On bucket lists and low-hanging fruit

Have you ever heard that term, "low-hanging fruit"? In my work world of strategy and analytics, it gets thrown around A LOT. Usually through a haze of coffee-induced enthusiasm in planning meetings. All it means is "something that is easy to achieve in a short time". Recently I made a life bucket list. Aside from Nolan's criticisms ("you can't put 'daily quiet times' on a bucket list! It has to be stuff you cross off!"), I feel rather pleased with it so far. It gives me a sense of purpose for my time on earth. Anyway, I also have this little list of things in my head that I want to do, and consider as my personal low-hanging fruit. One of them was making as many things as possible from scratch, or being semi self-sufficient. Making cheese was a subgroup of this. So this weekend I made mozzarella. It was FASCINATING. And easy. And oh, so tasty.

I also made Ricotta from the leftover whey, but although it tasted good (Nolan had it on some crepes with berries!), it wasn't pretty to look at. So no picture this time. Though...speaking of breakfast, this waffle-maker has turned out to be an obsession. You guys, I eat waffles WAY too often now. Granted, I make my protein waffles, so they're full of good stuff...but...WAFFFFFLES.

Anyway: N requested chocolate waffles with strawberry compote, whipped topping and whatever else. Just to test out my new request that he start telling me what he wants to eat instead of saying "surprise me!". So I made him this beauty:

I start feeling the waffle cravings just looking at the picture.

Another bucket list item (this time from our Bay Area bucket list!) was learning to windsurf. So we took our friends, John and Julie, and the 4 of us got certified on Sunday and spent a few hours exhausting ourselves on surfboards with giant masts attached. It was so much fun! However, when I dragged myself out of the water after a few hours, I was hungry enough to kill something and too tired to even stay on the board upright. 

I know, I know - wetsuits are unbearably sexy.

Yay! Now that we're certified, we can go whenever we want for a piddly $20/day. Smokin' deal!

And now for yet another small goal achieved last night: make yogurt. When I was growing up, my mom used to make EVERYTHING from scratch. Including delicious, fresh yogurt. So since I had some fancy milk still sitting in my fridge, I decided to give it a whirl:

Nolan was skeptical when he saw the finished product, but it was delicious! Especially with my 5-minute stovetop granola that I was craving on top. Mmm, homemade organic whole milk yogurt. Note to self: eat in moderation!

Today is rest day from CrossFit, and since I ended up going for a 6.2 mile run on my last rest day (whoops), I am focusing on doing NOTHING today. I was going to get up early and do some yoga, but since I had a weird night of non-sleep, I let myself do nothing this morning, too. Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night, positive your alarm just went off, and started to go about your day when you realize it's like...11:30pm or something? Yeah, I did that. And then was basically awake the rest of the night. Hello, dark roast Peet's coffee.