Taco night has to be one of our favorites in the US.  It’s really easy to find local ingredients like salsa, lettuce, and tortillas.  Plus it’s fast and inexpensive.

We just add a little twist I came up with when Martin and I were first married:

textured vegetable protein instead of ground meat

You can find textured vegetable protein (also called “tvp” on some packages) in Germany and the US.  It’s a dried soy product.  You mix it with water, add spices, salsa, peppers, and tomatoes, and it’s good to go.  I always warm it on the stove as I add ingredients.

We used to invite people over for tacos + boardgames wherever we lived.  First we shocked them with how good vegetarian tacos could be, then I’d silently knock their socks off and win our favorite games, Settlers of Catan or Ticket to Ride.  …I think that’s how it went!

The point is that when you look at food and question how you are really supposed to make it, amazing things happen.  (Like homemade lemonade or popcorn on the stovetop – mmm)  Suddenly the guy who I remembered winning hot dog eating contests was eating like 8 tacos made of the same ingredient as tofu.

You just can’t think of it as, “This had better taste like MEAT.”  It won’t.  It’ll taste like taco seasoning + salsa + vegetables.  But I don’t think vegetarian foods should taste like meat.  Why not just eat the meat, right?

Have you ever tried textured vegetable protein?  Any beloved recipes or perhaps a memory of the time you shocked someone with dinner?  Good shocks, bad shocks – whatever it is, you know we’re hungry to hear!

Oh hey – for all you folks in Germany, here’s a very American taco joint in Berlin where Americans pass out in pure joy.

And double hey – here’s a whole slew of recipes we heart.

We didn’t have a dryer in Germany.  All of our clothes dried on this rack from OBI for about 20 euros.

It filled a big chunk of our living room every time we set it up.

Then our laundry took over 24 hours to dry on wet winter days.  Nobody gave us funny looks; line drying clothes was the norm.

Now we live in the Rocky Mountains (where there isn’t intense humidity) in the heat of the summer.  A lot of our neighbors are using dryers.  But not us.  The dryer here is just collecting dust because living in Germany reintroduced us to the laundry habits our mothers and grandmothers were doing for years.  I love it!  Here’s why:

1. We save money. Dryers suck up more energy than almost anything else in the house when they run.  There’s also the added expense of buying a dryer.

2.  The temperatures are perfect for line drying right now. It’s summer.  Running a hot dryer doesn’t sound too appealing in our already hot house.

3.  We generate less laundry. Line drying clothes takes a little more time to set up each time, so we get a little more wear out of things before they go in the laundry (especially in the winter!).  Here are some laundry tips we’ve found.  We find our towels especially don’t need to be washed quite so often.

4.  Our clothes last longer. Remember our family’s No New Clothes Challenge?  We’re not buying new clothes.  We’re using what we have, which means we’re doing what we can to make them last.  Dryers weaken fabrics over time.  All that lint in our dryers is particles of fabric getting prematurely warn from our clothes.  In our dryer days, our biggest problem was worn heels in our socks.  Not any more.

Sadly, a lot of home owner associations ban lines for drying laundry outside.  And if you’re like us, clothes can’t be hanging out in the breeze due to allergies.  That doesn’t mean you can’t still line dry clothes.  Hang them in your house.  Build a rack in the basement or garage.  Set up a rack in the laundry room (Amazon has a good selection we’re eyeing).  Put dress shirts on hangers to dry.  Or find places to hang laundry in the house.  That’s what we’re doing thanks to the lack of a fourth solid wall in each room…

How do you dry your clothes?  What are the benefits you love about the system you have or what would you change?

If we were to hang a little sign on our door, I think we’d have to say something like, “Welcome to our home sweet tire.”

Our home for the summer is made out of old, discarded tires.  And in case there is any confusion about this fact when guests come to visit, here’s the front door:

Tire houses are officially called Earthships.  They are designed with natural materials from the area (such as stones from the valley) and hundreds of recycled tires.  You don’t know how many tread patterns there are on tires until they make up your walls!

The tires on the inside of the house are covered with stucco.  Shall we walk in and take a peek?

There’s one of our interior walls right there.  See the tire trim on the bottom?  That cracks me up every day!  The reason the whole house doesn’t have four complete walls in each room is to take advantage of passive solar heat.  The fourth wall is a canvas curtain.  The roof angles just right so that the house gets all the sun in the world in the winter.  The stucco walls absorb the warm sunlight, so then at night, the house retains a lot of the warmth.  The high summer sun barely enters the house.

Here’s the view if we turn to the left a little.

Tire houses are meant to be self-sufficient.  That’s why there’s this huge strip of garden along the whole house.  Right now, the garden is only a huge, thick row of aloe… which came in pretty handy as our skin adjusted to the sunny Rocky Mountains after a winter in Germany with no sun to speak of.

We’re learning a lot about country life out here, and we really find ourselves thinking a lot about sustainability and the things that matter to us.  There’s no going out to eat around here.  Just getting to the mailbox is a mini journey.  It’s hard to remember that we were just calling a city of 3.5 million people our home – where you could hear and see people at every moment you stepped outside.  Here when you see someone – anyone – you always wave or tip your hat.

The house doesn’t have a lot of windows that open, which is a very good thing since the house is built into the ground.  Mice literally just hop into the house if you leave the window open.  Martin’s in front of the only window (besides skylights in every room).  Instead the house uses air exchangers that swap outside air with inside air via an underground pipe.  That underground pipe either helps cool the air or warm it naturally depending on the time of year.

We bake our own bread.  Neighbors kindly give us some fresh produce, and when we do drive into town, we always make sure it’s during the farmer’s market.  We are on a well here, so we think it’s super important to avoid spraying weeds and we use eco-products like dish soap and laundry soap.  (Right now, we’re loving soap nuts.)

Those of you who have been joining us on Making This Home for a while might recall the Earthship Tour I gave of this house last summer.  That post contains a lot more Tire House facts and history.  We rented the home then, too.  Ever since, the tire jokes just seem to roll right out of everyone’s mouths!

The absolute best thing about living in a house made out of recycled tires?  Well that’s easy:

The views, the neighbors, and the big hearts.  These two arrived just in time for dinner.  Apparently they like farmer’s market spinach, too!

What do you love about where you live?  Any tire house takers out there?

Being back in the United States, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the whispers our hearts are urging us to do and who were are supposed to become.  Do you ever think about your journey?  I am often reflecting on hopes that my gestures can positively benefit the people around me.

This week, two bloggers have invited me to share bits of this journey of discovery with them.  I’d like to invite you to visit them.

Christy at A Lil’ Welsh Rarebit let me sneak into her blog to talk about my little brother.  I’m not sure we praise our male siblings like we should (or at least I feel like maybe I haven’t).  So that post is for baby brothers and for the mothers like Christy and my own mom who raise kids less than two years apart in age.  It’s a big job – and gosh I’m thankful.

Today Ashely at The Creative Place interviewed me about my journey with writing journals at Gadanke.  We talk about finding inspiration and creativity, overcoming fears, and ideas for starting a creative business.

Thanks so much ladies!

And yeow!  After introducing all of you to my sister and her dreams with cakes and cookies, I couldn’t believe it.  One of you actually KNOWS my sister.  I love when pieces of the world connect.

Just for fun: me, my brother, and our baby sister on his wedding day.  Gosh my heart is so grateful to have these two!

I hope you and I can continue to follow our hearts – keep being creative, keep being grateful.  Who’s someone in your life that you’re grateful for that deserves an extra applause today?

I fell in love with the state of Wyoming this summer.  I did not see it coming.  The people have always been the kindest people during the 5-minute glimpses of life that I share with them in gas stations, restaurants, and all those quick-stop kind of places over the years.

For example, Martin and I needed two AA batteries for my headset when we were getting fuel for the plane this past weekend, and the airport didn’t have any.  So the woman just pulled the batteries out of the remote control and handed them to us.  ”You’ll be needing these,” she said and handed them to us, refusing payment.

But the state’s land itself?  Ohh.  It just wasn’t capturing my heart like the people were.

Then I saw Grand Teton National Park.

Martin and I flew by on our way to my cousin’s wedding.  Suddenly the hearts of the people and the glory of the state’s earth came together in pure bliss. Would you like to see Grand Teton National Park from the sky with me?

Wyoming, you are stunning!

Have any of you ever been to the Grand Tetons?  What is your favorite National Park or similar place?

Last summer, we flew over a few other National Parks.  Want to see?  Here’s Canyon Lands and Arches National Park.

When you can finally slow down to capture more pleasures in each day, home and life take on a whole new meaning.  Our culture is becoming such a rush-rush-rush society.  Being rushed doesn’t seem to make anyone happier or more accomplished.  It usually seems to just bring more anxiety.

I learned a lot about our tendency to keep ourselves busy when I moved to Germany, as many of you know through the months of revelations I’ve shared on Making This Home.  The moments in life make all the difference, and gosh we’re lucky to have so many beautiful minutes.

Martin and I were racing for shelter in an enormous rainfall this weekend when I caught this right beside me, clearly telling me to enjoy the rain and the moment:

It’s always confusing to see and hear German or English when I do not expect them.  A German poem in a public space in the US?

Here’s the same stanza in English:

I’m leaving you with that today.  So use the present day with luck!

What are the simple things you are slowing down and enjoying today?