A Rant on Organic Food

Where do you get your information about organic food?

Magazines? Food network shows? Nightly news? Friends? "They"? The pretty section in the grocery store?

Ever read a scientific research article conducted by a research university, the FDA, or Consumer Reports on the claims that organic food is healthier/better for the environment/tastes better?

Probably not.

Or you would know that organic food has never been proven to be any of those things. What has been proven? It costs more.

That sure is a pretty sign!

What are we talking about?
Organic food is defined as "food grown without pesticides, artificial fertilizers, or preservatives, hormones, and antibiotics (Public Hearing in the Matter of Organic Foods). Basically, this refers to the method used to produce food, rather than the quality of the food itself. Great! I'm all for growing food the way Adam and Eve did! What does the USDA say about food grown in this way?

"No distinctions should be made between organically and non-organically produced products in terms of quality, appearance, or safety."

Ohhhh. So we're not allowed to claim that just because food was grown "organically," that it is better than food not grown organically? Why would you say that USDA? Logically, if food is grown without pesticides, fertilizers, or preservatives, it MUST be better!!

Ohhh....you have research that it's not. Our bad....

The research.

Organic food is soooo much more nutritious!
The number one claim from organic fans is that organic food is more nutritious. Nope. Dozens of studies have been conducted to determine the nutritional value of organic food compared to non-organic food. There has been no difference. According to Food Technology, a research publication on foods, nutrition content is determined by heredity, not how a food is grown. No nutritional difference exists between organic and non-organic food.

Organic food is totes safer for you.
Organic food is not grown with pesticides. This doesn't mean they are pesticide-free when they enter yo' belly! And foods that are grown with pesticides CAN be pesticide-free when they enter yo' belly. The FDA found in a 1997 study that 60% of non-organic food contained no detectable pesticides. That same year, Consumer Reports found that 25% of organic food contained some level of pesticides. One actually exceeded the federal limit! In fact, every vegetable contains about 5% of its weight in natural pesticides, many of them carcinogenic. But before you freak out, you should know that one cup of coffee contains more carcinogens than a year's worth of synthetic pesticides found on produce. 

I don't see a movement to limit coffee coming any time soon.

Oh yeah, in 2007, Consumer Reports found that organic chicken contained 300% more Salmonella than regular chicken. University studies have repeatedly found more illness-causing bacteria in organic food because of the lack of pesticides.

Organic food is better for the environment.
Another big claim of organic peeps is that organic food is better for the environment because of the absence of pesticides. What is your motivation for wanting to save the environment? Most people would answer, "To preserve this world for future generations." Great answer. However, the methods that must be used in organic farming are far too inefficient to meet the world's food demand. Without the use of pesticides (which remember: are not enough to even give you a cold), crops die so much faster. If every farmer in the world used organic farming methods, the world would quickly starve.

To conclude, organic food is not dangerous. It's not going to kill you or give your unborn child three arms. But neither is non-organic food. Research has consistently proven that no difference exists between the two groups, except for the method in which the food was grown. The results are nearly identical. The only notable difference is that farms that use pesticides are much more productive than organic farms. They don't lose crops because an army of beetles moved in.

In the end, I'm really just trying to save you some money. If you want to buy your organic vegetables, pasta, chicken, etc., go ahead. I really won't be mad. I would just rather spend my little teacher salary buying more vegetables that I would be able to afford if I bought organic. In the end, I will be equally as healthy as you. And maybe not surprised when I still get cancer after a lifetime of "doing everything right." 

A Blog about Nothing

Okay, not really "nothing." I have been doing some stuff.

But mostly, I do nothing. Here's a typical day in the life of summer Laura:

7:30-Wake up and bemoan the fact that Teacher Laura has ruined Summer Laura's ability to sleep in.
8:00-8:30- Spend some time with Chris before he goes to school.
8:30-10:00- Facebook.
10:00-10:30- Decide if it's sunny enough to go to the pool.
10:30- Scope out all the channels for a Teen Mom/Ghost Hunters/America's Next Top Model marathon. If marathon exists, this is the rest of the day. If no marathon, ....
11:00-11:30- Think about the awesome stuff in the freezer for lunch.
11:30-12:00- Cook one of the awesome freezer goods.
12:00-2:00- Facebook.
2:00-2:30- Decide what to cook for dinner. Only recipes that involve ingredients we don't have are applicable.
2:30-3:00- Go to grocery store to buy ingredients.
3:00-4:00- Facebook.
4:00- Realize you didn't thaw any meat for dinner. A) Throw some chicken in a bowl of water, or B) Go back to grocery store.
4:30-5:30- Greet Chris and talk about what we he did today.
5:30- Begin cooking dinner. If it's easy, you're doing something wrong.
6:30- Eat dinner and have nightly debate about whether we should ever cook this again.
7:00-10:00- Facebook.
10:00- Realize you didn't do dishes and do just enough to get the stinky out.
10:30- Go to bed.


So as you can see, there hasn't been much to blog about. But here are some awesome things I have done that broke up the monotony of the above schedule.

Girl Cousins Weekend in Birmingham
I have a lot of cousins. We are spread across Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and Texas. We don't get to see each other a lot, so it was super fun to get together with the lady cousins for a girls weekend. Apparently, we didn't take any pictures while we were there, so here's a picture of us from Thanksgiving:

Me, Janice, Paula, Julia, Kathryn, and Ashley.

Julia is being awesome at a summer camp in Arkansas so she couldn't make it. Ashley was being awesome and hosted the whole shindig at her new house in B'ham. We played games. We watched movies. We painted our nails. We cooked delicious food. It was a lot of fun.

--Side bar-- I learned that all of my cousins are 10x more skilled at cooking than I am. Who knew it was less messy to blend the powdered sugar into the cream before turning on the electric mixer at high speed?!?

This is how Itchy rode the whole way there. He loved snorting in the air from the A/C. Weirdo.

 

 

Nail art!

Cutest part of the weekend! Ashley has two wiener dogs, Tucker and Sadie. Itchy absolutely loved them! Minus the pooping incident 5 minutes after we arrived to claim his territory, they got along just fine. We might have to get more wiener dogs to continue the adorableness of this picture.

Alright, onto other exciting things...

Hedwig is now a Davidson County resident.
(Hedwig is my car.)

It's somewhat inconvenient to move the same month that your car tags expire. It's a LOT cheaper to renew tags in Knox County, and there's no emissions test required, but apparently vehicle registration is the one piece of mail the post office won't forward to a new address. However, we don't really have anything confirming that we live in Davidson County either. But it's cool. I can apparently get away with anything without proof.

Last year when I got married, I prepared myself for an epic fight to change my name. I walked into the Social Security Administration building armed with every document on earth proving who I was and that I was, in fact, legally married. And what happened?

Absolutely nothing. They changed my name on my social security card without asking for any kind of proof. They didn't even ask to see my old SS card. Just asked my number and my new name.

That can't be okay.

Then I went to the DMV to get a new driver license with my new name AND address. Again, I had no proof of my new name because I had just ordered my new SS card. What happened?

Nothing. I filled out a form with my new name and new address, and I walked out with a new driver license in less than 10 minutes. I've heard horror stories about just changing your address and bringing enough documents to prove where you live, but no one even asked for a utility bill.

That's not okay either.

Today, I went to the county clerk's office to get new tags with a new county sticker. I brought utility bills, proof of address change with TDOT, emissions testing, etc. I was somewhat concerned because my car is still in my parents' name, and according to the website, you have to have Power of Attorney to change the address. I thought I'd try it anyway.

And yep, you guessed it. Nothing happened. The lady asked what my new address was, took my money, and gave me a shiny Davidson County sticker.

HOW is it possible to do all these things without proof? I know people get tired of all the red tape everywhere you go, but seriously?! I could have completely changed my entire identity without any proof of who I used to be. I feel like this is a case of "profiling" in reverse. It's rude to "profile" someone for looking shady, but we can't assume someone's not being shady because they look decent enough. It's a little disconcerting to think someone else, who is up to no good, could completely change their identity without so much as a question.

Let's stick to the rules, America. You're not inconveniencing me to make sure I'm not a serial killer before you give me a new social security card. I'll wait the extra 3 minutes.





Okay. Wow. I thought I had done more exciting things. I guess not. I was pretty excited about the return of So You Think You Can Dance and watching it with Leslie, but you probably don't care. (Unless you're Leslie, in which case, I'M SO EXCITED!!!!!!)

Stay tuned for next time. Chris and I are cooking up a pretty awesome post about why "organic" foods are not as awesome as everyone thinks they are. This will be written as a scientific paper with source citing and all. Be excited.

We Made It a Whole Year!

Married for 20 minutes.

Yesterday was mine and Chris' 1st wedding anniversary! Neither of us has ever had a wedding anniversary before, so this was new territory. What do you do? I thought it would be fun to re-create the entire wedding day, but the more we thought about it, the more we decided that most of that day was pretty weird. Chris was bored until the actual wedding started, and I was a nauseous mess being fed watermelon and mountain dew by my bridesmaids. So here's what we actually did for our anniversary:

We went to church.
Because duh. God got us this far.

There was some excitement at church though. In a congregation of about 150 people, who should happen to be sitting behind us?

 Bill Haslam, governor of Tennessee. So we worshipped with the Gov and went home.


Open window?!? @#$%@
While eating anniversary lunch (5 slices of bread and a frozen rice dinner), I noticed I could hear the wind blowing. And the window looked funny. Upon further examination, we realized the window was OPEN. And had been that way since we moved in 3 weeks ago. This explains the $50 electric bill for one week of service and why our apartment seemed hot no matter how high the air conditioner was. We're not sure who opened the window, but we're pretty mad at whoever you are.



We watched Titanic.
Because nothing says "I love you" like watching thousands of people die tragic, water-bloated deaths.

Really...Chris and I made a deal a few months ago that I would watch Zombieland if he would watch Titanic. I tried Zombieland but it was way too gross, so we exchanged Zombieland for all three extended editions of Lord of the Rings. Fair trade? No. But Chris made good on his promise to watch Titanic with me, so we did that yesterday.


Dinner at the Cheesecake Factory.
[Insert same reaction that everyone has when they go to the Cheesecake Factory for the first time.]

I want to tell you about our Cheesecake Factory $$ Plan. Here's how it works:

1. Decide where you want to eat dinner. (In our case, the Cheesecake Factory.)
2. Go to Kroger and buy a gift card for yourself to the restaurant of your choosing.
3. When you buy said gift card, you get 4x the amount of Kroger fuel points.
4. For every 100 fuel points you earn, you get $0.10/gallon off gas.
5. Go getchya some gas for less $$!

So we turned a $50 Cheesecake Factory gift card into 200 fuel points. Combined with 100 fuel points for filling a prescription at Kroger. And we got $0.30/gallon off gas!

It's the little things, ya know?

So dinner...
Bang-Bang Chicken and Shrimp at CF is NOT the same thing as Bang-Bang Shrimp at Bonefish, just FYI.

June 12, 2011!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake. MINE.

Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Cheesecake. Not mine... :(

:-)
It was good.


The secret to success.
I have learned a lot in my one year of marriage. No, it's not a lot, especially compared to couples approaching 30, 40, 50 years. But it's been significant for me.

I've learned how much God truly desires to be with us. If He calls us his spouse, does He feel the same disappointment I do if I don't get daily quality time with my husband? Does He want me to talk to him the same way I get excited about talking to my husband? Are His favorite times with me the silly, casual, "let's just enjoy life" moments? Does He think about me as much as I think about Chris? If all those answers are yes, then God thinks we are really special and loves us more than I knew was possible.

In our first year of marriage, I have learned that selflessness is pretty much the best policy. Want to have a solidly awesome marriage? Completely let go of anything you want or desire. The motto of our first year could be:
"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves." Philippians 2:3
Why does your spouse deserve to always get things their way? Because they are better than you. Or at least they should be in your head. This means:

• doing things for them that they should probably do themselves (picking up their clothes, washing their dishes, cleaning their hair out of the sink...)
• letting them pick the restaurant, movie, activity, etc.
• listening to them talk about stresses in their life that you've already heard a thousand times but know they need to air it out one more time
• giving them a backrub even if you're exhausted and your back hurts too
• cooking foods that you don't like but you know they love
• living with the air/heat/water at a temperature that makes them comfortable
• waiting to make decisions that don't really concern them but giving them a chance to express their thoughts

What's the difference between living selflessly and being a doormat?
Your spouse treats you the EXACT. SAME. WAY.


I'm not sure what the key to success will be for our second year of marriage. Probably something totally different. But I'm so glad God has given Chris and I one year of the most amazing marriage I could have imagined. I know it won't always be this easy, but as long as we continue doing life with Christ at the center, we're gonna make it through anything.

Love you, O'B.

Sunburn 101 with a Red Head

It happens to all of us. Even Kim Kardashian.

Yesterday, my mom and I had a pool date. Two redheads, 4 hours. In my defense, I really did wear sunscreen. My face is fine, probably because I never put my face in the water, so the sunscreen stayed put. But apparently, slouching over a pool float for hours washes away the sunscreen you had applied.

So here's the situation:

• Legs, shoulders, back, arms, and my left hand are a little a lot burnt. (Is burnt really a word? It wasn't underlined in red. Anyway...)
• I thought my stomach was okay because it wasn't red at all at first. Around 9 pm last night, I discovered that my stomach did not survive Sunburn 2011.
• This morning, the sunburn is gone on my right arm, both knees, and chest. Everything else is still pretty cooked. (Btdubs, WHY does it disappear on only certain parts of my body?)
• My thighs and left hand are actually a little swollen. That can't be good.

To the best of my knowledge, here is the best way to care for a sunburn. You can be assured this is legitimate advice from someone who has been moonburned before.

• Aloe vera is weak sauce. This is only for people with melanin who need it on the first day and then have a beautiful tan. For serious sunburns (or regular sunburns for redheads), skip the aloe and go straight to the top shelf liquor.
• 1000 mg of ibuprofen. Don't do anything until you have numbed yourself.
• Drink lots of water. The headache will only get worse in your dehydrated state if you don't drink water.
• Vinegar. Much like how you forget the pain of childbirth when you see your baby, you forget the awful stench when you feel the relief. Pour on liberally and let drip dry. If you pat yourself with a towel, prepare for worse pain than when you started. I warned you.
• If you don't have vinegar on hand (and who wants to go to the store in your sunburned state?), you can use mustard. It has enough vinegar in it that it will work. I do not, however, recommend using it on a couch you share with someone...
• Preparation H. STOP LAUGHING and listen for a second. The uber-gross medicine was designed for swelling, burning, and pain. Even though it is intended for a different part of your body, it will have the same effect on sunburned skin. So get over the stigma and give it a try. (It also helps with under-eye bags, just FYI.)
• Lightweight, summer-wear, UnderArmor shirts. My husband and I both have these shirts, but I like his the best because it's looser-fitting. They are the softest shirts and super breathable. It won't rub your skin and further irritate the sunburn.
• Maybe don't go in public for a while. Sunburn + embarrassment from the sunburn = crazy shades of red.

Okay, that's the advice. Next time you enjoy a day at the pool so much that you forget to re-apply sunscreen after going in the water, follow these steps and your life will be a little easier for the next few days.

Now I'm going to lay in the floor and cry for a while.

Ohhh the BREAD!

Chris mourning over Mark being turned into a loaf of bread.

"This is for my father!"   "This is for all the people you've turned into bread!"

I'm sorry...these images were totally worth bringing back. If I had the video link, I would totally post it.

This classic BCM movie was stuck in my head all day Tuesday. Why you ask? Because I made homemade bread!!

I don't really like bread, but I wanted to see if I could do it. First lesson I learned was that there is a special flour just for bread. You should probably use that if you're making bread.

First, mix a really stinky package of yeast with a bunch of other stuff until you get this cute little ball of dough.

 

 

 

Next, cover the bread with a damp cloth and place in a "warm place." Naturally, the warmest place I could think of was outside on the back porch.

Um, hello? It worked. The yeast has risen!

After putting the buns in the oven (hahaha...), you have created bead! It was not super fluffy, so I'll try to work on that next time. I guess it was okay because Chris ate an entire loaf in one day. But that could have been out of pity, because he's sweet like that.

If you would like to made homemade bread, here's the recipe I used.

 

I also made barbeque chicken in the crockpot. Again, I don't really like barbeque either, but Tuesday was all about making Chris happy. If you ever want a super easy meal, throw some still-frozen pieces of chicken in the crockpot. Empty a small bottle of barbeque sauce on it, and let the crockpot do the magic.

Alright, that's today edition of the boring food blog. I'm excited because before we got married, I knew how to cook frozen chicken fingers and frozen potatoes only. Homemade bread is a big deal. Plus, you get to use these things:

Until now, these were for chasing Chris around like Captain Hook.

The Un-boring Pickwick Blog

My mom informed me that my blog has been pretty boring the past couple of posts. To remedy this, I think we should take a moment to delve into my mom's extreme couponing habits.


My mom is an extreme coupon-er in the fact that she does not search hundreds of ads and clip coupons, but rather argues with store employees over the rules of coupons. She was recently escorted through the Publix line by the manager and engaged in an argument over $0.30. She was upset that she had to pay 2 for $7 for biscuits (or something?) when her coupon for 3 for $10 did not register. I both cringe and look forward to going shopping with my mom when she has coupons. You can bet one of the coupons will ring up incorrectly and a schooling will occur. I'll try to bring my camera next time.

Anyone else care to comment on my boring posts? I have dirt on all of you.

Pickwick
This weekend, Chris and I went to Pickwick Lake to spend some time with the whole O'Brien clan. Let's do a plog for this. Yes, I made up plog. It's a picture blog. Anwyay...

My chauffeur.

Mrs. O'B sunbathing.

Mrs. O'B tubing. My mother-in-law is awesome.

The cute guys in my life.

What's this? My husband knows how to wakeboard?

Yes he does!  I'M MARRIED TO HIM!!!!!!

Sarah made brownies. O'BRIEN RULES!

This is the greatest picture ever. O'Brien family tradition to wave at the parting company until we are completely out of sight. I love this family.

Puppy Shenanigans

I'm not sure why Itchy has been hiding under the bed and end table today. Could be three reasons:

1. He's annoyed with me taking pictures of him and is trying to hide.
2. He has pooped and/or peed somewhere and is dreading the moment I find it.
3. He's still ashamed of the poop he got in trouble for last night.

Whatever the reason, he is innocent until proven guilty. Stay tuned for the results.

Banana Cake with Caramel Icing

This is actually a surprise for Chris. If he sees this before he gets home, it means he is checking my blog during class and deserves to ruin the surprise!

This is his Mama Katy's banana cake. He subtly mentioned he wanted me to make it by opening our family recipe book to the banana cake page and leaving it on the kitchen table for days. I got the hint.

This was quite an adventure of using my electric mixer (first time unsupervised!), breaking open the round pans, and as my mother-in-law exclaimed in a surprised voice: "You made a layered cake?!" I know--I didn't think I could do it either.

We had a slight caramel icing malfunction. The recipe gave instructions for how to make it thinner, but not what to do if it turned out runny like water. Trusty ole Google helped, though, and I mostly got the icing on the cake. Now we'll see if it measures up to Chris' mama's banana cake.

I don't know why I keep trying to compete with decades-old family recipes. This never ends well for me.


God is awesome.
"I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead."
Philippians 3:13

I like this reminder from God. As I said before, dwelling on past failures, experiences, and regrets is a big struggle of mine. This needs to be my motto. There is so much to look forward to and I think God is pretty okay with being excited about it! I have a new job, we still have 3 years of Nashville living to do, Chris will soon be a doctor of physical therapy, and we'll hopefully have little O'Bs running around in the next couple of years! So there! Take that past-poop-flinging Satan!

The Glory Days

Before I really start blogging today, I just want to announce:

I got a job!!

Thank you to everyone who prayed for me and/or listened to me complain about getting a job. The teaching world is pretty competitive. Especially when you're a young teacher, everyone's resumes start to look the same. We all have degrees. We all did some amount of student teaching. I had a little something extra going for me because I had a few years of experience and a master's degree, but I surely wasn't the only person with those qualifications. God definitely deserves all the credit for choosing to place me in a position that I am so excited about and for giving it to me waaay early in the summer so I've got 2 months to prepare!

I'll be teaching 2nd grade at Cedar Grove Elementary. Which brings to mind one of my favorite "Friends" quotes, courtesy of Phoebe regarding 2nd grade:

"I love the second grade! It's so much better than first grade, when you don't know what's going on. And definitely better than third grade, with all the politics and the mind games."

Always making me laugh.

 

Okay, the glory days...as the title of this post appears to be.

It is one of my favorite times of year. The Women's College World Series of SOFTBALL!!!!!! In case you didn't know, I started playing softball when I was 6. Fast pitch. I took a little detour into slow pitch when I moved to Knoxville in 4th grade and fast pitch was not offered. But fast pitch from 6th grade on.

I was often on 2-3 teams at a time. April was always a particularly busy month when league softball, school softball, and travel softball were all going at the same time. But I loved it. I love the game. I love watching the WCWS and being proud that I know all the little nuances of the game. For a while in college, I had played with or against a lot of the girls you saw on TV. It felt good to know that I had gotten hits off pitchers you saw striking girls out at the World Series.

I played on a LOT of teams in my 12 years of playing. But two stick out as the most memorable because I spent the most amount of time playing with them. 

First, the Oakland High School Lady Patriots.

2003.

What a weird team...but great friends! We had a different coach all four years that I played. Still, we managed to win the district tournament for the 12th year in a row. My sophomore year, we earned a trip to the state tournament and placed 4th. Not bad for having only 2 juniors and 1 senior!

I don't have a lot of pictures from high school because digital cameras weren't really cool then....

Sophomore Year.

State Tournament 2002

I played right field 99% of the time. I was running toward the fence in the second picture. And I caught it. :-)

Senior Year.

I also pitched. Not much though. Our starting pitcher was really good, so fortunately I didn't have to pitch too much. But we did have a pretty sweet strategy. I was so much slower than our regular pitcher, that we could switch out pitching between innings and the hitters could never adjust to me or her. They were waaay ahead of my pitches and waaay behind hers. I mean, it worked.

Senior year, punting softballs out of gloves.

 

My main job, other than dominating right field, was to steal bases. This got harder as I got older and most teams knew I was going to steal if I got on base, but I made it work. I just got really good at punting softballs out of peoples' gloves. This took a toll junior year when a slide went awry, and I had to have ankle surgery to put the ligaments back together. But I made a comeback and also became certified in taping ankles with athletic tape.

So okay, high school softball was fun but was pretty much straight business. Win the games, go to state, bring home trophies.

My real team was Sudden Rage. We were all the rejects from the Firebirds, the other travel team in Murfreesboro. We even went by the name Firebirds "B" our first year. Yeah...pretty humiliating. That is, until we played them in the championship game of the 4th of July Tournament, 1999. We were 13 and a little terrified. Our coach had this brilliant idea that I would pitch (I had never pitched a single game before) and that would throw them off enough that we might win. It worked. Apparently it's nearly impossible to hit a ball when not even the pitcher is sure where it's going to go.

But the best part of that team is the family I made. I don't remember how many games we won or lost, but those girls will always be like sisters. We played together for 5 years and had the same core group of 9 girls the whole time. We spent every weekend every summer traveling around the South, staying in hotels, playing softball. It's been 7 years since we last played a game together, but we still get together for cookouts, bowling, bridal showers, baby showers, etc. Love these girls!!

2000. Our first year as Sudden Rage.

2002 maybe? We won a lot of tournaments. It's hard to tell.

5th place at the World Tournament in 2002!

Our last end of the year party our senior year of high school.

Getting together after going to so many different colleges!

Experiencing some "sudden rage" with Sudden Rage the day I broke up with my boyfriend.

Sudden Rage at my wedding shower.

We lost our Coach Tim suddenly this past year. He made sure we knew every detail of how to play the game, but also spent just as much time making sure our "heads were on straight," even if that meant doing a little "girl talk" in the hotel room. He was a great guy. I was so glad we were able to get together with Kylie and Jesi to celebrate how much their dad meant to all of us. I'm going to miss being severely pinched in the arm fat.

Okay that's my softball blog. Let me know if you ever want to throw the ball around and I will hurt your hand.