Have you ever shot a charging lion?

John-Mark planned a fabulous date for us last night...we had signed up to clean the ward building, so we went over to the Institute after school and cleaned up. This principally means that John-Mark traversed the outskirts of the building, picking up beer cans and cigarette butts. These weren't discarded by our other LDS ward-goers, no, the building happens to be next to some freshman dorms and the Dairy Mart--so the grounds get littered like the rest of campus.

After we cleaned, I played the choir piece we've been working on and John-Mark sang along. We've been doing home evenings lately when we just sign together. I love it. I'm glad I got over my insecurity of singing in front of him.

When we got home we made Spinach feta turkey burgers with grilled onions, sundried tomatoes, and mango chutney on top. I ground up the meat/spinach/cheese/garlic in the Cuisinart, which worked wonderfully, except I wasn't prepared for the meat to turn as green as it did. It looked somewhat unappetizing, but you couldn't really tell once they were cooked and brown a little bit. I've been trying to make our "meat" meals especially exciting because they don't come around very often. We've only been eating meat probably twice a week now. It's healthier, less expensive, and best of all, I don't think J-M minds too much. Instead of chicken and cream of something dishes (I was thinking of this while reading the NY Times article on traditional Mormon cooking this week) we've been having things like sweet potato and black bean burritos. And cooking has become something we share together. John-Mark is somewhat of an impurist--he put both mango chutney and ketchup on his burger--but I love that he helps me cook and encourages me to make "hippie food".

After dinner we popped popcorn on the new airpopper. Though it of course set off our kitchen fire alarm, (which currently is triggered by a piece of bread toasting in the toaster--it's perplexing) it was brilliant! I had an impulse to pour several cups of kernels in just to watch them pop. Then we pushed the two couches together to make a fort and watched Midnight in Paris, which made us both giggle. Ernest Hemingway's dialogue was the best part.