratulations, folks. What an incredible accomplishment. The difficulty of doing this actually depends a lot on what background you have, like what kind of family you were raised in. Most of us middle-class Sunday schoolers have been blessed with a lot, and therefore graduating from high school is about as easy as falling over a log. Similarly, abstaining from Word of Wisdom No-Nos requires minimal effort, because to break it would mean acting against all the ingrained cultural and familial forces that have shaped your life since before your skin was exposed to the atmosphere.

No, my dear Mormon readers, this is not at all impressive or effective. Keeping out a short list of certain types of filth does not make your body pure or healthy. It only keeps it free from a short list of ailments and addictions. The "evils and designs" that threaten your health you may only be vaguely aware of. The industrial machinations in place to provide you with the cheapest possible selection of food would likely surprise you. This industry, from which you and I freely gorge ourselves, is motivated by something that may rhyme with "health" but it starts with a 'w' and has a significantly different meaning.

"That sounds like one of those crazy conspiracy theories," you say. Like the kind in D&C 89:4? Of course not, right? Everybody knows that those conspiracies are the tobacco, alcohol, and illegal drug industries. The evil Marlboro guy. Those devilishly funny beer commercials. The "secret combinations" of teenage gangster wannabe crack-smokers. That's where the evil lies, not the friendly McDonald's ads or the "variety" of processed corn-derived products lining the shelves at the supermarket. The tobacco/alcohol/drug fiends are motivated by something completely different than the food corporations, right? These guys want you to get sick and die! The food guys just want to earn a living!

Another funny thing is the way we like to gloss over the meaty parts (D&C 89:12-13):

Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly; And it is pleasing unto me that they should not be used, only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine.

Luckily we have a more modern interpretation of this scripture: "sparingly" and "only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine" actually means "every day".

We sit back and complacently distance ourselves from the soul-destroying monsters of alcohol/drug/smoking addiction, and yet we have no idea where our own food comes from and why. It might be wise to consider these kinds of things, since they directly impact our health. What better time to talk about these things than during a lesson on the Word of Wisdom? Can we get past high school?

[Footnote: My comments regarding high school and the like are not intended to diminish the accomplishments of those people who come from poor or otherwise difficult backgrounds or circumstances and have had to overcome incredible odds.]

gDiapers

To my great amusement, a few months ago I found myself contemplating looking into cloth diapers for our next kid. (I was quite determined against them when expecting Gareth, partly because I'd no idea how far they've evolved in recent years.) And, oddly enough, it wasn't because of the environmental impact or the cost of plastic diapers. It's simply that I'd grown tired of the act of purchasing diapers. I find myself dreading the end of each box and the ensuing trip to Sam's Club (oh, how I wish they'd build a Costco here!!!!) to buy more. The thing I don't like about cloth is the constant washing. So I'd actually given up on the idea, until I came across gDiapers. These diapers come with a flushable insert. How cool is that!? You can even toss wet ones in your compost! So, I'm once again contemplating plastic diaper alternatives. And hoping that Gareth is ready to potty-train sooner rather than later, so we get a diaper break for a while.

'Sta

Here's a new quick and easy 'sta (as Gareth calls it) recipe for everyone, obtained from the Cooking Light June 2009 issue (found online here):

Pasta with Zucchini and Toasted Almonds

Ingredients

• 2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved

• 2 tablespoons minced shallots

• 1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme

• 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

• 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt

• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

• 1/4 teaspoon sugar

• 5 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided

• 1 (9-ounce) package refrigerated linguine

• 1 1/2 teaspoons bottled minced garlic

• 3 cups chopped zucchini (about 1 pound)

• 3/4 cup fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth

• 3 tablespoons chopped fresh mint, divided

• 1/3 cup (1 1/2 ounces) grated fresh pecorino Romano cheese

• 3 tablespoons sliced almonds, toasted

Preparation

1. Combine first 7 ingredients in a medium bowl. Add 2 teaspoons oil, tossing to coat.

2. Cook pasta according to package directions, omitting salt and fat. Drain well.

3. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon oil to pan, swirling to coat. Add garlic to pan; sauté 30 seconds. Add zucchini; sauté 3 minutes or until crisp-tender. Add broth; bring to a simmer. Stir in pasta and 1 1/2 tablespoons mint; toss well. Remove from heat; stir in tomato mixture. Place 1 1/2 cups pasta mixture in each of 4 bowls; top evenly with remaining 1 1/2 tablespoons mint. Sprinkle each serving with 4 teaspoons cheese and 2 teaspoons almonds.

I was getting a little nervous about this one the past couple of weeks since as the reviews were coming in online there were an awful lot of "eh" or "blech" reviews. I did change a few things. I used grape tomatoes rather than cherry, mainly because they were more cost-effective and vidalia onion since I couldn't see any shallots. I left out the mint, but used a bit of basil instead, used parmesan cheese since it's what we have, and used more almonds than called for. I also used penne pasta rather than linguine, knowing from experience that an independent-minded but less than perfectly coordinated 2-year-old and spaghetti or linguine are a great recipe for frustration all around at the dinner table. I'd say I used about 12 ounces of penne - it seemed perfectly balanced even with more pasta than called for. One big complaint in the reviews was the impossibility of stirring everything together in the frying pan. I just mixed it all together in a serving bowl, almonds included, and grated the cheese over the top of that. This was a delicious and easy summertime meal that we all loved.

Budgeting

I'm extremely excited about a new budget system we're trying out - BucketWise. It was written by Jamis Buck, who actually used to work at BYU on the same team as Ryan, and it's basically everything we've been wanting. When we were first married we used Quicken, but that didn't allow us to create different categories to sort our money into and then draw from. It was a decent way to track overall spending and make sure we were syncing up with our bank account, but it didn't really do what we wanted. And once our version became too old to download online account information we stopped using it.

Next we tried the YNAB approach without buying the YNAB product. Ryan coded up a complete clone of the YNAB spreadsheet where we could enter our purchases into a register, dole money out to specific categories, and it would record how much was spent, budgeted, and remaining in each category. If we went over in a category it would subtract that amount from our available amount to budget in the next month. This worked pretty well except that there was no way to account for different bank accounts. And then Ryan was going to need to roll it over for the new year (I didn't have the time or inclination to learn how to do it myself), but he was too busy with school so it never happened. A scary 5 months of not keeping track of our purchases ensued.

Now we've successfully transitioned over to BucketWise (thanks to Ryan allowing me free reign at the Mac for one weekend so I could enter everything from the past 5 months and figure out how the program works). The program allows you to set up multiple bank or credit card accounts and then you can create "buckets" within each acount. For us, I have all deposits go into a "general" bucket and then I can dole it out from there. With this program I can tell exactly what we can afford to pay for from our main account and what we'll need to pay for from our secondary account (where my paychecks go). I'm hoping this will gradually end the worries about if we've got any money left in our primary account. We're being better about making sure we have the money for a purchase before we make it - even the little ones, which was usually what caught us before. And we're using it to help us save for items we want to get in the future; we already have a "bucket" for Ryan's drumset! We'll see how it works over time, but so far I'm excited.