Catching up

Well, we're off to sail the high seas just hours from now. I'm sure cruise ship food will be an adventure in itself. One of our wedding presents was a new camera so I'm eager to put it to the test. I also gave Mr. RV a teeny video camera as a wedding present, so maybe some videos will eventually find their way onto this site. Meanwhile, here are a few dishes I photographed but didn't get a chance to blog about while the wedding planning was in high gear.

A tasty midsummer bulghur salad. I wanted to do something different from tabouli. This has grapes, pecans, cucumbers, red onions, and red peppers. I think the dressing was a simple lemon juice/olive oil vinaigrette.



Roasted vegetable napoleons. I made these for dinner with a friend after seeing their deliciousness on Vegan Yum Yum. They were very time-consuming to make, but came out very flavorful. The stuff sticking them together is a variation on baba ghanouj. The paste didn't turn out too great. I would make these again, but I'd slice the veggies more thickly and I'd probably use a silken tofu concoction between the layers. Don't they look like some kind of space colony in this picture?



I've got to get packing, literally!

My descent into respectability

Readers, are you out there? I am back, at least for this week. Our wedding is a wrap and the honeymoon starts on Saturday. The wedding was truly perfect, despite being married in the second worst storm (the remnants of Hurricane Hanna) to hit this area in at least the past 6 years. I’ve put a few pictures of me and HS* up but will replace them with pictures of just me in a few days, since HS is a bit wary of Internet-posted photos. The quality of the pictures should improve when I replace them, since these are just snaps taken by tipsy people, not the real photos from our pro photog friend.

Here are some ecologically-friendly aspects of our wedding:
--We had it in a neighborhood that is extremely walkable and well-served by public transportation.
--The location for both the ceremony and the luncheon was America’s first certified organic restaurant. Of course, vegan alternatives were available for all courses!


(Non-vegan risotto; vegan version did not have parmesan thingy on top)

--About 90% of our wedding-related expenditures went to independent businesses.
--We did away with many of the wedding trappings that we didn’t care about. There was no wedding cake, nor special ceremonial wedding cake knife with its own corsage. I made the centerpieces for about $100 total. Needless to say, there was no bouquet toss or garter removal. There was a classical guitarist instead of a DJ, and the only dancing was a conga line to “White Wedding” for our exit.


(Classy friends, cheap centerpieces)

--I hope to be able to wear my wedding dress again, and I asked my two bridesmaids to buy any dress that they would wear again.
--We kept the guest list to 50 people (fewer guests=less travel and less emissions).
--We didn’t register, because we really have everything that we need for our new place.
--Our rings are recycled gold.
--No limousines were deployed. (I had hoped to make our exit on a tandem bicycle, but the rain definitely prevented that from happening.)

We knew we wanted to do things our way for the wedding, and not follow the path of “traditional” weddings. (I put that in quotes since I think the traditional American wedding is really cake and punch in a church rec room or the bride’s parents’ house, not the 40K affairs now called traditional.) It was difficult to swim against the Wedding Industrial Complex current at times, but we are both extremely happy we stuck to our guns and had the small, nonreligious, intimate wedding that we desired.

Hopefully I’ll have the chance to blog again before we leave for the honeymoon. I’ve got a few pictures and many health-related thoughts to share.

*HS will now be known as Mr. RV.


(At the afterparty)

Reflection

It's not much of a lighthouse; it looks like a small farmhouse with a light instead of a chimney. The massive highway construction project that has spanned 10 years so far and cost 2.5 billion dollars turned all the land surrounding it into an asphalt wasteland but spared the small park around the lighthouse. I walked under the highway overpass in the blazing sun today to pay my respects.

The lighthouse was owned by Margaret Brent in the seventeenth century. The inscription reads, "An extraordinary woman, she spent most of her adult life fighting discrimination of her sex." She was a land baron as well as a litigator, and people were often stunned at her very unladylike ways.



Our rapidly approaching wedding has made me reflective. I am grateful to Margaret and everyone else who fought for gender equality so that I can marry the person I love, not the one who will support me or the one my family has chosen. I left Margaret flowers in gratitude.



Margaret must sometimes have been discouraged by the enormity of the fight towards gender equality. 400 years later, sexism still exists, and attitudes towards animal rights, resource consumption, and the environment frustrate me on at least a weekly basis. However, I told Margaret her work was worth it, and I hope that ours is too.