Hodgepodge

Linking up with Joyce for the Hodgepodge

1. Monday was National Apple Day... did you eat an apple or enjoy something made with apples on Monday? Do you like apples? Do you prefer raw, baked, or in cider? Do you have a favorite variety of apple?

I had no idea it was National Apple Day- how fun that I inadvertently celebrated it! I had to go to Columbus to bring some things from home that Alyssa needed and we went to a restaurant off campus to eat. I ordered a salad that had apple slices in it. It was delicious 🍎 When I arrived home, I had an apple as a snack. I prefer apples raw but I will eat them baked. My favorite variety would probably be Honeycrisp.

But first, a pretzel- we split this pretzel at lunch on Monday.

Then it was salad time…

Had to do a little photo shoot with these beauties-  my farmer’s market apples 😊. I got these on Saturday in Oxford.

2. Do you think there's any truth to the saying 'an apple a day keeps the doctor away'? Of the following healthy habits which do you find the easiest to incorporate into your life and which is the most difficult for you to adopt-

    adequate sleep, a balanced diet, plenty of water, eat breakfast, don't smoke, exercise, limit alcohol, include fruits and vegetables in your diet, manage stress, limit screen time

I think for sure what we eat impacts our health. Filling your body with the best possible fuel for it to function properly makes perfect sense. However, eating a healthy diet including an apple a day is not a guarantee that good health will prevail. 

Not smoking and limiting alcohol are the easiest as I have never been in the habit of either. 

For me adequate sleep is the hardest to incorporate into my life. I consistently wake up early no matter when I go to bed. Going to bed super early to account for waking up early does not always result in falling asleep early. To wit, getting adequate sleep is not something over which I have complete control vs. something like eating healthy food or abstaining from unhealthy habits. 

3. Who taught you how to drive? Do you enjoy driving? Would you rather be the driver or the passenger? Do you have a favorite scenic drive near you?

Begrudgingly, my high school driving instructor taught me how to drive. Unlike most parents of kids in our rural area, my mom, a stickler for rules which, not surprisingly included laws, did not let any of us kids drive prior to getting our learners permit. 

We had driver's ed in high school. On the first day of my driver's ed, I sat in the driver's seat of a car with Mr. Felke, the industrial art teacher, track coach, cross country coach and driver's ed teacher in the passenger seat of the car.

"Ok, you can start driving now," instructed Mr. Felke as soon as we had our seat belts on. 

I had to deliver the bad news that I didn't know how to drive; Mr. Felke was incredulous. And dismayed. Sigh. He was going to have to do that which the taxpayers of Indiana were paying him to do and teach me how to drive.

I don't enjoy or dislike driving. It's just something that I have to do. Since I have been eighteen, I have never lived close to any of my relatives. If I want to see them, I have to drive. When the kids were younger, I crisscrossed the Midwest and beyond in the driver's seat of a minivan or SUV taking the kids to either competitions or games. For many years, the kids had activities that conflicted with their siblings' so Donnie would take one or two of the kids one place and I would take the other where he or she needed to go. 

I looked through my camera roll to find pictures from a roadtrip and I easily found some!

The back of the car before a soccer roadtrip- this may have been the last one I went on. I believe our destination was South Carolina.

We were in Tennessee or North Carolina here. I asked Alyssa to take some pictures because it was so pretty and I wanted to remember how pretty it was. Plus I couldn’t really look at the scenery since I was driving.

I can’t help but notice how I am white knuckling the steering wheel! I am not used to driving in mountains!

I am a little more relaxed here, thankfully. The views are amazing. We are used to our flat roads/scenery :).

I would probably rather be a passenger than a driver, just because it's easier (#littlebitlazy) but I truly don't mind driving…

4. What small habit has had a big impact on your life?

I would say being fine with delayed gratification- understanding the benefit of and not giving in to the temptation of impulsivity.  (Most of the time- I am not perfect at all in this regard but habitually, impulsivity has not been an issue for me.) 

Being able to delay gratification impacts many areas of life that require discipline- from waiting until a desired object is on sale to purchase rather than buy it the moment it's possible to buy it, to knowing that I will be glad later that I decided to run (eg when training for a marathon- those long runs aren't fun but you know there's no way to finish a marathon without doing lots of long runs), to abstaining from eating something tempting that is super unhealthy knowing that I will be glad later when I'm not bloated from it or have an upset stomach. 

As I have gotten older, I have seen certain threads or trends emerge when I have achieved something that was important to me and/or good for me. Habitually reminding myself to think of goals and the necessity of delaying gratification to achieve them was one of the best things I have done! (And hopefully will continue to do.)

5. Tell us something nice that happened to you recently?

-Donnie finding this treat for me... And me liking the cookies quite a bit yet foregoing buying a package at the store :). 

-choosing not to work in the beginning of this week after having two rough days last week. I got a lot done at home including finally making it to Aldi and getting ingredients for cashew chicken. I wrote about this recipe last week. Donnie loves it and I was happy to make something that he likes.

I love how colorful the vegetables are in it- this was before I made the sauce and added it and the cashews

Ready to eat!

6. Insert your own random thought here.

I have been ignoring my garden. It is, of course, in its twilight as we are well into autumn. Additionally, workers are in our backyard a lot so I don’t think to go to the garden and check on the waning plants. For some reason, my pepper plant came to mind and I realized it had been days since I had picked any peppers. It was nearly dark when I made my way to the garden and I picked peppers by feeling for them on the plant. Most of them were way oversized. Now I need to look up whether or not they are still ok to eat when they are enlarged? 

In the pictures, they don’t look that oversized but they seem to me to be really oversized. Here is a picture of my hand for comparison.