Things I Learned This Month | September 2018

I have a confession: I have been resenting the onset of fall. Usually I welcome the advent of sweater weather, but this year I clung to the last remnants of summer. Now that it's October, fall and I have made our peace and I'm enjoying bundling, but it's a struggle. As is usual with the close of a month, I'm sharing a few things I learned during September - mostly ordinary, some extraordinary.

{Also, I had the chance to write a guest post for The Write 100 Challenge last month. Check it out here.}

1. All the chicken things. I listened to The Lazy Genius Cooks Chicken a few days ago. Its a 40+ minute episode on all the different cuts of chicken and different things to do with them. I'm now dying to try change-your-life chicken. Also braising.

2. Pumpkin soup, which I already loved, is ratcheted up a notch when you add ginger, garlic, curry, and coconut milk. Yum. I'm so not a pumpkin spice latte person (hello tea-drinker), but I live on pumpkin soup in the fall.

3. Scrubbing the kitchen floor is THE BEST feeling. I moved back into my Munich apartment this month. Last year when I moved in, there were already people here, so I couldn't do a real deep clean. But this year I had the apartment to myself for a few weeks, and I attacked that kitchen. It probably hadn't been properly cleaned in five years. The final step was the floor. I got down on my hands and knees with two buckets of water, a scrub brush, and a rag and SCRUBBED that floor. End result, a job well done and a kitchen that feels clean for the first time since I moved here.

4. There is a tool to get at those pernicious weeds that root themselves in cracks in the driveway. It's a speed weeder and it is a beautiful creation. (Also it has a red handle. Score.) I found this randomly in a hardware store and bought it on a whim. This thing works wonders. You still have to apply a lot of elbow grease, but it's actually effectively applied elbow grease. My usual experience is huffing and puffing and straining and failing to get the roots of those weeds. This thing is easy on the wrist (directs force through the shoulder) AND gets the roots. Beautiful.

5. Dordrecht might be Holland's best-kept secret. My parents and I found this little gem of a town on a fluke and absolutely loved our stay there. I'm hoping to do an actual post on it eventually, but let's just say it has antique/junk shops galore, terrific seafood, idyllic canals, and a nature reserve where you can kayak. And everyone is incredibly friendly. Basically it's the perfect weekend getaway.

6. The Cinque Terre is one of my favorite places on earth. I knew this already, but I forgot how much I loved it in the 7 or 8 years since I've been there. I went this weekend with friends and fell in love with it all over again. There is nothing better than hiking hard along the Italian coast all day and then diving into the Mediterranean to refresh.

7. That word translated "angels" in Psalm 8? It's actually a word almost exclusively used for God. The word "angels" is actually 'elohiym. That word shows up 2,606 times in the Old Testament, and it's translated "God" 2,346 times, "god" 244 times, and then miscellaneous other things like "angels" the remaining 16 times. I could write a whole post on why this is awesome, but I'll content myself by suggesting that you go listen to Marty Goetz's song inspired by this Psalm. It pulls out the link to Christ as the Son of Man in such a cool way.

"When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the angels,
and crowned him with glory and honor."