This is where I ate my roasted chestnuts. We've been enjoying some great weather, but it's not exactly the right atmosphere for the nuts. An old man came along and told me that they're much better when it's cold and you feel their warmth in your hands as you peel off the hot shells.

I'm counting down the days until I come home!

Here's a cool thing about Switzerland--everywhere you go you can find these fountains. Great for getting a drink, washing your hands, cooling off your dog, whatever.

Just a picture of my cutie Chinese friend in a vineyard.

I'm in love!

Uh...with Jesus, that is. Sheesh, people, is zest of life so uncommon these days that when you encounter someone with enthousiasm you think, "Ah, they must be in love." I've started getting such accusations, so I'll just clarify: Nope, not in love. I pretty much say everything like it is, so you can just read my blog without reading INTO it. And you've never known me to be secretive, so you can count on me for a big headline when I do fall in love :o)

Jessica's Lasagna Recipe (careful, it's half-baked!)

OK, so here's the absolute proof that anyone can publish anything on the Internet. I'm laughing as I write out this recipe, as though I actually know something about cooking! But I just ate it and it was good and if I can do it then I figure maybe there's others out there who would want to. I made a lasagna last week using a tomato sauce, so this week I decided to tweak the recipe to make a spinach pesto version. Ready for yumminess? Here you go...

Ingredients:
Fresh lasagna sheets
1 bunch of fresh basil
Olive oil
Parmesan cheese (grated)
Asiago cheese (grated)
Ricotta (250g)
Frozen creamed spinach (600g)
3 eggs
1 onion, diced
5 large garlic cloves
Berchamel: butter, flour, milk
1 large or 2 small aluminum pans

Those ingredients are totally flexible. Replace fresh pasta with the boilable variety, use some other kind of smelly cheese, add or take away a clove of garlic, whatever. Remember: I MADE THIS UP. So, don't take it too seriously, it's not like baking a cake where you mess one thing up and the whole thing gets trashed. Also, the following directions are simply in the order I did them, but there's nothing magic about it.

Start by thawing the creamed spinach by putting it in a pan over medium heat and covering. When it's thawed, add the onion and garlic (with a garlic press) and let the flavors simmer together until the other ingredients are ready. Just before adding this mix to the lasagna add 2 eggs.

Today one of my dreams came true: I made pesto using a mortar and pestle. so romantic. I cut up the basil (about 15 leaves maybe) into pieces and then ground it up with the mortar and pestle. Then I added a bunch of olive oil and parmesan cheese. It was about half a cereal-bowl-full. Ideally, you should add some pinenuts, but I'm not rich and famous. Set aside.

Empty the ricotta into a small bowl and stir in one egg. Set aside.

Make the berchamel and set aside (mix butter, flour and milk together in about equal parts to fill about 2/3 a cereal-bowl). I don't really know what this does, I just thought it would be more professional if I used the word "berchamel."

Here's the great part of making lasagna--the layering process. Cooking is fun! Put some olive oil on the bottom of the pans. Add a layer of pasta. Add 2/3 of the spinach mix (1/3 in each pan if you have 2 small ones like I did). Add another layer of pasta. Add the ricotta mixture and top with the pesto. Add another layer of pasta. Spread on top the rest of the spinach, pour the berchamel over it, and top with lots of yummy cheese (I used something like asiago).

Cover with foil and bake for about 40 minutes at maybe 400 degrees. Or you can save it in the fridge for a couple of days to bake later. Voila!

One of the great parts of this recipe is that you can make each component and set it aside until everything is ready to be layered. No stress!

My favorite part is the layering! The one on the left is how it looked when it was ready to go in the oven.

Another great thing about lasagna is the cooking time--I had time to clean everything up and make the side dish while it was in the oven. Again, really low stress.

I was super happy when it came out of the oven to discover that it had puffed up really nicely. The eggs and spinach make it sort of quiche-esque.

I suggest accompanying the lasagna with a grilled tomato. The colors and flavors went great together!

Don't forget to enjoy yourself. I love listening to music while I cook. Tonight I enjoyed 3 of my favorite groups: Late Tuesday, Pedro the Lion, and Five O'Clock People. And then I realized all 3 are from the NW! Yay for Porland and Seattle musicians.

Too many dance moves

Here's a little something I wrote a couple of weeks ago...

I sit with a blank page in front of me, not planning ahead of time what will fill up the white space, but knowing that my heart is full, my life is interesting, my brain is functional, so perhaps something will come to me.

Why do we go through life longing for an invisible carrot that dangles in front of our noses, when if we’d stop to smell the roses we’d see we have all we want right around us. No need to chase after something that may or may not exist. Am I going to meet more interesting people than those who are already around me? Am I going to find a more appropriate time to live life to the fullest than now? I’m much too interesting to have to wait for the ideal circumstances to create romance and adventure around me. Only people who don’t know that secret wait. The rest of us seize the moment.

There are far too many cute outfits to be worn, inspiring songs to be listened to, intriguing people to be talked to, artistic photos to be taken, languages to be mastered, cookies to be baked, icecream flavors to be tasted, countries to be visited, dance moves to be learned, quotes to be quoted, stickers to be collected, waves to be surfed, mountains to be climbed, sweaters to be knit, walls to be sponge painted, Christmas Trees to be decorated, magazines to be clipped, hair styles to be tried out, parties to be hosted, and Scriptures to be memorized to have any boring days or hours or minutes.

Wow, that list looks pretty good. Makes me want to try an unusual ice cream flavor and learn a groovy dance! Perhaps it’s the influence of Björk’s “Violently Happy” blasting through my headphones. “Violently happy because I love you. Violently happy but you’re not here. Violently happy, come calm me down before I get into trouble. I tiptoe down to the shore. Stand by the ocean. Make it roar at me and I roar back."

Cliff Hanger

"My life is definitely way cooler than I am." That's what I said as I made my way along the edge of the cliff, trusting that the cable I was connected to would keep me from plunging into the valley below should I lose my balance. Today was my first time at a "via ferrata," (which means something like "iron way" in Italian). It's a type of climbing where you make your way along the edge of a cliff that's been marked out for such a purpose. A cable runs all the way along, and at the difficult parts there are bars to hold on to or step on. Very, very fun...for me at least. You can check out the photos and see if you would have attempted the climb! I had the extra motivation of wanting to live out to the fullest my last weeks in Switzerland. Perhaps my family will look at these photos and just hope I live it out at all!

I made the climb with about 15 others from my church in Neuchatel. I felt oh-so-professional in our climbing gear. Professional geek that is. The hotair balloon was like a cherry on top of the delicious scenery.

I was totally elated from the get-go. It was so fun. And check out how pretty those trees are!

Nathan on the other hand kept chanting "I'm not here right now. I'm somewhere else." He used his incessant humor to distract from his fear, so he had me laughing all the way. Except when he said the get-up we were wearing made my butt look big and when he'd jiggle the cable I was holding onto. Nice. But look at him go! Victory over vertigo.

Here's the cable and the whatcha-ma-call-its I was attached with. And that's my shadow waving to you.

I tried not to spend too much time focused on moving along the cable because there was this breathtaking view to take in.

So cool. We're like little spiders climbing along the wall.