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Whenever I cook ground beef for pizza, lasagna, sloppy joes, and so on, I always use the same set of spices. Tonight, as I was preparing pizza, I finally decided I’d just pre-mix all of them into a single “secret blend”. Behold!

It’s like those jars of sand art! Of course I shook it up– otherwise the pizza would’ve been a bit heavy on chili powder. And now I have my very own spice mix.

Today is the Jewish holiday of Purim, which celebrates the triumph of Queen Esther over the wicked royal councillor Haman. In our Institute class, we’ve been studying the “villains of the scriptures”, and it seemed fitting to discuss that story this week.

One of the traditions of the holiday is to make little treats called hamantaschen, which means “Haman’s pockets”. They’re delicious little cookies shaped like triangles (the pockets, I guess) with fruit in the center:

Recipes for them abound on the internet, so I found one and went to work.

Notice how nice those look on my pan! Beautiful little triangles with fruity centers! But after baking, they looked terrible.

The dough completely collapsed, and they looked like pathetic little biscuits with a dollop of strawberry jam. I dubbed them hamantraschen.

That said, they still tasted fine. We brought them to our classes, and everyone seemed to enjoy the snack.

Oh, and another Jewish tradition on Purim is to dress in costume. We thought we’d do that, so I was Haman (or rather, a generic villain, complete with a top hat, cane, and dastardly mustache). Pepper was the beautiful Queen Esther.

And yes, we taught class in costume.

Learning about the Purim customs made our otherwise mundane lesson much more fun!

Six weeks (a transfer) seem to fly past. Another group of missionaries is heading out to new assignments. We’ll miss some of these amazing men and women.

Sister Jones:

Elder Glassey:

Sister Olsen:

For some reason these fifteen missionaries seemed to click really well. It’s been awesome to be a part of the work with them.

Somehow this second group photo captures the spirit of the group a bit better:

Onward and upward!

Because I’m such a nice guy, I occasionally make a bunch of chocolate-chip cookies for the missionaries. Last week I whipped up a batch.

After baking them, I sampled a few (quality control is very important!) and realized they tasted… off. Too salty. And they didn’t flatten out much; they were sort of hemispherical. A few had burned because I’d used a dark pan. Hmm.

I thought about it a bit and realized I’d not only used the wrong measuring spoon and put in three times the salt, I’d used baking powder instead of baking soda. Big mistake. That said, the missionaries all devoured the cookies and told me they were fine.

But it didn’t sit right with me, and today I made another batch. I was more careful with my measurements, and double-checked my ingredients. The result was much better.

The lesson: follow the recipe. In life, there are things we should be doing, and if we stray too much from the path, we find ourselves in a bit of a mess. Too salty. Shaped wrong. Burned.

I know what I need to be doing. Am I doing it? Am I following my recipe?

We’ve had enough pizza parties with the missionaries that now they ask when we’ll host another one. Who are we to deny them such pleasures in life? Our apartment isn’t very big, so we have to split them up. First the guys.

The next night, the gals came over.

Alas, we’ll only have a few more of these before we finish our mission…

Tonight was a senior missionary event in San Diego, so as usual we went west early to spend some time in the city beforehand. We did our best to organize some activities with friends, but schedules didn’t match up. We managed to get lunch at Which Wich (third on my list of best sandwich joints) with the Knudsens:

We really wanted to go on a hike (we don’t get much opportunity to hike during our mission) and we had about three hours, so we headed up to Poway to see the legendary Potato Chip Rock. The trail is almost eight miles out and back, which meant we had to hustle. There was a lot of uphill. A lot.

I had to stop to meditate for a moment.

At last we reached the summit of Mount Woodson, where the famous rock formation is. It’s pretty cool!

From the top, the Poway area is spread out below. In the far distance is the Pacific Ocean. What a view!

The clock was ticking, so we hustled back down the trail and managed to make it to the mission event with about three minutes to spare. Nice!

I was reading some forum discussions about game design, and loved this:

Your gems are in the back of the stack: [junk, junk, mostly junk, kinda junk, gem]. Gotta keep popping the stack.

bloomingkales @ Hacker News

It’s programmer humor, but I like what it reminds me about game design. I just have to keep plugging away, designing one after another, until I find a gem.

It was just a week ago that we went out to Phoenix for a family reunion. And now the family was coming to us! Dave and Jeanele were taking two of their granddaughters (our grand-nieces) out to Sea World, and we just happen to live half a mile off the interstate they’d be driving. So they stopped in.

They were only staying for the night, so we had a few hours together. We taught them the classic card game Cover Your Assets, which they loved. Veja learned to do a bridge shuffle…

… while Tallie just loved grabbing everyone else’s money stashes and adding to her pile.

In the morning they were on their way, and we said goodbye again for the second time in a week.

We’re going to see them again soon. No, seriously.

This picture of our friend Elder Jones sums up life for young missionaries pretty well.

After our time with Mom and Dad, we were driving back from the San Diego Airport and decided we’d go on a hike up in the mountains that separate the city from our home in the Valley. The landscape is still a desert, but the hills are covered with interesting boulders. A bit of sleuthing turned up some hikes in the vicinity of Jacumba, so we pulled off the interstate and looked for them.

We couldn’t find the trails! I guess they’re out there somewhere, but the desert is trackless and all looks the same. After driving down increasingly sketchy dusty roads, we figured we’d just get out and make our own trail. The area is all federal land, so we weren’t trespassing or anything. We chose the highest peak in the distance and decided to climb to the top.

Of course it always looks easier from far away. Without a trail, we had to pick our way through countless prickly bushes, barrel cacti, and the ubiquitous cholla.

Even though it’s February, the sun was scorching. It was in the 80s, with no shade and nothing but dust and dry sharp plants poking at us. We reached the hill and started up. Again, it was more difficult than it seemed.

But we scrambled to the summit and surveyed the desert all around.

I still don’t know where the trail is (or if there even is one) but it was a good time nonetheless.