You know what I love?

To go to the grocery store, spend $40 and have the bottom of my receipt say "You saved $43.86."

That is fun to read. So fun, in fact, that I'm going to go get that receipt and read it again.

Soda Cracker Toffee

I've started my health goals again. I had five eating healthy goals all summer, and they were tough, but so good for me. Moving up here, though, I kind of gave up on them for a while. But now, I'm back again. Five servings of fruits or vegetables per day, portion control, not eating after a set time each night, eight glasses of water each day, and only eating one sugary treat per day. I know some people can cut sugar from their diet entirely, but I've got things like Soda Cracker Toffee that I just can't stay away from.

To make this incredibly easy treat, start by placing a single layer of saltine crackers on a baking sheet. Preheat the oven to 425. In a saucepan, bring one cup brown sugar and one cup butter to boil and let boil for three minutes. Pour this directly over the crackers and place baking sheet in the oven for only 3 to 5 minutes. The crackers will begin to sort of "float" over the mixture. Be careful, because this can burn really fast, and the sugar will get grainy and bleh.

Let the crackers cool for a while, then spread with melted chocolate chips. Place in the freezer until it hardens, then break apart and eat!

YES!

"Some portray legalization of so-called same-sex marriage as a civil right. This is not a matter of civil rights; it is a matter of morality. . . that is of critical importance to the future of the family. . . . We are compelled by our doctrine to speak out."
-President Gordon B. Hinckley "Why We Do Some of the Things We Do." Ensign, Nov. 1999

I was reading a book by Elder Bruce C. Hafen, of the Quorum of the Seventy titled Covenant Hearts: Marriage and the Joy of Human Love. One of his final chapters is about how same-sex marriage weakens what marriage means. What Elder Hafen says in this chapter makes sense to me. I wish I could just copy the entire chapter here for you to read.

Some quotes:

"Because gay marriage is fundamentally a moral issue, laws on this subject can alter both personal and public moral attitudes."

"Same-sex marriage blurs the distinction between what society tolerates and what it endorses."

"The obligations of parenthood, marriage, and biological kinship are fundamental to preserving a civilized order. Such weighty societal obligations are worthy of being highly protected, not merely being tolerated or permitted. One consequence of the law's protecting marriage is that the state is a party to the marriage; and the state must legally approve both starting and ending it. These formalities are not required to create or dissolve other legal contracts. Society actually has a greater stake in the creation and survival of each marriage than it does in the survival of each business agreement."

"To marry is to accept a public responsibility to the community and its basic social values, especially its values about what is best for children."

"Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in 1986 that he would protect homosexual behavior not because it promotes any social value but precisely because it dissents from the established social order: 'We protect these rights not because they contribute. . . to the general public welfare, but because they form so central a part of an individual's life, including one's right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.'" Marriage, Elder Hafen explains, is fundamental to the survival of society, and the autonomy argument for gay marriage undermines that social obligation.

"The power of the law to communicate society's endorsement tells us that our system does not and should not protect everything it tolerates. If we merge tolerance with protection, our system will end up removing marriage and childrearing from the most protected legal sphere, because the lowest common denomiator effect of 'individual autonomy' denies the possibility that some relationships are more significant to society than others. So, the closer our society comes to approving gay marriage, the more we will actually reduce our expectation that married people owe anything at all to society, including their utmost effort to succeed in their marriages. That is how gay marriage undermines the sense of personal and social obligation that is fundamental to our thinking about what marriage is and what it means."

"From the perspective of prophetic teachings, state endorsement means the government would be promoting serious immorality."

-Bruce C. Hafen. Covenant Hearts. pp 249-255

Please vote YES! on Proposition 8! And please vote tomorrow even if you aren't in California. It is our right to choose the government we believe will make the best choices for our country!

Husband Tag

Jocelyn tagged me to do this post about Kent

1. Husband's full name: Kent Garrett Andersen. A good, strong name.
2. How long have we been married? Almost 11 months.
3. How long did we date? 11 months. (counting engagement).
4. Who eats the most sweets? Kent, for sure. He has a separate shelf in the kitchen he calls "instant goodness" with all of our candy and snacks.
5. Who said "I love you" first? I said it first, but Kent was the first to want to say it--he was waiting for me because he wanted to be able to say it back to me right away. Sweet, huh?
6. Who's taller? Kent, by only 3 inches. A good excuse for me to wear flat shoes.
7. Who sings better? Well, I enjoy singing in choirs and at church more, but there's hardly a moment at home that Kent isn't making up a song or singing something silly.
8. Who is smarter? Oh boy. Let's not go there.
9. Who does the laundry? Kent has actually kind of taken over this semester because he has less schoolwork.
10. Who pays the bills? Kent.
11. Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? Kent. But it switches if we're sleeping in a bed where the nightstand is on the right--I always sleep where the nightstand is.
12. Who mows the lawn? We don't have one, but I hate mowing, so I hope Kent will take over that job. :D
13. Who drives? Kent always gets nervous when I'm driving, so he likes to take over as often as he can.
14. Who admits they are wrong? Kent's answer to this: "I'm never wrong." Truthfully, though, we're both good at apologizing.
15. Who kissed who first? Kent kissed me--I had never kissed anyone before, and I didn't know what to do!
16. Who asked who out first? Kent asked me to go ice skating and to lunch at Big Judd's.
17. Who wears the pants? Good question. As the oldest child, I'm pretty bossy. But I'm learning to let Kent lead while I "encourage."

Welcome to November!

Just look at the mess my "Raven" pumpkin left on my doorstep!

I crack myself up sometimes.

Happy Halloween!

I cleaned the guts out of both of these pumpkins. Kent doesn't like doing it. We were happy with how they turned out. After we were done carving, we lit the candles and turned off the lights and listened to "The Monster Mash," "Thriller," and "Ghostbusters."

I hope you all had a fun Halloween night!

Feasting my eyes

(from http://fortheloveofcooking-recipes.blogspot.com/)

My newest (and currently most persistent) addiction:

http://www.foodgawker.com/

Beautiful pictures of food, taken from webpages and blogs all around the world, displayed here with links to the page it came from so you can click on the ones that make your mouth water. Which for me, is almost all of them.

Like the pumpkin milkshake,
homemade potstickers,
sage and apple pork chops,
chocolate roses,
vegetable chowder in a sourdough bread bowl,
homemade sorbet,
and on and on and on.

I seriously have to wear a bib when I open up this website. And I can scroll through those pictures with my face only inches away from the screen for hours. I want to taste everything on there!

Well, almost everything. Sometimes they'll get a wave of bizarre foods from other countries. But if that's what you see when you go to the site, don't give up on it! Either jump to the next ten pages or so, or just wait until the next day. It seems to go in waves of normal, American food one day and then foreign stuff the next. Not that there's anything wrong with foreign foods, they just don't make my mouth water as much.

I love this website. I have loved it for the past few months, and I don't get tired of it, because there's new food every day. And there are certain hormone-charged weeks of the month that I love it way more than any human should feel for a website. I call it the "eat myself to death week." I am learning to stay away from this website during those weeks.

And here's one last example, one of the many pictures that caught my eye on foodgawker.com today:
from http://www.kayotic.nl/blog/?p=1042

on reading Poe

My reading assignment tonight for one of my three English classes this semester was Edgar Allen Poe. I like to try to get my homework done while Kent is still at work, which requires a lot of motivation on my part to avoid the TV, blog world, and even the housework (which is at times more appealing than my homework).

I was mildly successful tonight, and I was sitting here at the kitchen table reading "A Tell-tale Heart" and "The Fall of the House of Usher." It was getting dark in my apartment as the sun went down, and it was very, very quiet with Kent gone. It's always windy here, and I could hear the wind howling around the building. And I realized these stories were perfect for Halloween. I was getting a little creeped out. Which, if you know me at all, is easy to do.

And then, when it was time for me to go pick Kent up from work I put on my shoes, turned off the lights, and opened the door to find a perfectly white pigeon sitting right on my doorstep between my two pumpkins.

A white pigeon! I have never even seen a normal pigeon in my four years in Rexburg, let along a white one. It didn't move at all; it just sat there on my doorstep, staring up at me. I have no idea what it was doing there. I guess I should have looked for a note or something attatched to it's foot. And instantly, I began to wonder what kind of omen Edgar Allen Poe would say this white bird was. At least it wasn't black and it didn't say "nevermore." But it sure startled me anyway.



Update: I just got a call from our next door neighbors wondering if we knew that there is a white pigeon hanging out in front of our door. Um, yeah. It's still there, almost four hours after I first saw it. What am I supposed do with a lost white pigeon?