Here Come the Brides!

This weekend, my friend Maggie and I co-hosted a bridal shower for our friend and MCH-colleague Shannon and her fiance, Emily. Shannon and Emily are two of my very best friends in the Bay Area and I wanted this shower to really be something special for them! Most of Shannon's friends here are in our program, so we invited the whole lot of them plus Annie and Lauren, two other friends from school, and celebrated with a Cupcakes and Cocktails-themed fete.

My fabulous friend and neighbor Alyse came over in the afternoon to help me set up. We had a little station where guests could drop off gifts and write date ideas and family recipes for the brides. Then down below, we set up flowers, snacks, and the fire pit. The cupcakes and drink station were both inside the studio to keep away from the bugs! We set out champagne, red and white wine, and a make your own mojito station which I think was a big hit!

Annie made the most gourmet cupcakes -- lemon blackberry with a lemon curd filling and a white chocolate ganache (amazing, right??). Maggie whipped up some delish red velvet cupcakes with legit cream cheese frosting. Shannon, Emily, and I are all doing a nutrition challenge as part of our gym which "forbids" sugar, gluten, dairy, alcohol...all the good stuff. The cupcakes at the front are the ones I made and were challenge friendly: almond-orange base with coconut milk strawberry "frosting" (more like glaze). They were fine, but definitely didn't hold a candle to the other cupcakes! That's right, I obviously tasted everything.

We played some fun bridal shower games and talked until midnight. I never expected to make such wonderful friends in graduate school and am SO lucky to call these girls my pals. Tuck had a great time, too!! 

Congrats, Shannon and Emily! We love you!

"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need."

When I moved to Oakland, I knew I wanted to have a garden. In Charlotte, I kept herbs on my porch and so knew the convenience of being able to pick fresh produce rather than buy it.

My mom has a a beautiful orchard in Santa Barbara: lemon, lime, apple, avocado and orange trees; blueberry and strawberry bushes; grape vines; sprawling tomato plants and vegetables of all kinds. She came to visit our house in Oakland last September and we went to Berkeley Horticulture, a great nursery in north Berkeley. She helped me pick out a bunch of baby vegetable plants, herbs, and young trees. We spent the weekend mixing soil and planting a variety of vegetables...and then I began to wait. A few weeks later, the veggies started to pop (with a Tucker photobomb):

From left: Herbs in the box and snap peas (back row); bok choy, 2 kinds of broccoli, 2 kinds of kale, spinach, green onions, and arugula (front row)

As the weeks went by, I couldn't believe how well the garden was doing. Maybe it was the earthworm casings we mixed in with the soil, maybe we just had great seedlings, but either way, the produce was plentiful. I have absolutely LOVED having this garden in my yard. I go out nearly every day and cut some arugula or spinach for salads. The broccoli had some trouble growing, but I learned that you can cook the leaves and they taste just like broccoli. We used bok choy instead of celery during the winter in soups, and it was delicious. The snap pea plants are now completely taking over the garden -- this picture was taken a few weeks ago, and if you can imagine, the snap peas now completely cover that siding and reach high above the fence (again, Tucker just had to be in the picture): 

I mean, come on! So beautiful!

I've also been able to tie this hobby into my academic work by studying community and school gardens' effect on health. So many communities in the Bay Area are food insecure, and community gardens can offer access to fresh produce for low-income families.

Alice Waters, the superhero behind The Edible Schoolyard and Chez Panisse, is somewhat of a controversial character in the East Bay in that she seems to ignore the issue of access regarding school gardens. While her Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley gets a large sum of money from donors each year (I've heard it's around $400k), many Oakland schools operate on a much smaller budget (again, I've heard this is about $15k per school). While it may not be the taxpayer's responsibility to enhance the garden budgets for these schools, there is plenty of evidence linking gardens and access to fresh food with better performance in schools: investing in school gardens is investing in the academic success of kids. I don't want to take any sort of political stance on this issue, but I DO believe that every kid and family has the right to access healthy, fresh food and that it will ultimately improve their chance for success later in life!!

Okay, I'm off my soapbox.

"But if each man could have his own house, a large garden to cultivate and healthy surroundings - then, I thought, there will be for them a better opportunity of a happy family life."

I'm Baaaaaaack!

Dearest readers,

Apologies for my extended absence over the past...FIVE months?! There have been a lot of changes in my little food-loving life, most of which will earn their own posts, but to get you all caught up...

In May, I left my job and so many wonderful friends in Charlotte to return home to California. I'm starting a graduate program in Public Health at Berkeley in just under two weeks from today, and have spent the summer relaxing and unwinding in preparation for this new chapter. Rob and I drove from Charlotte to Santa Barbara in less than 4 days with Tucker in tow. That adventure kicked off a summer of change that I can't believe is coming to an end. Rob transferred to his company's office in SF which made both of our lives a little easier. We have settled into a little home in Oakland (more on that in a future post). My family took an amazing vacation to Turkey, which of course will get its own post.

For now, a couple of thoughts:

Change is hard, but I've found that it's most important to trust yourself when making big decisions that will shake up your world.

I was deciding between graduate programs in all different parts of the country, including one in the city where my best friends live; one just two hours from the life I had built in Charlotte and from where I thought Rob would be living; and one, Berkeley, that promised frequent visits to and from family in California. Over the past five months, I've made a lot of decisions with a lot of help from others, but ultimately, I had to learn to listen to myself and trust that things will work out. The best advice I've received all year is don't look back and regret your choices; instead, move forward knowing you made the best decision you could have at that time.

The last few months have left me feeling like a very lucky girl.