While all my friends go away, this is why I stay!

    'Tis the season for all of my good friends to return back to Kansas City and for me to venture out to visit friends who have moved away. Two weeks ago, I got to have lunch with a friend who is living an exciting life teaching down in Guatemala. My best friend temporarily left her successful life in San Francisco to visit this past week. This week, I will be venturing down to Oklahoma to visit a great friend who relocated to Oklahoma for work. All of these trips remind me of how few of my friends are still in the KC area. Yet, as I wallow in self pity, I have to remind myself why I'm still here.
    There was a time early in my husband's and my relationship that we were dead set on moving to Texas. I think we had it in our heads that we could move near Austin, get good jobs (immigration is one of my research interests), and never have to shovel another driveway. That "dream" faded away (honestly, WTF were we thinking?), and we settled down in Kansas. Sure, Kansas is its own kind of special. When it makes the news, it's usually because Fred Phelps' group is spreading hate or our very, very conservative government (as in so conservative that some Republicans are siding with the liberal gubernatorial candidate this year) is denying some minority group its rights. Yet, despite Kansas' many attempts to make me want to leave, here I am. So in a Buzzfeed-like fashion, here are my top 6 reasons I'm still here:

1. You get a lot for your money- There was a piece on Buzzfeed (very scientific) about what kind of a house $300,000 can get you in different US cities. Number 8 on this list is Topeka, Kansas, where you can get a 5-bedroom house. Compare this to the spacious 1 bedroom/1 bath "homes" you can get in major cities on the coast. We certainly did not pay that much for our home, but we still have a decent sized home with an acre of land. We're close enough to our neighbors to interact with them when we want to and faraway enough to spend time outside without being bothered. I cannot even fathom what a house like this would cost in California or some other state I might consider living in. Sure, I know it's worth it when you love the place you live (a guy in Hawaii called it a "luxury tax"), but I prefer to just save money living in a place I like and then retire and live half of the year in the mountains and half of the year somewhere warm.

2. Kansas is beautiful- My eighteen-year-old self would smack me for saying this because this is a newer revelation for me. As a teenager, I thought Kansas was dull and flat. Trips across Kansas to get to Colorado seemed like torture, but as I got older and as my trips across Kansas became more frequent, I started appreciating the beauty that the Kansas landscape offers. We even have photos of the Konza prairie throughout our home! The wide open expanse of the prairie at sunset can be breathtaking. The sites I'm able to see while riding my bike through rural Kansas make me feel lucky to be here. In fact, last night I saw a man riding a horse down the road while talking on a cell phone. Where else can you see that?!

Lone barn south of Lawrence, Kansas

Our regular Sunday ride- look at that sky!

A lovely (but not so lovely on a bike) brick road south of Louisburg, KS

3. It's actually diverse!- We may not have the kind of diversity that larger cities enjoy, but we have a sizable population of immigrants and refugees living in the area. Even in the white-washed suburbs, small populations of immigrants thrive. For example, I'm helping conduct research at elementary schools in the suburbs whose populations are majority minority. The diverse people bring diverse food and diverse ideas to a place that really needs it! I have my anthropology students write a culture shock paper, in which they must go experience something out of their cultural zone. The range of restaurants, ethnic grocery stores, religious services, and special interest group meetings they can visit is amazing!

4. There's a lot to do....- This is another thing my teenager self would not have agreed with, but now that I've lived here for awhile (and am over 21), I can see there are tons of things to do. For one, there are now several neat, small breweries, including KC Bier Company, Big Rip Brewery, and Cinder Block Brewery. I haven't tried one yet, but we also have wineries. There are good places to see a show, and we have plenty of award-winning restaurants. One of the exciting things I'm doing this week is going to a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle party at Alamo Drafthouse, where there will be all-you-can-eat pizza and a showing of the original TMNT movie. In addition to all these things, there are plenty of bikes rides, runs, and triathlons for the athletically-inclined. We even have an outdoor ski slope within an hour drive!

5. and you can get their pretty easily.- My friend from San Francisco could not believe the ease in which she and a friend were able to get in and out of the Justin Timberlake concert in KC. This is because when she saw him in San Fran, she waited 3 hours to leave the concert. Even though I live a little bit outside of the suburbs of KC, I can drive 30 minutes any direction and get to something interesting, whether it be downtown KC or the wonderful little college town Lawrence, Kansas, or the airport (I can't always stay in KS).

6. My family is here!- Both my husband's and my families still live in Kansas. Our parents are very important to us, especially to me as an only child. We want to make sure that our future kids are raised close to their grandparents. When we go out of town, we know our parents can watch our current children (cats), and we can doggy-sit for them. It's just nice to have that kind of support nearby. 

The real reasons why I stay: they can't survive a car ride longer than 5 minutes!

Dilly Beans: My First Attempt at Refrigerator Pickling

It's amazing how motivated I get to update this when I have a pile of essay exams to grade (as opposed to when I have a pile of Bob's Burgers to watch)....

The Smuber household is currently experiencing a green bean assault. My husband planted a lot of pole beans, and currently ALL YOUR BEAN ARE BELONG TO US!!1!! For the past two weeks, I have been able to pick a handful  or two of beans a day. I've steamed them, I've blanched them, and I've sauteed them. I like green beans, but I needed a new way to eat them. I thought about investing in a pressure canner, but I had trouble paying $200+ for a device that was only going to be canning green beans. Thankfully, my dad came to the rescue.

While I was at my parents' house one evening, my dad showed me a recipe he was wanting to try. It was for "dilly beans," refrigerator-pickled green beans. This appealed to me because 1) I could pickle without the added danger of extreme heat 2) I had found an alternative green bean preparation 3) I love almost anything pickled (it's the eastern European in my genes).

That day's haul of beans

Making dilly beans is actually quite easy. First you need to sterilize the jars and lids in boiling water. While the jars are drying, you start heating up a mixture of equal parts water and cider vinegar with some sugar and salt. As that comes to a boil, you start packing the jars with fresh dill, a garlic clove,dill seed, mustard seed, cayenne, and (of course) green beans. If you don't have all those spices and don't want to buy them, I have found it convenient to raid a culinary-inclined person's (my dad) spice rack and return what you've taken on a later date. It's also best to pay interest in the form of a jar of dilly beans.

Forty percent of what you see was stolen from another's spice rack. Sixty percent was obtained legally.

Once your liquids have come to a boil, pour the liquid over the beans in the jar. Seal the jars and let them cool. Into the refrigerator they go! Now, find something to do with yourself for the next two days.

In the words of Mumford and Sons: "I will wait, I will wait for you!"

Filling time during those two days. Did I mention our cucumbers have been big and delicious?

Before I could get home on day 2, positive reviews were flooding in:

I had paid my interest early, and my creditors were pleased.

When I got home on the night of day 2, my husband and I cracked open a jar and were pleased with the contents. It was like eating a pickle, but it was crunchier. They were just as delicious as a pickle but almost seemed easier to eat. We had found a new way to eat green beans!

Discriminating palates were won over!

My parting word of advice would be to make sure that you de-string your beans. I've never really had to do this until we grew this batch of beans. There is definitely a little more chew to the beans if you don't snap and remove the strings on outer edges of the bean. I cut the ends off for this recipe, but I have since learned to snap and de-string as I pick.

**If you're interested in the recipe, I'd be happy to send it to you! I took a picture of the recipe from a magazine, and I don't know how legal it is for me to post it here.

Solving Problems with Problems

My leaf problem:
Dedicated readers may remember that I have a lot of trees and that they love to spill tons of leaves into my yard every fall. Although I do my best to mow frequently, and thus mulch leaves in the process, there are always large piles of leaves gathering on my back porch (which is walled in), against my fence, and in any other nook and cranny they can find. It would probably be best to take care of my leaf issue in the fall, but I tend to like to procrastinate......for years. So those piles of leaves are getting quite large as we move into year 3 in our little rural paradise. My issue was what to do with all those leaves. I know they could fill many, many yard waste bags, as was made evident during one of my half-assed attempts to clean up the back porch last year. I filled up almost ten bags, and my porch isn't even that large. For some reason, my neighbors never put out yard waste bags. They have the added advantage of not having fences, so their leaves blow away (or against my fence). I don't want to be the neighborhood yard waste bag pariah.

My mulch problem:
During our first year in the house, we put down wood mulch in our garden and our flowerbeds to keep weeds away. When it came time to clean and prepare them for planting the next year, we had the fun task of cleaning out and dealing with lovely chunks of wood. We decided to do no wood mulch the following year, but I was too late putting down hay. Weeds were everywhere (as evidenced by earlier posts) and our plants suffered from not having good mulch to retain moisture.

The solution:
During late spring, I stumbled across a pin on Pinterest titled "Mulch Alternatives." It was as if mother nature was smiling down upon me and pointing me in the right direction. One of the more viable options it gave was using leaves. The leaves would have to mulched, though, to let air and moisture get to the soil. My dad had talked about his leaf mulching machine, so I asked to borrow it. One a warm sunny day, I mulched up all the leaves on our back patio and those stuck between our two fenced garden plots. I made a dent in some of the leaves piled against our fence. There is still work to be done and leaves to be mulched, but I have turned two problems into a solution!

The wonderful electric leaf mulcher. Good thing we have a lot of extension cords.

An assortment of leaves between the gardens. Who knew we had a walkway?!

The plants are digging their new mulch. Green beans to the right and front. Peppers in the middle. Cucs in the back.

Front flower beds: surprisingly attractive with alternative mulch

Let the 2014 season begin!

I have a confession. I led a very suburban life this winter. How can you not? Kansas was cold, so I would drive to work in my heated car, drive back home to my heated house, and then sit on my pre-heated couch (cats are very useful) watching Netflix. When I wanted to workout, I would drive to the gym and go to an overly heated spin class. That was basically my winter and early spring. Despite eating delicious homemade canned tomato sauce and knitting up a storm, it was pretty suburban.

We did break up the monotony by going to Italy, but we went to the tourist cities (Venice, Florence, and Rome). Although beautiful, fun, and full of history, Italy really brought home how much we love wide open spaces and nature and how much we dislike crowds of people.

Gladiatoring tour groups in the Colosseum!

Warm weather has come, and we're easing back into going outside and enjoying the longer days. Yet, even as my garden is planted and growing strong (a post to come), suburban issues arise. I worry if  I'm letting my grass get too high because despite the lack of an HOA, our neighbors sure are out there once, even twice, a week mowing. I worry that our lawn has a lot of weeds. I don't know why. The neighbor to the east of us only has weeds. The neighbor on our other side has a company come out to fertilize and weed. There are cracks in our driveway from a cold winter. I thought these were things I wouldn't have to worry about as much when we moved away from perfectly coiffed lawns and homes 6.5 feet apart.

Longer work days and teaching more classes has contributed to this overall stress, BUT Friday was my turn around point. It was the day that inspired me to come back and write. I had had a very long week of work (I'm teaching three classes this summer, which is a first), and I had not had anytime outside. I was always in the classroom or tutoring one-on-one in a windowless room. Friday was my day off, and I knew I needed a bike ride. My road bike was in the shop, so I got my oft neglected hybrid out (yes, I have more than one bike and I know this sounds very suburban). This bike doesn't have a speedometer hooked up. I could have turned on my Map My Ride app on my phone to see my speed, but I didn't. I could have strapped on my heart rate monitor to see how many calories I rode, but I didn't. I JUST RODE. I rode past chickens and cows and fields and horses and creeks. I don't know how fast I went up that huge hill, but I don't think the miniature horses that I rode past we're judging me.

If those miniature horses we're going to judge me, it should be for taking pictures while biking.

I can't see this without Dixie Chicks singing "Wide Open Spaces!"

And thus begins the 2014 season of a suburban girl seeking rural life. I'm gardening, knitting, canning, and biking through the countryside. Here's what's happening this year......