Tonight I got home a little later from work than normal, which means that I saw a different crop of people waiting for the elevators than I typically do (funny how when you travel along well-rutted time paths, how you always encounter the same faces). There were two people talking about last night’s Phillies game as they waited for the car to arrive. I smiled and nodded as they turned their conversation in my direction, but didn’t engage in it (despite the fact that I do truly want the Phillies to win, I don’t have a whole lot to add to a discussion between deeply committed fans). Just as the doors were closing, an older man in a dark suit slipped on.

The sports fan kept their conversation going, but got off the elevator on floors nine and twelve. Once it was just the two of us, the suited man turned to me and said, “Are you a Phillies fan?”

“I follow the series for work, but…” I shrugged.

With a knowing nod, he said, “Let me give you some advice. Pick a sports columnist and follow him. Just choose one and keep reading, it’ll give you something to talk about. I’ve been doing it for years.”

The elevator reached my floor as soon as he finished giving me this advice. I thanked him for his suggestion and headed home.

At any point in time, there will always be someone in this building who’s willing to pass along advice.

In my family, my mother is the chief laundry officer. She takes the movement of clothing from clean to dirty to clean and folded once more very seriously. Tee-shirts get folded so that they stack precisely and fit most efficiently in the drawers. Pants are vigorously shaken before being smoothed and stacked. Even underwear is folded neatly and aligned into a perfect pile. And, of course, it is all folded within moments of being removed from the dryer.

I have always been my mom’s acolyte in laundry maintenance. Growing up, I was the only one in the family she trusted to fold her clothes, as neither my dad or sister were particularly devoted to living a wrinkle-free life. However, I must confess that in recent years, my adherence to the “Leana method” has slipped. Often, I’ll do a load of laundry, pile it on the couch and then leave it to sit for a day or two before it gets folded*. I’ll dip into the pile each morning as I get dressed, giving the clothes a shake before deeming them “good enough” and slipping them on.

That pile you see above is the accumulation of several loads of laundry. After taking the picture, I did dig in and fold the whole thing (although it’s still on the couch, just in neater stacks). Sadly, the basket in the bedroom is already beginning to fill up once more. The cycle just never ends (and from what I hear, it just gets worse when you reproduce).

*You might be wondering why Scott doesn’t tackle the laundry pile. Well, I have inherited my mom’s laundry affliction. I just don’t love it when other people fold my clothes (space optimization and all). So while he does occasionally try to help, neither of us end up enjoying the experience.

I spent the day doing a variety of kitchen-based activities. The thing I’m most delighted with? The ten pints of applesauce this pot yielded. Soon, a recipe (actually, more of a technique) will be up on Food in Jars, but for now, I’m just reveling in the satisfying abundance of it.

Back in the days before getting married to one another was even a remote possibility, Scott and I spent a lot of time together making a series of silly cooking videos. Once we finally got our heads out of respective asses and figured out that being together made an enormous amount of sense, fresh episodes became fewer, as we didn’t need to schedule an activity in order to hang out.

Thing is, we still have a whole lot of fondness for Fork You, despite the fact that in the last nine months, we’ve hardly posted any episodes. And so, now that all this wedding stuff is behind us, we’re doing our best to resuscitate the show. In addition to this one, in which we taste test cupcakes from three different area bakeries, we’ve got two other episodes in the can (as they say in Hollywood). Which ‘cake reigns supreme? You’ll just have to watch to find out!

[viddler id-fe264730 h-370 w-437]

In the two weeks since Scott and I returned from our honeymoon, I’ve been feeling a little lost. For so many months, my energy and focus was directed towards making everything come together for September 26th that once the day was past, I felt a little uncertain, directionless. I realize that this is a common feeling for newly married women who put lots of energy into their weddings, but I somehow I thought that since ours was a small wedding, I’d be able to avoid the post-nuptial blues. I was wrong.

The way it manifested for me was through feelings of hopelessness. I began to feel like this basket in which I put so many of my career hopes, the one labeled food writer/teacher, was so very, very misguided. Watching all the other food writers and bloggers out there, I questioned what exactly it was that I brought to the table. I couldn’t remember why I had once felt that I had anything to offer and started to nurture a belief that I was shamefully out of my league.

Last Thursday, I went to a chocolate, wine and cheese tasting put on by The Food Trust, and for a while, that experience buoyed me. I talked about food, canning and issues around the way we eat and for awhile, I shed the hopelessness and reconnected with my excitement. But in the last few days, it’s slipped away again (admittedly, a really miserable 4-day jury duty experience this week didn’t help things).

I realize that I’m going to get through these feelings. And I know (at least, most of the time) that in the world of food writing, I bring a number of really wonderful things to the table. However, I also recognize that in this era of closing magazines and newspapers, the options for people who want to deal with food and words in equal measure are scant. Beyond that, I just don’t know.

What do the rest of you do when you find yourselves in a place like this?

Scott and I got married to one another on Saturday, September 26th. It was an amazing day and while the weather wasn’t quite as warm as I would have liked, the rain held off until just after we finished cleaning up. The food our friends and family brought to share was delicious, the cakes that I made were perfect and people had a really good time.

One of our goals with this wedding was to keep the ceremony portion short, as we were asking people to stand for it. So we kept our vows brief, funny and to the point. Here’s what we said to each other.

Marisa, to Scott

For the years that we were nothing more than friends, I swore up and down to anyone who would listen that you were not the man for me. It wasn’t until you started dating someone else that I realized how deeply I adored you (despite the fact that you didn’t have a driver’s license and that you are undeniably a picky eater). Now, I can’t imagine my life without you.

Scott, I am delighted to be marrying you today, and I vow to you to love you for the rest of my life, even when you’re painfully stubborn, when you turn up your nose at my sautéed string beans or when you fling your dirty socks across the room. I promise to support your dreams and will never stop encouraging you to write those novels we all know are in you. I promise to respect your Star Trek cards, weekly D & D dates and general geekery, and appreciate your similar courtesy for my jars, cookbooks and sundry kitchen implements.

Scott, I vow to give you the quiet time you need and to be the one in our relationship who deals with the minutia of daily living. I solemnly swear that I’ll never stop laughing, even if things get momentarily grim. And most of all, I vow to always embrace your whimsy, your humor and all your wacky charms.

You are my person, my favorite boy and I love you with all I’ve got.

Scott, to Marisa

If you asked me 10 years ago, or even 3 years ago, if I would be getting married to a hippie, at a potluck wedding officiated by a lesbian I would have laughed at you. And yet, here we are and words can’t express how happy I am. Funny how life works, isn’t it?

Marisa, you and I are complete opposites in many ways. I’m tall, you’re short. I hardly know what day of the week it is, you’re always on top of the details. I’m funny and you’re… well maybe we can move on.

Marisa, I vow to do as I am told most of the time. I promise to not make your life any more difficult than I normally do. I promise to talk you through moments of panic and anxiety with a smile and love in my heart. I vow to at least try and express my feelings more than fortnightly, and above all else I promise to be your partner in all of life’s adventures and misfortunes.

You are the love of my life, the reason I wake up in the morning, the spring in my step, and I can’t imagine life without you.

There’s a wall in my kitchen that, when rapped strongly, always sounded hollow. The storage space in my little galley comes at a premium and so I’ve frequently wished that I could bash into that empty space and add a few more shelves. Well, this week, my dream is coming true, thanks to my very handy father.

He was in town less than 24 hours before he’d cut a hole in the wall and developed a plan for building a shelving unit that is two feet wide, six feet tall and just six inches deep (perfect for jars of all stripes).

The gift of storage – it’s the best wedding present a girl could ask for.

Right now, this is the weather forecast for the day of our wedding. This is perfect. I need it to stay exactly like this. If you are so inclined (and if you believe in such things), I would so appreciate positive thoughts and prayers in the direction of the weather, in the hopes that it will indeed be clear, sunny and perfectly temperate on the day of the wedding.

It pains me that this site has become nearly defunct in recent days, but at the moment, the bulk of my energy is going into maintaining Food in Jars, making things to feature over there and getting everything ready for the wedding.

However, I’ve got a few moments right now and a post topic to boot! Last weekend, and for the sixth year running, I pointed my Subaru south, towards the Chesapeake Bay to attend Camp Tockwogh (also fondly referred to as “church camp,” despite the fact that there’s nothing church-y about it, other than the fact that the people who attend come from two Unitarian Universalist congregations).

This year, we didn’t have the gaggle of young adults that we’ve had in the past. The crew has scattered, taking off for points south and west. It was up to Cindy, Seth and me to represent the young adult collective and we did so with honor (though, we admittedly consumed far less alcohol than in past years. We’re getting soft in our old age).

I drove down Saturday morning and met up with Cindy at a lovely wine bar in Chestertown. We ate lunch in the sunshine and later, wandered through a collection of thrift stores, dollar stores and grocery stores, preparing for the rest of the weekend. Seth arrived a bit later and we spend the rest of the weekend laying outside, reading, sleeping, swimming, kayaking, eating and talking. Camp is truly one of my very favorite ways to spend a weekend. And here are the pictures to prove it.

I’ve carried a water bottle with me since high school. Back in those early days, I reused a large disposable bottle that I carried around in an insulated carrier I picked up at Eddie Bauer (EB was way cool during the 1990s in Portland, OR). When I went to college, I picked up a serious Nalgene habit, particularly since that was around the time that they started making the cool, brightly colored bottles. I used those Nalgenes for years, even taking one to Indonesia when I went in 2001. My attachment wavered slightly when an impossibly stylish European girl scoffed at my red Nalgene (she said it made me look like such an American), but as soon I was stateside again, my water bottle was ever-present once more.

About three years ago, having hear about potential issues with plastic bottles leaching chemicals that mimicked female hormones into their contents, I switched from using Nalgene water bottles for work/gym/school water toting, to Sigg bottles. Everyone said that the metal bottles were BPA-free and so I felt safe guzzling water out of those vibrantly printed canisters. Over the last few years, I’ve amassed quite a collection of Siggs, so that there’s always one around the apartment that’s clean and ready to go. I even convinced Scott to trade in his Nalgene for a silver Sigg.

However, it’s recently been found that the lining used in these older Sigg bottles also have small amounts of BPA in them, despite all company assurances to the contrary (for more about Sigg bottles and BPA, check out this Metafilter thread). When I heard about this on Friday afternoon, I was pissed off, as between Scott and me, we’ve got seven older Sigg bottles. That represents a fairly significant financial investment, that we made thinking we were buying safe, chemical-free bottles.

I sent an email to the address (liners@mysigg.com) I found online (I don’t remember where I found this exactly, I did a lot of searching once I first read about this) on Friday, inquiring about whether the company would be offering replacements. Amazingly, I got a response within two hours of writing and it was a completely positive and helpful email. They are willingly taking their old bottles back, and once they receive them, will issue me a gift certificate to buy a few new ones off their website.

I’m seriously bummed out that the old bottles have BPA in their liners, but I’m so appreciative that they’re responding in such a customer-friendly manner. If you’ve got some old bottles that you want to send back for replacement, just send an email to the address above and they’ll take care of you.